by Ninie Hammon
"Where on earth did Riley …?" Mrs. Campbell began but didn't finish.
"Did you give the boy any of these items?" Nakamura asked.
"No," both parents said in unison.
"Do you know where he got them?"
"I have no idea. I didn't even know …" She turned. "I'll ask Holly—"
Brice stopped her before she had a chance to call her daughter and told both the parents, "I need for both of you to step outside while I talk to Holly."
"Why would we do that?" her mother said, frightened. "She's only five years old. You can't—"
"She promised Riley, a pinky-swear promise, that she wouldn't tell anybody about this 'treasure.' I have her convinced pinky swears don't count for police officers, but she won't talk if anyone else is around. Just for a few minutes."
The parents left grudgingly and Brice went upstairs and brought Holly down from her room. She saw Riley's treasure on the table and cried, "You told!"
Nakamura reached into his pocket and pulled out his FBI badge.
"I'm a police officer, too," he said. "See. You didn't break your promise telling me."
She seemed only half-convinced.
"I need to ask you about these things, Holly. Do you know where Riley got them?" Nakamura continued.
She shook her head.
"He didn't tell you who gave them to him?"
She shook her head. "He said it was a secret." She put her finger to her lips and made a "shhhhh" sound.
"If it was a secret, why did he tell you?"
"He didn't. I found him putting the sack in Biscuit and he made me promise I wouldn't tell anybody about it."
"You never asked him where he got these things?"
She shook her head.
"Weren't you curious?"
She nodded.
"I know about that one," she said, and pointed to the pin with the music note and the cross. "That's the last one he got. It's from church, for singing."
"When did he get it?"
"The day before he … left."
Chapter Twenty-Five
T.J., Bailey and Dobbs stopped at an IHOP on their way out of Huntington.
Nobody had much appetite, though. Bailey pushed chunks of a make-your-own omelette around on her plate. Even Dobbs didn't gobble down his sticky pile of strawberry-banana pancakes. T.J. ate, of course. If they's food in front of you and it's edible, you eat it. He'd learned that lesson as a child growing up in a home where wasn't nothing predictable, including where the next meal might be coming from. You got yours, or you went hungry. It was a lesson served him well later in life, in the military, eating food you didn't know the name of and it was a good thing you didn't.
Dobbs's phone rang as they waited for the cashier to ring up their bill. He handed the woman behind the counter a credit card that was likely of the "no limit" variety as he spoke to the caller, the look on his face downshifting from surprise through wonderment to something T.J. would have translated: I don't want to know how he did that. He ended the call and smiled so broad his eyes almost disappeared above his round cheeks.
"He found them," Dobbs said. "Caitlyn's foster parents. Wendell and Juanita Bartley. They're right here in Huntington, in the Hollyhock Apartments on Stone Branch Road."
The three of them stood stock still for something like a single beat, unspoken agreement passing among them. Then they went out to Dobbs's Jeep in the parking lot as Bailey entered Hollyhock Apartments into the maps app on her phone.
The neighborhood was "in decline," might have been nice once but now it was worn out, houses and people. The grass between the buildings needed mowing, and was full of dandelions and sticker weeds. There was trails worn down to dirt through the yards where people had cut across to a doorway from the sidewalk so many times the grass was completely gone.
There were four buildings, all a rusty red brick, with the look of prison dormitories. The buildings' doors faced out, like a motel where all the doorways faced the cars parked out front. But the steps up to the second-floor apartments were reached from the inside courtyard, where each of the apartments had a separate mini-deck. The decks were jammed with barbecue grills and children's riding toys. There was a bicycle parked in the stairwell of cracked concrete steps and the common area in the courtyard had no grass at all, just dirt.
They decided to let Dobbs do the talking, since he could sound like the Senior Senator from Somewhere when he wanted to. Bailey and T.J. would stand back a ways, so as not to intimidate, 'cause three people showin' up at your door was not likely to induce cooperation unless it was finessed just right. Dobbs was a master at it.
He knocked confidently — but not belligerently. A woman came to the door before he had a chance to knock again. She was skinny and pale, no, more sallow than pale with a yellow cast to her skin. She was wearing one of those close-fitting hats that always reminded T.J. of the top part of the ski masks so favored by bank robbers. It was clear there was no hair beneath the hat, that hiding the bald head was the purpose of it.
"Excuse me, but are you Juanita Bartley?" Dobbs asked.
"I am. What can I do for you?"
Dobbs launched into his spiel.
"We're trying to locate a child that records indicate was in your care in 2000."
"We had a lotta foster kids over the years, don't rightly remember all of them."
"This was a little girl who'd have come here from the Frazier Rehab Center in Charleston. Her name was Caitlyn Whitfield. Do you remember her?"
The woman looked momentarily shocked, then smiled.
"Remember Caitlyn?" she said wistfully. "No way we coulda forgot about Caitlyn."
"What can you tell us about her?"
"What do you want to know?"
Bailey blurted out, "Everything!" Then she softened it with a "please" that woulda broke your heart.
"Well, then you best come in and have a seat, 'cause there's a lot to tell."
They filed into the small, dim living room that smelled unpleasantly of disinfectant and illness. There were pictures of sailing ships on the walls, all different kinds. One of the lamps had a shade decorated with dolphins, but there was only one bulb burning and it made the dolphins look faded out, tired. Like the room. And the people. And the neighborhood.
The woman went to the hallway and called out, "Wendell, come on in here. There's folks here wants to talk about Caitlyn."
She looked momentarily flustered, as if suddenly remembering her manners, and offered to get them coffee, ice tea or a soft drink. She seemed relieved when Dobbs said they'd just left IHOP, but insisted they all have a seat.
A wizened man with a shock of thick hair the color of a gun barrel wheeled slowly into the room in a wheelchair. Dobbs introduced the others and repeated for Mr. Bartley their request to hear "everything you can tell us" about Caitlyn Whitfield. They had a reasonable story cooked up for why they wanted to know, but the Bartleys never even asked.
"We took care of … shoot, more'n two hundred children, I guess, in the twenty-three years we worked for the Department of Child Protective Services." Wendell's speech was slow, not slurred. You could see him concentrate to form the words. "Then I got MS and we couldn't do it no more."
"We got into it with such starry-eyed enthusiasm," Juanita said, her smile full of broken dreams and unfulfilled expectations. "We couldn't have any children of our own, so we thought about adoption. But then we thought about all the children there were out there who needed love and a family just for a time."
"We wanted to save 'em all." He gave his wife a sad look. "Not sure we ever saved any of 'em."
"That Caitlyn, though, she was something special."
The man nodded, but said nothing.
"She had been catatonic, in an awful wreck and didn't wake up for more than a year so all her muscles had atrophied. She done exercises and such at the rehab. And they done a bunch of dental work on her, too. Caps in the front. Her teeth — you don't use 'em — they were a mess."
"
When we got her, she was still weak," Wendell said. "She could do for herself, but she wore out easy."
"And she was skinny, of course, needed to get some meat on her bones, but I plumped her right up."
The woman smiled.
"You got to understand, the kids we took in had had rough lives and for lots of them we weren't their first placement. Or even the second or third. They'd been taken out of their homes because of some situation that was not healthy. Domestic violence. Drug abuse. Alcoholism. Or they was just neglected."
"Lot of them got here with a chip on their shoulders the size of Mount Rushmore," Wendell said.
"You could take the hostility. Understand it. Even expect it. But it wore on you. Kids always acting out, always fighting, bickering, being selfish and belligerent. We got that, but still … it grated on you."
"Not Caitlyn, though."
The two exchanged a smile and then Juanita said, "Caitlyn was an angel."
In a wistful tone tinged with a sadness T.J. couldn't miss, the woman described Caitlyn — "beautiful, with white-blonde hair, wispy-like and blue eyes clear as a summer sky." A child who "wasn't mad at the world like the rest of them was."
"She wasn't unhappy, or feeling abused and neglected," Wendell said. "That little girl was grateful to be alive and … I swear, she reminded me of those old—"
Juanita took up the story from him, "—Shirley Temple movies. They was all about a sugary-sweet little girl who changes everybody. You don't think a thing like that can happen—"
"But it can."
"The mean kids, the angry ones, older girls and boys. Didn't matter who you was, you just couldn't be mean and angry at Caitlyn. All she did was smile and laugh and ask could she help you or she'd do something nice for you and not even tell you. The other kids changed soon as she got here. The boys was still boys, of course, acting out with each other, but after Caitlyn moved in, they left her and the other girls alone, never so much as teased them. All the kids loved her and she was strictly hands-off. You didn't mess with Caitlyn or you'd have to answer to every other kid in the house."
"She was here for almost nine years and that was the best years of our foster care." Wendell appeared to be tiring from the effort to speak. T.J. watched Juanita step in to carry the story forward.
"As she got older, she was like a mama to the little kids, got up in the middle of the night when one had a nightmare, cleaned up vomit without complaint when they were sick." Juanita held up her hands as if she could hear the comments coming. "Oh, we got it, we understood she was too perfect, that it wasn't healthy her being like that. We figured musta been somethin' happened to her that she was reacting to and we told the social workers, said she needed counseling."
She drew a breath and Wendell put in, his voice thin and trembly.
"They was too busy with the bad ones, told us to be grateful she wasn't no trouble."
"Her caseworker was a good woman." Juanita was defensive. "She tried. She was just covered up with kids is all. She did say, though, that the psychologists who had worked with Caitlyn when she was in the rehab facility said it was like she had reinvented herself when she woke up from that coma or catatonic state or whatever it was. She had no memory, or said she didn't and I never saw any indication that she did, of what had happened to her before. No memory of the accident where her parents were killed. Nothing. It was like she began life at nine years old and I figure she just musta decided she was gonna have a happy life." She turned to her husband. "I never seen that child angry. Did you, Wendell?"
The old man shook his head.
"I never saw her cry, neither," Juanita said. "She was smart, got good grades in school. We did all we knew to do about the too-perfect part. Gave her permission to be real. But after all those years, we just decided …"
"We decided she was just what she appeared to be — the perfect little girl.”
Chapter Twenty-Six
Before Nakamura picked up the items off the kitchen table with gloved fingers and placed them back into the pouch, he took a picture of each with his phone, a close-up front and back. Then he gave Gascoyne the bag to hold for the forensics team.
"I'm betting we'll get prints," Gascoyne said.
"They'll help us nail him, but I doubt they'll do any good finding him," Nakamura said. "This feels home grown."
Brice agreed. He'd be surprised if they found a match for whatever prints were on the items in the Scrabble pouch. He didn't believe the kidnapper was in the system.
"No more chasing down strangers," Nakamura said as they stepped out onto the Campbells’ porch. "This little treasure chest — that's the work of a pedophile, giving gifts to the child in exchange for silence. A pedophile who had close access to the boy."
"Lots of candidates — neighbors, teachers, older friends, relatives …"
"We know where that pin came from. The little girl said it was for singing at church. Let's start with the director of the choir at Covenant Community Church."
They got into the car and Brice pulled away from the curb.
"Sexual predator kidnappers tend to stick with one sex," Nakamura continued, musing.
"Could be it's someone who works at the church — the choir director, most likely — and his connection to Christi Strickland was to silence her. Maybe she heard or saw something going on between him and Riley. They would all have been together during the children's choir rehearsals."
"Might be."
The pastor of the church looked like Friar Tuck, round and affable. Even when he was being serious about the disappearance of a child, his eyes had an inextinguishable merry twinkle.
Oh, yes, he said, the pin pictured on Nakamura's phone was one of those the choir director, Dominic Ingerson, gave to the children who participated in the festival performances the choirs gave twice a year, spring and fall. There was a festival coming up, he said, and the choirs had been rehearsing a couple of times a week for it.
"But now, you know, with everything that's happened …" The pastor stopped. "Two children from our church family. Two. How …?" He let it go. "I'm seriously considering cancelling the festival performance altogether."
"Were Riley Campbell and Christi Strickland both in the choir?" Brice asked.
"Riley was, but I'm not sure about Christi. You'll have to ask Mr. Ingerson about that, and unfortunately he is not at work and won't be back for a week."
Nakamura shot Brice a look. "When did he leave?"
"Yesterday. He was terribly upset over what had happened to those children." The cheery man leaned close. "He is … how can I put this? A fragile soul and the strain of all this … Riley was bad enough, but when he heard about Christi, he just wasn't up to it."
"When was the last time you saw him?" Brice asked.
"He came into my office yesterday morning and said he'd be taking a leave of absence. I told him I didn't think now was a good time to be away from his office but there was no changing his mind. He has worked here seven years and never taken a leave, so he was due one. And it was clear he did need to get away."
Brice and the FBI agent took Ingerson's address from the pastor and pulled up in front of his house fifteen minutes later. It was on a tree-lined street that looked like the neighborhood where Wally and Beaver Cleaver grew up.
"This whole place is like a town off a Christmas card," said Nakamura. "Don't you have any slums?"
"Actually no. There are some modest homes in Shadow Rock, but mostly those are on the outskirts. The rich and famous who built this place made sure to keep the riff-raff at a safe distance."
Nakamura rang the bell, a pretty ding-dong chime, and the woman who opened the door was almost as tall as Brice, towering over the FBI agent. She was a scarecrow of a woman, with pipe-cleaner arms and a scrawny neck on which rested a big head with a weathered face that was severe — with lines moulded around her mouth by perpetual frowns, not smiles. Her hair was the color of a ten-penny nail, stylishly cut. She was wearing an apron — who wore aprons anymore?
— and was wiping her hands on it when she opened the door. She took note of Brice's uniform and he thought he could see doors slamming shut behind her eyes.
Nakamura did the talking. Holding out his FBI badge, he said, "My name is Haruto Nakamura, this is Kavanaugh County Sheriff Brice McGreggor. Are you Mrs. Ingerson?"
"Yes, what can I do for you?"
"We would like to talk to Dominic Ingerson, your son. Is he home?"
"No, he's not here."
"Can you tell us where we can find him?"
"You can't disturb him now. He took a leave of absence to rest to get his strength back. He doesn't need company."
"Ma'am, we're not company. We want to talk to him about the case of a missing child."
"Oh, absolutely not. Why do you think he went on the leave of absence?"
"Mrs. Ingerson, we need to know the whereabouts of your son. Now."
Brice continued a beat later, "If you refuse to tell us, I will charge you with hindering law enforcement."
At this point, they did not have probable cause to believe her son had committed a crime, and therefore her refusal to give up his whereabouts was not illegal, did not make her an "accessory" to anything. At least, not according to state or federal statutes. But local ordinances did apply here, and Brice had long ago pushed through the town council a rather all-inclusive ordinance that forbade any resident of the county to "hinder law enforcement." He'd never charged anyone with that particular misdemeanor and suspected the county attorney would decline to prosecute if he did. But it had often proved useful as a bluff.
Of course, Dominic Ingerson's mother didn't know any of that.
"Oh, don't be ridiculous. I'm not hindering anything. You have to leave Dominic alone."
The stern tone in Nakamura's voice was sharp enough to filet a fish.
"I won't say this again. Tell us where to find your son … or the sheriff will place you under arrest."