Alina is Missing - Help Find Her!

2,500 MS Words -- Short Story sized

Author's note:

This storyline contains violence; not the graphic details, just that it occurs. Reader's should also be aware that unlike the other stories that are associated with this main character, there are no sexually titillating acts within this story. Just a highly charged foreshadowing and character development of Jack Wilson. It gives rise to the shadow government he creates to 'Fix' egregious wrongs.

I've grown quite fond of Jack Wilson, ex-Recon Ranger, and his protégé Jackie Wilson, a sword wielding Asian American, quite capable of... anything! They were introduced in a satirical piece I first wrote, 'Life is Like Chocolate--Not Shit,' then evolved further as Jackie Wilson becomes self-aware in 'The Rise of the Fixer.' One comment from a reader mentioned she had a new Asian American heroine to look up to! Upon reading that, I created 'A Hunting We Will Go!' that spun off the drug dealer sub-theme Jackie dealt with in her 'Fixer' coming out story. The latter story is in editing review by Kenjisato, a Literotica volunteer editor. It may post after this story.

Here, I felt it was time to bring Jack Wilson out of the shadows--just a bit, and introduce how his zeal for thrashing bad guys came to fruition in this storyline.

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Alina Is Missing--Help Find Her!

Stopping at the drive-thru for coffee and breakfast to go, I spotted a new, pristine poster taped outside, by the window. It was a parent's plea for help -- a missing child's poster. 'Alina Is Missing--Help Me Find Her' it read. My eyes had focused on the teenager's bright smile and Goddess braids. It was the picture of a child without a worry in the world -- except now she is missing. My road meal arrived at the window before I had scanned all the verbiage. But from what I saw, it told me an eighteen-year-old was missing for three days now. I'd seen enough TV cop shows that stress the first seventy-two hours are critical in missing persons reports, if you could believe them. Her parents must be off the rails with worry at this point.

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Earlier that morning, I was out my front door, coffee mug in hand. I was heading out of town, down on Interstate 75 to a new jobsite in south Atlanta, that includes Centennial Lakes, a development in Acworth at the northwest tip of Cobb County.

The foundation slab went in last week. That's when my boss got the call and slotted this morning to start framing. "Be there early, sarge," he said, "the lumber delivery is scheduled for seven o'clock." I smiled at his laconic direction; he knew me well enough to know he didn't have to remind me to be early. Hell, if you get to work at seven, you're already fifteen minutes late!

Be there, early at seven, snow-haired Curly Joe had said, as his slow gait to his pickup reinforced his seventy-five-year bent frame. I laughed at his words. Hell, by six-thirty I'd already had a two mile run in, showered, and on my way to 'my regular work time,' well before seven-thirty. Yet, that's the price I paid for being what the guys call me, 'Mr. Fixer.' I'd left the heat and red dust of Fort Bragg trailing behind me in search of a job that didn't include vaulting out of the back of military aircraft loaded with ammo and a Barrett M82 that could shoot a hole through an armored vehicle over 2,500 yards away. Watching a vehicle stop dead in its tracks from that distance was one thing, but a close up inspection of the shrapnel damage to the crew inside was a totally different layer of raw emotions. Especially when they looked like kids.

I'd parachuted, you might say, into some construction work in Atlanta Georgia. I joined a crew, that could pound nails in lumber all day long, like John Henry drove steel spikes for the railroad in that old Johnny Cash song. However, that was only when they showed up for work. But not one gave a lick at it beyond that. They got paid to nail, not show early and take responsibility for getting things organized -- not their concern.

'Yeah, boss! I'll be here tomorrow, count on me!' I'd picked up the local vernacular and heard that repeated more than once to Curley Joe. He took them at their word, week after week and they let him down on many a day. He had a soft heart and took them back, minus the day's pay missed. They grew to expect that; disrespected the man and leveraged his willingness to forgive and keep them employed. Production wasn't their concern, but it was his. I'd been on the job six weeks, not a day missed and I became a blip on his radar. He liked that.

"Sarge, you got drive! Smarts, too. If you stay, a guy with your 'no guff non-sense,' could run a company like this of your own one day." He liked that I showed initiative.

So here I am, a year later, his crew foreman, showing initiative, and showing up early. I had weeded out the shiftless; firing those that lied and caused production delays. It wasn't too hard to do the weeding; looking a bit like 'John Henry' and having only to lift one smart mouth off the ground with a double-fisted grasp by his collar for a 'talking to' created a good first impression on my re-shaped work crew. I organized the new recruits -- minus the military-style morning calisthenics I had been accustomed to for eight years. The pay got better for them as production increased; but the days got longer for me too in organizing deliveries. The extra hours took my mind off of my war memories; I looked at it as being on the plus side of things.

I'd stopped at the drive threw for coffee and breakfast to go that morning. On the drive toward I-75, I caught sight of that poster for three miles stapled on telephone poles and then it stopped appearing. What if it was just a girl that took off over a spat with her parents and was hiding out at some friend's place or was it a case of something more sinister? Even so, I felt for the family. It occurred to me as I drove, that she must live in the neighborhood. Why? Well for starters, the flyers were plentiful all up and down the main street but became sparse and then stopped two miles down the road.

The poster child thoughts faded as I arrived and began staking out sorting piles for the lumber drop off. Not long after, the truck arrived and the boom crane began off-loading the lumber bundles at the staked locations I had marked. It made for easier sorting and shorter carry distances as the framing commenced. A little cash helped smooth the griping about just drop off, not distribute arguments. That had been a source of contention for me in the past. A little cash money, I learned bought a lot of 'sugar' at the end of the supply chain. The end effect was better production and fewer lost hours sorting and carrying lumber in the heat of the day. When I pointed that out to the crew, they weren't as reluctant to tip the driver--at my request. Hell, two bucks each isn't much to ask from five guys; I gave ten myself. It bought the driver's lunch at least and it made for a better day.

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Those posters caught my eye, again, as I drove back into my rental neighborhood in Atlanta proper. I was dirty, a bit tired; but the angelic look on her face tugged at me as I sat at a stop sign, staring at the flyer taped to it.

Fuck it! I decided to drive the neighborhood, just to scope out the metrics of the posters, at first. I was looking for the epi-center of the distribution source. I found it not long after. It was an older home, similar to my rental, just not as run down as mine. A small group of people were picking up new flyers off a card table on the porch. I suppose they were headed out to shopping centers to post those. I sat in my Silverado, watching for a moment before alighting. I'm still not sure what made me exit and walk over to the table. Perhaps it was the lady in the wheel chair that helped hand out the posters. Her facial features resembled those of Alina, the poster girl. Mom? Grandmother?

"Afternoon, mam," I nodded.

She looked at me, more with suspicion than anything else on her mind. I was out of place in this neighborhood.

"I saw the posters down the road toward I-75," I said, as I started to explain why I came. I wasn't sure what else to say after that.

"My daughter Alina," she responded. "What makes a white man take an interest in my daughter?" she added. There was a touch of guarded disdain in her voice. Distrust registered across her face.

I wasn't sure how to answer her question. She deserved one, though. "There is too much hurt in this world for us all, to have to go through missing someone like you are going through. I'm not sure what I can do, but I thought I would offer to help. Anything that you thought I could do?" I proffered. If she turned me down, I would understand her point of view.

"Mister, I don't know what more to do or that my family can do. The police came, took a report, but said they didn't have anything to go on since they don't have any crime scene or eyewitness reports. Black girls don't get plastered on TV like that..."

Her voice trailed off. Those teary eyes dropped down to gaze at the flyer she held in her hands. In the pause, I asked, "Did they canvass the area, like look for her... empty houses things like that?" I didn't want to come right out and say, 'Look for her under some rubble or in a dumpster.'

She shook her head, slowly wiping away a few tears, and then gave a slight shrug as though she wasn't sure what the police were doing. I could tell by her reaction, police communication with the missing girl's mother was not proactive.

"I can help with that," I suggested. I learned a bit about Alina's comings and goings from her; the range of where her daughter walked, her school location, and grocery shopping places. Location points that I was familiar with plotting out in my military surveillance work. I mapped those out and started a grid search until almost sundown. I came back and found Mrs. White still on the porch as though waiting for Alina to walk up the steps and smile, "I'm home Mama!"

She looked over the grid map as I showed her what I had cleared. "I see what you are doing," she said. "I can have my brother help you do more of those squares tomorrow."

"Thank you..." her voice faltered, searching for words.

"Jack Wilson," I filled in the pause, "I'm Jack Wilson. I work construction. My team calls me 'The Fixer.'"

"Thank you, Mr. Jack... for helping to look for Alina."

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Alina Is Missing -- Help Find Her!

After work for the rest of the week, we widened the search area. Her Uncle Colby and I, knocked on doors, leaving posters, and pried open doors to abandoned buildings. Well beyond the seventy-two critical hours the FBI said that were most hopeful. It was near dusk that last evening when I heard his anguished wail of, "Dear God!" ringing out in an abandoned shack behind an old home marked for demolition five miles away. The smell of decomposition in the intense heat was overpowering. The cruelty was evident from the way the ropes bound her and some bastard had positioned her splayed body. I knew from the recognizable sliced clothing piled on the rotted carpet that, like her uncle knew in his heart, it was Alina. She had met a bad ending.

I vowed to myself and to her mother, right after Alina's funeral, that I would track down the guilty SOB. The police processed the crime scene with nothing to go on but a bit of DNA. I became obsessed with learning as much as I could about tracking such cases. Learning about the mechanics of tracing evidence.

I left construction work the following year to pursue a career in the justice department, after her case turned cold as ice, and not a damn person in law enforcement seemed to care. Eventually, I worked my way up to high profile crime cases--those that required solutions beyond the regular law enforcement roles. From those methodologies I learned to work cold cases and other cries for help; those that required the levels of a shadow government that could reach beyond the court rooms and obtain justice -- some might call it vigilante justice.

Some likeminded colleagues and I prefer to call it justice served cold which sometimes is required when the legal systems fail us. Sometimes cold justice is much more expedient than in court resolutions. Not all of our 'fixer solutions' end that way; some of them are returned to the criminal justice system, if the evidence is sound. It took some time, years, to form a network of similar thinking 'fixers' that now operate on the periphery of our legal systems.

Periodically, I return to an old cold case, one involving an eighteen-year-old girl and a wheelchair bound mother still praying for justice. I call once a year to speak with Mrs. White. To let her know the case is still on going. I hold out hope that DNA will one day link the case to someone responsible.

Meanwhile, I continue to help out with inter-agency operations in a major task force role. However, when those flag or go dark, I make contact with a few courageous individuals willing to step beyond those boundaries into the realm of a shadow government for resolution. People, I depend upon for a sense of sound judgement, skills, and intelligence; like the Jackie Wilsons and other Jack Wilsons that are spread across the country awaiting a text or call for action.

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Alina Is Missing -- Help Find Her!

©️Copyright by dmallord, 2021, USA. All rights reserved.

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Dmallord