The man snorted. I couldn’t tell where he was standing in relationship to the boy and the fence—the hat was still covering my eyes—but I could swear I heard the snow crunch beneath his rubber boots as he took a step closer to me, the squeak of wet, rusty nails straining against wooden slats, as if he were climbing over to get me. I wanted to scream, but I was afraid Emma might hear me and then she’d be in danger, too. So I stayed really still and listened. For a long time. With no more noises than his heavy breathing, I realized he was probably just leaning against the fence, sizing me up and thinking.
“What’d you tell him?” Mr. Creepy’s words sounded panicked, like I remembered my friends at school sounding once. They’d been playing with a lighter in the bathroom the week before Christmas break and were afraid Mrs. Davis would catch them and send them to the principal’s office. Only Mr. Scaredy Cat’s voice was deeper.
“Nothing,” little Max whimpered, which made me wonder if the grouchy man was clutching the boy’s arm or pinching his ear. “I tried to say ‘hello,’ asked him his name.”
“And what’d he say?” he whispered, hushed and hurried.
“Nothing. He just sits there. I don’t think he can talk.”
For once, I was glad someone didn’t understand me. Maybe little Max would stay safe if Mr. Creepy thought I was no threat.
“What’s your name, kid?” His words were rushed and demanding. I didn’t move.
“See? He won’t answer. What’s wrong with him, Papa? Why won’t he be my friend?”
I thought little Max was about to cry and prayed he wouldn’t, again worried about Emma hearing us and her curiosity leading her to come around the corner to check things out. And I prayed even harder that little Max wouldn’t mention talking to Emma.
Finally, after a long time, Mr. Fletcher said, “This kid’s broken. And it’s a good thing. Because if you had talked to anyone else besides this vegetable, it would have been really bad.”
“But Papa, I wanted a friend and I don’t—”
“Shh, stop it! Let’s go back inside. I’m your friend, remember? That’s all you need.”
Terrified, all I could do was pray that Emma stayed on the other side of the house out of view and out of earshot of this horrible man. And that my football pin was working. I didn’t understand everything that was happening next door. The angry, terrified neighbor. The missing boy. I didn’t even pretend to understand exactly what was going on in the backyard, right here, right now. But I knew deep in my twisted bones that Max would be in great danger if the creep discovered that he had also spoken to Emma a few minutes earlier. The neighbor would certainly know she was not a vegetable and that she could talk. Or scream!
Although normally being called a vegetable or broken might hurt my feelings, for the first time in my life, I was relieved that someone thought of me that way. I knew that if the scaredy-cat neighbor believed I couldn’t think or speak—that I was nothing more than a vegetable—the little boy would stay safer somehow. I sensed this. I knew it simply by what the man had said to the boy. I went into spy mode and pretended to be a vegetable, since invisibility was out of the question.
I must have done a good job because Mr. Fat-and-Creepy was walking away. I listened to the snow groan beneath his heavy footsteps and twice as many, but much lighter, steps of the boy. When the door slammed as the two disappeared into the house, I startled.
And breathed.
Underneath the snow clothes Mom had layered on me, my chest was heaving with fear. I was proud of myself for staying brave, but it was starting to hit me how close Emma was to being taken. How close I had been. It was scary. I felt the corners of my mouth dip and my lower lip being sucked in and out of my mouth in rhythm with my heaving chest. I fought back tears. With my hat tilted over my eye, my mind still raced and my body trembled with fear, and I surrendered to the weight of it all. I let the tears come.
And I let out a single, piercingly high note of hurt.
Once I had forced all the air out of my lungs with the first wail, I snorted in more before the floodgate of tears opened, which was followed by much louder sobs.
By the grace of God, Emma hadn’t heard the angry man minutes earlier. She hadn’t heard Mr. Scaredy Cat whisk the child away into the dark house. But Emma had heard me crying and came running to my rescue.
“What’s the matter, Noah? Is it your hat again?”
Although she quickly adjusted my hat to reveal my tear-streaked cheeks and trembling lower lip, I could not for the life of me stop crying long enough to answer her questions, her tiny five fingers flying in my face. Emma desperately tried to comfort me, but I just couldn’t focus. For the first time in my life, I was scared to death. For an instant, I understood why it would be better for God to have my soul than for me to hold on to it. Concerned for the child next door and despite Emma’s efforts, I wept.
“Okay, Noah,” she said as she bent to release the brakes on my chair. She pushed me laboriously through the snow toward the back door of our house. “I’ll get you inside. You must be cold or something, huh? Was it the hat I put back on your head? Too cold? Too wet? Don’t tell Mom, Noah. She won’t let us go to Auntie Elizabeth’s house for our overnight.”
I snorted in gasping breaths and wailed even louder as I felt my chair thumping along in the snow and breaking through the crust.
“I’ll take you to Mom. She’ll know what’s wrong, Noah. She’ll make it all better. Don’t tell on me, okay? I’m sorry, Noah.”
I heard Emma slide open the door just before pushing my chair into our basement playroom. Even through my wailing, I heard Mom’s hastened steps on the stairway. She would know. She would understand. She would get me to calm down so I could explain and get that little boy some help.
I could feel Mom’s heavy breathing on my face as her hands quickly assessed every part of my coiled body. She was expediently removing my winter clothing while interrogating Emma about what had happened. Dad was by her side in no time, helping to take my arms out of the sleeves and the boots off my feet.
Emma answered, “I don’t know. Really, I don’t. I was making a snow lady for Howie and—”
“Who’s Howie?” Mom asked in concern, as I felt Dad pry the right snow boot off.
When he did, I felt the giant’s thick finger strumming the inside of my rib cage—the early sign of an oncoming seizure
“My snowman,” Emma answered in exasperation.
I could barely catch my breath in between sobs. But I had to. I had to calm down or the darkness would come. My mom was feeling all of my extremities for excessive cold, fractures, or bleeding. My dad’s hands expertly ran over every inch of my body, just as Mom’s had a second ago.
I’m not injured! I screamed in my head. My voice never even made it up my windpipe because the thrumming in my chest had drowned out any sound.
As Dad performed his assessment, Mom grilled Emma. “Was he tipped over somehow? Did his foot get caught under his chair or in the wheel?”
Emma shook her head. “I don’t think so, Mom. But I was on the other side of the house making Howie’s snow lady. I was putting on the head when I heard Noah crying. I went to see what was wrong and I found him in his chair where I’d left him. The only difference between how I left him and how I found him was that his hat had slid down over his eyes again. You know how much he hates that. Not seeing.”
“This is not an angry cry, Emma,” Mom snapped.
I wanted to tell Mom it wasn’t Emma’s fault. She didn’t know. And I was glad she didn’t know. I just needed to talk with Emma for a second. But first I needed to calm down and steady my breathing. I reached for my football pin and tapped it hard, hoping my mom would notice, but she didn’t. Besides, she doesn’t even know what it is. Maybe I could get Emma to call Auntie Liv. If I could only calm down and talk with Emma.
“Maybe it’s his contact lens again. Maybe it’s bunched up in his eyeball,” Emma said.
Mom looked under my lid, but my cont
act was fine. “This is his hurt cry. You know, when his feelings are hurt, or the way he cries when he listens to opera, or when he’s been frightened badly.”
See, she did know. Mom always knows.
There is something wrong, Mom. The little, missing boy, little Max, is a prisoner of the creepy man in the house next door. See for yourself, my mind screamed against wracking sobs and tears spilling down my cheeks.
My dad pried open my eyelids, again, to see if somehow the hat had injured my eyes in some way. Finding the contact still in place in my right eye and finding nothing but tears in my left, he quickly unbuckled me. “He’s not injured,” my dad said.
Mom pulled me from my chair and heaved me up against her body. Carrying me over to the couch in the family room, she cradled my long, thin, trembling body in her arms and rocked me while Dad rubbed my back. I knew she could sense my fright.
With my tears and trembling beginning to subside, I heard Mom tell Emma, “Why don’t you go on upstairs and make yourself a snack.”
“All by myself?”
“All by yourself.”
Emma ran up the stairs two at a time. With every bump of her feet on the carpeted stairs, I felt hope fade. I needed Emma to explain about the boy! And as my hope faded, my anxiety grew. I felt the drag of a thick finger on the inside of my rib cage again.
Mom called after her, “Hang up your coat first, Emma, and put your hat and mittens up to dry. Auntie Elizabeth will be here soon.”
Holding me close to her chest, my mom rocked me until my wailing and tears stopped. Only the aftermath of breath-catching hiccups remained.
Dad spoke softly to me. “Noah, are you okay?”
I did not smile and did not raise my eyes. My gasps for breaths intensified and my lower lip began to tremble again.
“Were you hurt?” Dad asked. My mom was still rocking me back and forth, back and forth. Getting no response, Dad asked, “Did something happen to frighten you, Noah?”
No smile. But I arched my body by tightening my muscles, in a last attempt to explain. I rolled my eyes toward the ceiling, affirming Dad’s suspicions. No more questions. They didn’t understand. I had started to suck my lower lip again, in and out of my mouth, as I fought back tears. Losing the battle, a small cry had begun to seep out of my lungs.
“Were you afraid of the snow? The cold? A noise?” My mom pressed on with a battery of questions quickly before I became too upset to reply. “Of something Emma did?”
Receiving no response, my mom reiterated, “But something did happen outside to frighten you. Is that right, Noah?”
I lifted my eyes and flashed a fleeting smile amid more waves of tears and sobs. I knew my mom would have dozens of questions for me, but I sensed she knew I had grown too upset to answer them anymore. I needed to calm down first or I’d be no good to anyone, especially to the little boy next door. I tried to relax. Until exhaustion overtook me.
Then it came.
The sudden, involuntary tremble of my muscles gripped my thin frame. I imagined it was what a snake must feel like when shedding its skin. That’s the first thought I always had when these came on. I hated seizures. Particularly the grand mal seizures. The big ones. The serious ones. The ones I was never quite sure I’d ever live through. The ones where I held fast to my soul so no one, including God, could take it.
My muscles rippled and buckled in waves up and down my limbs, starting small and rising like the ocean tides with an oncoming hurricane. The muscle spasm climbed up my arms and legs like a python, squeezing the consciousness out of my thin body. The last thought I had was Not now!
Then my world turned black and still.
CHAPTER 43
JUDY MANNING’S EYES WERE glued to the screen.
Streeter leaned toward the keyboard to shut off the video. “Why do you carry this?”
“Isn’t it obvious?” Her gaze alternated between the chief and Streeter.
“Not to me,” Streeter said, his voice low and easy. “Help me.”
“It’s Christmas. I was going to be all alone. Without little Max. I needed a reminder of how much he loved me.”
Her gray eyes looked nothing like Ida’s to me now, and although I had seen a resemblance, for the life of me I couldn’t understand how TSA had let this woman through security using my sister’s identity.
“Did you go home to pack? When you took little Max to the airport?” Streeter asked.
“What? No. There was no time for that,” Judy said, her eyes dropping to the black screen where little Max’s image had been playing. “Can you play it again?”
“So you packed ahead of time? Knowing you were traveling with the boy?” Streeter asked.
“Packed?”
“Don’t you have luggage with you?”
“No, I … I grabbed a bus to the nearest hotel after spending the night looking for little Max in the airport. I saw you tracking a scent, tried to figure out where he might be, if he was hiding. I followed the officers, too, and doubled back over the entire airport on this side of security. Then I went to the main terminal and spent time searching every crevice, every store, on every level. I had just enough money to get a change in my ticket back to NYC, but I just couldn’t leave without little Max. I didn’t know what to do and finally decided I needed a shower to clear my head.”
I actually felt sorry for her. Almost.
Streeter asked, “So if you didn’t go back to your apartment yesterday, what made you think to grab that video before leaving for work?”
“Well, I knew little Max was leaving and that I was taking him to the airport. I was hoping Mr. Williams would let me go with him, and if he didn’t, I suspected it would be a long holiday for me.”
“I still don’t understand,” Streeter said. “Where did you intend to play that video once little Max was on the plane? I mean, if you had every intention of going back to your apartment at the end of the day, after work, why grab the video?”
An expression of surprise registered on her sallow face. “I always carry a video of little Max with me everywhere I go. I thought you were wondering why I chose that particular video.”
Streeter’s eyebrow arched and I managed to exchange a glance with the chief, telegraphing that this woman was nothing but weirdness.
“So let me get this straight. You just happened to have a video of little Max in your purse, you just happened to have a phony ID in your purse, and you just happened to have a fistful of cash, enough to bribe the airline employee to get you a seat on the plane on Christmas Eve.” The rare expression of Streeter’s sarcasm was totally lost on the nutty nanny.
“Agent Pierce, you have this all wrong. I always carry the passport and a video of little Max in my purse. And Mr. Williams gave the cash to me as my Christmas bonus yesterday morning. So that was unusual. I did stop at an ATM, just in case.” Judy Manning shot an apologetic look my way. “I found your sister’s passport. She must have lost it years ago, before Mr. Williams married the Mrs. I was going to let Mr. Williams know, but I … I decided against it. I didn’t do anything wrong.”
“What do you mean, you didn’t do anything wrong? You posed as my sister. Were you planning to abduct little Max all along and pin the crime on her?” I balled my fists, ready to throw some punches at her for involving my sister. “And why in the hell were you stalking me last night?”
She buried her face in her hands, rocking side to side as she moaned. Streeter shot me a look that told me to back off. I knew I’d made a mistake the second the words left my mouth. I let my emotion—my sister’s involvement—take priority over my job.
“Ms. Manning, do you know where the boy might be?” Streeter’s voice was calm.
I was on the edge of my seat, staring at the woman across from me, embarrassed that I had caused her to start pulling out clumps of her own hair, the straggles a raggedy mess.
“Or who might have taken him?” Gates mumbled, but I didn’t think Manning had heard him through her sobbing.
&nb
sp; She shook her head, her face down on the table, her shoulders racked with sobs and her fingers clutching her hair.
“Where do you think Maximillian Bennett Williams III is? Ms. Manning?” Streeter pressed.
I didn’t realize I’d been holding my breath until she began to shout, “I don’t know! I don’t know! I lost him. He was on the plane with me. He sang ‘Feliz Navidad,’ just as I’d taught him. And then he was gone.” She was sobbing, swiping her nose with a sleeve and wiping her face on the inside of her shirt.
“What do you mean, you lost him?” Streeter asked.
“He was just gone. When I got off the plane. Normally, escorts make unaccompanied minors wait until everyone else deplanes and then take the child to the next gate. But he was already gone by the time I made it up the aisle. I was in the very back row by the bathroom. The last row. And by the time I deplaned, every seat was empty. Empty. No little Max.”
She buried her face in her hands again, bending at the waist and rocking back and forth, as she wailed, sobbing and moaning. “I lost him. I lost him. My boy. My poor boy.”
There she goes with calling little Max her boy again. She’s totally bonkers, if you ask me.
Streeter shared a look with Tony and me and then said, “Ms. Manning. Can I be honest with you?”
She sat up, wiped her face, and stared at him—her eyes puffy and red, her nose a purplish rose color, and her hair bedraggled. She not only looked twenty years older but wasted. “Of course.”
“My observation is that you love little Max dearly.”
“Like he was my own flesh and blood.”
“Did you ever have hopes you would raise him that way? As your own flesh and blood? As your son?”
She shook her head. “Not hopes. Reality. He was my son.”
That confused me. By the looks on the others’ faces, it confused them, too.
Streeter leaned forward. “You were the nanny, not the mother.”
“You’re wrong. I was the mother and the father to that boy. The Williamses simply owned him. They were the sperm and egg donors.”
I just couldn’t imagine Max entrusting his child to this Hand that Rocks the Cradle crazy lady or why he didn’t see her neurosis.
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