by Paula Graves
“Cissy’s still unconscious. They’ve called in a helicopter to take her to Birmingham.” Sam’s eyes darkened with anger. “If I ever get my hands on the son of a bitch who did this-”
“What about your daughter?” Foley pressed.
Sam looked at Kristen rather than Foley. “Can’t it wait?”
She wanted to say yes. The last thing she wanted to do was spend any more time with Sam Cooper’s little girl. But questions had to be asked, and for better or worse, she and Foley were the ones who’d been assigned to ask them. “I think the sooner we can talk to her, the more we’ll get from her, while it’s fresh in her mind.”
He looked at her for a long moment, his expression hard to read. It softened a bit, finally, and he gave a short nod.
Foley glanced at Kristen, a question in his eyes.
“I’ll talk to the family,” she said. “You handle the kid.”
Sam Cooper looked at Kristen through narrowed eyes, his irritation evident. “Don’t like children?”
“They don’t like me,” Kristen answered shortly, wondering why his clear disapproval bothered her so much. “Foley has kids. He knows how to handle them.”
Sam’s expression darkened further, but his next words were directed at his daughter. “Maddy, this is Detective Foley. He wants to ask you some questions.”
Maddy buried her face in her father’s neck and shook her head. “No, Daddy!”
“Look, why don’t we wait until tomorrow-” Sam began.
“The sooner we do this, the more she’ll remember,” Foley said. He took a step toward Maddy, softening his voice. “Maddy, sweetheart? I have a little girl just your age. Do you want to see a picture of her?”
“No!” Maddy’s voice was muffled by her father’s collar.
Foley looked at Kristen, his expression helpless. “You give it a try.”
“No,” Kristen said in unison with Sam.
Foley arched one eyebrow.
“She doesn’t like kids.” Sam’s voice tightened.
“They don’t like me,” Kristen repeated, annoyed.
“Maddy, will you talk to Detective Tandy?” Foley asked, ignoring them both.
Maddy turned her head slightly, peeking out from under her father’s chin at Kristen. “Her?”
Foley nodded.
Maddy pressed her face against her father’s throat again, to Kristen’s relief. But a moment later, the little girl nodded, and Kristen’s heart sank. No way to avoid it now.
With resignation, she gestured toward the emergency room waiting area. “Let’s find a quiet corner.”
Sam Cooper gave her a warning look, as if he suspected the sole purpose of the requested interview was to further traumatize his daughter. She ignored his clear discomfort and led the way to the chairs tucked into the corner of the waiting room. Sam settled into one of the chairs, Maddy curled on his lap. Kristen pulled her chair around to face them. Maddy gazed back at her with solemn green eyes, her face still pink from crying. Teardrops glittered on her long lashes like diamonds.
“You saw the bad man who hurt Cissy, didn’t you, Maddy?”
She heard Sam’s soft inhalation but ignored it, keeping her eyes on the little girl. Slowly, Maddy nodded.
“Was he tall like your daddy?”
Maddy shook her head. She lifted one thumb to her mouth and laid it on her lower lip but didn’t start sucking it. She craned her head to look up at her father.
The look of heartbroken love Sam Cooper gave his daughter made Kristen’s breath catch. She looked away, a phantom pain jabbing her under her rib cage like a knife. Licking her lips, she pressed on. “So he wasn’t tall. Was he short like me?” She stood up so Maddy could see her height.
The little girl considered the question for a moment, then shook her head again. “Bigger.”
“Was he skinny like Uncle J.D.?” Sam asked.
“No, Daddy. Like Uncle Aaron.”
Sam met Kristen’s eyes over the top of his daughter’s head. “My brother Aaron. You may know him-he’s a Chickasaw County Sheriff’s Deputy. A little taller than me, built like a bulldog. Played football at ’Bama till he blew out his knee.”
“Yeah, I’ve met him before,” Kristen said. She turned her attention back to Maddy. “So he’s shorter than your daddy and about your Uncle Aaron’s size. Did you see his hair color?”
She shook her head. “Had a daddy hat.”
Kristen looked to Sam for translation.
He gave a helpless shrug. “I guess she means a baseball cap. That’s the only kind of hat I ever wear.”
Maddy looked up at her father again, her eyes welling up with new tears. “He made Cissy cry, Daddy.”
Sam’s eyes glittered as he stroked his daughter’s dark curls. “I know, baby. That’s why we need to find out who he is and make sure he doesn’t ever do that again.” He looked at Kristen. “I don’t think she remembers much about it.”
“Did you notice anything special about him? Did he have freckles or moles or scars-?” With a bracing breath, Kristen held out her right hand and showed it to Maddy. “This is a scar, Maddy. See that?”
Maddy looked solemnly at the burned skin on the back of Kristen’s hand, then up at Kristen. “Does it hurt?”
“Not anymore.” She avoided Sam’s gaze. “Did the man have anything like this?”
Maddy shook her head.
“What happened?” Sam’s gaze lingered on the scar burned into her hand.
She looked up, surprised. He didn’t know? She forced her gaze back to Maddy, ignoring Sam’s question. “How did you get into the closet, Maddy?”
“Cissy told me to run so I runned.” Her little brow furrowed. “I couldn’t get the back door to open.”
“Locked,” Sam said. “She doesn’t know how to unlock it.”
“So I runned up to the secret place.”
A chill darted up Kristen’s spine, scattering goose bumps along her back and arms. Her stomach twisted, a sinking sensation filling her insides, but she pressed on. “The closet was the secret place?”
Maddy nodded. “Nobody ever finded me there.”
“Cissy plays hide-and-seek with her sometimes. I guess she’s so small she doesn’t have any trouble squeezing in there behind the boxes.” Sam’s gaze moved away from hers, settling on something behind her. She turned to see J.D. Cooper coming into the waiting area, his face pale and drawn.
“Do you think you could watch Maddy a second?” Sam asked Kristen. He ruffled his daughter’s hair. “Can you sit here with Detective Tandy for me, baby? I’m just going over there to talk to Uncle J.D., okay?”
Kristen wanted to argue, but the little girl had already climbed down from her father’s lap and settled onto a seat beside Kristen, looking up at her with warm green eyes.
“Do you like to color?” she asked Kristen.
“Yeah, I do,” Kristen answered, wishing she were anywhere else in the world.
“THEY’RE TRANSFERRING HER to Birmingham,” J.D. was telling the others as Sam walked up. His voice sounded faint and weary. “They’re afraid she’s got some bleeding in her brain and they’re not set up to handle that here. The helicopter should be here any minute.”
“Is she gonna be okay, Dad?” Michael asked J.D., his eyes wide with fear.
J.D. hugged the boy. “She’s going to be in the best hospital around. The doctors there are going to take good care of her, Mike. I promise.” He looked at his mother. “Y’all keep Mike here, okay? I’ll call with any word.”
“I’m going with you,” Gabe said.
“Thanks, man.” J.D. turned at the sound of wheels rolling across the linoleum floor behind him. At the same time, Sam heard the first faint whump-whump of helicopter blades beating in the distance.
“Mr. Cooper, Life-Flight will be landing any moment.” A nurse in a pair of blue scrubs stepped away from the gurney carrying Cissy and crossed to J.D.’s side. “There won’t be room for you in the helicopter, so if you’d like to get a hea
d start, we’ll take good care of her until they get here.”
J.D. looked at Sam. “I’ll call when I know something.”
Sam gave his brother a hug. “She’s a fighter.” J.D. managed a weak smile and repeated the familiar old mantra. “She’s a Cooper.” He headed out the door, Gabe on his heels. Jake moved up next to Sam, watching them go.
“Hell of a night,” Jake murmured. He looked over his shoulder at Maddy and the detective. “I see little Mad Dog has made a new friend.”
Sam followed his brother’s gaze to find Maddy leaning against Detective Tandy’s arm. Tandy was sitting stiffly, gazing down at the child with a hint of alarm, but Maddy didn’t seem to care. “Detective Tandy apparently isn’t the maternal sort,” he murmured.
“Can’t blame her,” Jake said. “She’s got no reason to think much of motherhood.”
Sam looked at his brother. “What do you mean?”
Jake looked taken aback. “Don’t you know who she is?”
Sam shook his head. “Should I?”
“Oh, that’s right-you’d already left town when that all went down.” Jake lowered his voice. “Fifteen years ago, Molly Jane Tandy brutally killed four of her five children.”
Sam looked across the waiting room at Kristen Tandy, his stomach tightening. The scar on the back of her hand made sudden, horrifying sense. “My God.”
“Kristen Tandy was the oldest. She was thirteen. She’s also the only one who survived.”
Chapter Two
The space behind the cellar wall was almost too small to hold her, but she squeezed through the narrow opening and pulled the loose board over the gap, trying to slow her ragged breathing. Pain tore at her insides, stronger and bloodier than the cuts on her palms and fingers, more wretched than the searing ache on the back of her hand where the hot spatula had branded her. She had pressed her wounded hands to her body as she ran, terrified of leaving a blood trail for Mama to follow.
She held her breath, lungs aching, and listened. The angry shouts had died away a few minutes ago, the only sounds in the now-still house were the soft thud-thud of footfalls on the kitchen floor above.
Her mind was filled with images too grotesque, too profane to process. A whimper hammered against her throat but she crushed it ruthlessly, determined to remain soundless.
She heard Mama’s hoarsened voice from the kitchen above. “Kristy, I know you’re still here. Nobody goes outside today. Come here to Mama.”
Kristen pressed her forehead to the cold brick wall behind the panel and prayed without words, a mindless, desperate plea for mercy and help.
The door to the cellar opened.
Kristen jerked awake, her heart pounding. She scraped her hair back from her sweaty brow and stared at the shadowy shapes in her darkened bedroom, half-afraid one of them would move. But everything remained quiet and still.
On her bedside table, green glowing numbers on her alarm clock read 5:35 a.m. She’d managed about four hours of sleep. More than she’d expected.
She switched on the bedside lamp, squinting against the sudden light. Her fingers itched to grab the cell phone lying on the table next to her, but she squelched the urge. Foley wouldn’t appreciate a predawn call, and it wasn’t as if she had anything to tell him anyway.
As of midnight, when Kristen and Foley called it a night, Cissy Cooper was still unconscious in a Birmingham hospital, her prognosis guarded and uncertain. Sam Cooper and his daughter were spending the next few nights at his parents’ place on Gossamer Lake. The crime scene had offered up plenty for the lab to sift through but no obvious smoking gun. And Kristen had at least two more hours to wait before she could decently start following up on the few leads she and Foley had to work with.
She’d start with the ex-wife, she decided sleepily as she stepped into the shower and turned the spray on hot and strong. Sam Cooper had seemed certain the former Mrs. Cooper wasn’t a suspect, but Kristen believed in playing the odds. Family members-primarily noncustodial parents-were involved in the majority of child kidnappings. And from what little Cooper had revealed during their brief discussion the night before, Kristen had gleaned that Norah Cabot Cooper hadn’t seen her daughter in nearly three years.
She was in the middle of dressing around 7:00 a.m. when her cell phone rang. Stepping into a pair of brown trousers, she grabbed the phone. “Tandy.”
“Sam Cooper here.”
Her feet got tangled in the trousers and she stumbled onto the bed, hitting it heavily. “Mr. Cooper.” She’d given him her business card, with her cell phone number, but he was the last person she’d expected to hear from this morning. “Has something happened?”
“I’m not sure,” he said. “Maybe.”
She tucked the phone between her chin and shoulder and finished pulling on her pants. “Maybe?”
“My secretary called from my office in Birmingham. She got in early today and found a package for me sitting in front of my office door.”
“What kind of package?” Visions of mail bombs flitted through her head. Maybe an anthrax letter. Cooper was a county prosecutor, almost as good a target as a judge or a politician.
“No return address. No postal mark. Right now building security is examining it, and if they think it’s a threat, they’ll call the cops. But I thought you’d want to know.” Sam sounded tired. She doubted he’d managed even as much sleep as she had. “I should probably go into the office, but-”
“No, stay with your kid. If it turns out to be anything we need to worry about, I’ll handle it.”
There was a pause on the other end of the phone. “I don’t want this case mucked up by police agencies marking territory.”
If that was a warning, she could hardly blame him. She’d seen her share of interagency wrangling during her seven years as a police officer. “I’ll call your office when I get to work, and if I think the package is remotely connected to this case, I’ll go to Birmingham and sort it out myself.”
“Thank you.” After a brief pause he added, “Maddy liked you. You made her feel safer last night when you talked to her. I know that was probably hard on you, considering-you know.”
Her heart sank. So he did know who she was. Everybody in Gossamer Ridge knew. Oh, well, the brief anonymity had been nice while it lasted. “It’s my job,” she said gruffly.
“Thank you anyway.” He rang off.
Kristen closed her phone and released a long breath. He was right. It had been hard dealing with Maddy. Kids in general, really. The psychiatrists had all assured her the prickly, uncomfortable feeling she had around young children would go away eventually, as her memories of that horrible day faded with distance.
Only they hadn’t faded. The pain had receded, even most of the fear, but not those last, wretched memories of her brothers and sisters.
Their last moments on earth.
She arrived at work in a gloomy mood and found Foley sitting at her desk, jotting a note. He looked up with a half smile. “Ah, I was about to leave you a note. One of Sam Cooper’s neighbors called, said she might have seen someone suspicious lurking around the Cooper house earlier in the evening. I thought I’d go hear her out. Let’s go.”
“Let me make a phone call first.” As she looked up the number for the Jefferson County District Attorney’s office, she told Foley about Sam Cooper’s call. He arched an eyebrow but didn’t speak while she waited for someone to pick up. After several rings, voice mail picked up.
“Maybe they’ve cleared the building, just in case?”
Kristen left a brief message, then dialed Sam Cooper’s cell phone number.
He answered on the first ring. “Detective Tandy?”
“I got voice mail when I called your office.”
“I know. I managed to get a colleague on his cell. They’ve evacuated the building and the bomb squad is examining the package. Tim promised to call me back as soon as he knew something more, but this waiting is driving me nuts.”
“I’ll drive down to Birmin
gham and check it out for you.”
“I’ll meet you there.”
“Shouldn’t you stay with your daughter?”
“Jake and Gabe took her and my nephew Mike fishing to keep their minds off what’s going on with Cissy. They’ll be out on the lake all morning.”
“You should’ve gone with them.”
His soft laugh was humorless. “I’d be on the phone the whole time anyway.”
“Then why don’t you ride along with me?” Kristen supposed he might be of use to her if the Birmingham Police didn’t want to play nice.
“Okay,” he agreed. “Do you know where Cooper Marina is?”
“Yeah. See you in fifteen minutes.”
KRISTEN TANDY’S CHEVROLET pulled into the marina parking lot with a minute to spare. Sam didn’t wait for her to get out. “Where’s Detective Foley?” he asked as he slid into the passenger seat.
She cranked the engine. “Talking to a neighbor of yours. Might be a lead.” She didn’t sound convinced.
“I talked to my colleague again just before you arrived.” Sam buckled in as she headed toward the main highway. “Bomb squad’s still inside. Nobody seems to know anything yet.”
“Don’t imagine it’s a job you’d want to rush.”
He slanted a look at her. Her eyes were on the narrow road twisting through the woods from his parents’ marina to the two-lane highway leading into town, her lips curved in a wry smile. He’d been too preoccupied last night to really process much about her, like the fact that she was strikingly pretty. He’d been right about how young she was, though. No older than her late twenties.
She’d shed her jacket to drive, a well-cut white blouse revealing soft curves her boxy business suit had hidden the night before. In the morning sunlight, her skin was as smooth and pale as fine porcelain and her sleek blond hair shimmered like gold. He was surprised by how attractive he found her, under the circumstances.
He distracted himself with a question. “You haven’t been a detective long, have you?”
Her expression grew defensive. “Six months.”
He nodded. “Big case for you, I guess.”
“Not my usual petty theft or meth lab,” she admitted.