A Daughter's Story (12 page)

Her blue eyes warm, Lucy shook her head. “None of the items
found in Walters’s basement link him to Claire.”

“Thank God.” Thank you, Lord. A thousand times, thank you.
Emma’s eyes welled with tears and she blinked them away, nodding. Trying to
smile. “Of course that means we’re back to square one,” she said. It was
frustrating, but she was more than willing to go back to not knowing if it meant
that Claire hadn’t suffered at the hands of that sick bastard.

“We aren’t quite back to square one,” Lucy said slowly, her
gaze intent. Giving Emma’s hand one last squeeze, she sat back. “We have nothing
concrete yet. Not even enough to warrant informing you…”

“But you’re going to tell me.”

“I need to explain something, first.”

“Of course.”

Lucy took a sip of her drink, and turned up the corners of her
napkin with her free hand.

“Ramsey told you about the case that introduced us—he needed
evidence to rule out a female infant abduction as one of Walters’s victims and
I’d signed out the evidence.”

Walters was not Claire’s abductor. Still weak with relief, Emma
made herself focus on the words Detective Hayes was saying, and nodded.

Claire had not been one of Walters’s victims.

She had to call Cal.

“That infant female was my older sister.”

Emma’s heart lurched as she became fully present. She stared at
the detective.

“I don’t know exactly what you’re going through,” Lucy Hayes
said. “I never knew my sister. She was abducted before I was born. But I do know
how hard it is to live with the aftermath. The way it changes a family. I
understand how the not knowing can make you crazy. And give you perpetual hope
at the same time.”

“Did you find your sister?”

“Not yet. She’s the reason I became a cop. So that I could have
access to every means possible to find her. My mother…she’s never been stable,
or even always coherent, since I’ve known her. She was with Allison at the time
she was taken. She was taken, too. The guy beat her up, raped her and left her
for dead. But he kept Allison. They never found him. Or my sister.”

Holding back the emotion swarming inside her as best she could,
Emma asked, “How long was this before you were born?”

“A little over a year.”

“So you weren’t… The rape didn’t make her pregnant.”

“No. My father died when I was a baby, though. He was much
older than my mother. A cop. She turned to him after Allie was taken. Allie’s
father, a boyfriend who left her when she found out she was pregnant, was
nowhere to be found.”

“Was your father on the case?”

“Not full-time. He was from across the state line and followed
up on a camera sighting that they thought was my mother and Allie. Turned out
not to be, but he checked in on my mom afterward and one thing led to another.
He died in an unrelated shoot-out.”

“And Allie…your sister…she’s not one of Walters’s victims
either, right? Since you say you haven’t found her.”

“Right. We don’t have Allie’s DNA, but a sample from my mother
ruled out even a close match.”

“My mom’s stable,” Emma said. “She went back to work a year
after Claire went missing. She was a teacher. She’s an elementary-school
principal now and spends all of her free time advocating for child-safety
education. But I’ve spent my entire life protecting her from the fear and
depression that could easily kill her.”

The detective nodded, her smile filled with understanding.

“My mother would never have been able to handle my becoming a
cop,” Emma continued. “Cops were on the list of men I was not to even think
about dating because of the possibility someone he put away could get out and
come after us.”

“Mom didn’t like the idea, at first, but when I explained to
her that I’d have the best self-defense training around and would be qualified
to keep us both safe from harm, she relented. I just don’t ever tell her when
I’m on a case. She doesn’t even know what shifts I work.”

“Do you see her often?”

“All the time. She lives across the street from me. She has a
part-time caregiver, too. A woman who looks in on her several times a week.
Helps her around the house and runs errands for her. I… She drinks and doesn’t
do well on her own.”

Emma felt lucky. “Have you tried to get her into
treatment?”

“She’s been. Four times. And as soon as something happens that
upsets her, she goes right back to the bottle.”

“That’s got to be rough.”

Lucy shrugged. “We manage. She’s not a mean drunk. Or a weepy
or sloppy one, either. She drinks quietly. At home. And up until recently, she
painted. Beautiful landscapes. I’ve put several of them up on eBay for her and
she’s actually made pretty good money.”

“Why did she stop?”

“She was just in treatment. And she hasn’t picked up a brush
since she got back.”

“Does she live alone?”

“Now she does. There was a guy, Daniel, who lived with us for a
long time but he got tired of the drinking, too, and moved out to Arizona. He’s
got his own construction business out there. He’s invited me to visit.”

Emma sipped her coffee, not caring that it had gone cold. “Are
you going to go?”

“Maybe. I don’t take a lot of time off. Except to follow leads
off the clock.” She grinned. “Too many questions to find answers for, too many
cases to be able to leave the job and walk away.”

“You should, though,” Emma said. “Everyone needs a break now
and then.”

“That’s what Ramsey tells me.”

“He takes vacations?”

“No, he just tells me to. Ramsey’s one of those guys who knows
the rules but doesn’t think that they apply to him. Which is part of what makes
him a great cop.”

“Seems like it could get him into a lot of trouble, not to
mention danger.”

“He’s smart enough to know when to play by the rules even if he
doesn’t think they apply.” Lucy took a long sip of her latte.

Emma was glad the man was on Claire’s case. Even if, in the
end, he brought her bad news. It was time to get on with her life.

She’d been in a perpetual holding pattern since she was four
years old. Waiting to find Claire. And somewhere along the way, the not knowing
had become comfortable. Even though she didn’t have her sister with her, she
didn’t have to mourn. Didn’t have to give up hope.

Looking for Claire gave her life meaning. But it was the only
real meaning her life held.

And it wasn’t enough.

Somehow she had to find a way to let go of the past. One way or
another, she needed closure. She had to move on, or she was never going to be
happy.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

“I
DIDN
’
T
MEAN
TO
GET
so far offtrack.”
Detective Hayes put her coffee cup down. “You’re easy to talk to.”

“So are you.”

“Thank you.” The other woman smiled. “Sometimes I think I get
so wrapped up in my work that I forget how to just be a person. You know, I see
everyone as a perp or a victim and not as a three-dimensional human being.” She
chuckled. “Anyway, I have to put my cop hat back on. I wanted to let you know
that the possible connection I was working on in Aurora—the one I told you and
Cal about—came to nothing.”

“Can you tell me what it was?”

“Cal had talked about Claire being a climber. There was a case
in Aurora more than twenty years ago, a little girl who’d been abducted from her
home. They recovered her, healthy and unharmed, and I remembered reading that
when the guy was caught he said that he never would have taken her at all if the
other one hadn’t been such a climber. The detectives on the case discovered that
there’d been another little girl—one the perp claimed he bought and couldn’t
remember from whom. The first child had climbed up on the kitchen counter,
fallen and hit her head and died. He’d disposed of her body. They’d recovered
some evidence from that first girl, but hadn’t ever been able to make a match to
any missing person’s report. Last year she was added to our DNA database.”

“And you know now that it wasn’t Claire?”

“That’s right.”

“Is the guy in prison now?”

“For life. Without parole. And the second girl he kidnapped is
now a senior in college and doesn’t even remember the time away from her
family.”

Sometimes justice was done. It was good to know.

“You said that we weren’t quite back to square one.” But it
seemed as if they were.

Not that she was complaining. They’d ruled out two possible
homicides this week. Twice, they’d played Russian roulette and won.

She was going to have to get something to eat soon.

To go home to her empty house.

“I believe that Claire might have been in Aurora, Emma.”

She froze.

“Not any time recently,” the detective clarified, her eyes
filled with sympathy.

And suddenly Emma wasn’t feeling hungry, or lucky, at all. Was
Lucy Hayes about to tell her that Claire was dead, after all?

“About eight years ago there was a big bust in Aurora—a
well-to-do woman had been running a black-market adoption operation out of her
home on the Ohio River for more than twenty years. She serviced the entire
eastern and midwestern United States. And she dealt only with infants up to six
months of age.”

Emma listened, numbing herself, in case.

“To be honest, I think the bust was part of the reason I moved
up to detective so rapidly. I’d been going through my mother’s records and found
the woman’s name and number. Mom told me that some time after detectives failed
to turn up any evidence on Allie’s whereabouts, she got desperate and went to
downtown Cincinnati, to the seamiest part of town, and posed as a desperate
young, homeless pregnant woman seeking money in exchange for her unborn baby,
hoping to connect with the people who might have sold Allie. Some junkies told
her about this woman in Aurora. My mother contacted her, hoping that the woman
might remember Allie. The woman told my mother that she’d read about her rape,
but that she hadn’t had Allie.

“I wasn’t quite nineteen at the time, fresh out of the police
academy. I told a detective mentor of mine what I knew. I gave her the woman’s
name and ended up posing as an infertile woman with a lot of cash looking for a
newborn, and helped shut the place down.”

If Emma hadn’t been so preoccupied with wondering how this was
going to tie into Claire, she’d have been fascinated. “And you think that Claire
was at this woman’s house? You think my sister was sold on the black
market?”

“I don’t think she was sold,” the detective said. “But I know
that she was at the home at some point.”

The din around them faded away. Emma heard pounding in her
ears. Waves. And Lucy’s voice.

“When the place was busted, they bagged pounds of evidence—baby
items, clothes, toys—in the hope that they might be able to trace some of the
kids who’d been stolen—or sold by their own parents. I made it my personal
business, with the help of a DNA scientist friend of mine in Cincinnati, to
catalog and file all that evidence.”

Emma’s heart was pounding so hard she could barely breathe. She
needed fresh air.

“I sent a sample of Claire’s DNA to my friend. I asked her to
check it against the database.”

Emma knew. “She found a match.”

“Yes.” Lucy whispered. She must have. Emma didn’t hear her. But
she saw her lips form the word.

“My sister was adopted. She’s alive.”

The shake of the detective’s head sent her crashing.

“She’s not alive?” Emma asked.

Lucy Hayes frowned. “We don’t know. We might never know. The
woman who owned the mansion kept impeccable records of all of her adoptions. She
kept a little piece of hair from every baby—they were attached as identifiers to
the records. She gave an identical record to the adoptive parents, along with
footprints and the forged hospital birth records. For all intents and purposes,
she ran a legitimate private-adoption agency.”

“But none of the hair samples matched Claire?”

“Uh-huh. We’d already processed all of the DNA on the hair
samples to check them against cold-case missing-child cases. There was no
evidence of Allie there, either, but I was able to solve a couple of other cases
from what we found.”

“I can see why you don’t take vacations.”

“I know, I’m obsessed. I admit it. I’m addicted to finding
children just like my mother is addicted to alcohol. I come by the addictive
personality naturally. But at least I’m using it constructively.”

“Hey, I’m not criticizing!” Emma said. “You’ve done so much
more than I ever have. I admire you.” Lucy Hayes had a life.

“Yeah, well, don’t forget, Emma, I didn’t know my sister. You
knew and loved yours. More than that, you were the big sister, and to a
four-year-old, that means Claire was your baby.”

Lucy was right. She had felt like Claire was her baby as well
as Rose’s. But no one else had ever said so. Herself included.

“So what do you think it means? Claire having been there? I
mean, if she wasn’t adopted out, why would she have been there at all?”

“I’m not sure. The agency handled only newborns and Claire
would have been at least two. Maybe the woman tried to find a buyer for her and
couldn’t.”

“What would have happened to her, then?”

Lucy Hayes gave her a look that made Emma go cold. “You think
they might have killed her?”

“I’m not going there. Not unless I have to. At this point,
there’s been no evidence of any murders. To the contrary, the babies in the
woman’s care were well cared for. The mansion has been torn down, the land
redeveloped. If there were bodies there, they’d have been found already.”

“So what happens next?”

“I keep looking,” Lucy said. “I go through all of the evidence
of that case again, comparing what’s there with what I know about Claire. I talk
to anyone else I can find who might know more about what went on in that house.
I question the adoptive parents again. I’ll go over all of the trial
transcripts, too. Once I’m fully versed in the case, I’ll head to prison to talk
to the woman again.”

“That sounds like more work than one person can
accomplish.”

“It’s not as onerous as it sounds. I have it down to a system.
And Ramsey will be helping me.”

“I don’t know how I’ll ever repay you.”

“You won’t. I’m just doing my job, Emma. Because this has to do
with the Aurora bust, my department will pay me. Not many people get paid to
feed their addictions, you know?” The detective smiled, but her eyes told
another story.

“I could have waited to fill you in until I knew more, but I
had a feeling you’d want to be kept informed every step of the way.”

“You’re right,” Emma said, pulling her purse back up to her
shoulder as Detective Hayes stood. “Thank you.”

“No need to thank me, either.” Lucy Hayes handed her a card.
“Call me if you think of anything else that might help me narrow my search.”

“I will.” Emma walked with the woman to the door.

“And call me if you just want to talk, too,” the detective
added, turning to look at Emma. “I mean that.”

Emma nodded. “That goes both ways,” she said, thinking that as
difficult as facing up to life was, it wasn’t all bad. For the first time in
twenty-five years she’d met someone who knew what she had gone through. Someone
who knew what it was like to walk around with an open wound in your core.
Someone who not only understood her intellectually, but who could relate to her
emotionally, too.

For the first time since she’d lost Claire, she no longer felt
completely and utterly alone.