Текст книги "Thread of Innocence"

Автор книги: Jeff Shelby

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Текущая страница: 7 (всего у книги 14 страниц)

TWENTY

The front door was askew and I knocked on the doorframe as I took a step inside. The floor was covered in white tile and the whitewashed walls were peppered with what looked to me like expensive artwork. There was a small table in the entry way and I could see into the living room off to my right. Two small leather sofas, a flat screen TV and a square glass coffee table. Everything was neat and orderly and expensive looking.

A small, compact woman entered from the other side of the living room. Long dark hair swept up in a neat bundle on top of her head, wearing faded jeans and a purple T-shirt, her feet bare. She wore little makeup and was free of the fake tan the two I’d left in the street sported. She was maybe ten years older than me and she immediately looked wary.

“Can I help you?” she asked, stopping short of the glass table, keeping all of the furniture in between us.

“Are you Janine Bandencoop?” I asked.

She didn’t answer immediately, as if she was weighing her options. But then too much time passed and we both knew she was Janine Bandencoop and she couldn’t deny it.

“Yes,” she said. “You are?”

“Joe Tyler,” I said, then gestured back toward the front door. “Whoever the two were that met me out front are lying in the street. Both will need a doctor.”

Concern settled on her face and she took a step toward the table. “What? My sons?”

“I guess,” I said. “I asked if you were home. They lied and said you weren’t. It went downhill after that.”

“I’m calling the police,” she said.

“Please do,” I said. “I’m guessing we’ll need them eventually, anyway.”

She didn’t move for a phone. “Who are you?”

“I told you,” I said. “I want to know if you were involved in my daughter’s abduction from Coronado Island in San Diego.”

Her thin eyebrows attempted to furrow together in concern but it took her a fraction too long. “I don’t know who you are or what you’re talking about. I want you out of my home right now.”

I didn’t move, just stared at her, my expression impassive.

“And I want to see my sons,” she said.

“You wanna see them?” I held up a finger. “Hang on.”

I went back out the front door and they were both where I’d left them. I grabbed Landon by the foot on the leg I hadn’t mangled. I looked at his brother.

“I’m taking him inside,” I said. “You stay here. Got it?”

He nodded, grimacing, still hugging his knee.

I tugged on Landon’s leg and he moaned, the lights still trying to come back on his head. I pulled him up over the curb and through the gravel. He started moaning louder, making whiny high-pitched sounds that were unintelligible. I knew his jaw was broken and he couldn’t move it. I got him to the porch, pulled him up over it and dragged him into the house until I had him right near the glass table.

I dropped his leg and looked at Janine. “Here you go.”

She folded her arms around herself and shivered. “Jesus,” she whispered, her eyes widened in horror.

“His knee is spaghetti and his jaw is broken,” I said. “The other one’s in the street. He’s in better shape, but he’s afraid to move.”

“I don’t know who you think you are,” she said, the anger beginning to rise up. “But if you think…”

“Shut the fuck up, lady,” I said, waving my hand. “And if you feed me any bullshit here, I’ll start breaking more bones in Landon’s body.”

Landon, hearing his name, whined again, sounding like a beaten dog. He tried to move on the ground, but I stepped on his damaged knee and the whine kicked into high gear.

“Stop!” she screamed. “Stop!”

“I want to know if you were involved in my daughter’s abduction,” I said again, lifting my foot off Landon. “Not quite ten years ago. In San Diego.”

She stayed quiet.

I pulled my phone out of my pocket and held it out. “I’ve got a federal agent on speed dial. She specializes in missing children. You either start talking or I make the call. You’ve got three seconds to decide.”

She chewed on her bottom lift for a moment. “Alright.”

“Alright what?”

“What do you want to know?”

“I already told you. My daughter. Almost ten years ago. San Diego.”

She closed her eyes. “It’s hard for me to recall…”

“Figure out a way to recall, Janine,” I said, my voice rising. “I’m about out of patience here.”

She opened her eyes, licked her lips and glanced at her son on the floor. “I need more details. I’m involved in many…transactions.”

“Let’s start there,” I said. “Tell me about your transactions.”

She took a deep breath and sat down on the edge of the sofa closest to her. “I run a private adoption agency.”

“So you’re licensed?”

She hesitated, then shook her head. “No.”

I didn’t say anything.

“People come to me with children that need homes,” she said. “I find them homes.”

“Who brings them to you?”

“Just depends,” she said. “Most times, they request anonymity.”

“You don’t run background checks? Ask for birth records? Anything?”

“As I said. They request anonymity.”

“So you have no idea where these kids are coming from?” I asked, incredulous. “And then you just find some family for them?” I paused. “And you must pay for them. The ones that are brought to you. Then you make it up when you sell to the loving families, correct? Maybe charge double what you paid?”

She didn’t say anything.

I was shaking. I needed to get control of myself and my temper or I’d learn nothing. But sitting there, looking at a woman who did this, made me sick to my stomach.

“How do they find you?” I asked. “The people who bring you children.”

“There are channels,” she said, wringing her hands in her lap. “Just depends.”

“Like which segment of the child trafficking world they are coming from, right?” I said, frowning. “Using big words doesn’t change what you do, lady.”

“I’m helping families who can’t have their own children,” she argued. “They are families desperate for children, families that give them good homes.”

“Or unwittingly take in abducted kids,” I said. “Are you fucking kidding me?”

She stayed quiet.

I shook my head, trying to shake the anger out of me. I needed to stay focused, remember why I was there. I could let other people deal with the details of her operation.

“A young girl named Elizabeth Tyler,” I said. “I don’t know how or who brought her to you. But you sold her to a family in Minneapolis. The Corzines.”

“I don’t sell these children. I match them…”

“Spare me,” I said, holding up a hand. “You buy and sell children. If you’re paying for them, then you’re looking for kids who need to be placed, to use your bullshit word. You may not be the one snatching them, but you’re just as guilty. So fuck you.”

She sank back into the sofa.

“There may have been a story involving an explosion and the death of her parents,” I said. “It was bullshit. But she was then sold to the Corzines in Minnesota.”

We sat there in silence for a minute or so. I wasn’t sure if she was trying to remember or if she was trying to figure out a way out of her living room. She still hadn’t confirmed anything about Elizabeth, so there was still a possibility that she wasn’t involved in her disappearance. Worst-case scenario was that I’d found a child trafficker and could shut her down.

“She was at the airport,” Janine Bandencoop finally said.

Something pinched inside my gut. “Who was?”

“The girl you’re describing,” she said. “I know she came from San Diego.”

I stepped over Landon, who’d passed out again on the floor, and sat down on the sofa opposite her.

She leaned back in the sofa, as if I might strike her. When she realized I wasn’t going to, she took another breath. “I don’t know who brought her there or how she got there.”

“She was just left there?”

She hesitated, then nodded. “Yes. I was instructed where to pick her up.”

“But you had to pay for her,” I said, forcing the words out of my mouth.

“The payment was made before she arrived,” she said.

“How?”

“I was given an account,” she said, the lines at the corners of her mouth tight. “I deposited the money there.”

“How much?”

“I don’t recall.”

I steadied my breathing. “So you met her at the airport.”

She hesitated, then nodded. “Yes. I’d already arranged the match with the family in Minnesota. We arranged a meeting in a hotel. It was the same day. The girl was with me for less than an hour.”

I swallowed hard, choking down the urge to smash her head into the glass table. “So you met the Corzines then?”

She shook her head. “No. I was already gone by the time they arrived to pick her up.”

“I don’t understand.”

She folded her arms around herself again. “I did not have direct contact with the family. I placed her in a hotel room and then left. The family was then responsible for picking her up.”

I stared at her. “Sounds like you’ve got the system down.”

She didn’t say anything.

“So then what? You go back and make sure the room’s empty? The package has been delivered?”

She stayed quiet.

She didn’t need to answer. I knew I was close enough to getting it right. She was covering her tracks and took enough safeguards to make sure she kept her distance. It was what good criminals did.

“What did my daughter say to you in the time you were with her?” I said, my jaw clenched, my hands balled into fists.

She shook her head. “Nothing. Not a word. She was entirely silent.”

“Did you try to talk to her?”

She nodded. “Yes. But she didn’t respond. She barely looked at me. She may have been giving something to calm her nerves.”

I was being bombarded with emotions. I saw Elizabeth, sitting in the Phoenix airport, alone. Snatched from our front yard, driven across the desert, left by herself, then picked up by some woman she’d never seen before. Dropped at another hotel to be picked up by more people she didn’t know. It was nearly suffocating, letting the pictures form in my head.

I cleared my throat. “So you drove her to the hotel? Did she want to go?”

She thought for a moment. “She seemed indifferent. She didn’t speak. But she didn’t resist. She did what I asked. We left the airport, got in the car and drove to the hotel. I explained to her that the family she would be going with would be taking her to Minnesota.”

“Then what?”

She shrugged. “We went to the hotel.”

“But you said you didn’t meet the family.”

Her lips twitched. “Correct.”

I didn’t say anything.

She fidgeted with her hands. “I put her in the hotel room so she could wait for the family.”

I took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. “You left her alone in the room.”

“For just a few minutes, yes.”

I stared down at the floor for a minute. A million questions were running through my head. Why didn’t Elizabeth try to get away? Why didn’t she ask someone for help at the airport? Why didn’t she pick up the hotel phone? I could think of a hundred ways in which she could’ve tried to get away. I had to remind myself, though, that she was young, she’d been told we were dead and that she was probably in shock. But it still frustrated me. And it still didn’t answer the question as to who had taken her from the yard and what happened in between that moment and when she was told we were gone. The more things I was able to unearth, the more questions were left unanswered.

I looked up again at Janine Bandencoop. “So then they just picked her up and that was it?”

She nodded. “Yes. I made sure they showed up. I saw them pull up at the hotel. Then I left.”

“How’d they get into the room?”

“They were instructed to ask at the front desk for an envelope,” she said. “I’d left a key card to the room for them.”

Neat and clean. And awful.

I took another deep breath and stared across the table at her until she started to squirm.

“I want the account information,” I said.

“The what?”

“The account information,” I repeated. “The account that you paid into to buy my daughter in order to sell her.”

“I told you,” she said, shaking her head. “I don’t have…”

“I want the fucking account information!” I screamed at her.

She jerked back in the sofa, clearly startled.

“I don’t give a shit what you have to do,” I said, lowering my voice again. “But you will find that account information.”

“I never had a name,” she said, throwing her hands up. “I never had a name.”

“I don’t care,” I said. “I want the account number. I want the initial email or whatever that came to you that indicated someone had my daughter and was offering her to you.”

“That was nearly a decade ago,” she said.

“Yeah, I’m fucking aware of that,” I said, staring at her. “I know exactly how long she was gone.”

She looked away from me.

“So I want anything related to my daughter,” I said. “Emails, message board notes, bank account numbers, the dollar amounts. All of it. Everything you have.”

I saw her teeth grinding, her jaw sliding back and forth. Her hands shook in her lap. She was scared of me. And she needed to be.

“It’ll take me some time to come up with the information,” she said. “I don’t keep records. I don’t keep files.”

“You have until tomorrow,” I said.

“Tomorrow’s impossible,” she said, shaking her head. “I can’t do that.”

“You have until tomorrow,” I said. “Or I bring my federal agent friend in here and we start tracking every fucking child you’ve ever bought and sold. You don’t believe me?” I smiled at her. “Check my name on the Internet. See how many kids I’ve found over the last few years. Read the rumors about what I’ve done to help families.” I paused. “And know that most of the rumors, especially the ones where I’ve hurt people to find who I was looking for, are true.” I glanced down at Landon. “You think he looks bad now?” I shook my head. “You won’t believe what I’ll do to him if I don’t get what I want from you.” I stood. “So. Tomorrow.”

“But I just can’t…”

“Then you’re going to jail tomorrow and your boys will end up in a ravine somewhere,” I said, staring at her. “It’s that simple.”

Her eyes moved to her son, still passed out on the floor.

I pulled my wallet from my pocket and dropped my card with my name and number on the table. “Tomorrow.”

“And if I get it to you,” she said, looking up me nervously. “If I get it to you, then you’ll leave me alone? No police, no FBI?”

I knew she wasn’t stupid. If she’d been moving kids for at least a decade, she wasn’t stupid. There were too many factors involved that could’ve gotten her caught if she was stupid. So she was smart in that way.

But I couldn’t believe she was asking me that question.

“I just want the information on my daughter,” I said, heading for the door.

“So we have a deal then?” she said, standing up. “I get you what you want and you go away and no one else gets involved?”

I opened the door. Maybe I was wrong. Maybe she could’ve done all of this while being stupid.

“That’s right,” I lied. “No one else gets involved.”

TWENTY ONE

The other son was gone when I walked outside, either licking his wounds or looking to take revenge against me. I eyed the cul-de-sac carefully, checked in the back of the rental before I got in before driving off slowly. He was nowhere to be found.

My fingers ached from gripping the steering wheel so tight as I drove away. I felt like I’d made some headway, but at the same time, I felt like I was stuck in no man’s land. I knew what Bandencoop was going to do. She probably didn’t have any of the information I demanded. There was no reason for her to keep it. It would’ve been an incredibly stupid thing to do and made her much more vulnerable. She was going to pack up and disappear. She probably realized that there was no way in hell I was going to let her walk. Maybe I was wrong and maybe she was stupid enough to keep records and maybe she’d be calling me. I doubted it. But at the very least, I’d scared the hell out of her and if she did try to disappear she’d never stop looking over her shoulder. Eventually, I’d get her name to Blundell and they could work on finding her and doing whatever the hell the law would let them do to her.

I drove aimlessly for awhile, just cruising the highway. I had nowhere to go, nowhere to be and I was going stick around for a bit on the small chance that I’d from Bandencoop. My anger level was too high to actually interact with anyone. I needed to let the anger seep out of me, at least temporarily. It was a skill I’d learned during the time Elizabeth had been gone. I’d get so worked up that I was incapable of dealing normally and rationally with people. So I stayed away from them until everything had leveled off.

By the time the sun began to set over the mountains, I felt more collected. I pulled off the highway and grabbed a hamburger at a fast food joint and pulled into the lot of the first hotel I spotted. Ten minutes later, I was stretched out on a firm king bed, the TV on for background noise and eating the burger. The air conditioner buzzed quietly in the corner and cooled the room so efficiently that I realized I was cold. I was kicking off my shoes to get under the blankets on the bed when my phone buzzed and I saw Lauren’s number on the screen.

I touched the screen. “Hey.”

“Hey,” she said. “How are you?”

I hesitated. “I’m okay. How are you guys?”

“Been better.”

“Why’s that?”

She let out a long, frustrated sigh. “I think this was a mistake.”

I pushed myself up so I was sitting straight up on the bed, my back against the headboard. “Why?”

“Flight was fine,” she said. “We actually talked most of the flight. Nothing serious, just talked. We were still talking when we got off. That’s why I forgot to text you the second we landed.”

“That’s alright.”

“So it was fine,” she said, then stopped. “Hang on.” The line buzzed for a moment. “Sorry. She’s in the shower and wanted to make sure she was still in there.”

“Okay.”

“I called the Corzines after we got the rental,” she explained. “Spoke to the woman. She was surprised, but very nice.”

I smiled. “She must’ve been if you’re actually saying she was nice.”

“I was trying to be open-minded,” Lauren said. “And she was very nice. Said they were dying to see Elizabeth and they’d do whatever was necessary.”

“That doesn’t sound bad.”

“I suggested a coffee shop near their house,” she continued. “I found it online. We found it and they showed up about ten minutes later.”

The line buzzed and it sounded like she was clearing her throat.

“She immediately went to them and hugged them,” she said and I could tell she was on the verge of tears. “And it hurt, Joe. It hurt to watch.”

“I’m sure,” I said. “But again. Have to try and put ourselves in her shoes.”

“We’ve told her what happened, Joe,” Lauren said. “She knows they essentially bought her from us.”

“It’s not quite that clear cut, Lauren.”

“You know what I mean,” she answered. “It’s like she doesn’t even care.”

I could understand Lauren’s frustration and hurt and I wasn’t sure that I wouldn’t have reacted the exact same way if I’d been there. But I also thought it was unrealistic to expect Elizabeth to just cut the cord with people that had apparently treated her well.

“What happened then?” I asked.

She sighed again. “We went through some awkward pleasantries. The guy didn’t really say anything. He seemed really nervous. I think he’s still waiting for the other shoe to fall and the cops to swarm his home.”

I nodded to myself. I was sure that he was. We hadn’t decided what to do with them from a legal standpoint and I wasn’t sure we could do anything. It was probably going to be up to Blundell to decide what their role had been in Elizabeth’s abduction.

“After a few minutes, I offered to move to another table so the three of them could talk. They seemed unsure at first, like I was trying to trap them or something. But then I convinced them I wasn’t and they said that would be nice. So I got up and got coffee and sat on other side of the shop.”

“How did they interact?”

“Fine, I guess,” she said. “There was no physical contact or anything like that. Elizabeth actually seemed kind of…I don’t know. Apathetic. She was talking but her body language was kind of indifferent.”

“She’s a teenager.”

“I guess,” she answered. “After maybe twenty minutes, Elizabeth got up and came over to me.”

I didn’t say anything.

“And she wanted to know if she could spend the night at their house,” Lauren said.

It was my turn to sigh.

“I, of course, because I am a black-hearted shrew, said absofuckinglutely not.”

I chuckled. “Of course.”

“At least, according to Elizabeth, that’s what I am. She was pissed. At me. Really pissed. Didn’t understand why it was such a big deal. We went round and round and covered the same ground about why I was there with her in the first place. But she wasn’t interested.”

I leaned my head back against the headboard. “What were the Corzines doing?”

“Watching,” she said. “After we’d stopped arguing and just sat there, staring at one another, the woman came over.”

“To intervene?”

“No. To apologize.”

“What?”

“She heard us arguing,” Lauren explained. “And she wanted to make it clear that it wasn’t their idea for her to spend the night. It was Elizabeth’s.”

I shifted on the bed. “Oh.”

“It got really awkward and they ended up leaving because it was like we were at a stalemate or something,” Lauren said. “I tried to talk to Elizabeth but she basically stopped talking to me because she was so pissed. So we sat there for awhile and then I just threw my hands up and we went and found our hotel and we’ve been sitting here, not talking to one another, until she got up to take a shower a few minutes ago.”

“I’m sorry,” I said. “That sucks.”

“Yeah, it really does,” she said. “I feel helpless.”

“Remember what I said. We are her parents. Not them or anyone else. We get to make the decisions.”

“I guess.”

I knew she was down, but I didn’t think I had anything to offer her. This was just going to be part of the process and there were going to be ups and downs. It was cliché, but it was the truth. And no matter how much we wanted it, Elizabeth wasn’t going to like us all of the time. Even if she’d never been taken from us, we would’ve been fighting a similar battle through the teenage years.

“Any plans for tomorrow yet, then?” I asked.

“She’d have to be speaking to me in order for us to make plans.”

“Right.”

“Hang on,” she said and I heard some muffled voices before she came back. “You want to talk to her?”

“Yes.”

There was a moment of silence, then Elizabeth said “Hello?”

“Hey. How was the shower?”

“Okay. Not much water pressure.” Her tone was bored, uninterested. “Kind of cold.”

“Bummer,” I said. “How was today?”

“Fine.”

“Not what I heard.”

I heard a door close in the background. “It was fine.”

“Your mom said you wanted to stay with the Corzines.”

“Yeah. But she said no. So, oh well.”

“Do you understand why she said no?”

“I don’t really wanna talk about it, okay?”

The same frustration Lauren felt was finding its way to me. So I tried to remind myself that it was just the first day there and Elizabeth was allowed to be confused and frustrated, too.

“Okay,” I said. “You know what you’re doing tomorrow?”

“No.”

My inclination was to push because that was what I almost always did, but I knew that was the wrong path to take at that moment. “Okay. Well, I just wanted to say hi.”

“You wanna talk to her again?” Still refusing to say Mom.

“Yeah, please. Hey, Elizabeth?”

“What?”

“I miss you. I love you.”

She didn’t respond right away, then, “I’ll get her from the bathroom.”

A tiny punch to the stomach.

I heard muffled voices again and then Lauren was back on the line. “Hey.”

“She wasn’t any more talkative with me.”

“Nope.”

“She’s right there, isn’t she?”

“Yep.”

“Okay, well, I guess we can’t hash it out any further.”

“Not sure what there is to hash out, Joe.”

She was right. I wasn’t sure, either. It was just going to be a bumpy road.

“You do anything interesting today?” Lauren asked.

I felt myself blush, knowing I hadn’t told her where I was and that I was about to lie to her. “Not really. Same old, same old.”

“I’m not really sure what that is for you, Joe.”

I laughed. “Me either.”

“I’m tired,” Lauren said. “I need to get in bed.”

“Call me tomorrow?” I asked.

“Of course.”

“Okay. Hang in there, Lauren. She’ll come around. It’s just gonna take awhile.”

She cleared her throat. “I hope so. I really hope so.”

We hung up and I set the phone on the nightstand next to the bed. I clicked off the light and un-muted the TV. It was on ESPN and the announcer was selling some story on a football player. But I really wasn’t listening.

I was staring at the ceiling, wondering if and when our daughter would come all the way back to us.