Radio Waves of the Macabre [On Hiatus]

Chapter 13 - Missing (Part 3)

She pressed the button on her key fob, pushed through the rising wind, and hopped behind the wheel of her aged Toyota Prius. As the car silently whirred to life, she struggled to keep positive, reminding herself once again that Tess was only a little over an hour late. She had done this many times before, and while Mindy would never encourage it, she knew that she was making a bigger deal of this than was necessary. In all likelihood Tess would be arriving home any minute.

As she backed down the drive, Mindy glanced both ways down the street. A few kids played off towards the intersection with Jackson Court, but they were all older. There was no sign of Tess. Mindy shifted into drive and lurched forward, her mind racing ahead of her.

After Ricky had gone missing a pall had fallen over the community and in their grief, the residents of Russet Creek had come together in that unity that arises only in the wake of tragedy or the mass hysteria of hate. Local police had initiated a search of the woods in which Tess had last seen Ricky, forming search parties consisting of officers and local community members, but other than one lock of hair taken from an old, deserted field, no sign of the boy had been uncovered. Flyers were distributed throughout Randolph county and the surrounding areas, and additional search parties combed the area for the next couple of weeks, but with increasingly diminishing returns.

A few days in, after the initial searches concluded, Ricky's status had been updated from lost to unknown, which meant exactly what it sounded like: police were no longer certain if the boy had become lost in the woods and had shifted to considering all options, from his being a runaway to the possibility of an abduction. Local sheriffs joined in the search efforts, and soon police initiated door-to-door interviews in the homes surrounding the woods where Ricky had disappeared.

It had been during this phase of the investigation that the specters of child abduction and human trafficking came under very real consideration. Officer Hatley, known by Earl to most residents of Russet Creek, had been working the northern perimeter of the search area on one of the door-to-door sweeps. He had finished up at the Rock Hill subdivision and had pulled up to his last stop of the day – the Hallahan cabin. Like many local families, the Hallahan's had deep roots in Randolph county, though this cabin belonged specifically to Art and Georgia Hallahan out of Boone County, patrons of the arts, and big shots down in Columbia. It was common knowledge in Russet Creek that the Hallahan's used the cabin as a winter retreat, and it stayed unoccupied most of the summer.

As such, Earl's visit had been perfunctory with no expectation that he would find anyone or anything pertinent to the investigation, but you had to dot the I's and cross the T's. That being the case, it had come as a surprise to Earl when he had found Harris Hallahan, Art and Georgia's youngest, holed up in the cabin on an extended stay. Harris had always been an odd one – a loner, with grease-stained hair and a quiet but sulking demeanor. He had never been well-liked as a child, and had grown into an even less-liked adult. Perhaps it was this local disdain for Harris, perhaps it was something else entirely, but something had raised Earl's hackles and soon Harris had been taken in as a person-of-interest.

Shortly thereafter it came to light that Harris Hallahan had a penchant for child pornography. His computer had been seized and though officially no details had been released to the public it soon became well known that numerous compromising photos of Hallahan children were found on his hard drive. Apparently Harris had been taking illicit photographs of his own nephews with hidden cameras on his and his siblings' properties. And although no photographs of Ricky were recovered, charges had been filed, and Harris' guilt in the abduction had become a foregone conclusion.

Technically the case remained open and the search for Ricky was still ongoing, but with Harris in custody the life had ebbed from the investigation. Russet Creek had returned to normalcy, or at least a new darker normal, tainted by the grief of those closest to Ricky Hill and the knowledge of the sins that lived amongst them in their previously sleepy hamlet.

Mindy lived with that knowledge now, and it clung to her. She wanted to believe that Harris had taken Ricky, and at first she had allowed herself to believe that, because if he had, then in his arrest the safety of her own child could be more readily assured. Yet every time Tess left her sight Mindy became flooded with doubts. Tess had been so adamant about her ghostly radio station, her mysterious vanishing building in the field. It had angered Mindy, the obvious lie of it, and yet it had been so unlike her Tess. Mindy didn't believe her of course – there was no room in her reality for dark Brigadoons – but she did believe something had happened and she couldn't be certain it had anything to do with Harris Hallahan.

Off to her right, through the passenger-side window, a faded missing persons flyer fluttered against a telephone pole flashing the smiling face of her nephew Ricky. The paper had yellowed and tore, frayed by the elements, and now left neglected and forgotten. Mindy winced as she drove past, but averted her gaze and focused as best she could on the road. She had her own worries now.

She told herself this for another twenty yards, before finally slowing the car and pulling to the curb. She sat there, face blank, hands on the ten and the two, staring lifeless out the window as her hand inevitably began to drum against the steering wheel. She should just let it be, she thought. Right now, she had to focus on Tess.

Mindy glanced to the road, dotted on either side by a sporadic distribution of parked cars and mini-vans.  A family darted across the street about ten yards ahead. They had made it halfway across before their youngest, a child that looked to be about four, made a break for it running across the road to his parents' dismay and making straight for the nearby jungle gym. It was a bit late for parks, but a few kids still swung upside down on the parallel bars or slid down one of the two slides. The late night crowd consisted of a mix of pre-K kids, a couple of pre-teens, and a scattering of bleary-eyed parents. Still Tess was nowhere to be found. Mindy needed to keep moving.

She sighed, reached into her backseat, and hauled up a small stack of crisp flyers and a staple gun. She couldn't let it be.

She slipped out of her Prius, not even bothering to turn off the ignition, and briskly jogged to the telephone pole with the frayed flyer. Once there, she yanked it down, slapped up the new flyer, and stapled it down with a honed efficiency. For a moment she took in her handy work, staring at the bright smiling face of her nephew shining out from the fresh flyer. He looked so happy, his smile dimpling his plump cheeks. Melinda always insisted they were the last remnants of his baby fat, and Mindy had never had the heart to tell her that his baby fat had likely faded a long time ago.

She thought about babysitting him, about him and Tess playing hide-and-seek in the Burton household just after Tess had turned three and the divorce, unlike the separation, had not yet been finalized. Tess had been a natural at the game. Ricky on the other hand had not. Mindy had come across him hiding behind a coat rack, its stem no wider than two inches across and its arms devoid of coats. He had a wide grin stabbing through those cheeks, a grin that shouted his pride at his brilliant choice of a hiding spot. Tess had found him almost immediately.

That time.