by Rick Mofina
That was then.
His old man was doing better now. He was faithful to his AA sessions, took early retirement from the brewery, and was a part-time private detective.
In many ways, his father was doing better than he was right now, Jason figured as he finished off his meal. It was rough with Spangler at the paper, seeing him fire Astrid. True, she had it coming, but Spangler was brutal about it. And catching the Colson story in the wake of Spangler’s termination rage didn’t help.
Jason had no one to turn to, really. After Valerie returned from Europe, they were together again. But it was never the same. While he’d quit drinking, he’d withdrawn. They only lasted about six months before Valerie said, “Jason, one of us has to say it: this is just not working. We’ve grown in different directions.”
It was a fact.
So they agreed to go their separate ways without any bitterness. He remembered how she smiled, tears in her eyes, as she kissed him at the airport on her way back to Europe.
That part of his life was finished. Over. Dead.
Forget about it.
He reached for his milk. Despite everything, he felt a little better and was contemplating having a slice of apple pie. Could it be that he’d found hope by way of Detective Grace Garner?
Maybe he should call her right now.
He weighed the idea, reasoning that he needed to check on Maria Colson’s condition before final edition. Jason pulled out his camera phone and began viewing some of the pictures he’d taken during the day, coming to a few of Grace Garner at the news conference.
He remembered how she had smelled mildly like roses when she got in his face today. She had the aura of a strong, bright woman, maybe a year or two older than him. She was attractive. Right, and she was probably married or had a guy, he thought, staring into her eyes.
He clicked to the next image.
Maria and Dylan Colson.
He was going to find out what happened to them.
No matter what it took, he thought later that night, as he continued staring at their faces.
In the darkness, they glowed from his camera phone like ghosts.
16
Detective Grace Garner sat alone in the placid light of the hospital cafeteria searching the cream clouds of her tea for answers.
Several floors above her, Maria Colson remained comatose, her condition unchanged. Perelli had insisted Grace take a break while he and Lee kept vigil, giving her time to study the status of the case.
Dupree should’ve called by now.
A new break had surfaced more than an hour ago out of Sea-Tac International, where a woman traveling with a baby was acting strangely while trying to board a flight to Los Angeles.
Dupree was on it.
And he should’ve called by now, Grace thought, staring at her phone. The cafeteria was okay for cell phones. “Surgeons are on them all the time, talking to brokers or booking tee times,” a nursing supervisor had told her. Grace added sugar to her tea just as her phone finally rang.
“The airport dead-ended,” Dupree said.
“What happened?”
“Turned out the mother was a nervous flyer who’d been mixing alcohol and medication. She spooked some travelers when she said she’d had dreams that the devil was going to steal her son. Comparison of the baby’s footprint with Dylan Colson’s didn’t match.”
“So we’ve got nothing.”
“This is solvable. With all the attention, something will break. What about there at the hospital, anything?”
“No, her condition hasn’t changed.”
“Forensics isn’t done yet, they’re still scrutinizing everything they picked up at the scene. They’ll be going at everything all night, maybe they’ll give us something.”
“Maybe.”
After Dupree’s call, Grace looked at the time. It was coming up on, what? Fourteen or fifteen hours since Dylan Colson’s abduction and nothing concrete had emerged.
The false alarm on the takedown, the alert, the intense news coverage, hundreds of tips to process, but nothing solid that brought them closer to the suspects. Words blurred as she flipped through her notes. All were fragments. Pieces of a thousand possibilities. Nothing stood out as a solid lead. Had she overlooked something? Had they done everything? Had they looked everywhere? What was she missing?
Initial background checks of the Colsons revealed nothing more than an old parking ticket issued to Lee. Maria was a churchgoer who attended mass every Sunday and did a lot of volunteer community work.
These were good, decent-living people.
Detectives and FBI agents were scrutinizing the Colsons’ circle of friends, neighbors, and social networks for any possible links, for anyone who may have lost a baby, or wanted a baby, or had a grudge against Lee and Maria.
They lit up the neighborhood to check databases against people with criminal records, or those whose names were with the sex offender registry. Nothing. They’d examined the Colsons’ e-mail exchanges, Internet travels, and phone records. Scores of detectives were probing several other areas; they’d been going full tilt.
Dupree pointed to patterns in baby abductions and believed the odds favored a break arising from the way offenders traditionally acted. “They’re often illogical in the time after the abduction,” he’d told her. “They get tripped up on the getaway part because they don’t plan it and they’re irrational.”
Irrational? Agent Dupree, whoever did this is insane.
Grace thought of Maria and Lee upstairs in the intensive care unit. Since the Lake City takedown earlier that day, Lee had never left her side, had never released her hand as he whispered prayers into her ear.
While observing them, Grace had, for a moment, let her emotional guard down. She had no one in her life to anguish over her. No one to miss her, should she lay dying. And the more she thought about it, the more it weighed on her. She looked at her hands. No rings. No strings. Nothing to complicate her life.
Wasn’t that the way I always wanted it? Ever since that time? Knock it off. You’ve always been a loner. That’s the way you like it. You’ve got a job to do. Focus on it.
All right. She went into her bag and pulled out Dylan Colson’s baby book with its soft blue, pink, and yellow flower motif. Baby’s First Year. Lee had volunteered it from the house. Filled with Maria’s journal entries about their son’s birth, it was as close as you could get to a diary.
Maybe there was something here.
Again, she examined Maria’s neat handwriting, intrigued by some of the passages. “To Mommy’s Angel, no one believed we would have you, except me. I always believed you would come to me.”
That was a strange way of wording her joy. What exactly did she mean? When she’d asked Lee, he explained that doctors told Maria long ago that she might never be able to conceive. But Maria never gave up hope and prayed for a child.
That’s it?
Sitting alone in the cafeteria looking at the blue ballpoint ink that formed the words Maria had written in the time after Dylan’s birth, Grace sensed there had to be more to it.
Maybe it had a bearing on the case. Maybe it didn’t. But there had to be more.
Gently biting her bottom lip, she considered Jason Wade, the reporter from the Mirror. He was smart. Quick. Good looking too. Was she attracted to him? No. Stop it. Blame that on stress and the adrenaline rush of the case. Focus here, Grace. Wade seemed to have picked up on the same angle that was eating at her.
What was Wade’s cryptic question again? She flipped through her notes. There it was, in her own shorthand: “I know this is a difficult time, but there may have been others for you and Maria?” Lee said he didn’t understand the question, yet he called Dylan their “miracle” just like Maria had in the book. Here it was—“Today God granted me a miracle... my answered prayer.”
She had to go back to Lee on this. Had to press him on it, she told herself, stepping into the elevator. As it ascended she reflected on the juxtaposition.
Lee was praying for his wife to live.
Grace was preparing for Maria’s death.
Grace needed a dying declaration from Maria. She was the only one who could identify the people who took her son. Perhaps her final gift would be to help Grace catch her son’s abductors.
To help solve her own murder.
Grace spotted Lee sitting on the couch in the lounge. Perelli was unwrapping a candy bar. He loved peanuts and chocolate. Lee was talking softly with Maria’s aunt and uncle, telling them that he had to step out of Maria’s room while the nurses tended to her.
“She’s going to be all right, Lee,” the older man was saying.
Lee nodded.
“We have to be strong,” Maria’s aunt said, following Lee’s gaze to Grace, who signaled that she wanted to take him aside. His face sagged into dark whiskered lines as he joined her and Perelli at the far side of the lounge.
“Lee, I’m sorry, but I have to come back to something, I have to ask you this.” She opened the baby journal to show him Maria’s words. “What exactly did she mean by these words?”
Lee looked at her, then the words again.
“I told you, we had trouble conceiving. We were told it may never happen.”
“Why, what was the reason?”
“When Maria was twelve she got hurt bad after falling when she was on a school camping trip in Glacier National Park. The doctors blamed her problem on her fall. But Maria wouldn’t give up, kept praying, and Dylan—” Lee stopped to compose himself. “Then we had Dylan.”
“How long were you trying for?”
“I—” He shook his head. “I don’t know, a few years. I mean, we just wanted to have kids and we were told we might have trouble.”
“Did the doctors say it was impossible, or just going to be hard?”
“Well, some thought the odds were against it ever happening but Maria refused to accept that.”
“What did you do?”
“Kept trying.”
“Did you tell people about it?”
“I know she told her friends at the supermarket.”
“Did you consider other options?”
“Like what—adopting?”
“Yes, or surrogate, or in vitro, stuff like that?”
Lee nodded. They’d considered everything.
Two nurses rushed to Maria’s room, faces taut as they uncollared stethoscopes. Muted serious tones leaked into the hall when they swung through her door, monitoring equipment was beeping, they glimpsed staff moving quickly around the bed.
Lee stepped toward the door, but a nurse in green scrubs stopped him from entering his wife’s room.
“Wait here, Mr. Colson, please.”
“What the hell’s going on?”
Grace found her cassette recorder in her bag, gripped it. “I want in there in case she says anything.”
“No, Detective. I’m sorry. She’s not able to say anything.”
“What the hell’s happening?” Lee asked.
More staff were rushing into the room. The door swung again releasing glimpses of urgency and words like defib, epinephrine, and ECG.
Perelli and Lee’s uncle got him to the couch, where they waited. Some twenty minutes passed before a doctor, face red, approached. Lee stood.
“Maria went into cardiac arrest.”
“Is she all right?”
“She’s stable,” the doctor said. “It was touch and go but her heart rate is normal and all of her signs are normal.”
“Will she be okay?”
The doctor stared at Lee.
“Nothing’s changed. She’s still unconscious. As I’m sure Dr. Binder explained, she could still make a full recovery, or she may never regain consciousness.”
Lee looked off, his shoulders fell, he put his hands over his face.
“She’s in God’s hands,” Maria’s aunt said.
The doctor nodded.
“Can I go back in to be with her, please?”
“That should be fine. Give it a moment so they can clear things up.”
A few minutes later, a nurse let Lee into the room. Grace followed him. The room was dim. It was tranquil with the soft beeping and hum of the monitoring equipment.
It took a few seconds before Grace’s eyes adjusted to the light.
All of Maria’s hair had been shorn off. Her scalp was a web of stitches from the surgery. Her face was bruised. A large-bore IV line ran from her left arm, while a sensor clipped to her right index finger ran to a monitor. A clear oxygen tube looped under her nostrils.
Lee took her hand, then adjusted Snowball, the white stuffed polar bear, next to her; he’d bought it the day Dylan was born.
Grace heard him whispering to her.
“Wake up, please wake up. Don’t leave me.”
Grace turned to the window and looked at the twinkling lights of Seattle and the reflection of Lee Colson, on his knees next to his dying wife. Then Grace saw herself, alone, helpless, as she feared for Dylan and the worst.
Better face it, you could have a double homicide on your hands.
17
At that moment, across the city from where Maria Colson was fighting for her life, the television flickered in the darkness of Nadine’s living room.
Casablanca was tonight’s late-night classic.
A beautiful story about tortured souls in love. She sighed as the movie was interrupted by another stream of commercials. This time starting with an ad for cheap furniture—nice-looking stuff—pre-owned cars—don’t they really mean used?—laxatives—yuck, gross—preplanned funerals—morbid—Big Poppa Vinnie’s Pizza—yummy—and the latest local news update.
Nadine leaned forward.
The Colson case was still the lead item.
So tragic.
But it was better than the movie and she didn’t want to miss any new developments. Did that make her a horrible person? She hoped not. Wasn’t everyone in Seattle drawn into the story? she thought as the images from earlier in the day replayed.
No trace of the baby. No lead on suspects. Frustrated detectives. Maria Colson remained in critical condition.
Watching Lee Colson’s pleading broke Nadine’s heart. What happened was terrible. Just awful. If only she could help in some way.
But how? She didn’t know the answer to that question.
Casablanca resumed but without her interest. She’d lost sight of Bogart and Bergman. Instead she chewed on her thoughts and her fingernails.
She looked across the room at Axel in his recliner, taking in the outline of his hard, muscular frame silhouetted in the tranquil light. She only saw his face in the brief halo that blossomed each time he dragged on his cigarette. She liked his deep-set eyes, his strong jaw, and the fact he seldom spoke.
She felt safe with him, her protector.
Axel kept most of his feelings locked inside. She never knew what he was really thinking, only that he was smart, wise from his experiences. And that he had a lot on his mind lately.
So did Nadine.
They’d been so busy in the last little while.
Axel was expecting to close his business deal any day now and receive his payout. And he’d said that if things went the way he expected, there would be “a huge bonus” to go with it. Enough for them to first take a vacation, then buy that little house on the beach in Oregon, up the coast from Portland—then get married.
Nadine smiled.
Her dream was coming true. Finally coming true. They’d live happily in that house by the sea. It had been a long road for both of them, but it was meant to be.
It was happening.
Not a moment too soon either, she thought, taking stock of the living room with the sofa, bleeding stuffing through the torn fabric. And would you look at these walls with their surface fractures and unfilled holes left by the previous tenants. There was a faint urine-like odor in the carpet of the back room, which convinced her the previous people had also kept pets, which was against the rules.
Some people were just so inconsiderate. And in some areas they’d left the electrical wiring exposed and frayed. Surely it was a building code violation, but she never complained.
No point in making a fuss.
They’d be gone soon.
Nadine was grateful it was a rental and none of this junk was theirs. But the mess was. She groaned at the takeout food cartons on the coffee table; at the sweater, the jeans, and other clothes scattered about, along with their business papers and wrappers from all the things they’d bought recently. Look at it. All of it was spread everywhere. They’d been so busy she hadn’t had the chance to keep up. Things just sort of got away from her.
“I can’t stand it. I’ve got to clean this up.”
Axel’s face glowed for a few seconds as he smoked.
She collected the plates, utensils, glasses. Heading into the kitchen she remembered to step around the treacherous floor-board with the loose nail that always popped up unexpectedly to snag her sock.
A small color television on the kitchen counter was tuned to a different local channel. The sound was low but Nadine had caught the tail end of another late-night news report on the Colson abduction.
Still nothing new.
Setting the dishes in the sink, she admitted she couldn’t take her mind from the story. It was silly but she was obsessed with keeping up on details. Who wouldn’t be? It was real-life drama, a hundred times better than any fake reality show.
She glanced to the top of the refrigerator where an AM radio was tuned to an all-news station. At the other end of the kitchen, atop the stove, she had another radio going.
Nothing new was being reported.
An hour earlier, when Axel went out to pick up some Chinese food for their late dinner, he stopped at a twenty-four-hour corner store for cigarettes and tomorrow’s—actually today’s—edition of one of the papers, the Seattle Mirror. It was opened on the kitchen table. Nadine sat down and read the stories.
Again.
She wanted to go through them once more in case she’d missed something. Tapping her red pen against the newsprint, she scrutinized the articles, concentrating on every iota that had been reported.
