The Night Stalker_ A Novel of Suspense - James Swain [11]
Five blocks later the scenery changed, and the streets turned mean. The houses were now made of cinder block, and many had iron security bars on their windows. Cars filled with angry young men roamed the streets, looking for trouble. Buster sat at stiff attention beside me, his lip turned up in a snarl.
Jed Grimes’s street appeared in my headlights. It was called RichJo Lane, and was lined with falling-down bungalows built during the middle of the last century. I parked in front of a bungalow with yellow police tape surrounding the perimeter. Printed on the mailbox in black Magic Marker was the word Grimes.
I took a look around before getting out of my car. It was a rough-looking area. Had I still been a cop, I might have called for backup. I glanced at my dog.
“It’s just you and me, pal,” I told him.
Buster pawed his seat. He was ready to go. I liked that in a partner. I grabbed a flashlight from the glove compartment and opened my door. My dog climbed over me, and ran to the bushes surrounding Jed Grimes’s house.
I got out of my car and stood on the sidewalk. Jed’s place was dark, and I shined my flashlight at it. Shingles were missing from the roof, the paint peeling like a bad sunburn. The carport was empty, and no one appeared to be at home.
I started to climb over the police tape. The articles I’d read on the Internet had said that Sampson had been abducted from his bedroom in the rear of the house. Stealing kids from their bedrooms was tricky, and I wanted to see how the kidnapper had pulled it off.
Hearing a woman’s voice, I stopped what I was doing. Trespassing on a crime scene was a crime, and I didn’t want to get caught in the act.
I looked up and down RichJo Lane, then heard the voice again. It had come from a white trailer parked on the street. I hadn’t paid much attention to the trailer, thinking it belonged to a neighbor. Now I took a closer look.
It was the Broward County Sheriff’s Department’s Operations Center trailer, or what cops called the OC. When kids were abducted, the police parked the OC near the home, and conducted their investigation from it. This allowed the police to be near the crime scene, while giving the child’s family some privacy.
A door on the trailer opened, and a young woman came outside and shut the door behind her. She was no more than twenty feet away from me, and stood beneath a streetlight. She started to cross the street, then halted, and looked directly at me.
“Mr. Carpenter? Is that you?”
She was a long-stemmed beauty with slender features and deeply troubled eyes. I couldn’t place her, and I stepped forward to get a better look at her.
“Excuse me, but who are you?” I asked.
“Heather Rinker. I played basketball with your daughter in junior high school. You used to drive us to games.”
Shock was the best word to describe my reaction. The last time I’d seen Heather, she’d been a skinny little girl in pigtails, and hardly resembled the stunning woman standing before me. I said, “It’s been a long time. What are you doing here?”
“I was talking to the detective inside the trailer.”
“About what?”
“You don’t know?”
I shook my head.
“Sampson Grimes is my son.”
I didn’t know what to say. I put my hand on her shoulder. As a cop, I couldn’t do that, but I wasn’t a cop anymore.
“I’m sorry, Heather,” I said.
Her eyes welled with tears, and she wiped them away. “I spoke to Jed earlier. He told me that his father’s attorney hired you to find Sampson.”
“That’s right,” I said.
“That’s what you do, isn’t it? You find missing kids.”
I nodded. I sensed that Heather was dying inside, but I had to press her. “I need for you to tell me what happened to your son.”
“Right now?”
“Now’s a good time.”
She took a deep breath. “Jed and I got divorced after Sampson was born,