“Do you think she’ll be able to handle seeing you go through a pregnancy?” he asked.
“She doesn’t have much choice. Whether she lives with me or not, it’s happening. But I honestly believe it’ll be easier on her if she can get her act together. She just needs to feel hopeful about something. Feel good about herself and the future, instead of focusing on the past.”
“What she needs is therapy,” Jake added coolly as he twirled the spaghetti noodles around his fork.
Maybe I was a fool—and too optimistic for my own good—but I genuinely believed that if my sister moved in with me, I’d be able to help her.
Interestingly, it didn’t turn out that way. Not even close.
Riley
November 13
“Good news.” Detective Miller walked into the kitchen where I was standing at the counter, drinking coffee. “Lieutenant Holmes was able to glean a few more details from your daughter. It’s not much, but it’s something.”
Holmes was a female detective who, no doubt, had a gentler touch than I did. She was still in the living room with Trudy—playing Barbies—while a team of investigators were making their way through the house dusting for prints. Others were outside talking to neighbors.
I set my coffee cup down on the counter. “What did she say?”
He consulted his notepad. “She described the woman as tall, slender with brown hair in a single ponytail. She also described a tattoo on the inside of her forearm, which tells us she may not have been wearing a coat.”
“A tattoo?” That didn’t sit well in my mind. I’d known too many guys in prison with tattoos. “Was she able to describe it?”
Miller hesitated. “She’s only four so her descriptions aren’t exactly articulate. From what we can gather, it’s possibly a word, about seven to ten letters long, but she wasn’t able to tell us what it said.”
“She can’t read yet,” I explained, “but she knows her alphabet. We have a wooden alphabet puzzle. If Lieutenant Holmes wants to give it a try, Trudy might be able to identify some of the letters she saw.”
“That would be helpful. Can you get it?”
I went into Trudy’s room to find the puzzle on her bookshelf, returned to the kitchen and handed it to Detective Miller, who called Holmes into the kitchen.
While Holmes resumed “playing” with Trudy, I went to check on Danny, who was in his room with his portable Nintendo device. “You okay, buddy?” I asked.
He set the device down and sat up on the bed. “Are the police going to find her?”
I moved fully into the room and sat on the edge of the bed. “They’re doing everything they can. All we can do is stay positive.”
“What do you mean?”
I squeezed his shoulder. “Think good thoughts. Say prayers. And we need to take care of each other.”
“I already said a prayer,” Danny replied, reaching for a sheet of paper on the bed beside him. “I even wrote it down, like a letter.” He handed it to me. The words were simple, written in light blue marker.
Dear God,
Please take care of my baby sister and help us find her soon. I promise to be good.
Danny James
“This is wonderful,” I said. “I’ll do the same thing.”
I handed the paper back to him but his eyes remained downcast. He was quiet for a long moment until at last his eyes lifted. “Why didn’t you tell me when you picked me up at school? Why did you lie?”
My stomach dropped and I swallowed uncomfortably. “I’m sorry, Danny… I didn’t mean to lie. I just didn’t want to scare you and I was waiting for the right time to tell you and Trudy. I thought maybe we’d find your sister first and then everything would be okay, but you’re right. I should have told you.”
He sat forward and hugged me. “I’m scared, Dad. What if they take me and Trudy, too?”
I held him tight. “They won’t. I promise. Everything’s going to be okay. I won’t let anything happen to you.”
But after what happened to my newborn daughter, could I live up to that promise to my son?
*
Holmes was still working with Trudy when I realized I hadn’t called my family in Boston since very early that morning. The last time I’d spoken to my mother, I was still waiting for Lois to wake up and I hadn’t even learned that our baby was gone.
Since then, I’d been ignoring my mother’s calls. Maybe I hoped we’d find our daughter before I’d have to deliver the news. Or maybe I was just ashamed that I hadn’t prevented this from happening. Thoughts of what my father would say about it grated through my nerves like sharp steel teeth—because he and I were on shaky ground to begin with. I dreaded the assumptions he would make. He might suspect I sold my daughter for drug money, or that an enemy from my prison days was out for revenge…
For all I knew, he could turn out to be right.
Knowing I had to face this hurdle eventually, I called my mother’s home phone number.
“Hello?” she answered. “Oh, Riley, thank goodness. We’ve been so worried. How’s Lois? How’s the baby?”
I sat down at the kitchen table and lay my head in a hand. “I don’t know how to tell you this, Mom. You better sit down.”
I waited until she replied. “All right. I’m sitting. You’re on speaker phone now. Holly’s here, too.”
Holly was my younger sister. She was in her final year of med school and had recently married one of my childhood friends—Josh Wallace, a Boston police officer.
I proceeded to explain what had happened that morning before Lois woke up and described everything that was being done to find our daughter.
“I can’t believe this,” my mother quietly sobbed. “Dear Lord. How could that happen?”
“I don’t know. The hospital’s in a ruckus. I suspect it’ll be on the local news tonight.”
“Have you called a lawyer?” my mother asked. “Because this is above and beyond unacceptable. Someone clearly wasn’t doing their job.”
“Suing the hospital isn’t exactly at the top of my priority list right now,” I replied. “I just want to find our daughter.”
“Of course, of course.” She sniffed and said nothing for a few seconds. “I have to come out there, Riley. I can’t just sit here and do nothing. I’ll stay in a hotel if you don’t have room at your house.”
“I’ll come too,” Holly added.
“You have school,” I reminded her. “And we’re doing everything we can here. The police are on top of it.”
“I’ll tell Josh about it as soon as we hang up,” Holly said. “I don’t know if there’s anything he can do from here, but he might have some advice for you.”
“Thanks,” I replied. “And Mom, if you want to come, we could use your help. There was some mention of setting up a call center and getting the community involved to get the word out. Handing out flyers, that sort of thing.”
“I’ll book a flight right away,” she said. “I should get there tonight.”
Just then, Detective Miller entered the kitchen and looked at me. He held up his notepad, as if he had some important new information to convey.
“I gotta go,” I said. “Call me when you know what time you’ll be arriving.” I set my phone down on the table. “What is it?” I asked. “Did you learn something?”
“Yeah,” he replied. “Something interesting.”
“We tried the puzzle,” Detective Miller said, striding closer. “Your daughter wasn’t completely sure. She seemed a bit hesitant, but she said she thought the woman’s tattoo was letters followed by numbers. She also mentioned there were two dots on top of each other—most likely a colon—and a horizontal line which was probably a dash.”
“She didn’t pick out any of the letters or numbers?” I asked.
“She was able to identify an 8 and a 4, and a J at the beginning. She said she thought it was a word with four or maybe five letters.”
I let out a breath and bowed my head. “That doesn’t tell us much. What could it mean?”
“We’re looking into it,” Miller replied. “It could be someone’s birthday or anniversary.”
Lieutenant Holmes entered the kitchen. “I just had a lightbulb moment. What if it’s a bible citation? They’re usually listed by book, chapter and verse, in that order.” She pulled a pen and notepad out of her pocket and wrote down an example. “Like this.” She held it up:
John 3:16–17
I stared at it intently. “So this might suggest that the kidnapper is religious? Go figure.”
“Call it in,” Detective Miller said. “We’ll have someone search for all the passages with a J, 8 and 4.”
Lieutenant Holmes dug her phone out of her pocket while I went to the living room to spend some time with Trudy.
*
That afternoon, Miller returned to the hospital to question my mother-in-law about the intruder. He then called back to report that Carol, who had remained at Lois’s bedside all morning, was shocked to learn of it. She explained that she had risen from bed at 7:15 a.m. without hearing a thing. Trudy hadn’t mentioned it to her either. Both Lois and Carol were disturbed by the news and I spent a half hour on the phone with Lois, promising I would keep a close eye on our other two children.
Still needing to do something proactive while I remained at home with them, I set them up with a movie in the living room while I went online at the kitchen table to do a search on infant kidnappings. After an hour I felt nauseous. There were so many missing children. The cops were searching for a needle in a haystack.
Shutting down the computer, I checked on the kids, then sat down on the edge of my bed and did nothing but fiddle with the hospital band on my wrist. The numbers on it connected me with my newborn child. It identified me as the father. Lois wore the same bracelet, and our baby wore one on her ankle.
Was she still wearing it? I wondered miserably, needing to look away.
The sick churning in my stomach continued. My pulse throbbed in my veins. It wasn’t easy to sit still. My fingers tapped rapidly on my knee. I wanted to get up, run out the door and do something that would make a difference. Or lose myself in a drink…
Seven years.
Seven years sober
…
If there was ever a moment I was in danger of taking a drink, this was it. Shutting my eyes, I took a few slow, deep breaths, then re-shifted the focus of my thoughts away from me.
A few minutes later, I was back at the kitchen table, flipping through the family bible, searching the scriptures for verses with the letter J and numbers 8 and 4 in the headings. I read for a long while, but nothing jumped out at me as a clue about the kidnapper.
I recalled what Detective Miller had said about the woman not wearing a coat. It was the middle of November. Had she simply taken it off when she entered? Or did she leave a warm car running outside in the driveway? If so, why wouldn’t Carol have heard it?
In the end, I read recommended verses for those in need of comfort until I nodded off at the table with my head resting on my arms.
Later in the afternoon, Carol returned home to watch over Trudy and Danny so that I could return to the hospital to visit with Lois. I arrived to discover they had moved her out of the ICU to a private room, which was good news in terms of her recovery.
Physically, she was doing well. Mentally was another story altogether. I almost didn’t recognize her when I walked in the room. Her eyes were puffy from crying and her skin was blotchy. As soon as our eyes met, she asked desperately, “Did they find her?”
I shook my head solemnly. “Not yet.” Approaching the bed, I kissed her and held her for a long time. “The police were at the house for hours this morning. They have some good leads. Trudy was able to give them a description of the woman, and the tattoo is definitely something to go on.”
“You said you thought it might be a bible citation?”
“Maybe,” I replied. “We don’t know for sure, but they’re looking into it. I spent the afternoon reading scriptures. Looking for a clue.”
“Did you find anything?” she asked hopefully.
“Not yet.”
Lois looked up at the ceiling and sighed. “Maybe you should bring Trudy in here so I can talk to her. I might be able to get more information out of her.”
“We could try, but Lieutenant Holmes was brilliant with her,” I assured my wife. “She worked with her for quite a while. Played with her, actually.”
Lois turned her head on the pillow to look at me. “Still…I’m her mother.”
A feeling of love and understanding moved between us and I prayed that somehow the collective love we felt for our missing daughter would count for something. We wanted her back so desperately. Either one of us would walk through fire for her. I would give my right arm to have her back. I would die for her…for any one of our children.
Backing away from the bed, I sat down in the chair by the wall.
A nurse came in to take Lois’s temperature and blood pressure. While I sat there considering how powerless we both were in that moment, I began to feel agitated and restless. I looked around the hospital room and realized suddenly that they hadn’t brought Lois to the maternity floor to recover from her C-section. We were on some other floor—where we couldn’t hear the sound of babies crying.