Jack Ryder Mystery Series: Vol 1-3

  “You think he was kidnapped?” Beth asked.

  “We don’t know yet,” Ron said. “He could have just run away. But when children are involved, I don’t take chances. I’m putting all my men in to look for him.”

  We all nodded. No arguing that it was important. I stared at the little boy next to Scott Kingston on the whiteboard. The similarities were obvious. Little boy, almost the same age, disappeared from his room where the window or sliding door was left open. No one in the room wanted to say it out loud, but we were all thinking it.

  Vernon Johnson had just been released and now it happened again?

  It could be a coincidence. It might not be. We didn’t know just yet. When Ron ended the meeting and told us to go to work, I went back to my desk with the pictures of the two little boys flickering for my inner eye. Carrie Kingston’s voice was roaming my mind.

  All this time…all this time, I could have been looking for him. You could have been looking for him. We could have found him. I know we could.

  I couldn’t bear it. So many years this boy was still alive after he was kidnapped. We weren’t going to make the same mistake again. That was for sure. I was determined not to let that happen.

  I looked through the newspaper, where Shannon’s upcoming concert in Orlando in two weeks was announced. She had said yes to doing a couple of concerts in the coming months. I hoped it wasn’t too much for her. I wanted her to rest. She was, after all, carrying our child. She had been throwing up a lot lately and I wondered if she was up for it. Could it affect the baby? All the loud music, screaming fans, and Shannon straining herself? I wasn’t happy about her doing it, but I also knew it was her passion and her entire life, so I hesitated to say anything when she told me about her plans. Now I wished I had. Now that it was too late.

  I flipped a couple of pages in the newspaper, then stopped at an article that made my heart pound. I grabbed the paper, then ran into Ron’s office without knocking. He looked at me, perplexed.

  “What’s going on, Ryder?”

  I threw the article on the desk. He looked at it.

  “Two people were found killed yesterday in Daytona Beach,” I said. “These two.”

  Ron gave the picture an extra glance. “So? It’s out of our area.”

  “Their story. Look at their story. It’s a couple. According to the article, they were being charged after their little girl was found locked in basement in deplorable conditions. Deplorable conditions. Look at what it says: a school nurse reported that a nine-year-old student may have been the victim of abuse after the girl was sent to the nurse's office because she smelled strongly of urine. The girl told the nurse that her private parts hurt, so the nurse conducted an examination and found her vaginal area to be red and irritated. The little girl also told the nurse that she wasn't allowed to go to the bathroom in the house and was forced to go to the bathroom outside because her family didn't want to contract the infections she had. When Sheriff's deputies responded, the victim's father and his girlfriend acknowledged they locked her in their unfinished basement with little food and water during the day as punishment for a recent school suspension. The basement door was secured with a lock and chain. He and his live-in girlfriend and her biological son live upstairs, while the little girl lives in the unfinished basement. He said they kept her downstairs because of her lack of bladder control, saying he "cannot afford to keep cleaning up after her."

  I put the paper down and looked at Ron. He looked at me like I had completely lost it. “Where are you going with this?”

  “They’re dead. They were shot outside of their house yesterday. Both twice in the heart.”

  Ron’s eyes widened. Finally, he understood. “The Monahan sisters?”

  “You bet.”

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Florida 1969

  When Hector spotted his brother in the crowd at the train station in Orlando, he started to cry. Raul yelled his name and started to run closer.

  “Hector! Hector!”

  Seconds later, they were in each other’s arms. The trip from Cuba and been long and hard, and finding Raul had taken months. But through other Cubans in Miami, he had heard that Raul had settled on a small island up in Central Florida called Merritt Island. As soon as Raul had polished enough shoes to make enough money for the train ticket, he had written to Raul at the restaurant that he had heard he worked in, and once he was on the train, he could do nothing but hope that Raul would be there. And so he was. Tears were streaming across his cheeks.

  “Dear brother. Look at you. You are too skinny!” Raul said and clapped him on the back. He put his arm around his shoulder and pulled him close.

  Raul took Hector to the restaurant where he worked. It was a small Cuban place, and the smells and music inside of it made Hector sick with longing for his daughter, Isabella, whom he had left.

  At the restaurant, he was also reunited with two of his other brothers who had escaped Cuba the year before. The reunion was tearful, yet joyous.

  “We have a job for you here,” Raul said. “The owner is Cuban too and he told us you could work with us. You can live with me as long as you want to. After all, I owe you my life, dear brother.”

  Raul smiled and wiped a tear from his eyes. Then he laughed and patted Hector on the shoulder once again. Hector’s other two other brothers, Alonzo and Juan, joined in and they all hugged again. Hector’s heart was heavy in his chest. He was so happy to finally be there, to finally be in the U.S., but now that he had reached his destination, he was confronted with the fact that he had left everything back in Cuba. Four of the brothers were together, but the rest of the family wasn’t. He feared for their lives.

  Hector soon started working in the kitchen of the restaurant, and as the days passed, he got used to life in the U.S. without his daughter and parents, even though he missed them every day, every minute. He started to make a decent living and soon was able to get his own place. A condo on Merritt Island soon became a house on Merritt Island, and his job in the kitchen at the restaurant soon led to a job as a butcher in Cocoa Beach, and two years later, he had saved enough money to be able to open his own Cuban restaurant in Cocoa Beach.

  Little Havana was the love of Hector’s life, after his daughter Isabella, naturally. He wrote her letters every day and hoped they would reach her, but knowing how things worked in his homeland, he also knew it was very unlikely. The political tensions were getting worse, even though Hector didn’t understand what it was all about. He knew things were getting worse back home; he heard many stories of people being imprisoned for speaking up for themselves, for defending the right of speech, or if they tried to leave, and he started to wonder how he was going to get his daughter out. He wanted to get his parents to come as well, and the rest of his brothers, but for now he focused only on Isabella. She was the one who deserved a better future. She was the one he was responsible for. She was the one he was being eaten up from the inside with longing for.

  Sometimes, he would drive down to the beach after closing up the restaurant or before they opened, and he would simply stare out into the Atlantic Ocean, thinking she was out there somewhere. South of where he was. Breathing in the same air that he did. Maybe swimming in the same ocean. Every day, he wondered if it would be possible to simply take a boat and go get her. But he knew he would be shot if he was caught. They had made themselves very clear. He could never set foot in Cuba again.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  May 2015

  I immediately called up my colleagues at Volusia County Sheriff’s Office, who covered Daytona Beach. They gave me the details of the case and I told them my concerns.

  “I believe it might be connected to a case we’re working on down here,” I told the detective on the case, and then gave him the details about the sisters.

  I hung up and then called Sarah Millman’s lawyer and asked him to bring her back in. Two hours later, she was sitting in the interrogation room as Ron and I entered. He wanted to hear what s
he had to say.

  “My client is not saying anything,” the lawyer said before I even opened my mouth. “What are the charges?”

  “She’s not under arrest,” I said. “At least not yet.”

  “So, why are we here?” the lawyer asked. “My client is still only a suspect, as far as I have been informed.”

  I threw a picture of the couple from Daytona Beach in front of them. “These two were killed outside their home yesterday. It has the scent of the Monahan sisters all over it. They were being charged with child abuse, and they were each shot twice in the heart.”

  Sarah Millman shook her head. “I don’t know anything about this. I was at home yesterday. The guard at the gate can tell you. I haven’t been to Daytona for years.”

  “Have you spoken to your sisters lately?” I asked. “Maybe they’re in Daytona?”

  “I hardly think so,” she said. “It’s a very noisy town.”

  “I wasn’t asking if they were there for the speedway,” I said.

  “I know what you’re asking,” she said. “But you also know I haven’t heard from them. After all, you’re tapping my phone, aren’t you? You have a tail on me twenty-four-seven. Isn’t that what you call it? Don’t think I haven’t noticed that I’m being followed everywhere.”

  “Well, it’s hardly a secret that we’re trying to catch your sisters, so I don’t expect you to be surprised,” I said.

  “I’m not.”

  “We have a proposition for you,” Ron said. “I talked to the State Attorney and they’re willing to lower the charges against you if you help us find your sisters.”

  The lawyer leaned forward. His facial expression told me he believed in her guilt as well. He knew she had a bad case. “What are we talking about?” he asked.

  “Assisting murder instead of homicide,” Ron said.

  It hurt inside of me to know that she might get away with killing her husband, and only being charged with assisting to it, but it was worth it if it meant we would get the two others.

  Sarah Millman leaned back and crossed her arms in front of her chest. Her lawyer looked at her. She shook her head.

  “It’s a good deal,” her lawyer said.

  Sarah Millman was thinking about it. I could tell this might be a way to get to her. She was afraid of going to jail. She doubted if it was worth it…if it was worth covering for her sisters.

  “What about Christopher?” I asked. “If you go in for murder, he’ll have to grow up without a mother or a father. You say you fight for the children…against injustice and abuse. But what about your own son? Is he the one who will be lost in all this? ‘Cause you’re going to jail. I spoke to Jacquelyn Jones this morning, and they’re getting ready to press charges. She even believes she has enough evidence to charge you with being an accomplice in the attack on my partner. And that’s bad. You know how they get when an officer is involved. They always go for the worst punishment. Even if it was your sister Natalie who set up the bomb, you knew about it. That’s what they’ll argue. They might even say you planned it along with your other sisters. And then there’s the matter of Stanley Bradley, who identified you as one of the women holding him captive and trying to kill him. It doesn’t look very good, sweetheart. It’s only a matter of days before we’ll be taking you in again. And this time, it’s for good. It’s up to you how badly you want this to end for Christopher.”

  “Would they agree to us pleading that my client was under the influence of substances while planning or committing the crime?” the lawyer asked.

  Ron nodded. “Yes. If she talks.”

  “I’m not saying anything,” she said. “I don’t know where they are.”

  I sighed and got up from my chair. “That’s too bad, Sarah. We were just trying to help you out here. Now, we’ll just have to settle for whatever we found in your house when our people went through it while you were here talking to us.”

  “You searched my house again?”

  The lawyer was about to speak, but I showed him a copy of the warrant. “Yes, we did,” I said.

  “This is beginning to look like harassment,” the lawyer said.

  “You won’t find anything this time either,” Sarah Millman said.

  I got up from the chair and walked to the door. I grabbed the handle, then turned and looked at her. “I guess you have nothing to fear, then.”

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  May 2015

  Noah knew he was in the worst nightmare in his life. As a matter of fact, it was worse than any nightmare he’d ever had. And Noah used to have many. Especially since they moved to the new house. He never liked the house much. There was something about it that made him scared, especially in the dark.

  “It was just a nightmare,” his mother would whisper when she came to his room after being awakened by Noah’s screaming. “Go back to sleep. It was just a bad dream.”

  But Noah kept having the same dream over and over again; it haunted him even when he was awake.

  Where are you, Mommy?

  He had no idea if it was night or day. Wherever he was, there was no light. Only walls surrounding him on all sides. Wooden walls that he knocked and knocked on, but had no answer. He had no idea how long he had been lying like this, but he did know he was very, very thirsty.

  He had wet his pants and the smell made him sick. The hunger and the thirst ate him up from the inside.

  I’m so thirsty, Mommy. I’m so hungry. Where are you? Help me, Mommy!

  Did his mom know he was gone by now? She had to know. He had been gone for a very long time. Noah closed his eyes. It didn’t matter if he had them closed or open. The darkness surrounded him anyway. Every now and then, he broke into a panic thinking he was never going to get out of this thing. Then he would scream and knock and call for his mommy, but nothing happened. No one came.

  Have they forgotten about me?

  Sometimes, Noah felt like back when he had been lost at J.C. Penney’s at the mall. He had been only five years old, but remembered it vividly. He had been holding his mother’s hand, then spotted something, a sweet alligator toy, and let go of his mother’s hand for one unforgiving second. When he returned and spotted his mother again, he grabbed her hand and looked up, only to realize it wasn’t his mother anymore. It was some other woman wearing the same white pants.

  “Hello there,” the woman said and knelt next to him.

  “You’re not my mommy.”

  “No, I’m not.”

  Noah had let go of the woman’s hand, then run away, getting lost between rows of women’s clothing. He had looked and looked but not been able to find his mother anywhere. He had ended up asking a security guard to help him. The guard had found her. Finally, he was back with his mother again and promised to never ever wander off again. It was an easy promise to make, since Noah never ever wanted to feel that feeling again.

  But now, it had happened again. He was lost, he was in trouble, and he couldn’t get himself out of it. He had no idea how to. There was no nice security guard he could ask; he was all alone, alone in this…this thing.

  Noah sobbed and felt sorry for himself, when suddenly, he was interrupted by a sound coming from outside.

  Someone was there.

  There was a fumbling on the other side, sounds, and then someone saying something, calling his name.

  “Noah…Noah…”

  Strong light from above blinded him. He held a hand to his face to cover his eyes. But he wanted to see who it was. Was it his mom and dad? Was it the police?

  Noah smiled with relief and felt his heart race in his chest. Finally, someone was here. Finally, he was getting out.

  A silhouette blocked out the light. Noah couldn’t see their face.

  “Mommy?” he cried. “Is that you, Mommy?”

  A hand reached down and he grabbed it and sat up. Then he was helped up, but it was hard for him to stand, and he kept falling. An arm grabbed him and finally he saw the face of his savior. Only, when he looked into his
eyes, he realized with terror that he wasn’t here to rescue him. He was the one who had put him there.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  May 2015

  “I have something!”

  Richard yelled through the room. I looked up from my computer. Outside, the windows the dark gray clouds hung heavily. The storm was still forecasted to stay off the Florida Coast. It was still far away, but it was bringing bad weather to our area already. So far, it wasn’t even a tropical storm yet, but it was building. I was keeping a close eye on the radars. The wind gusts made people’s clothes and hats fly in the streets. Still, they all wore flip-flops and shorts, since it was very hot.

  I walked to Richard and stood behind him, looking over his shoulder. Twenty-four hours had passed since we had searched Sarah Millman’s house, and so far, we hadn’t come any closer to finding her sisters.

  Until now.

  “What did you find?”

  “I’ve been through all of the stuff on her computer, and I mean everything. Search history, all her emails, anything she looked at for the last forty-eight hours before we took her computer in. Just now, I was going through her iPad, and I finally came upon something. You are familiar with Snapchat, right?”

  I shrugged. “I’ve never used it myself, but I’ve heard about it, yes. Emily uses it with her friends.”

  “Well, basically, it’s an app where you send a photo or a video or a text message to someone and users set a time limit for how long recipients can view their Snaps. The time limit ranges from one to ten seconds.”

  “And afterwards, it’s deleted; I know that much,” I said.

  “Yes, that’s how it works. When the ten seconds are up, the pictures are hidden from the recipient's device and deleted from Snapchat's servers.”