“You think there was a kid, and someone snatched it,” Fogel said, more of a statement than a question.
“Like I said, we found no evidence of a kid—no clothes, no toys, the room was completely stripped down. Nothing in any of the bathrooms to indicate a kid, but that woman’s face…” He trailed off, raised the beer to his lips, and drank.
“Here’s the thing, though,” Stack went on. “We found three dead perps in that room. Their shoes matched perfectly to the three sets of prints we found downstairs. So if there was a kid, who took the kid?”
“A fourth?”
“A fourth,” he repeated. “I spent more than a decade looking for that fourth and got nowhere. When other bodies started piling up—a new one every year, always on that same date—today’s date—I grew convinced there was someone else out there. I was certain the same someone killed the first three, took the kid, took all evidence of the kid, and has been killing once a year ever since, and that person is a ghost and once they get their claws into your head this case doesn’t go away.” He raised the bottle again, brought it to his lips, then changed his mind and set it beside the empties on the rickety table. “You need to walk away from this. Let this mess retire with Faustino. He caught the bug from me, and if you catch it from him, you’ll spend the rest of your career hunting a ghost. You’ll spend every day of the year waiting for the eighth of August to come around. You don’t want that. You don’t want any of it.”
Fogel knew he was probably right. Faustino hinted as much. But this case was already in her head. It took root. And there was nothing she liked more than a good puzzle to solve.
“How many bodies does Faustino have on that board of his now? Thirteen? Fourteen?”
“Sixteen.”
Stack’s eyes fell to his beer bottle but he didn’t pick it up. “Seventeen, by day’s end. You can be sure of that, as sure as the ticking of a clock.”
“You said the adults were squatting. Did you find a car? They might have been living out of a vehicle, keeping all their stuff in there.”
Stack shook his head. “Thought about that. Back then, abandoned cars were reported directly to the mayor’s office and towed to a city yard by a company called McGann and Chester. Not sure who handles that sort of thing nowadays. We put a flag on three square miles surrounding that house, looked at every car that got towed in for the next few months. We had a couple contenders—cars full of clothing, mostly—but the prints never matched the man and woman from the house. They weren’t in any of the databases, either. Local or federal.”
Stack’s eyes hadn’t left the beer, and he finally reached for the bottle, finished it off. “I did twenty-eight years with the Pittsburgh PD, twenty-four of those with homicide. In that time, I solved well over a hundred cases. The few unsolved I left behind will probably stay that way. I know I did everything I could on them. My record is solid, I’m at peace with that. This is the only one that nags me.” He lowered his voice, his fingers picking at the label on the bottle. “My gut tells me the whole thing is about the missing kid, always has been. All those bodies. The ME back then was a buddy of mine, and when he did his exam of the woman, he confirmed that she gave birth at least once. I didn’t put that in the report, but you should know. Faustino knows. I’m certain there’s a kid out there, somewhere. That child would be at least fourteen years old now, maybe older. You really want to bust open this case, you find the kid.”
6
The ceiling of the long hallway vaulted at the center, a large arch that began with elaborately thick crown molding at the base and curved to a height of at least eighteen feet. The ceiling with the arch was coffered in deep mahogany over what appeared to be marble slabs. Dotting the elaborate millwork every ten feet were crystal chandeliers.
A staircase filled the center of the hallway’s mouth, wide at the base and curved as it disappeared into the next level. As I approached, I realized the staircase not only went up at least two more floors, but down as well, disappearing into a basement level.
Smaller hallways and doors split off from this center throughway on both sides. The doors were all closed, and within each hallway stood no less than two people dressed in the same long, white coats as the others. Their eyes followed as I followed Stella through the center of the house and out through one of five sets of French doors at the back onto a large, rounded cobblestone patio.
Stella stood out there, waiting for me, her gloved hands clasped at her back, her dark hair catching the wind and fluttering over her right shoulder. “You shouldn’t dawdle. It’s not polite to keep your hostess waiting.”
“I’m sorry, I was just admiring your home.”
“You shouldn’t apologize so much unless your goal is to cement your social standing somewhere beneath whoever the apology is directed. I suppose in this case, that may be true. Ms. Oliver has made it quite clear you are beneath me and always shall be beneath me. Perhaps that is why you follow behind me rather than walk at my side? The intricacies of psychology fascinate me so.”
I crossed the patio and came to her left side. “I meant to say, your house is beautiful, almost to the point of distraction. I want to take it in, not rush past.”
“If that is what you meant to say, then you should have just said it. This house, it’s only a place. No better or worse than any other.”
“It’s much nicer than where I live.”
“Nicer? Yes, of course. There is little doubt of that. But better? These are two very distinct things, and one could argue both sides, I suppose.”
She stepped to the edge of the patio, past white metal furniture and white roses in tall vases, to a winding cobblestone pathway weaving away from the house and out into the immense yard. The lush grass rolled away from the patio, through hills of varying heights dotted with trees. All were tall and well groomed, a canopy of green holding the slightest hint of orange and brown as the hand of fall touched them, one by one.
Strangers in long, white coats stood among the trees, all eyes on us, so many I couldn’t count them all. When Stella looked out across the lawn, looked out at them, they diverted their gazes. Some even stepped behind the trees, but none left. If anything, it seemed more were coming, but I couldn’t tell from where.
Stella started down the cobblestone path deeper into the yard, and I quickly fell in step beside her, careful not to fall behind this time. “Even within a forest, one can feel trapped while others find freedom within the confines of a prison cell.”
“Is that why you wrote ‘help me’ on the bench? You feel trapped?”
Stella smiled. “Oh, that was so long ago. Just the workings of a child’s overactive imagination. You should pay it no heed.”
“So you don’t need help?”
From the corner of my eye, I caught one of the people in white slipping around the trunk of a large oak, attempting to stay opposite us, out of sight.
