Stolen in the Night

by MacDonald, Patricia

  “No, I know. We’ll go to my rooms. Erny’s back there right now.”

  The three of them hurried past the spacious common rooms of the inn and Dawn ushered them through the curtained French doors that led to the tidy little innkeeper’s suite. Erny was lying on a braided rug, gaping at the television. Dawn walked up to the TV and lowered the volume.

  “Hey!” Erny sat up in protest. Then he saw Tess. “Ma, we were looking for you on TV but we didn’t see you.”

  Jake collapsed into a corner of the sofa, rubbing his face with one large, weathered hand. “Go on outside, Erny,” Jake said.

  Erny was peering at Tess. “What’s the matter?” he said.

  Tess sat down at the other end of the sofa. She shook her head. “Nothing,” said Tess. “It’s all right.”

  “They said on TV that guy didn’t do it,” said Erny. “I thought you said he did—”

  “Not now, honey,” said Dawn. “Your mom isn’t feeling too well.”

  “Can we talk about it later?” Tess asked, her face haggard.

  Erny hesitated, his own face reflecting her distress.

  “Everything’s okay, Erny. Really. I just need to…um…rest for a while.”

  Erny accepted her reassurance skeptically. Then he had an idea. “Can I ride Sean’s bike now?” he asked.

  “Yeah, go take a ride,” said Jake.

  “Far as I want?”

  “Don’t go to the mountain. Don’t…talk to anyone you don’t know,” Tess warned him. “You hear me? If anyone tries to talk to you…”

  “I’ll ride away,” Erny promised.

  “Take your jacket,” said Dawn.

  The boy grabbed his heavy, hooded sweatshirt and disappeared. Dawn pulled up a cherrywood rocker to the end of the sofa where Tess was sitting and took Tess’s hand, limp on the armrest, into her own, rubbing it solicitously. “It’s just unbelievable,” said Dawn. “I don’t understand. How could it be?”

  “Lazarus Abbott was a crazy bastard with a sex crime record and his own stepfather believed he was guilty,” said Jake. “He did it.”

  Tess stared ahead, unseeing. “It was him,” she said. “I saw him.”

  Dawn pressed Tess’s unresponsive hand to her own cheek. “Oh Tess,” Dawn crooned. “You were a little girl. Completely traumatized. If…this is true…”

  Tess looked at her mother, her eyes wide. “Mom, I know it was him. I recognized him immediately that night when they brought him into the police station. I saw him in that courtroom. I’ve seen his picture millions of times. I know that Lazarus Abbott was the one who came into the tent that night.”

  “Honey,” said Dawn gently, “I’m afraid we have to face the possibility that you…that there was some mistake. You said it yourself. The science would settle it—put the matter to rest. Now, as it turns out, it didn’t put it to rest the way we expected…”

  “You always believed me. Now you think that I was lying?” Tess angrily pulled her hand away from her mother’s grasp.

  Dawn raised her hands in a placating gesture. “Not lying. Of course not. But you were so little—and vulnerable. And the police were sure it was him. You had all these grown-ups pointing to Lazarus Abbott. They may have influenced you. You were just a child. And you had endured the worst experience…”

  Tess stared at her mother. “No, I couldn’t have been wrong. That would mean…I implicated an innocent man. I brought about his death.”

  Dawn shook her head. “Your father was right. He was always against the idea of Lazarus Abbott being executed. This is the problem with the death penalty…”

  “Oh, for God’s sake, Mother,” said Jake, leaning forward. “Are you really going to get all teary-eyed about Lazarus Abbott? He was a psycho and I am not going to lose a minute’s sleep over this. And neither should you, Tess. And don’t be so quick to second-guess yourself. If you still think that he was the one who took Phoebe, I still believe you.”

  “Jake,” Dawn chided him. “That’s no help. No matter how we’d like to wish it away, we can’t just pretend these tests didn’t happen.”

  Jake shouted at his mother. “I’m not saying it didn’t happen.”

  “Jake, don’t yell at me,” his mother bristled.

  Jake lowered his voice. “I’m saying, Mother, that I believe Tess knew what she was talking about. She was a smart little kid. Nobody conned her into anything.”

  Dawn rolled her eyes. “Jake, we’re all upset by this but your attitude isn’t helpful. How could Tess be right when the evidence proves that it wasn’t Lazarus Abbott who killed Phoebe?”

  “Test results…” Jake scoffed. “Everybody acts like God himself ran the tests. Let me tell you something. I’ve got a guy on my crew—Sal Fuscaldo—you know Sal, Mom…”

  Dawn nodded wearily.

  “He wasn’t feeling good, so the doctor sent him for blood tests at the hospital lab. The results came back positive for some kind of acute leukemia. Sal asked the doctor what that meant, worst case, and the doctor told him he might have only four to eight weeks to live. Can you imagine? Sal was making out his will and picking out his cemetery plot. His wife, Bea, nearly had a breakdown. But the doc thought Sal didn’t seem sick enough for that diagnosis so he sent him for a spinal tap, just to make sure. Guess what? There was no cancer. The lab goofed. They sent Sal’s results to somebody else. Some other poor slob thought he was off the hook and then found out different.”

  Tess shook her head. “This was important. I’m sure they checked those results several times,” she said.

  “Oh, and you don’t think it was important to Sal whether he lived or died?”

  “You know what I mean,” said Tess.

  “That’s a true story, Tess. About Sal,” Jake said. “You wait and see. They’re going to find out they made a mistake at the lab.”

  “How I wish that were true,” said Tess.

  Dawn shook her head. “I’m almost glad your father didn’t have to live to see this day. Lazarus Abbott declared innocent. After all that we went through…” The three sat in silence for a moment, numb, all lost in their own thoughts. Then the phone began to ring.

  “Don’t answer it,” said Jake.

  Dawn stared at the phone. “It could be a reservation.”

  “It’s the press. Hounding us,” said Jake. “Trust me.”

  Dawn hesitated and then took her son’s advice and ignored the phone’s ringing. The machine picked up. A reporter from CNN wanted to tape an interview with the family and left his number. Dawn shook her head “What do we say to them?” she asked.

  “We don’t have to say anything,” said Jake. “It’s not our problem. Lazarus Abbott had a trial. He went to prison for Phoebe’s murder. He lost about a million appeals. He was executed. End of story.”

  There was a tapping on the voile-curtained French doors that led to Dawn’s quarters and they all jumped. Then Dawn sighed and stood up. “What now?” She walked over to the doors and pulled back the curtain, peeking out into the hallway. Then she let out a sigh of relief and opened the door. Julie came into the room, wearing a puffy mauve, quilted jacket over her hospital uniform.

  “I came as soon as I could get away,” she said to no one in particular. She pushed her glasses up on her nose and looked sympathetically at Tess. “The hospital was buzzing. Everybody’s talking about it.”

  “That’s not what my sister needs to hear right now,” said Jake to his wife.

  “Well, excuse me,” said Julie. “I’m just telling you what I heard.”

  “It’s all right,” said Tess. She looked at her brother and his wife, still together but no longer in sync. Once, long ago, they were like bookends—Jake and Julie, youth and beauty. Now Julie waddled and wore glasses and kept her faded blonde hair styled in a sensible haircut. Jake, ungroomed but still good-looking, seemed to look at his wife with distaste. For a moment, Tess felt critical of her brother’s superficiality. Julie might no longer be the eye candy he married, but she was still the sa
me kind person who was loyal to Jake’s family in their darkest hours. She had always been a practical girl and a source of strength.

  “Is there anything I can do for you?” Julie asked Tess.

  “You can tell her,” said Jake, “how often those hospital lab tests get screwed up. You’ve told me stories like that. Remember when they gave Sal the wrong results? You were telling me some story about a woman who had a tumor and they told her she was pregnant…”

  Julie, who was shrugging off her jacket, hesitated for a second and then she nodded. “Oh yes.” She looked encouragingly at Tess. “It definitely does happen. I mean, they try to be accurate, but there are mistakes sometimes.”

  “Thanks,” said Tess. She knew they were trying to help.

  Julie hung her jacket up on a coatrack by the door and walked over to the sofa. “Scoot over,” she said to her husband, wedging herself between Tess and Jake.

  Tess suddenly felt as if she couldn’t breathe. It wasn’t so much the physical proximity of the other three in Dawn’s tiny sitting room. It was more their sympathetic gazes and their well-meant reassurances that suddenly felt crushing. This affected all of them, but only Tess was truly…responsible. Only she had pointed to Lazarus Abbott in the courtroom and insisted that he was the guilty one.

  Tess jumped up. “I’m going to go out and get some air,” she said.

  “See? You’re squashing her,” Jake complained to his wife.

  “Nobody’s squashing me,” Tess snapped. “I just need to clear my head.”

  “Are you sure, honey?” Dawn asked. “Those reporters will see you. They’re everywhere.”

  “I’ll go out through the kitchen,” said Tess. She could hear the note of panic in her own voice. Before they could think of any more reasons why she shouldn’t go, Tess fled from her family.

  CHAPTER 6

  Tess made her way through the inn’s kitchen to the mudroom door, which led to the back steps. In the mudroom, she lifted a knit cap off a hook and put it on, tucking her hair into it. She still had on her wool hacking jacket, but she was shivering all over. She pulled a parka off one of the hooks and slipped it on over her jacket. Then she opened the back door and stood for a moment on the step, inhaling the smell of autumn and wood smoke and looking out at the perimeter of the national park in the distance. Under gray skies, the brown fields behind the inn were ringed by evergreens and ancient trees still bejeweled with stubborn, unshed leaves of gold and garnet at the foot of the mountain. Her gaze, so accustomed to the camera’s lens, automatically framed the beauty of the scene in front of her, even as her heart welled with the painful memories summoned by the sight. Her head was aching, but the damp air felt as soothing as a cool hand on her pounding forehead.

  Tess looked warily down the deserted bridle path that wended through the field and to the mountain, and the campground. Even though she knew rationally that no danger awaited her there, she never ventured in the direction of the park when she took a walk. But today she felt it tugging her, insisting that she face up to the past.

  For a minute she felt trapped, both compelled and afraid to go, and then she had an inspiration. She went back into the mudroom, picked up Leo’s leash, and whistled. The yellow Lab, who was snoozing on his rug near the woodstove in the kitchen, looked up, tongue hanging out.

  “Leo, come on,” said Tess. “Want to go for a walk?”

  Panting eagerly, the dog got up and padded out to where Tess was waiting. “Thata boy,” she murmured as she hooked the leash on Leo and closed the door behind them. She let Leo pick his way across the back terrace and down to the bridle path where Dawn often took him for a walk.

  Together they started down the path, crunching over ice-covered ruts of horses’ hooves and brown, broken grass. Leo led Tess along, stopping to sniff every bush and tree trunk he passed. Normally, Tess would have been impatient with the erratic pace of Leo’s explorations. But today the constant stopping and starting was good in that it kept her from following any train of thought too far.

  As Leo stopped to mark yet another shrub, Tess pulled the hat off and stuffed it into her jacket pocket as she shook out her hair. No need for a disguise, she thought, on this lonely trail. She held the leash lightly and looked ahead at the jagged, granite-colored horizon. As they approached the entrance to the wooded campground, Tess felt her heart beating faster with anxiety. Sometimes she wondered how Dawn could even bear to live so close to the spot where all their lives had been upended forever.

  Just before she entered the campground, she turned and looked back in the direction of the inn. The well-kept, clapboard-sided building looked charming and peaceful with smoke curling out of the chimney. Somehow, Tess thought, her mother had come to terms with living here, at the edge of their personal disaster area. It was almost as if it comforted her to be near the place where she lost Phoebe, as one might move to a place where a beloved child had disappeared, so as to be there if that child ever returned. But Phoebe had not disappeared and she would never return.

  Drawing in a deep breath, Tess followed the dog into the dark woods. She was amazed to see that nothing seemed to have changed in those twenty years. She passed by the latrine, where she never dared to go without Phoebe, and wound through the trails and up to the campsite, where they had set up their two tents that long-ago summer’s day. She had thought that perhaps she would not know the exact site if she saw it, but in fact, she recognized it instantly. It looked remarkably the same. She could picture their Volvo parked there, the doors and trunk open, their gear spilling out. She could almost hear their voices, calling to one another. Teasing. Her legs felt weak and she sat down at the pitted picnic table, Leo’s leash held loosely in her hand. The dog sniffed eagerly at the campsite’s unfamiliar smells, investigating a wide circle. Tess looked behind her and could see down the hill to the surface of the lake glinting through the empty branches of the trees. She gazed at the patch of dirt with its ring of rocks placed there to encircle a campfire. The ashes in the center of it were cold. Songs came to her mind, and ghost stories. Her heart was thudding madly, seeing it all again. Phoebe in the lantern light, and a ripping sound that woke her, and the man’s face…

  Leo’s sharp bark startled Tess and she felt the dog straining at the leash. Tess looked up in the direction the dog was pulling and saw a man walking toward them from the direction of the trail. He was wearing a navy blue sweatshirt, sweatpants, and watch cap. Tess scrambled to her feet, her heart hammering. She thought of the man watching her from the field this morning, and though she wanted to cry out, fear caught the words in her throat.

  Leo barked again. The man slowed down slightly as he approached. “Take it easy, boy,” he called out in a friendly voice.

  Tess did not try to restrain the dog but let him bark. She glared at the man who raised his hands in surrender.

  “Sorry,” he said. “I was jogging on the bridle path. I rarely run into anybody up here since it started getting cold.”

  “Leo, sit,” Tess commanded. The dog obeyed and became quiet. Tess glanced warily at the man who’d stopped at the edge of the campsite. “You startled us,” she said accusingly.

  “I can see that. I didn’t mean to.” He leaned over and reached out a hand for Leo to sniff. Leo approached him, pulling the leash taut, and examined the proffered hand warily. “You’re a good boy,” said the intruder in a gentle voice that thrummed through Tess, unnerving her. He looked up at Tess, smiling. “He means to protect you.”

  “Yes, he does,” Tess agreed in a warning tone. She had a sudden, embarrassing realization that she recognized this stranger. Now that she was standing close to him, she felt his physical presence weaken her, and his eyes seemed to uncover her secrets as if he could see the pulse throbbing beneath her skin.

  The man frowned as he straightened up. “It’s Miss DeGraff, isn’t it?” he said.

  Tess’s heart sank. There was no use denying it, although she didn’t want to talk to him, or have to meet his eyes. She had a
sudden impulse, which she resisted, to let go of the leash and command Leo to run him off down the trail. The jogger pulled off his watch cap, revealing shining silver hair.

  The attorney for Edith Abbott had a grave look in his delft-blue eyes. “I thought I recognized you from this morning,” he said. “I don’t know if you remember me. I’m—”

  “I know who you are,” Tess said abruptly.

  “I wouldn’t think you’d want to be up here,” he said. “Too many memories.”

  Tess did not reply.

  “I’m sure those results came as a shock to you today,” he said.

  Tess lifted her chin. “And I’m surprised to see you out jogging. I would have thought you’d be busy doing interviews.”

  “I had to get away from that madness,” he said. “I needed some air.”

  “No victory celebration?”

  “This is how I celebrate,” he said with a hint of a smile. “I run.”

  “I prefer champagne myself,” said Tess.

  Ben Ramsey shook his head. “This isn’t a champagne occasion,” he said. “An innocent man was executed.”

  “And you think it’s my fault,” she said.

  “Your fault?”

  “That is what you think.”

  Ben Ramsey shook his head. “No. Of course not. You were only a child.”

  “I told the court exactly what I saw,” Tess said.

  “What you thought you saw,” he corrected her. He crossed his arms over his chest and assumed a comfortable stance. “You know, initially, when Edith Abbott approached me, I didn’t want to get involved. I had my own problems and I knew it would be a drain on me. But when I read the transcript and saw that the conviction was largely based on the eyewitness testimony of a nine-year-old child…well, do you have any idea how unreliable eyewitness testimony can be? Even with adults? Psychologists have conducted tests that prove that over fifty percent of all eyewitness testimony is incorrect. That is a frightening statistic,” he said. “Especially when you’re building a death penalty case on it.”

  Tess stared at him without replying. He spoke as if he were discussing the case with a colleague, not with the very witness involved. She began to shiver again and her head hurt.