“You think Anderson may have used his influence?”
“Could be. It’s not illegal, I mean, if he didn’t bribe the judge. But here’s the thing: none of the kidnappers could definitively recall what happened during the time they were with the children. They all had wildly different stories, too. Some of them said they drove around for hours, others said they stashed them in an abandoned building. One of the suspects even told the DA the story of a beast attacking them. But, all of them confessed to planning the kidnapping, taking the children. The same thing with the witnesses at the school. The kids were taken in broad daylight, but none of the other nannies or parents or children could definitively recount the events.”
“Witnesses can be unreliable. Although that is strange that kidnappers themselves couldn’t recall anything. Could it be possible head injuries caused them to have different stories?”
“Some. But all?” she reasoned. “And well, because of that, I started digging into Anderson and Fenrir Corp. At all cases somehow connected to them over the years. Some of it was inconsequential really, though a few stood out. For example, have you heard of the Fenrir building explosion from a couple decades ago?”
“Of course,” he said. “I was a beat cop then. Everyone heard about that accident. An entire floor of the building blew up, right? Everyone thought it was a terror attack.” His brows drew together.
“Yes, sir. No one recalls anything, and the whole thing was chalked up to a leaky gas pipe.”
“It happens, I suppose.” His gaze narrowed at her. “What else?”
“There was also a case a few years ago at a bar in the Village. Someone reported an explosion of some kind. When the fire department got there, the bar was perfectly fine, except that everyone inside was unconscious. They all woke up on their own, but no one could remember what happened. The fire department concluded it was probably a gas leak. No one was charged.”
“If no one was hurt, that makes sense. What’s the connection to Fenrir?”
“Well, it’s not a solid connection, but the bar was partly-owned by Gunnar Jonasson, whose mother works for Fenrir.” Her gut told her he was probably related to Daric Jonasson, though for some reason, she couldn’t find any info on the older man. He sounded foreign, so maybe that’s why he didn’t have any domestic records. But she would be keeping that to herself for now, as she didn’t want to reveal her visits to Blood Moon.
She continued. “The other owner is Sebastian Creed Jr., whose mother also works for Fenrir. His father, on the other hand, owns Creed Security.” The name popped up when, after an exhaustive search for anything connected to Fenrir or Grant Anderson, she started looking into Creed Security, the only other figure that was connected to the kidnapping, and that’s when the younger Creed’s name popped up.
“Sounds like a lot of leaky gas pipes and forgetful witnesses. Still, Detective, none of those prove any criminal activity. Or a direct connection to your victim. Did you find anything useful?”
She cleared her throat. “It’s not so much what I found as what I didn’t find.”
“What you didn’t find?” he echoed.
“Yes, sir.” Where to begin? From the beginning, she supposed. “I found another case that might be related. This one circles right back to Dixon. Or rather, the kids he tried to kidnap. The boy’s name only popped up one other time. He was seventeen, about to graduate from his prep school. A couple of students from his class had some party in a lake cabin upstate. Someone called 911 and the EMTs found two boys that were severely injured. Kevin Hall and Jeffrey Smith. Hall died later, but the other, Smith, he’s in a wheelchair.”
“And no one could remember anything?” It was a statement, not a question.
She nodded. “Over twenty kids and no one could recall what happened. In fact, the official police report from the local station seemed to have gotten lost.”
“Lost? Then how did you know about this incident?”
“The two boys’ parents filed a suit in civil court as soon as Anderson’s boy turned eighteen a few months after the incident. The suit alleges that he beat up the two other boys. He and one of the boys had fought over some girl at the party. Anyway, the case was settled out of court for an undisclosed amount. I tried contacting the parents of both boys, but they refused to talk to me.”
“And the girl?”
“I’m still working on finding her contact info. It’s like she just disappeared off the face of the earth. I have a couple of guys working on it.” In the meantime, she’d tracked down the girl’s social media sites, and looking through them was one of the things on her growing to-do list.
“You’ve had all weekend to think about this.” The captain’s face turned grave. “So, what’s your hunch?”
“I can’t draw any final conclusions yet, sir. But you have to admit, it’s hard to put all these connections aside as a coincidence.”
“Fenrir is a big corporation,” he began. “They have hundreds of employees in New York, so it’s not impossible that their name could be connected to any number of incidents.”
“True. But what about the connection with Dixon?”
“What about it?” He narrowed his gaze at her. “You obviously have some theories about Dixon.”
She swallowed the lump in her throat. “I think … well, this is just an early thought, but what if the son found out about Dixon getting out and decided to get some revenge?”
“Twenty years later?”
“We don’t know what happened during those twelve hours they were kidnapped, sir.” Her flesh crawled, thinking of the possibilities. Those men … at least one of them had a rap sheet that made her want to vomit. “And who knows if that
