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Deborah shook her head. “One of the kidnappers wore fake glasses with a big plastic nose attached and the other dressed like Santa Claus. We’d taken her to see Santa on two previous occasions so she was used to seeing him. He made her promise to be a good girl and she was.”
“Here’s what I don’t get. If they’d already picked up the fifteen thousand, why kidnap a second child?”
“I can tell you Patrick’s theory. When Mary Claire was taken the ransom demand was twenty-five thousand dollars. Add twenty-five to the fifteen we paid for Rain’s return and you’re looking at forty thousand dollars, which is what Greg and Shelly wanted in the first place. That’s hardly proof, but I can’t believe the total was a coincidence.”
“It does seem like an odd amount. Too bad they weren’t satisfied with what they got the first time around,” I said. I let a short silence fall while I thought about what she’d told me. “How soon after Rain’s abduction was Mary Claire kidnapped?”
“A week or so. By then we had the house on the market and we were looking at places in gated communities down south. The minute we heard about Mary Claire, we went to the police and told the detectives everything we knew. The FBI had been called into it by then. We gave them Greg and Shelly’s names and descriptions, plus a description of the school bus along with the license plate number. None of this ever made the papers. They did put out an APB, but there was never any sign of them.”
“Have you heard from them since?”
“Not a peep,” she said. “I saw Shawn when Patrick died. He spotted the obituary in the paper and drove down for the funeral.”
“Drove down from where?”
“Belicia,” she said, mentioning a little town an hour and a half north of us. “He was calling himself Shawn again, using Dancer as his last name. He looked wonderful. Tall and handsome. He has a shop up there where he builds furniture. He showed me photographs and the pieces are beautiful. He also does custom cabinetwork.”
“You think he’d talk to me?”
“I don’t see why not. You’re welcome to use my name, or I can call him if you like.”
“When you saw him at the funeral, did you ask about Greg and Shelly?”
“Briefly. He told me both of them were gone. To tell you the truth, I didn’t care that much. As far as I was concerned, Greg had been dead to me since the summer of ’sixty-seven. We parted from them on bad terms, and anything that happened to them afterward was irrelevant. Except for the business with Rain, of course.”
It bothered me that much of what she’d told me ran counter to my intuitions. “I’m sorry to keep harping on Mary Claire, but I have trouble believing they’d resort to snatching her. That’s hard-core for a pair who weren’t seasoned criminals.”
“Look. I know what you’re getting at and I agree. I can’t imagine Greg doing any of this even under Shelly’s influence, but Patrick felt if they were desperate enough to take Rain, they wouldn’t be all that scrupulous about trying again. We paid without hesitation. If the plan worked once, why not twice?”
“I wonder how they fixed on Mary Claire? Did you know the Fitzhughs?”
“To speak to. We didn’t socialize with them, but we were all members of the Horton Ravine Country Club.”
“But the Fitzhughs said they’d pay, didn’t they? I mean, they agreed to the ransom the same way you did.”
“They also notified the police, which they were told not to do. The kidnappers must have figured it out.”
“But how?”
“I have no idea. Maybe they sensed their luck had turned. Somehow they understood if they picked up the money, they’d be caught, so they left it where it was.”
I said, “If they decided to forfeit the ransom, why not just hit the road? Why kill the child?”
“I can’t believe they meant to hurt her. Greg might have been stupid and greedy, but he’d never harm a child. Not even Shelly could have talked him into going that far. To be fair, I’ve questioned whether she was capable of anything so heinous. Patrick thought it was totally in character. As for the hole being dug on our property… whatever the intention… Greg and Shelly could have chosen the location, thinking it was safe. To my way of thinking, the similarities between Rain’s abduction and Mary Claire’s are too obvious to discount.”
I said, “The one obvious difference is the introduction of a ransom note during the second kidnapping. As I understand it, when Rain was taken, the contact was strictly by phone.”
Deborah slowed and I was surprised to see we’d almost reached the wharf by then. I’d been so focused on the conversation I hadn’t been aware of the walk itself. By now the fog had fully enveloped us and the air was so saturated with mist that my sweatshirt was damp. I could see beads of moisture in Deborah’s hair, a veil of diamonds.
I was quiet, ru
“That’s true. On the other hand, Greg and Shelly had their druggie pals who kept them supplied with dope. They sat out in the bus and smoked so much weed, I could have gotten high myself. I realize now I should have turned them in to the police, but I was still hoping the problem would go away of its own accord.”
“Did you meet their friends?”
“I never laid eyes on them. They’d park around the corner and approach on foot, which allowed them to bypass the house and go straight to the cabana where the bus was parked. One of them had a motor scooter. I remember that because every time he left, I could hear it puttering down the street.”
“I wish I could make sense of it.”
“You and me both,” she said. “Oh, before I forget. Rain’s driving up from L.A. for a few days. She took over the family business after Patrick died. I’m sure she’d be willing to tell you what she remembers. It isn’t much, but you might pick up a useful tidbit.”
“That’s great. I’ll call and set something up.”
20
The four-mile beach walk with Deborah had warmed me, but once I cooled off and my body temperature dropped, I could feel the chill in my bones. I returned to my car and pulled on my socks and ru
At 5:00, I unlocked the studio door and let myself in. My first order of business was to strip off my damp clothes and hop in a hot shower, after which I put on my sweats and went down to the living room. For supper I made myself a peanut butter and pickle sandwich. Recently I’d been making an effort to upgrade my diet, which meant cutting down on the french fries and Quarter Pounders with Cheese that had been my mainstays. A peanut butter and pickle sandwich was never going to qualify as the pi
I set my plate and napkin on the table at one end of the sofa, then opened a bottle of Chardo
I had a lot of ground to cover, consigning everything I’d learned to note cards, one item per card, which reduced the facts to their simplest form. It’s our nature to condense and collate, bundling related elements for ease of storage in the back of our brains. Since we lack the capacity to capture every detail, we cull what we can, blocking the bits we don’t like and admitting those that match our notions of what’s going on. While efficient, the practice leaves us vulnerable to blind spots. Under stress, memory becomes even less reliable. Over time we sort and discard what seems irrelevant to make room for additional incoming data. In the end, it’s a wonder we remember anything at all. What we manage to preserve is subject to misinterpretation. An event might appear to be generated by the one before it, when the order is actually coincidental. Two occurrences may be linked even when widely separated by time and place.