While Everyone Was Sleeping

by Donald Collins

  Quinn ran his fist across his mouth. “So, he was eliminated as a suspect.”

  “Correct,” Danski said. “We figured he had no emotional connection with Jake. If he walked out on the boy and his mother, he certainly wouldn’t return less than two years later and kidnap the kid.”

  “Yes, yes. But you quickly had another suspect,” Quinn said.

  Danski nodded. “Susan admitted having two affairs, one was with Adams Matthews, a handyman in her building, the other with Aaron Cooper, the manager of a mini-market on Second Avenue.”

  “But you learned that Adam Matthews was really Matthew Adams,” Quinn scoffed.

  “Yes,” Danski said. “Susan told us she ran into Matthew one afternoon when she and Jake were on their way to Central Park. She said Matthew made a big fuss over Jake. He told her he had a son named Jason who was Jake’s age.”

  Quinn nodded grimly. “Two boys with similar names and ages.”

  “Yes,” Danski said. “And when Susan mentioned that Jake was a diabetic, Matthew told her that his son was also a diabetic.”

  “Which made you feel that Matthew was Jake’s father as well.”

  “Exactly,” Litchfield said. “It was a reasonable assumption.”

  “Susan did the arithmetic,” Danski said. “There’s no doubt in her mind that Matthew is Jake’s father. We later learned that Matthew’s son Jason died due to complications from diabetes and he apparently kidnapped Jake to take his place.”

  “It’s no wonder Latimer never got anywhere with this investigation,” Quinn said. “The key to solving this case was knowing that Adams was Jake’s real father, and Susan never gave him that information. And where is Adams right now?” Quinn asked. “Have you located him?”

  Danski admitted they hadn’t. “We went to his last known address in Astoria and spoke with the building superintendent. He told us that Matthew moved out five years ago and his family was intact at that time – Matthew, his wife Audrey and their son Jason. Frazier called me yesterday right after he received a call from Matthew. Matthew told him he had a job coming up and asked to borrow Frazier’s spackle-stilts. That’s what professional drywall hangers use when they work on ceilings.”

  “I know what spackle-stilts are,” Quinn said. “When’s he coming for them?”

  “Matthew said he’d call first.”

  “And you’re waiting for the super to call you again.”

  “We’re not just sitting around waiting,” Danski said. “We’ve learned that Adams lives in Far Rockaway and we’ve been looking for him there.”

  “We’ve invested too much time already to give up the case now,” Litchfield said.

  Quinn pinched his lips together and then nodded. “Yes, I agree.”

  “You agree?” Danski said.

  “Yes. Here’s what I want you to do. Ask Susan for a picture of Jake that wasn’t in the newspapers five years ago. I’m sure she has several. I want you to get with a police artist and have him create an age-progression rendering of the boy. When you have that get it over to our Public Information Department and have him get with the newspapers and have them feature the story in tomorrow’s newspapers and television newscasts.”

  Quinn bunched the papers together on his desk and returned them to the folder. He noticed Danski’s grin as he pushed the folder across his desk.

  “Did I say something funny?

  “Only that when you called us in here twenty minutes ago, we got the impression that you wanted us to close the Whitlock case and have us move on to a fresh case. And now you seemed totally into the investigation.”

  “I guess that’s the kind of effect this case has on people,” Quinn said. “It goes without saying that I’d love to announce at the Comstat meeting that after being missing for five years you guys found him and arrested the kidnapper. So, get moving, gentlemen.”

  Danski’s phone was ringing as they got back to their desks. “That might be Frazier now,” Litchfield said.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Far Rockaway, Queens

  Matthew put his blinker on and turned left when he reached Beach 57th Street, leaving Beach Channel Drive’s rush-hour traffic behind. Two blocks later he made another turn and pulled his van into a driveway behind a two-bedroom clapboard house that he and Audrey rented on a one-year lease.

  The house was quiet when he came in the back door. He flipped the kitchen light switch before moving on to the living room. When he got there, he fell into a comfortable brown imitation-leather recliner that faced his TV set. He remembered then why the house was quiet. It was Tuesday, the night Audrey did her food shopping. She said there were fewer shoppers out on Tuesday evening and she was able to find what she wanted easily. With no one to babysit Jake, she always brought him along. Left alone with his thoughts, Matthew stretched the recliner out fully and let his head fall back.

  He thought of his sons, one tragically taken from him and Audrey at the tender age of four, the other now suffering from the same ailment. Both were Type1 diabetics, just as he was himself. He struggled with his insulin and regretted that he had passed the cursed disease on to his sons. Until Jason died, Matthew was content to leave Jake right where he was, living with Susan. He considered it the best of two worlds. Though he couldn’t visit the boy, he knew that Susan raising him the best she could and Martin was supporting him while he and Audrey raised his half-brother Jason. Audrey never knew the real story about how Jake came to them. As far as she knew, he was Jason.

  He remembered Jason as a frail boy with a shy, winning smile, bony knees, teeth that were slightly flared and difficulty pronouncing the word Astoria. It always came out – Athoria. Matthew smiled remembering how he used to tell people that was the reason they had to move, that it was important for them to live in a town that Jason could pronounce. They decided on Far Rockaway, and taught Jason to call it, “The Rock.” Audrey signed Jason up for the Pee Wee-league soccer when he was old enough and the youngster was starting to show potential as the season progressed. She brought him to a local park in the early afternoons during the week and he enjoyed running hard, kicking a soccer ball across the hilly grasslands into the netted goals that were abandoned during the daytime. But slowly, Audrey noticed something different in Jason’s regimen. He’d begun to tire easily, and most days he didn’t want to run and kick the ball at all. He seemed content to sit on a swing and let Audrey push him or just laze on the rich green lawns. He often chose to sit on the park benches and watch other boys chase one another around the park. Audrey scheduled an appointment with Tom Weber their family doctor who had an office nearby on Cornaga Avenue. After a thorough examination Weber put his stethoscope aside and let out a heavy sigh. He told Audrey and Matthew that Jason needed to be taken to Far Rockaway’s Seacrest Hospital for further observation and tests. When they got there, they learned that Jason had developed diabetic ketoacidosis, a condition that develops when the body is not getting enough insulin. “We call it DKA,” one doctor said. He explained that Jason’s extreme fatigue, constant thirst and nausea were the result of his body wearing down and his muscles being starved for energy. Two days later doctors at Seacrest admitted they were not equipped to treat Jason effectively and he was transferred to Hillsdale Hospital in Flushing where he later fell into a coma and never recovered.

  In the weeks following Jason’s death, his heartbroken mother often burst into tears and cried inconsolably whenever his name was mentioned. She couldn’t muster the strength to get out of bed, even to cook Matthew’s dinner. As the weeks passed by with no sign of recovery, Matthew feared Audrey would need to be hospitalized or possibly institutionalized if he didn’t act quickly. The answer came weeks later when he ran into Susan and Jake when they were on their way to Central Park. Shortly afterwards he snuck into Susan’s apartment in the middle of the night and kidnapped Jake. When he brought Jake into their home, he told Audrey that the boy was Jason and he had come back to them. In her delicate condition, Audrey was easily convinced. She cal
led it a gift from God.

  When the new soccer season started Matthew signed Jake up for the Five-and-Over league as Jason Adams, and because of his remarkable resemblance to his half-brother as well as the skills he had developed through daily practice sessions with Matthew when he came home from work, no one noticed a difference.

  And now, five years later, Jake had begun to take on some of the same symptoms that Jason had shown. He was able to go to school and to play soccer, but he lacked the drive and energy he had previously exhibited. Gradually, the symptoms became more pronounced and the insulin that had served him adequately in the past now proved ineffective. His new doctor adjusted the dosage, but it brought little change.

  “Parents need to adjust insulin doses after children exercise or engage in activities like soccer so the child doesn’t experience low blood glucose episodes,” the new doctors told them.

  “I didn’t realize that,” Audrey admitted. “I tried to adjust his intake by skipping injections.”

  “That was a mistake” the doctor responded, “Skipping injections often leads to DKA, or Diabetic Ketoacidosis.”

  Audrey and Matthew realized the new doctor had done all that he could, and when he recommended specialized treatment, they agreed to bring him to New York Presbyterian Hospital in Fresh Meadows or to Mount Sinai where Jason was born. Both had excellent reputations.

  ***

  Matthew had other things on his mind, though. He knew the police had made advances in the kidnap investigation. His former neighbor told him that detectives had come by asking questions about him. They didn’t say why they were looking for him, but they had his name and that bothered him. Susan was the only one that could positively tie him to Jake’s disappearance. He should have been high on her list of suspects when Jake was taken, but surprisingly, she apparently never made the connection.

  He felt that if the police had named him a person of interest, at this point, their case against him would be circumstantial at best. They had no concrete evidence that he kidnapped Jake. If they had proof, they would have come looking for him long ago. But something must have changed in order for them to suddenly take an interest in him. Had it finally dawned on Susan that he was Jake’s father? Or had she suddenly remembered that he had a key to her apartment at the time Jake was taken and mentioned that to the detectives? Whatever the reason was for their sudden interested in him, they had nothing without Susan. Without her they had no case. Yes, he and Susan had an affair five years ago, and he would not deny that he was Jake’s father, but so what? They couldn’t prove that he was the one who kidnapped Jake. The boy he was raising was Jason and no one could prove otherwise as far as he was concerned.

  Susan suddenly posed a threat. Her testimony could put him in jail for a very long time. He needed to go back to Manhattan immediately and make sure she was not able to point her finger at him.

  ***

  Even with alternate side of the street parking in effect, Matthew had no problem finding a place to park when he reached East 67th Street. It dawned on him, however, that a dog walker or night jogger might become a problem if the police later had a reason to question people in the area. He wanted no witnesses that could say they saw his van in front of Susan’s building the night she plunged to her death. For that reason, he parked on the next block, far enough away that his van would go unnoticed. He glanced at the clock in his dashboard before getting out. The LED said Ten-forty-seven. Perfect, he thought. Susan would already be in bed and asleep when he got there, and so would the two hundred other tenants in the building.

  He avoided the security camera in the lobby, the same as he did five years ago when he came for Jake. This time, to lessen the chance the police would make a connection between Jake’s kidnap and Susan’s “suicide,” he wore a baseball cap instead of the floppy bush hat. He took to the stairs instead of the elevator to avoid being seen by someone arriving home late or by some busy-body standing at her peephole when she couldn’t get to sleep. When he reached the third floor he listened at Susan’s door for several seconds before using his key. Once inside her apartment he stood in the darkness and listened. He smiled thinking the task at hand would be much more difficult if Susan had a dog, even a small Yorkie or Shiatzu that would bark and wake her.

  Hearing no noise, he crept down the hall to Susan’s bedroom. As he passed the small bedroom on the right side of the hallway, he remembered how easy it was for him to take Jake from his bed that summer night five years ago, and how the boy went limp when he held a rag laced with chloroform to his tiny face and lifted him from his bed.

  When he reached Susan’s room, he found her sound asleep, just as he had anticipated. Guided by a night-light near her bed he stood over her and admired her soft blonde hair, her graceful neck and fine facial features. He watched her chest rise and fall as she snored softly. Seeing her eyes covered with a sleep-mask aroused him as he thought back to a time when he shared that same bed with her and enjoyed her exquisite body. He couldn’t help wondering what his life might have been like if things were different. Would he have brought Jason to her the way he brought Jake to Audrey? He would never know for sure what he might have done.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Edna Danski was sound asleep in her Adirondack chair on the small front porch of her Far Rockaway bungalow when her son pulled his unmarked cruiser onto the sand and shells that covered the shoulder of the road out front. He waved to her, but, of course, he got no response. He smiled seeing her resting peacefully, breathing in the soft ocean air. The newspaper she was reading when she dozed off had fallen to the wooden floor and scattered with the slight breeze coming off the beach. He shut the engine off and got out. As he ambled along the narrow sidewalk, he noticed that she looked a little thinner, and her hair had become a shade or two grayer since the last time they were together, but her face seemed calm and relaxed and overall, he thought she looked well. His first instinct was to turn and go back to the cruiser and let her rest, but it had been two months since he’d seen her and he didn’t want to pass up the opportunity. Her shoulders shook when he forced a heavy cough as he stepped onto the porch.

  “Stay where you are, Mom. Don’t get up.”

  He bent and kissed her cheek and then picked the newspaper pages off the floor before pulling a second chair closer. She blinked herself awake and brought her hands to her cheeks, surprised but delighted that he had stopped to see her.

  “It’s so good to see you, Steven. You should have called to let me know you were coming. I could have made meatloaf. I know how much you like my meatloaf.” She stretched her neck to see past him. “Are Christina and Brittany with you?”

  “No, Mom. I’m all by my lonesome,” he answered. He saw no reason to tell her that he and Christina had broken up. He would save that announcement for another time. “I have some business in the area so I wanted to stop in and see you. I can’t stay too long.”

  “I’ll go put on a pot of coffee,” she said and pressed her palms against the arm rests, ready to push herself up from the chair.

  “Stay where you are, Mom. I can do that. I’m closer.”

  “There’s a pound-cake in the fridge,” she called out as he pushed the door open and went inside.

  He glanced into the other rooms on his way to the kitchen and was glad to see that she was still able to do her housework and keep the place neat and clutter-free. He reached into the refrigerator for milk and inspected the date on the container. He smiled when he saw it was current.

  “The place looks good, Mom,” he commented when he returned to the porch with two filled coffee mugs.

  “Your sister stops by every few days and gives me a hand,” she said. “God bless her.”

  Danski nodded and smiled. “Yes, God bless her.”

  It was dark when he left an hour later a little happier for his visit, and yet a little sadder as he wondered how much time his mother had left. She seemed content and pain-free, so hopefully God would be generous. After cruising Far R
ockaway for two hours with no sign of Matthew’s van he went to the Far Rockaway station house on Beach 19th Street and put out a city-wide alert for the F150. When he left there, he drove to the Dunkin Donuts a few blocks away on Mott Avenue. He scanned the parking lot before going inside. The only vehicles there were a red Rav4 he assumed belonged to the woman behind the counter and a Silverado pickup truck that the two men leaving the coffee shop were heading toward. Having a cup of coffee in the evening generally didn’t interfere with his sleep as long as he consumed it before eight o’clock. It was well past that hour now, and he realized it might upset his system’s delicate balance and keep him awake late, but he needed the edge and would worry about his caffeine intake later.

  The donut shop was empty except for a disheveled woman in her late-fifties who occupied a counter-seat opposite his. The heavy wool coat she wore despite the high temperature outside told him she was likely homeless. She kept her head down as she broke her cruller into small chunks and dipped them in her coffee while she tossed an occasional comment to the empty chair to her right. After finishing his coffee he got a “to-go” container and left. He set the container in the center console and pulled the lid as he drove along Central Avenue and headed north. After a series of back streets and service roads he made it to the Cross Island Parkway twenty minutes later and exited at the Grand Central Parkway. Assuming he wasn’t going to be able to go right off to sleep, he continued on to Manhattan instead of getting off at the Flushing exit. He reached East 67th Street at eleven-thirty and parked near the corner.