The Longest Winter (22 page)

Chapter Thirty-Seven

M
arie woke up to Claude standing over her bed. She looked across the room to see the alarm clock; it wasn’t even past two yet.

“Are you okay? Did you have another accident?”

Claude shook his head. Marie couldn’t see much, but his face was cast in the glow of the streetlights that seeped in through the cracks in the blinds. There was a confidence in his face she almost couldn’t remember, a look of fearlessness and acceptance.

“No, I didn’t.”

“What’s wrong? Do you want me to tuck you back in?”

“No, I’m fine. I want to go see that nice detective lady in the morning. I want to tell her everything that happened.”

Marie sat up. “Are you sure?”

Claude nodded. “I think it will help. And I heard you and Dad talking about how we were running out of time.”

“I wonder if they’re there right now. Would you want to go now?”

Henri had just woken up. “Go where?”

“Claude wants to talk to Detective Jameson again. He wants to tell her what happened.”

Henri jumped from the bed and grabbed his cellphone. He stepped out of the room as he dialed the number Kara had given him.

Claude looked at his mother and smiled. “We can go now if she’s there.”

Marie leaned over and hugged him tight. “I’m proud of you.”

A minute later Henri returned to the room. “They’re still there, and they want us to come in right away. The officers that are out front guarding the house will lead the way. Let’s get dressed and go.”

Claude started for the door to go back to his room and put on some clothes. Henri stopped him as he walked past and patted him on the head.

“Thanks, buddy. We’re going to find him, I promise.”

Chapter Thirty-Eight

K
ara walked into the break room and found Yuri sitting at one of the tables half-asleep with his head resting on his hand.

“Yuri, you still awake?”

He sat up fast, then, seeing that it was only Kara, yawned. “Barely. How did it go?”

“Still not great. He clammed up again, but I think Lincoln was getting to him. There’s something missing still, but I think we may soon know what it is.”

“Why?”

“Henri called. Claude woke up in the middle of the night saying he wanted to come in and talk to me. He wants to tell me what happened. They’ll be here within the hour.”

“That is great. You think it will help?”

“I do. Both Lincoln and I feel like there’s a piece we can’t find… I really hope Claude has it.”

“Me too.”

Kara looked at her feet then back up at Yuri. “So, I have to confess something.”

“Okay…” Yuri said, a mix of question and comment.

“Chen didn’t know how to work the recording system very well and he ended up recording both interview rooms. I opened the video to see what it was and to make sure I could delete it… I heard you and Kat talking.”

Yuri closed his eyes for a moment then looked at Kara.

“I’m really sorry,” Kara said before he had a chance to speak. “I didn’t mean to, and I turned it off as soon as I realized what was happening. But… it was too late. I heard what happened to you. I’m sorry, Yuri.”

“It is okay. I wanted to tell you anyway. I told Kat that at the end. You have a right to know, since we are partners now.”

“You’re not mad?”

“It was not your fault. I might be mad at Chen, but I am not sure yet.” He winked as he said it and Kara saw a spark in his eyes she hadn’t seen. The dullness was gone, the emptiness filled; a burden had been lifted and she could tell how much it meant to him.

“So that’s why you took this case, why you wanted me on it. You knew what those boys were going through, and you knew how I was trying to find Kat. You figured I’d understand.”

“The first part, yes. The second part, no. I did not realize how hard you had been looking for her. I wanted you on the case because I knew you could handle it. You had worked child abuse cases before, and you had proven yourself many times.”

“Oh. Well, thank you.”

“You are welcome,” Yuri said, a smile forming on his lips. He took a deep breath, then looked down at the table. “There was another reason as well.”

Kara felt herself blushing. “Really?” she said. “Maybe when this is over, you can tell me that reason over a coffee?”

Yuri looked up. “I think that just happened backwards.”

“I’m a take charge kind of girl. Probably another part of why you brought me in on this case.”

Kara’s phone buzzed and chimed in her pocket. She took it out and looked at the text. “Claude is here. Way earlier than we expected.”

“You going to talk to him alone?”

“Probably best. I want him to be comfortable.”

Yuri nodded. “Good luck.”

“Thanks,” Kara said as she turned and walked out of the room. She went down the hallway to the reception area and saw Henri, Marie and Claude standing at the front desk.

“
Bonjour
,” she said. She walked up and shook hands with Claude’s parents and then with Claude. “Thanks for coming. I was really happy to hear that you wanted to come in.”

Claude nodded. “I want to help find Jacques.”

“We need your help.” Kara looked at the desk to see Sophie standing there. “Desk duty tonight?”

“No,” she said. “I’ve been going through files and other records trying to help. Just covering for a few minutes. Washroom and cigarette break, apparently.”

“Do you mind showing them to the interview room? I’ll be right there.”

“Not a problem.” Sophie pressed a button beneath the counter and Kara heard the magnetic locks engage on the exterior doors. Kara walked into another office and searched for a moment before she found what she was looking for. Just like back home, the service had commissioned stuffed animals that looked like the German Shepherd police dogs. Each had a badge-shaped tag around its neck. They were there for children who needed something good in an otherwise bad experience. She had handed out many in her career to children whose parent she had no choice but to arrest, to children who had lost a parent, to those who had been in car accidents or been victims of crimes or who had witnessed a crime. She handed them out a lot, just to try to instill a little brightness in a dark moment in a child’s life.

She took two from the box and walked into the interview room. Henri and Marie were sitting on the couch with Claude in between them. Kara handed him the stuffed dogs and he smiled as he accepted them.

“Thank you,” he said.

“One is for Jacques,” Kara said, taking a seat. “I’m sure you can keep it safe for him.”

“Of course,” Claude said, beaming.

Kara cursed her judgment, worrying that if they never found Jacques, or if they didn’t find him alive, that her gesture might make things worse. She pushed the thought away and looked at Claude.

“So you know that we caught him, right?”

Claude nodded. “I saw it on the news. But you don’t know where Jacques is?”

“Not yet. He isn’t telling us. I think we’re close to getting him to tell. And that’s where I think you can help. Are you ready to tell me what happened?”

“I… I think so.” The confidence Claude had walked in with wavered for a moment before he seemed to steel himself. “Everyone thinks that he did things to me and Jacques, bad things.”

“What did he do?”

“He never touched us, not there,” Claude said, pointing below his waist. “I thought he was going to, but he didn’t. He took my pants off once and I was naked. He took out a knife. Jacques tried to stop him but he hit him really hard and knocked him down. Then he came back to me. He looked like he was going to do something but then he started screaming that he wasn’t going to. He said ‘I’m not like you. I’m not a monster.’ I was really confused because I thought he was talking to me.”

“Who was he talking to?”

“I don’t know. He was looking up and he looked really sad. Well, sad but angry too. He just kept yelling, and then he kept hitting himself over and over. Then he took the knife and started cutting himself on his arms. He was bleeding. And then he just left me there. I put my clothes back on and nothing else happened.”

“And he did the same thing to Jacques?”

“About a week later. It happened the exact same way… except…” Claude stopped and looked down.

“It’s okay, Claude. You couldn’t have stopped him anyway.”

“But I didn’t even try. Maybe I could’ve.”

“I’ve seen him, Claude,” Kara said. “I’m not even sure I could stop him.”

Claude nodded and wiped his tears away. “He never touched us, not like people keep saying. The doctors and nurses kept asking me, and mom and dad did too.”

Kara could see Henri and Marie both looked concerned.

“They were worried about you, Claude. We can’t really help you if we don’t know what happened. And unfortunately, that sort of stuff happens when kids get taken like you did.”

“I know, they said that on the news. And I was worried that everyone would say that when I went back to school.”

Kara nodded. “Maybe it’s time for me to update the reporters. I won’t tell them what really happened, just what didn’t happen. And then hopefully no one will bug you.”

Claude smiled. “Thank you.” He hugged the dogs that he was holding and looked at Kara, his eyes wide with innocence despite everything he had been through. “Do you think it will help you find him?”

“I do,” Kara said. “I really do.”

Chapter Thirty-Nine

I
was already sitting at the table when Max was brought in again. We left the handcuffs off this time, hoping he might relax right from the beginning. I was wrong.

“I told you I’m done. You won’t get another word out of me.”

“Fine. Sit and listen. I don’t care.”

Max leaned back in his chair, crossed his arms and did his best to look disinterested. Kara sat beside me and did the same. It seemed to catch Max off guard seeing someone mimicking his childish actions and he straightened up a little. The expression on his face stayed.

“You’re charged with the abductions of five children…”

Max shook his head at the number. He still believed he had taken Claude twice.

“…the murder of two children as well as the vehicular homicides of two pedestrians and the murder of a police officer. If you don’t help us you’ll have two more murder charges added for letting those boys die.” I paused for a moment then unleashed a theory on him. “Then there’s the other murder we haven’t charged you with yet.”

Max perked up. “Which one?”

“The owner of the home the boys are now in. I doubt you would have been able to find another place as perfect as that farmhouse, so instead you found a home here you could use. The job you had in Belgium ended a while ago. Makes me think you found work somewhere in Luxembourg, probably in the area where we arrested you. It would’ve been easier to just kill the homeowner and move in, rather than find a new place to hide the boys.”

“You’re smart, Detective. I’ve admitted to all of my crimes and have no problem admitting to this one as well. He was elderly and wanted his house converted to have a second unit. He wanted to rent it out. The best part was that he was completely deaf. I snuck Jacques in and he never had a clue. But then you found out who I was and put it on the news. I had to kill him then or he would’ve told someone he’d seen me.”

“Just another bit of collateral damage. A necessary action, obviously.”

“Yes, it was. I couldn’t have him ruining things for me.”

“There’s still one thing we haven’t charged you with, something rare in situations like these.”

“What’s that?”

“Sex offences.”

Max swallowed hard and sat upright. “I never touched them.”

“I know you didn’t. Claude told me. Remember, the one who got away? The one who just came in to tell me a little more about you.”

“I’m not listening to your lies.”

I thought I heard Kara whisper “psycho” but I couldn’t be certain. Luckily Max didn’t seem to hear anything.

“He told me you never touched them, but you did try. Stripped the kids naked and scared the hell out of them. But then you started punching yourself in the head and then you used a knife to cut yourself.”

Max didn’t speak; he just stared at me.

“Explains all the cuts you’ve got on you. Kara showed me the pictures from when you were booked in.”

“It helps. You wouldn’t understand.”

“You were screaming as you did it. About how you’re not like him, and how you’re not a monster.” I stared back at him, my eyes boring into his. “I disagree.”

“I never touched them. Not like he did to us.”

Us.
That single word struck me harder than I’d expected. My mind raced and images flashed in front of me. I tried to flip through them, tried to focus on a single image. Then I saw it. I had been looking for cases of child abductions that had happened around the same time as mine, almost thirty years ago, to see if my abductor may have been responsible for others. I remembered reading about one in Belgium around that time but set it aside due to the location and lack of similarities to my own case.

What had struck me then was that the abducted boys were brothers.

“Us?”

“What?”

“You said ‘us’ just now.”

Max shook his head. I took out my cellphone and searched for the article, finding it a few minutes later.

“Look, Lars, let’s cut the bullshit.”

“Who is Lars?”

“Don’t play dumb with me. Lars Joossens. You and your older brother Mats were abducted as children, just like you’re abducting these boys. Except your abductor had tendencies you don’t. The two of you were abused, physically and sexually, before he gave you a bowl of ice cream laced with sedatives.”

Max was shaking his head repeatedly. “No, no, no…”

“Mats knew something was wrong and he wouldn’t let you finish yours, would he? He ate it as well. Because of that, you survived - but he didn’t. Your captor thought you were dead and dumped you both in a ditch at the side of a rural road.”

“Please don’t. No more.”

“You wanted to die with him, you couldn’t bear to live on without your brother. That’s why you’re doing this, bringing siblings together in some fucked up way. You force them to bond before you kill them.”

“It’s not like that,” Max said, his voice getting louder.

“It is. There’s no other explanation. You’re taking out your past on them. You’re parents blamed you for Mats dying, didn’t they?”

Max nodded. “They said if I’d eaten mine maybe we both could’ve lived. They went crazy with the guilt and I was the only one they could take it out on.”

“Right, your abductor killed himself when he found out you were still alive. So you ended up in hospital, depressed and suicidal, and your parents told you to never come back.”

“He threatened to kill me if he ever saw me again.”

“Your father. Nice man. You were probably better off without him then. So you changed your name, got a judge to seal the record out of fear of your family finding you again. That’s why we have no record of you before you turned sixteen.”

Max nodded again, tears streaming from his eyes.

“Why did you take his last name? After everything he did to you?”

“I figured my parents would never think of it. And Max, well, it’s close to Mats.”

I smiled. “I think he would’ve liked that. But, Peeters? I think you idolized him somewhat, even after everything.”

“He brought us together, if only for a little while.”

“You didn’t have a great relationship growing up?”

“It was alright. Typical of kids. But when we were there, locked up, we had no one but each other.”

“Do you really think you would have been better off dead?”

“Of course I do,” Max said. “None of this would’ve happened.”

“Then stop it now before other people die.”

“I… I can’t.”

I stood up and slammed my fists down on the table. “You can, you’re just too fucking weak to do it. Just like you were too weak to save your brother.”

Max stood up and stared at me, his fists clenched above the table. “There was nothing I could do.”

“And yet Claude escaped and got help. Why didn’t you?”

He struck the table. “He didn’t escape!”

“I have video surveillance of him in this department today talking to my partner. Do I need to show it to you to make you realize you’re delusional? Think long and hard about it. You took another boy in his place and you know it.”

Max clutched his head with both hands then started to hit himself. I moved around the table to restrain him but he stopped. “It’s really not him, is it?”

I shook my head. “No, Max, it’s not.”

He paused for a minute and I could see him thinking. Just as he was about to speak Sophie burst into the room waving a stack of papers.

“I have the address,” she shouted.

I turned to look at her. “Where is it?”

She read it out to me. “It’s about eight kilometres from where he was arrested.”

I turned and looked at him. “Is that right, Max?”

Max slumped back down into his chair. “It is, but they’re probably already dead.”

“You’d better start praying that they aren’t.”

* * *

The lights and sirens kept traffic off to the side as we drove south toward our destination. Our vehicle was equipped with lights, but it was an unmarked detective’s car, so we had two cruisers taking up the front and back. The traffic parted in front of us and we drove on. We had an ambulance meeting us there as well, but it was taking a different route coming from a detachment not far from the address.

Yuri drove as he knew the area the best, I took the passenger seat and Sophie and Kara sat in the back. It wasn’t chauvinism, it was tactical. We still didn’t know what to expect, and we always kept the ‘plus one’ rule in mind. Even when you’ve got the bad guy, assume there’s one more. Focus all your attention on the person you arrested and next thing you know you’ll be jumped from behind by his buddy who was hiding in the shadows.

We had no reason to suspect a second person, but we were prepared. Kara was injured and Sophie lacked in experience. I had, for better or worse, been involved in enough life-or-death situations that I made the better choice for the front line.

I really hoped for the best-case scenario with this one.

I turned around to face Sophie. “So how did you find the address?”

“Facebook.”

“Really?”

“I got Hugo Krier, David’s dad, to give me access to his account and searched for the people who had last viewed it. Max wasn’t one of them, but we already knew that. So I started going through other accounts and found one that seemed… well, just not right.”

“How so?”

“It was a teenage girl’s account. But it was so stereotypically teenage girl that it just didn’t sit right. I thought maybe Max was using it to lure young boys. I checked the message history but there was nothing and none of the posts jumped out at me. But every liked page or group was a boy band or a clothing store or a movie star or something. So I dug deeper. I had sent warrants to the internet service providers and everything but no one was getting back to me fast enough, so I called and told them it was exigent circumstances and they still fought me. Once I told them it was about the two missing boys they coughed it up.”

“A lot of those companies can be difficult to deal with.”

Sophie laughed. “That’s an understatement. Anyway, I wish I’d thought of this sooner.”

“I wish I had too,” Kara said.

I was still confused. “So you got the address from the internet provider? How did you know it was the right one? You seemed pretty damned certain when you busted into the interview room.”

“I got the address and ran it through our system. We had a report from a break-in from a few years ago with an elderly complainant. The remarks field on his entry noted that he is completely deaf. I came in to talk to Chen and let him know what I found when I heard Max telling you about killing the deaf homeowner. That sealed it. I waited a bit because I didn’t want to interrupt. I was hoping he’d tell you first, just to be certain.”

“Nice work.”

I thought I saw her blush. “Thank you.”

“We’ll have to make sure your superiors hear about this one. You may have just saved two lives.”

She didn’t speak again, just smiled and resumed looking bashful.

It was a long drive, even in emergency response mode, and when we finally pulled up in front of the house our hearts were racing. Yuri took the lead and used his size and strength to make splinters out of the front door frame with a single kick. He and I went in first, guns drawn, and started clearing the main floor.

It didn’t take us long to find the homeowner dead in his chair. A glass lay broken on the hardwood floor beside him. He had dropped it when the table was only a few inches further. There were no outward signs of trauma and it was enough for me to decide he had probably been killed the same way the previous boys had been: an overdose of Propofol delivered orally. Max had been nice enough to get the poor old man his drink. I bowed my head for just a moment and at least tried to find some solace in the fact that his death would have been quick and painless.

We left the body where it was and didn’t approach it. Decomposition had begun – we had smelled it the moment we entered – and it was obvious that he was deceased. There was nothing we could do for him. Visual confirmation was enough in this case; there was no need to check for signs of life.

We cleared the rest of the main floor and Sophie took up position at the base of the stairs leading to the second floor. She had her gun drawn and held the point while Kara watched the front door. Yuri and I went into the basement to make sure no one would surprise us from behind as we made our way to the second floor where the boys were. There was nothing in the basement besides the heating equipment and ductwork – and a lot of dust and cobwebs. We returned upstairs and I fought the compulsive urge to keep brushing at my head and shoulders, the feeling of cobwebs on me was something I couldn’t shake. Sirens sounded from outside and through the window I could see the ambulance pulling up. The officers outside would deal with them, telling them to hold back until it was clear.

Yuri and I moved past Sophie and went upstairs to find a door at the top of the stairs that was locked with a deadbolt. There was a small landing before the door, just enough room for Yuri to wind up and loose another kick with one of his enormous boots.

The doorframe splintered once more and the door swung in hard before bouncing off of the wall behind it. Just a few feet away, sitting on the couch in front of the TV with a plate of chicken wings and French fries and a few empty soda cans on the coffee table, were two terrified-looking young boys.

“It’s okay,” I said. “We’re police officers.” I holstered my gun and fished my badge out of my pocket. They both seemed to relax right away. They sat there staring at us for a moment, taking deep but hurried breaths, before they leapt off of the couch and ran toward us. Yuri and I each found ourselves the recipients of one of the biggest hugs we had ever received, a hug complete with tear-soaked faces and sauce-covered hands. I looked up at Yuri and thought I saw a tear in his eye.

“You boys are safe now.” I looked at the boy who was clinging to me and saw enough of a resemblance to know who it was. “Jacques, Claude is waiting for you.”

He looked up at me with the widest smile I had ever seen then started to cry again. “He saved me, didn’t he?”

“He did. If it wasn’t for him, we may never have found you boys. But you helped him escape, Jacques.”