A Justified Murder (Medlar Mystery #2)(55)

Sara nodded in agreement. “My guess is that you wanted people to doubt that it was the same baby. Keep the case going.”

“Quick, aren’t you?”

“She writes this kind of thing,” Kate said.

“And I bet you’re really good at it.” His voice was so smooth, so flattering, so suggestive, that Sara smiled warmly back at him.

“Did it?” Jack asked loudly. “Is that what happened?”

Chet straightened up. “Yeah. Exactly. We got a lot of letters telling us we had the wrong baby. That the real one was... Well, fill in the blanks. Half a dozen so-called psychics called and told us we had the wrong baby. People began ratting on their neighbors. Anyone who had recently brought home a baby was under suspicion.”

“It couldn’t be true, could it?” Kate asked. “I mean it really was little Jeanne, wasn’t it?”

“Yes. There was a birthmark and we compared footprints. It was her. But still, we followed up on every clue we were given.”

“Who is the ‘we’?” Jack asked. “The police force and you or just you?”

Chet’s mouth quirked at the corner. “Just me. Weekends, evenings. I checked out everything. Found a couple of cases that were later prosecuted, but nothing about the Crawford baby.”

Sara spoke up. “I’m curious about the cross that Everett found in the bootie. When was that made public?”

“It wasn’t. Not ever. I was the only one who knew about it and the only person I told was my wife.” He took a breath. “I stayed in touch with the Crawford family. She had another baby, a boy, and she told me to leave it alone, that she had her daughter back and that was all she wanted. But the grandmother who had given the sweater set agreed with me. She wanted the culprit caught. Just days before she died, she asked me to visit her and she told me about sewing a cross inside the toe of each bootie. She said she’d kept it to herself because she wanted something she could use to verify the baby’s identity. ‘Someone has that little slipper,’ she said. ‘Someone kept it. You find it and you’ll find the bastard that tried to take my grandchild.’ She held my hand and asked me to swear to never give up. I promised that I wouldn’t.”

He paused for a moment. “I kept my vow. Even though I got promotions and was made chief, I kept looking. It got to the point where no one in the office remembered the case, but that didn’t stop me from searching.”

Sara took a deep drink of her lemonade. “I don’t know about anyone else, but I’m ready for a story. I want to know what really happened to make you dedicate your life to this case.”

“The injustice of it. A baby stolen, the grief of the parents, the...” He trailed off because Sara obviously wasn’t buying it.

“People are self-centered beings,” she said. “We do things that interest us, that we have a connection to. What happened that made this case touch you? Personally you?”

Chet took his time in answering. He sat down on one of Sara’s comfortable dining chairs, picked up a bag containing a pink cardigan, and turned it around in his hands. “Her.” Chet’s voice was a whisper. “I think I saw her. The woman who kidnapped the baby.” He let out his breath. “Outside of my wife, you’re the first people I’ve told that.”

Sara shook her head. “How you managed to keep that secret is beyond me.”

“You could identify her but you said nothing?” Jack sounded on the verge of anger.

“No,” Chet said. “I couldn’t identify her. Not well enough to testify in court.”

“But you said—”

Sara looked at Jack. “Let’s let him tell his story, shall we?” She said they should move to the more comfortable couches in the living room.

When they were settled, Chet still hesitated. But then, he was about to tell a story he’d revealed to only one person, yet it was something that had driven his life.

“I think you know the basics. It started at a frantic, going-out-of-business sale. The big store was packed with customers, almost all women, who were snatching and grabbing and... It was a state of war. In the midst of the chaos, a woman started screaming that her baby had been taken. A clerk was inches from an emergency lock-down switch. He pressed it and all the doors locked. There wasn’t time for anyone to push through that crowd to get to an exit door. We got there just minutes later and began questioning everyone, but no one had seen anything. Certainly no one frantically clutching a baby.”

The way he was talking sounded as though he’d said it many times before. It was a memorized speech.

Chet stopped and for a moment, he looked out the window, then turned back. “I was young, inexperienced. I’d never been on a case like that before. I was used to giving out tickets and breaking up bar fights.” He let out his breath.

“I was told to check the women’s lavatory. It was not something that I wanted to do, but there were no female cops so I was given the job. I can’t describe my embarrassment when I saw a young woman sitting on top of the sink counter, breastfeeding her baby. I kept my eyes down.”

Chet looked at them. “Eyes down is an important fact. Anyway, I saw that the baby was wearing denim overalls, and a blue T-shirt. It was obviously a boy and we were looking for a baby girl.”