Abduction (4 page)

“Calm down,
Mrs. Matthews. You’re not helping your daughter with all these hysterics.”
Detective Johnson leaned back in the sofa chair, tapping his pen against his
knee, one eyebrow lifted.

“If
your
child had been taken, what would you be doing?” she demanded angrily.

“I’d be
cooperating with the police so they could find her. Or don’t you want us to
find her?”

The question
hit Karen like a fist in the face. She staggered back, lost her balance, and
found herself sitting back on the sofa, Ted’s hand on her shoulder. “That has
to be the stupidest question anyone has ever asked me.”

Detective
Johnson raised his pen over his notebook. “Then let’s get through this so we
can find her.”

Karen leaned
back into the sofa, seeking support, shaking as the tears started again. She
didn’t even try to wipe them away as she stared at the detective.
Why are
you doing this to me, God?

There was no
bright light from heaven to ease the pain. No angelic visitor to comfort her.
No thundering voice or soft whisper with the answers to the questions that
tormented her heart. The heavy silence was broken only by the sound of the
clock in the living room marking the seconds, the minutes, the hours since her
daughter’s disappearance.

The front door
burst open and Karen’s father came barreling in, a police officer hard on his
heels. “Sir, you can’t go in there!”

“It’s my daughter’s house! I can go in if I bloody
well feel like it!”

“Daddy!” Karen
jumped to her feet. “Someone took Jess!” She flung herself in his arms. He held
her stiffly, patting her awkwardly on the back. “Now, now. Gonna be fine,
girl.” He looked over at Ted. “What happened?”

“Someone
kidnapped Jessica.”

Walter reached
out and placed his hand on Ted’s shoulder. “Oh, dear heavens. What can I do to
help?”

Karen eased
out of her father’s arms and sank down on the sofa, clutching her arms around
her stomach. She could hear the sound of the detective’s voice as he directed
questions at her father and Ted, but she turned inward, tuning them out.
Please,
God. Help them find Jess.
Doubts assailed her as the pain welled up,
choking her. She clenched her fists against her stomach as she began to wonder,
Oh, God, what could I have done?

chapter
3

Tuesday, April 11

^J
J
stared up at the wall where two young faces on glossy paper stared back at him.
Two beautiful, helpless children. Six-year-old Gina Sarentino: black hair,
brown eyes, a missing front tooth, pierced ears. Seven-month-old Jessica
Matthews: light brown hair, hazel eyes, small mole or birthmark on her cheek.

Both of them
gone without a trace.

Gina Sarentino
had been walking home from a neighbor’s shortly after four in the afternoon on
April 3 when she disappeared.

Jessica
Matthews had disappeared from her crib, in her home, in the middle of the
night, with her parents just down the hall.

This newest
case had him scratching his head.

And looking
twice at the parents.

The sight of
the empty crib had set his stomach churning. He knew that had caused him to be
unusually rough on the parents. The baby might still be alive. This could be a
simple kidnapping case. Someone might call with a ransom demand.

The Matthews’
house was an unassuming ranch in an upper-middle-class neighborhood. The
furnishings were simple but moderately expensive. There was no sign of forced
entry. No sign of an intruder. And no sign of seven-month-old Jessica Matthews.

JJ’s instincts
were still screaming that nothing was the way it appeared. After eighteen years
on the force, he’d learned to listen to his instincts. No one had broken into
that home and stolen the baby. He’d stake his badge on that.

Had they
killed the baby by accident? Shaken it to death? Dropped it? Or had it been
deliberate? Tired of the crying and the diapers, had they simply smothered it
and buried it?

Oh, they had been properly upset. Karen Matthews
had been sitting on the edge of the sofa, her bare feet primly flat on the
floor, her face buried in her hands as she sobbed uncontrollably. Academy Award
material. The husband, Edward “Just Call Me Ted” Matthews, sat next to his
wife, appearing visibly shaken, upset, disturbed.

He’d spent most of the previous day with them,
taking reports, gathering evidence, talking to neighbors, and studying the
parents. They had cried, pleaded, begged. They wanted him to find their baby.

He just
couldn’t get a good read on them.

JJ leaned back
in his chair and frowned at the crowded room. The Monroe County Sheriff’s Department
was a three-story brick building right across the street from the courthouse.
Built in the early 1950s, it was once a modern, state-of-the-art facility.
Fifty years later, it barely kept up with safety standards.

The first
floor housed the patrol officers and processing. The second floor accommodated
Narcotics, Vice, the detective divisions, and the chief’s office. The third
floor consisted mainly of holding cells and interrogation rooms.

The elevator, installed in 1955, was a
temperamental piece of machinery that broke down more often than not and
managed to run just perfectly as soon as elevator repair showed up. After
getting stuck in the elevator a few times, most people opted to use the stairs.

The second
floor was divided into four areas. Narcotics and Vice were arranged on the
south side of the floor. Homicide and Criminal Investigations took up the north
side.

When Gina
Sarentino was reported missing, Chief Harris had called JJ into his office and
handed him the case file.
“Vince Sarentino is a close personal friend of the
mayor. We’re going all out on this one. Find the girl.”

The department
had formed a special task force led by JJ that included three other detectives
and a couple of gophers. They took up residence in a small conference room off
the main bullpen. Somehow JJ managed to fit two desks, a conference table, a
computer, and a coffeemaker in the room before running out of space.

Anything
you need, Johnson, just ask.

What he needed
was more manpower and a larger space in which to work. He tripped over himself
nearly every time he came in the room.

Marsha, one of
the second floor’s shared secretaries, appeared in the doorway. “Harris wants
to see you.”

JJ lurched out
of his chair with the usual dread. Harris wasn’t a bad guy. Just a pain to deal
with.

“Yes, sir?” JJ
asked as he stepped inside the chief’s office.

Harris
explained and handed JJ a slip of paper.

Stunned, he
stared hard at Harris. “You can’t be serious!”

“I am quite
serious.”

“Sir, with all
due respect, have you lost your mind? This is a police station, not a
carnival.”

Harris glared. “You’ll do it, Johnson, or you’ll
turn in your badge.”

chapter
4

Wednesday, April 12

Z
oe
pulled her suitcase out of the car trunk. She could still hear the questions
ringing in her ears now six and a half hours later.

“Tell me,
Miss Shefford, how did you know the girl was dead?”

“Miss
Shefford! Miss Shefford! How was she killed?”

“Miss
Shefford! Can you tell us what shape she was in?”

Walking
briskly to her front door, she pulled the suitcase behind her, wheels squeaking
across the brick as she tried to forget the reporters, the questions, the
publicity.

And that
police chief! He’d all but manhandled her to stand there in front of the
cameras while he went on and on about what a fantastic job she’d done.

Right.

She’d done
what she always did. Refused to answer their questions, turned their attention
to the police, and caught the first flight home.

Home.

Zoe wrinkled
her nose as she stepped through the door of her townhouse. She had forgotten to
take out the trash. After six days away, the house smelled a little ripe.

Leaving her
suitcase by the door, she headed for the kitchen, opening windows as she went
along. She tossed the mail on the kitchen table and immediately opened the back
door, setting the trash can on the deck.

The
refrigerator didn’t offer much hope of a meal. She hadn’t bothered to shop
before leaving. Then again, she hadn’t expected to rush out at 4:00
a.m.
to catch a plane to Grafton, West
Virginia.

The orange
juice didn’t look promising. A week beyond the expiration date, the milk didn’t
smell too fresh. And the iced tea was cloudy. Zoe did find a can of root beer
behind the butter and was more than happy to settle for that.

She turned on
the radio and sorted the mail. Bills in one stack, junk mail in another, and
anything that looked interesting enough to open in the final stack. Junk mail
went out the back door and into the trash can. She tossed bills in the basket
on the counter.

When the DJ
started reading the news headlines, Zoe kicked off her shoes and wiggled her
toes. She was preparing to head upstairs to unpack her suitcase when she heard
the kind of news she always dreaded.

The lead story
reached Zoe’s ears as news bites: Another missing child—an infant; no leads yet;
disappeared from her crib; parents pleading for safe return; second
missing-child case in less than two weeks; police form special task force.

Zoe sagged
against the doorframe. Too many missing children and too many parents pleading
with tear-streaked eyes and soul-wrenching sobs for a safe return. Too few
parents getting their wish.
Zoe knew the
numbers all too well: nearly sixty thousand nonfam
ily abductions each
year. More than a hundred missing children found murdered. Many more never
found.

How well she
understood the parents’ pain.

She heard the phone ring in her head before it
actually did. Staring at it, she fought back the dread that always came with
these calls—the helplessness, the hopelessness, the gut-wrenching under
standing
that she was their last hope.

They recalled
her successes.

She recalled
her failures.

Taking a deep
breath, she picked up the phone. “Hello?”

“Miss
Shefford? Zoe Shefford?”

“Speaking.”
But far from willingly. Go ahead.
Get it over with. Tell me about the baby. Tell me how sweet she was. How much
she is loved. I know.

“This is
Detective Johnson from the Monroe County Sheriff’s Department. I was given your
number.”

“I just heard
about it on the radio. They said the baby was taken two days ago. What about
the other child?”

A pause and a
heavy sigh. “Nine days.”

Zoe curled her
fingers around the cord. Nine days. Too long. If they didn’t have a solid lead
on the child within 48 to 72 hours, the chances were slim to none of ever
seeing the child alive again. “How soon do you need to talk to me?”

There was another pause on the other end of the
line, and she could almost see this man scratching his head, wondering if he
was doing the right thing. It forced a wistful but fleeting smile out of her.

“Uh. .
.sometime today? I don’t know how these things work.”

She did. She
took another deep breath. “I just got home from West Virginia.” The memory shot
through her; a little girl, seven years old with big brown eyes, brown hair,
and two missing front teeth. Kathleen. Buried behind an old hunting lodge some
twenty miles from nowhere in the mountains.

“Yeah. . .I
heard that you found her.”

“Too late,”
she reminded him sadly. Two days too late. She shook off the memory. “Anyway, I
just need to unpack, shower, and change, and then I’ll come down to the
station. You know I can’t promise anything?”

“Yes.”

Zoe hung up
the phone, dropping her forehead against the wall.
Where are you, Jessica?
Talk to me, baby. Tell me where you are.

*

Detective JJ
Johnson stared at the phone, his brow wrinkled, his fingers drumming an erratic
pattern on the desk blotter. He was up to his ears in dead ends and was not at
all happy about calling Zoe Shefford. But the pressure was on from as high up
as the governor. Pressure to give anything a shot. Zoe Shefford was the biggest
“anything shot” he’d heard of.

A psychic?

She was the
best, they said. Amazing, they said. Had found more than forty-seven children,
they said.

He didn’t much
care what they said.

A psychic? What kind of detective used a psychic?
Not him. Nope. Not JJ Johnson. He relied on his own talent, instincts, and hard
work. Bringing in a psychic was like kicking him while he was down.

He didn’t like
it. He didn’t like it at all. Calling in some voodoo queen was admitting he
didn’t have a clue what he was doing.

JJ imagined
her slithering in with black hair, heavy black eyes, a scarf tied around her
forehead, a ton of dime-store beads around her neck, and a crystal ball in her
bag.

And expecting
him to hang on her every word.

Not in this
lifetime.

It was his job
to lead this task force, and he had no intention of handing over the reins to
some decked-out demagogue of deceit.

But try
telling that to the boss. Harris had narrowed those beady little eyes and
handed him the psychic’s phone number.
“I want these kids found and I want
this guy in custody. The governor wants us to call this woman. If you can’t
find them, maybe she can.”