The Single Staircase (8 page)

David Grey la
ughed again, grimly, softly. He nodded his head.

“I thought I had it planned out so
well
. Yes, Davidson. He told me how hard it would be to get custody, how hard it is for a father to get sole custody of a child i
f the mother doesn’t give it up
. So then I talked to
Daphne
. I said to her, ‘Maybe you’d be happier on your own.’ I told her she wasn’t ready to be a mom, she was too young and I was sorry I’d pressured her into marriage when she was still so young, and I wanted her to get back that time to be young and have fun. I tried to blame myself.”

“And?”

“
And
she started talking about how happy we would be without the baby. How happy we used to be, before she was born. Going out to the clubs, spending money, falling in love. She wasn’t going to let me go, let us go. It’s this, this fantasy she has.”

“Plus she would have lost all that money.”

“Yeah.
I guess. There’s that
.”

“You could have gone to the cops.”

“With what?”

“With what you just said.”

“And what would happen to
Daphne
? Nothing. Because it’s not illegal to look up ways to kill a baby on a cell phone. But she was going to do it. She was going to kill my baby. Sophia. She was going to kill Sophia. Imagine you’re me. Every time you go to work, you wonder if when you get home, your baby will be dead. Every time you go to the bathroom, you have to leave them alone together. Alone. Together. I had to get Sophia out.”

“So one night you put her to bed, told the wife you wanted to get high and fool around. While she’s waiting for the sedatives to kick in, you turned on a movie, but this is the thing. You got it on-demand. So you overdosed her
.”

Owl paused, but David Grey didn’t move or say anything or even breathe. Owl continued.

“T
hen all you had to do was hit pause, take Soph
ia down to where your parents w
ere waiting on the sidewalk outside, go back up and when you saw her waking up, you hit the play button and said, ‘Hey, why don’t you go check on Sophia?’ How was
Daphne
going to know, right? She thought she was high on roofies and wine. She never knew she lost a couple hours passed out while you kidnapped her daughter.”

“Her daughter? Hers?” David shifted, he leaned forward, desperate,
hurting
. “Detective, please. Listen, I’m not a perfect dad. I know I’ve done a terrible thing. The press conference…”

“Yeah, that had to have scared the piss out of you.”

“I didn’t think it would go that far.
Daphne
wasn’t going to take it that far.
She thinks I did it. That I killed Sophia. Daphne thinks she’s covering for me. So
I just thought if I kept my mouth shut, what are you going to do? I knew you wouldn’t find any evidence because there isn’t any. Because Sophia i
s safe. And that’s a dad’s job.”

And now it was David Grey’s turn to stop, to look for affirmation, for confirmation, for understanding. But Owl gave him nothing. And so the man went on.

“
That’s my job, my most important job. To keep my baby safe. And she is safe now. And over the next month, I’m going to get myself out of my marriage to that, that thing. I’m going to leave her. I’ll have everything ready and I’ll just walk away. And
Daphne
will have no way to stop me. And then I’m going to pick up and go. I’m going to go to Indiana and raise my little girl. And love her. And keep her safe. I promise.”

Owl said nothing. David went on, desperate.

“What if you arrest me? What will it get you? I’m in jail, my baby will be returned to
Daphne
.
Daphne
doesn’t want her. She’ll neglect her. Maybe kill her. Maybe give her up for adoption while I’m in jail.”

“Maybe she’ll just give her back to your parents.”

“OK. Maybe. Maybe. Best case, that’s what she does. But this time, I won’t be coming for Sophia. I’m in jail for whatever it is I’ve done here. Kidnapping or false reporting or fraud or something. For the next ten years? They’re 65! How many years can they give her? My 65-year-old parents with a three-month-old? They could die, she could go to a foster home. Please, detective. What’s best for Sophia? Isn’t that what you want? Is that why you’ve been doing this? Don’t you want what’s best for her? Don’t you?” He looked at Owl and said, “I just love her. I love my baby so much. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

David Grey started to cry.

Chap. 65

It takes less time to forget a missing baby than you’d like to believe. A comet passes by the planet, a pretty coed gets a rare disease, a celebrity gets divorced. The world moves on and the memory of a little girl fades for everybody except those who really love her.

After three days, surveillance on the Greys ended. Owl and Raccoon quietly moved the affair into a cold case file.

After three weeks, David Grey left
Daphne
Grey. David A. Davidson showed up at her room with papers and a settlement. “David says he can’t go on. He’s not coming back.”

She had been confused, and she protested, “But he did
that thing. H
e did
it for us. H
e did it so we could be together again.”

The lawyer just said, “He’s offering you this much money. It’s a lot of money. Take it or I’ll see you in court.”

She took it.

A week after that,
Daphne
Grey was seen at the Carrot Room, dancing and drinking.

Chap. 66

Eighteen years later, a group of teenage girls walked into a post office and applied for passports so they could take their sen
ior class trip to France.

Somewhere deep in a computer, one of their social security numbers triggered a long lost file.

Sophia Grey. Missing person.

A
n aging
bureaucrat double-checked the fingerprints, and then asked the healthy, happy girl standing in front of him if she’d ever been missing.

“No,” she answered. And then she looked at her friends and laughed at the oddity of the question.

The bureaucrat shrugged and thought, “Probably one of those custody spats. Dad takes off with kid, mom freaks out and files a report, dad shows up the next day, and nobody bothered to close the damn thing.”

He helpfully deleted the case forever.

Chap. 67

That night, after the final interrogation of David Grey, after Owl and Raccoon had decided what they had to do, after they’d picked up their jackets and rubbed their eyes and started to walk to their cars, Raccoon had said, “You owe me a dollar.”

Owl had said, “I don’t.”

“You said I prove they didn’t kill her, you’d give me a dollar. Give me my dollar, Owl.”

“But they did do it. Dad did it. I was right. I’ll keep my dollar.”

“But he didn’t do what you thought he did. He didn’t murder the kid.”

“
No, he
wasted three days of our lives investigating a kidnapping that never happened.”

“No, no. I was investigating a kidnapping. You were investigating a murder. And you were wrong, so give me my dollar.”

Owl had reached in his po
cket and pulled out his wallet.
“I don’t owe you a dollar at all. I said one of them was guilty, that there was no mystery kidnapper, and I was right. But I’m going to give you one anyway because it feels good.”

Owl had smiled and was so glad he wasn
’t drinking or on SWAT anymore.
He had handed a dollar to Raccoon and then Owl had got into his car and pulled out his cell phone and called each of his kids, waking them up just so he could tell them how very much he loved them.

The End

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