Stolen in the Night (20 page)

“
S
top the car, Mother,” Tess cried, glimpsing a hiker on a neighboring trail. “Maybe
this guy knows something.”

Dawn glanced in her rearview mirror as her car bounced along the rutted, dirt road.
Her face was chalk white and impassive. “All right,” she said.

Tess leaped from the car and began to stumble through the brambles, calling out to
the young man on a nearby trail who was wearing a backpack and a knitted hat with
earflaps.

The young man stopped and looked up at the frantic woman who was crashing through
the woods in his direction.

“Help me!” Tess cried. “I need your help. Did you see a car with a young boy in it
coming along this trail maybe—I don’t know—an hour ago? Probably going very fast?”

The hiker, who had a tufted beard and mild eyes, shook his head and his earflaps rose
and fell. “The cops already stopped me and asked me. I told them I wasn’t on this
trail. I was on the other side of the lake forty minutes ago. I didn’t see anybody
over there.”

Tess’s small flicker of hope was doused by his words. “Are you sure?”

“Yeah. What’s going on anyway?”

Tess shook her head. “Never mind.”

“Wish I could help,” the young man said.

“Thanks.” Tess trudged back to her mother’s idling car and slid into the front seat.

“Nothing?” Dawn asked.

Tess shook her head and pressed her face against the car window, trying to peer through
it into the curtain of bare branches and evergreens, dense and twisted, that stretched
as far as the eye could see. “How will I ever find him?” she asked. “Nelson Abbott
is dead.”

“I know,” said Dawn.

“I thought it was Nelson, but it wasn’t. There’s another killer.”

“I guess so,” said Dawn.

Tess turned and looked at her mother. “Where is Kenneth Phalen today, Mother?”

Dawn yelped in dismay. “Ken!”

“Yes, Ken,” Tess cried. “Why should he be above suspicion? He was around when Phoebe
was killed. His own daughter was a suicide at that same age. All of a sudden, after
all these years, he shows up here out of the blue—”

“Tess,” Dawn cried. “Stop. Just stop it.”

Tess fell silent.

“Sweetheart, I know you’re desperate. I know exactly how you feel. But it’s not going
to help to make a scapegoat out of that poor man.”

Tess glanced over at her mother’s sagging profile as she drove through the woods.
Dawn had been through this same ordeal once before in her life. “How can you go through
this, Mother?” Tess asked. “Again?”

“Don’t think like that. It’s not the same. It’s different these days. When a child
disappears, the FBI gets involved right away…it’s not going to end that same way.
It can’t,” Dawn said, keeping her eyes fixed on the narrow road.

Tess looked back out the window as the car crept along the road leading out of the
woods. Erny. She wanted to call out his name, but she knew that he would not answer.
He was with Nelson Abbott’s killer. Whoever it was who had come to the forest to bury
Nelson had snatched Erny, not as part of a plan, but impulsively. She could only pray
that Nelson’s killer was not someone who would hurt a child.

“The DNA proved that Nelson was guilty,” said Tess. “But somebody killed Nelson. Somebody
who was desperate.”

Dawn nodded with a distant look in her eyes.

Tess sighed, rolled down the window, and leaned her head out. She knew it was futile
but she had to do something to relieve the pain in her heart. She began to scream
Erny’s name.

When they got back to the inn, another car had already pulled into the parking area
and two men who were clearly not guests were getting out of it. One man pulled a transmitter
from inside his windbreaker and began to speak into it. “The police are here,” said
Tess. Dawn nodded agreement. “I’m going to ask them to keep the reporters away,” she
said.

Tess didn’t even wait for Dawn to pull into her parking spot. She asked her mother
to stop near the front door. She jumped out of the car and went inside, not looking
up when reporters called her name. She hung up her jacket and went through the inn,
to the phone in the kitchen. She had to speak to someone who could explain to her
how it was possible that Nelson Abbott had been set free. Obviously, she was not going
to call Ben Ramsey. She called Chief Fuller, whose number was written on a pad by
the phone. His daughter-in-law answered on the second ring. Tess identified herself
and asked to speak to the former chief.

“He’s can’t come to the phone,” said Mary Anne.

“Can you have him call me?” Tess asked hopefully.

“No, he won’t be calling anyone. He can’t talk. He had a terrible night. He’s, um…we
had to put him on hospice care this morning.”

“Hospice!” Tess exclaimed.

“You knew he was sick,” Mary Anne said accusingly.

“I know. But I didn’t realize he was that bad.”

“Well, he is,” said Mary Anne in an angry tone.

“Is he there? Is he at home?”

“Yes, he’s at home,” Mary Anne said indignantly. “But he’s extremely weak. He can’t
talk on the phone. Now leave the man in peace.” Without waiting for Tess to reply,
she hung up the phone.

For one moment, shaken by this news about Chief Fuller, Tess forgot about why she
had called. And then, instantly, it returned to her, like a stabbing pain in her own
heart. Erny.

She came out of the kitchen and into the hallway. Her mother was standing between
the two casually dressed men she had seen in the parking lot. One was short with dark
hair and a mustache and the other was a large overweight man with small porcine eyes.

“Miss DeGraff?” said the dark-haired man. “I’m Chuck Virgilio. This is my partner,
Mac Swain. Chief Bosworth sent us over. We sent the press jackals packing like your
mother asked us to. I don’t know how long they’ll stay away, but…for the moment…”

Tess nodded. “Thanks.”

“We’ll be monitoring your phones in case anyone calls about…ransom.”

Tess’s knees felt like jelly. “Ransom.”

“Don’t get me wrong. We’re still betting your son got lost in the woods. The search
party is going to keep on looking for him. But meanwhile, we’re covering this end.
Believe me, I understand how stressed out you are. I’m a parent myself. Anything we
can do to help, we will.”

“Thank you,” said Tess.

“I’m here to help, too, if I can.”

Tess turned around and saw Ben Ramsey emerging from the library. Tess stared at him,
too shocked to speak.

“Listen, I heard about Erny’s disappearance,” said Ben. “I had to come.”

“You’ve got a lot of nerve,” she said.

“Why don’t we step outside,” Ben said. “You look like you could use the fresh air.”
He pulled her jacket from a hook in the foyer and offered it to her.

Tess snatched it from his hand. “Please leave,” she said.

“Tess, come outside for a minute,” said Ben in a low voice. “I really need to talk
to you.”

“You heard the lady. You’d better clear out of here, Counselor,” said Officer Virgilio.
“Get going.”

“Okay, I’m leaving,” said Ben to the police officers. “Tess. Two minutes. Please.
I may be able to help you.”

“If you know anything pertinent to this case, Mr. Ramsey,” said the larger officer,
Officer Swain, in a menacing tone, “you’d better tell us about it right now.”

“That’s right,” said Tess. “If you have any idea where Erny is…”

Ben shook his head. “Of course I would tell you. Immediately. Please, Tess. I just
want a word with you. Come outside with me.”

“I don’t want to go outside,” Tess complained. “It’s cold. And I need to be here if
Erny calls or—”

“I’ll come get you right away,” said Dawn. “Go ahead and talk to him. Just stay close
by.”

Tess saw the intense expression in her mother’s eyes and realized that Dawn was not
making a suggestion. It was more like a command. Tess sighed and then threw on the
jacket Ben had handed her. “Two minutes,” she said. She opened the door, walked out,
and stood on the granite stone of the entryway. She heard Ben step out and close the
door carefully behind him. Tess gazed past the circular gravel driveway to the wooded
lane bounded by a stone wall. With the reporters gone, it was the image of peace and
tranquility. It was the kind of picturesque view that drew people to New England.
Historic and unchanging. A fairy-tale place. A mirage. “All right, what is it?” she
said without looking at Ben.

“Come and sit down,” he said.

He indicated the pair of wooden, church-pewlike benches, painted the same green as
the shutters, that flanked the front door. Behind each one was a white wooden lattice
screen that extended up to the low overhanging roof. In summer, roses grew on the
lattice. Now, in late October, there were only brown vines. Tess hesitated, but she
could not resist. She did feel wobbly on her legs. She sat. He sat beside her. She
still did not look at him. It was chilly sitting on the wooden bench. She shivered
and jammed her hands into her pockets.

“Look, I know you’re angry with me…” he began.

Tess turned and looked at him. His silver hair glinted, even in the gloom of the afternoon.
And his frowning eyes seemed to refract light like a prism. “Do you think so?” she
said.

“I’d like to explain to you what happened,” he said.

“No, I’ll tell you what happened,” said Tess. “You got Nelson Abbott sprung on some
technicality and somebody killed him and tried to dump his body. And in the process,
that person kidnapped my son. My son is with a murderer. For all I know…” She tried
to continue, but her voice broke. She wiped her eyes angrily and looked away.

Ben ignored her tears. His voice remained calm and matter-of-fact. “Look, I know you
want to blame someone, but I had no way of predicting this. And I’m as sorry about
it as I can be. Both for you and for Nelson.”

“Nelson Abbott?” she cried. “You feel sorry for him?”

“Tess, it was not some technicality, as you’d like to think, that exonerated him.”

“Sorry. I meant to say ‘constitutional protection,’” Tess said sarcastically. “The
rights of the accused. I know all about it. You found out that I obtained that hat
with Nelson’s DNA without telling him. Went into his house and walked out with his
filthy hat. I can just imagine your righteous indignation. I’m surprised you didn’t
have the cops arrest me.”

Ben shook his head, but did not respond.

Tess pointed a shaking finger at him. “The police were doing nothing. Somebody had
to trap Nelson Abbott in his lies. When I brought the hat to Chief Fuller, he said
it would be okay. And it was, until Nelson hired you—the crackerjack lawyer. It’s
your job to find loopholes. And you seem to be very good at it. Anybody that tries
to hurt my family, you find them an out.” She could feel her cheeks flaming, and she
knew very well that it was unreasonable to impugn him for doing his job, but she felt
helplessly furious with him.

Ben’s expression did not change. “Stop it, Tess,” he said firmly. “I’ll explain to
you what really happened, if you will listen. I think you might want to hear this.
It’s important.”

Tess stuck out her chin defiantly, but remained quiet.

Ben spoke in a low urgent voice. “While Nelson was being questioned, I asked for,
and was given access to, the DNA results that supposedly implicated him. I’m sure
Bosworth thought that it would just look like a jumble of numbers to me, but I’ve
had a lot of experience with DNA evidence. And what I saw in those results set off
alarm bells in me. I had another lab—a highly reputable lab—check them for me. The
lab I sent it to said that the results did not match Nelson’s DNA.”

Tess shook her head. “That’s crap. Chief Fuller’s guy said that they did match. Why
would he lie about it?”

Ben sighed. “Chief Fuller was trying to help you, but he went too far. His friend
at the lab gave him a shabby report that said what Aldous Fuller wanted to believe.”

“It’s science. He said the sample matched Nelson’s!” Tess cried.

“When in fact,” Ben corrected her, “the sample only had some markers in it that matched
Nelson’s. The sample did not match perfectly.”

Tess shook her head. “You’re splitting hairs. Goddammit! Everybody knows that the
sample from Phoebe’s case was deteriorated. After all these years of being stored
under less-than-ideal conditions…it never was going to be perfect. But it was enough.
It was enough to get Lazarus ‘exonerated,’ as you say. I notice you had no problem
with that.”

Ben shook his head. “That’s different. In that case, there were
no
markers that matched Lazarus. He was ruled out completely by the DNA.”

“Ruled out. Exonerated. What’s the difference? The guy from Chief Fuller’s lab was
able to match it to Nelson.”

Ben explained in a patient tone. “Listen to me. Nelson was Lazarus’s stepfather. They
weren’t actually related. There was no match to Lazarus. But the sample
did
have markers that matched Nelson’s. It also had markers that didn’t.”

Tess peered at him. “What does that mean?”

“I’m saying that a person’s DNA sample is always going to be a perfect match of itself.
No extra markers. No differences. A perfect match. My lab guy found other markers.”

“Then they were Phoebe’s cells,” she said.

Ben shook his head. “No. My guy checked for that. It was not Nelson who was in league
with Lazarus. It was not Nelson who killed Phoebe,” Ben said. “It wasn’t. That’s not
speculation. It’s fact.”

“NO,” Tess wailed in protest. “How could the sample be mistaken for Nelson’s? What
are the chances of that happening? Are you saying that the guy at the state lab lied
deliberately? Why would he do that? It makes no sense.”

“No. I’m not saying that he lied. There
were
markers that matched.”

Tess shook her head. “I’m utterly confused. What the hell are you saying? Some markers
matched by coincidence?”

“Not at all,” said Ben. “Not coincidence. It wasn’t Nelson who killed Phoebe. But
it
was
someone related to him.”