Where Are the Children? Read online

  “Tell him what?”

  “He knows . . . he’s beginning to know. . . .”

  “Know what, Nancy?”

  “I’m going away . . . take the children. . . . Have to go away. . . .”

  “Didn’t you love Carl, Nancy?”

  “I should. He said, ‘Happy birthday.’ . . . Lisa so quiet. I promised her we’d make a birthday cake for me . . . She and Peter and I. . . . We’d go out and get candles and chocolate for it. It’s a bad day . . . starting to rain. . . . Lisa may be getting sick. . . .”

  “Did Carl go to school that day?”

  “Yes. . . . He phoned. . . . I said we were going to shopping center . . . that after that I was going to stop at the doctor’s to let him see Lisa. . . . I was worried. I said I’d go to the Mart at eleven . . . after the children’s television program. . . .”

  “What did Carl say when you told him you were worried about Lisa?”

  “He said it was a bad day . . . if Lisa was getting a cold, he didn’t want her out. I said I’d leave them in the car while I shopped. . . . They wanted to help with the cake. . . . They were excited about my birthday. They never had fun. . . . I shouldn’t have let Carl be so strict . . . my fault. . . . I’ll talk to doctor . . . have to ask doctor . . . about Lisa . . . about me. . . . Why am I always so tired? . . . Why do I take so much medicine? . . . Rob made children laugh. . . . They were so different around him. . . . Children should laugh. . . .”

  “Were you in love with Rob, Nancy?”

  “No. . . . I was in cage . . . had to get out . . . wanted to talk to someone. . . . Then Rob said what I said to him. . . . Wasn’t like that . . . wasn’t like that. . . .” Her voice began to rise.

  Lendon’s voice became soothing. “Then you took the children to the store at eleven.”

  “Yes. It’s raining. . . . I told children to stay in car. . . . They said they would. . . . Such good little children . . . I left them in back seat of car. . . . Never saw them again . . . never . . . never . . .”

  “Nancy, were there many cars in the lot?”

  “No. . . . No one I knew in store. . . . So windy . . . cold . . . not many people. . . .”

  “How long were you in the store?”

  “Not long . . . ten minutes. . . . Couldn’t find birthday candles. . . . Ten minutes. . . . Hurry back to car. . . . The children gone.” Her voice was incredulous.

  “What did you do, Nancy?”

  “Don’t know what to do. . . . Maybe they went to buy present for me. . . . Peter has money. . . . They wouldn’t leave except for that. . . . They’re so good. . . . That might make them leave. . . . Maybe in other store . . . the dime store. . . . Look in candy store . . . look in gift shop . . . hardware store . . . look back at car. . . . Look, look for children. . . .”

  “Did you ask anyone if they’d been seen?”

  “No. . . . Mustn’t let Carl know. He’ll be angry. . . . Don’t want him to punish children. . . .”

  “So you checked all the stores in the shopping center.”

  “Maybe they came looking for me . . . got lost. . . . Look in parking lot. . . . Maybe they couldn’t find car again. . . . Begin calling them. . . . Frightened. . . . Someone said we’ll call police and your husband. . . . I said, ‘Don’t tell my husband, please.’ . . . Woman told about that at trial. . . . I just didn’t want Carl to be angry. . . .”

  “Why didn’t you tell this at your trial?”

  “Mustn’t. . . . Lawyer said, Don’t say Carl was angry. . . . Don’t say you argued on phone. . . . Lisa didn’t wet the bed . . . bed dry. . . .”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Bed dry. . . . Why did Carl hurt her? Why? Doesn’t matter. . . . Nothing matters. . . . Children gone. . . . Michael . . . Missy gone too. . . . Look for them . . . have to look for them. . . .”

  “Tell us about looking for Michael and Missy, this morning.”

  “I must look at the lake. . . . Maybe they went to the lake. . . . Maybe they fell into the water. . . . Hurry, hurry. . . . Something is in the lake. . . . Something is underwater. . . .”

  “What was underwater, Nancy?”

  “Red, something red. . . . Maybe it’s Missy’s mitten . . . I must get it. . . . Water is so cold. . . . I can’t reach it. . . . It’s not a mitten. . . . It’s cold, cold. . . .”

  “What did you do?”

  “Children aren’t here. . . . Get out . . . get out of water. . . . So cold . . . the beach . . . I fell on the beach. . . . He was there . . . in the woods . . . watching me. . . . I saw him there . . . watching me. . . .”

  Jed Coffin stood up. Ray jumped forward convulsively. Lendon held up a warning hand. “Who was there, Nancy?” he asked. “Tell us who was there.”

  “A man . . . I know him. . . . It was . . . it was . . . Rob Legler. . . . Rob Legler was there. . . . He was hiding . . . looking at me.” Her voice rose, fell; her eyelids fluttered open, then closed again slowly. Ray paled. Dorothy inhaled sharply. So the two cases were linked.

  “The amytal’s about worn off. She’ll be coming to soon.” Lendon stood up, grimacing against the cramped sensation in his knees and thighs.

  “Doctor, may I speak with you and Jonathan outside?” Jed’s voice was noncommittal.

  “Stay with her, Ray,” Lendon cautioned. “She’ll probably wake up any minute.”

  In the dining room, Jed faced Lendon and Jonathan. “Doctor, how long is this to go on?” Jed’s face was impenetrable.

  “I don’t think we should attempt to question Nancy any further.”

  “What have we gotten from all this other than the fact that she was afraid of her husband; that she obviously did not love him and that Rob Legler may have been at the lake this morning?”

  Lendon stared. “Good God, didn’t you hear what that girl was saying? Don’t you know what you were listening to?”

  “I only know that I haven’t heard one thing that will help me discharge my responsibility to find the Eldredge children. I heard Nancy Eldredge blaming herself for her mother’s death, which is natural in a case where a visit to a child in school results in a parent’s death. Her reactions to her first husband sound pretty hysterical. She’s trying to blame him for the fact that she wanted out of their marriage.”

  “What impression did you get of Carl Harmon?” Lendon asked quietly.

  “One of those possessive guys who marries a younger girl and wants the upper hand. Hell, he isn’t any different than half the men on the Cape. I can cite you examples of guys who won’t let their wives handle a dime except for food money. I know one who won’t let his wife drive the family car. Another never lets his wife go out at night by herself. This kind of thing is common all over the world. Maybe that’s why that Women’s Lib bunch have something to beef about.”

  “Chief, do you know what pedophilia is?” Lendon asked quietly.

  Jonathan nodded. “That’s what I’ve been thinking,” he said.

  Lendon didn’t give Jed time to answer. “In laymen’s terms, it’s a sexual deviation involving sexual activity of any type with a child who has not yet reached puberty.”

  “How does that fit in here?”

  “It doesn’t . . . not completely. Nancy was eighteen when she married. But in appearance she could look quite childish. Chief, is there any way you can run a check on Carl Harmon’s background?”

  Jed Coffin looked incredulous. When he answered, his voice was trembling with repressed fury. He pointed to the sleet that was beating a steady, sharp staccato against the window. “Doctor,” he said, “do you see and hear that? Somewhere out there two kids are either wandering around freezing or they’re in the hands of God knows what kind of kook and maybe they’re dead. But it’s my job to find them and find them now. We have one distinct lead to all this. That is that both Nancy Eldredge and a gasoline attendant have placed Rob Legler, a pretty unsavory character, in the immediate vicinity. That’s the kind of information I can do something about.” His voice bit off the words s
cornfully. “And you’re asking me to waste my time running a check on a dead man to prove some cockeyed theory.”

  The telephone rang. Bernie Mills, who’d been standing unobtrusively in the room, hurried to answer it. Now they were talking about running a check on Nancy’s first husband. Wait till he told this to Jean. He picked up the phone quickly. It was the station house. “Put the Chief on.” Sergeant Poler at the desk spat the words.

  Lendon and Jonathan watched while Chief Coffin listened, then asked quick, short questions. “How long ago? Where?”

  The men looked at each other silently. Lendon realized he was praying—an inarticulate, fervent prayer that the message was not bad news about the children.

  Jed slapped the receiver back into the cradle and turned to them. “Rob Legler checked into the Adams Port Motel right here in town around ten-thirty this morning. A car we believe he stole has just been smashed up on Route 6A, but he got away. He’s probably heading for the mainland. We’ve got an all-out search for him and I’m going over to direct it. I’ll leave Officer Mills here. We’ll get that Legler bird, and when we do, I think we’ll really have the answer to what happened to those kids.”

  After the door had closed behind the Chief, Jonathan spoke to Lendon. “What do you make of this so far?” he asked.

  Lendon waited a long minute before answering. I am too close to this, he thought. I see Priscilla at that phone . . . calling me. Carl Harmon left the table after her. Where did he go? Did he overhear what Priscilla said to me? Nancy said her dress was smeared with grease. Hadn’t she been saying in effect that she believed Carl’s hand must have been smeared and when he put his hand on her shoulder, her dress got dirty? Hadn’t she been trying to say that she believed Carl Harmon might have done something to Priscilla’s car? Lendon saw a violent pattern forming. But what purpose would this knowledge serve with Carl Harmon in his grave?

  Jonathan said, “If your mind is running in the same direction as mine, going back to the disappearance of the Harmon children won’t help us. You’re thinking of the father.”

  “Yes,” Lendon said.

  “And since he is dead, we turn to Rob Legler, the man sent into the home by Carl Harmon and the one witness whose testimony convicted Nancy. How accurate is her statement about this morning under the amytal?”

  Lendon shook his head. “I can’t be sure. It’s been known that even under sedation, some patients can resist and suppress. But I believe that she saw—or believes she saw—Rob Legler at Maushop Lake.”

  Jonathan said, “And at ten-thirty this morning he checked into a motel alone.”

  Lendon nodded.

  Without speaking again, the two men turned and looked out the window in the direction of the lake.

  22

  THE FIVE-O’CLOCK TELEVISION NEWS gave little coverage to the Mideastern crisis, spiraling inflation, the automobile workers’ threatened strike or the dismal standing of the New England Patriots. Most of the half hour broadcast was devoted to the disappearance of the Eldredge children and old film clips from the sensational Harmon murder case.

  The pictures that had appeared in the Cape Cod Community News were reproduced. Special attention was focused on the one of Rob Legler leaving the San Francisco courthouse with Professor Carl Harmon after Nancy Harmon’s conviction for the willful murder of her children.

  The commentator’s voice was especially urgent when that picture was shown. “Rob Legler has been positively identified as being in the vicinity of the Eldredge home this morning. If you believe you have seen this man, please call this special number at once: KL five, three eight hundred. The lives of the Eldredge children may be at stake. If you believe you have any information which may lead to the person or persons responsible for the children’s disappearance, we urge you to call this number: KL five, three eight hundred. Let me repeat it again: KL five, three eight hundred.”

  The Wigginses had closed their store when the power failed and were home in time to catch the broadcast on their battery-operated television set.

  “That fellow looks kind of familiar,” Mrs. Wiggins said.

  “You’d say that anyhow,” her husband snorted.

  “No . . . not really. There’s something about him . . . the way he bends forward . . . Certainly is nothing to look at.”

  Jack Wiggins stared at his wife. “I was just thinking he’s the type that might turn a young girl’s head.”

  “Him? Oh, you mean the young one. I’m talking about the other fellow—the professor.”

  Jack looked at his wife condescendingly. “This is why I say women don’t make good witnesses and never should be jurors. Nobody’s talking about that Professor Harmon. He committed suicide. They’re talking about the Legler fellow.”

  Mrs. Wiggins bit her lip. “I see. Well, guess you’re right. It’s just . . . oh, well . . .”

  Her husband got up heavily. “When’ll dinner be ready?”

  “Oh, not long. But it’s hard to worry about food when you think about little Michael and Missy . . . God knows where. . . . You think you just want to help them. I don’t care what they say about Nancy Eldredge. She never came in the store much, but when she did, I liked to watch her with her kids. She had such a nice way with them—never upset, never cranky, the way half these young mothers are. It makes our little annoyances so unimportant, you know.”

  “What little annoyances do we have?” His tone was sharply suspicious.

  “Well . . .” Mrs. Wiggins bit her lip. They’d had so much trouble with shoplifters this past summer. Jack got so upset even discussing it. That was why, all day, it just hadn’t seemed worthwhile to tell him that she was absolutely certain that Mr. Parrish had stolen a large can of baby powder from the shelf this morning.

  23

  THE FIVE O’CLOCK NEWS was on in a modest home down the block from St. Francis Xavier Church in Hyannis Port. The family of Patrick Keeney was about to start dinner. All eyes were glued on the small portable set in the crowded junior-size dining room.

  Ellen Keeney shook her head as the picture of Michael and Missy Eldredge filled the screen. Involuntarily, she glanced at her own children—Neil and Jimmy, Deirdre and Kit . . . one . . . two. . . . three . . . four. Whenever she took them to the beach, that was the way it was. She never stopped counting heads. God, don’t let anything happen to them, ever, please. That was her prayer.

  Ellen was a daily communicant at St. Francis Church and usually went to the same Mass as Mrs. Rose Kennedy. She remembered the days after the President and then Bobby were killed when Mrs. Kennedy would come into the church, her face lined with grief but still serene and composed. Ellen never watched her during Mass. Poor lady, she had a right to some privacy somewhere. Often Mrs. Kennedy would smile and nod and sometimes say, “Good morning” if they happened to walk out after Mass at the same moment. How does she stand it? Ellen wondered. How can she stand it? Now she was thinking the same thing. How can Nancy Eldredge stand it? . . . especially when you think that it happened to her before.

  The commentator was talking about the article in the Community News—that the police were trying to track down the author. His words barely registered on Ellen’s mind as she decided that Nancy was not responsible for the death of her children. It simply wasn’t possible. No mother murdered her flesh and blood. She saw Pat looking at her and smiled at him faintly—a communication that said, We are blessed, my dear; we are blessed.

  “He got awful fat,” Neil said.

  Startled, Ellen stared at her oldest child. At seven, Neil worried her. He was so daring, so unpredictable. He had Pat’s dark-blond hair and gray eyes. He was small for his age, and she knew that worried him a little, but from time to time, she reassured him. “Daddy’s tall and your Uncle John’s tall, and someday you will be too.” Still, Neil did look younger than anyone else in his class.

  “Who got fat, dear?” she asked absently, turning her back to gaze at the screen.

  “That man, the one in front. He’s the one w
ho gave me the dollar to ask for his mail at the post office last month. Remember, I showed you the note he wrote when you wouldn’t believe me.”

  Ellen and Pat stared at the screen. They were looking at the picture of Rob Legler following Professor Carl Harmon out of the courtroom.

  “Neil, you’re mistaken. That man has been dead for a long time.”

  Neil looked aggrieved. “See. You never believe me. But when you kept asking me where I got that dollar and I told you, you didn’t believe me either. He’s a lot fatter and his hair’s all gone, but when he leaned out of the station wagon, he had his head kind of pulled down on his neck like that man.”

  The anchorman was saying, “. . . any piece of information, no matter how irrelevant you may consider it.”

  Pat scowled.

  “Why do you look mad, Daddy?” five-year-old Deirdre asked anxiously.

  His face cleared. Neil had said, “like that man.” “I guess because sometimes I realize how hard it is to raise a bunch like you,” he answered, running his hand through her short curly hair, grateful that she was here within his touch. “Turn off the television, Neil,” he ordered his son. “Now, children, before we say grace, we will pray that God sends the Eldredge children safely home.”

  Through the prayer that followed, Ellen’s mind was far away. They had pleaded for any information, no matter how irrelevant it seemed, and Neil had gotten that dollar tip to pick up a letter at General Delivery. She remembered the day exactly: Wednesday, four weeks ago. She remembered the date because there was a parents’ meeting at school that night and she was annoyed that Neil was late for the early dinner. Suddenly she remembered something.

  “Neil, by any chance, do you still have the note the man gave you to show the post office?” she asked. “Didn’t I see you put it in your bank with the dollar?”