Taken (23 page)

“This boy looks like your son?”

“Who are you?” she asks me. Then her expression gets canny. “You’re Stephen’s girlfriend, aren’t you? He sent you here to punish me. To put worms in my head.”

“Lyla, do you have a picture of Jesse?”

“I don’t blame him for having a girlfriend,” she says wistfully. “You’re very pretty. Prettier than me.”

“Mrs. Cutter, I’m not your husband’s girlfriend. I’m a mother looking for her son. Please, this is very important, could you show me a picture of Jesse?”

Something in my desperate tone touches her. She goes to a bureau in the boy’s room, slides open the top drawer and hands me a framed photograph.

A boy posing in his Little League uniform, sporting a smart-aleck, mischievous grin that floors me.

“Oh, my God.”

“You tried to trick me,” Lyla says. “That’s not right.”

“I didn’t try to trick you,” I say, showing her the two photographs side by side. “Your son and my son are twins. Identical twins.”

A glance at Lyla reveals that she isn’t buying it, that she thinks I’m still trying to deceive her. “Did your son get sick, too?” she asks. “Did he go in the hospital and not come home?”

“No. Tommy is as healthy as a horse.”

“Then they’re not identical, are they?” she says tauntingly.

“They’re brothers, Mrs. Cutter. Look at the pictures. My God. See how they stand the same? Smile is almost the same, too.”

She shakes her head, denying. “Liar, liar, pants on fire. Did you take your pants off for Stephen? I bet you did.”

“Please, Mrs. Cutter. Look at the pictures. They’re brothers. Family Finders must have thought they’d get more money selling them separately.”

“Ask Stephen. He knows everything. He’s a know-it-all.”

“What exactly happened to Jesse in the hospital, Mrs. Cutter? What did the virus do?”

Her hands float up to her heart and she hugs herself. And then with her eyes closed, in a singsong lullaby, she tells me what I need to know. “The virus went to his heart, his heart. The virus went to my little boy’s heart.”

It hits me like a body blow. Then with an abrupt sensation of sick-making vertigo, I’m falling down an endless elevator shaft, free-falling to the end of my world. Because I remember what the man in the mask said to me, that first day when he invaded my home. When he told me what the consequences would be if I didn’t cooperate.

I’ll cut out Tommy’s heart,
he said.
I’ll cut out his heart and give it to you in a plastic bag.

That’s what he wants. What he’s wanted all along. My son’s good heart.

P
rominently displayed on the reception desk at the Health East Medical Complex, a glass jar of Hershey chocolate kisses. Taped to the jar, a hand-lettered sign advising me that Chocolate Is Good For Your Heart and the admonition to Help Yourself To Health. Under normal circumstances I’d be tempted, but the world has tilted off normal and I’m a madwoman pretending sanity. Holding myself together with psychic duct tape while the elderly volunteer, a woman with orange hair so thin her freckled scalp shows through, searches the register for Jesse Cutter, a long-term-care patient. It’s all I can do not to leap over the counter and search the photocopied lists myself.

“Cutter, Cutter,” the woman mumbles. “Should be in the
C
s, right?”

Why is it that so many people work as unpaid volunteers for for-profit medical chains? Maybe because they got in the habit when hospitals were nonprofit, owned and run by communities. Or because making themselves useful gives them a purpose, a reason to get up in the morning, or in this case late in the day for a midnight shift.

Whatever, the volunteer is trying her best and I have to refrain from screaming out that my son has been designated as an involuntary organ donor. As it is I’ve got one eye on the TV bolted to the wall. The sound is off but the local news broadcast is filling the screen with images of burning homes and grisly automotive accidents. Matter of time before they get to me, I assume.

“Here he is,” says the volunteer, looking up with a brightly dentured smile. “Room 212, Wing C.” Then with a puzzled look she adds, “No, wait, that’s wrong. The patient has just been discharged.”

“When?”

“Today. An hour ago, as a matter of fact.”

“Where has he been taken?”

“I’m sorry, Mrs. Cutter, but the desk doesn’t have that information. Just that he was, um, discharged into the care of his father, Stephen Cutter.”

“Dammit!”

The volunteer has that uneasy look people get when they’re about to be involved in someone else’s domestic dispute. “Perhaps you should talk to one of the security staff, Mrs. Cutter. Are you the boy’s mother? You can explain the situation to security. If you could show me some identification, I’ll see about getting you a pass.”

My eyes are riveted on the TV screen, where my own face seems to be staring right at me. That horrible mug shot from my arrest and booking. The running caption reads:
Katherine Bickford, Wanted for questioning.
Next, a video of Jared Nichols being interviewed by a reporter who looks suitably appalled by what he has to say about the suspect killer mom.
We’re asking Mrs. Bickford to surrender to authorities, and undergo further inquiries about the hit-and-run of a local investigator
.

Thanks, Jared. Perfect timing.

“Mrs. Cutter?”

“Sorry. What?”

“Your driver’s license, please.”

Clutching my purse, I tell her, “Be right back. I have to, um, call my husband.”

And then I’m fleeing the reception area before hospital security can be alerted.

Slumped down in my rental car, I make several hurried cell-phone calls. The first to Maria Savalo. Naturally I get her voice mail, and leave her a barely coherent message detailing the events of the last few hours. Trying not to sound hysterical when mentioning what Cutter intends to do to my son.

“For God’s sake, Maria, tell the FBI we’ve identified the kidnapper. Stephen Cutter of New London. He was a Special Ops guy in the army. He and his wife adopted Tommy’s identical twin. That’s the connection. That’s why he grabbed Tommy, because his own son needs a transplant and Tommy’s the perfect match. Somebody has to do something. The FBI, the cops, the state police, I don’t care. Somebody! The guy has just taken his son out of the hospital—Health East in New Haven—so whatever it is he’s got planned, it’s going down tonight or early tomorrow morning. Do you understand what that means? If Tommy’s alive, he won’t be for long. While you’re at it you can tell that bastard Jared Nichols I’ll turn myself in when they get off their asses and rescue my son. They can keep me for a million years, I don’t care, but they have to DO SOMETHING TONIGHT, okay?”

Next call to Connie Pendergast. I’m assuming she’s at home in bed at this hour, but she’s set her home number to ring at the warehouse, and that’s where she answers. Hearing her cheerful voice announce, “Katherine Bickford Catering, how may we help?” sets off a convulsion of sobbing. Weeping so inconsolably that I’m afraid my tears will short out the cell phone.

“Kate? What’s happened?”

There’s an underlying element of panic in her query that for some reason calms me down. She’s thinking the worst, that I’ve found Tommy’s body and fallen apart. Have to set her straight, let her know what’s actually happened, and what’s likely to happen if I don’t find Tommy soon.

After blowing my nose, I give her a rundown of what has transpired in the last few hours, my voice steadier than hers, as it turns out.

“Oh, my God, Kate, I don’t know how you’re still functioning. I’d be a puddle.”

“I am a puddle,” I admit. “But I can’t quit now, not when we’re this close. Connie, what are you doing at the warehouse at this hour?”

“Wedding tomorrow in Westport. Two hundred hungry guests expecting the usual Kate Bickford romance with food. Sherona just finished up the pastry order, I’m giving her a hand. Everything’s ready for the catering crew, they’ll be here at the crack of dawn. So where are you, exactly?”

“Hospital parking lot. I thought the security guards might come after me, but so far nobody seems to care about a woman alone in a car, crying in the middle of the night. I suppose it happens all the time.”

“How can we help? Sherona’s right here, says she wants to kick some butt.”

“I can’t go back into the hospital,” I tell her. “They’ll grab me for sure and I haven’t got time to sort this out with the cops. But I need to find out where Cutter took his son, and that information has to be somewhere in the hospital. Somebody has to know.”

“We’re on our way,” Connie announces. “Traffic will be minimal this time of night, so figure what, twenty minutes?”

What transpires is the longest half hour of my life. During that endless interval I check my watch two or three thousand times, tune in to several radio stations in a fruitless search for breaking news, and call for an update on Shane’s condition. It takes a couple of tries, but finally they patch me through to the attending nurse, who tells me that Mr. Shane remains stable.

“Is he still unconscious?” I want to know.

The RN hedges, but admits that Mr. Shane has been what she calls “responsive.”

“That’s good, right?”

“That’s very good. Better than it looked a few hours ago. Is this Mrs. Bickford? Because the police have been here. They want to interview Mr. Shane and they want to talk to you, too.”

“Yeah. Listen, you sound like a really nice person,” I tell her. “Can you do me a favor?”

“Depends,” says the RN, sounding very guarded. “I won’t do anything illegal.”

“This isn’t illegal. If Randall wakes up, give him a kiss. Not on the lips, I wouldn’t ask that, a kiss on the forehead, okay? Tell him the kiss is from me and I’m sorry and I’m grateful and I wish I could be there, but I can’t. He’ll understand. I’m going to hang up before you can say no, so please think about it, okay? Please?”

Then I’m alone with the disconnected phone and the useless radio and I’m weeping again, weeping for Tommy and Shane and for all the sick kids in the world and for desperate parents crazed with fear, trying to make things right. Weeping for myself, too, I guess, wondering if the situation was reversed and it was Tommy sick and needing a new heart, how far would I go? Takes less than a millisecond for my gut to tell me that never, never would I endanger another child, no matter how much grief it caused me. There are some things that simply aren’t allowed, no matter how much you want your own child to live. The man in the mask, he may be a parent, no doubt he loves his boy, but he’s also a monster, a man who does not hesitate to kill. Killed the lawyer, tried to kill Shane, just missed killing me. And he intends to kill Tommy, that’s certain, that’s been his plan all along.

I feel certain that if Shane were here he’d already have the information about where Cutter has taken his ailing son. Shane has that air of authority, folks respond to it, they want to please him by cooperating. Whereas I can’t seem to summon that sort of gravitas, all I can do is keep searching for information that will bring me closer to Tommy. Making it up as I go along, trying not to fall apart. People keep telling me I’m strong, but that’s not how I feel. Far from it. Makes me wonder if those who act courageously under fire are actually so terrified that they simply function on instinct. Too scared to act scared. Does that make sense? Or is fear making me as wigged out as Lyla Cutter?

My cell rings. Connie announcing that she’s here, in the hospital parking lot. There’s more than one lot, so it takes a few minutes to make physical contact, but when I finally spot her Beetle it feels like witnessing a miracle. The sight of that happy little car cruising out of the shadows floods me with warmth.

This I know for sure: Whatever happens in the next few hours, I’m really, really going to need a friend.

Connie, as promised, is accompanied by Sherona, as well as her Pekingese, Mr. Yap.

“Sorry about that,” she says, embracing me. “I couldn’t leave him at the warehouse. He’s totally unreliable when it comes to food.”

“The dog is fine. Thanks, Connie. Thanks, guys. You didn’t have to do this.”

“Ain’t done nothing yet,” the master pastry chef responds.

“Sherona’s got a plan,” Connie explains. “I’m going to target the administrator’s office and she’s going after the staff.”

“What I’m going after is the colored people,” Sherona says, her ample chin jutting out. “They see me coming, they’re gonna give it up. We’ll find your boy, Mrs. Bickford. You hang in there, honey.”

Fortunately, Connie has brought along a box of tissues, because my eyes are leaking and it’s not the slight allergic reaction I have to the excitable Pekingese. It’s watching these two unlikely warriors march into combat, both of them looking resolute and determined, and risking God-knows-what on my behalf.

I’m waiting in Connie’s Beetle, feeding milk bones to Mr. Yap, when Maria Savalo rings me back. “Don’t tell me where you are,” is the first phrase out of her mouth. “If I knew that, I’d be obliged to inform the authorities.”

“Fine. I’m in Nome, Alaska, selling ice to Eskimos.”

“My God, you’re joking! One o’clock in the morning and you made a joke, after all you’ve been through?”

“What can I say, I’m in a very weird mood. You know when people say they don’t know whether to laugh or cry? I’m doing both.”

“That’s good, I guess.”

“I’ll let you know.”

“You actually went to the kidnapper’s house and talked to his wife? That’s amazing. And truly dangerous. What if he’d been there?”

“He wasn’t. I knew he wasn’t there.”

“How did you know?”

“A feeling. I can’t explain it. Is the FBI going to do something?”

Maria sighs. “Maybe yes and maybe no. I got hold of the local bureau chief in New Haven. Apparently he goes to bed early, but he returned my call and said he would ‘take appropriate action.’ I asked him what that means, exactly, and he said I’d have to wait and find out. So either they’re all over it or they’re not.”

“Great. Wonderful. My tax dollars at work.”

“The thing is, they have agents on the night shift, I assume, but I really don’t know if anything will happen until tomorrow morning, when the boss comes in.”

“Tomorrow morning will be too late. What about the state police? Can they help?”

“We’ll see. I gave them the information, identifying the alleged kidnapper and urging them to respond immediately. They sounded very interested, but the thing is, I’m a defense attorney and they don’t want to let me know what they’re doing, or not doing.”

“So it all boils down to, there could be a dozen FBI agents and a hundred troopers swarming around, searching for the man who took Tommy,” I say. “Or maybe nothing is happening yet. Or somewhere in between.”

“I’d guess in between.”

“Thanks, Maria. I can hear car noises, where are you?”

“On my way to see Randall.”

“He saved my life, you know.”

“That’s what he does.”

“Got the name of the kidnapper, too.”

“And that’s what he lives for,” says my lawyer. “Is there any point urging you to be careful?”

“No,” I tell her quite honestly. “Gotta go.”

My pastry chef is tapping on the window, and I can tell by the look in her eyes that she has important news.