by Matt Lincoln
Raskin cleared his throat when we were there, clearly embarrassed about interrupting.
“Sorry,” he muttered, staring down at his shoes. “The MBLIS agents are here.”
“Thank you, Eddie,” the woman told him, murmuring something else to the parents and then rising to greet Holm and me with her hand extended. “I’m Doctor Osborne. You can call me Ellie. I’m a psychologist with the FBI.”
She was who I’d imagined then when I saw the photographs.
“Ethan Marston, glad to meet you,” I said, taking her hand. “And this is my partner, Robbie Holm.”
She nodded to Holm and shook his hand, too.
“Why don’t we take a step out and chat for a few minutes?” she suggested, and I nodded.
“Y-you’re leaving?” the mother sputtered, looking like she might burst into tears just like her husband at this news.
“Just for a few minutes,” Osborne assured them. “I need to talk with these agents about your case.”
That seemed to abate the woman, who no doubt wanted everyone to get on with what needed to be done so we could find her son sooner, even if it made her uncomfortable. She nodded and gave me a weak smile as Holm and I followed Osborne toward one of the interrogation rooms.
“I’ll just sit with ‘em a minute,” Raskin said, looking like he would prefer to do anything else at that moment.
“Thank you,” Osborne said gratefully, and he walked over to take her place in the chair next to the coffee table.
In the interrogation room, Osborne shut and locked the door behind us and then sat down. Holm and I took our seats across from her.
“Sorry about that,” she said. “They’ve developed an attachment to me. It’s not uncommon in situations like these.”
“Do you work a lot of these cases?” I asked.
She was a stern-looking woman, probably in her early fifties, with streaks of gray running through her long hair, which was pulled back in a very tight ponytail.
“A fair number,” she said with a curt nod. “Well, considering how many there are, that is, and there aren’t all that many. I’d say I’ve worked about a dozen in my time. This is the most high profile one, though. That girl in Colorado came close, though.”
I vaguely remembered that case, enough to know that they’d found the kid. That gave me hope.
“Why don’t you tell us about the parents?” Holm suggested, folding his hands in his lap.
“The average American family, I’d say,” Osborne mused, her brow furrowed together in thought. “The mother works for the CDC in Atlanta, as I’m sure you’ve heard. Pretty high up, too. The father’s in advertising. No other children. Two dogs. No cats. Live in the suburbs. Cookie-cutter in a lot of ways, I like to call it.”
“Anything beneath the surface?” I asked.
“Oh, there always is,” she said, giving me a small, knowing smile. “I just haven’t found it yet. But then again, I’m sure you know that everyone’s more complicated than they seem, given your line of work.”
“A bit pessimistic,” Holm pointed out, and I had to agree.
“You misunderstand me,” she said, shaking her head. “It’s not that I think every family has some dark secret. It’s just that no one’s as average as they seem. I just haven’t figured out what’s different about these people yet, though. In between the media coverage and keeping them somewhat composed—and sometimes medicated—over the past few hours, I haven’t had time for much else.”
“I think I understand that,” I said, nodding slowly. “Do you suspect them?”
Osborne sighed and pursed her lips as if trying to decide how to respond to this.
“I don’t know,” she said at long last. “You know the details of the case, Agent Marston. It’s an odd one. Usually, it’s someone known to the child, but it’s hard to work this whole thing out. I’m relatively confident that neither parent recognized the unmasked perpetrator, but we all know there were two men who took him.”
“Yes,” I said, thinking this over. “That could explain why one of them had his face covered. He could be someone they know, or who the child knows.”
“Agreed, though if he’s the only one who knew him, and not the parents, it probably would’ve been more of a benefit to be unmasked to lure him in,” Osborne added.
“Could’ve been to avoid detection,” Holm shrugged.
“But the other one didn’t seem so concerned about that,” the woman said, shaking her head slowly. “It is an odd case. None of it quite adds up the way you expect it to.”
“I suppose that’s why we’re here,” I said, giving her a small smile. “In the meantime, I think I’d like to talk to the parents myself if you don’t mind.”
“Of course,” Osborne said, nodding her head gratefully to me.
“Has anyone else spoken to them much?” Holm asked.
“Not in detail,” she admitted, shaking her head as she rose to reopen the door to the interrogation room for us. “They’ve been very busy trying to find the child, and I’m more than competent.”
“I’m certain that you are,” Holm said quickly, looking alarmed that he might have inadvertently called Dr. Osborne’s expertise into question. “I didn’t mean to…”
“Don’t worry, I didn’t take it that way,” she said, giving him a thin smile, which I imagined was the best she could manage on a good day. “I was just reiterating the point.”
Together, we all made our way back to the sitting area, which was silent but for the father’s continued sobs. The mother was also crying now. Chief Raskin looked even more uncomfortable than he had when we left him.
“Don’t worry, Eddie,” Osborne told him, resting a long, thin hand on his shoulder gently. “We can take it from here.”
“Uh, thanks,” Raskin said, seeming surprised to see us, like he hadn’t noticed our return, though he looked more relieved than ever that we had. “I’ll just be in my office if anybody needs me.”
“Thank you,” I told him, and he scurried off as quickly as he could, leaving us alone with the parents.
Osborne settled back into the chair once occupied by the chief, and I sat down in another across from the boy’s mother. Holm crossed over to a bench against the wall, closer to the father’s side of the couch.
“Hello, I’m Ethan, and this is my partner, Robbie,” I said as gently as I could, speaking directly to the mother, who looked right at me with tears streaming down her face. The father still had his head in his hands, though his shoulders shook less now. “What are your names?”
I knew from the police and media reports, of course, but it was better to ease witnesses into difficult conversations like this.
“You’re with that other agency?” the father asked, raising his head weakly. “The one the FBI called?”
“MBLIS, yes,” I confirmed, and the mother nodded knowingly. She must have been familiar with most government agencies, I realized, because of her job.
“I’m Annabelle Watson, and this is my husband, Curt,” the mother said, rubbing her partner’s back. “Our son’s Mikey. Well, Michael, but we call him Mikey. You know that, though, of course.”
She shut her eyes tight as if trying not to visualize what might be happening to her little boy at that moment, and I had to force the thought away myself.
“Why don’t you tell us what happened?” I asked her gently.
“I know you’ve probably told the story a thousand times already today, but if you could just indulge us one more time, we’d appreciate it,” Holm added when the woman hesitated to respond.
The woman reopened her eyes and nodded, and so did her husband.
“We… we went to the mall early this morning, the second it opened,” she explained. “Mikey forgot his toothbrush and his bathing suit, so we needed to get him a new one. He insisted on packing himself, you see. He wanted to be a big boy. He wouldn’t even let me check to see that he had anything. I figured I might as well encourage some independence. We both work, you s
ee.”
She choked up again, and I nodded to her to make sure she knew that I didn’t think it was her fault.
“I understand,” I assured her.
“Well,” she continued, gulping down her tears. “By the time we were done at the department store, he was crying because he was so hungry, and we hadn’t had breakfast yet.”
“Most of the places in the food court were still closed,” Curt added. “But there was a pretzel stand open, and so I went to get him one of those. He wanted the fancy one, covered in cinnamon and sugar and all of that. He likes those.”
The man gave a watery smile at the memory.
“What happened next?” I urged gently, hating myself as I did so.
“Well, the stand only took cash, and I didn’t have enough coins,” Curt said, his voice shaking. “Mikey was looking at some gum-ball machines, and I called Annabelle over to see if she had any quarters or another dollar bill.”
It was the father’s turn to shut his eyes tightly now, not wanting to go on. His wife looked at me apologetically.
“That’s when it happened,” she said, her voice as small as that of a mouse. “When I turned my back, just for a minute, to give Curt some coins. When I turned back around, Mikey wasn’t by the gum-ball machines anymore. He was all the way down the hall by one of the stores, and then he was screaming, and that man was holding him…”
She grimaced and shivered, not wanting to go on herself now.
“I’m so sorry,” Holm said softly. That was all there was to say when it came to something like this.
“Thank you,” Annabelle murmured, interlinking her arm with her husband’s own and placing her other hand on his knee.
“Did you only see the one man?” I asked.
“No,” she said, shaking her head. “Well, Curt only saw the one. I saw both of them. The other man was hard to see at first… he just kind of blended into the wall, with his dark clothes. Then I saw his gun.”
“Was it drawn?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” she said, shaking her head. “I’m sorry, I don’t remember.”
“That’s okay,” I assured her. “I’d rather you tell us that than make something up because you think it’s what we want to hear.”
“That’s what she said,” Annabelle said with a small smile, nodding in Osborne’s direction.
“Glad we’re on the same page,” I said, smiling back at her, though I never doubted it. “Why don’t you tell me what you remember, Curt?”
“I-it’s all a blur,” he stammered, shaking his head. “I’m sure Annabelle can tell you better. She’s always had a better memory than me.”
“Why don’t you just tell us what you do remember?” Holm prompted gently. “It doesn’t have to be much.”
“Well, I… I just remember paying the pretzel guy,” he began with a deep breath. “Or trying to pay the pretzel guy, at least, but Annabelle screamed and grabbed my arm, and I dropped all the coins. I bent over to pick them up without thinking. It was just instinctive.”
“It’s alright,” I assured him, just as I had his wife. “You didn’t do anything wrong.”
“Well, once I registered that she was yelling, I turned around, and I just saw this guy in a tan jacket carrying Mikey off. I didn’t notice anything else. I just saw red and ran after them.”
“We both did,” Annabelle added. “But by the time we got to the store they were in front of, they were gone, and I couldn’t hear Mikey screaming anymore. Some lady from the store helped us, then. I don’t remember much else until the security guards showed up.”
“It’s all a blur for me, too,” Curt said, shaking his head and gulping down another sob. “I just remember someone in a mall uniform giving me some water, and then the police came and were talking about a security tape. Have you seen it?”
He looked between Holm and me hopefully.
“Yes, we’ve seen it,” I said, nodding. “It tells us some, but not a lot.” I wanted to temper their expectations. It was important to keep hope, but also important to be realistic.
“Dr. Osborne said that the other FBI agent ran into the man in the jacket again at the mall,” Annabelle said excitedly, looking at me with wide eyes as if she was willing me to tell her that we’d caught the man.
“Yes, we haven’t been able to find him, though,” I said quietly. “Did Dr. Osborne tell you about the Coast Guard?”
There was a long silence.
“Yes,” Curt said quietly at long last. “But you don’t… you don’t really think that they could be taking him… to some other country or something like that?”
It clearly took an effort for him to get the words out.
“We don’t know,” Holm said honestly. “But that’s why we’re here. To find out, and to bring him back if we have to.”
“Have you done this before?” Annabelle asked. “Gone into other countries to rescue people?”
“Yes,” I assured her. “Many times. It’s our job.”
She nodded, seeming reassured at least a little by this. Curt seemed to calm slightly, as well, when he saw his wife’s reaction.
“Why don’t you tell us a bit about yourselves and about Mikey?” I asked, wanting to get a better sense of their family life.
“Well, Mikey’s seven,” Annabelle said, giving me a watery smile. “He just finished the second grade, and he was so excited. We came on this vacation the second he got out of school. His favorite subject’s reading.”
“I don’t think he’s going to be a scientist like his mom,” Curt chuckled. “Maybe a college professor or something like that.”
“What about the two of you?” I asked. “Would you both say that you have a good relationship with Mikey?”
“Oh yes,” Annabelle said, predictably, as no parent was going to admit to the alternative, especially with a child this age. “We both work, as I said, but we make sure to take time off whenever we can and to see him off in the morning and spend every night with him after we get home.”
“No late nights at the office?” Holm asked her.
“Well, I won’t say never,” she admitted with a weak laugh. “But only a couple times a month for me. And Curt never does, never. He’s always home with Mikey. With my line of work, it’s hard to get out of it sometimes, though. You’ll understand.”
Her eyes were almost pleading as she looked at me. I knew from experience to double the figure she’d given me, but four or five nights out of the month wasn’t even close to bad if you asked me.
“Better than most,” I told her.
“Do you have children?” she asked.
That was the second time someone had asked me that that day.
“No,” I said, shaking my head. “Never had the time.”
“Oh,” she said, looking a little disappointed.
“Look, I promise that we’re going to do everything we can to find Mikey,” I said, leaning forward and placing a hand over hers gently. This seemed to cheer her up again.
“You work for the CDC, right?” Holm asked Annabelle before turning to Curt. “And you’re in advertising?”
“Yes,” they both said.
“Do you think that anyone from either of your jobs could have a problem with you or even an interest in Mikey?” Holm asked. “A disgruntled client, maybe? A former employee?”
“Oh, no, nothing like that,” Annabelle said dismissively. “I work in a lab all day! Unless you think some virus is going to grow feet and come after me for experimenting on it.”
She laughed nervously at this as if trying and failing to lighten the mood for herself all at once.
“And I’m just an ideas guy,” Curt said apologetically with a shrug. “No one works for me, except maybe a summer intern now and then. I just sit around and come up with ideas for commercials for gum and stuff.”
“Alright, this is helpful, thank you,” Holm said, giving them an encouraging smile.
“Is it?” Annabelle asked, giving another uncomfortable laugh. “I fe
el like we haven’t really been able to tell you anything.”
“Ruling things out is just as important as new information,” my partner told her with a nod.
“What about Mikey?” I asked. “Are there any family friends that he’s particularly close with?”
“I mean, I don’t think so…” Annabelle said, startled by the question, her eyes widening as she realized what I was suggesting. “You don’t really think that someone we know…”
“Anything is possible,” Dr. Osborne said, breaking her silence. “We talked about this earlier, Annabelle. Most of these situations are not stranger abductions, even though those are sensationalized in the media. Usually, it’s someone known to the child, and even someone you trust deeply.”
“Certain types have a way of worming themselves into people’s lives before they even realize it,” Holm explained.
“I… I don’t think any of our friends would…” Annabelle said, sounding almost out of breath at the idea.
“Our friends are just work friends,” Curt explained. “We both went to college up in New England. All of our old friends are still there. We have people over a couple of times a month, but none of them have kids yet, and I’ve never seen anyone take an interest in Mikey.”
“This is helpful, thank you,” I said. “What about extended family? Is anyone close by? Aunts, uncles, grandparents? Anyone close to Mikey, or who might have a difference of opinion about how you’re raising him?”
“We live away from family, too,” Curt said, and his tone was a bit strained then as he shifted uncomfortably on the couch. “What do you mean about opinions about how we’re raising him?”
“Sometimes grandparents have certain ways they think the grandkids should be raised, and they get all up in arms about it,” Holm explained, narrowing his eyes at the man. “Families are weird. I’m sure you get that.”
