The K Handshape

by Maureen Jennings

  CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

  For one crazy second I thought he was being poetic, then I realized he was referring to his granddaughter. He was speaking in a monotone, and you’d have to know him to detect the immense pressure underneath the words.

  “I would appreciate it if you would come here immediately, Chris. I’m at Deedee’s house. There is no doubt Joy has been abducted. I have telephoned the police and they are on their way. Where are you now?”

  “In Atherley.”

  “Did you find the girl?”

  “Yes.”

  “Does she confirm his alibi?”

  “Yes.”

  “Thank God for that. Do you believe her?”

  “I do.”

  “Sigmund and I are here together so there are no worries on that score, but I’d better not tie up my phone, Chris. I’ll explain everything when you get here.”

  We clicked off and I saw that both Susan and Irina were eyeing me curiously. My shock must have shown on my face.

  “I have an emergency to deal with but I think we’ve pretty much finished here. Thank you, Irina.”

  “No problem.” She gave me a worried look. “Your emergency doesn’t have to do with Siggie, does it?”

  “No.”

  “Good. He’s my one-way ticket out of here.”

  Nothing hidden about this young woman.

  Susan and I left on the double. I doubted Leo would have used the word abducted unless he was sure but I had an irrational hope that he was wrong. That Joy had wandered off or Nora had taken her somewhere.

  I filled Susan in and she drove fast to the house.

  There were two police cars in front of the house, lights flashing, and a couple of people were standing on the street watching to see what was going on. A constable was manning the door and he let us in.

  Ed Chaffey, a uniformed constable, Leo, Sigmund, and Loretta were all jammed together in the living room. Nora was sitting alone on the couch, nobody beside her. Nobody seemed to be talking. Ed got up as soon as he saw me and came out into the narrow hallway. He spoke quietly.

  “Glad you’re here, Chris. The nanny has given us her story and we are treating this as an abduction. I’ve had a cursory look at the child’s bedroom but I’d like you to see it yourself. I’ve sent constables to speak to the neighbours and we’re ready to put out an Amber Alert.” He rubbed his hands over his face. He looked exhausted. “Child abduction is one of my nightmares. I don’t know if it has anything to do with the murder of the kid’s mother but I guess we’ll have to assume there is a connection until proven otherwise.”

  I felt sick. There were indications that Deidre’s death was a hate crime and it wasn’t too big a step to encompass the child. Ed was virtually whispering.

  “We need to rein in Dr. Forgach. He’s not helping the situation any. He and the nanny are at total loggerheads. It’s ridiculous. Can you cool him out, Chris?”

  “I don’t know. I’ll try.”

  He ushered me into the room. Nobody had moved, as if they were actors waiting for the director to start the rehearsal. Nora was slouched over, hugging her knees. Loretta was perched on the edge of her chair. Sigmund was sitting next to her. He looked as if he would like to have become invisible. He also had a guilty hangdog expression on his face but I decided that was his habitual state of mind. Leo was standing by the window.

  “We were waiting until you arrived, Sergeant Morris. Allow me to apprise you of the situation as we understand it.”

  He spoke as if he were addressing a rather dim-witted jury. His formality was incongruous after what we’d been through but perhaps it gave him something to hold onto.

  “Ms. Larsen had gone out to do some shopping at about one forty-five this afternoon. Nora, Ms. Cochrane, decided she needed some cigarettes … or so she has told us. She had put Joy down for a nap at approximately two o’clock. Is that correct, Nora?”

  She nodded sullenly. “Give or take a minute.”

  “She says that she latched Joy’s bedroom door before she left. When she returned…”

  Nora burst out. “I keep telling you. I was only gone for ten fucking minutes.”

  Leo ignored her. “When she returned she did not go directly to check on the child but remained in the living room…”

  “Why shouldn’t I? How was I to know something had happened? I thought she was still asleep.”

  “At which point, Ms. Larsen returned. Nora did not tell her she had left the house and at Ms. Larsen’s enquiry simply said that Joy was taking a nap.”

  Unable to contain herself, Loretta jumped in. “It didn’t occur to me to check on her. I was unloading the groceries.”

  “Did you notice the time when you got back to the house?” I asked.

  “I think it was about a quarter to three.”

  “When did you realize Joy was missing?”

  I’d addressed both of them but it was Loretta who answered.

  “I made myself a cup of herbal tea and Nora was in the living room watching television. I realized it was almost three-thirty and Joy should be waking up by now. I said that to Nora, who said, quote, unquote, ‘Why don’t you go get her if you’re that concerned? It’ll make a nice change.’” Loretta bit her lip. “I went upstairs. The door was slightly ajar which I thought was odd…”

  “You mean you thought I’d been sloppy,” burst out Nora. “Say it, woman. You’re just like him over there, you think I’m a total fuck-up. Admit it!”

  Leo turned red and I could see he was just about to boil over. I managed to catch his eye, warning him not to lose it. I went and sat beside Nora.

  “Look, everybody is upset but I’m going to ask you to have some self-control. We need to establish a timeline. It is most important. I’d appreciate it if you would let me do that.”

  She scowled and held on tight to her knees but subsided. Loretta drew in her breath sharply, ready to kill but having the self-discipline to keep to the facts.

  “As I was saying, I went upstairs. Joy’s door was open and the bed was empty. I thought she might have woken up and gone to the bathroom, which she can do by herself, or gone down the hall to her mother’s room. I started to call…”

  Nora had to put in her two cents’ worth and I could have smacked her. “She keeps forgetting she’s deaf as a post. You have to stamp on the floor or flick the lights if you want her attention.”

  Loretta refused to rise to the bait. “It’s true, I did forget for a moment. It was so instinctive to call for her. Nora heard me and asked what the problem was. She was focused on her show and didn’t want to be interrupted. I presume it was worth it.”

  Loretta had a scalpel and Nora’s hammer was no match for it.

  “She did not at this point tell me that she had left the child unattended…”

  Nora suddenly screamed at her. “I was only gone for ten minutes and I locked her in. How many times have I got to repeat myself?”

  “As many as is necessary,” said Leo, and I don’t think I’ve ever heard a voice as icy. I could understand but it wasn’t helping the situation. Nora was escalating by the minute, fear driving her over the edge.

  “What did you do next?” I addressed the question to Loretta.

  “We searched the house. Then Nora admitted she had left the house earlier. We went outside but of course there was no sign of her. Nora went to the neighbours on one side and I went on the other.”

  “How long did that take you?”

  “Perhaps another half an hour. Nobody had seen her, and given what Nora had said, I thought we had better contact the police.”

  “In other words, Joy has not been seen for about two and a half hours?”

  Nora burst into sobs, her tough exterior melting like the wicked witch of the west.

  “I swear I locked her in. I would never allow any harm to come to her, I swear it. I loved that kid.”

  I put my arm around her shoulders. “I believe you, Nora. That’s why we’re treating this as an abduction.
”

  “You mean she’s been kidnapped?”

  “Yes, I’m afraid so.”

  “By who?”

  “I wish I had an answer to that, but I don’t.”

  I met Ed’s eyes. I knew what I saw there was reflected in my own. The percentage of child abductions that ended happily was very small. Leo knew that too. Back to Nora.

  “Are you positive you latched Joy’s door when you left?”

  She hesitated. “Yes, well, at least I think I did. I wasn’t paying much attention really so it’s easy to think you’ve done something when you haven’t. But yes, I’m pretty sure that’s what I did. Then I ran up to the corner store for some cigarettes. It’s just a block up and round the corner. It must have taken me ten or twelve minutes at the most.”

  “Did you lock the front door?”

  “It locks automatically.”

  “Nora, you said that the variety store is around the corner. Does that mean you were out of sight of the house for most of your ten-minute period?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Did you notice any cars parked on the street?”

  “Not really. I wasn’t looking for anything, was I?”

  “Have you ever done that before? Shut Joy in her room and gone for cigarettes?”

  She got tense again. “A couple of times. Just in emergencies.”

  I wasn’t sure a nicotine fix qualified as an emergency but then I wasn’t a smoker.

  “What did you do when you got back to the house?”

  “I didn’t do anything.”

  “But you’d run out because you were desperate for a smoke. Did you go outside?”

  “No.”

  “So you didn’t have a cigarette after all?”

  Our eyes locked at this point. Nora’s pupils were dilated. “The urge had passed.”

  “What did you do then?”

  “Like I said, nothing. I came in and went to the bathroom.” She tried for a little defiance. “Do you want to know if I did a piss or a shit?”

  “Only if you think it’s necessary to the enquiry.”

  Leo spoke, still in a monotone. “It would seem that we are looking at a very narrow window of time when she could have been taken. If Miss Cochrane is to be believed, she returned at about twelve minutes past two. Joy must have been taken almost as soon as she left the house.”

  “They’d have to be fucking quick about it,” said Nora.

  Abductors often were appallingly quick.

  “Her clothes have gone,” said Loretta. “And her favourite toy, Harold the dinosaur.”

  “It’s Horace, not Harold,” said Nora.

  “We’ll need a description of the clothes,” said Ed.

  Sigmund was so quiet I’d almost forgotten about him. He was looking at his father in action with a sort of horrified fascination.

  Ed shifted in his chair and frowned at Nora, who glared back. “So Joy was most likely taken when you were on your way to the store and it suggests somebody who was familiar with the house and possibly saw you leave.”

  She snorted. “Chancy, wasn’t it? I didn’t even know I was out of smokes myself til I came downstairs.”

  Many criminals are opportunists on the lookout for a victim and some horrible destiny comes into play. Wrong place, wrong time. In spite of Nora’s remark, this case didn’t fit that mode at all. First, there was the question of entry, which had to be with a key and a knowledge of the child’s bedroom; secondly, as she said, she could quite easily have not left the house. Was the abductor lying in wait, ready to strike whenever they could? There must have been a vehicle involved. Joy’s abduction was not done on impulse. It had been planned.

  CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

  Katherine had called for an emergency meeting and the team, including Ed, was gathered in the boardroom. Once again, Janice, bless her, had thought of bodily needs and sent out for pizzas. She’d also ordered salads for those who were health conscious, which right now meant only David.

  Katherine gave us a moment to get the pizza from the box.

  “Chris, can you let us in on your thinking?”

  I’d made notes and I consulted them. Not that I really needed to; everything was burned in my mind.

  “I think we can rule out a stranger. The abductor had to know the layout of the house and the current situation. I’d say somebody was watching the house and saw Loretta leave and then Nora shortly afterward. Joy is deaf but she has a good pair of lungs, and even though Deidre’s house is detached, the houses are close together. I think if she had been yelling top volume, somebody would have heard her and nobody did. There were people at home on either side.”

  “The window of opportunity seems incredibly small,” said Ray.

  “It is. One of the constables did a quick time check of a walk from the house to the convenience store and back. Twelve minutes. Nora was probably minimizing the time she was absent but it wouldn’t have been much more than that if she did what she said she did.”

  “She wasn’t coming clean about everything, I’m sure of it,” said Leo.

  “Do you think there’s a likelihood that she is implicated?” Katherine asked.

  “I’d say not. And if she is, she’d have to have an accomplice. What was your take, Ed?”

  “I agree with you. She’s not the most endearing of people, but yes, I believed her. She seemed too upset to be faking.”

  “Leo?”

  “I would find it hard to believe that she would do this. It simply rebounds on her anyway.”

  I went on. “The proprietor of the convenience store confirms that she came in when she said she did. They have an ongoing joke about her stopping smoking. He offered to sell her one cigarette to get her through the ‘craving moment,’ as he called it.”

  Ray snorted. He was still struggling to stay off cigarettes.

  “Did he confirm the time?” Katherine asked.

  “He’s sure it was just after two and that she was in and out very quickly.”

  David raised a finger to indicate he had a question. “I don’t disagree that the abductor might have been watching the house but that too is risky. If he, can we use ‘he’ for now, it’s easier, or do I have to be PC?”

  Katherine nodded brusquely and David continued. “Let’s say he drives up to the house but has some other method of entry on his mind, say a home invasion, as it were. He sees the two women leave. He thinks this is his lucky day and immediately goes into the house, up to the kid’s room, gets her out of bed. She may or may not know him. He could have subdued her if she protested, and he carries her into the car. What? Seven minutes maximum.”

  “He had to get her dressed,” I said. “That would add some time. Her clothes are missing and a raincoat and boots, which were in the hall closet.”

  “If he had a car, he wouldn’t need to dress her, he could collect the clothes and carry her out as she was. Most hall closets hold outdoor things so that doesn’t prove a hell of a lot.” David had a rather irritating “point scored” tone to his voice but he was right.

  “Neither Loretta nor Nora noticed a car parked outside the house,” said Ed.

  “If you’re not looking, you often don’t see.”

  Again David was right about that. The unreliability of witness testimony was notorious.

  “Christine and I were talking about the big question on the way over,” said Ed. “Motive. What the hell’s the motive? There’s been no ransom demand.”

  “It’s early days,” said David. “We know that kidnappers sometimes wait before making contact with the victim’s family.”

  He was playing devil’s advocate but it was necessary to have somebody do that. Nobody wanted to get into tunnel vision. That had led to too many a tragic wild goose chase.

  “I tried to get in touch immediately with the close friends, Jessica Manolo and Hannah Silverstein, but didn’t get any answer.”

  “We sent a constable to the house but there was nobody home,” said Ed.

  “Is tha
t suspicious, do you think?” Katherine asked.

  “I don’t know. Either or both of them fit our profile of person in the loop, but they don’t have a car and as far as I know no reason to take Joy.”

  “Is it within the realm of possibility that the whole thing is a variation of David’s thesis?” Jamie asked. “Not a home invasion as such, but say one or both of these girls came over to visit, found that nobody was home and Joy had been left alone. They enter the house, get her, and take her back to their place just to make a point that she isn’t being looked after properly.”

  Katherine took off her glasses and polished the lens. “If that is the case, they are unusually insensitive and callous young women with no regard for the anguish they’ve caused. It’s been four hours since Joy was last seen.”

  In my brief meetings with Jessica and Hannah, neither one had struck me as like that but who knows? The nicest people can do uncharacteristic things if they feel strongly about something.

  Suddenly Ed grabbed at his pocket. “Excuse me,” he said. We all had our cellphones turned to silent ring and he’d just got a call. I was just about to go back to the question of the letters when he gave a yelp of pleasure.

  “That was the station. I think we’ve got a positive ID on Joy. One of the neighbours on Mary Street, six or seven houses down from Deidre, says she looked out of the window and saw, get this, a woman walking with a child along the street. She was vague about the time, but thinks it was just after she’d listened to the news on the radio at two o’clock. She’s not vague about what she saw. A little girl about three years of age in a bright yellow raincoat and matching boots.”

  “Yes!” That was from me, I couldn’t help it. The missing raincoat and boots were yellow.

  “She noticed, she said, because the child splashed through some puddles and obviously wanted to do it again but the woman, who she assumed was the child’s mother, hurried her along. Bingo!”

  Leo was looking at the table. I thought he was afraid to risk meeting anybody’s eyes. The rest of us were beaming at each other even though we were well aware this was only the beginning. It didn’t necessarily mean that Joy wouldn’t come to harm.