Her Silent Cry

Twenty-Eight

The day was painfully long. Several calls came in to Amy’s cell phone: the principal of Lucy’s school, calls from Ingrid and Zoey, the mothers of two of Lucy’s friends, and one from the pharmacy to let her know that a prescription was ready. Each time the phone rang, the two FBI agents stationed inside the house, Oaks, Mettner and Josie all converged on the dining room waiting with bated breath until Amy answered, her voice always tremulous, saying a hesitant hello as though she was afraid of what the word would unleash. But the kidnapper didn’t call.

The lack of progress on any leads and absence of any contact from the kidnapper made everyone jittery and agitated. It left far too much time for Amy and Colin to start asking difficult questions that had no ready answers.

“Do you think she’s still alive?”

“What is he doing to her?”

“What does he want?”

“Why won’t he call?”

“Why is this happening?”

Their lives were in a state of suspended animation. But that was what the kidnapper wanted, Josie realized. Neither Amy nor Colin could live their lives not knowing where Lucy was or what was happening to her. It was the cruelest kind of torture. Josie didn’t have to have children of her own to understand this. He was getting pleasure from this, which was why Josie was certain that he would continue the game. He couldn’t take Lucy away from them permanently. Eventually, after a great deal of time had passed, they’d start to resume some of their normal activities. They would begin to live with the uncertainty, begin to eat and shower again and Colin would force himself to go to work because the bills needed to be paid. The absence of Lucy and the not knowing would become their new normal. They would never be at peace again, but they would move out of the acute stage of horror into something more chronic. The kidnapper would want them to stay in the acute phase for as long as possible, she imagined. He was going to drag this out.

Unless they found him first.

When Gretchen showed up late in the afternoon the sight of her was so soothing that Josie wanted to jump into her arms. She brought coffees and pastries for everyone with a special bag for Josie filled with three cheese Danishes. Because the press was camped out front—and growing in number with each hour, it seemed—Josie and Gretchen snuck into the yard.

“I thought you could use a break,” Gretchen told her.

Josie took the coffee from her and set it on the table in the center of the Rosses’ back patio. The smell of it still made her a little queasy, but the Danishes went down without any issues. “Thanks,” Josie said. “Did you guys track down the guy in the tweed jacket? From the WYEP footage?”

“Not yet. We know he’s not a professor at the college though. I’ve got a couple of people working on that.”

“Did you get in touch with Bausch?”

Gretchen nodded. “He was in Allentown doing a school presentation today, but he said he would drive up tomorrow. He was very cooperative.”

“Good,” Josie said.

“You want to sit in?”

“Yeah. I’ll come over when he gets there.”

A few moments passed in companionable silence. Gretchen sipped her own coffee while Josie polished off her third cheese Danish.

Gretchen said, “What do you think this guy’s endgame is?”

“I don’t know,” Josie said. “He’s not operating like a pedophile. They try not to draw any attention to themselves. They will usually either keep the child or they’ll act out their fantasy and kill the child within the first few hours.”

Gretchen nodded. “A pedophile would be pretty unlikely to be taunting the parents like this.”

“Which is not to say this guy doesn’t have perversions, but I don’t think that’s why he took Lucy.”

What Josie didn’t say, what she couldn’t bring herself to say out loud, but what they both knew was that even if the kidnapper was after money or something personal to Lucy’s parents, that didn’t mean that Lucy would come home alive.

By dinnertime, when there had been no more calls, Oaks sent Josie home. Noah, having had someone drop him off at her house, was already at her dinner table with Misty and little Harris. “Hope you don’t mind pasta,” Misty said.

“It’s delicious,” Noah informed her around a mouthful of spaghetti noodles.

“Jojo!” Harris called as Josie took a seat at the kitchen table between Noah and Harris’s high chair. She smiled and kissed the top of his head, inhaling the scent of his shampoo, the smell more soothing than a hot bath after a long day.

His pudgy hand reached into the plastic bowl before him and pulled out a sauce-covered noodle. “Sketties!” he exclaimed.

Misty set a plate of steaming spaghetti in front of Josie and sat on the other side of Harris. “Spaghetti,” she enunciated.

He ignored her, thrusting the noodle at Josie’s face. “You eat,” he said.

Josie let him feed her the noodle, slurping it out of his hand at the last second, unleashing a torrent of giggles. “Again, again!” he said, digging into his bowl for more noodles.

Josie repeated the noodle slurp three more times until everyone at the table was laughing. Harris’s giggles had always been contagious.

Finally, Misty said, “Harris. You eat your own food. Let Jojo eat her dinner.”

Josie took a noodle off her own plate and held it out to Harris who tried to imitate her without success, finally just snatching the noodle from her and jamming it into his mouth with his fingers.

They kept the conversation light, with no talk of Josie or Noah’s work, of Lucy Ross or missing children. Immediately after dinner, Josie and Noah collapsed into her bed again, too tired to even talk. Nausea woke her at five-thirty in the morning, while the rest of the house was still quiet. As she emptied the contents of her stomach into the toilet, she prayed Noah wouldn’t wake up and find her ill. Luckily, no one came to the door. She propped herself up against the edge of the bathtub and covered her stomach with both hands. The voice in the back of her head goaded her again. Why was she still sick? Was it really just stress? Or was it something more? Just as the question: what if I’m pregnant? floated to the surface of her mind, she heard footsteps outside the door. Then, from beneath the crack in the door, she heard Harris’s voice, a loud whisper: “JoJo?”

Smiling, Josie hefted herself up and opened the door. Harris squinted up at her, blinking against the light. She lifted him into her arms. “Does your mom know you’re awake?”

He wrapped his arms around her neck. “Jojo, drink,” he said.

Josie smiled. “You’re thirsty? We’ll let Mommy sleep then. Let’s go down to the kitchen.”

Josie was at the Ross household bright and early once more. Oaks was there with a new shift of agents to man the phones and laptops.

“Have you even slept?” Josie asked.

Oaks smiled. “A few hours here and there.”

She didn’t bother to tell him to get some rest. The only reason she was able to sleep at night was because she knew his team was able to work around the clock and that the Ross family was in good hands.

“We got the DNA processed from the Jaclyn Underwood scene,” Oaks told her. “We found one hair with the root attached on the pillow in the closet which we believe may belong to whomever was staying with Jaclyn, and we found trace amounts of skin beneath two of Jaclyn’s fingernails, which we believe may have come from the killer. No hits though.”

“I didn’t think there would be,” Josie sighed.

“But we did match the prints on the compact at the nanny’s house to an unknown print in Lucy’s room.”

Josie felt a small thrill of excitement. While it wouldn’t help them find the kidnapper or his accomplice, it linked the two crime scenes. “So the female staying at Jaclyn Underwood’s apartment was also in Lucy’s room. Amy said that Lucy had never met any of Jaclyn’s friends though—that she knew of.”

“Well, I asked her again if Jaclyn ever brought any friends over, and she said never. Why do I feel like these assholes are right under our noses?” Oaks asked, raking a hand down over his face and then rubbing at his eyes.

“Because I think they might be,” Josie said. “Are we missing something big?”

Oaks shook his head. “I don’t see how we can be. I’ve got dozens of agents working leads around the clock plus the work your department is doing.”

Before Josie could say anything more, Amy’s cell phone rang. Oaks and Josie turned and stared at the screen. The name read ‘Wendy’.

Amy raced in from the kitchen and Colin appeared in the other doorway just behind her, having come from the living room. Josie had noticed the couple hadn’t been speaking to one another much since the evening before.

“Who’s Wendy?” Oaks asked.

Amy looked from the phone to him. “Wendy Kaplan. She’s a friend from yoga.” Her hand hovered over the phone. “I’ll tell her I need to keep the line open.”

She picked up the phone and said, “Hello?”

There was a moment of perfect silence before the kidnapper’s voice sent a wave of revulsion through the room. “Hello, Amy.”

She took a sharp intake of breath and pressed her hand to her chest. “How is Lucy?” she asked, and Josie could tell she’d thought long and hard about what she was going to ask him when he called next.

“How do you think she is, Amy?”

“I want to talk to her. Can I talk to her, please?”

Laughter filtered through the line. “Oh, Amy,” he said. “Sad, silly, brainless Amy.”

Undeterred, Amy said, “Have you hurt her?”

“Well, that depends on what you mean by hurt.”

Amy gasped. Tears gathered in her eyes. Colin squeezed past the agents and went to Amy’s side. He held out a hand for her to give him the phone, but she turned away, her voice cracking as she begged the kidnapper to let her talk to Lucy.

One of the agents waved Oaks over and pointed to the screen. Oaks beckoned for Josie, and she went over to take a look at the address. “I’m not sure of the exact address,” the agent whispered. “But I did a property search for Wendy Kaplan and this one here” —he pointed to a house on the screen as shown from Google’s satellite map—“belongs to her.”

Unfortunately for them, Wendy Kaplan lived on the outskirts of Denton. “Fifteen,” Josie whispered, indicating how long it would take to get to Kaplan’s house. “At least.” She started to move toward the doorway, but Oaks whispered back, “Stay with Mrs. Ross. I’ll take Mettner. He’s right outside.”

As Oaks departed, Josie turned back toward Amy. Tears streaked her face. “What do you want?” she sobbed into the phone. “Just tell me what you want.”

Josie expected more taunts but instead, the kidnapper said, “A million dollars.”

Everyone in the room went perfectly still. The two agents looked at Josie and then at one another before turning their attention back to the computer. As if on a switch, the kidnapper had gone from taunting Amy to making his demand.

When she didn’t answer, the kidnapper laughed. “Oh, you didn’t really want to know what I wanted? Were you only asking because you think that’s what a distraught mother is supposed to ask?”

Amy opened her mouth to respond but nothing came out. Colin grabbed the phone from her hand and barked into it. “We want proof of life.”

Amy tugged at Colin’s arm, trying to wrestle the phone away from him. “No,” she wailed. “Just give it to him so we can get Lucy back.”

Colin pulled away from her. “Prove to us that Lucy is alive and you can have the money.”

Josie heard anger in the kidnapper’s voice when he spoke next. “You don’t get to make the rules. Any rules. You give me a million dollars, and I give you Lucy back. That’s it. That’s all.”

Amy was practically hanging from Colin’s arm, shouting to be heard. “You can have whatever you want. Just give me my daughter back. Please.”

Colin said, “Alive. I want her back alive.”

There was a long moment of silence. Josie thought for a second that the kidnapper had hung up, but then she heard him exhale. “A million dollars,” he said. “Not a penny less. No conditions.”

Then the line went dead.

Colin tossed the phone onto the table and pressed his palm to the top of his head. Amy started hitting him with her open hand, slapping him and screaming, “You bastard. Why would you do that? Why?”

Colin didn’t fight her. He kept his hands up, blocking her blows as well as he could. “What if she’s already dead?” he said.

“Don’t,” Amy shrieked. “Don’t you even say it. Why would you ask for proof of life? Just give him whatever he asks for so we can get Lucy back.”

“Ame, we’re talking to a guy who kidnapped a seven-year-old girl. You think I should trust him?”

“Oh, so what? You’re not going to give him the money if she’s dead?”

“What?”

“You know damn well ‘what’. You’re not willing to do anything to get her back, are you?”

“Of course I am,” Colin said. His hands came down and hung slack at his waist. “I just wanted to know she was okay. That’s all. I wanted to…” he stopped. When he spoke again, his voice cracked. “I wanted to hear her voice, Ame. Oh God, I just want to hear her voice.”

He dropped to his knees and Amy dropped to hers in front of him. She took him in her arms. “Me too. Me too.”