Forgotten (28 page)

THIRTY-THREE

T
he morning of Christopher Williams’s memorial service was the first relatively cool day in weeks. The temperature was not expected to go over eighty-five, and the humidity was lower than normal for a Maryland August. Portia stood in the receiving line that snaked through the cemetery where the once-lost child would be laid to rest and watched as Madeline Williams, seated in a wheelchair, personally greeted and had a word with everyone who had come to pay their respects to her son. She looked pale and weak, but even from a distance, Portia could see that the woman’s eyes were very much alive.

“How do you think she’s holding up?” Portia asked John, who with his wife, Genna, represented the Bureau.

“She’s waited eleven years for this day,” John replied. “It’s what kept her going, what kept her alive.”

Lisa Williams stood behind her mother’s chair, occasionally patting Madeline on the shoulder or passing her a bottle of spring water. When the few clouds that had shielded them from the sun moved on, Lisa wheeled the chair into the shade under the tent that had been set up for the service. The line moved slowly, because so many had come.

Portia looked around at the crowd, amazed at the people who waited in line. There were detectives, street cops, representatives from the Mary land, Pennsylvania, and Delaware State Police, sheriff’s deputies, and district attorneys from several counties. John pointed out the parents and family members of those other boys who had been murdered by Sheldon Woods, the “Baker’s Dozen,” and the families of those boys who were yet to be found. Portia recognized Chief of Police Duffy from Oldbridge Township and her crime scene techs who had uncovered the bones of the boy they would bury that day, and Tom Patton, the medical examiner who had cared for the bones until they were released to the funeral home Madeline had chosen.

Portia had been so busy watching the crowd, she hadn’t realized how far the line had progressed until she heard Madeline Williams’s voice.

“Agent Mancini.” The woman in the wheelchair reached for John’s hands. “I am so happy to see you. If not for you…”

John leaned in close and spoke softly, so Portia could not hear what he was saying. She assumed he’d introduced Madeline to his wife, whose hand Madeline now held.

Suddenly Portia felt John’s hand on her elbow as he steered her forward, and she found herself standing in front of Madeline Williams, whose hand, dry and brittle as November leaves, had taken her own. She barely heard John’s words of introduction, so stricken was she by the irony of life, how burying your only son could be regarded as a good day.

Madeline’s fingers were surprisingly strong, though her voice was weak. She tugged at Portia to bring her closer.

“There are no words to thank you for what you have done, Agent Cahill. If Agent Mancini is my knight in shining armor, you are my hero.”

And for the first time since she’d taken her place beside her son’s coffin, Madeline Williams began to weep.

J
im parked the Jag in front of Miranda’s townhouse and turned off the engine.

“Want to come in and meet Will?” Portia asked.

“Sure.”

They walked hand in hand to the front door and found Miranda and Will waiting for them in the doorway.

“I can’t thank you enough for saving the day.” Miranda stepped forward to embrace Jim. “Not to mention saving my sister’s ass.”

Will extended his hand to Jim. “Thanks, man. Like she said…”

“Thank Livy Bach,” Jim said modestly. “She was the one who tracked the cell phone and marched into the woods to find Portia. I just sort of followed along.”

“That’s not the way Livy tells it.” Miranda ushered them into the house and closed the door behind them.

Jim shrugged. “The important thing is that Portia is here and she’s fine, and DeLuca is in the psych ward being evaluated.”

“As long as he’s under lock and key, I don’t care where they put him,” Portia said. “All the heartbreak that man caused because he wanted to be noticed. That says psycho to me.”

“How’s your leg, Portia?” Will asked.

“Much better, thank you,” Portia told him. “Some antibiotics, a couple of stitches, and I was good to go.”

“Great,” Will said on his way out of the room.

“You were lucky,” Miranda pointed out.

“Very,” Portia agreed.

“How was the memorial service?” Miranda asked.

“Very sad and yet satisfying at the same time,” Portia replied. “There was a huge crowd and I think that helped the family, but I also think it took a lot out of Madeline Williams. She’s obviously in very poor health.”

“She rallied like a trouper today, though,” Jim added.

“Like John said, finding her son’s remains meant everything to her,” Portia said. “I have a feeling that the next news we get about her won’t be good news. I overheard her daughter tell someone that Madeline felt that now she could let go and die in peace.”

“We’ve been saving this bottle of champagne for a special occasion.” Will returned with a tray holding a bottle and four glasses. “I think this qualifies.”

He popped the cork and poured some bubbly into each of the glasses. Miranda handed them around.

“What are we drinking to?” Jim asked.

“To getting the bad guys, and to the bad guys getting theirs.” Will raised his glass.

“I will certainly drink to that.” Miranda took a sip, then lowered her glass and said, “Speaking of the bad guys getting theirs, what’s going to happen to Rhona of the many last names and the many perversions?”

“I’m meeting with the state attorney’s office tomorrow morning. We’re going to sort out what we can charge her with.”

“How about being a disgusting, immoral, despicable excuse for a human being, not to mention a very sick mother.” Miranda started ticking off Rhona’s dubious qualities on her fingers. “While I know that none of those are offenses under the law, they do offend me.”

“We’re going to start with child abuse, corruption of minors, and go on from there. It’s going to be tough without a witness against her, though.”

“Neither of the boys will testify?” Will asked.

“Sheldon has gone silent on the matter, Doug still denies that it happened to him, and Teddy is dead,” Portia explained.

“Is Woods denying that he killed his son? Or his brother…” Miranda paused. “Which is it? Or is it both?”

“It’s both, actually,” Portia said. “Sheldon was Teddy’s half brother, since they had the same mother but different fathers.”

“Teddy’s father being Sheldon. Ugh.” Miranda grimaced.

“To answer your question, no, he’s never denied it.”

“Then there’s your chance to bring murder charges against him that he can be tried on, right?” Miranda asked. “Isn’t that what you were hoping for? To bring him to trial for a murder he doesn’t have immunity for? It should be a slam dunk.”

“I guess.” Portia nodded. “Though frankly, I don’t know that I wouldn’t like to see Rhona strapped to a gurney with an IV in her arm.”

“Rhona didn’t tell him to repeatedly rape little boys and then kill them and bury them in hidden graves,” Miranda pointed out to her.

“Granted, Sheldon Woods is responsible for everything he ever did,” Portia agreed. “But would he have done those things, would he have become what he is, if his own mother had not been a nymphomaniac pedophile who repeatedly abused him and forced him to have sex with her? If he’d had a normal childhood, would those boys still be alive?” She looked at Jim. “My guess is that they would be. I lay this all at her feet. Not pardoning him, but I think the blame has to go to her as well.”

“I don’t know,” Jim said. “If Sheldon is telling the truth, Doug Nicholson suffered the same kind of assault at their mother’s hands. He hasn’t become a pedophile. He’s not a murderer. He’s married, owns his own business. By all appearances, he’s managed to overcome the abuse without becoming an abuser himself.”

“He wasn’t subjected to the years of abuse that Sheldon endured,” Portia reminded him. “She abused Doug until she could abuse Sheldon. But after Sheldon, there were no more ‘little men’ until she had Teddy. By then, Doug had long since moved out. He didn’t even know there was another half brother.”

“And we don’t know what goes on in Nicholson’s head,” Will noted. “We don’t know what demons he faces when he closes his eyes.”

“And here’s the thing about Woods getting the death penalty. Once he’s gone, his secrets—the whereabouts of the remains of those other missing boys—that all goes with him,” Portia said. “I don’t know if I’d want to deny those parents—many of whom were at the cemetery this morning—a chance to recover their sons.”

“That’s a call I wouldn’t want to have to make,”

Jim agreed.

“So where is Rhona now?” Miranda asked.

“She’s in Vegas. She’s being questioned about her sons—it remains to be seen whether or not she’ll admit to anything. So far she has not. She has a lawyer, though, and his attitude is, ‘bring your charges or leave her alone.’ He also hinted that he’s having her evaluated by a psychiatrist. He thinks she has a sexual addiction.”

“Oh, there’s a surefire defense.” Miranda rolled her eyes.

“Maybe in time Sheldon will change his mind and will agree to testify against his mother,” Jim said, “and maybe someday, Doug will face the truth and be willing to talk about it.”

“It won’t feel
done
to me until she’s behind bars,”

Portia told them. “There won’t be any justice until she’s convicted of her crimes.”

“You know how it is, though. You can’t always make it right. You just do your best, then put it be hind you and move on to your next case.” Miranda paused. “You are staying around for another case, right?”

“Staying around?” Jim turned to Portia. “Is there some question of whether or not you’re staying around?”

“No.” Portia shook her head. “I’m here and I plan on staying. John was right. The fight is the same. I’m on board. One hundred percent.”

“Great. We need you,” Will told her. “Counterterrorism has thinned our ranks and has taken some of our best agents. We’re happy to have one of them come back to us.”

“In that case, welcome home, Sister Love.” Miranda raised her glass.

“On that note of reconciliation…” Will got up and went to the desk and picked up a flat FedEx envelope that he handed to Portia. “This came after you left for the memorial service this morning.”

Portia looked at the return address. “It’s from Jack,” she said.

“We know.” Miranda took another sip of her wine.

Portia opened the envelope and took out a smaller one, from which she removed a handwritten note.

She sat quietly and read both sides.

“He’s going to be in New York next month,” she told them. “Madison Square Garden.”

“I heard about that,” Will said. “The tickets sold out in something like twenty minutes. You should see what they’re selling for on the Internet. Astronomical.”

“Wonder what I could get for these little beauties.” Portia held up the envelope.

“Are they what I think they are?” Will asked.

“An Evening with Jack Marlowe,” Portia read. “Four in the front row. Plus backstage passes, hotel reservations, limo service to and from, and dinner with Jack after the show.”

Will bit the back of his hand, and Portia laughed.

“He’d like you to be there,” Portia said to Miranda. “What do you say?”

Miranda looked at Will. “It’s up to you, babe,” he told her.

“Oh, crap, maybe it’s time,” Miranda said. “Tell him I’ll be there.”

Will cleared his throat meaningfully.

“
We’ll
be there,” she corrected herself.

“Yes!” A jubilant Will pumped a triumphant fist in the air.

Quiet until now, Jim asked Portia, “Would I be out of line asking how you rate front-row seats and backstage passes to see Jack Marlowe?”

“He’s our father,” Portia told him.

“Jack Marlowe. Mad Jack Marlowe?” His eyebrows rose in surprise.

“Yes,” Portia and Miranda both said at the same time.

“Jack Marlowe is your
father
?” he asked as if he wasn’t sure he understood.

Both women nodded.

“Are you going to explain that?”

“Someday.” Portia smiled.

Jim turned to Portia. “Any other bombshells? Family secrets? Skeletons in the closet? Anything else I don’t know about you?”

“Oh, there’s lots.” Portia grinned. “Stick around.”

He lifted her hand and kissed the inside of her wrist.

“Count on it.”

Read on to catch an exclusive sneak peek at

Goodbye Again

the highly anticipated second novel in the Mercy Street Foundation series from
New York Times
bestselling author Mariah Stewart!

Coming in March 2009 from Ballantine Books

Available wherever books are sold.

I
n southern California, a woman leaned closer to her television and listened with great interest to the midday press conference she’d found by accident while she was channel surfing, wasting time until she had to pick up her daughter at summer camp. Intrigued, she went to the Mercy Street Foundation website and read about Robert Magellan’s latest brainstorm. Using Magellan Express, the Internet search engine he’d developed and later sold for a king’s ransom, she typed in
Conroy, PA
, and found it to be a small, working-class city surrounded by farms and gently rolling hills. She studied the photographs, and liked what she saw. Returning to the website for the Foundation, she filled out the online application for employment.

Fifteen minutes later, she was still deliberating whether to submit the app, when the sound of a slamming car door drew her attention to the street outside. In this mostly blue collar neighborhood, there was little traffic during the afternoon hours. She rose and peered through the front window, and her blood froze in her veins. A late-model car was parked directly across from her house, and two men were standing on her front lawn. Instinctively, she knew what they were there for, even if she did not know their names.

Turning back to the laptop, she hit
SEND
.

Almost without thinking, she ran up the steps and into her daughter’s room, where she grabbed a few things she knew they could not leave behind, then slipped back downstairs. The men were still standing on the front lawn, debating, perhaps, the likelihood of finding her home in the middle of the day. She picked up her laptop from the sofa and hurried into the kitchen. Grabbing her handbag from the counter, she checked for her Glock, stuffed her daughter’s things in with it, opened a drawer and searched quickly for her checkbook, then quietly passed through the back door into the yard.

She’d been warned that this day was coming. She just hadn’t expected it to be so soon.

Her heart pounding, she ran the length of the backyard to the alley behind her house where she’d parked her car. Driving carefully to make certain she was not being followed, she took a roundabout way to her daughter’s day camp. She parked on a side street, out of view of the front of the building, took a deep calming breath, and entered through a side door, just in case.

Once inside, she waved to the head counselor, indicating that she’d arrived to pick up her daughter.

“Hey, you’re early today,” the counselor said.

“Just a little.” She searched the group for her child.

“Chloe, your mommy’s here,” the counselor called into the next room.

A tiny girl with dark curls and yellow paint on her clothes skipped through the doorway.

“Can I go home with Natalie today?” The little girl flung herself onto her mother’s legs and held on. “Please?”

“Not today, sweetie,” her mother replied softly. “Go get your things and tell Natalie maybe another day.”

“Tomorrow?”

“We’ll see.”

“‘We’ll see’ means no.” Chloe pouted.

“It means, we’ll see what tomorrow brings. And we will. So go get your things now and—”

“I have my things. There, by the door.” The child pointed to the pile of backpacks.

“Say good-bye to your counselor, then, and let’s go.”

“Bye, Miss Maria. Bye, Natalie. Bye, Kelly.” The little girl’s voice trailed off as she picked up her belongings. Reaching up to hold her mother’s hand, she babbled brightly all the way to the car.

“Are we going home?” Chloe asked as she strapped herself into her seat.

“We’re going to Aunt Nikki’s for a while.”

“Are we eating dinner there?”

“We might even stay all night.”

“Yay! I get to play with Mr. Mustache.” Chloe’s small feet kicked the seat gleefully. “He’s my favorite cat in the whole entire world.”

“He’s a pretty special cat, all right,” her mother agreed.

“Mommy, are you having a bad day?”

“Why? Do I look like I’m having a bad day?”

“You’re not smiling.”

She forced the biggest smile she could muster.

“Better?” she asked.

“Better,” Chloe agreed.

She took the long way to her friend Nicole’s house, and parked two blocks away. Knowing that cell phones can be tracked, she opened the glove box and set it inside. She gathered up the things she’d brought with her, and locked the door. She’d have to remember to ask Nikki to have the car towed to the police impound lot for safekeeping.

“Why do we have to walk so far?” Chloe grumbled as she trudged along, lugging her backpack.

“Because it’s a good day for a walk, and we want to see what we can see.”

“It’s cold,” Chloe complained.

“Then we’ll cross and walk on the sunny side of the street.” She remembered there used to be a song about that, but she couldn’t remember the words. Someone used to sing it to her, long ago, but she wasn’t sure who. “But we’re almost there already. See? Just three more houses and we’re there.”

They crossed the street and walked up the drive way to the backyard.

“Her car’s not here. She isn’t home.” Chloe looked as if she were about to cry.

“She’ll be here soon.”

“What if she isn’t? We’ll have to walk all the way back to the car…” Chloe’s eyes widened dramatically at the thought.

“She said she’d be home by…oh, there she is, see? I told you.”

The blue and white Crown Victoria pulled slowly into the driveway, parked, and a tall woman in her early forties got out. If she was surprised to see she had visitors, Chief Nicole Jenkins of the Silver Hills, California, police department didn’t show it.

“Hey, cuteness,” she called to Chloe. “What’s happening?”

“I’m happening,” Chloe grinned.

“You bet your buttons you are.” She kissed the top of the child’s head, looking over it as if trying to read her friend’s expression. “Come on inside. Let’s see what old Mr. Mustache is up to. I’ll bet he’s sleeping like a big old slug.”

“Mommy said we might eat dinner here and maybe sleep here, too.” Chloe dropped her backpack inside the door and took off in search of the cat.

“Mi casa es su casa,”
her Aunt Nikki told her.

“What?” Chloe turned to ask.

“It means my house is your house. It means you are welcome to stay as long as you’d like.”

“Yay.” Chloe grinned. “Does that mean your cat is my cat, too?”

No words had yet been exchanged between the two women. It wasn’t until after Chloe was sleeping snugly in the guest bedroom, the old gray tom curled up contentedly beside her, that Nikki handed her old friend a glass of wine and said, “Okay, spill.”

“I brought in a hooker this morning for solicitation.”

“And that would be news because…?”

“She offered to trade some information with me in exchange for not booking her.”

“By the look on your face, I’d say she had something big to trade.” Nikki tucked her legs under her on the sofa.

“She told me that Anthony Navarro knows that the child I adopted four years ago is his daughter, and he’s coming after her.” She nodded slowly. “I’d say that was big.”

“You think she knows what she’s talking about?”

“You think there’s any chance she could have made that up and just coincidentally got the facts right?”

“Okay, so we pick him up…”

“First, you have to find him. Nik, you’ve been after him for years, and you haven’t come close.”

“So we stake out your house and we wait for him to show. In the meantime, you and Chloe stay here.”

“He won’t be coming himself. He won’t have to. He’s offered twenty-five thousand dollars to the person who brings him his daughter.”

Nikki whistled. “Jesus. He’s serious.”

“As a heart attack.”

“So we pick up whoever he sends—”

“They’ll just keep on coming, Nikki. He wants his daughter.”

“Why?”

“The word on the street is, two years ago he had measles. It left him sterile. No more baby Navarros.”

“So he wants the one he had with…wait a minute. How did he find out who adopted her? Tameka died while she was in prison. The court terminated his rights because he never showed up for any of the hearings. How all of a sudden does he know who has his kid?”

“He bribed someone at children’s services. This gal this morning, she knew the whole story, Nik. She even knew the name of Chloe’s birth mother.”

“Well, shit.” Nikki stood and began to pace. After a moment, she said, “Okay, we do this. We stake out your house—”

“You’ll have to get in line. It’s already being staked out.”

“You know this for certain?”

“I saw them. Two of them, parked right across the street from my house. Bold little bastards, they thought nothing of walking right up onto my lawn.”

“When was this?”

“They were there when I left to pick up Chloe. Which is why I left when I did, and why I came here instead of going home.”

“You think Navarro sent them?”

“I’d bet my life on it. I won’t, however, bet Chloe’s.”

Nikki reached for the radio she had strapped onto her waistband, but her friend stopped her.

“Uh-uh. It won’t do any good, Nik. It won’t stop until he gets her. He’ll get her at her school or he’ll have someone come into the house in the middle of the night, but he will get her.” She shook her head. “As long as we’re here, and he knows we’re here, it won’t stop. There aren’t enough police in this part of the state to take on his whole family, and he won’t care how many of us or how many of them die.”

“So we call in the FBI.”

“Nikki, the FBI has been after him for longer than you have.”

“So what are you going to do?”

“Let me tell you what I saw on TV this afternoon.” She related what she’d heard and what she’d learned from the Mercy Street Foundation website.

“You’re thinking about applying?”

“I already did, online.”

“You’re just going to pack up and move east?”

“No time to pack.” She shook her head. “I don’t dare go back to the house, Nik. I have to protect my daughter. No way can I let that animal or any of his relatives get within a country mile of her.”

“Give me a few days to see what we can do.”

“There’s nothing you can do. No one’s gotten close to him, ever. No one knows where he is. He has a huge network, his brothers, his cousins, his uncles. We’re talking about one of the biggest drug families in southern California.”

“Sooner or later—”

“Later will be too late for my daughter. I can’t give her up to the kind of life she’d have, growing up as the daughter of a major drug dealer.”

“So you move across the country, you think he won’t be able to find you?”

“He won’t be looking for Emme Caldwell.”

“You’d change your name?”

“My
name
?” she snorted. “What’s my name, Nik? I don’t even know what my real name is.”

Nikki held her head in her hands. “You know that Emme Caldwell died two years ago.”

“Robert Magellan won’t know that.”

“He will when he checks her references.”

“That would be you.”

Nikki fell silent.

“I know it’s a lot to ask. If you’re not comfortable with it, God knows, I’ll understand. I can reapply, with a different name.”

“You already applied as Emme?”

“Yes.”

“Well, that pretty much seals the deal.”

“I know. I should have thought this through a little more. It’s just that, after hearing all this from that hooker this morning, then going off my shift and seeing this press conference on TV, then those two goons were outside my house…” She blew out a long stream of air. “It just seemed like a sign, like someone was telling me something. Anyway, it’s going to be okay, Nik. I’ll come up with something else.”

“It’s not okay,” Nikki told her. “You’re the best friend I ever had. You saved my life twice in the past five years. I can save yours this once. Besides, if anything happened to you or to that precious girl…”

A chill ran through Nikki, and she visibly shivered. They both knew she’d seen firsthand what happened to those who crossed the Navarro family in the past.

“Just tell me what you want me to do.”