Richard Hale - Frozen Past

Luke looked discouraged, but nodded anyway.

“Keep the doors locked and call the officer out front on the radio immediately if something happens. Got it?”

Jeffrey Harrison said, “We’ll be alright.”

Jaxon opened the door and said, “I know you will.” Victoria touched Ellie’s arm and smiled, then she walked out the door and Jaxon followed behind.

“We’re getting too close to this,” he said.

“I know. I don’t care.”

“I’m starting to care too much about those kids.”

“So am I.”

“We’re gonna get burned on this.”

“No way around it,” she said. “I’m not giving this case to anyone else. I can’t let anything happen to those kids. If Holt tries to pull me off, I’ll physically hurt him.” She wasn’t smiling.

“We need to be careful,” he said.

She suddenly stopped and turned on him. “Bullshit! I’m doing no such thing! I’m going to go after this guy like the crazed lunatic that he is! If you want to back off, be my guest, but I’m all in.” He stood there stunned. She turned, walked away, and said, “I thought you would be too.”

He caught up to her and grabbed her arm. “Hey! I’m on your side. I want this guy just as bad as you”

She wouldn’t look at him.

“Look at me,” he said. She moved her eyes to his. “I’m in. How could you think that I wouldn’t be? I’m just worried about you.”

“Well, don’t be. I can take care of myself.”

He smiled at her and said, “I know you can. I should know better than to be all protective around you. But we look out for each other, right? I’ve got your back. You can’t keep me from looking out for you.”

She finally smiled a little. “You’d better.”

They stood like that for a minute, the tension bleeding off.

“We done freakin’ out now?” he said.

“Yeah.”

“Let’s go get the asshole then.”

“I love it when you curse,” she said, stepping to the car. “It gets me all worked up.”

“In a good way?”

“You’ll find out later.”

“You said that last night.”

She just smiled at him.

Patrick Pemberton didn’t know squat. Jaxon thought the kid was an asshole too, but that was just his opinion. Teenagers these days were all assholes most of the time.

Victoria had asked him nicely, “Did you happen to see who delivered the package?”

“No. Why?”

“It might help us solve the case, Patrick,” Jaxon said.

“I didn’t do anything.”

“We know that,” Victoria said. “We’re not here to hassle you, we’re just trying to find out some information. Do you know when the package was delivered?”

“No.”

“When did you realize it was here?” Jaxon asked.

“When I left to take Ellie her stupid suitcase.”

“Did you happen to see anyone around or a delivery truck? Anything like that?”

“No.”

“Alright, if you think of anything or remember anything else, call.” Jaxon handed him a business card. He took it and stuffed it in his pocket and shut the door.

“That was a lot of help,” Victoria said.

“No wonder Ellie called him a jerk.”

“Because he is one,” they both said at the same time and then laughed.

Next stop, June Littleton’s. Not only was she pissed because she expected them two hours ago, but apparently her husband was out drinking and hadn’t shown up home yet. She kept looking at her watch and saying, “Son-of-a-bitch.”

Victoria, ever the FBI agent, started the questioning. “Mrs. Littleton, we were going over the interviews from the time of Stewart’s abduction and we wanted to ask you a few questions about Stewart’s friends.”

“That was a long time ago,” she said. “I hope I can remember things.”

“By the way, Mrs. Littleton,” Jaxon said, “When you re-married, why did you keep the name Littleton?”

“I wanted Stewart to be able to find me. If I had changed my name, he wouldn’t know that, would he? He wouldn’t be able to find his way home. Not that it mattered.” She looked at her hands in her lap and fiddled with the tie on her apron.

This is what Jaxon thought, but he wanted to hear it from her. “That was smart,” he said. “I’m so sorry about Stewart.”

She nodded but said nothing.

“Do you remember one of Stewart’s playmates back at that time?” Victoria asked. “His name was Leonard Worthington. He was mentioned a couple of times in the reports and was even interviewed.”

Her face turned cold. “Yes. I remember him.”

“What can you tell us?” Victoria said.

She sighed. “He was a big boy. Six foot something and a lot of muscles for his age. He was older than Stewart, and at times he would let Stewart know this.”

“How much older?”

“Three or four years. Stewart was twelve and the Worthington boy was fifteen or sixteen.”

“At that age, that gap is huge,” Jaxon said. “Why did they even hang out together? It surprises me Leonard would even give a twelve year old the time of day.”

“I thought the same thing, but they got along most of the time.”

“Most of the time?” Victoria asked.

“Every once in a while, Stewart would come home with a bruise, or a lump, or a bloody lip, and he would tell me he fell, or tripped, or ran into a tree. I think the Worthington kid was being rough on him.”

“But Stewart would never admit this to you?”

“No.” She sat thoughtfully for a moment and then said. “I saw the Worthington boy push my Stewart down once. Nothing too bad. It didn’t hurt him or anything, it was just a shove that drove him to his knees, but Stewart got right back up and I let it pass without confronting the older boy. Sometimes as parents, you just have to let the kids work things out for themselves, because if the moms and dads get involved, it usually gets blown all out of proportion.”

Jaxon knew she was right. He’d seen it all too often and had been to a number of calls when he was a rookie patrolman. Calls where the parents were in fistfights over something the twelve year olds did to each other. If they had left it alone, the kids probably would have been back playing with each other in a half an hour.

“So, you could never prove the Worthington boy injured Stewart?”

“No.”

“What else can you remember? Was there a reason a sixteen year old would hang out with your son?” Victoria kept going back to this and Jaxon knew this is what bothered both of them the most.

“Stewart idolized him,” Mrs. Littleton said. “In his eyes, he was the coolest kid on the block with the coolest things. He was fascinated with the Worthington boy’s radio controlled airplane collection and this is what drove Stewart to him.” She smiled. “Stewart loved airplanes.”

“What did you just say?” Jaxon asked.

“Stewart loved airplanes?”

“No. About Leonard Worthington’s collection? Did you say it was radio controlled airplanes?”

“Yes. He had lots of them. Big ones, little ones. The older boy was quite the pilot.”

Victoria turned to Jaxon and they shared a look. June Littleton looked at her watch again and mumbled the same curse at her husband while Jaxon stared at Victoria in disbelief.

“Mrs. Littleton,” Jaxon said. “Where did Leonard live?”

“Three doors down,” she pointed out the window. “Right there. In the grey one.”

Jaxon followed her finger and saw a grey, two-story bungalow sitting back from the street in an overgrown, weed infested yard, the structure looking dilapidated in the late evening light. It looked deserted.

“His parents are dead, right?” Victoria asked.

“Oh, yes. They both died years ago. Car accident. It was a terrible tragedy.”