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  His dad gave Pepper a long look.

  “You and Klein need to search the apartment very carefully to make sure you’re not in any physical danger,” his dad told Larch. “You know what I mean? Search good and careful.”

  Behind his back, so his dad wouldn’t see, Pepper crossed his fingers for luck.

  Chapter Seven

  Larch reported back five minutes later.

  “All’s clear, but there’s no sign of Emma Bailey or Casper Yelle,” said Larch. “We found one weird thing—a circular enclosure made from chicken wire. Kind of flimsy if it’s for caging someone. Just kinda weird.”

  “Maybe if he’d already tied up his victim?” Pepper speculated.

  Larch continued in his official monotone. “And we found a cardboard box in his bedroom closet with a couple dozen pairs of women’s underwear. The sexy kind—thongs, boy shorts, that sort of thing.”

  “Good job, Randy. Call dispatch for a unit to transport the Baileys back here for booking. You and the rook stay put. See if you can get Yelle’s door to close properly. We don’t want him to see a problem and take off.”

  Pepper’s dad hung up.

  “I don’t blame the Baileys,” said Pepper.

  “That’s not how a good cop thinks,” said his dad. “We can’t have vigilantes running wild.”

  “Good thing I’m not a cop.” Pepper could totally understand why Emma’s relatives did what they did. They must be out of their minds with worry about her. He hated to imagine the pain they must be feeling, knowing a monster like Casper Yelle might be holding their daughter.

  His dad began explaining the legal ramifications for the Bailey relatives. One offense for breaking and entering. Another offense if they got Yelle’s address from the Sex Offender Registry Board website. They could be looking at prison time and fines. What a bunch of dumbasses, etc…

  But Pepper wasn’t listening. He was thinking about Emma Bailey. She might need food and water. She might need oxygen.

  What would his dad do if he or Jake were missing? Hopefully, he’d tear the world apart.

  Pepper could only begin to guess how the poor girl was suffering—if she was still alive.

  Emma Bailey was sitting against a cold, hard wall in the dark, scared. Freaked out, actually. And totally pissed off.

  She didn’t know what the hell had happened to her.

  I mean, she knew some douchebag had grabbed her right off the sidewalk in front of her house. She’d like, frozen up, then she’d fought back, but there was nothing she could do. The asshole had even tased her.

  Now she’d woken up here, wherever here was. She looked around and tried to figure it out. It was mostly dark, except for one light. She was leaning against a hard, cold wall which felt kind of sloped. Her hands were tied up with something that dug into her wrists—plastic? So were her feet. She was pretty sure she still wore the clothes she’d had on when she was grabbed—skinny jeans and a T-shirt.

  She squirmed forward and tried to roll over, but something else was tying her to the wall. She could only move a few inches. Fuck!

  She saw a shadow move, and then a man came into the faint light. A large man. He squatted down. The douchebag was wearing a mask of the green ogre dude from the kids’ movies. Shrek. She could see the weirdly long, thin green ears with bulbs at the ends. The flat nose, the stupid smile. The only holes in the mask were for the eyes.

  Emma spat at him, aiming for those little eyeholes. She missed, but was happy he jumped back. What a dick!

  “Hello, Emma,” the man said, his voice muffled by the stupid mask.

  “Hello, Needle-dick,” she answered. “You need to let me go. Right fucking now.” Then she screamed as loud and long as she could. And that was pretty damn loud and long. Bloodcurdling. She had the best scream of all her friends.

  Her scream echoed around them.

  The green mask studied her. “I think we’re getting off on the wrong foot,” the man said. “You should be nicer to me. I’m your only source of food and water. I’m your everything now.”

  He sounded like he actually believed his own bullshit. “That’s the ugliest fucking mask I’ve ever seen,” she said. “But I’m guessing you’re, like, more butt ugly than Shrek? So you think it’s an improvement?”

  The man smacked her knee, causing a sharp sting of pain. “You’ve got a mouth on you. We’ll have to do something about that.”

  She flung her knees to the side. “You better not touch me again. My dad’s a Marine. He’ll rip off your—”

  “Your dad’s not relevant anymore. I’ll be looking after you from now on. You be nice and I’ll be nice. Are you thirsty?”

  Emma was. But she wasn’t going to tell him that. “It stinks in here,” she said. “You ever hear of deodorant?”

  Shrek studied her again, but she couldn’t tell his reaction. “Open your mouth and I’ll pour in a little water,” the man said. “It’ll make you less cranky.”

  Emma wanted to defy him. She wanted to tell him to pound sand. But she was super thirsty. Why punish herself?

  So she opened her mouth and Shrek slowly trickled water in. It wasn’t very good water. It was kind of chalky. But she gulped it down as long as he poured it.

  “Ugh. It tastes as bad as you smell,” she said, coughing.

  The man smacked her cheek. “I put a little something in the water to help you sleep, since you must be uncomfortable. See? I’m taking care of you already.”

  Emma tried to spit out the chalky residue in her mouth. She was shaking from anger and fear. “Could you do one other thing for me?” she asked.

  “What?”

  “Could you please take your roofie water and your little Taser and shove them up your ass? Then pull the damned trigger. Thanks so much.”

  The man didn’t respond this time. A moment later, he pulled a mask over her eyes and everything went black.

  She heard his footsteps, clattering on what sounded like metal stairs, and then a heavy door shutting with an echoing thud.

  Alone, Emma began crying in the dark.

  Please, could someone save her? Find her quick and catch the sick bastard in the Shrek mask. Get her the hell out of there.

  She could feel the chalky drug affecting her…feel her thoughts slowing, her body sagging harder against the cold wall.

  Be strong, she said to herself. Someone would come soon to help her.

  And her dad was going to kick Shrek’s ass. That was her last thought as she slipped away into a drugged, terrified sleep.

  Chapter Eight

  Chief of Police Gerald Ryan got a rush of adrenaline when Detective Sweeney brought in Casper Yelle to the station forty-five minutes later.

  They were accompanied by Yelle’s parole officer, Charlie Brown, a thin, unhappy-looking white guy in his late twenties. Brown’s monitoring center had pinpointed Yelle’s ankle bracelet coordinates, and they’d picked him up on foot, two blocks from his apartment.

  As a level-three sex offender, Yelle was wearing a GPS monitor, which looked like an old-school pager attached to a belt locked to his ankle. It was designed to alert the parole office if he tampered with it.

  Yelle’s conditions of parole required him to let his parole officer search him and his property at any time, for pretty much any reason. Parolees effectively forfeited most of their Fourth Amendment rights.

  Yelle was also required to answer any questions his P.O. asked him. That’s why Gerald wanted Charlie Brown to take part in the interrogation—Yelle’s conditions of parole didn’t require him to answer police questions. He hoped the man wasn’t aware of the distinction.

  If Yelle didn’t like Brown’s questions and invoked his Fifth Amendment right to be free from self-incrimination, he’d be in violation of his parole terms and would probably land straight back in prison. Yelle would have to weigh the damage of not talking versus talking himself into trouble for the Emma Bailey kidnapping—new felonies and then even lengthier prison time.

  Swee
ney parked the suspect in a too-warm interview room, handcuffed to the table. They left him there to sweat. And hopefully worry.

  But Gerald was preoccupied with his son Pepper as he reached the recording room to watch the Yelle interrogation.

  Pepper had ambushed him in the hallway, asking if he could sit in. The kid’s face had fallen hard when he’d said no. But the recording room was tiny and it would already have four people crammed in there: himself; an overweight detective from Eastham named Paul Thunberg, who was helping Detective Ingram on the Bailey case; Don Eisenhower; and a detective sergeant who would handle the audiovisual equipment.

  Gerald had invited the Eastham detective because multiple jurisdictions were investigating the Bailey kidnapping at the same time and they would step on each other’s dicks if they didn’t coordinate.

  He also included Lieutenant Eisenhower to watch the interrogation because he trusted Don’s instincts. Hell, he trusted him as a cop and a man more than anyone in the world. It was unusual for a police chief and a lieutenant to watch a suspect interview, but this case was too big and too raw for Gerald. He needed to look the suspect in the eye.

  So Pepper’s big frame would be one body too many. Pepper had stomped away, his face a storm cloud. The young man was energetic, full of life. But with a chip on his shoulder. Insecure. Which made little sense. What was Pepper now—6’3”? Strong and a good athlete. He had a bunch of friends and girls seemed to like him. Luckily, he’d gotten enough of his mom’s good looks. Maybe most twenty-year-olds were insecure, whether they showed it or not?

  Gerald pushed thoughts of Pepper out of his mind when he stepped into the recording room. He needed to focus on Casper Yelle. They needed to pin Yelle to the wall and find out if he was the kidnapper, quickly. And then find the girl…

  Everyone was waiting for Gerald. The recording room was not much bigger than a janitor’s closet, and it was half full of video equipment: DVRs, monitors and headsets. They all had to remain standing other than the detective sergeant working the AV controls.

  The room was also damn hot, and someone needed to switch to a stronger brand of deodorant. But nobody said it. Nobody was joking around, which was unusual for cops.

  The video and sound equipment recorded as Yelle sat alone in the interview room. Everyone in the recording room fiddled with their headsets and watched the suspect on the monitor in silence.

  Gerald studied the suspect carefully. Casper Yelle lived up to his first name—he was pale as a ghost. Eyes a bit sunken. Other than that, he was a plain-looking middle-aged white guy, balding up top and a light brown ponytail. He looked tall and heavy. He wore a plain white T-shirt and tan cargo shorts.

  Charlie Brown had filled them in on Casper Yelle, saying he was a sexual deviant, a narcissist, and had a near genius IQ. But he’d kept his nose clean in New Albion as far as Brown knew. Until maybe now.

  Yelle was wiggling and fidgeting in the chair, his eyes moving around the room.

  Yelle sat up when Detective Sweeney and Officer Brown entered the interview room. Sweeney sat across from Yelle and Brown remained standing. Brown began pacing up and down, looking pissed, as they had choreographed in advance. They staged everything in a suspect interrogation.

  The plan was to leverage Yelle’s conditions of parole to find out his alibi for the time Emma Bailey was abducted to see if he was lying, and to gather any other information they could get from him.

  Detective Sweeney, Gerald’s most senior detective, was a transplant from Boston. He’d joined the department six years ago. He was a likable guy and had an easy style. Perpetrators seemed comfortable chatting with him. Detective Sweeney identified everyone in the room, noted that the interview was being recorded.

  “This is harassment,” said Yelle.

  “Shut up, Casper,” said Brown. “I don’t get paid enough to spend my day off with you. You’re going to answer our questions, and then I can get back to my barbecue.” Brown asked Yelle to explain why he had been outside the Bailey house when the officer stopped him.

  Yelle repeated what he’d told the Eastham officer—he was curious if the girl was home safe yet.

  “Bullshit,” said Brown. “One more lie and you’re going to Shirley.” Shirley was the Souza-Baranowski Correctional Center, the only maximum-security prison in Massachusetts.

  Charlie Brown reminded Yelle he needed to fully and honestly answer questions as a condition of his parole.

  “Mr. Brown, I am being honest. I didn’t do anything,” said Yelle. But he wasn’t looking at the parole officer. He was looking at the video camera in the room's corner. Like he was talking to the people in the recording room.

  “Well, let’s clear everything up, then,” said Sweeney with a smile. “Where were you last night?”

  “Mr. Brown knows where I was. I have this elegant ankle jewelry which tells him everywhere I go.”

  Sweeney was still smiling, still looking supportive and relaxed. “Absolutely. But you need to help us help you, right? So tell us all the places you were yesterday, starting at five p.m..”

  “Yesterday? I got out of work at the machine shop at five o’clock sharp. I bought some Taco Bell down the road and ate it in their parking lot. Then I drove home.”

  “What were you driving?” asked Sweeney.

  “My Jeep. I worry about it because the machine shop’s next door to that contractor park, the Big Red Yard? Those cretins use our parking lot for staging. They leave trash everywhere. I’ve even found them sitting in my Jeep, smoking cigarettes when I had my top and doors off.”

  Gerald knew Yelle was employed at Johnston Precision Machining out on Richards Road. They fabricated replacement metal parts for industrial machines. It was one type of business on the Cape which routinely hired parolees.

  Brown stopped pacing and put his hands on the back of the empty chair next to Sweeney. He leaned toward Yelle. “You drove straight home around five-thirty? Then you stayed there until morning?” Brown sounded very skeptical.

  “Come on, Mr. Brown, you know I did! You have the GPS data to prove it!”

  “Did you know someone broke into your apartment today?” asked Sweeney.

  “Oh my God! What?” Yelle looked genuinely surprised.

  “Do you know anyone who’d do that?” Brown asked.

  Gerald watched the back and forth on the monitor. Yelle looked alarmed and confused.

  It took awhile for Yelle to speak. “No way. Nobody. Assuming it wasn’t a rogue member of law enforcement?”

  “Nah, it wasn’t us,” said Brown. “And we don’t need to knock down your door. I can search your apartment anytime I want to. You don’t have the same rights as normal humans. After I finish wasting my time here, I’m going over to your apartment to search every inch of it.”

  Yelle laughed, sounding only a bit nervous. “I thought you needed to get back to a barbecue. But please, feel free.”

  Brown glowered at him. “How about you save us both some trouble and tell me what I’ll find there?”

  Yelle sniffed. “Absolutely nothing that worries me.”

  In the recording room, Eisenhower said, “He’s not looking so confident now.”

  “The asshole fucking did it,” said the sweaty detective from Eastham.

  Gerald just kept breathing through his mouth and listened, watching Yelle’s face and body language.

  The interview went back and forth for thirty minutes, with Brown leading the questioning, using his leverage as Yelle’s P.O. to push the man. Sweeney jumped in from time to time, expanding the timeline, drawing out of Yelle where he’d been during the past two days, hour by hour. Then they circled back and verified everything, trying to trip him up.

  Casper Yelle answered every question. He seemed to say as little as possible without overtly breaking his conditions of parole. But everything he said was with a condescending edge. Yelle was either a smartass or he was trying to deflect. Like he had something to hide?

  “You haven’t been doing an
y under-the-table home security alarm jobs since you got out of prison, right?” asked Brown. “You’ve only worked at the machine shop, like we discussed for the last three months? Since you can’t be near minors, right, Casper?”

  “Of course not!”

  Yelle’s old career, before his arrest and conviction for the sex crime, had been installing home security systems as an independent contractor.

  Sweeney’s cell phone rang. He checked the caller ID, then chuckled. “Oh man, are you toast,” he said to Yelle. “Try to relax, we’ll be back.” Then he and Brown left the man alone in the interview room to stew about his situation.

  In the large conference room, Sweeney updated everyone that the phone call he’d received was from Detective Ingram of the Eastham Police. It was an update about the photo array he’d shown Emma Bailey’s seven-year-old brother, Mason.

  The detective had shown the boy a set of six photos, including Yelle and five other men who resembled him. Mason initially chose Yelle’s picture and said he was probably the guy. Then the boy started shaking and crying.

  The detective waited an hour, then asked the boy to look at the photos again. This time the boy wasn’t as sure and didn’t identify Yelle as the abductor. He picked a different picture.

  So, not great.

  They let Casper Yelle sweat for half an hour, then resumed the interview. Gerald and the others crammed back in the recording room.

  “Okay, about your apartment,” said Charlie Brown. “Tell me about your wire cage.”

  Yelle froze. “I’m planning to purchase a pair of cockatiels. To breed them and sell the chicks.”

  “Funny, it looked more like one of those Faraday cages,” said Sweeney.

  A Faraday cage is a mesh enclosure of conductive material, designed to block electromagnetic fields. If Casper Yelle was inside it, he could remove or disable his ankle monitor and the cage would block any signal from the ankle monitor to the parole office.