by Webb, Debra
The couple stared mutely at her. Sarah imagined both had gone numb at this point. Nothing felt real. Typical. She needed all the information she could get before that numbness wore off and reality set in again.
“Anything that pertains to your daughter, anything at all, could be useful no matter how seemingly insignificant,” she continued. “Is she involved in any sports or hobbies? Dance or music lessons? I need to know every individual she comes into contact with on a regular basis, even those she rarely sees. This abduction may be the result of a single contact. Her pediatrician, her dentist, the person who trims her hair. Friends. Relatives. Don’t leave anyone out. At this stage of the investigation, everyone is a suspect, including the two of you.”
Mrs. Adams gasped, indignation joining the terror in her red, swollen eyes, but the senator remained stoic, his expression unflinching.
“First,” Sarah began, “are there any problems with the two of you, marital, financial, or otherwise?”
Three hours later Sarah had all she was going to get. The Adamses, as well as Detective Kline, looked exhausted. “Just one last question, Senator,” she said when they had all risen in preparation for ending the interview.
The annoyed look he pointed in her direction was nothing more than his weariness. She didn’t take it personally.
“Are you certain there is no one who has a grudge against you? You’ve made quite a reputation on Capitol Hill for standing by your beliefs and not being swayed. You’ve unquestionably made a few enemies along the way.”
Something changed in the senator’s demeanor. The shift was subtle, but Sarah noticed.
“Detective Kline,” he said without taking his eyes off Sarah. “Would you show my wife back to your office while I speak with Detective Cuddahy privately for a moment?”
“Of course, Senator.”
Obviously too weak with emotions to argue Mrs. Adams followed Detective Kline without comment.
When the door had closed behind them, the senator stared long and hard at Sarah for a moment longer before he spoke. “If I had any enemies capable of this I would have said so up front. Now.” He pulled in a big breath. “Give it to me straight, Detective. What are we looking at here? I’ve read about the children who’ve gone missing the past week or so.”
Sarah kept her expression carefully schooled. Adams didn’t know the half of it if his assessments were based on what he’d read in the papers. Telling him wasn’t going to change anything. Not really. Or maybe she just didn’t want to go down that road at this time of night. She, too, was exhausted.
She braced for his reaction. “We believe there could be a connection.”
“Dear God.” The words were scarcely more than a wounded moan.
“We can’t be sure of anything yet. Your case may be different. There could be a ransom demand. There could be evidence that points to an entirely different MO. Forensics may turn up important clues that will lead us to your daughter. All the proper alerts have been issued, the search is ongoing.”
Adams shook his head slowly from side to side. “You’re holding back on me, Detective. I can see it in your eyes.”
Sarah had trained herself long ago never to give away her emotions. He was fishing. “Senator, I wish I could give you more, but it’s too early to have any answers.”
“So you’ll waste precious time interrogating friends and relatives,” he said savagely, his anger building with each word as he concluded the worst... the truth, “on enemies I don’t have. You know more than you’re telling me. I demand full disclosure.”
“I wish that was true, sir,” she responded frankly. “If I were holding out on you that would mean I have some sort of substantial lead... some hope of finding answers.” She tossed the idea of beating around the bush. Why hide it? He would know by morning. He would push everyone involved until he was told all there was to tell.
The color drained from his face. “It’s worse than I thought,” he said, his tone unexpectedly soft... the force barely enough to carry the words across the room. His eyes held a new kind of terror. “How many are missing?”
Sarah moistened her lips and told him what he wanted to hear. “We have six missing children—seven if your daughter’s abductor doesn’t demand a ransom. If,” she cleared her throat of the emotion clogged there, “her body isn’t found.”
“Seven children,” he repeated, a new wave of shock visibly setting in. “And no leads?”
She shook her head. “Not one.”
Chapter 7
105 7th Street, Washington, D.C.,
Saturday, October 21, 1:55 a.m.
Sarah parked at the curb and stared up at the Victorian townhouse lit only by the meager glow from the street lamp. She wished now she’d left a light on, but she hadn’t known she would be home so late though she should have. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d made it home before dark.
Summoning the necessary strength she opened her car door and stepped out onto the walk. When she closed the door and activated the locking alarm a dog somewhere up the deserted street barked in protest. Sarah glanced toward the desolate howl and shivered. All the other houses were dark like hers, the residents tucked in for the night.
She wondered if they would sleep so peacefully if they knew what she knew.
Seven missing children.
Sarah trudged up the steps toward her front door, the exhaustion boring deeper. It felt suffocating, overwhelming. Crushing.
“Sarah!”
She whipped around at the sound of the female voice on the street behind her. Her heart bumped hard against her sternum in the three seconds required for her to recognize the voice.
Carla Parsons stood at the bottom of the steps, her face dimly lit by the ancient street lamp. She looked much older than she had the last time Sarah saw her. How long had it been? Eight or nine months? They talked by phone from time to time but not recently. Those dark memories she worked so hard every waking hour to keep at bay, whispered inside her, chilling Sarah to the bone.
“Carla.” Sarah waited on the landing separating the twin sets of steps that led from the walk to her front stoop. “Are you all right?” It was two a.m. Had there been a break in her son’s case? One Sarah hadn’t heard about? Whatever it was, Carla obviously couldn’t wait to share it.
“I’ve been waiting for you to come home.”
The waif thin woman climbed another step, careful to keep her gaze steady on Sarah as if she feared she might disappear. As she neared, Sarah noted the new lines on her face. The loss of her son had taken a heavy toll. No one lived through the loss of a child without suffering the visible as well as the invisible costs. Sarah knew that better than anyone.
“Waiting? How long?”
“Since around eight.”
Sarah sat down on the landing, too tired to do this standing up. “Carla, why didn’t you call my office? I could’ve warned you that I wouldn’t be home until late.”
The other woman’s shoulders slumped with her own exhaustion as she took a seat next to Sarah. “I didn’t want to talk on the phone. I needed to do this in person. Waiting wasn’t a bother.” She looked at Sarah, hope mingling with the desperation that usually inhabited her sunken eyes. “I’d use just about any excuse not to go home.”
Carla’s son had been missing for five years, like Sophie. Josh Parsons had been six at the time. Sophie was only five. They’d disappeared a week apart. Since Sarah hadn’t been able to work the case she and Carla had taken every possible step behind the scenes to find their children, including joining a support group. The longer their children were missing the more they fell apart. Sarah had taken a leave of absence from work for those first few months. Carla had been fired from her job.
Months and years passed and nothing changed except the other faces in their support group. New parents, fresh from losing a child, would wander into a meeting. Others would give up and stop coming. Sarah and Carla had stayed with the meetings longer than most. Then Carla’s husband had died. Eventual
ly Sarah’s had decided to move on with his life. Tom, the man she had married seemingly a lifetime ago, had tried to make Sarah see that at some point they had to start living again. She couldn’t do it, not without Sophie.
Sarah had promptly slipped over the edge after that. Even she had recognized the downward spiral but she hadn’t been able to stop it. The crash and burn wasn’t her husband’s fault. She’d been on the brink for a while. The trip into that dark abyss had earned Sarah three months in a ritzy place with a fancy name that had been nothing more than a mental hospital. She’d come out no closer to being healed than when she’d gone in. There was no true recovery from the loss of a child. A part of her was broken and it couldn’t be fixed.
The very day Sarah had been released Carla had overdosed. In truth, Sarah had been contemplating the same thing. Ironically, Carla was the one reason she hadn’t. For two days after the overdose Sarah had sat in that hospital room next to Carla’s bed. She’d held the other woman in her arms and begged her not to give up. A promise that Sarah would always be there for her was the only way Carla would swear not to try suicide again. Sarah had been forced to forgo the idea of permanently checking out for Carla’s sake.
She pushed away the crushing memories. “Has there been a new development in Josh’s case?” That couldn’t be right. Sarah would have heard.
Carla averted her gaze once more and Sarah suppressed the urge to sigh. Whatever she’d come to say or to ask Sarah wasn’t going to like it. They’d been down this road before… too many times.
“There’s this man,” Carla began hesitantly. “He’s kind of like a private investigator.”
Carla had hired three private investigators during the first two years after Josh’s disappearance. Sarah and Tom had hired a couple, too. Eventually, Sarah had realized they couldn’t help them anymore than the cops or the feds could. She wished for a way to save Carla from further hurt. Sarah could tell her not to get her hopes up too high, but why shatter whatever meager hope she had left.
What about you, Cuddahy? What happened to your hopes? Sarah clenched her jaw and evicted that damned little voice that refused to leave her alone even when she collapsed into her drug-induced sleep. Call her a quitter, call her a bad mother, Sarah had finally reached that numb zone and she couldn’t look back anymore. For her, it was the only way to survive.
“He has a good reputation and there’s something special about him,” Carla went on. “I think this time will be different.”
That last part gave Sarah pause. “What do you mean special?” Anytime a private dick claimed to have some special skill Sarah always grew suspicious. It usually meant the guy was a con artist.
“He can sense things... pick up vibes of some sort. I’ve spoken to several people he’s helped in the past.” Carla looked so desperate for anything at all to hang onto. “I really think he might be able to find Josh and Sophie.”
When you couldn’t. Carla didn’t have to say the words.
For the first three and a half years after Sophie and Josh’s abductions, not a night passed that Sarah didn’t ask herself what she could have done differently. What Tom and his colleagues at the FBI could have done differently. She had mentally reexamined the evidence and the strategies taken by those investigating the case thousands of times.
Drawing in a deep breath, Sarah readied for a hail of protest. “Carla, you know the chances that he’s legit are next to none.”
Sarah had visited her share of psychics in the beginning. Desperation made people do things they wouldn’t normally do. Tom had even asked a man he’d once worked with in the FBI who supposedly had those special senses. A waste of time. Dr. Paul Phillips had been a fraud just like all the rest. Yet, Sarah had clung to any hope. She’d wanted to find her baby so badly she would have given her life to make it happen. Still would. The only difference between then and now is that she didn’t dare look much less hope. Sophie was gone.
“I know. I know,” Carla admitted. “It’s just that he has helped a few.” She shrugged. “I have to let him try. I don’t care how much it costs. It’s worth any risk if there’s even a remote chance he can find my boy.” She looked to Sarah hopefully. “If he finds Josh, he might find Sophie.”
Sarah bowed her head and stared at the cracked mortar between the bricks at her feet. The pain of hearing her daughter’s name spoken aloud was still nearly unbearable. There were a lot of things she could say right now, negative things mostly, but no advice she had to offer would change Carla’s mind. So why hurt her with the truth? As long as she was looking, she had hope. Maybe that was why Sarah had lost hers.
“I know what you mean,” Sarah relented. “If there’s any chance this guy can help, you should grab onto the opportunity with both hands.”
Carla nodded enthusiastically. “That’s what I thought. What do I care how much it costs? When the life insurance money my husband left is gone, it’s gone, but until then I have to do whatever I can to find him.”
Carla didn’t say the rest, but Sarah knew what she was thinking. I can’t be like you.
“I wish I could… help.” Sarah couldn’t go there again.
Carla laid a hand on her arm. “I know. It’s okay. I’m doing this for both of us.”
For a long moment they said nothing. The strong connection they’d shared five years ago still hummed just beneath the wall Sarah had built to block the pain. She and Carla had never met until their children disappeared. Two shattered souls adrift on the same desolate ocean looking for any kind of life raft.
Sarah drummed up a shaky smile. “I tell you what, before you become this guy’s client and lay down a retainer, let me check him out. If he’s clean, then I say go for it.”
Carla looked away. “I’ve checked his references.”
Sarah placed a hand over hers. “I know you have and you’re probably right in deciding to hire him, but give me a couple of days to dig a little deeper. It couldn’t hurt.”
After a beat or two of indecision Carla finally dredged up a faint smile. “All right. Like you said, it couldn’t hurt. Just let me know as soon as you can. I’d like to get the ball rolling.”
“Forty-eight hours is all I need,” Sarah promised. “I’ll give you something then.”
After an awkward farewell hug, Sarah watched as Carla climbed into her car and drove away. The smile Sarah had tacked into place wilted the instant her taillights were out of sight.
Five long years Carla had focused solely on the search for her son. Each individual had to cope in their own way... had to come to terms with the reality in their own time. Some took longer than others. And some, like Sarah, just skipped over certain phases with work and pharmaceuticals.
She unlocked her front door, entered the code for the security system so it would stop beeping a warning and kicked off her shoes. The cool hardwood felt like heaven beneath her tired feet. She hung her keys on a hook on the coatrack right next to the dog leash. She’d had a dog once. Tom had brought him home six months before Sophie was born. A big, black Lab pup they’d named Sam. Sam had disappeared the same day as Sophie. She and Tom had decided that Sam had gone after Sophie and gotten lost. Sarah still looked twice whenever she passed a big old black lab.
She stalled, closed her eyes for a moment to clear her mind of the memories.
No looking back.
What she needed was a little help with shoring up her wobbly defenses. She wandered to the CD player and sorted through the stack of loose CDs until she found the one she wanted. As the lazy notes drifted through the air, she snagged a long neck bottle of beer from the fridge and plodded up the stairs to her bedroom. She allowed a long slug of the cold brew to slide down her throat, and then she held the bottle to her forehead with one hand as she struggled out of her slacks with the other.
Do not mix with alcohol. The warning on her prescription label filtered through her mind. She dismissed it. What was the worst it could do? Kill her?
Sarah laughed. “Can’t kill someone
who’s already dead.”
Leaving a trail of clothing behind her, she made her way to the shower, adjusted the spray and temperature of the water, then climbed in and leaned against the cool tile wall. Content to feel the steam rising around her, she took her time and finished her beer. Eventually, she redirected the spray and allowed the hot water to sluice down her body. She moaned softly as the heat instantly started to relax her tired, aching muscles.
Too spent to shut the memories off, images of Tom filtered through her mind. Deep down where she didn’t allow anyone else to see, she missed her husband. The trouble with that was, even if he still wanted her, she couldn’t be with him anymore. She couldn’t live that lie. Disgust welled in her throat. He knew the truth. She heard it in his voice, saw it in his eyes. He never mentioned it, but he knew.
If she’d left work on time that day, she would have been home to take Sophie and Sam to the new dog park that had opened a few blocks from the house. Sarah had promised her daughter, but a big murder case had made her forget. Harriett, the sitter Sophie had loved like a grandmother, had agreed to take them. With Sarah’s blessing and infinite relief that she could remain focused on her case, Harriet had leashed Sam and off she and Sophie had gone. No big deal. They had walked to the other parks in the neighborhood on numerous occasions.
Only this time they never made it to the park. Sophie and Sam vanished and Harriett was left dying on the sidewalk. No one saw a single thing until a jogger discovered Harriett’s cold body.
Sarah squeezed her eyes shut and forced away the images. She had to keep it together. She had six—make that seven—children counting on her. Each face flashed before her eyes like a movie trailer on a slow forward search.
Sarah heard her cell ringing, but she ignored it. Setting her empty beer bottle aside, she stuck her head under the water to drown out the sound. She didn’t want to talk to anyone. She just wanted to relax and to find that black emptiness for an hour or two before the dreams invaded.
Later, dried and clad in a fluffy white terry-cloth robe, she went for another beer. Only one more. Heading back to the stairs she paused as she passed the hall table. She ordered herself to disregard her cell sitting there, likely harboring a new voicemail.
