Five hours. Three hundred minutes had slipped away since Tommy had vanished from the hospital. John and Melissa took up residence in a hospital waiting room where they received the search updates. Not a single report got them closer to their son. Every janitor’s closet, dustbin, and open space in the hospital was searched, twice. John’s friend in the county search-and-rescue team brought in his tracking dog, but the bloodhound lost the trail among all the chemical and blood odors in the dialysis unit. A team recovered all the footage from Weber’s place. The killer had been careful to leave no digital trail either.
Fear and frustration form a toxic combination, a bitter cloud where self-doubt and helpless cries of panic dwell. Heaviness gathered in the room, along with darker thoughts that accompanied each negative report. The search teams came up dry. There was no sighting, trace evidence, or magic thread that promised to unravel the mystery of Tommy’s abduction.
John sat on the edge of a stiff waiting-room sofa, cradling his head in his hands. Melissa perched next to her husband, her legs tucked under her. She nibbled on a thumbnail and gazed absently at a spot on the worn carpeting. They were together but so alone with their fear.
Other cops and hospital personnel checked on them frequently at first, but even that trickled off. It was another sign, and not a good one.
John lifted his red-rimmed eyes when a chair scuffed the floor near him. Lieutenant Barnes pulled a chair close to the sofa. The lieutenant sat silently for a moment. John knew what that meant.
“Still nothing?” John said.
Barnes shook his head. “We’ve pulled this place apart, interviewed anyone who could have seen them, and showed them a photo of Tommy. Nothing.”
“What photo of Tommy did you use? I didn’t give you one.”
Barnes pulled his cell from a pocket and handed it over.
The screen displayed a photo of Tommy, one that Barnes had taken at the kid’s birthday party two months ago. He wore a silly-looking pirate hat.
“He wanted to be Captain Jack. I’d forgotten that,” John said.
“There’s nothing more to do here, John. You and Melissa need to go home, try to get some rest.”
“You know how many times I’ve said that to people before? I know what happens next.” John gave the cell phone back. “Another case comes along, and Tommy gets handed off.”
“That’s not how you work, John. You never give up on a case, and you should know that I don’t either.”
A moment of silence passed between them.
“I know,” John said. He wrung his hands, sat back against the sofa, and said, “I should be out there. This guy hit my family.”
“Tommy’s my family too. You aren’t doing any good here. Take Melissa home.”
Melissa said nothing, but her eyes moistened.
“I’ve got a trap and trace on your home phone and your cell phone for when this guy calls,” Barnes said.
“He won’t call,” John said.
“What makes you think that?”
“He doesn’t call. He wants what he wants.”
“As far as we know, this guy’s never snatched a kid before. He’s changed things up.”
“We both know what happens when a killer dissolves. Their time between kills shrinks,” John said.
“There’s more to it than that. This guy went out of his way to get to Tommy. If he didn’t want something specific, he would have grabbed someone else,” Barnes said.
“Stop it! Stop talking like that! Like Tommy’s just some piece of meat to this creep. I gave my son over to him. I handed my boy to a killer,” Melissa said.
Her outburst silenced John and the lieutenant.
She stood and looked down on the two men, first locking eyes with her husband, then Lieutenant Barnes. “All this arguing isn’t helping me get Tommy back home. So what are we gonna do that will actually help?”
“We wait for him to call,” Barnes said.
“He’s not going to do that,” John insisted.
“I can’t wait around and hope for the phone to ring—I have to do something,” Melissa complained.
“Go home, John. I’ll call you the minute I have anything,” Barnes said.
“This isn’t supposed to go down this way,” John said.
“Promise me you will let me know if he calls.”
John nodded but couldn’t say the words.
Lieutenant Barnes turned away after a quick glance at Melissa. The pain and anguish had darkened her light-blue eyes into muddy, dark pools. The lieutenant couldn’t look at her for more than a moment before his heart started to break.
Melissa waited until Barnes left them alone in the waiting room. She stood close to her husband. “Tell me the truth. Are they going to find Tommy? I couldn’t live with myself . . .”
“This isn’t your fault. I’ll get him back,” John said. He leaned to Melissa and whispered, “The man who took him wants me to contact him.”
“Contact? How?” Melissa grabbed her husband’s arm.
John hung his head and exhaled. “I didn’t mean for any of this to happen.”
“What do you mean?”
“This all comes back to that website you found on my laptop. I started this and almost made a deal to bump Tommy up on the wait list.”
Melissa cocked her head and turned away from her husband.
“But when I didn’t go through with it, I got this guy angry, and he took it out on our son,” he said.
“It’s not your fault, John.” Melissa reached for her coat and brushed the photograph of Weber and Winnow to the floor. “I . . .” She went rigid.
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
“That man, the nurse who took Tommy—I’ve seen him before.”
“What—where?” John said, picking up the photo.
“I knew his face seemed familiar. He took my blood. The day we found out I wasn’t a match for Tommy, he took my blood sample. He asked about him—about us.”
“Are you sure? This guy, right here?” John said, pointing at the photo of Brice Winnow.
“I’m absolutely certain. He stuck a needle in my arm. I remember that. If he manipulated the transplant list, he could have changed the results of our tests, too.” She took the coat from John and tucked it under her arm.
“He set this in motion months ago.” John placed his hand around Melissa’s waist and guided her out of the waiting room.
The former flurry of police activity was absent in the corridor, marking a point of surrender in the search for their son. As they walked down the hallways and through the lobby, hospital staff subtly turned away, fumbled with something on their desks, or ducked into a patient room. The maneuvers seemed all too practiced. It was the dance to avoid death and those caught in its swirling current. John had done the dance before, and he knew the hollowness of the words, “I’m sorry for your loss.”
Once outside, Melissa pointed out where she had parked.
John saw a black form near the car. A person waited in the shadows.
He put his hand out, blocking Melissa’s path. “Wait here.”
John stepped in front of Melissa and approached the car while his hand slipped down and released the catch on his holster.
The shadow turned, faced John, but didn’t move from the side of the car. The parking-lot lights angled the yellow glare away from the person’s features. John’s hand crept down over the pistol’s grip and tightened around the polymer surface.
The shadow took a step forward into a pool of light.
John tensed before he recognized Paula’s face. His hand dropped away from his weapon, and he said, “What do you want?”
“I have something for you,” she said.
“Paula, we just want to get home.”
“John . . .”
“Not now, Paula. I don’t know why you needed to get me kicked from the case. But now that I am, leave us alone.”
“Let me—” Paula held an envelope in her hand.
John ignored her and unlocked the car.
Melissa walked over and stood at John’s side. She hooked an arm around her husband and felt the tension coiled inside.
“Paula, it’s probably best that we leave now,” Melissa said, taking the envelope from her.
Paula turned away; a slouch betrayed the hurt she felt. She faded into the shadows behind the car.
Melissa slid a finger under the envelope flap and tore it open. She extracted a copy of the photo of the two medical students, Brice Winnow and Zack Weber. Under the photo, a page torn from a medical-school yearbook held a dozen more photos, but one had a bright-red circle drawn around the image.
“John, look.”
John sighed and took the paper from Melissa. It wasn’t the apology he expected from his partner. The circled photo was of a younger version of Winnow, but underneath, the student’s name was listed as Patrick Horn.
Horn and Winnow were the same person.