by Neal Baer
Which he proved the moment he and Claire rounded a corner. A tall, trim man with a full head of silvering hair, and wearing a tie and shirtsleeves, the badge and automatic on his belt pegging him as a cop, waited by a door. When he saw Nick, his face burst into a huge smile. Nick couldn’t help but return the grin.
“I knew that stuff about your wife was bullshit,” said the detective, slapping Nick on the shoulder and pulling him into an embrace. “Welcome back.”
“You two know each other?” Claire asked, incredulous.
“Detective Allan Hart, Dr. Claire Waters,” Nick said, gesturing to Claire.
“I’ve read all about you,” Hart said to Claire as they shook hands. “In the case file, that is. You still look like your picture.”
“That picture was taken when I was eight,” Claire said, returning his easy smile. “I guess I’ll take that as a compliment, Detective.”
“My friends call me Al,” said Hart, opening the door beside him. “And any friend of Nick’s is a friend of mine. Follow me.”
Hart led them into the Homicide office, where six detectives (four men and two women) worked individually at standard government-issue metal desks—until they caught sight of Nick, whereupon they rose and gave him a standing ovation.
Claire looked at Nick. “What’s up with the hero’s welcome?”
“I helped them out with a case a couple of years ago,” Nick replied uncomfortably.
“Must’ve been some case,” Claire said, shaking her head as the other detectives came over and greeted Nick, pulling him aside.
“It was,” Hart said to her, and proceeded to tell her the story. Two years earlier, three brothers operating a heroin-processing factory in the basement of their home in Rochester’s crime-ridden 19th Ward were gunned down by a duo of professional hitters equipped with Uzis. They might’ve gotten away clean but for an unmarked police cruiser passing the house at exactly the wrong time. The solo rookie cop behind the wheel, Officer Evan Springer, was passing nearby when he heard the automatic weapons fire. A former marine sharpshooter in Iraq, Springer stopped, got out, and positioned himself behind his car as the two shooters burst from the house. He scored head shots on both killers literally before they knew what hit them. They sprayed bullets everywhere as they went down in their death dance. Unfortunately, one of the bullets ricocheted off a light post behind the police cruiser and into the back of Springer’s skull, slicing through his brain and killing him.
The last Rochester cop shot to death had been in 1959, when Hart was in diapers, and he wasn’t about to let Officer Springer’s death go unanswered on his watch. Whoever ordered the hit on the three drug-dealing brothers was as guilty of murdering Officer Springer as the two dead killers-for-hire, and Al Hart vowed to catch the bastard.
A set of keys in one of the dead killers’ pockets led to a 2006 Mitsubishi Diamante parked around the corner from the scene of the massacre. The vehicle turned out to have been stolen from an outdoor parking lot on West 47th Street in New York City. Cop brotherhood being what it is, Hart skipped official channels and dialed Manhattan South Homicide on his own, looking for help. When Detective Nick Lawler just happened to pick up the phone, he not only pledged his cooperation, but he also invited Hart to come down to the city to work the case with him.
By the time Hart arrived in Manhattan the next day, Nick had already worked his contacts in Special Narcotics, who’d rousted their snitches and come up with the name Eduardo Pena, the reputed owner of the Juárez Cartel’s New York City heroin franchise. Word had it that Pena planned to expand his operations upstate by knocking off the competition—literally.
Heavily armed NYPD emergency service cops burst through Pena’s door, followed by Nick Lawler and Al Hart in body armor, and took him down. One of the ESU guys pulled Pena to his feet and held him out to Nick.
“All yours, Detective,” the ESU cop said.
Nick turned to Hart. “Your case, your collar.”
“Your turf,” Hart said, flabbergasted that Nick would hand over such a high-profile arrest to someone from out of town.
“We’re still in New York State,” replied Nick. “You’re a cop here too. Take him home and put him away.”
Hart nodded a grateful thanks and cuffed Pena, taking him back to Rochester to face capital murder charges in the death of Officer Springer. And the Rochester police got to announce that one of its own locked up the most dangerous drug-running cop-killing badass scumbag in the country.
For his work, Nick Lawler received an honorary Rochester detective’s badge and the assurance that anything he ever needed in the Flower City was his for the asking.
“And in this particular case,” Hart said, finishing, “anything you come up with helps us as well. We’ve been carrying this as an open file for more than twenty years.”
“Did you work on it originally?” Claire asked, glancing at a man she pegged as Hart’s boss emerging from a glassed-in office and heading their way.
“Sort of,” answered Hart. “I was in the academy and they had us out doing grid searches for your friend in Seneca Park.”
“You mean, searching for Amy’s body,” Claire concluded. She looked down to chase away the pain and compose herself. “I can’t tell you how much I appreciate all this,” she said, managing a smile.
Hart nodded as the man from the office reached them. “Captain Killian,” Hart said, gesturing to Claire, “Dr. Claire Waters.”
“Your mother taught all my kids how to dissect a frog,” the captain said, shaking Claire’s hand. “I guess that’s a strange way to introduce myself.”
“No worries,” Claire replied. “I just hope she did a good job.”
Nick joined them now, shaking hands with the captain, whom he’d met on the Springer murder case. “We’ve got you all set up,” Killian said, pulling from his pocket two temporary ID cards and handing them to Claire and Nick. “You can come and go as you please, use our computers, whatever you need. Chief’s providing us with an extra unmarked car for this investigation and an empty office right down the hall. The files are there, and the three of you can work comfortably.”
“Three of us?” Nick asked, shooting Hart a knowing look.
Hart smiled. “You didn’t think I was gonna pass up a chance to help you out, did you?”
“Payback’s a bitch,” Nick said with a smile.
Captain Killian headed back to his office. “Al, just let me know if there’s anything else,” he said over his shoulder.
“Thank you, Detective,” Claire said with relief, as if a heavy burden had been lifted from her shoulders.
“Forget it,” Hart replied. “Let’s get to work.”
It was clear that Nick and Claire had their work cut out for them. Inside their temporary office, more than a dozen boxes, battered from use and yellowed with age, were piled on several metal tables in the windowless room.
“So many?” Claire gasped, filled with trepidation over what she might find inside them.
“There was barely a cop in western New York who didn’t help us in some way,” Hart told her as he pulled the lid off a box and peeked inside.
“What about the original detectives who ran the case?” Nick asked as he shot Claire a look. “Any value in talking to them?”
“Wish we could,” Hart said. “But the captain who ran the investigation died in ninety-eight, the lead guys both passed away last year, and everyone else who was in Homicide back then’s retired and living in Florida.”
Claire barely heard any of it. Her eyes were focused on one particular box, on which was written “#1” and the date she’d never forget: “July 18, 1989”—the day Amy had been stolen from her.
Nick sensed her discomfort. “You okay?” he asked, moving beside her.
Claire brushed a wisp of hair from her eyes. “I hoped this would be easier,” she replied.
“There’s no physical evidence to look at,” Hart assured her as he stepped over to join them, “because none was found at the scene of the
kidnapping. Our CSU techs got a few photos of tire tracks in the dirt on the street but that’s about all.”
Claire looked up at Nick. “How do you want to do this?”
“From the beginning,” Nick answered instantly, pulling the first box from atop the pile and opening the lid. “Best information about any crime comes when the crime is fresh in everyone’s mind. We’ll each take a box, work through them in chronological order.”
He pulled the second and third boxes, keeping the former for himself and handing the latter to Hart, who moved off to one of the three tables. Claire took her cue and began going through the massive amount of paperwork in the first box. Report after report, statement after statement, the sheer volume of what she didn’t know about the case made her head spin and, at the same time, cleared up what she’d wondered about for so many years: The police had left few, if any, stones unturned in their search for Amy and her kidnapper. The investigation had been a thorough, professional one, involving numerous cops from surrounding towns and counties, the state police, and even the FBI when a piece of evidence turned up suggesting Amy was abducted to be sold into child slavery. That was ruled out when the ring in question was busted and Amy wasn’t found.
Although the file boxes were labeled in chronological order, the paperwork inside was disorganized, presumably from having been gone through numerous times over the past two decades. They worked silently for an hour, leafing through papers, until Claire picked up a manila folder and stared at the label affixed to the tab.
“Someone else needs to read this,” she said, the fear in her voice catching both Nick’s and Al’s attention.
“What is it?” Hart asked, putting down a piece of paper.
“My statement to the police the day Amy disappeared,” Claire answered, realizing she’d completely erased or blocked it from her mind. A good part of her didn’t want to bring it back in. She dropped the file on the table as if it were burning her hands.
Nick slid his chair beside hers. “We can look at it together,” he said, “but you need to read what you told the cops the day it happened.”
“Why?” asked Claire, avoiding Nick’s eyes.
“Because it may help you remember something,” Nick answered. “You’re the only one who saw the kidnapper. And you were just a kid. What seemed irrelevant then may have more meaning to you now.”
Claire understood. She had seen enough patients unlock childhood memories for the sheer reason that they were now adults who could reason their way through and interpret events in ways a child never could.
She opened the folder and read. The interview she gave to detectives all those years ago appeared in front of her, the words neatly transcribed from a cassette tape she could almost see whirring in a recorder on the table in front of her.
The words themselves didn’t ring familiar, for they were the words of a terrified eight-year-old who’d just witnessed a horrible crime.
And then she began to remember. The room at the precinct had stuffed animals on the chairs. She’d sat on a couch beside a psychologist, and the detective sat on a stool facing her. She could tell from the way their questions were worded that they had been gentle, trying not to traumatize her more than she already was. They tried to jog her young memory without crossing the line by asking leading questions. The interview was short, and Claire told them as much as she could remember. Which, she realized, was so much less than she remembered now.
“I barely told them anything,” she said to Nick without taking her eyes from the page. “Certainly not enough to help.”
“You were eight,” Nick said, “and you were scared to death. Give yourself a break.”
“They asked me what he looked like,” Claire said, pointing to the page in question. “I said he was tall, had brown hair and a big nose, and he was wearing a short-sleeve shirt and khaki shorts. They asked me what kind of car he drove. I told them it was white and had four doors. I never got the license plate.”
“That’s more than we get from most witnesses,” Hart chimed in from across the room without looking up. “Especially the kids.”
She kept reading, the scene playing through her head like it had thousands of times over the last twenty years.
He pulled up to the house in the gleaming white car.
He looked nervous.
I blinked. I backed away from him.
Then he told Amy about her father.
“I blinked,” Claire said.
“What?” Nick asked, looking up from the file his head was buried in.
“Nothing,” Claire answered, though it was far from nothing. Something was bothering her.
Why did I blink?
She tried to rewind the scene in her head and play it back in slow motion. As if it were recorded on videotape. She could clearly see Winslow getting out of the car. Heading toward them. Looking right at Claire.
Looking at me?
She slowed down the tape playing in her head even more, like a film in which she could clearly see each frame.
Eight-year-old Claire looked up.
She made eye contact with Winslow, who was almost directly in front of her.
She felt her nose wrinkle.
His head turned toward Amy.
My nose wrinkled.
An odor permeated her nostrils. Like someone had just taken a picture.
A Polaroid picture.
Claire nearly jumped out of her chair, startling Nick and Hart.
“Are you okay?” Hart asked, alarmed.
But Claire only had eyes for her statement, tears dropping on the pages as she sped through each one. Looking for words, a sentence she knew she wouldn’t find.
“It’s not here,” she said, her worst fears realized.
Nick shot Hart a look as he turned toward her. “What’s not there?” he asked, seeing that something had been released deep inside her.
“The smell,” Claire uttered. “I never told them about the smell.”
“You smelled something?” asked Hart as he closed the folder in his hand.
Claire tried to regain her composure. “My father had this old Polaroid camera,” she recalled. “He loved taking pictures of me with it. But then he’d make me sit there as the picture came out of the camera and he’d peel back the paper on it . . . and I hated the smell.”
“The smell of the picture,” Nick clarified.
“That’s why I wrinkled my nose when Winslow came up my driveway. He was looking right at me. He was almost in front of me and I wrinkled my nose and backed away. . . .”
“Because he smelled like a Polaroid picture,” Hart deduced. “He stunk like developing fluid.”
He tossed Nick a look. Any detective would know this was a huge lead.
“But I never told the police,” Claire continued. “I never told them because—” She looked down, trying to catch her breath.
This time, Nick didn’t hesitate to put his arm around her shoulder. “Because it was you who Winslow really wanted,” he said, just as gently as before. “You smelled him and the look on your face must’ve repulsed him. You backed away and he turned his attention toward your friend.”
“You see?” Claire said, looking up at Nick, her eyes wet. “It was my fault. He wanted me. It was supposed to be me, not Amy.” Claire was gulping for air as if she were drowning. “I didn’t tell the police because I was ashamed to admit it—”
“No,” Nick replied. “That look saved your life. And you didn’t tell the police because you were scared someone would blame you. But Winslow taking Amy was never your fault.”
Just like that, Claire was that scared eight-year-old girl again. And she did what she remembered doing back then, that day. She began to sob, and buried her head in the cop’s shoulder. Only this time, the shoulder was Nick Lawler’s.
CHAPTER 22
Fifteen minutes later, Claire, now fully composed, sat in a well-worn leather chair beside Nick and Hart in Captain Killian’s office. The room was small, dark, and musty,
as if light were the enemy. Claire wondered how many other victims had sat in this chair over the years—and how many ever got answers to their nightmares.
Though the trio had just begun to dig into the myriad of boxes that made up Amy’s case file, Nick and Hart pounced on Claire’s revelation that Mr. Winslow reeked of developing fluid. That was too big a lead to sit on. Still, the captain shook his head with doubt.
“You grew up here,” Killian said to Claire, “so I don’t have to tell you what a needle in a haystack this is.” He looked at Nick. “You didn’t grow up here, so I’ll fill you in. Back in eighty-nine, Rochester was still Kodak City. Hell, half the town’s named after George Eastman, and until digital cameras came along and decimated the film business, Kodak was Monroe County’s biggest employer. I’d hate to guess how many people working in the plants there came home every night stinking of developing fluid.”
Hart had anticipated Killian’s reaction. “Boss,” he said, handing over a folder, “the father of the victim, Amy Danforth, was a sales exec at Kodak. Because the kidnapper said he worked with Amy’s father, Kodak cooperated with the investigation.” He gestured to Claire. “The composite of the suspect that Dr. Waters gave back then was compared to photos from the ID badges of every Kodak employee. No one matched, and the one employee whose last name was Winslow was a woman who died in 2002.”
Nick shifted in his chair. “We’re thinking maybe the guy who took Amy was involved in kiddie porn.”
Killian’s face tightened. “You mean he was looking for another little girl to take pictures of.”
“No Internet back then,” Nick answered. “Only way for pervs to share their sick pictures with fellow pedophiles was either in person or by U.S. mail. And they could hardly take their film to be developed at some drugstore or photo kiosk, so they had to do it themselves.”
Killian closed the folder and put it on his desk. “Did anyone back then look into the possibility that Amy was kidnapped by a kiddie porn ring?”
“Yes,” Hart replied. “Her info and photos were sent to the FBI and National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. With no results, obviously.”