Chapter 6 - A Dead Woman's Fingerprints
The first lead on Marnie came from a pharmacy receipt found beneath the cardboard where the girls had slept. Detective Brooks traced the transaction to a small shop in the Bronx. A surveillance image showed Marnie purchasing children's cough syrup and bandages three days before she vanished. A second person stood behind her: a man in a gray coat.
Samuel Price.
He wasn't wearing his old investigator's confident smile. His jaw was bruised and his left hand was wrapped in gauze. Brooks shared only what she could. She had located his abandoned vehicle near an elevated subway station and was searching for both adults.
Meanwhile, our home assessment proceeded. Dana walked through Valerie's bedroom, the guest rooms, the kitchen, and the garden, asking questions about routines, discipline, childcare, and safety. I answered as carefully as I could. When she asked what I would do if Vera refused to trust me, I surprised myself with the truth.
“I'd make sure she had breakfast. Then I'd try again the next day.”
Dana smiled faintly. “That's a better answer than promising to fix everything overnight.”
That evening I visited the girls with Valerie. Violet presented me with a drawing of a house. It had three upstairs windows and a front door that was taller than the building itself.
“Is that my house?” I asked.
“Our house,” Valerie corrected. “If they want.”
Vera looked away, but I saw the corner of her mouth lift.
The next morning Brooks asked me to come to the station. Marnie had been found at an urgent-care clinic under an assumed name. She had a fractured wrist and dehydration. She was frightened, but alive. For her protection, Brooks had not publicly announced the location.
When I entered the interview room, Marnie was seated with a blanket over her shoulders. I barely recognized her. Her hair had been cut short. There were lines around her eyes that had no business being there at thirty-four.
She stood so fast her chair scraped the floor. “The girls?”
“Safe,” I told her. “They're warm and being looked after.”
Marnie began to cry. Not graceful tears. The kind that take a person's breath away.
“I tried to get them to you,” she said. “I tried for years.”
“Then why didn't you call me?”
“Because the last time I called, someone came to our apartment that night. They knew what I had said. They knew where the girls slept.”
“Who?”
She looked toward the one-way glass. Brooks came inside and reminded us that Marnie's account needed to be recorded. Marnie agreed, and her lawyer joined us by telephone.
Five years earlier, Marnie said, she'd witnessed something strange after Lena's emergency delivery. A nurse had told her all three babies were alive. Hours later Eunice insisted that two had died. When Marnie demanded records, Eunice threatened to report her for stealing medication from the hospital—a crime Marnie denied. Then a man delivered the two infants to an apartment in Queens and told her that if she wanted them to survive, she would take them and never contact me.
“Why would you believe him?” I asked.
“Because he showed me a video of Lena in a hospital bed. She was alive. He said if I made trouble, they'd stop treating her.”
The words struck harder than any blow.
“Where was she?”
“I didn't know. For months, I sent messages through people I was told to trust. Then the messages stopped.”
Marnie wiped her face. “I thought the only way to keep Lena alive was to stay quiet. Eventually I realized they'd been lying to me. But by then they had someone watching my apartment.”
“Why now?”
“Samuel found the transport paperwork. He said he had a witness who'd finally talk. We were supposed to meet at your hotel because he believed one of your cameras could catch the people following us. I hid the girls where I hoped you'd see them on your usual route.”
“You left them in the rain.”
“I know,” she whispered. “I made the worst decision of my life. I thought I'd be gone twenty minutes. They grabbed me before I reached the corner.”
Anger rushed through me. So did the unbearable knowledge that she'd raised my daughters under threat while I lived in a warm house a few miles away.
“I can't forgive that yet,” I said.
“I don't expect you to.”
Brooks asked about the man who'd abducted her. Marnie described his jacket, his vehicle, his voice. The investigators would determine the rest.
At the end of the interview, Marnie reached across the table and touched my hand.
“Brett, there's something I haven't told anyone. Lena didn't lose her memory in the accident they claimed she had.”
“What accident?”
Marnie swallowed. “That's what they put on her records. But when I saw her on the video, she was trying to say one word.”
May you like
“What word?”
“Valerie.”
