Abduction (12 page)

#

Rene closed
the car door and started up the front walk, groceries in hand, when a light
blue convertible pulled up to the curb. She spotted the blond hair and knew
immediately that it was Zoe Shefford. Halting at the bottom of the front steps,
she waited while Zoe climbed out of her car and joined her.

“I hope I haven’t stopped by at a bad time.” Zoe
sounded nervous.

“Not at all,”
Rene responded with a welcoming smile. “Come on in.”

She settled Zoe at the kitchen table while she put
on water for tea then quickly put away the groceries. A few minutes later, she
placed a mug of tea in front of Zoe along with a small plate of shortbread and
then settled into the chair across from the young woman.

“I gather you
wanted to talk to me about something?”

Zoe nodded as she stirred sugar into the steaming
tea. “I haven’t
been able to stop thinking about what you said. You
know, about my gift not being from God. I guess I just need some clarification
or something. None of it makes any sense to me.”

“I know. And
I’m sorry about what happened over at Karen’s that day. I didn’t mean to come
on so strong or so negatively. You had all the best intentions.” She dipped a
piece of shortbread in her tea and gathered her thoughts.

“I really
wanted to find Mrs. Matthews’s baby.”

Rene nodded as
she swallowed. “I know you did, sweetheart. But we couldn’t let you get
involved.”

“Why not? I
mean, if I could have found the child, wouldn’t that have been a good thing?”

Rene watched
as Zoe dropped her hands into her lap. She felt sorry for the young woman. “It
might have been a good thing, Zoe, but it wouldn’t have been a God thing. And
there is a difference. Zoe, you’re searching for answers, and they have nothing
to do with Jessica Matthews.”

Zoe’s eyes met
hers and held. Rene could easily read the questions and the confusion. Zoe’s
next words caught her off guard. “Did Karen Matthews hurt her baby?”

#

Unaware that her mental state was being discussed
at that very moment by her neighbor, Karen Matthews entered her daughter’s
nursery. She knew she was only tormenting herself, but she couldn’t help it.
She moved past the crib, her fingers trailing over the smooth wood, before
reaching out for the soft pink bear on the dresser. She folded it in her arms
and held it close as she stood there in her daughter’s room.

Was she dead?
Was she alive? Was she gone forever? Would she be coming home someday?

Questions with
no answers. Torment without relief. Grief without understanding, and loss
without ending.

She wanted to hold Jessica one more time. No. That
was a lie. She wanted to hold Jessica and never let her go. She wanted to bury
her face in Jessica’s soft skin and breathe her in. Listen to her little
heartbeat. Smell the powder and shampoo and the very essence of her precious
daughter. She wanted to see Jessica laugh and to hear her cry. To watch her
sleep and stretch herself awake with that soft
mewling cry for her
mommy.

And she’d
never let her out of her sight again.

What would she
pay to get Jessica back?
Anything.

Zoe
Shefford?

The name rose
up inside her, taunting her, teasing. Zoe had found other children. She could find
Jessica. What real harm would it do?

Plenty.

Karen dropped down in the rocking chair, tears
welling up in her eyes. The silence in the house seemed overwhelming. She
glanced over to the blanket that Zoe Shefford had held in her hands.

Zoe might be
able to find Jessica. Was it worth it? What would be her punishment for
disobeying God? Wasn’t her daughter’s life worth anything?

What if
Rene Taylor is wrong? What if she’s just some fanatic?

“Karen?” Ted
stood in the doorway. He had gone to help someone from work move into a new
home and was a mess. He looked as though someone had dragged him behind the
truck. His pullover and jeans were dusty and streaked with dirt. His dark brown
hair was ruffled, as if he’d been dragging his fingers through it, and his dark
eyes were solemn. He looked as bad as she felt.

Karen lifted
her face and gazed through red-rimmed eyes at her husband. “Are you home
already?”

“It’s after
four. Have you been in here long?”

After four?
Where had the time gone?
She shook her head, setting the bear down on the
dresser as she moved over to him, lifting her face for a kiss. “No. Not long.
How did the move go?”

“Not bad. Harry had enough people there to make it
go fast. We were done a lot earlier than I thought we would be. He just
overlooked pulling up the kids’ swing set, so Jack and I were elected to pull
it out of the ground and tear it down.” He looked down at his shirt and
frowned. “As you can see, the swing set won the tug of war.”

Karen smiled
wearily. “It was nice of you to help them.”

“Harry’s
helped me out on more than one occasion.” He pointedly eyed the bear on the
dresser. “You’re not making this any easier on yourself, coming in here and
looking at all this. You know that, don’t you?”

Karen gazed up
at him. “Staying away doesn’t make it any easier. Coming in here doesn’t make
it any easier. The truth is, until Jessica is home, nothing will be easier.”

Ted turned and
walked toward the bedroom. “And what if she never comes home, Karen? What
then?”

Karen followed him to the door of their bedroom,
watching as he pulled his shirt over his head and tossed it in the hamper by
the bathroom door. “Never comes home? I can’t even go there, Ted. This is our
daughter we’re talking about. How can you just write her off?”

Pulling a
clean shirt out of the dresser, he used his hip to nudge the drawer closed and
yanked the shirt over his head. “I’m
not
writing her off, Karen. I’m
trying to face reality here. I can’t bury myself in grief and stop living.”

“And that’s
what you think I’m doing?”

“I don’t
know!” Ted hissed with frustration as he pulled the shirt back off and tossed
it on the bed. “Yes! Maybe! You moon around with that sad face and cry at the
drop of a hat. How long can you live like this?”

“I’m trying to deal with this, Ted. My daughter has
been kid
napped. I don’t know if she’s dead or alive. I don’t know if
she’s coming back or not, but I’m not ready to bury her yet.”

“Your
daughter?” Ted stepped into the bathroom and shoved back the shower curtain. He
turned on the water before looking at her. “How about
our
daughter?”

“I didn’t mean
it that way.”

Ted brushed
past her. Karen rushed down the hall after him, following him into the kitchen.
“You meant it exactly that way. Ever since Jessica was born, it’s been Jess
this and Jessica that. I’ve become incidental at best.”

“That’s not
true!”

Opening the
refrigerator, Ted stared at the shelves. “No? When was the last time you went
shopping? Did it ever dawn on you that I might want to eat something?”

Karen nipped
her bottom lip between her teeth. “I’m sorry.”

“But,” he
muttered, slamming the refrigerator door shut, “you stepped into Jessica’s room
and that was that. Good old Ted was forgotten.”

“Please, Ted.”

“Please, what? Overlook this? Forget this? Or
forgive this? Which is it, Karen? Just last month, you came home from church
with Jessica and told me what a wonderful, inspiring message Reverend Pollack
gave about trusting God. Now you act like God doesn’t exist!”

“What?”

He started
opening cabinet doors, pointing out the lack of food. “If you trust God with
our daughter, then act like it. Get on with your life and trust God to bring
her home!”

Karen took a
step back, wanting to deny and defend but finding it impossible to do so. He
was right. She hadn’t been trusting God at all. She’d let everything go. It was
a wonder Ted had clean clothes to wear.
The dry cleaners! She was supposed
to pick up Ted’s suits two days ago!

Ted slammed
one of the cabinet doors. “I’m going to take a shower. Do you think you could
manage to call out for food?”

Karen nodded meekly as he stormed out of the
kitchen. With trembling hands, she reached for the take-out menus stacked near
the phone. She would run by the dry cleaners on her way to pick up
the
food.

Ted didn’t
need to know she’d let him down again.

#

FBI profiler Adam Zahn’s voice came across the
line low and steady. JJ could almost picture him—suit and tie, dark hair,
mustache, and broad shoulders to go with that steady personality. He had to
give the guy credit. Zahn worked fast. JJ had called Thursday night after Emily
Terrance’s disappearance. It was now Saturday afternoon.

“It’s hard to say if you have a serial killer on
your hands with what little information you’ve given me, but if we go on the
assumption that you do, I may be able to help.”

JJ grabbed a
legal pad and turned to a clean sheet. “Go ahead. I’m listening.”

“It’s hard to
pinpoint the exact reason your unsub is going after children, but I suspect
it’s for their innocence or their purity or their goodness.”

“I thought
this was all about control.”

“It is. You’ve
got an unsub who strikes and then retreats. There could be months, even years,
between killings. He is careful and organized, leaving few, if any, clues
behind.”

JJ snorted
softly. “No kidding. We have no fingerprints, no DNA, no fibers.”

“Exactly. He’s
a pro and the worst kind of killer there is. He can sit back patiently and
watch you chase your tail. If my guess is right, he’s probably been at this for
years.”

“Insane,” JJ
muttered darkly, seeing a long trail of unsolved murders in his future.

“Far from it.
He probably appears perfectly normal to everyone around him. You could pass him
in the grocery store, the mall. . . . He’s the man who helps you buy a house or
a car, or he could be your electrician. He’s more than likely a white male between
the ages of thirty-five and fifty. Neatly groomed, above-average intelligence,
and probably has no traceable history of mental illness, although that’s not a
guarantee.”

JJ sighed, shaking his head. This wasn’t much.
The profiler had
n’t been exaggerating. “Okay, we have two little girls,
both six years old, and an infant—”

“I don’t think
the infant is in this. Just my gut talking when I read over the reports. It’s a
different M.O. entirely. You’ve got two different things going on here.”

JJ slapped his
hand down on his desk. “Yes! Finally someone who agrees with me!”

“Been fighting
the politics game, eh? How well I remember. Give you the job because they say
you’re the best man for it and then tell you how to do it every step of the
way, even when you know they’re wrong.”

“Exactly.”

“Well,” Zahn
said with a chuckle, “tell them I said you’re right.”

“I will. And
then I’m going after Karen Matthews.”

“If you’re
hunting a serial killer, do you really have time to worry about this case with
the baby?”

“Probably not,
but this has become somewhat personal for me. I want to nail that lady to the
wall for killing her baby. And I will. I most definitely will.”

chapter
10

Monday, April 17

Z
oe
was jerked out of sleep before her alarm went off by the sound of a lawn mower
under her bedroom window. After another restless night tossing and turning,
she’d finally drifted off to sleep just before dawn. Gina had come to her in
her dreams, calling to Zoe through the swirling mists. Zoe had run to her, but
each time she came close, the child would disappear in the shadows. And Rene
Taylor would appear, shaking her head and saying, “This is not of God,” over
and over.

The dread that
had been building all night was still with her as she slipped into her robe. It
dragged at her limbs and shadowed her thoughts.

With a groan, she stumbled to the kitchen and
started the cof
fee. Just once, she’d like to see Frank put her on the
end of his route instead of the beginning. Every Monday morning, he started his
day with her. He was dependable. Irritatingly so, sometimes.

She turned on
the television and flipped through the channels to catch the news. When she saw
a familiar newscaster’s face appear, she tossed the remote down on the counter.
It slid across the tile and went crashing to the floor.

Zoe dove for
it and missed, watching it bounce off the little carpet in front of her sink.
Picking it up, she turned it over and breathed a sigh of relief. It wasn’t
broken.

“And it came
to pass, as we went to prayer, a certain damsel possessed with a spirit of
divination met us.”

Confused, Zoe
looked over at the television. The bouncing remote had changed the channel. In
place of the newscaster, there was a young man in a suit and wire-rimmed
glasses.

“Today we
would call them psychics,” he said to his television congregation. “And Paul
cast that evil spirit out of her.”

Zoe changed
the channel.
Evil spirit. Hogwash.

By the time
she was out of the shower and dressed, she’d forgotten about the TV sermon and
Frank was mowing the backyard. With coffee in hand, she stepped out on the deck
and watched him.

Frank Harrow
was close to fifty years old with a shock of gray-streaked dark brown hair. He
was a big man, although he only stood an inch less than six feet. Broad of
girth, he had big hands and thick fingers that were uncharacteristically nimble
around the delicate blooms he nurtured. His wife had cancer and the prognosis
wasn’t good. Frank mentioned that his daughter had come from California to help
take care of her.