A Justified Murder (Medlar Mystery 2)

“The injustice of it. A baby stolen, the grief of the parents, the...” He trailed off because Sara obviously wasn’t buying it.

“People are self-centered beings,” she said. “We do things that interest us, that we have a connection to. What happened that made this case touch you? Personally you?”

Chet took his time in answering. He sat down on one of Sara’s comfortable dining chairs, picked up a bag containing a pink cardigan, and turned it around in his hands. “Her.” Chet’s voice was a whisper. “I think I saw her. The woman who kidnapped the baby.” He let out his breath. “Outside of my wife, you’re the first people I’ve told that.”

Sara shook her head. “How you managed to keep that secret is beyond me.”

“You could identify her but you said nothing?” Jack sounded on the verge of anger.

“No,” Chet said. “I couldn’t identify her. Not well enough to testify in court.”

“But you said—”

Sara looked at Jack. “Let’s let him tell his story, shall we?” She said they should move to the more comfortable couches in the living room.

When they were settled, Chet still hesitated. But then, he was about to tell a story he’d revealed to only one person, yet it was something that had driven his life.

“I think you know the basics. It started at a frantic, going-out-of-business sale. The big store was packed with customers, almost all women, who were snatching and grabbing and... It was a state of war. In the midst of the chaos, a woman started screaming that her baby had been taken. A clerk was inches from an emergency lock-down switch. He pressed it and all the doors locked. There wasn’t time for anyone to push through that crowd to get to an exit door. We got there just minutes later and began questioning everyone, but no one had seen anything. Certainly no one frantically clutching a baby.”

The way he was talking sounded as though he’d said it many times before. It was a memorized speech.

Chet stopped and for a moment, he looked out the window, then turned back. “I was young, inexperienced. I’d never been on a case like that before. I was used to giving out tickets and breaking up bar fights.” He let out his breath.

“I was told to check the women’s lavatory. It was not something that I wanted to do, but there were no female cops so I was given the job. I can’t describe my embarrassment when I saw a young woman sitting on top of the sink counter, breastfeeding her baby. I kept my eyes down.”

Chet looked at them. “Eyes down is an important fact. Anyway, I saw that the baby was wearing denim overalls, and a blue T-shirt. It was obviously a boy and we were looking for a baby girl.”

His face had a pleading look. “You have to understand that at that time my wife and I were trying to have a baby. It’s what she wanted more than to live. She talked about it, dreamed of it. Babies were at the center of our lives.”

For a moment, Chet closed his eyes. “I only glanced at her face, then down at the baby. I can still see it. It was a beautiful scene, like something out of a Renaissance painting. The mother and child were so perfectly content. I’ve never seen such a look of...fulfillment, I guess. It was as though this young woman had found her own soul. I thought, That’s how mothers should look at their babies. I was thinking that I was seeing what having a baby meant to my wife. They were both so happy, so at peace.” He stopped to calm himself.

“Finally, the woman said, ‘Seen all you want to?’ That brought me back to reality and I felt like a pervert.”

Chet shook his head in wonder. “I left. I turned around, went out the door, and left them there. To me, it was obvious that was her child and he was a boy. It wasn’t the baby we were looking for.”

He let out a sigh. “We were on lockdown for hours and every inch of the store was searched but we didn’t find the baby.” Chet looked out the window, his jaw muscles working as he thought about what he’d just told.

“Did you see the woman from the restroom again?” Jack asked.

Chet turned back to them. “No. I was stuck in a room interviewing a lot of tired, angry people. One of our questions was if anyone had seen someone carrying a bunch of white lilies, but they hadn’t. We described the missing baby’s clothing. The truth is that I was so busy that I didn’t think about the woman I’d seen. Besides, if I had, I would have assumed that someone else had interviewed her.” He raised his hands in helplessness. “But then, it never entered my mind that it wasn’t her own baby.”

“When did you begin to think she was the kidnapper?” Sara asked.

“Not until about three days later, after I’d had some sleep. It hit me like in a fog. Gradually, I realized that I’d probably seen the kidnapper.”

Sara shook her head. “If she was nursing the baby, then she must have recently given birth. And maybe she’d lost her own baby.”

Chet nodded. “That was my guess. I didn’t tell what I’d seen—I was too afraid of losing my job to reveal that—but I asked everyone in the squad if they’d seen her. Red hair—”

“Red?” Kate asked. “Like mine?”

“Lighter,” Chet said. “You’re more mahogany. She was more...”

“Strawberry blonde?” Sara asked.

“Yeah. A sort of blonde with red in it.”

“What about her face?” Jack asked. “Pretty girl?”