Seven Minutes to Noon (34 page)

“How was your flight, Mom?”

Lizzie grazed the backs of her fingers along Alice’s cheek. “How are you, babydoll? I’ve been so worried.”

“I’m fine.” Alice felt the crinkle of the thin plastic under her fingers. “Okay, it’s been a nightmare. But it’s over now.”

“Let’s hope.” Lizzie yawned. “Any chance an old lady could get a strong cup of joe around here?”

“Coming right up, Mom.”

When Alice returned to the living room five minutes later, Lizzie had removed her shoes and was stretched out on the couch, reading the newspaper. The blue plastic sat crumpled like an abandoned skin on the coffee table, next to the Metro section. Alice set down the mug of coffee and picked up the newspaper. And there it was, the latest.

In a lead article headlined
FALSE IDENTITY STYMIES POLICE,
Erin Brinkley claimed that Sylvie Devrais simply never existed. Another woman, Christina Dreux, had been given up at birth by Judy Gersten and raised in Paris by French parents, but there was no trace of Ms. Dreux having ever been in New York. According to her adoptive parents, Ms. Dreux had been a rebellious teenager who had left home at the age of seventeen, returning, humbled, after a year. Christina eventually trained as an obstetrics nurse but never worked as one. How she had earned a living was unclear. French authorities were in the process of reopening cold cases from the last decade, in search of missing pregnant women.

In “International Black Market for Babies,” Brinkley revealed that the lack of a coherent database, linking missing babies and children internationally, created a
huge loophole for traffickers in illegal adoption. Each case had to be investigated separately, taking large amounts of time and resources, and requiring a motivated investigator. Therefore, as soon as a baby or child crossed a border, it was nearly impossible to find him or her.

In “Slumlord Faces Grand Jury,” Brinkley continued her exposure of Julius Pollack and Sal Cattaneo, citing individual cases of illegal evictions and the transformation of rent-regulated apartments into top-of-the-market cash cows. She also described the worst of the many harassment cases they had faced, making Alice shiver. Her encounters with him were nothing compared to what some of the other tenants had endured: withheld heat, deliberately broken windows, ignored rats.

Finally, in “A Secret History,” Brinkley described the entwined backgrounds of Metro Properties and Garden Hill Realty, splaying open the long relationship of Sal Cattaneo and Judy Gersten. Erin had somehow gotten her hands on the photograph Alice had seen in Judy’s apartment, and it accompanied the article. She wrote about Angie Cattaneo and the childhood romance that withered in a childless marriage. Finally, Brinkley tied in the other stories, with a long-lost illegitimate daughter returning to reap havoc in a scenario rife with opportunity for blackmail and deception. She brought it only as far as that, being unable to reliably demonstrate Sylvie’s role, or lack of role, in the real estate angle of the story. But Brinkley made it plain what she believed, that Sylvie’s goal was an age-old, lethal combination: revenge and money.

Brinkley couldn’t print it outright in the newspaper, because the assumed conclusion of her long story relied so much on conjecture, but at the end of the article the implication was clear: Had Sylvie tried to destroy her birth parents by targeting pregnant tenants undergoing illegal evictions, then used her training as an obstetrics nurse to deliver the babies and sell them on the black market?

It seemed far too complicated to Alice. She didn’t truly believe Sylvie could have lived among them for so long and undertaken such a dramatic series of crimes. A simplicity was lacking in the convergence of all the stories. Even after all Erin Brinkley’s analyses, Alice wasn’t fully convinced.

A phone conversation with Frannie later that evening confirmed Alice’s skepticism. “Brinkley’s a drama queen,” Frannie said. “Sometimes she comes up with a good angle, but I’m telling you, other times we laugh at her around here.”

“Have you met her, Frannie?”

“A few times. She’s about twenty-four years old, shares a desk at the
Times
with another cub reporter. You know the drill. She’s trying to fight her way up the ladder. Probably figures if she wins a Pulitzer Prize, they’ll give her her own desk.”

It made sense, the young, undisciplined reporter slipping guesswork into observation, keeping just this side of fact.

“There’s always a story behind the story,” Frannie said.

“Tell me the rest.” Alice shifted on the couch, trying to get comfortable. Frannie’s hesitancy on the other end of the line told her she wasn’t sure how much she should say. Maybe she was sitting at her desk in the PDU, surrounded by male colleagues who would accuse her of gossiping. “Are you at work right now?”

“Actually I’m home,” Frannie said.

“Good, then you can talk to me, Frannie. I’ve been part of this from the beginning. I was supposed to be the next set of initials on a pillow. It’s part of my life story and I need to know.”

On the floor in front of her, Nell, Peter and Ethan were building a city out of shoe boxes, blocks and Lego. Lizzie was on the floor with them, constructing her own corner of their empire. Alice vaguely watched them, her mind tuned to Frannie’s voice.

“All right,” Frannie said. “But I might give it to you
out of order. I’ve never had much trouble sleeping, but after the last few days I know exactly how you feel with your insomnia.”

“Crazy,” Alice said. “Myopic. Right?”

“Well, I’m not hearing things—” Frannie chuckled.

“Good try.” Alice said. “I’m not one bit fazed. Go on.”

“First of all, that
ZL
on the pillow? It panned out to nothing. No one with those initials came up missing.”

“So there wasn’t any other missing pregnant woman?” Alice asked.

“And there’s still nothing on Christine Craddock. Zip. So as far as we’re concerned, she’s not part of this picture. All the stuffing in the pillows, except for Lauren’s hair, was standard pillow foam.”

“You were checking DNA for other hair strands in the peony pillow,” Alice said, wondering if traces of Ivy’s hair had turned up with Lauren’s.

“We found Sylvie’s hair, but that’s no big surprise at this point; her prints were all over the crime scene.”

“You mean Christina,” Alice said. “I read the paper, remember?”

“It’s a bad habit, Alice.” Frannie paused. “So you know Christina Dreux was the baby Judy gave up for adoption.”

“Was Erin Brinkley right, then?” Alice asked. “She
did
come back for some kind of twisted revenge?”

“That’s what Brinkley wants all of New York to think because it makes such a good story, right?”

“It’s kind of confusing, I think,” Alice answered, watching the children run their little trucks along a road through their city.

“It’s confusing,” Frannie said, “because it’s wrong.”

Lizzie caught Peter’s hand just before it knocked into the base of a tall tower.

“Christina Dreux was never here. Analise Krup was. She’s a German girl who grew up in Paris. Her mother was a translator; it was just the two of them. Analise met Christina in nursing school and they became good
friends. Christina decided to find out who her birth parents were and her father helped her. He’s a diplomat, so he has access to all that information. Her parents respected her desire to know, and she found out, but decided not to act on it.”

“But Analise did, right?” Alice asked.

“Right.”

Nell stepped into the city and knocked down an entire neighborhood. Peter and Lizzie shrieked,
No!
but it was too late. Ethan immediately scrambled to rebuild.

“Her mother put us in touch with her therapist,” Frannie said. “He said Analise is a classic psychopath. Do you know anything about psychopaths, Alice?”

“No, not really.” Only what she had learned on television: that they were crazed killers, every one. Probably a simplistic assumption.

“Mostly they’re con artists, manipulators, rarely violent. They blend in really well.” Frannie yawned. “That’s what makes them so dangerous.”

Alice pulled the red blanket over her knees. It was starting to get cold.

“So this Analise,” Alice said, “passed herself off as Christina pretending to be Sylvie?”

“Right.”

“And Analise wanted to destroy Christina’s birth parents by making it seem like they were killing tenants?” The convolutions were making Alice’s head spin.

“Shh!” Lizzie shook her head at Alice and shifted her eyes to the children in a silent admonishment not to scare them.

Alice got up from the couch, slinging the red blanket over her shoulders. Mike and Simon were in the kitchen, so she went upstairs where she could finish the conversation in private.

“We don’t think so,” Frannie said. “We’re not sure, but we think she might have come here to try to extract some money from them. You know, she would pretend to be Christina, work their heartstrings. But then her plans changed.”

“Why?” Alice settled onto her bed in the guest room. Peter had left his Curious George doll on a pillow and Alice held its furry brown head against her chest.

“We’re not sure,” Frannie answered. “But she never asked them for money. She took information. She wove a pretty complicated cover for what she did to Lauren.”

“You mean her change of plans was deciding to kill Lauren? And take Ivy?” It seemed incredible.
“Why?”

“We don’t know for sure at the moment.”

But Alice did. Suddenly it was perfectly clear. Maggie was right, again. The
little bitch
had been in love. She wanted her man. But he was a devoted father and would never have left his children.

“Frannie?” Alice held Peter’s doll tight under her neck, pressing her chin down on its soft head, bolstering herself.

“Say it, Alice.”

“It was one of us after all.”

Alice heard a buzzer sound in Frannie’s background and a woman saying, “I’ll get it.” She realized she knew absolutely nothing about Frannie’s life.

“Do you know where he is?” Frannie asked calmly.

Alice was momentarily shocked by the question. Did Frannie honestly think Alice would protect an accomplice to Lauren’s killer? Lauren’s worst betrayer?

“You’re joking, Frannie, aren’t you?”

“I don’t really joke much.”

“I’ve noticed that.”

“Listen, Alice, I’m a detective. I have to ask.”

Alice rolled over onto her left side to accommodate one of the twins, who had started to kick under her right rib cage. “If I had the answer to that question, Frannie, I would tell you.”

“I know you would,” Frannie said.

Alice let it go at that. The truth was, she had no idea of what Frannie really thought of her. And it didn’t much matter. Frannie was very good at her job, smart and determined, and Alice respected her even if she hadn’t made a new friend.

After that, minutes and hours and days slipped by. Nearly a whole week.

Tim Barnet and Analise Krup were hotly sought by every agency of law under the sun. And Ivy too. It was assumed now that they had her with them, hiding in some remote country. But wherever they were, how had they gotten there without a trace? And how had no one spotted them and sent word? Even if they were in a country with no extradition treaty, hamstringing the FBI, someone surely would have
seen
them. There were many calls, many sightings, but none were accurate. Were they too plain a family to notice — American father, French mother, little boy and baby sister? A psychopathic unit expert at slipping under the radar? And what about sweet Austin — how badly had they twisted his mind?

Alice tried not to cry now when she recalled the sight of Lauren’s wrecked body. Once the floodgates opened, she couldn’t close them and it all started again: insomnia, nausea, incessant trolling of the Internet, fruitless calls to Frannie Viola. Alice steeled herself against the memory of those wretched days in which she suffered the murder of her best friend and learned the awful truth of what could go on beneath the surface of a family’s apparently happy life.

Six days passed with blissful uneventfulness, each calm hour a promise that the last one had been real. It was over, Alice thought; finally over. Until one afternoon — after a flash storm on the last humid day of a spent summer — when she returned alone to Simon’s house for a few minutes before picking up Nell and Peter from school.

She knew it was inevitable the moment she heard his voice.

“Shh.”

The sound was distant, barely audible, like the crying baby who had haunted so many of Alice’s sleepless nights. But this time Alice
knew
it was real.

She kept still a moment, then took a step across the foyer.

“Shh.”

She stopped, listening carefully. “Simon?” She walked to the arched entrance of the living room. Outside, the sun was just beginning to split through a storm-darkened afternoon sky, sending tentative slivers of light over the gleaming ebony of Simon’s piano, gently striping the slanted top.

“Alice, are you alone?” his voice whispered.

It didn’t sound like Simon, but Alice
wanted
it to be Simon,
hoped
it was.

“Simon, is that you?”

“Are you alone?”

“Who’s there?”

“Answer me.”

He was sitting in the corner, blanketed in shadow. Someone hovered beside him, crouched down.

A shaft of broken sunlight crept slowly over the shadow that hid him. He leaned forward, with both palms open as if in offering.

Cupped in his hands was a small black gun with a curved white handle.

Alice stepped backward, shoving her hand into her pocket for her cell phone.

Beside him, the other person — who Alice now saw was not crouched, but small — became restless.

“Simon!” Alice called, hoping he was upstairs.
“Simon!”

“Shh.” He leaned fully forward now, green eyes glowing through the shadow. He was badly sunburned. “Simon isn’t home.”

“Daddy,” a small voice whispered. “Please can I come out?”

Tim’s right hand yanked the gun behind a cushion at his side, hiding it. “Go ahead.”