HDA - Living in Darkness Trilogy - Pt 2 - The Search

“Here, Mandy, Frank, look through these.” Fenton set a pile of folders on the coffee table in front of where they sat, idly flipping through the channels on the television; grateful to have finally seen something he thought he should have noticed days before – news reports about Joe’s going missing and about his cousin being the suspected kidnapper.

Nothing brought down pressure on a kidnapper like having his identity bleated all over the news reports, and this case had national coverage. Nothing was leaked about what they thought Andrew wanted to do with Joe - nobody would dare let that kind of news out of the family – but Frank hoped it would help. It couldn’t hurt to get some help from the world at large, he hoped. Frank stared blankly at the nothingness as he listened to his father and Mandy flipping pages and finally he spoke.

“What are these?” Frank asked his father as he leaned back. Mandy answered him, telling them that they had found a report from some small town called “Weston, Massachusetts ” where an Andrew Mathews owned several small businesses, including the local newspaper. She read with interest about Andrew’s so-called entrepreneurial spirit, about how Andrew donated several thousands of dollars to a local school when they needed more funding to support their music and art programs. Frank sighed and shook his head, dark hair flying around his shoulders.

“Are they all like this?” he asked his father a few minutes later, when Mandy finished off the second report from a similar small town with similar circumstances. “Is he buying up the state of Massachusetts or what?”

“Most of them,” Fenton said. “It looks like he’s making nests all over the place, as if he’s trying to be the local good guy just about everywhere. Maybe get himself some coverage in case he ever gets caught, he’ll have a thousand and one character witnesses claiming he could never do anything so heinous as steal his cousin, especially not his male cousin. Listen here.”

Fenton explained. “There’re several different newspaper clippings from the society pages in Cambridge . He’s with different girls in every one, until last year, when he’s with the same girl in every one of them. A Lindsey Parish. Here.”

The clipping he handed to Mandy had a picture of Andrew with a young woman with short, curly, blonde hair and piercing blue eyes. Mandy read the article about Andrew and Lindsey attending a local soirée hosted by MIT’s prep club.

“So he has a regular girlfriend?” Mandy asked. “Then why did he fixate on Joe all of a sudden?”

Fenton considered his words carefully.

“I think he’s been planning this for years,” Fenton said. “He’s shown aptitude toward electronics, physical engineering – frankly, he’s a genius. He graduated three years early – he’s a senior at MIT now. I think he’s been planning the whole time. He’s had the money, obviously Cathy doesn’t pay attention to how much he spends or where he spends it, if she even really cares. I think he’s been very carefully laying the foundation for what he’s wanted – Joe – for years. Mandy, you told us about the pictures, he’s been saving those for several years now, since Joe was a younger teenager.”

“Oh, God,” Frank breathed, inhaling sharply.

“Right,” Fenton said. “He could have a hundred places to hide by now, all of them in different places, maybe in these towns or maybe in a town we don’t know about yet. It’s going to literally be like looking for a needle in a haystack unless he messes up. That’s the biggest reason why we finally brought the media in on this – if we have a big enough manhunt out for Andrew himself, and pictures of both him and Joe out there, someone will have to locate him eventually. I can’t see him starving, after all.”

“What if that just makes him leave the country?” Mandy asked as she set the top file back down on the table. “I mean, he could have already gotten out of the country. They could be in Timbuktu by now for all we know.”

“That’s a possibility I wasn’t wanting to think about, Amanda.” Fenton laid his own files on the coffee table. “But we aren’t going to lose hope. I know where we’re going to start looking next. Deanna and her team have finished going over the Andiron mansion, but haven’t found anything more there to indicate where Andrew is going. She’s sending in an agent undercover at MIT to talk to the students there. They need a replacement professor for one of the classes and she has someone that’s qualified.”

“Dad,” Mandy protested. “Don’t you think it would be better if some actual kids showed up on campus? I mean, we might be able to get people to talk to us that a professor won’t. And besides, we want to help!”

Fenton sighed and Frank hoped his dad wasn’t about to say no, because there was no way he was going to sit around on his butt any longer and let Andrew get further out of reach with Joe. Frank sat up, swinging his injured leg onto the floor and challenged his father with his best sightless glare.

“It’s an F.B.I. investigation,” Fenton began. “You know how the F.B.I. is about anyone interfering with their cases.”

“Right,” Mandy agreed.

“And that’s never stopped us before,” Frank continued.

“And we’re good enough to be careful and stay out of their way,” Mandy said.

“And we’re not being left behind,” Frank finished. “He’s our brother.”

Fenton sighed. How had he raised such headstrong children, anyway? Then again, he often prided himself on his children’s ability to think for themselves, to be their own people, to do what they thought was right and to fight for their convictions. He often appreciated their tenacity, even as he tried very hard not to get an ulcer because of it.

“All right,” he said. “All right. Fine. You can go. But Frank, you miss one ounce of your medication and I’ll have your head when you get home. I’ll ground you so fast your head will spin. You’ll think you’re doing the hula in a circle.”

Frank blinked and laughed. “Sure, dad.”

“Mandy,” he continued. “You will not let him overdo. Your mother would have my head. She may anyway when she hears I’m actually agreeing to this.”

“Right, Dad. Connor and I’ll make sure he takes it easy. We’ll sit on him if we have to, and force feed him the medication. We’ll even lock him in the car. Or, worse, we’ll tell Samantha he’s neglecting his health and let her take care of it.” Frank flinched, nervously, at Mandy’s obvious delight at the thought; he could even imagine her smile, the one she smiled when plotting something nefarious.

“Are you sure Connor can go? Doesn’t he have practice?”

“Dad, he got hurt, remember? Broken ribs? No practice for four weeks? New quarterback having to take over?”

Fenton winced. “I remember the broken ribs, I just didn’t tie that into his not playing football. Is he okay? That’s not going to affect his scholarship is it?”

Mandy shook her head. “No, sir. The school doesn’t like the fact he got hurt but his scholarship is intact. He’ll be back for the last two games of the season. Besides, he cares a lot more about finding Joe than he does about football.”

Frank nodded. “I already know he and Samantha both want to go and, well, we need someone with that kind of finesse along.”

“Hey, are you saying I can’t finesse?” Mandy protested.

“I’m saying you have about as much finesse as a football player in a china stop, sister dear,” Frank grinned. “But you do have your other charms.”

“And a mean right hook,” Mandy grinned.

“And a mean right hook,” Frank agreed. “We promise we’ll keep in touch, dad.”

“You’d better,” Fenton warned, grimly.

“We will!” Mandy exclaimed. “So let’s get cracking, we have work to do.”

** ** **

A full night of rain left the lawn of the old house drenched in mud and dripping leaves from the unkempt trees. Deanna Merrill sighed as she looked down at what had been brand-new ‘New Balance’ tennis shoes. Ruined already. Why was it her job was so hard on her clothing? And why didn’t they ever show that side of life on TV shows anyway?

Deanna spent the better part of the day before and early this morning going over the grounds and the inside of the old mansion, working with a team of agents sent by the New York office, staring idly at photographs and thinking unwholesome thoughts about what she was going to do to Andrew Mathews when she got her hands on him, despite the fact that Joe Hardy was no relation of hers, and she had certain laws by which to abide. She flicked back the blonde ponytail trailing down her back as she moved slowly back inside the house again and went to find Audrey.

Her partner stood amidst piles of papers and photographs in the center of what had been the living room, her arms full of yet more photographs. Deanna took half her burden from her, and brought the photos into the dining room to set them on a clear section of the table, before she slid into a chair and pulled out the inhaler in her handbag.

“Where’d you find these?” she asked Audrey.

“Upstairs, closet inside of a closet inside of one of the bedrooms.” Audrey settled into a chair and took a sip of coffee handed to her by another agent. She thanked him before turning her attention back to her partner. “There’s all kinds of things up there, Deanna, things I don’t like and you won’t like. This kid is certifiable. He may get off on an insanity plea.”

“No way,” Deanna said. “There’s too much forethought and planning for this to get an insanity plea. You saw that dungeon down there. There’s no other word for it but dungeon. He didn’t build that overnight. The bombs in the house and on the helicopter – the kid’s going down for murder one and felony kidnapping…when I find the twerp.”

“You’re taking this one personally, aren’t you, Dea?” Audrey said. “Why?”

“I take them all personally, as you’re always telling me, Audrey.” Deanna sighed and accepted a cup of hot cocoa, thankfully sipping at it and letting it warm her. October in New York was just so much fun.

“I guess this one is because the Hardys are good people. They help people. They work hard. I’ve done some reading up on them and I don’t like the idea that one of them is missing. Yep, I’m sticking this one out till the bitter end.”

“If Daniel lets you.”

“He’ll let me,” Deanna smiled, and pulled her legs up. Ah. Warmth, it was a wonderful thing.

She chewed on a granola bar she found in her bag and sighed even more gratefully. Granola, hot chocolate – life was complete as far as she was concerned. Now, to find the kid.

“Any papers in the midst of all those pictures?” she asked Audrey. Her partner shook her head in denial, auburn hair spilling all over.

“Nothing to help, anyway,” Audrey said. “Just more signs of his obsession with his cousin. We should have a report from Massachusetts in a couple of hours. Bobby is getting ready to head to MIT to take that professorship. He’ll do a good job while he’s there.”

Deanna nodded her agreement. If any of them fit into the life of academia it was Bobby, the anti-agent. With his long, curly, auburn hair and grunge wear, he fit into all kinds of places that the rest of them didn’t. That was what made him so darned good at undercover work. Bobby, who never went by Bob and abhorred being called “Robert” was sharp as a tack, too, which helped when a case needed finesse and intelligence.

“Good,” Deanna said. “That’s got to be our next stop. I want to get search warrants to go through every place he owns between here and Cambridge, too. We’ll start with those and work our way around. I’ll call Daniel and see if we can swing a federal search warrant so I don’t have to deal with the locals. Maybe call in a U.S. Marshal or two.”

“You want to work with the Marshals.” Audrey’s voice was flat as she stared at her friend. “You really want to work with the Marshals?”

Deanna shrugged. “They can intimidate like nobody’s business. You don’t really expect me to have, say, Billy do it, do you?”

Bill Reilly, Audrey’s long-time paramour and fellow F.B.I. agent, just didn’t have the looks for intimidation. There were F.B.I. agents who could do it but Marshals excelled at it.

“Let’s see how the land lies.” Deanna plopped the pictures she scanned down on the table. “And we can ask Fenton to help us; you know he’s not going to just sit out and let us deal with finding his son. I wouldn’t if I were him and I’m not going to toe the company line that says ‘never work with civilians, they don’t know what they’re doing.’” Deanna smirked and shook her head. “I know better. And Fenton has one helluva reputation.”

“All right,” Audrey agreed. “Should we let him know we’re working with him or let him do his thing and we do ours?”

“Let him know; we may need to share information,” Deanna said.

First things first – a serious sorting of all of the files and pictures – of which there were too many – in this house. She’d set the local team loose on that; she beckoned to one of the nearby agents.

“Sort these all by types,” she said. “Younger ages, teenage years, older years. Beach, school, girls, etc. You know what to do.”

“Yes ma’am,” the junior agent said politely.

“If you find ANYTHING we should look at, let us know. I’m going to be out in the field for a bit, so call my cell.”

“Agent Merrill,” another agent appeared in the doorway. Farber, Deanna thought she remembered the name. Something Farber.

“Yeah?” Deanna asked.

Farber came into the room. “Ma’am, we just got a notice over the wire. The car we’re looking for was found in Aynesbury, Massachusetts – it had gone over a cliff…”

Farber paused for a moment, considering, then plunged on. “Ma’am, they found two bodies inside of the car - two men, matching the description of the kidnapper and his victim. Ma’am, neither of them survived the crash.”

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Disclaimer

The Hardy Boys belong to Simon and Schuster and the Stratemeyer Foundation. The authors have just borrowed them for an adventure or two. The authors promise to put the boys back when they are done with them. The authors do claim copyright to the original characters in this story. Please do not borrow original characters without express permission of the authors.