The Ex

Salter looked at Chumley, who shook his head no. “Like I said, she’s really not much more than a stranger to me-in a way.”

The young detective, who had the wan, wasted look of an esthete, stared at Chumley until Chumley looked away.

“What about a photo of the boy?” Salter asked.

“I have several,” Molly said. “They’re downstairs in our apartment, if they haven’t been destroyed.”

“Let’s go,” Salter said. “It’s time we looked at the destruction down there.”

He accompanied them downstairs while Marrivale stayed behind and continued questioning Chumley.

In the elevator, Salter said nothing. Molly saw him glancing out of the corner of his eye at David, as if he were suspicious of him. She’d read that the police always suspected the parents first in the disappearance of a child. But this was different. They knew who’d taken Michael. A psychopath who’d left a taunting message on the parents’ answering machine.

When they entered the apartment, Salter cautioned them not to touch anything. “The place will be dusted for prints,” he said. “We want to know who’s been here recently and handled whatever was vandalized.”

Molly knew that made sense, but she felt somehow violated again, being unable even to touch her possessions in her own apartment. She and David stood near the center of the room with their arms at their sides, looking like awkward trespassers in their home.

Then Molly remembered that the apartment would never be home again-at least not the home it had been. She’d never be able to see it, to live in it, the same way. However the nightmare with Michael would be resolved, Deirdre had changed their lives forever.

Salter clasped his meaty hands together and looked around with his neutral, assessing eyes at the littered floor, the slashed sofa with its batting bulging from its wounds. “Somebody doesn’t like you, all right.”

“Deirdre,” Molly said.

Sidestepping the contents of the desk drawers that lay on the floor, Salter walked over to the answering machine lying beside the overturned desk. He stooped and pressed the message button. Molly felt the boiling pressure of rage building in her again as they listened to Deirdre’s message.

“You sure it’s her?” Salter asked when the message was finished. He pressed his hand to the small of his back as he stood up. “The caller only identifies herself as ‘you know who.’”

“Who else would it be?” Molly blurted.

“It’s Deirdre,” David said. “I recognize her voice. And Julia at Small Business Preschool said Deirdre was the one who picked up Michael.”

“Aunt Deirdre!” Molly said.

Salter looked at her. “Deirdre was acquainted enough with the boy that he thought of her as an aunt?”

“Apparently,” David said.

“Then the three of you were friends.”

“No,” Molly said. “She’s my husband’s ex-wife, for God’s sake! We were civil, at first. Then it was just as I told you. She began tormenting me, sneaking in here, and she tried to kill me.”

Salter looked at her the way he’d been looking at David in the elevator.

“Damn it!” Molly exploded. “A maniac has our son and you stand there looking at us as if we were the criminals. Do something! Do your fucking job!”

She felt spittle on her chin and realized she must look like the maniac, ranting and foaming at the mouth. David tried to pull her to him and hold her, but she pushed away from him, walked a few feet, and stood alone. She felt as isolated and ineffective as if she were frozen in ice with only her agonizing thoughts. When she gazed fearfully into herself, she saw only a deep darkness that pulled like a vacuum at her being. A devouring black hole in the space of her existence. What had happened to her life? It was all so horrible and hopeless.

The detective’s lips were moving soundlessly. He was talking to her. She focused her mind and brought herself back to outer awareness.

“The photograph,” Salter reminded her flatly. “You said you had a photograph of your son.”

Later, in the hall outside Deirdre’s apartment, Salter and Marrivale walked together to stand near the elevator, where they wouldn’t be overheard.

“I checked,” Marrivale said. “There’s a murder warrant out for Deirdre Grocci, maybe goes under the last name Chandler, maybe Jones. She escaped from a psychiatric clinic in Missouri, and she’s suspected of killing a woman named Christine Mathews in Saint Louis.”

“A nutcase killer,” Salter said. “And now they tell us she’s snatched a kid.”

“You don’t think she did?” Marrivale asked, obviously surprised.

“Oh, yeah, I think she’s got him,” Salter said. “And I think maybe there’s a lot more to it than we know.”

“She sounds plenty dangerous,” Marrivale said. His pale face tightened. “Jesus! That poor kid…”

“Yeah.” Salter dug the photograph of Michael that Molly had given him out of his pocket and held it out for Marrivale to see.

“Poor kid,” Marrivale repeated, staring at the photo with his head bowed. “He looks something like my sister’s boy. About the same age.” For a moment his expression hardened with fury.

“Some shitty world,” Salter said, sliding the photo back into his pocket.

“Anything can happen anytime to anybody,” Marrivale said. “And when it does, it usually isn’t good.”

“This time,” Salter told him, “we’ve gotta see that it doesn’t happen to this kid.”

“It’s too often the innocents who get hurt,” Marrivale said. “They’re like prey animals for the carnivores of the world. We have to protect them.”

Salter looked at him, wondering for a moment if Marrivale might be too philosophical to be a cop.

50

Molly sat in a chair in the room at the Wharman Hotel that night and stared out the window, though her attention never reached beyond the reflecting pane that held her indistinct image, a woman mostly faded away, never changing expression and idly twining a strand of hair around her forefinger. She wished she could exist in that flat, opaque world that had no dimension or agony, that would disappear with the dawn.

After the police had taken her statement, then David’s, they talked to Chumley again. And they listened again to Deirdre’s message on the answering machine, then confiscated the cassette and slid it into a yellow evidence envelope. Another detective, who seemed to outrank Salter and Marrivale, arrived and was given the photograph of Michael that Molly had taken that summer in Riverside Park. He stared intently at it, then handed it back to Salter, who left to talk to Julia at Small Business.

Then they’d instructed Molly and David. At least one of them was to remain in their room at the Wharman. The police would be watching the apartment building. A policeman would be stationed inside their apartment, in case Deirdre returned there. He would also be monitoring and recording all phone conversations; any calls would be patched through, without the caller’s knowledge, to the room in the Wharman. Molly and David were told to agree to any demands and terms for ransom money, and to ask to talk to Michael.

So after packing two more suitcases, they’d returned to the hotel room, which seemed to become smaller and more confining with every hour.

There was a ghost in the flat, reflecting window, pacing behind Molly. David, four paces one way, four the other, back to his starting point. She saw his reflection stand still and slam a fist into its palm, heard the impact of flesh on flesh behind her.

David resumed pacing.

“She’ll know the police are watching the apartment building,” Molly said in a flat, exhausted monotone. “She won’t go back there. She’s too smart. She was smarter all along than any of us thought. Scheming and smart and evil.”

“The cops will find her,” David said with more assurance than he could possibly feel. “They’ll find Michael. If she calls the apartment, the cop there will listen in. They’re ready for a phone call. They might be able to trace it.”