The Lure

by S. W. Hubbard

  Lew waved him back into his seat. “It’s not the Golding woman. The man who came to take back the baby was a big burly fellow with blond, curly hair.”

  “Brian Finn.”

  Brian and Eileen Finn’s photos appeared on the evening news and immediately the phones started ringing. There were the usual crackpots, plus calls from well-intentioned people reporting blameless couples who bore a passing resemblance to Brian and Eileen. But one call showed promise. A woman in Malone reported renting a small furnished house six days ago to a couple with a baby who had paid the first and last month’s rent and the security deposit in cash. She hadn’t asked for references. Eileen’s sister remembered that Brian’s father had come from somewhere near there. Maybe this was an area Brian felt familiar with.

  Frank and Meyerson drove toward Malone together.

  “How did Finn find the baby at the Buckners’?” Meyerson asked.

  “He must have just tailed Meredith and Sutter, waiting for them to move the baby. By that time, he’d already quit his job, so he just devoted himself to finding that child.”

  “But why not just take her away from Mrs. Golding? Why wait until the Buckners had her?”

  Frank shrugged. “He would have had to take her by force from Meredith. He figured no one suspected him yet in Nathan’s death, so he didn’t want to do anything to give himself away. He took a gamble that he could trick the Buckners. If that didn’t work, I guess he could’ve tried snatching the baby from them.”

  They crossed the city limits into Malone and Frank began to direct Lew to the house. The streets they drove down became progressively shabbier, until they pulled up in front of 162 Hauser Avenue, a Depression-era bungalow with peeling paint and a concave roof. A far cry from the trim house the Finns had abandoned on Hawthorne Lane.

  Frank glanced inside the rusty Toyota Corolla parked in front of the house —a brand new infant car seat was strapped into the back. Brian Finn was a murderer and kidnapper, but a safety-conscious one.

  He and Meyerson walked up the crumbling concrete path and climbed three steps onto a broad, saggy front porch. A dormer on the second floor jutted out over the porch, making its roof. Meyerson hammered on the wooden front door. “Open up, Mr. and Mrs. Finn. Police.”

  Immediately, they heard scurrying footsteps above them. “Sarah!” a woman’s voice shrieked.

  Sarah had been the name Eileen had chosen for Mary Pat’s baby, Frank remembered. Absolutely no doubt now they were in the right place.

  “This is Frank Bennett, Mr. Finn. Open the door, please, so we can talk.”

  “Talk! There’s nothing to talk about.” Finn sounded like he was right on the other side of the door.

  “Open the door, Finn, or we’ll break it down,” Meyerson barked.

  “You’ll be sorry if you do,” Brian Finn answered.

  “It’s over now, Mr. Finn,” Frank said gently. “Get your wife and the baby and come out.”

  “Oh, it’s over all right. Be we’re not coming out. There’s nothing to come out for.”

  “Don’t talk crazy, Mr. Finn. We can work this out,” Frank said.

  “I’m calling for back-up,” Lew mouthed. He crouched down, slipped past the front window, and jumped down off the side of the porch.

  “All Eileen ever wanted was a family. We can never have that now. There’s no point in going on.”

  No point in going on—Frank knew that feeling well enough. People had spouted all kinds of platitudes at him after Estelle’s death. Time heals all wounds, a brighter day is coming, blah, blah. He’d felt like spitting in their faces. But he had gone on, even though there was no point. Just by waking up every morning and eating breakfast and putting one foot in front of the other, he’d gone on. And the point had come back, on most days, at least. He wished there was some way to tell Brian Finn that through the locked front door of 162 Hauser Avenue.

  Instead he said, “We don’t want anyone to get hurt, Mr. Finn. The baby’s OK, so we can straighten this out.” Let Finn think they didn’t suspect him of Golding’s murder.

  He heard footsteps walking away from the door, then silence.

  “Mr. Finn? Brian?”

  More silence. He was just turning toward Lew when the shot rang out, so close that he reflexively dove for the ground. Lew had taken cover behind the patrol car and had his weapon drawn.

  “Are you alright?” Lew shouted.

  “Yeah. The shot was inside, right in the hall, or this front room,” Frank answered. “Mr. Finn?” he called, but didn’t expect an answer.

  Lew was on the bullhorn. “Mrs. Finn, please come to a window with the baby and let us see that you’re all right.” They waited, but there was no sound or movement from inside the house. Three more local police cars pulled up.

  “I’m going in around the back.” Frank said.

  “No! You don’t know that Finn is down. It could be a trap,” Lew shouted. “I’m calling in the SWAT team.”

  Great. When he had wanted Lew’s help with this case, he’d shown no interest. Now he had to horn in and complicate things. Once those SWAT yahoos arrived with all their gadgetry and armor poor Eileen Finn would be so terrified she’d never come out. The whole thing would spiral out of control. He’d met the woman. He knew if he went in now he could talk her out.

  “Just watch my back, Lew.” Frank walked through the narrow path between the house and its neighbor and came out in an overgrown backyard. Cautiously, he looked through an uncurtained window. The kitchen appeared to be empty. He tried the back door, but it was locked. He used his penknife to slice through the window screen, pulled an old wheelbarrow under the window to raise himself and silently slid up the old double-hung window. He climbed through onto the kitchen table, then stood and looked around.

  The place had fifties-style metal cabinets, and faded Formica counters. Clean baby bottles were lined up next to the stained porcelain sink. Two doors led out of the kitchen. He looked through the nearest one into the dining room, empty except for a card table with a laptop computer set up on it. Through an archway he could see part of the living room: a grungy plaid sofa and a scarred coffee table.

  He turned toward the other door out of the kitchen. A narrow hallway led to the front door and the staircase upstairs. Just past the newel post, a large man’s foot and part of a blue-jeaned leg were visible. Flattening himself against the wall, Frank edged closer. A trickle of blood made its way down the hall to meet him.

  Frank made it to where the stairs were low enough to look through the bannisters. Brian Finn sprawled across the lower part of the staircase, the shaft of a powerful Glock semiautomatic in his mouth. The top of his head was now an integral part of the dingy wallpaper pattern in the hall.

  It was what he had expected, but still shocking. He closed his eyes for a moment, then went to look into the living room from the hall doorway. The room was empty: Eileen and the baby must be upstairs.

  Gingerly he stepped around the body on the steps. The creaking stair treads announced his approach. “Mrs. Finn, it’s Frank Bennett, from Trout Run. I’m coming upstairs now.” He kept talking slowly and calmly. “We’re going to get an ambulance for your husband. Everything will be all right now.” He hoped she hadn’t come out in the hall.

  He reached the upstairs landing. There were just two bedrooms and a bath. He pushed the closest door open—a lumpy double bed, neatly made, consumed the whole room. The bathroom was unoccupied. In the other bedroom, Frank saw a corner of bright yellow and pink fabric moving.

  He peeked through the door. Eileen Finn sat in a rocking chair holding a sleeping baby. She kept her eyes focused resolutely on a picture of Pooh and Tigger on the opposite wall, as her feet pumped the chair back and forth. The baby was nestled in the crook of Eileen’s left arm, her little mouth slightly agape.

  “Mrs. Finn?” He extended his hand. “Come on now, it’s time to go.”

  Eileen Finn raised her head and looked at him for a long moment. Then she lifted her ri
ght hand from where it rested on the chair cushion. In it she held a tiny silver handgun, the kind of small-caliber revolver that had ended Nathan Golding’s life. She leveled it at Frank’s heart.

  Chapter 36

  It took Frank’s brain a full second to process what his eyes saw.

  A woman with a baby in her lap was holding a gun on him. He knew she wasn’t thinking clearly—he could practically see the disjointed thoughts ricocheting around behind her glittering eyes. But the hand that held the gun was steady, disturbingly steady.

  What had he been thinking charging in here by himself, all because he wanted this thing resolved and didn’t have the patience for a drawn-out standoff with the SWAT team? He criticized Earl for going off half-cocked, but who was the cowboy now?

  Frank shifted his stance slightly; Eileen tracked him with the gun.

  There had been a time when he wanted to die, when he would have welcomed this predicament. But he realized that time was past. He didn’t want his life to end in this crummy house, shot by this pathetic woman.

  “Mrs. Finn, put that gun down. If you put it down now, no one will ever know you drew a gun on a police officer. We’ll pretend it never happened.”

  “I’ll kill you if you try to take my baby away. I’ll kill anyone who tries to take her.”

  “No one’s going to take her,” Frank said, in what he hoped was a reassuring voice. What the hell was the woman doing with a gun in the baby’s room, anyway? Did she walk around armed while she took care of the kid? Then it dawned on him. Brian had intended for them both to die. But he couldn’t bring himself to shoot his wife, so he left her with a gun to do it herself. But she hadn’t. Yet.

  “You’re lying to me. They’ll never let me keep her now. Brian was right.”

  “No! Brian was not right.” What could he say to this woman? She had lost everything—what could he hold out to her?

  “Don’t do anything foolish, Mrs. Finn. Think of Sarah. When she gets older, she’ll want to know about her birth, her background. If you kill me, or kill yourself with that baby in your lap, can you imagine what the newspapers and TV will do when they get a hold of the story? This will follow Sarah around for the rest of her life. Don’t do that to her.”

  He saw her hesitate. He bit back the impulse to say any more. Just let that sink in. Finally, the hand with the gun dropped to her side.

  “Let me be alone with her for a few minutes, to say good-bye.”

  “Slide the gun over to me first, Mrs. Finn.”

  The little silver gun came skittering across the floor and stopped at his feet. Frank picked it up, and with a wary glance over his shoulder, stepped out in the hall. He heard Eileen murmuring and singing to the baby. He radioed to Meyerson and told him everything was clear, and to take Brian’s body out of the hall.

  After about five minutes, the chair stopped rocking and Eileen appeared in the doorway, and held out the baby to him. “You take her,” she said, and went back to the rocker to wait.

  Frank let the state police have the arrest. What joy was there in taking that poor broken woman into custody? Outside, amid all the commotion of squad cars and ambulances and the medical examiner, the baby still slept in his arms. The thatch of jet-black hair, the tawny skin, the delicately formed features were all from Sanjiv.

  Then the sun moved out from behind a cloud. The brightness and the heat on her face awakened her, when all the noise had not. She looked up at him—another stranger in her short life—and he expected her to cry. Instead, a gummy smile spread across her face, and the sweetness, the innocence, the joy in that smile was pure Mary Pat.

  Chapter 37

  The days following the resolution of a big case were usually ones of quiet satisfaction, but ever since finding Mary Pat Sheehan’s baby Frank had felt like Typhoid Mary, spreading misery wherever he went.

  The Sheehan’s had greeted the news that their granddaughter had been found with icy silence. Over seventy-five couples around the country had been informed that the adoptions they’d arranged through Sheltering Arms were illegal. Constance Stiler had agreed to a plea bargain with the DA that would have her serving two years at the Albion Women’s Correctional Facility for her role in the adoption ring and her reckless medical treatment of Mary Pat Sheehan, which meant her husband would have to go into a nursing home. Doug Penniman was also in custody, since the forensics tests had proved his gun had been used to shoot Sanjiv Patel. Patel was still awaiting the outcome of the tests that would prove he was baby Sarah’s father; in the meantime she was in a foster home. And so was Olivia Veech.

  Anita, Ralph and Pap Veech couldn’t make bail so they were in the county jail awaiting their trail on drug possession with intent to distribute. The DA would happily have charged them with participation in the adoption ring, but Constance insisted that although Anita had sold her own baby to Sheltering Arms, and recommended the same solution to Mary Pat, she wasn’t actually on the payroll.

  After her brief lapse in judgment, Meredith Golding had come to her senses and hired a high-priced lawyer. Her upcoming trial would probably make Court TV ratings soar.

  Trudy Massinay had taken one look at the homes of the rest of the extended Veech family and decided Olivia would be better off in foster care. But Olivia hadn’t adapted well, and the first family who’d taken her in soon gave up on her, as had the second. The list of eligible foster families in Essex County wasn’t very long, and word had soon gone out that Olivia was trouble.

  Frank’s day had gone straight to hell when Trudy called to say she couldn’t find another family to take Olivia and might have to ship her out of county to a group home for troubled children.

  Frank felt the greasy burger he’d eaten for lunch rise up in his throat. “I’ll take her,” he volunteered.

  “We don’t normally place little girls with single men who work full time, Frank.”

  Couldn’t just one thing in this damn casework out well? Was that so much to ask? “If I find someone appropriate, can you push the official paperwork through so they can take her?” Frank asked.

  “Yes, but who—”

  “Just give me a few hours and I’ll get back to you.”

  Lucy said yes before he even had the request out of his mouth, but Edwin was adamantly opposed.

  “We don’t know anything about taking care of traumatized children,” he objected. “She needs experienced parents.”

  “She just needs someone who understands her,” Frank said. “Someone who doesn’t assume that she’s no good because of who her family is. Besides, if it doesn’t work out, you can always give her back to Trudy, like the others did.”

  “Please, Edwin, let’s try,” Lucy begged. “She needs us.”

  Edwin’s face had a look of stony anger that Frank had never seen before. He hadn’t really thought about the trouble he might be stirring up between Edwin and Lucy when he’d raced over to the Inn with this plan to save Olivia. Still, he couldn’t help feeling that he was right, that of all the children in the world, Olivia was perfect for Edwin and Lucy.

  “The kid’s as sharp as a tack, Edwin. She loves books, spends her recess in the library. She’s a little diamond in the rough who just needs some polishing.”

  “We have to take her,” Lucy cried. “You’re being selfish to say no.”

  “Selfish! What’s going to happen when Anita gets out of jail and wants Olivia back? You’ll be heartbroken, Lucy, and I’ll be left to pick up the pieces. Have you thought about that, Frank?”

  “Actually, I have. With the quantities of marijuana and PCP we found, Anita will probably be in jail for a good ten years.”

  Edwin sighed. “All right, we’ll take her.” In the screaming and squealing from Lucy that followed, he turned to Frank and muttered, “You’d better be right.”

  Frank left the Iron Eagle confident that he had done Edwin a favor, even if his friend couldn’t see it yet. The radio produced more static than music in the low-lying areas between the Inn and his house, s
o he switched to loudly singing, “Lord I Want to be a Christian.” He broke off in the middle of the third “in-a my hear-art” when a hand-lettered sign on bright yellow paper caught his eye. “Moving Sale—Everything Must Go.” Traveling too fast to make the turn down the narrow road to Beth Abercrombie’s shop, he turned around and backtracked.

  As he got out of his car, he passed two ladies leaving the shop with shopping bags, clucking about bargains. He entered to find the shelves half empty, and Beth sweeping up mounds of Styrofoam packing peanuts.

  “Hi. What’s going on?” He knew it was lame to come in here acting like nothing extraordinary had happened in the past two weeks, but starting in with explanations and apologies and reassurances seemed just as awkward, so he took the easier approach.

  Beth stopped sweeping and studied him with unblinking green eyes. “I’m moving to Oregon,” she said finally. “My older son is there, and the younger wants to move west when he graduates, so there’s no reason for me to stay here.”

  “I see. This is kind of sudden, isn’t it?”

  “Not really. There’s a vibrant arts community in Portland—I’ve considered moving before. The time seems right…now.”

  “Look, Beth, the way everything turned out. I’m sorry, but—”

  She interrupted him with a sharp bang of her dustpan against the side of the trashcan. “There’s no need to apologize Frank. You were right about Meredith. I was right about Nathan. I guess it never occurred to either of us that we could both be right about Green Tomorrow.”

  So, she still had her back up. He didn’t see how any of this was his fault, but there was no point in arguing. “You heard about Mary Pat’s baby?”

  “Yes, I hope it all works out for Mr. Patel. He’s a nice man and he’s been through a lot.”

  “We’ve arrested Doug Penniman for shooting him. I can’t quite figure what his motive was, though. Meredith and Extrom both swear they knew nothing about it—not that either one of them can be trusted. Still, I don’t see what purpose it served Extrom to have Sanjiv shot.”