So were Nat’s. And they were getting more ragged with each passing minute.
Leo poured himself a refill of coffee as they waited in the doctors’ lounge up in ICU. “You sure Varda said nine
a.m.?”
Nat checked her watch. It was nine thirty-five. Varda told her he planned to come there straight from home and then go on to Grafton for an eleven
a.m.
therapy group he was running.
Where the hell was he? Of all people, you’d expect psychiatrists to be punctual.
Shortly after nine, Leo got in touch with the two officers posted in an unmarked car outside Varda’s building. They had not yet seen Varda exit. Okay, so he was running a bit late. But now Nat was starting to feel increasingly uneasy.
“Maybe he had some kind of emergency,” she said. “He mentioned something about his sister being sick. I don’t know how serious it is, but she could have been rushed to the hospital.” “Let’s see if he left.” Leo phoned the officers on duty again. “Phil. Do me a favor. Take Lenny and run up to Varda’s apartment. Check if he’s there.” He hesitated briefly before adding, “And if he is, that he’s in one piece.”
The first thing Nat saw when she followed Leo into Dr. Varda’s apartment was the red stain on the psychiatrist’s beige carpet. There were a few splatters of red, as well, on the khaki sofa just above the carpet. Bile rose up in her throat, burning its way back down as she swallowed hard.
Mitchell Oates and another plainclothes detective stepped out from the bedroom. Behind Nat and Leo, two Boston crime-scene investigators entered the front door.
“What have we got?” Leo addressed the question to Oates, who was walking over to the crime-scene pair.
“It’s what we don’t got that’s the problem,” Oates answered dryly. “We don’t got the shrink.”
“Isn’t that a good thing?” Nat said. “It means Dr. Varda might very well still be alive.”
Oates shrugged. “Maybe.”
Leo pointed toward the bedroom. “Anything in there?” “Bed’s unmade. Looks like the shrink slept there last night. Alone,” Oates added. “No sign of any struggle.” He looked over at the red stain on the carpet. “No blood’s turned up anywhere else in the apartment from what I’ve seen.”
“Front door was unlocked?”
Oates nodded. “No sign of any tampering. I’d say the doctor let whoever it was in. There’s half a pot of coffee in the kitchen. Still warm. Timer was set for seven
a.m. Two
mugs in the drain board. I got them bagged and tagged, but I don’t think we’ll get much from them. Unfortunately, our shrink is very tidy. Washed the mugs rather than stuck ’em in the dishwasher.”
“So,” Leo said, “somebody shows up sometime this morning. Varda lets him or her in, they have coffee, sit around, shoot the breeze, then something happens. Now we’ve got bloodstains and a missing shrink.”
“What about the two officers posted outside?” Nat asked. “They never saw Varda exit.”
“There’s a service entrance. Locked from the outside so my men didn’t worry about someone getting into the building that way. ”
A uniform came into the apartment and made a beeline for Oates.
“The neighbor across the hall says she saw a woman ringing Dr. Varda’s doorbell sometime around eight-thirty this morning. Neighbor’s name is Gloria Weber.”
“Mrs. Weber, I wonder if we could nail down the description of this woman at the doctor’s door,” Leo said.
Mrs. Weber looked very put-out by the intrusion. “I’ve already done the best I could. Her back was to me. And 1 only glanced out my peephole. It couldn’t have been more than a second or two. I had no idea I was looking at a ... a criminal.” “We don’t know that it was a criminal, Mrs. Weber,” Leo cautioned.
“Really, this is very upsetting.”
“I wonder if you’d like a cup of tea, Mrs. Weber?” Nat asked. The woman smiled at her. “Now, how did you know I was a tea drinker and not a coffee drinker?”
Nat pointed to the collection of teapots in her china cabinet. “Very observant, my dear. And thank you for your offer, but I only have one cup in the morning.”
“You impress me as being very observant as well, Mrs. Weber. Could you please try to describe the woman again?”
“Well, let me see. She was a blonde. I did say that, didn’t I? And I believe her hair was long. A rather tall woman. Not fat. No, I wouldn’t say fat. Big.”
“What was she wearing?”
“A coat. A plain black coat. Oh, yes, and sneakers. They were black, too. But I’m pretty sure they were sneakers. I don’t know what else I can tell you.”
“Please,” she pleaded. “Keep your voices down. My little girl is home sick.”
“Is she upstairs in her room coloring?”
Carol Bell gave Nat an edgy look.
“We have an eyewitness that places you at Dr. Ross Varda’s apartment this morning at approximately eight-thirty,” Leo said. “No, that can’t be. I... I wasn’t there.”
“But you know who Dr. Varda is.”
She blanched. “Harrison’s mentioned him. I... I know he’s Lynn’s psychiatrist.”
“You’d better call a baby-sitter to come over, Mrs. Bell,” Leo said grimly. “I’m bringing you to the precinct to participate in a lineup.”
Carol Bell swayed. Nat grabbed hold of her as she tried to steady herself. “Oh, God, I never should have gone there. It’s true. But. . . But he phoned me at seven o’clock this morning. He . . . He told me he had important information that would clear me and Harrison. He asked me to meet him at his apartment. I was supposed to be there by eight, but I explained I had to get the children off to school, and he said I should get there as soon as I could.”
She looked wanly from Nat to Leo. “But I was too late. He was already gone.”
“How do you know that?” Leo asked.
“He never came to the door.”
“Curious, that you haven’t even asked us why we are questioning you about this visit,” Leo said.
“I, I. . . assumed something must have . . . happened to him,” she answered starkly. “Is he . .. dead?”
“I think you know the answer to that better than I do.”
“No. I swear, I have no idea.”
“What about my dog?”
She gave Nat a blank look, but then her expression darkened. “I want to call my lawyer. I’m not saying another word until she gets here.”
“Don’t bother. We’re leaving. But you can tell her that chances are damn good you’ll be needing her services real soon.”
Leo and Nat stopped for lunch in Brookline, and they were just about to give their order to the waitress when his cell phone rang.
Even from across the booth Nat could hear a woman crying hysterically on the other end of the line.
“Mom, Mom,” Leo pleaded. “Calm down. I can’t understand what you’re saying. ”
Nat couldn’t make out Anna Coscarelli’s words, but she had only to look at Leo’s expression to know something terrible had happened.
twenty-nine
I keep praying Jakey just wandered off. . . that he wasn’t taken. But I guess when your daddy’s a homicide detective there’s always a risk.
Cindy Shaeffer, PlayDays School teacher, in a
TV
interview
LEO WAS TEARING ass down Beacon Street, his foot flat on the accelerator.
Nat blinked rapidly, trying to take this in. “Someone at the school must have seen where he went. Who . . . Who he went with. They don’t just let children wander off. Or turn them over to perfect strangers. They don’t—”
Leo wasn’t listening. Nat stopped talking. As upset as she was, she could only imagine what must be going through Leo’s head. His child was missing.
First her dog, then Varda, now Jakey. It was crazy. Insane.
But then, whoever was behind all this madness very likely was insane.
There were three Boston blue-and-whites parked in front of PlayDays Nursery School when Leo screeched to a shuddering stop. He bolted out the driver’s-side door, not even bothering to shut off the engine. Nat turned the key, pocketed it, then hesitated as she reached for her door handle.
She was worried that she’d only be in the way. She worried more that Leo would rather she wasn’t there. She was no relation to him, to Jakey. She was an outsider.
If anyone should be there, it was Suzanne. Jakey’s mother.
Nat’s chest constricted.
Suzanne.
How would she take the news of her son’s disappearance? If she was already feeling burdened with guilt, finding out about Jakey could prove her breaking point.
No sooner did Nat think that Suzanne mustn’t find out, than two more-potent thoughts hit her like a sledgehammer: Suzanne had to know who’d taken Jakey. And Leo knew that Suzanne knew.
Anna Coscarelli was inconsolable. The physician used by the nursery school and called to the scene shortly after Anna’s arrival obtained Leo’s permission and gave Leo’s mother a shot of Valium. One of the teachers offered to drive her home and stay with her for as long as necessary. The teacher looked like she could use a tranquilizer herself. Everyone at the school did. Leo most of all.
He was laying into the teary-eyed and badly shaken young teacher who’d been on duty outside with the children when Jakey had disappeared.
Leo was right in her face: “ ‘Vanished out of thin air’? Nobody vanishes out of thin air. Some fuck came and took my kid. And you were—what, daydreaming about your fucking boyfriend or what the fuck you were gonna cook for dinner?—”
Cindy Shaeffer put her hands up to her face and broke down in sobs. “One minute ... he was . . . right there . . . and the next . . . minute he was . . . gone. I was just. . . having a word . . . with one of . . . the parents. And then . . . your mother . . . came and I. . . looked around . .. I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry.” Her words, stilted and muffled, were etched in despair.
A plainclothes cop walked over to Leo. Put a hand lightly on his shoulder. Leo jerked away, glared at him.
“Detective Coscarelli, please. You’re upset—”
“You bet the fuck I’m
upset.
My kid is gone. And somebody at this fucking school is going to come up with some answers, or I swear I’m going to fucking—” He stopped abruptly, a wrenching moan escaping from his lips, as if the impotence of his fury had finally taken hold of him.
He turned away, caught Nat’s eye for the briefest of moments as she stood by the classroom door, then strode briskly across the room, going right by her and heading out of the building. A man on a mission. And Nat was pretty sure she knew exactly what that mission was.
“Leo,” she called out, rushing to catch up with him.
“This isn’t some dumb-assed dog now. This is my kid,” he snarled.
Nat had never seen Leo this ugly. But then, how ugly would she be if it were her child who’d disappeared?
Before anyone—Nat, Jack, Hutch, even the two cops in the hall—could stop him, Leo stormed into Suzanne’s room and slammed the door behind him. Nat tried to open it, but the door wouldn’t budge. She was guessing Leo probably wedged the same chair under the knob as Suzanne had yesterday.
The four men beside Nat all offered to break the door down. Any one of them, no doubt, could have managed the task on his own. But she rejected their offer. It was too late now to stop Leo, and it would only cause a futile confrontation. At this point Nat could only hope that Suzanne would quickly tell Leo what he wanted to know. Then all Nat could do was pray that the cops could get to the bastard before Jakey was harmed. If he hadn’t been harmed already. Or worse.
Nat didn’t have to be in the room to hear Leo and Suzanne. Their voices, especially Leo’s, could be heard clearly out in the hall. There were only a couple of other female inmates on the floor at that hour—a recent transfer who’d not yet started her work assignment and one resident home with the flu. They’d both come out of their rooms during the commotion, and Nat disbanded Jack and Hutch to escort the pair down to the visiting room. She told the two cops to go have a smoke. They reluctantly shuffled off.
Nat stayed put, listening—
“No, no. It can’t be true.” Suzanne was crying.
“Do I look like I’m fucking lying,” Leo roared.
“It’s all my fault. But they won’t hurt him, Leo. They won’t.”
“ ‘They’? Who are we talking about? The Bells? Is that who—?”
“Don’t. Oh, God, I’ve been terrified of this happening the whole time. Don’t you see, Leo? That’s why they took him. To stop me from talking. If I talk they’ll kill him, Leo. Don’t you get it? I hold our son’s life in my hands. If you ever hope to see him alive again, you’ll stop trying to make me tell you.”
“So what do we do, Suzanne?” Leo’s voice had gone from fury to anguish. “They—whoever the fuck ‘they’ are—are blackmailing you into keeping silent by holding our son. So how do I get him back?”
“Damn you, Leo,” Suzanne screamed. “You should have let me get that abortion! You shouldn’t have ever let Jakey be born. I knew it would only lead to heartache. I knew even then—”
“Where is he?” Oates asked as Nat slid into a booth across from him in a coffee shop near the precinct house. It was nearly three o’clock in the afternoon.
“Leo stormed out of the center after his fruitless confrontation with Suzanne, got into his car, and drove off like a bat out of hell.”
“He didn’t go to the Bells’ house. I have an unmarked car over there. No sign of him.”
“As wildly upset as he is, he’s not going to risk Jakey getting hurt by barreling in there. I think he went back to the nursery school.”
“Romero’s not gonna be happy to see him,” Oates said.
“Romero?”
“The detective assigned to the kidnapping.”
“He can’t blame Leo for wanting to be in on the investigation.”
“We don’t even know that the boy’s still alive, Natalie.”
Nat winced at the thought, then attacked it. “No, they know that as long as Suzanne can be assured Jakey’s alive, she’ll keep her mouth shut. It’s their only hold over her. She was meant to die from that OD. When that failed, it was too hard to get at her. So they used Jakey as a threat, somehow got a message to her that they’d harm him if she talked. But they must have worried she was close to the breaking point, and so they took it to the next step.” She looked wanly across at Leo’s partner. “I’ve got to believe Jakey’s okay.”
Oates leaned forward, reached a hand across the table, and rested it over hers. Nat was taken aback by his solicitous touch and the even more solicitous expression on his face.