Mystery: Missing Mystery (A Suspense Thriller Mystery novella): (Mystery, Suspense, Thriller, Suspense Thriller Mystery) (Alaska Mysteries Book 1)

  MYSTERY:Missing

  (A Suspense Thriller Mystery novella)

  S. C. King

  Mystery Thriller Suspense Publications House

  MYSTERY: Missing (A Suspense Thriller Mystery novella)

  Copyright 2015 S. C. King, Mystery Thriller Suspense Publications House

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  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Thank You

  Booklist

  Chapter 1

  Stronghill, Alaska was a paradise during this time of the year. The weather was not too hot and not too cold, and there was something magical about the beauty of nature around here. The mountain was like a majestic background, on which the little town looked ridiculously small. Jake Harrison had understood immediately what had made his mother Sara Jones leave her home in New York and come here. It was a different world, but not in a bad way.

  Jake gave a last glance at the mountain, and started calling for his six year old son, Thomas, who had been playing in the garden.

  “Tommy, Tommy, it is time for dinner.” The man called, but no one answered him. Jake descended the few steps of the veranda, and looked around the garden. “Come on, Tommy, I know you are here.”

  When the little boy did not appear again, Jake started worrying a little. He made a round of the garden, and looked outside the fence. There was no sign of the boy. Dreading something bad, Jake ran into the house, and went straight to the second floor. The boy’s room was empty, as were all the rest of the rooms.

  This time, Jake had no doubt that something was wrong, so he ran down the stairs and went into the kitchen, where his mother and his wife Lora were preparing the dinner.

  “Is Thomas with you?” he asked, still hoping that the boy was somewhere in the house.

  “No,” Lora answered. “Didn’t you go to fetch him from the garden?”

  “He is not in there.” Jake headed for the front door. “Maybe he went to the street?”

  Both his mother and his wife left the food and started calling the boy. After a few minutes, his mother’s husband Richard Jones joined them, but Tommy was nowhere to be found. The village was small, but it still took some time to go through it. All four of them and a few close neighbors, who joined the search, went through the village looking for the little boy.

  “We should call the police,” Richard said, when it became obvious that the boy was missing.

  He was a handsome man in his fifties, distinguished by his calm character. Sarah had fallen in love with him from the moment she saw him, and Jake was happy for them, although right now all he could think about was his boy.

  Lora was crying desperately in the garden, still hoping that Thomas would come out from under the bushes, while Jake was trying to decide what to do next. Richard took the decision from him, and made the call to the local police station. Sergeant Charlie Wood answered the call, and said that he was on his way.

  Sarah was the one to open the door for the police officer and invite him in. Sergeant Wood thanked her, and asked for an explanation of what was going on.

  “There is something very wrong here. You should do something about it.” Mrs. Jones said to him, once they were inside the house.

  “Let’s first see what the problem is,” the officer answered.

  “Our son is missing. He was playing in the garden and now he is missing.” Jake almost cried the words. “I went to look for him when dinner was ready, but he wasn’t in the garden anymore.”

  “Maybe he wandered outside. Did you look around the town?”

  “What do you take us for? We already searched the whole town. There is no sign of the boy.” This time Jake answered angrily.

  “There is no need to get angry,” Richard stepped in. “The sergeant is only trying to understand the situation, Jake. Why don’t you go to look once more around the neighborhood and I will explain everything to the sergeant.”

  Jake muttered a sorry under his breath and walked out to search for his boy. Richard was right, but he was so worried that any delay seemed unnecessary to him.

  “Sit down Charlie,” Richard said, and Sarah offered a cup of coffee to the young officer. “Jake is my wife’s son, and he came here with his family for the summer vacation. Thomas, or Tommy, as everyone calls him, is only six years old. Here is a photo of him.” Sarah had already taken a photo of the boy from the album, and Richard offered it to the officer.

  “We were getting ready for dinner, while the boy played in the garden. The gate was closed, and the door to the living room was wide open. Jake and I were there the whole time, and the boy was coming in almost every few minutes. We have no idea what happened, but at some point he disappeared. When Jake went to call him for dinner, Tommy was nowhere to be found.”

  “I am sorry,” the young sergeant said. “I will call it in and will immediately gather a search party. I am sure that everyone will be happy to help.”

  “Thank you, Charlie,” both Richard and Sarah expressed their gratitude.

  “We need to be quick; the first few hours are of great importance in cases like this one.”

  “We will do whatever is needed to be done.”

  “Stay here and wait. If it is a kidnapping, they should call in the next few hours,” the policeman explained.

  “Okay, we will stay close to the phone,” Richard said, holding his wife’s hand.

  It would have given Sergeant Wood a great pleasure to say that it would be easy to find the boy. Unfortunately, this was not the case. Most of the similar cases ended with the child never returning to the family, or being killed. They needed to act quickly, and Sergeant Wood knew that he had to ask for help. There was no way he would be able to do everything alone.

  Chapter 2

  The small town of Stronghill was proud of its long and glorious history. According to the local historical society, there had been a settlement here back in the prehistoric period. Centuries later, the town’s territory became the hunting ground of the local Indian tribes and today, it was inhabited by about two thousand people.

  Stronghill had it all – church, schools, library, theatre, bars, fast food joints, and a cute family restaurant. Most of the families that lived here had been in the town for generations, and were very proud of that. Here worth was measured by family origin and personal character. A few families of American Indians lived in the town, while the rest still preferred the nearby reservation.

  The town had its own mayor, who had been running it for the last three years. Mayor Moore was a forty something year old man, with a big and powerful family behind him. His re-election as the Mayor
was a sure thing, and most of the townspeople were good with it.

  Richard Jones’ family, on the other hand, was one of the oldest in the town, but he and his brothers had never considered politics as a way of living. Richard had lost his wife almost ten years ago, and until he met Sarah, he never considered remarrying. He had a daughter from his first marriage who lived in Fairbanks.

  Sarah had quickly fallen in love with the town, and now was a respected member of the town’s council. As most small towns, Stronghill had only one police officer residing on its premises. Sergeant Wood was a local boy of American Indian origin, who, after finishing the police academy, was assigned to keep the order in Stronghill.

  During his one year of service, he had dealt with a few drunken men, two robberies, and a supposed killing that turned out to be a joke. The disappearance of Thomas Harrison, however, was the first serious case coming his way.

  The whole situation worried the young sergeant, not just because the victim was a child, but mostly because there were no obvious clues to what was going on. Up until now, there were no witnesses and as far as he could say, there would not be any. That would not be strange in the big city, but here in Stronghill, it was the first sign of mystery.

  How was it possible for a small boy to disappear without anyone noticing? Nothing happened here without everyone knowing. Annoying as it was, in Stronghill everybody knew everything about others. There was very little kept quiet, and in situations like this one, the townspeople were more than willing to help and assist with whatever was needed.

  Why then, after two hours of the disappearance had no one come forward? Sergeant Wood was right to worry.

  He called the case in, and informed his superiors in Fairbanks about the missing child. He was informed that they would send help, and instructed him to keep the situation under control. The sergeant followed the instructions, and made sure to keep the family informed about the situation. A group of volunteers coordinated by the mayor started searching the town and the nearby woods, but up until now nothing was found.

  Sergeant Wood waited for the reinforcements at the local police department, and used the time to write down all the information he had collected so far. It was half past 10 p.m. when a car stopped in front of the department.

  Detective Benjamin Davis was the one sent to investigate the case, something he was not very happy about. He was a big man with a certain air of paternalism, which was visible in his behavior towards his younger colleagues. Sergeant Wood had never seen him before, but he could tell that the detective was terse and liked things to be clear.

  “Well, Sergeant?”

  “There is a six year old boy missing, sir. He is the son of Jake and Lora Harrison, who came here to visit the boy’s grandmother. The town and the nearby woods have been already searched, but there is no sign of the child. No one has called asking for ransom, either.”

  Davis lifted his head from the floor he had been examining carefully. He didn’t look like he was pleased, the sergeant thought. On the contrary, he looked tired and not very well.

  “Are there any real leads on the case?”

  “All I know is that the boy has disappeared.”

  “Right!”

  “What I meant, sir, was that there is something very wrong with the situation.” The sergeant rephrased his statement. “The family is not rich or famous, they have no enemies, and what is even more suspicious is the fact that no one has seen anything.”

  “Why is that?” the detective asked in his cold voice.

  “Here everybody knows everything about everyone.”

  “Then we should speak to everyone, and find out why they have seen nothing.”

  Chapter 3

  “All right, show him in,” Detective Davis called to the sergeant and seated himself comfortably behind the only desk in the room

  Mr. Harrison settled himself in the chair that the officer drew forward and looked around, obviously displeased with what he was seeing. He looked very tired, with clothes that were all creased and tousled hair. His eyes moved all the time, searching for something that wasn’t there for him to find.

  “I am Detective Davis,” the policemen said, after expressing his sorrow for the child’s disappearing. “What can you tell me about what happened yesterday?”

  “Well...” he eyed him doubtfully. “I was hoping for a bigger law enforcement effort, but anyway all I want is for my boy to return home.”

  “Do you suspect someone of taking your son, sir?” the detective asked, as if the man never expressed any doubt.

  “No, I know no one here, except my mother and her husband. I cannot imagine that someone would ever want to harm my little boy.” Jake Harrison spoke quietly, but the worry was visible in his behavior.

  “Can you tell me everything you remember from yesterday?”

  The young man narrated the events of the last few hours, trying to remember everything that happened, and making sure to point out all details. The detective listened closely, while the sergeant took notes. The father’s statement was detailed, and the detective could see that he really was worried about his son. According to recent police statistics, most of the kidnappings of young children were done by a family member.

  “You have to find my boy. I am ready to pay whatever they ask...” the younger man was saying.

  “Not necessarily, Mr. Harrison. The paying of any ransom would depend on the circumstances.”

  “Is all this normal?”

  “No, you are right; the circumstances here are very strange indeed,” the detective agreed.

  They did not sound all that strange, thought Davis, picking up the phone. Apparently the boy had disappeared from the garden, and no one had been able to find him. The detective dialed the number of his boss, and asked to speak to him later today.

  “I think we will need more help than what I thought at the beginning.” He listened carefully at what was said on the other side of the phone and hung it up, after thanking his boss. “Mr. Harrison, thank you for your statement, if you think of anything else, please contact me or Sergeant Wood.”

  The man left after that, and the two policemen continued to interrogate the rest of the people who were involved with the case. The mother was very nervous and scared for the life of her child, and had nothing to add to what the father had already said. The detective asked Sergeant Wood to bring her a glass of water, and after a while sent her home.

  The child’s grandmother and her husband were the next to come in and finally, Sergeant Wood accompanied in a few of the neighbors.

  “The odd thing is that the garden door was locked,” Richard Jones said. “I don’t see how the boy could have exited the garden.”

  The man had obviously thought carefully about the situation, and Davis was glad to find such a logical mind in all the madness.

  Detective Davis was a very logical man himself, but he was also open to other people’s interpretations. He had long discovered that through the multiple statements he read and listened to, he was able to reach the truth. His wife called that view of her husband Ben’s way, and he always wondered why she considered his methods so strange.

  At forty two, Benjamin Davis was a good looking man, who his colleagues knew to be a very intelligent policeman. His wife Grace and his daughter Elisabeth were so used to his views that they only smiled at his theories. Sergeant Wood, however, had never seen him before, and was quite stunned by the way the interrogations were performed. The detective was asking a lot of questions that seamed irrelevant to the case, questions that the sergeant could not understand.

  The last people to be interrogated were the closest neighbors of the Jones’ family. Robert Brown and his wife Betty lived in the house facing the Jones’ garden. Mrs. Brown was a kind woman, who acted around others in a motherly way, while Mr. Brown was a cold, reserved man, who looked like the weight of the whole world was on his shoulders. Both were well liked by the townspeople, especially because Mrs. Brown ran the town’s best coffe
e shop.

  “You saw nothing then,” the detective was saying. “But maybe you saw something before the boy’s disappearance. Maybe something unusual happened before the accident.”

  “I was at the coffee shop most of the day,” Mrs. Brown said. “And when I came back home, the boy was already gone.”

  “What about you, Mr. Brown?”

  “During the morning I helped at the shop, and in the afternoon I visited a friend and then came home,” Mr. Brown said. “I was watching television when I heard the commotion outside, and went to see what it was all about. Later, I joined the search party and helped in looking for the child.”

  “My brother is the mayor of the town, and I am sure he would do everything he can to help,” the man added as an afterthought.

  “Thank you,” Davis said and stood up. “I will contact you if there is anything else I need from you.”

  The man was a little distant and maybe even scared, but the detective saw no reason to keep him detained. The mayor had already offered his help and although Davis did not like his superior attitude, he still planned to use his help.

  The rest of the day, the detective and the sergeant examined the garden where the boy had disappeared, looked at the nearby streets, and spoke to a few more people. Nothing and no one had something to add to the case. The child seemed to have disappeared into thin air, leaving no clues behind.

  Chapter 4

  The next day started with more interrogations and search parties. No one had called the family asking for ransom, and the detective was more than a little displeased with the outcome of the situation.

  He was sitting in the small police station and looking through the family members’ statements, when Sergeant Wood came in with two paper cups of coffee. The older policeman watched his younger colleague and wondered what kind of a person he was.

  Wood was much younger than him, with dark longish hair and the specific looks of the American Indians. Davis thought that his wife and daughter would find him handsome, and smiled at the direction which his thoughts took. He was going to be staying here for the time being. In order to go home, he needed to finish the case.