“Timothy,” said Anita quietly.
Ford ignored her and kept going. “No one knows where they live. The playground is a popular one, it’s in a dense residential area, a lot of apartment complexes, condominiums. People come and go. That’s what we know about them. Here’s what we know about you.”
Ford opened a folder and began reciting surprisingly accurate information about Anita’s past. He had all the details about the kidnapping in California and about Pam.
“So you know…I’m not some kind of insane child snatcher,” responded Anita.
Ford didn’t respond affirmatively. He sighed. “I’ve been on the phone with Mike Calcina of the Oakland detective unit. I have an understanding of where you’re coming from. However, I am not on board with where you are taking this.”
“There was no body,” said Anita, forcefully.
“This isn’t the first time you’ve done this.”
Anita looked at him, puzzled.
“Sears,” said Ford finally.
“Screw Sears!” snapped Anita. “That was different. That was nothing.”
“Many times, you’ve reported sightings of your son to the Oakland Police, and caused false alarm. It reached the point where they no longer followed up on your reports.”
She was shocked by this. Was it true?
“Those times were different,” she said. “It was right after Tim disappeared, I wasn’t thinking straight.”
“The case has been closed for more than two years,” said Ford. “There is a very strong set of circumstances to support that your son is deceased.”
He said deceased simply, without emotion, like a line on a police report.
“But they never found a body,” said Anita. How many times did she have to repeat that?
“In drownings off the coast in that region, they don’t find the body a high percentage of the time. It’s just not possible. The current’s too strong, you have cliffs instead of beaches. I know that makes it difficult, but…”
“So you don’t believe me?” Anita asked Ford, point-blank.
“The Oakland Police Department closed the case, and I don’t have any evidence to support re-opening it.”
Anita looked down at the floor. She was too exhausted to become enraged. Tim was alive, that was a fact, and they could all go to hell.
“So…” said Anita, slowly, looking back up at him. She looked him squarely in the face. Into his weary eyes. “What you’re saying is that you refuse to help me.”
Ford sighed. “Not entirely. I can do two things. Technically, if someone is kidnapped and taken across state lines, it’s a case for the FBI. I will contact the field office and see if they want to become involved. There’s no guarantee.”
Anita nodded. “OK. Thanks.”
“Second, I will take the description of the boy and the woman, and I will talk to our beat officers in that area,” he said. “This is off the books. But I will ask my men to keep an eye out. We’re not going to give it priority over the rest of our work. But we’ll see what we can do to at least ID these people.”
“I have a photo,” said Anita. She reached into her purse and pulled out the snapshot of Tim. “Of course, he’s older now, but you can make copies for the officers.”
Ford stared at it for a moment, and then called over a woman named Lucy to make fifteen copies.
Anita felt better. Some help was better than no help. Sooner or later, something had to turn up.
“I’m going to keep looking, too,” she said. “Can I have your direct number, so I can reach you if I find anything?”
Ford sighed. He opened a drawer in his desk and handed her a card. “Here’s my direct number. But be responsible with it.”
What am I, twelve years old? thought Anita.
“I know that you suffered a great loss,” said Ford in a low tone. “I realize that they never recovered your boy’s body, so you want to keep this hope alive, but…don’t let your emotions overcome you. Stay level-headed and realistic.”
Anita resented the condescending tone. All she could say in response was, “That boy was my son.”
Lucy returned with the photo. Anita took it back and placed it in her purse.
Ford stood up. “Let me walk you out.” Anita rose from the chair slowly, painfully, feeling soreness in her ribs. Her eyes again roamed the large assortment of photographs on the wall behind Ford.
He noticed her looking at them.
“I do some photography on the side,” he said, offering his first smile. “Buildings and bridges, mostly for fun.”
“They’re really good,” said Anita.
“Thanks,” he said, almost in a tone of surprise.
On her way to exit the building, Anita noticed a bulletin board loaded with various wanted criminal posters…and then noticed missing children bulletins in the mix. She stopped.
“Lieutenant Ford,” she said, stopping him. “Wait a second. We need a poster.”
Ford struggled with a response. It was obvious that the answer was no, but at the same time he was softening since they had first met.
“Since your case is technically closed, we can’t do one,” he told her. “But…there’s nothing stopping you.” He took a pen out of his breast pocket. “Take out the card I gave you.”
She handed it over. He wrote a name and phone number on the back.
“We have a woman, Donna Petersen,” he said. “She’s freelance. She does a lot of the missing kids stuff. She has this software where she can take a photo and give it what we call ‘age progression.’ She works out of her apartment, does web consulting. She’s not too far from here.” He handed the card to her.
“Thanks,” said Anita, adding, “You know what…you actually have been a help to me.”
Ford sighed, shrugged. “It happens.”
When Anita returned to her hotel room, she had a very important phone call to make. She had to call Dennis.
She was frightened that he would not be receptive, having been burned so many times before by false sightings and wild goose chases. She was uncomfortable that she had barely talked to him since the divorce. But now their world had changed again, and she needed him bad.
She tried the only number she had for him, a number in Los Angeles. It was old and, she quickly discovered, disconnected.
“Damn!” She slammed down the receiver.
What now? She thought hard and came up with a blue-haired solution: Myrtle Sherwood. Dennis’s mother would have the new number. Myrtle lived in Kansas City. Anita called information and quickly became connected with one of her least favorite people in the world.
It had always been a chilly relationship, and the divorce had only made it worse. Myrtle resented Anita for everything: the crazy nanny, the crumbled marriage. And when Anita asked for Dennis’s phone number, the response was not accommodating.
“My son does not want to talk to you,” she stated flatly.
“It’s very important,” stressed Anita.
“Why should I give you his number, after everything you’ve put him through? You left him when he needed you most.”
Anita let the old woman vent and kept her temper in check. She wanted to shout: Put aside your prejudices for one damn minute!
Instead, Anita said gently, “I know we had problems. But this is very urgent. He needs to talk with me.”
“He doesn’t want to talk to you.”
“You don’t know that.”
“Oh yes I do, honey.”
“Please…let him decide for himself. If I give you my number, will you at least tell him I called?”
“You can give me your number, but he’s not going to call.”
“OK, good, here’s the number—”
“Wait, wait, wait,” groused Myrtle. “Let me get a dag-blasted pencil.”
The old woman dropped the receiver with a loud, dramatic thud. Anita could hear the Wheel of Fortune spinning in the background.
When Myrtle returned, she said, “Yessss?”<
br />
Anita gave her the number, speaking very slowly, but Myrtle still griped that she couldn’t keep up.
Finally, Anita made Myrtle read the number back. She did and added, “He’s not going to want to talk with you.”
Anita could take no more. She exclaimed, “Tell him I found Tim and he’s alive.” She hung up.
After the upsetting call with Dennis’s mother, Anita needed the reassurance of her own parents. They would provide sympathy and encouragement. Most importantly, they would wholeheartedly believe her, and she needed that to strengthen her for the search.
But she got the answering machine. And then she recalled a recent phone call with her dad, and he had said something about an Alaskan cruise. Was it this week? Oh shit, it probably was.
Anita started to pace the small hotel room. Who could help? She couldn’t do this alone and she certainly couldn’t depend on the police. True, they were going to keep an eye out. But Ford had said it would be low priority.
There was no one in Sacramento to call. Coworkers, yes. Friends, yes. Close friends who would drop everything and fly out to indulge in this insanity with her, no.
Maggie was a possibility. But Anita hadn’t spoken to Maggie in more than a year and couldn’t imagine her leaving Digital Learnings at a moment’s notice. Not when the evidence was so intangible. No one would really believe her and that was the problem. No one knows the truth that I have seen.
Why would anyone climb aboard this crazy train unless, like her and Dennis, they had a personal and emotional attachment to the tragedy?
Anita was staring out the window at the traffic below, brain working overtime, when the sight of a 7-Up truck brought a name to the forefront of her thoughts:
Roy.
Roy had a vested interest in the outcome of this search. His sister was a despised, notorious child murderer. If Tim was discovered alive, Pam’s name would be cleared. The whole Beckert family would be relieved of a horrible burden that would stigmatize generations.
“Roy Beckert, B-E-C-K-E-R-T in Oakland,” she told the woman on the information line for the Bay Area. A moment later, she had the number. It was late afternoon, his shift should be over…
Roy answered with a gruff “Hello!”
“Roy, this is Anita Sherwood.”
Silence on the other end.
“I know it’s strange that I’m calling you,” she continued. “But I have something very important to tell you.”
Roy said, pensively, “Yeah?”
“I don’t think your sister killed Tim.”
A long pause. “What do you mean?”
“Tim is alive. I’m in Chicago. I came here on business. I saw him on a bus. I followed the bus to a neighborhood called Lakeview, and then, today, I saw him at a playground with a strange, tall woman who took him away. They got away from me, the police thought I was a kidnapper. I have to find them, and I need your help.”
She knew that her story sounded off the wall. There was another long pause from Roy. In a very skeptical voice, he asked, “Are you sure about this?”
“I am totally positive!” she said, flattening his cynicism with the most definitive, confident tone she had in her.
“What’s your proof?”
“My eyes. I saw him. I know him. A mother doesn’t forget. A mother knows her son. It’s only been two years. Wouldn’t a mother recognize her son after two years?”
“This sounds a little crazy, if you want to know the truth.”
“Together, we can search the neighborhood. We’ll find him. I’ll pay for your plane ticket and hotel room.”
“Yeah?”
“You get to come to Chicago,” she offered, which was lame, but whatever works…
“I don’t know.”
“Think about it, Roy. This is big.”
“Who else you got out there helping?”
“No one.”
“No one? What about your husband?”
“Not yet. We’re divorced. I have to… He’s not available at the moment.”
“You guys got divorced?” said Roy, finding this interesting.
“Roy, listen to me. You can be a hero. If you help find him, you will be on the front page of every newspaper in the country.”
Roy chewed on this. “Yeah, if we find him.”
“We will.”
“So he’s in Chicago?” Again, the skeptical edge, the audible smirk.
“Roy, we can clear your sister. We clear her, we clear your family’s name. I just need help, Roy.” Her tone had turned to begging, pleading. She felt like she was going to cry at any minute.
“OK,” said Roy suddenly.
“What?”
“OK, sure.”
“You’ll come out?”
“Yeah. I’ll come out. I’ll help.”
“Thank you. Oh God, thank you. How soon can you get out here?”
“I don’t know. When’s the next flight?”
Anita felt a huge relief after her phone call with Roy. Brains or not, he would be a big assistance. She wouldn’t be alone.
It was getting dark outside. She called room service and ordered a chicken sandwich and two beers.
Seconds after she hung up with room service, the phone rang.
Dennis!
He sounded aggravated. “I’ve been trying to get through for twenty minutes. What’s going on? My mother said you called and were acting crazy.”
“Dennis, thank God you called back,” said Anita. “Tim is alive.”
Dennis groaned, angry. “Oh Christ, Anita, we’re back to this again.”
“No-no-no, let me explain,” she said quickly. She told him the full story, slowly and measured, rational and detailed, from the sighting on Michigan Avenue to the encounter at Little People Playground to the meeting with the Chicago Police.
Dennis seemed at odds with how to respond. “You’ve done this to me before. I can’t take another one of your false alarms.”
“This is different,” she insisted. “I stared into his eyes. I grabbed him, Dennis. I was three inches from his face. This is nothing like those other sightings. I know that it’s him.”
“But how is it possible? Did you ever stop to think about that?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know any more than you do. I admit that it makes absolutely no sense. But this whole thing has been nuts from the beginning.”
“And the police are going to help?”
“Sure, but it’s off the books. To be honest, I think they’re just humoring me. I don’t think they believe me.”
“Anita, I swear, if you—” he started.
“I’m not crazy!” she countered. “Dennis, I need you here to help me. We can cover more ground.”
“You want me to just drop everything for you?”
“It’s not for me, it’s for Tim.”
“Anita, I’m in Orlando. I’m trying to rebuild a career. I can’t just take off on a whim to search the City of Chicago because you saw a little boy who looks like Tim.”
“What if I’m right, Dennis?” she asked. “Just stop and consider that for a moment. What if I’m right?”
Her words hung in the silence that followed.
Dennis finally relented. “I…can come out in a few days.”
“A few days?”
“I have a job, Anita. It’s delicate…”
“This is your son, Dennis!”
Dennis simply replied, “Yeah. Or somebody else’s.”
“It’s pretty sad that I can get Roy out here faster than I can get you.”
“Roy?”
“Roy Beckert. He’ll be here tomorrow. We’re going to start dividing up the neighborhood. We’ll have posters.”
“Roy Beckert? Have you lost your mind? Why would you get that creep involved?”
“I was desperate, Dennis.” She was shouting now. “I didn’t know if I would ever hear from you. I didn’t even know if your mother would give you the message. The police don’t take me seriously. I can’t do this
alone. I had to call someone. I need help.”
Dennis muttered, “I don’t trust that guy any more than his psycho sister.”
Anita reassured him, “I’ll be fine. Don’t worry about me.”
“Why don’t you just wait until I get there?”
“I’m not going to wait,” said Anita. Her voice wavered. “I have already waited…for two years…for Tim to come home.”
Dennis softened his tone. “OK. I hope you’re right, baby.”
“Me too.”
“Otherwise, you’re just reopening a big wound all over again. For both of us.”
“I understand,” said Anita. “It took me a long time to come to terms that Tim was gone. I would not be doing this unless I was absolutely certain.”
For a brief moment, the old Dennis started to reappear. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to get so mad,” he said. He quickly followed with “I have to go. But give me a few days. I’ll be there on Wednesday. And we’ll see where it takes us.”
XIII
Donna Petersen’s apartment overlooked the right field wall of Wrigley Field, high enough to get a partial glimpse of the games. Even though the evening’s contest was hours away, Anita could see a small gathering of street vendors and fans, dressed in Cub blue, scattered outside the park. She couldn’t help looking for Tim, rotating her attention between the activity on Sheffield Avenue and the eerie image on Donna’s iMac.
Donna was manipulating Tim’s face with a software program. She was pinching, stretching, and deepening Tim’s characteristics, starting from a scanned photo of Tim at two and altering him to create a boy of four. Anita provided guidance, based on the little boy she had seen at the playground.
Jonathan Ford was right, the woman could do magic. With a series of mouse strokes and clicks, she adjusted Tim’s cheekbones, eyebrows, nose, neck, and hair to create someone new yet familiar.
“You’re like a plastic surgeon,” she told Donna.
The brown-haired woman in her fifties just chuckled and responded, “Yeah. I wish I made the same kind of money.”
Illustrating the bony blonde who took Tim away was more challenging. There was no photograph to serve as a starting point. And Anita had not studied her appearance. The woman was seen in glimpses during the chaos and turmoil after the boy screamed.
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