Vanished (11 page)

The sergeant warned her too that putting a bulletin on the police radio meant that the press would arrive soon, but if putting a police bulletin out for the child could mean finding him at once, she knew it was a risk well worth taking. She also knew she had to call Malcolm before he heard it on the radio or read it with his morning coffee, but the house was already swarming with police, and the FBI arrived before she had time to call him. It was all like a nightmare, or a very bad film, police running up and down stairs, throwing open windows, pulling back drapes, moving furniture, tearing up the garden, putting searchlights into bushes, stopping pedestrians, and questioning the servants. It was totally frantic and unreal, and through it all she had a continuing sense that it really hadn't happened. It was all a bad dream, and she would awake in the morning. It would turn out to be one of those terrible nightmares she had with her migraines.

“Mrs. Patterson.” Sergeant O'Connor was standing next to her, surrounded by half a dozen men in dark suits. They all seemed to be wearing hats, save one, who was apparently their leader. He was about forty or forty-two, tall, lean, serious, with brown hair and piercing blue eyes that seemed to run right through her. He looked hard as steel as he stared down at her, and he looked as though he always got what he wanted. “Mrs. Patterson.” Sergeant O'Connor spoke to her as gently as he could in the confusion. “This is Special Agent Taylor. He's with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and he's been assigned to your case.” Her case …what case? …what had happened? Where was she? Where was Malcolm? …and where was their baby? …

“How do you do.” She shook his hand woodenly while he watched her, and like the rest of him, his eyes were cool. He gave away nothing as he listened to the few details she gave him. He'd been on the Lindbergh case too, but it was too late by then. It had all been
so
botched by the time they brought in the FBI, and in the end it didn't make much difference. Kidnapping was his specialty, and at least now they could get in on it from the first. But so far there was very little to work with. The chauffeur and maid had disappeared, and there was an all points bulletin out on them, but other than that, there was nothing. No ransom notes, no clues, no fingerprints, no description of the men, nothing at all except their M.O., the chloroform and the fact that the child was gone. He'd heard it all, but what intrigued him was this woman. There was something absolutely terrified in her eyes, as though at any moment she would lose control, and her hands shook visibly, but other than that she seemed completely calm and collected, and she was painfully polite and deliberate when she spoke. But for a moment, he was almost afraid she would snap and go crazy. She was barely hanging on by her fingernails, he knew. And she was genuinely terrified. Yet through it all, standing there in her nightgown and robe, she looked like an empress at a ball, quiet, aloof, and unbelievably pretty.

“Is there somewhere quieter for us to talk?” he inquired, looking around at the police tearing her house apart, while the servants stood by and watched them.

“Yes.” She motioned him to Malcolm's study. It was a handsome room, filled with rare books, leather couches and chairs, and the huge desk Malcolm worked on, the desk where he had sat only that morning. The sight of the room reminded Taylor that he hadn't seen her husband. He asked her about it, as she invited him to sit down, She sat down, shivering, on one of the couches as she answered.

“He's away. In Washington. I spoke to him about two hours before I discovered …before I went upstairs….” She could not bring herself to say the words that Teddy had been kidnapped.

“Have you called him yet?” She shook her head, looking deeply troubled. How would she tell him?

“I haven't had time to call him,” she said softly, suddenly feeling it was all her fault.

He nodded, watching her, deeply intrigued by this woman. He came from a totally different world, and he had never met anyone quite like her. So distinguished, so polite, and at the same time so warm and gentle.

He had grown up in Queens, and came from a desperately poor family. He'd been in the Marines, in the big war, and came out and joined the FBI right after. He'd been with them now for twenty years, and he had just had his forty-second birthday. He had a wife and two kids, and he loved them deeply, but as he sat facing her, trying to concentrate on the case, he had to admit to himself, he had never seen a woman like this one. Even in her nightclothes, she looked aristocratic and dignified. Her face was so innocent, her eyes so full of pain, that all he wanted to do was put his arms around her.

“I'm sorry, Mrs. Patterson.” He had to force his mind back to the case, for her sake. “Tell me about it again, exactly the way it happened.” At first he just closed his eyes and listened to her, and then from time to time he'd open his eyes and watch her face, as though to see if there was some discrepancy there, something wrong, some untruth, the kind he had an uncanny sense for. But there was something different here, no lie, but some intangible terror. He waited until she was through, and then he asked her, “Is there anything else? Anything else you might have seen, tonight, or in the last few days …anything that frightened you, or that might make sense to you now, in light of what has happened?” But she shook her head again, unwilling to share her private terrors with a stranger. “Is there anything you'd like to share with me, anything you want to say, before the rest of the world gets in on this …even your husband?” At other times, he had asked women about boyfriends, lovers, friends, but somehow here it seemed wrong. She didn't feel like that kind of woman …to him, she looked like the kind of woman you wanted to die for. “Is there anyone in your life, or even from your past, who might want to do something like this to you …anyone you can think of?”

There was a long, long silence this time, and then she shook her head with a look of visible pain. “I hope not.”

“Mrs. Patterson …think carefully …your child's life may depend on the information you give me.” And as she thought of him, her heart turned over. Was it possible that she was still willing to protect him now? …could it even be him? …but could she take the chance and not tell Agent Taylor? Before she could say another word, Sergeant O'Connor knocked briefly and walked into the room to announce that the maid and driver were home, and the child wasn't with them. “Where are they?” The FBI man looked annoyed. He had sensed that she was wrestling with herself, and had been about to tell him something important.

“They're in the living room, and John …” He looked conspiratorially at him, and then apologetically at Marielle. “They're drunk as skunks, the pair of them, and she's wearing one hell of a ball gown.” He glanced at Marielle again. “I'd bet my bottom dollar it's yours and you don't know she's got it.” But all of that seemed unimportant now. The question was, where was her son, and who had him?

“Take them to the kitchen and give them as much black coffee as you can get into them till they puke, and then call me.” The policeman nodded and disappeared, as John Taylor turned his attention back to the child's mother. And then the officer returned again, as though to tell her something.

“Mrs. Patterson, we called your husband.” She wasn't sure whether to thank him or not. She felt guilty for not calling him herself, but relieved too. She had wanted to spare him the shock of hearing it from a stranger. There was no way to gentle this news, and all she could think was how much he loved Teddy.

“What did he say?” She looked terrified, as the inspector watched her reaction.

“He was very upset.” He glanced at John, and didn't tell her that her husband had cried openly on the phone, but he hadn't asked to speak to his wife. O'Connor thought that was strange, but between people of their kind, sometimes things were different. He'd seen it all before, everything from kidnappings to murders. “He said he'll be here in the morning.”

“Thank you.” She nodded as he left the room, and she looked at the FBI agent again, and as he watched her, he knew that there was more than she had told him. He wondered how straightforward he could be with her, if she would lie, or swoon, or attempt to leave the room in a rage, but she did none of those, she only listened to him. And watched him. He was a powerful, compelling, very handsome man in a rugged way, but she wasn't paying any attention to his looks, only to what he was saying.

“Mrs. Patterson, sometimes there are things we don't want to say to people we don't know, things we don't want to admit about ourselves or people we love …but in a case like this, it could make all the difference. I don't need to tell you what's at stake here. You know … we all do. Will you please give it some thought, and see if there's anything else you want to tell me?” But before she could say anything, he left the room, and promised to come back as soon as he'd spoken to Patrick and Edith. And she sat there in Malcolm's den, wondering how much she should say to him, but knowing that she had to trust him.

Both Patrick and Edith were still very drunk when he walked in, but they were coherent enough to know where they'd been, what they'd done, and who they'd been with. O'Connor wrote it all down as Taylor talked to them, and Patrick acted outraged that an APB had been put out on him, he said it could ruin his reputation, which neither O'Connor nor Taylor cared about for a single moment. They both suspected he could be a nasty piece of work, given the chance, as could Edith.

“Why were you out with him tonight?” Taylor asked her as she crossed her legs and tried to look sexy in the dress she'd stolen. It was the one Marielle had worn the night before, to the Whytes', and she had asked Edith to send it to the cleaners. She was planning to send it to them, but she had worn it first, as she had with lots of other gowns before. She just hadn't had the courage to “borrow” the ermine. “Weren't you supposed to be on duty?”

“Yeah, so what?” Patrick said. “What difference did it make who sat with the kid? So if she'd been there she'd have wound up gassed and all trussed up like a chicken. What for? For the lousy salary they give us?” He was still too drunk to realize that what he said could damn them both, but Edith was sobering fast and looking very nervous.

“I didn't know … I should have … I guess … I just thought it being almost Christmas …”

“Where did you get the dress?”

“It's mine.” She tried to brazen it out. “My sister made it.” Taylor nodded understandingly, and then sat down across from her, as though he knew her better than he did, and had no intention of buying her story.

“If I ask Mrs. Patterson to come in, will she agree with that, or is the dress hers?” The girl bowed her head and started to cry in answer, as Patrick became increasingly belligerent.

“Oh for chrissake, you sniveling bitch, cut it out … so what … so you borrowed her dress. You always give 'em back. Shit, you'd think we was working for the Virgin Mary. And listen,” he waved a finger menacingly at John Taylor, “don't you buy any of that holy Madonna crap from her. Twice this week I seen her with her boyfriend. Once she even took the kid, so don't you go insinuating it was us. You talk to her and ask her about the guy she was kissing in the church on Friday, and in the park yesterday, with Teddy.” Nothing registered on O'Connor's face as he made a note of it, and John Taylor stared at him with silent interest. He knew that if he kept his mouth shut, there would be more, and he was right, there was, less than a minute later. “The guy looks like a lunatic if you ask me, ranting and raving at her, shouting, he looked like he was threatening her, then trying to kiss her. Poor Teddy looked scared out of his wits he did, if you ask me, the bastard is crazy.”

“What makes you say that he's her boyfriend?” The voice was cool, but the eyes were icy. “Have you seen him with her before?”

Patrick thought about it and then shook his head. “No …just the other afternoon in church and yesterday in Central Park. But she could have seen him other times, and he really seemed to know her. She don't always let me drive her.”

“Does she drive herself?”

“Now and then,” he thought it out again, “she goes for walks sometimes. But she don't go out much.

Feels sorry for herself a lot, I think. She gets a lot of headaches.” It was certainly an interesting portrait he painted. Somehow, John Taylor had gotten the impression she was stronger.

“Have you ever seen her with other men?” He seemed sorry to admit that he hadn't, except this one. And then Taylor threw him a curve, with a question he didn't want to answer. “Have you ever seen Mr. Patterson with other women?”

There was a long, pregnant pause, when Patrick looked at the still sobbing Edith. She was sure she was going to lose her job over the dress she had taken. She was far more concerned with that than the disappearance of the little boy when she was supposed to have been there to watch him.

John Taylor repeated the question again, in case Patrick needed to be reminded. “Have you ever seen your employer with another woman?”

“Not that I can remember …” And then, “…except his secretaries of course.” But that was all information Taylor knew he could delve into later. The matter of the boyfriend, however, did intrigue him. She seemed too cool for that, too smart, too clean, and too decent. But you never knew, and now he certainly had to ask her. He hated these things, forcing answers, causing pain. But the entire situation that had brought him here was painful, and if he could help find the boy for them, then it was worth it.

He stood up and looked at the driver he had come to loathe in a single moment. They were a slimy pair.

But instinct also told him that it was unlikely they were involved in the kidnapping. It was possible they'd taken a bribe, had left a door open somewhere for a hundred bucks, but he wasn't even sure they'd done that. They were just out, taking advantage of their employers, in a purloined dress, a borrowed car, having shirked their duties to the child, but he doubted if there was more to it than that. Lucky for them, or he'd have been glad to nail them.

He went back to the library after telling O'Connor to let them go. He'd interrogate them again in the morning. They had both already insisted that they'd seen nothing unusual that night, or in the days before. The only thing unusual, Patrick repeated, was Marielle's meeting with her “boyfriend.”