Tracks Read Online Free PDF

even
his mother, could reach him.  It was only when Black Jack would arrive
with updates of the investigation, that Sam would show any spark of awareness,
only to be thrown back into his torment when odds remained bleak .
    His mother, Diane, suffered
for him more than anyone did.  Trauma from the ghastly affair, losing a
daughter-in-law and a grandson, along with such drastic change in her son,
proved too much even for her.  Her son’s reaction was, at first, reasoned
to be a mourning period, a period of adjustment, but it went far beyond.  She
knew the change in him went much deeper and was much more significant than what
would ordinarily be considered grief.  She knew that, together with his
wife, his natural optimism had died, his naive trust
in people, his kindness.  The light that had always flickered in him had
been extinguished and she felt it her responsibility, her burden, to bring him
back from the dead.  When he did not react to her
efforts, her world collapsed.   She suffered a nervous breakdown and
was hospitalized for a month. She returned, not the same person, in need of
constant medication .
    It was three months before Sam
set foot in his home.  Black Jack had accompanied him.  He walked
around feeling his wife and son’s presence everywhere.  The place had not
been altered.  The police had left it as he had last seen it except for
the bloodied covers and sheets, which had been checked for traces of semen and
prints and discarded.  His brother Robert had offered to have the house
cleaned but Sam wanted it left alone.  When he reached the bedroom, he had
a momentary lapse, feeling faint again, but regained his poise, walked in and
sat on the bed, Black Jack watching from the doorway.  Sam surveyed the
room, chilled to the bone.  He looked up at Black Jack and began to sob,
silently at first, then in short gasps, cupping his face with his hands. 
Later, sitting opposite Black Jack at a nearby coffee shop, he heard the
horrifying details for the first time as Black Jack disclosed the gruesome
findings of his investigation.  Sam sat through it, feeling numb, as he
found out his wife, cuffed to the bed frame, had not only been raped but
sodomized as well before being shot from point blank range by a 9mm
Beretta.  Evidence found in the house clearly identified two men from
semen samples found on Michelle’s body and fingerprints in the bedroom. 
He thought of her there, helpless, being butchered by animals.  Feeling
totally impotent he began to sob once again.  Black Jack had paused, then offered to stop, but Sam, through his tears, urged him
on.
    Prints were found all over the
place, but had not been matched with any local or federal offenders.  The
two had obviously been careless covering their tracks, leading investigators to
believe they were foreigners but Interpol and other foreign agencies had come up
empty as well .
    There were no witnesses who
could point to a strange car or prowlers in the neighborhood at the time. 
None of the neighbors saw or heard anything out of the ordinary that night and
no random passerby had come forth with any useful information. The two men had
come in, performed their terrible deed, and were gone - presumably with little
Sammy - like ghosts in the night . The search for little Sammy had also proved fruitless. 
Local and state police, federal and border authorities had been alerted a mere
seven hours after Sammy had presumably been kidnapped but three months into the
investigation no solid identification of him had been established.  Black
Jack had gotten a few reports of toddlers fitting the description and had
pursued several of those leads with a vengeance, but came up empty each time .
    Sam managed only a few months
back at the office, getting nowhere with work.  Files piled high on his
desk, memos and phone messages were ignored as he sat in his chair unable to
allot any attention to everyday chores.  The first few days were spent
staring into