Twisted, Chapter Two
SUMMARY: Detectives work desperately to recover a pair of missing siblings. A discovery leads them to believe that the disappearances might involve more people than they anticipated.
It had been two hours since the Locke family had reported seven-year-old Ben and eighteen-year-old Brooke missing.
Elliot, Olivia and Cragen were at the station looking at the layout of the Locke townhouse while Munch and Fin scoured the neighborhood, asking the neighbors if they had heard anything strange over the nighttime hours.
"It's a two-story townhouse. The master bedroom is on the first floor, on the far end of the home attached to the living room. Upstairs the three bedrooms are in a row," Elliot pointed at the rough sketch an officer had drawn. They usually didn't focus so much on the layouts themselves, but they also usually didn't have multiple missing people from a house. After Elliot told Cragen about Brad Locke's indifference, Cragen had immediately become suspicious of the family.
"The left bedroom is the playroom for the boys. Their parents said that they hadn't been in there for a couple of days to their knowledge, because they had been so busy. The middle bedroom is the room that Ben and Brad shared. Brad's bed is the bed in the left side of the room, closest to the door. The one window, which is double-paned, is directly above his bed. There's no space between the bed and the wall, so even if it did look like someone had come through the door, they would have had to step over Brad. Ben's bed is on the opposite side of the room, much farther from the door than Brad. Brooke was in the other room. Her window was open but her parents said that that was normal."
"Was there any signs of a struggle?" Cragen asked, staring hard at the sketch of the bedrooms and location of the beds and the windows.
"They found one of Ben's socks twisted up in the sheets, and another one just outside the door. Someone had deliberately placed a pillow and stuffed animal under the blanket to make it seem as if Ben was curled up underneath the blanket. There was also a glass of water knocked over that had been on the night stand beside Ben's bed," Olivia explained.
"And the older brother didn't hear anything?" Cragen asked incredulously.
"Well, he started to say something but his dad walked in and pulled him away," Elliot said.
"There was nothing in Brooke's room. Nothing. Nothing knocked over, no socks left behind. Absolutely no struggle," Olivia finished.
"What are we thinking?" Cragen turned to Elliot and Olivia.
"Inside job," Elliot said at the same time Olivia said, "Stranger abduction."
"Why?" Olivia demanded of Elliot.
"Liv, you weren't there when that kid asked me if he was going to be allowed to miss school. He wasn't fearful; he wasn't worried that his siblings had disappeared. He wanted to stay home so he didn't have to turn in homework. And then the dad wouldn't let me talk to him. How could he have slept through a glass of water being knocked off the table, or his brother struggling? And where was Ben when this kidnapper was fixing his bed to look like he was still sleeping there? If the guy had put him down wouldn't he have tried to cry out? To run? It doesn't add up."
"So what do you suppose happened? Mom or dad murdered their kids and the other son isn't scared of them in the least bit, either?" Olivia asked.
"I don't know the details. We've been on the case for two hours. I'm just saying that it doesn't add up. I don't know if maybe Brooke took Ben for some reason, or if one of the parents did something to Ben for some reason. Maybe Brad knows that they're safe, and that's why he's not upset. I don't know. I just don't think that a stranger walked in and took a teen-age girl and a little boy."
"Well, I think they did. The parents were obviously distraught. Maybe Brad is a heavy sleeper. It's not like that glass shattered, and it landed on carpet. And if the kidnapper had a weapon or held onto Ben with one arm, it's not hard to shove a pillow under a blanket. Maybe the guy was going for Brooke and Ben walked in. Maybe the guy was going for Ben and Brooke walked in, since she obviously never went to bed. There's a million different scenarios, and I don't think we should jump to the parents being psychotic murderers."
"No one's jumping to anything. I'm going to have to agree with Elliot for now. But, like he said, it's only been a couple of hours," Cragen interjected just as Munch and Fin walked in.
"Anything?" Cragen asked, rubbing his temples as Elliot and Olivia eyed each other.
"Yeah, actually. Neighbors to the right heard a scream from the house at around 3 in the morning. A kid from the left townhouse was sneaking back into his house at around 2:30 and said that he saw someone running across the lawn towards the house. His name is…Chad Humphries, he said it looked like a guy but that it could have been a girl with her hair up, it was too dark to tell," Munch told them, handing his notepad over to Cragen.
"Did they say what the scream sounded like? Like if it could have come from Ben or Brooke?" Cragen asked.
"Um, the neighbor-Jane van Deer-said that if she were to guess it would have been from Ben, but that she was disoriented because the scream woke her up. She couldn't really tell," Fin explained.
"So the neighbor heard a scream but not the kid who was in the room?" Elliot said, raising an eyebrow at Olivia.
"Shut up. He could have screamed once he was outside," she pointed out.
"Maybe," Cragen said doubtfully, "but for now, let's try to talk to the brother."
Munch and Fin were told to search the database to see if there were any similar cases in the area while Elliot and Olivia headed back to the house to try to talk to Brad Locke.
When they got to the Locke home, there were even more police officers there. They walked up to an officer filling out some sort of report.
"Where are the parents?" Olivia asked him. She knew that they would have a hard time talking to Brad with the Lockes hanging around.
"They're being questioned. Turns out that there was a suspected abuse complaint filed on them a couple of days ago by Ben Locke's teacher," the officer informed them.
Elliot looked at Olivia. "What'd the complaint say?"
The officer flipped through a couple of pages on his clipboard. "Um, teacher overheard Ben telling a friend that his dad told him that he was stupid because of some grade he made. She said that he often puts himself down, and once pointed to a child's low grade and called her a 'stupid ass'. When she asked him where he heard something like that from, he said his dad told his brother that. She lists a couple of other instances that led her to file the report about emotional abuse."
"Where's Brad Locke?" Olivia asked the officer. He absentmindedly pointed towards the small backyard, where the swung-open gate revealed a small jungle gym.
"Emotional abuse does not translate to murder," Olivia said before Elliot could even start.
"Come on, Liv. The kid just coincidentally vanishes a couple of days after an abuse complaint is filed?"
"I think a lot of people are forgetting that his older sister is missing as well. Why would they kill two of their kids for a complaint?"
"I don't know why these people kill their kids. All's I know is, something's weird about this whole thing."
They walked up to Brad, who was sitting on top of the slide playing a handheld game.
"What are you doing, Brad?" Elliot asked.
"Playing my DS," he answered.
"Guess you got to stay home, huh?"
"Yeah! It's great because now I bet I won't even have to do that stupid test," he grinned.
"Brad? Do you realize that your brother and sister are missing?" Olivia asked softly, a little perturbed by his indifference.
"Sure," he said, looking up at her and turning off the game. "But I know they'll be okay."
"How? Did someone say something to you?" Elliot asked.
Brad stared straight ahead for a moment.
"No. I just know. Bad things don't happen to kids who are good. And Ben and Brooke are always pretty good."
"Who told you that? That bad things don't happen to kids who are good?" Elliot asked.
"My dad. He told me that this morning before the police came because I think he thought I was upset."
"Brad…Did your mom or dad tell you not to tell us anything?" Olivia asked him.
"Nope. That's all dad said to me."
"Brad, are you sure you didn't wake up during the night? You didn't see anything?" She tried to coax him.
"No. I slept straight through the night. I didn't hear anything," Brad told them, but he looked away.
"Well, if you remember anything, you give me a call, okay?" Elliot told him, and handed him a card with his cell number on it. "Any time of the day or night. Because I know you might be a little scared right now, but it's important that we find your brother and sister."
Brad nodded. Elliot and Olivia started walking off Elliot asked one more question.
"Brad. Does Brooke have any webpages online?"
"Oh, yeah. She has a myspace and a different site, I don't remember it. Face-something. She's my friend on myspace! I'm on her top 8!" He said excitedly.
"You have a myspace? You're in the fifth grade," Elliot said incredulously.
"Sure. A lot of my friends do."
"Why does a little boy need a myspace?" Elliot whispered to Olivia as they walked off. He was thinking of his twins. Even though they were fourteen, he was still reluctant to allow them to have those pages when he knew, and dealt with, the sick freaks that tended to be on the sites.
"Why does my friend's eight-year-old daughter need a cell phone? Or her four-year-old need an iPod? Times are changing, El," Olivia responded.
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