Stolen Lives: A Detective Mystery Series SuperBoxset (24 page)

“Same thing that brought you two here,” she responded.

Miriam leaned forward and edged closer to Summerson. “Detective Keely and I were just about to approach the house. Why don’t you guys provide us some cover?”

Amused, Summerson shook her head. “Nah, doll face. We made it this far. I think we’ll join ya’.”

“This isn’t a game,” Keely snapped.

Wright quickly attempted to mediate. “Everyone just calm down. I’m sure we can work together to check the place out. But it certainly does us no good to stand out here and chat all day.”

With the roar of an engine, a blue van suddenly smashed through the garage door and sped down the driveway, shattering the door into broken planks. The explosive shattering of wood left a giant hole in the garage and startled the four officers, who shouted and cursed in surprise and panic. Miriam and Keely jumped to the side as Summerson and Wright froze in complete shock.

The van roared into the street, screeching, and sped off like a rocket propelled from its launch pad. Miriam fell to the ground on her knees as smoke and exhaust engulfed then. Other vehicles swerved to the side, crashing into nearby mailboxes or parked cars. It continued down the road unabated, and growing more distant by the second.

Keely reached down and helped Miriam to her feet as exhaust from the van rushed over them.

“Let’s go!” he shouted.

Their heightened instincts kicked. They turned and ran past a dazed Summerson and Wright and continued to their Dodge Charger parked nearby.

Summerson pulled her pistol from her side holster and sprinted off in the direction of the van, jumping over planks of wood lying in the driveway.

Wright stood by and cupped his mouth. “Where are you going? You’ll never catch him on foot!”

“Watch me!” she yelled back.

Frustrated, Wright ran back to his car, a few houses down the road. Miriam and Keely jumped into theirs. Keely jammed the keys in the ignition, turned, and revved on the gas pedal. Miriam grabbed the radio hand-mike. “Pursuit of suspect in a blue van. We need immediate backup and air support!”

Keely peeled out and tore down the road like a drag racer with his lights flashing and engine revving. Engaging in a high-speed pursuit on a narrow two-lane road wasn’t the safest endeavor, or encouraged in most circumstances in their code of conduct. But they had a high-value suspect in their midst and couldn’t risk letting him get away. Miriam urged him on as the blue van ahead barreled down the street with little regard for anything in its path.

“He’s getting away,” she said. “Step on it!”

Keely floored it. The RPM needle on the dashboard vaulted to the right and started quavering. With his own lights flashing, Detective Wright was behind them, gaining. They passed Summerson as she ran down the sidewalk as fast as her legs could take her. Wright swerved around a pickup truck that had sideswiped a Mini Cooper. Miriam gripped her armrest as Wright dodged a collision involving a Corolla and a Volkswagen in the left lane. The van had left a path of destruction in its wake and they kept its small red taillights in view up ahead just as it took a sharp left at the next intersection, right through a red light.

“Damn, he’s going for the highway,” Keely said.

“Stay on him,” Miriam said. She called for backup once more on the radio. They needed to block him off. Create a barrier and box their suspect in so that more drivers wouldn’t be at risk.

Wright managed to stay right on their heels as the Dodge careened from lane to lane, avoiding stopped vehicles that had little room to go anywhere to get out of the way.

For Miriam, the chase was both frightening and exhilarating. She wished it was her behind the wheel. They neared the next intersection.

“He’s taken a left at South Gilbert,” Miriam said into the radio. “All present teams please pursue.”

Traffic in all lanes slowed and parted as drivers did the best they could to make way. Once Keely turned onto South Gilbert, tires screeching, they could see the blue van swerving into a back street to avoid an incoming barrage of police cruisers headed in its direction. Backup had finally arrived.

Whoever was driving the blue van wasn’t going to get far—that Miriam was sure of. She was fraught with anticipation. Wright gunned it forward as they turned onto the four-lane street, racing past gas stations, fast food restaurants, and onlookers with stunned, open-mouthed expressions. Miriam could hear the rumbling of a helicopter approaching in the distance.

Keely veered into the right lane and jerked the wheel to make a sharp turn down a back road, sending the engine rattling. The blue van was ahead, sparking from the rear tire that seemed to have popped. Thick smoke billowed from the van as it pressed down the narrow road, flanked by dumpsters on both sides.

Keely maintained their pursuit, despite the smoke and exhaust engulfing the windshield and obstructing their view. The driver was clearly pushing the van beyond its modest capacity. Another rush of black smoke and then they heard a loud crash as the van crashed into a large green metal dumpster. Keely slammed the brakes, coming to a sudden, neck-jerking halt. A parade of police cruisers, lights flashing and in wild pursuit, all made abrupt stops that sent them skidding within inches of parked cars and each other.

The Charger screeched to the side of the road just past the collision, which had left the van smoking, its front end smashed in and the dumpster tilted on its side. Miriam opened the door and jumped out before they came to a complete stop. Keely yelled after her and swung open his door. Police cars surrounded the dumpster, kicking up dust in the air that, combined with the van’s blanket of smoke swelling into the air, created a veritable sand storm.

Miriam ran to the passenger side with her pistol aimed. The windows were tinted beyond any legal measure, and it was near impossible to see inside. “Hands up!” she shouted. “Come on out now.” There was no response.

She hoped within all her heart that the missing girl wasn’t in the van. It would be a tragic outcome in a long line of such outcomes that had afflicted her in the past few years. She didn’t think she could take any more. Wright had circled the driver’s side with a few other officers. All had their guns out, ready to engage.

“Out of the van, now!” he shouted.

Miriam came around to the smashed front-end of the van, trying to see inside. The entire windshield was cracked and nothing could be seen beyond its spider web patterns. The driver’s door creaked as it suddenly swung open. All officers stepped forward, shouting demands. Steam and exhaust flowed out of the van. A moment later, a large man dressed in sweatpants and a blood-stained T-shirt tumbled out. Coughing and gasping for air, he limped away, dazed and seeming in shock.

He was bleeding from a gash on his bald forehead. His watery eyes were looking up into nothing. Six police officers surrounded him, guns drawn, with Detective Wright in the middle.

“Down on the ground!” a red-faced officer shouted. They weren’t playing around.

The man stumbled to the side and continued walking, looking disoriented and in pain. He held his head and crept hunched over just as one of the burly officers rushed him and threw him to the ground. A circle of police descended on the man, surrounding him. The man cried out just as the officer knelt on his back, burying his face into the dirt, and locking his wrists behind his back with handcuffs.

“Let’s get an ambulance here ASAP,” a female officer shouted out.

“EMT on its way,” another officer added.

Miriam was on a mission all her own. She swung the passenger side door open and pointed her gun inside. No one was inside and the back of the van didn’t have any windows. She climbed inside, swatting away the exhaust and smoke that wafted in her face.

“Sarah!” she called out.

There was no response. She looked into the back of the van, which was free of seats and littered with all kinds of tools and trash. The collision had spilled the contents of several tool boxes all over the floor. If there was a girl anywhere in the van, she was completely hidden. But something wasn’t right.

Miriam thought of the house they had almost entered at 24 South Cooper, and the giant gaping hole in the garage door.
He didn’t take her
, she thought.
She has to still be there
.

She jumped outside the van and ran over to where they had the driver cuffed and on the ground. His appearance immediately piqued her interest. He was a big man, but beyond a few tattoos on his arms, she didn’t see noticeable burns. His face rose, dirty, with a string of drool falling from his mouth.

“Let me go! I’m innocent!” he cried as his chubby cheeks trembled and his left eye twitched. His face was reddened all the up to the light stubble on his bald, sweaty head. He was a quivering mound of fear who in no way resembled Phillip Anderson. Miriam sighed with relief. They pulled the man up onto his feet as he screamed in pain.

“I’m hurt here! Go easy!”

An ambulance pulled up along with about four police cruisers. The scene had become a hornet’s nest of activity. Detective Wright joined up with them as well, surveying the scene with intense scrutiny.

“Hell of a way to end a pursuit.”

“You said it,” Keely said.

Two officers escorted the large, defeated man to the ambulance as he hobbled along almost theatrically.

“What do you think, Detective Castillo?” Keely asked.

She stared ahead, unblinking, as smoke drifted past her face. “I say we go back to his house this instant and find that Sarah.”

Captured

The police surrounded the man’s house, cordoning off the front yard and the demolished garage as neighbors stood outside watching with curiosity. The entire residential street was blocked off on both sides. Damaged vehicles were still in the process of being towed away. A news helicopter hovered overhead, and eager members of the media were kept at a careful distance behind several barricades.

The homeowner and man in question was one Edwin Silva, a thirty-four-year-old gas station attendant with no prior record. Miriam and Keely led an intensive search of the man’s two-bedroom, sparsely furnished home and found no evidence of child abduction—and, most disheartening of all, no Sarah.

In his cramped home, authorities found copious numbers of video games, trading cards, collectibles, and other items that would be of interest to a teenager but nothing that directly linked him to Sarah’s abduction.

Keely and Miriam paced his living room as investigators searched the house. Keely stopped and looked around, shaking his head. “If there’s nothing here, than why’d he run?”

“I agree,” Miriam said. “He has to have her somewhere.” She walked toward the sliding glass door and opened it. The backyard was small with sporadic patches of grass over dirt surrounded by a picket fence.

Miriam walked outside, examining the hardened ground as a breeze kicked up a cloud of thin dust around her feet. A helicopter hovered high above. At first, Miriam thought it was one of theirs but then noticed FOUR NEWS SKYCOPTER on its side. The media were persistent in their hunt for developments and eager for a story. It came with the territory.

Keely opened the sliding glass door and stuck his head outside. “Hey, they’ve got Silva downtown at the Regional Medical. Paramedics said that he should be okay.”

Miriam turned to head back inside. “We need to get down there. I’ve seen enough here.”

“Perhaps another look around?” Keely asked.

She walked past him with a shrug. “Seems that there’s enough investigators here to do that.”

“But, Sarah…” he said, stopping her in the living room.

“She’s not here,” Miriam said. “He must be holding her somewhere. Trust me, I know a lot about this.”

Investigators passed by, taking multiple pictures of the modest dwelling space, searching every inch of it with gloved hands. Before leaving, however, Keely and Miriam did one last search of Silva’s bedroom.

They followed the hall to a room littered with dirty clothes, comic books, and discarded pizza boxes. Miriam observed the medieval fantasy posters on the wall: scantily clad, buxom women wielding swords and fighting dragons.

A team of investigators in the corner placed a dozen different notebooks into evidence boxes. Two others unplugged a PC tower, bagged it, and placed it in another evidence box.

“Okay,” Miriam said. “It’s time to have some words with Mr. Silva.” She stopped and turned to Keely. “Sarah doesn’t have much time.”

They left the scene in haste and walked outside the front door as a county clean-up crew was cleaning up the shambled garage door, lying in pieces. A horde of reporters stood at the end of the street behind the barricades, calling out as Miriam and Keely went to their car.

“Did you find the girl?”

“Where’s Sarah?”

“Who do you have in custody?”

Miriam ignored them, eyes down, and opened the passenger door as Keely went around to the other side. Once inside, he revved up the Charger and drove the opposite direction, away from the reporters and in between a set of barricades.

“Is Ana going to be okay?” Keely asked.

She glanced at him. “What’s up?”

“I was asking you if Ana was going to be okay. You had mentioned getting home to see her earlier… before all of this.”

Miriam had completely forgotten. Sarah’s disappearance had consumed her. “I’ll call her,” she answered. Keely pulled out onto the main road and headed toward Chandler Regional Hospital.

Miriam was beginning to convince herself that the string of abductions that followed her from career to career was no longer tied to just one man. There seemed to be more to it. She was meant to find them, to recover the missing. It was a gift or a curse, depending on how she looked at it.

They arrived at the hospital, eager to probe Edwin Silva on Sarah’s whereabouts. But they were going to have to take a number. A slew of other investigators with the department were already there. Congressman Bynes had gotten word of Silva’s capture and had arrived moments before with his wife and security detail in tow.