Her Silent Cry

Sixty-Four

They relieved Gretchen and Mettner a few hours later. The night gave way to morning, the sun coming up on Denton with a relentless vibrancy that cared nothing for the turmoil currently gripping the city. Oaks assured Josie that his colleagues in the Buffalo field office were working hard to track down any leads there. Denton PD patrol officers located Natalie Oliver’s Ford F-150 abandoned in a ditch along a rural mountain road. The day stretched on. Josie left Noah at the command tent to go out with searchers, traversing the two-mile radius in which they’d found Violet Young. There was no sign of Lucy or her male abductor. The money went untouched. The time for the kidnapper to return Lucy to the carousel came and went with no sign of the girl.

Amy’s condition hadn’t improved but decisions had to be made, so Josie sent Mettner to retrieve Colin from the hospital. A thin gray beard covered his face. He looked pale and gaunt, as though the last few days had aged him by decades. Josie offered him coffee but he declined, sinking into a folding chair near Noah, his gaze on the floor. He looked utterly defeated.

Oaks and Josie looked at one another. She nodded for Oaks to proceed. “Mr. Ross,” he said. “We can’t leave your money in the drop locations indefinitely. We can leave it there for a few more days, but the high school will need their field back soon. What would you like us to do?”

Colin shook his head. “I don’t know. How can I make this decision? We don’t even know if Lucy is alive. My wife—” He broke off, tears gleaming in his eyes. He looked from Oaks to Josie. “What would you do?”

Josie shifted uncomfortably. “I don’t have children, Mr. Ross,” she said softly.

“But I saw you with your son the day Lucy disappeared. At the park,” he said.

Josie grimaced. “Harris is not my son. I was babysitting for a friend.”

He took that in, eyes back on the floor, a muscle ticking in his jaw. “My wife trusts you,” he said.

“Yes,” Josie said.

Oaks said, “Mr. Ross, we can’t make these decisions for you.”

“Do you think Lucy is alive?”

“We don’t know,” Josie said honestly. “But we’re not going to stop looking for her.”

“Do you think he’ll come back for the money?”

Oaks said, “I don’t think so, but again, we have no way of predicting what he will or won’t do.”

“He’s stopped calling. Your agents have had Amy’s phone charged and monitored this whole time.” He put his face in his hands. “My God, this can’t be over. My little Lucy. She can’t just be gone.”

Josie waited a moment and when he didn’t speak, she said, “There is another option.”

Colin looked up at her once more. She said, “We could put you on camera. Hold a press conference. You speak to him directly.”

“And say what?” Colin asked.

“Give him instructions,” Josie said.

Oaks said, “It’s not the worst idea. We have no way of making contact with this guy. We have no idea where his head’s at now that his entire plan has gone south.”

“The press is the only way to reach him right now,” Josie said. “You tell him what you want him to do. Maybe we can lure him in.”

“He can have the money,” Colin said. “I’ll deliver it somewhere and he can have it. I just want Lucy back.”

Oaks said, “We’ll hash this out then, sort the location and time, and contact the press. Why don’t you go home and clean up? Take a shower, change your clothes. When you get back, we’ll have everything ironed out, and we’ll prep you on what to say and how to say it.”

Colin stood up. “Yes, yes. I can do that.”

Josie said, “I’ll go with you. I’d like to bring a few items from Lucy’s room if you don’t mind. If this guy has even a shred of humanity left in him, maybe we can appeal to that. Remind him Lucy’s just a little girl and whatever beef he has with Amy, Lucy has nothing to do with that.”

Colin followed her to her vehicle, and they drove the few blocks to the Ross home. “The press is all gone,” he mused.

Josie said, “They’re stationed at all the other locations, hoping to catch something newsworthy. If they knew you were here, they’d be here.”

“Your officer, Mettner? He did a good job avoiding them when we left the hospital.”

“Mett’s a good man,” Josie said as they got out and walked to the front door.

Colin unlocked the door and let them in. The house was eerily silent, the odor of spoiled food filling its rooms. Josie wrinkled her nose. Colin said, “Must be food left out in the kitchen. We ran out of here the other day quickly, and I haven’t been back since.”

Josie motioned to the steps. “You go get ready. I’ll clean up in the kitchen.”

Colin walked to the stairs and stopped, his hand resting on the railing. “Detective Quinn, last night Agent Oaks told me that my wife… that she… that Amy isn’t her real name. That she used to go by a different name. Tessa something. Is that really true? She’s not who she says she is?”

Josie said, “Yes, it’s true. I’m so sorry.”

“Do you know what—what happened to her? Why she took someone else’s identity?”

“I don’t,” Josie said. “I’m sorry. She did allude to the fact that she had been in an abusive relationship. We’re trying to find out more about her past.”

“I didn’t know,” Colin said. “I never knew. She always had such bad anxiety. I tried to be empathetic, understanding, but I—ultimately, I wasn’t. I shouldn’t have said the things I said to her the other day. I didn’t mean them. And now… I might not get to tell her that.”

“You don’t know that,” Josie said. “She might pull through. Then you can tell her anything at all that you need to tell her. Right now, we need to keep our focus on Lucy. The sooner you’re ready, the sooner we can get back to mobile command and start planning for the press conference.”

With a nod, Colin trudged up the steps. Josie walked into the kitchen to start cleaning up when her phone rang. Trinity. “Hey,” she answered. “Did you find something out?”

“Martin Lendhardt—the other Lendhardt who died—I talked to the neighbors where he used to live. No one remembered him.”

“That’s not helpful,” Josie said.

“Just wait,” Trinity said. Josie could hear the excitement in her voice. “One of the neighbors bought his house from an elderly lady who is still alive and residing at a nearby nursing home. I talked to her. She remembered Martin Lendhardt. She said he was mean as the day is long. Moved into the house next to hers twenty-six years ago with a young wife.”

“A young wife?” Josie echoed.

“Yes. A young wife named Tessa.”

“Please tell me you’re serious.”

“Dead serious.”

Josie did calculations in her head. “Wait, twenty-six years ago, Amy would have been fourteen years old. This woman said they were married?”

“That’s what she said. They were new to the neighborhood. The wife never spoke to anyone. She said they often heard her screaming. They were sure he beat her, but whenever the police were called, Martin would make up some story like he had the television on too loudly, and Tessa would speak only long enough to tell the police her husband hadn’t laid a hand on her.”

“Jesus. I wonder if there are any police reports.”

“I doubt it. He was never even arrested. Well, not for domestic violence.”

“For what then?”

“Well, that’s where it gets really interesting.”

Josie’s heartbeat sped up. “Tell me,” she said.

“Tessa and Martin Lendhardt had a baby.”

“What?”

“My source says that when they first moved in, she often heard a baby crying. She says eventually she worked up the nerve to go over when Martin was at work. She knocked on the door and asked Tessa if she needed help, but that Tessa closed the door in her face.”

“But there’s no record of Tessa Lendhardt even existing,” Josie said. “How could she have had a baby?”

“Maybe a home birth? It sounds like Martin didn’t let her out of the house very often—if at all.”

“Was the child a boy or a girl?” Josie asked.

“She didn’t know. They never let the child leave the house.”

“Then how does she know that there was really a child?”

“Well, I guess she doesn’t know. Not for sure. But there’s something else.”

“Besides a baby that may or may not have existed?”

“We’ll come back to that,” Trinity said. “My source thinks that Martin killed Tessa.”

“Based on what?”

“About five years after they moved in, Tessa disappeared. She says she used to see her pass by one of the windows facing her house just about every day. Then one day, Tessa wasn’t there anymore, and Martin was meaner than ever. She asked him where his wife went, and he said it was none of her damn business. She thought because of the way he used to beat her, he must have killed her and was hiding her body in the house. She says she called the police but that they came, went inside his house for a while and then left. She tried to get information out of them, but they wouldn’t talk to her. She asked them if they’d seen the child inside the house, but they told her to mind her own business. Nothing ever came of it.”

“Probably because Tessa never existed in the first place. There’s no record of her. So what happened?”

Trinity drew in a breath. Josie heard papers rustling. “She’s not sure what happened after that. She got put into a nursing home by her kids. Her house was rented out multiple times after that. I left her son a message, but I don’t know that he’ll have the information for all the tenants or that any of them would remember Martin.”

“It couldn’t possibly be that easy,” Josie groused.

“But I checked out Martin Lendhardt, and he was convicted of child endangerment in 2002.”

Now Josie’s heartbeat was a series of thunderclaps in her chest. “So there was a child.”

“Evidently. I couldn’t get anything else. But maybe you or the FBI could access the records of his arrest and conviction?”

“Yes,” Josie said. “I’ll call Special Agent Oaks. Trinity, thank you for this. That exclusive is yours.”

Josie hung up and called Oaks, briefing him on everything Trinity had discovered. He promised to find out everything he could about Martin Lendhardt’s child endangerment conviction. Josie dropped her phone into her pocket and tried to slow her breathing. It felt like a break in the case. She hoped that by the time she brought Colin back to the command tent, Oaks would have a lot more information.

She took a glance around the messy kitchen and started cleaning up. Several half-finished mugs of coffee sat on the kitchen table. Someone had kept the Rosses’ coffeemaker full and hot while the FBI and Denton PD were stationed at the house. Josie emptied them into the sink and rinsed them out. The real stink came from the trash bin, which was full of half-finished takeout, also from the myriad law enforcement officers who had been staying there around the clock. Neither Amy nor Colin had been able to eat much since Lucy went missing. She tied up the bag and wrestled it out of the bin. Turning toward the back door, something on the shiny tile floor caught her eye.

A muddy footprint. Then another partial print. From someone walking into the kitchen from the back door. From the look of the treads, Josie guessed the person who left them had been wearing boots. Her mind worked backward to every agent and officer who had been at the Ross home in the past week. None of them had been wearing boots. Besides that, it hadn’t rained, and there was no mud in the backyard. Josie set the trash bag softly onto the floor. She took out her phone, fired off a text to Noah—he would respond the quickest—and then she drew her service weapon.