Sara sat up a little so that she could look him in the eye. 'More careful than usual,' she said. 'For me, okay?'
'Okay,' he nodded, pushing her hair back behind her ear. 'What's going on with us?' he asked.
'I dunno,' she said.
'It feels good, whatever it is.'
She smiled, touching her fingers to his lips. 'Yeah.'
He opened his mouth to say more, but his cell phone rang, spoiling the moment.
'It's two in the morning,' Jeffrey said, as if this made any difference. The phone was on the closed toilet lid, and Sara picked it up and handed it to him. 'Maybe it's Nick?'
He checked the caller I.D. 'It's the station.'
Paul Jennings was a tall, barrel-chested man with a dark beard accentuating his round face. His white dress shirt was wrinkled, as were his brown polyester pants. But for the expectant expression on his face, Jeffrey thought he looked like a high school math teacher.
'Thank you for coming in,' he said. 'I was going to wait to call you, but I couldn't sleep. I had this feeling.'
'It's all right,' Jeffrey said, leading the man into his office.
'I know this is a shot in the dark. I just had this feeling,' he repeated. 'I took the first flight they had.'
'I apologize for not returning your call,' Jeffrey told him. 'My secretary thought you were trying to sell me something.'
Paul told him, 'I work for a vinyl supply company up in Newark. I guess I should have made it clear why I was calling.' He paused. 'I've been looking for my daughter for so long, and I've been disappointed so many times.' He held his hands up in a shrug. 'Part of me couldn't believe they might be here, after all this time.'
'I understand,' Jeffrey told him, though he really had no idea what kind of pain this man had suffered over the last ten years. 'Would you like some coffee?'
'No, no,' Paul said, taking the seat Jeffrey indicated.
'We've got a fresh pot in the back,' Jeffrey offered, walking around to the opposite side of the desk. He knew who this man was, and what he had to be told. Jeffrey wanted to keep some distance between them. He needed space.
'This is a picture of Wendy when she was three,' Paul said, showing Jeffrey a photograph of a happy-looking child. Though it was taken several years ago, Jeffrey was still able to tell that the girl in the photograph had grown up to be Jenny Weaver.
'Was this just before she disappeared?' Jeffrey asked, sliding the photo back across his desk.
The man nodded, showing Jeffrey another picture. 'Wanda took her shortly after that.'
Jeffrey studied the next photograph, though he knew from first glance that Wanda Jennings was the person he knew as Dottie Weaver. He slid this back across, and watched as Paul stacked them together, putting the picture of Dottie Weaver on the bottom so he would not have to look at her while they talked.
Jeffrey asked, 'Can you tell me when it was your wife and daughter disappeared?'
Paul shifted in his chair. 'We were living in Canada while I went to graduate school,' he said. 'Vinyl siding wasn't how I planned to spend my professional career. But when Wendy was taken from me…' He paused, a sad smile on his lips. 'Wanda was working as a nurse at the hospital. I guess she was there about five months when the allegations started.'
'What kind of allegations?'
'She worked in the maternity ward,' Paul said. 'There were rumors that something wasn't right. That something was going on.' He took a deep breath. 'I didn't listen to them, of course. We had been married for three years by then. I loved my wife. I would never have thought she was capable of… And women don't really do that kind of thing, do they?'
Jeffrey was silent. They both knew the answer to that.
'So,' Paul began. 'She was put on administrative leave while they investigated the charges. Babies can't really tell you what happens to them, but there were rumors of some physical findings. I still didn't believe what people were saying, until one day there was a knock on the door. Two cops wanted to talk to me.'
'Where was your wife?'
'She was out doing the shopping. I suppose they were watching the house, because they knocked on the door ten minutes after she left.'
Jeffrey nodded for him to continue.
'They told me about the physical evidence,' he said. 'They had photographs and…' He stopped. 'It was graphic.'
'You don't have to tell me what they found,' Jeffrey told him, and Paul seemed relieved.
'They wanted to check Wendy to see if she had been…' He paused. 'I still could not accept that Wanda had done these things, let alone that she would ever harm our daughter. Wanda is very good at making people think she's trustworthy.'
'Yeah,' Jeffrey agreed, because he had seen that firsthand.
'When Wanda got back from the store, I confronted her with what they had said. We argued. Somehow, she convinced me that the police were wrong, that it was another woman at the hospital. A nurse I had met a couple of times and, honestly, did not like.'
'People like your wife can be pretty persuasive.'
'Yes,' Paul said. 'A week went by, and it was still in the news. The police actually did investigate this other woman.' Tears came to his eyes. 'We believe what we want to believe, don't we?'
Jeffrey nodded.
'I suppose it was three weeks later that the police came back. They had a warrant this time, and wanted to search the house.' Paul looked at the picture of his child, resting his hand beside it. 'They had talked to her the day before. It was an official interview. I guess they had finally found enough evidence to do something.' He looked back at Jeffrey. 'They came very early, about six in the morning. I was still asleep.' He gave a humorless laugh. 'I had stayed up late studying for a final. How something like that could have seemed important to me…'
'We all cope in different ways.'
'Yes, well,' he said, obviously not accepting this. 'They were gone. Wanda had taken Wendy sometime during the night. I never saw or heard from them again.'
'What brought you here?'
'A friend of mine called me,' he said. 'He runs credit checks for us at work, for the siding, and I had asked him a while back to keep an eye out for their social security numbers. About a week ago, Wendy's came up on a Visa application. The address was a post office box in your town.'
Jeffrey nodded, thinking that Dottie Weaver, or whatever the hell her name was, had probably thought it was safe to use her daughter's identity after all of this time. She would have gotten away with it if Paul Jennings had not been so vigilant.
'Do you have the address?' Jeffrey asked, feeling hope for the first time. Dottie obviously wanted that credit card. She would have to come back for it.
Paul Jennings handed him a slip of paper. Jeffrey thought he recognized the address as that of the Mailing Post over in Madison. He copied it down and handed back the paper,
