Red Web

by Ninie Hammon

  The nurse said physical therapists worked with the child every day so her muscles wouldn't atrophy from disuse and twist her limbs.

  "She could sit up in a wheelchair, and we'd roll her out onto the balcony when the weather was nice. I liked to think she enjoyed the warmth of the sun on her face. She had way, way better muscle tone than the others in the unit and I don't know why that was. I thought at the time it was about awareness, that she responded to her environment — tensed and relaxed her muscles — even though she wouldn't mentally engage. But I was just guessing."

  The nurse stopped.

  "I was brand new, green as a gourd, and I … I — you had to see her, maybe, to understand. She was a precious little girl, long blonde hair, big blue eyes, and so fragile, like a china doll that would break."

  "Did you know what had happened to her?"

  "I found out. Asked around. I was horrified."

  "Who wouldn't be?"

  "And every day I'd come in and there she was. Just like I left her the day before. So I decided that since she functioned on some levels, she wasn't just lying there, but would eat and drink … I decided I'd try to get through to her. The other nurses made fun of me for trying."

  She smiled self-consciously.

  "I understand their skepticism now, but at the time it just made me that much more determined to reach her. So for part of my shift every day, I would go into her room and talk to her. I brought story books — I was living at home and had a little sister a year or two younger than she was.

  She looked into Bailey's eyes. "That was part of it, of course, that she reminded me of Kelly. So I borrowed some of Kelly's books, and I read to her. It just became part of my routine, what I did every day. Day after day. Week after week. There was no response, no change. I'm not sure I even continued to believe she ever would respond to me, but it was just what I did every day."

  She smiled again.

  "I was a total newbie, fresh out of nursing school, and I was always coming up with ways to engage the patients. Most of the ones on the chronic care wing were in worse shape than Caitlyn, totally non-functioning. Over time, I watched them wither and die. Organ shutdown."

  Bailey began trying to steel herself for the rest of the story.

  "So … I was an elf at Christmas, came in all dressed up with big green elf ears and curled-toe shoes, bearing presents in a big sack. The first Christmas she was here, I got her this little soft — you remember Lamb Chop, the hand puppet that Sherri somebody used to use on some show I don't remember?"

  "I know the one you mean."

  "Well, I got Caitlyn a Lamb Chop and stuck it in bed beside her. She never touched it. I dressed up as the Easter Bunny at Easter, had this costume with white ears and a fluffy tail, and I'd go around the ward hiding Easter eggs and then help the ones who were able find them. I dressed up for every holiday."

  She paused.

  "Caitlyn was brought in the first of November in 1997. She'd been here almost a year on Halloween, 1998. I did what I always did. I dressed up in a costume. I was a witch, painted my face green, black dress and broom, I had a witch's hat with a hairy black spider dangling down from the brim of it and I had a sack of candy I handed out."

  "So I did my Halloween schtick, handed out the goodies. And then later that shift, I came in to read to Caitlyn, like I did every day. I stood by her bed with a book. I still remember it was Where the Wild Things Are. And I read dramatically, making voices, kind of stomping around for the monsters, stuff like that." The nurse stopped. "When I finished, I tucked the book under my arm, looked at Caitlyn and …"

  Suddenly, the nurse's eyes filled with tears and a single fat one slid down her cheek, leaving a shiny trail behind that glistened in the overhead florescent light.

  "I mean, I didn't intend to get so attached. I hadn't even realized how attached I was until that moment. I definitely went to school on that little girl, took a cram course in professional distance, caring but not … caring, if you know what I mean. I never realized how hard it would hit me when …"

  And in that moment, Bailey knew. Caitlyn Whitfield had died. Of course, Bailey'd known all along what'd happened to the little girl, had been surprised they'd been able to track her so far, that her little heart had kept beating all those years while she lived inside herself, deep in the dark there with all the breaker switches thrown.

  The two spoke softly at the same time.

  "She died," Bailey said.

  "She woke up," the nurse said.

  There was a heartbeat pause.

  "What did you say?" Bailey must have misunderstood.

  "Caitlyn's eyes were moving. I just stared, dumfounded. Her eyes were focused, looking up at me. I moved and her eyes followed me, moved with me. She didn't look me in the eye, or anything like that, but she was aware, she followed my movements."

  "You mean, she woke up? She saw you?"

  "Yes! I got down close to her face — and she still wasn't looking me in the eye, but she was looking — seeing, or at least I thought she was. Looking at my hat, and the spider, watching it sway when I moved. My hooked nose with the wart on it. My green face. Taking it all in.

  "I grabbed the call button and summoned the charge nurse. And pretty soon the whole shift was by her bed. She watched me, her eyes followed me, ignored the others. They called the doctor and when he finally came in, we all backed away. He examined her, used a pin light, and her eyes followed the light."

  She reached up and wiped away the tear that'd slid down her cheek.

  "That little girl came back!"

  Bailey didn't know what to say. She was dumfounded.

  "So what … happened to her?"

  "She grew more and more aware. It was slow going, but she responded to sounds, to words. Eventually, she looked me in the eye, looked everyone in the eye. About a month later, the doctor asked her if she wanted ice cream and she nodded her head yes. After that, she spoke, a word or two. It was a gradual process, but it was an amazing thing to watch that little girl come back to life."

  "What … what happened to her? Did she know who she was, what had happened to her?"

  "She had no memory of anything for a long time, but eventually she got to the point that she could remember her parents, things she'd done with them, finally down to the wreck. She remembered it was the end of summer and they were going camping. The memories ended right there. The next thing she knew, she woke up here. She had no memory of anything that happened in between and Dr. Nisole said he was sure she never would. That kind of specific amnesia is not uncommon for trauma patients. Her memories had just been wiped away because her mind couldn't deal with them."

  Bailey was still reeling, trying to take in the reality that the little girl whose portrait sat on an easel in her studio had survived.

  "Before long, she was laughing, really enjoying the books I read to her."

  "What … what was she like?"

  "She was precious! Sweet, loving. She found something nice to say to everybody, couldn't do enough for you. I really missed her when they transferred her to the rehab facility."

  "What rehab facility?"

  "Frazier Rehab in Charleston. I went there to visit her once, but she wasn't there long. She didn't have any family that they could find."

  Well, she had a great aunt, Bailey thought, but it was a good thing they didn't put the child in her care.

  "So the Department of Human Resources checked her out of the rehab facility sometime in early 2000 and put her in a foster home."

  A foster home.

  The words banged around inside Bailey's head, colliding with the walls of her mind, making awful thudding sounds as she rode down in the elevator to the first floor. Foster care. She knew what that meant — could mean. Not always, not every time. Still, a small child at the mercy of adults who … Bailey shook the thoughts away as the elevator doors opened and T.J. and Dobbs looked at her expectantly. And she let it go. After all, she had an amazing story to tell. They listened, sp
ellbound.

  "That little girl got well," Dobbs said, shaking his head in wonder. "She grew up."

  "I hope so," Bailey said. "Which means she's out there somewhere, alive, living her life. And if we find her—"

  "When we find her," Dobbs corrected her. He pulled his phone out of his pocket and called the investigator, told him the story as they left the building, sent him digging for the foster home where Caitlyn had been placed.

  "Pro'lly won't take him long to find it," T.J. said as they walked out across the parking lot, "if he lets his fingers do the walking."

  Dobbs feigned innocence. "Not all hackers use axes," he said.

  Bailey stopped in her tracks and the others continued on a couple of steps before they noticed and turned back to her quizzically.

  A new, horrible thought had struck her.

  "Caitlyn was, what, almost nine years old when she left this hospital. Still just a little girl."

  "Uh huh. Where you goin' with this?" T.J. asked.

  "What if … what if she's not alive, not 'living the good life' out there somewhere?" She paused and gathered herself. "I am not connected to her the way I was to Macy Cosgrove. Macy was alive and I would get piped in and out of her life — remember?"

  "You talkin’ about when you seen out her eyes?"

  "No, not when I touched something she'd touched and BOOM, I could see what she was looking at, or would be looking at — that what-hasn't-happened-yet thing. I'm talking about waking up to the smell of bacon frying, or hearing a song on the radio, only the radio was turned off."

  "Like my Mama done when she'd get that look on her face like she was hearing somethin' I wasn't. But that ain't happenin' with Caitlyn."

  "I've said it all along, I'm on the phone, but nobody's on the other end of the line."

  Bailey took in a breath and let it out slowly.

  "Caitlyn Whitfield does not exist — she couldn't be alive or I'd be connected to her. And if she's dead …" The thought formed in her head whole, hot and stinking and oh-so-very plausible. "Maybe Caitlyn isn't connected to Riley Campbell at all. Maybe Caitlyn is linked to whoever took Riley. Maybe Caitlyn Whitfield's connection to Riley Campbell is that the same person kidnapped them both."

  Saying the words out loud, voicing the thought as she thought it, knocked the breath out of her. Hearing it knocked the breath out of the other two.

  All three fell silent.

  "And if the kidnapper killed Caitlyn …?" Dobbs didn't have to finish his thought. Bailey did it for him.

  "He's going to kill Riley, too."

  "It's likely he already has." T.J. held up his hand before Bailey could protest. "It's an awful thought, I know, but reality's reality. After twenty-four hours …"

  She could see him watching her face, knew he was trying to find a way to say what he knew to be truth in the least painful way possible. But there was no "least painful way."

  "Bailey, girl, a kidnapper don't kidnap a second child 'less he's finished with the first one."

  She felt like he had slapped her.

  "And him takin' that little girl so soon after he took Riley tells me he's gonna keep snatchin' kids until somebody stops him."

  "A serial kidnapper?" Dobbs asked.

  "No … a serial killer."

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Brice had gone home shortly before dawn on Saturday morning, slept fitfully for a couple of hours, then showered, changed and arrived at the station about the same time Bailey, Dobbs and T.J. arrived in Huntington.

  He found Nakamura conferring with one of the agents who'd been checking out traffic cameras in the intersections around the park where the second child had disappeared. He'd crosschecked the cars that passed by the ATM with the huge list of car license plates, makes and models of those that'd been parked at the school the day Riley was taken. They'd come up with more than eighty-one possible matches … and that only mattered if the car that picked up Christi hadn't turned off at any one of three side streets before it got to the bank.

  Nakamura looked up questioningly when he approached. Brice was certain Nakamura'd only caught a couple of hours of sleep here and there since he'd arrived from Pittsburgh Wednesday afternoon, but his face showed none of the fatigue he surely felt. It had to be that since his emotionless countenance never wavered it didn't show wear and tear like other people's did.

  "Got something?" he asked.

  "Maybe. Long shot."

  "I don't have any short ones. What is it?"

  "Riley's little sister, Holly, knows something."

  "What is she, five? You talked to her? What'd she say?"

  "It's not what she said, it's what she wouldn't say. She's hiding something, a secret she and Riley had that they didn't tell their parents. Might have nothing at all to do with the boy's disappearance, but I want to talk to her again — with more time and her parents not around."

  "I can arrange that."

  At the Campbell house, Nakamura gathered the parents to go over, yet again, their understanding of the events surrounding the adoption of Riley seven years ago.

  "If you don't mind, Sheriff McGreggor would like to wander around Riley's room, see if we missed something."

  "What could there possibly be in Riley's room that would tell you who took him?" Mrs. Campbell had become querulous.

  "That's not your concern, Mrs. Campbell. You need to concentrate on telling me about your son's secret adoption." Nakamura's voice was as cold as a nuclear winter.

  That shut them up and Brice climbed the winding staircase to the second floor where the little boy's bedroom was the first one on the left. It was as little boy as money could buy. A fireman motif. Pictures of firehouses and fire hydrants and fire hats on the wall. The bed was actually a fire truck, with a light on the top of the headboard that — he assumed — flashed red and blue when you flipped a switch. It was a bed — surely it didn't have a siren!

  There was a huge stuffed Dalmatian, probably as big as the child himself, at the foot of the fire truck bed, and a wallpaper chair rail showing ladder trucks and pumper trucks putting out blazes.

  Brice intended to casually wander into Holly's room — he'd heard her in there singing an off-key nursery rhyme song when he climbed the stairs — but she saved him the trouble by coming into Riley's room behind him, holding a baby doll in her arms, gently cradling it.

  The only place to sit was on the fire truck bed and Brice feared he'd crush it. Still, he was way too big to talk to such a small child standing, so he sat down on the floor, folded himself up and leaned against the wall, his legs crossed Indian style in front of him.

  "I saw your room when I came upstairs. You're a little princess."

  She smiled, but not a bubbly smile. "Riley doesn't want to be a fireman when he grows up. Mama saw the fire truck bed and bought it for him and didn't ask if he liked it."

  "Did she ask if you liked the fairy princess bed?"

  She nodded. "I want to be a princess with a magic wand and make apples into puppies."

  He laughed at that.

  "Riley wants to be a pirate when he grows up."

  Brice saw his opening and dived at it.

  "Pirates bury treasure and don't tell anybody where. It's a secret. Does Riley have secrets he doesn't tell anybody?"

  "Uh huh."

  "What about?"

  "Like a pirate, but the treasure's not buried."

  Brice's heart kicked into a gallop.

  "He has a treasure?"

  "It's a secret."

  "You can tell me."

  "No, Riley made me pinky swear I wouldn't tell."

  "But pinky swears don't count for policemen." Brice pointed to the badge on his shirt.

  "They don't?"

  "Nope. There's a special kind of policeman promise. You put your hand on the badge." He took her little hand and put it on his badge. "And you promise on the badge. That counts for policemen."

  "Riley doesn't have a badge."

  "So you didn't promise not
to tell on a badge?"

  She shook her head.

  "Well, then it doesn't count for me because I'm a policeman. You can tell me and it's not breaking your pinky-swear promise."

  The logic was convoluted, but she was, after all, only five years old.

  "Oh."

  "So Riley has a buried treasure?"

  "Not buried."

  "Okay, just a treasure. Where did he keep it?"

  "In Biscuit."

  "Biscuit?"

  She reached out to the gigantic stuffed Dalmatian.

  "It's in there."

  "Can you show me?"

  He helped the little girl turn the dog over. On the bottom, there was a small place where the seam had come undone.

  "My hand's too big. Would you reach in there and get it for me?"

  Holly stuck her hand into the stuffing of the dog, buried her arm almost up to her shoulder, then pulled out a small pouch. On the outside were the words SCRABBLE, so it evidently had once held the letters for a game.

  He slipped the bag into an evidence envelope, careful not to touch it. As he got to his feet, he asked Holly to go play in her own room for a little while. Then he went back downstairs.

  "You're going to want to get the forensics team on Riley's room," he told Nakamura, holding up the envelope. "This was Riley's hidden treasure."

  Ignoring the parents' questions, Nakamura sent Gascoyne up to Riley's room to secure it until forensics could go over it.

  Then Brice carried the evidence envelope to the Campbells' kitchen table.

  "I'm going to empty this here so maybe you can help me determine where he got whatever's in here," Nakamura said. "But don't touch anything. Is that clear?"

  The boy's shocked parents nodded.

  Nakamura spread out a clean dish towel on the table, then took the envelope from Brice and dumped out the SCRABBLE pouch. Pulling open the drawstrings on the pouch, he poured out the contents.

  Lying on the towel was a Boy Scout knife, new, looked like it had never been used. A pin, the kind that stuck through fabric into a separate catch on the back. It was round, the size of a quarter, gold-colored. Emblazoned on it was a music note and on top of the note was a cross. There were three action figure dolls — Batman, Superman and Spiderman. Three silver dollars. A shark tooth on a leather thong. The final item was a globe with the skyline of Chicago inside, that you shook up so it would snow.