A Justified Murder (Medlar Mystery 2)

“But little Jeanne was found,” Kate said.

“In the fire station. I talked to the men who found her. At first I suspected one of them, but...” Chet’s head came up. “I’m not proud of the way I was back then. I was obsessed. I wanted to know who had done such a heinous thing. I needed to know. That’s why later, I put ads in the papers. I went on the radio asking people to come forward and tell what they’d seen or heard. Anything.”

“You did this after the baby was returned?” Jack’s meaning was clear: Why?

Chet glared at him. “Yeah.” His belligerent tone said that he’d been asked that question before and he didn’t want to hear it now.

Leaning back in his chair, Jack gave a smile. “Don’t blame you a bit.”

Sara explained. “We were the same when it came to finding out about the Morrises. We had to know.” She put her hand on his wrist. “Were you given a lot of grief because you persisted?”

Chet put his hand over hers. “Endless. But the captain understood. He said there were cases in his past that he wished he’d pursued. And he was afraid it would happen again. Whoever did it, didn’t get the first kid so maybe he/she would try again. We sent out alerts to hospitals to watch out. And we kept up with the questions about who and why.”

He pulled out a box about four down from the top. “We got a lot of theories. One guy said a baby adoption ring had tried to steal the child but gave up under all the publicity. Others said the baby was going to be used for child porn. One woman who used to work at the store told us that a baby could have been stuffed in a heat register and taken out later. Someone else said the sliding doors under the jewelry case could hide an infant.”

“I guess you checked it all out,” Sara said.

“Everything. And we were glad because we stopped some creeps who were selling babies. Found two porno sources. We got a heating company to send a man through the entire system of the store. We hoped we’d find a torn piece of clothing, or something. But there were just dead rodents, bugs, and a little bag of diamond rings that we think had been there since the 1950s. We never found out how they got there.”

Chet picked up another box, set it on the table, and opened the lid. He began pulling out plastic bags. Inside were pink sweaters in various forms of decay. One had a plastic flower glued onto it. They ranged in size from something for a doll to one that would fit a two-year-old. None of them came close to the description Everett had given.

“Should you have these?” Kate asked. “Aren’t they evidence?”

“The case was closed years ago. The new guy who replaced the old captain said there never really was a case. He thought maybe it was all mistaken identity. Some woman got her kid mixed up with another one and panicked when the sirens went off.”

“Because women do silly things, right?” Sara said.

Chet smiled. “Exactly. He didn’t last long at the job. But by that time, I’d started my own evidence file.” He lifted a bag. “For about five years after the kidnapping, people turned in anything that looked like what baby Jeanne was wearing when she was taken. What we didn’t tell the public was that when she was returned, she was wearing the same clothes that she’d had on when she’d been taken. Whatever they found couldn’t be her clothes.”

Sara nodded in agreement. “My guess is that you wanted people to doubt that it was the same baby. Keep the case going.”

“Quick, aren’t you?”

“She writes this kind of thing,” Kate said.

“And I bet you’re really good at it.” His voice was so smooth, so flattering, so suggestive, that Sara smiled warmly back at him.

“Did it?” Jack asked loudly. “Is that what happened?”

Chet straightened up. “Yeah. Exactly. We got a lot of letters telling us we had the wrong baby. That the real one was... Well, fill in the blanks. Half a dozen so-called psychics called and told us we had the wrong baby. People began ratting on their neighbors. Anyone who had recently brought home a baby was under suspicion.”

“It couldn’t be true, could it?” Kate asked. “I mean it really was little Jeanne, wasn’t it?”

“Yes. There was a birthmark and we compared footprints. It was her. But still, we followed up on every clue we were given.”

“Who is the ‘we’?” Jack asked. “The police force and you or just you?”

Chet’s mouth quirked at the corner. “Just me. Weekends, evenings. I checked out everything. Found a couple of cases that were later prosecuted, but nothing about the Crawford baby.”

Sara spoke up. “I’m curious about the cross that Everett found in the bootie. When was that made public?”

“It wasn’t. Not ever. I was the only one who knew about it and the only person I told was my wife.” He took a breath. “I stayed

in touch with the Crawford family. She had another baby, a boy, and she told me to leave it alone, that she had her daughter back and that was all she wanted. But the grandmother who had given the sweater set agreed with me. She wanted the culprit caught. Just days before she died, she asked me to visit her and she told me about sewing a cross inside the toe of each bootie. She said she’d kept it to herself because she wanted something she could use to verify the baby’s identity. ‘Someone has that little slipper,’ she said. ‘Someone kept it. You find it and you’ll find the bastard that tried to take my grandchild.’ She held my hand and asked me to swear to never give up. I promised that I wouldn’t.”

He paused for a moment. “I kept my vow. Even though I got promotions and was made chief, I kept looking. It got to the point where no one in the office remembered the case, but that didn’t stop me from searching.”

Sara took a deep drink of her lemonade. “I don’t know about anyone else, but I’m ready for a story. I want to know what really happened to make you dedicate your life to this case.”