Every Fear (26 page)

J
ason was rolling his Falcon along the Seattle streets from Joy Montgomery’s home to Ballard. He needed to show Nadine’s picture to the neighbors, maybe the supermarket cashiers and the people at Lee Colson’s tow shop.

Jason was planning his next steps when his phone went off.

“It’s Grace. You’re the first person to get this, but we believe Dylan Colson is still alive.”

“What? Hold on! Hold on!” He pulled over. “Say that again.”

“We found no trace of the baby’s remains at the scene.”

“Who’s dead, then?”

“Nadine’s boyfriend. An ex-con named Axel Tackett. I gotta go.”

“Wait, wait. Spell that and give me his D.O.B.” After taking down the information, he said, “Where’s Dylan?”

“We believe Nadine fled with him after setting the fire.”

“She murdered Tackett?”

“She’s the prime suspect.”

“For Beth Bannon too?”

“Yes.”

“Man. Where is she? You got a lead on a location?”

“Working on it. It’ll all be out soon with a press conference. You’ve got the scoop. I’ll see you there. I have to go.”

“Hold on, Grace. What about Lee Colson as a suspect?”

“Cleared.”

“Is all this on the record, or am I sourcing you?”

“On the record, we’re squared now.”

“Closer to being squared.”

“Very funny.”

Jason called an editorial assistant at the paper and dictated a breaking news update for immediate posting on the
Mirror’s
Internet edition. Then he called Spangler’s line and left a voice-mail message, alerting him to the development and urging him to put someone good on the police scanners to listen for a possible takedown.

After hanging up his phone rang again.

“Jay,” his old man said. “I’ve got to meet you right away.”

“Not now, Dad. There’s been a major break.”

“I’ve got something you must see.”

“What is it?”

“Prison, police, and psychiatric records for Nadine Lasher. That’s her real name. Nadine Sienna Lasher.”

Twenty minutes later, Jason met his father at a booth at Fat Ray’s Diner, off the northeast campus of the University of Washington.

Jason’s old man passed him the records, some fifteen pages from several agencies—Toronto Police, Royal Canadian Mounted Police, Correctional Service of Canada, something from psychiatric services from the province of Ontario.

“She’s Canadian, born in Toronto.” Henry Wade spooned sugar into his coffee.

“I see that. This is dynamite. How’d you get this so fast?”

“Krofton’s connected. A lot of this stuff, in various forms, is public up there. But the agency got its request fast-tracked through the FBI liaison at the U.S. Embassy in Ottawa. You can bet a fuller package moved even faster and is now with Seattle PD and at the FBI field office downtown.”

As Jason examined Nadine’s records, a compelling story emerged.

Hours after her birth, she was found wrapped in a worn, torn ski jacket, abandoned on the steps of a downtown Toronto church.

She grew up a ward of social welfare agencies, raised in the homes of foster parents, where, at times, she was abused. At twenty-three, she was a desperately lonely gift-shop clerk who, oddly, still lived with her morally strict foster parents.

Nadine had an affair with a married stockbroker and became pregnant. He broke his promise to leave his wife and marry her. He demanded Nadine get an abortion, then broke off their relationship.

Nadine refused to get an abortion but attempted suicide.

When her foster parents learned of her affair and
pregnancy they were appalled and shamed. They sent her off to relatives in Niagara Falls, where she gave birth to a son. Her foster parents then demanded she give up her baby for adoption.

Nadine agreed, but secretly kept in contact with the adoptive parents. At this time, unknown to anyone, Nadine was undergoing psychiatric counseling for delusions and drug abuse.

Meanwhile, the happy adoptive parents had agreed to grant Nadine periodic visits. About a year after her baby boy was born, the adoptive parents were days away from finalizing the adoption.

During her last visit with her son, Nadine abducted him and fled. It triggered a massive search involving police, volunteers, tracking dogs, and helicopters. The trail led to a remote area north of Toronto, where searchers found Nadine sitting alone by the shore of an isolated small lake.

She was humming a lullaby to herself.

Searchers could not find the baby. Divers probed the lake. Police dragged it for three days. No body was ever recovered.

In custody, Nadine told detectives that it was wrong for the father of her baby to have lied. Wrong for her foster parents to have forced her to give up her son. And wrong for the adoptive parents to take him from her.

“How could the baby ever be happy without his real mother?” she was quoted in court transcripts as telling homicide investigators.

During her trial, she remained steadfast in her
account of the abduction, stating that she had no clear memory of the whereabouts of the baby. After three days of testimony, Nadine Sienna Lasher, owing to her altered mental state at the time of her acts, was sentenced to five years in prison.

A year after she was sent to a prison for the criminally insane, Nadine underwent several severe psychotic episodes. She summoned detectives. She had something more to tell them.

In a long, emotionless monologue, she blamed others. Having been lied to by everyone, she’d been certain that her baby’s adoptive parents were going to move far away once the adoption was complete.

“I knew I would never see my boy again, that’s why I took care of him.”

“What did you do, Nadine?”

“I sent my baby to Heaven.”

“Can you show us where? Where you sent him to Heaven?”

Detectives drove Nadine north of Toronto and deep into the bush country but far from the original spot where she was first found. Nadine took the police deep into a forest clearing, where she pointed to a shiny heart-shaped stone under a stand of wildflowers.

An autopsy confirmed that the baby had been buried.

Alive.

N
adine stared live from TVs across the United States.

So did Dylan Colson.

Photos of their faces were followed by the faces of Axel Tackett and Beth Bannon.

By midmorning, Nadine Sienna Lasher, a.k.a., Nadine Getch, was the nation’s most wanted fugitive, sought in the abduction of Dylan Colson and the homicides of Beth Bannon and Axel Tackett.

Police believed Nadine was still in the greater Sea-Tac area and were appealing to the public through the alert system and the press for anyone with information to call.

“She is considered armed and dangerous, and should not be approached,” Agent McCusker told more than one hundred reporters gathered at the news conference held by the Seattle FBI, the Seattle Police, and the King County Sheriff’s Office.

“And now, Dylan’s parents, Lee and Maria Colson, will say a few words. They will take no questions.”

The room’s emotional intensity shot up under the lights.

Brilliant flashes from still cameras rained down on
the Colsons as they sat behind the mountain of microphones and recorders. Heads bowed, they held hands while struggling to begin. Maria wore a print bandana to cover her stitches. She touched the corners of her eyes. Lee was unshaven. Relatives and friends lined the wall behind them.

“Dylan is our world,” Maria said amid the whir-click of cameras. “He is everything. Nadine, if you can hear my voice, please, I’m begging you, please, just let him go.”

Maria covered her face with her hand, then she buried it in Lee’s chest, intensifying the camera flashes. For newswires and newspapers,
that
was the shot. A portrait of pain. The mother of a stolen baby boy pleading to the fugitive murder suspect who’d abducted him.

Lee cleared his throat and swallowed. He blinked rapidly before he said, “Nadine, Dylan is our son. We know you’re taking good care of him. We know you have no intention of hurting him. Please, let him go. People want to help you. Please.” Lee rubbed the tension in his jaw. “Thank you.”

The Colsons left and McCusker concluded things as the description of Nadine appeared on broadcasts next to her face.

“We’re asking anyone who has any information as to the whereabouts of Nadine Lasher and Dylan Colson to call your local police agency immediately,” McCusker said. “We are only one call away from locating Dylan and bringing him home safe to his mother and father.”

“Y
ou’re liars! All of you!” Nadine shouted at Lee and Maria Colson, who pleaded to her from the TV. Her eyes raced around her motel room; the stained walls were closing in on her. They were coming.

She gazed upon Dylan, asleep on the bed.

“You’re mine. They can’t take you from me.”

Stinging from lack of sleep, her eyes widened as she inventoried the room. The foul-smelling carpet had disappeared under the scattered files, papers, and notes she’d searched. Beth’s material.

It wasn’t there.

Why wasn’t it there?

Her painful memories of how she’d arrived in Seattle, alone, scared, and pregnant. She’d given birth to her son but they would not let her see him.

Why?

Well, Nadine had figured it out, it had to have happened like the last time. They took him and gave him to a childless couple. And she was not going to let that happen again. She told Beth everything, told her what had happened. Begged her to help her find her baby.

Who had her baby?

Beth had to know. She helped people find babies.

Axel was supposed to help too. That was why she wrote to him at Coyote Ridge before he got out. He believed in her. Shared her dream to build a life together with their baby. That was how it had been—until Nadine found out for herself that Lee and Maria had stolen her baby.

Papers rustled as she rummaged through the scattered files for anything that would prove it. Tears blurred her eyes. Why wasn’t it here? She could not let them take her boy away.

What’s this?

A note, handwritten by Beth, a fragment from another note. She slid to the floor as she read it, not believing, the words coming like blows.

I’m very concerned about Nadine. She’s mentally unstable, insisting she’s given birth to a baby boy here in Washington State within the past year when it’s just not true. I know little about her past, but her delusions and fantasies are disturbing. She needs help.

Nadine gasped.

Mentally unstable. Delusions. Fantasies.

How could Beth say such hurtful things?

“There’s my son on the bed, Beth! He’s not a fantasy. He’s real!”

Nadine’s world was falling apart. She had to do something fast.

What was that?

A siren.

Far off.

Was it getting closer or going away?

She couldn’t risk waiting to find out. She couldn’t let them stop her from being with him. Nadine got to her feet, brushed the tears from her eyes, wrapped Dylan in a blanket, took him in her arms, and left.

She found the entrance to the path and stepped into the cool darkness of the woods. Soothed by the sundappled light, she followed the trail as it twisted along a downward slope. As she neared the water, she heard its rush beckoning. Branches grazed her as she came closer to the creek and a final decision.

It was an isolated sanctuary within Seattle.

No one else around.

Nothing but trees and the creek, the water’s flow drowning out the sounds of the city.

Nadine stood at the water’s edge with Dylan in her arms and tears rolling down her face.

She was so tired of lies, so tired of fighting for what was hers. Dylan’s warmth against her felt so right. So perfect. Looking at his sweet face, feeling his sweet breath, she understood now.

Understood exactly what he was.

He was her angel baby from the bad time come back from Heaven.

Her answered prayer. Come back to take her with him.

Slowly, Nadine slipped off her shoes.

The moist mud of the bank was cool on her toes.

It felt like
release.
It felt right. Like a dream.

Her dream.

Their dream.

Remember the dream.

They were going to move into a beautiful little house with a big wraparound porch with hand-carved spindles in the railing. They’d have a big porch swing where they would sit on summer nights, sip lemonade, and look up at the stars.

They’d have a pretty yard with a big old shade tree in the back where he could play. She’d buy him a baseball and a glove and a football and she would play catch with him. And on weekends they’d go for drives into the country for picnics and ice cream, then pick wildflowers and wade in a stream. Birthday parties in their house would be special. Christmas and all the holidays would be perfect, like in the magazines she read at the supermarket checkout.

They were going to be the kind of family she’d always dreamed of having. Ever since she was a little girl. And they were going to live in the kind of house she’d seen a million billion times in her mind.

It would have a big fireplace where they would sit and listen to the rain on stormy days, or keep cozy on winter nights. Their house would have a big kitchen where she would make the best home-cooked meals ever, and it would have big bright rooms filled with light.

Filled with love.

They would go there now.

Nadine edged into the water, felt it rise above her
ankles, swirl and suck around her calves, knees, thighs, and climb coolly to her waist.

Dylan stirred in her arms.

His blanket, her pants and shirt glowed surreally against the dark water and green of the wood. She edged farther out, feeling the slippery, moss-slicked rocks under her toes and the current pushing against her.

Dylan was waking.

Squirming.

“Hush. We’re almost home, angel, almost home.”

T
he mouth. The chin. The butterfly and spiderweb tattoo.

Lord of Moses, could it be her? The girl the police were looking for?

Shirley Brewer pulled her attention from the TV news bulletin to the peg that held the key for Room 19. She looked at her telephone before she checked the guest registration card.

Jane Smith with her face bruised. Her fingers scraped.

Shirley had this one down for a runaway, an abused woman. She couldn’t be this “Nadine” they were looking for, could she? There was no baby.
But there was that tattoo on the back of her hand.
Shirley tapped the card on the counter.

All right.

Before she called anybody, she’d check it out, just to be sure.

Grunting, she reached for her hickory cane and her ring of master keys, then headed to the linen storage room to collect some fresh towels and her thoughts. She’d just make a little innocent check. To be sure. No sense sounding an alarm if it wasn’t her.

And she prayed that it was not her.

Lord, two murders, a missing baby.

Shirley was uneasy but not afraid. She’d dealt with all kinds of people and had learned that being in this business was not for the faint of heart.

Still, her grip on her cane tightened.

Her swollen legs bothered her more and more these days, she thought as she tottered across the deserted courtyard. When she came to the back unit by the trees, she saw Jane Smith’s blue Ford Focus and took note of the license plate.

All quiet here.

The car was unlocked and the windows were down. Seemed a little odd. People always locked up. Poking her head inside, she took stock of the interior. It was empty, clean, no sign of anything wrong. She stuck out her bottom lip upon seeing the rental dealer plate.

She knocked on the motel room door.

“Hello, dear, I brought you more fresh towels.”

No response.

“Dear?”

She knocked again, louder, then tried to see through the crack in the drawn curtains. Where could she be? Breezes swept through the treetops and she glanced to the woods. Maybe she went for a walk to the creek. Shirley slid her key into the handle and opened the door.

“Hello, dear. I’ve brought you more towels.”

Lord Almighty.

Her jaw dropped.

Papers were strewn over the floor, the nightstand, the chair, the TV, the desk. They buried a laptop and much
of the bed, where a suitcase had spewed its contents. This was not a mess. It was an explosion of rage, of something gone terribly wrong, Shirley thought, moving closer to the bed.

There, under the papers, she saw a baby’s bottle, a small pack of fresh disposable diapers. As Shirley touched other baby items, worry twisted in her stomach and kept twisting until it took her breath away.

She did have a baby.

Then Shirley Brewer, who had battled drunks, crackhead hookers, pimps, and the frightening pieces of scum who landed here, groaned with fear. For as she shifted her weight, the light adjusted and she saw the words dripping in red letters across the mirror.

“He’s My Baby!”

Shirley had to call the police now. She reached for the phone but froze.

“What are you doing in my room?”

Nadine stood in the doorway.

“Oh, dear, you startled me! Oh, I’m sorry. I just brought you these fresh towels,” Shirley said, disturbed by Nadine’s condition. “Goodness, you’re soaked to the bone.”

Nadine said nothing. Breathing hard, she was drenched, her hair, her clothes; water dripped from her, darkening the carpet at her feet. In the moment the two women looked at each other, the truth passed between them and the air tightened as if someone had just pulled back the hammer of a gun.

“Dear.” Shirley swallowed. “Where’s the baby?”

Nadine was lost in a trance, staring at nothing.

“Sweetheart, where’s the baby?”

“He’s my baby.”

“I’d love to see him.”

“He’s safe. He’ll always be safe.”

“Where?” Shirley’s knuckles whitened on her cane as she moved closer. “Honey, where is he?”

“Hey!” A distant voice outside. A man calling. “Hey, miss!”

In that instant, Nadine snatched her small bag from the round table near the door, ran outside, and got into her car.

“Wait!” Shirley started after her, but the Ford’s door slammed and the ignition turned. “Please! Wait!”

The engine revved and the tires squealed.

“Wait! Miss!”

The man emerging from the forest was in his forties, with glasses, a blondish beard, and a ball cap. His clothes were soaked too. He arrived just as the Focus roared away.

“Hey, what the hell’s going on?” Puzzled, he looked to Shirley for an answer. “I’m downstream taking bird pictures when I see this girl in my viewfinder. I thought she was drowning, so I set my gear down and rush across the creek to help, and she runs away. Ma’am?”

Shirley was chanting the license plate of the Focus. Over and over as she hurried back into the room, seized the phone, and called 911.

“Lord, hurry!” she told no one as the line clicked.

“Jee-zuss, what the hell happened in here?” The man looked around the room. “Is that woman all right?”

“Go back to the water”—Shirley pointed her cane at the birdwatcher.

“Why?”

“Go back to the creek and look for a baby!”

“What?”

“A baby—did you see a baby?” Shirley spoke into the phone, “Hello, police! Lord—!”