Chapter 26:
Cameras
“I wonder how Brian is getting along?” Nick said.
“We’ll find out soon. We’re almost there now,” Kevin said, pulling off onto
another road.
Nick had hitched a ride from Kevin to visit Brian. He had not seen much of him
lately. Brian had wanted to get Sammy settled in properly before he resumed his
usual life.
Kevin slowed down. “Oh God,” he whispered.
Nick looked up from his comic book and his mouth fell open. There were cop cars
all over the street outside of Brian’s house.
Nick jumped out of the car along with Kevin and both of them dashed over to the
nearest cop.
“What happened? Where’s Brian and Sammy?” Kevin demanded.
“This is a crime scene. I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask you to leave,” the
man replied.
“Brian is my cousin!” Kevin shrieked. “I want to know what’s happened!”
“I’ll deal with this,” another man said, coming over to see what all of the
commotion was about. “My name is Daniel Harsen. I’m in charge of this
investigation.”
“ Investigation? Where’s my cousin? And where’s little Sammy?” Kevin asked,
desperately.
“I’m afraid we don’t know,” Harsen replied, regretfully. “We got a call last
night from a neighbour saying there was a disturbance here. When we arrived to
see what the problem was, the front door was unlocked and there was nobody
home.”
“Cut the crap,” Nick said. “What happened?”
“We think they’ve been kidnapped.”
****************************
Kevin had tears in his eyes as he walked into Brian’s house. Nick waited
outside, trying to contact Brian’s parents and the other guys.
It was easy to see why the cops suspected they’d been kidnapped, there were
plenty of clues. A cabinet had been smashed and Kevin felt ill when he saw the
blood on the carpet. Had that come from his sweet cousin or little Sammy?
In the kitchen there was a lot of glass over the floor, as well as a pile of
sugar.
“What’s Sammy’s room like?” Kevin asked.
“The kid’s room? There’s a broken lamp but no blood. We’re not sure if the
stuff on the carpet came from one of the kidnappers or Brian Littrell. We’ll
have to send a sample off for testing,” a police officer replied.
“Anything else?”
The cop shuffled uncomfortably. “A bullet in the wall,” he said.
Kevin felt himself go numb. He imagined the terror that had flashed through
Brian’s mind. Then there was Sammy… how would a child react to a gun being
fired in their own home? At least the bullet was in the wall, though, and not,
he prayed, in Brian or Sammy.
“Where’s Tyke?” Kevin asked.
“Tyke?”
“Brian’s dog. It’s a brown Chihuahua.”
“Oh, the dog. Someone took it to the vets. He was kicked or something. Poor
thing had a broken leg.”
Kevin gulped, dreading what kind of people had kidnapped Sammy and Brian. His
eyes flickered to the blood again. He couldn’t stop the tears from falling.
“Kevin?”
He turned to see Nick. He was almost crying, though he was desperately trying
to push the tears back.
“I’m sorry,” Kevin said, rubbing his eyes. “I’m so worried about them.”
“Me too,” Nick confessed. “What do they want with them? Nothing valuable was
stolen.”
“I don’t know,” Kevin replied. “Did you get hold of the others?”
“Brian’s parents are coming up here straight away. AJ says he’ll find Howie and
meet us at the police station.”
Nick’s looked about the house in dismay. He saw a cop poking at a hole in the
wall. “Where did that come from?” he asked.
Kevin didn’t reply. He looked away.
“Kevin!” Nick said, urgently.
“A – a bullet hole,” Kevin said, quietly.
“Someone was shooting at them?” Nick asked, his eyes brimming with tears.
Kevin sad nothing but he reached out and put an arm around Nick as tears fell
down the younger man’s cheeks.
“Where are they?” Nick sobbed.
“I don’t know. But I’m sure they’ll be all right,” Kevin said, praying for
their safety.
***********************
Hours later, Kevin and Nick were joined by AJ and Howie at the police station.
Harsen said he had some news for them.
“I found some connections,” Harsen said.
“What kind of ‘connections’?” Howie asked.
“Well, I’ve been working on the accident involving Sammy’s mother Chloe and I
was called out to Sammy’s old foster home when there was a break in there,”
Harsen explained.
“I read about that,” Kevin said. “You think people were after Sammy?”
“Sammy told us that he thought him and his mother were being chased. At the
time, I thought he was imagining things. It seemed so unlikely – then we found
something. One of the tyres of Chloe’s car was flat. And there was a bullet in
it.”
There was a moment’s silence as this fact sunk in.
“Someone was shooting at them?” AJ asked, quietly.
“It looks like someone shot the wheel to stop the car. Chloe lost control and
crashed. There were other wheel marks in the ground where her car was found,
like someone had stopped beside her.”
“Could the wheel marks have come from somewhere else?” Kevin enquired.
“Well, they didn’t come from the people who found Chloe in her car, the marks
don’t match. I was told that they were from a much heavier vehicle, more like a
van. Sammy told us that a white van was chasing them.”
“So, the people were after Sammy?”
“It fits perfectly. They tried to take him from Chloe, but she tricked them by
making him hide by the road. Then, the home that Sammy was staying in was
broken into but nothing was taken. Finally, they went to Brian’s house. This
time, they got what they were after.”
“Why’d they take Brian as well, though?” Howie asked.
“We don’t know. We’re trying to put all of the clues together now but we still
don’t know who these people are,” Harsen said. “Maybe - ”
“Security cameras!” Nick said, suddenly.
“I beg your pardon?”
Nick stared at Harsen. He didn’t seem to be aware that he had spoken aloud.
“Brian has a couple of security cameras. He had them put up after Tyke was
kidnapped,” Nick said.
“We didn’t see any cameras,” Harsen replied.
“They’re hidden because someone threw stones at his last lot. There’s two round
the back and one at the front, I think. I called him paranoid when he got
them.”
“If they were switched on, then they might have recorded who took Brian and
Sammy!” Howie said.
Harsen grabbed the phone on his desk.
“I just hope they were on,” AJ said, quietly to Kevin.
***