My First Kidnapping

My first case was on my first day. It was the kidnapping of a 16 year old boy named Zane Blackwood, the famous singer. I remember it so clearly, like it was just yesterday.

His parents were worried when he didn’t come home from school that day. His mother was clutching his favorite yo-yo in her hand like it was her life-line.

“He doesn’t have a girlfriend and he isn’t in any clubs. And if he went home with his friends he would’ve told us. We were a little worried, but then we got this,” she said, showing me a note. “Just please get our baby back, Officer Thorne,” his mother said.

“We will,” I promised. When I proposed it to the team, they jumped at it. Kidnapping involving minors always get priority over others.

“Get his background first, Maya. Then go with Ricardo to talk to his family and teachers. I will go with Melanie to talk to his friends to see if he had any enemies,” Nathan Lake, the leader of the team, said.

Going through his life, he was an average kid. He had average grades, no girlfriend, no clubs, and no criminal record. I didn’t find anything that could give us a lead.

Talking to his family and teachers gave us nothing until we came to his literature teacher. When we walked in, he was reading a worn copy of Moby Dick waiting for his next class. We asked him if he knew anything interesting, showing him the note.

“Hmm… let’s see what this says. ‘He never could tell between me and her, and now he will pay. I have to do this, but it will be okay. I would have never hurt him, but that thought has gone astray. And I love him, on my bed I lay. Our souls will go up and away. But don’t worry, everything will be okay.’ Well it sounds like a crazed fan to me, but you probably already know that. You two are looking for whoever this crazed fan is. Let me see now. Hmm well yes, there is one girl. She sits outside the window every day watching him. Her name is Naomi Lee, I believe,” he says.

When we leave, we see a pretty girl sitting on a bench in fancy shoes, too fancy to go to school there, so we were thinking that it was Naomi Lee, and it was. We walk up to her and she instantly stops cutting up pictures of Zane with scissors.

“Did you get my note? I knew you would come here, too. I know everything, especially about Zane,” she says to us. “So yes, I am confessing, but you will have to figure out the clues that I tell you.” Right after this, we took her into custody.

Questioning her was hard. All she would do was either stare at us or tell us that she knew we could figure it out. All she asked for was paper and a purple marker, which she used to write and draw Zane Blackwood over and over. Finally though, she gave us something real.

“By the big tree you’ll find a shack. Inside you will find a pack. It contains the key,” she said mysteriously. Well, okay, maybe it wasn’t something real, but it was better than her stares. All we had to do was find a landmark with a big tree and a shack, and we would find the key to finding Zane. It seemed easy enough at the time, but it wasn’t. To find the landmark, though, we had to go to her room, a place we all dreaded going.

It looked exactly like we all thought it would. Pictures of Zane were on the wall, on her ceiling, everywhere. She had shirts with him on it, too. If it wasn’t so creepy it would be flattering that someone was such a big fan.

Going through her room, we found a group of normal things. It was a photo album of a family vacation, a book, and an iPod. We suddenly thought that the landmark could be in the pictures, and it was. In one of the pictures, her and her two little sisters were in front of a vacation home, and far in the background was a shack behind a big tree. We decided to check it out.

When we got there, we found the shack. And she was right; inside we did find a pack. And it did contain the key, just not the key to finding him. It was an actual key, a key to a building of some sort. Since we were not a fancy police station, we had to figure what it goes to without computers, so we had to talk to Naomi again.

“I see that you found the key. But since you are back you do not know what it goes to, and that is where I come in. Okay, I can do that. Here is your next clue: What the key goes to is a mystery. And although the building is history, it always tells a story,” she says, and nothing else, even when we ask her more questions. We just get her stare. We did get a significant clue, though, and we thought we know exactly what she is talking about. Downtown in Phoenix, there was a building that used to be a museum, but it is closed now because no one ever went there.

It turned out that we were correct. The key opened the door easily, so we were inside. Then we got a call on our radio from the station.

“Please, Nathan’s team, watch out. Naomi Lee escaped from custody earlier and after we checked in on her she wasn’t there. She will be coming for you. Watch out,” it said. Hearing this, we all got out our guns, ready to fire if she attacked any of us. Instead, it was quiet until we opened one door, and what was behind that door was rather disturbing.

We found her and Zane, who was shaking, having dinner at a long table with candles. But that wasn’t the bad part. The bad part was that Zane was handcuffed to the table so he couldn’t run, and there was a girl’s dead body lying on the floor. We found later that she was the girl he was secretly dating, Amber Jones, but Naomi didn’t like that so she killed her with the scissors she used to cut Zane’s pictures.

As soon as we walked in, she put a gun to Zane’s head.

“Put the gun down, Naomi. We are just trying to help you,” Ricardo said.

“But if I do I don’t get to be with him ever again. You take me away to jail and he goes free. I won’t allow it,” she snarled, and shot the gun. Immediately, Melanie shot Naomi, because we know knew that she was capable of doing something fatal.

We checked Zane’s pulse, but there was nothing we could do. He got shot in the head, and only a miniscule percentage of the population survives those.

Later, when we got back to the station, we searched Naomi’s clothes. Inside, there was a note that said, “I told you the first time that our souls will go up and away, and I was right. I’m always right.”