wasn’t listening. As they walked side by side, Hannah became more and more uncomfortable. Finally, the stranger paused and whispered, almost to himself. “We’re all alone here, aren’t we?”
Hannah swallowed hard and tried to veer away from him ever so subtly. “You know, I think I’m okay now,” she said, finally. “I—I’m going to finish my run. It was—it was nice of you to—”
“Did you hear that?” he interrupted, stopping suddenly.
Hannah stopped, too. “Hear what?”
He took hold of her arm and led her off the trail—toward some bushes. Twigs snapped under their feet. “Listen to it,” he said. “Sounds like whimpering….”
Hannah’s whole body stiffened up. She gently pulled her arm away. Any minute now, she expected him to slap a hand over her mouth and drag her into the bushes. She thought about making a break for it—while he was staring into the thicket. But then she heard it, too: a strange, muffled whining. It sounded like a wounded animal.
He weaved around some bushes. “You’re gonna think I’m crazy,” he said, his back to her. “But I recognize that crying….”
Hannah didn’t move. She gazed into the woods, but couldn’t see anything beyond the first group of shrubs and trees. There was just darkness. Still, she heard the whimpering.
“Sounds like my kid,” the man said. He squinted over his shoulder at her. “Earlier, you didn’t see a pretty brunette with a baby in a stroller, did you?”
Confused, Hannah just shook her head.
He heaved a sigh. “My wife and I had an argument tonight. She left with the baby. Last time she blew up at me, she came to this park. That’s why I’m here….” The man rana hand through his red hair, then turned and gazed into the forest. “I can’t hear him anymore,” he said, a panic in his voice. “Pam?” he called out. “Sweetie? Is that Andy I hear? Sweetheart?”
Hannah dared to venture a few steps farther into the woods. At the same time, she widened the gap between her and the man. Just beyond a cluster of shrubs, she detected movement. Moonlight reflected off something shiny and metal; it looked like a fallen bicycle’s handlebars. With apprehension, Hannah moved in closer. The muffled whimpering became louder. The man was right. It sounded like a baby’s stifled cries.
“Andy, is that you?” the man called, heading in the other direction. “Pam?”
Hannah crept around the bushes and gasped. It wasn’t a bicycle’s handlebars shining in the moonlight. She could see the baby stroller now—and the gleaming metal struts. “Over here!” she screamed.
She hurried toward the baby. Writhing and kicking in his stroller, he wore a hooded blue jacket and held a little stuffed yellow giraffe that looked a bit tattered. Someone had wrapped a green cloth around the lower part of his face. Hannah wondered how the baby could breathe with that thing over his nose and mouth. The cloth—it looked like a scarf—muted his cries but didn’t stop him from trying to shriek in protest. His face was red, and tears slid down his cheeks. He vainly swatted at the scarf with one little hand. The other hand clung to the dilapidated stuffed animal.
Instinctively, Hannah lifted the wriggling baby out of his stroller seat. How could his stupid mother just abandon him like this? She held him tightly with one arm and started to unravel the scarf from his face. “You poor thing,” she murmured. It was hard holding on to him; he kept squirming and twitching. His little face was so red, it almost matched his hair.
The man staggered through the bushes. “Oh, Jesus, Andy!” he cried, reaching out for him. “It’s Daddy….”
Hannah gave the child to his father, but kept unraveling the scarf—careful not to scratch the baby’s cheek with her fingernails. His screams became louder, and he wiggled fiercely. “What in the world?” she muttered. To her horror, Hannah found part of the silky material crammed into the baby’s little mouth. She pulled out the makeshift gag, partially stained with his saliva and tears.
The little boy gasped, then let go an ear-piercing scream. He trembled in his father’s arms. The man kept hugging him and kissing his forehead.
“Do you know whose this is?” Hannah asked, showing him the green silk scarf. She had to shout over the baby’s cries.
“That’s his mother’s,” the man replied, dazed. He rocked the baby in an effort to calm him down. “She—she had it on when she left the house earlier. But she—she wouldn’t have done that to him, not Pam. She’s a good mother, she—”
Hannah gazed at him and shook her head.
The man seemed to choke on those words, She’s a good mother. Tears came to his eyes as he stared at the frayed stuffed giraffe in his son’s grasp. “Oh, my God, that’s not his…. It’s not his toy…. Oh, Jesus, this isn’t happening….”
In horror and disgust, he knocked the stuffed animal out of the boy’s hand. The child shrieked even louder, and his father held him against his chest. He anxiously glanced at the dark woods around them. “Pam?” he screamed. “Sweetheart? Pam?”
The green scarf slipped out of Hannah’s grasp. Numbly, she stepped back and bumped into a tree. But she barely felt it. She couldn’t feel anything beyond the terrible sensation in her gut.
Most everyone in the Seattle area knew about the string of recent murders. Three women had disappeared in the last few months. Their ages varied, but they had one thing in common. They were all mothers, each one abducted in front of her son. In what was becoming an eerie calling card, their abductor always left behind a used toy for the child.
And each of the mothers was later found dead.
The local TV and newspapers had given this killer a name: Mama’s Boy.
People in the Seattle area were scared—especially women with young sons. But maybe Andy’s mother hadn’t been thinking when she’d taken her baby for a walk after dark. Didn’t her husband say they’d been quarreling? In the heat of anger, she must have grabbed her son and left the house in a hurry.
“Pam?” the man screamed over his son’s wailing. He kept rocking the baby in his arms. “Honey, can you hear me? Pam? Sweetheart…”
Hannah stood with her back against the tree. She listened to the man crying out and the baby’s screaming. She felt sick to her stomach. A cool wind whipped through her. Leaves scattered. Shuddering, Hannah stared down at the frayed, stuffed yellow giraffe, leaning against one of the wheels of the child’s empty stroller.
Hannah had an awful feeling that no matter how many times this man called out for her, Andy’s mother would never answer him.
Two days later, someone found Andy’s mother. The story made the front page of The Seattle Times on April 5, 1998:
FOURTH VICTIM DISCOVERED IN ‘MOTHER’ KILLINGS
‘Mama’s Boy’ Continues to Elude Police
LATEST CASUALTY LEFT BEHIND AN INFANT SON
SEATTLE—An intense, 36-hour search for a missing Seattle woman, Pamela Baiter Milford, 31, ended early Friday morning, when workers found her body partially buried under a tarp at a Greenwood area construction
