Cris' disappearance mobilized the state cops as well as the FBI's Crimes Against Children squad. It also made the national news as soon as it was known that "John Doe" of the Miracle Trust was missing.
The driver and team member of the transport van had been found inside their vehicle, their bodies dragged from the swamp. It was known that they must have been involved in the kidnapping, as only the transport team, the doctors and the Trust people knew when or where Cris Snow was leaving the hospital.
The logical suspects in their murders were the Beilby boys and their cousins on behalf of Tempe Neige. There were plenty of complicated relationships between the two families, plenty of men and women who weren't afraid of killing obstacles in their path if money, honor or greed was involved. No one knew how much Neige had promised to any one of them for finding his son.
He hadn't been seen since disappearing from the swamp nor had his Great-aunt Elmira. Some thought that she might be a co-conspirator but Eachann believed she had run afoul of Tempe and was most likely dead. The swamp held many secrets and the atmosphere around the dark woods and darker waters reeked of the anguished souls of murdered and tortured victims.
Eachann raged. Called every cop, contact and informer he knew. Paid informants for any hint of a trace leading to tips on the boy's whereabouts, Neige or the Beilbys. He found nothing.
The Administrators of the Trust called daily. Billboards popped up overnight on highways, city streets and neighborhoods. Posters and TV spots kept the case in the forefront of the public's eyes.
A thousand tips a day came in. A thousand an hour until the system was overwhelmed. Each credible one had to be investigated. A few even seemed hopeful. It was amazing how many kids looked like Cris, yet once Eachann saw the child he wasn't the only one to notice that something special was missing from the lookalike’s eyes. He could only hope that it was still shining out of Cris' when they found him.
Weeks passed. None of the leads panned out. There were rumors that Neige and the Beilbys had vanished into Mexico before dumping Cris Snow's body into the swamp. Months went by and even though the government had spent millions on the case, they could not find the boy or his father.
Matt grew thinner and more depressed; his family, friends and co-workers worried that his depression might lead him to do something rash and stupid. They noticed and talked about the difference in the detective – he was Matt but more. Most had heard the story of Captain Faille Lacey, his son Crispin and Johannsen, all of it documented in historical records. They were stunned at the depths of knowledge that Matt had memorized, not considering that what he claimed might be true.
Jonas Sanderson had found the Captain's burial plot in the old Kirkwood Cemetery in St. Louis. He offered to come north and try to track Cris' movements from his last known position. He too, was worried what Eachann might do if they never found the child.
Some of the cops believed Cris Snow was dead and his body waiting to be found. When one of those said that in Eachann's vicinity, he went ballistic, yelling that if Cris was dead, he would know it. The same words they heard from parents of other murdered children.
He said that if Cris was gone, he'd see his spirit and no such thing had happened. To his Lieutenant and Captain, that was the final straw in the detective's weird behavior, in his tenuous mental grasp on sanity.
Called in to the Captain's office, he was ordered to see the staff Psychologist who immediately diagnosed the detective with acute depression and paranoid delusions. The shrink prescribed drugs to which Matt laughed and threw the prescriptions back at the doctor's face. He called the man a quack, laughed at the stunned expression on his face and departed the office with a wall-jarring thud as he slammed the door open. It rebounded twice before it shuddered to a close. After his fit of pique, he headed back to Homicide.
The minute that he stepped inside, he was greeted by the Captain, the Lieutenant and the Precinct Commander. Worried that he might freak out, they had brought two of the younger Sergeants – both big men who did MMA fights on the side. To add to the insult, they had a pair of Emergency Medical Responders standing by.
"What is this shit?" Matt burst out. They were startled, none of them had heard the detective curse before, especially in front of the brass.
"Matt, my office. Now," Captain Jaeger ordered. His face was a stone slab of granite, his lips uncompromising. Eachann looked hard at the group, his blue eyes burned white-hot, narrowed as his lips thinned. He looked as tough as steel. Who would bend and who would break?
Slowly, carefully, he pulled off his holster and slapped the .40 caliber, ugly black semi-automatic into the calloused palm of the older Captain, ignoring the Lieutenant. His badge and ID/key card were next.
Without another word, he turned on his heel and stiff-armed his way past the muscle, down the hallway through the squad room where hundreds of heads popped over carrels or out doorways to watch in stunned silence. Others followed to watch as Eachann pounded out onto the street.
Shifts changed, and roll-call was just happening but the news of Eachann's departure was all that was talked about. Personal vehicles zipped in and out of the parking structure, stopping to relay the news to the oncoming officers until there was a massive jam-up coming and going. Within a half hour, sides were evenly divided through the entire city on the verdict of Eachann's sanity and actions. Those that might believe his story or at least that the boy was still alive and those that knew he was nuts.
The Captain followed him out, demanding a radio from one of the uniformed officers who had trailed along. “Get me Jake Jacobs,” he said. The Dispatcher found the patrolman on shift and had him go after Eachann.
Jake was on the radio only an amazing ten minutes after the Captain had called for him. Five minutes later, his cruiser was doing eighty down the streets of Manhattan. He didn’t know for sure where Matt was headed but he could guess. In all the time they had spent together, Jake had never found out where Matt lived. He knew that it had to be in the city, cops were required to live within the borough where they worked. But Manhattan was a big island with millions of people. An incredible place to hide yet he didn’t waste his time there, he called dispatch and told them that he was headed upstate. To where it all began.
*****
I was afraid to come out. Hidden inside my safe little box buried within the big blue vault with chains and huge padlocks, I was safe from the monsters. I knew that they could not reach me, couldn’t lean their ugly faces in, sniff me and try to eat me. They couldn’t tear off my arms and crack my bones, poke out my eyes and do worse things to me. But I was also afraid of the tiny space crushing all around me. I could barely breathe and the longer I stayed inside the dark box, the less I remembered the light, the way it was outside. I was alone. Terribly alone and I could not even hear my own voice when I screamed as loud as I could. I knew what I was screaming. I was calling for help from my daddy, yet I was afraid that my father would hear me.
The box that I had so carefully constructed of iron-hard wood and nailed together with special magic screws that couldn’t come unscrewed, the lid that fit so tight not even a whisper could escape. The box that I wanted to climb out of only to confront the impenetrable vault, the box I had created – now, I did not know how to escape from it.
I beat on the walls, barely banging within the limited space, sobbing and as my tears fell filling the box under me, the wood swelled. Slowly, it began to unfold around me, like a rose opening from a bud, watered with my tears.
I could not see anything. The inside of my vault was darkness and that scared me because I could not see if anything was in there with me. But at least I could hear myself speak. My words were gibberish, baby talk, the product of an unhinged mind. Which frightened me worse than being in the box.
“Crispin?” I whispered and dug through the myriad memories of all my past lives. In only a few instances had I lived to become an adult before being murdered, but one of those had been a teacher and a doctor. He knew what I was experiencing and how to come out of it.
A fugue state or catatonic; my mind so shattered by fearful events that it broke free to hide away from reality. Only when I was safe would I let the barriers drop and come out. The problem was that if I did not come out, I could not free myself from wherever or whoever had me. I was assuming that it was my father and not Matt.
I couldn’t take a quick peek and go back if it was still not safe, this didn’t work like that. Crispin’s memories held no answers for me, either.
I wasn’t conscious of my body. Realized that I couldn’t feel myself breathing, or hunger, thirst, no itches. No pressure on any part of me, my feet or backside so I wasn’t sure if I was standing, lying down or on my knees.
I pushed my hands out and felt only empty space around me. “What do I do?” I asked the darkness and it answered me. Sort of.
As I stared into nothingness, gradually the spot in front of my eyes grew lighter and brighter until I could see. The outline of a door, a knob and light glowing through the cracks of the door frame. Light from behind the door.
It looked like an ordinary wooden door with three panels and a regular doorknob. I walked toward it, my feet getting heavier and heavier until I could feel the floor underneath me, and the sensation of up, down, forward and back became tangible.
As my hand touched the knob, an electric shock passed through the metal into my body, yet it made me grip harder, not let go. I twisted the doorknob and it opened. I stepped through.