Lullabies and Lies (21 page)

Her eyes went back to the woman standing alone. There was nothing familiar about her, and yet… She zoomed in until the woman’s head and shoulders filled the screen.

Her gaze froze on the woman’s hand. All the horror of that night came back to her. The taste of leather, the empty fingers of the glove brushing her chin. Nausea twisted her gut.

“Griff!” she choked.

He held up a hand. “Right. Yes. If you’ll call the hospital. We’ll be there within the hour.” He disconnected. “Sunny, we need to go—”

“Griff! Look at this.” Sunny could barely breathe. Her pulse echoed in her head like a bass drum.

“Look at this woman.” She got up. “Don’t move the mouse,” she cautioned as he sat down in front of the laptop.

“Look at her left hand.”

“Yeah?”

“Is she missing two fingers?”

Griff zoomed in until the woman’s pixilated hand filled the screen, then backed out step by step. He squinted. “It’s possible. Why?”

Fear and hope collided inside her chest. “I didn’t say anything before. I wasn’t sure. And I was so scared.”

“Say anything about what?”

Sunny swallowed. “About the kidnapper’s hand.”

Griff’s gaze snapped to hers. “His hand?”

She nodded. “The kidnapper had on leather gloves. And when he stuffed the note into my mouth, his hand felt odd.” She took a long breath. “Like a finger of the glove, or maybe two fingers—were empty.” She held up her hand, fingers spread, then curved the last two fingers in toward her palm.

“Empty?” Griff stared at her hand. “Why didn’t you mention this before?”

“I wasn’t sure. And then everything happened—” Her breath caught on a sob. “Griff, do you think that woman could be the kidnapper?” The horrible certainty that had been growing inside her bloomed. “Do you think she took Marianne?”

Sunny’s words stabbed him. He stared at the photo.
Missing fingers
.

“Hold on.” Tension scraped his throat as he switched to his database. He scrolled downward, searching for a particular entry.

“Here it is. There was a case, back in ’98. A ten-month-old boy disappeared from a playpen in the green area of an apartment building in Missouri. Another mother reported noticing a slightly built brown-haired woman with a missing finger in the area.”

“I was working with Violent Crimes at that time, but I read up on the case. I think the witness worked with a sketch artist, but her description was too vague, except for the missing finger.”

“That has to be her!” Sunny’s voice was filled with hope.

A hope that broke his heart. He’d been where she was now. Time and time again. Certain each lead was the one that would reunite him with his sister.

He shook his head, not meeting her gaze. “Don’t get your hopes up, Sunny. It’s a long shot. These photos are fifteen years old. I can’t tell for sure that the woman’s fingers are missing. It could just be the angle of her hand. In fifteen years, there’s only been one case with that description.”

“Two.”

“All right. Two. If we count your sudden memory of the empty glove.”

She glared at him. “It wasn’t sudden. I just—” Her throat moved as she swallowed, and her eyes suddenly swam with tears. “I didn’t mention it that night because of the note.”

Griff opened his mouth to reprimand her for holding back information, but her wide sad eyes and determined chin stopped him. She’d been trying to protect her baby in the only way she knew how.

He sat down and pulled up his e-mail program. “I’ll send the photo to a friend of mine, a forensic photo-analyst in D.C. Maybe he can tell us something about the woman. I’ll ask him to look up the 1998 case, too, and compare them.” It only took a few seconds to attach and send the photo. He stood.

“I’ll call him on the way. We need to get going. Captain Sparks has obtained authorization for you to visit Bess Raymond in the hospital, and I need to go to the police station. They found several cigarette butts in a wooded area near her house. They think someone was watching, possibly even while the police were there.”

“Do you know who?”

He shook his head and put his hands on her shoulders. “I’m going to leave you at the hospital. I’ll be gone a few hours. We may go out to the crime scene. Bess has a police officer guarding her. As soon as she can talk, the officer will notify a detective to take her statement. You’ll be able to see her then. Don’t leave the hospital for any reason. If you stay put, you’ll be perfectly safe.”

132 hours missing

SUNNY PACED the short length of the intensive care waiting room. There were several other people in the room. They all had worry etched on their faces. All but the toddler who sported his mother’s red hair. He sat on her lap, gaily bouncing up and down. Sunny couldn’t
help but smile at his innocent happiness. She’d already formed images of Emily as a toddler, already signed her up for a day care center, already started looking at the pretty ruffled dresses in the department stores.

Her empty heart’s hollow beating echoed through her.

The toddler’s mother met Sunny’s gaze. She acknowledged her smile with a sad little smile of her own. The crumpled tissue she clutched and her red-rimmed eyes told Sunny that, so far, whoever she was there to see was not doing well.

An older woman was sitting with a couple who had probably brought her to the hospital this morning, because they all appeared freshly showered and their clothes were fresh and unwrinkled, unlike their faces.

She looked at the clock that hung over the door. She’d been waiting for almost two hours. The brief, coveted ten o’clock visiting time had come and gone, and no one had called her. The grizzled volunteer sitting at the information desk had given her a message when she arrived. Bess Raymond had regained consciousness and was being taken off the ventilator.

Sunny stopped in front of the desk.

“Can you check with the nurses’ station again? If she’s awake, I don’t understand what the delay is.”

The man stopped checking the list of names before him and looked up. The shapeless blue jacket that identified hospital volunteers contrasted sharply with his weathered skin. “They’d have called me.”

“Are you sure? Maybe they got busy and forgot.”

“The nurses know you’re here. You should have a cup of coffee and sit down. Things go slow sometimes. I’ll let you know.” His kind expression softened his words.

Sunny tried to smile at him. “Thank you.” She didn’t want any coffee. She wanted to talk to Bess. Bess knew where Emily was.

She sat down in one of the chairs and tried to watch the TV that was set to a local morning show, but all she could see before her eyes was Bess lying so still in the ambulance, with blood staining her clothes, and the concerned faces of the emergency medical team.

She didn’t remember much after that. She’d succumbed to the sedative and slept the rest of the way to the emergency room.

A second volunteer stepped into the room. Everyone stopped talking and turned toward her. Did she have a message for someone?

The woman stood for a few seconds, her hands in the big patch pockets of her blue jacket, then leaned over and said something to the man at the desk, who nodded in Sunny’s direction.

Sunny’s heart leaped as the woman started toward her. The murmur of conversation rose again as the others realized she wasn’t looking for them.

Sunny stood.

“Are you Ms. Loveless?”

“Yes.” Sunny’s pulse raced. “Am I going to get to see Bess now?”

The woman nodded. “That would be Bess Raymond, right? She’s been moved to a private room. I’ll show you the way.”

“Really? Already?” Sunny was surprised. “She must be doing very well.” She glanced at the male volunteer, but he was still busily checking his list. Why hadn’t he told her Bess was going to be moved?

“She is.” The woman shouldered the door open so Sunny could exit. “Go left, down to the end of the hall and turn left again.”

The volunteer waited until Sunny passed her. There were no patient rooms on the hall. Its doors were marked STORAGE, HOUSEKEEPING CLOSET, LINENS.

“The elevators are about halfway down.”

Sunny peered down the hall. “I thought the elevators were on the front side of the hospital.”

“These are the service elevators. They’re quicker. We’re going to the first floor.”

Sunny frowned as she stepped into the elevator. “First? There aren’t any patient rooms down there, are there?”

The woman stepped inside and stood beside her, sending her a bland smile. “This is a shortcut. Ms. Raymond was moved to the new wing. To get there, we have to go to the lobby and take a different set of elevators.”

Sunny pressed the button marked 1.

“I’m so glad my—friend is doing better. I’ve been worried.”

“We all have.”

Sunny frowned at the woman. That was an odd thing to say. Her scalp tingled. “Do you know Bess Raymond?”

The woman smiled. “Of course. She raised me.”

The little sign in Bess’s front yard and the children’s toys and playground. “You were in her day care center. She’s good with children?”

“The best.” The woman coughed.

“Here we are,” she said as the elevator doors opened. “I just need to check in with my supervisor for a moment.”

Anxious and impatient, Sunny waited while the woman stepped over to the front desk and asked to use the phone. She made a quick call, then hung up.

She glanced around the lobby, then returned to Sunny’s side.

“Which way is the new wing?” Sunny asked.

“Listen to me.” The woman stepped up close behind Sunny and thrust something hard into the middle of her back.

A gun.
Sunny gasped and froze. “What—”

“Shut up. Go straight down this hall and out the end door. A taxi will be here to pick us up in a couple of minutes.

The gun dug into the sensitive flesh between Sunny’s ribs. She could barely breathe, her chest was so tight with fear. “What are you doing? Do you have Emily—?”

“I said shut up.” The woman coughed. “You make the slightest move to get away or alert anyone and I will shoot you in the back.”

Sunny swallowed the scream that pushed at her throat. There was a note of confidence in the woman’s voice. She meant what she said.

“Do you believe me?”

Sunny nodded. “Y-yes. You shot Bess, didn’t you?”

“Keep moving.”

Sunny glanced at a young man in green scrubs who passed them going in the opposite direction. He didn’t even look at them.

“Who are you?” she whispered.

The gun jabbed into her ribs. “What did Bess tell you?”

“I haven’t talked to her. I was waiting. I thought you—”

“You’re lying. I called over an hour ago, told them I was her cousin. They said she was awake. Now open the door.”

Sunny’s knees shook. Her head spun. Terror cramped her muscles. This was the woman who had shot Bess.

She pushed on the exit door. It opened into an employee parking lot. There were a lot of cars and no people. Even if Sunny had found the courage to alert someone, there was no one around.

“Walk to your right, up to the main driveway. And stop looking so damn scared.”

She did as she was told.

Just as they reached the driveway, her cell phone rang.

The woman cursed, then stuck out her left hand. “Give me your damn purse.”

Sunny looked down. Shock turned her heart to ice. The woman’s hand was missing two fingers—the ring finger and the pinkie.

She tried to speak, but her throat wouldn’t work. A sob shook her.

Finally she found her voice. “It was you. You took my baby,” she choked out. She couldn’t even cry. Her chest felt crushed in a vise. “Where is she? Please tell me.”

The phone rang again, and again.

The woman jerked Sunny’s purse out of her numb hands, and dug out the cell phone. “Shut
up!
”

After glancing around to be sure no one was watching, she dropped the phone onto the concrete pavement and stomped on it.

The metallic crunch screeched through Sunny’s brain, accompanied by the crunch of tires on gravel as the taxi stopped.

“Get in! And keep your mouth shut.” The woman pushed Sunny into the car and climbed in beside her.

Sunny clasped her hands in her lap and stared at the back of the taxi driver’s head.

The woman gave him an address that sounded familiar. Was it Bess’s street?

Think.
What could she do? Should she try to fight? To run?

The cold metal of the gun barrel dug into her side. The taxi driver turned up his radio. A country station was playing something about loving and leaving.

“We’re going to Bess’s house?”

“Don’t talk.”

Had Griff said Sparks was going to take him out to the house? Sunny couldn’t remember, but a glimmer of hope fluttered in her chest. “Why there?”

“Bess has something I need. And this way, I can dispose of two problems at the same time.” She pressed the gun deeper into Sunny’s side. “Now tell me what Bess told you.”

“I haven’t been able to see her yet.”

“Not today.
Before,
when she called you.”

Sunny tried to think like a detective. The woman had to be Jane Gross. The landlord’s description fit her perfectly. There was nothing distinctive about her. She had dull brown hair, a pale face with small, unremarkable features. She was her own perfect disguise. Her description would fit a million women.

The only photos Sunny had seen of Jane were newspaper clippings of political events. It was impossible to say whether this woman was the same person that stood by Ed Gross in those blurry pictures.

But Griff’s photo, and the empty fingers on the glove told the whole story. Certainty gripped Sunny. This woman had stolen Emily. And fifteen years ago, she’d stolen Griff’s sister.

She had to stifle a gasp. She was in the presence of a monster.

She turned and looked directly into Jane Gross’s eyes. “If my baby is dead,” she whispered, “then I don’t care what you do to me.” Griff’s face rose in her mind, right beside her daughter’s, and a suffocating grief swathed her. Tears spilled down her cheeks and she choked back a short, pained sob. But she didn’t look away.