“I don’t mean you’re a suspect. I mean to help with finding Chloe.”
“I’d help if I could, but I don’t know nothing.” He stressed that last word hard. “Ask me, the cops should be talking to her dad.”
Ellery made a rolling motion with her hand. Follow up. Come on.
“Why her dad?” Ashley asked.
“He’s got some pervy-ass friends, that’s why. One of ’em been creeping on Chloe, asking her for pictures and shit.”
Name, Ellery mouthed. The man’s name.
“What guy? What’s his name?”
“I don’t know his name. I’ve gotta blast. I hope you find Chloe.”
“Wait,” she said, but the blue figure on the screen melted away.
14
Reed woke to the sound of his phone buzzing on the hotel nightstand and he craned his head up to look at it. Sarit again. He couldn’t ignore her forever. “Hello?” he said, his voice still rough with sleep.
“Have you completely lost your mind?” she said by way of greeting. “You’re supposed to be walking the Freedom Trail and showing her where the tea went into the harbor. Instead, I see her face on CNN. What the hell, Reed?”
“We’re sightseeing today,” he replied, sitting up and rubbing his eyes with one hand. He didn’t mention it would be in Philadelphia.
“That doesn’t explain why I saw our daughter at a crime scene.”
“It wasn’t a crime scene. It was a family home with a dozen law enforcement officers crawling all over it. Statistically, Tula was probably safer than she’s ever been in her life.”
“Don’t give me that bullshit.”
“She was fine, Sarit. She had some cookies and played with a dog while I had a conversation.”
“You’re working, then?”
“It was just a quick conversation,” he replied.
“Oh my God, you are. You just can’t stop, can you? Not even when you’re on vacation. Not even when you’re supposed to be caring for your daughter.”
“I am caring for her.” Reed glanced at the bed where Tula slept, limbs akimbo amid the chaos of sheets and blankets. “Just because my version doesn’t precisely match yours doesn’t mean it’s wrong. Tula is safe and happy and you’re just going to have to deal with the fact that she has two parents. You don’t outrank me, Sarit.”
“That’s not what the custody arrangement says.”
“Is that a threat?”
“More like a promise. To our child, Reed, that I will always put her first, whatever it takes.”
“Daddy?” Tula stirred, her hair stuck to one side of her face as she blinked at him in the half-light.
“I’ve got to go,” he told Sarit. “Tula’s awake and I have to send her out to panhandle for our breakfast.” He hung up before she could register her outrage.
“What’s ‘panhandle’?” Tula asked, bouncing from her bed to his.
“It means we’re having breakfast on a train. Let’s get ready.”
They took the Acela speed rail train from Boston to Philadelphia. Tula had never ridden anything more than a kiddie train before, and she was entranced by the East Coast scenery rushing past. “Wait till I tell Ashley the train has a bathroom, too,” she said to Reed as she stuffed part of a blueberry muffin into her face. “And a restaurant!” Reed smiled at her enthusiasm.
He gave Tula the tablet computer to use for drawing while he called up the Boston branch of the FBI to let them know he was crashing their case. Fortunately, the local guy assigned was someone he knew, Jeff Zuckerman. “You know we’d love your help,” Jeff said when Reed reached him. “This one is seven kinds of weird so far.”
“It doesn’t follow any of the usual patterns,” Reed agreed. Out of all the kinds of kidnapping, Chloe’s abduction seemed to most closely parallel those with political motivations. The point wasn’t to get money or to sexually abuse the victim but to force attention to a particular cause. However, the kidnappers were willing to harm the abductees to make a point or exact revenge against whatever entity they felt had wronged them. In this case, that seemed to be Teresa Lockhart. “I’m en route to Philadelphia at the moment. I plan to talk to Ethan Stone, Teresa’s first husband. I’d like to go by the Stone house as well.”
“You think the cases are related? We’re talking two different geographic areas, one abduction versus a double homicide. I know the mother is a common element here, but she seems to be the only one.”
“Yet she’s the focus, or so it seems. I’m not saying the cases are definitely connected, but there are a few aspects that do concern me. First, did you notice the date? We are coming up on the fifteenth anniversary of the Stone incident in just a few weeks. Second, Trevor was twelve, the same age as Chloe. There are certain offenders who are attracted to a particular age group rather than one sex or the other. Finally, Ethan Stone was in the Boston area the past few days attending an economics conference at MIT.”
Reed glanced at Tula, careful to keep the lurid details out of her earshot. She had headphones on, listening to music as she used her finger to draw rainbows on the tablet, but he never knew what she might pick up, as Sarit was going to discover regarding her supersecret move to Houston. “There is a case I know of,” he said to Zuckerman, “in which a heavily pregnant woman was murdered in her home—stabbed by someone furious with her, it would seem. But she was well liked by everyone the investigators questioned. She had been divorced for more than ten years from her ex-husband and her new marriage reportedly was in good shape.”
“Yeah, and?” Zuckerman said with a hint of impatience.
“The ex-husband was eventually arrested for the attack. He and the victim had shared a child together, a boy who died in a car accident five years earlier. The victim was behind the wheel at the time. Her new pregnancy five years after the fact triggered something in the ex-husband. He felt like she was replacing their son with a new baby.”
“So you think … what? Stone went nutso because Chloe Lockhart reached the same age as his kid when he was murdered?”
“I’m just saying I want to talk to him.”
“Okay, I agree he’s a loose end that needs to be tied up. Let me know what you find out.”
The train rolled into the 30th Street Station shortly before noon, and Kimmy met them in the vast lobby with its travertine façade. Tula tilted her head all the way back to exclaim over the high coffered ceiling, which was painted red and gold. “Like a castle!” she enthused.
Kimmy, in her designer sunglasses, aquamarine sundress, and matching heels, looked like she could be an extra in any one of the movies that had filmed in the stylish station. “Thanks so much for doing this,” Reed said as he embraced his sister. “I owe you one.”
“You owe me about three million by now,” she retorted without rancor. “I’ll forgive you because you come with this amazing girl right here. Hey there, sunshine. Are you up for some lunch?”
“She ate on the train.”
“I’m starving,” Tula replied with real feeling, and Kimmy laughed as she took her hand.