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"We Got Shoes" is the second part of a two part story, Patrick he liked it enough that we agreed I would finish it and publish. Eliot deserved co-author credit for that story.

In Dustoff (co-published as Chapter 27) we follow the continuing story of Levi Fisher, started in Chapter 8, to follow him via Sky Harbor International Airport to an ancient temple in Vietnam, where he sets up a mysterious and moving reunion with his long lost love. I consider Dustoff the best story I"ve ever written. I hope you will like it.

Chapters 1-8 of Fourteen introduce Patrick Hunter and John Cannon. I thought they were the most interesting characters and relationship in the series (so far); and I knew readers would want to hear what became of them. In Part 1, Summer Camp Day, we learn how and where they met, why they became attached so closely.</p> In "We Got Shoes" we learn what happens to them after they exit their part of Fourteen.

While Eliot"s series is a complex and lengthy tale that takes time to engage, by design my stories are pretty much written to stand alone and be readily accessible. So if you aren"t sure about taking on the series, start with one of these and it may encourage you to jump in for that long and delicious ride Eliot is providing.

Fourteen, both the series and these extensions, is about many things, most of all about Jeremy Gates and his journey to young adulthood, and how he is shaped by the people, especially the men, he meets on that journey. I hope my modest stories will contribute to an understanding of who those people are, how they affect him, and how they became the people they are.

As I am a hopeless perfectionist, no story is ever done, revision is frequent
Thus We Got Shoes will be found in its most current version and with some
limited illustrations at https://wp.me/p3nYC8-1N3</p>
If you are enjoying the stories, please drop me a note at when you ail; I respond to all such messages but flames are ignored.</p>
If you are interested in other stories I"ve written here are some links:*</p>

</p> https://www.//gay/adult-youth/storie...uman-calculus/

https://www.//gay/adult-youth/a-fathers-love.pdf

https://www.//gay/adult-youth/i-can-see-clearly-now.pdf

OBLIGATORY LEGAL NONSENSE</p>
</p> You know this is gay fiction, erotic (not so much in this story it"s not really porn, though it involves homosexual relationships and erotic themes), 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.</p>
</p> You"re going to read it anyway. Aren"t you?</p>
</p> Enjoy!</p>
</p>
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 fty/donate.html</p>


Patrick kith and kin of bottom rack cheap motels anywhere.</p> Nor is the service any better distinguished; it rates two out of five stars according to its undiscriminating clientele. Some might well hesitate to book the place just on that basis. Then again if as fugitive from justice you are booking a room, there are some advantages: on the two sides not previously described, rising onto a hill, lay a tightly packed, nigh inaccessible thicket of stunted Beech and Sycamore, offering perhaps a slim hope of cover for an escape -- or alternatively, as good a backstop for stray bullets as anyone could hope.
Yet in this unremarkable place, today begins in a thoroughly remarkable way.
The challenges of a good night"s sleep are much more than those related to it"s unsatisfying service or unremarkable and unpromising amenities. Today is without doubt the most memorable day in Bear Trap Lodge history, distinguished as it is by the presence of the FBI SWAT team, which moved in about four a.m. and began silently removing sleepy and confused travelers from below and to both sides of Room 240, near the North end of the two story motel.
Once those rooms were empty they began moving people out of other rooms; and from any property within rifle shot of the place. The structure itself is brick-faced reinforced concrete, offering a little protection for anyone who hasn"t gotten out of the way thus making the effort a lot simpler and faster.
Units of the State Police and Sheriff"s office are stationed on the nearby Interstate and ready to shut down traffic both ways to ensure no one will become an accidental recipient of a stray round.
And in Room 240 two very tired men sleep somehow unaware of the busy and, well, unforgettable day that lay before them.
FBI Sniper/Observers consider themselves among the most skilled marksmen in any military or law enforcement organization for they possess technical skills consistent with the most elite long range shooters; they also must possess situational awareness not usually found on a battlefield. Gaining a line of sight to the room was challenging because in the present instance they had to deploy in a birch grove, on the one hand gaining direct outlook on the east face of the motel, and of Room 240, yet on the other made entry and camouflage in the words of the SWAT commander "a bitch"
October 14, 2017
Washington County
Western Pennsylvania
1936 Hours The boy"s picture was on the screen again.
Damn Justice Channel, that Adam Walsh talking. Schoolboy photo. Sometimes they"d flash that old man"s photo too but they said he"s dead.
Alice averted her eyes and continued doing her bar back setup. The rum and Bailey"s and well Vodka needed to be replenished, ice and other supplies needed for the evening shift.
But the PSA was still replaying in her head. It had been persistently there for weeks even if it was only on and off on the TV. It just wouldn"t go away.



She rooted out the remote control and switched to ESPN. She didn"t like football much but it was better. Anything that didn"t give her a headache; was better.
If I was sure it was him...
But she couldn"t complete the thought, because, if it was him, what would she do? Well at any rate she wasn"t sure it was the same kid, it did look pretty similar, a younger version. It had been haunting her for a while.
$90,000, to a woman of her station in life was a virtually irresistible reward.
Can"t just go report on that. Besides I was so drunk it"s all a dream. Probably wasn"t any pretty little teen boy at all, some half-dwarf thirty year old fucking me and I was too drunk to... anyway there were three of them... and never that old man...
And ten years in the pen is an unattractive counterweight.
It would put my kids at risk.
Fuck if I tell everything I could go to jail.
Maybe she"d call tomorrow.
February 8, 2018
Cincinnati Ohio
FBI Field Office
1022 Hours Wilson Jameson set the phone down his faced flushed with anger and frustration. Almost immediately he picked it up again and dialed his boss" extension.
"Don, Wilson here. I just heard from the lab in Washington...you won"t believe this but they found a print Chillicothe cops missed on Jeremy Gates" phone..."
March 3-4, 2018
Hershey - Harrisburg PA
The Keck
0115 Hours Keck is a millennial bar, really set up to cater to the nerds from Harrisburg University of Science and Technology and the Harrisburg Campus of Penn State, themed on the big telescope of the same name in Hawai"i. Lots of lasers and machinery rotating in its upper reaches were to make it feel like you might be inside the huge "scope.
Working a second job, John had helped remodel one of the side rooms set up to look like the mirror array floating in the midst of an unnamed nebula. That job is how he knew the place. He"d shown the crews how to assemble the mechanisms though he had to keep his mouth shut. They were ridiculous and wildly inaccurate designs; you could never hold even one of the mirror segments of The Keck with something that flimsy... It would weigh, well, 298 tons divided up by 36 mirror segments...?



He shrugged. It was a lot of weight he was sure. Besides they have to float on a couple microns of oil don"t they? That he even had a notion about microns shows his extraordinary nature. Math had never been a strong point and his impressive natural mechanical skill often was let down by a not a very rigorous first semester ninth grade education.
Daddy wanted me in the auto shop and I wasn"t going anywhere else anyway. Why stay in school?
John stood at the games room bar slowly downing a Bud Lite, instinctively assessing the crowd. It was good for the work at hand, though he thought gay bars were usually pretty shit. He"d actually had some fun at the pool table this time, and made some decent coin. Poor little college boys would have to call daddy for some more tomorrow; they"d been hustled but good.



The folding cash will come in handy if I can scare up some real cunt instead of these homos.
John was wrong. Keck had become a hangout for gay nerds, but it was just an accepting bar, nerd equality, pretty much anyone was allowed to hang out on good behavior; it wasn"t a gay bar, and the regulars would have been surprised if they could hear his thoughts.
For another thing those nerds had a lot more money than $189.
The layout of Keck was pretty simple, mostly it was just two good sized rooms set at right angles to each other, joined at the ends to form a large "L". One leg was the games room and the other the dance hall, whose floor was painted with 36 hexagons simulating the Keck Mirror Array. Running along the inside of the legs were the bars and along the outside, six different astronomy-themed rooms like the one John worked on, each appropriate for more intimate discussions or Multiplayer gaming.
At the far end of the games room an industrial rollup door led to the patio, which was dotted with telescopes for use by patrons and sometimes for informal classes on the nights set up for those interested in viewing. If there was an interesting event in the night sky they"d do a viewing night.
Thus the Keck is named for the observatory and the patio a geek draw though lots of normal everyday folk liked to sit out under the stars and down a beer or two. Well not tonight, early March, it was about twenty degrees, windy, damp, and a dusting of snow lay on the tables. The scopes were all in their protective covers in a store room just now.
They must insulate the walls or have baffles or something plus those curtains to keep the noise down no other way to have the dance floor so close to the rest...
This place was big compared to what you usually see in a smallish town like Hershey. Well to be fair it was half-ways toward Harrisburg, five miles out of center Hershey, a similar distance from central Harrisburg. Good location, low cost and still convenient for the college kids.
Maybe we should move over here closer to Harrisburg.....?
Nah, too expensive ... and we"d stand out too much.
The dance floor wasn"t ever going to be his thing nor Patrick"s for that matter. Too much noise, too fruity. The noise made it impossible to really get down to work, and they didn"t want fruity queers, they wanted a different sort. Well mostly. A couple of the hapless stick-meisters might have qualified but none showed the right sort of interest.
Patrick was working the hallway outside the East men"s room. His tall blonde masculine looks and tight body were a good draw, he could pretty much pick any gay guy he wanted. He didn"t want men though; Patrick"s fantasy life was pretty specific. He would have told you he was no pedophile, he didn"t find boys attractive at all. But when it wasn"t women it had to be men and when it wasn"t men it... he needed young guys, ones that could pass for underage, the guys who gave off the innocent vibe.
Role playing was enough most of the time though. He"d learned how to put the proposition, over the past four years, to be effective, he could close the deal especially if they"d had a few.
This evening he was working a young blonde, a kid who must have a fake ID; wasn"t more than sixteen maybe younger. Lots of young kids came in to the dance hall and then got boozed up at the expense of the older fags; Patrick would have roofied them if he could.
But he wanted them awake eventually.
As John walked up Pat gave him a quick wave-off so he went past the pair into the men"s room.
"So if this happens, what time do you have to be home?"
"Oh, uh, no problem I can be out all night, nobody will miss me tonight.-- uh," he fumbled, "I just have to let my roommate know..." Patrick thought that was a lie.
"Great. Because, you know, this kind of thing takes some time to do right, you don"t rush this kind of thing." The kid nodded as if he knew. Pat"s voice dropped, "If the toys come out they all come out, if they don"t none of them do... You like ropes or cuffs?"
"Oh either one would be OK I guess. I"ve only done this kinda stuff with my boyfriend when we were in high school just...y"know messing around really but, you know, it"s pretty hot." The boy licked his lips, then decided to add, "Like you are," and offered what he thought was a seductive smile.
Patrick laughed inside. This little faggot is in for a big surprise tonight. He liked looking into this naive boy"s eyes, see his reckless enthusiasm to explore.
"It"ll be intense. And hot." Oh yes, hot it will be. He didn"t say that out out loud.
"Look, if we do this, you have to commit to it, you know, it"s a bummer for everybody if you back out."
"Well...I mean, I won"t, I"ve read about this and fantasized a lot, I"ll go with it as long as, I mean, nothing that..." the boy seemed ümitköy escort tongue-tied, "...I mean, no marks, you know, that won"t heal in a day or so, by Monday..." he looked questioningly into Pat"s baby blues and got lost on a little haze of alcohol and lust.
"Oh don"t worry, I know how to do it. A little pain, a lot of pleasure, can"t say no marks but nothing that will last."
"Yeah and I get a safe word, right? That"s how it works?"?
?"Sure does."
"OK. I mean, I"m so hard I can hardly stand still, Paul," the young boy said. He was tipsy, swaying a little.
?"All right we got to wait for my cousin to get out of the john," Patrick replied with nonchalance.
"Cousin...is he....I mean will he...."
"Yeah, Alan, it"s his place, and his toys, you know? It"s okay, Jerry"s a pretty hot guy and he"ll give us both a good time. You"re okay with that aren"t you?" Patrick moved a little closer put his hip against the boy"s, slid an arm over his shoulder seductively, then tweaked the tip of the mesmerized kid"s nipple. They boy melted into the attractive, very masculine man, who looked the part of a college student though he had never said that he was...
And John, almost on cue stepped in front of young Alan, not smiling -- but not scowling, looking serious and -- a little dangerous. So...strong and rough looking, and very very sexy...and the deal was sealed.
"Let"s go, our place is the other side of Hershey, why don"t you two get acquainted in the back seat while I drive," said John.
March 17, 2018
Hershey, PA
Keystone Gardens Apartments
2315 Hours John was done with Pat for the third time tonight. He liked to call him Patty when they did this, it happened, Patrick loved/hated it for the humiliation.
Fact is that this was starting to bother John because he knew it meant a time was approaching when Patrick would erase these encounters, overwrite them, cancel them out. And it was the thing John disliked. Ever since that first damned kid in San Diego, fuck what a panic it was when he started screaming for help and he had had to...
This meant that soon Patrick must go hunting again, Patrick needed a new boy.
And if Pat did then John would have to cleanup after.
When he finished his fourth, John was sated, at least for the moment; he started smoking a joint and let Pat fall asleep next to him. Once more maybe and Pat would go to his own bed in his own room for whatever was left of the night. Five was sort of a magic number for Patrick.
John could relax a little. He did this for Patrick, not because he liked the sex with guys. He just wanted Pat to feel good and safe.
John didn"t care for sex with boys. He never talked about it with anyone, not even Patrick. But he would have told you, he didn"t like boys, he"d do men in the right situation but really he was just filling up the hole the assholes had burned into and through Patrick, never could get full, that boy. Like in juvie, he did it but it wasn"t his thing, he wasn"t a fag and definitely wasn"t a boy lover -- you don"t want that jacket in prison.
When they did the bar guys he liked that because it was definitely hot, stuff you couldn"t hardly do that with women, and hell they practically begged for it, the goddam homos. Just had to have a place where they could scream, you could work them over all night.
But most of all because it kept Patrick from doing something dangerous. Staved it off.
The kids, he understood what Pat got out of it, he just didn"t like it for himself. He knew Pat wasn"t really a kiddy fucker either, he wasn"t picking them for those adolescent bodies, what he was doing though, that had to happen with a boy. They had to find someone innocent to make it work...besides John figured boys, not little boys, adolescent boys, they were all ready for sex and it was just a question of who got to do what. He grinned to himself remembering how smooth Fourteen"s little round buns had been.
That kid he liked what we gave him, but then we didn"t really get rough with him. After four days of fucking he was pretty sore though.
And in juvie, well there weren"t alternatives, were there? You wanted sex you took it from the weak boys. Just how it is.
It was the thing Patrick needed that worried him. No judgments! But he didn"t just want sex, he wanted to make up for what happened to him in the Terminator.
Just, well you can"t let them go after that can you? Some of them were bound to talk. And that put Patrick in danger. John, well, he didn"t give a fuck, but then he didn"t like the little teens wouldn"t have been doing them. He"d have been doing women if Pat hadn"t needed something else. He liked doing Patrick, made Pat happy and made him happy too.
The one they picked up in Keck last month he was soft and smooth almost a child, a girl. Hardly 18, looked about fourteen. Pretty average, not cute like Fourteen, now that kid had been a looker...what was his name, Jeremy something? Oh and those twins too...shame about them. Too bad they hadn"t been girls, they"d have been real keepers. Pretty little things...
Well, Fourteen he was different from all those other boys, thought John, probably why I let Patrick talk me into selling him.
That loose end had John sweating for months. On the news all the time, the kids face was out there to be seen. Stupid to have let him go, but he hadn"t talked, maybe the old faggot offed him after all...
Bar kid thought he"d struck the lottery with Pat"s pretty face on that hard body... He probably figured adding me in was a real bonus at the time...well, cum-drunk little fags, they don"t think straight do they?
He laughed at his own pun.
We showed him. By the time we untied him and sent him on his way, raw, bleeding, beat up, crying and couldn"t wait to get out the door. But I didn"t lie, no permanent marks, they probably healed in less than a week. And Pat didn"t lie, it was only a little pain, the pansy just couldn"t handle being degraded and that was all Pat wanted really. To see his innocence break, that was Pat"s thing, to show him what it had been like in the Terminator.
He wasn"t happy when his "safety" word didn"t work. And the $300 he had in his wallet was a pleasant surprise. But he won"t rat us out. We got him scared enough. He thought we were going to kill him I reckon. Peed himself. Bet that little homo hasn"t been out of his house much less into the gay scene in a month... well a life lesson well-taught Patrick would say...
John wasn"t gay, but his sex life included a lot of odd encounters as he saw it. It was just a thing you do when you don"t have a woman, or .... when Patrick needs it. He only really does it for Patrick. And those young boys, they are not his thing at all. He only fucked them to make Pat happy, to humiliate the kids for Pat because he liked that, he needed that.
He"d deliberately lost count but he knew if he let himself go there he"d be able to remember every single one, including where he"d buri -- left them ...
Of course they might get a woman together again, that usually made Pat feel better pretty quick. Usually they"d do them in turns, tag team style, but once in a while they"d be in her at the same time, and that to be honest, that got both of them off...one up the ass or the mouth and one in her cunt.
So hot feeling Pat"s hard cock moving against his through her insides...got him so hard he could barely keep pumping...and the times they both managed to get in one hole or the other at the same time! Of course they tried that with the bar boys, most of em screamed and bled too much, but one had definitely liked it and the rest if they could manage it they didn"t make a lot of noise. Or they did make a lot of noise! he smirked.
We need to stay put for a change. Maybe settle in a bit. Make some buddies, get some regular girls. That might get this shit out of Pat"s head...I"ll still bone him if he needs it, but we should try just women for a while anyway.
He reached to the nightstand to feel the reassurance of the loaded revolver. He shut off the images of cleaning and reloading so many times before. Discarding spent cartridges a hundred miles from where he"d fired them off...
It won"t be long now . Better clean it tomorrow after work.
July 5, 2018
Cincinnati Ohio
FBI Field Office
1005 Hours "Don, it"s Wilson. We"ve got a break in the Jeremy Gates case."
"Wilson, that"s great. have you found him?"
"Well no, don"t bring me down, please. Not a single lead proved out on that score. But I think we may have a lead on the abduction."
"What"s that then?"
"The fingerprint on the cell phone came up with a hit; forensics says this one looks good."
"Holy -- What"s the score?"
"Well they had zero hits for months but there"s a new entry into the DB from Hershey PA, One Patrick Hunter, age 22, bust for shoplifting. It"s a solid match."
"Priors?"
"Nothing, I don"t know where he"s from, except born Manhattan Beach, California. He"s young so if he has anything it might be they"re juvie and sealed."
"What"s the next move, pick him up, interview him?"
"Yes but I want to know as much as possible before I go into an interview with him. I need to have the tools to pressure him to talk."
July 11, 2018
Harrisburg. PA
FBI Field Office
0930 Hours Six days later Special Agent Wilson Jamieson met with Hershey detectives, Barry Hrulska, a black man of immense proportions, at least six foot seven inches tall and three hundred pounds, providing almost comical contrast to his partner, Jennifer Candleman, a petite woman at just over five foot two and one hundred twenty five pounds, a woman of plain features but at forty as sharp as any in the department, Representing the FBI with him, Agents Philip Donte and William Dodd came to review what was known about Patrick John Hunter.
Jamieson started the briefing.
"You probably know the salient points but let"s just be sure we have a common picture of the crime and our man, and I"m sure as we go through this there"s going to be questions for us so don"t hesitate to ask."
"August 8th, Jeremy Gates, a fourteen year old boy was abducted from the street a few dozen yards from home in Chillicothe Ohio. It is estimated that shortly before midnight, the boy having spent the evening at the county fair with friends, rode his bike home. About one-thirty his bike, cell phone, wallet, fair tokens and such were found by his parents, found lying on the street half a block from his home. His parents, Remy and Greyson Gates, pretty decent folks, were worried that he hadn"t arrived home more than an hour late. That is really the primary evidence of abduction. No witnesses, no surveillance cams in the area. No ransom demands, no calls at all."
"About a week later, though it has taken almost the entire time since for us to establish the facts, he was in the company of a seventy-one year old surgeon from Boston named Levi Fisher, traveling in the guy"s RV across country headed West, a trip that eventually stretched out for four months to early December in Phoenix Arizona. At that point, though he had been seen the day before in the Flagstaff area, Jeremy was no longer with Fisher, who promptly caught a flight to Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, and thence he traveled to Danang, where he killed himself in an ancient temple of some sort, by means of injections of this and that, not really relevant.
"Fisher was suffering from an inoperable and essentially untreatable brain tumor, something he"d had about six months before he began what we refer to as his Bucket List Trip."
"It was no surprise he ended up in Vietnam, he started his adult life there at 19 as a Navy Corpsman with a Marine platoon. Most of his buddies on his first tour were blown up in barracks by a kid who was known to be Fisher"s houseboy during Tet 1968 -- for those of us too young to remember, which," he wryly remarked, "appears to be all of us here, Tet is the New Year"s holiday in Asia, and in 1968 it also was a nationwide offensive where the commies tried to take the country. It didn"t succeed but many say that"s what turned the U.S. against the war. At any rate it seems this boy took on a suicide vest and blew up the barracks, notably excluding Fisher."
"Evidently Fisher was consumed with guilt and never completely got over it. Fisher made a huge name for himself, won a Navy Cross for heroism and eventually served three tours. He spent every minute in country there trying to save lives to make up for it. At least, that"s what his ex-boyfriend told us. Yes, Fisher was gay and wasn"t particularly secretive about it."
?"He went on to become a physician and surgeon and kept on saving lives."
"When Fisher found out he was dying, he set out to meet every survivor of his original unit, got his RV ready and took off on this grand farewell tour that I"m convinced was always going to end up in that Temple in Vietnam."
"Philip, your turn."
Donte, a bookish fellow hardly in his thirties with heavy black framed glasses took up the story.
"We couldn"t find a connection between Jeremy Gates and Levi Fisher but one. And this was tentative. It seems Jeremy Gates is also gay."
He paused for reactions. But these are all battle hardened cops, they won"t show much surprise to anything. Fourteen -- no, fifteen year old gay boys are not a surprise in these enlightened days. It"s not known to the rest but Jennifer Candleman has two gay sons still in high school. She feels a whisper of winter against her neck, thinking of what could have happened had they been in the wrong place one August night.
"We aren"t sure of that, what we have is two teenagers Jeremy encountered on this long trip and he told that to both of them. One in Arkansas, one in Nebraska. So we consider that reasonably solid confirmation. I might add, it is not known to his parents either from Jeremy or from us so far as we can tell."
"For quite a while our theory was that somehow the boy avrupa yakası üniversiteli escort met Fisher online and arranged to rendezvous with him in Ohio and maybe they staged the abduction. We"re pretty sure that Fisher was thinking of taking the boy with him to Vietnam but gave up on it when his health declined suddenly."
"Now there"s a lot more to that story, but there"s a new piece we haven"t let anyone outside law enforcement know and don"t want to let it out now either. We finally think we know how Jeremy got to be with Fisher. Fisher bought him."
This did prompt some wide eyes and reactions, though it"s not as if kidnapping, sex trafficking and the like are strangers to this crew.
"The details aren"t important but Fisher apparently wanted a teenager for company, and presumably for sex, on his trip. He went looking on the dark web and met up with someone we have not identified yet. We didn"t get this until we cracked the codes on his phone and computer, and it took us months to get those back from Vietnam. Anyhow, he paid $3500 cash as a finder"s fee. Fisher had closed his bank accounts and was carrying a lot of cash -- and got it seems, one Jeremy Gates in exchange at a place you fellows know about." He paused for effect. "Gifford Pinchot State Park, less than forty-five minutes drive from here. More or less halfway between here and Chillicothe. We don"t have any details but a rendezvous was set up after dark four days after Jeremy was abducted; both parties spent as little time there as possible. A two way handoff."
"Now to be clear, Fisher was not asking for an underaged innocent kidnap victim to rape, he was told he"d get a twenty year old street hustler. He was offering to pay the kid for his time and trouble and take him to San Diego."
"We didn"t find any messaging between Jeremy Gates and Levi Fisher. There"s a lot more we"re sifting through now."
"Of course, events took a different turn."
"Fisher, maybe not sure what to do with the hot potato those guys passed him, may have used some scare tactics to control the boy; the worst of it was he apparently told him he put a piece of jewelry around his neck that was loaded up with C-4."
"JESUS!"
That came from Hrulska, the others were showing some shock and outrage too. This was far from an ordinary case. And Hrulska has been in the Army and had some acquaintance with explosives. Candleman was looking shocked and guarded.
"Well it turns out that it was a lie. In fact he and Jeremy apparently made peace with the whole mess and the boy was taking care of Fisher when he got too sick to do it himself. When he left the country he left an old but pretty valuable RV parked with the title signed over to Jeremy and his parents. And a message saying there were no explosives in the necklace and never had been."
"And while we aren"t sure where Jeremy is now we are closing in on where he may be at least since we got into the computer. That"s a whole other story. We need to find out if this Patrick Hunter is how Jeremy got to that State Park or if we"re looking for the wrong low-lifes. And above all we need to question him to find out what he might know about Jeremy"s location now."
"So that"s the basics of the FBI"s interest here in that man, I understand Hershey PD has some background and information for us."
July 11, 2018
Hershey, PA
Keystone Garden Apartments
Wednesday
0530 Hours John was bushed. It had been a very tough job getting the park"s largest roller coaster serviced after closing and ready to run and it was nearly dawn by the time he was done. So he got home just as the sun was peeking over the horizon; was on his way in to their apartment when the door next to theirs opened and an older black man, perhaps 50, dressed in dirty wrinkled denim pants and a stained sweatshirt slipped out.
"Hey." John stepped past not expecting any response since they barely knew their neighbor.
To his surprise, the African American"s hand snaked out, grabbed his arm, and pulled John to him, whispering "What you been up to John Cannon?"
"Up to nothing old man...why you asking?"
"Cuz the Man been buzzing around your ass John Cannon. Word to the wise, don"t get them into my business, hear?"
Oh. So.
"Message received."
Opening the door with a casual air he entered through the kitchen, shut it quietly behind him making sure it didn"t slam. Stepping lightly and quickly, leaving his jacket on, he stepped into Patrick"s bedroom.
"Patty boy, wake up wake up now. We got shoes."
He went to his room to get the revolver.
July 11, 2018
Harrisburg. PA
FBI Field Office
1000 Hours "Agent Jamieson, that was a hell of a story. I"m afraid ours isn"t as interesting." boomed Barry Hrulska "But I"ll give this a go for you."
The black detective used magnets to attach two photos of young men, one blonde, one dark, to the whiteboard.
"Hunter is half of a Mutt and Jeff pair. He"s the tall dumb one as far as we can tell, and the shorter, smarter one is John Cannon, 26. Seems they"ve been together as a set since they met in Juvenile Hall in Los Angeles County in 2009. They overlapped about a year and Cannon was out but Hunter got into some pretty serious trouble inside, stabbed a kid for one thing. So he was in from "09 to 2014. Some time after he got out they teamed up and have been tramping across country slowly moving East for the most part for the past four years. We haven"t found any real trouble since they got together, a few traffic tickets for Cannon. A bit of bar brawling. Suspected conned some gay men out of their money without providing the sex they promised. Nice guys."
"But the closest date I can get for their arrival in this area is August 14. A week after the abduction in Ohio."
"We have tentatively put Hunter and Cannon in Ohio around the time the Gates abduction occurred, but these guys had No Fixed Address, pay cash for most everything so there"s no credit card trail, they"ve changed cars at least six times in four years that we can tell, and they don"t use banks, got burner phones, just nothing that will let us pin them time-wise, nor geography-wise to Chillicothe."
"Their current vehicle is still registered to a guy in the Hershey area, we"ve had agents interview him and he says he sold it last October for $1400. Didn"t think much of them, they gave off a vibe he didn"t like but other than failing to transfer the registration -- John Cannon took the ticket for it when Hershey patrol officers stopped him outside the Wal-Mart. He had insurance and he had a bill of sale so they didn"t tow. His California license is valid though he was told he needs to change now that he"s here. The patrol cops said Hunter was literally crying when they told him he"d have to go to the station but Cannon told him he"d be bailed out before the end of the day. And he was."
Jennifer Candleman was one of the most senior female dicks Hershey had. She took up the briefing.
"What sticks out, way too close for comfort is that they are first in the general area of the abduction around the time it happened And a week later you tell us the kid is being shopped over to this Fisher guy just a few days before they settle in here."
There was a general pause. No one liked that coincidence, that"s sure.
"Why did your guys take him in, I understood it was misdemeanor shoplifting?" Asked Jamieson.
"He lifted a pack of gum, if you can believe that. Well two factors really. One is that they ran, or rather, Hunter did when store staff tried to stop him, jumped into their van and they took off. The other, he didn"t have any ID with him so they took him to the station to print him, they didn"t have a portable print device in their unit. before the prints run was sent out Cannon showed up with Hunter"s ID and posted $100 bail, so the prints didn"t get run for three more days. No rush on them since they had ID"d the guy and, hell, shoplifting."
"Do we know where they live?"
"Yeah they"ve got a two bedroom in the Hershey Park area, it"s a pretty low rent place. They haven"t made any fuss the neighbors haven"t been directly interviewed yet because we didn"t want to stir up a fuss or give them any warning. Suspicious of authority over there you might say. But we"ve been asking informants about them."
"Hunter works at a Middle School not too far from there, as a food service tech in the cafeteria. A lot of the women there find him quite attractive if not too smart, and he"s been warned about flirting with the school girls. We can"t get deep interviews, again, but nobody had a bad vibe from that. They didn"t think he was chasing the kids or anything, the company has a lot of cafeteria facilities around the county and they"d have shifted him to the college or one of the hospitals they have if there had been even a hint of it. So it seems it was just a quiet word, hey don"t talk to the kids."
"His buddy, Cannon, though he"s at the Hershey Parks, works as a ride mechanic. I talked to his boss, we often are in and out of the parks talking to management because a subset of the adult staff of those places do tend toward the sketchy, so I went in to talk about another employee and casually asked a few questions about Cannon. He has a high opinion, describes him as quiet, but a wizard mechanic and not the complaining type. Dependable."
"That"s about all we"ve dug out so far."
Agent Dodd took his cue.
"FBI haven"t been able to backtrack them entirely, seems they"ve been doing the same sort of stuff all the way across country, we"ve located them in Nevada, Nebraska, Illinois at least. They seem to stay a few months then suddenly up stakes and drive off. They don"t seem to give notice, sometimes they leave paychecks behind. And..." he paused heavily. "We are trying to see if we can match them up with disappearances of kids -- or anyone else."
Jamieson spoke up.
"Jeremy Gates was at a county fair the night he disappeared so we thought for a moment we had something but we"ve definitely been able to eliminate either one of them from the work crews at the fair. These characters haven"t traveled with any outfits, so they aren"t carnies in the classic sense. In fact Hunter has only worked the entertainment parks a few times, usually he"s at some other kind of place; Cannon has a knack for this stuff so he tends to pick up work easily at such places."
"So....it"s not a lot to work on. What do we think of this print on the kid"s cell phone?" asked Candleman.
"Hard to say. First it"s a good match so we"re positive it"s Hunter"s. But he could have just found the phone, kid walked off and left it on a table and he handed it to him. There"s a thousand possibilities. The print links them but we can"t say it happened in time proximity to the abduction."
"But, I don"t see how the print gets on that phone if they weren"t in Chillicothe. So we have planned on issuing a warrant for the kidnap of Jeremy Gates. We"ve got probable cause. We"re just not going to make it stick without more evidence."

"Well that brings us up to date and fills out the profiles a bit, there"s a lot more detail in the briefing books but I"d like us to turn to the development of a plan to get Patrick Hunter into an interrogation room..."
Thursday, July 12, 2018
Luzerne County, PA
Bear Trap Lodge Motel
Dawn The phone on the motel nightstand was ringing shrilly, John was startled out of a deep sleep, eyed it suspiciously and reached to answer.
"Yeah."
"Hello, John?"
That wasn"t the name they"d registered under, John grabbed for the revolver next to the phone, as he spoke to the caller he quickly opened the cylinder to check to see all seven chambers were loaded.
"Who is this."
"John, I"m Jason Remand with the FBI. Before you react, please there"s nothing to be excited about here. We just want to talk to you and your roommate."
"What about?"
"We want to know if you know anything about the disappearance of a young boy. We"re really trying to find him he"s been missing a while and we had a tip that at one point he might have been with you."
"Don"t know anything about it. Don"t hang with kids."
"Well that"s fine we"ll be able to wrap up the questioning pretty quickly then. But we do need to talk to both of you privately."
Patrick was stirring and sitting up.
* * *
"It"s been hours now, John. We really need you and Patrick to come out so we can do this."
John looked over at Patrick, on the end of his bed. He was shaking, though not crying.
"Look stop fucking with me you"re gonna arrest us."
"John, not necessarily it depends on what you tell us. We know you guys didn"t hurt the Jeremy Gates boy. We don"t have any grounds for an arrest."
Sure, sure, and after we"ll all go out for drinks and a steak dinner.
He covered the mouthpiece with his hand.
"Patty boy, what do you want to do, They say they won"t arrest us but I think it"s bull."
The red eyed young man was holding himself arms crossed and gripping.
"John. I-- I can"t go to prison, John." He started sobbing, "Please Johnny don"t let them take me to prison. I can"t do it again..."
John let out a slow breath and quietly set the receiver on the phone.
"It"s ok Patty boy, I"ll talk to them about it. We"ll work something out."
A pause.
"I promise you won"t have to go there Patrick. I"ve never let you down, and I won"t ever will I?"
That seemed to reassure Patrick.
"I gotta go to the can."
"Okay but be sure they aren"t in the window or anything, they"re sneaky that way."
He heard the toilet flush waited for the door to open, and when Patrick came out said, "I need it too"
As he passed by the taller younger man, he turned, pulled the revolver up our of the back of his waistband and fired twice into the back of Patrick"s head.
"You won"t have to go urfa escort back Pat."
There was yelling and the phone rang.
"Shots fired! Shots fired!"
Luzerne Courier-Journal
July 15, 2018
Page One HERSHEY MEN ALLEGEDLY KILLED NUMEROUS BOYS,
SELVES IN MURDER-SUICIDE SPREE</p> Two Hershey men who were sought for questioning in connection with the disappearance of an Ohio teenager, and who barricaded themselves in a Luzerne County motel earlier this week, died in what police say they now believe was a murder-suicide.
Twenty-two year old Patrick Hunter originally from Garden Grove California and his roommate John Cannon, 26, originally from Long Beach, California, both died of gunshot wounds Thursday at a motel in the North County near State Route 2078.
During a tense six hour standoff the men repeatedly refused to exit their room. FBI negotiators were still talking to them when gunfire erupted inside the room. Cannon informed the negotiator that Hunter had killed himself, but that Cannon was willing to surrender. However Cannon refused to leave the room saying he had to write something up "about the kids" and promised that he"d be done in "a few hours."
Sources say police have tentatively linked the men to the disappearance of five boys in Nevada, Colorado, Missouri, and California and possibly more. The men are believed to have abducted and killed the boys over a period of at least three years.
Hershey PD public affairs spokesman Lt. John Rabbenhour said that John Cannon apparently killed Patrick Hunter, his companion for those four years during which the pair moved across country settling briefly in a number of places. He said Cannon left behind a detailed handwritten guide to find the bodies of an undisclosed number of boys; authorities have decided not to release any names until they have investigated the entire list and if possible found bodies to support the claim.
However police in Colorado Springs, Colorado say that they are investigating the claim that the pair killed thirteen-year-old twins Reece and Ronan Culver who were last seen at an Amusement Park in Colorado Springs in June of 2015. They say that Cannon"s note indicates the boys were killed and their bodies left in the Black Forest National Park in Wyoming. While the remains of the boys have not been located as yet, in searching the area indicated a day pack known to have belonged to one of the twins was found. According to police spokesperson material collected from the day pack has been sent for DNA testing.
Rabbenhour said FBI, Hershey Police, and Dauphin County Sheriff"s office were jointly investigating Patrick Hunter in connection with the disappearance of fourteen year old Jeremy Gates of Chillicothe, Ohio. Hunter was living and working in Hershey when the FBI allegedly identified his fingerprints on the teen"s cell phone left at the scene of his abduction near his home last August.
The FBI was unable to connect the fingerprints with anyone until Hunter was arrested on a shoplifting charge at a Hershey area Wal-Mart ten days ago and his fingerprints were entered into the nationwide AFIS system.
The men apparently learned the FBI wanted to interview Hunter in connection with the Gates kidnapping, and the pair allegedly fled Hershey ending up in the Bear Trap Lodge Motel.
The FBI decided to wait it out.
"At 2:30 pm Cannon picked up the phone and said he was ready to surrender, but when he exited the room a moment later, he raised his pistol and shot in the direction of the waiting SWAT team, and police returned fire, instantly killing him," Rabbenhour said.
Police sources say Cannon also confessed to killing Hunter, writing that, Hunter "wouldn"t do well in prison and didn"t want to go" and that Cannon "didn"t want to go without him." They say Hunter died from multiple shots to the back of his head.
The whereabouts of Jeremy Gates remain a mystery; the FBI refuses to say whether they believe he is alive or dead or whether his name was included on the list, despite the claims of his parents to have had multiple communications from him since he disappeared.
July 14, 2018
Gates" Residence
Chillicothe Ohio
1025 Hours Remy Gates was shaking when the bell rang. As Greyson went to answer she forced the kitchen towel she had been crying into against her eyes and demanded that her body take control and stop the tremors. And being the sort of in control woman she was, she got her way. The medication helped a lot. The buspirone reduced the anxiety from "out of this world" to "almost tolerable at moments."
"Ms. Gates, I"m Don Wickenheiser, Special Agent In Charge of the Cincinnati Office. We"ve spoken on the phone before I think."
"How do you do, Agent."
"It"s very kind of you and your husband to meet with me, I know this is a very confusing time and frankly I wouldn"t have been surprised if you"d asked me not to come."
"Not at all. I think it"s true that we have been, well, feeling a bit mis-used but we never thought the FBI was less than forthright with us. It"s just, we know Jeremy wasn"t involved with those men, he couldn"t have been."
"May we sit down, Mr. Gates, Mrs Gates? This is going to take some talking."
"I"ll get us some coffee, would you like some Bundt cake, Mr. Wickenheiser?"
"Please call me Don. Did you make it yourself?"
"Yes I did, Don."
"Then I"d be delighted Ms. Gates."
"I"m Grey and she"s Remy."
Grudgingly.
The formalities, the ritual of brewing and laying flatware and serving food that no one was going to eat helped to steady them all, let Wickenheiser start to build a little rapport. The tension diminished and he was finally able to start what he expected to be the most difficult discussion he"d ever had with parents whose child wasn"t dead.
"I know you have heard about the shootings in Pennsylvania and of course Jeremy"s name has been bandied about in the news. I am truly sorry we couldn"t comment as it was happening, we couldn"t even warn you what was to transpire. We did try to tell reporters "off the record" that we had reasons to believe Jeremy was alive. And I know you believe that he is as well. But we could not and don"t now want to go on the record with that claim."
She froze mid move in raising her cup to lip.
"Don, why ever not?"
"Because until we know where he is or how he is, we think saying anything on the record could jeopardize his well-being. We just don"t know enough. Where is he? Who is he with? What has he been doing? Is he absent of his own volition? Is he a victim now of a crime?"
"I see," interjected Greyson, clearly a little hot under the collar. "But you must then think we also should not say anything, it doesn"t make sense if you don"t and we do."
Spreading his hands, "It"s why I"m here." True, it"s part of why...
"We"re listening." Grey said, crossing his arms and leaning away from the man.
"First I want to let you know some things that cannot be publicly released just yet about those two in Pennsylvania. I trust you will keep this information to yourselves."
"It"s really worse than the press knows. They left a detailed record of the kidnap, rape, and murder of eight boys and young men from San Diego to Pennsylvania over four years." Pausing. "And while you and I know Jeremy is alive, we are absolutely convinced he was their last victim, their ninth. Jeremy, for reasons not clear, was allowed to live. However, he was not ... treated well."
Wickenheiser was measuring Grey like a boiler gauge he thought was about to go red. Remy too was staring open eyed.
"There are some things we have not told you, some because we hoped Jeremy would come home and if they are true, he would tell you. Normally it"s not a thing, well some of this, not something we would discuss with parents at all, not in our wheel house and not relevant to the offenses we are investigating. But I"m afraid we don"t know how long Jeremy will be away. And you deserve to know it, to think about how you will talk to him about it. And in some way it could have something to do with the events that have transpired, we just don"t know."
Silence. Grey gestured, a tornado of conflicting thoughts and feelings whirling to get out, go ahead.
"We have been able to talk to people who spent some time, time alone, with Jeremy while he was with Fisher. And we have more information about Fisher"s side of things too. This is, I said it already, Jeremy"s to tell you in any normal world. But we"re not in that world I"m afraid."
"Jeremy met and spoke to different teenagers in two different states, met alone, where he could have possibly told them whatever he wanted. About the kidnapping, about Fisher, about those two other men. Now we can"t know to what degree he was in fear if he said the wrong thing, people who"ve been held for a while can be very afraid to tell the truth. But we think what he said is what he wanted to say, we can"t think of a reason for him to lie about this. But I want to say again, we do not know for sure this is true; we just know he said it," he took a moment to see if they had listened, seemed to understand.
"What he wanted to tell these young men, unsolicited from them, was that he is gay."
Wickenheiser was measuring the Gates" reception of this information, which to this point was nothing; a pure suspension of emotions...
"I am truly sorry that it falls to me to convey that to you. Not," he continued, "because of any negativity about or to gay people, but because it should not be we who tell you, and to be honest because we do not know whether it is true. And we"re not certain how much, or whether, it has to do with the case. But as you will see there is some reason to think it may."
"One thing we have ascertained is that Levi Fisher met with those two jerks and took your son from them. He paid them several thousand dollars, apparently he regarded it as a finder"s fee for a young man who wanted a ride to San Diego and was willing to be a companion to him on his trip."
"We do not believe Jeremy willingly went with Hunter and Cannon. They"re con men and good at getting kids to trust them but then they wouldn"t have had to force him into the car and leave his belongings behind. We do not believe he offered to accompany Fisher though it has to be ruled out when we can talk to him. So he may have unwillingly accompanied him, at least initially; eventually over time his participation had elements of the willing and the unwilling. You"ve been told that we consider Jeremy to be a victim of a kidnapping, and that has not changed."
"There are two more points. I really apologize for this..."
"The first is that Cannon"s note affirmed that Jeremy was sexually abused by Hunter and himself. And we"ve found a witness to verify that in fact."
Remy"s face was stone and Grey"s was redder than any Wickenheiser had ever seen.
"The second is that we have pretty strong evidence Jeremy did have sexual relations with Levi Fisher. We cannot say if it was against his will or not, Fisher has no history of assault or of raping anyone. But we don"t think there is much question that this did occur. Now both because of the circumstances and because of his age, Jeremy would be regarded as a victim no matter what. He couldn"t consent, legally speaking."
There was a long silence. The ticking of the grandfather clock in the living room seemed to grow louder and louder until it somehow drowned the noise of the reporters outside, on the sidewalk.
"Don. This is ... this is... it"s hard news to hear and harder to make sense of."
"I am so sorry to bring this to you."
"Better now than later, I think," said Greyson, his eyes black and dead. "But who is this witness you mentioned and how could he know that?"
"It seems these bozos had a habit of picking up women when they could, not just boys. One of them spent a few hours in a motel room with Cannon and was introduced to Hunter and a boy who was supposedly Hunter"s little brother. The woman has identified Jeremy as that boy. And while she was very drunk at the time she admitted to having intercourse with Jeremy while the men watched. In retrospect she thinks perhaps he had a chain of some sort around his neck to control him."
How many times in a single conversation can one be hit in the face?
Remy turned her head. Grey was merely stunned.
Some time passed in silence, finally Remy took up her coffee. Grey stared at the table, lost in thought.
In the silence, "Please tell us. Where has Jeremy been?" Greyson asked, avoiding Wikenheiser"s eye.
"There is a rather tiny little commune in the middle of nowhere in Northern Arizona, technically it"s on the reservation of one of the native tribes near the Grand Canyon. It"s a dozen or so people, they live off the grid, they"ve a fairly comfortable little settlement, huts made from earth-bag construction, solar panels, not luxurious but pretty livable. It"s headed by a man who was a friend of Fisher"s back in Boston, actually served with him in "Nam and Fisher saved his life there and later his son"s life in Boston. They met up with Jeremy and Fisher near the Grand Canyon and took Jeremy with them so Fisher would have a chance to make his getaway to Vietnam without interference. Why they didn"t take him to an airport and fly him to Ohio is not clear. It was the original plan."
"Three of the leaders have agreed to be questioned and we"re not inclined to make arrests until we know for sure what happened. They are in agreement that Jeremy left their little settlement on March 7 and headed to San Diego."
The two parents exchanged looks.
"San Diego? Jeremy was in San Diego?"
WIckenheiser was conscious to breathe out slowly, finally he had arrived at the crux of the interview. He didn"t want to show tension and blow it now. They were lying, at least by omission, but everyone lies. In any investigation your job is to sift through the lies, find the important truths. And he thought he knew the reason behind the lies and after all, they are parents. They want to protect the boy.
"Yes. I was just curious about something now that it comes up. I"ve been meaning to ask you about this. Didn"t the two of you take a trip to San Diego just about then?"
-30-
PS --- Just where the hell IS fifteen year old Jeremy Gates?