STOLEN (19 page)

At first, Marty thought she was talking about the case and
then it hit him. She was talking about his impending wedding nuptials.

“Nope, Hope’s got all the nervous energy for both of us. I’m
ready.”

She nodded. Her long blonde ponytail swayed back and forth. “Well,
if she runs, Marty, you know I’m available again.” She flashed him a bright
smile, but he got the feeling she was dead serious as she turned and walked
away to help another customer.

“You have got yourself some pretty women in this town. What
do you feed them?” Sanders asked just before he sunk his teeth into his
cheeseburger.

Marty’s mind was no longer on his meal, but on those
articles about the kidnapping. He picked up the papers again.

“What is it, Marty? You look like this is something personal
for you. Did you know these kids?”

Marty picked up the picture of T.J. “He was my neighbor. His
aunt and sisters were at my mother’s funeral when he went missing. His father
was supposed to be watching him, but when they came home, he was passed out on
the couch . . . drunk . . . and T.J.
was nowhere to be found.”

“Damn. I’m sorry.” Now his curiosity was peeked. “Did they
ever find either of these kids?”

“No, they never found either of them. They didn’t have too
many leads. It was like they disappeared into thin air. You’re thinking that
somehow these Blakey guys are involved in T.J.’s disappearance?” Marty asked
the veteran detective.

“No, Marty.” He hesitated before he spoke. “I think Troy and
Shane could very well be those two kids.”

It felt like someone punched Marty in the gut.

He lost his appetite and didn’t finish his sandwich. He
waited anxiously as Sanders devoured his. Within the hour, they were headed
back to the hospital to continue their interrogation of Troy Blakey, this time
without Jean.

If Sanders was correct, then Marty would be able to tell
Mrs. K that her prayers had finally been answered. All those years refusing to
give up, ignoring those who told her to put it to rest, to accept the fact the
boy was probably dead and was never going to come home.

But before he was going to bring Mrs. K into the equation, he
was going to make damn sure he had all the facts at his disposal and that
Sanders was right.

When they got back into the room, Blakey was awake again.

“What can you tell us about this?” Marty handed him one of
the articles, the one about the boy from Orange County, deliberately leaving
out the one from Fallsburg with the black and white photo of the little boy they
affectionately called T.J.

“Where did you find those?” Troy looked at them, his face
contorted and confused.

“How about just answering the question, Troy. What can you
tell us about this kid?”

“Shane found them hidden in some of my father’s crap. He
went through all his stuff when the old man left, and came across that and some
other stuff. It’s one of the reasons we came looking for the old man here. Shane
is convinced that he could be one of those kids. That my dad kidnapped him.” He
lifted his arm and motioned toward the paper.

“What makes him think that?” Sanders asked him.

“I don’t know, we just have always had a lot of questions.
He told us some stories, when we were growing up, that just didn’t ring true.
One day our mother died of cancer, and then he would tell us she was killed in
a car wreck. The old man never told us the same story twice.”

“When did your mother die?” Marty asked this time.

He shrugged his shoulders, wincing in pain.

“I don’t really remember having one. There were a few women
that used to come and stay for a while, but they never lasted long. I’m not
sure, but I think I remember someone who may have been my mother, but I’m not sure
if it’s even a real memory. I was really young. Actually, I think it may even
be Carol Brady, you know, the one from the Brady Bunch.”

Marty wasn’t sure if he was for real or trying to be
flippant. The hollow look in his eyes gave them the feeling he wasn’t trying to
be funny at all.

“What about Shane? What about your brother? What does he
remember?” Marty asked him.

Sanders was standing to Marty’s left and breathing heavily
enough for Marty to actually hear it. The man was just standing there frozen, taking
it all in. He was watching Troy talk, and Marty wondered if he was thinking the
same thing he was. Had he known the location of two abducted children all these
years? Marty didn’t know how he would feel if it were him. Being an officer of
the law, and not being able to sense that something was seriously wrong with
the family dynamics . . . . Had two abducted children that
law enforcement had been searching for twenty-five years, been right under his
nose all this time and he was oblivious to it?

“I don’t remember much.” Troy went on. “Sometimes I get
these flashbacks, but I don’t even know if they’re real or not.” He took a sip from
a cup of water and this time he was able to ingest a larger amount.

Sanders waited until Troy swallowed the fluid before he
asked the next question. “What brought you two out here to New York? It’s a
pretty far trek from Oregon, Troy. Did your father ever bring you two out here
before?”

Blakey didn’t answer right away, seemed to be lost in
thought. As if he was trying to figure out what he should say.

“Does your brother know the area?” Marty asked him.

“No. We were going through all his stuff when my old man
took off. We found some paperwork and a property title on the log cabin. Once
we found those articles and some other stuff, Shane was determined to come this
way and see what we could find out about those kidnappings. I remembered the
old man talking about owning a piece of property here and wanting to go back
one day. So, we just took a chance we would find him and get some answers at
the same time. Honestly, we didn’t come here with the intention of hurting
anyone.” Again, a moment of silence fell as he gathered his thoughts. “Then
there was this feeling about this state being familiar . . . .”

“What do you mean, familiar?” Marty interjected, prompting
him to continue.

“I’m not sure. The only thing I know to be a fact is when I
was a kid, whenever I would see a car with New York State plates, I would get
this feeling, like I belonged in that car. It was just weird. I don’t think I
was ever here, in New York. In this state, that is, but I’m not sure. I just
don’t know.”

The minute Marty heard him mention the license plates, he
felt the hair on his arms stand up; and the rest of the words that came out of
his mouth seemed to be garbled and dissolved into the air. Marty wasn’t quite
sure if he heard him right. Did he just hear this guy talk about New York State
license plates? The words came out of his mouth, but bounced around before he
was able to actually understand. Here was the something that he wanted to feel.
His thoughts did a slow crawl, and he dug deep into his long forgotten memories,
trying to remember another face. He began to mentally create a vision of a
little boy sitting in the backseat of his father’s Buick, calling out state
names as if he was actually reading the license plates of cars they passed on
the highway. Marty tried hard to see if he could connect the two. That faded
newspaper photo and this grown man lying in the hospital bed, no more than two
feet right in front of him now. Was he grabbing at straws here?

Marty stared at him, but nothing came out of his mouth. He couldn’t
say anything. He tried to take in every feature, every line, the shape of his
nose, the exact color of his eyes, the shape of his eyebrows, and the width of
his lips. He wanted to memorize it, stamp it on his brain, so that when he
walked out of the room, he would have a photograph of the man engraved in his
mind.

Marty tried desperately to dig into his memory and picture
the little boy who would come knocking on his door asking if his brother, Danny,
could come out and play.

And he wondered now if he was totally off base and just
imagining things.

Marty didn’t know if he wanted to be right. Did he want this
guy to be that little boy? He didn’t know who he was or what he was mixed up
in. Would he finally be able to give some closure to Mrs. Kolakowski and her
family who have mourned the loss of a child all these years? Would he be able
to look at her grieved eyes, when she had suffered all these years for a lost
little boy, but never really gave up hope? Would he finally be able to say to
her the words she had longed to hear all these years, ‘we found him!’

It
wasn’t long before Jean also discovered the possible real identity of the two men.
Not being in the mood to go to The Liar’s Den with Marty and the visitor from
Oregon, Jean headed back to the station. She was just taking off her coat when
the note Detective Frank Robinson had left on her desk caught her attention. It
simply said: ‘Check your monitor.’

It was Detective Frank Robinson, using his methodical,
investigative computer skills that put it all together. He was going over the
copies of files that Sanders had faxed over and comparing them to what he found
on the hard drive on the laptop discovered in the pickup truck found by the
cabin. The browser history on the laptop showed several searches were made of
kidnappings in the area going back as far as twenty-five years ago; and a
Google map was used to get directions to areas mentioned in those articles.

Someone in Sanders’ office had compared the mug shot of
Shane Blakey to one of the images and the age progression photo of Charlie Ward,
a missing child from Orange County, and faxed over the photos to them. Frank
left the page open on her computer and as soon as she moved her mouse, the two
photographs appeared side by side.

Jean stared at the computer monitor and then glanced back
down at her notes. Her thoughts swirled around in her head.

“Tell me who you are, Shane Blakey? I need to know who you
are and what you are capable of. We know you’re armed, we know you are capable
of pulling the trigger. We know you are willing and able to shoot a man down in
cold blood. I need to know if you are capable of doing it again. Are you stable
emotionally or are you a danger to the general public?” She spoke out loud to
herself. The photograph of the white-headed, freckled-faced three-year-old
toddler Charlie Ward stared back at her.

She read the newspaper article over and over again. She read
the arrest reports on Shane Blakey Sanders’ unit had sent over earlier in the
week. They were just minor infractions, two for shoplifting; and another for
having a bong and a joint on his person, which coincidently is what he
shoplifted on one occasion. She scanned the file, not quite sure what she was
looking for. Up until this incident, Shane seemed to be non-violent in nature.
According to his brother, or whatever their true relationship was, he was a
gentle, naïve soul and wouldn’t hurt a fly. Obviously, when push came to shove,
Shane had a breaking point and he reached it the day he shot his own . . . .

She made a conscience effort to stop herself from referring
to the man Shane shot as his father. Not only wasn’t the man his father, it was
apparent now, the recently deceased gentleman was nothing more than an alleged
kidnapper and pedophile.

Frank’s investigation hadn’t stopped with the Ward child. He
left a second folder labeled Kolakowski. Jean recognized the name immediately.
As soon as she saw the twenty-five year old age progression photo of T.J., she
flashed back to the man in the hospital. The face didn’t change. The baby face
was gone, but the curly brown hair, the almond-shaped hazel eyes remained
unchanged. Why didn’t she see that immediately?

Now she had another job to do and she didn’t have a clue how
she was going to handle this one. She called Marty; but it went directly to his
voicemail, so she left him a message informing him of what Frank had found out.

In the meantime, she decided she would track down the
biological parents of the man who was now known to them as Shane Blakey, but
was most likely the missing child, Charlie Ward.

How and where do you start to tell a parent whose child
disappeared twenty-five years ago, that the child was alive and well? Can
anyone come home after all this time, as if no time had passed?

No matter how you looked at it, both Charlie Ward and T.J.
Kolakowski died the day Archie Blakey decided to grab them and take them from
their families. She could not fathom what the parents were going through the
past few decades.

What would she do if it were her and Glenn? What if the
child in question was Bethany or her son Cliff? Would she have given up hope?
Would the ache of the loss be so bad that she would rather her child be dead so
she could mourn the loss and get a sense of closure? Would she rather her child
be dead than suffer the injustices that these two boys, now grown men, most
likely went through?

Or would she choose instead not to give up; the hope that
one day her prayers would be answered and a day like this would come? She
couldn’t even fathom what the parents had gone through all these years. Her son,
Cliff, went away to college and every day she missed him. She would get a
gnawing feeling, deep down in her gut, that wouldn’t let up if she was
expecting a phone call and it didn’t come on time. That feeling wouldn’t go
away until she heard his voice. What would it be like to feel that gnawing
sensation every day of her life for twenty-five years or more? Would she give
up hope? How would she deal with the absolute horror of not knowing if her
child was dead or alive? Would she choose not to give up hope, praying every
day, every moment?

She suddenly sensed she was not alone. Her friend and coworker,
Detective Kathy Blackwelder, managed to find an empty spot on Jean’s cluttered
desk and sat down on the now empty space.

“Here,” she said, handing her a half cup of coffee. “You
look like you can use this.” The hot steam rose from the cup like a vertical
cloud of gray. “You okay, Jean? Hot flashes gone?” Kathy swung her long legs
straight out in an effort to stretch her muscles.

“How long are these things going to last? I feel like someone
has inserted a bag of charcoal the length of my entire body and set it on fire.
Tell me it’s just temporary!” She pleaded.

She took a sip of the hot coffee and decided to turn the
caffeine lift into a cold drink. She walked over to the office cooler, and
grabbing some ice cubes, carefully dropped them in the cup.

“I thought you might want to do that, so I left room in the
cup for you.”

Jean sat back down. She rolled her chair up against the desk
so she had something sturdier to lean on.

“Kathy, how would you handle it? What do you think it would
be like? To have your kid back after all those years?”

“I honestly can’t answer that, Jean. I mean, for all intents
and purposes, those two little boys, they no longer exist. You just can’t open
the door to their old bedroom and expect them to fit into their old lives. It’s
not only their old clothes that are going to be the wrong size, but nothing is
going to fit! They will never be who they were supposed to be, never. For all
it’s worth, those boys died the day Blakey abducted them. To be honest, I
wouldn’t want to be the parents of either of these kids for anything in the
world. I hate to say it, but I guess it’s lucky the one boy’s father blew his
brains out.”

Kathy knew she was being harsh, so she apologized with the
tilt of her head. Jean didn’t respond or argue.

“You want to come with me, Kathy, and help me track down and
notify this boy’s parents? They moved out of state; but I have an address and
phone number for one of the father’s relatives, a Kevin Ward. He’s a cousin, or
something, and still resides in the area. I don’t want to just call these
people out of the blue and say ‘Hey, we may have found your long lost kid.’”

Kathy looked at her; a slight look of bewilderment crossed
her face. She popped a breath mint in her mouth, offered one to Jean, who
snapped it out of Kathy’s hand.

“Marty doesn’t want to be in on it?” Kathy questioned her. “He
deserves to take credit for this one, Jean.” And then added, “not only is he
stone-cold handsome, but he can even make an old married woman, like me, think
about adultery. You know he’s turning out to be one a hell of a detective.”

Jean shook her head and laughed at the thought of Kathy
drooling over her partner.

Suddenly her phone rang. She looked at the screen. It was
Marty. After a few minutes of listening and talking, she hung up. She turned
back to Kathy. “That was Marty, he knows. In fact, Marty and Sanders are going
to make the notification to Troy Blakey’s family. I mean T.J. Kolakowski’s family,
his aunt. She’s actually a family friend. Actually, she’s Marty’s next door
neighbor. Apparently, they were all at Marty’s mother’s funeral the day the kid
disappeared.”

“Yeah, I heard. Yeah, sure, I’ll go with you. Let me get my
jacket.” Kathy lifted her bottom off the desk and walked away.