For roughly three hours and forty-five minutes, Amanda McCready had been left alone in an unlocked apartment. At some point during that time, the assumption went, she had either slipped out on her own or been abducted.
Angie and I had followed the case as closely as the rest of the city, and it baffled us as much as it seemed to baffle everyone else. Helene McCready, we knew, had submitted to a polygraph regarding her daughter’s disappearance and passed. Police were unable to find a single lead to follow; rumor had it they were consulting psychics. Neighbors on the street that night, a warm Indian summer night when most windows were open and pedestrians strolled at random, reported seeing nothing suspicious, hearing nothing that sounded like a child’s screams. No one remembered seeing a four-year-old wandering around alone or a suspicious person or persons carrying either a child or an odd-looking bundle.
Amanda McCready, as far as anyone could tell, had vanished so completely it was as if she’d never been born.
Beatrice McCready, her aunt, had called us this afternoon. I told her I didn’t think there was much we could do that a hundred cops, half the Boston press corps, and thousands of everyday people weren’t already doing on her niece’s behalf.
“Mrs. McCready,” I said, “save your money.”
“I’d rather save my niece,” she said.
Now, as the Wednesday evening rush-hour traffic dwindled to some distant beeps and engine revs on the avenue below, Angie and I sat in our office in the belfry of St. Bartholomew’s Church in Dorchester and listened to Amanda’s aunt and uncle plead her case.
“Who’s Amanda’s father?” Angie said.
The weight seemed to resettle onto Lionel’s shoulders. “We don’t know. We think it’s a guy named Todd Morgan. He left the city right after Helene got pregnant. Nobody’s heard from him since.”
“The list of possible fathers is long, though,” Beatrice said.
Lionel looked down at the floor.
“Mr. McCready,” I said.
He looked at me. “Lionel.”
“Please, Lionel,” I said. “Have a seat.”
He fitted himself into the small chair on the other side of the desk after a bit of a struggle.
“This Todd Morgan,” Angie said, as she finished writing the name on a pad of paper. “Do police know his whereabouts?”
“Mannheim, Germany,” Beatrice said. “He’s stationed in the army over there. And he was on the base when Amanda disappeared.”
“Have they discounted him as a suspect?” I said. “There’s no way he would have hired a friend to do it?”
Lionel cleared his throat, looked at the floor again. “The police said he’s embarrassed by my sister and doesn’t think Amanda is his child anyway.” He looked up at me with those lost, gentle eyes of his. “They said his response was: ‘If I want a rug rat to shit and cry all the time, I can have a German one.’”
I could feel the wave of hurt that had washed through him when he’d had to call his niece a “rug rat,” and I nodded. “Tell me about Helene,” I said.
There wasn’t much to tell. Helene McCready was Lionel’s younger sister by four years, which put her at twenty-eight. She’d dropped out of Monsignor Ryan Memorial High School in her junior year, never got the GED she kept saying she would. At seventeen, she ran off with a guy fifteen years older, and they’d lived in a trailer park in New Hampshire for six months before Helene returned home with a face bruised purple and the first of three abortions behind her. Since then she’d worked a variety of jobs—Stop & Shop cashier, Chess King clerk, dry cleaner’s assistant, UPS receptionist—and never managed to hold on to any for more than eighteen months. Since the disappearance of her daughter, she’d taken leave from her part-time job running the lottery machine at Li’l Peach, and there weren’t any indications she’d be going back.
“She loved that little girl, though,” Lionel said.
Beatrice looked as if she were of a different opinion, but she kept silent.
“Where is Helene now?” Angie said.
“At our house,” Lionel said. “The lawyer we contacted said we should keep her under wraps as long as we can.”
“Why?” I said.
“Why?” Lionel said.
“Yeah. I mean, her child’s missing. Shouldn’t she be making appeals to the public? Canvassing the neighborhood at least?”
Lionel opened his mouth, then closed it. He looked down at his shoes.
“Helene is not up to that,” Beatrice said.
“Why not?” Angie said.
“Because—well, because she’s Helene,” Beatrice said.
“Are the police monitoring the phones at her place in case there’s a ransom demand?”
“Yes,” Lionel said.
“And she’s not there,” Angie said.
“It got to be too much for her,” Lionel said. “She needed her privacy.” He held out his hands, looked at us.
“Oh,” I said. “Her privacy.”
“Of course,” Angie said.
“Look”—Lionel kneaded his cap again—”I know how it seems. I do. But people show their worry in different ways. Right?”
I gave him a halfhearted nod. “If she’d had three abortions,” I said, and Lionel winced, “what made her decide to give birth to Amanda?”
“I think she decided it was time.” He leaned forward and his face brightened. “If you could have seen how excited she was during that pregnancy. I mean, her life had purpose, you know? She was sure that child would make everything better.”
“For her,” Angie said. “What about the child?”
“My point at the time,” Beatrice said.
Lionel turned to both women, his eyes wide and desperate again. “They were good for each other,” he said. “I believe that.”
Beatrice looked at her shoes. Angie looked out the window.
Lionel looked back at me. “They were.”
I nodded, and his hound dog’s face sagged with relief.
“Lionel,” Angie said, still looking out the window, “I’ve read all the newspaper reports. Nobody seems to know who would have taken Amanda. The police are stymied, and according to reports, Helene says she has no ideas on the subject either.”
“I know.” Lionel nodded.
“So, okay.” Angie turned from the window and looked at Lionel. “What do you think happened?”