Stone Maidens (30 page)

“Well, no. It isn’t.”

Peters led her past a posh office, its door ajar. A young couple seated on a crimson couch gazed expectantly at a large catalogue of babies. A leaded crystal chandelier hung low in the center of the room. The Liberace effect rubbed Prusik wrong. So did the baby catalogue.

The custodian inserted a key and pushed her shoulder against a door marked P
RIVATE
. “It’s so musty in here. I apologize.”

“How are they organized?” Prusik stepped past Peters and began to walk down a narrow canyon of stacked bankers boxes.

“Crowder Agency records I can’t help you much with. My employer purchased the business before I started. I’m afraid most of the files were simply dumped in here as is.”

“I don’t see any dates on these covers,” Prusik said. She pulled out a box.

“What’s here is here, Ms. Prusik. I’ve come in here maybe once or twice in the last year. An older child looking for a natural parent, something like that. If you ask me, adoptees make too big a fuss trying to find their biologicals.”

“Cut the crap, Ms. Peters,” Prusik said coolly from years of practice. “Unless I can enlist your help right now, I will bring my team in to move all these boxes back to my office. What would your clients think about that?”

The woman’s brow sharply creased. “You can’t do that. They’re confidential, protected by—”

“Ms. Peters, I don’t care what they’re protected by, and I’m not sure I care for your adoption agency, either. It looks to me like you’ve got people shopping by catalogue for babies out there, and that really pisses me off. Find me David Claremont’s file, or I’ll be back in twenty minutes with a warrant. My team will tear apart every single office, including Mr. Branson’s.”

The woman’s mouth formed a perfect circle. “You can’t do that!”

“Try me,” Prusik said, hoping her bluff wasn’t showing. Christine really did need Ms. Peters’s cooperation. “Look, this information is very important to an investigation we are conducting. I’m sorry if I gave you any misimpression that the FBI is the least bit interested in learning how you conduct business here in your agency.”

“Well, you don’t have to threaten me like that!” Peters knelt at Prusik’s feet and obediently pulled out a carton. “Everything we do here is one hundred percent legal.”

Prusik flipped open the top of the box and read Dennison, Driver, and Duke across the tabs. She pulled out the next box, landing it hard on the floor.

“Here are the Cs,” Prusik said.

Peters joined her. “Here, let me help you with that.”

“Thank you,” Prusik said, pleased by the woman’s newfound cooperative spirit.

Peters rapidly fingered through the files. A minute later she held out a yellowed folder.

“Lawrence and Hilda Claremont, did you say?”

“That’s the one.”

The application was written in a difficult-to-read script. Prusik scanned through it. “Is this the birth mother’s name, Bruna Holmquist?”

Peters stood shoulder to shoulder with Prusik, peering down at the form. “It seems so. Yes.”

“The space for the mother’s social security or identity number is blank,” Prusik said. “No address is given, either. How can an official record be filed like this?”

Peters raised her palms in conciliation, nodding. “I know, I know. Some adoption agencies have lax record-keeping habits. As I recall, lots of partials came from Crowder. Keep in mind, Crowder’s mothers were often in desperate straits.”

Prusik studied another official document. “The affidavit filed with the county court is stamped with the name of a Crowder Agency representative. The mother didn’t sign off on her child? How could that be?”

“I believe it was common practice for some agencies to petition on behalf of the natural mother. Foreign immigrants frequented the Crowder Agency. The mothers may not have known English that well, if at all.” Peters eyed Prusik nervously.

The remaining documents in Claremont’s file gave information about the prospective parents’ suitability, livelihood, income, and standing in the community. Prusik needed answers about Bruna Holmquist, and there was nothing here.

She brushed past Peters, heading straight for the office with the luxurious couch. The door was closed now. She knocked once, then entered without waiting and held out her badge to a man wearing a three-piece brown suit. He was seated beside the same
couple she’d seen earlier. The suit had to be Branson. His glazed-over hairdo looked pressed into place.

“May I help you, miss?” Branson’s eyebrows rose, and his face went pinkish.

“Mr. Branson, Special Agent Christine Prusik with the FBI. I need to speak with you alone.” She paced her words no differently than if she were making an arrest. “Right now if you can, sir.”

His face flushed red. “Please excuse me?” he said to the couple, motioning them back to the waiting area outside his office.

“What’s the meaning of barging into my office like this, scaring the hell out of those dear people?” he said angrily, and then he lowered his voice. “Do you realize what they’ve been through? No, of course not.”

“Finished?” Prusik said. “When I spoke to you on the phone earlier, Mr. Branson, you assured me that you’d give this matter your personal attention. Perhaps you haven’t been following the news lately? Three girls in Indiana have been viciously murdered. There may be others. The murders have led me straight to your agency.”

Branson blanched.

Prusik eased her tone. “Now, look, I’m sorry I barged in on your private meeting. But I do need your assistance to locate information on a suspect. Do we understand each other?”

“Yes, yes we do, Ms. Prusik,” Branson said, flustered. “I had scheduled previous engagements, it’s true, but I don’t want any trouble. I don’t see what possible connection this agency could have with any
murders
.” He shook his head.

“Well, there is a connection. I have a suspect with a name, and he was adopted through your agency. You have records with missing names and missing information,” Prusik said. “What do you know about the Crowder Agency?”

“Owen Crowder and I didn’t know each other very well. He was much older, kept meticulous records on three-by-five cards. Before computers, you know.” Branson removed a drawer of a large
oak cabinet that stood against the wall behind him and placed the rack of cards on his desk. “Two separate file systems—one with clients seeking adoption, the other the mums giving up children, of course,” he said, fingering through the tops of the cards, reading the names as he went.

“David Claremont’s DOB is on or about December tenth, nineteen eighty-seven,” Prusik added, leaning over Branson’s desk, watching the man carefully as he handled the cards, not trusting him. “The files Ms. Peters showed me were incomplete,” she said. “No social security numbers. No address of the mother or identity of the father or mention of there being any siblings.”

He shook his head. “As good as Crowder was at keeping track of things on these cards, he couldn’t always get cooperation from the mothers. He did a fair amount of business with immigrants, often a desperate bunch.”

“So he bought babies from illegals—is that what you’re saying, Mr. Branson?” Prusik stared him down.

He smiled nervously, backpedaling. “You mean the missing social security numbers? Look. It’s not good practice, but Crowder would have never knowingly harbored illegal aliens. In this business, a woman out of wedlock who gets in trouble is very likely to use an alias, especially if new to this country. Not in my agency, mind you, but foreign mothers frequently don’t give out their alien identity card information for fear it will get them deported.”

Branson removed another card tray that contained information on the adoptive parents. He came around to Prusik’s side of the desk and flicked through the yellowed cards. “Unfortunately, I haven’t the staff to computerize all these. I really should. So many people are looking for their biological parents these days.” He stopped and pulled out a card. “Here, at the bottom, it says B. Holmquist is the birth mother.” He handed it to Prusik. “Not very much, I’m afraid.”

Prusik scanned the card. “There’s also a reference here to the birth mother’s own
card
, Mr. Branson. Right here.” She pointed.

Branson donned a pair of reading glasses. “Ah, so there is.” He shuffled through more oak drawers. The heavy wooden filing cabinet looked ancient; Prusik wondered if he’d inherited it, file cards and all, from Crowder. “Here are the
H
mums. Holmquist comma Bruna. You are so right—another card for the birth mother.”

Prusik studied the neat blue ink. Bruna Holmquist, age thirty-eight, white, from Oslo, Norway. Under the heading P
REVIOUS
C
HILDREN
B
ORN
there was a smudge mark, an erasure. Something definitely had been scratched out. Again, no address was listed.

“What’s with this entry, Mr. Branson?” Prusik said, handing him the card.

The agency director stood silent, blinking down at the card.

“Have you any more cards you aren’t telling me about, Mr. Branson?”

Branson cleared his throat. “Let me check. I really had no idea about these particular cards.”

“The line before
PREVIOUS CHILDREN
is smudged,” Prusik pointed out. “Couldn’t it be referring to the fact that there was another child born, unreported? One with another Crowder three-by-five card somewhere else?”

“It’s possible, yes.” Agitated, he went back to the heavy oak file drawer and removed the cards immediately following Bruna Holmquist’s. Two of them were stuck together, and as he fingered them apart, one fell on the floor.

“What’s that?” Prusik pointed. “Something’s stapled to it?”

Branson picked it up. A lined note bearing the logo of St. Mary’s Hospital was stapled to a three-by-five card with “Holmquist, Bruna, card two of two” printed neatly across the top. The name and address of the now-defunct Crowder Agency and the words “8:00 p.m. sharp” were all that was written on the notepaper.

“St. Mary’s was torn down ten years ago,” Branson said. “But the hospital records must be stored somewhere.”

“Something’s written on the back of the index card.” Prusik drew closer.

He handed it to her. The name Donald was deliberately crossed out and the name David written in its place.
Donald.
Below that was something else.

“
Sons’
father?” Prusik placed it in front of Branson. “In your lifetime of experience in the baby-dealing business, what do you think it means, Mr. Branson, when an
s
trails a noun?”

“More than one son?” He gazed at her with a furrowed brow.

“
Very
good. And wouldn’t the fact that the name Donald is crossed out and the name David written in its place bear that out? Wouldn’t Mr. Crowder have been indicating that the mother had two sons? It is Mr. Crowder’s writing, isn’t it?”

“I see your point, yes. Perhaps it was the mother’s decision not to give up the other son?”

“Thank you, Mr. Branson.” Prusik tucked the cards and the note into her overcoat pocket, showing herself out.

“Ms. Prusik.” Branson followed her out into the hallway, clasping his hands in a praying gesture. “You won’t be needing to come back again, will you?”

She gave a sweet smile. “Let’s just see how things go, shall we?”

Prusik sat in the idling car with the air on maximum cool, studying the yellowed Crowder Agency cards. She pondered the significance of the erasure. Had Bruna Holmquist had a change of heart about which baby to give up for adoption? Had she planned to give up both, then decided to keep Donald? Bruna Holmquist had no doubt been poor, vulnerable, and new to this country. With spotty English and twin babies, her road would have been a hard one. So she’d tried to do her best for them by giving up one of them, who’d become David Claremont, a troubled loser. The other son, whom she kept, became Donald Holmquist, a bona fide serial killer. She’d get Eisen on it immediately. Have him reverse the image of the photo of Claremont and circulate it, with information that he
might have been a painter on the museum project last March who could have gone by the name Donald Holmquist.

Prusik’s hands were trembling as she reached for her cell phone. And her pinkie throbbed mercilessly.

She took her time driving back into the city. When she finally got downtown, she accelerated past the underground parking garage entrance to her office building, needing to think in peace. Fifteen minutes later she was in her Speedo, muscling down a smooth lane of water between the float lines. She’d already come up with a plan, and she was praying to God that her next move wouldn’t cost more lives than it would save.

Prusik eased the sedan into the government-only spot at O’Hare Airport and levered the shifter into park. Thick gray clouds drifted in from the west, cutting the muggy midafternoon heat by a few degrees. Sheriff McFaron had accepted her proposal and would be arriving shortly.

In the past four hours, Paul Higgins had found out that Donald Holmquist had only made it through his junior year at Southside High. The school’s guidance office had his last known address listed as 1371 Hawthorne Boulevard, apartment 3C, Delphos, Illinois, which was a tenement building among a raft of condemned blocks that were scheduled to be torn down next spring. A scan of police records in the greater Chicago area had yielded another hit, which had led to a meaningful conversation with a Sergeant Gatto, who seemed more than pleased that someone was looking for Donald Holmquist five years after five-year-old Benjamin Moseley, who had lived in the same building, had disappeared. Holmquist had been the last to see the young child. Gatto had suspected him of foul play but had been unable to prove it.