Chapter 16
The hour after the shooting had flown by. As I secured Whitaker, with Tony’s hand cuffs, Tony had read him his rights. Then we cleared the trailer and found the two little girls. They were both alive, but not at all well. They were in an ambulance on the way to the hospital now. Of the two girls, Victoria Winslow was in pretty bad shape. She was conscious, but nearly completely catatonic. It had been the other little girl we had heard scream when Whitaker took the duct tape off her mouth. Tony and I showed up just as he had taken her into a back room in the mobile home
There was no sign of Aaron Horowitz, the little boy who had been with Victoria in the trunk of the Impala.
The whole area was now crawling with emergency vehicles and law enforcement of every conceivable type. There was DPS, sheriff’s deputies from two counties, local cops, the Justice of the Peace and constables, even Texas Rangers and game wardens. There was a dispute over jurisdiction.
Tony would be going to the hospital when we were through here. All of the cops were treating him like a hero, with the possible exception of his lieutenant.
Tony looked like hell. I felt that way myself, but Tony was injured. His Kevlar tactical vest had saved his life, stopping all the pellets and debris from the door, but he had taken most of the energy of a twelve gauge blast full in the chest, from about four feet away. The door had barely slowed the pellets, and he’d been knocked back through the warped, old 2x4 front porch railing, to land on his back in the yard. He’d had splinters and dust from the door in his eyes. His tears had washed away most of it, but splinters and debris had also struck his neck and face.
He had ignored the pain until now, but clearly he was hurt and nearly done in.
“Thanks, J.W. I haven’t had a minute to think till now, but I know you saved my life.”
“Your vest did that, Tony.”
“I’m alive because you kept him from blowing my head off, J.W. If you had stayed on the back porch like I told you to, Whitaker would have killed me.”
“Yeah well, the best laid plans don’t last past the first contact with the enemy. You wouldn’t even have been in harm’s way, if I hadn’t led you into it. I guess the important point is we got him, and those girls will go home to their families.”
“Thanks, J.W., I’m glad to be alive.”
Finally! I wished it hadn’t taken this to get him there.
We both stared at nothing for a while.
We wanted to forget what we had seen.
Tony had to be driven to the hospital in Tyler. I was taken to the town of Rusk, the County Seat of Cherokee County, for additional questioning. It was routine and according to procedure, but the attitude of the deputies was cordial and as accommodating as they could be.
From a police procedural point of view, this was a disaster. The only saving grace for me was I was a civilian, licensed and legal. I was engaged in investigating the kidnapping of my client’s daughter, and I had alerted the authorities. It helped that I had saved Tony’s life and secured the suspect. I hadn’t even discharged my weapon.
Nothing I had done was worthy of charges, nor would any of my actions interfere with the official investigation. Tony had been in pursuit of a suspect in recent child abductions.
Getting a conviction on Whitaker should be no problem.
My phone was filled with missed calls and recorded messages. I ignored them.
On my way back to Tyler, I called Christine. I told her to call the client in Jacksonville and apologize for my failure to show up for our meeting. I hadn’t even thought about it till now.
“The news people have been calling. Somebody must have tipped them off. It’s all over the news, John. They’re saying an unnamed Tyler police officer located and rescued the two little girls who were abducted from Tyler in the last week. The unnamed officer has been hospitalized with a gunshot injury he sustained while acting on a tip from a citizen. A suspect in the case is in custody. They have a helicopter flying over that mobile home, out there in the woods.”
“I think Tony will come out of this in pretty good shape. I don’t understand why he was hospitalized. I thought he would just be treated and released”
“What about you, John, are you OK?”
“I’m not hurt, Christine. I’ll be fine. Right now I’m pretty shaken up. I think I’ll go to the hospital to check on Tony. Tell everybody to leave me alone. I mean, reschedule and take messages. Hell, I don’t know what I mean.”
“I’ve got it, John. Don’t even think about it.”
“Thanks, Christine.”
“John, you need to get some rest. You sound terrible, besides they might not let you see Detective Escalante.”
Of course, she was right. I was completely wrung out and I wasn’t thinking clearly. Every news person in the country would want to interview Tony. The Tyler PD would want to keep him isolated until he was completely debriefed and prepared to meet the press. And since I was involved in the incident, there was no way I could visit him.
“Yeah, OK, I’m going home.”
It turned out Tony had been kept for observation to be sure he didn’t have a bruised heart. The shotgun blast had fractured his sternum. He had a couple of broken ribs from hitting or landing on the porch railing. His face and neck had small lacerations from the splinters blown out of the door. He was sore, but he would heal.
After what we had seen in that trailer, we both had bruised hearts. You can’t live in this world without the occasional bruised or broken heart.
Tony’s name and mine eventually got broadcast by the news media as part of the sensational story. I was identified as a private investigator. Tony was always referred to as a hero cop.
The Tyler PD had to go easy on him. He had single-handedly put them in the national spotlight. In fact, because he had already passed his lieutenant’s exam, they promoted him to a desk.
Christine and I moved into our fancy new office. I decided to raise our daily rate to $500.00. We were going to have to generate more income to pay for our new space. Christine was true to her word. She chose the furnishings and appointments with exacting care. Her taste was impeccable.
It was an ideal place to meet with Victoria’s parents.
Victoria was…recovering. She was responding well to treatment and was outwardly a typical ten year old girl. She never left her mother’s sight these days. Sometimes she woke up at night screaming, but the doctor’s felt she would slowly make adjustments and learn to cope. The Winslow family was making plans for homeschooling, starting in the fall.
Children are resilient, thank God.
The door to my corner office was open so Victoria could see her mom, and vice versa. Christine was sitting on the floor with her, playing jacks.
“We can’t thank you enough, Mr. Tucker. Lieutenant Escalante said you were responsible for locating Victoria. He said you were the only one who never gave up, and you led him to where that man was keeping the girls.”
“Please don’t thank me. Thank God. There is another person you can thank as well. His name is Dustin. You may have seen him on the sidewalks at one time or another. He’s the tall skinny black man pushing a shopping cart around. He told me everything I needed to know to track down Whitaker.”
“Oh, OK, but we hired you. I would like to know what we owe you. Money wise, I mean. We can never repay you what we owe you,” Mr. Winslow said.
“You owe me nothing. In fact, here is the check you first gave me, as a retainer. I’d appreciate it if you would use the money to help Dustin. He’s homeless and he has some mental issues. I don’t expect miracles, but any help you might give him would go a long way towards doing something good with the money. I would appreciate it, very much.”
Eventually we learned the fate of Aaron Horowitz. He was a kid
Whitaker had just picked up one day, after visiting his mother in Marshall. The authorities recovered a lot of forensic evidence from both the trailer and the Impala. They found a great deal of further incriminating evidence on Whitaker’s computer. He told the police he had sold Aaron Horowitz, to ‘some guy from Louisiana’ he had connected with over the internet. Whitaker had carried the little boy in the trunk of his Impala, to a truck stop in Shreveport, where he made the sale to a guy he knew only as ‘SleeZ362’. It was a Federal offense, transporting a kidnap victim across state lines.
The Feds were able to track down ‘SleeZ362’ from his internet activities. He was arrested. He led them to the place deep in the Louisiana woods, where he had buried Aaron Horowitz’s body. Whitaker was now implicated in the boy’s murder.
I took no comfort from the news. It was certainly no comfort to the Horowitz family.
Sometimes, I have to remind myself that this world is not my home.