Where Are the Children? Page 8

  13

  THE CLATTER OF THE HELICOPTERS pleased him. It reminded him of the last time, when everyone for miles around the University had fanned out looking for the children. He stared out the front window overlooking the bay. The gray water was caked with ice near the jetty. Earlier the radio had spoken of gale warnings and sleet or rain mixed with snow. For once, the weatherman had been right. The wind was whipping the bay into angry whitecaps. He watched as a flock of gulls flew unsteadily in a futile effort to make headway against the wind.

  He carefully consulted the indoor-outdoor thermometer. Twenty-eight degrees out there now—a drop of twenty degrees since the morning. The helicopters and search planes wouldn’t be up much longer in this. There wouldn’t be many searchers out on land either.

  High tide was seven o’clock tonight. At that time he’d take the children up through the attic to the outer balcony they called the widow’s walk. The water at high tide covered the beach below, broke furiously against the retaining wall and then, sucked by the violent undertow, rolled back to sea. That would be the time to drop the children . . . over . . . down . . . They might not be washed in for weeks. . . . But even if they were found in a few days, he’d prepared for that. He’d given them only milk and cookies. He wouldn’t be fool enough to feed them anything that would suggest that a person other than Nancy had fed them a real meal after breakfast. Of course, hopefully they’d be beyond analysis when they were found.

  He chuckled. In the meantime, he had five hours: five long hours to look at the floodlights that were being set up near Nancy’s house and the lake; five hours to be with the children. Even the boy, come to think of it, was a beautiful child . . . such soft skin, and that perfectly formed body.

  But it was the little girl. She looked so much like Nancy . . . that silky, beautiful hair and small, well-formed ears. He turned from the window abruptly. The children were lying together on the couch. The sedative he’d put in the milk had both of them sleeping. The boy’s arm was protectively over his sister. But he didn’t even stir when he picked up the little girl. He’d just take her inside and put her on the bed and undress her. She made no sound as he carefully carried her into the bedroom and laid her down. He went into the bathroom and turned on the faucets in the tub, testing the gushing water until it reached the temperature he wanted. When the tub was filled, he tested the water again with his elbow. A little hotter than it should be, but that was all right. It would cool in a few minutes.

  He sucked in his breath. He was wasting time. Swiftly he opened the door of the medicine cabinet and pulled out the can of baby powder he’d slipped into his coat pocket at Wiggins’ Market this morning. As he was about to close the door, he noticed the little rubber duck poked back behind the shaving cream. He’d forgotten about that . . . why it had been used the last time . . . how appropriate. Laughing softly, he reached for the duck; ran it under cold water, feeling the lack of elasticity and the cracking of the rubber; then tossed it into the tub. It was a good idea to distract children sometimes.

  Grabbing the can of powder, he hurried back into the bedroom. Swiftly his fingers unbuttoned Missy’s jacket and pulled it off. Easily, he slipped the turtleneck polo shirt over her head, bringing her undershirt with it. He sighed—a lingering, groaning sound—and picked up the little girl, hugging her limp body to him. Three years old. Just a beautiful age. She stirred and started to open her eyes. “Mommy, Mommy . . .” It was a weak, lazy cry—so dear, so precious.

  The phone rang.

  Angrily he tightened his grip on the child, and she began to wail—a hopeless, lethargic cry.

  He’d let the phone ring. He never, never got calls. Why now? His eyes narrowed. It might be a call from the town, asking him to volunteer in the search. He’d better answer. It might be suspicious not to answer. He tossed Missy back onto the bed and closed the bedroom door securely before he picked up the phone in the sitting room. “Yes.” He made his voice sound formal and cold.

  “Mr. Parrish, I hope I haven’t disturbed you. This is Dorothy Prentiss of Eldredge Realty. I’m sorry to give you such short notice, but I’ll be bringing a prospective buyer for the house over in twenty minutes. Will you be there or shall I use my passkey to show your apartment?”

  14

  LENDON MILES TURNED right off Route 6A onto Paddock Path. All the way down on the trip from Boston he’d kept his radio at a news station, and most of the news was about Nancy Eldredge and the missing Eldredge children.

  According to the bulletins, Maushop Lake had been divided into sections, but it would take divers at least three days to search it properly. Maushop Lake was filled with underwater ledges. Police Chief Coffin of Adams Port was quoted as explaining that at one point it was possible to walk halfway across the lake and still be in water only to the waist; a few yards away, only five feet from the shore, the water became forty feet deep. The underwater ledges caught and held objects and made the search hazardous and inconclusive. . . .

  The bulletins announced that helicopters, small seaplanes and ground search parties had been out but gale warnings for the Cape were in effect and the air search was being called off.

  At the news that Nancy Eldredge was expected to be taken to Police Headquarters for questioning, Lendon unconsciously accelerated the car. He felt a desperate urgency about getting to Nancy. But he quickly found that he had to reduce his speed. Sleet was glazing the windshield so rapidly that the defroster was having trouble melting the crusting ice.

  When at last he turned into Paddock Path, he had no trouble finding the Eldredge home. There was no mistaking the center of activity on the street. Halfway up the road, a television van was parked across the street from a house that had two police cars stationed in front of it. Private cars lined the road near the television van. Many bore special press identifications.

  The entrance to the semicircular driveway was blocked by one of the police cars. Lendon stopped and waited for a policeman to come over to him. When one did, his tone was brusque. “State your business, please.”

  Lendon had anticipated the question and was ready. He handed out his card with a note scrawled on it. “Please take this to Mrs. Eldredge.”

  The policeman looked uncertain. “If you’ll wait here, Doctor . . . I’ll have to check.” He returned promptly, his attitude subtly less hostile. “I’ll move the squad car out of the way. Park in the driveway and go into the house, sir.”

  From across the street, reporters had been watching the byplay, and they hurried over. One of them thrust a microphone in front of Lendon’s face as he got out of the car.

  “Dr. Miles, may we ask you a few questions?”

  Without waiting for an answer, he went on quickly, “Sir, you are a prominent psychiatrist on the staff of Harvard Medical School. Has the Eldredge family sent for you?”

  “No one has sent for me,” Lendon replied sharply. “I am a friend—was a friend—of Mrs. Eldredge’s mother. I have come here because of personal friendship and that alone.”

  He tried to pass, but was blocked by the microphone-holding reporter. “You say you were a friend of Mrs. Eldredge’s mother. Will you tell us this: Was Nancy Harmon Eldredge ever a patient of yours?”

  “Absolutely not!” Lendon literally shoved his way through the reporters and onto the porch. The front door was being held open by another policeman. “Right in there,” the man said, indicating the room to the right.

  Nancy Eldredge was standing at the fireplace next to a tall young man, undoubtedly her husband. Lendon would have known her anywhere. The finely chiseled nose, the large midnight-blue eyes that looked straight out from under thick lashes, the widow’s peak at the hairline, the profile that was so like Priscilla’s . . .

  Ignoring the openly hostile look of the police officer and the scrutiny of the craggy-faced man at the window, he went directly to Nancy. “I should have come before,” he said.

  The girl’s eyes had a staring quality, but she knew what he meant. “I thought you wo
uld come last time,” she told him—“when mother died. I was so sure you would come. And you didn’t.”

  Expertly, Lendon measured the symptoms of shock that he could see: the enlarged pupils; the rigidity of her body; the low, monotone quality of her voice. He turned to Ray. “I want to help if there’s any possible way,” he said.

  Ray studied him intently and instinctively liked what he saw. “Then as a doctor, try to persuade the Chief here that it would be a disaster to take Nancy to the police station,” he said flatly.

  Nancy stared into Lendon’s face. She felt so detached—as though each minute she were slipping farther and farther away. But there was something about this Dr. Miles. Mother had liked him so much; Mother’s letters had sounded so happy; more and more often his name had been in them.

  When her mother had come out to visit her at college she’d asked about the doctor; how important was he? But Carl was with them, and Mother didn’t seem to want to talk about him then. She just smiled and said, “Oh, terribly important, but I’ll fill you in later, dear.”

  She could remember that so clearly. She had wanted to meet Dr. Miles. Somehow she’d been sure that when he heard about Mother’s accident he would call her. She had needed to talk to someone who loved Mother too. . . .

  “You loved my mother, didn’t you?” It was her voice asking that question. She wasn’t even aware that she had intended to ask it.

  “Yes, I did. Very much. I didn’t know that she had told you about me. I thought you might resent me. I should have tried to help you.”

  “Help me now!”

  He took her hands in his, her terribly cold hands. “I’ll try, Nancy, I promise.” She sagged, and her husband put his arms around her.

  Lendon liked the looks of Ray Eldredge. The younger man’s face was gray with anxiety, but he bore himself well. His attitude toward his wife was protective. He obviously had a firm grip on his own emotions. Lendon noticed the small framed picture on the table next to the sofa. It was an outdoor snapshot of Ray holding a little boy and girl. . . . The missing children. Of course. What a handsome family. Interesting that nowhere in this room could he see a single picture of Nancy. He wondered if she ever allowed herself to be photographed.

  “Nancy, come, honey. You’ve got to rest.” Ray gently eased her down onto the sofa and lifted her feet. “Now, that’s better.” She obediently leaned back. Lendon watched as her eyes focused on the snapshot of Ray and the children and then closed in pain. A shiver made her entire body tremble.

  “I think we’d better stir up this fire,” he told Ray. He selected a medium-sized log from the basket on the fireplace and threw it onto the smoldering hearth. A shower of flames sprayed up.

  Ray tucked a quilt around Nancy. “You’re so cold, darling,” he said. For an instant he held her face between his hands. Tears trickled from under her closed eyelids and dampened his fingers.

  “Ray, have I your permission to represent Nancy as her legal counsel?” Jonathan’s voice had subtly altered. It was infused with an authoritative crispness. Calmly he met the astonished stares. “I assure you I am well qualified,” he said drily.

  “Legal counsel,” Nancy whispered. From somewhere she could see the colorless, frightened face of the lawyer last time. Domes, that had been his name—Joseph Domes. He’d kept saying to her, “But you must tell me the truth. You must trust me to help you.” Even he hadn’t believed her.

  But Jonathan Knowles was different. She liked his bigness and the courtly way he always spoke to her, and he was so attentive to the children when he stopped to speak. . . . Lowery’s Market—that was it. A couple of weeks ago, he’d helped her and Mike to stack up the cans that Mike had knocked over. He liked her, she was sure. Instinctively she knew it. She opened her eyes. “Please,” she said, looking at Ray.

  Ray nodded. “We’d be very grateful, Jonathan.”

  Jonathan turned to Lendon. “Doctor, may I have your medical opinion as to the advisability of allowing Mrs. Eldredge to be taken to the police station for questioning?”

  “It is highly inadvisable,” Lendon said promptly. “I would urge that any questioning be done here.”

  “But I can’t remember.” Nancy’s voice was weary, as though she had said those same words too many times. “You say I know where my children are. But I don’t remember anything from when I saw that paper in the kitchen this morning until I heard Ray calling me.” She looked up at Lendon, her eyes clouded and staring. “Can you help me to remember? Is there any way?”

  “What do you mean?” Lendon asked.

  “I mean isn’t there some way you can give me something so that if I know . . . or saw . . . or did . . . Even if I did something . . . I have to know . . . That isn’t something you can hide. If there is some awful part of me that could hurt my children . . . we have to know that too. And if there isn’t but if somehow I know where they might be, we’re just wasting time now.”

  “Nancy, I won’t let—” But Ray stopped when he saw the anguish in her face.

  “Is it possible to help Nancy to remember what happened this morning, Doctor?” Jonathan asked.

  “Perhaps. She is probably suffering from a form of amnesia which is not uncommon after what to her was a catastrophic experience. In medical terms, it’s a hysterical amnesia. Under an injection of sodium amytal, she would be relaxed and probably able to tell us what happened—the truth as she knows it.”

  “Answers given under sedation would not be admissible in court,” Jed snapped. “I can’t have you questioning Mrs. Eldredge like that.”

  “I used to have such a good memory,” Nancy murmured. “Once at college we had a contest to see who could recall what she’d done every day. You just kept going backwards day by day until you couldn’t remember anymore. I won by so much that it was a joke in the dorm. Everything was so clear. . . .”

  The telephone rang and had the effect of a pistol exploding in the room. Nancy shrank back, and Ray covered her hands with his. They all waited silently until the policeman on duty at the phone came into the room. He said, “Long distance for you, Chief.”

  “I can assure you that this is the call I’ve been trying to place,” Jed told Nancy and Ray. “Mr. Knowles, I’d appreciate it if you’d come with me. You too, Ray.”

  “Be right back, darling,” Ray murmured to Nancy. Then he looked into Lendon’s face. Satisfied with what he saw, he followed the other men out of the room.

  Lendon watched as relief drained from Nancy’s expression. “Every time it rings, I think somebody has found the children and they’re safe,” she murmured. “And then I think it will be like last time . . . when the call came.”

  “Steady,” Lendon said. “Nancy, this is important. Tell me when you started having trouble remembering specific events.”

  “When Peter and Lisa died . . . but maybe even before that. It’s so hard to remember the years I was married to Carl.”

  “That could be because you associate those years with the children and it’s too painful to remember anything about them.”

  “But during those five years . . . I was so terribly tired so much . . . after Mother died . . . always so tired. Poor Carl . . . so patient. He did everything for me. He got up with the children at night—even when they were babies. Everything was such an effort for me. . . . After the children disappeared, I couldn’t remember . . . like . . . like now . . . I just couldn’t.” Her voice had begun to rise.

  Ray came back into the room. Something had happened. Lendon could see it in the taut lines around Ray’s mouth, the slight trembling of his hands. He found himself praying: Please, don’t let it be bad news.

  “Doctor, could you speak with Jonathan for a minute, please?” Ray was making a determined effort to keep his voice even.

  “Certainly.” Lendon hurried toward the arched doorway that led into the family and dining room, sure that the phone call had badly upset Ray.

  When he got to the dining room, Chief Coffin was still on the phone. He wa
s barking orders to the lieutenant on duty at the station: “Get the hell down to that post office and round up every clerk who was on duty October thirtieth and don’t stop questioning them until somebody remembers who picked up that letter from the Community News addressed to J. R. Penrose. I need a full description, and I need it now.” He slammed the receiver into its cradle.

  There was new tension in Jonathan too. Without preamble, he said, “Doctor, we can’t lose any time in trying to break through Nancy’s amnesia. To fill you in, I have a very complete file on the Harmon case because of a book I’m writing. I’ve spent the last three hours studying that file and reading the article that appeared in today’s paper. Something struck me that seemed of the greatest possible importance, and I asked Chief Coffin to phone the District Attorney in San Francisco and check my theory. His assistant has just returned the call.”

  Jonathan reached into his pocket for his pipe, clamped his teeth on it without lighting it and continued, “Doctor, as you may know, in cases of missing children where foul play is suspected, the police will often deliberately withhold a piece of information so that they have some help in sifting through the inevitable meaningless clues they receive after a publicized disappearance.”

  He began to speak more quickly, as though he felt he was letting too much time pass. “I noticed that all the newspaper accounts seven years ago described the missing children as wearing red cardigan sweaters with a white pattern when they disappeared. Nowhere in any of the extensive newspaper coverage is there an exact description of what that pattern was. I surmised—correctly—that the motif of the pattern had been deliberately withheld.”

  Jonathan looked directly at Lendon, wanting him to understand immediately the importance of what he was about to tell him. “The article which appeared in the Cape Cod Community News clearly states that when the Harmon children disappeared they were wearing red cardigan sweaters with an unusual white sailboat design, and that they were still wearing them when their bodies were washed ashore weeks later. Now, Nancy, of course, was aware of that sailboat design. She made those sweaters herself. But only one other person outside of the top people on the San Francisco investigative staff knew about that design.” Jonathan’s voice rose in pitch. “If we assume Nancy’s innocence, that person was the one who kidnapped the Harmon children seven years ago—and who one month ago wrote the story that appeared in today’s paper!”