Eva Rae Thomas Mystery Box Set Page 16

I sat up in bed and let the tears crawl down my cheeks. My pillow was soaked from me crying in my sleep. I felt so overwhelmed inside; I couldn't stop crying. For years, I had forgotten how my mother had shut me out back then. I knew she had, but I had forgotten how lonely it had made me, how inadequate it had made me feel. I guess I needed to put all that somewhere in the back of my mind in order to move on, in order to make it in life. But now that I was back in Cocoa Beach, it was like it had decided to pour out and completely overpower me. There was nothing I could do.

  I went to the bathroom and found a box of tissues, then wiped my nose, remembering how I used to get on my knees in my old room and pray to God to allow me to go back in time so the kidnapper could take me instead of her, crying to him, asking him why it had to be me? Why did I have to survive?

  It still made no sense to me.

  Sensing how thirsty I was, I walked down the stairs into the kitchen and turned on the light. It was still very dark outside, and the clock showed only midnight. I hadn't been asleep for very long. I wondered if I was going to get any more sleep. The emotions from the dream still lingered with me and made me want to cry more.

  I grabbed a glass from the cabinet when I spotted a figure outside my window, and I dropped it.

  Chapter 64

  "Matt? What the heck?"

  He pointed at the front door, and I ran to open it.

  "What are you doing out there scaring me half to death?"

  The look in his eyes startled me, and I knew he wasn't joking around. Something was wrong.

  "I came to see you," he said. "Then I spotted you in the window and thought, if I could get your attention, we wouldn't have to wake up the kids. Something's happened. Can I come in?"

  "Of course," I said and stepped aside to let him in. He rushed to my kitchen and put down his laptop.

  "Matt, you look awful," I said. "Can I get you something? A glass of water?"

  He looked at me. "Do you have something stronger?"

  "Wine? Whiskey?"

  He nodded. "A scotch please."

  "That bad, huh?" I asked and poured him a glass. I handed it to him, and he downed it in one gulp. Matt had never been much of a drinker, so I was very surprised to see this. A little frightened too, to be honest.

  "Worse," he said and put the glass down with a grimace. The alcohol seemed to give him color back in his cheeks, but only for a few seconds. He opened the laptop and tapped on the keyboard. I walked up behind him, clutching my glass of water in my hand, bracing myself for something terrible.

  "What is it, Matt?" I asked. "A new video?"

  He nodded. "Yes. I was about to go to bed when I received it. It was sent to me directly. Just like last time. I’m beginning to think this guy has something against me personally."

  "Or maybe it's just because he knows you're on the case. You have been on the news quite a few times talking about Sophie Williams' disappearance and the finding of her body. He might just have picked you because of that."

  "Okay, but how do you explain this then?" he said and opened a video, then started it. I sat on a stool next to him and watched it with him. It showed a box made from wood. On the side of it, someone had painted the word ALONE.

  Next, text appeared on the screen.

  Loneliness. Divorce often leads to a profound sense of loneliness for the children involved. As parents move into new homes and custodial parents get caught up in trying to make it through each day, children are often left feeling lonely and all alone. This child will often demand unusual amounts of attention from his or her parents. He or she might smile constantly and try to keep everyone happy, hoping to keep peace between the parents. Others might withdraw from friends and family or express anger in order to get attention. Some turn to goofing around or getting in fights to gain attention. Common to all of these is a feeling of isolation from the world.

  The text stopped, and the video clipped to another picture, taken from inside the box. A young child was sitting inside of it, bent over like he was sleeping. The video sped up, and we could see him wake up, then start knocking on the sides of the box, hammering it, crying helplessly. As the video progressed, the child became more and more apathetic, and the hammering turned to knocking and a strained face as he called out. The knocking soon became scratching till the boy barely moved anymore.

  Then, Matt stopped it.

  "What…what the hell is this, Matt?"

  "A boy, isolated from the world, slowly dying from his loneliness, is my guess." He rubbed his forehead. "If you look at the date in the corner, you’ll see that this has been recorded over a long period of time. Two months, it looks like."

  "Has that boy been in that box for two whole months?" I said. "He must have fed him then."

  Matt nodded, biting his nails. I had never seen him do that before. That was new.

  "Matt?"

  "There’s more," he said.

  "Okay?"

  "The boy. He's…he's my son."

  Chapter 65

  It took me a few seconds before the realization slowly sunk in. I kept staring at Matt while the thoughts fluttered in my mind.

  "You have a son?"

  Matt nodded, still biting his nails. "Elijah. He's eight."

  "How…you never mentioned him?"

  Matt's eyes were avoiding mine. I saw hurt in them. "I don't see him much. His mom has custody of him. It was all a mess. He was an accident—a one-night-stand. I was never really a part of his life. The last few years, she hasn't been letting me see him much."

  "When did you see him last?" I asked.

  "In April."

  "But that was six months ago?"

  Matt rubbed his forehead. "I know. I checked the database; she hasn't reported him missing."

  I wrinkled my forehead. "That's odd. Have you called her?"

  He nodded. "It was the first thing I did. She doesn’t answer."

  I looked at the clock on my stove. It was past midnight. I grabbed my phone and put it in my pocket.

  "I'll drive."

  I woke up Olivia and told her she was in charge for a few hours while I took care of some work. She blinked a few times, then sighed.

  "I thought you stopped all that."

  "Yeah, you and me both, baby. But this is urgent."

  Olivia gave me a look to let me know she understood it was important. Matt and I took off and soon drove out of Cocoa Beach.

  His ex lived in Vieira, a town on the mainland about twenty-five minutes from my house. It was one of those newer neighborhoods that had shot up in the past few years. There was a big water fountain at the entrance, and the bushes and trees were nicely trimmed, and everything was clean and pretty, but all the houses looked exactly alike. Just like had they been cut out with the same cookie cutter. To me, it all came out as bland, and I knew I would suffocate if I lived in a neighborhood like this. That's what I liked about Cocoa Beach. No two houses were the same. It was messy and a little rough in places, but it had charm.

  We parked the car outside in the well-trimmed driveway and walked up the lawn. I noticed that Matt's hand was shaking as he rang the doorbell. I sent him a comforting smile, but it didn't help.

  No one opened the door, and he rang again. When nothing happened still, he opened the screen door and started hammering on the wooden door behind it. He was going to wake up the entire neighborhood, but I had a feeling he didn't care about that right now.

  "POLICE. OPEN UP!"

  A light was turned on in the house next door. I saw the blinds being pulled aside. There was going to be a lot of talking once morning came. No doubt about that.

  It concerned me that no one still opened the door after Matt had been yelling. Since it woke up the neighbors, it had to wake up the woman inside this house too.

  "Lisa?" he yelled. "I need to talk to you. Now," Matt yelled.

  I gave him a look. "Could she be somewhere else?"

  He shook his head. "She doesn’t have family around here."

  "Friends?"
>
  He swallowed. "Sure. She has a few."

  I walked to a window and peeked inside, placing my face close to the glass. I couldn't escape the feeling that something was very much off here. Why hadn't the woman put out a missing person's report for her child? If he really had been in that box for two months, she'd had plenty of time to figure out he was gone. Unless the person making the video was just messing with us, and he hadn't been gone that long after all. Except this guy didn't seem to be messing around at all. Everything else he had done had been very seriously and very well planned out. He hadn't taken any shortcuts and had been planning this in very small detail for months, maybe even years. And so far, all we had been able to do was to play by his rules. It was time to change that up; it was time for us to get ahead, but how? So far, his next move had been impossible to figure out in advance. They had all come as surprise attacks.

  "I see something," I said, then looked at Matt, concern in my eyes. My heart started pounding. "I see legs poking out from behind a couch. We need to get inside. Asap."

  Chapter 66

  I didn't have to say that twice to Matt. He kicked the door open, and we both went into the hallway, holding our weapons out in front of us. The sweet yet nauseating stench that met us made me feel sick to my stomach. I knew that smell a little too well…the sulfurous gas that a putrefying body gives off after having been dead for some time. It was similar to the smell of rotten eggs. I covered my mouth and nose with my sleeve. Matt did the same, gagging as he went along.

  "Police!"

  "It was in the living room," I said.

  Matt entered to the right to clear the kitchen, then came back out and nodded.

  "Clear."

  We continued into the living room, scanning the room first, making sure no one was hiding in there. And that was when we saw her—a woman lying on the carpet by the couch. I turned on the light, and we walked to her. Matt gasped and clasped his mouth, then knelt next to her.

  "Lisa," he whispered.

  "Looks like blunt force trauma to the back of her head," I said and pointed at the pool of dried up blood surrounding her head like a halo. Flies and maggots crawled in her ears and eye sockets. Her eyes had been pushed out of their sockets, and her tongue was forced out of her mouth. That was also due to the gas and bloating buildup inside the body as it was decomposing. All the fluids and gas had leaked out of her body; her skin had ruptured and fallen off her bones.

  "Nails and hair have fallen out," I said. "Which tells us she's been here for more than a month. My guess is that the decay has been slowed down by the fact that she's been lying inside air-conditioning. A good guess will be that she was killed on the day someone took Elijah, two months ago, but of course, we'll need the medical examiner's report to verify that."

  Matt stared at her dead body, shaking his head, eyes wet. "Oh, dear God, Lisa. No."

  "I am so sorry, Matt," I said. "I'll call it in."

  With the phone against my ear, I walked outside to get out of the stench and be able to talk. A few neighbors had gathered outside their houses now to see what was going on. A couple from across the street was staring at me, holding onto one another, their faces struck with fear. As I hung up, I walked to them, trying to look reassuring.

  "What's going on?" the woman asked, her voice shaking.

  "Police investigation," I said.

  "Did something happen to Lisa?" the woman asked, breathing in small gasps.

  "I am afraid so, and I would like to ask you a few questions; can I do that?"

  The husband looked briefly at his wife, then nodded. "Of course."

  "Have you seen anything suspicious around here, anything out of the ordinary around Lisa's house? A car maybe? People hanging out there whom you haven't seen before?"

  They exchanged a look briefly, then looked back at me. "No, not that we can think of," the wife answered. "We did talk the other day about how long ago it was that we had seen the little boy. We used to always see him riding his bike around in the cul-de-sac. But we hadn't seen the mother either, so we just assumed they were out of town or maybe just busy, you know?"

  "We did talk about if they might have moved," the husband added.

  "You didn't notice a smell?" I asked.

  They looked at one another again, then the wife gasped. "The smell? Oh, yes…what that…? Oh, dear Lord."

  She clasped her mouth with a whimper. Her husband pulled her closer. "We did talk about a strange smell in the neighborhood a couple of weeks ago but assumed it came from somewhere else. Maybe the sewers or the lake. We could never imagine…it coming from over there?"

  I nodded. "We believe the crime may have been committed two months ago…"

  "Two months ago..?" the wife said with a shrill voice. "But… but…"

  "I need you to try and think back. Two months ago, did anything unusual happen around here? Any cars drive by that you didn't know?" I asked. "Anyone walk up to the house that made you wonder who he or she was?"

  The wife pondered while the husband shook his head. "That’s a very long time ago. I don't think we…"

  "Wait," she said and held a hand up to stop him. "We're talking back in August, right?"

  "Yes?"

  "That's when Daniel was there."

  "Daniel who?" the husband asked.

  "From the paper."

  "I don't remember any Daniel from the paper," the husband said.

  "Well, that's because you're never home; you're always out on that golf course." She looked at me, shaking her head. "Nevertheless, there was this guy, this reporter, from Florida Today who wanted to do a story about Elijah," she continued. "Because he was such a great baseball talent. He followed him for a couple of days around for practice and so on. Come to think of it, I never read the story in the paper…"

  "Okay," I said and wrote it down on my notepad. "This is very good. So, there was a reporter there; Daniel, you say his name was?"

  The woman nodded. "Yes."

  "Do you know his last name?"

  She shook her head. "I’m afraid not."

  "Do you remember anything else about him? What did he look like?" I asked.

  "Well, he was tall. Taller than Fred," she said and glanced at her husband. "And he's six foot two, so I'll say about six foot four or so."

  I wrote it down. "Okay, good, anything else? Color of hair and eyes? Any special birthmarks or facial hair?"

  "Brown hair, brown eyes, and a mustache. Kind of reminded me of Burt Reynolds. I used to love that guy. Too bad he passed. The mustache wasn't as thick as Burt's, though."

  "Did he drive a car?"

  "Oh, yes, a blue BMW convertible. Flashy little thing." She paused pensively. "Are you trying to locate him? I’m sure if you call the newspaper, they'll help you find him."

  Fred sighed and rolled his eyes. "Don't you understand? He was never from the newspaper. That's why the article was never printed."

  His wife looked at him, annoyed. "I know that."

  "Well, we don't know about that yet, but thank you so much for your help. I'll probably be back for more information later. Did he say anything about where he lived?"

  "I never really spoke to him myself," she said. "It was mostly what Lisa told me."

  "Okay. Was there anything else, anything that stood out to you about him?"

  The small woman sighed, then shook her head. "He seemed like such a nice guy."

  I nodded. "They all do, ma'am."

  Chapter 67

  I stayed at the crime scene all night while the techs searched Lisa's house. We had explained the situation to them and asked them to secure anything that might give us a clue as to where her son might be.

  At five o'clock, we drove back toward Cocoa Beach. I had kids I needed to wake up and get ready for school. I told Matt he could come back to my house and crash on my couch for a little while. I figured it was a bad idea for him to be alone right now.

  "You need the rest. If you want to find your son, you need to sleep first," I sa
id when he started to argue.

  My kids were exhausted and, somehow, they all three managed to get themselves in a fight during breakfast. But, for once, I managed to get Alex to the bus on time, and both girls rode their bikes to school. It was a small victory, but at this point, I took what I could get. I made some coffee then went to the living room where I thought Matt was sleeping. But, of course, he wasn't. How could he? I knew I wouldn't be able to. Instead, he was sitting with his laptop on his knees, watching the video over and over again.

  I handed him a cup of coffee, and he took it.

  "Do you think he's still alive?" he asked, staring at the screen, where he had stopped the video of Elijah curled up inside of the box, not moving.

  I fought my desire to cry when thinking of that poor boy trapped inside that awful box, then sat down with my coffee between my hands. Images of Lisa's decomposed body rushed across my mind as I briefly closed my eyes.

  "All we can do is hope," I said.

  "It seems like such a fragile thing to cling to, doesn’t it?" Matt said. "Hope. If this guy wants him dead, then he's probably dead, right?"

  "We don't know that."

  "I spoke to IT," he said, sipping his coffee. "They're trying to trace it. Both emails were sent from a newly created account using Proton Mail, a secure email based in Switzerland. The named used is fake and so is all the other information."

  "And the IP address?" I asked.

  "Led us to a Starbucks on 520. According to our IT guys, it is most likely that our guy bought a cheap tablet with cash, took that tablet to the local Starbucks, then logged onto their free Wi-Fi, uploaded the video to YouTube, sent the email, then destroyed the tablet afterward."

  "And the tablet couldn't somehow be traced?" I asked.

  "Some models do send model numbers or even serial numbers, but even if they were able to identify where it was bought, this guy probably bought it with cash, and that means there's no tracing him. At least that's what they told me last time."

  I growled and clenched my fist in anger. This guy was just always one step ahead of us. It annoyed me immensely. It was almost as if he knew as much about how the police worked as we did.