10th Anniversary (8 page)

I sighed. Put my anger down. This was such a bleeping awful story. Maybe the only way the kid could deal with what had happened to her was to distance herself as she had done.

“Next time I woke up, there was a light shining in my face. It was clipped to a door. One of those aluminum bowl-shaped lights?”

I nodded and noted the non-clue detail.

“I couldn’t see anyone because of the light in my eyes, and
I was numb,” she said. “They gave me some water out of a red bottle with a sippy straw.

“I heard the baby cry. I asked to see it,” she went on, her voice and expression as flat as a photograph. “I was told, no, it wouldn’t do me any good. That he was a healthy baby boy. And then I woke up on the street,” she told me.

“It was dark,” Avis said. “I didn’t know where I was. Then I saw a street sign that said Lake Merced. My clothes were bloody and disgusting. I found a rain poncho blown into some bushes, so I took off my clothes and put it on.”

The green plastic poncho, the only hard evidence we had, hadn’t even been handled by the men who’d taken her. So much for the thirty-six hours of lab time spent processing traces off it.

“They could have killed me,” she said.

I nodded. “It’s hard to say you were lucky, but you were.”

The girl’s sharpest memories were utterly useless. Fake French accent. Dark sedan. Aluminum lamp. Red bottle with a sippy straw. Green plastic poncho that had never had contact with the perps. Everything led to nothing.

I understood why Avis had blocked more traumatic memories.

But her continued lack of interest in the baby stunned me. It didn’t matter that she didn’t care.
I
cared.

I would find that baby boy or die trying.

“Do you know where your baby is?”

“No.”

“Have you been honest with me?”

“Yes. I swear,” Avis said.

My bullshit meter went on the blink. I couldn’t tell if she was lying or not. But there was another entire line of inquiry we hadn’t yet pursued.

“Who is the baby’s father?” I asked.

BRIGHTON ACADEMY is in the Presidio Heights area, tucked away, nearly hidden behind trees and a neighborhood of sleepy, Victorian-lined streets. It was a surprise to turn a corner and see four handsome stone buildings set in a square around a compact campus of clipped lawns punctuated with carved boxwood cones and hedges.

High-school kids played field hockey and tennis, and others were grouped on benches or lying under trees in the quad.

The whole place smelled green. Greenback green.

Like Hogwarts for the really, truly rich.

Conklin and I checked in at the Administration Office, where we met with Dean Hanover, a big man wearing a pink shirt and polka-dot bow tie under his blue blazer.

We told him about our investigation into the possible kidnapping of Avis Richardson and the disappearance of her
child. Hanover was sweating on a cool day, and I knew why. The dean had a big problem.

“This goes beyond nightmare,” Hanover said to me. “That poor kid. And, of course, her parents are going to sue us to the walls.”

I got the dean’s in loco parentis permission to interview Avis’s boyfriend, E. Lawrence Foster, as well as my short list of Avis’s six best friends.

“Tell me about these kids,” I said.

“Foster is an average kid, friendly. Parents own a magazine in New York. He’s got a lot of friends, but I confess I don’t know much about his relationship with Avis.”

Hanover gave us one-paragraph bios on the other kids: all children of wealthy parents who lived in other states or other countries. Avis’s roommate, Kristin Beale, was no exception. Her parents were in the military, stationed overseas.

We left the sweaty dean, headed out through the stone-arch entrance to the Administration Office, and took one of the shrub-lined paths toward the main hall.

“You want to be the good cop for a change?” Rich asked me.

“I would if I could,” I told him.

WE FOUND LARRY FOSTER in the high-tech chemistry lab in the southernmost wing of the school. He was as the dean had described him: a friendly, good-looking tenth-grader from the East Coast. He was neatly dressed in the school uniform—blazer, necktie, gray pants, and state-of-the-art cross-trainers.

We invited Larry into an empty classroom and seated ourselves at desks. I sent up a prayer that this teenage boy would know something that would lead us to his son.

“You think
I’m
the father? I’m
not,
” Larry Foster said. His sleepy gray eyes opened wide. His lower lip quivered. “Avis and I are friends. That’s all.”

“Friends, huh,” said Conklin. “Avis said you were closer than that. Why would she lie?”

“I don’t
know
why she would lie. We never hooked up, not
ever,” the kid said. “I never had those kinds of feelings about Avis, I swear.”

“You knew she was pregnant?” I said.

“Yeah, like since last week, and I didn’t tell anyone. Avis said she was having the baby for an infertile couple. I told her she was full of it, and she said, ‘Yeah, full of baby.’ And then I thought, Hey, she hasn’t called me back the past couple of days. Is she okay?”

“We have reason to believe that Avis got pregnant the regular way,” Conklin said. “If that is true, who’s your first guess for the father of her baby?”

“No idea. I didn’t even know she was with anyone,” the kid said.

Next up was Brandon Tucker, a kid with a future as a professional soccer player. He was taller than me and he had a disarmingly wicked smile. I’d seen a lot of pictures of this kid on Avis’s Facebook page.

Was he baby Richardson’s father?

After the preliminary introductions, I asked Tucker what he knew about Avis—her pregnancy, her baby, and her whereabouts over the past three days.

“Ma’am, I don’t know anything about a baby,” said Tucker. “I only heard that she was pregnant, like, a week ago. And I was, like, totally shocked. Avis is a very quiet girl. And heavy. I just thought she was bulking up.”

“So, what was she to you?” I asked. “She has you on her Facebook friends list.”

“Like that means anything. She asked to friend me. I said
okay. She used to help me with my French,” he laughed. “She tutored me for exams once in a while. I paid her by the hour. For
tutoring,
” he said.

“You ever hook up with Avis?” Conklin asked.

The kid looked offended.

“Me? Hell, no. Not my type, dude. Not even if I was drunk—she just wasn’t my type.”

“Who was her type?” I asked.

“Larry Foster, right?”

We used the same classroom to talk to three other teens, and by this time, they all knew why we were there. Not one of those kids admitted to knowing that Avis was pregnant until a week ago, and no one knew the identity of the father of her child.

We were told repeatedly that she was a quiet girl, intelligent, not popular, not an outcast, either. She got good grades and kept to herself.

Even the girls we interviewed, when implored to help us find the baby, said they didn’t have an idea in the world.

“You believe this?” Conklin said to me when the last kid had left the room. “A school like this. Avis was nine months pregnant, and no one knew nothin’.”

“Reminds me of something I once heard,” I said to my partner. “How do you know if a teenager is lying?”

“How?” Conklin asked.

“Their lips are moving.”

AVIS AND KRISTIN BEALE had been bunking in the same room for more than a year. Logically, of all the people who knew Avis, her roommate, given their daily contact, should have had the most intimate knowledge. I figured she might very well know what Avis had been thinking, doing, and planning for herself and her baby.

Kristin Beale was our best hope—and maybe our last.

Conklin knocked on the paneled door in a corridor lined with them. A voice called out, “Come innnnn.”

We did—and the smell of marijuana came out to greet us.

The dorm room was just big enough for two beds, two closets, and two desks. It looked out over the Presidio, and I could see a sliver of the bay over the tops of trees.

In front of the view was Kristin Beale.

She was lying on her back in the window seat, her long
legs bent, her bare feet pressed against the wall. She was pretty, with a wild mop of dark brown hair, and had on footless leggings and a man’s dress shirt. White wires were plugged into her ears.

The girl startled when she saw us, straightened her legs and sat up, and pulled out her earbuds. She was thin—too thin.

She said, “Who are you?”

As I did the introductions and told her why we had come, I looked the girl over. Even from fifteen feet away, I could see that Kristin Beale’s pupils were dilated.

I also took in the state of the room.

Kristin’s side had a post-tornado, morning-after look. The floor around her unmade bed was strewn with clothes, books, and candy wrappers.

The other side, Avis’s side, was as tidy as a banker’s desk. A pillow on the bed was embroidered with the letter
A,
and there was a picture of the Richardson family on her dresser.

Avis’s closet was open. I quickly went through her clothes and saw that she had them in two sizes. Size eight and extra large.

Her computer was turned off on her desk, untouchable without a warrant.

“Is Avis okay?” Kristin asked, in a tone that told me she didn’t care at all.

“She’s with her parents,” I said. “She’s doing okay, but she’s been through an ordeal. Kristin, has Avis called you or written to you? We’re trying to find her baby.”

“Baby? I don’t know anything about a baby.”

“Avis was nine months pregnant,” I said. “You saw her every day. Unless you’re blind, you must have known she was pregnant.”

“Well, I didn’t,” the girl said. “She was a pretty good eater and she didn’t work out.”

Turning to Conklin, I said, “You know, Inspector, I’m getting sick of these kids lying their faces off.”

“I don’t think they understand that we are homicide cops,” he said. “Maybe they think that because they go to a rich kids’ school, they’re outside of the law.”

The girl was staring at us now, eyes going back and forth between us and darting to a spot on the floor. I followed her eyes to a pile of laundry and saw the corner of a plastic bag under a sock.

I said to Conklin, “You’re right. They’re spoiled. They’re living in a separate universe. A universe where this,” I said, toeing the sock aside, “a few ounces of marijuana, isn’t illegal. But, of course it’s possession of an illegal substance, and in this case, given how much you have here, Kristin, I’m thinking it could even be possession with intent to sell.”

“That’s not mine. I never saw it before.”

I had to laugh. Two feet from her bed and she’d never seen it before.

“I say it’s your grass and that your urine is going to show that you’ve been smoking it.”

I reached under my coat for my cuffs, and the girl backed up.

“Kristin Beale, you’re under arrest for possession of narcotics.”

“No… what, are you—kidding? I’ll get kicked out of here. Okay, okay, okay. Like, what do you want to know?”

“Where is the baby?”

“I don’t know.”

“Who is the father of Avis’s baby?” I said.

“She never told me. I am telling you the
truth.
”

“Someone got her pregnant,” said Conklin.

“She’s gone out with boys, but no one regularly.”

“More lies,” I said. “I think you’ll tell us the truth at the station. Of course, we’ll have to call your parents.”

“I think she was going out with a married man,” the kid yelled at me. “Look. She didn’t tell me. One time, I asked her if she was pregnant. She said, ‘I don’t want to talk about it.’ I asked if her secret boyfriend was married, and she gave me a look. Like
this.
And she told me to never tell anyone. And that is everything I know. Everything. She never talked about the baby again. Maybe she told Larry Foster. Those guys are tight.”

I PUT MY CARD on Kristin’s desk and told her to call me if she had any thoughts she’d like to share that might save a baby’s life. I flushed the weed down the toilet in the bathroom down the hall, and then, muttering under my breath about teenagers, my partner and I left the dorm.

During the six hours we had spent interviewing Avis’s friends at Brighton, her parents had called me a dozen times. I had nothing for them, so I’d let the calls go through to voice mail. But as we were driving away from the campus empty-handed, Brady called.

I picked up the call on the third ring.

The lieutenant sounded agitated.

“The press has the story,” he said. “It’s going to hit the fan on the networks in a couple of hours, but it’s already broken on cable news and the Web.”

Cindy was my next caller.

“Lindsay. How could you not call me? You promised the story to me. You
swore.
”

“I’ve got nothing, Cindy. Nothing at all. Zero. Zip. Legwork with no payoff.”

Conklin’s phone rang, too. It was Paul Richardson saying that the media were gathering outside their hotel, clamoring for a statement.

“Don’t tell them anything,” Conklin told Avis’s father. “Stay in your room and get the hotel to block your incoming calls. Use only your cell phone.”

“The press is going to do cartwheels with this story,” I said to Conklin as we got back into the car.

“Maybe a lead will come out of it,” he said.

“I like your optimism.”

I’d seen similar stories spin out of control and confuse evidence, spawn hoaxters, and contaminate jury pools. “Baby missing” could become kidnapping, child trafficking, even witchcraft or alien abduction. And that would be before the supermarket tabloids got hold of the story.

“We need to catch a break,” Conklin said as we got back on the road.

I sighed loudly.

I wished I felt upbeat about this one. But I was feeling that it was too late to strap in. We’d already hit the wall.