*****
Michelle’s train of thought
was suddenly disturbed as she heard a door squeak. She listened intently,
her daydream of Greece utterly vanishing when suddenly a strange man appeared
beside her in the mirror. She turned in panic. Another man appeared
next to him. She made an instinctive effort to cover herself but
instantly realized it was fruitless. The taller of the two, a muscled,
tanned man with dirty blonde hair slicked closely backward, looked at her in
astonishment; his skinny white partner snickered with lust
.
She could not utter a
sound. She could not think. Then her parental instincts took over
and she sprang for Sammy’s room, but they were quicker. They grabbed her
and placed her between them in front of the mirror.
They were wild with
lust. Her slender figure, tender white skin and private parts drove them
mad. They fondled her in front of the mirror grabbing her nipples and
sticking their fingers in her. She tried to resist but they were too big
and strong. They flung her on the bed, cuffing her to the metal bed frame
above her head with a belt and continued violating her. She was helpless
.
Then, simultaneously, they
both lowered their pants and jocks, shamelessly letting their erections spring
free. She fought silently, afraid to scare little Sammy. The blonde
tanned man positioned himself between her legs, spreading her, looking directly
at her exposed sex. He then proceeded to violate her with his monstrous
fingers. The skinny white man crouched above her, pinning her down, his
erect penis rubbing against her face. The two produced animalistic sounds
while communicating horrifying descriptions of what they were about to perform
.
She felt sickened as the
tanned man penetrated her dryness with brutal force. Sharp pain shattered
her body and soul. The skinny man above her growled with desire.
With a cry, she raised her upper body and vomited all over herself. The
tanned man climaxed inside her with a loud groan
.
She fainted. The two sat
on the bed watching her float in and out of consciousness. Then they
wiped her clean with one of her own towels and swapped places. It was the
skinny man's turn to violate her. She became totally numb. Her eyes
were open but she did not see.
They took turns for another
hour, after which the skinny man produced a handgun and the tanned man shot her
twice in the head, muffing the blasts with a pillow, putting an end to her
misery
.
PART
ONE
CHAPTER
ONE
The sign above the entrance to
The Center for Missing Children was a modest one, partially erased and aging from
perpetual mistreatment by the vindictive New York City weather. Anyone
not deliberately looking for it was unlikely to be aware of its presence, on
the ground floor of a ten-storey brownstone in Lower East Side, Manhattan
.
Sam Baker heaved the stout begrudging
oak door, as he did every morning, flinging it open with a bang. He swore
under his breath, swearing to himself once again to harass the building
maintenance person into fixing his padlock. He flicked on the lights,
kicking the door shut with his heel and stepped into a tiny foyer that led to a
narrow corridor accommodating several rooms positioned left and right. He
stuffed his gloves and scarf in his coat pockets and hung his coat on a row of
plastic hangers lined shoulder high on the foyer wall
.
Thankful for the heater
holding up, he rubbed his hands together then put them to his mouth and blew,
his warm breath helping defrost his nose and fingers. He stood a minute,
adjusting to the dreary morning ambiance, appreciating the few moments of solitude
he had, before the place filled up to become a chaotic chamber of
conflict. He walked to the far end of the corridor taking the glass urn
from the percolator and entered the WC, the European equivalent of a Restroom
sign, long ago posted on their lone toilet door. Filling the pot with
water to the brim, he went back to the coffee shelf, threw several scoops of
filter coffee into a disposable paper filter, and poured the water into the
percolator, leaving the coffee to brew
.
Then he approached his office,
which loomed dark and threatening at the front end of the corridor. He
dreaded entering his office at the dawn of a new day fearing what he might find
in the way of faxes or phone messages; a hysterical parent missing a child;
another child found dead on the street; or maybe a runaway or a kidnapping of
the sort that had ravaged his own life
.
The dread never ceased.
Not for one moment. The horror would forever be with him.
He had found her on the
bed. Little Sammy was gone. Then he barely made it to the
phone. The doctors heavily sedated him for days and he had to be wheeled
to the funeral
.
Sam flicked on the lights in
his office and looked at her photo. The bedroom scene would never vacate
his mind. In the photo she was beautiful and radiating, smiling at him
with little Sammy on her lap. It was the only photo he kept at the
office. He recalled exactly where it had been taken; at Sammy’s birthday
party at the daycare center under the large tree by the yellow swings. He
had taken it, but the photos were developed after Michelle died and little
Sammy disappeared
.
That night he had reached his
house past midnight and had gotten an uneasy feeling as he parked his
car. The front door was partly ajar and the house was lit as in early
evening. It puzzled him because on those rare occasions when he came home
late, the front door would always be locked and he would find Michelle asleep,
a book in her lap, with her bedside lamp and Sammy’s night stand the only
active light sources in the house
.
As he climbed the stairs to
their bedroom he felt a sense of dread creeping in on him, intensifying with
every step. Michelle lay
naked,
spread eagled on
the bed in a pool of blood and vomit that soaked through the covers and
sheets. He tried to call to her but produced not a sound. Her face
was covered with the bloodstained pillows but he would never get to see the
hollow look and disfigured heap of flesh caused by the two bullets fired at
point blank range. Feeling faint, he had hesitantly touched her bare leg
and felt death, the coldness and hardening of limbs. He suddenly felt
very heavy, unable to take another step, as if all the blood in his body was
draining to his feet. Then another dread struck him and he gingerly
stumbled to Sammy’s room, finding it empty and cold. He wobbled back to
the bedroom and tried to look at his wife but flashes of light and floating
dark spots was all that he could see. He lunged for the phone, his body
shaking and out of control and managed to dial the emergency number and give
his address before passing out.
He came to in the ambulance
but remained still. He just lay there staring into emptiness. Then
he was up and lunging for the door, shouting his son’s name.
The paramedics, caught
unawares by this sudden surge, just managed to latch on to him as he threw open
the back door of the streaking vehicle. The driver braked and they were
thrown about to the front of the ambulance, knocking over medical equipment,
IVs, scopes, and the like. Sam fought to get past them but they held on
tight, quickly sedating him with a syringe prepared in advance, as Detective
Black Jack had wisely suggested
.
As he slowly subsided under
the substance Sam began to cry, begging to see his son. A while later, at the
hospital, Detective Black Jack informed Sam that his son was not in the house
nor anywhere else they had looked so far. He assured him there was
nothing to point to Sammy being harmed in any way but that so far, Sammy was
missing
.
Ten years had passed since that terrible day
and Sammy was still missing, Sam agonized, as he scooped the pile of faxes off
the machine and sat at his desk to scan them. He heard the door open, the
street sounds suddenly becoming audible, and knew Black Jack had arrived
.
Detective Jack Preston,
invariably known to all as Black Jack, was, as the name suggested, a black
police detective, who in his youth loved card games, especially the game of
blackjack which he excelled at. He was awarded his nickname before
joining the police force but the name stuck when some of his colleagues at the
police academy discovered that he spent significant sums of money pursuing this
shady practice. He had been assigned to investigate the rape and murder
of Michelle Baker and the kidnapping of little Sammy Baker, and would later be
a pillar of strength in Sam’s road to recovery. He would become obsessed
with the unresolved case and eventually leave the Los Angeles Police Department
to form a special federal task force for finding missing children, a task force
which would later accept Sam as a member but eventually be dismantled for lack
of funds
.
Sam would privately go on to
form the “Center for Missing Children”, a non-profit organization funded by
philanthropists and various concerned businesses and organizations.
Designed to assist children and parents in need, the Center would be sanctioned
by the various law enforcement bureaux but would not be funded by them.
Detective Black Jack Preston would eventually leave the force and join Sam’s
Center for Missing Children as lead investigator
.
Black Jack fussed in the foyer
with his attire then threaded his way through the crammed corridor, knocking
over several stacks of files before poking his head through the door to wish
Sam a good morning. He continued on to the brewing coffeepot and came
back with two steaming Styrofoam cups filled to the brim with coffee, set them
on the desk and slumped into a chair across from Sam
.
Such was their morning ritual
when both were in town. They sat in silence for a while, sipping their
coffee, scanning the faxes that had come through during the night. Soon
they would begin to assess pending issues and examine ongoing events, preparing
for the day ahead. Mainly they would try to assign a set of priorities to
the numerous tasks they had to perform, their troop clearly being undermanned
with a staff of only six people, Black Jack and Sam included
.
“
Sammy
would’ve been eleven tomorrow,” Black Jack gloomily remarked after he read the
last of the faxes Sam had passed on to him
.
“
He
will be eleven tomorrow,” Sam corrected him, then instinctively looked to his
calendar. It was March 18, 1995
.
As the years passed, treating
his son’s existence became more and more ambiguous to many of his acquaintances
and friends, even to Black Jack, his closest friend, but never to Sam who
refused to believe in anything other than his little Sammy being alive. In his
darkest hours throughout the yet-to-be-resolved ordeal, he would refuse to
succumb to morbid thoughts concerning his son’s being. Lately he had
begun to concede the idea that he may never get to see his son again, but never
would he concede to thinking he no longer lived. This belief was quintessential
to Sam’s own survival and he had told Black Jack early on, that so long as
there was no hard proof, he would never accept such a fate, and if he ever did,
he would have nothing to live for
.
Sam’s brother, Robert, three
years his senior, a professor of law at UCLA, had been the first to arrive at
the hospital. Black Jack, one of the first detectives to reach the
dreadful murder scene, had found his phone number in Michelle’s Rolodex in the
kitchen and had delivered the horrible news, suggesting he hurry to the
hospital to be with his brother. Robert had called Sam’s sister, Rebecca,
and she had alerted his parents
.
His entire family was by his
bedside when he awoke early the following morning but he would not utter a word
to any of them. Then he tried to flee his bed and had to be sedated
again. He floated in and out of consciousness, whispering his son’s name
from time to time but it was only when Detective Black Jack appeared that Sam
had, for a few minutes at least, shown any interest in what was being said
around him. Michelle’s mother, Laura Kent, arrived that afternoon without
Michelle’s father, James, who later spoke to Sam briefly at the funeral, then
never spoke to him again. Michelle’s sisters, Sally and Cindy, both
married and living on the East Coast, just made it to the funeral. James
Kent would blame Sam for his daughter’s terrible death and later suffer a fatal
cardiac arrest, the result of bitterness and reproach he could not curtail
.
Sam would wonder about the
funeral for many years to come and he was convinced that it was there,
alongside his wife’s fresh grave that he would cease to embrace the faith he
had in human nature and inverted his attitude toward life
.
Sitting in the wheelchair
above the black pit into which they were about to lower his wife’s lifeless
body, paying little attention to the words being spoken, he tried to envisage
her as he knew her, but couldn’t. Her final pose overshadowed every
memory he had of her: her body, violated; her flesh ashen; life so cruelly
drained out of her. He could not erase the memory, nor could he continue
to view mankind as he had his entire life
.
Before they married, Michelle
had once told him that what she loved most about
him,
was his no-nonsense, reckless faith in people. Sam believed it to be
true. He did not deem himself naive or unseeing but he never wished to
doubt people’s motives. He knew, of course, that deceit existed all around him,
but in his personal dealings with people he believed he could overcome
intrinsic suspicion with simple straightforwardness. To women and men
alike, he believed in speaking God’s honest truth, presenting himself as is,
with no hidden agenda. People would naturally become skeptical of such
simplicity but would seize such quality once convinced it was sincere. He
had his eccentricities and scruples with society but he lived with a naive
sense of security that basic mankind was good and bad things did not happen to
people who functioned honestly.
He knew it to be his mother,
Diane, who instilled that trust in him. She had been an educator all her
life, teaching kindergarten, elementary school, high school, and college, and
it was her extraordinary presence, conveying patience and leniency, that most
influenced his childhood. His father, Stewart, had become a judge when
Sam was still a toddler and that had taught him diplomacy and compromise at a
very young age. He had mostly gotten his way with both his older brother
and younger sister employing those inherited virtues and had later coasted through
life in similar fashion. A family friend had once told him that she
thought he was the most balanced of the Baker children, his brother being
overly ambitious and his sister overly anxious to please
.
Besides the grievance and
sense of loss, Michelle’s rape and murder left him wondering what evil nature
existed in humans ready to commit such acts to other humans who did them no
harm. The tragedy had a profound effect on what followed. Refusing to go back
to his house, his parents, sister, and brother took turns lodging him during
the first few weeks following his release from the hospital. He became
weary and aloof, practically unreachable. He sat brooding for days,
cocooned in his misery. His law firm colleagues came by, several old
college friends, Michelle’s sisters and mother, and even Albert Sweeny, senior
partner at the firm, suggesting Sam would be better off keeping himself busy at
work. But Sam had retreated into a state of mind so withdrawn, no one, not even
his mother, could reach him. It was only when Black Jack would arrive
with updates of the investigation, that Sam would show any spark of awareness,
only to be thrown back into his torment when odds remained bleak
.