“I went to a bar, got drunk, met a man who was more than willing to hold me, went to a hotel with him intending to have mind-numbing sex and ended up spending the night sobbing in his arms. I’m a good cop. I’m capable of getting the job done. And when the case is heartbreaking, I cry.”
She would never have guessed it.
Amber Locken cried.
Cal Whittier, dressed in jeans and a button-down shirt under a long-sleeved blue sweater, hardly resembled the man who’d been with Emma Sanderson that day she’d brought in hair ribbons containing her sister’s DNA providing the means to prove, one way or the other, if Claire Sanderson had been one of Peter Walters’s victims.
The man who stood before him, holding a brown paper sack rolled down from the top, was relaxed. At ease. His eyes met Ramsey’s with a peace that was noticeable. His hair was longer, too.
Ramsey looked for a wedding ring on the other man’s left hand and noted there was none. Had his fiancée, who was the single mother of a ten-year-old boy, wised up? Did she know that Cal was covering for his criminal father?
“I brought you something, Detective,” Whittier said, holding out the bag. “I was going to give it to Emma, but Morgan insisted that you might be able to use it. And this morning, when I asked Emma, she said the same. I don’t think it’ll help, but if it does, then I am with them one hundred percent in wanting you to have it.”
Leary, Ramsey took the bag.
“You and Morgan set a date yet?” Ramsey asked.
“January 18,” the professor replied with a smile. “Society weddings require a bit of time to plan and prepare for.”
“I wouldn’t have figured you for a society wedding.” Whittier was the most private man Ramsey had ever met.
“I’m not. And neither, incidentally, is Morgan. But if that’s what it takes to keep the family intact, and to get her old man to walk her up the aisle and give her over to me, then I’m game.”
So they were still engaged. And had her family’s blessing.
Would the Lowens still be as willing to put on the big public bash when the fiancé’s father was called out for abducting a little girl?
And why didn’t Ramsey feel any better about knowing that the wedding would soon be off?
“What’s in the bag?” he asked, holding up the brown paper.
“Claire’s teddy bear.”
What? Ramsey peeled open the bag and looked inside. He’d have pulled out the brown bear—something Claire had, reportedly, refused to have out of her sight—if he’d had gloves on.
“How did you get this?”
The bear had been found in Frank Whittier’s car after Claire had gone missing. Everyone in the family had reported that Claire had been trying to feed the bear breakfast the morning of her disappearance. And then the bear had turned up underneath the seat in Frank’s car.
It had been logged in as evidence, but it’d been missing from the box of forensic evidence that was stolen and later recovered from Emma’s ex-fiancé. The evidence that was, at that moment, at the DNA office in Boston waiting for further testing.
“I guess you could say I stole it,” Cal said, his face serious. “When Claire disappeared, they brought us all down here to the police station.”
Cal had been here, in Ramsey’s building, while Ramsey had been a child running around on the farm in Vienna, Kentucky.
“They put me in a room,” Cal said. “They gave me French fries and anything else I wanted to eat. They brought in a counselor. And they asked me questions about Claire and my dad.”
Ramsey had read about the meeting in the writings he’d confiscated from Cal in August. And in police reports.
“The container of evidence they were collecting was on the counter,” he said. “I saw Claire’s bear there. And when I was left alone for a couple of minutes, I took it. I was scared to death, for her and for me and Emma, too. I thought about how Claire wasn’t afraid as long as she had that bear. And I guess I thought that if I kept the bear safe for her, she’d come to get it. And in the meantime, Emma and I would be safe, too.”
The elevator binged and the doors opened. Kim got off. She gave Cal a curious look, smiled at Ramsey and went on into the squad room.
“I hid the bear in my jacket, brought it home with me and have kept it hidden ever since.”
Ramsey frowned. “Your father never knew you had it?”
“Nope. No one did until I showed it to Morgan. And then, this morning, to Emma.”