by Chris Jordan
She weeps, blows her formidable nose, keeps on weeping. “Poor Tomas,” she manages to say between blows. “I can’t stop thinking about him. He’s such a sweet kid. He must be so scared.”
I take back the box of tissues and blot away my own tears. “Great,” I say. “Now we’re both weeping.”
“It’s just so horrible.”
“I really need you, Con. The kidnappers got all my cash. The lawyer is taking a lien on the house. God knows what the investigator is charging, I haven’t had the courage to ask him yet. So the business needs to make money for as long as we can, okay?”
“Okay,” she says, making one last honk into a wad of tissues. “Phone has been ringing off the hook. I switched it to voice mail.”
I nod. “When I leave, switch it back. What are they saying?”
“They’re worried we won’t show up. For most of them it’s too late to find another caterer.”
“Anybody cancel?”
“No,” says Connie, looking shocked. “Why would they do that?”
“Oh, I don’t know. Maybe they don’t want their wedding catered by a kidnapping killer mom?”
“Nobody thinks that!” Connie says vehemently.
“What did you hear on the news?”
Connie gives me an odd look. “You don’t know? You didn’t watch?”
“Didn’t have the guts.”
Connie sighs and shrugs. “Lots of alleged this and sources said that. Something about a custody fight for Tomas and poor Fred got in the way. Nothing very specific.”
For the last year or so I’ve been leaving the planning and preparation to Connie and the crew, and concentrating my own efforts on corporate sales. Obviously, that’s not possible right now. We’ll go with what we’ve got and worry about the future when it gets here. If it gets here.
“We’re booked solid for two months, right?”
“You know we are,” Connie says with a small, satisfied smile. “We’re the best, my dear. Clients check with us before they set wedding dates.”
“They do, don’t they?”
“Darn right they do. And a lot of the invitations I see include the phrase ‘refreshments provided by Kate Bickford.’ Not even Katherine Bickford Catering. Just your name. That’s how well known you are.”
“How well known ‘we’ are,” I correct her. “I haven’t baked a pie or a cookie in two years.”
“Doesn’t matter. People trust us to bring them great food. And that won’t change.”
“Thanks, Coach. This is exactly what I needed to hear.”
Connie responds by giving me a hug. Making me feel small and safe because she’s so much taller than I am, and because I can sense the strength radiating from her angular frame.
“You are not to worry about the business,” she tells me. “Worry about Tomas, or the cops, or the lawyers, or whatever else you have on your mind, but do not worry about the business.”
I pull away, wiping my eyes. “You’re the best, Con.”
Connie smiles. “I really am. Now beat it. Go find Tomas.”
I’m out of the warehouse and on my way to the parking lot when a hand touches my shoulder. Hits me like an electrical zap, but when I turn it’s only Sherona, looking appalled to have frightened me.
“Sorry,” she says meekly. “Didn’t mean to scare you.”
“What can I do for you?” I respond, dreading that she’s about to give notice. We’ve been through four pastry chefs in five years and Sherona is by far the best, and the most reliable. A bit rocky for the first few months, but since she settled in and developed the necessary confidence her work has been superb.
“Just wanted to say, ma’am, doesn’t matter if you did it, not to me.”
I’m so stunned I can’t think of how to respond.
Sherona, aware of my discomfort, begins to speak faster and faster. “I mean, it’s like what I’m trying to say is, I’m sure you didn’t do it and you’re innocent and everything, but even if you did do it you must have had a reason. Maybe that cop got physical on you or something, you had to defend yourself.”
The look of intense concentration on her normally angelic face reminds me of something I’d put out of my mind, since Sherona herself never brought it up after she started work. According to her résumé, and several letters of recommendation, her training as a pastry chef had taken place at the Bridgeport Sanctuary, a shelter for abused women. So she undoubtedly knows a thing or two about threatening males, and the fear they instill in otherwise strong and self-reliant females. And she’s assuming I may have had a similar experience.
She’s right, in a way. But I can’t let her think that my old friend the sheriff deserved to be killed.
“Fred Corso was never abusive to me,” I tell her, “or to the kids, or to anyone that I know of, okay?”
“If you say so, ma’am.”
“The only man who ever abused me is still out there, and he’s got my son.”
“You gonna find him, though.”
“I’m gonna find him.”
Sherona smiles, relieved not to have offended me. “When you do find that sucker, the kidnap man, you want to pop him in the oven or something, you call on me.”
“I will, Sherona. Thank you.”
On the way to the rental car I’m thinking, pop the kidnap man in the oven. Not a bad idea. Not a bad idea at all.
18
my bad
The boy comes awake very slowly. The first thing he’s aware of is the inescapable fact that he’s wet the bed. Again wet sheets, the stench of his own urine. Then the feel of the gag in his mouth—it tastes like throw-up. A moment later he becomes aware of the tight, tingly numbness of his wrists and ankles. White plastic straps securing him to the bed. He remembers the straps from the last time he woke up, and the sneering voice that threatened to put rubber pants on him. Rubber pants like a baby.
Bastards.
He remembers calling out for his mother, too. This time he won’t make that mistake. Obviously Mom isn’t here, or none of this would be happening. Still, he searches his mind for the most recent memory of his mom. Was it standing in the dugout, cheering him on? Maybe. No, no, after the game. Giving him money. Ice-cream money. But he never got the ice cream. Something happened. What was it exactly?
Choking. A hand covering his face. White van. No, the white van was first. Then a door sliding open. Shadow behind him. Then the hand on his face, a whiff of something powerful. Dizzy darkness. Next thing, his bladder hurting. Voice of a stranger, threatening him.
Kidnapped.
Tomas had heard scary stories about strangers who steal children, but the stories never had anything to do with him. Scary junk about sickos, or vampires, or slimy monsters from outer space, they were all the same really. Just stuff to make you shiver. Not real.
This is real.
Not fair, he’s thinking. A sense of unfairness so deeply felt it feels like heat spreading from his belly. The heat overwhelms the cold knot of fear, melts it away, and that makes him feel stronger. Not strong enough to break the thick plastic restraints, but strong enough to let him think.
First thing, what does he know? Tomas makes a list in his head. He knows he’s been kidnapped, taken away from everything that’s ever been familiar. He knows he was put to sleep somehow, and that it has happened more than once. He knows he’s facedown on a bed not his own, in a room not his own. He knows there are men nearby, because if he screams they come into the room, threaten him, and put him to sleep.
Tomas knows he doesn’t want to be put to sleep again, no matter how tempting that might be. He must stay awake. He must think. Mom is always telling him to use his brain. If she were here, he knows she’d want him to find a way to escape. Probably she wants him to do that anyway, no matter where she is.
He sure hopes his mom is okay, but he can’t let himself think about that too much or he’ll cry, and if he’s crying he’s not thinking.
First thing, he has to do something about the stra
ps on his wrists and ankles. In the movies guys always fray the rope and get free. But this isn’t a movie and there’s nothing to fray the plastic against. Nothing but damp sheets. And when he tugs, the straps just get tighter. He tries willing his wrists smaller but that doesn’t work. And he can’t really see what’s going on with his ankles, tangled up as they are in the ruined bedclothes.
Think. There’s always a way, if you use your brain, young man.
Tomas is thinking as hard as he can when a door opens behind him and footsteps come softly into the room.
“Dammit!”
The boy steels himself for a blow. Instead, a dark form appears in his peripheral vision. Can’t quite focus, but this man, like the others, conceals his face with a kind of mask.
“I told them not to let this happen,” the voice says. “My bad, Tomas. You deserve better than this.”
Something shiny near his face. A knife. The boy flinches, squeezing shut his eyes.
“Shh,” the voice says. “Easy now. Here’s what I’m going to do. First I’m going to cut away the gag. You must promise not to scream. No one to hear you anyhow. Then, I’ll free your hands and feet. You promise not to scream?”
Tomas nods.
The blade slices through the gag and he can breathe through his mouth. He takes great, gulping lungs full of air. Then coughs, because the stench of the ruined bed is so acrid.
Suddenly his hands and feet are free. Didn’t even feel the knife slicing through the plastic straps. Which makes him even more afraid of the blade, what it can do.
“Roll off the bed onto the floor,” the voice commands. “Sit there.”
Tomas slides off the bed, away from the blade. He’s dizzy, not sure if he could stand even if he wasn’t so afraid of the voice and the knife it wields.
“We’re going to treat you better, Tomas,” the man says. “There will be a new mattress, fresh clothes. No more drugs. I want you to be healthy. Do you want to be healthy, Tomas?”
Tomas hates that the voice knows his name. He’s afraid to look up at the man with the knife.
“Answer me, son.”
He hates that the man calls him “son.” But he’s afraid not to answer. “Yes,” he says.
“Yes, what?”
“Yes, I want to be healthy,” he says, speaking into his hands.
“Good. Excellent. You’re going to do me a big favor, Tomas,” the man says. “You know what the big favor is? Can you guess?”
“No,” the boy says.
“It’s very simple, really. You’re going to make things right.”
19
queens for a day
There’s something about the highway, about getting the show on the road, that makes me feel almost optimistic. Maybe because I’m finally doing something, making decisions, taking action.
Today is the day, I’m thinking. The day I find my son. The day Tommy comes home.
Have to think like that or I’ll fall apart.
Ted used to joke about potholes on 295 that were big enough to swallow Hummers. And that was long before military vehicles became the new station wagons. As I’m discovering, the pothole thing hasn’t exactly improved over the years. On the approach to the Throgs Neck they have the look and feel of bomb craters, and once or twice my passenger’s head comes close to smacking the underside of the car roof. Not that he’s complaining. Nothing less than an exploding land mine would break his concentration on the coffee he’s been sipping since we got on the thruway heading south.
Earlier, explaining his sleep disorder, he’d mentioned “zoning out.” Apparently that means staring at the dashboard with unfocused eyes as his right hand robotically feeds a steady dose of Starbucks caffeine into his system. Several times I’ve attempted to initiate a conversation, but his response is limited to noncommittal grunts.
I’ve owned dogs that were more responsive to my queries.
Shane snaps out of it as we begin our descent from the bridge. Suddenly his eyes brighten, his posture changes, he’s back in my world. “Little nap,” he says, yawning happily. “I feel much better.”
“That was a nap?”
He shrugs. “My version. Not refreshing, exactly, but it helps.”
Traffic opens, I find the right lane, slotting us into the flow for the Cross Island. After we successfully negotiate our way onto the parkway, Shane suddenly announces, “I’ve been thinking about motivation.”
“Motivation?” I’m at a loss. Is he about to bring up the so-far unmentioned subject of his fee?
“There’s the money extorted from you,” he says. “Half a million bucks is plenty of motivation. But if they have that kind of access into bank software, it’s a good guess they could have drained your accounts without having to risk a child abduction. Not to mention killing a cop.”
“You just said ‘they,’” I say, interrupting. “So you really think I’m right? There’s more than just, um, Bruce?”
“I do,” he says. “An abduction that involves ransom or extortion almost invariably requires teamwork. I’m assuming Bruce is team leader.”
“Okay,” I say, keeping my eyes on the fleet of battle-scared cabs that have suddenly surrounded us. “Sorry for interrupting, you said something about motivation.”
“Yes. There’s a strong possibility this wasn’t just about the money.”
“And that’s good?” I ask hopefully.
He shoots me a wary look. “Can I be blunt?”
“Go ahead.”
“Once Bruce had the money, why not kill you? From his point of view, you’ve served your purpose. Why leave you alive and go to the trouble of planting evidence implicating you in a murder?”
“How about this?” I say vehemently. “Because he’s a sadistic monster. Because he’s a sick, sick son of a bitch.”
“No doubt,” Shane agrees. “But he’s a sick monster with a very specific and well-planned agenda. I’m assuming the whole thing of setting you up for a murder, making it look like you’re in a custody dispute, all of that is an elaborate diversion from his actual purpose. He’s creating a lot of light and smoke, making sure the major law enforcement agencies aren’t treating this as a straight-ahead child abduction. He’s got something else planned.”
“And taking Tommy is part of his plan?”
“Yes. He’s buying time. Which means, whatever he wants to accomplish, it isn’t over yet.”
“And that’s a good thing?”
“Absolutely. Everything Bruce has done so far convinces me your son is still alive.”
A horrifying thought: Shane has been searching for a reason to believe that my son is alive.
“What about this woman who claims to be his birth mother?” I ask somewhat lamely. The air now definitely out of my optimistic balloon.
“We’ll know more by the end of the day,” Shane assures me. “But my experience is that birth mothers rarely kidnap children after so many years have elapsed without contact. Your son is what, eleven years old?”
“Eleven, yes.” I get a flash of his last birthday party—total chaos of screaming boy-monsters—and feel a lump forming in my throat.
“A distraught birth mother might change her mind and take drastic action after a few months. Possibly even a year or two,” Shane says, nodding to himself. “But after a decade? After that long, why not just go through the courts to establish shared custody, or visitation, or whatever? Why risk a felony conviction—a very serious felony conviction—when the child is going to be legally of age in two more years?”
“Legally of age? What are you talking about? In two years Tommy will only be thirteen.”
“Exactly,” Shane says. “And at age thirteen, most custodial judges will defer to the child. All things being equal, they’d let him make up his own mind regarding who has custody, or at least who he lives with. It’s actually a practical application of the law, because by the time they’re teenagers, unhappy kids run away, or find their way back to the parent of choice anyhow, no matter what t
he law or the social workers decree.”
The whole subject of a possible birth mother makes me feel very unsettled. Not quite skin crawling, but close. Reminds me of how relieved I’d been when Ted told me the parents were deceased, that we were adopting an orphaned child. Which also made me feel guilty, for benefiting from a tragedy. Guilt that was swept away by the flood of joy when I took the baby in my arms and felt his little heart beating. He’s afraid, too, I thought, and then, but I can fix that. And I did fix it, by a simple act of love. Proving to myself that I could mother a child not my own, and in that way make him as much a part of me as if he had been conceived with my own DNA.
Or so I thought at the time. The idea that his birth mother might be alive changes everything, throwing me back into a deep unease about my place in Tommy’s world. Unease somehow separate from my anxiety about his current well-being.
Every minute, every hour without my son makes me more uneasy, motherwise. Anxious not that my love for him will ever abate—no chance—but that he will no longer feel the same way about me. Knowing there may be another Tommy-mom in the world changes everything, doesn’t it?
“So how did you get into this crazy business?” I ask my passenger, if only to distract myself.
Shane studies me, as if unsure how much information should be shared with a client. “I was with the bureau,” he finally admits. “The FBI. After I took early retirement, I needed something to do.”
His hesitant tone makes it sound like he’s far from certain about his own motivation. Or at the very least unwilling to discuss it with me. But I’m not ready to let him off the hook. I glance over—one eye for the traffic, one for the passenger—and ask, “So this is what you did in the FBI? Located missing children?”
Shane rubs his chin, stroking his trim little beard and grimacing slightly. “No, no. At least not like what you see on TV,” he explains. “I was a special agent with an expertise in fingerprint identification. Really not so much the prints themselves, as our system for accessing prints and connecting them with perpetrators. Which means linking up with other systems, worldwide. Software stuff.”