The Storm

Copyright © 2024 Eva McDaniel.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, names, incidents, organizations, and dialogue in this novel are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

Archway Publishing

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Bloomington, IN 47403

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844-669-3957

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are

models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

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ISBN: 978-1-6657-5476-7 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-6657-5477-4 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2023924278

Archway Publishing rev. date:  08/29/2024

CONTENTS

Prologue

The Kidnappers

The Plan

The Storm

The Detective

The Caseys

The Boys

The Search

The Investigation

The Witness

The Prosecuter

The Bail Bondsman

The Inmate

The Missing Piece

The Rescue

Epilogue

Acknowledgments

To Mama

For giving me the love of books, the written word, and storytelling.

PROLOGUE

Cheryl and Mitchell Casey sat what seemed like miles apart on the front porch of their three-bedroom house in Georgia. It had been almost two months since what people were calling the big storm had passed through. The storm that launched a dozen tornadoes and wreaked havoc across the small south eastern town of Marietta. Two months since buildings were demolished and neighborhoods erased. Two months since Lucas had disappeared. Cheryl didn’t speak. She just sat and stared at the driveway. When she wasn’t on the porch, staring at the driveway, she was pacing around the house. She cried for hours until she fell asleep and then she would wake up and cry for hours again. There were days upon endless days when she never left the bed. Mitchell thought it had gotten worse since they picked up the car from police impound two weeks before. He remembered the detective at the station saying. The car was clean. No evidence of foul-play or blood. We’ll keep you informed.

He wasn’t sure if he trusted that they would find his son. He didn’t have much faith in the investigation so far because the fact of the matter was that there should have been blood. Lucas had just started little league baseball that summer. During one Saturday game, he collided head first with another player and got a nasty gash over his left eye; right at the brow line. There were stitches and blood. A lot of blood. He had taken the car to a detailer to get it out of the carpet about a week after but... There should have been blood. He told them it had been cleaned when they asked but didn’t mention the accident or the blood. Right? Was he crazy to think that? He wanted to tell them to search the car again. The truth of it was that he kept his mouth shut. He knew that his wife was a suspect in the disappearance at least in the beginning. He couldn’t take the chance that they would stop looking elsewhere and focus harder on her. He didn’t think she could either. At any rate, there had been almost no communication since the first few weeks had passed. Every day Cheryl would ask. Did they call? Is there any news? When he said no, she shrunk back into herself.

The hardest part was the not knowing. The endless scenarios of not knowing.

Friends and family came over. Cards of condolences and encouragement arrived often. They held close to their faith but he found it odd that most days the hope of Heaven could not diminish the emptiness of the space Lucas once took up.

Cheryl was disappearing, falling apart. Occasionally, he wanted to fall apart too.

Sometimes he thought that at any moment one or both of them would start screaming and never stop.

THE KIDNAPPERS

ODELL MILLER AND Tanner Hughes were an unlikely duo. Lyle Hughes-Tanner’s father-had been Odell’s friend of fifty years until he died of cancer 2 years ago. The lives of the two families were complicated and tragic.

Lyle owned a garage where he fixed cars and sold used tires. He had inherited it from his father when he didn’t come home from Vietnam. Lyle’s father died April 30 1974.

At the ripe old age of 17 Lyle took over. Even if he hadn’t been the only living son, he had a twisted foot so when all the young men in town were being drafted, Lyle stayed home. He ran the garage, married his high school sweetheart at nineteen and started having children. He and Emma wanted a house full but were told after two that future pregnancies would not be a good idea for Emma’s body so they had Wyatt in ‘78 Jocelyn in ‘81 and Tanner was a surprise seven years later. Emma decided to home school her children because she had been taught by her mother. It was not unheard of for farm families to home school because of the need to have children help run the farm. The public school sent police a few times when some do good-er learned that the Hughes children were not attending. Eventually the checkups became what one Board of Education director called a waste of time and effort. The children weren’t neglected. They weren’t illiterate and they seemed sociable for the most part.

The Millers and the Hughes’ had their first children at the same time over four years. Emma kept Caleb and Brady Miller along with her own children until each of the boys started school in first grade.

The boys wanted to be home-schooled like Wyatt and Jocelyn Hughes but Nora Miller wouldn’t hear of it. They rode the bus after school each day to the Hughes farm and stayed until Nora got off work at 4:30.

Odell Miller. Town drunk and punchline to most jokes. When things would go missing, things like a pound of meat from the butcher or melons from the produce stand outside the store, bicycles, or on a an occasion or two, ladies handbags, Odell was almost always the primary suspect. The suspicions were mostly correct and although he was never arrested, he was questioned a lot. He was for all intents and purposes - a grifter.

He was 16 when his friend Lyle’s father was killed in the war. A couple of other boys in the area were listed as missing one returned intact but only on the outside. And the Flaherty twins came back in body bags two weeks apart. Odell was ready to, as he put it, blow up some slants but the conflict ended just shy of his 17th birthday.

With little prospects in the very small town, he learned quickly how to get what he wanted by taking advantage of others. He took regular trips to the bigger city of Atlanta where he would practice his pickpocket skills. He was good at it too. He always had cash, always came back from his excursions with the latest gadgets. He had been working the system his whole life. He tried to make it honest once years before, after he met Nora.

She was full of personality. She laughed and talked a mile a minute. Her family had moved here from London and her father, once a big wig in finance, had retired to his dream of owning a working farm. He was much older than Nora’s mother and was mostly unavailable to his daughter. Nora developed a rebellious streak that drew Odell in and she didn’t seem to care that he was bad news to most of the locals.

He dropped out of high school at 17 to help with the chicken farm and the Monday after Nora graduated, they drove to Lavonia and got married. He worked at the A&P bagging groceries and she booked appointments at a little beauty shop that her mom owned.

A year later, their first child was born. She was a sickly baby but Nora doted on her. Dressed her in lace and ribbons and tied big bows around her tiny head. The baby died three months later and that was the end of the life he or Nora thought they would have. She retreated into herself. She was quiet and cried a lot.

Calen Lyle Miller was born two years year later but Odell remembered that Nora only went through the motions. She was not very affectionate to her new son. As if she couldn’t risk getting close. She didn’t laugh anymore and barely took care of herself. It’s funny what grief can do to change a person if they let it. Odell restarted his old partying ways. He lost his job at the A&P and he came home drunk too many times.

A year later they had Brady, then the year after that Nora had four miscarriages. It was almost two years before she let Odell near her.

Nine months and thirteen days later, another daughter was born. By then Odell was living a separate life. He had women on the side and was making money selling marijuana.

Nora continued to disappear little by little then one day she watched the boys get on the bus for school packed a small bag, dropped her three year old daughter off with Emma Hughes and never came to get her.

When Lyle called Odell from the garage a little past five to say that Nora had not come to pick them up, he didn’t seem to understand that his life had just been dumped upside down.

Over the next few years, Emma and Lyle helped out as much as they could trying to raise three children of their own.

Odell knew he was a lousy father even by his own standards but it turns out that excuses and alcohol can help you sleep at night no matter what you have or haven’t done.

Lyle and Emma Hughes didn’t mind having the Miller children over as much as they were. Odell gave them plenty of financial support and Emma enjoyed the noise of a house full of children. It was a good set up until Emma got sick. The children couldn’t go to the Hughes house anymore. Once Odell was in charge of his own children it was clear that they were raising themselves.

It was a hard enough life for boys but it was brutal for Odell’s daughter. She would sneak away sometimes to visit Emma but Jocelyn Hughes Emma’s only daughter wasn’t nice to her so she stopped going. She used to hide in a tree house at a nearby house that had gone vacant. She would read and pretend that she had a busy job that allowed for travel or that she had struck it rich and was touring the world. When the sun was just right, she imagined herself in a tree house in Africa. When it got cold she would be in Alaska or Iceland. Her brothers were in trouble all the time. Odell was rarely home and when he was, he was belligerent or passed out in his chair. There would be days when he wouldn’t even speak to his children. It was as if he didn’t know who they were or that they were even there.

One day some years later, Odell came home from a drug run to a driveway full of police. He thought they were there for him but soon realized there were too many. As he stepped out of his truck, he was met by the officer in charge who told him that they had received a 911 call from his daughter that her brothers were fighting. When they arrived, they found his son Brady dead in the house. They had not been able to locate his other two children. After the investigation, it was determined that Calen had shot his brother in a domestic dispute. Brady died instantly. An APB was issued for Calen. The Miller girl was not suspected of any wrong doing so they didn’t bother trying to locate her. The trauma of the event had clearly been too much for her and she simply ran away. Odell was alone for the first time since he left his parent’s house at the age of 17. He was 43 years old.

Tanner Hughes came into the world kicking and screaming. He was born with colic.

The house was always busy, there weren’t an excessive amount of life skills being taught but they were fed, clean and there wasn’t too much of a fuss kicked up when they ran wild.

Emma got pneumonia when Tanner was ten. It left her weak and unable to move around too much.

Wyatt, the oldest of Lyle and Emma’s children got arrested for breaking and entering that same year and was sentenced to prison for three years which left sixteen year old Jocelyn with the mantle of cooking, cleaning and caring for her younger brother Tanner. Lyle had to put his foot down about the extra burden that Odell’s children were to his teen-aged daughter.

Emma’s pneumonia got worse and when she was admitted to Cobb Memorial Hospital in Lavonia. That’s when the doctors found the Sarcoidosis Sarcoma. It was advanced and aggressive. She lived 18 more months.

When Wyatt was released from prison after five years. Two years longer than his original sentence because he couldn’t stay out of trouble even inside. He skipped probation and headed out west to New Mexico. He had met a guy in jail that said he could set him up stealing cars.

Jocelyn had spent the last few years of her life as a child with all the responsibilities of an adult. Tanner was fourteen and capable of fending for himself. She was resentful, restless and was ready to start her own life. As soon as she turned twenty-one, she married her longtime boyfriend at the courthouse and moved to San Diego where her new husband got stationed after boot camp.

A few years after that, Lyle got a visit from the local Sheriff with news that Wyatt had been killed in a high-speed chase with state police in Arizona.

From then on it was just Lyle, Tanner and Odell.

Tanner was the only child still living in the tiny town. He knew that soon the garage would be his. He knew how to fix just about anything but had no business sense and wasn’t the tiniest bit motivated to run the place day to day.

The majority of his teenage years were spent getting into trouble. He was never the instigator. He had no motivation for that either but he ran along with the crowd that was had a small-town restless taste for no good; until they all grew out of the phase and straightened up moved away or went to jail. Since then, he just kind of drifted along. Fixing a random vehicle now and then. He did good work but was highly unreliable. He insulted customers, flew off the handle and didn’t show up at the garage for days. Eventually most of the farmers had taken their business into the nearby towns of Commerce or Toccoa. He sold used tires but only to people who wanted to buy weed. It was a good front for that. They would bring a tire in he would fix it and tuck the stash inside for pick up. He had even started growing his own plants in the pit. It seemed to be the only thing that did motivate him.

Tanner didn’t want the garage, he didn’t want this crummy town, he didn’t want this life.

As his father’s cancer had begun to take its toll, Tanner spent more and more time at the Miller’s while hospice took care of things.

In no time at all. Tanner found himself involved in the marijuana selling. Such a small town Carnesville. Hardly anyone under the age of fifty. A lot of the people older than that had some sort of respiratory illness. A class action suit was brought against the chicken farms that supplied to big name food producers but nothing ever came of it. Plenty of younger folks looking to partake and there was plenty of interest in the areas outside of town as well.

Odell had been approached a handful of times by people who offered to sell for him to truckers or near the school but he always turned them down. He thought it best to keep outsider involvement in his enterprise to a minimum.

One of Odell’s regular customers and a friend was Garrison Buddy Dibben’s. He went simply by Bud. Bud worked in the laundry room at St. Ignacio’s Hospital. He was always broke because in addition to his drug expenses he had a gambling problem and three kids by three different women that he had to pay child support for. Since he was having a hard time coming up with the money to pay Odell, he got the idea that he could steal pills in exchange for his pot.

It’ll be easy. he told Odell one night over a bonfire and beers. They’re careless with the trays. I mean they leave ‘em sitting on the counter and they don’t recount ‘em before they pass ‘em out.

What about the cameras and the security guards? Odell questioned as he was already counting the money he could make with the more substantial product.

The cameras don’t work half the time and there is only one security guard who’s like 100 years old.

Bud and Odell ironed out the details and in less than a week, Bud started swiping pills from patients and medicine trays left unattended at the nurse’s stations.

On a crisp night in late October over their regular bonfire and booze parties, what started as a twisted joke began to brew into the biggest money maker the petty criminal had thought possible.

The night air was especially chilly and the two men stood as close to the fire as they could throwing can ups and shooting them out of the air with a BB gun. Kind of a red neck skeet shoot.

Bud mentioned that he was called to pick up a load of sheets that had accidentally been left in one of the hospital rooms. While he was stuffing the sheets into the bag, he heard two nurses chatting about a couple that had come in with a new baby and an older child. They said that the parents didn’t even seem to notice the older boy except to tell him to sit down or be quiet or tell him what a pain he was. One of the nurses said she wondered how many desperate people would gladly have him. The other nurse agreed especially considering how hard it was to adopt and they would probably be glad to pay off the parents and take the child as their own.

Maybe we should do that. Bud practically shouted in a drunken stupor. "Could you imagine how much money we could make selling a kid instead of pills?

Odell threw a half empty can at Bud’s head. Shut up with your crap. We don’t know anybody with enough money to buy a kid.

Those rich people in Atlanta would pay out the nose. But they probably have enough money for lawyers and stuff. Bud continued. I bet we could find ‘em he said rubbing the spot where the beer can had clacked into his skull.

And we don’t know kids looking for a better place to live. Not little ones anyway. Odell was annoyed with the whole stupid conversation. You gotta go now, you’re getting on my nerves. he gave Bud a shove toward the dirt and gravel driveway.

"I bet we could find them too. Bud said as he stumbled to the cooler to grab one for the road. Alls you’d need is somebody who could drive into Athens or Marietta and look for ‘em Course you couldn’t use a car anybody would know. Wouldn’t want the cops coming to your humble palace here and finding two or three kids hidden in the shed.

Bud rambled on with the story until Odell gave him another shove.

I’m going! he said as he half slid half fell into the driver’s side of his orange Barracuda.

Odell stumbled inside to his beat up recliner. After Bud drove away, the old man sat in the cluttered living room of his run down house lit only by a small lamp with a dim bulb and ironed out a different idea. A more sinister idea. And a smile crossed his lips.

***

THE PLAN

DO YOU WANT to live the rest of your life in a cold greasy garage then die like your father?

The question or maybe the tone pissed Tanner off. He wanted to tell Odell Miller off. Wanted to tell him what a crazy old fool he was but the truth is that Tanner knew exactly what his life would look like. He may or may not find some girl with low expectations, have a few kids and indeed die like his father. Weak, nearly broke and filled with dreams that never made it out of his head. Another truth that Tanner knew was that he wasn’t exceptionally bright and even less ambitious. He wasn’t even sure he enjoyed living. Despite watching his father wither away in such a painful manner, he maintained the notion that dying was easier but the thought of doing anything about it simply never crossed his mind.

It took a month of convincing to get Tanner to buy in. He had easy access to vehicles and old license plates. A handful of customers who couldn’t pay had left the cars at the garage over the years. Their intentions were to come back at some point but the money never came so the cars were abandoned. Odell filled Tanner’s head full of get rich quick notions and assured him that they were helping neglected unloved kids find better families. For some reason, Tanner was oblivious to the fact that Odell couldn’t care less about the well-being of children.

Odell agreed to wait until the cancer had won before the plan was put in motion. Bud was cut out completely. He was a hot head and had too big a mouth Odell’s liking. Although the seed had been planted by him, he was never going to reap the harvest. He was too risky.

Just a few short weeks after he buried his father, Tanner started working on a van in the closed in area of the garage while Odell worked on a bunker. He was sure they would need it but just in case it would be ready.

Odell didn’t discuss much with Tanner. He more or less told him what to do and when. He didn’t see the point in going over something that Tanner would get wrong or forget altogether by the end of the day. It was better to keep him out of the details. Less to screw up he thought.

Tanner had insisted that they only take children with no siblings. It’s too hard on the ones left behind he had said. The parents fall apart when a child is gone he explained and the other kids suffer the consequences. Odell didn’t care one way or the other. He had been doing his own research looking for families willing to make a secret purchase.

Finding the first family was surprisingly easy. They walked out of the door of the Angel’s Hands Foster and Adoption Center just outside of Bremen. The woman was crying and the man was holding her as they walked. The woman was African American and the man Odell assumed was her husband, was white.

He took the chance and approached them. He briefly laid out the story that his nephew’s girlfriend had a child. Odell portrayed himself as a poor disabled war vet that was raising the boy since the mother had died and his father- Odell’s non-existent nephew ran off. She was black and his family had turned their back on the child. The girl had no family. His nephew didn’t want to put the kid in the system but didn’t want to keep him either, so Odell had taken the boy in but he was sickly and unable to continue.

He told the lie well. He had always been good at lying and it was a convincing plot to two desperate people so they agreed and made the first payment.

Of course, there was no boy. That part was a little more difficult.

Odell and Tanner cased playgrounds and grocery stores, they followed people to their houses and watched the family dynamics.

The first one was clumsy.

One Saturday only a couple of weeks after the couple had paid their deposit.

They found the boy. When it was time Odell gave Tanner instructions.

Wait, I need to write it down. Tanner said in a whispered panic.

You aint writin’ it down stupid. Odell said with a hard slap to the back of Tanner’s head. I’m sittin’ right here. It’s a wonder you can take a dump without someone holdin’ your hand.

The child looked to be of mixed race so it fit the story and the new parents. The boy’s mother was walking from the grocery store to her car and he was trailing behind about two yards. He was having a fit and she was uninterested in helping him through it.

At first Tanner hesitated because he didn’t want a screaming kid in the back of the van but Odell explained that they were all going to put up a fuss in the beginning, until they saw that their new families wanted them.

Tanner inched the van forward as the gap between mother and child grew wider. Odell opened the side door and simply snatched the boy off his feet. Drive slow he calmly said as he slid the door closed. Tanner made his way out of the parking lot. They watched the mother as she loaded bags into her trunk. She still hadn’t noticed that the child she brought with her was gone as the van turned into the main road.

The boy was subdued, didn’t make a sound at all to Odell’s surprise and Tanner’s relief. The call was made to the waiting couple. Odell had to smooth some things out so he told them that the boy didn’t know that his mother had died. That he had been so upset about her being gone that the last thing he remembered was going with her to the store. It took a day for them to get to the meeting spot for the exchange of the boy and the balance of the payment. The child was handed over and went easily with the couple. Odell had made sure that he had filled the youngster’s head with the thought that his real mother had called them and told them to come get him because he was misbehaving. He said she had asked them to give him to a family that could love him better. The child couldn’t have been more than four or five years old.

From grab to give away the boy had not spoken and had only stayed in the dank Miller house one night. This child- four year old George Weigert the news would report a day later-was the first.

There would be more.

Tanner got his allowance and Odell hid the rest of the money. Tanner wasn’t as greedy as his partner but he was simple minded and reckless. Odell thought he didn’t possess the capacity to think before acting. That would prove to be a careless and dangerous assumption later.

That’s all I need for that idiot to go buy a fancy boat or something and blow the whole operation.

The thoughts churned in his head. He decided going forward that he wasn’t going to tell Tanner how much the payment was. He seemed content with the portion he had been given and didn’t ask for more.

Month after month they drove through towns and neighborhoods in Georgia. Undetected by preoccupied parents and unaware children. They watched and waited for the right opportunity. The right child in the wrong place. The right set of distractions witnessed by the wrong people.

The ‘operation’ had been going on for two years. It was getting harder to find new families that wanted older children but babies were too much work and trouble.

There had been a problem with the second child. three year old Conner Sheffield.

Odell gave the boy to the new parents before they made their full payment. The family had gone heavily into credit card debt taking out loans for the balance. When Odell threatened to turn them in if they didn’t make the last payment within thirty days, the couple agreed. They called Odell about fifteen days later and set up a secluded spot to meet. Odell was expecting to find a black Nissan with someone delivering $20,000. At midnight when Odell and Tanner arrived, there was no black Nissan, no money, only the boy. The couple had left him there. A sort of return. Unable to make any more payments. The marriage shaky already eventually failed and the two dropped off of Odell’s radar. They had apparently gotten rid of the burner phone and simply disappeared. Conner Sheffield had to be dealt with. Tanner handled it.

A decision was made to come up with a better place to keep the children away from prying eyes.

The bunker was a good idea Odell had decided that if they were going to keep the enterprise going that they should have somewhere besides a back bedroom in his rickety house until a buyer could be found or in case a buyer got cold feet like this one had. Tanner thought otherwise. The boy had been fine staying in the back room of the Miller house. He wasn’t going to run away. Maybe an older kid might but not his one. No matter. It was done now. He guessed that Odell was right, eventually some nosy sales person or do-gooder trying to save the occupant’s soul would wander up to the house and might see a kid in there. It was clear from the Sheffield incident that some might have to stay longer so with a little bit of the money from the sale, the bunker was made as ready as Odell and Tanner knew how. Tanner had complained about that but Odell not so gently explained that the kids couldn’t go to the new people all traumatized from being locked in a closet. Odell knew from his own upbringing, too much about childhood trauma and locked closets.

After Tanner left, Odell squatted down next to the closet and scribbled the information into a notebook and tossed it into a beat-up suitcase. One more payment and the kid was yours he sneered. He insisted on cash payments in full before delivery from then on and so far, every one of his customers since then had been willing.

Until Toby Weaver.

Toby kind of happened. He wasn’t sought out. He was rescued from a potential situation that Tanner explained no kid deserved.

There the two men were with a child but no buyer. They went back to the adoption agencies and paced around until they found them. The Dunbars. These new people seemed skittish from the beginning and Odell could tell the money was harder for them to come by. He had cut the price in half just to unload the boy but they still made all kinds of excuses for being late or short on the payments. Odell was no longer willing to rely on payment plans either but he didn’t want this to go south and end up with a five year old boy living in his buried building indefinitely.

Odell met with the husband and told him that quick meetings for partial payments were no longer acceptable. He wanted the balance by the end of the week. Geoff Dunbar knew that the story Odell spun when they first met was a lie. He hated himself for continuing to go through with it but his wife wanted a child so badly and he loved her so dearly. He assured Odell that they would get the money to him and a pick-up time was scheduled.

After that phone call Odell pulled the suitcase from its hiding place and pulled out the notebook with all of the Dunbar’s information in it. He scribbled the information and shoved the money and the notebook inside of the manila envelope. After putting the envelope in the suit case, he snapped it closed and lowered it into the wall inside the closet of the tiny bedroom still adorned with rock band posters and drawings of muscle cars. It had been his son Brady’s room up until the day he was killed and Odell only went in there because of the hiding place.

He paused briefly at the