Frankie
“How’s it coming, Lynx?” Frankie asked the spindly girl still typing away at the keyboard, her eyes focused sharply on the screen only inches from her face.
“Almost got it,” she answered without looking up.
“Yo, boss,” Bruno said as he pushed through the swinging door to the back room and stood staring at Frankie blankly. All the lights were on, but it seemed no one was ever home in poor Bruno’s mind.
“Yes, Bruno?”
“You got a visitor. Some pig called Jamison.”
“Send him in.”
Seconds later, Kurt Jamison walked in with his badge clearly displayed on his belt. “You said you know who took Mollie,” he said without preamble.
“I think I do,” Frankie said. “Come. Sit down. I’ll explain.”
Kurt hesitated for a beat before walking over to Frankie’s table and pulling out a chair. It appeared Kurt’s back was bothering him by the way he slowly lowered himself into it.
“What’s this all about, Frankie? How’s it you’ve already figured out who took her?” Doubt played plainly on Kurt’s face.
“Because he called me.”
“Come again?”
“He called me.”
“When?”
“About half an hour ago.”
“Who is it?”
Frankie let out a deep sigh and leaned back in his chair. “That’s the hard part. It’s about Addie.”
The look on Kurt’s faced betrayed the pain he felt every time he heard his twin sister’s name. He stared at Frankie without blinking. “What about her?”
“He said he took Mollie because I took a father away from his son. He rambled on about past sins and revenge, and at first I didn’t understand, but then I thought about it, and it hit me.”
“What hit you? Frankie, spit it out.”
“He’s Julian McAllister’s son.”
Kurt didn’t respond. Not verbally, anyway. His head jerked back. He worked his jaw side to side as if chewing on something tough.
“I know. It’s a name neither of us ever wanted to hear again, let alone speak. But it makes sense. Julian had a son back in 1978. He was just a baby then, but apparently he’s spent the past thirty-eight years dreaming of ways to get his revenge for what I…what happened.”
Kurt still wasn’t speaking. Frankie could almost see the fire burning behind his eyes as he glared across the table at Kurt.
“Say something, man.”
After another few seconds of drawn-out silence, Kurt’s mouth finally opened. “I told you. Back then. I told you to let the police handle him. But no, you had to handle him your way. Now look what’s happened. Mollie doesn’t deserve this, but the truth is, Frankie, you brought this on yourself. If you’d only let me bring him in—”
“Enough!” Frankie slammed his palm down on the table, but Kurt didn’t flinch. There was a thickness in his throat, and his face was tingling. It wasn’t just anger Frankie was experiencing, it was shame too. He knew Kurt was right, but there was nothing he could do about it now. It was the right decision at the time. How could he have known Julian McAllister’s son would grow up to be a monster just like him, bide his time for nearly forty years, then kidnap Frankie’s granddaughter to extract his pound of flesh?
“Look,” Frankie said, breathing deeply, trying hard not to yell. “I know you don’t agree with what I did. But if I’d let you take him in, he’d have gotten off on a technicality or gotten out in three years. After what he did to Addie, I couldn’t stand by and do nothing. I couldn’t watch that happen. He had to pay, Kurt. For God’s sake, she was your sister.”
“You don’t have to tell me who Addie was to me, Frankie. And I know why you did what you did. Hell, I wanted to kill the bastard too. I could have done it with my bare hands and slept like a baby that night. But this is exactly why you can’t go serving up justice yourself to everyone who wrongs you. Payback’s a bitch.”
Frankie leaned forward and rubbed his face. Nearly forty years had gone by, and he could still feel the pain that ripped through his body when he’d been told Addie was dead. Not just dead, but brutally murdered. The knowledge that the son of the man who’d killed her now had his precious grandbaby somewhere out there doing God only knew what to her made him sick with grief and anger. But nothing Kurt said was going to make him regret killing Julian McAllister. In fact, he was already dreaming of what he’d do to his son once he got his hands on him.
“Oh, no.” Kurt shook his head. “I know what you’re thinking. You can’t do it again. This time, I won’t sit by and let you kill another human being. I know what he’s done, and by God, if I get to him first, he’s going to wish he was dead. But things have changed, Frankie. I’m a cop now. It was one thing to turn my head when I was eighteen years old and mourning the death of my twin sister. It’s quite another to stand by and let you hunt this man down and kill him too. I can’t. I won’t. You need to let me and Lonnie handle this.”
“What? Like you’ve handled it so far? This bastard has taken six other girls, and you guys haven’t so much as turned up a hair or a fingerprint. No offense, Kurt, but like I told you earlier in the station…I’m going to find this sick sonofabitch, and I’m going to take care of it, once again. You do what you have to do, but do not try to stand in my way.”
Kurt shot up from his chair, knocking it to the floor. “Damn it, Frankie! Can’t you see that revenge is what put you in this position to begin with? If you’d let me handle it…if you’d let the police handle it, Mollie would still be safe and sound at Kitty’s right now. You’re the most stubborn asshole I’ve ever known.” He walked toward the swinging door and slammed his hand into it, causing it to flap violently against the wall.
Bruno looked up from his table and over at Frankie, a silent request to let him show Kurt the way out, but Frankie just shook his head.
Kurt spun around and pointed at Frankie. “You let me do my job this time…do you hear me? I promise, I’ll find Mollie. Just stay out of it.”
Frankie knew there was no point in arguing, but he wasn’t about to agree to Kurt’s demands, either. He stood, crossed his arms over his chest, and nodded once. “I hear you, Detective.”
Kurt looked like he was going to literally explode. A dark blue vein appeared and pulsed at his temple. “Shit, Frankie.” He looked like he wanted to say more, but blew out a huff of air, turned around, and stormed out of the back room. Frankie watched as his old friend stomped through the restaurant and out the front door.
“You want I should follow him, boss?” Bruno asked from his corner.
Frankie waved him off then leaned back in his chair again. He rubbed his temples as his mind wandered back to June 30, 1978.
It was a warm, sunny Saturday in mid-summer, and Frankie and Kurt were hanging out in Frankie’s basement listening to Led Zeppelin’s album, Physical Graffiti. Robert Plant was singing “Stairway to Heaven,” and the boys were high as kites. He could still see his mother’s pale face when she came down the stairs and said she needed to talk to Kurt. Frankie knew it was serious when his mother didn’t say a word about the obvious stench of pot smoke in the air.
“It’s Addie,” Luanne Cartwright had said in a shaky whisper. “Sh-she’s…I’m af-fraid she’s…oh, Kurt, I’m so s-sorry. Your sister…they f-found her body in the river…”
The rest of her words trailed off, and the world tilted on its axis. Kurt stood, dumbfounded, apparently unable to move for the shock of the news, but Frankie had bolted past his mother, up the stairs, out the front door, and all the way to the river. He was nearly out of breath when he arrived at the top of the hill and saw a swarm of police cars with their blue and red lights pulsating through the fields. He watched as the coroner’s van drove up the embankment and past where he stood on knees that felt like soggy noodles. Frankie’s heart was in his throat, and for the first time since he was a little boy, he cried uncontrollably.
“I’ve got it!”
The shout snapped Frankie back to the present, and he looked around the room for the source of the interruption. It only took a second to realize it came from Lynx. She was waving at Frankie and smiling, which was a rarity for her.
Frankie shot up out of his seat and walked over to her table. “Did you find her?”
“Well,” she said, biting her bottom lip which was pierced with a silver hoop. “Not her, necessarily. But I found her phone’s last location. It’s right there.” She pointed a ring-clad finger at the screen. All Frankie saw was a map with a red dot in the middle and a large red circle around it.
“Where is that?” Frankie asked, his excitement mounting.
“It’s an abandoned grocery store out on Delong Road. About five miles outside the city proper. Just on the edge of the county.”
“That’s it,” he said. “That’s where she is. I’ve got to go find her. I’ve got to—”
“Hold on, boss,” Lynx said cautiously. “Remember…her phone stopped pinging last night about half an hour after she was taken. I highly doubt this is where she is now. If the kidnapper had any sense at all, he ditched or destroyed her phone somewhere near that red dot. But I’d say he kept moving on from there.”
“Still,” he said, clinging to hope, “it gives us a general direction, at least. Right?”
“It should. It’s definitely worth looking into.”
Frankie grabbed his winter coat from the back of his chair and headed for the swinging door.
“Where are you going, boss?” Lynx asked.
“I’m going to get my granddaughter.”
With a curt nod, he turned and pushed through the door. He felt a mixture of excitement and trepidation at what he might find when he reached the isolated location, but his desire to find Mollie and make Julian McAllister’s son disappear, just like his father, spurred him forward.