Chapter 2
“YOU KNOW serial killers have to kill more than one person,” Atlas teased as they sat in the exercise yard, letting Dexter and Evie have some play time.
He and Atlas had gone through training together.
Grant had been paired with Dexter, an excellent dog who had already been trained in search-and-rescue, while Atlas had gotten Evie and trained her himself. Both dogs were amazing.
“I know you think you’re funny. But the implications are striking.
What if we have someone in town playing out some power fantasy by locking people in cisterns and just leaving them?
” Okay, maybe he was getting ahead of himself.
And god knows they couldn’t go into every house in town to find out if they had a cistern and then check the damned thing out.
There was the possibility that many current owners weren’t even aware those cisterns were there.
“I get your concern,” Atlas said as a spring breeze rustled the leaves overhead. It was a beautiful day, and Grant was happy to have a few minutes to sit with a cup of coffee. “Have you checked on missing child cases that are still open?”
“Yeah, I did. There aren’t many, thank god, and I suspect most of them are in divorced households where the kids were taken overseas by a parent.
But there are two that I’m going to take another look at.
I need to talk to Wes about them, but he’s out on a call.
As soon as he returns, I can get his input on the situation. ”
“You know this isn’t what we usually do,” Atlas told him. “We usually support other officers rather than lead cases.” They were typically called in to assist with investigations because of the dogs.
“I know, but I can’t seem to let this go.
” Nor could he get the image of a certain cute, rather geeky guy out of his mind.
He didn’t even know if the guy was gay, but the belly flutters he got when he was with him told Grant that there was a pretty good chance.
“I keep thinking of Bobby in that cistern, alone and scared in the dark for days.”
“Is he okay?” Atlas asked.
“Yes. I spoke to his parents this morning. He’s eating a little and recovering from severe dehydration.
Apparently we found him just in time, because his systems were beginning to shut down.
But he’s going to be okay. I’m going to take Dexter up to see him after I talk to Wes.
” He’d really wanted to be able to question Bobby about how long he had been in the cistern, but that had already been done with the help of a psychologist. They had been able to determine that Bobby was most likely placed in the cistern after they conducted the first search, because Bobby remembered being tied to a bed for a while by a man, but that he had had to go to the bathroom, and when he couldn’t hold it anymore, he had been taken away and placed in the dark.
Reading the report had damned near brought tears to Grant’s eyes.
He could feel the fear radiating off the page like a black cloud that threatened to overtake him.
“You know you shouldn’t try to talk to him about what happened,” Atlas told him.
“I’m not going up there for that. I’m going because I want to see that he’s okay.
I need to actually see him.” The sight of that little boy curled against the side of the cistern had hit him like a ton of bricks.
Grant stood and called Dexter over, and he came right away.
Grant put his halter and leash on him, signaling that it was time for them to go back to work. “I’ll see you later.”
Atlas nodded. “Give me a call if you need anything.” Grant nodded and led Dexter into the station. He checked Wes’s desk and was a little surprised to find him already on duty.
“Paperwork, paperwork,” Wes groused as Grant took a seat and Dexter lay at his feet. “What’s up?”
“These two cases,” Grant said, giving Wes printouts of the first page of the files.
Wes sighed. “I knew those two would come back to haunt me again and again.” Wes pointed to a board on his wall.
“Those two right there. I’ve had their pictures on the wall for a year.
In both cases, we got a call from the parents that their child was missing.
Cameras at the school show the boy, Cameron, leaving the building, and between there and his foster home, he disappeared.
The girl, Melissa, disappeared from her grandmother’s house while she was playing.
I always suspected that Melissa was taken by her father, because he returned to Mexico a week later and I figured that she was with him, but I didn’t have the resources to conduct an international search. ”
Well, at least that explained one of the cases, and Grant set it aside. “Tell me more about Cameron.”
“Why? Do you think you have a lead?” Wes’s eyes brightened and his voice held excitement.
“Maybe. I don’t know. But what happened to him sounds a lot like what we can piece together about Bobby’s disappearance—the boy we recovered the other day. I was wondering if it could be possible the cases might be related. There are some similarities.”
Wes looked over the details of both cases.
“I will agree to that. But a lot of child abduction cases have certain similarities. Kids taken from school or from their backyards while they were playing. It doesn’t mean one perpetrator; it means these are places where kids are.
What makes this case so striking is where you found him.
I mean, there has to be a reason why someone would take a child.
At least, there usually is. If there are foster parents, see if someone was trying to get leverage.
Look into their backgrounds, just like we would with any other case, if for no other reason than to rule them out.
Check on the owner of the house or past owners.
It wasn’t like the house had a sign that there was a cistern, so our perpetrator had to know it was there. ”
“I’m doing all that,” Grant said. “And maybe I’m being unreasonable, but this seems particularly evil. Why take a kid, keep him tied up, and then once he makes a mess, like kids will because he’s six, they toss him into a cistern as though he were trash?”
“That is something you’ll need to figure out. But there’s a saying: don’t look for a zebra in a horse barn.”
Grant shook his head. “Huh?”
“Look for the horses first. Look for that most basic motivations for the crime. Those are the ones that usually bear fruit. Don’t look for the zebra first. It’s like if you go to the doctor sneezing and coughing with a stuffy head.
The first thing the doctor doesn’t do is run a test for malaria.
He diagnoses that you have the cold that he’s already seen twelve times.
Once you’ve ruled out the horses, then you go looking for the zebra.
With these missing child cases, it’s easy to get wrapped up in them emotionally.
” He gazed at the board. “Lord knows I have.”
He turned back to Grant, who could only nod. The guys he worked with didn’t know his past, and he wanted to keep it that way. They didn’t need to, and it was something he didn’t talk about with anyone.
“Thanks,” Grant said, standing up. Dexter did as well, and they left Wes’s desk, heading out of the station.
The trip to the hospital didn’t take long. Dexter stayed by his side and was as well behaved as he always was. He and Dexter were a team, and they depended on each other. His dog was also his best friend, and he was almost always with him.
He checked in at the desk, and after finding out which room Bobby was in, took the elevator to Pediatrics and then went down the brightly painted halls to Bobby’s room, where the little boy sat up in bed, his mother in a chair nearby.
“Hello, I’m Officer Grant, and I brought a friend.
” He waited as Bobby broke into a grin. “This is Dexter.”
“Is he nice?” Bobby asked.
“Oh yes.” He turned to Dexter. “Free.” Dexter went right up to the bed and put his head on it. Bobby began petting him, and of course Dexter was in heaven.
“Can I get a dog like Dexter?” Bobby asked.
“Sweetheart, when you’re all better and ready to go home, you can get a dog.” The mother looked up at him with a combination of relief and residual fear.
“There’s a great dog rescue west of town.
The man who runs it is a vet, and he has some great dogs.
Not all of them are as big as Dexter.” He smiled slightly and watched Bobby as he petted Dexter and even got a kiss, which made him giggle.
That was unusual behavior for him. Dexter was not a licker, but he must have known that Bobby needed some loving.
Dexter was an amazing dog and incredibly intuitive in so many ways.
“Are you the officer who found Bobby?” his mother asked softly.
Grant nodded. “It was one of the neighbors who had the real idea. His name was Marty, and he told me that his house had a cistern, so we went inside the other house to look for one.”
“Were you talking about me?” Marty asked as he came into the room holding a stuffed penguin.
“Mr. Marty, you came back,” Bobby said with a grin.
“I stopped in yesterday, and Bobby and I had a good talk about penguins, so I brought this for him.” He handed it to Bobby, who hugged it, then placed the toy right next to him before going back to petting Dexter, who stood hind legs on the floor, front feet on one of the bed rails, and head in Bobby’s lap.
“So you both helped find him?” Bobby’s mother asked.
Marty nodded. “Grant was great. I found the door, and he got it open and got Bobby out. I have one of the same sort of cisterns under my kitchen, so….” He smiled at Grant, whose belly did a little flip.
“It was very much a team effort,” Grant said.
“Are you a police officer too?” she asked, settling in her chair. She looked shaken, and Grant had little doubt that she was probably ready to collapse after everything.