The Fourth Victim (21 page)

Her eyes widened, as though some possibility had occurred to her, but she didn't say a word.

“Please, Kelly. I know this is hard, but you're all I've got.”

She closed her eyes. Her skates slid away from her body until her legs were extended straight out onto the floor. She crossed her arms over her stomach and Clay knew he'd lost.

Unless the men and women out on the streets turned up a miracle, some innocent children could very well be breathing their last.

The woman had picked one hell of a time to fall apart.

Edgewood, Ohio
Monday, December 6, 2010

A
hand reached down inside me, twisting and pulling. Ripping. Dragging out the deepest, most painful parts of me. It laid them there. Letting the light shine on them. Letting everyone see.

But there was no one there. No one besides Clay.

And the children whose laughter could be quieted forever, if not for me.

My eyes closed and I forced myself to let the memories pushing at me come forward. If I hadn't already been crying, been feeling so low and vulnerable, maybe they wouldn't have been able to surface. Maybe I could've kept them hidden. I couldn't breathe. Was suffocating. And pieces fell into place. In that moment I knew exactly what my father was doing. “I don't know where, but there's a place. In Dayton.”

Dayton, the failing metropolis between Cincinnati and Columbus, best known for being a crossroads, where two major interstates, 70 and 75, crossed. Or was it best known for Wright-Patterson Air Force Base and the Wright
brothers? Or maybe for the six General Motors plants that had shut down in the past decade.

It was the nearest major city to Chandler, Brookwood and Trotville. And Edgewood. Clay's office was there and—

“Kelly? What place, sweetie? What are you talking about?”

Mom had called me
sweetie.
I'd liked that. And…

“It might not even exist anymore,” I said. The words were forming in my mind. I had to get them out without hearing them. Without thinking about them.

I had to face the fact that—

“When I was three, my father tried to sell me.” I was talking about a little girl who'd lived long ago. The story didn't affect me now. “Funny, huh, since he's doing it again? All the money I've given him and it's never enough.”

I was crying. And getting off topic. This wasn't about now.

“He tried to sell you…where?”

“There's a place in Dayton. I don't know where it was. I've tried to find it many times over the years. I even reported it to the Dayton police when I was in college, but I never heard anything back about it.”

I'd never followed up. I hadn't wanted to know.

“I suspect they ran a legitimate adoption business—but they had a sideline. They let people who didn't want their kids bring them there and they match the kids with couples who want to adopt them. I think. That's the way my mother explained it when I asked her about it years later.”

I had to continue. He was running out of time. Little kids might be running out of time. I thought about them. And about the other little kids I'd seen in the room that day. “My father took me there. I remember being there. I remember being put in a room with other little kids. I remember other adults. Someone, another kid, had peed their
pants. It stank. A lady in charge took hold of my arm and wouldn't let it go. I was crying for my mom. I wanted my dad to take me back to my mom, but the lady's fingers were pinching my skin and I couldn't get out of the room.”

Under my closed eyelids, the scene played out perfectly and I had to escape. Daylight was bright. Made my eyes water. And showed me Clay's tense features only inches from my own.

He didn't touch me. Didn't crowd me. But he was there.

“My father had taken me from my mother. She'd refused to turn any more tricks for him because of me. He needed drug money, so…he came up with another approach,” I said. “I was saved that day. My mother showed up at the last minute and I never saw my father again—until Mom died. He must've lost a lot of money, at the adoption place that day because the fit I threw gave my mom time to get there…. My father is very methodical. Every single thing he does is for a reason. It's all calculated. When he chooses his food, there's always a reason for the choice. The blue backpack. The time of the meeting. The school. There were reasons, and they all had to do with me. If he's going to set off a bomb in a place where there are children, it'll be at that place, if it still exists.” I started to cry. It all made sense now. I hated myself, but I cried, anyway. “I'm so sorry, Clay. I'm sorry I didn't remember this sooner. It's like I've always known, but I just wouldn't think about it and—”

“You didn't need the information until now. You're doing great, Kelly.” His steady, warm voice reached me.

He sounded genuinely impressed.

“Can you recall who you spoke with on the Dayton police force? What office you contacted?”

Now that I'd opened that door, the details were there. More than I'd realized. More than I wanted.

“Detective Scott Needmore. I remember because it's like that road in Dayton, Needmore Road. There was a bar on that road called Need One More. I used to drive by there….”

Clay was already on his phone.

I was forgotten.

And I was thankful for that.

 

After several phone calls and some file-pulling, Clay connected with retired detective Scott Needmore at 10:45 Monday morning.

He was living with his wife in Florida and was out on the golf course, but he took Clay's call.

“I remember the case like it was yesterday,” Needmore said after Clay identified himself as a special agent with the FBI. Clay had men searching all the files Needmore had worked on during the year Kelly remembered contacting him, but it was taking too long. “It was one of those that stick with you until the day you die,” the retired police detective was saying.

The case didn't end well, Clay translated.

“I spent six months following dead-end leads, mostly on my own time, because all I had to go on was the memory of a girl from when she was three years old and questionable testimony from her wasted mother.”

Yeah, that was the case.

“I'm working on a possible homicide, Detective,” Clay said. “Where was this agency? And does it still exist?”

“As far as I know it still exists,” Needmore said. “That was the bitch of it. I eventually track down the place. They'd moved to a different neighborhood. But I can't shut it down. It's a legitimate adoption agency in South Dayton. It has a lot of high-society clients.” The man gave him the name and even remembered the second address.

Clay was out the door before he'd disconnected the call.
Not until several seconds later, while he waited for the speed-dial connection to his office, did he realize he hadn't so much as told Kelly Chapman goodbye.

 

The Happy Day Adoption Agency was housed in a sprawling building in a part of town that was once glamorous and now was not. Although the building itself, and the grounds on which it stood, were still immaculate, the neighboring land was garbage-strewn, with boarded-up buildings that hinted at better times.

Many years ago.

By the time Clay arrived, the place was taped off and surrounded by emergency vehicles with flashers going. Cursing at how far away he had to park, he locked his car and ran between fire engines and ambulances, police cars, a canine unit and a couple of bomb squad trucks, all haphazardly stopped on the street and in the yard of the statuesque old building.

Worried-looking men and women, obviously personnel from the adoption agency, stood in huddles of two or three outside the black wrought-iron gate at the entrance.

“All the children are out.” Marcus Williams, an agent who'd worked for Clay until his transfer six months before, hurried over to Clay.

He nodded. Thank God they'd made it in time. And they didn't need him. He'd had to be sure.

“The dog found something, a propane tank buried beneath the window of the playroom. There's a timer attached and they don't know what's inside. Bomb squad's got it now.”

Clay couldn't wait. He had thirty minutes to get to Chandler before the money drop. He'd already turned the bag over to the female agent who was posing as Samantha Jones. He'd drawn the line at allowing the detective to
make the drop herself. He'd only won her agreement when he'd reminded her that Kelly needed her with Maggie.

JoAnne and Barry and the rest of the team were in place.

With the bubble out on his dark-colored sedan, Clay squealed his tires, backing up to return to Chandler. He'd just put his car in Drive and was pushing the pedal to the floor when the explosion happened.

 

Maggie saw it all on the news. The picture of the man they were saying was Kelly's father. His teeth were rotten and his shirt didn't fit over his gut, which was hairy and gross.

He looked dirty, too, like the guy her mom used to bring home sometimes who stank. Looked about as nice as that guy had been, too. He'd hit Mom. And Maggie'd called the cops.

And then gotten in trouble for it because they could've taken her away from Mom.

But that had been years ago. When she was just a kid and didn't know how to handle stuff like that.

She saw all the emergency vehicles surrounding the fancy-looking building downtown. They said it was an adoption agency.

She saw the explosion, too.

“I'll be damned.” Sam was sitting next to Maggie on the couch in the living room. Grandpa was in his chair. He'd been sleeping pretty much all the time since Maggie got home Saturday night and found out Grandpa was home from the hospital already.

She figured they'd sent him home to die. They'd done that with Jeanine, too. Jeanine had been Maggie's best friend until she'd died of leukemia right before they'd started ninth grade.

“Oh, my God.” Sam stood, hands covering her mouth.
She walked around the room, staring at the television the whole time.

They hadn't told Maggie what was going on. Well, they had, but not really, just stuff they thought would satisfy her. No one got that she was grown up now. Anyway, she'd figured it all out.

“That bomb was meant for Kelly, right?” she asked. Obviously, they'd gotten Kelly out of there. With all those cop cars and ambulances and fire trucks, they would've cleared the whole street by now.

Kelly was going to be safe. The plan had failed.

Thank God.

“No.” Shaking her head, Sam turned up the television.

“A bomb planted, police believe, by the father of Kelly Chapman, a person of interest in Ms. Chapman's disappearance, detonated this morning in the five-hundred block of Old Sycamore Street in South Dayton. We're here outside the Happy Day Adoption Agency now, and while initial reports said the building had been cleared and there were no injuries, it now appears that there's been at least one fatality. A member of the Ohio state bomb squad who was working to disarm the bomb apparently did not survive the blast….”

“Oh, God!” Sam wailed, and Maggie got scared. Really scared.

“Sam?” She felt like she was going to throw up. Seriously.

“Yeah?”

“Is that guy going to kill Kelly?” She'd thought no one even knew Kelly had a dad except for her. How had Mom found out?

And what about Mac? He knew everything about everybody. Why hadn't he told her if Mom knew that?

“Of course not, Maggie,” Sam said. “Not as long as they give him the money he's asked for.”

It wasn't just about money. Maggie was sure of that. She was surprised Sam hadn't figured that out by now.

Or maybe she had and she was just giving Maggie a dumb kid answer.

“Are they giving it to him?” she asked, wondering if she was going to die soon. God would punish her for being such a rotten person.

“Yes, they are.” Sam turned off the television. “They've got it all under control, Maggie, I promise you. The best agents in the state are working on this. By tonight Kelly will be safe at home. You'll see.”

Right. So why did Sam look like she'd just eaten something bad?

“Do they know where she is?”

“Not yet. But the guy doesn't get to leave with his money until Kelly is safe with the police.”

Creeps like Kelly's father didn't do what they were
allowed
to do. They did what they
wanted
to do.

Maggie needed Mac to hurry up and get in touch with her somehow. To kidnap her and take her away from all this so she could do what
she
wanted to do, too.

She'd tell the police about Mom wanting to get rid of Kelly, but she had to do it without getting Mac in trouble.

Scared to death that they were going to kill Kelly before she had a chance to save her, Maggie made a dash for the bathroom.

And threw up all over the hallway floor.

 

The other two bombs were apprehended along with their suspect at 11:56 Monday morning. Ezekial Greene had grabbed the blue backpack. He strolled through the playground and out to the street, whistling. Clay heard and saw everything from his vantage point in the disguised delivery vehicle outfitted with recording equipment.

And then Ezekial, the pimp, made the mistake of looking at the beautiful woman walking down the sidewalk across from him. She smiled at him. He smiled back. And she paused.

“Got any money, big boy?”

“Maybe. You got anything I want?”

“Oh, I'm sure of that,” the woman said, running her hand up her side, letting her fingers linger on the edge of her breast. Her skintight black jeans, the formfitting white fake-fur coat and her long dark curls were exquisite. Nope, a pimp couldn't be blamed for giving in to his weakness, Clay thought cynically.

And it was that weakness that got 'em every time.

“You got somewhere we can go?” JoAnne Laramie asked while Clay listened from the van. She was wired, and he could hear every word as clearly as if he'd been standing beside her.

“I got a place,” Ezekial said, moving closer to JoAnne. “It's only temporary, mind you, just until I check into my room at the Regency tonight.” The man had crossed the street and approached JoAnne. He eyed her breasts. And then reached for her crotch. “If you're real good to Daddy, you can come home with him tonight. And maybe never have to go out looking for work again.”