the-chillicothe-interlude.html

**admin**

I have been much taken by Eliot Moore"s excellent writing, especially his series, Fourteen.
 I began corresponding with Eliot and in talking about hhis story I mentioned I wanted to hear about Fourteen"s family, how they were dealing with this, being a father myself. On an impulse I wrote a draft chapter, an interlude to explore the idea. Eliot liked it enough to encourage me to develop and publish it. And after many helpful exchanges Eliot is now also my co-author.

If you like this story, I hope you"ll give a try reading the whole Fourteen series and will enjoy it as much as I have. If you"re a fan of the series, I equally hope you enjoy my contribution. And if you find yourself filled with questions you cannot wait to have answered well at least some of those are answered in Fourteen the main series.

 OBLIGATORY LEGAL NONSENSE
 You know this is gay fiction, erotic (not so much in this chapter), but who knows, and we"ll pretend you don"t know so.... it may be unlawful for you to read this if your mind or weenie are too small or if you are too young or from a particularly unaccepting or intolerant country. Neither I nor Nifty can take any responsibility for any decisions you make to ignore those laws -- or this warning.
 You"re going to read it anyway.
 Aren"t you?
 Enjoy!

Will you join your fellow authors and readers to support Nifty? To contribute discreetly to the continuing operations of the Nifty Erotic Stories Archive website using a credit card or other methods of donation, go to* http://donate./donate.html

The Chillicothe Interlude by Philip Marks there is after.

The Hikari-blade-sharp demarcation is a line that glows in inky dark August night; mountain-bike-overturned, Kleig-light-glaring-wheel-rim-cruelly-shining
crime-scene-taped August night.

Remy is stuck between before and after.
Her now doesn"t move, it is frozen. She exists on that knife edge.
They might as well have wound that crime scene tape around her,
tied her to one of the lampposts, preserved her as evidence.

She cannot move, forward nor back.

December 4
North Platte, Nebraska
0900 hours The strange car was gone now.
Cameron had been peering out the window all morning, at first idly, then seriously puzzled; why would two men sit in a car at the neighbor"s curb across the way since early morning? They were gone now but there was a white van, one he"d never seen on the block before, five houses away. And again across the street. Just parked. Weird.
Noah was in the backyard shooting hoops and Cameron, bored, thought about joining him but didn"t want his older brother to lord it over him again since Cam sucked at athletics generally. Besides it was icy cold this morning.

Maybe Fortnite...?
December 4
Chillicothe, Ohio
0301 hours It"s early morning, early winter, early gloom; silent sleeping sadness in a once warm Craftsman bungalow gone Chillicothe Winter cold, and not warmed one bit by the three a.m. jarring clamor of the phone. Remy Gates, hyper-vigilant, jerks gasping from sleep to awareness, heart pounding, takes not even one full ring to reach-grasp-answer hand curled white-knuckling handset from the nightstand.
"Hello?!" Breathless chest-aching reflex.
The hot ball in the pit of her stomach blares: I"m here.
"Remy. Wilson Jameson, FBI." Calm, measured, almost lethargic voice.
She remembered. He"d been here for a week or so back in early September but mostly she had been spending time with other agents. A tall, fiftyish man, serious, driven. She remembered them all; not a detail but she had gone over and over and over in the long long months after.
"I"m sorry to call you so early."
Heart sinks.
They don"t start with apologizing if it"s good news. This cannot be good news. Calls at 3 a.m. are never going to be good news.
Have they found another body? Oh God, I can"t go through that again. Please not that.
They are all gone now. FBI. Ohio BCI. Ross County Sheriff"s Office. Chillicothe Police. The street is no longer clogged with LEO vehicles, the driveway empty, the lawn and the broad porch long since cleared as they picked up their empty paper coffee cups and sandwich wrappers and rode off into the sunset. Nothing to see here. Move along folks. It"s all over.

Strawberry blonde and stress worn gray hair is not merely her fortyish due.
Sorry Ms. Gates. We did what we could. We have to get on with our robbery-murder-kidnapping-rape-jaywalking cases. Oh they said "We won"t stop looking..." but she knew better.

The news reporters ("Tell us how you feel Remy! Do you miss him? Do you have a message for him? What would you like to say to his kidnappers?" "Tell us how you feel Tell us how you feel Tell us how you feeltellus howyoufeeltellustellus... howdoyoufeel?doyoufeel doyoufeelfeelfeel ...") are gone too, thank God.

Eighty-six days after, each longer than the last, come six enigmatic words on a dormant Facebook page.
I"m ok, don"t worry, love you Not reassuring even if it was him.
If it were him.
No explanation, no location, not even a promise to return.
"That"s fine, Wilson. I"m sure it"s important."
There was so much hope then. The police returned albeit in smaller numbers.
Only to leave again.
They call every week now, to tell her they have nothing to tell her.
"Is your husband there? I think if possible it would be good to talk to both of you together."
Pressing the speakerphone button she shakily lays the handset down, speaks dully. The klonopin has slowed her a bit especially when she wakes up, she"s a little groggy, but it does help with the panic attacks and that lets her sleep more.
"Yes, Wilson; Greyson is here. Grey -- it"s Wilson from the FBI."
We are both here, what did you think? He"d be out playing golf at 3:04 a.m.? Sleeping with some other woman? Drunk in the gutter? We"re here! Together.
They say when a child is lost-dies-abducted- (not) murdered (please!) - it destroys the family. That may yet happen but she feels they have had nothing but each other to cling to, it has in fact driven them more together, at least for now.
One day, perhaps, the pain of memory; his face; will drive her away. But not now. Not yet.
Warm -- and chilled-- he had stirred when she answered the phone; he rises, fear and strength transparent to her not obvious to a casual observer. She feels the arm, strong about her, back straight; body warm; they move to the edge of the bed.
"I wanted to alert you about something."
Her heart falls to the bottom of her stomach, joins that hot ball.
So. A body after all.
Alert me that the press will be here to capture the pain.
Tellushowyoufeel...

Feel? I feel like I need to up my famotidine dosage... and maybe some fluoxitine too.
"We -- well, we just may be closing in on a location."
He might as well shove a taser in her mouth and trigger it.
She was awake but groggy before; is not the least bit sleepy now.
He had her attention in a way no one has in four months.
She is fully in the now for once.
For this instant at least she is not frozen on that Hikari-blade.
"It has taken so long because the message was posted using a secure browser set up to make it look like it was from Argentina -- which we didn"t believe of course; OTD -- sorry, our Operational Tech Division has now been able to backtrack it to the origin. It was posted from North Platte, Nebraska."

"So I need to ask if either of you know anyone in North Platte; or does he?"
Puzzled, tense, confused. North Platte? Where is that? Glances exchanged, wordless.
"No," said Grey, speaking for both of them, "We don"t think so. He certainly never mentioned it."
"We"ve conclusively tracked it to an IP address and that to a particular home."

A monotone-clipped-hypnotic-remote-professional, unreal voice speaking an incomprehensible situation.

"We wanted to talk to you before we take action, in the hopes that this might be someone you know, a more benign situation."
Jameson paused for a response. Remy shook her head silently and glanced at Greyson. His eyes met hers. They"ve already answered.
"We"ve had the house under surveillance since midnight and haven"t seen anyone in or out. We"ve done some checking and a family lives there, nothing unusual that we see so far. One promising thing, they"ve two teenaged boys, one is fifteen or sixteen, close to his age, one older about nineteen. That makes us wonder if somehow he met one of them online and went to meet him."
I don"t know what to feel, to say. Could he have run away to meet some boy in Nebraska? Run away? Never. Why would he do that? Would he not realize the terror-dread-horror-slow-dying she has had every moment since he disappeared? How could this account for that bike; the fair tokens scattered in the street, just half a block away?

"Jeremy did not run away. He did not leave. He was taken."

She doesn"t raise her voice, she doesn"t have to; don"t you challenge the anvil "cause she"ll bring the hammer.
"I"m so sorry, Remy, I don"t mean to suggest otherwise, just, it"s something we have to consider. No not runaway, but perhaps he was enticed to meet someone nearby, maybe expecting to return in a few minutes perhaps, but then taken. We agree there"s (something) nothing to suggest anything but his being taken."
Continuing quickly, forestalling further reaction; his job is to gently manage devastated men and women as much as it is to find their missing children. He"s more successful at the former and needs to be, because the endings to these are so often tragic.
"We"re waiting for eight a.m. to talk to Shane Andrews again in the hope he knows something. We won"t tell him what it"s about, just "following up on some leads, did Jeremy ever talk to you about Nebraska that you can remember?""

Slowly, carefully for this part.

"You know sometimes teenagers will keep secrets for each other; though I believe Shane has told us everything he knows. But this could be something Jeremy mentioned that Shane just didn"t attach significance to so he hasn"t remembered or thought to tell us about it. So we"ll ask him."

"We may wait to move in, we"re going to see what we can learn. If we find no evidence that Jeremy is there, that will require caution. We need information. we have warrants to tap the phones and put GPS on the cars."

"I can"t tell you everything. I can"t tell you the location in North Platte at this point, we have to keep this tightly held just to be sure it doesn"t jeopardize the..." he stumbles -- "your boy. If he is there."
One slow tear rolls down a cheek, a choking sob suppressed, tightness revisits her chest. The ball flares. This wound has never healed but the bleeding had been stopped. The dressing has been ripped off now.

The boy.
Your boy.
The victim he meant.
"I don"t want to raise hopes too much. Remy, Grey, it"s the only real lead we"ve had so far; this could be the break we need; but it is also possible that message was a hoax or prank; he hasn"t posted anything since. It"s still possible he wasn"t even there. Heck someone could have parked at the curb nearby and gotten onto the internet through the family wifi. But there is at least a chance Jeremy is there and safe or they may know where he is. I frankly wondered if I shouldn"t wait to let you know, but I felt it wasn"t fair to keep it from you. Anyway, depending on how things move it could be a day or two or just a few hours before we know something."
"I understa -- understand. I appreciate you letting us know what is going on."

She is choking on her words even though she means them.

"Thank you, Wilson."
I might rather not know. Ah, I must know.
December 4
North Platte
1030 hours 
It started out as a pretty good day, since the boiler at the high school had broken down and they had the day off, a snow day even though it wasn"t snowing.

A knock at the door from the JW"s, they didn"t want to talk to a teenager they wanted his parents. But us Kreugers are Baptists, he thinks; well sort of, it"s just, not like we go to church or anything. But Baptists, yeah.

They asked if they could come in to talk with Mom or Dad.
Dad was sleeping in and Cam knew better than to wake him up for this. "I"m sorry my Dad and Mom are sleeping..."

"Oh," said the pretty blonde, all cheerleader enthusiastic; her male companion politely bored. "That"s fine we don"t want to bother them. Can we leave a newsletter with you for them?"

"Um yaaah, sure..." slowly. "I don"t have any money."

"Oh no, sweetheart, we don"t want money! Whats your name, dear?"

"Cameron."

"Oh that"s a nice name. Cameron. How old are you?"

(Fifteen)."Sixteen." (Soon.)

"Oh that"s great! You go to North Platte? A sophomore? My daughter is going there next year."

"Um...yah...." Suddenly this seemed.... "Erm...I gotta go."

"Okay, Cameron it was nice to meet you, I hope I"ll see you again soon."

"Sure."

He put the Watchtower on the dining room table, after uncharacteristically locking the door.

They"ve never come by on a weekday before, at least he doesn"t think they have; awful damn cold weather for that; he shrugs.

Yeah, maybe some Fortnite will be fun...

 December 7
North Platte
11:15 hours

After, Cameron would think this the most awful ümitköy escort and eventful day of his life.
After, he felt guilty about not telling them everything, but it was too personal. He sure didn"t want Noah or his parents to know. And he didn"t see how it could really matter.
He told them so much more than he wanted to.
The phone rang, Dad picked it up in the bedroom. Then the door was pounding; wood splintered; the world crashed in.
"FBI!! Search warrant! Down!! Everybody down on the floor! On the floor NOW!!" Rude knee in his back. Handcuffs. Hands all over his body.
WTF???
FBI??
What the double fuck!!??
Dad came out white faced, hands cuffed behind his back, in his boxers, they sat him on the couch while Cam was hustled out the door, trying to look backwards to his parents, his hands shackled behind and a burly guy in an FBI windbreaker pushing on his arm.
"Mr Kreuger, I"m Supervisory Special Agent Norman Beck of the North Platte FBI office. We have a warrant to search your home and cars, we are going to find the evidence in here as to the whereabouts of Jeremy Gates. Please save us all a lot of time and effort by answering now. Is Jeremy here? If not, where is he?"
The FBI will not be taking any bullshit; they want that message sent loud and clear. It comes across like the flash-bang stun grenade they"d decided not to use, for which Tony Kreuger (eventually) would be very happy.
"Who the hell is Jeremy Gates?"
"That"s not a good idea, Mr Kreuger. I"m disappointed. Understand we are good at what we do. We know Jeremy has been in this house. We are going to get the whole story so you might as well drop the pretense."

"Jesus Christ! Who in hell is Jeremy Gates??"

Vein-throbbing-red-face.

"Okay play it your way, you"re just delaying the inevitable. Let"s get you some pants and we"ll all go to the FBI office."
While we rip this place apart because if it"s here we will find anything that can lead us to Jeremy Gates. Or what"s left of him.
They put Noah, his mom, his dad and him each in a separate car and Cam saw a small army moving into the empty house, the neighbors were all outside, street abuzz, eyes agog; it was out of a movie or TV. He sees police, sheriff"s, state trooper"s cars, and some that aren"t marked must be FBI. Hell one was a fucking SWAT truck!! Fucking crime scene tape going up all over the block!
And as they pulled off, they passed a TV truck headed the opposite way. His head is sort of pounding. He has no context for this, no way to process it.
OOh fuck! Oh fuck! What the fuck!? What has Noah done, -- of course it has to be him -- is he selling pot? Something he did on the internet maybe? Terror plans? Bomb threats? Is that the real reason they cancelled class the other day? ... No...Noah"s not the school-shooter type, he wouldn"t really even kid about that. Shit they don"t send the FBI for sexting do they? Is this some joke, somebody SWATing us? What the hell am I gonna tell my friends on Monday??
He"d not heard the exchange, the Jeremy Gates. He might not even remember that name. Maybe Jem would"ve kick-started his adrenal glands.
The FBI guy driving was silent but the woman was his Jehovah"s Witness and at least that part of the puzzle fell into place.
"Cameron, I"m Melissa Benson, I"m a special agent for the FBI and I apologize that we lied to you earlier."

"Um. Yeah, ok..." tentatively, plaintively: "Can you tell me what"s going on here?"

"When we get to the office I"ll explain some things to you. We have to do it there so we can record our conversation plus North Platte and Lincoln County detectives will join us. I don"t think you are in any trouble. However we do have to read your rights to you. I"m going to do that now, and again when we are at the office and on camera, so I want you to understand it"s really important for you to be honest and to answer our questions. You can tell, I think, how serious this is."

"Uhhh..." No shit.
North Platte is hardly more than a big town; it wasn"t a long ride to the sprawling bleakness of the FBI office on East 3rd Street in what passes for a downtown. The Kreuger-caravan pulled into the near empty, icy parking lot. Saturday, the place is closed. Dizzy impressions of multi-story tannish brick building, depressingly modern yet somehow outdated; dark windows, brushed aluminum doors. Past an empty lobby and into the unknown.

Cam hadn"t even known there was an FBI office in North Platte.

They took the cuffs off, gave him a coke and left him in an interview room for an hour. He was shaking, pumping his left leg nervously. Melissa came in with two very taciturn men. As promised she read his rights, it was right out of The First 48. He allowed as how he understood his rights, and didn"t want a lawyer. He did, sort of but didn"t want to look guilty (of what?) He kinda wanted his mother and dad should be there, but was afraid to ask. He couldn"t imagine that he could have done anything to create a spectacle this big. It had to be stupid Noah.
"OK Cameron," Melissa was patient, soft, "what can you tell us about him?"

She pushed over a picture of a boy, a school photo maybe. 8 x 10 glossy. This, honestly was about the last thing he expected to see, the last person he expected to be asked about; suddenly he felt naked. He couldn"t, he just couldn"t... the leg went to overdrive.
Looking wildly fearful and equally bewildered the boy took in a couple of sharp breaths, then started to speak.
"Yeah. I, I, I mean, that"s Jeremy, he was here about a month ago... with his grandpa. They were visiting our neighbors. He hung out with me for a couple hours that"s all. I mean, I don"t know what to tell you...is- is he OK?" Cameron"s voice cracked and the final words trailed off to a whisper.
Mellissa wrote on a legal yellow pad in a precise neat script. He couldn"t read it upside down except Grandpa?
"How did you meet him? Who was he visiting next door?"

And slowly Cam let it come out, a bit at a time, stringing out suitable facts, deferring the less suitable; sifting carefully before he spoke: the fucking Jardines, how the boy had come to visit after dinner over there; the sad story of his parents" death and his grandfather"s illness and how they were going to San Francisco then fly back to Boston. He didn"t know the grandfather"s name, didn"t remember it.

She circled Grandpa?
Cam has neither inclination nor any intention to talk about the more personal events of a November evening.
"So he told you his name is Jeremy Euler, then?"
"Yeah, well he said Kale Euler at first; his gramps is old and sick, his memory is kind of going. Jeremy said his dad"s name was Kale and that his grandpa sometimes gets confused and Jeremy sometimes he calls Kale, so he sorta used the name himself or let his gramps tell people and he didn"t correct him. But yeah. Jeremy."
When he said it out loud it sounded stupid. He should have known.
Had Jeremy lied to him? But the tears were real --
He didn"t tell the agents about the tears.
Or the kissing.
Or the other stuff.
"Jeremy said his grampa was dying. I think he was afraid what would happen to him with his parents dead too."
("Sometimes, sometimes, Cam, he thinks I"m someone else...")
He couldn"t remember the question, but his answer was, "Well I guess Jeremy drove the RV that night because his grampa wasn"t in any shape to do it."
"RV? What RV?"
It wasn"t Cam"s fault, they didn"t hang in the RV but a couple minutes really. No one asked about a car or truck or RV. Or anything.
"Uh they had this, uh, big RV, it was green. It was kind of old."
"Class? Make? Model? Year?"
One of the men. Demanding, urgent.
"Big. Green. RV." Meekly
Exasperated sighs.
"Big? Was it the kind you tow or the kind you drive? Did it have a shower and bedroom? How long was it?"
"Well it has to be the kind you drive doesn"t it, or Jeremy couldn"t drive it! I told you!"

Perplexed.

"Um. the kind with a pilot seat, and it has like a kitchen and TV and yeh I guess there was a bathroom and bedroom I didn"t go there. We sat in the front a little bit a couple minutes, maybe a little more late that evening. Then we got out."
A lot more RV questions he couldn"t answer. He got angry-hangry then stuck to his comforting (honest) mantra.
"Big. Green. RV." Almost defiantly. I don"t have to (can"t) answer you.

He felt a little bit empowered by that. He liked seeing the cop get pissed at him and not able to do anything about it.
He thought maybe they"d ask him something completely different and he"d still answer "Big. Green. RV." Like every time he didn"t know or didn"t want them to know.
Hours and hours later after talking some more about the Big. Green. RV. and not knowing where the plates were from, remembering to tell the Dicks about the yelling next door and again late that night and Jeremy running down the street, the old man following. The leaving (not the final kissing), and they honed in on the computer, he had let Jeremy -- if that even was his name -- he had let him use the computer to set up his iPod. So of course, they knew Jeremy had an iPod. Well, now they know.
I"m okay, don"t worry, love you.
Could the FBI tease that out of his computer?
Finally he couldn"t stand it, got angry.
"I"m done answering questions until you tell me what is going on!"
It was quiet for a minute then Melissa spoke gently.
"Cameron I understand how you feel, really I do. But we are investigating serious crimes right now, this boy"s life may be at risk; and the thing is, if we tell you things, it may affect what you remember or how you remember it, or what you tell us, completely unintentionally, it could affect what we learn, so we need to know these things without telling you anything; I promise when we are done I"ll tell you everything that I can."
They went over it and over it. He told them he had left the room for a little bit and yes, he supposed Jeremy might have gone to Facebook.
"But I don"t think he uses Facebook."
Cameron lets this latest omission (lie) hang there.
"And he hasn"t answered any of my emails."
"Emails?"
That set off another round of questioning. Another round of careful (tired) answers. So of course, they learned Jeremy had a Gmail account.
They had his laptop on the table now. He knew they probably had cloned his drive already. He was screwed.
They demanded his password. (Oh god, they"re gonna see my porn! But ...he had taken precautions in case his folks checked...or his brother, or his friends about the browsing history.)
Melisa was asking most of the questions, he found when she spoke she put him at ease. She read his mind.
"Cameron, you"re a teenager, you probably have some porn or other things that would be embarrassing on here. I promise if it is not relevant to this case we won"t tell your family or anyone not directly involved. And we can put it low priority so we can look for things that do have to do with this boy. I hope you can shorten our efforts to find anything we need. To find him. And really, you don"t need to be embarrassed, we deal with this all the time, it"s nothing new to us."
"But... I can tell you we are deeply concerned for Jeremy"s well being; we can"t find him. Anything you say might help shorten our search, let us find him. Let us protect him."
Silence. Struggling for breath.
"Oh...Um....Ah-- "
Shoulders slump in defeat.
"I do have you know some...stuff. It"s not illegal. I don"t think it is. But. But. I mean... I don"t want you to tell my parents. Because ....some of it is gay stuff. I was just curious, I mean... I don"t think there"s anything else, like; what do you mean?"
"Conversations with strangers. People who might seem to be teens but aren"t; anyone you haven"t seen live or who talked sex with you and especially anyone who tried to get you to meet them someplace...emails, texts, DM"s, Dick pics, requests for nudes; anything like that. And of course any communications from Jeremy."
"Oh wow I"m not stupid I know all about Catfishing. If somebody like that was talking I see them on cam, or I wouldn"t let it ride I"d block them. I"m not gonna send anything at all if they look fishy...um, I never talked to anybody about gay stuff. I just like -- was curious about the porn, honest."
(Very) Technically that was not a lie.
"Okay that doesn"t sound like a problem Cameron. Lots of kids are curious. Is there anything that involves Jeremy beside the emails you sent? Also have you shared anything like that with Jeremy or showed it to him or anything? Again we aren"t trying to charge you with anything, or embarrass you; but it might be important to why he"s where he is or who took him. We need to know as much as we can about this boy and about his visit."
"No. no. No I didn"t show him that stuff and well, I dunno anything about Jeremy"s sex life."
That was an actual real lie. But. It was just a little one.
The two men, he wondered which of them was the good cop and which was the bad cop. And he decided that even if his dream boy/friend had lied about something or other (pretty much everything, it was looking like), Cam wasn"t going to betray him any more than necessary. His first kiss was not going to be shared with anyone else. Anyone.
And he was looking out for himself too he admitted it...
They wouldn"t tell him anything until they"d finished asking him and asking him and asking him. And by then they knew he was innocent, believed his explanations, had the story from his mom and his brother too, he hadn"t left that much out.
They brought in some Burger King, god he was starving, he wolfed it, drank shakily, thirsty in avrupa yakası üniversiteli escort spite of the earlier coke; it was evening now. He was tired, the food was starting to make him sleepy. It has been tense and draining.
She sat next to him, shared onion rings, started talking.
"His real name is Jeremy. Jeremy Gates."
Cameron lets that hang there in the air. Jeremy (not Euller) Gates, he had known that in the first-kiss, first-tangle after.
"He was kidnapped from his neighborhood in south central Ohio in August, Cameron."
What the fuck do I say to that? The burger-bite took an extra swallow to get it down.
"You think his grandpa kidnapped him?"
She was quiet for a moment, pensive.
"Cameron, the night Jeremy disappeared from his home, his bike, his cell phone, his keys, his wallet, and everything in his pockets was found lying in the street a half block from his home as he was returning from a county fair. Even unused fair tokens. That doesn"t sound like a boy who ran away or left voluntarily does it? It doesn"t sound planned does it?"
Cameron has no words. His eyes are wider than he thought they could go. His jaw drops open. He felt a tremendous fear for Jeremy. How could this be?
"And at this point we have no clue who that man is, but we know he absolutely is not Jeremy"s grandfather, not any relation at all."

Eyes can"t get wider than Cameron"s were.
"So I think you can see why we need to find Jeremy; and you can understand that we aren"t sure why he"s doing this but we don"t really think it"s his choice. Think of the message he sent. Think of what he said to you."
"He is sick. He is dying... he needs me along right now." is what Cam thought. And the part about wanting to go home and missing his parents.
That"s when Cameron decided to tell them; at least part of it. It might matter.
"Um. There"s a couple things...I should tell you about. I didn"t think they mattered but maybe they do..."
After, Melissa thanked him, "Thank you Cameron. I know that was not easy to do. I want you to know Jeremy"s parents are alive and well and very frightened as I"m sure you can understand. They miss him too, very much. So we want to ask you to keep thinking even after you leave here, to see if you remember anything more, and call us if anything pops up. And if you hear from Jeremy, it"s vital that you let us know."
So he had told them (not) everything and was feeling pretty good he hadn"t got to the kisses, and well, the other stuff. He had not really outed Jeremy, just they knew he was thinking he might be gay... and they weren"t going to tell Cam"s folks about the gay porn.
When they finally got home it was long after dark, the fucking Jardines were gone, probably also at the FBI by that time he figured.
Christ the house looked like a tornado came through. Everything was opened, rummaged through, every drawer had been pulled out, emptied, searched under, checked for hidden compartments. Everything in every closet moved, rummaged, hell every damn pocket had been pulled out. All his clothes were on the bed, the mattress was askew. They"d looked under it and turned the box springs over and looked into the underside. Fingerprint powder was on every surface.
Dad took one look through the house and hammered a board across the front door inside for the moment. They"d use the back door until it was fixed. And he shoved a NO TRESPASSING sign in the lawn.
"Grab a change of clothes and some toiletries. Do it now."
A couple of cops were parked at the curb ("to make sure you have privacy").
"We don"t need your help. We aren"t gonna be here."
They got in Mom"s SUV and drove to the Hampton Inn, back downtown way and checked in for two rooms, one for him and Noah, one for them. Pretty sweet.
"Tomorrow we go back and clean up that fucking mess. But we all need a night"s sleep."
Everybody was freaking exhausted, so the whole family turned in, but Cam knew they"d be grinding on him tomorrow. He figured play it cool. "Jeremy and I just played some computer games, I dunno what that was all about. Ask the Fibbies, ask those fucking Jardines."
Well of course he couldn"t say it that way to his parents. But still....
"Hey dad, can we go to church tomorrow?"
His dad looked at him like he was crazy, and he couldn"t help it he broke up laughing.
"Gotcha!"
His dad looked sour a minute then he laughed too.
"Fucking FBI is gonna pay for this fucking hotel room, goddammit They"re the ones need to be in church...I"ll take them to church and read them the damn gospel!"
As Cam lay in bed, despite his exhaustion sleep eluding at first, he was glad he didn"t have to see Emma Jardine who wanted to think she was his girlfriend and was getting awkward. Well this might help clarify that split. Hell Cam should be pissed, it was old man Jardine who made all this happen!
The old man Jardine had moved weeks ago -- right after that visit, to some a nursing home or something.
Cam wondered if they"d get raided too. He cracked up thinking about all these old people proned out on the carpet.

"FBI! Get on the floor! Keep away from that cane! You lady drop the walker! Don"t drool on me!!"
Later, much later, he learned the old man had told the FBI to go to hell, ("Go Fuck yourselves!") and he lawyered up and wouldn"t talk one word. I guess those combat buddies really stick together, he thought. Jardine wouldn"t rat on his war buddy.
A fifteen year old doesn"t understand. It"s hard to budge a man who sees death in the close view mirror. Nothing else matters.
The Jardine grandkids told the FBI all about their grandfather"s "Army buddy, Doc" who had visited towing along a teenager that one night, and a stormy visit it was with lots of drinking and even more yelling, though they couldn"t understand what it was about, some war shit they were arguing about, some war, some kid with an IED, who knows, what war?
They were a little used to that from the old bastard anyway...
Of course being a Marine one of the agents quickly corrected it.
"Army, they"re mostly called "Medics" or "Whiskeys"; "Doc" is what Marines call the Navy medic, a corpsman who serves with them in combat."

"Find Jardine"s unit service records, we should be able to find his "Doc"..."
Cam finally drifted off to sleep with the image in his head of the FBI raiding a nursing home chuckling.

Tomorrow must be a better day.
December 7
Chillicothe, Ohio
Gates Living Room
2217 hours "Grey, Remy- I"m happy now to be able to fill you in on some of what we learned over the past three days. I want to thank you for your great patience while we investigated this, I know it must have been awful to just wait."
"I apologize this is going to be one hell of a lot to take in. But first things first, I have some good news, even though we haven"t found him yet, I believe we"re just a day or two behind him and that we will find him.

"And even better news, we have good reason to think he is alive and well, at least he was seen alive and well within the past three days. And there is no mistake, we are absolutely certain of that."
Remy feels a dam inside her start to break, quickly reinforces it; she must maintain control now.
"Surveillance didn"t give us any relevant information, but we knew our best chance to find him was to be patient and wait for someone to have a conversation that would enlighten us. When we got nothing like that on our intercepts, we made a decision to raid the home this morning."
"Sadly, he was not in North Platte when we moved in, he"s been gone since he posted the message in fact. But we know he did post that message. And maybe why."
"We didn"t find a lot in terms of physical evidence. To be frank we"ve also found a lot of new questions, we don"t feel we have a full grasp of the situation but I want to assure you while it"s confusing, we have not one bit of evidence to suggest Jeremy is in any imminent danger. We"ve just found a lot more questions than we started with."

He laughed deprecatingly. "I won"t kid you this is one of the strangest cases I"ve seen in over twenty five years with the Bureau."

"We believe Jeremy was in that house for only a few hours that one day, have no information yet about what happened in the three months preceding. "
She is frozen by words. Remy softly weeps, internally. She does not allow tears to trickle. Her body is not permitted to betray her.
"Now I will have a few questions for you as I lay all this out and the first is, when Jeremy was in Nebraska, he used the names Jeremy Euler and Kale Euler. I assume you have no knowledge of those names? And does the name Levi Fisher, Doctor Levi Fisher, ring a bell? As I expected. Later I"ll run some more names by you but I don"t think they"re ones you will recognize either."

"We know now Jeremy is or rather, was, traveling with a man we"ve identified as Levi David Fisher, a surgeon, aged seventy-one, from Boston, and we cannot really say how, why, or when he came to be with this person; our biggest puzzle."
"Both your son and Doctor Fisher identified Jeremy to others as his grandson, and told a tale that the parents had just died in an accident and Jeremy-slash-Kale, was traveling on an extended trip with his grandfather and would be living with him in Boston. None of that is true of course."
Remy is utterly bewildered.

This person"s grandson?
Even thinking the words leaves a bitter copper tang in her mouth; she has no idea what to think. How can she encompass that?
It has been an eternal four months since golden Jeremy, beautiful, fourteen- middle-class-privileged-sweet-clever-Jeremy has disappeared. There will never be a Gates day at a county fair again. The summer fun permanently departed with his tangerine sweetness and she knows it won"t ever return. Remy tried to override fear, deny knowing. Even recovered, if they should be so unlikely-lucky, Remy and Grey know their boy will be injured-damaged-broken-lost. Twisted-transformed? Drug addicted? Raped?
This person"s grandson??
A long pause.
"We"re not sure what is going on, and I can see you aren"t either. Bear with me, there"s a lot to tell. We"ve discovered Doctor Fisher does seem to be on a sort of bucket list trip, a last hurrah; he"s been looking up and meeting with men he served with in Vietnam, in various locations across the country. We are sure he was in Bull Shoals, Arkansas with Jeremy for some time , that"s a large recreational lake and tourist area, visiting one of his former Marine comrades."
"We are of course looking deeply into his background. We"re compiling a record of veterans from his unit in Vietnam but so far we can"t find many; it appears they suffered extraordinarily high casualties, almost every one in the unit died in Vietnam. We don"t know if that has any relevance -- but might have influenced Fisher who was the unit"s medic, he became an M.D. after the war. And we cannot imagine any connection to Jeremy, fifty years later."

"It may mean nothing more than somehow Jeremy came to meet this man, and possibly offered (asked-decided-was-forced?) or was somehow required to accompany him on his trip; but we don"t how we get from an abduction to ...that. Now, don"t let this seem ominous, Fisher has a brain tumor that is likely to be terminal fairly soon. It"s one reason why we don"t think he"s going to end up in Boston."

"If we uncover more survivors we"ll have their places staked out in case Jeremy (not Levi Fisher) shows up at one of them. As I say we are looking hard at every bit of information."

"Now, don"t let this seem too scary, Fisher has a brain tumor that is likely to be terminal fairly soon. It"s one reason why we don"t think he"s going to end up in Boston."
(And we don"t have to tell Remy that people with brain tumors can be irrational or dangerous, do we? She knows.)
"At this point we don"t have any evidence to suggest Jeremy has been abused in any way at all. To the contrary he seems to have been taking care of Levi Fisher. Just as a dutiful grandson might. It may not matter but Doctor Fisher is a gay man, one who has a good reputation in Boston. That may have no relevance at all, we just don"t know for sure. He certainly has never been arrested. Again, it"s a puzzle why they took this trip together, or came into contact with each other at all."
And then there are things it"s not time to share.
They had tracked down a couple who had visited with the pair. Jameson sees no reason to discuss the report of one of the sons who had spent some time boating with Jeremy. The young man said Jeremy had revealed he is gay. Nor is he going to talk about the other one, in Nebraska, who had heard the same thing from the same source.
Plenty of time for that later. If Jeremy returned.
Still, a motive for Jeremy"s departure, however accomplished, was starting to come into (maybe) focus. Finally.
Of course, there has been a lot of tentative putting together of those bits. Possibly gay boy, traveling with an old sick gay man, farewell tour, this Band of brothers (nearly all) the Gratefully Dead. The confluence seems far-less-than-coincidence. But what does it all mean? Still too early to know. Motives unclear. Facts unclear. No conclusions can be drawn.
"It"s been a bit of a slog but we finally traced the RV they were traveling in. Doctor Fisher bought it some twenty years ago in New Hampshire and kept it registered there, didn"t bother to reregister it in Massachusetts just renewed it in New Hampshire every year and kept it stored at an RV storage lot there. That made it a bit difficult to find since it was registered in the wrong state and used the lot address, not his."
"After North Platte, they spent several weeks at the KOA near Albuquerque and Fisher went into the hospital. In fact almost every moment urfa escort since the message was posted that is where they have been, Albuquerque."
Now, walking very delicately on these eggs, studiously neutral, picking his words with deliberate care, not making accusations or inferences that will upset the couple.
"Until two days ago."
"We interviewed a police officer who made friends with Jeremy in Albuquerque, he has been able to make a positive ID, he was concerned that Jeremy was not being supervised, was alone, but in fact several different couples had offered to be available for him if he needed help at the KOA, keep an eye on him. That"s why he didn"t notify Children"s Services. Jeremy identified himself to the officer as Kale Euler, which we have learned is the real name of Fisher"s grand-nephew who is seventeen."
Picking a path through all this was excruciating. Just the facts, ma"am.
"To be honest it"s a bit of a guess whether Levi Fisher even knows the boy"s real identity. We think so but we can"t be sure. We can"t be sure he had anything to do with Jeremy"s disappearance or abduction."
"After twenty-five days, Jeremy drove the RV to the hospital where Fisher discharged himself against medical advice. We"ve surveillance cam footage from the hospital which we will let you see; we need you to confirm that it is Jeremy though we have little doubt."
"And then we know they went to Arizona, they were sighted at the KOA near Flagstaff. And disappeared; as did the RV."

He held up his hand to ward them off. "There"s a lot more so don"t get worked up."
"While he was in Nebraska Jeremy visited for a few hours with a boy whose computer he used for part of that day. He"s a neighbor of the man Fisher went to visit, his former Marine buddy. That boy"s house is the place we raided. We"re convinced that is when he posted the message.
"This part may seem sad but I think it"s deceptively so. That boy, Cameron Kreuger, tells us at one point Jeremy broke down crying, saying he just wanted to go home," (Pulling out reading glasses and a tablet). He said "I want to go home. I miss my parents," and "I don"t know what to do."
"The Kreuger boy assumed he was speaking of the parents who were supposed to have recently died so he didn"t have any reason to see anything sinister, just a boy who had lost his parents and naturally enough was feeling heartbroken and lost."
"I would say to you, take heart, he was clearly speaking of the two of you and how he felt, and it was in that frame of mind he left his message. There"s no doubt of that."
"Let me be clear that we are not suggesting he ran away. (But it"s hard to think anything else.) I don"t know why Jeremy doesn"t return, who or what is keeping him away, but it"s clear it"s not because he doesn"t want to see you nor is he in some adolescent rebellion."
"Now, the next thing, it"s pretty important. And again we aren"t sure what to make of it. It is -- a complication."
"There"s a second reason we don"t think he"ll go to Boston."
"We have established Doctor Fisher boarded a plane three days ago at Sky Harbor Airport in Phoenix for Tan Sohn Nhut Airport, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam -- what we used to call Saigon."
Slight emphasis on these three words. "He was alone."
"We checked all other passengers on the plane. Fisher had a flight transfer at San Francisco Airport to Narita in Tokyo, we have a lot of surveillance cam footage. At Narita he made another to Tan Sohn Nhut. And we are expecting their footage soon."

"For each connecting flight, we are completely sure that Jeremy was not on any of them. No one of his description was on any of them, we"ve checked flight lists and video. Vietnamese immigration and port of entry officials are reviewing records but don"t think there is any boy through their facilities that could be Jeremy. And given his age and race he would stand out quite a bit." He reflected, "Of course bribery or smuggling can be an issue, it"s a third world country. But we just don"t think it"s possible that Jeremy is there. We aren"t leaving it to chance though."
"I have watched all available footage; and have to say that Fisher is looking a lot the worse for wear. He arrived in Saigon on schedule and we have no track of him from that point. Vietnamese officials are, at the FBI"s request, looking for him. If he seeks medical care we"ll find him for sure and we don"t think from what we learned in Albuquerque that he can go very long without a doctor."
"It"s possible (near certain) Doctor Fisher expects (intends) to die in Vietnam."
"But Jeremy is not there."
"So I know this is a pretty perplexing and mixed bag and you must feel pretty concerned. We could have a lot of different things happening, some teenage angst, some adventure seeking, maybe a desire to do a good deed for this Doctor Fisher, though it"s disconcerting we can"t figure out how or where or when they connected. Or why. Nevertheless there is nothing actually ominous, no suggestion he"s in danger as I said. We have a solid month where he"s been seen and recorded and talked to and appeared to dozens of people to be perfectly normal. Perhaps Jeremy no matter how this started out, is doing what so many have done before, trying to find himself on the road, figure out who he is.

"And if that"s it, hopefully he will be home soon."
"At this point we are absolutely considering Jeremy the victim of an abduction, but given the message, and his apparently voluntary travels with Levi Fisher, his failure to make contact with you or police, his meeting police along the way and not identifying himself, well, we don"t think he is properly seen as unwilling or a captive at this time. Of course we"ve talked with you before about the Stockholm Syndrome, and it"s quite possible that"s what is going on."

"We aren"t feeling or saying Jeremy ran away or that he doesn"t need to be rescued. So as perplexing as it may seem to you and us, we think you should just take solace from the fact that he seems to be physically well and not suffering in any apparent manner; and that he misses you and loves you..."
"But you lost him after Flagstaff." Greyson angrily interrupted. "This Levi Fisher left the country on his own. Flagstaff to Phoenix, our son....what did he do with our son??" He choked off the next words. His hand groped for Remy"s.
"Grey, I completely get your anger and fear. We are concerned and aren"t taking it for granted, but I want you to think about this: abduction murders usually happen within the first few hours, days; four months is not unheard of though it"s rare; but they don"t take a child and parade them in public and then kill them! In fact I can"t think of any case where it has ever happened. Grey, hold to the many indications that your son formed some bond with this man, that he was taking care of the man, that"s not something you see with those bad endings."

"I promise you, Grey, we are anything but complacent about it and we won"t give up trying to find him. Perhaps we can"t make sense of all this yet but for so long we"ve had no leads; yesterday we had one lead. Today we"ve got dozens of leads. We thought he might be dead, we see that he"s alive and well as of three days ago. We will find him soon, I"m (reasonably. optimistically.) confident that he"s alive, he"s well, we"re two or three days behind at most."
"Now the RV and Jeremy, we don"t know where they are," the agent conceded patiently.
"We"ve posted flyers in every bus terminal, train depot, shuttle service, and ride share facility. Officials at Sky Harbor are looking for any passenger to any destination that might be Jeremy but it"s a very big airport with thousands of flights, families, and kids on any day. We"ll issue an Amber Alert for Arizona and surrounding states by morning. Border Patrol and CIS are on the alert all along the Mexican Border for Arizona, California and New Mexico. You can be sure we"re combing every feasible place for that RV. We"re checking every RV Park, and every state and federal park and campground in Arizona. We"re flying fixed wing and helicopter surveillance and setting up checkpoints on every major highway. The police in Arizona and the Phoenix FBI office are doing everything possible to find him"
"We are currently trying to get Doctor Fisher"s phone, email, and banking records to further the search. We are identifying and interviewing his family, friends, colleagues, and neighbors. We continue to research his military background which seems involved at least in some way in what he is doing. Sadly, he took his laptop and phone with him to Vietnam which could be a bit of snag. The FBI attache in Hanoi is working hard to see if Doctor Fisher can be found, he may be quite innocent but we sure want to interview him. We are turning over every rock to find out more about him."
"And we"ve increased the reward for Jeremy"s return -- $75,000."
Another long pause, this is news he doesn"t want to deliver.
"It"s a mixed blessing, Remy, but press attention can help us a lot in getting leads and turning up the heat on any kidnapper, and indeed on whoever might have him. I don"t see a big downside to that. And... I saw how hard it was the last time but perhaps you can make an on-camera plea for his return, because it might really speak to Jeremy if he sees it and he is free to respond. And that tends to get people to call in if they know something."
"And since the Amber Alert will be out soon, you can, I"m sorry to say, expect the press to be gathering in front of your home, certainly by morning. I think it might be best if the FBI did a press conference on your lawn if you agree."
Her boy is alive. She has seen him, walking, confident, unafraid.
In the dark of the night,
late in the night,
in the cover of the night,
the fear and passing despair of the night,
the hope of the night....

Remy lets out her long deep sobs, crying out her truncated-half-aborted relief.

Greyson holds her through the long night. He will vent his own pain but not now, Remy needs him. Jeremy needs him.
"Remy do you feel?"
She is afraid to.
Her nightmare is not over.
December 8
Sunday
1000 hours AMBER Alert: AZ CA NV UT CO NM

Jeremy Gates Age 14 Abducted
1996 Luxor Winnebago Silver/Gray/Green
New Hampshire Plates FISH DOC
Last: Flagstaff, AZ Dec 4 - 5.
Monday December 9.
Columbus, OH
0700 hours GMO Seg 1 Runtime 2:00 Hillman

Good Morning Ohio, I"m Ashley Hillman and we have exciting news and big developments for you this morning in the mysterious disappearance and apparent abduction of local teen Jeremy Gates from Chillicothe last August.

In astonishing new developments over the weekend, the FBI issued an Amber Alert for Jeremy in Arizona and all surrounding states.

Jeremy went missing after attending the Ross County Fair in August.. His bike, cell phone, and other items were found on the roadway a block from his home. Since then despite the efforts of over fifty FBI agents, state, county and local detectives, in four months the only development in the case seemed to be a mysterious post on his Facebook account in early November claiming he was safe. But that message could not be traced or verified, and police sources who did not wish to be identified have said it is doubtful that it really came from Jeremy.

FBI officials now say they have determined that Jeremy was seen alive and in apparent good health five days ago at a campground in Flagstaff Arizona, and say they believe Jeremy has been in the company of a seventy-one year old Massachusetts man, Levi David Fisher, of Boston.

Police are looking for Fisher"s Silver and Green 1996 Luxor Winnebago with New Hampshire plates FISH DOC. It appears that Gates and Fisher have traveled across the Midwest and West; and stopped in North Platte, Nebraska, Albuquerque, New Mexico, Flagstaff, Arizona possibly Phoenix, Arizona as well as other unspecified points.

In an equally surprising turn of events it was revealed that Fisher left the United States without Jeremy, but authorities won"t disclose at this time when he left or where he went and acknowledge they don"t know where Jeremy is at this moment. However they do not think Jeremy is a runaway and say he may not have been with Fisher voluntarily; they are adamant that the boy did not leave the country and are optimistic that he will soon be found.

Police are asking anyone who has seen Jeremy Gates or Levi Fisher or has information about them to call the hotline number on your screen.

In addition The Terry Breen Foundation for Children in Cuyahoga County has now offered a $15,000 reward for information leading to Jeremy"s safe return home. Tips can be called in to Crimestoppers and you can remain anonymous. This brings the total rewards from all sources to $90,000.

We"ll have much more on this story, including video of Jeremy, Levi David Fisher, and the RV being sought; an interview with his parents live from Chillicothe, and special reports from our affiliates KWBN in Kearny Nebraska, ABC-15 in Phoenix and KOAT Action 7 in Albuquerque. We"ll be spending our entire show this morning bringing you as much as possible about these developments. Stay tuned.

For the other headlines of the morning, we go now to Reg Baker.
Tempe Arizona
Midday. The RV was located in a parking lot in Tempe, a few miles from Sky Harbor.

No one had checked this lot sooner because it was not an official lot, the owner ran a bootleg parking operation. Legal, but not approved by the airport. And there were tarps over the RV concealing it"s color, tags, model.

The title was in an envelope on the dashboard. It had been signed over to
"Remy and Greyson Gates, FBO Jeremy Gates."

And a post-it note was attached:
"Just in case. Tell him there are no explosives in the necklace. Never were."
The RV was towed to the Arizona Highway Patrol impound for examination.
FBI sent the bedsheets to have the semen stains tested.

-30-


If you are interested in other stories I"ve written here are some fty//gay/adult-youth/i-can-see-clearly-now.pdf