Without a Whisper

"When the Sheriff throws me in a trunk, I have limited options," I say, and she simply nods. She still thinks my entire ploy was crazy, but she doesn't say it.

"What the hell happened back there?" she asks.

"Suicide by cop," I say. "Turned to Midge fast, transparently going for a gun. Found his trophies in the shack. I think he killed about eighteen girls."

"Jesus," she says, turning slightly around a tree. She slows down to get through a narrow patch, branches scraping the sides. Hope she got insurance for the rental.

"I don't think they killed together though," I say, and turns to me, then back to the road. "Mort and Art were competing. I think the pictures in the auto shop weren't advertisements. They're his trophies."

"Midge figured the same thing already. Mort was winning," she says. How does something like this happen? How do so many girls just vanish and all I managed to find were seven?

"Where would he take her?" Yvonne asks. "We've already searched her trailer. We're ransacking his house for clues. The repair shop is being torn apart as we speak. He's just gone."

"I don't know," I say in defeat. "Take me to the auto shop."

"Why?"

"Just do it."

"Okay," she says.

Yvonne pulls onto pavement several minutes later, and guns it for downtown. The town is buzzing with activity. Dozens of people are in the street, watching the show. She idles her way through town, people staring at us as we pull through and stop in front of the auto shop. The FBI has cordoned off the area, and forensic teams are already hard at work. I shut the door and see Lionel outside as part of the security detail.

"Where's Junior?" I ask.

"I had him in lock up, but one of the other Deputies was ordered by Art to let him out before the shit hit the fan. He's gone," he says. "I'm the only one they're letting help now, if that makes you feel better. FBI has the Deputies, vetting them to see if they were accomplices."

"Keep it tight out here. Town needs to see at least one of their lawmen doing good," I say and walk past him with Yvonne into the building.

"What are you looking for?" Yvonne asks. She knows me well enough to understand I have a process. Same as her.

"Trophies," I say. The wall had already been torn down, and was now in a box, each picture in an individual baggy. "Have you guys pulled all the receipts yet?"

"Over here. His record keeping is trash though. He never charged for the girls as far as I can see. Part of why it never came back on him," a computer analyst says from the store's computer. He likely stopped keeping the records of victims after Katie's car was reported stolen. After a detective showed up, they became more careful. "Pretty easy to crack into, not encrypted or anything."

"What are we doing?" Yvonne asks.

"We're IDing the victims," I say.

"We don't have a name to go off of," she says.

"No, but some of the pictures you have..." I start to say, and she notices it immediately.

"...license plates," she says, and is now on my page. Some of the pictures were taken from the front of the car. Others have the sides of the car in frame. We segregate the ones where the license plates are visible and start there. Yvonne jumps on an FBI computer to help me.

"That plate was registered to Matthew Webster," she says and looks him up. "He had a daughter named Michelle who died in July, six years ago. Homicide cold case, found in the trunk of the same car."

I go the next one with a visible plate.

"Registered to Jasmine Fotopoulos. Her daughter Athena was found...dead in the trunk of the same car. July. Homicide cold case."

Their hunting season is July. They only kill in or around that month. Most killers don't maintain that level of discipline for that long.

"Put out an APB for her car, now," I say, and Yvonne gets the wheels moving on that request. Some of the girls were never reported missing, others were put in their trunks and left to be found. Mort Junior likely drove them. That's why I only found seven, because Mort's kills were not missing persons. All except Katie.

"Alright you sick fuck, where do you do the dirty work?" I ask myself aloud.

I stare at the pictures, begging for them to tell me more. What is your ritual? Hunting. They've always called it hunting. Where do you hunt? Art had a shack, so where's yours? You'd need it to be quiet. Isolated. You'd need to own the land if possible. Did they use the same shack?

I shuffle the photo's again, begging one of them to speak to me. Not a word. Groaning, I slam my fist on the counter, and resist the urge to start throwing objects. I look around the room and see the picture of Senior with his deer. It's not the same shack. Different construction and the foliage is different. He does it somewhere else.

"Does he own any land?" I ask the analyst still in the room with me. He shrugs, not sure on how to answer my question. I exit the shop and find Yvonne on a radio pushing out the APB. "Did he own land?" Yvonne holds up a finger, asking for a second to hear the confirmation, and then turns to me when given the confirmation.

"Say it again," she says.

"Does he own land?" I ask.

"Besides this place and his home, no," Yvonne says.

"Did he ever?" I ask. Yvonne thinks for a moment, and then makes a call to ask. I anxiously wait as she rights something down, and then hangs up.

"About five years he sold fifty acres in Ohio," she says. "Houses are being built on it right now."

I know where he is. I was standing there just a few months ago. Senior threw the revolver in the artificial pond ten years ago. On his own land. While this revelation hits me, Midge managed to get away from the shack and exits an FBI SUV to join us.

"Anything?" Midge asks.

"I need a car," I say, and Yvonne says she'll do me one better. She can get us a chopper in twenty minutes.

--

Thursday -- April 16, 2020: Second Day Found

~Midge Appletree~

I haven't been on a helicopter since I was in the Coast Guard. Hated it then too. The wash of the wings gives me an instant migraine, and every slight shift in direction makes me feel like I'm on a mechanical bull. The fact I haven't slept in nearly two days is not helping. It's just after midnight now.

The HRT unit on standby picked us up fast, and a second chopper is minutes ahead of us. Local police have already helped by blocking access around the property. He's had enough time to make the drive, so we're looking for the car.

"You okay?" Chase asks through the headset. The earmuffs help a little, but I probably look nauseous.

"Not a fan of flying this way," I explain. Chase has asked for a gun a few times, but no one wants to be held responsible if he uses one. He's unarmed right now. He keeps touching where his holster would be. Odd habit of making sure it's still there. Not to mention, his leg is still in evidence.

"Stay back and let us do it. You've done enough," I say, and Chase exhales before nodding in acceptance that right now he's a passive bystander. That kind of shit eats Chase alive.

"Three minutes," Yvonne says from the front with the pilot. I give her a thumbs up and check my own weapon. "Locals say they found her car. Found Junior's too. We're landing away from the property, in case the choppers spook him, and he kills her in panic."

We touch down in a grassy field, and immediately jump into a car to get there. Lights off. The driver is using night vision goggles to steer us. Damn, these guys are intense. They pull into a street where several houses are in various stages of construction, ranging from foundation poured, frames up, to fully built. Stephanie's car is parked in the driveway, next to the tow truck, of a house that looks fully built.

The HRT members immediately search the car, and Stephanie is not in the trunk. Did we get here in time? Yvonne and I split up, her going with the team to the front, while I go with the team to the back.

"Possibly two hostiles, one hostage," the team leader reiterates over the radio. "Two men, one female. Female is the hostage." The team confirms they understand, and in we go.

The house was finished on the outside, but work still needs to be done inside. Some walls haven't even been put up yet. It's a gutted shell. Electrical wiring is being put in, and piping for plumbing is starting to take shape. When I walk in, I can see clear across the house to Yvonne entering on the other side.

"First floor clear," team leader says. "Schematics say this place has a basement, stairwell toward the center. Two, hold the floor, one, on me."

Yvonne's team hangs tight, and I get to the stairs. The door isn't even up yet, and we look down toward the lower level. There is a glow from light down there. I swear I hear whispering. Like someone talking to himself.

"Go!"

We storm the stairs and quickly turn into the basement. It's the same half built aesthetic. Only with an electrical lantern illuminating a grisly scene. Stephanie is alive, tied by her wrists with her toes just touching the ground. She's trying to scream through a gag. Mort Senior is on the floor in a puddle of blood. A team member checks him and shake his head to confirm he's dead, while another member gets Stephanie down. I hear the erratic mumbling coming from somewhere and follow the voice.

Mort Junior is pacing with a gun in his hand. He's talking to himself like a madman.

"Junior," I say, and he stops talking and moving. "Put it down."

"I shot him," he says, sniffing loudly between tearful breaths. "You said make it right."

"That's not what I meant, and you know it," I say. The team comes to me, but I make them back off. "Put the gun down, we'll talk this out."

"He made me drive the bodies back to their homes. All those girls, who never hurt anyone. He said he'd kill my mother if I didn't," he says, and starts slapping his forehead with the unarmed hand. One of the members raises his rifle, but I catch the barrel with my left hand and shove it back down. This isn't Waco, motherfucker.

"That's what we call special circumstances. You have a tough road ahead, but it's manageable. You need to put the gun down though," I plead. I don't want to kill two people in a single night.

"I could have saved Katie that night. She got away from the Sheriff and came running for help. She found me, and I could have helped her. But I got scared. I knew what they did to them, so I spared her the suffering," Junior cries out.

"You killed her yourself, didn't you?" I ask.

"It was mercy. Fast, painless. I couldn't let it happen to her the same way it happened to others. Then I kept her close," he says, and then slowly starts to turn toward me. I tense up, just waiting for him to be stupid. "Katie's buried under the boathouse. Please, take care of her. She liked white lilies."

"We will. We'll take her home. Give her a funeral. Her family and friends will finally be able to have some resolution," I say. Please, just drop the fucking gun.

Instead, before anyone can react, he swallows the barrel and does it himself.

"Fuck," I say, looking away, then seeing the other dead body. I put my head against a wall and clinch my eyes shut. "Fuck, fuck, fuck!"

I take the time to regather my composure and turn back to him. That's when I notice he did it with Chase's gun.

--

Friday -- July 10, 2009: First Day Free

~Katie Grossman/Rodgers~

"My name is Katie Grossman. I'm a pregnant sixteen-year-old runaway. I'm a cliché. You know what, I'm okay with that. I am who I am, and I won't apologize. All my friends think I'm weird because I like eighties pop music. In truth, I was just born in the wrong decade," I say into the camera. I put it on the desk in the hotel room I can't afford. I can't afford it because I threw $3000 dollars out of a car today. I'm pregnant, sixteen, and broke. I'm a super cliché.

The owner is the nicest woman in the world who offered to let me stay for basically free. Some people like that still exist. I'm sure that asshole at the repair shop put that hole there himself.

"I bet you're wondering why I ran away. I'll tell you. Just know, it isn't a happy story. Why would it be? I'm running away after all. I can still turn that into a happy ending though. That's something I can still control. Kind of, you know what I'm getting at," I say, making myself giggle. I feel like the camera is another person. Someone who will listen to me.

"You know how when you're a kid, and you do things, but you don't know those things are wrong, because no one ever told you it was wrong? Sometimes, things are done to you, and you don't know they're wrong. You just think they're normal. So, when I was eleven, my mom remarried, and I didn't know my stepfather putting his fingers into me was wrong."

I cry some and cut the camera off. I need the moment so I can continue. The choppy cuts are going to look weird later, but it's either that or it's three hours of me crying and two minutes of me talking.

"I also didn't know, him putting his penis in my mouth was wrong. Or him licking my, you know, was wrong. Or all the other, escalating shit was wrong. I just thought it was normal. Do this for me, and you get a new toy. As I got older, the gifts only got better. Shower with me, and you get a new computer. The first time he, put it in, I got a phone. I was twelve. That's normal, right? Fuck your stepdad and you get a phone? I'm sure everyone's stepdad put a camera next to the bed."

I need another minute, but that turns into an hour of me crying in the corner. Fuck I'm pathetic. Just call your dad. Your real dad. Get out of here and get help. Not yet. I need to meet her first. I'm going to find Stephanie tomorrow. My sister. She probably doesn't even know I exist.

"Not to mention, sharing is caring, right? Why would he keep me all to himself? I like meeting new people after all."

I need another hour. I put the camera back on the charger and look at the lake. It's so beautiful here. Maybe I just stay here and raise her with this view. She'll love it. I have no idea if it's a boy or a girl, but I'm leaning more on girl. I think every girl wants a girl.

"I knew it was wrong when he killed someone to keep our little secret. Mom came home early, and I was promised a car when I got my drivers permit. All I had to do was keep that secret. And I did. Until now.

"Now, I know it was wrong. I think I always knew, deep down," I say, and take a deep breath to focus on this part. "My name is Katie Grossman, and my stepfather raped me. One day, the right people will find this tape. Some will say I'm a spoiled brat who is only saying this because he cut off my allowance. Which he did, but only because I refused to do it any longer. You should have seen his face when I told him the evidence was inside of me. It's his baby. But it will never be, his, baby. It's mine."

I trashed the computer because he gave it to me. The phone I smashed with a hammer because he gave it to me. My brand-new car I drove through a red light because he gave it to me. So why keep a baby he gave to me? Because he doesn't want me to keep it. Because getting rid of it, is what he wants. I will never do what that man wants. Never again.

"Believe me or don't, I know the truth. I have the evidence in my belly, and a box full of tapes to prove it. My mother didn't protect me. She likes nice things too. Whenever something didn't feel right, about our relationship, she got a new necklace. See the pattern? I took that necklace by the way, sorry mom. Not my fault your husband likes to rape little girls."

"What now?" I ask, as if I'm talking to a living, breathing person. "Now, I don't know. I really don't. I know what I'm not going to do if that helps. I'm not going to let anything happen to this baby. To my baby. See mom, that's what you're supposed to do. You don't rationalize, and turn a blind eye, and not question why I walked funny some days. You protect your fucking children. That's what a mother is supposed to do."

Another hour passes, and I don't collect myself before my door knocks. I try my best to hide my tears and answer the door. The owner, Ms. Morgan is here.

"Just seeing how you're settling in sweetheart," she says, and notices my fake smile, and real tears. "What's the matter dear?"

"Hormones," I say, hoping that's enough to explain it away.

"If you need anything, just let me know. A meal. A drink. An ear," she says, and my smile becomes real.

"I will, thank you," I say, and softly shut the door behind me. I fan my hands toward my face and sit in front of the camera again. I placed the lilies behind it to calm me down if I start cracking again.

"If, somehow, he finds me, I'll be ready," I say, and hold up his gun to the camera. "I've been practicing. I can draw this thing like Annie Fucking Oakley. If he comes here, shit's going to be the goddamn O.K. Corral."

"If he does, and I lose, or something else happens. Angela, Leland, thanks guys. Thanks for getting me this far. I love you two. Thanks for everything."

--

Thursday -- April 16, 2020: Second Day Found

-Chase Kramner-

Stephanie is alive and is taken to the hospital. Mort Junior killed his father not long after they arrived, so her injuries are relatively minor. He finally cracked. The pressure became too much, and he killed his father, and then himself. Junior killed Katie to spare her the worst death of being killed by Art, but that ate away at him until it was too much.

We take a chopper back to Whisper, and land at around sunrise. Midge is literally falling asleep during the flight, and Yvonne volunteers to get her to the lodge for some well earned sleep. That woman's been at it for over two days. I need the sleep too, but instead, I join the team digging at the boat house.

The bottom was cut open, and then they started. Within the hour, we got a body. She's nothing but bones. All I see is the beautiful brunette girl who died too soon.

I step away from the grave and make a call. It's early, but this man never sleeps.

"Hello?" Derek asks, and I smile from just hearing his voice.

"It's me sir," I say.

"Chase?" he asks, and I confirm. "I heard they found you. Are you okay?"

"I'm not dead, that's a good start," I say. "I found her."

"Katie Grossman?" he asks.

"They're moving her body right now. They need to do some tests, but I know it's her," I say. "Your folder just got a little lighter."

"You sound tired. Get some sleep and call your wife. Call her first. She's calling me too much," he says, and I say I'll do that. I hang up and call Jenn.

"Hello?" she asks. I smile even wider. The burner phone means she doesn't get my name on ID.

"You didn't think I was dead, did you?" I ask.

"You fucking asshole," Jenn says, but I can almost hear her laugh the tears out. "I'm going to kick you in the nuts when you get home."

"Good thing I got two into you before you do it," I say, and she laughs.

"Girl," she says, and I smile. "We're having a girl."

"Krista Amanda it is," I say, and she agrees. "It's nuts here. I've never seen so much FBI. Don't get mad, but I'm going to get some sleep, and start heading back tomorrow."

"You better," she says. "I love you, you fucking idiot."

"I love you too. I'll see you tomorrow."

--

Tuesday - April 21, 2020: One Week Home

~Midge Appletree~

Thomas Hollinger was put into handcuffs yesterday. The statute of limitations for rape in Ohio is twenty-five years. The FBI salvaged enough from the tapes for prosecutors to go after him with everything. They couldn't prove the baby Katie was carrying was fathered by him, but the tapes were enough. Will called me after they made the arrest, telling me Katie's mother sat frigid on the couch the entire time he was struggling with the officers sent to arrest him. Like she knew the entire time, but now it was impossible to suspend her disbelief.