Her Silent Cry

Twenty-Five

Amy let out a bloodcurdling scream. Josie jumped up from the bed. Before Josie could stop her, Amy threw the bear from her lap. “Don’t touch anything,” Josie said, but her words were swallowed by Amy’s shrieks. Within seconds, the two FBI agents stationed downstairs in the dining room burst through the door. Josie used her body to block them where they were. “Stop,” she said. “Don’t touch anything. Go back into the hall. This is a crime scene.”

Amy collapsed onto the floor inches from where the bear had landed, still screaming. One of the agents looked over Josie’s shoulder at her and then back at Josie, his eyes wide with shock and confusion. “What the hell happened?” he asked. “Is she hurt?”

“No,” Josie said. “Just get back. Please.”

Both agents raised their hands in the air and backed out of the room. With adrenaline surging through her veins, Josie walked over to Amy, squatted down, picked her up in a fireman’s lift and lugged her out of the room. She turned to her left and kicked open the nearest door, which luckily was Amy and Colin’s bedroom. She gently deposited Amy onto the bed. The woman’s screams had receded to grunts. Her eyes stared straight ahead, wide with terror but seeing nothing at all. Josie spent several minutes trying to soothe and comfort her, to bring her back from the edge of hysteria but this time, it didn’t work. It wasn’t until Colin appeared in the doorway, face stricken, and called Amy’s name that she finally snapped back.

“He was here,” Amy told him. “He was here in our house.”

“What are you talking about?”

Amy looked at Josie. “Show him.”

The last thing that Josie wanted to do was hear the awful sound of the kidnapper taunting Amy again, but she drew herself up and went into the hallway. The two FBI agents stood like sentries on either side of Lucy’s bedroom door. Josie walked past them into the room. She took a pair of gloves from her pocket—she always carried some on the job—and snapped them on. She pressed the bear’s paw just as Amy had, and again the terrible message played. Colin stood in the doorway with the two agents, looking like he might throw up. Josie felt the same.

One of the agents said, “I’ll get Agent Oaks on the line. Get our team over here to process this.”

Josie shook her head. “They’ve got their hands full at the murder scene. I’ll call my team. They can be here in five minutes. We’ll brief Oaks as soon as he’s free.”

It felt like an eternity had passed by the time Lucy’s room was processed and Oaks returned from the Jaclyn Underwood murder scene. It had grown dark outside though none of them would ever know it thanks to the number of press vehicles outside with their cameras and lights ready to go for the eleven o’clock newscast. At some point that day, the case had gone national even though Oaks’s press liaison hadn’t told reporters much other than that they were now treating Lucy’s disappearance as an abduction. Reluctantly, Josie called Trinity.

“You have something for me?” Trinity asked. “I’m going to come there and cover this story myself.”

“I’m sorry,” Josie said. “I’ve got nothing, and don’t try to do that psychic twin thing to me again.”

Trinity laughed. “I don’t have to have a psychic twin connection to know you want something. What’s up?”

“Amy Ross might have had an abusive boyfriend before she met Colin.”

There was silence, then the rustling of papers and Josie knew Trinity was looking through her notes. “The roommate I spoke with never mentioned that—or any boyfriends.”

Josie thought about how Amy had described the relationship as “kid stuff.” To Trinity, she said, “Then maybe you have to go back further.”

“Well,” Trinity replied. “Looks like I’ll be making a trip to Fulton, New York, before I see you in Denton.”

Oaks had already dispatched agents to Fulton to look into Amy’s background, but she also knew that much of the time, Trinity worked faster than the police. In addition, her celebrity often caused people to tell her things they would be reluctant to share with law enforcement. Trinity also wasn’t bound by concerns about the admissibility of evidence or the need for warrants. If she stumbled on a rabbit hole, she could plunge in without reservation. If there was anything that anyone from Amy’s past wanted to keep hidden from police, there was a good chance that Trinity could uncover it. “Keep me posted,” Josie told her.

The night wore on, and Josie felt as though time itself had broken down. Only hours had passed since she had woken up with Noah in her bed, but she felt like she had been with Amy for weeks and that it had been ages since she had seen anyone from her team. So she was relieved when Mettner followed Oaks into the Rosses’ dining room. She’d briefed him over the phone while Hummel and Denton’s ERT worked in Lucy’s room, looking for any trace the kidnapper might have left behind.

Oaks looked exhausted and haggard as he made her go over the story again. “Did you ask Mrs. Ross if the bear was missing at any time in the last few weeks?”

“Yes, I did,” Josie answered. “After she calmed down. She said it’s never been missing.”

“Mr. Ross got home from his latest trip the day before Lucy disappeared,” Oaks said.

“Yes,” Josie agreed. “Amy said that Lucy listened to Colin’s message the night before he came home. It was his voice, his message.”

“So the kidnapper had to have changed the message between then and now.”

“Amy said no one besides the family and nanny have been inside the house for months. No friends or repair people. No one who could have changed the message. Based on everything Amy told me about their routine and Colin’s travel schedule, I think the kidnapper got in while the Ross family was at the park—before he took Lucy or during the initial search before the FBI stationed themselves inside the house.”

“How did he get in? Nothing was disturbed. No sign of forced entry.”

Josie said, “I think he might have a key.”

Oaks raised a brow. “That’s a stretch, Detective Quinn.”

“Is it? Who even knew about the bear? Think about it. That bear was a special gift from Colin to Lucy. The only people who knew that it had a recording device in it and what it was used for were Colin, Amy, Lucy and the nanny.”

“So we’re back to the nanny.”

“What if someone got close to the nanny? Stayed with her. Asked her all about the family she worked for—their routines, their habits. Got a copy of the house key. Amy told me Jaclyn had a key. It would be a simple thing to make a copy while Jaclyn was in one of her classes.”

Oaks folded his arms over his chest. “We lifted some prints from the compact in the spare room, but they didn’t match anyone in AFIS. We’re trying to get DNA from hair we found on the pillow, but if the print didn’t turn anyone up, I doubt a DNA profile will do the trick. We might not find this mystery woman unless one of the neighbors or one of her friends knows something about her, but we’ll keep working that angle. So far, none of Jaclyn Underwood’s friends remember her having had a live-in guest in the last year.”

Josie told him about Colin’s messages usually starting out with the words ‘Little Lucy’, the same as the kidnapper’s note. “I don’t know if it means anything,” Josie concluded. “But worth mentioning.”

“Good work,” Oaks said. “By the way, my team finished checking out the rest of the people who have made threats against Colin at Quarmark. They all have alibis for when Lucy went missing.”

Josie said, “But there could be people out there who are equally as upset about the price of Quarmark’s new cancer drug who didn’t make death threats.”

“Yes,” Oaks agreed. “That’s true. That’s what’s scary. We really have no idea who we’re dealing with.”

“Yet,” Josie said. “We’ll find him. My team checked the rest of the house to see if there were any other messages that the kidnapper might have left for the parents, but we didn’t find anything.”

“Where are Mr. and Mrs. Ross?”

“Upstairs resting.”

“That sounds like a good idea. Go home, Quinn. Grab a few hours. Take Mettner, too. We’ve all had a long day. Come back in the morning. Bring someone from your team. We’ll keep working every angle until something breaks.”

Josie didn’t argue. She picked Noah up at the mobile command station on her way home, never so relieved to see his face and hear his voice. Misty and Harris were asleep in the spare room by the time they made it up the stairs to Josie’s room.

“Did you eat anything tonight?” Noah asked her as she climbed under her covers. He always worried about her staying fed, hydrated and caffeinated.

“Yes,” she lied, not bothering to tell him her stomach had been far too churned up to eat after the evening’s events. “Just come to bed. I’ve missed you all day.”