Where Are the Children?

by Mary Higgins Clark

  “Put her down, Carl. Don’t touch her.” Her voice was a croak now, but he looked at her wildly and turned. Holding Missy against him, he ran away, his gait awkward. In the dark of the next room, she heard him bumping into furniture, and she staggered after him, trying to shake the dizziness. There were footsteps on the stairs now—hard, racing footsteps coming up. Desperately she listened for Carl, heard him down the hall; saw his dark shadow silhouetted against the window. He was climbing up the stairs to the attic. He was going up to the attic. She followed him, caught up with him, tried to grasp his leg. The attic was cavernous, musty-smelling, thick-beamed with a low ceiling. And dark. So dark it was hard to follow him.

  “Help!” she screamed. “Help!” At last she could make her voice carry. “Up here. Ray. Up here!” She stumbled blindly after the sound of Carl’s footsteps. But where was he? The ladder. He was climbing the thin, rickety ladder that led from the attic straight up to the roof. The widow’s walk. He was going onto the widow’s walk. She thought of the narrow, perilous balcony that circled the chimney between the turrets of the house.

  “Carl, don’t go up there. It’s too dangerous. Carl, come back, come back!”

  She could hear his harsh breathing, the high-pitched sound that was between sob and giggle. She tried to grab his foot as she climbed after him, but he kicked savagely when he felt her hand. The thick sole of his shoe caught the edge of her forehead, and she slipped down the ladder. Ignoring the warm, gushing blood that streamed down her face, not feeling the force of the blow, she started up again, crying, “Carl, give her to me. Carl, stop!”

  But he was at the top of the ladder, pushing up the door that led onto the roof. Thick sleet pelted down as the door creaked upward. “Carl, you can’t get away,” she pleaded. “Carl, I’ll help you. You’re sick. I’ll tell them you’re sick.”

  The wind caught the door, pulled it open till it thudded against the side of the house. Missy was crying now—a loud, frightened wail: “Mommmmmmmy!”

  Carl thrust his body onto the balcony. Nancy scrambled after him, bracing against the door-frame. It was so narrow. There was barely space for one person between the railing and the chimney.

  Frantically she clawed at his clothes—trying to get a grip on him, to pull him back from the low railing. If he fell or dropped Missy . . . “Carl, stop. Stop!”

  Sleet beat against him. He turned and tried to kick her again, but stumbled backward, grasping Missy against him. He lurched against the railing and regained his balance. His giggle was now a persistent, hiccuping sound.

  The walk was covered with a layer of ice. He sat Missy on the railing, holding her with one hand. “Don’t come any nearer, little girl,” he said to Nancy. “I’ll drop her if you do. Tell them they must let me go away. Tell them they must not touch me.”

  “Carl. I’ll help you. Give her to me.”

  “You won’t help. You’ll want them to hurt me.” He swung one foot over the rail.

  “Carl. No. Don’t do it. Carl, you hate water. You don’t want water to cover your face. You know that. That’s why I should have known you didn’t commit suicide. You couldn’t drown yourself. You know that, Carl.” She made her voice calm, deliberate, soothing. She took one step toward the railing. Missy was reaching her arms out, pleading.

  Then she heard it . . . a cracking, breaking sound. The railing was breaking! As she watched, the wooden posts gave way under Carl’s weight. His head went backward; he swung his arms forward.

  As he released his hold on Missy, Nancy darted forward and grabbed her baby. Her hands caught in Missy’s long hair—caught and twisted and held. She was teetering on the edge of the walk; the rail was crumbling. She felt Carl grab her leg as he fell, screaming.

  Then, as she was being dragged forward, firm arms came around her waist from behind arms that held and supported her. A strong hand pulled Missy’s head against her neck, pulled them both back, and she collapsed against Ray even as, with a last despairing scream, Carl slid off the balcony, across the icy, sloping roof and into the angry, rock-filled surf far below.

  31

  THE FIRE LICKED HUNGRILY at the thick logs. The warm hearth smell permeated the room and mingled with the scent of freshly made coffee. The Wigginses had opened the store and brought up cold cuts for sandwiches, and they and Dorothy had prepared a spread while Nancy and Ray were at the hospital with the children.

  When they got home, Nancy insisted that the television crews and reporters be fed too, and Jonathan had thrown his home open to them. They had taken films of the homecoming of Nancy and Ray, carrying their children in from the car, and had been promised an interview the next day.

  “In the meantime,” Ray said into the microphones, “we want to thank everyone whose prayers through this day kept our children from harm.”

  The Keeneys had come back to the house too, wanting to be part of the gladness; frightened that they had waited to come forward with their information; sure that only prayer had made the rescue possible. We are all so human, so foolish, Ellen thought She shuddered thinking that her Neil had talked to that insane man. Suppose he had asked Neil to get into his car that day . . . ?

  Nancy sat on the couch, tightly holding a peacefully sleeping Missy. Missy, smelling of Vicks and soothed with warm milk and aspirin, the ragged blanket she called her “bee” held securely to her face as she nestled against her mother.

  Michael was talking to a gently questioning Lendon—telling all about it, thinking it out. His voice, at first excitable and rapid, was calmer now, even a little boastful: “. . . I didn’t want to go away from that house without Missy when the nice man started fighting with the other man and yelled at me to get help. So I ran back up to Missy and called Mommy on the phone. But then the phone stopped working. And I tried to carry Missy down the stairs, but the bad man came. . . .”

  Ray’s arms were around him. “Good boy. You’re quite a guy, Mike.” Ray couldn’t keep his eyes off Nancy and Missy. Nancy’s face was discolored and bruised, but so serenely beautiful that he had trouble swallowing over the lump in his throat.

  Chief Coffin put down his coffee cup and reviewed the statement that he would make to the press: “Professor Carl Harmon, alias Courtney Parrish, was pulled out of the water still alive. Before he died, he was able to make a statement, confessing his sole guilt in the murder of his children, Lisa and Peter, seven years ago. He also admitted that he was responsible for the death of Nancy Eldredge’s mother. Realizing that she would have prevented his marriage to Nancy, he jammed the steering mechanism of her car while she was in the restaurant with Nancy. Mr. John Kragopoulos, whom Professor Harmon assaulted today, is on the serious list in Cape Cod Hospital with a concussion, but is expected to recover. The Eldredge children have been examined and were not sexually molested, although the boy, Michael, suffered a bruise on the side of the face from a violent slap.”

  The Chief felt fatigue settling into the very marrow of his bones. He’d give the statement and get home himself. Delia would be waiting for him, wanting to know everything about what had happened. This, he reflected, was the kind of day that made police work worthwhile. There was so much grief in this job. There were the times you had to tell parents that their child was dead. Moments like the one in The Lookout when they knew they had found both kids safe were to be cherished.

  Tomorrow. Jed reflected that tomorrow he would have to judge his own culpability. This morning he had prejudged Nancy because of pique that he hadn’t recognized her. By prejudging her, he hadn’t let his mind stay open; had ignored what Jonathan and Ray and the doctor and Nancy herself were telling him.

  But at least he had driven the car that got Ray to the balcony on the roof of The Lookout in that split second of time. No one else could have gotten up that hill on that ice so fast. When they’d seen Nancy’s car crashed into the tree at the bend of the road, Ray had wanted to stop. But Jed had kept going. Some instinct made him feel that Nancy had gotten out of the car and was in the hous
e. His hunch had been right. For that he could defend himself.

  Dorothy quietly refilled Lendon’s cup at his affirmative nod. Michael would be all right, Lendon thought. He’d come down and see them again soon. He’d talk to the children and to Nancy—try to help her to completely see the past for what it was and then turn her back on it. Nancy wouldn’t need too much help. It was a miracle that she’d had the toughness to survive the horror of everything that had happened to her. But she was a strong person and would emerge from this last ordeal, able to look forward to a normal life.

  There was peace in Lendon. He had compensated at last for his neglect. If he had gone to Nancy when Priscilla died, so much could have been avoided. He would have realized there was something wrong with Carl Harmon and somehow gotten her away from him. But then she wouldn’t be here now with this young man who was her husband. These children would not be in her arms.

  Lendon realized how much he wanted now to get home to Allison.

  “Coffee?” Jonathan repeated Dorothy’s question. “Yes, thank you. I don’t usually have any this late, but I don’t think many of us will have trouble sleeping tonight.” He studied Dorothy closely. “How about you? You must be pretty tired.”

  He watched as an indefinable sadness crept over her face and understood the reason for it. “I think I must tell you,” he said firmly, “that any kind of self-recrimination you have is intolerable. We all ignored facts today in a way that might have contributed to disaster. One of the first of these is that every single morning as I walked past this house, I have been annoyed by the glint that hit my eyes. This very morning I considered asking Ray to speak to the tenant at The Lookout about whatever he had in the window. With my legal training, I should have remembered that. An investigation would have led us to The Lookout very quickly.

  “And one irrevocable fact is that if you had not elected to keep that appointment and bring Mr. Kragopoulos to that house, Carl Harmon would not have been deterred in his evil intent. He would not have had his attention distracted from Missy. Surely you’ve been listening to Michael’s description of what was happening before your call.”

  Dorothy listened, considered, and in basic honesty agreed. A weight of guilt and remorse dissolved, and she felt suddenly lighthearted and glad, able to rejoice fully in the reunion. “Thank you, Jonathan,” she said simply. “I did need to hear that.”

  Unconsciously, she clasped his arm. Consciously, he covered her hand with his own. “The roads are still treacherous,” he said. “When you’re ready to go home, I’d feel better if I drove you.”

  It is over, Nancy thought. It is over. Her arms tightened around her sleeping child. Missy stirred, murmured “Mommy,” and slipped back into even, soft breathing.

  Nancy looked at Michael. He was leaning back against Ray. Nancy watched as Ray gently pulled him down on his lap. “You’re getting tired, fellow,” Ray said. “I think maybe you kids had better get to bed. It’s been quite a day.”

  Nancy remembered the feeling when those strong arms had grabbed her, held her, kept her and Missy from falling. It would always be like that with Ray. She would always be safe. And today she’d seen and known and been in time.

  From the wellsprings of her being, prayer permeated her mind and heart: Thank You, thank You, thank You. You have delivered us from evil.

  She realized that the sleet was no longer pelting the windows, that the moaning sound of the wind had died.

  “Mommy,” Michael said, and now his voice was sleepy. “We didn’t even have a birthday party for you, and I didn’t get you your present.”

  “Don’t worry, Mike,” Ray said. “We’ll celebrate Mommy’s birthday tomorrow, and I know just the presents to get for her.” Miraculously, the strain and fatigue left his expression, and Nancy saw a twinkle begin in his eye. He looked directly at her. “I’ll even tell you what they are, honey,” he volunteered. “Art lessons from a really good teacher from the kids and a color job at the beauty parlor from me.”

  He stood up, eased Michael back into the chair and came over to her. Standing over her, he studied the part in her hair carefully. “I have a hunch you make a hell of a redhead, honey,” he said.

  About the Author

  Mary Higgins Clark was born and raised in New York City. After graduating from secretarial school, she first worked in an advertising agency and then became a Pan Am flight attendant. She gave up flying around the world when she married Warren Clark, and it was soon after her marriage that she began writing short stories. She sold her first one to Extension magazine in 1956 for $100—after six years and forty rejection slips.

  When her husband died in 1964, Clark was left a young widow with five children, and it was then that she decided to try her talents at writing fiction. Her first book was a biographical novel about the life of George Washington, Aspire to the Heavens. In 1975, her first suspense novel, Where Are the Children?, became a number one bestseller and marked a turning point in her life and career.

  Clark then decided to take time for things she had always wanted to do. After concentrating on her children’s education, getting her own degree was at the top of her list. She entered Fordham University at Lincoln Center, and in 1979, she graduated summa cum laude with a B.A. in philosophy. She has fourteen honorary doctorates.

  Since her debut suspense novel in 1975, Clark has become known as the Queen of Suspense, writing one bestseller after another.

  In 1987, Clark was the president of the Mystery Writers of America, and for many years, she served on its board of directors.

  Clark married John J. Conheeney in 1996. She now lives and writes in their Saddle River, New Jersey, home. Her new suspense novel, We’ll Meet Again, will be published in April 1999.

  Mary Higgins Clark, America’s Queen of Suspense, is the author of twenty national bestsellers. Her career as one of the most successful writers of our time was launched with the publication of Where Are the Children? This debut suspense thriller, originally published by Simon & Schuster in 1975, was Mary Higgins Clark’s first bestseller. It marked a turning point in her life and set the standard for her distinctive page-turning style.

  Where Are the Children? is the story of a woman whose past holds a terrible secret. Nancy Harmon had been found guilty in a California court of murdering her two young children, but she was released from prison on a legal technicality. Deciding to make a fresh start, to change her identity, she left San Francisco and sought tranquillity on Cape Cod.

  Seven years later, Nancy is remarried and has two small children: five-year-old Michael and three-year-old Missy. Finally she feels that she has been able to reclaim all that she had lost. Then the nightmare begins again.

  One day a local Cape Cod paper runs an article about a famous California murder trial involving a mother accused of killing her two children. Along with the article is a photo of Nancy. On that same morning, Michael and Missy disappear. They had been playing in the yard, but when she looked for them, they were gone . . . all that remained was Missy’s red mitten.

  While Nancy becomes the prime suspect in the disappearance of her children, no one in the small Cape Cod town is aware of a stranger in their midst—someone whose plans for revenge have been festering for seven long years.

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  coming from Simon & Schuster on April 4, 2012

  Prologue

  1474 A.D.

  In the hushed quiet as late shadows fell over the walls of the eternal city of Rome, an elderly monk, his shoulders bent, made his silent and unobtrusive way into the Biblioteca Secreta, one of the four rooms that comprised the Vatican Library. The Library contained a total of 2,527 manuscripts written in Latin, Greek, and Hebrew. Some were available under strict supervision to be read by outsiders. Others were not.

  The most controversial of the manuscripts was the one
known as both the Joseph of Arimathea parchment and the Vatican letter. Carried by Peter the Apostle to Rome, it was believed by many to be the only letter ever written by the Christ.

  It was a simple letter thanking Joseph for the kindness he had extended from the time Joseph had first heard Him preaching at the Temple in Jerusalem when He was only twelve years old. Joseph had believed He was the long-awaited Messiah.

  When King Herod’s son had discovered that this profoundly wise and learned child had been born in Bethlehem, he’d ordered the young Christ’s assassination. Hearing this, Joseph had rushed to Nazareth and received permission from the boy’s parents to take Him to Egypt so that He could be safe and could study at the temple of Leontopolis near the Nile Valley.

  The next eighteen years of the life of Jesus Christ are lost to history. Nearing the end of His ministry, foreseeing that the last kindness Joseph would offer Him would be his own tomb for Him to rest in, Christ had written a letter expressing gratitude to His faithful friend.

  Over the centuries some of the Popes had believed that it was genuine. Others had not. The Vatican librarian had learned that the current Pope, Sixtus IV, was contemplating having it destroyed.

  The assistant librarian had been awaiting the arrival of the monk in the Biblioteca Secreta. His eyes deeply troubled, he handed him the parchment. “I do this under the direction of His Eminence Cardinal del Portego,” he said. “The sacred parchment must not be destroyed. Hide it well in the monastery and do not let anyone know of its contents.”

  The monk took the parchment, reverently kissed it, and then enfolded it in the protection of the sleeves of his flowing robe.

  The letter to Joseph of Arimathea did not appear again until over five hundred years later when this story begins.