Coincidence, thought Sheriff David Newman. Many people were called Jack or some variation like Jackson. Many parents wanted unusual names for their kids, so spelling it “Jaxon” wasn’t that strange. If he’d called the principal down at the high school, she probably would have told him of others.
Just because the name was spelled the same didn’t mean it was his Jaxon. Besides, his Jaxon would be sixteen years old, not twelve.
“Stop seeing ghosts,” he muttered to himself as he parked his unmarked black SUV in a reserved-for-law-enforcement space beside an ambulance at the emergency-room entrance. He waved to the maintenance workers salting the sidewalks and nodded a good morning to a paramedic pushing an empty stretcher out of the building.
Voters loved a sheriff who was another down-to-earth, working-class guy, same as them, not too full of himself to say hello. He made a point to smile and shake hands wherever he went. It had to be done. The key to being reelected time after time was being both likable and tough.
All it took, though, was some particularly heinous unsolved crime, a deputy captured on a cell phone being overzealous during an arrest, or some other ridiculous scandal to push open the door for some ambitious person to emerge and challenge him for the office.
The former sheriff had certainly understood that, if too late to save his job. The disappearance of Jaxon Lathan a decade earlier had brought hordes of national media to their small town. Unaccustomed to the limelight, he’d tried to explain how thoroughly they were checking every lead—knocking on doors of all known sex offenders, interviewing every neighbor, questioning teachers. The reporters who’d wanted a simple story and a bad guy to pursue portrayed him as indecisive and weak. His statement that they had no suspects and no leads was played over and over, even becoming the headline of the local weekly paper.
Wanting to take the heat off himself, the sheriff had invited his lead investigator to handle the press. David knew what the sheriff told the reporters was truthful and accurate. They were following every possible angle, even if none of them looked particularly promising. But having learned from his boss’s mistakes, David had stood shoulder to shoulder with the FBI agents in front of a swarm of cameras, confidently describing their desire to locate the ex-husband as a person of interest. Not a suspect, oh no, but he had disappeared at the same time as the missing child. They just wanted to talk to him, to find out what he knew. And that gave the media horde and the public someone else to focus on.
By the time Harold Lathan was found days later, drunk and high in a motel room with a hooker, the public was convinced he was guilty. The citizens of Miller County clamored for his head on a stake. Without any other viable suspects, David dragged him into an interrogation room and leaned on him hard, but Harold refused to confess. He couldn’t—or wouldn’t—explain where he had been or what he had been doing during the days following the boy’s disappearance. He couldn’t even remember if he had shown up to watch his sons that day like he was supposed to. Still, he steadfastly denied abducting or harming Jaxon. He would never have hurt him, he protested.
Armed with search warrants, they combed Harold’s few possessions for clues. Jaxon’s prized baseball cap was tucked under the front seat of his car. The boy was rarely seen without it, and his older brother, Connor, was sure—pretty sure—well, maybe—that Jaxon had worn it that fateful morning. When pressed, though, Connor really couldn’t remember whether he had been wearing the hat or not. Maybe it had been the day before or the day before that.
A pair of Jaxon’s underwear was found in Harold’s mobile home along with other clothes. Some of Connor’s clothes were in the trailer too. Harold admitted the boys often visited, despite the custody agreement forbidding either of them from being at his place or in his car. Connor backed him up, saying the boys often snuck over there during the day.
They needed a body. Without forensic evidence from a corpse, they didn’t have a case. Despite days of searching with dogs, they never found it.
Frustrated by the lack of evidence and needing to respond to the citizens’ cry for justice, David and the district attorney did the only thing they could do—they charged Harold with unrelated but provable crimes. Enough drugs to charge him with intent to distribute had been found in his car and home. Given his previous convictions and the suspicions of worse crimes, he went to prison.
The community became convinced that justice had been served. The district attorney became a law-and-order congressman. David ousted the former sheriff at the next election. No one other than Harold questioned the outcome.
Ten years later, a boy with the same first name with the same unusual spelling was found wandering in a snowstorm along the interstate. What if it’s his Jaxon? Where had he been? Who took him? Did Harold Lathan have nothing to do with his son’s disappearance? Were the man’s professions of innocence real? And, if so, had the real kidnapper slipped away undetected?
Stop it. This kid isn’t the same Jaxon, so think of the upside. Finding a lost kid could be a boon in an election year.
A heroic sheriff’s department rescue of a little boy during a snowstorm—a story like that could go a long way in solidifying political support. Even the television station down in Asheville would love an image of the thankful waif sitting in his hospital bed, smiling his gratitude while the sheriff modestly stated in a photogenic aw-shucks way, “Just doing our jobs.” The citizens of Miller County deserved to see an ever-vigilant, professional, and highly reelectable sheriff on their TV screens, describing the successful search and rescue.
He marched through a pair of sliding glass doors, paused to say hello to a maintenance worker mopping the hall—barely spoke English so probably wasn’t even a voter, but one never could be sure—and entered the large rectangular room housing the hospital’s emergency department. At that early-morning hour, most of the patient cubicles ringing the outer wall were empty, their privacy curtains pulled open to expose vacant beds and clean sheets waiting for the inevitable patients a snowy day would bring. Cars would collide on slippery roads, feet would slip on icy sidewalks, kids would crash sleds into trees, and people would have heart attacks shoveling snow, but the carnage wouldn’t begin until after breakfast.
Closed curtains indicated five occupied beds. A young couple in neighboring units ached from minor bumps and bruises after their car had slipped on the icy roads and into a ditch. One man loudly proclaimed he had chest pains, damn it, and he was going to sue everybody if they didn’t take care of him right now. A lady who had avoided going to her doctor three days earlier because of a lack of insurance had flu symptoms that had morphed into pneumonia, and she now faced a much larger emergency room bill.
But the fifth curtain held David’s focus. It hid a boy named Jaxon.
A waist-high counter separated the corridor from the open workspace in the center of the emergency department. Computer terminals glowed, awaiting data entry, and a bank of video screens—most connected to vacant beds and dark at the moment—displayed patient statistics. Coffeepots percolated their energy-giving substances, files sat neatly in wire racks, telephones blinked with waiting calls, and a half-eaten sandwich waited on a paper plate for its hungry owner’s return. The complainer’s voice—“I’m going to die in here of a heart attack, and none of you care!”—elicited eye rolls from a pair of nurses as it carried over the soft beeps of the few operating monitors.
A uniformed deputy leaned over the counter with his back to the entrance, talking with a young nurse. Based on her smile and twinkling eyes, David guessed she found the uniformed officer entertaining. Enthralled in the conversation, the young man didn’t seem to notice the approach of the six-foot-four-inch sheriff until he stepped behind him and cleared his throat. “Can I interrupt your chat?”
Deputy Patterson straightened and spun, his equipment belt jangling. His face blushed as he stammered, “Sir, I didn’t know you were coming here.”
Chatting with a nurse was hardly an unprofessional act, so David smiled at the young man’s flustered response to let him know he was fine. He had been young once, long ago, and would have been attracted to the nurse, too, if she hadn’t been young enough to be his daughter. Not that he saw his kids much anymore. His ex-wife and children lived in Charlotte with a new husband-slash-dad who kept steady banker’s hours and earned a salary that could pay for college tuition.
Patterson was proving to be a great young deputy with a lot of potential. His training officer had bragged about his rookie performance and recommended him, based on his military experience, for a trainee role with the SWAT team. In a small department, David knew all of his deputies and wanted to develop Patterson. “Tell me what you know.”
The deputy pulled a small notepad from his shirt pocket, flipped it open, and stared at it. He closed it again and sheepishly shrugged as his face turned red. “Not much yet. The boy was exhausted and fell asleep in my car before he could answer many of my questions. All I got out of him was his first name.”
“Jaxon? X and not J-A-C-K-S-O-N?”
“Yes, sir. ‘Jaxon with an x.’ The kid said it just like that.”
Just like my Jaxon told his first-grade teacher. But don’t get ahead of yourself. It’s just a coincidence. With a clenched stomach, David asked, “No last name?”
“No, sir. He didn’t say anything else at all. And he didn’t have any identification in his pockets, so no last name and no address.” The deputy paused, and his face scrunched in puzzlement. “The really weird part is I didn’t find anything at all in his pockets. No keys, cell phone, wallet, money. Nothing. My nephew always has crap in his pockets. What boy doesn’t?”
The sheriff waved away the question with a flick of his hand. “Walking barefoot in the snow? Did I hear that right?”
“No, sir, not exactly. No shoes or socks, but he had burlap sacks wrapped around his feet and tied with twine. He was wearing jeans and a flannel shirt. No coat, gloves, or hat. Hell, sir, the docs found he wasn’t even wearing underwear. It’s amazing he didn’t freeze his nuts off.”
David chewed on his lip. A quick check with his office during the drive over confirmed none of the neighboring states had issued Amber Alerts. No recent missing-children reports matched or even came close. Twelve-year-old kids didn’t just walk away unnoticed, but until someone reported him missing, they had few clues to his identity except what the boy told them. For the time being, that was almost nothing.
“You confirmed with highway patrol no reported wrecks in the area?”
“Yes, sir, I checked. HP handled a few fender benders in the gorge overnight, but nothing serious. No one unconscious or anything like that. No one saying they were missing a boy. Same thing on the Tennessee side. I checked with a trooper I know over there.” The man’s face reddened further as he floundered in front of the sheriff. “Well, I mean, I kind of met him last night.”
“Good thinking to reach out to him.” A young deputy, David thought, but thorough. He kept his tone gentle. Encourage, don’t discourage. “Maybe a car over the railing that hasn’t been reported?”
“I was up and down that stretch of road several times last night. Never saw a guardrail torn up or any other sign of anything like that. HP said the same thing. And the snowplow guys would have noticed.”
“Get day shift to make one more pass on the interstate to be sure. Maybe he was a hitchhiker who had to get out of a car quick. Once we can talk to him, we’ll figure out how he got there.”
“I’ll do one more sweep myself if you want before I go off shift.”
The beeping monitors counted the seconds as David shifted the conversation where he needed—to confirm it wasn’t his Jaxon and then focus on the poor kid. “Let’s get a good description prepared to send out. You say he’s around twelve?”
“I doubt that, Sheriff,” a voice called from behind. “That boy is older than twelve.”