Jack Ryder Mystery Series: Vol 1-3

  May 2015

  Shannon and I didn’t discuss the matter further the next morning. The mornings were way too busy with getting the kids fed, dressed, and to the school bus on time. Shannon was nauseated and spent most of the morning in the bathroom throwing up, while I took care of the kids.

  As soon as they were off on the bus, I jumped in my car and drove to the office. I wanted to get there as early as possible, since Yamilla had called me yesterday and asked me to come to the ME’s office today. I had to finish some paperwork, answer a few emails, and then I was off.

  Yamilla greeted me in the lobby and told me to come with her downstairs. I hated going there, the smell alone made me sick to my stomach. I simply didn’t understand how Yamilla did it, how she could work in a place like this.

  “I have news on Scott Kingston,” she said and approached a table where she had put the bones together so it almost looked like a skeleton. A few bones were still missing and hadn’t been found…probably taken by animals over the years.

  “Great,” I said.

  “After thorough examination, I have finally found a cause of death. I believe he starved to death.”

  I stared at Yamilla. “Starved to death?”

  “I see serious signs of malnutrition in the bones. They’re not developed properly. Around the age of seven, something went wrong. His body stopped developing and his growth slowed down drastically…signs of severe malnutrition or starvation. It also shows in the skeleton’s spinal curvature. The bones have rickets and his teeth were affected. There is no trauma to the bones or skull indicating the death could have had another cause.”

  “How old was he when he died?”

  “I believe he was fourteen.”

  It fit with the fact that the building he was found under was constructed in ninety-three. It had been a construction site at that point. An easy way to dispose of a body.

  “So, we know for sure now that the kidnapper kept him alive for seven years?” I asked. It still surprised me. How the heck was this even possible without anyone noticing? Someone must have seen the boy. Neighbors? The kidnapper’s family? Where had he been for seven years?

  “I think he did. I think he fed him just about enough to keep him alive. For some reason, he didn’t want to kill him right away. I believe he kept him in a small place. A place he couldn’t stand upright. If you look at the spine, it is so curved, I believe he must have been kept in very small room or something like it. He was crouched for a long time while his body tried to grow.”

  I drew in a deep breath. Starvation? Kept for seven years in a small room? Who was this creep?

  Yamilla cleared her throat and approached another table with a microscope.

  “We also found this in the dirt,” she said. “Close to the body.”

  I looked in the microscope and saw tiny splinters.

  “Wood?”

  “Yes, searchers found pieces of birch bark in the ground next to him. This type of birch bark isn’t commonly seen around here. It’s very sustainable and takes a long time to decompose. I think the splinters might have been in his body, maybe in his fingers and under his nails.”

  “From scratching,” I said, my heart in my throat.

  “Yes. Maybe on a wooden door,” she said.

  I wrote it down while Yamilla continued to another skeleton. I recognized it as the remains we found on the construction site a couple of days ago.

  “We just got a positive ID on this one. Say hello to Jordan Turner,” she said. “Jordan was thirteen when he died. Also from starvation. We found the exact same signs in his bones as in Scott Kingston. This one was also kept in a small room and suffered from a severe vitamin D deficiency from the lack of sunlight. He is from Rockledge. He was reported missing in September, 1999.”

  Chapter Forty-Two

  May 2015

  Noah had no more tears. He couldn’t cry anymore. His legs were hurting from being in the box, his mouth so dry he couldn’t swallow. He was so thirsty it made him delirious. Being in constant darkness made him sleep constantly. Now, the lid to the box was opened and he was being pulled out. His body felt so weak he couldn’t get up on his own. The light from the window hurt his eyes.

  The man placed Noah on the ground. Noah blinked his eyes. A slap across his face woke him up. Noah cried; his cheek was burning. He looked at the man in front of him. His nostrils were flaring; his eyes burning with fire. Noah gasped. He had seen this look in the man’s eyes before. The last time he had looked at him like this he had beaten him with a stick. Noah still had stripes on his back.

  “Thirsty,” Noah whimpered. “I’m so thirsty.”

  The man laughed loudly. “Thirsty, huh? I bet you’re hungry too.”

  Noah nodded feebly. “Yes.”

  Violently Noah felt the man grab him by the hair, and soon he was pulled forcefully backwards. Screaming, he was dragged into another room, where he was placed in a shower and stripped of his clothes.

  Noah smiled when he saw the showerhead above him, thinking finally he was getting a bath, finally he would get water. He opened his mouth, thinking, hoping, and dreaming of the soft water streaming at him from the showerhead. He closed his eyes and laughed in anticipation of finally getting all the water he could drink, of finally getting rid of this awful smell he was in constantly from his own body rotting inside the box. When he opened his eyes, the man was standing in front of him holding a bucket in his hand. Noah looked surprised at the bucket and managed to think in the split of a second that maybe the showerhead was broken and the man would just give him a bath using water from a bucket, when a second later he was hit in the face with something ice cold. So cold it hurt when it touched his naked skin.

  Noah screamed and cried, while the man laughed, lifted another bucket up and threw it at Noah. The ice cold water felt like needles to the skin when it landed all over Noah, who bent to the ground in terror, crying and screaming his heart out.

  Water dripped from his nose. His body trembled. He tried to get some in his mouth and cupped his hands to gather a handful and drink it, but he was so cold his hands couldn’t be still long enough for him to hold on to the water.

  “Please, stop,” Noah cried. “Please, stop this. I want to go home. I want to go home to my mom.”

  He fell to his knees and pleaded while another bucket of ice cold water hit him on the head. He screamed and cried while the man laughed and laughed at him. Seconds later, yet another bucket landed on top of his head. Noah shivered and screamed.

  “Help me,” he cried. “Please, help me.”

  “No one can help you, pretty boy. No one can help your rich little ass now. Your mom and dad are gone; they left you to rot in here,” the man hissed, then grabbed Noah’s ankle and started to pull him across the floor.

  Noah felt his body be lifted from the ground and soon he was put back in the small wooden box and the lid closed. Noah cried and screamed for help, fighting the lid so it wouldn’t close, but it was no use. The man left without a word, leaving Noah alone again with nothing but the cold as companion.

  Chapter Forty-Three

  May 2015

  “Jordan Turner,” Ron said and hung up an old picture of the boy from the case file, taken in 1998, the year before he disappeared.

  “A black kid that disappeared on his way home from school on September tenth 1999. The case was investigated as a runaway, since Jordan had gotten himself in trouble at school and was facing his parents’ punishment when he got home. It was believed he simply never wanted to come home. He was nine at the time he disappeared. Friends talked about a car with a man inside of it that had been parked at the school. The driver had asked Jordan for directions outside of the school. Jordan spoke to him shortly, and then walked home alone as usual. Jordan was reported missing the next day to Rockledge Police, but as I said, they believed he had run away and the case was never closed.”

  “But they didn’t do anything to solve it either, I’m guessing,” I said, thinking a black
kid from a bad neighborhood running away didn’t get much attention.

  Ron shrugged. “Those are the facts.”

  “What do we know about the driver of that car?” I asked.

  Ron looked at the case file. “Not much. The man was black, the car was an old beat up Ford, uh…that’s about it.”

  “That’s not much,” I said, leaning back in my chair. “They didn’t make a drawing or anything?”

  Ron shook his head. “Like I said, they treated it like a runaway. So many kids run away from home every year…”

  I knew what he was saying, even though I didn’t like it. I wrote the details on my notepad, while Ron closed the meeting. I went back to my desk. I checked the radar. I had been doing that all day. Anna was getting closer and closer to the coast, and the forecasters were getting anxious. It had done a solid amount of damage to The Bahamas when it went through there. If it decided to make landfall, we would have to evacuate the entire coastline. We were all holding our breath.

  Meanwhile, I had this knot in my stomach from last night. Shannon and I still hadn’t talked things out, and I was worried what was going on between us. Was it just the pregnancy? The fear of the future? I could understand if she was worried and nervous about it. So was I. But wasn’t it always like that when you were expecting, when big changes came in your life?

  I feared she was going to say she didn’t want to live on the lot. That would be the worst.

  I opened the floor plan from the architect and looked at it. It was truly my dream house. I had even added a sundeck as a surprise to Shannon, since I knew she would love to have one. From up there, you would be able to look over both the ocean and Intracoastal. It didn’t get anymore beautiful than that.

  I sighed and closed the document, then looked at my phone. She hadn’t called yet. Beth approached my desk. She threw me the keys to one of the cars.

  “You ready?”

  I sighed and looked at her. “Don’t think I ever will be.”

  We got in and drove to the address in Rockledge where Jordan Turner used to live. It was in one of the worst parts of town, the same place we had more than often been called out to drug related shootings. The house was from the fifties, and hadn’t been maintained for many years. It was located right next to a road where cars drove past at forty-five miles an hour. Not exactly a safe environment for a kid to grow up, I thought to myself. On the porch sat an old woman on a chair. I approached her.

  “Excuse me, Ma’am. We’re looking for Mrs. or Mr. Turner. Do they still live here?”

  The woman nodded. “That’s my daughter,” she said. “She’s inside.”

  Chapter Forty-Four

  May 2015

  “They’re charging you with murder. I just got the news.”

  Shannon stared out the window of the condo, but didn’t really see. Instead, images of her in an orange jumper with her hands in cuffs flickered for her inner eye.

  “Excuse me?” she asked her lawyer on the phone. “They can’t do that!”

  He sighed. It wasn’t a good sign. “I’m afraid they can,” he said. “They have Joe’s letter stating you killed Robert Hill with the microphone stand. I don’t know what else they have yet, but they seem pretty sure about this, about your guilt.”

  “But I’m not,” Shannon said. “I’m not guilty.”

  She felt dizzy and sat on one of Jack’s chairs. Outside, the storm was moving closer and it was pouring down rain. She saw lightning on the horizon. “I’m not guilty, John. You know I’m innocent. How can they do this to me? I told them everything.”

  “They think you’re lying, Shannon. They believe they have enough material to convict you. That’s how these things work,” John said.

  Shannon had stopped breathing. She felt how the blood was leaving her head. Her stomach turned into a huge knot.

  They’re going to convict me, aren’t they? They’re going to put me in jail and I am going to have my baby in jail. Oh, my God, they’ll take my baby away from me. I won’t get to see my baby grow up, will I?

  “Now, Shannon, it’s important to take it easy. Nothing is decided yet. There will be a trial, and that’s when we’ll do everything we can to prove your innocence. I still believe there is hope, and you should too, Shannon. But we need to be smart about this. I need you to try and stay calm and keep your head cool, alright?”

  Shannon gasped for air. She was panicking. “I…I…I’m so scared, John. I’m terrified.”

  “Of course you are,” he said. “Now, take it easy and breathe, and when I hang up you call Jack and ask him to come home and help you stay calm. We can’t have you collapsing again, Shannon. We have to think of the baby. I might be able to push things back. I’ll be pleading that they wait till the baby is born before we go to trial. I’m going to try for that first. That should give us at least six months, if not more, since I will argue that you need time with the baby and physically won’t be ready for trial till several weeks after the birth. Plus, you can’t breastfeed in court. I think we’re looking at trial around Christmas, if all goes well. That gives us a lot of time to figure out our defense strategy.”

  “Will they arrest me?”

  “I have spoken to the State’s Attorney and convinced them you are no flight risk. You’ve already paid a quite huge bail amount, so I think we’re good for now. Just don’t go out of the country the next couple of months. I need you to stay put.”

  “That’s not going to be a problem,” Shannon said.

  “Okay. Now, take it easy, then call Jack and I’ll be in touch as soon as I know more details. No panicking, you hear me?”

  Shannon took in a deep breath. “Alright.”

  “Talk to you soon.”

  As soon as Shannon hung up, she felt the tears well up in her eyes. She let them go. She sat for a few seconds and cried while staring at the phone. Then she got up and threw it across the room with a loud scream.

  “You bastard, Joe!! You BASTARD!”

  Chapter Forty-Five

  May 2015

  Beth and I had finished talking to Mrs. Turner, who had lost her husband five years ago. She had cried a lot when we told her what happened to her son, but at the same time, she was happy to finally get closure. All these years, she had wondered where he was and why he didn’t come home.

  “It gets so bad, you catch yourself just staring out the window, into the street and expect him to walk around the corner any second,” she told us.

  It was raining when we stepped out of her house. And when it rained in Florida, it poured. We said our goodbyes and promised to keep her updated if there was any news in the case, then ran towards the car and jumped inside. We closed the doors, then looked at each other and laughed. We were both soaked just from that little run. The rain was still pouring heavily on the windshield.

  “That was interesting, huh?” Beth said, when I drove into the street, where the cars had slowed down due to the heavy rain. Our wipers couldn’t keep up with the amount of water that was being poured on us.

  “It definitely was,” I said.

  “How come she didn’t tell the police what she knew?” Beth asked.

  “Probably no one wanted to listen,” I said. “A black woman from a poor neighborhood back in the nineties? Not a chance.”

  “So, what do we do now?” she asked.

  “I don’t know yet. But we need to go talk to the people at the shop tomorrow,” I said. “The fact that she had seen the guy in the Ford parked on the street in front of her house every day for at least a week before her son disappeared is certainly something that should have been investigated back then.”

  “And that she had seen him before? I can’t believe it wasn’t investigated,” Beth said.

  “I know. It’s mentioned nowhere in the report, even though she did tell the police that she had seen the guy, that she knew where he worked.”

  “I can’t believe that the same roofing company is still there,” I said with a chuckle. “This many years later.??
?

  “Well, Mrs. Turner said it was a family business, and that the son had taken over now. But there is always work to do in the roofing business, right?”

  I looked out the window at the black clouds covering the horizon. “And there sure will be if Anna gets any closer.”

  I had just parked the car in front of the Sheriff’s Office and run inside through the rain when my phone started to ring. It was Shannon. I picked it up.

  “Hi, sweetheart.”

  “Jack, oh, Jack.”

  She could hardly speak. I could tell she was tearing up. A million thoughts flickered through my mind. Had something happened to the baby? Had she lost it?

  “What’s wrong, Shannon? Talk to me. Is it something with the baby? Has something happened?”

  “I…I…I need you.”

  “I’m coming home right away,” I said, as I grabbed my car keys from my desk. I signaled to Beth that I had to go home and she understood. I ran to the car and got in. The rain wasn’t as heavy as it had been earlier. It would soon be quieting down.

  “Talk to me, Shannon. What’s going on?”

  “They’ve…my lawyer called. They’ve decided to charge me with first degree murder,” she said, her voice trembling.

  My heart dropped. I couldn’t believe it. I started the car. “Stay where you are. I’m coming home.”

  Chapter Forty-Six

  Cuba, April 1980

  “Isabella Suarez? Have you seen a young girl, sixteen years old? She might be with an elderly couple. Their names are Suarez?”

  Everything was chaos. When Raul and Hector finally docked in the harbor of Mariel, boats waited everywhere, hundreds of boats…from tiny skiffs to yachts. On the docks, the crowds of people waited, all looking for a way out. Names were being shouted in the crowds, some screamed in joy when they found each other, others cried. In search of their own family, Raul and Hector talked to many of them and soon realized that the rumors had been true. Castro had allowed everyone with a permit to leave Cuba. They could only hope their family was among those that had been granted a permit.