Her Silent Cry

Twenty-Four

Josie found Amy on the second floor inside a room that was clearly Lucy’s bedroom. It was decorated in pink—pastel pink paint covered the walls; pink unicorns danced along the border near the ceiling. Amy sat in a pile of stuffed animals on top of a twin bed ensconced in a white bedframe with a gauzy pink canopy draped over it. The carpet was plush and dark pink. All the furniture was white—dresser, toybox, and a small desk and chair. In one corner was a large easel with a three-drawer storage cabinet. Crayons, markers, construction paper and other craft items spilled out of the drawers. On the easel was a large picture drawn in crayon of a little girl with blonde hair standing next to a larger figure in a tan shirt and shorts with a net in his hand. Above their heads floated a dozen butterflies.

In fact, all over the room were signs of Lucy’s obsession with butterflies. There was a discarded net and jar next to the door. A blanket with butterflies on it was draped over a beanbag chair. Lucy had put butterfly stickers on the front of her dresser. A large poster hung on one wall with several butterflies on it, the names of their classifications below each one. Thrown in one corner was what looked like a pair of butterfly wings Lucy could wear on her back. Next to the desk was a large circular net enclosure filled with small plants. On closer inspection, Josie thought she saw actual cocoons hanging from a small plastic circle.

Amy’s voice was barely a whisper. “It’s a butterfly garden. You send away for the caterpillars.”

Josie peered inside counting six cocoons dangling from the white round piece of plastic. “There are actually caterpillars in there?”

“Yes. They should emerge as butterflies in a few days. This is the third time we’ve done it.”

“I had no idea you could even do this,” Josie said, amazed.

Amy gave a small laugh. “Colin thinks it’s gross, but Lucy just loves it. They come in a small plastic cup. You just leave them in there and in about a week, they attach themselves to the lid and form their cocoons. Then you take the lid off, stand it up inside the net using that little log and wait for them to emerge. They’re so beautiful when they come out. We set them free in the backyard.”

“Wow,” Josie said. “She really is obsessed with butterflies.”

“Obsessed is putting it mildly. She wanted us to change her name to Chrysalis.”

Now Josie laughed but it quickly died in her throat because any thought of Lucy automatically led to the questions that ran in a loop in her brain: where was she, and was she still alive?

“That was after we visited the butterfly room. We did a weekend in Philadelphia. The Academy of Natural Sciences has one. It’s lovely. They keep it at eighty-five degrees. You just walk around in there. Butterflies are everywhere. Lucy was wearing a bright red shirt, and they kept landing on her. She said—” Amy broke off, her lower lip trembling. Then she took in a deep breath and continued, “She said it was the best day of her life. She likes ladybugs, too. She knows all kinds of weird facts about them. She knows that they hibernate over the winter, and that they look for the west-facing walls of light-colored houses to burrow into the siding. She used to say to me that if she ever got lost, she would fly back to me like a ladybug. Go west and look for our house. She was so glad it was light-colored. Fly home to me. I wish she would.”

Josie walked over and sat next to Amy on the bed. Amy said, “I’m sorry about downstairs.”

“Don’t be,” Josie said. “You know that Jaclyn’s murder is not your fault, right?”

Amy’s voice squeaked. “Isn’t it? He’s right, you know. I don’t need a nanny. I should be able to do this myself. If it weren’t for me—”

“If it weren’t for you, Jaclyn would have been working a lot harder at a job she loved a lot less for practically no money at all. The only person who put her in harm’s way was the person who killed her. No one else is to blame. No one.”

“I’d like to believe that.”

“When you and Colin were… arguing, you said he promised not to be cruel. Has he been cruel to you in the past?”

Amy waved a hand. “Oh no. Not him. I would never have given in to him. He chased me, you know. He was so persistent. I didn’t want a man at all. He wore me down in the best possible way. But before I said yes to marriage, I made him promise he would never treat me cruelly. The man I was with before him, a long, long time ago, was very cruel. I didn’t ever want to be in that position again.”

“That man—” Josie started.

“He’s dead,” Amy interrupted. “He passed years ago, or so I heard. It wasn’t serious anyway. Kid stuff. Like I said, a long, long time ago. It was barely a relationship at all. It’s just that that was my only experience and it was bad, so I wasn’t looking for a man. That’s all.”

“You left him?”

“Yes. He didn’t try to come after me, if that’s what you’re getting at. Ultimately, he didn’t care enough to come after me. Ancient history.”

“Amy, I have to ask. Is there anyone who would do this? Take Lucy, kill Jaclyn?”

“That would be so easy, wouldn’t it?” Amy said. “It would lead us right to him. But no, I can’t think of anyone.”

Josie measured her next words carefully. “We all have secrets, Amy. I have some whoppers. Google me. You’ll see. There’s no shame in having a past.”

“I don’t have a past,” Amy insisted. “I barely have a present.”

“This is personal,” Josie said. “Whoever this guy is, he’s targeting you and Colin for personal reasons. Colin seems like the obvious target—he’s already got death threats from his work with Quarmark. Can you think of anyone who might want to target him? Maybe someone you wouldn’t want to mention in front of Colin?”

Amy raised a brow. “What do you mean? You think… you think he was having an affair?”

“I don’t know what to think,” Josie said. “But I’ve been in this business long enough to know that people keep all kinds of secrets.”

“Not Colin,” Amy said. “He’s an honorable man—in spite of what you saw downstairs. He has nothing to hide.”

“What about you?” Josie asked carefully.

Amy pointed to her own chest. “Me? You think I have something to hide?”

“You understand that I have to ask. If there’s anything you haven’t told us, anything that you maybe didn’t want to say in front of your husband, you should tell me now. If you have even the slightest suspicion at all that someone you know might have targeted Lucy to get to you, it’s important that you tell me now. Before this goes any further.”

“I wish I knew which direction to send you. Do you think I would keep any secret from you if it meant saving my daughter’s life? I don’t know anyone who would want to do this to Lucy or to me.”

Josie didn’t push. They sat in silence for a moment. Then Amy said, “Do you think she’s still alive?”

“I don’t know,” Josie answered honestly.

“I just wish he would tell us what he wants. We have money. This could all be over quickly.”

Kidnapping Lucy for money was the most logical scenario, but Josie didn’t think this was about money. If it was as simple as that, the kidnapper wouldn’t have murdered Jaclyn so he could call Lucy’s parents, only to goad them. He wouldn’t waste his time or resources—he would make a ransom demand right away. This was about more than money, Josie was sure of it, but she didn’t say that to Amy. It would do her no good. She had already told Josie that she couldn’t think of anyone who would target her. Either she was lying—and if she was still willing to lie after Jaclyn’s murder, Josie couldn’t imagine her ever willingly coming clean—or the kidnapper was targeting the Ross parents for some other reason—a reason that neither Colin nor Amy knew about.

Again, Josie thought of the death threats Colin had received at work because of the cancer drug. How many people had died because they couldn’t afford Quarmark’s miracle drug? Certainly seventy-four people blamed him for their loved ones’ suffering, even deaths. Perhaps one of them believed the best way to take revenge on Colin would be to take the person he loved most away and then make the next most important person in his life suffer by taunting her. In the current scenario, Colin was almost a bystander. Forced to watch powerlessly while his daughter’s life hung in the balance and his wife became increasingly hysterical and unstable. Was it, as Josie and Oaks had discussed earlier, somehow symbolic of the way family members had to stand by and watch their loved one fight cancer—all the while knowing there was a drug that could stop the disease in its tracks, or at least slow it down, but unable to afford access to it? If that was the case, there would be no ransom demand and the endgame would be Lucy’s death.

A shiver ran the length of Josie’s body.

Beside her, Amy had picked up a stuffed unicorn. She hugged it to her. “They all smell like her,” she told Josie.

Josie looked behind them at the row of colorful stuffed animals all neatly seated along the wall. She reached out and touched a teddy bear with a red bowtie around its neck. How she would have loved to have a room like this when she was a child. She hoped they could bring Lucy home to this room so she could sleep in her beautiful princess bed again.

“Oh, careful,” Amy said.

Josie pulled her hand away. “I’m sorry. I should go.”

“Oh no,” Amy said. “I didn’t mean—that bear is one of those stuffed animals you can record messages on. Colin leaves a standing message on it for Lucy when he travels, but it’s really sensitive. Once, he was on a trip and I was cleaning up and moved the bear and somehow erased his message. Lucy cried for hours.”

“Oh,” Josie said. “That’s a good idea. He travels a lot, it seems.”

Amy nodded. “He’s barely here at all, to tell you the truth.” Gingerly, she picked up the teddy bear. “Lucy still worships the ground he walks on even though she hardly sees him. This bear is her special connection to him.” She did a mock impression of Colin, making her voice low like a man’s. “I love you, little Lucy. Sweet dreams. That’s usually what he says.”

Josie couldn’t help but think of the note the kidnapper had left inside Lucy’s butterfly backpack. Little Lucy cannot play. Was it just a coincidence?

“Sometimes if he knows she’s got a test coming up or he’s promised her something when he gets back, he’ll mention it. I think this last trip was his standard love you message.” Amy felt the bear’s paws until she found what she was looking for. “Here,” she said. “It’s a little button inside.”

She squeezed the bear’s paw, but it wasn’t Colin’s voice that filled the room.

The kidnapper’s voice turned Josie’s insides to ice. His tone was cold, his words dripping with contempt and getting louder and louder with each word until he was shouting. “Hello, Amy. How does it feel? How does it feel? How does it feel?”