Chapter 49

Colt was true to his word, never leaving her side, except when it was time to actually identify the culprit up close. Henry took her to a room with a glass panel where she saw six men standing in a horizontal line facing the glass. Their faces were covered, and they were all similarly dressed, about the same height and built.

“Leave her with me,” Henry said to him. “I’ll take care of her.”

Colt had reluctantly stood back while the detective led her into the room. Chelsea’s eyes scanned the area. There were several officers sitting at computers while another stood near a coffee machine. A man in a suit was standing at the panel with a briefcase in hand. Standing at around five feet nine inches, the man perused them with sharp gray eyes. His brown hair was neatly cropped and his face seriously set.

Henry guided her over, introducing them “This is DA Kirkpatrick, he’s handling the case.”

“Miss Downing, glad you could make it,” Mr. Kirkpatrick said, offering his hand.

The handshake was firm and brief, while he eyeballed her from head to toe. She inwardly cringed, feeling uncomfortable with the scrutiny.

“Th-thank you,” she stuttered.

Henry pointed at the glass panel. “You see those men; the suspect is among them. Do any of them seem familiar now?”

There were six of them. Her eyes moved over them and back, but she could not make out anything family since she never got a chance to see the kidnapper’s face. All she had that she could remember was the smell and the voices on the day of her release. The man’s voice still echoed through her head, but it sounded distant to her like it was far away. She didn’t know how she would identify it now.

“Okay, here’s what we’ll do. You get a chance to go in and get close to them.” Her sharp intake of breath had Henry resting his hand on her shoulder. “Don’t worry, this is a building full of police officers, soon the Fed will be here as well since kidnapping is a federal offense.”

“The Feds?” she asked, her voice a little shaky.

Kirkpatrick was the one to reply. “Yes, they will take over the case after you’ve identified the perp. They would have been here sooner if our neighborhood hero here hadn’t convinced them to let him do the investigation,” he said in a sour tone.

“Cut it out, will you Bryan?” Henry retorted. The DA snickered and turned back to the panel. Henry shook his head, explaining, “We’re childhood buddies; never mind him.”

“Let’s do this, shall we?” the DA suggested.

“Okay,” Henry agreed. “Are you ready, Chelsea?” he asked, his eye narrowing as they studied her.

She nodded, uncertain, wishing that Colt was in the room with her. Henry indicated a door to the left which would take them to the room where the men were. Her knees wobbled as she moved forward, while her stomach flipped several times. With a silent prayer, she was glad she hadn’t eaten, or she would have brought up her breakfast and lunch with the way her stomach churned.

“This way,” the detective said, standing aside when they reached the door.

He held it open and allowed her entry first. The urge to tell him to go ahead of her was strong, but she suppressed it, reassuring herself of his earlier statement that the precinct was full of cops and nothing would happen to her. Moreover, Colt was somewhere in the building; he would save her should the cops fail. She shook her head at the thought. What was she thinking? How could Colt save her if the police could not?

There were several uniformed, armed officers at the door. This gave her a sense of security, knowing they were a few meters away in the event the perpetrator should try anything; that is if he was in the lineup.

“Walk close to them and get a sense of anything familiar … anything,” Henry encouraged. “I’m right here, and so are they.” He thumbed at the officers outside the door, then gently nudged her in.

A voice came over an intercom inside the room and startled her. She looked at the men lined up against the wall. There were numbers on the wall above their heads. Upon closely scrutinizing them, she realized their hands were cuffed behind them and their feet chained at the ankles.

“Number 1, come forward two steps,” the voice over the intercom said.

The person under the number one sign stepped forward as instructed. Henry nodded to her, and she stepped closer as well. Her legs were wooden, but she managed to reach the person. She moved as close as about a foot, then closed her eyes and tried to remember that day. The scent, the feel of the man as he grabbed her, the height. She inched closer, trying to see if the height matched.

She knew that number one was not the guy as soon as she closed in another six or so inches. Shaking her head, she turned to Henry who motioned to the person behind the panel.

“Number 2, make two steps forward,” the male voice instructed once more.

The second man stepped forward as well. Chelsea did the same as before, stepping close, closing her eyes and trying to conjure the day in question. They completed the ritual with all six men, the third and fourth were closest to the height of her kidnapper, but she could not be certain from them standing so still.

When the session was over, she felt that she’d missed something, and as she approached Henry who never left the door, a weird presence enveloped her that she stopped short and turned. A shudder ran through her at the thought that the kidnapper was actually there, but she could not point him out.

“What’s wrong?” Henry took a step and was by her side.

“Nothing,” she replied, swallowing and trying to appear unaffected. “Are we done?” She wanted Colt, but he was not allowed back there.

“No, we have two more things we want to try. The officers here will be inside the room when we do the last one. But first, we want you to listen.”

“To what?”

He held her gaze as he told her what would happen next. “We’ll have each of them talk first through the voice changer; it may not help much, but let’s give it a shot. After that, we’ll have them say ‘I did it for you’, according to the report you gave.”

She sighed. “Okay.”

“We can go back behind the panel; you look like you could use some coffee.”

Her stomach was still somewhat queasy, so coffee perhaps was not a good choice. On the other hand, maybe the caffeine would do her some good. Henry went ahead and poured a cup, bringing it back to her.

“I’m not sure how you take it.” He smiled.

“This is fine,” she said, returning his smile.

The dark liquid was smooth and rich, no sugar or cream, but it suited her fine. The DA beckoned them over to stand beside him while the men turned their backs and the hoods were removed from their heads. They were all given baseball caps to wear so that they would all appear the same. Their cuffs were removed from behind them, and their hands cuffed in front. Chelsea thought it was natural police procedure so didn’t think twice about the direction of the cuffed hands. But the inability to see their faces bothered her.

“Why can’t I see their faces?” She turned to Henry quizzically.

“Because it would put them at an unfair disadvantage since you never saw their face in the first place. If someone was present that you knew, it might influence the identification process.”

Nodding her understanding, she turned back to the panel as the officer at a desk near the panel began to speak through a microphone. “Number 1, speak into the voice changer, ‘keep still!’”

Chelsea closed her eyes and waited. The first man spoke; it sounded like Darth Vader, but too tame. She asked the officer to instruct him to repeat with a little more venom.

“Keep still!” came through the voice changer once again. Keeping her eyes closed, she listened as number 2 repeated the words, number 3, number 4, and then it was time for number 5. But as number four repeated the words, the weird feeling hit her again.

“Can you make number 4 repeat please?” she asked the officer.

The one at number 4 repeated; she asked him to do it three times, and each time he sounded more annoyed to her by the slight rise in pitch of Darth Vader’s voice. Her heart had started drumming unevenly, and she caught herself breathily shallow. She was almost certain it was him, but she needed to make sure. For though she wanted the culprit behind bars, she needed to make certain she was correct.

“Can you ask him to say ‘I did it for you’ without the changer?” she asked the officer.

Henry had a pleased expression as he and the DA exchanged glances. Chelsea believed that they thought she was identifying the one who held her. Her gut told her number 4 was the guy, but the small doubt lingered.

“Number 4, say ‘I did it for you’, without the voice enhancer,” the officer instructed. The man hesitated, resulting in the officer repeating the instruction. “Number 4, say ‘I did it for you’, without the voice enhancer.”

“I did it for you,” the man said.

The instructing officer looked at her. Her heart was pounding loudly, and her stomach quivering. “Again, please,” she requested. She was surprised with the dread that threatened to overwhelm her that she could speak clearly.

“Number 4, repeat.”

“I did it for you,” the voice came through, and for Chelsea, it was the same tone, except that it seemed far away in her haze. She closed her eyes and focused, clearing the fog from her drugged state, lying on the cold floor of her prison.

As she listened to the voice repeat the line, she knew it was one and the same. She staggered back, her knees threatening to buckle. A pair of hands grabbed her shoulders, steadying her. A flood of memories, buried through her drugged out state began to surface. A hand clamping over her mouth, her inhaling something smelly, and just as her eyes began to close, the tattoo on the wrist as he removed his hand.

“I remember something,” she breathed. “I remember. He has a tattoo of a pentagram or star of some sort on the inside of his wrist.”

The DA walked over to her as he straightened from her earlier bout of weakness. Her stomach was still queasy, and her knees weak, but the memory was the best option for seizing the suspect.

“Are you sure?” Kirkpatrick asked, with one brow raised.

“I’ll draw it.”

Someone handed her a pencil and a blank sheet of paper. One of the police officers offered her a seat at one of the desks. She closed her eyes and pictured the tattoo. There was a six-point star with two circles inside each other, inside the star. In the crook of each star were some symbols that she could not make out. In the center of the star was something red, like a heart.

She handed the paper to Henry who looked at it keenly and asked her once more if she was certain that the perp had the tattoo she’d drawn. She was certain. He handed the paper to the DA who nodded with a smile.

“We got him,” Henry said. “Would you like to see his face?”

She inhaled deeply before expelling it slowly. “Can Colt be in here with me?”

“Yes, I suppose he’s as anxious to see the fellow as you are,” he replied, beckoning to one of the other officers, who moved toward the door to the right.

A moment later, he returned with Colt right behind. As soon as he was in the room, she ran into his arms which encircled her tightly. She wrapped her arms around his waist and let herself sag against him. She wasn’t sure when the tears started, but somehow they were flowing freely.

“What did they do to you?” Colt’s tone was accusing.

Chelsea raised her head to see that he was looking pointedly at Henry. She sniffled, wiping the tears with the back of her hand.

“I’m okay. I’m just happy to see you.”

Henry moved up beside them. “She did great, even remembered something else.”

“Really?” Colt sounded surprised and pleased at the same time. “Did you identify him?”

“She picked someone. She even picked him before mentioning the tattoo.” Henry turned to the panel and spoke through a microphone Chelsea hadn’t noticed was there before. “Officer, Myers, cover number 4 with the hood,” he instructed. A female officer moved toward the suspect, removed the cap and replaced the hood. “Now let him turn around and remove his cuffs.”

Officer Myers followed the instructions, and the perp turned around. His cuffs were removed, and he rubbed his wrist.

Henry glanced over at her. “Was it his right or left wrist, Chelsea?”

She closed her eyes for a second and pictured the hand over her mouth, then as her eyes began to close the hand moved. “The right hand,” she said, her eyes still closed.

“You’re certain about this?’ Henry asked.

“Yes, I’m certain.”

“Number 4, Lift your right hand and hold it out.”

There was a moment’s hesitation, but he complied. The tattoo of the six-point star was there with a bleeding heart in the center. The two circles were there inside the star along with the symbols which Chelsea could not remember.

A gasp escaped her as she stared at the wrist of the suspect. “That’s it!” she breathed.

Colt’s arm closed around her shoulder, pulling her up against him for support. The man held up his hand for a few minutes while Henry spoke to the DA in a low tone. His words were not discernible to her, but she knew that she had the right man. Her gut had told her that even before listening to his voice. The terror she had felt in the moment he grabbed her, that same feeling had almost paralyzed her while she was in the same room.

“We almost didn’t get him because of the articles you posted, Chelsea. He was about to leave the country,” Henry informed them.

She stiffened, her eyes becoming wide with the dawning that the perp was someone mentioned in her articles. “What do you mean?” she croaked, a frog seemed to have lodged in her throat.

“See for yourself,” he said.

Officer Myers pulled the hood from the face of the suspect, and it was no surprise to her. But she could feel Colt tense beside her. She chanced a glance at his face and noticed how hard and dark it had become. His eyes glinted dangerously as he stared at the face of his stepbrother.

“Son of a …” Colt ground through his teeth.

“You had no idea about this, Mr. Montgomery?” the DA asked.

“No, I never suspected him to be the one to do this.”

“Chelsea did. She named him as her captor in the articles she sent to the press. That’s why he ran,” Henry informed them. “We were lucky; as it turned out he was also responsible for assaulting his sister.”

His jaw clenched. Chelsea knew Colt was trying to contain himself. He was staring at the glass panel as though the heat from his eyes could penetrate the glass like Superman. She took his hand and twined her fingers with his. With their palms clasped together, she hoped she could help him relax. Slowly, his face relaxed as he tore his eyes away from the panel and looked down at her.

“Are you okay?” he asked.

“Yes, now that you’re here with me.”