The Wrong Girl (Jane Ryland)

by Hank Phillippi Ryan

  Iffy.

  Very, very iffy.

  And if any of these were the keys to Callaberry Street, and if they got thrown out because Jake had seized them illegally, he was screwed.

  “What’re these to, Mr. Ricker?” Jake held the key ring between two fingers as he took the few steps back from the kitchen. Ricker, still lounging against the front door, tapped his cigarette ash into a can of A&W root beer. The room was so quiet, as Jake waited for the answer, that he heard the hiss of the ember hitting the liquid.

  “No idea.” Ricker didn’t look up, swirled the can. “Never saw them before. That I can remember.”

  “Okay, no problem.” Interesting response. “You’re sure they’re not yours?”

  “Lawyer,” Ricker said. “Right now.”

  Hennessey looked up from his phone screen, put a hand on the black plastic baton hooked to his belt. “Jake? You need me to—?”

  “Mr. Ricker has a right to remain silent,” Jake said. Good cop. “However. We do not need his permission to try these keys in his front door.”

  Which might actually be true.

  “Jake?” DeLuca had taken the slipcovers off the couch cushions and held a limp piece of zippered corduroy. A rectangle of foam rubber lay at his feet. He cocked his head at the front door, cleared his throat. “Ya think…”

  He paused, not finishing the question.

  Jake could predict what DeLuca was thinking: Plain sight? Scope of the warrant? Inadmissible evidence? You sure about this?

  As answer, Jake held up the keys. He was sure. As sure as anyone would be, faced with an uncooperative suspect and potential evidence in a murder case, his only weapon the power of a search warrant.

  Which he hoped would cover his ass.

  “Let’s do this.” Jake started toward the door. “We don’t have all day.”

  *

  Jane locked her door, absolutely, and started down the stairs to the street and her car. She’d read Coda the riot act about escaping, asked Neena to call a locksmith, and in one computer search and two phone calls had found Bethany Sibbach, who’d agreed to talk with her in person. “Off the record,” naturally.

  Feeling the chill of the gray afternoon, she tucked the tails of her plaid muffler into her black parka and patted her pockets. Gloves, where was her other glove? Damn. Had she left it in the car?

  She paused on the front steps of her brownstone, looking up through the bare branches of the municipal maples that lined Corey Road. False alarm, the cops had insisted. Nicer to think so. Maybe. Still, was it better she was leaving?

  Her shoulders sagged briefly. Was she afraid? No. Yes. No. Of what? And if she were, what should she do? Call the police? They’d think she was the girl who cried wolf.

  Scanning the mid-century brick and brownstone buildings across the street, she wondered if the cop’s brother or whatever he was with the surveillance camera was still on the lookout. Was he watching her right now? She raised both arms, waving, then pointed to her car. Half-serious.

  “I’m leaving,” she mouthed the words.

  44

  Jake took the seventh key from the front door. “Not this one, either, Mr. Ricker.”

  “So the hell what?” Curtis Ricker’s contempt for the situation, for the cops, for Jake, apparently knew no bounds.

  Jake couldn’t care less. “You sure you can’t tell me what door these keys do open?”

  “I told you, I never saw them before.”

  “They’re in your kitchen drawer,” DeLuca said. “Sir. You don’t open your kitchen drawer?”

  “I never—that’s—you can’t just—”

  “Inventory.” Jake interrupted Ricker’s bluster, signaling Hennessey, who unclicked the snaps of a hard-sided leather briefcase and pulled out a glassine bag and a legal pad.

  “Yup.” Hennessey patted his pockets, found a pen. Clicked it open. “All set. Item one?”

  “Inventory item one, subsequent to the Ricker warrant, number thirteen dash nine-forty-four, at,” Jake looked at his watch, “approximately three twenty-six P.M. Tuesday. One set of keys, one Schlage, one Yale, five blanks. One key ring, metal, no identification.”

  “That’s the most idiotic—I’m gonna call—”

  Jake ignored Ricker, who, judging by his sudden rigid posture and deepening frown, seemed finally to realize this visit was not a game.

  “Officer DeLuca, you’ll stay here with Mr. Ricker. Officer Hennessey, you’ll come with me. Officer DeLuca will take over the inventory.”

  This was a tough one. Jake’d rather have D with him when he tested the keys, but he sure as hell wasn’t going to leave loose-cannon Hennessey here with the bad guy. They’d probably wind up in a contest to see which moron would convince the other to flee to Vegas. Hennessey would have to be his witness. Sad but necessary. “We’ll return in approximately thirty minutes.”

  “Where’re we—?” Hennessey couldn’t have looked more befuddled.

  How’d this guy make it, all these years?

  By the time Jake got back from Callaberry Street, six more butts crowded Ricker’s ashtray, and the suspect apparently hadn’t moved from his post at the front door. DeLuca was counting a lineup of amber plastic prescription containers he’d arranged on the coffee table. A cast-iron frying pan was bagged on the couch. So was what looked like a bowling trophy and a stack of ratty-edged papers. No cell phone.

  “Only took us two tries with the keys,” Jake announced. “One opened the door to 56 Callaberry Street, and another the front door of apartment C. Why’d you have Brianna Tillson’s keys, Mr. Ricker?”

  “Are you fricking—” Ricker took two steps backward, toward the now-closed front door. DeLuca was at his side before the second step ended.

  “You said you didn’t remember when you’d last seen her,” Jake said. “So why’d you have her keys?”

  “Hey, I never … ow! Shit.”

  He saw DeLuca unclick the cuffs, heard them ratchet over Ricker’s scrawny wrists. Hennessey breathed through his mouth, slack-jawed, as if he’d never seen an arrest. Had Ricker been the one who called the Callaberry Street 911? Soon the voice-forensics guys would find that out.

  Jake thought about Brianna Tillson’s ragdoll body, her spotless kitchen, the awkwardly wrong splay of her long legs, and those bare feet, somehow all the more heartbreaking. ME Kat McMahan had confirmed her cause of death as blunt trauma. No accident. Murder. Jake was a murder cop. Times like this were what made him happy. Happy as you could be when an innocent person got bludgeoned to death with a frying pan.

  What happened to set Ricker off like that? To murder that woman? With Phillip and Phoebe probably in the next room?

  Those two kids—maybe three, that was next on his list—had lost another mother. He couldn’t bring her back, no one could. But he’d made a promise to Brianna Tillson, as he did to all his victims. Right now, this minute, in this smoke-stained sorry excuse for an apartment, he got to keep that promise. Case closed.

  “Curtis Ricker? You’re under arrest for the murder of Brianna Tillson.”

  *

  Jane clicked her remote, trotted the last few steps to her car door. Yes, fine, she was looking around to see if anyone was … no. No one was watching her; no one was even in the street, or in a car, or pretending to be casually walking down the sidewalk. She couldn’t be spooked for the rest of her life.

  She slammed the car door, slipped her keys into the ignition. Bethany Sibbach lived on Hinshaw Street, about twenty minutes away. She opened the center console, got out her GPS. It would be so much easier if there were a GPS for everything in life. A magic gizmo that would give you exact directions, alternate routes. So you could never be lost.

  The Audi’s engine hummed to life. She needed to find Hec Underhill. But first, Bethany Sibbach. It would be so rewarding to power back into the newsroom with a big scoop. Then, no way they could lay her off.

  Jane glanced in her rearview. Nothing. No one. She was on the way to her story, and,
she promised herself, leaving her fear behind. She was not, not, going to allow her own possibly overdramatizing brain to scare her with shadows of terrors that did not exist.

  And there appeared the first good omen. She spotted it on the floor of the passenger side. Her missing glove.

  “Thank you, universe,” she said out loud. “About time.”

  Leaning across the center console, she stretched full out to reach, and patted her hand across the floor, blindly feeling for the glove. She scooped it up, then felt something … else? She stared, uncomprehendingly, at what items now lay in her hand. Her no-longer-missing black leather glove.

  And a red stretchy cat collar.

  *

  Where baby? If little Phillip Lussier was actually remembering, those two words were about to explode this whole case. If there was a baby, where was it? Jake had worked his share of juvenile crimes. Knew, bottom line, if a third child had been in the Callaberry Street apartment, only a few possibilities existed for where that baby was right now.

  Dead, for one. If so, there’d be another murder charge in Curtis Ricker’s rap sheet. And no jury would let the asshole off.

  Jake opened the door of his cruiser, slid into the seat, adjusted the rearview mirror. Getting dark already. His shift ended at five, but there were no shifts in a murder case.

  Thing was, there were other potential outcomes. The ones that also made his knuckles go white on the steering wheel and pushed his cop instincts into overdrive.

  What if the baby were alive? Kidnapped? Sold? By who? And why?

  Jake turned the key in the ignition, then paused, seeing his own frown in the rearview. “You watch too much TV,” he said aloud.

  He shifted into reverse, checked for street traffic as he backed out of Ricker’s patched asphalt driveway, and considered his to-do list. Ricker was in custody. Check. Kat McMahan still hadn’t filed her autopsy reports for Brannigan or Lillian Finch. Check.

  For now, only one question remained. The person with the answer might be playing with a Batmobile at Bethany Sibbach’s house.

  Where baby?

  *

  “Not exactly what I expected.” Jane smiled at Bethany. The DFS counselor said it was easier in person than on the phone, and invited Jane over. She’d set out a couple of ground rules: One, park in the back to let the snowplows clear the street. Two, that her wards, Phillip and Phoebe, were off limits. As was their history, their birth parents, and their murdered foster mother. Other than that, she’d be happy to discuss the state’s foster care system to help Jane do a “compassionate and comprehensive” story.

  Jane could handle ground rules. Ground rules always changed.

  And now Phillip Lussier showed no inclination to leave Jane’s lap. The little boy’s Spider-Man sneakers were leaving damp footprints on her Levis. Kids liked her, she was used to that, but this show of affection was surprising. Phillip had dropped his chocolate chip cookie on the floor the moment he saw Jane. When she sat down on the couch, he climbed onto her lap without invitation.

  Jane settled Phillip in, extricating one little foot from that tender place on top of her kneecap, seeing what looked like swipes of chocolate on his blue striped T-shirt and crumbs around his lips. Somehow Jane was his new best friend.

  “First time he’s smiled in—well, I can’t remember a smile.” Bethany tied the ends of her dangling cardigan into a loopy knot, then untied them. “Phoebe’s napping, for now. These kids have been through a lot. I cannot predict how much the situation will affect—well, what can I do for you, Jane?”

  Jane felt the tickle of Phillip’s curls. He’d wrapped one hand around the turtleneck of her sweater, yanking it away from her face.

  “Hey, sweetie,” she said. “Should we…” She looked at Bethany, baffled, hoping for direction. “Read a book or something?”

  “Book!” Phillip crowed. A smile wreathed his chocolaty face, and he bounced with excitement, a pudgy bobblehead. “Read book, Mama!”

  *

  “When will she be back?” Ella paced the length of her living room, clutching her cell phone to her ear as the receptionist at the Register made up a bunch of reasons why Jane Ryland wasn’t available. “Well, is there someone who would know? Yes, I’ll hold.”

  She paced the other way, seeing the color of the evening change as the streetlights popped on along her street. Someone had looped a string of valentine hearts on the building’s front door, reminding Ella that the second worst holiday in the world—after New Year’s Eve—was around the corner. She was nobody’s valentine. As a kid, had she gotten valentines? Maybe in school. But Aunt Marion, as she’d been told to call the woman, hadn’t been much for “Hallmark holidays.” Or any holidays except the “real” ones, Christmas and Easter. Mother’s Day they ignored.

  “Yes?” Ella heard the connection change, but it was only someone telling her to hold again. It really sounded like the Register’s people were making up excuses for why Jane wasn’t there. Or maybe today was simply a day off. But she had to talk to Jane. Had to.

  “Okay, fine, I’ll hold. She still works there, doesn’t she? Would there be a better time for me to call?”

  Did she want to leave a message? the receptionist asked.

  Did she? She’d already left one on Jane’s voice mail. Jane hadn’t called her back.

  Had she trusted the wrong person? She usually had good instincts about people. But reality—and relationships—weren’t reliable. Ella prided herself on how she could predict which matches were going to thrive, and which ones might better have been forgotten. Maybe because of all that’d just happened, she was losing it.

  “No, thanks,” she replied. “I’ll try later.”

  The receptionist was saying something more, but Ella hung up. Her kitchen table now held two stacks of pilfered folders. Tucker Cameron’s. And some new ones.

  Ella had come home early, as Collins Munson suggested. But she wasn’t about to abandon Ms. Finch’s office or all her personal stuff for that Grace to paw through. Not to mention the files.

  Once they got hold of them, Ella realized, every bit of evidence of—whatever it was—could be gone. It was up to her to protect the history. Protect the sanctity of the Brannigan families. That’s when she realized what had been nagging her, almost tormenting her, ever since she’d begun to believe Carlyn Parker Beerman had been sent the wrong girl.

  What if there were others?

  Before she could change her mind, Ella had snatched the files for the last five Calls Ms. Finch had made. With the snap of rubber bands and the flap of manila folders, she’d stuffed them in her backpack and whisked them out of the building, right past Collins Munson’s closed office door.

  Tonight, right after her chicken potpie and Diet Pepsi, she would make a few … what would she call them? Follow-up calls. Just to see how things were going with the five new families.

  After all, she was now the “acting” Lillian Finch. And she didn’t need some reporter to help the new Ella find out what—she smiled—the hell was going on.

  45

  “Book, Mama! Phillip get!” Phillip leaped from Jane’s lap and plowed himself into a pile of shiny picture books stacked on the floor by the end table. He grabbed a glossy turquoise-and-red cover and held it up, triumphant. “Dis one, Mama!”

  Jane recognized The Cat in the Hat.

  “Did he say…?” Jane looked at Bethany, wondering if she’d heard properly. “… Mama? Did he mean me? Or does he call everyone—oof.”

  Phillip clambered back onto her lap and plastered his spine against Jane’s chest, awkwardly propping the too-big book on his outstretched legs. His feet barely reached beyond Jane’s knees, and the plaid laces of one of his rubber-soled shoes had come untied.

  Bethany crossed her arms in front of her, watching the two of them on the couch. “I’m sorry, Jane. Yes, he did say ‘Mama.’ And no, I must tell you he’s never said that word, not in the three days he’s been with me. He has said—well, some other things. Bu
t I’m trying to assess what, if anything, he means. Possibly you look like his birth mother? Or wear her perfume? You don’t look like Brianna Tillson. We may never know.”

  “Hey, Phillip.” Jane cuddled him closer. Poor thing. “Sure, we can read this. Okay?” She looked up as the boy pawed through the pages. “Bethany? You were saying?”

  “Yes. Well. There is some discussion in the literature,” Bethany, drawing out her words, seemed to be remembering, “that children who are too young to properly imprint, or who have been removed from their biological mother and put into other arrangements for care at what might be a vulnerable time in their emotional development, might possibly fail to adapt, and subsequently create the belief system that whatever woman is presented as a caregiver is, therefore, ‘mother.’ That the word represents more of a role, you see, rather than terminology signifying a specific, singular person. We call it role conflation.”

  “Mama, read book. Mama! Read book!” Phillip made himself heavy in her lap. Wiggling his insistence.

  It was kind of adorable, really. Reassuring. That this tiny boy would see Jane as a mother. Oh, she’d felt the stirrings. Of course. Of the possibility that someday, with someone, there’d be a little person who was half her and half—whoever. Her own mother had always told her nothing was comparable to motherhood. But that was for someday. Here, Jane understood the sad reality. Probably the reason Phillip called her “mama” was that his own mother was dead.

  Well, his foster mother, at least. Brianna Tillson. “Is Phillip’s real mother alive?”

  “Can’t discuss that.” Bethany stopped her, palms up. “Jane, he’s had a tough time. I’ve been hoping upon hope—not very professionally said, I know—that he won’t remember anything about what happened to him.”