Mother May I(37)

Marshall gave me an approving nod. It was a smart question, but she wasn’t stupid enough to answer.

“Not close, but he’ll be safe enough. He may be mad before you get to him, but he won’t die. I’ll clip him in his car seat, and there’s a good strong door between him and any coyotes.” She said the last word with only two syllables. Ky-oats. My head shook, back and forth. No. I didn’t want Robert waiting for me, alone in some abandoned gas station or a backwoods shed or a soundproofed city basement. “If you come without your husband, if you send police instead, I’ll never tell where he is. He’ll stay there, crying for you, until thirst gets him. He’s in a place won’t nobody find him. Not fast enough. I’ll die knowing it’ll finish fair without me. Hard on the baby, though.”

I believed her. I could see it. It would be easier than putting him into the water. She wouldn’t have to do anything but keep silent and die. She could tell herself that Trey and I had made our choice.

Far away, in a secret place with a locked door, I could hear Robert stirring, making hungry peeps.

“I’ll see you tomorrow. Or not. It’s on you now.”

“Wait,” I said. “Please tell me. What did he do? What did they do?” I meant Trey. And Spence. And Geoff’s poor parents.

A pause, a breath, but she didn’t answer. “I won’t call again.”

“What did he do?” I insisted, but she was gone. I was talking to dead air.





11




Marshall knew that the old woman had made some mistakes during the conversation, though he couldn’t see them all clearly yet. He could feel them like little cracks, spidering and spreading in the veil that hid her from him.

She’d said too much. Why had she been so forthcoming?

Something was at work inside her, a strange tenderness aimed at Bree. Bree herself had a pretty serious case of Stockholm syndrome going, no doubt, but why was her softness being reciprocated? It made no sense.

Marshall scrubbed at his tired eyes, grateful that Cara was with Yvonne at the lake. She’d spend the day kayaking and swimming, hearing birdsong as sunlight sparked the blue water. How could the world be wide enough to hold that place and this one? Her live, young joy should not share a planet with what was happening here.

He’d been right there, too, in the building. Bree had even shown him the kidnapper, pointed at her through the greenroom window, agitated, and he hadn’t followed up. He’d been so busy trying to keep his distance.

Now she was crumpled into herself on the sofa, rocking faintly. Whenever he looked her way, he wanted to rip the world in half and pull the old woman out through the boiling center for her.

But he could not muddy up his mind with rage or worry. Not even hope. Hope was too personal. In real life cops didn’t work cases they were close to, and this was why. He needed to be thinking, cold and clear.

“She messed up,” he told them, so calm. He’d found his old cop voice, rusty from disuse. “She gave us the other child’s name and approximate age. There will be news stories about a missing toddler, and this one had an unusual name.”

“How does that help?” Gabrielle said, overwhelmed.

“Until now we had only two points, Spence and Trey, connected by the line of a legal case. Geoff is a third point, a way to triangulate. When we find the lines connecting Geoff’s parents, the right case file will be inside the shape they all make together. Inside that file we’ll find the woman who took Robert. We need her real name.”

With the real name, maybe, just maybe, he could get Robert back. If he was willing to be ruthless. He didn’t have to mull it over. He was willing. He was past willing. He could feel a coming violence, like a prickling carbonation in his blood. This was yet another reason cops were not allowed to work on cases close to them.

Gabrielle burst into motion, pushing off the doorway. “We should have called the police. They would have traced that call. We’d know exactly where she is.” Her words came blurting out, all rush and tumble, a road straight to regret.

“No,” Marshall cut in, firm and cool. They could not indulge in woulda-coulda-shoulda. He saw only one path that might get them all the way to Robert. It was full of switchbacks and deadfalls, but it was a path, and he was on it. “We got this. I have a plan.” Well, the seeds of one. “Remember, if Bree had called the cops first thing, Robert would be dead already.”

Bree flinched, but it was good for her to hear these words. Like every parent living, she’d be looking for a way to make this her fault.

She looked up at him with drowning eyes. “Maybe we should call them now?”

“No,” he said. He looked at Gabrielle and was glad to see her nodding, backing his play. Bree could end up in prison and still lose her baby. And as murder/suicide plans went, this one felt pretty tight. He could see six thousand ways it could go ass up if they called the cops. “She’s tied the baby to her body, which makes snipers or gas or a breach too risky. She doesn’t care if she lives, so they can’t negotiate. That’s every choice the cops have. They have to stay inside the law. They have limits.” He held Bree’s gaze. “We don’t. All I need is her name. She has a weak point.”

He saw it click in her, or perhaps she’d thought of it already and was only recognizing how far down into this thing he’d go with her. A light came into her eyes. She said, “You want her name so you can find the daughter. Get something to trade that isn’t Trey.”