Bell, driving his twelve-year-old Ford Taurus, traveled nearly nine hundred miles over a day and a half and by the time he arrived back in New York he knew that the impulse tapping at his brain at the Williamsburg market wasn’t the static electricity in the air.
Over the course of thirty-six hours, he learned that there had been a woman selling produce out of a green cargo van at the Greenfield market the day that Sam Jackson had received the first call, and a woman doing the same at the markets in Elmira and Hershey on the days of the follow-up calls. All three markets were within a five-minute walk to the pay phones used by the caller, phones that were tucked away in inconspicuous places. Bell further learned that the woman had vended at each of the markets just once previously. Scouting missions, no doubt.
Bell now had his pattern, and he was partway to understanding the logic behind the woman’s actions. She was too smart to use a cellphone or a computer; he’d figured that out early on. She knew that a pay phone was traceable but wouldn’t care, as long as she wasn’t caught in the act, and by keeping the calls limited to a couple of minutes, that wasn’t a real concern. Placing the calls hundreds of miles apart made it impossible to anticipate where she would call from next.
However, in order to travel relatively undetected from town to town, she required a cover. The truck full of vegetables provided that. None of the markets Bell had visited required a plate number from their vendors, and the number the woman had written down at Williamsburg had proved to be a fake. In spite of that, Bell doubted the woman had been driving across three states with false license plates. It would have invited a cop to pull her over and it would have been particularly risky on that day in Williamsburg, the day that she had used the truck to transport the abducted girl out of the city. Because Bell was now convinced that that was how it had gone down. Why else would she have been at the market, five blocks away from the abandoned parking lot where the limo was found?
He got home at three in the morning and before he went to bed he sat down and made notes of all he had learned on his circuitous trip through Massachusetts and New York and Pennsylvania. He rose at nine and drank coffee while he tried to make sense of what he had written.
He had considerably more information than two days ago, but all that data merely raised more questions. For one—was the woman actually a farmer who decided on a whim to get into the kidnapping business? That seemed a stretch to Bell. It was more likely that she was somebody with an agenda who bought or leased a truck and then filled it with vegetables as part of the act. She couldn’t very well pose as an organic farmer without some produce to display. Then again, maybe she was a farmer first and a kidnapper second. Selling at small-town markets could have inspired the plan to travel about undetected. Who knew which came first? It was the chicken and the egg, an apt reference for someone posing as a farmer.
Bell had attempted to get a description of the woman and in that he had been given a lot of information, all of it useless. According to the people who claimed to have seen her, the woman driving the truck was either in her late twenties or mid-forties or early sixties. She was blonde or brunette or redheaded. She was dark, possibly African-American. She might have been Asian, or had a Swedish accent and she weighed somewhere between one hundred and three hundred pounds.
Sitting at his kitchen table with his coffee, Bell knew what he needed to do next. Now that he had a description of vehicle, he needed to go through all the available street videos from the day of the abduction to try to find it. And hopefully pick up a valid plate number. And he would have to do it while supposedly being on vacation, and without the blessing of Sam Jackson and the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Or his own boss at the NYPD.
While he was considering the delicate nature of the task, his phone rang. He looked at the display and then answered. Rachel Jackson was on the line.
“Why are you calling me from Whitman’s Diner?” Bell asked.
“I can’t use my cell,” she said. “Unless I want the FBI listening.”
“And you don’t want the FBI listening?”
“Can you meet me?”
They met in the park a half-hour later. She was waiting for him, by the bandshell she’d mentioned. It was cool and damp and she was huddled in a blue windbreaker, a cap pulled low over her eyes. Bell joined her on the bench and listened while she told him about the phone call she’d received earlier, the call from the woman he’d been following, albeit a few days behind. Apparently she had called this time from Cooperstown. It was a pretty good bet that Cooperstown had a farmers market, and that today was market day. Not that it mattered, Bell knew, because the woman wasn’t in Cooperstown anymore.
When Rachel told him what the woman had asked for, Bell sat quietly for a long time, relieved that it was finally out in the open. He didn’t have to feign ignorance anymore.
“An apology,” he said then. “That’s what this is about?”
“Seems that way,” Rachel said. “More than the money. I always wondered about the money. A million dollars. Sam’s worth fifty times that, probably more. Why are they asking for peanuts?”
“You and I have different definitions of peanuts,” Bell said, “but I see what you mean.” He looked across the park. The place was full of people, in spite of the weather. There was a dozen or so guys playing touch football, teenagers it seemed, and a few had their shirts off. The foolishness of youth. After a moment he turned to Rachel. “Did the woman say she’s from Laureltown? Is she connected somehow to the shooting?”
“I thought about that,” Rachel said. “What if she’s one of the mothers? What if she took my kid because she lost her own? Maybe she has no intention of letting her go.”
“If that was the situation, she wouldn’t be contacting you at all,” Bell reminded her. “You said she promised she would let her go. Don’t you believe that?”
Rachel took a few seconds then nodded. “I do.”
“Why did you call me?”
“Because Sam won’t do it,” Rachel said. “He won’t apologize to those parents. He won’t even consider it. And he sure as hell is not going to go on TV to say he’s wrong.” She laughed, quickly and bitterly. “He’s the man who doesn’t surrender. Don’t you know that?”
“This is his daughter,” Bell said.
She started to reply then stopped, forcing herself to be quiet. Bell had seen her do that once before. She was edgy, her knee bouncing, eyes darting about the park. He decided to tell her about where he’d been the past two days. She sat huddled in the windbreaker, listening, her teeth chewing on her bottom lip.
“I’ve been to the Williamsburg market,” she said when he finished. “Vanessa and I went there to buy flowers a couple of times. So this is the woman? You’re sure?”
“Put it this way,” Bell said. “If I was absolutely certain, I’d ask the state police to put out an APB on that truck right now, assuming it’s traveling from Cooperstown back to—well, we don’t know to where. But all I have is a vague description of a green truck, maybe a GMC, and no plate number. And keep in mind I’ve been removed from the case.”
“It’s too coincidental though,” Rachel said. “Are you going to tell the FBI this?”
“I’ll tell them if they want to listen. But that doesn’t solve the problem with your husband. He needs to change his thinking.”
Rachel shook her head. “You have to understand. He doesn’t operate as a person. He operates as a persona. I don’t think he knows how to separate the two. And now, with this campaign—”
“He feels like he can’t back down,” Bell said.
“I hate to say this but I really believe he’d prefer that this would end in a confrontation. The FBI against the kidnappers.” She looked at Bell. “Because that would be a big news story. And it would be a victory for Sam.”
Bell got to his feet. “I hope you’re wrong about that.” He hesitated, thinking of what he was about to say. Thinking that maybe he should leave it alone. But he couldn’t: he needed to know so he could better understand the situation. “By the way, we still need Sam’s DNA for the lab work. You remember Lynn asked you for it?”
Her face went blank and she looked away from him. He kept waiting for something but it never came. It seemed as if she would rather sit there forever than respond. In the end it was Bell who broke the silence.
“Does he know?”
“I didn’t think so.” As she spoke, she was watching the kids playing football. “Now I’m not sure.”
“Who’s the father?”
“Doesn’t matter,” she said. “A guy I knew. A guy I saw…briefly.” Only now did she look at him. “I have a shitty marriage, Mr. Bell.”
He smiled. “Yeah, I picked up on that.”
She didn’t smile back. “I have a shitty marriage and I’m not a good person. I told you before that I haven’t been a good mother. But I am going to change that. If I get a second chance, I’m going to change. Do you believe me?”
“I believe you.”
She nodded. “I need a second chance. I need to have my baby back. I don’t fucking care about my marriage. This is the straw that breaks it. I’m a weak person to have put up with him for so long. I know that.”
Bell stood there a moment longer before he nodded. “Okay. But you are not a weak person, Rachel.”
“What are you going to do now?” she asked.
“Try and find your daughter.”