Out of Focus (4 page)

I have the right to be there, don’t I? It’s my family—my tragedy, for God’s sake.

An Amber alert had been broadcast, and she’d been ordered to sit tight until the FBI arrived in the morning.

Overnight Ernesto picked up significant wind speed. A dangerous category three, sustained winds were expected to increase with gusts over 130 miles per hour by later in the day.

Kasey watched the investigation unfold on the television between storm warnings. Von had gone back to the crash site. He called to give Kasey and Riley updates every couple of hours through the night—but minutes slinked by. They hadn’t heard anything in a while.

Ernesto was relentless in his path of destruction. Once the full brunt of the storm hit, there’d be no way anyone could search for Jake. Precious evidence would wash away under Ernesto’s powerful force.

Kasey drifted in and out of a restless sleep, arousing to the familiar sound of her son’s name. She’d slept but hadn’t rested. She sat up to listen again to what she’d already memorized. No changes, but then she expected that. Loneliness consumed her.
How can I face this without Nick by my side?

Riley came from the kitchen with juice. “Here girl. You need to keep your strength up.”

Kasey took a sip from the glass and placed it on the table. “I hoped I’d wake up to find this was all a bad dream. Nothing new?”

“Afraid not. The Child Abduction Rapid Deployment team will be here soon.”

“I know.” Kasey dropped her head into her hands. then pushed herself to her feet. She forced herself to get up and go out to the front porch. She sat on the steps. The rain pounded on the metal roof. A toy car lay abandoned nearby. Kasey picked it up and pushed it back and forth. The wooden deck was scarred from the many hours Jake had raced his cars along these planks.

Two dark nondescript sedans filed into the driveway. She squeezed the tiny car into her palm. Her nails pinched into her skin as she pushed against the handrail to stand.

Riley burst through the screen door and stood behind Kasey, one arm wrapped around her friend’s shoulders.

“Please, Lord, give me the strength.” Kasey grabbed Riley’s hand. “This is too much.”

“It’s okay. They’ll help us. That’s why they’re here.”

The southeast region specialists from the Child Abduction Rapid Deployment team, better known as CARD, blew in with as much gusto as Ernesto. They gathered their information with an eagerness that left Kasey dazed and exhausted. The questions from the team were so in-depth that she began to doubt her ability to answer the easiest of them about her own family. Now the big guns were involved. Their special workforce had been successful in a high percentage of cases similar to this.

Riley escorted the last of the federal agents out the door less than an hour after they’d arrived.

“Lord.” Riley leaned back against the closed door. “That’s way more difficult than they make it look on television.”

“You’re telling me.” Kasey tucked her feet underneath her on the couch.

The phone rang again, and it felt like each ring sucked a little more life out of her.

“I’ve got it. Don’t move.” Riley ran to the kitchen to answer the phone. She’d been fielding calls all morning. There were twice as many from concerned friends and media than updates from Von and the police.

Kasey sprawled out on the couch and pulled a pillow over her head. Thank goodness Riley was there to field the calls. Kasey couldn’t bear to give any more reality to this situation. If she kept it to herself, maybe it would all go away and Nick and Jake would be back.

Dutch pushed the pillow off her face, nudged his wet nose into the crook of her neck, then licked away her tears.

“Kasey!” Riley lunged into the room with the phone in her hand. “It’s Von. They’ve found the car seat.”

Kasey jumped to her feet and ran to Riley’s side. “Jake? Did they find him?” She wrapped her hands around Riley’s arm and tipped her head toward the phone, struggling to hear the conversation.

Riley took down the details then hung up the phone. “They recovered a car seat downstream. It’s Jake’s. That State Fair belt buckle of Nick’s is still hanging from the bracket.”

“He has to be nearby. Come on. We’ve got to be there when they find him.”

“Not so fast. They don’t know anything more yet. Von will keep us posted.” Riley led Kasey back to the couch and sat down next to her. “The best thing we can do right now is remain calm and let them do their jobs.”

Kasey buried her trembling fingers in her hair. Her heart ached for Nick and worried for Jake. “I’ll never make it through this.”

Chapter Four

Sheriff Scott Calvin took the information from the lead officer at the accident site and ran to his car. He’d worked in this county before he became Sheriff of nearby Adams Grove, so when he’d heard about the accident he’d wasted no time volunteering to help.

The tip was from Penny’s Candy and Soda Shoppe. The popular stop for folks traveling this stretch of highway was located just down the road from the scene of the accident.

Bells tinkled when he opened the door. He crossed the shiny black-and-white tiled floor and slid onto the stool at the end of the counter.

Penny smiled when she saw him. “Hey, stranger.” She grabbed a glass and filled it with root beer. “On the house.”

“You remembered.” He raised the glass and took an exaggerated sip.

“Of course. How’ve you been? You haven’t been down here in a while.”

“I’m here about the accident,” he said.

Penny leaned on the counter. “Heartbreaking,” she said shaking her head. “I still can’t believe it. They were in here, just before....” She pressed her lips together, and closed her eyes for a moment. “That poor woman.”

“I know. They told me you have the security tape.” He scrubbed the back of his neck. “If it proves that boy was with his dad, it’s like he’s vanished. There’s not a sign of him out there yet.”

Penny reached under the counter. “I remember the truck. Handsome guy. Cute little boy. I wouldn’t forget them. Here it is.” She handed Scott the tape. “If there’s anything else I can do, let me know. Posters, whatever.”

He took another sip of his soda, then picked up the tape and stood. “I will.” He tossed a couple of dollars on the counter. “Thanks, Penny.”

When Sheriff Calvin arrived back at the accident site, the swampy terrain had become slippery and dangerous. One of the rescue volunteers was on his way to the hospital with a possible broken leg. The river rose against the shoreline as the trees leaned over, slapping its surface with their branches. Blinding bands of rain from Hurricane Ernesto increased the risk and finally forced them to halt the search.

“I don’t have a choice,” the lead officer said to Sheriff Calvin.

Scott shook his head. “You don’t. You can’t risk any more lives.” He knew this was a hard decision to make, but the risk of more loss of life was too high to ignore.

He watched as the lead officer went out and made the announcement. Soaked men and women reluctantly filed out of the woods. There was nothing more they could do until Ernesto finished his punishment, but it was hard for anyone to leave knowing there was a child unaccounted for.

The team was thinking two steps ahead. Thank goodness, because there wouldn’t be much evidence left at the crash site except battered trees, and their story had already been told.

Scott helped pull together volunteers to work through the night in the safety of the precinct logging each piece of potential evidence from the bags of debris collected at the accident site. Even the smallest item could be critical in locating Jake Rolly. It was a slow and tedious process.

Ernesto pounded southeastern Virginia through the night, dumping over five inches of rain and toppling trees. Tens of thousands of residents lost power.

Damaging winds were a problem, but because Ernesto parked himself over the region, flooding had become the top concern. Rivers were expected to crest at new heights, and flash flood warnings crawled across the television screens of those who still had electricity.

By the end of day on Monday, the lead detective gave a public statement.

“We are continuing to examine the evidence and are determined to find Jake Rolly,” he said on camera from the police department in Southampton County. “We’ve partnered with neighboring counties, but we need your help. Anyone who has information should contact their local authorities.”

Assumptions and evidence nipped away at the corners. They would get to the root of what happened eventually. Tomorrow, as soon as the waters subsided, they’d canvas the neighboring shops and residents along Route 58. A small team would search the area one last time, but any evidence was lost to Ernesto.

Back in Pungo, Von worked his way out from Nick and Kasey’s house, trying to reconstruct Nick’s activities on the morning of the accident.

The clerk at the corner store nodded and bowed his head. “Yeah, I heard about the accident. Nick came in on Saturday. He’s in here every Saturday.”

Von knew that. Nick was a creature of habit. Always had been. “Was Jake with him?”

The clerk rubbed his moustache. “I can’t be sure if the little guy was with him or not. It was so busy. I’ve got the security tapes though. Give me a minute and I’ll get them for you.”

The clerk disappeared behind a security door and came out with a tape.

“It’s a start,” Von said. “I appreciate it.”

“Hey, anything I can do. Let me know.”

Von hurried out of the store. He needed to leave now if he was going to make it on time. He’d offered to take care of all the arrangements for Kasey. Nick had pre-paid and planned his funeral years ago, so it was just a matter of following that plan. Von had an appointment in thirty minutes with the funeral home. It was the least he could do for her. Burying a spouse was a torture he wished on no one.

He remembered only too well how unpredictable grief was. How it swept in and took you right off your feet with no warning. Everyone gave him unsolicited advice on how to navigate it; they’d do the same to Kasey. She’d have to find her own way—in her own time. A lesson he’d learned the hard way.

The funeral director was helpful, and a lot smoother than when he’d had to go through it for Deidre. Of course, he’d been in a fog then.

With all the details finalized, Von headed home. Losing Nick brought on a familiar grief that burned in his chest like a raw, gaping wound. It was like reliving losing Deidre all over again. But if Jake was out there, the most important thing he could do for Nick was find his boy. That was all he could think about the whole ride home.

He walked into the house feeling tired and impatient. His specialized skills weren’t getting him anywhere with this case. Maybe it was true that you shouldn’t work on cases you were too close to. The video tape tucked in his pocket was the only glimmer of hope he had. He tossed his hat on his desk, and inserted the video surveillance into the player. The date stamp was blank. The clerk had warned him that the power had gone off that week and he hadn’t reset the recorder yet. Von wasn’t sure why he even bothered looking at the tape, except that any hope was better than none, and there were no other leads to follow.

Von rubbed his hand across his chin as he pressed the buttons on the remote, fast-forwarding, then rewinding, then pausing to analyze the less than perfect images as people came and went. The process was slow.

After numerous stops and starts, a familiar image caught his eye. He pressed the Pause button and moved closer to the screen.

Frame by frame, he watched his best friend push open the glass door. Nick was dressed in a camo t-shirt and a ball cap, with a junior version of himself clinging to his hand.

Jake.

Von settled on the edge of his desk, rewound the tape, watched it again, and let it play out. He watched Nick and Jake walk to the counter and then leave the store together. He rewound the tape and played the scene again, and then again.

“This is too much.”

It was bad enough Nick was gone, but no man could bear to think of a young boy like Jake in danger or hurt...or worse.

He bowed his head. The loss was like a steel weight, empty and cold in his gut.

“Damn it, Nick,” Von said to the screen. “This isn’t enough to go on.” He pounded his fist on the desk. “Help me find him, man. Point me to a clue. Where is he?”

Von pitched the remote against the wall, then headed to his truck.