Текст книги "Thread of Suspicion"

Автор книги: Jeff Shelby

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Текущая страница: 10 (всего у книги 13 страниц)

THIRTY-NINE

The icy air hit me like a wall when I stepped outside, the sunshine blinding me, brilliant against the snow-covered world. I shuffled through the slush on the sidewalk to get to the rental, cranked up the heat and sat there for a moment, trying to stop my hands from shaking.

I knew I had to make a phone call.

I fumbled in my pocket for my cell phone. I pulled it out, scrolled through the contacts and found the one I wanted. I stared at it for a moment, then pressed my finger to it, waited for it to dial. The ringing was loud as I held the phone to my ear.

“Hey,” Lauren said on the other end. “You caught me just in time.”

“In time for what?”

“Flying to San Francisco for a depo,” she said. “I’m at Lindbergh. Flight is late. Surprise.”

“You need to come to Minneapolis,” I said.

The line buzzed. “Why?”

Tears were forming in my eyes and my throat was closing. I couldn’t find the words.

“Joe?” she asked. “Why?”

“She’s alive, Lauren,” I managed. “I think I found her.”

The line buzzed again. “What?”

“Can you get on a plane?” I asked. “Now?”

“I’ll call you right back,” she said.

The call clicked off and I set the phone in my lap, my hands still shaking. I gripped the steering wheel, trying to settle myself. I needed to calm down, needed to start thinking straight, plan a course of action.

I thought about calling Mike, but I figured he’d tell me the same thing Tim did. To wait, involve the local police and arrange something at the address I now had for Ellie Corzine.

It wasn’t that it was bad advice. But there was no way I was going to wait. I’d waited eight years to find my daughter, pouring my life into searching, looking, hoping. It had consumed me in a way that I didn’t think anything ever could. And now I had someone telling me that not only was she alive, but she was nearby.

No way in hell I was waiting for anyone or anything.

The phone rang in my lap and I grabbed it. “Hey.”

“I just switched my flight,” Lauren said, out of breath. “I’m running to gate now. Leaves in fifteen minutes.”

“Text me the info,” I said. “I’ll meet you there.”

She huffed and puffed into the phone. “Joe.”

“I saw her picture,” I said. “In a yearbook. She’s enrolled in a high school here. I have a home address.”

“Oh my God,” she said and I knew she was crying. “It’s her?”

“It’s her, Lauren,” I said. “It’s her.”

She whimpered into the phone.

Tears streamed down my cheeks.

“Hang on,” she said. “I’m at the gate.”

She must’ve already gone thru security. I knew her firm always flew first-class and she’d probably gone to the airline’s executive lounge to make the change.

Timing. Timing always mattered.

“I’m in the jetway,” she said. “I’ll send you flight info as soon as I sit down.”

“Okay.”

“Oh my God, Joe,” she said. “It’s really her?”

“I wouldn’t have called.”

“I know, I know,” she said, sobbing. “I know.”

“Just get here,” I said, wiping at my eyes. “I’ll be there to pick you up.”

“Okay,” she said, her voice strained. Voices mumbled behind her. “I’m on. I’m on.”

“Okay,” I said. “I’ll see you soon.”

“Joe?”

“Yeah?”

“What’s it going to be like?” she asked, her voice cracking.

My grip tightened on the steering wheel and I stared out the windshield. “I have no idea.”

FORTY

Lauren’s flight info came through three minutes later. Her arrival time gave me three hours to fill and I took a deep breath.

I needed to get it together and make some decisions.

The logical decision was to call the police. Involve Mike, federal authorities and get everyone on the same page. But I knew how that would go. She’d been gone for a long time. This wasn’t a fresh disappearance. She wouldn’t just be brought out of the house and handed to me. There would be an incredible amount of red tape to navigate and the thought of wading through that made me ill. I knew that eventually that would all have to be taken care of, but I didn’t have the patience for that right then.

I wanted to see my daughter first.

I plugged the name of the high school into the GPS and it pulled up a route that would take twenty-two minutes.

I made it in fourteen.

The school itself was a massive stone building with steeples, large glass windows and a sprawling snow-covered lawn. Cars were parked along the street at the curb and a few students were walking along the shoveled sidewalk.

I pulled to the side and let the car idle at the curb, staring at the building.

She was in there. Somewhere.

But I wasn’t sure how to get to her.

I’d made the decision driving over that I wouldn’t get Tim in trouble, no matter what I had to do. He’d risked his job to give me the information and I owed it to him to protect the source of that information. I wasn’t going to turn him into collateral damage.

I gripped the steering wheel, trying to settle my hands. The longer I sat there, the less sure I became of what I was doing. Would she recognize me? Would she be afraid of me? What exactly was I going to say?

I leaned my head against the steering wheel. I’d worked this moment over in my head for so long and it felt nothing like it did right then. I’d always seen myself rushing to her, grabbing her, sharing a tearful reunion. But the reality was that I had no idea what was best for her. Or me.

The bell rang, echoing across the street. Almost immediately, the massive front doors opened and teenagers spilled out, pulling on their heavy coats and knit caps. Laughing, talking, frowning. Hundreds of different faces, none that I recognized.

I glanced at my watch. It was mid-day. I assumed it was lunchtime.

I searched every female face I could find, but it was like looking for a needle in the world’s largest moving haystack. The more students that exited the school, the more frustrated I became when I didn’t see her.

The students headed toward the parking lot and took up residence on the lawn, just standing in the snow, happy to be outside rather than in the stuffy classrooms. As the doors stopped opening and students stopped exiting, my hope of spotting Elizabeth dwindled. A heavy knot settled in my gut.

I glanced at the sheet of paper on the passenger seat, the one Tim had given me. I typed the address into the GPS, which told me I was eleven minutes away from where Elizabeth supposedly lived.

But she wouldn’t be there. She was in the school somewhere. And Tim was right. Rushing into the school and trying to find her would cause more harm than good. The circumstances didn’t matter. I could go in there and shout to whomever I wanted, but given the nervousness around school security, I’d get nowhere and would probably complicate everything.

I didn’t want to be rational, but I needed to be. For everyone’s sake.

I sat there and watched the students, still hoping for a glimpse of Elizabeth.

Nothing.

Cars began to return to the parking lot, having made a quick run to nearby fast-food restaurants. The kids emerged from the cars, drinks in hand, laughing, talking and frowning just as they had when they’d left.

The bell rang and they reluctantly trudged back toward the main doors, the laughing and chaos replaced with resignation, knowing they had several hours left in their school day.

The last student disappeared behind the door and the world was quiet again.

I sat there for a moment, fighting the urge to drive right through the front door and demand my daughter.

But I’d worked a very long time to get so close.

I wasn’t going to screw it up.

The clock told me I had several hours before school let out and before I’d be able to find someone at the address I had.

Just enough time to get to the airport and get Lauren.

We could go find our daughter.

Together.

FORTY-ONE

Lauren couldn’t let go of me.

I’d called Mike and left him a message, not telling him why I was calling but asking him to call me back as soon as he could. I’d grabbed a sandwich at a deli, took two bites and threw it away, my stomach too unsettled to do any digesting. Then I drove to the airport and waited for my ex-wife.

I waited in the baggage area at MSP and spotted her on the down escalator. She wore a red sweater, black skirt and black boots, a briefcase slung over her shoulder. Her eyes, swollen and puffy, matched the color of her sweater.

She came through the double doors and launched herself into my arms. I let her hang on to me for a few minutes, not saying anything, ignoring the stares of the people around us. Her body shook against mine, her face buried in my shoulder, her hands clasped around my neck.

The sobbing finally slowed and she took a few deep breaths. She pulled away.

Her mascara had created dark circles around her watery eyes. She tried to smile. “Hi.”

I kissed her cheek. “Hi.”

“Sorry,” she said, wiping at her cheeks. “I’m a mess.”

“It’s alright.”

“I need a bathroom.”

We found one close by and she ducked inside.

Even though we’d been divorced for so long, there was still a comfort level between us. Yes, the breakdown of our marriage was acrimonious and we’d both said and done things we wished we hadn’t. But once we’d created some distance between us, we realized that the divorce wasn’t really about us. It was about the circumstances. We’d agreed that we had to continue to live our lives differently after Elizabeth. Together wasn’t working. We’d finally come to terms with that and it had allowed us to remain close over the years. And when I’d visited San Diego, just the week before coming to Minnesota, we’d ended up spending a night together.

I wasn’t sure where that left us, but I was glad she’d come to Minnesota so quickly.

She emerged from the bathroom, makeup reapplied, her cheeks clean, the redness in her eyes somewhat tempered.

She ran a hand through her hair and took another deep breath. “Okay. Tell me.”

We walked through the baggage claim area and up the escalators to the parking level. I told her everything I’d learned since getting to Minneapolis. About seeing her picture in the yearbook and Tim Barron’s confirmation that she was currently an enrolled student at a local school. By the time we reached my car, she was already churning all of it over in her head.

“So you haven’t see her yet?” she asked, getting situated in the passenger seat.

“No. Just the photo in the yearbook from a number of years ago.”

“Did he have last year’s yearbook? From the high school?”

“No. Just from grade school.”

“But he could get them,” she said.

“Yeah, I guess. But we’re going to the house.”

“The house?”

“The address he gave me for this Corzine family,” I said. “I’m not waiting. The only thing I was waiting for was you.”

“What if it’s not her?”

“It’s her, Lauren. I saw the photo.”

“But, I don’t know, maybe…”

“I swear to you,” I said as we went through the pay booths. “I wouldn’t have called you unless I was absolutely certain it was her. I would not put you through this unless it was her. That’s the one promise I’ve always made you.”

We exited the airport, turned onto the highway and were passing the exit for Mall of America before she spoke again.

“I’m just preparing myself to be disappointed,” Lauren said. “You know that’s what I do. I’ve refused to let myself believe she was still alive, refused to think I’d ever get that call from you. And then I get it. Today. And here we are. Driving to go see our daughter. Maybe.”

Brake lights lit up in front of us and I slowed, the late afternoon traffic beginning to tie up the freeways.

“I mean, what if she doesn’t know who we are?” Lauren said, staring straight ahead. “What if she doesn’t remember? Or what if she blames us?”

“I don’t know,” I said.

“What if she doesn’t want to talk to us?” Lauren said. “What if she doesn’t want to leave?”

“I don’t know.”

“And what if she’s…not alright?” she said, her voice dropping. “What if she’s not okay?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “I don’t know, Lauren. I don’t have any answers. But I want them.”

The traffic started moving again and I changed lanes, focusing on the freeway in front of me.

“I want them,” I said.

FORTY-TWO

The walk in front of the Corzine address hadn’t been shoveled or cleared, unlike every other house on the block. It was a split-level home, painted yellow, with small windows and a screen door covering a dark wooden door. The yard sloped toward the street, the driveway a hill of compacted ice and snow. Smoke snaked out of the chimney.

I parked across the street and we sat in the car for a moment, silent. I had no idea what I was going to encounter when I knocked on the door. I didn’t know if this was the person that took Elizabeth from my front yard or if she’d come to them through another channel.

But as I stared at the house, I was angry. Angry that my daughter had lived there without me. Angry that someone else had gotten to see her grow up and take care of her. Whoever was in that house, they’d gotten all of the things that I’d been robbed of. They had taken things away from me that I couldn’t get back.

“You have that look,” Lauren said.

“What look?” I said, my eyes still on the house.

“The one that broke our marriage,” she said. “The one that told me that finding Elizabeth was more important to you than anything else. The one that scared me sometimes.”

I didn’t say anything, just opened the car door and stepped out into the street. Lauren got out on her side. We crossed the street and shuffled up the driveway, the snow trying to find its ways inside my shoes. I navigated the snow-covered steps up to the front door and stuck my finger on the doorbell. I felt Lauren’s hand on my elbow. I took a deep breath that did nothing to calm my nerves and waited.

Footsteps echoed behind the door and a young girl, probably six or so, opened the door. Blond ponytail, big brown eyes, wearing a long sleeve T-shirt and sweatpants.

“Are your parents home?” I said, loud enough so she could hear me through the screen door.

She hesitated, then closed the door. Footsteps echoed away from the door and were soon replaced by heavier footsteps. The door opened again.

An older version of the young girl appeared. Around my age, sporting a longer blond ponytail and the same brown eyes. But hers were red-rimmed, framed by dark circles. Slender, she wore faded jeans and a plain gray thermal.

“Yes?” she asked.

“Are you Valerie Corzine?” I asked.

She hesitated, then nodded. “Yes. What can I do for you?”

“You have a daughter? Ellie?”

Her shoulders stiffened and the lines in her face drew tighter. “Who are you?”

“My name’s Joe Tyler. You have a daughter named Ellie?”

If my name meant anything to her, she didn’t show it. Instead, she stepped closer to the door. “Yes. Ellie is my daughter. Is she with you?” Her eyes scanned the street behind us.

“No. She is not.”

“What do you know?” she asked, the tension moving to near panic. “Have you spoken to her? Do you know where she is? Who are you?”

A different kind of dread was filling me now. Lauren’s hand tightened on my elbow. Her questions weren’t what I’d hoped to hear.

“We’re her parents,” I said.

She stared at me, her mouth setting in an angry line. “Excuse me?”

“Elizabeth Tyler,” I said, my hands beginning to shake again. “The girl you call Ellie? Her name’s Elizabeth. She was taken from us. I’m her father. This is her mother. And we’re here to take her back.”

“Taken from you?” she asked, squinting at me. “What the hell is this?”

“Where is she?” I said, my voice rising, my patience ebbing away.

“What do you mean she was taken from you…”

I slammed my hand against the plexiglass pane in the door and it banged against the frame. “Where is she?”

The woman jumped back and the little girl hidden behind her legs took off running.

“She’s my daughter!” I screamed. “Not yours! And so help me God, if you’re the one that took her, I am going to end your life! Where is she?”

The woman stepped away from the door, her eyes wide, her hand covering her mouth.

“Joe,” Lauren whispered, her other hand touching my waist now. “Easy.”

Another person approached the door. A man, about her age, wearing jeans and a University of Minnesota sweatshirt. About my size, slightly built. He put his hands on his wife’s shoulders, looked from me to her and gently moved her back so he was between us.

“I’m not sure what the hell is going on here, but you need to leave,” he said.

“Where’s my daughter?” I asked.

“I’m going to call the police if you don’t leave.”

The woman said something behind him and he glanced back at her quickly, not wanting to take his eyes off me.

I shrugged Lauren off my arm and pulled out my cell phone. “Tell you what. I’ll do it for you. Because I’m not going anywhere until I see her. And while I’m at it, I’m also going to call the F.B.I. because they’ve been involved in looking for her, too, so they are all going to want to talk with you. And when I get off the phone, I’m coming through this door to find my daughter. They can sort through the fucking wreckage when they get here.”

The man stepped forward, closer to the door. “Wait, wait. Ellie is your daughter?”

I gritted my teeth. “Her name is Elizabeth.”

The woman spoke again. He turned around annoyed, said something to her that sounded like he wanted her to be quiet.

He turned back to me. “Have you seen her?”

“I just saw her in a yearbook photo. She’s my daughter.”

“No,” he said, shaking his head. “Have you seen her recently?”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

He ran a hand through his hair and unlocked the screen door. “Ellie ran away three days ago.”

FORTY-THREE

Alex and Valerie Corzine sat on their sofa, nervous, anxious, and not very happy. Lauren and I sat across from them on an old, floral-patterned loveseat. The little girl had been dismissed to her room.

Alex looked at his wife nervously one more time, then at me. “You’re her father?”

“I am. This is her mother.”

“I need some assurances from you.”

Anger flashed in my gut. “Right now, I’m not assuring you of anything.”

“You get angry about anything I’m about to tell you, we can go outside and you can take it out on me,” he said. “But not on my wife, and not in front of our other daughter.”

“Elizabeth isn’t your daughter.”

Lauren rested her hand on my knee.

He licked his lips, took a deep breath. “Take it out on me. Not on Val and not in front of Teresa.”

I looked at Valerie. Her hands were in her lap, clasped so tightly together that her knuckles were the color of enamel.

I looked back to Alex. “Alright. On you. Not your wife. Not in front of your daughter.”

He studied me for a moment, then nodded. “We adopted Ellie eight years ago. Through very private channels.”

“Illegally,” Lauren said.

He nodded. “Yes. At the time, we thought we were unable to have children. We were years away on the public adoption lists. No guarantees of anything ever. So we explored other options.”

I pictured Elizabeth standing in the front yard with the Christmas lights. Like it was the day before and a hundred years before, all at the same time.

“We found a woman on the Internet, offering private adoptions,” he continued. “For…a large sum. At first, it seemed out of reach. But we were desperate.” He glanced at his wife and she nodded, staring at her hands. “So, we agreed to meet with her.”

“Where did you meet?” I asked, glancing around the room, looking for pictures of Elizabeth. But there was only generic art on the walls.

“Phoenix,” Alex said. “We flew in on a Sunday afternoon, met with her that night. She told us that a girl was available. Orphaned. Parents died in a home explosion. Only child. About seven years old.”

I was chewing on the inside of my cheek, my teeth grinding into my flesh as I listened. Lauren’s fingernails dug into my leg.

“We asked for more info and she said that was all she could tell us and that was all we could discuss with her,” Alex said. “There was no extended family and she’d be turned over to DCFS within forty-eight hours if we didn’t want her.”

Lauren cleared her throat. “This woman say where she was coming from?”

“No. We asked and she wouldn’t tell us. We had to decide that night and let her know the next morning.”

“So, you said yes,” I said.

Alex let out a long breath. “We went back to our hotel and Val and I talked about it. The cost was our entire life savings and then some. We pulled money from retirement funds and borrowed against our home.”

“How much?”

He hesitated.

“How much?” I asked again, my voice tight.

“A hundred thousand dollars,” he said.

I looked away from him. He’d bought my daughter for the price of a house.

“So, we talked it over and decided to do it,” he said, rubbing at his chin. “We wanted a child badly and it sounded like she needed a family.”

“She didn’t,” I said. “She had one.”

He swallowed. “We didn’t know that.”

“But you blindly accepted that some seven-year old girl could be bought for a hundred grand, outside of the normal legal process,” I said, not bothering to hide my disgust.

“We were desperate,” Valerie whispered.

“As desperate as we’ve been to find her?” I asked. “I doubt that very much.”

Quiet settled over the room for a moment.

“Yes, we probably knew that it wasn’t the…smartest thing to do,” Alex finally said. “But we did believe that this girl was coming to us with nowhere else to go.”

I believed that that’s what they wanted to believe. But it didn’t make it alright.

“I called the woman, told her yes,” Alex continued. “She told us we needed to wait in Phoenix for forty-eight hours and then she’d be there. We made arrangements to stay two more nights and then she was brought to us.”

A thousand questions were running through my brain. What was she like? How did she feel? What did she say? But I kept my mouth closed and let him continue.

“She was quiet, very withdrawn,” Alex said. “Which we were prepared for. Again, we thought she’d just lost her parents and we were told it would be best not to bring it up. So, we didn’t. And we didn’t force ourselves on her.”

“Who was the woman?” I asked, trying to keep my composure and not picture how Elizabeth felt at that moment. “The woman who brought her to you and took your money?”

They exchanged nervous looks, hesitancy riddling their body language.

“I’m telling you right now, all of this is coming out one way or another,” I said. “You don’t wanna tell us now? That’s fine. But you’re going to be talking to other people and they are going to ask the same question and you won’t have the choice of not answering.”

Alex leaned back in the couch and folded his arms across his chest. “Her name was Marianna Gelson. But we’ve never spoken to her again.”

Probably not even her real name, if she was what I thought she was.

“So, she was quiet and withdrawn,” Alex said. “For quite some time, but eventually, she started to come around. We purposely avoided talking about her past and, given what we were told, we didn’t think she’d want to talk about it.”

I felt my blood pressure rise and I was having a difficult time maintaining any semblance of civility. I didn’t know what was going through Lauren’s mind, but it was all I could do to not jump across the room and attack him.

“We kept her home for a couple of years,” he said. “Val homeschooled her. She really seemed to like it and…”

“You know what?” I said, cutting him off. “I could give a shit about what she seemed to like and what she didn’t. I could give a shit about how you felt or homeschooling or anything else you did with my daughter. What I want to know is where she is so I can see her.”

Lauren’s hand pressed down on my thigh like she was trying to keep me seated.

Valerie started crying silently, tears streaming down her face. Alex put his arm around her. I wanted to punch them both in the face.

“As she’s gotten older, she’s asked us a few more questions,” he said, his voice less steady. “About her adoption. We were…careful.”

“Meaning you lied,” I said.

“Meaning we told her what we knew.”

“So, you told her that you bought her for a hundred thousand bucks? Did she ask to see the price tag that was on her toe?”

He shifted, uncomfortable. “No. Of course not. We were vague about the adoption details. We told her it was through an agency and that there was little information due to the circumstances.” He glanced at his wife. “That’s what we were told to do.”

I wanted to be able to put myself in his position, to understand where he was coming from, to have some sort of sympathy. But I couldn’t. All I could see was the guy who’d taken my place.

“And she was satisfied with that?” Lauren asked. “She just accepted vague details?”

“At first, I guess,” Alex said. “And there weren’t many more questions. But then recently, she pressed some more. She wanted more answers. More clarification.”

“And?” Lauren said.

He cleared his throat. “We shared some things, but not others. But…I think she sensed that. That we were leaving some things out.”

“Why?”

He glanced at his wife, then back at me. “We told her it was a private adoption. That records were scarce. She wanted more info on her birth parents. We tried to be vague, but she pushed. So, we told her about the explosion and the deaths.”

The hair on the back of my neck was standing at attention.

Alex Corzine ran a hand through his hair, deep lines gutting his forehead. “She said she didn’t remember any explosion. We told her that was probably normal, that she’d blocked it out. Too traumatic. But she was adamant. She didn’t remember any explosion. And that’s when she really started getting angry with us.”

I wondered what Elizabeth was like when she was angry. Did she yell? Did she withdraw? Did she slam doors? Was she like me? Like Lauren?

I didn’t have those answers and I despised Corzine for that.

“So, she went digging,” he said.

“Digging?” I asked.

“Through our file cabinets,” he said.

I took a deep breath, glanced at Lauren, who was deep in concentration, her eyes focused on Corzine. I turned my eyes back to him. “You kept her adoption paperwork in a file cabinet? Seriously?”

He shook his head. “No. We didn’t. There’s barely any paperwork to begin with. But we came home one night and she had the entire thing torn apart. Paper and files everywhere, screaming at us.”

“So, then you told her?” I asked.

He hesitated then shook his head again. “No. We still maintained we’d told her everything we could tell her.”

My teeth ground together.

“But then a week ago, she found it,” he said.

“What’s it?”

“The one piece of paper we had,” he replied. “With Gelson’s name on it. A phone number. A couple of other details about our meeting in Phoenix. We kept it in case we ever…I don’t know. We just kept it.” He exhaled. “Kept it inside the pocket of a pair of jeans that I don’t ever wear. Buried in my closet. But she found it.”

Valerie Corzine wiped at her eyes. “She called us liars. Called us a hundred things. She called the number. It was disconnected. Then she just refused to talk to us. Just stopped talking. Nothing for two days.”

“Then what?” Lauren asked, her hand still clutching my leg.

Alex and Valerie exchanged a look, then Valerie looked at Lauren, then me.

“Then she left,” Valerie said. “With Bryce.”