Back in the city Bell drove to the Jackson house and found Rachel Jackson there alone. No Heyward with his laptop, no radio interviews in the den, no Dugan with his snotty comments. She let him in. She was looking more worn with each passing day, her hair hanging loosely, her eyes swollen. Bell doubted she was sleeping much. When she offered to make coffee, he accepted, more to give her something tangible to do than any need he had for caffeine.
“What size clothing does your daughter wear?” he asked as she put the cup in front of him.
“Size?” she repeated. “She’s a nine.”
Bell pulled the photocopy of the receipt from his pocket. “We know that the call yesterday came from a Target store in Pennsylvania, at two minutes past three. Well, at exactly three o’clock a woman in that store bought clothes for a little girl. Size nine. She paid in cash.”
Bell handed the slip over. Rachel grabbed it like it was a winning lottery ticket.
“Oh my God,” she said.
Bell poured cream into his coffee. “I can’t sit here and tell you that the clothes were for Vanessa.”
“But they were.”
“I would say there’s a good chance.”
Rachel sat down, still looking at the paper. Bell glanced around.
“So—the whole lot of them packed up and headed for Wyoming?”
“It’s the most important thing, isn’t it? I mean, this other matter, the fact that my daughter has been kidnapped, it’s just a minor annoyance. We can deal with it at some point down the line. First we need to send Sam to fucking Washington.”
“So he crooks his finger and the FBI tags along?”
“That’s how it went,” she said.
Bell looked at his watch. Four-fifteen. “And no calls today? She’s called every day.”
“Not that I’ve heard,” Rachel said. She indicated her own phone on the counter. “She hasn’t called me. Somebody down at the FBI is tapped into my phone server, just in case. They wanted to leave an agent with me but I said no. They can monitor it from there.”
Bell drank the coffee, looking at the phone.
“This means she’s looking after her,” Rachel said, meaning the receipt. “Don’t you think so?”
“Kinda suggests that.”
“Maybe they’re not bad people,” Rachel said, going with it now. “I mean, I’ve been assuming they were evil but maybe they’re not. If they’re looking after her. Maybe they—I don’t know. I wish I knew what they wanted. She said three things and hung up. Why would she do that?”
Bell was caught now. He’d given his word to the campaign manager, Molly, that he wouldn’t reveal what she’d told him. He couldn’t go back on that, as much as he wanted to.
“Whatever it is,” he said, “I think we can assume it’s about your husband. Not you.”
Rachel nodded. Apparently she’d come to that conclusion on her own. “Still, I wish she would have told me.”
Bell was still looking at the phone, trying to figure a way.
“Maybe you could ask her,” he said.