Born in Death (In Death 23)

“Applebee here.”

“Lieutenant Dallas, New York Police and Security. You’ve been tough to track down, Mr. Applebee.”

“I’ve been on assignment in Glasgow. Just got in.” He rubbed a hand over a face that was shadowed by several days’ worth of light brown beard. “Who did you say you were?”

“Dallas, Lieutenant Eve. NYPSD.”

“Well, good morning, and I’m baffled. What can I do for you?”

“You can tell me the last time you had contact with Tandy Willowby.”

“Tandy?” His face changed in a fingersnap. Eve would have said what came into it was a burst of hope. “You’ve seen Tandy. Is she there? In New York. I never would have thought…She’s had the baby. She’s all right? They’re all right? Oh, God, I can get a shuttle and be there in a few hours.”

“Mr. Applebee, you’re the father of the child Ms. Willowby’s carrying?”

“Yes, yes. Of course. Carrying? You said carrying?” Another flash of hope lit his face even as his voice trembled. “I’m not too late.”

“You claim you didn’t know she was living in New York.”

“No, she—we—It’s complicated. What do you mean ‘was’?”

“Ms. Willowby’s been missing since Thursday evening.”

“Missing? I don’t understand what you mean by missing. Wait, wait a bloody minute.”

She could see him shift, sit down, struggle to orient himself. “How do you know she’s been missing since Thursday?”

“She left work at six P.M. on that evening. She did not return to her residence. She didn’t keep appointments. She hasn’t contacted her midwife, her employer, or her friends. I’m investigating.”

“She’s pregnant. She’s due any time now. Have you checked the birthing centers? Of course, you have,” he said before Eve could answer. “All right, let’s just keep calm. Let’s not lose our heads.” But he gripped the back of his neck with his hand as if to hold his own head in place. “Maybe she came home. She came home and I wasn’t here.”

“There’s no record of her boarding any transportation out of New York. Mr. Applebee, what was your relationship with Ms. Willowby when she left London?”

“Strained, maybe shattered. Stupid, stupid. I was such a bloody berk about it all. I was just panicked, or God knows. We hadn’t planned…it just happened. The pregnancy, and I bungled it. I buggered it up, that’s what I did. I suggested she terminate, and she got upset. Of course, she got upset.”

He pressed his fingers to his eyes now. “God. God. What an idiot I am. We quarreled, and she said she’d have the baby, and give it up for adoption. That I wouldn’t have to be bothered. She went to an agency, I think. She was barely speaking to me and I was so bloody righteous.”

“What agency?”

“I don’t know. We weren’t talking so much as sniping at each other. But she changed her mind. At least she left me a message that she had, and that she was going away. She quit her job, and left her flat. I was sure she’d get in touch with me, that she’d come back. I’ve been trying to find her, but I never thought to try the States. She didn’t take a shuttle from here, or from Paris. That’s where, after I’d begged and groveled, one of her coworkers said she’d gone, at least for a bit.”

“Let’s just get this out of the way. Give me your whereabouts on Thursday.”

“I was here, at my office through Thursday until about eight. I left for Glasgow that night, straight from there. I work for The Times, the London Times. I’ll give you my editor’s name and number, and the hotel where I stayed in Glasgow, so you can verify. Whatever you need. I can make some calls from here—friends of hers, coworkers, the OB she saw when she found out she was pregnant. Maybe someone knows…she might have contacted someone.”

“Why don’t you give me a list of names and contact numbers?”

“Yes, all right. Better from you than the git who mucked the whole business up. I’m coming to New York. I’ll be there this afternoon. I’ll give you my pocket ’link number, in case…”

By the time Eve had taken all the data, she had a cup of coffee on her desk along with her time line, in hard copy and disc.

“We can make calls,” Leonardo began. “Mavis and I can contact the birthing centers and the hospitals again, on the chance Tandy checked in this morning.”

“Call the midwife,” Eve told him. “Have her do it. They’ll talk to her quicker than either of you. Mavis, did Tandy ever mention she’d considered putting the baby up for adoption?”

“She did.” At her station, Mavis sat very still, her hands crossed over her belly. “She told me once she’d considered all the options. And she’d even gone to an agency, taken the first steps toward that one. But she’d changed her mind.”

Reading Eve’s expression, Mavis shook her hea