The 6th Target

Chapter 28

MADISON TYLER HOPSCOTCHED over the lines in the sidewalk, then raced back to her nanny's side, grabbing her hand as they walked toward Alta Plaza Park, Madison saying, "Were you listening, Paola?"

Paola Ricci squeezed Madison 's small hand.

Sometimes the little girl's enchanting five-year-old precocity was almost more than Paola could understand.

"Of course I was listening, darling."

"As I was saying," the girl said in the funny grown-up way she had, "when I play Beethoven's Bagatelle, the first notes are an ascending scale, and they look like a blue ladder -"

She trilled the notes.

"Then, the next part, when I play C-D-C, the notes are pink-green-pink!" she exclaimed.

"So you imagine that those notes have colors?"

"No, Paola," the little girl said comically, patiently. "The notes are those colors. Don't you see colors when you sing?"

"Nope. I guess I'm a ninny," Paola said. "A ninny-nanny."

"I don't know what a ninny-nanny is," Madison said, her dazzling smile setting off sparks in her big brown eyes. "But it sounds very funny."

The two laughed hard, Madison grabbing Paola around the waist, burying her face in the young woman's coat as they passed the exclusive Waldorf School, only a block and a half from where Madison lived with her parents.

"It's Saturday," Madison whispered to Paola. "I don't have to even look at school on Saturday."

Now the park was only a block away, and seeing the stone walls surrounding it, Madison got more excited and changed subjects.

"Mommy says I can have a red Lakeland terrier when I get a little older," Madison confided as they crossed Divisadero. "I'm going to name him 'Wolfgang.' "

"What a serious name for a little dog," Paola said, intent on crossing the street safely. She barely glanced at the black minivan idling outside the park's fence. Expensive black minivans were as common as crows in Pacific Heights.

Paola swung Madison 's arm, and the child jumped up onto the curb, then stopped suddenly as someone got out of the vehicle and came quickly toward them.

Madison said to her nanny, "Paola, who is that?"

"What's wrong?" Paola called to the man stepping out of the van.

"Trouble at home. You've both got to come with us right now. Madison, your mom took a fall down the stairs."

Madison stepped out from behind her nanny's back, shouting, "My daddy told me never to ride with strangers! And believe me, you're strange."

The man picked up the child like a bag of birdseed, and as she shouted, "Help! Put me down," he tossed her into the backseat of the van.

"Get in," the man said to Paola. He was pointing a handgun at her chest.

"Either get in or kiss this kid good-bye."

Chapter 29

RICH CONKLIN AND I had just returned to the squad room after a grim morning of investigating a brutal drive-by shooting when Jacobi waved us into his office.

We crossed the gray linoleum floor to the glass box and took our seats, Conklin perched on the edge of the credenza where Jacobi used to sit, me in the side chair next to Jacobi's desk, watching him get comfortable in the chair that was once mine.

I was still trying to get used to this turn of events. I looked around at the mess Jacobi had made of the place in just under two weeks: newspapers piled on the floor and windowsill, food odors coming out of the trash can.

"You're a pig, Jacobi," I said. "And I mean that in the barnyard sense."

Jacobi laughed, a thing he'd done more in the last few days than he'd done in the last two years, and despite the chop to my ego, I was glad that he wasn't huffing up hills anymore. He was a great cop, good at managing the unmanageable, and I was working myself around to loving him again.

Jacobi coughed a few times, said, "We've got a kidnapping."

"And we're catching it?" Conklin asked.

"Major Crimes has been on it for a few hours, but a witness came forward and now it looks like there could be a murder," said Jacobi. "We'll be coordinating with Lieutenant Macklin."

A humming sound came from the computer as Jacobi booted up, a thing he'd never done before getting his new badge. He pulled a CD off the pile of crap on his desk and clumsily slid it into the CD/DVD tray of his computer.

He said, "Little girl, age five, was going to the park with her nanny at nine this morning when they were snatched. The nanny is Paola Ricci, here on a work visa from Cremona, Italy. The child is Madison Tyler."

"Of the Chronicle Tylers?" I asked.

"Yep. Henry Tyler is the little girl's father."

"Did you say there's a witness to the kidnapping?"

"That's right, Boxer. A woman walking her schnauzer before going to work saw a figure in a gray coat exit a black minivan outside Alta Plaza Park on Scott Street."

"What do you mean, 'figure'?" Conklin asked.

"All she could say was a person in a gray coat, didn't know if it was a man or a woman because said person was turned away from her and she only looked up for a second. Likewise, she couldn't identify the make of the vehicle. Said it happened too fast."

"And what makes this a possible homicide?" I asked.

"The witness said that as soon as the car rounded Divisadero, she heard a pop. Then she saw blood explode against the back window of the van."

Chapter 30

JACOBI CLICKED HIS MOUSE a few times, then swung the laptop around so Conklin and I could see the video that was playing on the screen.

"This is Madison Tyler," he said.

The camera was focused on a small blond-haired child who came out from behind curtains onto a stage. She was wearing a simple navy-blue velvet dress with a lace collar, socks, and shiny red Mary Janes.

She was absolutely the prettiest little girl I'd ever seen, with a look of intelligence in her eyes that canceled any notion that she was a baby pageant queen.

Applause filled Jacobi's office as the little girl climbed onto a piano seat in front of a Steinway grand.

The clapping died away, and she began to play a piece of classical music I didn't recognize, but it was complicated and the child didn't seem to make any mistakes.

She finished the piece with a flourish, stretching her arms as far as they could go down the keyboard, releasing the last notes to loud bravos and rousing applause.

Madison turned and said to the audience, "I'll be able to do much better when my arms grow."

Fond laughter bubbled over the speakers, and a boy of about nine came out from the wings and gave her a bouquet.

"Have the parents gotten a call?" I asked, tearing my eyes from the video of Madison Tyler.

"It's still early, but no, they haven't heard anything from anyone," said Jacobi. "Not a single word. Nothing about a ransom so far."

Chapter 31

CINDY THOMAS WAS WORKING from the home office she'd set up in the small second bedroom of her new apartment. CNN was providing ambient sound as she typed, immersed in the story she was writing about Alfred Brinkley's upcoming trial. She thought of not answering the phone when it rang next to her elbow.

Then she glanced at the caller ID – and grabbed the phone off the hook.

"Mr. Tyler?" she said.

Henry Tyler's voice was eerily hollow, nearly unrecognizable. She almost thought he was playing a joke, but that wasn't his style.

Listening hard, gasping and saying, "No… oh, no," she tried hard to understand the man who was crying, losing his thoughts, and having to ask Cindy what he'd been saying.

"She was wearing a blue coat," Cindy prompted.

"That's right. A dark-blue coat, red sweater, blue pants, red shoes."

"You'll have copy in an hour," Cindy said, "and by then you'll have heard from those bastards saying how much you have to pay to get Maddy back. You will get her back."

Cindy said good-bye to the Chronicle's associate publisher, put down the receiver, and sat still for a moment, gripping the armrests, reeling from a sickening feeling of fear. She'd covered enough kidnappings to know that if the child wasn't found today, the chances of finding her alive dropped by about half. It would drop by half again if she wasn't found tomorrow.

She thought back to the last time she'd seen Madison, at the beginning of the summer when the little girl had come to the office with her father.

For about twenty minutes Madison had twirled around in the chair across from Cindy's desk, scribbling on a steno pad, pretending that she was a reporter who was interviewing Cindy about her job.

"Why is it called a 'deadline'? Do you ever get afraid when you're writing about bad guys? What's the dumbest story you ever wrote?"

Maddy was a delightful kid, funny and unspoiled, and Cindy had felt aggrieved when Tyler 's secretary had returned, saying, "Come on, Madison. Miss Thomas has work to do."

Cindy had impetuously kissed the child on the cheek, saying, "You're as cute as ten buttons, you know that?"

And Madison had flung her arms around her neck and returned the kiss.

"See you in the funny papers," Cindy had called after her, and Madison Tyler had spun around, grinning. "That's where I'll be!"

Now Cindy turned her eyes to her blank computer screen, paralyzed with thoughts of Madison being held captive by people who didn't love her, wondering if the girl was tied up inside a car trunk, if she'd been sexually molested, if she was already dead.

Cindy opened a new file on her computer and, after a few false starts, felt the story unspool under her fingers. "The five-year-old daughter of Chronicle associate publisher Henry Tyler was abducted this morning only blocks from her house…."

She heard Henry Tyler in her head, his voice choked with misery: "Write the story, Cindy. And pray to God we'll have Madison back before we run it."

Chapter 32

YUKI CASTELLANO SAT three rows back in the gallery of Superior Court 22, waiting for the clerk to call the case number.

She'd been with the DA's office only about a month, and although she'd worked as a defense attorney in a top law firm for several years, switching to the prosecution side was turning out to be dirtier, more urgent, and more real than defending white-collar clients in civil lawsuits.

It was exactly what she wanted.

Her former colleagues would never believe how much she was enjoying her new life "on the dark side."

The purpose of today's hearing was to set a trial date for Alfred Brinkley. There was an ADA in the office whose job it was to attend no-brainer proceedings like this one and keep the master calendar.

But Yuki didn't want to delegate a moment of this case.

She'd been picked by senior ADA Leonard Parisi to be his second chair in a trial that mattered very much to Yuki. Alfred Brinkley had murdered four people. It was sheer luck that he hadn't also killed Claire Washburn, one of her dearest friends.

She glanced down the row of seats, past the junkies and child abusers, their mothers and girlfriends, the public defenders in ad hoc conferences with their clients.

Finally she homed in on Public Defender Barbara Blanco, who was whispering to the ferry shooter. Blanco was a smart woman who, like herself, had drawn a hell of a card in Alfred Brinkley.

Blanco had pleaded Brinkley "not guilty" at his arraignment and was certainly going to try to get his confession tossed out before the trial. She would contend that Brinkley was bug-nuts during the crime and had been medicated ever since. And she'd work to get him kicked out of the penal system and into the mental-health system.

Let her try.

The clerk called the case number, and Yuki's pulse quickened as she closed her laptop and walked to the bench.

Alfred Brinkley followed meekly behind his attorney, looking clean-cut and less agitated than he had at his arraignment – which was all to the good.

Yuki opened the wooden gate between the gallery and the court proper, and stood at the bench with Blanco and Brinkley, looking up into the slate-blue eyes of Judge Norman Moore.

Moore looked back at them fleetingly, then dropped his eyes to the docket.

"All right. What do you say we set this matter soon, say Monday, November seventeenth?"

Yuki said, "That's good for the People, Your Honor."

But Blanco had a different idea. "Your Honor, Mr. Brinkley has a long history of mental illness. He should be evaluated pursuant to 1368 to determine his competence to stand trial."

Moore dropped his hands to his desktop, sighed, and said, "Okay, Ms. Blanco. Dr. Charlene Everedt is back from vacation. She told me this morning that she's got some free time. She'll do the psych on Mr. Brinkley."

His eyes went to Yuki. "Ms. Castellano, is it?"

"Yes, Your Honor. This is a delaying tactic," she said, her words coming out clipped and fast, her usual rat-a-tat style. "Defense counsel wants to get her client out of the public eye so that the media flap will die down. Ms. Blanco knows perfectly well that Mr. Brinkley is quite competent to stand trial. He shot and killed four people. He turned himself in. He confessed of his own volition.

"The People want and deserve a speedy trial -"

"I understand what the People want, Ms. Castellano," said the judge, countering her verbal machine gun with a patient drawl. "But we'll get a quick turnaround from Dr. Everedt. Shouldn't take more than a few days. I think the People can wait that long, don't you?"

Yuki said, "Yes, sir," and as the judge said, "Next case," to his clerk, Yuki left the courtroom through the vestibule and out the double courtroom doors.

She turned right, down the dingy marble hall toward her office, hoping that the court-appointed shrink would see what she and Lindsay knew to be true.

Alfred Brinkley might be crazy, but he wasn't legally insane.

He was a premeditated killer four times over. Soon enough, if all went well, the prosecution would get their chance to prove it.

Chapter 33

I TOSSED THE KEYS TO CONKLIN and got into the passenger-side door of the squad car.

Conklin whistled nervously through his teeth as we pulled onto Bryant, headed north on Sixth Street for a few blocks, then went across Market Street and north toward Pacific Heights.

"If there was ever a thing that would make you not want to have kids, this is it," he said.

"Otherwise?"

"I'd want a whole tribe."

We theorized about the kidnapping – whether or not there really had been a murder and if the nanny could have played a part in the abduction.

"She was inside," I said. "She would've known everything that went on in the household. How much money they had, their patterns and movements. If Madison trusted her, the abduction would have been a piece of cake."

"So why pop the nanny?" said Conklin.

"Well, maybe she outlived her usefulness."

"One less person to cut in on the ransom. Still, to shoot her in front of the little girl."

"Was it the nanny?" I asked. "Or did they shoot the child?"

We lapsed into silence as we turned onto Washington, one of the prettiest streets in Pacific Heights.

The Tyler house stood in the middle of the tree-lined block, a stately Victorian, pale yellow with gingerbread under the eaves and plants cascading over the sides of the flower boxes. It was a dream house, the kind of place you never imagined being visited by terror.

Conklin parked at the curb, and we took the Napa stone path six steps up to the front-door landing.

I lifted the brass knocker and let it fall against the striker plate on the old oak door, knowing that inside this beautiful house were two people absolutely steeped in fear and grief.

Chapter 34

HENRY TYLER OPENED THE FRONT DOOR, paling as he seemed to recognize my face. I held up my badge.

"I'm Sergeant Boxer and this is Inspector Conklin -"

"I know who you are," he said to me. "You're Cindy Thomas's friend. From homicide."

"That's right, Mr. Tyler, but please… we don't have any news about your daughter."

"Some other inspectors were here earlier," he said, showing us down a carpeted hallway to a sumptuous living room furnished authentically in 1800s style – antiques and Persian rugs and paintings of people and their dogs from an earlier time. A piano was angled toward the windows and a zillion-dollar panoramic view of the bay.

Tyler invited us to sit, taking a seat across from us on a velvet camelback sofa.

"We're here because a witness to the kidnapping heard a gunshot," I said.

"A gunshot?"

"We have no reason to think Madison has been harmed, Mr. Tyler, but we need to know more about your daughter and Paola Ricci."

Elizabeth Tyler entered the room, dressed in beige silk and fine wool, her eyes puffy and red from crying. She sat down beside her husband and clasped his hand.

"The sergeant just told me that the woman who saw Madison kidnapped heard a gunshot!"

"Oh, my God," said Elizabeth Tyler, collapsing against her husband.

I explained the situation again, doing my best to calm Madison 's parents, saying we knew only that a gun had been fired. I left out any mention of blood against glass.

After Mrs. Tyler had composed herself, Conklin asked if they'd noticed anyone who seemed out of place hanging around the neighborhood.

"I never saw a thing out of the ordinary," Tyler said.

"We watch out for one another in this neighborhood," said Elizabeth. "We're unabashed snoops. If any of us had seen anything suspicious, we would have called the police."

We asked the Tylers about their movements over the past days and about their habits – when they left the house, when they went to bed at night.

"Tell me about your daughter," I said. "Don't leave anything out."

Mrs. Tyler brightened for a moment. "She's a very happy little girl. Loves dogs. And she's a musical genius, you know."

"I saw a video. She was playing the piano," I said.

"Do you know she has synesthesia?" Elizabeth Tyler asked me.

I shook my head. "What is synesthesia?"

"When she hears or plays music, the notes appear to her in color. It's a fantastic gift -"

"It's a neurological condition," Henry Tyler said impatiently. "It has nothing to do with her abduction. This has got to be about money. What else could it be?"

"What can you tell us about Paola?" I asked.

"She spoke excellent English," Tyler said. "She's been with us only a couple of months. When was it, sweetie?"

"September. Right after Mala went home to Sri Lanka. Paola was highly recommended," Mrs. Tyler said. "And Maddy took to her instantly."

"Do you know any of Paola's friends?"

"No," Mrs. Tyler told us. "She wasn't allowed to bring anyone to the house. She had Thursdays and Sunday afternoons off, and what she did on those days, I'm sorry, we really don't know."

"She was always on her cell phone," Tyler said. " Madison told me that. So she had to have friends. What are you suggesting, Inspector? You think she was behind this?"

"Does that seem possible to you?"

"Sure," said Tyler. "She saw how we live. Maybe she wanted some of this for herself. Or maybe some guy she was seeing put her up to it."

"Right now, we can't rule anything out," I said.

"Whatever it takes, whoever did it," Henry Tyler said, his wife starting to break down beside him, "just please find our little girl."

Chapter 35

PAOLA RICCI'S ROOM in the Tylers ' house was compact and feminine. A poster of an Italian soccer team was on the wall opposite her bed, and over the headboard was a hand-carved crucifix.

There were three main doors in the small room, one leading out to the hallway, one opening into a bathroom, and another that connected to Madison 's room.

Paola's bed was made up with a blue chenille spread, and her clothes hung neatly in her closet – tasteful jumpers and plain skirts and blouses and a shelf of sweaters in neutral colors. A few pairs of flat-soled shoes were lined up on the floor, and a black leather bag hung from the knob of the closet door.

I opened Paola's handbag, went through her wallet.

According to her driver's license, Paola was nineteen years old.

"She's five nine, brown haired, blue eyed – and she likes her weed."

I waggled the baggie with three joints I'd found in a zipper pocket. "But there's no cell phone here, Richie. She must've taken it with her."

I opened one of the drawers in Paola's dresser while Conklin tossed the vanity.

Paola had white cotton workaday underwear, and she also had her days-off satin lingerie in tropical colors.

"A little bit naughty," I said, "a little bit nice."

I went into the bathroom, opened the medicine cabinet. Saw her various lotions and potions for clear skin and split ends, and an opened box of Ortho Tri-Cyclen, the patch for birth control.

Who was she sleeping with?

A boyfriend? Henry Tyler?

It wouldn't be the first time a nanny had gotten involved with the man of the house. Was something twisted going on? An affair gone wrong?

"Here's something, Lieu," Conklin called out. "I mean, Sarge." I stepped back into the bedroom.

"If you can't call me Boxer," I said, "try Lindsay."

"Okay," he said, his handsome face lighting up with a grin. "Lindsay. Paola keeps a diary."

Chapter 36

AS CONKLIN WENT TO SEARCH Madison 's room, I skimmed the nanny's diary.

Paola wrote in beautiful script, using symbols and emoticons to punctuate her exclamatory writing style.

Even a cursory look through the pages told me that Paola Ricci loved America.

She raved about the cafés and shops on Fillmore Street, saying she couldn't wait for nicer weather so that she and her friends could sit outside like she did at home.

She went on for pages about outfits she'd seen in shop windows, and she quoted her San Francisco friends on men, clothes, and media stars.

When mentioning her friends, Paola used only their initials, leading me to guess that she was smoking pot with ME and LK on her nanny's nights out.

I looked for references to Henry Tyler, and Paola referred to him infrequently, but when she did, she called him "Mr. B."

However, she embellished the initial of someone she called "G."

Paola reported charged looks and sightings of "G," but I got the clear impression that whoever he was, she was more anticipating having sex with "G" than actually having it.

The person mentioned most often in Paola's diary was Maddy. That's where I really saw Paola's love for the child. She'd even pasted some of Madison 's drawings and poems onto the pages.

I read nothing about plans, assignations, or vengeance.

I closed Paola's little red book, thinking it was the journal of an innocent abroad.

Or maybe she'd planted this diary to make us think so.

Henry Tyler followed Conklin and me out to the front step. He grabbed my arm.

"I appreciate your downplaying this for my wife, but I understand why you're here. Something may have already happened to my daughter. Please, keep me up to date on everything. And I insist that you tell me the truth."

I gave the distraught Henry Tyler my cell phone number and promised to check in often during the day. Techs were wiring up the Tylers ' phone lines, and inspectors from the Major Crimes Squad were canvassing the houses on Washington Street when Conklin and I left.

We drove to Alta Plaza Park, a historic, terraced gem of a place with breathtaking views.

Along with the nannies and toddlers and dog owners recreating within the park's tranquil greens were cops doing interviews.

Conklin and I joined the canvass, and between us all, we talked to every nanny and child who knew Madison, including one nanny with the initials ME, the friend Paola had mentioned in her diary.

Madeline Ellis broke into tears, telling us about her fear for Paola and Maddy.

"It's like everything I know has been turned upside down," she said. "This place is supposed to be safe!"

Madeline rocked the carriage with a baby inside, her voice choking as she said, "She's a nice girl. And she's very young for her age."

She told us that the "G" in Paola's diary was George, last name unknown, a waiter at the Rhapsody Café. He had flirted with Paola, and she with him – but Madeline was positive that Paola and George had never had a date.

We found George Henley working the tables outside the Rhapsody Café on Fillmore, and we questioned him. We drilled him, tried to scare him, but my instincts told me he wasn't involved in a kidnapping or a murder.

He was a kid, just a regular kid, working his way through night school, trying to get his degree in fine arts.

George wiped his hands on his apron, took Paola's driver's license from my hand, looked at her picture.

"Oh, sure. I've seen her around here with her girlfriends," he said. "But until this minute, I never knew her name."

Chapter 37

THE SUN WAS GOING DOWN on Pacific Heights as we left the apartment of a handyman named Willy Evans who lived over the garage of one of the Tylers ' neighbors. Evans was a creep with unbelievably dirty fingernails and two dozen terrariums inhabited by snakes and lizards. But as slithery as Willy Evans was, he had a solid alibi for the time Madison and Paola were abducted.

Conklin and I buttoned our coats and joined the canvass of the neighborhood, showing pictures of Paola and Madison to homeowners just returning from work.

We scared the hell out of a lot of innocent people and didn't get a single lead in return.

Back at the Hall, we converted our notes and thoughts into a report, noting the interviews we'd done and that the Devines, a family living next door to the Tylers, were on vacation before, during, and after the abduction and weren't interviewed, and that Paola Ricci's friends thought she was a saint.

A deep sadness was weighing on me.

The only witness to the abduction had told Jacobi that she'd heard a pop and saw blood explode on the inside of the rear window of the van at nine this morning.

Did the blood belong to Paola?

Or had the child put up a struggle and gotten a bullet to shut her up?

I said good night to Conklin and drove to the hospital.

Claire was sleeping when I came into her room.

She opened her eyes, said, "Hi, sugar," and fell back asleep. I sat with her for a while, leaned back in the leatherette armchair and even dozed fitfully for a moment or two before kissing my friend's cheek and telling her good-bye.

I parked my Explorer on the uphill slope a few doors from my apartment and got out my keys, thoughts of Madison Tyler still cycling through my mind as I walked up the hill.

I had to blink a couple of times to make sure I wasn't hallucinating.

Joe was waiting outside my apartment, sitting on the steps, a leash looped around his wrist, an arm around Martha.

He stood and I walked into his big hug, swayed with him in the moon shadows.

It felt so good to be in his arms.

Chapter 38

AS FAR AS I KNEW, Joe had never found out about my misadventure in Washington, and now didn't seem like the time to tell him.

"You've fed Martha?" I asked, hugging him closer, reaching my arms up around his neck for his kiss.

"Walked her, too," he murmured. "And I bought a roasted chicken and some vegetables for the human folk. Wine's in the fridge."

"Someday, I'm going to walk into my apartment and shoot you by accident."

"You wouldn't do that, would you, Blondie?"

I pulled back, smiled up at his face, saying, "No, I wouldn't do it, Joe."

"You're my girl."

Then he kissed me again, a true toe curler, and my body melted against his. We walked up the stairs to my apartment, Martha barking and herding us together, making us laugh so hard we were weak by the time we got to the top floor.

As was our habit… the food had to wait.

Joe took off my clothes and his, turned on the shower until the temperature was just right, and once we were both inside the stall, put my hands on the wall and washed me gently and slowly, working me up until I wanted to scream. He wrapped me in a bath sheet and walked me to my bed, lowered me down, turned on the small lamp by the night table, the one with the soft pink light. He unwrapped me as if this were our first time together, as if he were just now discovering my body.

And that gave me the time to admire his broad chest, the way the pattern curls led my eyes downward – and when I reached out to touch him, he was ready.

"Just lie back," he said into my ear.

The brilliant thing about going so long without Joe was that when I was with him, there was the element of "the unknown" along with the safety of familiarity.

I lay back on the pillows, my palms turned up, and Joe drove me crazy as he kissed me everywhere, ran teasing fingers over hot spots and pressed his hard body against mine.

I was dissolving in the heat, but as much as I was dying for him, something else was going on in my head. I was fighting my feelings for Joe, and I didn't know why.

Then the answer came: I don't want to do this.

Chapter 39

I FELT CRAZY, wanting Joe and not wanting him at the same time.

I rationalized at first that I was still swimming in worry for Madison and Paola, but what came to mind was my shame at showing up at Joe's place nearly two weeks ago, needing him so much, feeling as though I'd gone where I didn't belong.

He was lying beside me now, his hand on the plane of my belly.

"What is it, Lindsay?"

I shook my head – No, nothing's wrong – but Joe turned me toward him, made me look into his deep blue eyes.

"I had a horrible day," I told him.

"Sure," he said, "that's not new. But your mood is."

I felt tears spring from my eyes, and that embarrassed me. I didn't want to be vulnerable with Joe. Not now anyway.

"Start talking, Blondie," he said.

I rolled toward him and put my arm over his chest, tucked my head under his jaw. "I can't take this, Joe."

"I know, I know how you feel. I want to move here, but it's not the right time."

My breathing slowed as he talked about the current state of the war, next year's elections, the bombings in major cities, and the focus on Homeland Security.

At some point, I stopped listening. I got out of bed and put on a robe.

"Are you coming back?" Joe asked.

"There it is," I said. "I'm always asking myself that question about you."

Joe started to protest, but I said, "Let me talk."

I sat on the edge of the bed, said, "As good as this can be, that's how bad it is because I can't count on you, Joe. I'm too old for jack-in-the-box love."

"Linds -"

"You know I'm right. I don't know when I'll be seeing you, if I'll reach you when I call. Then you're here, and then you're gone, and I'm left behind, missing you.

"We have no time to relax together, be normal, have a life. We've talked and talked about your moving here, but we both know it's impossible."

"Lindsay, I swear -"

"I can't wait for the next administration or the war to be over. Do you understand?"

He was sitting up now, legs over the side of the bed, so much love in his face I had to turn away.

"I love you, Lindsay. Please, let's not fight. I have to leave in the morning."

"You have to leave now, Joe," I heard myself say. "It kills me to say this, but I don't want any more well-intentioned promises," I said. "Let's end this, okay? We had a great time. Please? If you love me, let me go."

After Joe kissed me good-bye, I lay on my bed, staring at the ceiling for a long time, tears soaking my pillow. I wondered what the hell I had done.

Chapter 40

IT WAS SATURDAY NIGHT, almost midnight. Cindy was sleeping in the bedroom of her new apartment at the Blakely Arms – alone – when she was awoken by a woman shouting her lungs out in Spanish on a floor somewhere over her head.

A door slammed, there were running footsteps, then a hinge creaked and another door slammed, this one closer to Cindy's apartment.

Maybe it was the door to the stairwell?

She heard more shouting, this time down on the street. Men's voices rose up to her third-floor windows, then there was the sound of scuffling.

Cindy was having thoughts she'd never had in her old apartment building.

Was she safe here?

Was the great buy she got on this place a poor bargain after all?

She threw back the covers, left her bedroom, and went out to her new airy living room and foyer. She peeked through the peephole – saw no one. She twisted the knob of the dead bolt, left-right-left-right, before going to her desk.

She ran her hands through her hair, pulled it up into a band. Jeez. Her hands were shaking.

Maybe it wasn't just the nightlife in the building. Maybe she was giving herself the creeps because of the story she was writing about child abduction. Since Henry Tyler's phone call, she'd been surfing the Web, reading more than she'd ever known about the thousands of children who were abducted in the United States every year.

Most of those kids were taken by family members, found, and returned. But a few hundred children every year were strangled, stabbed, or buried alive by their abductors.

And the majority of those kids were murdered within the first hours of their abduction.

Statistically it was far more likely that Madison had been grabbed by an extortionist than a child-molesting, murdering freak. The only problem with that scenario was that it left a huge, chilling question in her mind.

Why hadn't the Tylers been contacted about paying a ransom?

Cindy was halfway back to her bedroom when the doorbell rang. She froze, heart jumping inside her chest. She didn't know a soul in this building.

So who could be ringing her doorbell?

The bell rung again, insistently.

Clutching her robe, Cindy went to the door and peered through the peephole. She couldn't believe who was peering back.

It was Lindsay.

And she looked like hell.

Chapter 41

I WAS ABOUT TO TURN AND GO when Cindy opened the door in her pink PJs, her curls rubber banded into a pom-pom on the top of her head. She was looking at me as if she'd just seen the dead.

"You okay?" I asked.

"Me? I'm fine, Lindsay. I live here, remember? What's wrong with you?"

"I would've called," I said, hugging my friend, using the moment to try to get a grip on myself. But clearly Cindy had scanned and memorized the shock on my face. And frankly she didn't look so good herself. "But I didn't know I was coming until I was here."

"Come in, and for God's sake, sit down," she said, staring at me anxiously as I made for the couch.

Cardboard cartons were stacked against the walls, and layers of Bubble Wrap wafted around my feet.

"What's happened, Lindsay? As Yuki would say, 'You look like you've been dragged through a duck's ass.' "

I managed a weak laugh. "That's about how I feel."

"What can I get you? Tea? Maybe something stronger."

"Tea would be great."

I fell back onto the sofa cushions, and a few minutes later, Cindy returned from the kitchen, pulled up a footstool to sit on, and handed me a mug. "Talk to me," she said.

No joke, Cindy was a perfect paradox: all pink ruffles and curls on the outside, never leaving home without lipstick and the perfect shoes, but inside that girlie-girl was a bulldog who would get a grip on your leg and hang on until you had no choice but to tell her what she wanted to know.

I suddenly felt idiotic. Just seeing Cindy changed my mood for the better, and I no longer wanted to open myself up and talk about Joe.

"I wanted to see your apartment."

"Give. Me. A. Break."

"You're relentless -"

"Blame it on my choice of career."

"And proud of it."

"Ab-solutely."

"Bitch." I found myself laughing.

"Go ahead. Get it off your chest," she said. "Give me your best shot."

"Calling you a bitch was my best shot."

"Okay, then. What gives, Linds?"

I covered my face with a throw pillow, shutting out the light, feeling myself tumbling down. I sighed. "I broke up with Joe."

Cindy grabbed the pillow away from my face.

"You're kidding, right?"

"Be nice, okay, Cindy? Or I'll throw up on your rug."

"Okay, okay, so why did you do that? Joe's smart. He's gorgeous. He loves you. You love him. What's wrong with you?"

I pulled my knees up and hugged them tight with my arms. Cindy sat down next to me on the couch. She put an arm around me.

I felt as if I were holding on to a skinny tree while being lashed by a tidal wave. I'd been crying so much lately. I thought I might be losing my mind.

"Take your time, honey. I'm here. The night is young. Sort of."

So I gave in, blurted out the story about my totally embarrassing trip to DC and how I felt about the whole mood-swinging affair with Joe. "It really, really hurts, Cindy. But I did the right thing."

"It's not just because you got your feelings hurt when he wasn't home and you saw that girl?"

"No. Hell no."

"Oh, God, Linds, I didn't mean to make you cry. Lie down here. Close your eyes."

Cindy pushed me gently onto my side, put a pillow under my head. A moment later, a blanket floated over me. The light went off, and I felt Cindy tuck me in.

"It's not over, Linds. Trust me. It's not over."

"You're wrong once in a while, you know," I muttered.

"Wanna bet?" Cindy kissed my cheek. And then I was swept along by whatever dream featured me in a starring role. I sunk into a deep hole of agonized sleep, waking only as sunlight streamed through Cindy's bare windows.

I forced myself to sit up, swung my legs off the couch, saw the note from Cindy on the coffee table saying she'd gone out for rolls and coffee.

Then the day hit me for real.

Jacobi and Macklin were having a staff meeting this morning at eight. Every cop on the Tyler-Ricci case would be there – except me.

I scribbled a note to Cindy, stuck my feet in my shoes, and raced out the door.

Chapter 42

JACOBI ROLLED HIS EYES when I edged past him, slipped into a seat in the back of the squad room. Lieutenant Macklin gave me a short, glancing stare as he summarized the meeting so far. In the absence of any information regarding the whereabouts of Madison Tyler and Paola Ricci, we were assigned to interview registered sex offenders.

"Patrick Calvin," I read from our list as Conklin and I got into the squad car. "Convicted sex offender, recently released on probation after serving time for the sexual abuse of his own daughter. She was six when it happened."

Conklin started the car. "There's no understanding that kind of garbage. You know what? I don't want to understand it."

Calvin lived in a twenty-unit, U-shaped stucco apartment building at Palm and Euclid on the fringe of Jordan Park, about a mile and a half from where Madison Tyler lived and played. A blue Toyota Corolla registered to Calvin was parked on the street.

I smelled bacon cooking as we crossed the open patio area at the front entrance, climbed the outside stairs, knocked on Calvin's aggressively red-painted door.

The door opened, and a tousle-haired white male no more than five foot three stood in the doorway, wearing plaid pajamas and white socks.

He looked about fifteen years old, making me want to ask, "Is your father home?" But the faint gray shadow on his jowls and the prison tats on his knuckles gave Pat Calvin away as a former inmate of our prison system.

"Patrick Calvin?" I said, showing him my badge.

"What do you want?"

"I'm Sergeant Boxer. This is Inspector Conklin," I said. "We have a few questions. Mind if we come in?"

"Yes, I mind. What do you want?"

Conklin has an easy way about him, a trait I frankly envy. I'd seen him interrogate murdering psychos with a kind of sweetness, good cop to the max. He'd also taken care of that poor cat at the Alonzo murder scene.

"Sorry, Mr. Calvin," Conklin said now. "I know it's early on a Sunday morning, but a child is missing and we don't have a lot of time."

"What's that got to do with me?"

"Get used to this, Mr. Calvin," I said. "You're on parole -"

"You want to search my house, is that it?" Calvin shouted. "This is a goddamned free country, isn't it? You don't have a warrant," Calvin spat. "You have shit."

"You're getting awful steamed up for an innocent man," Conklin said. "Makes me wonder, you know?"

I stood by as Conklin explained that we could call Calvin's parole officer, who would have no problem letting us in. "Or we could get a warrant," Conklin said. "Have a couple of cruisers come screaming up to the curb, show your neighbors what kind of guy you are."

"So… mind if we come in?" I asked.

Calvin countered my scowl with a dark look of his own. "I've got nothing to hide," he said.

And he stepped aside.

Chapter 43

CALVIN'S PLACE WAS SPARSELY DECORATED in early Ikea: lightweight blond wood. There was a shelf of dolls over the TV – big ones, little ones, baby dolls, and dolls in fancy dresses.

"I bought them for my daughter," Calvin snarled, dropping into a chair. "In case she can ever visit me."

"What is she now? Sixteen?" Conklin asked.

"Shut up," Calvin said. "Okay? Just shut up."

"Watch your mouth," Conklin said before he disappeared into Calvin's bedroom. I took a seat on the sofa and whipped out my notebook.

I shook off the image of a young girl, now a teen, who'd had the terrible misfortune to have this shit as a father, and asked Calvin if he'd ever seen Madison Tyler.

"I saw her on the news last night. She's very cute. You could even say edible. But I don't know her."

"Okay, then," I said, gritting my teeth, feeling a sharp pang of fear for Madison. "Where were you yesterday morning at nine a.m.?"

"I was watching TV. I like to stay on top of the current cartoon shows so I can talk to little girls on their level, you know what I mean?"

At five ten, I'm a head taller than Calvin and in better shape, too. Violent fantasies were roiling in my mind, just as they had when I'd arrested Alfred Brinkley. I was stressing too much, too much…

"Can anyone vouch for your whereabouts?"

"Sure. Ask Mr. Happy," Pat Calvin said, patting the fly of his pajama bottoms, grabbing himself there. "He'll tell you anything you want to know."

I snapped. I grabbed Calvin's collar, bunching up the flannel tight around his neck. His hands flew out as I lifted him off his chair, thumped him against the wall.

Dolls scattered.

Conklin came out of the bedroom as I was about to thump Calvin again. My partner pretended that he didn't see anything crazy in my face and leaned casually against the door frame.

I was alarmed at how close I was to the edge. What I didn't need now was a complaint for police brutality. I released Calvin's pajamas.

"Nice photo collection you have, Mr. Calvin," Conklin said conversationally. "Pictures of little kids playing in Alta Plaza Park."

I shot a look at Conklin. Madison and Paola were snatched from the street just outside that park.

"Did you see my camera?" Calvin said defiantly. "Seven million megapixels and a 12x zoom. I shot those pictures from a block away. I know the rules. And I didn't break any of them."

"Sergeant," Conklin said to me, "there's a little girl in one of those pictures, could be Madison Tyler."

I got Jacobi on the phone, told him that Patrick Calvin had photos we should look at more closely.

"We need two patrolmen to sit on Calvin while Conklin and I come in to write up a warrant," I said.

"No problem, Boxer. I'll send a car. But I'll have Chi take care of the warrant and bring Calvin in."

"We can handle it, Jacobi," I said.

"You could," Jacobi said, "but a child matching Madison Tyler's description was just called in from Transbay security."

"She's been seen?"

"She's there right now."

Chapter 44

THE TRANSBAY TERMINAL on First and Mission is an open-air, rusty-roofed, concrete-block shed. Inside the cinder-block shell, half-dead fluorescent lights sputter overhead, throwing faint shadows on the homeless souls who camp out in this oppressive place so that they can use the scant facilities.

Even in daytime this terminal is creepy. I felt an urgent need to find Madison Tyler and get her the hell out of here.

Conklin and I jogged down the stairs to the terminal's lower level, a dark, dingy space dominated by a short wall of ticket booths and a security area.

Two black women wearing navy-blue pants and shirts with PRIVATE SECURITY SERVICES patches sewn to their pockets sat behind the desk.

We flashed our badges and were buzzed in.

The security office was glassed in on two sides, painted grimy beige on the other two, and furnished with two desks, unmatched file cabinets, three exit doors with keypad access, and two vending machines.

And there, sitting beside the stationmaster's desk, was a little girl with silky yellow hair falling over her collar.

Her blue coat was unbuttoned. She had on a red sweater over blue pants. And she wore shiny red shoes.

My heart did a little dance. We'd found her.

Oh, my God, Madison was safe!

The stationmaster, a big man, fortysomething with gray hair and matching mustache, stood up to introduce himself.

"I'm Fred Zimmer," he said, shaking our hands. "And we found this little lady wandering all by herself about fifteen minutes ago, weren't you, honey? I couldn't get her to talk to me."

I put my hands on my knees and looked into the little girl's face. She'd been crying, and I couldn't get her to look me in the eyes.

Her cheeks were dirt streaked and her nose was running. Her lower lip was swollen and she had a scrape along the side of her left cheek. I threw Richie a look. My relief at seeing Madison alive was swamped by a new concern for what had been done to her.

She looked so traumatized that I was having a hard time matching up her face to the image of the little dazzler I'd seen playing the piano on videotape.

Conklin stooped to the little girl's level.

"My name is Richie." He smiled. "Is your name Maddy?"

The child looked at Conklin, opened her mouth, and said, "Mahhh-dy."

I thought, This little girl has been scared to death.

I took her small hands in mine. They were cold to the touch, and she stared right through me.

"Call EMS," I said softly, trying not to frighten her further. "Something's wrong with this child."

Chapter 45

CONKLIN AND I WERE PACING RESTLESSLY outside the hospital's emergency room when the Tylers rushed in and embraced us like family.

I was feeling high. One part of this frightening, god-awful story was over. And I was hoping that right after she saw her parents, Madison would come back to herself. Because I had some questions for her – starting with, "Did you get a good look at the guys who kidnapped you?"

"She was sleeping when we last looked in on her," I told the Tylers. "Dr. Collins just stopped by and said he'll be back in… let's see… about ten minutes."

"I have to ask," Elizabeth Tyler said softly, "was Maddy harmed in any way?"

"She looks like she's been through an ordeal," I said to Madison 's mom. "She wasn't given any kind of invasive exam because the doctors were waiting for your consent."

Elizabeth Tyler covered her mouth with both hands, stifled her tears.

"You should know she's barely said anything to anyone."

"That's not like Maddy."

"Maybe she was warned not to talk or she would be hurt -"

"Oh, God. Those animals!"

"Why would they kidnap Maddy, then abandon her without trying to get a ransom?" Tyler was asking as we entered the ER.

I let the question hang, because I didn't want to say what I was thinking: Pedophiles don't ask for ransom. I stood aside so that the Tylers could enter Maddy's curtained stall in the ER ahead of me, thinking how overjoyed Madison would be when she saw her parents again.

Henry Tyler squeezed my arm and whispered, "Thank you," as he went through the curtains. I heard Elizabeth Tyler calling her daughter's name – then cry out with an agonized moan.

I jumped aside as she ran past me. Henry Tyler emerged next and put his face right up to mine.

"Do you know what you've done?" he said, his face scarlet with rage. "That girl isn't Madison. Do you understand? That's not Madison. That's not our baby!"

Chapter 46

I APOLOGIZED TO THE TYLERS sincerely and profusely as they exploded all over me in the hospital parking lot, then stood flat-footed as their car tore past me, leaving rubber on the asphalt. My cell phone rang on my hip, and eventually I answered it.

It was Jacobi. "A woman just called saying her daughter is missing. The child is five. Has long blond hair."

The caller's name was Sylvia Brodsky, and she was hysterical. She'd lost track of her daughter, Alicia, while shopping for groceries. Alicia must have wandered away, Mrs. Brodsky told the 911 operator, adding that her daughter was autistic.

Alicia Brodsky could barely speak a word.

Not long after Jacobi's call, Sylvia Brodsky came to the hospital and claimed her daughter, but Conklin and I weren't there to see it.

We were back in our Crown Vic, talking it over, me taking responsibility for jumping the gun, saying, "I should have been more forceful when I told the Tylers that maybe we'd found their daughter, but we couldn't be sure. But I did say that we needed them to make a positive ID, didn't I, Rich? You heard me."

"They stopped listening after you said, 'We may have found your daughter.' Hey, it all clicked, Lindsay. She said her name was Maddy."

"Well. Something like that."

"The red shoes," he insisted. "How many five-year-old blond-haired kids have blue coats and red patent leather shoes?"

"Two, anyway." I sighed.

Back at the Hall, we interrogated Calvin for two hours, squeezed him until he wasn't smirking anymore. We looked at the digital photos still inside his camera, and we examined the photos Conklin had found in his bedroom.

There were no pictures of Madison Tyler, but we kept our hopes up until the last frame that Calvin might have accidentally photographed the kidnapping in progress.

That maybe he'd caught the black van in his lens.

But the Memory Stick in his camera showed that he hadn't been taking pictures at Alta Plaza Park yesterday.

Patrick Calvin made me sick, but the law doesn't recognize causing revulsion as a criminal offense.

So we kicked him. Turned him loose.

Conklin and I interviewed three more registered sex offenders that day, three average-looking white males you'd never pick out of a crowd as sexual predators.

Three men whose alibis checked out.

I finally called it quits at around seven p.m. Emotionally speaking, my tank was dry.

I entered my apartment, threw my arms around Martha, and promised her a run after my shower to rinse the skeezy images out of my brain.

There was a note from Martha's sitter on the kitchen counter. I went to the fridge, cracked open a Corona, and took a long pull from the bottle before reading it.

Lindsay, hi, when I didn't see your car, I took Martha for a walk!:(Remember I told you my parents are letting me have the house in Hermosa Beach through Christmas? I should take Martha with me. It would be good for her,

Lindsay!!!

Let me know. K.

I felt sick knowing that I'd abandoned my dog without calling her sitter. And I knew Karen was right. I wasn't doing Martha any good right now. My new hours included double shifts and all-work weekends. I hadn't taken a real break since the ferry shooting.

I stooped down for a kiss, lifted Martha's silky ears, looked into her big brown eyes.

"You want to run on the beach, Boo?"

I picked up the phone and dialed Karen's number.

"Excellent," she said. "I'll pick her up in the morning."

Chapter 47

IT WAS MONDAY MORNING, half past dawn.

Conklin and I were at the construction site below Fort Point, the huge brick fort that had been built on the edge of the San Francisco peninsula during the Civil War and now stood in the shadow of the Golden Gate Bridge.

A damp breeze kicked up whitecaps on the bay, making the fifty-degree temperature feel more like thirty-five.

I was shaking, either because of the windchill factor or from my sickening sense of what we were about to find.

I zipped up my fleece-lined jacket, put my hands inside my pockets as the whipping wind brought moisture to my eyes.

A welder who was working on the bridge retrofit came toward us with containers of coffee from the "garbage truck," a food wagon outside the chain-link fence that separated the construction site from the public area.

The welder's name was Wayne Murray, and he told me and Conklin how when he'd come to work that morning, he'd seen something weird hung up on the rocks below the fort.

"I thought at first it was a seal," he said mournfully. "When I got closer, I saw an arm in the water. I never saw a dead body before."

Car doors slammed, men coming through the chain-link gate, talking and laughing – construction workers, EMS, and a couple of Park Service cops.

I asked them to rope off the area.

I turned my eyes back to the dark lump down on the rocks below the seawall, a white hand and foot trailing in the foam-flecked water that streamed toward the ocean.

"She wasn't dumped here," Conklin said. "Too much chance of being seen."

I squinted up at the silhouette of the bridge security officer patrolling the structure with his AR-15 semiautomatic rifle.

"Yeah. Depending on the time and the tides, she could have been dropped off one of the piers. The perps must've thought she'd float out to sea."

"Here comes Dr. G.," Conklin said.

The ME was chipper this morning, his damp white hair still showing comb marks, his waders pulled up to midchest, his nose pink under the bridge of his glasses.

He and one of his assistants took the lead, and we joined them, walking awkwardly across the jagged rocks that sloped at a forty-five-degree angle, fifteen feet down to the lip of the bay.

"Hang on, there. Be careful," Dr. Germaniuk said as we approached the body. "Don't want anyone to fall and touch something."

We stood our ground as Dr. G. scrambled down the boulders, approached the body, put his scene kit down. Using his flashlight, he began his preliminary in situ assessment.

I could see the body pretty well in his beam. The victim's face was darkened and swollen.

"Got some skin slippage here," Dr. G. called up to me. "She's been in the water a couple of days. Long enough to have become a floater."

"Does she have a gunshot wound to the head?"

"Can't tell. Looks like she's been banged up on the rocks. I'll give her a head-to-toe X-ray when we get her back to home base."

Dr. G. photographed the body twice from each angle, his flash popping every second or two.

I took note of the girl's clothing – the dark coat, the turtle-neck sweater, her short hair, similar to the distinctive bowl cut I'd seen in her driver's license picture when I'd gone through her wallet two days before.

"We both know that's Paola Ricci," Conklin said, staring down at the body.

I nodded. Except that yesterday we'd blown it, broken the Tylers ' hearts by jumping to conclusions.

"Right," I said. "But I'll believe it when we get a pos-itive ID."

Chapter 48

CLAIRE WAS SITTING UP IN BED when I walked through the door of her hospital room. She stretched out her arms, and I hugged her until she said, "Take it easy, sugar. I've got a hole in my chest, remember?"

I pulled back, kissed her on both cheeks, and sat down beside her.

"What's the latest from your doctor?"

"He said I'm a big, strong girl…" And then Claire started coughing. She held up the hand that wasn't covering her mouth, managing to finally say, "It hurts only when I cough."

"You're a big, strong girl and… what?" I pressed her.

"And I'm going to be fine. Getting out of this joint Wednesday. Then some time at home in bed. After that I should be good to go."

"Thank God."

"I've been thanking God since that asshole shot me, whenever that was. You lose track of time when you don't have an office job."

"It happened two weeks ago, Butterfly. Two weeks and two days."

Claire pushed a box of chocolates toward me, and I took the first one my hand fell on.

"You been sleeping in the trunk of your car?" she asked me. "Or did you trade Joe in for an eighteen-year-old boyfriend?"

I poured water for both of us, put a straw in Claire's glass, handed it to her, said, "I didn't trade him in. I just kinda let him go."

Claire's eyebrows shot up. "No, you didn't."

I explained what happened, aching as I talked. Claire watched me warily but kindly. She asked a few questions but mostly let me spill.

I sipped some water. Then I cleared my throat and told Claire about my new rank with the SFPD.

Shock registered in her eyes. Again. "You got yourself bumped down to the street and you told Joe to hit the bricks – at the same time? I'm worried about you, Lindsay. Are you sleeping? Taking vitamins? Eating right?"

No. No. No.

I threw myself back into the armchair as a nurse came in, bearing a tray with Claire's medication and dinner.

"Here you go, Dr. Washburn. Down the hatch."

Claire slugged down the pills, pushed her tray away once the nurse had gone. "Slop du jour," she said.

Had I eaten today? I didn't think so. I appropriated Claire's meal, mashing the overcooked peas and meatloaf together on the fork, getting to the ice-cream course before telling her that we had identified Paola Ricci's body.

"The kidnappers shot the nanny within a minute of taking her and the child. Couldn't get rid of her fast enough. But that's all I've got, Butterfly. We don't know who did it, why, or where they've taken Madison."

"Why haven't those shits called the parents?"

"That's the million-dollar question. Way too long without a ransom request. I don't think they want the Tylers' money."

"Damn."

"Yeah." I dropped the plastic spoon onto the tray and leaned back in the chair again, staring out at nothing.

"Lindsay?"

"I've been thinking that they'd shot Paola because she'd witnessed Madison's kidnapping."

"Makes sense."

"But if Madison witnessed Paola's murder… they're not going to let the child live after that."