The Amber Alert is issued on Monday at 9:14 a.m. The notification is sent instantly to all broadcasters and state transportation officials. It interrupts all regular television and radio programming. The message is instantly displayed on highway signage in Georgia, Florida, Alabama, and South Carolina. In that single minute, over eighty thousand text messages are sent out with the alert, and banner ads pop up on Internet sites everywhere.
I get an email alert at 9:16 a.m. It sits, unopened in my inbox, for five hours. At 2:21 p.m. I sit down on the floor, lean against my door, and log into my email. Peeling back the top of a Savory Chicken with Wild Rice meal, I am mid-chew when I scroll down and see the alert.
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Annie Cordele Thompson AMBER Alert: Georgia
Last updated: Monday, April 23 09:14:08
An AMBER Alert has been issued in Georgia for 7-year-old Annie Cordele Thompson. Officers say Annie was last seen when she was put to bed at approximately 8:15 p.m. Sunday night. Annie is approximately 37 inches tall, with blond hair and blue eyes. Investigators have no leads at this time, but expect her to be in the vicinity of Savannah, Georgia. We need your help in finding Annie.
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There is a toll-free number listed at the bottom of the email, along with a plea to call if you have any information regarding her whereabouts. I stare at the screen for a long time. Then I reach for my cell and dial the number.
It rings five times before someone answers—a man—his voice clipped and unfriendly.
“I’m calling about Annie Thompson.”
“Yes. Please state your name.”
I hesitate. “Jessica Reilly.”
“And the number you are calling from?”
I give it to him, certain it is showing up on his screen already. My stomach feels sick, tight. This is a bad idea, a threat to my bubble, my carefully cut ties.
“What is your information?” The man’s voice is cold, expressionless.
“You need to look at Ralph Atkins. He is a plumber that lives in Brooklet, Georgia.”
“What is his relationship to Annie?”
“I don’t know that he has a relationship to her.”
“What is the connection between them?”
“I … don’t know.” This conversation is going nowhere, tumbling downhill like an out-of-control skier gathering speed. I hear the weakness in my voice and hate it.
“Why don’t you explain what you do know?” I sense the touch of kindness behind the efficient steel.
“I know that I have had multiple conversations with Ralph Atkins, in which he has been obsessive in his desire to have sexual relationships with a young girl named Annie.”
“Did he provide a last name for Annie?”
I grind my teeth. “No.”
“Why didn’t you report this to the authorities?”
“I’ve been trying to get more information—about Annie—who she is, if she even exists.”
“How long have you known Ralph?”
“I don’t know him really. He’s a client. I’m an Internet sex operator. I have cybersex with men for money.”
“And it was in one of these sex sessions that he mentioned Annie?” I’ve lost him. I can hear it in the tone of his voice, the disbelief that coats his words.
“Yes.”
“What is his address?”
I give it to him, both hope and regret flooding my body. Hope that she will be found, and regret that I won’t be able to kill the monster myself.
We end the call, and I sit on the floor and think. I had long ago lost any respect for the police, for their inability to find the truth, even when it is thrust, front and center, in their faces. My call might lead them to Ralph; it might even lead them to the rescue of Annie. But, in anticipation of their failure, I need to take action.
I open the file Mike sent three hours earlier and start to search the depravity of RalphMA35’s computer and mind. It doesn’t take long to find what I am searching for.
I receive confirmation of Ralph’s sickness in his movie and photo files. In his email, I find subscription confirmations, forum postings and email correspondence in all things pedophile. It is in his web history that I hit the jackpot. Craigslist searches for rentals. Two postings he returned to more than five times. I go back to his email account, looking for correspondence on either listing, and find a two-week long email trail, and what looks like a final conclusion—a six month lease, written in some bogus ass name. Deposit was mailed in the form of a cashier’s check, and the lease began on April 1st.
Bingo.
That night, in my childhood kitchen, surrounded by carnage—my mother dying in front of me—the screams that came from my mouth weren’t cries of mourning. They were because when I stabbed her, when I shoved that knife in, again and again, when her blood soaked my hands and hit my face, I had experienced relief. My sick, twisted soul had taken her soul; extinguished her life. My mother, the person whose shoulder I had leaned on, who had packed my lunches, kissed my cuts, and been my inspiration, was dead. I had killed her.
That long, agonized scream was for the life I had taken, both hers and mine. It was a scream for what, in that instant, I had become.
Staring at that lease, looking at an address that could possibly hold Annie, I feel woefully unprepared. It is almost laughable when I look back at the last three years. Three years of thinking about death, about me taking the life of another. And now, when the time to act arrives, I don’t have the faintest idea of how to properly go about it. My failure with Jeremy, his body easily overtaking mine, my weakness against his strength, is too fresh in my mind. Maybe I can’t do it. Maybe I will fail. But it is there, that word that has been held off for so long, in my mind as clearly as its ‘wait’ predecessor. Go.
GO.
CHAPTER 39: RalphMA35