by Rick Mofina
“I’m going to show you items we’ve recovered from the scene.”
Maria’s hand covered her mouth.
“You cannot touch these items, but I want you to examine them and tell me if you recognize them, please. It’s very important.”
With utmost respect and care, Grace reached into the bag for a baby’s shoe. It was blue and its toe was singed. Then she set down a blanket, its edges blackened. Next came an infant-size T-shirt, blackened extensively by fire.
The items smelled of smoke.
Looking at them, Maria’s heart slammed against her ribs.
She seemed to slip out of her body. She saw herself reliving her fears of not ever being able to have a child. She saw herself giving birth to Dylan in this very hospital. She saw herself waking in the night to the thud of the bird slamming against her window in the hours before Dylan was taken from her.
Why?
Why am I being punished?
Maria’s hands shook as she struggled with her need to hold these items. They were blurring before her eyes as someone kept repeating her name. Her body was quaking; Lee’s arms held her together for she felt as if she were literally coming apart.
Dr. Binder protested any further questions.
Grace rolled the table a few inches away from Maria so that her tears would not fall on the evidence. “Maria, can you positively identify these items?”
“These are Dylan’s. I dressed him in them the morning we went to the corner store. This is what he was wearing when he was taken from me.”
55
Leaving the scene, Jason beat the morning traffic and got to the Mirror just as the sun was rising.
The newsroom was empty.
In the quiet, contemplating the crime, he thought of Dylan Colson’s tiny body, likely burned beyond recognition, and hoped that the baby hadn’t suffered.
Why did this happen? Who was Nadine Getch? Why did she do this?
He vowed to find the answers. Maybe it would provide Seattle a small degree of consolation. He ran his hands across the stubble of his face while settling in at his desk, his adrenaline flowing, his head throbbing from caffeine deficiency.
He needed coffee.
But first he got his notes into his computer. As he finished, his cell phone rang.
“Jay,” his father said, “I couldn’t get you at home.”
“I was called out. What’re you doing up at this hour?”
“An old buddy tipped me on the Colson fire. You know about it?”
“That’s what I was out on.”
“I want to help you.”
“But, Dad, Boulder threatened your license if you did more on Colson.”
“Well, Stan plays rough, but that’s fine. I’ve talked it over with Don. He says the agency’s good as long as whatever I do relates to the client file, because it was my client who flagged the van and the plate.”
That was true, but Jason was hesitant to accept his old man’s offer and wasn’t sure why. Maybe he was protecting him, or maybe he was still resentful for the hell his old man had put him through for most of his life. Maybe he was too damn tired to know.
“Son. I’ve let a lot of wasted years pass between us.”
Got that right, he thought, squeezing the phone.
“So let me help.”
Keep the past in the past. I need all the help I can get.
“All right. I have to know everything I can, as fast as I can, about this person.” Jason dictated details of Nadine Getch to his old man.
“Good. I’ll pull out all the stops. Krofton’s got plenty of police friends. We can move pretty fast. I’ll get right back to you.”
“Okay.”
After the call, Jason headed for the newsroom kitchen, surprised by the aroma of freshly brewed coffee. Who’s here this early? Rounding a corner he nearly bumped into his answer. Spangler was holding a full mug with the New York Daily News logo.
“Rosemary called me this morning. TV’s all over this fire. What have you got?”
“It’s the van used in the abduction. A suspected arson with two dead inside.”
“Is the kid one of them? Is it a murder-suicide?”
“I don’t know. Nothing’s confirmed yet.”
“Bull.” Spangler undid his collar button and loosened his tie. “They know. Have you worked another deal with your cop friends? Dammit, I’m disappointed in you. You’ve been out there since the get-go, and come back with nothing?”
Maybe it was exhaustion or adrenaline, or the sadness washing over him, but Spangler had crossed a line and Jason couldn’t take any more.
“You’re an asshole. Dylan Colson’s likely been incinerated by a lunatic and you continue to spew moronic orders at me.”
“Who the hell do you think you’re talking to?”
“I know how to do my job, so just back off.”
“Hey, don’t you walk away from me, Wade. Now, I’ll cut you some slack because you’ve put in long hours, but you’d better get a grip, pal.”
“I’m sick and tired of swallowing your shit.”
“You listen to me. You’re riding Seattle’s biggest story and we need to lead. I know the value of police sources, but we’ve already pulled back stuff for your cop friends. No more goddamm deals. We’re not going to get beat on this story. So, tell me, is it the kid and his kidnapper?”
If Jason told Spangler that Grace suspected it was Dylan and Nadine Getch, he’d no longer have control of the information. He’d lose the chance to flesh it out, to leverage more exclusive data from Grace.
He needed to buy a few more hours.
“They don’t know who’s dead, they’re sifting through the crap. There was an explosion. Seattle PD will release more later. Besides, we’ve got all day before final to work on this.”
“We do not have all day. TV and radio will feed on this live every few minutes. It’s started already. We’ve got to be in the mix now.”
“You want something now?”
“For our Internet edition. Three hundred words. And later, by tonight’s deadline, I want to know everything. Do you understand?” Spangler didn’t wait for an answer. “Get busy.”
At his desk, Jason downed nearly half of his mug of black coffee in one gulp, then tore into the first of two stale jelly doughnuts someone from the night crew had left in the kitchen.
That was breakfast.
Twenty minutes later, he’d finished a taut news item that began:
By JASON WADE, Seattle Mirror
Detectives fear that Dylan Colson, the Seattle baby stolen from his mother in their sleepy neighborhood, was killed in an early morning fire that also claimed the life of the woman suspected of abducting him.
He was satisfied that he’d nuanced his short hit so that it was speculative and did not betray specific details Grace had shared with him. After filing he checked his e-mail. His father had sent him a copy of Nadine Getch’s driver’s license.
He looked out toward the city, thinking there was one person who might have information on Nadine.
He grabbed his jacket and headed for his Falcon, hoping to beat the morning rush hour.
56
Nothing’s a fact until the evidence says so.
Kay Cataldo had returned from the scene to her lab on Airport Way knowing that Colson was the number-one priority in all of Seattle.
In all of Washington State.
The answers were in the evidence and much of the evidence was in her hands. It was her job to help the King County Medical Examiner’s Office close the case.
David Tanaka called from the M.E.’s office. “We’re going to need a bit more time.”
They were having major problems with the human remains because they were in bad shape. They’d located part of an adult lower jaw and pieces of an upper jaw. A forensic odontologist was working on them, preparing to expedite a comparison on a dental chart, should they make any progress toward identification.
Tanaka said that there was carbon mon
oxide in the blood of the adult, indicating that, at the time of the fire, the victim was alive—consistent with the witness account. But the bones of the adult were in pieces, making it difficult to analyze the ischium-pubis index, which, Cataldo knew, would establish the sex of the victim.
“And what about confirmation of the child, Dave?”
“We don’t have much to go on. We’re still working on it.”
Meanwhile, Arson had confirmed the fire had been intentionally set with an accelerant. Unleaded gasoline. Available everywhere.
Fingerprint people were analyzing every decent latent found at the scene, comparing them to the Bannon homicide. Phone records were being reviewed, along with utility bills and other sources of information. A hair sample taken from the crib matched Dylan’s, confirming he had been in the house.
But the homicide was going to take time to confirm because of the condition of the remains. The explosion had left little to analyze. The scene had been shredded and burned. The van appeared to have been jammed with belongings, as if there were plans for a move, or a long vacation.
Was that indicative of a suicide?
The note was puzzling. A computer printout. So far they could not locate anything else written by Nadine for comparison. That made it difficult to gauge if she had in fact written the note. There was no trace of the computer or the printer in the house.
Was it among the debris?
“But why?” Grace Garner had asked Cataldo at the scene. “Why write a suicide note and pack away the computer and equipment? Why bother?”
“Why steal someone’s baby in broad daylight?” Cataldo said. “This is not supposed to make sense.”
Grace conceded the point. Experience had taught them that the explanations for many suicides were often taken to the grave by the victim. But the circumstances of the fire pointed to another critical aspect of the case: the male suspect associated with Nadine.
Where was he? Who was he?
The fingerprint people were not having much luck finding latents in the house that pointed to anyone.
Cataldo took a deep breath, released it slowly. She’d never had a case like this one.
Never.
Another glance at her own family and she got back to work as her phone began ringing again.
“It’s Tanaka. Kay, we’ve got something and it is not at all what we thought.”
57
It was a large, two-story frame house hidden from the street on a professionally landscaped, tree-lined lot in the Lake Forest Park area of Seattle.
A basketweave bricked walk invited him from the street to the door. Clutching the folds of her thick robe, Joy Montgomery gasped when she answered the doorbell.
“Jason Wade! Good God!”
“I’m sorry to bother you.”
“How did you find our address?” She pulled him deep into the yard behind a garden shed. “Please, you have to go, my husband’s in the shower, I have to drive him to the airport.”
“I need your help on the Colson case. There was a fire.”
“I saw it on the morning news.”
“Do you recognize this woman, Nadine Getch?”
Joy studied Nadine’s picture. She had blonde hair, a pretty face with hazel eyes that were hooded like they were half-dead. Joy covered her mouth with her hand.
“Have you ever seen her before?”
She continued looking at the picture, not answering.
“Joy, please. I need your help.”
“I already told you everything I know. Now please go.”
He knew she was not telling him the truth.
“Joy.”
“I think I made a big mistake going to you,” she said, shaking her head.
“Why?”
“It’s so dangerous now. Beth’s dead, the baby, the fire. I’m afraid.”
“I understand, but it’s over. Please, I need to find some answers. Just help me, then you should think about going to the police if you’re afraid.”
She shook her head.
“Why not?”
“If we talked to police they may look into how we got Emily.”
“You told me it was all legal.”
“Maybe part of it wasn’t. I’m not sure. It was complicated and if they start looking into it”—Joy looked to the house—”if they ever took her away…”
“Joy, please. Think of the Colsons. I’m just asking for information about Nadine.”
She looked at him, then looked at the picture.
“I know you know something. Please, help me, then I’ll go and I won’t use your name. I swear.”
Her glance flicked up from the picture and she took a deep breath.
“About seven or eight months ago, I was at a support group to talk about our positive experience with Emily. The group was anonymous, like AA. Beth was there.” A glossy fingernail tapped Nadine’s face. “And her too. She was there, at the back, not many people saw her.”
“You’re sure?”
“Yes.”
“Did you talk to her?”
“No, but I think she was sitting with Beth.”
“How do you know it was her?”
“Look at those eyes. I remember thinking they were creepy, like she was dead inside, the way they looked right through you.”
“Why didn’t you tell anybody about her before?”
“I never thought of her until now.”
“Where was this support group meeting?”
“At a community hall, near the hospital in Ballard.”
“Swedish?”
Joy nodded.
“Do you remember anything else?”
“It was raining.”
“Wait a sec, you say seven months ago, near Swedish?”
Joy nodded.
“That’s where Dylan Colson was born. Seven months ago.”
58
It was all a dream.
Voices kept telling Maria about the most horrible thing that had happened to Dylan.
Nurses, a doctor, then Lee, whispered it over and over.
It all seemed so real.
Detectives and the bag of Dylan’s clothes: his shoe, his T-shirt, his blanket, all smelling of his sweet baby scent mixed with gasoline and smoke and death.
Strange, how dreams were, but it wasn’t really happening. It was a dream. Like with the bird hitting her window in the night—only she did not really wake. She did not really take Dylan to the store and leave him with Shannon Tabor out front.
No way.
See, that was all part of the dream. It never happened.
Dylan was never stolen by a woman who then murdered him in a fire.
It didn’t really happen.
Did it?
Because if it did—if it did happen, then it meant—it meant—oh God—horror gushed from the pit of her stomach, then subsided.
The sedative was working.
Barely.
Hands forced Maria to sit back down, to stay in her hospital bed. As more time passed and she stared into the chain of solemn faces, she knew.
She knew.
It was real. It did happen.
She felt the horrible truth coil around her, constrict and crush her, as it prepared to open its jaws and swallow her whole. She was not dreaming. She was living a nightmare.
Help me, please! Please, help me!
Suddenly her torment flared with anger, detonated with fury, as it had when she attacked the van to rescue Dylan. And now, as this evil worked to destroy her, she raged against it.
No.
It couldn’t happen like this. She would fight. Maria demanded to get dressed and go to the chapel.
Her battle was with God.
She stood, shaking off Lee and the nurses who tried to stop her.
“Let her go, but not alone,” Dr. Binder said.
Maria knew the chapel.
It was where she’d come to ask God to keep Dylan safe and healthy when she and Lee first learned that he was coming into their liv
es. Now, as Dr. Binder and two nurses watched, here she was again, not to implore God’s help, but to demand an accounting.
The fracture-pattern of stitches lacing her head accentuated the anguish in her face. With Lee holding her, Maria looked up to the large oak cross suspended on the wall.
How can You do this? How could You give us Dylan only to take him away? Like this! How could You do this?
The water from the hanging wall fountain bubbled.
I can’t accept that he’s dead. I just can’t. You show me. I want to see him! I want to hold him! It’s not true, unless I see. Because I don’t think that You would be such a cruel God, to take him away and let me live. To punish me for leaving him for a few seconds.
It was only a few seconds. I’m so sorry. Please.
Lee tightened his hold on her quaking body.
Because if You take him from me, I’ll follow him and I’ll find him and be with him. Because I’m his mother.
Maria fell to her knees before the cross.
Oh God. I can’t live without him.
59
In the hall outside the chapel where Maria pleaded with God, Grace’s cell phone rang.
“We’ve got a break,” Boulder told her. “The dead adult in the fire is a male and there’s no evidence of the baby in the fire.”
“Nothing?”
“Not a trace. We still have a shot here, Grace. Take down this number and password. Get to a land line. We’re starting a conference call with the FBI, right now.”
Grace grabbed Perelli.
A nurse found them an empty office with a speakerphone. They shut the door and joined the call. The emergency case status meeting was arranged through the FBI. It involved Seattle PD, King County Sheriff’s Office, Washington Highway Patrol, and several other departments. More agencies would be updated later.
“This is McCusker at the FBI, I’ll coordinate this and we’ll move fast. First up, David Tanaka.”
“The adult victim of the fire is not female, as presumed,” Tanaka said. Grace and Perelli exchanged looks while taking notes.