were papered in cartoon characters. Like the backyard, there were toys everywhere. Throughout the room I could see traces of white powder from where a police technician had dusted for fingerprints.
I found the bed with my flashlight. It was built to resemble a miniature race car. The bed was unmade, and the impression of Sampson’s body was still in the sheets.
A tiny light beside the bed caught my eye. It was faint, and difficult to see. I shut off my flashlight, and tried to determine what it was.
I realized it was a night-light. Then I saw the second one by the door. A lot of children slept with night-lights, but two was unusual.
Sampson was afraid of the dark.
That bothered me. Most children who were afraid of the dark were also light sleepers. I wondered how Sampson’s kidnapper had entered his bedroom without the boy hearing him, and yelling for help.
I was missing something. I stepped back, and started over.
The damaged screen: I had assumed that the kidnapper had popped it out, and stolen into Sampson’s bedroom. But I didn’t know that for a fact. I decided to see how difficult it would be, and I put my hands through the slice, and attempted to remove the screen. It refused to budge.
“What the hell,” I said under my breath.
I inspected the screen’s metal frame with my flashlight. It was held down by four screws covered in rust. This screen hadn’t been removed for a long time.
I stepped back into the yard. The kidnapper hadn’t gone into the bedroom. The boy had come to him and climbed through the slit. That was why no one had heard him leave. The boy had been an accomplice in his own kidnapping.
I turned off my flashlight. There was a picnic table in the backyard. I sat down on one of the benches. I had dealt with hundreds of child abductions and never encountered anything like this.
Little kids who were afraid of the dark didn’t climb through windows at night, even if someone they knew was coaxing them. It was too scary. Yet that was exactly what Sampson had done. Whoever had stolen the boy had worked some special magic on him.
I looked around the yard. I had no witnesses to talk to, no clues to work with. Unless some piece of evidence fell out of the sky, I was in trouble.
Buster ran around in circles, sniffing the ground. It gave me an idea. If I could determine the escape route the kidnapper had taken, it might lead to new evidence like a tire track or a witness. I knew the police had already done this, but I would try it again.
I turned my flashlight back on. The fenced backyard had a small gate at the rear. I went to the gate and unlatched it.
The gate led onto a deeply rutted alley. One end of the alley was a dead end, the other end led to the street. I envisioned Sampson’s kidnapper going that way during his escape.
Buster appeared by my side. I leashed him, and walked to the street. As I stepped out of the alley, I was bathed in bright streetlight. Cars were parked by the curb, and a dozen pedestrians lingered on the sidewalk. It looked like a gathering spot.
I approached an older couple. They said hello, and inquired about my dog.
“He’s an Australian Shepherd,” I said.
“He’s very unusual looking,” the wife said.
“Do you walk here often?”
“Every night,” the husband replied.
“Is it always this busy?”
“Usually,” she said.
“Were you here three nights ago?”
“Is that when the little boy was kidnapped?” the husband asked.
“Yes.”
“We were here,” she said. “But like we told the police, we didn’t see a thing.”
The couple said good night. I walked back to Jed’s house feeling stymied. People didn’t vanish into thin air. How had Sampson’s kidnapper gotten the boy away without being seen?
I came to Jed’s property and halted. I hadn’t paid much attention to the property directly across the alley from Jed’s because it was so well-fortified. Now I gave it a closer look.
The property was several acres in size. There was no house, just an orange grove filled with ripening trees. The grove looked too small to turn a profit, and I guessed it was being maintained to give the owners a tax break.
The grove was surrounded by a seven-foot chain-link fence, with razor wire running across the top. I ran my flashlight over the chain link and looked for an opening. There wasn’t one. Another dead end. I started to leave, but Buster remained by the fence, pawing feverishly at the ground. He wanted to go through. I knelt beside him.
“Is that where they went, boy? In there?”
His tail wagged furiously, and his tongue hung out of his mouth. Of course they did, you idiot, he seemed to be saying. I put my hands on the chain link and pushed. To my surprise, it gave several inches. Someone had tampered with it.
I ran my flashlight up the metal poles the fence was attached to. On the pole to my right, a piece of wire caught my eye.
I pressed my face to the pole. So did my dog.
It was a twist tie, attached to the pole at waist height. There was another at the bottom, a third near the top. The twist ties held the fence together, which had been cut the length of the pole. It was a masterful job, right down to the ends being snipped to avoid detection.
I have carried a pocketknife since I was a kid. Pulling it out, I cut away the twist ties, and started to pull back the fence. I stopped myself. The grove was part of the crime scene, and had not yet been searched by the police. I needed to alert Cheeks, and tell him what I’d found. If I didn’t, he could have me arrested for tampering with evidence.
I took out my cell phone, and dialed the sheriff’s department’s main number. The call went through, and an operator picked up.
“Broward County Sheriff’s Department.”
I killed the call.
Cheeks had botched this investigation from the start. He had locked onto Jed Grimes, and had refused to broaden his investigation. As a result, Sampson had spent three days with his kidnapper when he might have been safely at home with his mother.
I slipped my cell phone into my pocket. I needed to search the grove and draw my own conclusions. Then I’d call Cheeks and tell him what I’d found.
And not a moment before.
CHAPTER EIGHT
L eashing my dog, I pulled back the cut fence and entered the grove.
The trees had been planted in rows approximately fifteen feet apart. I shined my flashlight on the ground covered in sugar sand. Two sets of footprints appeared before my eyes. One belonged to a man, the other to a small, barefoot boy. I followed the footprints into the grove, careful not to disturb them.
I heard rustling. There were animals nesting in those trees, snakes and raccoons and birds. I imagined the sounds scaring the daylights out of Sampson three nights ago, and I wondered what his kidnapper had said to keep him quiet. Maybe he’d told Sampson to cover his ears, or perhaps he’d briefly picked the boy up in his arms.
Fifty feet into the grove, I came to a clearing. Orange trees have a short life span, and the clearing was filled with dead trees, their brittle trunks piled up to be burned. Buster stiffened by my leg, and began to whine.
“What’s wrong, boy?”
