Chapter 17
Snow glittered in the beams of her headlights as Detective Grace Santos drove to the address. During her five years in the Missing Persons Squad, she had investigated and recovered plenty of runaway teens as well as younger children involved in family abductions. Infant abductions were rare. In the past twenty-five years, there had been around two hundred cases nationwide. She had worked on an infant abduction at the hospital, a more common scenario these days, but an infant taken from her home in the middle of the night was a first for her. Most likely the baby was taken by a family member or caregiver. Sometimes a caregiver or parent claimed that the baby was abducted to cover up the child’s death, either intentional or accidental. The good news was that the recovery rate for infants was extremely high. Thank God for that.
Every case had a life of its own. In the next few hours, her focus would be on building the web of family and friends that surrounded Annabelle Green.
While waiting at the traffic light, she shot a look at her cell phone for the names of the major players—the parents and the child, three-month-old Annabelle.
“Where did you go on a snowy night, baby Annabelle?”
Her first responsibility was to the missing child, and Grace whispered a heartfelt Hail Mary for the safe return of this baby. It was part of her routine when starting a case, and she believed that God heard every word and answered in His own way.
The house was cute, in a nice neighborhood. She turned off the engine, took out her iPhone, and copied the Maple Lane address onto a Web site that tracked registered sex offenders. The results gave her four addresses of men within a two-mile radius. She checked the map, taking in the four residences lit in red. The closest was about six blocks away. Something to check out, though these men were not likely suspects in this case. They didn’t fit the profile of a typical infant abductor: a compulsive female, age twelve to fifty-three, married and living in the community.
As she got out of her car, she was surprised to see a woman sitting calmly by the side door, nudging a stroller. The red and blue lights from a cruiser’s roof rack washed over the scene, casting a surreal glow over the woman framed by falling snow that glimmered at the fringes of the carport. Mid-twenties, brunette, and dressed in a robe, she sat on a bench, rocking that stroller as if it were an August morning.
The distraught mother?
“Did you find my baby?” Stress flashed in her pale eyes underlined by gray arcs.
Grace noted that her robe wasn’t even belted. “I didn’t find your baby, but it’s freezing out here. Why don’t we step inside?”
“But my baby likes the fresh air. See? She’s quiet now.” The young woman rose to check the stroller. Her face fell when she saw that it was empty. “My baby! Oh, she’s missing.” She pressed her hands to her face, suddenly remembering. “Do you think the police will find her?”
“Finding your child is our top priority. I’m Grace Santos, with the Missing Persons bureau. You’re Chelsea Maynard?”
The woman nodded, her eyes round as quarters. “But my baby is named Annabelle Green. My husband has a different name.”
“I’ve got that in my notes.” This woman was on the edge, and Grace suspected the team of officers and dogs that would be arriving shortly to search would make things worse. “I think we should step inside and see how the officers are progressing.” She put a hand on the fragile woman’s shoulder and shepherded her in through the side door. The poor thing was barefoot and shivering under her robe, but Grace suspected that was more from shock than the cold.
Inside, the house was quaint; you could tell that a lot of care had gone into this home. The living room was cozy, with a fireplace covered in pretty white-and-blue tiles. There was a sour smell, which Grace quickly identified when she saw the soiled diapers on the floor by the changing table. The kitchen was a bit disheveled, with mops leaning against the kitchen counter, boots and hats set on the kitchen table, but then whose house looked like a spread from Better Homes and Gardens?
“Do you have some slippers you want to put on?” Grace suggested.
Obediently, Chelsea fished a pair of mules out of the mound of shoes on the table. She stepped into them, then stumbled into the living room and fell heavily onto the couch.
Grace leaned against the counter, taking in the kitchen. What was the reason for the buckets and mops? The counter was free of bread or fruit, though there was a gift box with two frosted cupcakes and a lot of crumbs. She picked up the note taped to the lid and read the message: GOOD NEIGHBORS HELP EACH OTHER.
At the other end of the counter was a framed photo of a baby with a joyous, toothless grin. No doubt, Annabelle. One plastic bag held a cell phone, another a little pink-print baby outfit. Miklowski had probably bagged the clothing for the dogs to use to follow Annabelle’s scent.
“I have to call my husband.” The hand that reached for the telephone shook. Grace watched as the young woman pressed numbers, frowned, and started over, as if she couldn’t get it right. Poor thing.
Grace went into the living room and sat beside her on the couch. “Chelsea, why don’t you let me make the call?” She suspected that the patrol officers hadn’t had a chance to notify the husband yet, and she did need to talk with him.
“It’s just that the numbers keep slipping around.” Chelsea poked at the phone again, then sighed. “I keep messing up.”
Grace nodded, keeping her voice sympathetic. “Chelsea, are you on medication?”
“Just Nebula, from my doctor. For depression. But don’t worry, I can still breast-feed the baby. It won’t hurt her.”
“That’s good to know.” She wondered if Nebula could make a person confused and disoriented.
Chelsea touched her chest gingerly. “I need to pump. And Annabelle . . . she must be hungry.” Her eyes filled with tears. “Do you think they’ll feed her? Whoever took her?”
“Most babies give a shout when they’re hungry. Does your Annabelle have a healthy pair of lungs?”
Chelsea nodded, swiping at her eyes with one sleeve.
“I’m sure she’ll let it be known that she’s hungry. Why don’t you let me put the call through for you? I’ll tell him what’s going on, then you two can talk.”
Chelsea had to go to the directory of her cell phone to find her husband’s number. “He should be here, but he had to go to Boston for work. Do you think he came home early and took Annabelle for a walk?”
“I would love to think that happened.” Grace bit her lower lip. “But don’t you think your husband would have told you he was home? And most parents don’t walk their babies in the frosty cold before dawn.”
“Of course not.” Chelsea bit her lower lip, trying to hold back tears. “That was stupid. What was I thinking?”
“You’re upset,” Grace said. “Keep breathing. That’s good.” She punched in the number Chelsea showed her.
When the call went through, the man on the other end of the line sounded groggy. “Mr. Green, this is Grace Santos from the New Rochelle Missing Persons Squad.” Grace always tried to put herself in the other person’s shoes when handling a case like this; it was rough, but there was no easy way to pass on difficult news. She tried to give it to them straight. “I’m here with your wife, Chelsea, and we’ve begun a search for your daughter, Annabelle, who was reporting missing this morning.”
Leo Green’s reaction quickly shot from disbelief to fear to action.
“I’m coming home . . . the next flight,” he said. “Who took her? Do you have any idea?”
“I was going to ask you the same thing,” Grace said. In fact, she had a long list of questions for Leo Green. It would have helped to have a more stable person here to draw information from, and she would have liked to see the child’s parents together to get a sense of their relationship. A large percentage of missing infants were taken by family members, often as a result of custody disputes.
“We’re going to do everything we can to find your daughter.” Grace gave Leo Green her contact information, wished him a safe flight, and handed the phone to his wife.
Grace listened as Chelsea cried, trying to piece the situation together for her husband. The young mother was distraught, not making much sense, and once again Grace felt for her. She thought of her own son at three months—a screamer. That baby boy shrieked through every dinner she and her husband attempted. Eventually she gave up on dinner; her husband gave up on their family.
Was Annabelle a crier? Grace wondered as a uniformed cop came down the stairs—Trent Miklowski. Outside, car doors were slamming. The search team was assembling. Grace motioned Miklowski into the kitchen, out of earshot of the young mother.
“What do we have?” she asked, leaning back against the kitchen counter.
“A fourteen-week-old infant goes missing in the middle of the night. Only child of Leo Green and Chelsea Maynard. The father is out of town. The mother says no one else lives in the house.”
“Did you find anything when you searched the place?”
“Nothing unusual upstairs, except the mother tore a few things apart looking for her. We’ve searched inside and out. Closets and cabinets, piles of laundry, inside appliances. Viloria searched outside with a flashlight. Nothing has been dug up in the yard and her car is clean. And we poked through the trash. Didn’t want to do that while the mother was sitting outside, but she didn’t seem to notice or care. There’s no sign of a B and E, but the mother left the side door unlocked. Or at least she says it was unlocked when she woke up this morning. Maynard says her husband cleaned the house this weekend, so it’s worth trying to take prints. We’ll eliminate anyone who’s been here since then.”
“Good.” Fingerprints were just one facet of a case, but if you didn’t gather them immediately, you couldn’t backtrack later.
“The kid was wearing something bright yellow,” Miklowski went on, “but the color is the only thing that stands out in Mom’s memory. She can’t remember some of the details of last night, like what time she put the baby to bed or even if she put her down in her crib. Do you think she’s on drugs or drinking or just plain crazy?”
Grace wanted to smack Miklowski. “When was the last time you gave birth to a child and stopped your life to take care of it twenty-four seven?” Grace asked.
He drew a hand back over his head. “Giving birth is no excuse for losing your kid, and look at this place. She could barely find this photo of the baby when I asked her for it. Didn’t know the baby’s weight. And do you see those dirty diapers over there?”
“I can’t tell you the whereabouts of Annabelle Green, but I can tell you that woman in there is compromised, either by medication or shock or depression or a combination of those. Right now, with the father out of town, she’s also our only resource in finding this child.”
“Exactly. Do you want to take her down to the precinct?”
“I can talk to her here. Have you issued an Amber Alert yet?” Time was of the essence. It was critical that information about the missing baby got out right away.
“Sgt. Balfour is issuing the alert. Do you want to make the house a crime scene?”
She nodded. “It never hurts. We can always break it down later if it seems unwarranted.”
“That’s what Viloria said. I’ll go tell her.”
Grace went back to the living room, wishing she didn’t have to badger this forlorn woman with a million questions. “Your husband sounded very upset. It must be a shock to wake up to a call like that.”
Chelsea nodded.
“Chelsea, I’m sorry but I have to ask you some questions. Your answers might help us locate Annabelle.” As she spoke, she took out her iPhone and went to the notepad function.
“So, you said you’re legally married to the baby’s father, Leo Green.”
“Yes.”
“And would you say you have a happy marriage?”
“Yes. Well, it’s been strained since Annie’s birth, which was so traumatic—worse than I could have imagined. But Leo’s been wonderful. He cooks all our meals, and he’s great with Annie.”
“Any custody issues regarding Annie? Angry exes looking for child support?”
“No, nothing like that.”
Grace had moved to the front windows, where half a dozen marked and unmarked cruisers were now parked in the street. “What’s the last thing you remember last night?”
Chelsea bit her lips as she scraped back her dark hair. “Putting Annie in her bucket seat? Or maybe it was eating a muffin. I don’t know.” She paused, pressing a fist to her mouth. “How could I be so stupid to leave the side door unlocked?”
“Maybe you locked it and someone got in with a key.”
“I think . . .” Chelsea’s eyes narrowed. “I mean, I might have put her in the stroller outside to calm her down.”
“Did you?”
“I don’t know. I woke up in bed upstairs but I don’t remember getting there.” Her thin thread of calm unraveled and, once again, she began to cry.
Off to the side of the living room, Grace noticed Miklowski and his female partner, Viloria, descending the staircase. She nodded as they crossed through the living room and headed out the side door.
“I know this is upsetting, but I need your help. I need to know who has access to this house—anyone with a key.”
“Leo and me. And my sister Emma. She helps with Annie, and she lives in New Rochelle, too. Oh, and I think my sister Melanie has one, too, but she lives down in central Jersey with four kids of her own. Her youngest is in the terrible twos. She can’t get here that often.”
Grace made notes, her fingers flying over the iPhone. “And who else watches Annabelle? Is she in day care?”
“No day care. But we’ve used a baby nurse named Helen Rosekind. She came through an agency. And there’s also a teenage girl someone recommended. I just used her this week and . . .” Chelsea squeezed her eyes shut and sniffed. “She seems like a nice girl, but I was worried. One Saturday night when we came home, her boyfriend was here, and we told her that wasn’t cool at all. They’re both so goth. They might be harmless, but I felt really uncomfortable around him.”
Grace got their names from Chelsea and typed: Eleni Zika and boyfriend Krispy. “Any other relatives in the area? Grandparents? Aunts, uncles?”
Chelsea shook her head. “Leo’s family is up in Maine, and my dad lives in Florida now. He and Mom . . . they moved down there, but she’s gone now. She died just a few days before Annabelle was born.”
“Is there someone, friend or family, who could come lend you some support?”
Chelsea shook her head. “No one.”
“What about your sister Emma? You said she lives close by.”
“No. She’s very upset. She . . .” Chelsea squinted. “Or maybe I dreamed that. I think she was crying on the phone last night, but I’m not sure.”
Grace picked up the phone and handed it to Chelsea. “Let’s give her a call. Something tells me she’ll want to talk with you now.”
Grace was right. When Chelsea told her sister what was happening, she promised to come right over.
Chelsea ended the call and looked toward the open side door. “Shouldn’t we be out there? I want to help with the search.”
“You need to be here for when we find her,” Grace said, praying they would recover this woman’s baby sooner rather than later. A pang of compassion hit her as she noticed the two stains on Chelsea’s robe. “Do you have a pump?”
Chelsea squinted, then looked down. “Upstairs.” She pushed off the sofa, then fumbled up the stairs, nearly tripping on her robe. Grace followed her up, just to be on the safe side.
In the hallway at the top of the stairs, the doors were open but yellow crime scene tape spanned each doorway.
“What’s that?” Chelsea paused outside the master bedroom, horrified.
“Not a problem.” Grace pulled the tape off and motioned her through.
“Hey!” Miklowski called from the stairs as Chelsea shut the door behind her. “What about the crime scene?”
“You already searched the bedroom,” she said. “And have a heart. The woman needs to pump her breast milk.”
His face soured and he went back downstairs, shaking his head.
Grace wasn’t sure why she felt so protective of Chelsea Maynard, but clearly the woman was in crisis. That observation scared Grace, for more than one reason. First, the desperation in Chelsea’s eyes was truly pathetic. That aside, there was the possibility that Chelsea Maynard had snapped and done something to shut her child up—a chilling but valid avenue that would have to be pursued. And, if Grace was truly honest, she had to admit that when she looked at Chelsea Maynard, she saw herself a dozen years ago.
Trying to put personal stuff out of her mind, she peered into the nursery, noting the appliqué elephants marching across the valance. The cheerful yellow walls were stenciled with the same elephants, and the lampshade on the dresser was decorated with a mother elephant nuzzling her baby close with her trunk.
It was one of those well-planned, perfect nurseries, missing just one thing. Annabelle Green.