STOLEN (2 page)

Marty walked out of the waiting room and into the corridor
to see what the heck was going on.

The boy’s arms were flaying like an injured bird trying to
take flight. He was running in Marty’s direction, like a wild animal, with two
hospital attendants and a police officer in hot pursuit.

Every time one of the attendants went to grab him, he managed
to twist away with the agility of a professional football player being chased
by three-hundred-pound tacklers. As the kid ran, he turned and shot a look into
each of the patient’s rooms as if he was looking for somebody.

“DDDDIIIRTTTEEEEE!!!” He screamed over and over again, his
shouts coming in short bursts as he ran. When he turned to see where his
pursuers were, he ran into what he must have thought was a brick wall. His
little neck snapped back violently, his hair, a mess of long brown curls, spun
in all directions. “Whoa!” Marty told him. Marty grabbed him by the forearms as
he ran straight into his left thigh. The boy glanced up at him, startled at first,
and then without warning, sunk his teeth into Marty’s leg, bearing down with
every ounce of strength he could muster.

“Shit! Damn!” Marty screamed loudly. Marty guessed that he had
expected the pain he inflicted to cause Marty to release him, but this kid didn’t
know who he was messing with. The boy stared up at him, in utter disbelief, and
then started his screaming again.

“Dddddiiiitrrtteee!” The sound was piercing now that the boy
was directly under him.

Marty looked up at the attendants and the police officer whom
he recognized as one of the newer recruits. The three of them were doubled over
trying to catch their breath. Apparently, they had been chasing this kid for a
while.

Marty grabbed the kid with one arm, lifting him in one swoop;
he wrapped him tightly to his chest to keep him from biting him again. He used his
other arm to clamp his legs down to his body, to stop his voracious kicking.

Marty looked up again and noticed a crowd gathering in the
hallway. The kid was still screaming, so he hugged him tighter to his chest and
placed his hand gently, yet firmly, on the back of his head to muffle the boy’s
screams with his own body. Marty heard her before he saw her.

“Did you get him?” Jean Whitley asked no one in particular. She
was rapidly making her way towards Marty, as the human barracuda continued to
kick violently, trying to make a getaway. It was Marty’s partner, Jean, her
face beet red and visibly upset.

As soon as she saw the kid was securely in his custody, she
let out what he assumed could only be a sigh of relief.

Ignoring the boy for a brief second, she turned her
attention towards Marty. “How’s the Captain? Is the surgery over?” she asked as
she glanced toward the room full of Keals, who now had joined the other
spectators in the hospital corridor.

“He just came out of surgery.” Marty informed her as he tried
to keep his precious package from escaping. “They think they got it all. What’s
going on?” Marty changed the subject back to the boy who was still wiggling furiously
in his arms.

Jean looked over at the attendants, who were still trying to
catch their breath from the pursuit, and nodded. A female doctor arrived and
exchanged a few words with Jean and the two men. From the corner of Marty’s eye,
he saw the small hypodermic needle enter the upper part of the child’s thin arm.
Within seconds, the struggling and screaming stopped and the little boy’s long
and lean body fell limp in his arms. With a bit of reluctance, Marty handed him
over to one of the men wearing a white coat. It must have been his training as
a cop, but he made sure to take notice of the color of the man’s hair: black;
the color of his eyes: brown; and his approximate height: five-foot-seven; and
last but not least, his nametag, which read: Ken Lubin, with the initials LPN below
it. If Marty was going to hand over his precious cargo, he wanted to know
exactly who it was that was taking it from him.

One
Hour Earlier

By
the time Detective Jean Whitley got to the crime scene, the place was cordoned
off with yellow tape and a small crowd of spectators were milling about.

Paramedics were furiously working on the younger victim in
an effort to keep him alive. One was administering CPR, while the other was taking
instructions from a medical professional whose voice was clearly being emitted
from the other end of his radio. Jean barely got a glimpse of the wounded man
on the gurney before he was loaded into the bus and taken to St. Katherine’s
Medical Center.

Since she was scheduled to make an appearance in court on
another case, and wasn’t expecting to have to hike through the woods, she
wasn’t exactly dressed in appropriate attire. After almost an hour of debating with
herself over what she would wear for her court appearance, she had settled on a
navy blue skirt and matching jacket with a white tailored blouse. In two-inch
heels, she made her way through some thick brush, cursing her decision not to
wear slacks and flats. But, she was feeling a little bloated since she was
expecting her period any minute, and the elastic waistband on the skirt gave
her a little bit more breathing room.

Jean lifted the crime scene tape and made her way under it.
She recognized the tall, lanky police officer by his familiar red hair. Justin
Thyme, her partner Marty’s best friend, was deep in conversation with one of
the three men attired in a fluorescent orange vest. Obviously, Jean thought to
herself, one of the hunters the dispatcher had mentioned when she called Jean
to the location.

Jean had been driving her daughter Bethany to school, and it
was in the middle of a heated discussion with the teenager when her cell rang.
She had thought about letting it go to voicemail, but then decided the
interruption might keep her from losing her temper with Bethany, who refused to
accept the fact that she was not going to allow her to be transported to and from
school on the back of her
friend
’s motorcycle.

“I have to go to work, Bethany,” she told her daughter after
getting the directions to the scene. “We will discuss this later.” Her car came
to a stop at the high school.

Obviously still annoyed with her position on the issue,
Bethany grabbed her backpack and departed the car.

“Love you!” Jean yelled out, as Bethany walked away toward a
group of teenagers.

Bethany turned back around and with what Jean thought to be
slight embarrassment, answered her. “Yeah sure,” her voice barely reached above
a whisper. After a slight hesitation, she ran back to the driver’s side of the
car, signaling her to lower the window.

“I love you, too,” she said, as she pecked her left cheek,
and then immediately ran back to the group of friends who were waiting for her.

Turning on the lights and siren, Jean had entered the
address the dispatcher gave her into her GPS, and took off, thinking to herself
she would never get through these adolescent years with her daughter with a
single ounce of sanity left. Her son, Cliff, who now attended the University of
Florida, had spoiled her. He was such an easygoing kid and she couldn’t
remember a time when they’d locked horns. On the other hand, once Bethany
entered her teens, she had become a handful. It had started right after the
death of her old partner’s wife, Connie. The families were so close, and
Bethany took the sudden death very hard. And then there was the murder of the
two young girls, last year, and her daughter’s involvement. And of course, she
thought, her daughter’s friendship with Dylan Silver, the boy who was the main
suspect in the murders.

“What do we have, Officer Thyme?” she asked, giving the
hunters the once over. For all she knew, these were the suspects and were not
above her suspicion.

Justin was just about to answer her when another official
vehicle pulled up. Jean immediately recognized the woman exiting the vehicle as
Sophie Harris, a social worker with the Office of Children and Families.

At the same moment, another officer walked out of the cabin
carrying a small child, a girl, four, maybe five years old. Someone threw a
blanket over her partially naked body, but the child continued to shiver; her
tiny body in spasms, her bottom lip moving uncontrollably. The officer,
obviously recognizing Sophie, immediately handed the child to the social worker,
who tightly hugged the girl to her chest, whispering soft words of comfort.

“What the hell is going on?” Jean turned her focus back to
Justin, not quite knowing what to make of what was transpiring before her. It
was then she noticed Sophie walking over to another patrol car and speaking to
Jean’s nemesis, Officer Hennessey. Apparently, the two were trading some words
and they weren’t pleasant ones.

Jean walked over to see what was going on. She heard Sophie’s
agitated voice first.

“Take those off of him, and take them off of him now!” The
social worker told Hennessey defiantly, getting so close she was within two
inches of the man’s face.

“Hey, lady, you do not want to do that.” the blond six-foot
officer said, trying not to look intimidated by the angry woman and standing
his ground.

Jean peeked around Sophie’s back into the vehicle. Behind
Hennessey was another small child, shirtless, shoeless, and shivering, his
hands behind his back bound in a plastic zip tie.

“What the hell! Hennessey, cut those things off of him!”

“Trust me, Detective.” the officer began to protest.

“Now!” Jean told him in no uncertain terms.

With a shrug of his shoulders, Hennessey turned and cut the
wraps from the child’s wrists. “Don’t say I didn’t warn you,” he said, glaring
at Jean, a smirk forming on his lips.

No sooner were those words out of his mouth, the little boy jumped
out of the car’s back seat, slid under Hennessey’s muscular arm and took off
running. Letting out a howl, as if it would give him a burst of speed, he ran
through one of the crime scene technician’s legs and under the yellow
polyethylene crime scene tape. Everyone stood there motionless, dumbfounded, until
someone became alert enough to chase him down. Within seconds, the boy found himself
surrounded by three of the spectators. Three big, burly men who had been out
hunting and joined the crowd, curious to see what was happening in their woods.

It took a few minutes to pursue and capture the child, he
was spitting and kicking and biting every chance he could get. When he wasn’t
using his mouth to bite or spit, he was screaming at the top of his lungs, “Diiirrttee!!”

“I told you, Detective,” Hennessey told her with a smug look
on his face.

“Oh, shut up, Hennessey.” Jean said, disgusted, as she
turned her back on him and looked over to where the social worker was standing.
She watched as Sophie secured both children in her vehicle and covered them
with a thick blanket. The moment the vehicle with the children departed, Jean
and Justin made their way back to the cabin. Robert Lyons, the county medical
examiner, had arrived and was doing a preliminary exam of the deceased victim.

“What the hell is going on here, Justin?” Jean asked the
uniformed officer, who was first on the scene, as she bent down and made her
way under the yellow crime scene tape for the third time.

“Who are these kids?” She asked him.

“Good question.” Justin answered. “We found the little boy
in the woods, just hysterical and making no sense at all. When I first came on
the scene, the two shooting victims were laying in the front room. One was
deceased, the other barely alive, then the witnesses led me to the back room
where I found the little girl. She hasn’t said a word. She’s scared to death.
The guy on the ground is.…” He handed over a wallet in a plastic evidence bag.

Jean opened the bag, her hands now covered in latex gloves,
and flipped through the contents.

“Archie Blakey,” she said, reading off the first item she
came across, his driver’s license. She looked at Justin inquisitively as she
pulled out the victim’s other items of I.D. “Blake Archman?” She pulled out
another driver’s license she discovered hidden in one of the wallet’s folds.

“Fred Blakey?” She turned her attention back to Justin. “Who
is this guy?” She handed the wallet and the bag back to the redheaded officer.
“Have you ever seen this guy before, Justin? He doesn’t look familiar to me.”
Jean remarked, as she walked closer to the body lying on the ground, taking a
closer look at the victim’s face, or she thought to herself, at least what was
left of it.

“I’m not sure, Detective. Maybe. The name doesn’t ring a
bell. Honestly, there are a slew of people living in these woods I haven’t had
the pleasure of meeting,” Justin answered with a sarcastic tone, as he once
again took possession of the wallet and placed it back in the evidence bag.
Understanding exactly the meaning behind his words, Jean nodded in agreement.

About a foot away from the dead man, she bent down and
carefully picked up the sawed-off shotgun, examined it, and then carefully
placed it back down exactly where she found it.

“I guess we can positively identify that as the smoking gun?”
Jean asked, as she reached the medical examiner.

Lyons had finished his preliminary examination and was
packing up his paraphernalia. He stood up and Jean, once again, was reminded
why she often compared him to a string bean. The man was tall and incredibly
thin. His deep olive complexion and an obvious affection for the sun left him
with deep wrinkles in his leathery skin, like an overcooked string bean. But
when Robert Lyons removed his latex gloves, underneath were long, slim fingers,
nary a blemish or wrinkle, as if they didn’t belong to the same body.

“Nope, that weapon is definitely not what delivered the
fatal shot. It looks like the cause of death to this man is a gunshot wound to
the left cerebrum. There are no visual signs of an exit wound. So I would say
the bullet is a small caliber, probably a .22 or .37 air-weight, lodged somewhere
in the left hemisphere of the brain, ruling out this shotgun as the weapon. He
also sustained a second wound to the face, which did extensive damage; it would
not have been a fatal shot, but also small caliber.” He glanced around the
room. “That bullet did pass through and has an exit wound, so I would say it’s
somewhere around.” He said, as he scanned the room looking for evidence. “I
would guess the trajectory would be somewhere in this direction.” He pointed to
his left. He then stepped aside to allow two men, waiting with a body bag,
access to the victim.

She thanked Lyons and told him she would be waiting for his
report. She once again turned her attention back to the redheaded officer.

“So, where the hell is the weapon that killed this guy? Are
we looking for a third party here?” she asked, as she perused the room.

The deep, hoarse voice, a result of years of chain-smoking non-filter
cigarettes, of veteran officer Tommy Sullivan was the one who offered an
answer. “Beats me, we can’t find it.”

Looking up, Jean took another glance around the room. “I
mean, a gun doesn’t grow a pair of legs and manage to just walk away. Find that
weapon; and see if we can get K9 in here so we can to make a thorough search of
the woods. Make sure you cover the entire area.” She took a deep breath as she
turned back to one of the crime scene technicians collecting evidence.

“And see if you can find that bullet; it’s got to be here
somewhere.”

She made her way over to Justin, and one of the other
officers, who had arrived first at the scene.

“Did either of those kids say anything?” Jean asked, even
though she knew what the answer was going to be. Anything else would have been
just way too easy.

“No, the little girl was just shaking uncontrollably and
barely able to answer questions. The boy, well, he, something just isn’t right
with that kid. He’s like . . . .” The tall, slightly pudgy
officer, who preferred to be called by his last name, Stiskin, stopped in the
middle of the sentence as if he was searching for the right adjective to
describe the child.

“What do they call those wild cats in the streets, you know,
the ones that are not domesticated? Like those kids raised with dogs or wolves,
you know, you’ve heard the stories.” He asked, scratching his shiny, recently
shaved scalp.

“Feral?” she offered, while thinking he reminded her of a short
Yul Brynner.

“Yeah, that’s it; that kid is like a feral animal. I think
half of the people here need to get tested for rabies. Kid sunk his teeth into
and bit anyone who got close enough.” He told her, as he lifted his forearm to
show the imprint of child-sized teeth marks on his hairless arm. Now she
wondered if he shaved more than just his head.

Taking ahold of his wrist, she noted that although the bite
didn’t draw any blood, it actually broke the skin. “Okay, you better have that
looked at.” She told him, with concern, as she walked to the back room of the
cabin where they had discovered the little girl.