Dead Little Dolly (24 page)

FORTY-FIVE

By the time Jackson and I got into the police station the building was surrounded by cars and pickups, with more pulling in—a line of vehicles filling the parking lot, and along the street. People rushed past us. Not many talked or greeted each other. They were silent, heads down, getting there fast to help.

Inside, the station was in chaos. Everyone offered suggestions, huddled together to plot strategy, or circled Lucky at the front desk with a phone clamped to his ear.

He gestured toward me and shook his head.

“Do what you can do,” he mouthed, then put his hand over the phone. “Help them, will you, Emily? Get ’em going on the back roads. She could be pulled into the woods, for all we know. Map’s over there.” He gestured to a large map of the northern counties, thumbtacked to the wall.

Then Dolly was there, mouth open and eyes wide at the sight of so many people.

I looked to Jackson, a head taller than everyone, bewildered by the noise and the crowd.

“Jackson—you do it,” I called over to him. “Give people roads to cover. Clear them out of here. Write their names down—where they’re going.”

He nodded. At last a job he could handle—be in charge and making notes. “Ordering the disordered,” he would call it as he applied his skills in research and alignment to the search for Jane’s kidnapper.

I watched for a brief moment. A man who could still amaze me, Jackson took a stance in front of the wall map, patted the air for order, then turned to punch at roadways calling out numbers, pointing to a man or woman to get out there and report back.

For just a second I wondered what if he’d been a different man in a different profession? Would our lives have been different? Maybe a cop—in crowd control. Or maybe with FEMA. Maybe a political organizer. Maybe a warden at a male correctional institution with no pliant women around.

Dolly and Lucky had their heads together. He was making notes and telling her which departments had cars out and where they were looking.

An amber alert had already gone out to TV and radio stations across the state.

This wasn’t the time to ask questions or get my reporter’s notebook out. I joined Dolly and Lucky, at first only listening as they exchanged information—Dolly had been busy coming in from Norwood.

“What can I do?” I asked, leaning into the tight space between them.

Dolly looked at me and frowned, as if she didn’t know me. That struck me hard; maybe she blamed me for not taking good enough care of her baby.

I looked into her distracted eyes and sputtered, “It wasn’t my fault . . .”

Dolly gave me a sad but impatient smile. She reached over and put an arm around my slumping shoulders. “’Course not. I’m just glad she didn’t kill you, too. Don’t worry, we’ll get her,” she promised.

Jackson got cars fanning out into the county and beyond, to adjacent counties. Some were headed south, down toward Kalkaska—mostly on back roads since the state police had the main roads covered.

Others headed toward Grayling, to the I-75 corridor, which is what she’d have to take if she was headed downstate. That and US 127 toward Lansing. Instructions were to cover every freeway entrance. Maybe park on the ramps. Check out every white Passat.

After a briefing from Dolly, Jackson instructed the drivers that if they saw the car they were to call in immediately. “Follow only,” he said. “At a safe distance and speed. Under no circumstance try to intercept the car. You could be putting the baby’s life at risk.”

At any other time, Jackson might have been funny, mouthing phrases from cop shows. Not now. He was effective. People ran out armed with a flyer Lucky’d printed with the description of the car and the woman.

The last of the searchers were soon on the roads, calls already coming in from those closer in, and from state and local departments all across northern Michigan. Lucky fielded most of them while Dolly stuck pins in the map.

“No sightings yet.” She turned to me. We’d been at it for over an hour.

I thought I knew what she was saying. Someone should have spotted the car by now.

“She won’t have food for Jane. No bottles. She’s got to stop someplace. What do you think?” she asked me. “Where?”

I shrugged. “Depends which direction she’s headed in.”

“So, any grocery store.”

“Even gas station convenience store. Every drugstore.”

Dolly bit at her lip. “No help then.”

“Why don’t we get on the road? Maybe check out gas stations and stores along the main roads.”

“Which direction?” she asked, her voice tired, even unsure.

I couldn’t answer.

“What if she heads back to Norwood?” I asked.

“She wouldn’t. Only one road out of that town. Well, one main road. It’s a trap. She’s got to know by now we’re on to where she got the car.”

“But we’re not talking about an ordinary woman here, Dolly. She’s obsessed. Maybe not thinking clearly. Probably off her meds. And, after all those years in the hospital, you think she’s up to planning some big escape?”

Dolly looked at me hard. “Let’s get out there. Wish I had a photograph.”

“What about one from the album?”

She gave me an exasperated look. “Too old.”

She turned to Lucky. “What do you think I should do?”

Lucky looked at her hard. “You can’t do anything here. Head toward Norwood. Just in case. We’ll hear if she’s spotted along US 31—going or leaving there. You’d be closer. You could check out stores on the way, not a bad idea to see if anybody remembers her buying baby food. Don’t forget that red shirt.”

Dolly nodded. I nodded. At least we were doing something other than waiting to hear.

FORTY-SIX

We didn’t stop at stores. We knew that was a futile gesture. How many women might, after all, have forgotten to buy baby formula? Or stopped off for a pack of diapers? We only had a description, no photo to show.

We drove, always heading west, toward Traverse City, then down back roads. Each road we took seemed wrong the minute we turned so we turned around again and again, coming back to the same places, looking for a Volkswagen Passat until it seemed there were no such cars on the road. If we’d seen one we would have been in immediate hot pursuit—man or woman driving.

I stared into every car we passed. Any woman in a red shirt was suspect. Even if the driver didn’t have on a red shirt and didn’t drive a Volkswagen, if she had dirty blond hair I stared doubly hard, sometimes turning in my seat to take a second and third look.

There wasn’t much to talk about except to reassure each other and make desultory comments about a road to take, a road not to take—and the artificial reasons we had for our choices.

“Audrey wouldn’t hurt your baby,” I said after a while. “You know that.”

“She did once. Tried to drown me, remember?”

“Come on, Dolly. The woman was sick. She was desperate. She was alone.”

“What do you think she’s feeling now? This any different? And she’s got a baby again.”

Dolly’s radio interrupted constantly: male voices, reports, cars and people stopped and checked.

Lucky came on from time to time to bring Dolly up to date. He told her newspapers from all over the country were calling for information. “Tell Emily her friend Bill is here. He’s fielding the press and TV calls.”

“What about Jackson Rinaldi? He still around?” Dolly asked.

“Still helping. He’s coordinating information for us.”

“Never expected it of him,” she said, then pulled up close behind a white car.

A Ford.

Dolly looked over at me. “I can almost see why you married him.”

“Me, too,” I agreed.

“I said ‘almost.’”

We turned down a road that dead-ended at the lake. I’d seen the Dead End sign but Dolly missed it. She backed up until she could turn around, then stopped.

“I can’t stand it, Emily,” she said.

I didn’t look at her. “I know,” was all I could come up with as she peeled back out onto US 31, heading north.

“Got any ideas?”

I shook my head.

“Want to go check Norwood again?”

“Sure.” I shrugged; at least it gave us something to do. I sat back and watched as we passed greening fields and cherry orchards in full blossom. And then woods and more woods and vineyards and Lake Michigan off in the distance and it would have been so serene. My new world in bloom. Except that it looked like a painted backdrop to a horror movie right then.

We turned west at the Norwood sign and made our way up and over and around hills until we reached the corner church and turned.

The house looked as closed and abandoned as it had the last time we were out there. No car anywhere. Not a person in sight.

Dolly got out of the squad car and fumbled the house key from her chain. She put the key in the lock and then her shoulder to the door.

It was as chilly inside as it had been the last time, despite warming weather. We stood absolutely still in the living room, listening for the sound of a baby, even the creak of a floor.

She motioned toward the kitchen. Before we got to the room, I felt something different about the place. Dolly looked over at me. She sensed it too. Air stirring. As if someone had opened a door. Dolly reached for the gun at her side and motioned me behind her. One finger went to her lips.

The kitchen was untouched but the window that had been covered with cardboard the last time we were there was broken out.

Dolly pulled in a breath. We exchanged looks. Dolly moved her head toward the upper floor. There was only one staircase. We made our way slowly back the way we’d come and climbed the stairs, one at a time, though they creaked beneath out feet, making me cringe and bite down hard on my lower lip.

There was no one in the upper hall. We went to the first bedroom and pushed the door wide open. No one. Dolly motioned me to stay where I was as she entered the room, knelt to check under the bed, then opened the tall chifforobe. Only the same hanging jacket, jeans, and robe were in there.

We checked the next bedroom. Empty.

Then the bathroom.

Dolly stood in front of me, blocking the doorway. When she moved aside, I could see things had been moved. The bath mat was rumpled; a towel lay over the basin, another towel was thrown over the closed toilet bowl, and on the floor lay a pink Onesie, wet and dirty.

Dolly picked up the small garment. She closed her eyes as she gripped it in her hand.

“She’s here,” she whispered.

I nodded.

We’d been through the house. We checked again. Nothing. No sound. No baby cry.

“Maybe she had different clothes to put on Jane. That’s all I can fig—” She looked at me and tears welled.

I shook my head at her. This wasn’t the time to break down. Not yet.

“What about that barn?” I meant the large crumbling building out behind the house. “Maybe she saw us coming. You are driving a police car, after all.”

“We gotta see,” she said, heading for the door, punching the radio at her shoulder, then passing on to Lucky that Audrey’d been there and she was going to do a search of the property.

We ran down the steps then slowed and made our way deliberately around the house. We stopped, flattened against the wall, to look over the fields to the distant structure: low on the horizon, sloping roof half fallen in. There was no movement anywhere near the barn, or in the empty acreage around it.

We started out across the field; not a single tree to hide behind. We were targets. Walking in the open. Neither of us said a word.

Dolly stopped a few yards into the blooming grass and pointed to tracks leading through the weeds, the weeds flattened and pushed aside. Two parallel tracks. A car had been through there recently.

We walked on, but faster now. Dolly didn’t bother to take her gun from the holster. Whatever we were facing was beyond brute force. This was something between one woman and another. I couldn’t imagine how it would end—Dolly facing Audrey Delores at last, but with this terrible weight of horror between them.

We drew near the decaying building. I took shallow breaths from time to time. Dolly ran to flatten herself against the front wall of the barn and stand there a minute, face set into something that didn’t even resemble her. I stood beside her.

“What’ll we do?” I asked. “Maybe wait for the others to get here . . .”

She shook her head. “I can’t take the chance. I’m going in . . .”

Far off, as if from someplace beyond the barn, or even beyond the field, came a baby’s choking cry, one of those cries I’d heard Jane make when she was overtired or had cried too much already.

Dolly heard it, too. “Come on,” she whispered. “I need you with me. I’ll get Audrey. You grab Jane.”

I nodded and we edged along the wall and around to stand in one of the open doorways, adjusting our eyes to the darkness in the building.

There was a sudden roar of a car engine. And then the echo of the roar reverberating from broken tin roof to decaying walls and falling hayloft, and then around us. An engine revved again. There was something like a screech, a streak of white, and the wall, where we’d been standing a moment before, cracked out as a Volkswagen Passat burst through the old timbers and bounced off across the field.