Before the skirmish, he’d only downed a couple martinis at the concourse bar. He hadn’t finished his third when he’d first seen the little girl. What drew his stare was Lucinda’s auburn hair, cut shorter than he remembered, so that it only grazed her little shoulders. A girl the same age as Lucinda when she’d disappeared seventeen years before.
At first, he wasn’t thinking. That’s not how the human heart works. He knew in his head how age progression worked. The pictures on milk cartons. How every year they computer age the kids until adulthood and then only every five years after that. Experts used photos of the mother, her aunts, any female relations, to approximate a new her every five years. There in any supermarket between the Reddi-wip and the half-and-half, Lucinda would be smiling from every carton in the dairy case.
He’d been totally convinced the girl in the airport was Lucinda—until she wasn’t.
What raised a red flag was the pervert holding the girl’s hand and leading her toward a gate where a flight was boarding. Not missing a beat, Foster had slapped cash on his table and sprinted after them. He’d taken his phone out and was scrolling through stored images. His rogues’ gallery. The pixilated faces with unmistakable neck tattoos. Or the full-on face shots of sweating child molesters.
The lowlife, the one leading the little girl, looked to be some Scooby-Doo type. A hemp-headed, shaggy-haired burnout wearing flip-flops. Foster circled, weaving from side to side to get different angles as he snapped photos. Ahead of them the gate agent was checking in passengers at the entrance to a Jetway.
The burnout throwback had presented two tickets, and they were gone through the gate. The last passengers to board.
Out of breath from running, Foster had reached the agent and said, “Call the police.”
The agent had stepped into his path, blocking the entrance to the Jetway. She’d signaled to an agent at the podium and held up a hand, saying, “Sir, I need you to stop.”
“I’m an investigator.” Foster had panted out the words. He’d held up his phone, showing her a grainy screen capture of a shaggy-haired man, his face gaunt, his eyes sunk deep into his skull. Dim and in the distance, he’d heard an announcement for his own flight to begin boarding.
Through the gate area windows, Foster could see the plane. The pilots were framed in the cockpit windows. The ramp crew had stowed the last of the checked luggage and were slamming shut the cargo hatches. They’d be pushing back in another minute.
Foster, he’d shoved past the agent. With more force than he’d intended, he’d strong-armed her so hard she’d tumbled to the floor. His footfalls thundering down the Jetway, he’d shouted, “You don’t understand!” To no one in particular, he’d shouted, “He’s going to fuck her, and he’s going to kill her!”
A flight attendant had stood ready to close the cabin door, but Foster had elbowed his way past her. He’d stumbled through the first-class section shouting, “That man is a child pornographer!” Waving his phone, he’d shouted, “He destroys kids!”
From his research he knew that child traffickers walk amongst us. They stand beside us at the bank. They sit next to us in restaurants. Foster had scarcely had to scratch the surface of the web before such predators had glommed onto him, sending him their corruption and trying to rope him into their sickening world.
A few passengers had still been standing, waiting in the aisle to take their seats. Last in line had been the girl, still holding the man’s hand. They’d looked back when Foster shouted. Everyone had looked, first at him, and then at the man with the girl. Whether it was Foster’s blue business suit or his good-boy haircut and egghead glasses, something had thrown the crowd to his aid.
Pointing with his phone, Foster had shouted, “That man is a kidnapper! He runs an international ring for kiddy porn!”
Bleary-eyed and bushy-haired, the accused had uttered only, “Harsh, dude.”
When the little girl had started to cry, that seemed to confirm the charge. Potential heroes had unclicked their seat belts and stood, launching themselves and tackling, then dog-piling the caveman lowlife whose muffled protests now nobody could hear. Everyone had been shouting at once, and those people not restraining the burnout had held their phones aloft to shoot video.
Foster had knelt in the airplane aisle and crawled toward the weeping girl, saying, “Take my hand!”
She’d lost hold of the burnout’s grip and watched him disappear beneath layers of bodies. Wailing in tears, she’d cried, “Daddy!”
“He’s not your daddy,” Foster had crooned. “Don’t you remember? He kidnapped you from Arlington, Texas.” Foster had known the details of the case by heart. “He’s not going to hurt you anymore.” He’d reached until his large hand had closed over her tiny one.
The girl had shrieked a wordless scream of pain and terror. The press of struggling passengers had held the caveman helplessly buried.
Foster had pulled the little girl into a hug, shushing her and petting her hair as he’d kept repeating, “You’re safe. You’re safe, now.”
At the blurred edge of his vision he’d been aware of passengers holding their phones to record him: this man, some distraught man wearing a navy-blue suit, an ordinary no one, he’d sunk to his knees in the center aisle of the plane grabbing after a little girl in a flowered dress.
An overhead announcement repeated, “This is the pilot speaking. TSA security is en route. Would all passengers please remain in their seats.”
The girl had been crying, maybe because Foster was crying. She’d stretched her free hand toward a patch of scruffy pervert hair barely visible under the tumble of bodies.
Foster had taken her tear-stained face between his two hands and brought her innocent brown eyes to meet his. Saying, “You don’t have to be his sex slave. Not anymore.”
For an instant, everyone had basked in the warm glow of their mutual heroism. In
