by Diane Hoh
While Reardon remained lost in concentration, Fitz astounded Nora by suggesting a short canoe ride on the river behind campus that afternoon.
She was incredulous. “A boat ride? Now? With Mindy still missing, and half the world thinking I took her? You expect me to casually float down the river in a boat as if I were Cleopatra on the Nile? God, Fitz, how can you be so insensitive?”
“We don’t think you had anything to do with the kidnapping,” Sabra said in an offended voice while Fitz flushed in anger. “We have some time before we have to rejoin the searchers. And I don’t see what good it’s going to do you to sit around the house alone and answer creepy phone calls.”
“She won’t be alone,” Reardon interjected. “I’ll be here. You guys go ahead. I have some details to go over with Nora, anyway.”
“I thought you were off-duty,” Lucas said. Nora thought she heard a note of resentment in his voice. But that made no sense. Why would Lucas care if Reardon stayed here with Nora? “Shouldn’t you be out looking for Mindy? How come you’re not on duty, anyway?”
“Being off-duty doesn’t mean I can’t talk to Nora,” Reardon answered pleasantly. “And there are many, many people looking for the little girl. My captain thought it might be a good idea for someone to hang out here. But not in uniform. The box of fingernail clippings and the shoe we found in Nora’s room are a pretty strong indication that the kidnapper has access to this house. We don’t want a uniformed cop hanging around, keeping him in hiding. We want him out in the open, where we can see him.”
“You mean you’re using Nora to set a trap for him?” Lucas asked, his tone one of disapproval.
“We don’t look at it that way. Remember, Nora was clobbered by that swing at the day care center, and someone tossed a pitchfork at her in the barn. We don’t know why, but we’re pretty sure it’s connected to the kidnapping. So if we can snag him while we’re making sure Nora doesn’t become a target again, so much the better.”
“It was only a toy pitchfork,” Lucas pointed out.
“No, it wasn’t,” Sabra disagreed. “It was child-sized, but it wasn’t a toy. It was a real gardening tool, and the tines were really sharp, right, Nora?”
Nora nodded absentmindedly, but she was thinking about Reardon’s comments. He was here to keep an eye on her? For her safety, as he’d said? Or to make sure she didn’t split? Or maybe he’d been sent here to pretend concern in the hope that she’d confide in him, tell him where she was keeping Mindy. Was that it?
Was she still under suspicion, or wasn’t she?
His conscience apparently stirred by Nora’s disapproval of the canoe ride idea, Fitz canceled the outing, suggesting instead that they “hang out” with Nora until it was time to rejoin the search.
She didn’t really want them to stay, but telling herself there was at least safety in numbers, she gave in, inviting them upstairs to her room but extracting from all of them a promise not to discuss the kidnapping.
Lounging about on the floor in Nora’s room, they talked instead about the small town of Twin Falls and how boring it must be to grow up there, with so little to do, and they talked about summer classes and which professors they’d liked, and about how beautiful campus was, and how different from high school they expected college life to be.
But then Amy forgot her earlier promise and said, “I liked Professor Donner’s summer history class. It was fun. He’s such a fascinating lecturer.” Her expression turned grim. “I just can’t imagine what it must be like, having someone in your family missing.”
Sabra shot her a warning glance, which Amy either didn’t see or chose to ignore. “I mean, not even knowing where the person you love is, or if they’re okay. And Mindy’s so little …”
Silence fell across the bright, sunny room. No one responded for several seconds. Then Lucas said, “Well, I was an only child. I loved it. Spoiled rotten, and loved every minute of it. But my mother hated to let me out of her sight for more than two minutes, she was so afraid something would happen to me. If she’d ever gone through what Donner’s going through, she’d have been a total basket case. Can’t even imagine it.”
Another minute or so of somber silence followed before Fitz said, “I had a sister once, when I was really little. I don’t remember her at all. She died when I was only three or four, not even sure which. There are pictures of her in the house, but they’re not very good ones. My parents didn’t tell me about her. Someone in the neighborhood did. When I asked my mother about it, she ended up lying on her bed crying for hours, so I never brought it up again. When it happened, when she died, my parents must have gone through what Donner’s going through.”
Sabra, sitting on the floor leaning against Nora’s bed, her long legs tucked underneath her, uttered a short laugh. “Well, there are so many kids in my family, I’m not sure my parents would notice if one of us was missing.”
Amy was shocked. “Sabra! That’s a terrible thing to say. I’m sure it’s not true.”
Sabra laughed again. “You don’t know anything about my family, Amy. Let’s just say it would at least take my folks a while to figure out which one of us was gone. They have a hard time keeping track of all of us. Besides, my dad drinks. A lot. Doesn’t always know if he’s even in the right house.” She didn’t sound bitter or angry, but accepting. “You’re right, though. If one of us was missing, I guess they’d both freak.” Sabra turned toward Amy. “What about your folks? Are you from a big family?”
Amy shook short, bouncy curls. “Nope, not me, although I always thought it would be fun to have lots of brothers and sisters. I’m adopted. My mother told me when I was six or seven. She was afraid someone else would tell me. I didn’t know what it meant, but she said it meant that I was really special, and that’s why they picked me. But both my parents died before I graduated from high school.”
“Did you move in with relatives then?” Nora asked, thinking of her aunt.
“Nope. I just sort of floated from friend, to friend.” Amy’s voice was light, almost cheerful, but her blue eyes seemed to Nora suspiciously bright, as if she might be struggling with unshed tears. “Got kicked out of one place for leaving wet towels lying on the new bathroom tile, something about mildew, and out of another because I wouldn’t eat vegetables. My friend’s mother thought that made me a bad influence on her younger kids. I felt kind of like a criminal.” She laughed. “But I didn’t argue. I left. Didn’t much like the girl, anyway. Then I lived with one of my teachers, a nice, older lady, until I graduated. She helped me get my scholarship to Salem U.”
Nora sat silently, listening attentively. She had thought of her own childhood as being bizarre, very different from the norm, mostly because of her mother’s illness, the moving from house to house, and her own emotional problems. But Lucas had grown up an only child with an overprotective mother, Sabra’s house was crowded and her father drank, Fitz’s sister had died, and Amy had been just about homeless.
We’re not all that different, Nora thought, surprised.
So where was the mythical perfect family she’d read about, dreamed about, wished for?
No sign of it in this room.
To Lucas, Amy said, “I thought you said you were going to become a pediatrician. The next Dr. Spock, you said. If you were an only child, how do you know if you even like children? You have to like kids to be a kids’ doctor, Lucas.”
Lucas laughed. “I didn’t grow up alone on a desert island, Amy. I had friends. They were kids. Most of them had younger siblings. And don’t forget, I was a kid, too. I know how a kid thinks and feels, right?”
Amy nodded dubiously. “I guess.”
“Look,” Jonah Reardon said then, “I need to talk to Nora alone. Police business. Would you guys mind splitting for a while?”
Lucas looked skeptical. “I don’t think it’s right to conduct police business when you’re out of uniform.”
“It’s okay if it’s important,” Reardon said, sounding amused. “And this is, I
promise.”
“We have to get back to our search teams, anyway,” Fitz said. “Maybe they’ve had some luck while we were gone.”
But they all knew that wasn’t likely. Nora had her radio on low, turned to the campus radio station, playing muted classical music in the background while they talked. They would have heard any bulletins about Mindy.
When the others had gone, Nora sat on her bed, leaned back against the wall, and looked at Reardon. “So, what’s so important?”
“Oh, I did say it was important, didn’t I? Well, it is, in a way.” He moved to drag Nora’s desk chair over near the bed, sitting in it backward, facing her. “I’ve been trying to remember where I saw that stuffed bear I told you about.” He nodded toward the llama and the hippo lying in Nora’s lap. She was holding the kangaroo in her hands, playing with its tail. “Like the ones you’ve got there.”
“And have you remembered?”
“No. But it seems pretty weird to me that I saw another one of those somewhere else. Recently, too, I’m sure of that. Wish I could remember where.”
“I don’t see why. I told you, I never had a bear. So if you’re thinking that the stuffed bear you saw could lead you to Mindy, it couldn’t. I never gave her one, and I never saw one in her room. She would have told me if she had a bear exactly like the animals I’d given her.”
Reardon didn’t look convinced. “Still seems weird.” Then he changed the subject by saying, “You’re the only one who didn’t talk about your family.”
“Excuse me?” Nora shifted uncomfortably on the bed. Why did he have to bring that up? She’d been relieved that the others had left before anyone had asked about her family life. It wasn’t something she talked about. Ever.
“Well, everyone else mentioned a little something about their backgrounds. But not you. I was just wondering why.”
“There’s nothing to tell, that’s all,” she said flippantly. “And are you asking out of interest, or because you’re a cop?”
He groaned. “You’re not going to hold that against me, are you? That I’m a cop?” But his tone was serious as he added, “I’m asking as a friend, that’s all. Sometimes you have this … this almost haunted look in your eyes. At first, I thought it was because of the little girl, but now I’m not so sure. I think you’ve had that look for a long time. And I’m wondering why.”
Nora hesitated. He seemed sincere enough. But he wasn’t really a friend. Not yet, anyway. “You weren’t sent here to interrogate me? To find out anything you could that might incriminate me in Mindy’s kidnapping?”
He laughed a little when she said “incriminate.” But he was perfectly serious again when he said, “I know I don’t know you as well as those friends of yours do. But I can tell you for a fact that of all of us who were just sitting in this room, no one believes more strongly than I do that you’re completely innocent. I don’t believe you had anything to do with the Donner girl’s kidnapping.”
Nora didn’t ask him how he knew. It didn’t seem important. It was enough that he knew.
So she told him about her life. What she could remember of it. “And I think you should know,” she finished, “because you’re going to find out anyway, since I’m sure your police department is doing a background check on everyone who works at the center, that I was in a hospital for a while when I was fifteen. A psychiatric hospital. One my mother had been in many times before me, actually.” She lifted her chin defiantly. “I wasn’t there very long, and they said it was because both my parents had died so close together, so I had grief counseling and then I left. But some of the medication they gave me erased a lot of my memory from early childhood.” She shrugged. “Not that I had that much to begin with. Never could remember anything that happened before my sixth birthday. Anyway,” she concluded, her voice sinking despondently, “I thought everything was going to be fine when I came here. I thought I was fine. Coming here, getting away from my aunt, starting over. But now …”
Jonah Reardon reached out and took one of Nora’s hands and held it gently. “You are fine,” he said, his voice firm. “You didn’t take that little girl. There’s not a chance in hell that you’re involved.”
Grateful for the support, Nora said softly, “Thanks.” She withdrew her hand and sank back against the wall again. Her head was beginning to throb, so she closed her eyes.
They flew open a moment later at the sound of a voice calling her name.
But the voice wasn’t Reardon’s. He was still sitting there, facing her, but he wasn’t speaking. So it wasn’t his voice that Nora heard.
It was Mindy’s.
Chapter 12
AT THE SOUND OF the childish whimpering of her name, Nora bolted upright on her bed, clutching the stuffed animals to her chest.
Reardon’s head whipped around, his eyes searching the room for the source of the sound.
It came again, louder and clearer this time. “Nor-rie! Norrie, where are you?”
Reardon jumped to his feet, sending the chair reeling backward. It toppled and fell, lying on the floor on its back like a wounded animal. “It’s her, isn’t it?” he asked, his eyes still scanning the room. “It’s the little girl.”
Nora, her eyes wide with shock, nodded silently.
“Where’s it coming from?” Reardon moved swiftly to the closet, yanked the door open, scrutinized the contents.
“Nor-rie! Come get me, Norrie! I want to go home. I want my daddy.”
While Nora watched, breathless, Reardon strode to the door of the room, opened it, stepped out into the hall, glancing first to his left, then to his right. When he stepped back inside, the childish voice seemed to fill the air. It was as clear and distinct as if Mindy Donner were standing in the center of the room.
“Nor-rie! Why don’t you hurry to get me, Norrie? I’ve been waiting and waiting and waiting!”
Reardon turned to Nora, his face white, and said in a pained voice, “She’s not here, is she? I couldn’t have been that wrong about you.”
Although she couldn’t blame him, since the sound of Mindy’s soft, sweet voice seemed to be wrapping itself around them, clinging, coaxing, impossible to ignore, Nora was filled with fury.
She jumped to her feet, her eyes blazing. “You said you knew I didn’t take her!” she shouted. “You said you knew, more than anyone, that I wasn’t involved!”
“And I meant it!” he shouted in return. “But … but I hear her, Nora. I hear her in this house. So do you.”
“She isn’t here!” Nora ran to the closet, flung the door open again, held it open as wide as it would go. “Look!” she commanded, “look in here, in this closet. Is she here? No, she is not!” She ran to the bed, bent to lift the dust ruffle, pointed underneath. “Here, look under here, is she there? Is Mindy under there, is that where I’ve been hiding her? No, she’s not there, either, is she?”
While Reardon stood, stricken mute, in the center of the room, Nora dashed wildly from bed to desk to dresser, loudly defying him to find the missing child among her things. She ripped the desk drawers free, emptying their contents onto the floor, then ran to do the same with her dresser drawers, crying out the whole time, “Is she here? Is she? Do you see her? Do you, Reardon? Do you see Mindy anywhere in this room?”
He stopped her on her way to the dresser. In order to check her wild flight around the room, he had to step directly in her path and take hold of her upper arms. “Stop it, Nora!” he ordered, his voice steely. “Stop it right now! Of course the little girl isn’t here. I’m sorry. I really am sorry. Hearing that voice, so close at hand, rattled me. I apologize. I meant what I said before. You didn’t take her. I know you don’t have her.”
But she had begun to think that he wasn’t like everyone else, hadn’t she? Wasn’t that why she had told him about her life? Because she’d begun to think he was different.
It hurt to know that he wasn’t that different.
So instead of doing what she wanted to do, which was to collapse against hi
s sturdy, solid chest, she jerked away from him, out of his grasp, and tilted her head angrily up at him. “Okay, so she’s not in this room. But she could be anywhere in the house. Isn’t that what you’re thinking? And since I’m the only occupant of this house, except for the housemother, who I’m sure you’ll agree probably isn’t into kidnapping small children, doesn’t that make me the prime suspect? Still?”
“Nora, calm down,” Reardon warned. “I didn’t mean …”
“Yes, you did!” Nora whirled then, and ran from the room. In the hall, she raced from door to door, throwing each door open and calling out Mindy’s name in a shrill, fever-pitched voice.
When Reardon appeared in the hall behind her, Nora paused only for a second to shoot him a wild, defiant glance before resuming her mad rush from door to door. “Here!” she called out to him as she threw another door open, “maybe she’s in here! Maybe this is where I’ve been hiding her all this time. You really should check it out, officer.”
He stayed where he was, at the far end of the hall, a mixture of irritation and helplessness on his strong, handsome face.
“Well? Aren’t you going to check it out? Dereliction of duty, if you ask me,” Nora taunted, standing in the doorway of the room she had just opened. “What kind of cop are you, anyway?” Her face was red and flushed, her hair flying around her face, and she regarded him stonily with cold eyes that shone dangerously.
“Nor-rie! Help me, Norrie! I keep waiting, and you don’t come. Where are you?”
Nora clapped her hands over her ears. “No! No, no more, no!” She shook her head from side to side, squeezing her hands against her ears as hard as she could.
Reardon reached her side, grabbed her, folded her against his chest. This time, Nora didn’t resist. “Make it stop,” she murmured into his T-shirt, “please, make it stop.”