The K Handshape

by Maureen Jennings

  “Did the woman give any ID on the so-called mother?” he asked.

  “She describes her as quite short, stocky, and she was wearing a dark-coloured raincoat with a hood which she had up.”

  “Hannah Silverstein,” I burst out. “When I first saw her she was wearing a dark plaid raincoat with a hood. Joy would certainly go with her happily.”

  Katherine sat back in her chair. “She’s our first priority then. But before we break up…” she paused. “Chris, in your opinion, what level of threat do you think we’re dealing with?”

  I tried to distance myself from the image of the smiling, round-cheeked face of the child who’d waved Horace’s paw at me.

  “Given what we know of the relationship between the suspect and the child’s mother, I’d say we are dealing with low threat.”

  “Unless, of course, Silverstein was connected with my daughter’s murder,” said Leo. “We don’t even know yet who wrote those hate letters or where they fit in.”

  He was voicing our worst fears, that there was some psycho on the loose who thought they were acting on behalf of a vengeful God. I flashed back to the letter I’d received and how disturbing the sense of a deranged mind had been. But Hannah Silverstein? I didn’t think so.

  “I’m going over to the girl’s apartment right now,” said Ed. “Chris, I’d like you to come with me. You know them.”

  I was only too happy to go. It would keep Leo from shooting off on his own, which I suspected he would do. I saw his expression when Ed spoke. I seemed to be the only person he trusted to investigate the case. So be it.

  CHAPTER FORTY-NINE

  The apartment building was a fifties-style walk-up in yellow brick with a flat front and symmetrical square windows. The two girls lived on the third floor. The blinds were down but there was a crack of light showing through, so somebody was at home. Ed pressed the bell, and through the old-fashioned stained glass vent above the door, I saw a light flashing on and off. Things went dark and he pressed again. More flashes.

  “We’re not leaving until we get some answers,” said Ed. His face was grim and I knew how much all of us were affected by what was going on.

  We heard footsteps and the door opened. Jessica Manolo looked at us in surprise.

  “Yes?”

  I faced her squarely so she could read my lips. “Is Hannah at home?”

  Either the hall was too dark or she didn’t want to answer.

  “Pardon me?”

  “May we come in, Jessica?”

  “Pardon?”

  “We’d like to come in,” I made some gesture to illustrate what I meant and she nodded, stepped back, and waved us in. I felt almost like a dog going into a strange place. All senses were on the alert, including my smell trying to pick up any evidence of Joy. All I got was a rather delicious aroma of baking chicken.

  “I was making dinner,” said Jessica. “A moment please.”

  She headed down the hall, leaving us to follow. The living room was to the left and the kitchen opened off it. The place was rather untidy, not unduly so for two young women, but a cursory glance around showed no sign that a child had been here. No chairs moved or cushions on the floor for childproofing. Jessica took a pot off the stove and returned to the living room. On the way, she retrieved two hearing aids from a dish on the table and began to twist them into her ears.

  She smiled at us. “That’s better.”

  “Jessica, we would particularly like to speak to Hannah.”

  It must have been obvious that we were here on a serious matter and she started to look alarmed.

  “She’s not here. She has gone to visit her parents in Toronto for the weekend.”

  “When did she leave?”

  “I was at the library so I’m not sure but she usually takes the afternoon train. But please tell me what is wrong?”

  I looked at her closely but I didn’t think she was dissembling. “Little Joy has disappeared. Somebody abducted her from her room about two o’clock this afternoon.”

  “What do you mean abducted?”

  “Unfortunately Nora had left the house unattended believing that Joy was asleep. She says she was gone for only a short period of time and did not immediately check on her. Ms. Larsen was also out. Neither person checked on Joy until about three-thirty, when Ms. Larsen found the door was open and Joy was gone.”

  “Oh that stupid girl,” Jessica snapped. “We kept telling Deidre that she wasn’t the right person to have as a nanny but she insisted that Joy loved her. She said Nora had a heart of gold and not to be fooled by her tough manners. That’s bullshit. What did she say she left the house for? Drugs, I bet. Stupid wicked girl. She is a drug addict to boot.” Jessica’s hands fluttered as if they had to talk. “But I don’t understand … what does this have to do with Hannah?”

  Ed answered this one. “We have a witness who saw a young woman fitting Hannah’s description walking with a child who was mostly likely Joy.”

  “It can’t have been her. She has gone to visit her parents. She said nothing about taking Joy with her.”

  “What time was it when you last saw Hannah?” I asked.

  “About noon. I went over to the library. But it’s all some silly misunderstanding. Hannah must have decided to take Joy with her at the last minute…”

  “Without informing anybody?”

  “Perhaps she left a note and nobody saw it yet.”

  “There is no sign of any note.”

  Jessica was looking more and more distressed.

  “I wonder if you would mind checking Miss Silverstein’s things,” said Ed. “Let’s confirm that she did indeed intend to go away for the weekend.”

  “Come this way.” Jessica hurried down the long narrow hall. There were several posters on the walls advertising long-gone rock concerts. Somebody was a Madonna fan.

  “Forgive the mess,” said Jessica, and as we followed her into the bedroom, she quickly pulled the duvet over one of the twin beds. The other bed was neatly made.

  She opened the closet door. “This half belongs to Hannah. She has more clothes than I do.” She riffled quickly through the coat hangers, several of which were empty. Then she rummaged underneath where the boots and shoes were. Finally she turned back to us. “For some reason she has taken more of her clothes with her than she would normally do and she has borrowed my wheelie suitcase, which is bigger than hers. She must be intending to stay more than the weekend. How odd. I know she is booked into work on Tuesday.”

  “Is there anything else missing?”

  Jessica looked around the room. “She’s taken her laptop.”

  “I think the best thing to do is get in touch with her parents and see if they have heard from her. Do you have their phone number?”

  “Come this way. We will have to use the TTY machine. Mr. and Mrs. Silverstein are deaf too.”

  Jessica hurried down the hall back to the living room and went over to a desk by the window on which was what looked like a small combination keyboard and telephone.

  “Not as modern as text messages but it is what they are used to. Shall I contact them right now?”

  “Yes, please. Will you just ask if Hannah is with them or if they have heard from her. It might be early for her to be there as yet but if she is, I’d like to communicate with her directly.”

  Jessica sat down and typed quickly, the text moving across the display window. I moved closer so I could read over her shoulder. She finished with the letters SK.

  “That just means I’ve finished the message,” she explained up at me. “We’ll have to wait a minute for them to answer.”

  I saw Ed walking casually around the room.

  “Do you mind if I use your bathroom?”

  I knew what he was up to and Jessica probably did too but she didn’t look worried as if she had something to hide.

  “Down the hall to your left.”

  The Silversteins answered promptly and the message began to appear in the display window.
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  “Jessica. How lovely to hear from you. No, Hannah is not here. We have not heard from her for a few days. We were not expecting her for a couple of weeks. Is something wrong?”

  Jessica looked up at me. “What shall I tell them?”

  I didn’t know how to reassure them without a long explanation.

  “They know about Deidre’s death, don’t they?”

  “Yes, they do. They had visited us many times. They were very distressed.”

  “Tell them then that as part of the ongoing investigation the police would like to speak to Hannah as soon as possible and if she does get in touch with them, they must tell her to contact the police department at once. She can text me. Here’s my number.”

  Jessica typed the message. A reply came almost immediately and even in the print I felt the helplessness of the couple on the other end.

  “We will do as you ask but we don’t understand. What is the urgency?”

  “Say it is necessary to our enquiries to speak to Hannah.”

  We’d also have to send along an officer to the house but I thought if I wrote that it would alarm them even more. Jessica finished her message. “Okay” appeared in the screen.

  She switched off.

  “Jessica, does Hannah have other friends that she might be staying with?”

  “Well, yes. There are some but why would she tell me she was going to Toronto if it wasn’t true?”

  Why indeed?

  “We will need a list of the names, addresses, and phone or emails of everybody in your circle of friends. And will you please indicate which of them, if any, have a vehicle and which are hearing and which aren’t.”

  “Most of them are deaf. If you are going to see them in person, you will need an interpreter.”

  “Will you do it? We mustn’t waste time. If Hannah doesn’t have Joy then somebody else does. And we are pretty sure it is somebody the child knows well.”

  “Shall I start by emailing everybody?”

  “All right.”

  Only those who had no nefarious reason would answer honestly but we might get some information out of it. She went over to the computer that was on the table and booted it up. Immediately, she swivelled around to look at us.

  “I have an email from Hannah.”

  “Open it,” said Ed.

  She did. We had both moved to stand behind her and I read,

  Hey Jess. I’ve decided not to go to TO after all. I need a break from everything. Time in the sun for some R and R. I’ve let Mrs. Scott know I’ll be off next week. I’ll be in touch. Don’t fret, Jess the best. I’ll be back.

  Love and hugs, Hannah.

  “Does she have a wireless laptop?”

  “Yes, she does. She just got one.”

  So she could be anywhere with a wireless connection.

  “Write back, will you, Jessica, and tell her she must get in touch with the nearest police station. Tell her that Joy has disappeared and if she doesn’t have her we must find out who does.”

  Of course she had the child but we had to go through the motions.

  There was no need for both of us to hang around, so Ed left me to keep an eye on Jessica and went back to the station so he could get the Amber Alert mobilized.

  “Call me as soon as you’ve done. I’ll have a car pick you up.”

  I stayed with Jessica for the next couple of hours. Her friends were prompt and she’d heard back from all but three either by text message or email. Of the three who didn’t answer, one was reached on the TTY, the other she thought was out of town, and the third was Zachary Taylor. I felt like the strobe light was going off in my head.

  “Do you know that there is a strong probability that Zachary is Joy’s father?” I asked her.

  She nodded, shamefaced. “Dee would never admit it, but we all thought that’s who it was. I hate to say this about the dead but Dee used him. He’s a sweet goofy guy who had the hugest crush on her. She wanted a child but didn’t want to be involved long-term with a man. Don’t get me wrong, she wasn’t a lesbo like that stupid Nora, but she liked to be independent. So she chose a sperm donor. He needed to be congenitally deaf, with a high likelihood of passing it on, but otherwise with good genes, eyes, and so on. Zach fitted the bill perfectly. She got pregnant and promptly dumped him. He was heartbroken.”

  “Did she confide in you that she was planning another such pregnancy?”

  “She made a few noises about it. Said Joy needed a companion. From the looks of it, she crooked her little finger and Zach came running.”

  “Jessica, you know Hannah. Do you think it’s possible that she is with Zachary and that they have taken Joy with them?”

  “My God, they’d never harm the girl. Hannah loved her.”

  “I’m not saying that. None of you seem to care for Nora. Maybe they’re teaching her a lesson, punishing her.”

  Jessica’s face was full of hurt. She had been left out of her best friend’s life. She sighed. “I will tell you this, Hannah has been in love with Zach Taylor ever since our university days. She would do anything for him.”

  Which could include kidnapping his child.

  She put her fingers to her mouth, realizing something. “Hannah had a text message sometime this morning. She seemed quite agitated by it but when I asked who it was from, she blew me off and wouldn’t say. I’ll bet it was him.”

  “What time was this?”

  “Quite early, we’d just got up. Maybe nine o’clock.”

  “And it was after this she told you she was going to visit her parents?”

  “That’s right. I was surprised I must say. I wanted her to stay with me but she was adamant.”

  I stood up. “That’s probably as much as we can do for now. Thanks so much for your help.”

  She shifted on her chair. “This is one sad thing after another, isn’t it?”

  I phoned Ed as promised and within five minutes all the table lamps started to flash. He had pressed the doorbell. I said goodbye to Jessica, who was sitting forlornly on the couch. As she said, it was one sad thing after another. No matter what their motive, Hannah Silverstein and Zachary Taylor had got themselves into a very serious situation.

  “You look as tired as I feel,” Ed said as I followed him out to the cruiser. “There’ve been no new sightings but we’ve got everybody on the alert for the camper van. He’s left the farmer’s field where he was before. I’m guessing he’s tucked away somewhere. He must know we’re looking for them and they’ll hide out a while.” He held open the car door for me. “I thought Jessica was telling the truth, didn’t you Chris?”

  I nodded. “She looked betrayed when she realized Hannah had lied to her. Yes, I believe it played exactly as she told it.” I told him about the morning text message to Hannah.

  “Taylor?”

  “I’d bet on it.”

  “So what’s Hannah up to?”

  “There’s no love lost between the two deaf girls and the nanny, that’s for sure. I’m still leaning on the side of punishment.”

  “I’ll put every available officer on to checking on the list of friends’ addresses and we’ll use the radio and television. The Sunday paper can print it too.” He tried to stifle back a yawn. “Lord, I’m tired. I’d better get off home. Aileen won’t recognize me if I’m away much longer.”

  I must say, I felt a twinge of envy. I had the sense that Ed had a good marriage, often quite a feat among police officers. Long unpredictable hours and lots of emotional stress that most guys and a lot of women didn’t talk about. I did however wish there was a nice patient somebody waiting for me to get home. But hey, Tory and Bertie were good listeners.

  “I’d better get back to Leo and Loretta. They’ll be waiting to hear.”

  Ed turned onto my street. “I liked her. Too bad about the son. Almost makes you feel sorry for the old doc. But my guess is he would be one difficult dude to live with.”

  It shows how far I’d come that I almost leaped in to defend Leo.

/>   CHAPTER FIFTY

  The house was in darkness downstairs and frankly I was glad when Ed insisted on coming up to my apartment and making sure nobody was hiding in the closet. I might joke about having an attack cat on the loose but the most help Bertie or Tory would provide was if one of them tripped the bad guy in an attempt to wrap themselves around his legs. Which they did to me as soon as I opened the door. I talked Ed out of stationing a patrol car outside and he left, assuring me he was as close as a call away. Sweet guy. It was ten o’clock by now and I was both exhausted and adrenalized, a bad combination that usually meant I wouldn’t be falling asleep any time soon. I put some cereal in a bowl, picked up Bertie, and went into the living room to see if some late-night TV would calm me down. Before that, however, I owed it to Nora to bring her up to speed. Ed had agreed to get in touch with Leo for which I was thankful.

  The phone rang several times before she answered. She sounded breathless.

  “Sorry. I was in the john. Any word? Have you found her?”

  I decided, given all the uncertainty of who was complicitous with whom, to withhold some of what we now knew.

  “Not yet. Nora, I’ve been going over this sequence of events over and over in my mind…”

  “Me too,” she interrupted.

  “The problem is the chancy nature of the whole thing. How would somebody know you were going to leave the house when you did? You said yourself it was a spontaneous decision.”

  There was dead silence at the other end of the phone, then she said in a tight voice, “Yeah.”

  “Yeah what? You told somebody?”

  “Yeah… ”

  I held on to my patience with difficulty. She finally went on. “Don’t get this all wrong, but yeah, when I think about it there is somebody who knew.”

  Another silence and I could hear a deep prolonged intake of breath. She was toking up.

  “Go on.”

  “Don’t rush me. This isn’t easy for me to tell you… Fact is, I’ve been stressed out of my mind ever since Dee’s death, so I called this fellow I know to see if he could sell me some weed. I needed to relax big time. He called me back just after Joy went down and said he’d meet me on the corner in two minutes. So I nipped out like I said, got cigs and the weed, came back and went for a smoke in the shed. I can see the kid’s window from there and I knew I’d hear her if she was crying or anything. You’ve heard the pair of lungs she’s got on her.”