Streeter’s last call was to Ellen Camry. He asked her to go directly to Lucy Jones’s house and inform the Monroes that Cutty was dead, that they were still looking for Adam Kaninsky, and that Streeter would be back that afternoon should they wish to see him. Camry was a trooper, but Streeter could tell by the tremble in her calm, steady voice that she was badly shaken.
With time still left to get to the airport, Streeter ordered a room service breakfast, dressed, packed, ate, all those ordinary things normal people do. He missed his kids. His heart ached for Katie and Scott. In the light of the day, he dismissed the lingering suspicions about them that he and Rusk had discussed the previous night.
Camry rang Lucy’s doorbell at seven thirty in the morning. She had not called to forewarn them. Scott answered the door in a tee shirt and sweatpants. Immediately, he wished that he had not. Agent Camry would not be there at that time of the morning with good news. He opened the door and she followed him inside.
“Katie’s not up yet,” he said. “Should I get her?”
“Yes,” Camry said.
Scott ascended the stairs like a robot, passing Jackie at the landing, turning back only when she spoke.
“Dad? Are you okay?”
He didn’t stop to respond. He needed to get Katie. He needed to protect Jackie. He needed to protect Alex and Sammie, but he was incapable of doing that.
“Hi, Agent Camry,” Jackie said, still in her nightgown, her hair hanging down, not yet brushed. “How come you’re here?”
“I came to talk to your parents,” Scott heard Camry say. He wished that he’d let Lucy take Jackie on her morning walk, but Katie would have gone ballistic if he’d let their daughter go outside. And Katie would have been right this time as the number of reporters camping out on Lucy’s street had multiplied. Poor Jackie was in a prison.
“Did you find my sisters?” Jackie asked.
Scott listened for Camry’s response. “No, honey, not yet,” she said.
“Thank God,” Scott said aloud before resuming his course up the steps. They can’t be dead. She didn’t say that they were dead.
Katie, dressed in slacks and a tunic top, came into the living room just as Lucy returned from her morning walk. Scott had served Camry coffee and he’d fixed oatmeal for Jackie. As he poured coffee for Katie, he tried to conceal his annoyance. When he’d told her that Agent Camry needed to speak to them, together, Katie had said that she’d be right down. Half an hour later she appeared. Scott guessed why it had taken her so long. Like him, she was terrified of what the agent might tell them.
“Mom, can you take Jackie upstairs and get her ready to go out?” Katie asked.
Not saying a word, Lucy took her granddaughter’s hand and urged her up the steps.
“Why can’t you tell me what’s happening?” Jackie repeated.
Neither parent responded, nor did Camry.
“Come on, Jackie,” Lucy said. “Everything will be okay.”
Katie and Scott sat beside each other on the sofa.
“What is it?” Scott moved closer to Katie and she took his hand and placed it on her lap.
Camry took the last sip of her coffee and informed them what had happened in Tampa last night.
Surprisingly, Scott thought, Katie did not explode. She listened quietly, analytically, asking a few pertinent questions. She was mostly interested in Adam Kaninsky. Scott could see her shoulders slump and the life go out of her eyes when she was told that he was still missing. Scott couldn’t help but wonder what kind of a relationship his wife had had with that kid. Until this week, he’d really had no idea of the secrets that Katie kept, the sordid relationships that her forensic practice forced upon her. Yes, he was in awe of her talents, but he was now vividly resentful of the inherent evilness she faced in her practice. Yet, that ransom demand had come from his profession, not hers.
Agent Camry was getting ready to leave when Scott tuned back into the conversation.
Katie was saying, “From the beginning I was sure that Maxwell Cutty was behind this. I was so sure, but now with Norman Watkins, I don’t know. And the ransom note? How does it all connect?”
“You know we have hundreds of agents working the case, Dr. Monroe, a SWAT team on standby, all our resources —”
“Still, you don’t know where our daughters are!” Gone was Katie’s initial calm, her voice rising an octave, but shaking. “We have absolutely no idea. All those people working, yes, we know, but why can’t you people find them? And now Maxwell Cutty is dead. And Norman Watkins is on life support. The only connections to our daughters — get assassinated right in front of you or gets their brains blown out by one of your agents!”
Worried about Katie’s abrupt change from calm to hysteria, Scott’s first reaction was to try to calm her, but everything she said was true. The FBI had let the two most viable suspects slip though their hands. He was about to back her up, but before he could speak, Katie’s shoulders slumped, and she asked, “What about Aiden and Jake Cutty? Their mother’s dead —”
Who cares about that pervert’s kids? We need to find our daughters! Scott wanted to yell, yet did not. But he did withdraw his hand from Katie’s grasp. The palpitations in his heart were constant now and he felt a surge of lightheadedness. He leaned back on the sofa and took slow, deep breaths. He was so close to the fatal ledge. So close that a single blast of wind would send him over. He needed to control his escalating fear.
“No, there’s no apparent connection to the ransom demand.”
Scott must have zoned out again. What had he missed? “Ransom?” he repeated.
“The FBI doesn’t think that the ransom demand came from Cutty,” Katie said.
“I don’t give a damn about what anybody thinks,” Scott said, his voice even louder than usual. “My little girls’ lives are at stake. And with all your resources, you have nothing. You haven’t even moved on the reward that my sister wants to offer! Are you all so smart that you know it’s not about money? And, you can bet your ass that we’ll have the money for whatever bastard called in that ransom offer.”
“Scott —”
Scott sensed that he’d gone too far, but he didn’t care. Katie started to get up, but he pulled her back and jerked her head to face him. “God, Katie, I can’t help it. I’m on an emotional teeter-totter. I’m sorry. I’m letting you down. Anger goes up. Fear goes down. Back and forth in my head. I can’t make it stop.”
“I’m going back to the field office,” Camry said. “Agent Streeter will be back by noon. I will impress on him your sister’s desire to post a reward, again. Personally, I think it may be the right time. We may want you two to televise the offer. Maybe Miss Monroe, too.”
It’s about time you get your head out of your ass and start doing something. Scott did not say that. Jackie had appeared at the stair landing. Long ago Scott and Katie agreed never to use unseemly language in front of their daughters.
“Mr. Monroe, we would like you to come down to continue going over professional baseball contacts,” Camry said. “We’ll be ready when you arrive.”
“Yes, but I wasn’t much help —” Yesterday had been a literal parade of players he’d worked with over the past twenty-odd years. The slide show started to click in his head, then stopped on a guy. Yankee uniform. A hefty guy with thick, blond hair, very curly. What was his name? What was there about him?
CHAPTER 24
Fourth Day and Monroe Triplets Still Missing — FBI Stumped.
— National News, Thursday, June 18
At first Jackie had thought that maybe, just maybe, her sisters were goofing off. Playing a trick on Mom and Dad. Sometimes Sammie yelled at Mom that she treated them like babies. “We’re nine years old, not kindergartners,” had been her usual line. And on this, Jackie had always agreed with Sam. But on Monday morning when she woke up and Alex and Sam were not home, Jackie had changed her mind. Something very bad was happening to them, and it was all her fault. If only she and Danielle would have gi
ven in and gone with them to see Night at the Museum.
Jackie had tried to figure out if Alex and Sammie were dead like some of the television people were suggesting. She knew that Dad didn’t think they were, but she wasn’t sure about Mom. Mom had had a dream right before she promised to get her a puppy. What did that mean?Everybody kept asking Jackie if she was okay. No, she was not okay, and if they didn’t find her sisters she could never be okay.
At first, Jackie had tried to stay close by her dad. He’d always understood her the best. But now he was not acting like her dad anymore. She’d heard him yelling at that nice Agent Camry. She’d heard him say two bad words, ass and bastard. Dad never talked like that even though he was an athlete and everybody knew how bad they talked. “Trash talk” they called it.
And sitting at the top of the stairs, waiting for Grandma to take a shower, she’d listened to the grown-ups talk. A bad man in Tampa had been killed. And he had two little boys, Mom had said. That made her think of Tina, the nice girl she’d met at the FBI. Something bad had happened to her dad, too.
When Agent Camry left, Dad came up to get dressed.
“Dad,” she’d said, “I heard Agent Camry say that you have to go to the FBI today. Do I have to go, too? Can I stay with Grandma or go to Aunt Sharon’s?”
“Afraid not. Aunt Sharon has to take Grandma to a doctor’s appointment.”
“But, Dad —”
“I’m in a hurry, Jackie, I have to jump in the shower.” She started to follow him into the bathroom, but he shut the door in her face.
Tears trickling down her cheeks, Jackie sat down on a step. She didn’t want anyone to see her cry, so she waited. She heard her Aunt Sharon arrive and go into the kitchen with Mom. Jackie inched down a couple of steps so that she could listen to what they were saying.
Sharon asked Mom all kinds of questions and Jackie was surprised at how calm Mom sounded as she explained about what Agents Streeter and Camry were doing, about how Aunt Monica was giving a lot of money for Alex and Sam.
“Katie, are you going to be okay,” Aunt Sharon asked.
“Yesterday, I had what I think was a hallucination.” Jackie wondered what that was. “Alex and Sammie spoke to me. At first I thought that meant they were, you know, dead.”
“Like a dream?” Aunt Sharon asked.
“Yes, just a dream, but when I tried to tell Scott, he wouldn’t even listen. I am so worried about him. Last night I crushed up a Valium and put it in his drink. He did sleep better, but he was awake by the time the FBI agent got here this morning.”
“You did?” Aunt Sharon sounded surprised. “You know how Scott feels about drugs. That guy won’t even take a Tylenol.” Jackie did know how her dad felt about drugs, he was always volunteering for antidrug programs. She wondered what Valium was. Would it make Dad a drug addict?
“I had to do it. Scott is falling apart. I don’t know how else to say it. You know how he’s always been so strong, so steady. Throughout everything. Even when he got hurt and had to drop out of baseball. Throughout all the stresses we’ve had to face as a couple. Well, you know what I’m saying.”
Jackie kept listening. “Yes. We’ve often said, both of us Jones girls married stalwart men. Men with inner strength, strong values, ‘selfactualized’ men. Isn’t that what you called Scott and my Fred?”
“Yes,” Mom said.
“But with what you two are going through —”
Jackie felt a little guilty, knowing that eavesdropping was not polite, but she just had to know what Mom was thinking. About her. So far Mom had not mentioned her.
“Each day that passes,” Mom told her aunt, “I keep thinking that it’ll be today. That Sammie and Alex will come skipping into Mom’s house. I just can’t let myself sink into hopelessness.”
“I sure agree with that,” Aunt Sharon said. “But what about Jackie? How’s she holding up?”
Jackie almost leapt off her step to join her mom and her aunt, but she held back. What would Mom say. About her?
But Mom said nothing. That is, nothing about Jackie.
“More coffee?” Aunt Sharon asked.
“Sharon, I’m convinced that they are with a woman, not a man. That belief is the only thing that keeps me sane.”
What about me, Mom. Don’t I matter to you?
“Katie, I just don’t know if you’re being —”
“I’ve had enough coffee. And where is Scott? We have to get downtown. But, Sharon, I feel it in here, in my heart. My Alex and Sammie are okay. They’re off on an adventure. Making a joke out of leaving Jackie behind. Jackie’s always plotting to be an individual, deep down, she resents being a triplet. That’s why the girls split up at the movie, squabbling over which movie to see, Jackie wanting her own way.”
Jackie stayed riveted to her seat on the stairs. Now she knew that Mom — and Dad, too — blamed her. Whatever had happened to her sisters had been her fault.
“We have to think positive thoughts,” Mom told Aunt Sharon. “That’s what I tell my patients,” she said. “Negative thoughts are just that, negative.”
“No suspects, only a ransom note,” Aunt Sharon said. “What about Keith Franklin, Katie, anything new there?”
“Jackie, what are you doing sitting there?” Grandma tapped on her shoulder. “Come on, let’s go downstairs.”
Jackie felt her body begin to shake all over. She hoped that Grandma wouldn’t notice when she took her hand, and together they went down the rest of the steps.
Mom didn’t even look up as they walked into the breakfast nook, but Aunt Sharon did. Jackie heard her whisper to Mom, “Look at Jackie. You didn’t give her any drugs?”
“Of course not,” Mom said, blinking her eyes like she did when she was mad.
“Katie,” Aunt Sharon said, “let me take Jackie with me today. After Mom’s appointment, she can swim in the pool; I’ll take her to the club for tennis. Her Monroe uncles can keep her busy with baseball. She’d be distracted with constant activities.”
Aunt Sharon had gotten up and she put her hands on Jackie’s shoulder. “Look, I’ll get her away from all those reporters out there.”
“You may be right,” Mom said, but then she stopped. “But they need Scott downtown, and I can’t let him go alone and if Jackie —”
“I think it’s a good idea, Katie,” Grandma said.
But Jackie didn’t really care what happened. Her parents hated her.
Pulling her hand out of Grandma’s, Jackie took a step back, squirming out of the hold that Mom and Aunt Sharon had on her shoulders. “My sisters are dead,” she said in a normal tone of voice. “And it’s all my fault, Mom said so. It is all my fault.”
Jackie stepped farther back as her mother came toward her with her eyes blinking very fast. “That’s not true, Jackie,” Katie said. “I did not say that!”
Jackie backed up two more steps onto the landing of the stairs. “I heard you, Mom!” Her voice so loud now that she sounded like her sister, Sammie, challenging Mom.
Mom reached to grab her shoulders, but Jackie took a step backward. “Jackie, please, I never, ever meant that. Come here, sweetie.”
“I heard you tell Aunt Sharon. You don’t want me any more. Do you?”
Katie stopped. “That’s not what I meant,” she said with such a strange look in her eyes. Jackie couldn’t tell if she was angry or scared or what, because her face looked so twisted. “Jackie, you’re everything —”
For an instant, Jackie wanted to step forward, into her mom’s arms, but when she heard footsteps from the top of the stairs she turned to see who it was, then she took a step back, lost her balance, and fell backward off the two-step landing.
Jackie’s head hit the hardwood floor with a thud. Katie gasped, seemingly frozen as Sharon rushed to the child. Just as she did, Scott came bounding down the steps.
“What was that noise?” he asked, almost stumbling over Jackie’s body on the floor, curled in the shape of a comma.
“Kati
e, what happened?” he shouted, now on his knees, a hand over Jackie’s chest, his hazel eyes wide with dread.
“Don’t move her,” Katie managed, still standing, unable to move, unable to breathe. “Her neck —”
Not sure she wanted to take another breath, ever, Katie remained frozen. What have I done? “My fault,” she mumbled. “My fault.”
Lucy was at the phone, dialing 9-1-1.
“Katie, you’re a doctor,” Scott’s voice came out as a croak. “Get over here.”
On the 9-1-1 call, Lucy asked them to contact Agent Camry at the FBI. Within minutes an emergency team had arrived, and Camry called to say that she’d meet them at Children’s Hospital.
Alex and Sammie’s voices warning reverberated through Katie’s head. Take care of Jackie.
CHAPTER 25
Monica Monroe Offers One Hundred Thousand Dollar
Reward for Return of Nieces.
— National News, Thursday, June 18
Spanky’s rig jostled over the rough spots on I-75. Radio blasting seventies tunes, static interfering. He’d be fifty in two years, but he was still a teenager at heart. Stuck in adolescence some shrink had once told him. His stomach growled and he decided to pull over at the next stop for a burger and fries.
He knew the truck stops on the Detroit-Miami run like the back of his hand. Could tick them off in order of his chances to score a little pussy. The one ahead near Knoxville had promise, but not at noon. Besides, his needs had been satisfied last night down in Valdosta. A real Georgia peach. Said her name was Kiki. Now what kind of a name was that? Hawaiian? Her skin was kind of brown. Not black like an African American, more like Mexican or Indian or one of those stinkin’ Middle East countries. Kiki’d been hanging by the vending machine. He’d bought her a candy bar and promised to show her a nest of baby birds. He hadn’t hurt her. He never did hurt them. He just rubbed his willy all over those soft spots. Well, he had licked. But nothing that hurt or left a mark. And he was careful not to let his cum get on her clothes. When he was done, he’d given her the usual warning not to tell mommy or daddy, and he’d kept her panties. White nylon. He’d been hoping for something more sexy for number twenty. Oh, well. He couldn’t wait to ceremoniously add it to his collection.
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