Christmas Conspiracy

by Susan Sleeman

  “Me, a dad?” He shook his head hard, sending greasy strands of hair sliding across his forehead. “Nah. I ain’t got no interest in that. Not at all. I’m just busy keeping my own stuff together. Even if I wanted to—which, trust me, I don’t—I can’t take care of a kid.”

  “So you don’t want anything to do with the baby, then?” Jake clarified.

  “Nope. Nothing.” He frowned. “Why’re you asking me about the kid?”

  “Where were you at 2:00 a.m. on Friday night?” Jake asked but didn’t share why he wanted to know about Sid’s whereabouts on the night of the vet’s break-in.

  He didn’t answer for a moment, but his eyes narrowed. “That some kind of trick question? ’Cause bedtime check’s at ten, and I’m always here for that.”

  “Okay, so that’s where you were at ten. But where were you at two?”

  “Here, man.” He gnawed on the inside of his cheek. “Once we check in for the night, we aren’t allowed to go out. If we do, we lose our place here. Can’t risk that.”

  “What about Monday morning at six. Where were you then?” Jake didn’t mention that this was the time of the attempted kidnapping.

  “Here. My work shift starts at eight, so I was still here.”

  Jake scribbled the alibi information in the notebook and asked about the times for the pizza delivery and last night’s shooting. Sid claimed he’d been at the halfway house both times.

  “Is there anyone who can vouch for you for any of these times?”

  “Maybe. Depends on how heavy the other guys were sleeping. Our beds are bunked in a room with six of us. You can ask them.” He frowned again. “Say, what do you think I did, anyway?”

  “I’m not at liberty to share that, but I appreciate your answers.” Jake stood, ending the conversation. The guy’s alibis were flimsy, and Jake didn’t want Sid to know he was on his trail in case he tried to cover it up. “If I have additional questions, I’ll get back to you.”

  Sid slunk out of the room, and Jake couldn’t honestly say this guy’s voice matched the man who’d tried to kidnap Kelly. If Sid’s alibis didn’t check out, Rachael would have to talk to him.

  The manager stepped back into the office. He wore a frown and rubbed his hand over his shiny, bald scalp as if puzzled by something.

  “Can I look at your bedtime checks for Sid?” Jake asked.

  He shook his head. “I have to respect my residents’ privacy rights.”

  “This is a matter of life and death.” Jake made it sound as dire as he could.

  “I suppose I could take a look at them and maybe answer your questions.”

  “Was Sid here on Friday night and last night at bed check?”

  He waved a hand in the air. “That’s an easy one. I’m sure he was here. If anyone is missing, the night supervisor is supposed to notify me of the missed check-in, as it’s a condition of living here. Two strikes and the resident is out. If Sid was missing, it would have been his second strike, so the supervisor would have mentioned it.”

  “Can you check to be sure?” Jake asked.

  “Sure.” He retrieved a binder, then flipped a few pages and looked up, scratching his head. “Odd. No checkmark by Sid’s name for Friday, and the night supervisor never reported it. Maybe he just made a mistake and didn’t check the box.”

  “Can you confirm that with him?”

  “Of course, but I don’t want to wake him up, so it won’t be until later this afternoon.”

  “That’s fine.” Jake flipped the page in his notebook. “I also need the names of Sid’s roommates, and I need to talk to each of them.”

  “Sorry,” he said, snapping the binder closed, “but I can’t give out the names. Privacy again.”

  “Can you arrange for me to talk to them?”

  “Most of them are still having breakfast, so I’ll ask if they want to speak to you, and if they do, I’ll send them in one at a time.”

  “Perfect,” Jake replied, thankful the manager was being as cooperative as he could while still observing his privacy rules.

  Jake settled into a chair and for the next hour interviewed five men, all wearing the ravages of habitual drug use on their faces. Not one of them could vouch for Sid the morning of the attempted kidnapping or for the other incidents. It didn’t mean Sid was guilty of attempted kidnapping, but he went to the top of Jake’s suspect list.

  When he got back to the firehouse, he’d arrange for Rachael to meet with Sid after work to see if his voice jogged her memory, but first Jake wanted to stop by the Portland Police Bureau’s Central Precinct to take a look at the evidence from the veterinary office break-in.

  Detective Lewis was cordial enough, but he watched Jake with a careful eye as he sifted through the box of items collected at the break-in. Jake found typical items bagged and tagged by the forensic staff—glass shards, fingerprints, a scrap of fabric—but one item, a piece of hard, glassy plastic, caught Jake’s attention. He pulled out the evidence bag and studied it.

  Golden in color, the object was an inch long and half an inch wide and thick. One side was rounded and the other jagged, as if the plastic had broken off a larger item. He checked the evidence tag to learn the criminalist found it by the window Jake had seen the thief enter on the video.

  “Ever discover what this is for?” Jake asked the detective.

  Lewis shook his head. “It would take a hard impact to cause the break in such solid plastic so it might not have belonged to the burglar.”

  “He could have had the object in his pocket, and when he landed on the windowsill, it snapped and fell out.”

  “Could be,” Lewis said, but he clearly didn’t believe it.

  “Mind if I take a picture of it?”

  “Sure, go ahead.”

  Jake dug out his camera and snapped a few shots from different angles. He filed thoughts of the item in the back of his mind in case something came up later, and then he moved on. He searched through the other items and stopped at a torn piece of clothing that could have been ripped from a black hoodie like the one the suspect had worn when he tried to take Kelly.

  “Recovered that on a nail by the window,” Lewis said before Jake could ask. “Likely the burglar’s jacket.”

  “Any hope that you found a manufacturer who uses this fabric?”

  Lewis snorted. “For a burglary? Nah, we don’t have that kind of time.”

  “I’d like to have it analyzed,” Jake said. “What about the hair fibers? Any DNA analysis done?”

  “Time and money, man,” Lewis said. “In a low-profile case like this, we don’t process DNA until we have a suspect to compare it to. Never found a suspect.”

  “I’d like to get the DNA run, too, so we can compare it to the DNA recovered from our kidnapping attempt.”

  “Sure. Knock yourself out. You’re welcome to fill out the mounds of paperwork it’ll take for our agencies to coordinate on this task.”

  “Oh, don’t worry,” Jake said with confidence. “I’m good at cutting through the bureaucracy, and we’ll be sending these off to the lab before I leave your building. You can count on that.”

  * * *

  The day had passed without incident, and as Rachael lifted Kelly to her shoulder, she felt a sense of relief that nothing bad had happened. Jake sat in a recliner, arranging an appointment for her to speak with Sid Cooper. Jake had already told her that he was able to send off hair and fabric for analysis from the break-in, and he was also hoping to get a sample of saliva from Sid for a DNA comparison, too.

  Cash stepped into the room. “The sketch artist is finally free, and I’m off to meet with her. I’ll call Skyler as soon as we have a solid sketch.”

  “Can you make sure it’s sent to Logan as soon as possible, too?”

  “Logan, as in Detective Hunter’
s husband?” Rachael asked. “Why him?”

  “The FBI has state-of-the-art facial recognition software,” Jake explained. “As an agent, Logan can run the sketch through it.”

  “And if all goes well, we’ll know the suspect’s ID before the day is out.” Cash spun and headed for the front door.

  Jake returned his focus to his phone and dialed. Rachael realized Kelly had fallen asleep, so she stood to take Kelly to her portable crib upstairs.

  “Hold up, Rachael,” Detective Hunter called out from the office doorway.

  Rachael turned, and when she saw the tight look on the detective’s face, Rachael tried not to cringe. She’d come to recognize Detective Hunter’s expressions, and Rachael knew she wasn’t going to like what was coming next. As the detective stepped into the room, Rachael nuzzled Kelly’s soft curls to keep her mind positive.

  Detective Hunter stopped near Rachael, her feet planted wide as if ready to do battle. “I need to talk to you and Jake once he’s off the phone.”

  Rachael glanced at Jake, and he held up a finger. Surprisingly, the detective turned her attention to Kelly. Her expression softened, and her eyes held tender affection, a look Rachael hadn’t seen from this tough detective before.

  “Would you like to hold her?” Rachael asked.

  “Me?” Detective Hunter shook her head. “I don’t know the first thing about babies.”

  “Maybe it’s time you learned.” Rachael put Kelly into the detective’s arms while giving her instructions on how to hold her.

  She cocooned Kelly like a fragile butterfly, and when Kelly made a mewling noise, the detective started bouncing her.

  “You might not want to do that,” Rachael warned. “She’s just finished her bottle, and she might spit up.”

  “Oh, yeah, right. Okay. Anything else I need to know?” She sounded unsure, an emotion foreign to her take-charge attitude.

  At the thought of a tiny baby unsettling this woman, Rachael almost chuckled, but she managed to hold it back. “She’s a pretty easygoing baby except for this recent colic. Some babies suffer with it for months, and they cry nonstop.”

  The detective’s head popped up, fear rampant in her gaze. “What happens if you have a baby who’s not so easygoing?”

  “You deal with it and find lots of support.” Rachael eyed the detective and thought about how she’d been so sick lately. Perhaps these questions and the fear meant she was pregnant and terrified of being a mother.

  Rachael couldn’t allow the poor woman’s fear to linger. “For example, if you were to have a baby, you have all of your friends on the FRS and their significant others. That’s a large number of people who can give you a break.”

  “Yeah, you’re right.” She smiled and seemed to relax a bit. “I have great support.”

  “Yes, you do.”

  Jake pocketed his phone and stood to join them. “You needed to talk to us.”

  And just like that, a curtain came down over Detective Hunter’s fear and anxiety, and she handed Kelly back to Rachael.

  “I just finished viewing the traffic cams near the Baldwins’ house. Pam’s father left home Monday morning despite claiming he stayed home.”

  “So he could be involved, then,” Jake said.

  Detective Hunter nodded. “I’ll contact his lawyer and get him into the office to question him again. Also, you should know the DNA from the hair found on Rachael’s clothes didn’t return a match in the database.”

  “Which means what, exactly?” Rachael asked.

  “Means that if the hair is from any of our suspects—Sid, Hal, Pam’s father, your friends in CAR—they haven’t had a DNA sample taken by a law enforcement agency.”

  “So it really doesn’t tell you anything,” Rachael said.

  “It tells me that in order to move forward, I’ll need to secure DNA samples from our list of suspects. Not you, of course, as we already know it’s not your hair. Though...” She paused and locked gazes with Rachael. “I have to say, after what I just discovered, your name will remain on my suspect list.”

  “Me?” Rachael’s heart creased at the seriousness of her tone. “What do you mean?”

  “Why didn’t you tell us about your miscarriage? Was it to keep us from thinking that you might want to replace your baby with Kelly?”

  “Miscarriage?” Jake asked, his face contorting in stunned disbelief.

  Rachael watched him, his pain clear and unsettling. She wanted to take him aside to explain that Detective Hunter was all wrong; Rachael would never consider replacing her loss by abducting Kelly. She could never cause another mother to go through the same pain she’d experienced. Instead, she’d taken the positive approach to assuaging her guilt by helping parents who were at risk of losing their children.

  “Care to explain?” Detective Hunter asked.

  Rachael didn’t want to tell the detective anything, but she did want Jake to know what had happened, so she kept her focus on him. His initial shock subsided and he seemed willing to remain in the room to hear her explanation.

  “After Eli died,” she said, “I was in such a state of grief, I couldn’t eat or sleep. My health suffered, and a month after he died, I miscarried. I was at the beginning of my fifth month.”

  Tears pricked at Rachael’s eyes, but she fought them back and kept her gaze on Jake. “I’m to blame for losing my child. If I’d taken better care of myself, she might be alive today.” She took a step closer to Jake. “You understand how I feel, right? You thought you could have saved your family.”

  He nodded, and again she was thankful that he was at least communicating with her.

  “You really think it’s your fault?” the detective asked.

  “The doctor said I wasn’t to blame, but my heart says otherwise.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” Jake clamped his hand on the back of his neck, a sure sign that he was stressed.

  “First, I’ve felt so guilty about not taking care of myself that I’ve never told anyone about it. Not even when my good friend Annie tried to help me cope.”

  “And second?” he asked.

  “You told me the other day that losing a baby fit an abductor’s profile, and I already fit all of the other criteria, so I knew it would make me a prime suspect.”

  Detective Hunter started to speak, but Rachael held up her hand.

  “I don’t care if you investigate me. I have nothing to hide. I’m innocent, but I thought if you spent your time on me, the real kidnapper would get away.”

  “You should have given us more credit to discern the facts,” Jake said. “At least me, anyway.”

  “I know, Jake, and I’m sorry. I should have told you. Can you forgive me?”

  He nodded, but she could see the lingering hurt in his eyes and her own visceral response to hurting him cut her to the core.

  If she’d wondered if more than attraction flowed between them, she now knew there was more—much more—on both of their sides.

  * * *

  Jake had to get out of the house. To get away. To think. Fortunately it was almost time to pick Pam up from work, so he took off. He arrived at the grocery store early and sat in the parking lot to wait for her shift to end. He tapped a thumb on the steering wheel—his way of pacing and working through the miscarriage bombshell.

  He didn’t for one minute believe the miscarriage meant Rachael was involved in trying to abduct Kelly, but he did believe she’d purposely misled him. And he didn’t even blame her for that. Not really. Guilt kept mouths shut. He knew that. He didn’t go around telling people about his role the day his family died, but he had told her, because he cared about her.

  There, he admitted it. He cared about her. A lot. And he thought she reciprocated the feelings and they were based on mutual respect and sharing. But maybe he was wro
ng. He wouldn’t know until he had a chance to process the news, and then sit down and talk to her about it.

  Pam opened the door of his truck, bringing him back to the present.

  “You were a long way off,” she said as she climbed in.

  “I’ve got a lot on my mind.” He cranked the engine and shifted into Drive.

  Pam clicked on her seat belt. “Would it be okay if we stopped by my apartment to pick up a few things for Kelly?”

  “No problem.” Jake appreciated more time away from Rachael to think, as discussing the miscarriage with her was too important to botch.

  “Anything new in the investigation?” Pam asked.

  He shared the leads they’d uncovered that day. “Skyler is trying to get your dad’s lawyer to arrange a meeting with him, but so far she’s struck out.”

  “Not surprising.” Pam shook her head in slow, sorrowful arcs. “I totally burned my bridges with them. They tried to help me so many times, and I stomped all over them. That’s not uncommon for addicts. Not that I’m making an excuse, because I treated them badly and don’t deserve another chance.”

  “You’ve gotten your life back on track,” Jake said. “And you deserve another chance.”

  “Honestly, I wish that was true, but I wonder if I’d take it if they offered it.”

  “I don’t follow.”

  “I live life one day at a time. I still wake up with cravings every morning. And when life throws me a curveball, I consider scoring some meth, and I’m afraid I’ll wind up hurting my parents again after I’ve already caused them so much grief.”

  He felt her pain, knew her guilt and hated to see it keep her from the best life had to offer.

  “You have to let go of your past and move on,” he said, shocked at the words coming out of his mouth. He didn’t practice what he preached, nor did Rachael, and it had put secrets between them and was keeping them apart.

  Pam sighed. “Easy to say. Not so easy to do.”

  “True, I know, but you’ve got a lot of people on your side supporting you and helping make sure you don’t slip. Let them support you so you won’t fail. Then, if we find out your parents aren’t involved in the kidnapping attempt, go talk to them when this is all over.”