Stolen in the Night

by MacDonald, Patricia

  Mistaking her silence for interest, he said, “I’ll tell you another sobering fact. Since 1989, a hundred and seventy-five prisoners on death row have been cleared on the basis of DNA evidence, and in seventy percent of those cases, they had originally been convicted primarily by eyewitness testimony. Seventy percent. That is mind-boggling.”

  Tess looked at him with narrowed eyes wondering how she could have found him attractive. He was obviously an insensitive jerk. “Why in the world are you telling me this? I was the eyewitness in this case.”

  Her indignation did not faze him. “I just thought you might want to know,” he said, “that this kind of erroneous identification isn’t some rare mistake. It’s practically commonplace. Add to that the fact that you were a child under a great deal of pressure…”

  “Nobody pressured me,” said Tess. “I told the truth.”

  Ben looked at her, his gaze sympathetic. “I’m sure it seems that way. And after all these years…you know, the more we repeat a story or recount a memory a certain way, the more we become convinced that our memory is the truth. That’s not just a courtroom fact. That’s something we do in our own lives.”

  “You’re wrong, Mr. Ramsey,” she told him coldly. “I saw Lazarus Abbott take my sister.”

  His gaze remained kindly. “You know, denial will give you ulcers.”

  “I wasn’t wrong,” Tess said. “And I’m not interested in your opinion anyway.”

  Hearing Tess’s angry tone, Leo began to bark again. At the same instant, Tess heard a voice call out, “Ma!” She turned. Erny was riding his bike straight into the campsite, bumping up and down with every stone and rut.

  “Erny,” she cried. The boy pulled up beside her and stuck out his feet on either side of the bike to balance himself. “Hey, Leo,” he said and the dog eagerly pressed up against Erny’s leg and accepted a flurry of pets. Then Erny looked up at Ben Ramsey guilelessly. “Hi,” he said.

  “Hi,” said the attorney in a friendly tone.

  Tess had no intention of making any introductions. She turned her back on Ben Ramsey. Erny was used to his mother behaving politely to people. He looked quizzically at her and then at the stranger in the sweat suit. Tess pretended not to notice. “Why are you up here by yourself?” she demanded.

  Erny looked back at her wide-eyed. “I was looking for you.”

  “I told you specifically not to come up here.”

  “I was just wondering where you were,” he insisted.

  Tess looked at him skeptically.

  “It’s neat up here,” said Erny.

  “Let’s get back,” said Tess. “Dawn will be worried.” Erny shrugged and turned his bike around on the path. “Bye,” he called out to Ramsey. Leo began straining at the leash to keep pace with Erny.

  “Bye now,” said the attorney, looking after the departing boy and raising a hand in farewell.

  Tess glanced at Ramsey, who had turned to her with unguarded interest, as if he had a hundred questions he wanted to ask her. His face fell at the sight of her bitter gaze. With a curt nod but not a word, Tess turned away from him and followed her son and the dog out of the campground and onto the path back to the inn.

  Dawn was at the stove, heating a teakettle, when the three of them came back through the mudroom door. “You found each other,” she exclaimed. Tess nodded. Leo made straight for his customary spot on the rug, while Erny picked up a fistful of thumbprint cookies from a plate on the counter.

  “Can I go watch TV?” he asked.

  “Sure,” said Dawn.

  “Come on, Leo, come with me,” Erny urged the dog. Leo did not have to be asked twice. He got up and followed Erny out of the kitchen and down the hall.

  Dawn looked at Tess with relief. “That’s better. That walk put a little color back in your cheeks,” she said. “You were so pale. I thought you were going to faint before.”

  Tess didn’t mention that it was anger from her upsetting encounter at the campground that had turned her cheeks pink. “Jake and Julie are gone?”

  Dawn nodded. “He left Kelli’s car for you and Erny to use while you’re here.”

  “That’s what he said,” said Tess.

  Dawn poured a mug of tea for Tess.

  Tess took the tea and sat down on the bench in the breakfast nook. She looked out across the gloomy field and thought about Edith Abbott’s attorney. There was no point denying that he was handsome or sexually appealing to her. Obviously, he knew it. It was probably a weapon he used freely to win over female jurors, she thought. But he was so smug with his analysis. Ben Ramsey had spoken to her as if she ought, obviously, to be agreeing with him. That was infuriating. Still, she could not deny that his words made her uneasy. For they had brought back to her an unwelcome memory that was unrelated to her sister’s death.

  Once, at college, during a painful estrangement from a boyfriend, she had come home from class one day to see him walking out of her dorm. Thinking that he wanted to make up, she had run after him, calling to him, but he didn’t respond to her calls. Later, when she brought it up during a brief reconcilation, he told her that he had not been on the campus at the time she thought she had seen him. He had not even been in the state. No matter how she argued with him about it, he insisted that he had been home with his parents at the time. He said that he had no reason to lie about it, and she knew that it was true. She had not seen him. She had mistaken someone else for him. But she had been so sure at the time. So completely sure. She would have bet her life on it.

  Dawn brought her own mug over to the nook where Tess was sitting. She sat down opposite her daughter. “I can see that you’re torn up about these results. Look, whatever happened, Tess, it wasn’t your fault,” she said.

  “No one believes me. It was Lazarus,” Tess said. “You were there. Don’t you remember?”

  Dawn sighed and gazed into the past through the steam rising from her mug. “You and your father talked to Chief Fuller about the man you saw. My only concern that night was the search for Phoebe. That was all that mattered to me. To be truthful, I don’t remember anything else.”

  Tess bowed her head. She was a mother now. She understood all too well.

  “Those days are just a blur to me now,” said Dawn softly.

  “I wonder if Chief Fuller remembers,” said Tess. She pictured Aldous Fuller as he’d looked the first time she met him. A burly man with light brown hair and glasses and a somber look in his eye. He had treated Tess, treated her whole family, with a respectful kindness at the time of Phoebe’s kidnapping. Even when Tess’s father, Rob, had shouted, pressed him for answers, and demanded results, Chief Fuller had maintained his sympathetic, unflappable demeanor.

  Dawn shook her head. “I don’t know. I understand he’s been very sick.”

  “Do you think he would talk to me?” Tess asked.

  Dawn frowned. “Well, he’s retired now…”

  “I could call him at home.”

  Dawn’s attention seemed to drift away. “I guess you could,” she said.

  “You act as if it doesn’t matter,” Tess said ruefully.

  Dawn opened her hands in a helpless gesture. “It’s not that. It’s just…it won’t change anything.”

  Tess blinked back tears and looked out at the smoky twilight. “Maybe not. But I have to know,” she said.

  CHAPTER 7

  The next morning Tess ducked out the side door of the inn, evading the assembled reporters, and drove out to the street address given to her by a woman who had answered the phone at the Fuller house. As she pulled up, she saw a thin, bespectacled man with a fringe of white hair sweeping the already immaculate front steps of the neat, barn-red Cape Cod house.

  Tess frowned at the numbers on the paper, wondering if she was misreading her own handwriting. The man stopped and straightened up, leaning on the broom as she got out of the car and walked hesitantly toward the steps.

  “I’m looking for Aldous Fuller’s house?” she said.

  The man
peered at her. “Tess?” he said.

  Tess stared at him, shocked at the drastic change in the former police chief. “I didn’t…it’s been so long,” said Tess, shaking the cold hand he proffered.

  “I know. I look terrible.” He patted his chest. “Cancer,” he said. “The treatment’s worse than the disease.”

  Tess grimaced and shook her head.

  Aldous shrugged. “Not much I can do about it.”

  “Thank you for seeing me,” said Tess.

  “Don’t mention it. It does my old heart good to see you,” said Aldous. “Didn’t you grow up lovely. Here, come on. Come inside.”

  Tess followed him into the house. They went through a formal living room to a cheerful red-and-white kitchen in the back. Aldous indicated the chairs by the kitchen table. “Have a seat,” he said.

  Tess sat down and looked around the tidy room. “What a nice house,” she said.

  Aldous, who was filling a kettle at the sink, turned off the faucet and looked around at his home. “Well, my daughter-in-law and my grandchildren live with me now. That was my daughter-in-law you talked to on the phone. Mary Anne. She’s a good girl. My wife died ten years ago, and then…two years ago I lost my son…” Aldous stared out the window above the sink.

  “I’m so sorry,” said Tess. She’d had enough loss in her life to know that it was best to be direct about it. “What happened to him?”

  Aldous sighed. “He was playing touch ball with some of his old high school friends. Just a bunch of guys having a game. Their families were there having a picnic. A nice autumn day…”

  Tess could picture the scene, smell the hot dogs, imagine the weather. And she felt the dread of what was coming.

  Aldous took a deep breath. “His heart just stopped. Some…fibrillation something. Twenty-seven years old.”

  “Oh, Chief. That is terrible. I’m so sorry,” said Tess.

  Aldous Fuller shook his head. “We never know, Tess. We never know.”

  Tess nodded.

  “Well, what am I telling you that for?” Aldous said with a trace of sheepishness in his voice. “So, anyway, it’s been tough for Mary Anne to make ends meet.” He did not mention his own illness, although Tess suspected that it must also have been a factor in their decision to share the house.

  Aldous lifted the kettle. “I was just going to make myself a cup of coffee. Can I interest you in one?”

  “Oh, no. No thanks,” said Tess. “One cup a day is my limit.”

  Aldous sighed. “The doc says I should cut back on it. I’ve cut back on everything else but…I can’t seem to give up my coffee.” He shook his head and reached for a mug in the cabinet.

  “I thought I might see you at the press conference yesterday,” Tess said.

  Aldous sighed. “I wanted to be there. But I wasn’t feeling too well yesterday…”

  Tess nodded and watched him as he poured his coffee and searched in the refrigerator for milk. Then he sat down at the opposite end of the table and set the coffee cup down on a paper napkin. She kept thinking of how he had been twenty years ago. A strapping man who spoke softly, but whose very bulk was a kind of reassurance to her. She felt sorry for him and, inexplicably, sorry for herself, as well.

  “So, I hear you have a son,” said Aldous, stirring the coffee in his cup.

  Tess nodded and smiled. She reached into her bag for her wallet and pulled it out. She opened it up and showed Aldous Fuller a picture. “His name is Erny. I adopted him. He’s ten now.”

  “Oh, he’s a fine-looking boy,” said Aldous, gazing at the photo.

  Tess beamed and nodded, looking at the school picture. “Well, he’s the best thing that ever happened to me.”

  “I’m glad to hear that, Tess. Mustn’t be afraid to live your life.”

  Tess folded up her wallet and put it back in her bag. Then she placed her hands on the scarred wooden surface of the table. “I haven’t been. I don’t think,” she said. “At least, not so far.”

  “So, enough fatherly advice. You wanted to see me. What can I do for you?”

  “Well, I’m sure you heard about the announcement yesterday. The DNA results.”

  Aldous Fuller’s eyes were weary behind his glasses. “I know this is tough on you, Tess. Hell, it’s been tough on me. These reporters calling. It gets to you.”

  Tess nodded. “I couldn’t sleep last night. All these years I’ve been so sure…then I ran into someone who told me something that shook me up. I have to admit it. This…person said that experiments had proved eyewitnesses were wrong about fifty percent of the time. Did you know that?”

  Aldous Fuller nodded. “Yeah, I’ve been hearing a lot of those theories.”

  “I keep thinking, what if that’s what happened. What if I was wrong?”

  “Do you want me to tell you what I remember?” asked Aldous.

  “Please,” said Tess.

  Fuller inhaled deeply. “Well, when we arrived at your campsite that night, I asked you to describe for me the man who took your sister. You remember that?”

  Tess shook her head. “To be honest, not really. It’s all a jumble.”

  “Well, I remember. You never hesitated. You gave me an absolutely dead-on description of the guy. Every detail. Here. I took my personal files home with me when I retired. After Mary Anne told me that you were coming by this morning, I pulled these out for you to see. These are the notes I made based on what you told me. Have a look.”

  Tess reached across the table and took the notebook. The entry read, “Tessa DeGraff, the victim’s sister, 9yrs old: white man, filthy dirty. Bumps and scars on his skin. Glasses. Black rims. A greasy black ponytail. A broken front tooth.” Beneath his notes, Chief Fuller had written “LAZARUS ABBOTT!!!”

  Tess looked up from the notebook. “I didn’t know his name at that time,” she said.

  “I wrote that,” Aldous said. “While you were describing him, Lazarus came instantly to my mind. It was as if I had asked you to describe Lazarus Abbott for me. Plus he was a known pervert—a Peeping Tom and a flasher. His mother protected him. Always bailing him out. That’s the only reason he wasn’t in jail that night.”

  “So you were sure right away, too?” she asked hopefully.

  “Damn right,” said the chief.

  And then Tess was struck by a sobering thought. “So you never really…considered anybody else?”

  “Did I?” asked the chief. “No. Not really. We just went out and picked up Lazarus Abbott, and brought him into the station. Do you remember that? You started screaming when you saw him.”

  Tessa nodded slowly. “Yes. That I do remember.” She remembered it vividly now—how terrifying it had been to see him walk in—the man she had seen in the tent.

  The chief shrugged. “His only alibi was his mother, whom I gave no credence to. His stepfather didn’t offer any corroboration. Lazarus had a record. A history of public indecency. We had no DNA testing at the time. Antigen testing was what we used. When we found Phoebe, the blood types were a match. The rapist was a secretor, type A, just like Lazarus. That wrapped the whole thing up with a bow. And you may have been only nine years old, but no DA ever had a better witness than you. The jury saw it the same way we all did. There was no one else it could be.”

  Tess sighed. “But the DNA says that I couldn’t have been right. My brother thought maybe they made a mistake with these tests at the lab.”

  Aldous Fuller shook his head. “They were pretty thorough in their procedures. Rusty Bosworth told me he had to sign about a hundred documents when they came to get the old evidence. They checked and rechecked, just to be sure there was no possibility of error.”

  “So where does that leave us?”

  “I don’t know. But I do know this. They’re going to try and make you recant, Tess. Rusty Bosworth and his bunch need someone to blame. They need you to say that I—or somebody else—put this idea in your head about Lazarus Abbott. That you were just a gullible child and I was willing to pin this cr
ime on an innocent man, just to have a suspect.” He wagged a bony finger at her. “But you know and I know, that’s not the way it was.”

  Tess suddenly realized that Chief Fuller was worried about his own reputation. His recollections had been consoling to her, but now she felt a sort of defensive chill. “I’d never say that,” she said stiffly. “Because it wasn’t true.”

  Aldous Fuller looked relieved. “No, it wasn’t.”

  For a moment there was an awkward silence between them. Tess couldn’t help thinking he wanted to distance himself from this horrible mistake and make sure the blame fell on her shoulders.

  “Well, okay,” she said coolly, standing up. “I should go.”

  Aldous Fuller reached out and took her hand in his. His palms and fingers were cold and Tess shivered involuntarily. “Look here, Tess. It does seem as if there was some mistake. Perhaps the killer was someone who strongly resembled Lazarus Abbott.”

  “Resembled?” Tess echoed the word.

  “But neither one of us has anything to be ashamed of. I mean, I did the best I could with what you told me. And you told the truth as best you could.”

  “I did tell the truth,” she insisted.

  Chief Fuller dropped her hand. “In any case, these perverts rarely stop with one,” said the chief. “I spoke to Rusty this morning. Those DNA results have already been sent to the FBI’s CODIS database.”

  “What’s that?” Tess asked.

  “It’s a…a national DNA index system of people who have been arrested or convicted of a sex or other violent crime. They may find Phoebe’s killer rotting away in some prison.”

  “And if they do,” Tess said, “that means the death of Lazarus Abbott will be on my conscience forever.”

  She expected him to agree and understand, to say that it would be on his conscience, too. Instead, he shook his head. “That would be hard, Tess,” he said.

  CHAPTER 8