by Ben Miller
Dolan’s unexpected outburst of empathy stifled Jeff for a brief moment, but he quickly collected himself. “No. I don’t even think she has a baby. But she’s also Facebook friends with Tina Langenbahn. And one of my colleagues Detective Ferroni interviewed her this morning, and she said the same thing. She agrees with you—she doesn’t think you know Tina Langenbahn either.
“And you don’t know Sara Gardner, do you?”
“No!” The relief spreading through Dolan’s body was nearly visible.
“And you were here, in jail, today. All day. So you couldn’t have taken little Ella Hadden away from her mother Charlotte this morning, could you?”
“No. There was another…?”
Jeff nodded slowly, sadly. “There was another. So who are you working with, Aiden? You couldn’t have done this today, so who did?”
“I don’t know. There’s nobody else. I told you I had nothin’ to do with those babies.”
Jeff raised his voice, nearly back to his initial decibel level. “My guess is you’re not the genius behind this thing, Aiden. Let’s face it—you’re no mastermind. So tell me: who are you working for? Trust me, they wouldn’t be protecting you if they were in here right now!”
“No one. Nothing!” Dolan, rattled again, began to shiver.
“What did they promise you, Aiden? A chance to get back at your ex, Fiona? I know you took Tyler, but—”
Jeff paused, hit with an epiphany. He realized he had to look at this a different way. His father’s lesson about the not-so-clean countertops of his childhood echoed in his head. He studied Dolan’s face, sizing up the pathetic-looking punk as if for the first time. Suddenly one theory—one Camilla Vanderbilt had suggested just a few minutes ago during their second debriefing of the day—seemed the only scenario that made any sense. Jeff had to abandon his notion that Dolan had perpetrated all these crimes. As much as he wanted to pin all of this on Dolan, he would need to find another guilty party responsible for the Piper’s kidnappings. “But it wasn’t your idea, was it?” His voice softened again.
Dolan dropped his eyes. Jim Fedorko leaned forward, gazing at Dolan’s face, trying to get a read on his client. Like Jeff Pine, Fedorko sensed that a confession was imminent. He considered saying something, but instead he just placed a hand on Dolan’s arm to remind him of his presence. Though legally bound to provide appropriate counsel, Fedorko knew that a confession and its subsequent guilty plea would amount to far less work for him than a murder trial.
Jeff leaned in close, this time trying to offer comfort to Dolan rather than intimidate him. He spoke at a volume barely louder than a whisper, repeating nearly verbatim the hypothesis posited by Camilla moments before. “I think it was Wendy’s idea all along. I saw the way she held Tyler at the hospital. I think she wanted a baby of her own. I think she saw those other kidnappings on the news, and she saw an opportunity for you to get Tyler. ‘Blame it on the Piper’, she said, right? She probably nagged you about it. On and on and on. And on. For days. Until you had no choice but to agree. Because Fiona wouldn’t let you see Tyler. So you had to take him.”
Dolan muttered something unintelligible and covered his face with his hands.
“What’s that, Aiden?” Jeff asked gently, trying not to pounce. He knew he was so close.
“Fuckin’ bitches, man,” Dolan repeated, this time slightly louder and perceptibly clear. He looked up at Jeff, trying to find a comrade with whom to commiserate. “You know? They’re just never happy, man. It’s always something. Fuckin’…” He trailed off, a tear falling along his downtrodden face.
Jeff let the silence persist. Soon someone would feel forced to fill the void, and he wanted it to be Dolan.
Finally, after nearly ninety seconds and several sniffles, Dolan obliged. “Fiona was just so cool, you know?” He pointed down at the tattoo of her name on his forearm. “We had fun, and, she was just cool. Then she got knocked up, and she was like—” He drew a straight line in the air with his fingers extended, making a “Fffft” sound with his lower lip against his teeth. “That’s it. She dumped me. Done. So, I moved on. I hung out with some other chicks. Then I met Wendy. She was like, ‘Oh, you should have custody. You need to be with your son.’ And all this other shit. So, I tried, but Fiona was all, ‘No.’ She wouldn’t even talk about it.”
Jeff had him talking, but he still hadn’t gotten an actual confession. He had much bigger issues to deal with right now—chiefly re-opening the Piper investigation—but he wanted to tie this up. “It was Wendy’s idea then, wasn’t it?” he prodded.
Dolan nodded and continued on without taking a beat. “Yeah. Just like you said. She saw it on the internet—YouTube or some shit—about those other kids bein’ taken from their moms, and she said, ‘Let’s just take Tyler.’ But, I couldn’t just take him. Fiona would…”
“She’d recognize you,” Jeff completed.
“Yeah. So…” Dolan paused again before passing all the way through the threshold to a full admission. “So I had to do it. I had to kill her. I feel so bad, man. I mean, I just…I hated her. I hated her for dumping me. But now? I mean…I loved her, you know? It’s so fucked.” Dolan wiped his hands on his face again. After digging his knuckles into his eye sockets for several seconds, he dropped his hands into his lap. His eyes met Jeff’s. “I’m so fucked, aren’t I?”
As much as Jeff despised this confessed murderer before him, his conscience, his heart, and his religion wouldn’t let him lie. So he looked back at Dolan in earnest, and he nodded.
54
Two puzzles. The recurring thought hit Jack once again, the itch that just never went away despite his efforts to scratch it, and eventually just to ignore it. Of course.
All the pieces about the Fiona Evans case that fit Aiden Dolan so well and all the pieces about the Piper cases that didn’t fit at all now seemed to make much more sense, because the two were not really related. Dolan just used the Piper cases to try to camouflage murdering his ex-girlfriend and abducting their son.
After Jack had gotten off the phone with Camilla, he had a chance to speak with one of the assistant State’s Attorneys working under Ian Dewey. Opening arguments took nearly an hour (Victor Upshall’s consuming almost forty-five minutes); nearly every bit of testimony lasted about twice as long as expected; and apparently Upshall upheld his reputation as a relentless bulldog, barking objections at a fast-paced clip. They would not get to Jack and Vicki today, the assistant DA assured Jack. Jack recognized they received special treatment when the assistant prosecutor told him they were free to leave, but he didn’t feel guilty in the least.
In order to avoid any silence on the way home, Jack filled Vicki in about the latest in the Piper case, per Camilla’s report. The details matched the Piper’s modus operandi almost perfectly. A young mother by the name of Charlotte Hadden was attacked early this morning while leaving her apartment for the bus stop in a poorer section of northern Boston. The main divergence from the previous attacks was that she had held her seven-week-old infant girl Ella in her arms, rather than carrying her in a car seat. The Piper approached from behind, calling out “Hey” (only once, as far as Charlotte could remember—another disparate detail), and then immobilized her with a Taser. He caught her rather than let her fall to the ground, quickly and safely removing the baby from her arms. He blinded her with the black pillowcase before jolting her again. When she regained her faculties, Ella and the Piper were gone.
Preliminary information suggested no link between Charlotte and the two other previous Piper victims, other than being young, single, white, and new mothers. Jeff Pine, Rita Ferroni, and the CASMIRC team were en route to examine the crime scene and interview Charlotte. Aiden Dolan had confessed to murdering Fiona Evans and kidnapping Tyler, and he was willing to testify against Wendy Jenkins for her involvement. DA Isaac McConnell was currently meeting with Dolan to work out a plea deal. As a result Dolan, who wielded the knife and ripped open his former lover’s throat, may serve equal or e
ven less time than his girlfriend Wendy, who only plotted the attack and drove the getaway car.
Jack had asked Camilla to forward as much information as she could as soon as possible about the new case. He planned on diving in the minute he got home. He hated that Randall’s trial pulled him away from the Piper investigation. Solving a crime from 450 miles away— without his feet on the ground, smelling the air, finding the subtleties in the silences—imposed such a handicap. He knew that his presence in Boston was imperative to successfully and rapidly bringing the Piper to justice.
Suddenly he wanted to testify as early as he could in this awful case. That way he could leave town to get to Boston. Both for better and worse, Prosecutor Dewey’s plan—as of last week, at least—included Vicki going on the stand before Jack. While it would delay the completion of his testimony, it did mean he would not have to worry about Vicki after he left to go back to Boston. He would call Dewey later this evening to try to get a better sense of the timing of everything, and to convey to Dewey the importance of finishing his obligation quickly. Surely Dewey could appreciate what an important role Jack served for the CASMIRC team. Plus they all expected Boston’s Piper to attract national media attention at this point, amplifying its significance in Jack’s argument to Dewey.
By the time they got home, Vicki was more interactive. The atmosphere in the courthouse had suffocated her, Jack told himself. Her turnaround provided much-needed comfort, allowing Jack to focus even more clearly on the incoming intelligence from his team in Boston. He immersed himself in that for the next several hours, until the next earthquake shook his world.
55
Heath Reilly and Camilla Vanderbilt left Jeff, Rita, and a score of other investigators at the crime scene to go up to Charlotte Hadden’s apartment. She lived with her mother in a two-bedroom on the second floor of a walk-up. As they ascended the stairs, elderly neighbors poked their heads out of their doors and looked at Reilly and Camilla, their inquisitive faces longing for answers. Reilly tried to ignore them, but Camilla asked them kindly and respectfully to close their doors.
A uniformed officer stood guard outside the Haddens’ apartment, the door just barely ajar. “They asked for some privacy,” he offered as an apology to the senior investigators for why he stayed outside rather than inside with the family.
Reilly shrugged—trying to indicate that no excuse was necessary—while Camilla replied, “Thank you,” as they walked past him into the apartment. The entrance opened into the living room. A threadbare couch sat in the center of the room, facing a large flat-screen mounted on the wall to their left. Reilly’s jaw nearly dropped at the sight of the enormous TV. Surely it cost about as much as half a year’s rent for this apartment. He briefly wondered how some people got their priorities so screwed up.
On the opposite side of the room, a woman in her late thirties sat in an armchair. While the fraying of the armchair’s upholstery matched that of the weathered couch, the patterns bore no resemblance. Based on what they had learned about Charlotte Hadden’s age of only seventeen years, Reilly presumed this woman was her mother.
Reilly heard Charlotte before he could visualize her. She periodically released a squeal or a sob into the air. As they approached Charlotte’s mother to introduce themselves, Reilly finally saw Charlotte. Previously obscured from view by a water-ring-laden coffee table, Charlotte knelt on the floor before her mother, her head in her lap. Charlotte’s mother stroked her hair reassuringly, likely as she had countless times before in her daughter’s life.
The woman did not get up or extend a hand when the agents introduced themselves. Rather she responded, “I’m Charmagne, and this is Charlotte. Please sit.”
Reilly and Camilla complied and placed themselves on the couch. “I’m so sorry for this ordeal you’re going through,” Camilla began. “Charlotte, sweetheart, can we please ask you a few questions?”
Charlotte wailed louder and shook her head in response. Her long, sandy blond hair, stuck in clumps from a combination of tears, sweat, and stress, flopped audibly on the tops of her mother’s thighs. Her mother lifted her hand for a moment, taking a break from massaging her scalp. Once the head-shaking died down, she resumed stroking.
“I can’t imagine what you’re going through right now,” Camilla empathized. “Our job is to try to help find the person who took Ella from you so we can bring her back to you. I’m sure you want that too, right?”
Charlotte stopping crying and lifted her head. She turned slowly toward Camilla and met her eyes through a forest of matted hair. Almost imperceptibly, she nodded.
Camilla smiled and tilted her head. “Good. Can you help us then?”
Charlotte did not respond for several seconds. Reilly and Camilla focused on her head, waiting for the subtlest shake or nod. She opened her mouth to answer. However, seemingly uncontrollably, her mouth stretched out widely and, instead of words, another shriek emerged. She buried her head between her mother’s knees again.
Reilly sighed quietly, his best effort at concealing his disappointment. Camilla glared at him through her peripheral vision, which he did not notice.
Charmagne began rubbing her daughter’s head again. “I’m sorry. She’s grown up so much these last several months, but she’s still a little girl.”
“That’s OK,” Camilla reassured, even though they desperately needed as much information from Charlotte as they could possibly retrieve. The Piper had now struck twice in six days; they likely had even less time to catch him before he attacked and abducted again.
“She’s working so hard. Really trying. At first she thought about, you know, not having her. Or giving her up. But she’s turned into a good little mother. She loves that baby so much. You should…” Charmagne had to pause to work the lump out of her throat. After several seconds, she was able to continue. “You should have seen her with Ella. Oh, and what a happy little baby. She had just started to smile.” With that she could no longer refrain, and tears began streaming down her cheeks as well. Charlotte wailed again.
“Perhaps we should come back later?” Camilla offered. “It’s very important we conduct a thorough interview, but we can see that you both need some time alone right now.”
Charmagne nodded. “Maybe tomorrow.”
Reilly, feeling perhaps a greater sense of urgency than Camilla, spoke up for the first time since the introductions. “How about we call you later this evening? If you are up to it, we can talk then?”
Charmagne agreed to this plan, so Reilly and Camilla left them to grieve alone.
56
Bo Edelstein drummed the fingers of his left hand on top of his desk. When Corinne had first started working at The Washington Post, meetings like this with Bo had always made her nervous. The idiosyncratic tapping of his fingers only added to the anxiety, which she surmised was the intended purpose. Bo was not someone who wasted energy on even the most trivial of activities without purpose. Now, however, she had grown accustomed to these parleys. She waited patiently for Bo to begin speaking, impervious to his nerve-racking thrum.
She couldn’t wait to get out of the courtroom that afternoon. She had only covered a handful of trials in her career, and it had been several years since her last trek inside a courthouse. She had nearly forgotten what a tedious process it could be. She intended to spend time this evening converting her notes into text for the book. So little of actual substance had transpired that she estimated it might take her less than thirty minutes. As soon as the proceedings concluded, she had bolted from the gallery and rushed to the office to make this scheduled meeting with her editor.
Finally Bo took his eyes off the laptop screen on his desk to stare directly at Corinne. He didn’t say a word; he just tried to read her face. She never fully understood the directive behind this tactic, but it remained consistent with previous encounters. “Well?” he asked, his face expressionless.
Corinne raised her eyebrows. She used to respond, “Well, what?” to this aimless query, but she had
learned to forgo that runaround and jump to the next question. “All the facts are accurate.”
“Where did this originate?” Bo asked.
Corinne sighed. She knew that Bo knew the answer to this. “A source.”
“A reliable one? “
“‘A reliable source’ is a redundant term—if a source isn’t reliable, then I don’t consider him or her a source.”
“An unbiased one?”
Corinne retorted, “As long as the facts are accurate—which they are in this case—since when does bias make someone an unreliable source?”
“Since this is an article that will send ripples through this community that could reach across the country. Since it may be damaging to at least one person’s career—a very rich, pretty powerful person—who wouldn’t think twice about dropping a libel suit against us if there’s merit to it. Or maybe even it there’s not. And since you hate him.”
“This isn’t personal, Bo.”
Bo glared at her disappointingly. “Bullshit, Corinne. I know how much work you put into the Allison Branford case, and how much you grew to like her family. You know I have to fine-tooth comb this thing.”
Corinne pulled a folder off her lap and opened it on top of Bo’s desk, pulling out leaflets as she spoke. “These are statements from two different New Affirmation employees attesting to both of them being checked in at the same time. Melissa Hollow’s credit card statements confirm the charge to New Affirmation in spring of 2001. One of Upshall’s former paralegals admitted that he took a leave from his firm at the time. He filed it under FMLA, but I can’t find any records of an ill family member at the time.”
Bo took the sheets from his desk and silently studied them carefully for several minutes. “Are these phone numbers accurate?”
Corinne nodded. “All personal cell lines.”