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“How’s she doing?” Annie asked as she began boxing up the cookies.
“Well, thanks to Uncle John for being the one to find the kidnapper’s abandoned car, we were able to find her in time. It was touch and go for a bit, but Rachel says she’s good. I haven’t seen her since they brought her home from the hospital. I’m on my way there now.”
Annie Cauley was proud of her husband’s part in the rescue.
“I told him afterward it was the hand of God leading him to it,” she said, and kept boxing up cookies, then put them on the counter and rang them up. Cameron paid, then leaned over the counter to kiss her cheek as he picked up the box.
“Thanks, Auntie.”
“You’re welcome, sugar. Give them all my best.”
Minutes later he was in the Jeep and headed out of town. He passed his drive on the way up to his sister’s house, but once he arrived, instead of Rachel it was Louis’s father, Marcus, who answered the door.
“Cameron! Good to see you, son. Come in, come in.”
“Did I come at a bad time?” Cameron asked.
“Not a bad time, but everyone in this house is asleep but me,” Marcus said, and chuckled. “Louis changed his shifts to days and so he’s gone, and I’m here until he comes home in case Rachel needs something.”
Cameron handed him the box of cookies. “Then I won’t stay. I brought Lili some cookies from Granny Annie’s Bakery, but there’s plenty for everyone. Give the girls my love.”
Marcus nodded. “I sure will, but are you sure you won’t come in?”
“Ghost is in the Jeep. We’ve been at the vet and I need to get him home.”
“Is he doing okay?” Marcus asked.
“Yes. His paw is healing. It’s just hard to keep him off it.”
“Understood,” Marcus said, and waved as Cameron drove away.
***
Rusty Caldwell was packing, but her mind was already on the info she’d received and the case she’d be working. She had a file and a photo of a man named Kevin Vanzant, and a photo and a file on Jack Barton, a man who owned a campground where Vanzant was staying. Human trafficking had become a lucrative business around the world, and she’d encountered aspects of this before. But abducting children to order was horrific from every angle. It took a special kind of evil to take photos of other people’s children, assemble them catalog-style for anyone willing to buy a child, then send someone to snatch them from their beds, like shopping for food off the shelves. It was black market—under the table, no questions asked—high-caliber theft.
She kept thinking of the harrowing rescue of the toddler Danny Biggers had kidnapped, and what might have happened if he’d gotten away with her. The details in the file indicated citizen participation in the hunt, and that a member of the child’s family, an uncle, had been vital to the retrieval. She wanted to find a way to meet and talk to him without giving herself away.
Biggers had finally given a statement after his capture, but it was sketchy. He might have said something to the man in the heat of capture that would be vital to their case, but turning a conversation with the uncle into a subtle interrogation could be tricky. She needed to run it by Howard and Pickard first to make sure they hadn’t already talked to him, so she stopped what she was doing and made a call.
***
Jay Howard was at his desk when his phone rang. He frowned when he saw caller ID. Caldwell wasn’t even on-site and she was already calling? He wondered what was up.
“This is Howard.”
“I have a question,” Rusty said.
“Shoot,” Howard said.
“I got the file on Vanzant and Barton, but what about the uncle who caught Biggers? Did you interview him when you were in Jubilee?”
“No. His name is Cameron Pope, and he’s the one who ultimately rescued his niece. You’re surely not suggesting he’d be part of the kidnapping?”
“No. I was thinking more along the lines of what transpired between him and Biggers before he left him tied to the tree. If I’ve understood Biggers’s priors, he already had a history with this family. So there had to have been words between them when Pope ran him down. Right?”
Howard was silent a moment, and then he sighed. “Good catch, Caldwell.”
“Thanks. My question is about the man himself. I’d like some background on Pope before I get there. Can you get something to me today?”
