The Stolen Ones (9 page)

After a few minutes or so, they heard the washer or dryer beep, signaling the end of a cycle. When the woman did not bring her basket of laundry up the stairs, Byrne went to the top of the stairs, peered down.

‘Ms Delacroix, do you need a hand with the laundry?’

No answer.

‘Ms Delacroix?’

Still no reply. Byrne looked at Jessica, then back down the stairs. ‘Is everything okay, ma’am?’

Nothing.

‘I’m coming down.’

Jessica heard Byrne begin to descend the steps. There was no other sound in the house. Jessica then heard Byrne call the woman’s name one more time. She heard no response. Byrne returned from the basement.

‘She’s not down there,’ he said.

‘What do you mean she’s not down there?’

‘I mean she’s not down there. There’s only the one main room and two smaller rooms, and I cleared them all. She’s not there.’

‘No exterior doors?’

‘None.’

Instinctively, Jessica looked at the ceiling, at the second floor. ‘You think she went upstairs?’

‘It’s possible.’

‘Not really,’ Jessica said. ‘We would have seen her make the turn on the steps. We would have heard her.’

‘You would think.’

‘Is her laundry still in the basement?’

Byrne nodded. ‘It’s in the basket, still warm.’ He walked over to the stairwell. ‘I’m going to check upstairs,’ he said. ‘This makes no sense.’

While Byrne went upstairs Jessica checked the back door. It was closed and locked with a deadbolt. There was no key in the lock. The curtains on the door were open. Jessica moved to the front of the house, opened the front door, stepped out on the stoop. She looked both ways on the street. There were no pedestrians.

When Jessica heard Byrne return to the living room she stepped inside, closed the door. ‘Anything?’

Byrne shook his head. ‘She’s not here.’

The two detectives stared at each other for a few moments, lost in their own thoughts. It wasn’t as if they had just wandered into the woman’s house uninvited. Jessica had talked to her, and the woman seemed receptive to an interview.

All told, it was fewer than two minutes between the phone call and the time they entered the house. The woman’s own brother had run interference for them, so it wasn’t exactly a sandbagging, or an interrogation.

That said, the woman and her role in all this was just nudged the slightest bit from witness to person of interest.

‘Do you want to call him or should I?’ Byrne asked.

Byrne was, of course, talking about James Delacroix.

‘I’ll call him,’ Jessica said.

She took out her iPhone, found Delacroix’s number, called it. Within a few rings he answered.

‘Hello?’

‘Mr Delacroix, this is Jessica Balzano once again. Is your sister there, by any chance?’

Pause. ‘My sister? Here?’

‘Yes, sir. Has she stopped by in the last few minutes?’

‘What do you mean? I thought you were at her house.’

‘We are,’ Jessica said. ‘Before we were able to talk to her, it seems, she slipped out.’

The line was silent for a few uneasy moments. ‘I don’t understand.’

‘Neither do we, Mr Delacroix. Would it be possible for you come over here please?’

Another pause, longer than the first. Jessica gripped her phone tightly. Before she could lose her temper, Delacroix said: ‘I’ll be right there.’

While waiting for James Delacroix, Jessica and Byrne poked around the woman’s belongings. In terms of procedure, this was not technically a crime scene, not by any means, and they were not permitted by law to do any kind of search, even a cursory search that involved the opening of drawers, closets, and the like. But, being two veteran detectives, the temptations were all but overwhelming.

‘Do you think she’s in the wind?’ Jessica asked.

‘Maybe, but it doesn’t add up. When you talked to her on the phone you didn’t mention Freitag’s name, did you?’

‘No,’ Jessica said. ‘I didn’t.’

‘And neither did her brother when he called her. So she would have no way of knowing what we wanted to talk about.’

‘Unless, of course, she had something to hide regarding her relationship with Freitag, or had some knowledge of what happened to him.’

Byrne absorbed this for a moment.

A few minutes later James Delacroix came walking up the steps, opened the door to his sister’s house, and slipped inside.

‘Sorry it took me so long,’ he said. ‘I made a few calls to Joan’s friends.’

‘Any luck?’ Jessica asked.

Delacroix shook his head. ‘No. She has a friend, Molly Fowler, who lives two streets over. Joan has been known to cut through the vacant lot across the street when she visits Molly. I thought that’s what happened. But Molly said she hasn’t seen Joan in a few weeks.’

‘And no one else has seen her or heard from her?’

‘No,’ he said. ‘I also called her phone twice. I got her voicemail.’

‘Did it ring a few times or click over to voicemail immediately?’ Jessica asked this in the hope of determining whether the woman was on her phone at the time. With many systems, if you were on the phone, it routed to voicemail after one ring. Sometimes without ringing at all.

‘It rang a few times,’ Delacroix said. ‘You didn’t hear it ring in the house, did you?’

Jessica shook her head. ‘No.’

At this, Delacroix put his hands on his hips, glanced at the floor, adrift in thought.

‘Has she ever done anything like this before?’ Byrne asked.

Delacroix looked up. ‘What do you mean by
anything like this
?’ he replied, with more than a little hostility.

‘What I mean, Mr Delacroix, is perhaps your sister is so busy that she forgot she had another appointment when she agreed to speak with us. I meant nothing more.’

Delacroix maintained his rigid posture. ‘If you’re asking if my sister is senile, or has dementia, or early onset Alzheimer’s, the answer to all three questions is no. She’s sharp as a tack. Sharper than I am. She does my taxes.’

‘Good,’ Byrne said. ‘That’s what we figured. Had to ask.’

Delacroix softened his position a bit. ‘So, can you walk me through this again? You came over here and then what?’

‘When we came over the door was open, we pushed on it, knocked on the jamb.’

‘Did my sister come to the door?’

‘No,’ Jessica said. ‘I called out her name, identified myself. She yelled up from the basement, and said she was just finishing up with her laundry.’

‘So you didn’t actually meet her.’

It was more a statement than a question. And more than a little accusatory. ‘No, sir, we didn’t,’ Jessica replied. ‘She said she would be up in a few minutes and for us to make ourselves at home.’

‘Do you mind if I take a look downstairs?’ Delacroix asked.

‘Of course not,’ Byrne said.

Without any hesitation James Delacroix quickly crossed the living room, ran noisily down the steps. ‘Joanie?’ he yelled. No response. Jessica could hear the man moving things around down there. A few moments later he trundled back up the steps.

‘Did you do look upstairs?’ Delacroix asked.

‘Yes,’ Jessica said. ‘We did.’

Delacroix sat down heavily in one of the armchairs. ‘I don’t like this,’ he said. ‘This isn’t right. This is unlike Joan. I don’t like this at all.’

‘Mr Delacroix, there’s absolutely no reason to suspect that anything might be wrong with your sister,’ Byrne said. ‘There are probably a dozen plausible explanations as to why she stepped out.’

‘You don’t understand. I know some people think my sister is a little demanding, and that perhaps she has some sort of…
mean
streak, but it’s not true. And the one thing about Joan you should know is that she takes her responsibilities very seriously. If she has an appointment, even a casual appointment, she is there. When she said she would talk to you, she meant it. She wouldn’t just walk out.’

Unless she had something to hide,
Jessica thought.

Delacroix tapped his fingers on the arms of the chair. ‘At what point does a person become a missing person?’ he asked.

‘We’re a long way away from that,’ Byrne said.

Delacroix stopped tapping. ‘What should we do?’

‘What we should do now is take a quick walk around the neighborhood. If I remember correctly there are a few stores and small restaurants in these blocks. It’s entirely possible your sister popped out to a bodega for a bottle of fabric softener, or a coffee to go, and is on her way back right now.’

The look on Delacroix’s face said that he did not believe this.

‘We’ll need to lock the place up,’ Byrne added. ‘Do you have keys?’

For a moment it appeared the question had not registered. Then, James Delacroix snapped back, stood up, fished around in his pocket. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I have keys for the front and back.’

‘The back door is a deadbolt key lock, am I right about that?’ Jessica asked.

Delacroix nodded. ‘Yes, Joan always keeps it locked, and she never leaves the key in the lock. She has this vision of someone punching through the glass, taking the key out and opening the door from the outside. She always keeps that deadbolt key in a drawer somewhere.’ He held up a key ring. ‘But I have a copy.’

Jessica had tried the back door, found it secured. That’s why this disappearance was so mysterious. Joan Delacroix would have had to come up the stairs from the basement, walked down the short hallway to the kitchen, through the kitchen to the back door, turned the key in the lock, stepped through the door, and locked the door from the outside, all without making a sound. It wasn’t possible.

‘I’m going to check the back door, then we’ll go,’ Delacroix said.

As James Delacroix walked into the kitchen Jessica met Byrne’s gaze. What had begun as a routine interview had just ratcheted up the investigation one notch. Maybe two.

Having checked the rear entrance, Delacroix walked back into the living room.

‘What about a car?’ Byrne asked. ‘Does she own a car?’

‘No,’ Delacroix said. ‘She takes SEPTA. If it’s a long distance, she borrows my car, or I drive her.’

‘Did you check to see if your car is gone?’

‘Of course.’

Jessica, Byrne and James Delacroix walked the neighborhood, covering five streets in all directions. No one had seen Joan Delacroix.

It had now been a little over an hour since the woman had simply vanished.

While Jessica and Byrne were waiting for James Delacroix to return they heard a scream coming from behind the woman’s row house.

‘
Oh my God!
’

Jessica and Byrne ran to the corner, around to the alley. There they found James Delacroix leaning against the wall, a few doors down from his sister’s house, white as a ghost.

‘God
no
,’ he said.

Jessica was just about to ask what he was talking about, when the man pointed to the ground. There, on the cracked concrete, just a few feet away, was a pearl clip-on earring.

Byrne moved forward, put a hand on James Delacroix’s shoulder, easing the man back a step or two. ‘Are you saying that this belongs to your sister, Mr Delacroix?’

The man nodded, began to hyperventilate.

Jessica stepped forward, knelt down. The earring was an inexpensive gold tone metal, with a swirl of what were most likely faux pearls. It wasn’t particularly stylish, or expensive, but the earring itself was not what drew Jessica’s attention, or kept it there, bringing with it a chill that skittered down her spine.

The earring was covered in blood.

With sector cars from the 22nd District parked at either end of the alley, and a patrol officer at the front door to Joan Delacroix’s house, Jessica and Byrne tried to walk James Delacroix through his sister’s daily routine. Understandably, the man was all but inconsolable, and therefore not much help in the process.

Every few seconds, as they stood chatting in his living room, Delacroix cast an expectant glance toward the front window.

‘There’s no reason to believe your sister is seriously injured, Mr Delacroix,’ Byrne said. ‘Let’s take this one step at a time.’

Delacroix looked up, his frightened eyes finding Byrne. ‘I don’t know what to do. Should I try calling her again?’

‘We can handle that. What’s your sister’s number?’

Delacroix told him. While Byrne stepped away to try the call, Jessica continued. She pointed to the picture on the wall. ‘Do you have another picture of your sister besides this one?’ she asked.

‘A picture? Why?’

‘We’d like to make copies and get it out to patrol officers in the district.’

Delacroix got up from the chair, crossed to the dining room. He opened one of the drawers in the hutch, pulled out an eight-by-ten photo, handed it to Jessica. In it, Joan Delacroix wore a nurse’s uniform.

‘How recent is this picture?’ Jessica asked.

‘I don’t know,’ Delacroix said. ‘Maybe ten years old.’

‘Do you have anything more recent?’

At this, Byrne stepped into the room from the kitchen. He shook his head. He had not gotten hold of the woman.

‘No, I…’ Delacroix began. ‘We don’t do a lot of things where we take pictures any more.’

‘That’s okay,’ Jessica said. ‘This picture will be fine.’

‘Wait,’ he said. ‘I do have a recent picture. It’s on my laptop. I took it with my phone at a fundraiser a month or so ago. Joan didn’t want to be in it, but I snapped it anyway.’

Delacroix took his laptop out of its case, connected it to a printer that was on the buffet in the dining room. He tapped a few keys. Moments later, the photograph began to print. It was a high-quality color print, followed by a second copy. Delacroix handed one each to Jessica and Byrne.

As Delacroix was going to close his laptop, he suddenly stopped. ‘I just thought of something.’

‘What’s that?’ Jessica asked.

‘Her phone. The one we’ve been calling.’

‘What about it?’

‘I bought her an iPhone last year. She really doesn’t use it much, but she always has it with her.’

‘I’m not following.’

‘We set up this app on the phone. Joan sometimes loses track of her phone, and she’s pretty paranoid about leaving it somewhere and having someone else have access to her data.’

‘You’re saying this app is set up?’

‘Yes,’ Delacroix said. ‘Find My iPhone. If she has it with her, we can find where she is.’

Delacroix sat down at the dining-room table. He tapped a few keys on his laptop, navigated to the right screen. He put in an ID and a password. Moments later another screen displayed a map of the greater Philadelphia area. Delacroix tapped a few more keys. The area of the map became a section of the Northeast.

In the center was a small icon.

When Jessica saw the location her blood ran cold. She glanced at Byrne. He saw it too. Without a word spoken they both knew what they had to do. Byrne would stay with Delacroix; she would make the call.

Jessica stepped out of the row house, onto the street. She got on the phone. In seconds she had Dana Westbrook on the line.

‘What’s up, Jess?’

‘Sarge, we need sector cars at Priory Park.’

‘How many?’ Westbrook asked.

‘All of them.’