Frozen Harvest (eBook)

Chapter 2

(Present)

When Joel started his career in the field of detective work, he quickly earned a reputation for solving cases where others had failed, notably missing person cases. He had a knack for assessing character and listened carefully to what people said before starting to peel back the layers to uncover the real story.

It was not about what a person said, but what they were not saying that he found informative. His logical mind and calm demeanor were assets he used to his advantage during investigative interviews.

The case that the strange letter referred to was the first time he had received any notoriety from his work. He had not paid much attention to the stories at the time; the successful conclusion of the case was enough of a reward. He knew that papers across the state had picked up the story and was pretty sure Williams must have seen an article before writing his letter.

The case had been a gut-wrenching affair, quickly capturing the attention of all the law enforcement agencies within the cities. A four-year-old girl vanished into thin air from her middle-class neighborhood home in Minneapolis. The investigation that ensued was swift and encompassed a massive commitment of resources. The picture the girl’s family provided the media was the type that would rip your heart out.

For 24 hours, law-enforcement threw everything they had at the case and came up empty. They canvassed the girl’s neighborhood exhaustively, and nobody had seen a thing. It was in the middle of the afternoon on July 2nd, when she went missing and people were preparing for the 4th of July holiday. She had been riding her bike with training wheels, and the bike left in the middle of the sidewalk faced straight ahead. One of the detectives who was first on the scene commented that it looked like the bike was carefully parked.

Two-story homes lined both sides of the residential avenue, and there were at least twelve nearby houses with a view of where the bike was left. A betting person would have liked the odds of someone seeing something. There was a small grocery store two blocks beyond the girl’s home that usually added foot traffic along the avenue, but that angle also came up empty. The police conducted a house to house search in the immediate vicinity, and the compulsory interviews with family members revealed nothing suspicious.

Somebody with authority decided that it must have been a “stranger abduction” and the focus of the investigation shifted from the immediate neighborhood to a wider net. Still, with nothing to go on, it was not a promising development. The community which had been crawling with police one day earlier was now virtually empty of officers except for an occasional patrol car drive-by.

Joel called his friend Marty, who injured in the line of duty, worked a desk at the downtown headquarters. Marty explained there had been a shift in focus, and after spending hundreds of man-hours in the neighborhood, they had nothing to go on. When Joel saw a picture of the girl on the news, he decided to take a look at the site for himself.

There was still a piece of yellow crime tape wrapped around a maple tree on the boulevard when he drove down the quiet street. Other than that, there was no sign of the previous police activity or anything else out of the ordinary. Joel understood the clock was ticking, and every hour that passed decreased the chances of a successful resolution.

Stepping out of his car, he crossed the grassy boulevard and stepped onto the sidewalk near the tree with the crime tape. Standing in the middle of the pavement, he looked up and down the street at the houses that had a view of this spot. Marty had given him the address of the girl’s house, and he saw those numbers above the door of a house sitting on top of a steep hill. There was a staircase that neatly split the yard in half with approximately 20 steps leading from the sidewalk to a landing and another set of five steps to the front door.

Joel looked up at the house for a few seconds before shifting his gaze to the grassy hill with its steep pitch leading into the side yard between the missing girl’s house and the next-door neighbors’. Both houses were at the same elevation. Beads of sweat formed on his brow in the heat of the July afternoon. There were lush plantings and inviting shade between the homes, and just slightly back from the crest of the hill, a small kitten stalked an unseen prey under a lilac bush.

Looking back at the sidewalk where the bike would have been, he asked himself, how long it would have taken her to scramble up the hill? A few seconds? He saw that once she reached the side yard, she became invisible to just about everyone.

Joel was well-liked by local law enforcement because he had been one of them, and now that he was an independent investigator, he respected their jurisdiction and shared any information he had. He did not see the point of adversarial relationships that did not benefit either party. He knew there was an extreme focus on this case and understood there was nothing that got under the skin of police officers more than cases involving children.

Joel figured massive data searches were underway that would try to match the location and crime to possible suspects. Information was also shared nationally, and open cases compared to the details of this one.

Marty indicated that one of their best interviewers, Jack Hannigan, had talked with the family, and unequivocally said there was nothing there. Nobody had seen a thing on a summer day when a lot of people were off work and preparing for the 4th of July holiday. It didn’t add up. It was dawning on Joel, that the lack of evidence, might be the best evidence that she had not been abducted at all and was still somewhere in the vicinity.

The more he looked at the scene, the more he was convinced she was still here. Something had probably caught her attention, and she carefully parked her bike in the middle of the sidewalk and scrambled up the hill to see what it was. When she did, she effectively disappeared from view. But where was she now?

Joel had driven around the block before parking on the street and noticed there were no alleys on this particular block. The lot sizes in his estimation were an acre or more. The elevation of the land dropped considerably from one end of the block to the other until leveling out on the far end. The missing girl’s home was the third house in from the corner on the high side of the block. The backyards were extensive, and it appeared homeowners carved out the amount of area they wanted to maintain and let mother-nature tend to the rest. The natural areas, beyond groomed lawns, would be ideal places for forts and hide-outs.

He called Marty, and when he answered said, “she is here somewhere, I have a strong gut feeling she is still here.”

Marty recognizing Joel’s voice, said, “what do you mean?”

“I mean, I don’t think she is gone, I am here on site, and it doesn’t add up, she is still here somewhere,” he said with conviction.

“Ok,’ Marty said, “take it easy, I will make a few calls” and hung up. Ten minutes later, Marty called back and asked Joel what he needed.

“I need help to conduct another search,” Joel said flatly.

Ten minutes later two squad cars pulled up in front of where Joel was standing, one officer jumped out, nodded at Joel, and climbed the steps to knock on the door of the missing girl’s home. The officer is explaining to a distraught father that they wanted to conduct another search behind the houses. Joel joined the remaining officers, and they climbed the steps together before walking between the houses into the backyard. He explained where he wanted the officers to concentrate their efforts and for them to pay close attention to any possible underground forts or hide-outs where she may have fallen.

An officer named Pete Stanley asked Joel why he was so sure she was here. Joel hesitated a couple of seconds and said: “because of the evidence.”

“What evidence?” Stanley asked.

“It’s all wrong,” Joel replied.

“The fact that nobody saw a thing in broad daylight when most people were home. Nobody saw a strange vehicle; nobody heard a sound; there is no sign of anything out of the ordinary; it doesn’t add up.”

The group made their way into the far reaches of the backyard and the overgrown areas between the girl’s home and its backyard neighbor.

About 20 minutes into the search, Officer Stanley called out that he had found something. Joel and the other officers converged on the area where Stanley held up a small tennis shoe dangling from the end of a stick. Joel knew it was the girl’s from the description her mother had given the media. The shoe was good news, she had been back here, and more than likely still was. The search party continued with a renewed urgency.

The news of finding the shoe was radioed back to headquarters and set things in motion that would soon bring dozens of additional officers to the scene.

The ground was soggy in the area where Joel searched, and he noticed and an unusual humped up protrusion running for several feet before disappearing into the denser brush. When he stepped on it, he found it to be hard under the dirt and weeds. Scraping at the earth with his foot, he uncovered what looked like an old drainage...