Except a young boy’s testimony that he’d seen the little girl in his father’s car earlier that morning. And the child’s teddy bear, which had been with her the last time anyone had seen her, had turned up in Frank’s car later that day.
“They focused the investigation on one man. They weren’t ever able to find enough evidence against him to press charges. And in the meantime, whatever other clues might have been there had grown cold and whoever took the little girl got away with the crime.”
“Did the family have money?”
“Enough to be comfortable. Nothing comparable to your father.”
But he and Emma and Claire had had everything a kid could want. And then some. They’d had a close, loving, happy family. At least for a while.
“As I recall, there wasn’t ever much talk about ransom calls,” he added, for her sake—and because for the first time in his life he was talking about the incident that had sealed his fate in a world filled with inner darkness. “The girl was only two. She wasn’t like Sammie, able to fend for herself, or to understand that she’d been abducted. And sick people don’t take two-year-old girls from middle-class neighborhoods in hopes of ransom money.”
He couldn’t go any further than that. Couldn’t let his mind travel down the road that Claire Sanderson had probably had to travel. He couldn’t save her from a twenty-five-year-old fate.
Perusing child pornography photos was one job he’d left solely up to the authorities. But the fact that there was no evidence that Claire was taken for that sordid lifestyle didn’t ease his emotional burden any. There’d been no internet twenty-five years before. No global access to illegal practices. No way to find most of the scumbags who practiced or made money from underage sex.
“Dr. Whittier—”
“Cal,” he interrupted. “I’m not here as your college professor, and as we established last spring, there’s only three years’ difference between us… .” His voice faded off. What in the hell did names or ages matter?
“Cal, then,” Morgan said. “I just wanted to thank you.” She drew a deep breath. “For being here. It helps.”
He nodded, in spite of the darkness that probably prevented her from knowing that. “Julie offered to stay.” Her friend had left hours earlier to go home and put her twin five-year-olds to bed.
Morgan rubbed a hand down her face just as he’d seen her do countless times over the past hours. “I know,” she said. “But she’s like the rest of us here, shocked and hurting and…besides, I think she needed to be with her kids. To hang on to them.”
“I’m sure she did.” Like Rose had clung to Emma, frantic to keep the four-year-old in sight at all times. Cal hadn’t even had a chance to say goodbye to the girl he’d loved as his little sister.
He glanced around the dark and too-quiet neighborhood. “I’m pretty certain all the parents around here are keeping a close hold on their children tonight. Thanking the Lord that they’re home. And they’re probably also scared to death that whoever took Sammie could come for their kids next.”
Up, down, up, down, up, down. He could feel the rhythm of her knee’s movement.
“They’ll be relieved to know that Sammie was scouted out specifically. That this is someone after my father, not some sicko after kids.” Shoulders hunched, she shuddered.
“Maybe. I figure the heads-up that children really are at risk of abduction will stick with most of them for a long time to come. You can’t witness something like this, even peripherally, and go back. You don’t ever become unaware again.”
“You really understand… .”
“Some things you don’t ever forget.”
“How long ago was that little girl taken?”
“Twenty-five years.”
“What?” She sat up, turned to him. “She’s been missing for twenty-five years? With no trace of her at all?”
“That’s right.”
“You had to have been just a kid then!”
“I was seven.”
“And yet you remember…”
“Like it was yesterday. I…knew the little girl. Her mother worked with my father.” He spoke slowly, choosing his way carefully. Like each word landed on a minefield and risked imminent explosion.
Rose and Frank had met at an educators’ conference. She’d been an elementary schoolteacher, while Frank was a high school principal and basketball coach. A match made in heaven.
Or could have been.
“Where did this happen? Here in Tyler?”
“No.” She seemed to be waiting for more. “It was in Massachusetts.” He was saying too much.
“What happened to the parents? Are they still there?”
“I have no idea where they are.” Claire’s father was dead. A shady man from the docks who’d run off when he’d found out that Rose was pregnant with Claire. Sanderson, Sr., had died in a bar brawl less than a year later, killed by the husband of the woman he’d just bedded.
And Rose? He didn’t want to know. “We moved away shortly after that and all we knew was what was on the news, which wasn’t much.”
“But you know she wasn’t found.”
“I was an impressionable kid. The incident stuck with me. I still periodically check the missing-persons database.”
“You don’t ever go back to a state of unawareness.”
She understood. And in a strange way, on a night when his only purpose was to give a measure of support, he’d found a moment of peace.
“When I get Sammie back…he won’t… I… Neither of us will ever be able to go back. We’ll be different.”
“Yes, but different might be better, too.” He knew with all of his being that she had to think that. Had to believe. To hope.
“Julie said something this morning shortly after I got to school. She apologized for not watching over Sammie more closely. She felt so guilty. And so do I. It’s my job to protect my son. And I didn’t. How can he ever forgive me?”
“Hey.” He nudged her arm, wanting to take her hand, but not doing so. “You have absolutely nothing to feel guilty about.” Guilt ate a body alive with insidious tenacity. “Your son was at school right where he belonged. You aren’t allowed to be there babysitting him even if you wanted to.”
“My son left class.” Her voice had dropped an octave. “He misbehaved and put himself in harm’s way and that is my fault. I’m the only one in charge of teaching him. Training him. I try so hard but he butts heads with me on a constant basis. Probably because he doesn’t have a father around and that’s my fault, too.”
Cal debated his response in terms of being kind to her. And then spoke. “He left class, with permission, to use the restroom. That’s all you know. The kidnapper has it in for your father. He obviously planned this whole thing. He didn’t just happen to be in the right place at the exact time that Sammie misbehaved. And while Sammie doesn’t have a father, you’ve been discussing things with me, getting male perspective and allowing Sammie some freedoms based on our conversations.”
Her silence gave him pause. He sure as hell hoped he hadn’t made things more difficult for her.
“You think this…this monster was watching Sammie? That he’d have taken him, anyway, the first chance he saw?” Her leg bounced up and down. Continuously. Getting faster.
“Probably.”
“I keep a close eye on him. As you know, that’s part of what he complains about.”
“You obviously do a great job if this guy thought his best chance of getting
to your son was while Sammie was in a secure school situation being watched over by trained professionals.”
The bouncing stopped. She rocked forward. And back. And then forward again.
“Sammie says I don’t let him grow up and be a man, but this is why…” Her voice broke with the threat of more tears. “I’m so sorry,” she said on a sigh. “I’m losing it here.”
“You have absolutely nothing to be sorry about and you are not losing it. As a matter of fact you’ve held up astonishingly well, considering. This is the first time I’ve seen you really cry.”
“It’s not something I do in front of my father.” She sounded stronger again.
“In front of your father? You’re kidding.” He said the words, and yet, thinking of the man inside the door behind them, what she’d told him made sense.
“From the time I was little I learned to hold back my tears around him,” she said softly. “Crying pisses him off. He says it’s a tactic females use to try to control men. It’s a sign of weakness. Of victimization rather than accountability.”
The guy was a first-class bastard.
But he was there. Insisting that mountains would move and his grandson would be brought home to them. From what Cal had seen, George Lowen was willing to get out there and move the mountains himself if need be.
“I must respectfully disagree. Crying is normal. Healthy. And part of being human.”
“When’s the last time you cried?”
He didn’t answer, knowing that his silence was an answer in itself.
“You just said it’s part of being human.”
He wasn’t surprised that she’d called him on the inconsistency.
“Which is why I’ve always envied people who could cry,” Cal said, the night, the circumstance, putting him in strange territory, making him a stranger to himself.
This night, these circumstances—it wasn’t real life.
It was a snippet of time outside of ordinary living. An anomaly that would seem surreal once Morgan’s son was home safe and sound.
“So why don’t you cry?”
“I’m not sure. It’s not like I sit around and try,” he said, giving her a sideways glance, glad he seemed to be distracting her. She was listening so he continued. “Might have something to do with the fact that I never knew my mother. She died when I was six months old.”
“That’s horrible! What happened?”
“She taught a program for accelerated students and was on an oceanography field trip. She went into the water at night with a couple of other teachers, on an ocean life study, and she and another teacher got tangled in the reef and drowned.”
“I’m so sorry! That’s awful.”
For his father it had been. Cal didn’t have any memories of her at all. But he missed knowing a mother—her absence had made him particularly eager to accept and return Rose Sanderson’s motherly care.
“Do you have brothers and sisters?”
“Nope. It’s just me and Dad.”
“He never remarried?”
“No.”
“So you went into teaching because of her? Because of your mother?”
It wasn’t that simple. “I teach because I enjoy it.” And because his father—who’d lost his prestigious career in education because of something Cal had told the police that had incriminated an innocent man—lived vicariously through him.
“You’re sure good at it.”
Before he could say more and risk crossing the boundaries between teacher and student and professionalism, the receiver in her hand pealed, splintering the quiet of the night.
CHAPTER SEVEN
“PLEASE…LET ME SPEAK to my son… .” Morgan’s voice broke as she started to cry, something she couldn’t help in spite of her father standing over her as she answered the phone.
Cal was there, too, somewhere behind her in the living room. Her knees were weak and wobbly as she stood at the card table, watching Detective Warner’s face.
He nodded, mouthed that she was doing fine, and then the voice that she recognized from earlier that night—a voice she somehow knew was going to live within her forever—spoke again.
“Good, you’re begging for the life of your loved one. Just like I did.”
Click.
Morgan’s stomach felt like lead as Detective Warner listened to the earbud that connected him to his people and then shook his head.
“They got the tower,” he announced. “A different one. It’s forty miles away.”
“He’s moving,” George Lowen said.
“Or his cell phone provider has good range and other towers had conflicting signals,” Grace said from the doorway leading into the bedrooms. “You heard what he said earlier, George, depending on cell providers—”
“It’s the middle of the night,” George interrupted, his impatience evident in spite of the soft tone he used to address his wife. “There can’t be that much business out there. He’s moving south.” George left the room, cell phone to his ear, barking orders to someone to get cars on every road going south out of Tyler.
Cal Whittier was behind her, a steady presence, and still Morgan struggled to maintain composure as panic surged through her. She looked at Detective Warner.
“We’ve got officers combing south, as well, Ms. Lowen. And we’ve notified law enforcement within a six-state radius. The Amber Alert has gone out nationally. We’ll find him.”
She nodded. “You have to bring him home to me. You have to.”
“We will, ma’am.”
She wanted to believe him.
* * *
ANOTHER CALL CAME in an hour later.
“Your son is crying for you.” Click.
Looking helplessly at Detective Warner, Morgan was crying, too.
* * *
BY 6:00 A.M. Morgan had fielded a total of five calls originating from towers on a southward route. Sometime in the small hours of the morning another detective, a woman, had shown up, offering to relieve Detective Warner. He’d declined.
George had spent the night in the kitchen, except for the occasional trek into the living room to confer with Rick Warner or to witness a phone call.
“I’ve got half a million sitting in wait,” he told Warner just after six. “I can put my hands on another two and a half by noon.”
The look of relief on Morgan’s face was palpable—as if that money sitting out there would ensure her son’s safe return, when, in fact, there hadn’t been a single request for ransom.
Only a slow and cruel torture of a beautiful young woman whose biggest sin, as far as Cal could see, was allowing herself to believe that she was in any way to blame for her son’s abduction.
“I’ve arranged for a press release at seven,” George continued, the more pronounced lines on his face the only visible sign of having spent a sleepless night. He’d shed his jacket at some point. Cal had seen it draped over the back of a kitchen chair when he’d made a trip to the bathroom. And the knot of Lowen’s tie was a little loose, but neatly so. His black wingtips still glistened as though they’d been freshly polished and the obviously expensive slacks bore few wrinkles. “I’m going to be offering a million-dollar cash reward to anyone who provides the information that brings my grandson home.”
Detective Warner stood. “Let me talk to my captain,” he said. “As you know from our conversation last night, he’s planning to go to the press in a few hours. We can’t stop you from maki
ng your own announcement, but I know he’s going to want you to coordinate the press release with the department. We’re trained to deal with these types and know the things to say that get the best response the most times. And regardless of that, it would be best for us to make a joint statement—puts more pressure on the perp if he knows we’ve joined forces—and the captain’s going to insist that you run the responses through us. Anything else will jeopardize our investigation and potentially put your grandson in more harm.”
Cal stood next to Morgan, whose weary gaze moved between her father and the detective with whom they’d all spent the night. She turned to Cal and he lowered his head to catch her whispered, “This is so my father, and I hate it. What if his high-handedness makes things worse? But I’m grateful, too. Am I nuts?”
“No. He’s out of line. But if he gets results, then he’s doing the right thing.”
Grace, having come in from the bedroom each time the phone rang, raised her head from the back of the chair to follow her husband’s exchange.
“Tell your captain that I’ll agree to a joint conference if your people can be ready at seven. And he cannot insist on anything. However, if you can have a contact response team ready to begin receiving calls within the hour, and will agree to let my representatives be privy to each and every response as well, I will agree to sending all possible leads to the care of the police. We realize the offer of a reward will bring out false leads and we’ll need the manpower to follow each of them until we can weed them out. I want my grandson back.”
Warner nodded and reached for the cell phone he’d been using all night to confer with his team.
“And tell him that I will make available to him any monies he needs to get this done,” George added, leaving the room without a glance at his daughter.
He motioned for Grace to join him, though, and with a quick squeeze of Morgan’s shoulder as she passed them, the older woman followed her husband from the room.
Morgan’s lips and chin were trembling and Cal knew that unless Sammie Lowen was found safe and sound, this was one of life’s pains that would not get better with time.
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