“Just the initial interviews,” Bree insisted. “I believe this could be a serial kidnapper now. Isn’t that one of your areas of expertise?”
“I’ve dealt with one other,” I said. “Doesn’t make me exactly an expert.”
“More expert than I am,” Bree said. “The kidnapped boy is only eight months old, Alex. He’s their only child.”
I sighed, checked my watch, saw it was nearly three, and said, “Give me the address.”
When I called Quintus and told him I was going to Georgetown to help for two hours maximum, he reluctantly agreed and said he’d send Detective Brefka to pay the massage parlor tycoons a visit.
I got turned around, heading back toward Georgetown, thinking, Eight months old? In turn, I flashed on each of my children at that age: Ali, Jannie, and Damon, wide-eyed, full of contradictions, delighted one minute and hysterical the next. What if one of mine had been taken at that age?
A pit soured in my stomach. I had the sudden urge to hear my kids’ voices, especially Damon’s. We hadn’t spoken in a week. Midterms, he’d said.
I pulled out my phone and punched in his number.
The phone rang and rang and rang. I called him six times, and six times I got voice mail. Parking and getting out down the street from the yellow tape that surrounded the town house, I couldn’t help thinking how annoying the whole cell phone and teenager thing was. You buy them a phone. You pay for a national plan so they can keep in touch, and they’ve never got the damn thing on. Then again, midterms were coming up and—
“Dr. Cross?” someone called as I got near the tape.
I looked to my right and recognized the eager baby-faced patrolman who’d so smartly sealed off the Superior Spa when he’d seen the bodies.
“Officer Carney, right?” I said.
“Yes, sir,” the patrolman said, beaming. “I thought you worked homicide?”
“I do,” I replied, ducking under the tape. “Just doing a colleague a favor.”
“Sounds like they’ll need the help,” Carney said, glancing over at the house. “Scary, isn’t it?”
“What’s that?”
“You know, some psycho stealing babies?”
“You’re right, Carney. It is scary. Something no parent should go through.”
“But they’ll catch her, right? The nanny?”
“Sure going to try,” I said. “Hold down the fort.”
“Yes, sir,” Carney said, and I moved on.
Another patrolman stood at the door, opened it to let me in.
Even from the foyer, I could hear a woman sobbing.
Chapter
36
On the Kraft School campus in the Berkshires of western Massachusetts, Damon Cross ignored the phone wh
ining in his pocket and gestured at an ivy-covered building. “This will be our first stop. Commons, where all students eat.”
Damon was leading the final campus tour of the day for seven prospective students and their parents. He enjoyed being a tour guide. He’d been doing it since sophomore year.
He held the door to the school dining hall open as his group filed inside and was about to follow them when he heard a woman cry in a southern accent, “Hold that door, sugar. Am I too late to join the tour?”
Damon looked back over his shoulder and saw a seriously attractive woman with wild blond hair and the kind of body that…well, the black stirrup pants and the white turtleneck clung to her beneath a smart leather jacket and sunglasses. She was hurrying across the quad toward him.