A Son's Tale

And every hour that passed made it less likely that they’d be able to return Sammie safe and sound.

“It’s so dark out.”

“Is Sammie afraid of the dark?”

“No. It’s just…I know that the first hours are critical… .”

The first three hours were the most critical if Sammie had been kidnapped. Most child murders happened within three hours after abduction. Not that he was going to tell her that.

“You hear about children being taken, you know to keep your kids safe, and you do everything you can. But still, it’s one of those things—you just don’t ever think it’ll happen to you.”

He’d never seen it that way. Or if he had, he’d been too young to remember a time when it felt like the world was a safe place for kids.

“Eight hundred thousand kids go missing each year in the United States. That’s two thousand a day or one every forty seconds. But most are safely returned.”

She stopped pacing in front of her house and faced him, studying him in the blackness. Light from the streetlamp shone on one side of her face, giving it a white hue that was almost sickly, and throwing the other side of her into shadow. But he could see the panic in her eyes.

“I… Are you sure you want to be here?”

“I can go if you’d like.”

“No!” Her hand reached toward him and then hugged her arm again without ever making contact with him. “I… You can stay if you want. I just…I’m not sure why you’d want to. It’s late. You have to be tired.”

“I wouldn’t sleep if I went home. I’d be thinking about you and your son. Wondering if you’d had any news.”

“You don’t even know Sammie. And I’m just a student… .”

“It wouldn’t matter to me if you were a stranger, Morgan, I’d still want to help if I could. But you are far from a stranger. I’ve been reading your essays for four years. I got to know you through them. And…I’ve enjoyed our recent conversations. I’d like to help if I can.”

“Don’t you have someone at home waiting for you?” she asked, looking down the street in one direction and then the other before glancing back at him.

“A Mrs. Whittier, you mean?” Had she been hoping she’d see Sammie walking up the street toward them? He’d been looking for that very thing all night long.

“No, everyone knows you’re single. But that doesn’t mean you live alone.”

“I live with my father. He knows where I am and why.”

“Oh.”

He’d never felt such an urge to talk. To share. And just as compelling was the reticence that had become a natural part of him.

“I…we…knew someone once. A woman in the town where we lived. Her child was taken. It’s not something you ever forget.”

“Did you know her well?”

Thinking of Rose Sanderson, of things the woman had done and said, he told the complete truth. “No.”

“How old was her child?”

“Two.” He wanted Morgan to know that she wasn’t alone. That other people knew exactly what she was feeling.

“A boy or a girl?”

“A girl.”

Her eyes filled with a painful mixture of compassion and fear and too late he knew what the next question was going to be.

“Did they find her?” Was the child returned safely to her mother’s waiting arms?

“No.” With a finger under Morgan’s chin, he held her face gently aloft, looking her straight in the eye, and said, “Of those eight hundred thousand kids that go missing each year, only one hundred and fifteen of them are stranger abductions and less than a hundred of them are victims of homicide.”

“Says who?”

“Washington, D.C.—the U.S. Department of Justice.”

She looked at him—and kept looking—as though the connection of their gazes was holding her upright.

She wasn’t Rose Sanderson. And this time he might be able to help.

* * *

TWELVEHOURSBEFORE, her greatest dream would definitely have included Caleb Whittier as a key player—in her home, with her.

Tonight he was included in her darkest nightmare. And her only dream was holding Sammie, safe and healthy, in her arms again. Her education didn’t matter. The day care and Saturday’s festivities were trivial. Nothing mattered if Sammie was gone.

Someone ordered pizza. The smell made Morgan sick to her stomach. Julie left, going home to be with her husband and twin daughters. Everything else stayed the same. Alarmingly the same.

Nothing was happening.

Until the phone rang just after midnight. Morgan’s body suffused with weakness even while her heart pounded so hard she could feel its beat.

“Wait,” the detective on duty, Rick Warner, said, looking at her. The hand Morgan held suspended over the receiver, ready to pick up, was shaking. The call display flashed Unknown Caller.

“Remember what they told you, Morgan.” George Lowen stood over her, having come in from the business papers he had strewn all over the kitchen table as soon as the phone pealed. “Keep them talking. Stay calm. Be agreeable…”

She tuned out the voice. She couldn’t deal with her father and kidnappers at the same time.

“You’ll do fine.” Cal Whittier dropped quietly onto the couch next to her. Not touching her. Just there.

The detective nodded and Morgan picked up, the call broadcast to the room on a special speaker they’d hooked up. “Hello?”

“Your father killed my wife. I got your kid. Fair trade.” Click.

She couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t move.

No one spoke at first, as the caller hung up far too soon for anyone to put a full trace on the call.

“What the hell?” George Lowen turned his back just as Grace came into the room. Morgan’s mother had been lying down on Morgan’s bed. Her usually immaculate, tastefully dyed brown hair was mussed. Her eyes were swollen, her lightweight navy slacks and white blouse wrinkled.