technically, included Claire Sanderson. She was one of the less than 1 percent who weren’t safely returned. But… “In the case I knew about, they never had contact from the kidnapper,” he told her. “There were no calls. Nothing for them to go on.”
Except a young boy’s testimony that he’d seen the little girl in his father’s car earlier that morning. And the child’s teddy bear, which had been with her the last time anyone had seen her, had turned up in Frank’s car later that day.
“They focused the investigation on one man. They weren’t ever able to find enough evidence against him to press charges. And in the meantime, whatever other clues might have been there had grown cold and whoever took the little girl got away with the crime.”
“Did the family have money?”
“Enough to be comfortable. Nothing comparable to your father.”
But he and Emma and Claire had had everything a kid could want. And then some. They’d had a close, loving, happy family. At least for a while.
“As I recall, there wasn’t ever much talk about ransom calls,” he added, for her sake—and because for the first time in his life he was talking about the incident that had sealed his fate in a world filled with inner darkness. “The girl was only two. She wasn’t like Sammie, able to fend for herself, or to understand that she’d been abducted. And sick people don’t take two-year-old girls from middle-class neighborhoods in hopes of ransom money.”
He couldn’t go any further than that. Couldn’t let his mind travel down the road that Claire Sanderson had probably had to travel. He couldn’t save her from a twenty-five-year-old fate.
Perusing child pornography photos was one job he’d left solely up to the authorities. But the fact that there was no evidence that Claire was taken for that sordid lifestyle didn’t ease his emotional burden any. There’d been no internet twenty-five years before. No global access to illegal practices. No way to find most of the scumbags who practiced or made money from underage sex.
“Dr. Whittier—”
“Cal,” he interrupted. “I’m not here as your college professor, and as we established last spring, there’s only three years’ difference between us… .” His voice faded off. What in the hell did names or ages matter?
“Cal, then,” Morgan said. “I just wanted to thank you.” She drew a deep breath. “For being here. It helps.”
He nodded, in spite of the darkness that probably prevented her from knowing that. “Julie offered to stay.” Her friend had left hours earlier to go home and put her twin five-year-olds to bed.
Morgan rubbed a hand down her face just as he’d seen her do countless times over the past hours. “I know,” she said. “But she’s like the rest of us here, shocked and hurting and…besides, I think she needed to be with her kids. To hang on to them.”
“I’m sure she did.” Like Rose had clung to Emma, frantic to keep the four-year-old in sight at all times. Cal hadn’t even had a chance to say goodbye to the girl he’d loved as his little sister.
He glanced around the dark and too-quiet neighborhood. “I’m pretty certain all the parents around here are keeping a close hold on their children tonight. Thanking the Lord that they’re home. And they’re probably also scared to death that whoever took Sammie could come for their kids next.”
Up, down, up, down, up, down. He could feel the rhythm of her knee’s movement.
“They’ll be relieved to know that Sammie was scouted out specifically. That this is someone after my father, not some sicko after kids.” Shoulders hunched, she shuddered.
“Maybe. I figure the heads-up that children really are at risk of abduction will stick with most of them for a long time to come. You can’t witness something like this, even peripherally, and go back. You don’t ever become unaware again.”
“You really understand… .”
“Some things you don’t ever forget.”
“How long ago was that little girl taken?”
“Twenty-five years.”
“What?” She sat up, turned to him. “She’s been missing for twenty-five years? With no trace of her at all?”
“That’s right.”
“You had to have been just a kid then!”
“I was seven.”
“And yet you remember…”
“Like it was yesterday. I…knew the little girl. Her mother worked with my father.” He spoke slowly, choosing his way carefully. Like each word landed on a minefield and risked imminent explosion.
Rose and Frank had met at an educators’ conference. She’d been an elementary schoolteacher, while Frank was a high school principal and basketball coach. A match made in heaven.
Or could have been.
“Where did this happen? Here in Tyler?”
“No.” She seemed to be waiting for more. “It was in Massachusetts.” He was saying too much.
“What happened to the parents? Are they still there?”
“I have no idea where they are.” Claire’s father was dead. A shady man from the docks who’d run off when he’d found out that Rose was pregnant with Claire. Sanderson, Sr., had died in a bar brawl less than a year later, killed by the husband of the woman he’d just bedded.
And Rose? He didn’t want to know. “We moved away shortly after that and all we knew was what was on the news, which wasn’t much.”
“But you know she wasn’t found.”
“I was an impressionable kid. The incident stuck with me. I still periodically check the missing-persons database.”
“You don’t ever go back to a state of unawareness.”
She understood. And in a strange way, on a night when his only purpose was to give a measure of support, he’d found a moment of peace.
“When I get Sammie back…he won’t… I… Neither of us will ever be able to go back. We’ll be different.”
“Yes, but different might be better, too.” He knew with all of his being that she had to think that. Had to believe. To hope.
“Julie said something this morning shortly after I got to school. She apologized for not watching over Sammie more closely. She felt so guilty. And so do I. It’s my job to protect my son. And I didn’t. How can he ever forgive me?”
“Hey.” He nudged her arm, wanting to take her hand, but not doing so. “You have absolutely nothing to feel guilty about.” Guilt ate a body alive with insidious tenacity. “Your son was at school right where he belonged. You aren’t allowed to be there babysitting him even if you wanted to.”
“My son left class.” Her voice had dropped
