Chapter 1
CHAPTER 1: The Yellow Paper on Interstate 80
I was staring at my own handwriting in a freezing police cruiser while two children cooked alive on the asphalt just ten feet away. I recognized the blue gel ink, the slight tear in the top right corner of the yellow paper, and the sharp, hurried way I always crossed my ‘t’s.
My lungs felt empty. The air conditioning blasted against my face, but a cold sweat broke out across my collar.
“What did you just say?” I asked the little girl.
She didn’t blink. “He said you would open the bag.”
Previously, I had pulled my cruiser over on Interstate 80 to check what I thought was an unsecured load—two heavy black contractor bags dumped by an older white van speeding away in the left lane. In the 104-degree heat, the bags were melting to the asphalt. Then one of them started to move.
I sliced the heavy plastic open and pulled out a screaming four-year-old boy and his older sister, both suffering from severe heat exhaustion. I rushed them into my cruiser to cool down. I expected the girl to be in shock. Instead, she unzipped her heavy denim jacket, reached into her pocket, and handed me a damp piece of yellow notepad paper.
It was my own grocery list, written in my empty house at six o’clock that morning.
Milk, eggs, coffee filters, batteries.
I had written this list standing at my kitchen island exactly six hours ago. I lived alone. My ex-wife had moved out two years prior, taking most of the furniture and leaving me with a three-bedroom house on Sycamore Drive that echoed every time I shut the front door. The house was locked. The alarm was set. The blue gel pen I used to write this list had been resting right next to the coffee maker when I grabbed my keys and walked out to my patrol vehicle.
“Who is ‘He’?” I asked the little girl, keeping my voice as steady as I could. “Who put you in the van?”
The girl sat rigidly in the passenger seat. Her little brother had finally stopped wailing, his head slumped against her side as the freezing air of the cruiser worked against the dangerous heat radiating from his skin.
“The man,” she whispered. Her voice was raspy, throat completely parched, despite the water I had given her. “He said you wouldn’t be mad at us if I gave you the yellow paper.”
“I’m not mad at you,” I said softly. “Do you know his name?”
She shook her head.
“What did he look like?”
Before she could answer, the wail of approaching sirens finally broke the silence inside the cruiser. Through the windshield, I watched a heavy rescue fire engine angle across the three lanes of westbound traffic. My shift supervisor, Sergeant Miller, pulled up onto the shoulder right after, his tires crunching over the gravel. He stepped out of his SUV, adjusting his campaign hat against the blinding sun.
“Harris, what the hell happened here?” Miller asked, looking at the torn, melted contractor bags still lying in the left lane.
“Not animals, Sarge,” I said. My voice sounded hollow. “Two kids. A white Ford Econoline van, older model, no visible plates. Tossed them out at sixty miles an hour and kept driving. I need a BOLO put out to every county and state unit in a fifty-mile radius. Right now.”
Before I turned back to my cruiser to follow the ambulances, I pulled out a plastic evidence bag. I carefully slid the damp, folded yellow notepad paper inside and sealed the red tape across the top.
“Sarge, I need you to log this immediately. It’s my grocery list,” I said.
Miller wiped a bead of sweat from his forehead, looking at me like the heat had finally broken my brain. “What?”
“I wrote this at six o’clock this morning on my kitchen counter. The little girl had it in her pocket. The driver gave it to her.”
Miller stared at the bag, then looked back at my face. He didn’t ask any more questions. “Go to the hospital, Harris. I’m calling the state investigative bureau.”
May you like
I got back into my cruiser, slammed it into gear, and grabbed my radio mic.
“Dispatch, Unit 42. I need a county unit dispatched to my primary residence. 414 Sycamore Drive. Have them do a full exterior perimeter check and look for signs of forced entry. Suspect may have breached the residence sometime after 0600 hours today.”
