by Karen Dionne
Her phone buzzed in her pocket. She took it out and flipped it open. Another text. An AMBER Alert. A toddler was missing from a foster home. Hugo Campbell.
She dropped the shovel with a clatter and dashed inside. She pulled off her hat and scarf and tossed them on the coffee table. Her hands trembled as she punched in her lieutenant’s number.
“What do we have on the missing child?” she asked without preamble. Hugo’s disappearance had to be connected with her case. Every crime had a ripple effect. And sometimes, the ripples built into a tsunami.
“Snatched or wandered away from the front yard of the foster home,” Lieutenant Oakes replied. “What’s your interest?”
“Hugo is Neil Campbell’s son. My suspect in the Marsee brothers’ murder.”
“Then get your ass down here,” Oakes said. “We’re gonna need what you know.”
Sarah shut the phone. What did she know about Hugo that could help the police get him back? Not much. His father was dead, and his mother had been out of the picture since Hugo was a baby. He’d been sent to foster care and his favorite toy was a flattened yellow rabbit. She could think of only two people who had a direct connection to the boy who might or might not have had a reason to take him. Not coincidentally, the same two people she’d wanted to bring in today for questioning.
But if Tiffany or Rutz had kidnapped Hugo, the question not only was, “Where had they taken him?” but “Why?”
35
Goddard had never seen the task force bullpen in such chaos. Or so empty. The snow emergency had cut the department’s resources to a fraction of what they normally would have been. All available officers were either on their way to the station, or already on out call directing traffic, rescuing stranded motorists, cleaning up accidents. A skeleton mission control crew had been hastily thrown together to locate the missing toddler that consisted of himself, Linden, Lieutenant Oakes, and three uniformed officers. Others would be joining them as they became available, but right now, they were it. Seven people to find one little boy.
“Okay, listen up,” Lieutenant Oakes called out over the radio chatter and the buzz of conversation. “We’ve got a snow emergency, and we’ve got a missing kid. He might have wandered off, but the yard is fenced, so the foster mom doesn’t think he did. Until we know otherwise, we’re calling it a snatch.” He nodded to one of the uniforms, who started passing out glossy photos along with a fact sheet. “The kid is two and a half,” Oakes said. “Name’s Hugo Campbell. Linden’s got more for us.”
Linden stood up. Goddard would have smiled if the situation hadn’t been so dire. She had so much winter gear on, she looked like she was ready to head off to the Klondike. This was his first Seattle winter after six years in L.A. Compared to her, his standard-issue police department outerwear had him seriously underdressed.
“Hugo’s father, Neil Campbell,” she began, “is the number one suspect in two open murders. Yesterday he died from burns he suffered in a meth explosion; that’s the reason his boy is in foster care. We have two persons of interest in the case. The first is Tiffany Crane, who lives in Rainier Valley trailer park, although she hasn’t been seen recently. Her live-in lodger was one of the murder victims. Our other lead was a work associate of the other victim, Dr. Nelson Rutz.”
“Do you think one of them took the boy?” one of the uniforms asked.
“We don’t know,” Linden said. She looked at Goddard to confirm her response. He nodded. “Given what we know about both of them, it doesn’t seem likely,” she continued. “But considering that the boy’s father was the suspect in an open murder investigation, it also doesn’t seem likely that the boy was grabbed by a stranger, or that he just wandered away. Especially since we’re in the middle of a major snow storm.” “Which one of your suspects should we be looking at?” Oakes asked. He waved his hand around the empty room. “We don’t exactly have a lot of manpower here. Give us your best guess.”
Linden shook her head and looked again at Goddard. He chewed on his knuckle as he thought.
“Rutz,” he said. Not because he thought Rutz was the more likely suspect of the two, but because he had to pick one, and Rutz would be easier to find. Tiffany had been in the wind since her interview with Linden. All things being equal, meaning he really couldn’t see either of them taking the boy, Rutz was as good a place as any to start.
“Okay,” Oakes said. “Put out a BOLO for both suspects’ vehicles. All Seattle, all King County. Goddard, you and Linden go talk to the foster mom, see what you can get out of her. Then follow up on Rutz. Gonzales and Reid, you go to Rainier Valley and see if you can find Tiffany Crane. The rest of you, stay here and man the phones.”
Phones that had been ringing almost from the moment the announcement went out. Since the AMBER Alert system had been established nationwide, the program had recovered hundreds of missing kids. Television, radio, highway billboards, social media, and text alerts marshaled an army of eyes and ears that sometimes resulted in the perpetrator releasing the abducted child just from hearing about the AMBER Alert through the media. Goddard had taken several calls during the half hour he’d been waiting for Linden to get to the station. Apparently the city was crawling with little blond boys wearing navy blue snowsuits and Power Ranger boots.
“I’ll drive,” he said as he and Linden grabbed their jackets and headed for the door.
“I got it,” she replied. Probably thinking that because he’d moved up from L.A., he didn’t know how to drive in ice and snow.
“Fine.” Goddard was a perfectly capable winter driver, but he wasn’t about to debate the issue. Not now. He didn’t care who drove as long as they got there.
“Your boy’ll be okay?” he asked.
“Jack will be fine. He’s got his cellphone and a handful of quarters for the vending machines, along with instructions to stay in my office and not bother anyone. Don’t worry. He knows the drill.”
They hurried down the hall and through the lobby, buttoning their coats and pulling on their gloves as they went. Goddard brushed away the snow that had accumulated on Linden’s car in the half hour since she’d parked, while she got in and started the engine.
“What’s the address?” she asked as she turned the defroster and the windshield wipers to “high.”
Goddard consulted the handout. “2023 Pineview. Over in Northgate.”
Linden entered the address into the car’s GPS. At the highway, she followed the instructions and turned right.
“Careful,” Goddard said as they came to the first intersection. The traffic signal was out. A utility van that hadn’t been able to make the stop was sliding through.
“I got it.” Linden steered the car to the right, aiming for a spot slightly behind the van’s back bumper so that by the time her car arrived at that point, the utility van would be gone. The vehicles missed each other by inches.
“Nicely done,” he commented.
“The trick is not to jerk the wheel,” she explained. “If you do, you’ll throw the car into a spin. Not necessarily a bad thing if you want to make a tight turnaround, but usually a maneuver to be avoided.”
A detail Goddard happened to be aware of, but he let it go. She could lecture him on the finer points of winter driving if she wanted to. He didn’t have anything to prove. Goddard was utterly lacking in the competition gene—probably because he lived in a household of women. A situation that was about to change now that he had a son. He smiled. The men in the Goddard clan would still be outnumbered, but he was looking forward to some male bonding. Tools. Cars. Baseball. Definitely baseball.
His son. He smiled again. He was still reeling from the baby’s birth. The experience had been incredible on so many levels, he hardly had words to describe it. A part of him had been terrified at the idea of the baby coming early. But a bigger part was fascinated by the birthing process. It really was a miracle, especially when you saw it for yourself. Kath had been a trooper. He’d done his part; helping with her breathing and wi
ping her forehead and adjusting her pillows, and yes, feeding her ice chips when she asked for them. In a way, the birth had been the easy part. It was the moments immediately afterward that were terrifying. Would the baby draw his first breath? Would he draw the next one? What about the one after that? He and Kath had held their own breaths until they heard their son’s first cry. The nurses gave them a minute to marvel over their newborn before they whisked the child away.
The doctors’ predictions were guarded, but optimistic. Goddard wasn’t overly worried. He wasn’t being fatalistic. It was just that whatever happened next was out of his hands. In a sense, it had been from the start. You had to accept that some things were out of your control or you’d drive yourself crazy trying to change them. Which was another reason he didn’t mind letting Linden take the wheel.
“Do you think Rutz did it?” he asked, dragging his thoughts away from his newborn and back to the present.
“Honestly? No. I can’t see it. Rutz is a liar, and we know he has an agenda, but he’s a smart man. He can’t possibly believe he could get away with taking the boy. And really, why would he?”
Why, indeed? Linden was right. It didn’t make sense. The best theory that Goddard could come up with was that with the two full-blooded Marsees and the one half-blooded Marsee dead, Rutz was somehow planning to use the boy’s DNA to continue the PKD project. But even Goddard knew that was a stretch. The boy was just one-quarter Marsee. The odds that he carried the double mutation were—well—twenty-five percent. Possibly less. Goddard had never been particularly clever with numbers. All he knew was that even if his best-guess theory was true, there were far easier ways for Rutz to carry the project forward than kidnapping the boy. Heck, if DNA was what he was after, all he had to do was steal the kid’s toothbrush.
“What about the boy’s mother?” he said. “Maybe she decided it was time to take an interest in her son.”
“If she did, then she has ridiculously bad timing. Anyway, how would she know where to find him? I was at Child Protective Services yesterday trying to make arrangements to see Hugo, and they wouldn’t even give me the address of his foster home. If they’re not forthcoming to the police, I can’t imagine them doling out that kind of information to a woman who gave up all rights to her son.”
Linden had gone looking for the boy? Goddard would have loved to know the reason why. But he knew Linden well enough to know that nothing good would result if he were to pry.
“We’ll figure it out,” Goddard said. “Whoa! Watch out!”
A fallen tree that had only become visible as they crested a hill lay across the road. Linden took her foot off the gas and steered carefully around it, only to immediately have to swerve around another. It occurred to Goddard that he really should be at the hospital with Kath and his son instead of out in the blizzard risking his life looking for somebody else’s boy. Though at this rate he might end up in the hospital sooner rather than later.
“Take a right at the next intersection,” he said, taking on the role of navigator so Linden could keep her eyes on the road. He counted off the house numbers. “There. On the right. Should be that big blue house.”
Linden pulled over to the curb. There was one other patrol car, presumably the officers who’d called in the report. Under normal circumstances, the street would have been crawling with cops. It was Hugo Campbell’s great misfortune to have gotten kidnapped during a blizzard.
“What have we got?” Linden asked the uni standing beside the patrol car. Goddard assumed the man’s partner was inside with the foster mother.
“Kid was snatched out of the front yard.”
“Anybody see it happen?” Goddard asked.
“Just the other kids. The foster mom, Jean Schute, was in the house. Our oldest witness is five years old.”
Five years old. Another unlucky break. Five was too young to be a reliable witness by anyone’s calculation. Could this case get any worse?
The uni opened the gate. The chain link fence surrounding the front yard was around three and a half feet tall. Tall enough to keep the kids in, easy enough for an adult to reach over. The kids had done a number on the yard. Snow trampled and beaten down from a thousand little footsteps around a half-finished snowman—at least Goddard assumed that was what the lopsided lump was going to be. In another part of the yard it looked like the mom had been showing the kids how to make snow angels. Someone had cleared a path up the sidewalk the width of a shovel.
“I got this,” Goddard said as they climbed the steps to the front porch. Linden had a history with foster homes, and it wasn’t good. He didn’t know the specifics, only that she carried a chip on her shoulder the size of a fireplace log as a result. He moved around her and knocked on the door.
The woman who opened to his knock was younger than he expected, maybe in her late twenties or early thirties, wearing jeans and a T-shirt stained with what Goddard recognized as baby spit. She looked like she’d been crying. Goddard could guess what Linden was thinking: Probably crying because she just lost a big chunk of her monthly check.
“Mrs. Schute? I’m Detective John Goddard. This is my associate, Detective Linden. We’re with the SPD. May we come in?”
“Of course.” The door opened directly into the living room. The uni’s partner was seated on the sofa. She stood up as they came in. Goddard waved her down.
“Please. Sit.” The foster mother indicated two matching armchairs and took a seat on the sofa.
Goddard assessed the room. Modest, but clean. A room that said the owner was more interested in providing for the kids than making a statement with decor. A laundry basket in the corner full of Fisher Price toys. One wall covered with kids’ drawings hung at kids’-eye height. A stack of Disney movies in the console under the TV. Seemed like a nice enough place.
“Can you tell us what happened?” he asked.
“Like I told the other officer,”—she nodded toward the uni on the other end of the couch—“the kids were playing in the front yard, everybody seemed to be having a good time, when all of a sudden, I heard Gabby scream. I ran to the front window. The kids had been yelling and throwing snowballs ever since I let them out to play, but this scream was different. I knew right away that something was wrong. I thought maybe one of the kids had gotten hurt. Gabby tends to freak out at the sight of blood. Her mother—well, never mind.”
“Gabby is the oldest?”
“That’s right. She’s five.”
“How many other children were in the yard?” Goddard asked.
“Three besides Gabby. Nathan, Sammy, and Hugo. Nathan is mine. Then there’s the baby. She was inside with me.”
“And their ages?”
“Nathan and Sammy are four. Hugo is two and a half.”
“Thank you. I just want to be able to picture the scene. So Gabby started screaming, and you ran to the window. What happened next? Did you see anyone with the children?”
“No. Only the children. I don’t think the boys even understood that anything was wrong. The only reason they were crying was because Gabby was screaming.”
“And what did Gabby tell you?” Goddard smiled and waggled his fingers at a little girl with red hair and pigtails who was peeking around the edge of a doorway. She ducked back.
“That she was making snowballs, and when she looked up, Hugo was gone. That’s it. That’s all she knows.” The woman pulled a Kleenex from the box on the end table and dabbed her eyes.
“Can we talk to Gabby? She might remember something that will help.” Goddard remembered well how imaginative his own girls had been at the age of five, but there was always an off chance that the girl might say something useful.
“Gabby!” the woman called. The child’s footsteps pattered away down the hall. “I’m sorry,” the woman said and followed after. Goddard heard her promising ice cream. A moment later she came back leading the child by the hand.
“Hi, Gabby,” Goddard said, and waggled his fingers again.
The woma
n nudged her forward. “Say ‘hello’ to the police officer, Gabby.”
“Hello,” the little girl mumbled. Looking at her shoes. Not sure if she should speak or not. Goddard remembered teaching his own kids about stranger danger. On the one hand, you told them never to talk to anyone they didn’t know, and on the other, like in situations such as this, you urged them to speak up. No wonder some kids didn’t know how to act around adults.
“It’s nice to meet you, Gabby.” He stayed seated so that he and the girl were eye to eye. “I have a little girl just like you. Her name is Sophie.”
“Does she have a brother?”
“As a matter of fact, she does. He’s very little. He was just born yesterday.”
“I had a brother.”
“Hugo?”
“No. My real brother. His name is Tyler. My dad put him in a box.”
The foster mother shook her head. Warning Goddard off. If Gabby freaked at the sight of blood, Goddard hated to think what kind of box she was referring to.
“Tell me about Hugo,” he said.
“He’s nice. I like him.”
“Now Gabby, this is important. Did you see anyone else in the front yard? Did anybody talk to you or to Hugo?”
She looked down at her shoes again, and nodded.
“You saw someone in the yard?”
She looked up and bit her lip. Looked between Goddard and her foster mother, and then nodded again.
“I saw a big man. A really big man. Big like this.” She put her hand above her head and stretched up on her tiptoes. “He had big white hair.”
Rutz. Goddard couldn’t believe the girl hadn’t said anything about it before. Children were unpredictable, but this was such a key detail, he wished they’d known about it sooner.
“And he had a long white beard,” the girl went on. “And a red coat. And reindeer. He had reindeer. And presents. Lots and lots of presents!” The little girl waved her arms and twirled happily as she warmed to her story.
Goddard smiled. No reason to spoil the child’s moment. He glanced over at Linden. She was scowling. “Thank you, Gabby. That will be all. You’ve been a big help.” He patted the girl’s head. She giggled and ran down the hall.
