Capturing Angels Read online

  Four young men in sport jackets, ties loosened, were at the bar and turned to look at me. The bartender was a curly-gray-haired man with a face that had the kind of deeply etched lines that people would rationalize as giving him more character. There was a waitress sitting on the farthest stool at the bar. I saw no other woman in the tavern. Two older men were at a table on my right, and three men who looked a bit older were at another table down from them. One of the men had a golden retriever sprawled at his feet. Everyone stopped talking for a moment to look at me.

  I waved back at Sam and started toward him. He rose when I reached the booth and reached for my hand. He wasn’t shaking it so much as guiding me into the booth and not letting go until I started to sit.

  “What is this, a men’s club or something?”

  “No,” he said, laughing. “Time of day. It’ll fill up in about an hour or so with couples. Would you like something hard or soft to drink?”

  “Soft. Just a mineral water, thank you.”

  He signaled the waitress and sat across from me.

  “That does look more inviting,” I said, nodding at his drink.

  “It’s a Cosmopolitan. The guys at the station ridicule my choice of beverage. They say real men don’t drink Cosmopolitans.”

  The waitress approached. “What’ll it be, Sam?” she asked him with her eyes on me.

  “A mineral water,” he told her.

  “No, I changed my mind. I’ll have what he’s having,” I said, and Sam smiled.

  He waited for the waitress to leave and then leaned forward. For the first time, I noticed that he had a small scar just under his left eye.

  “I don’t have much to report, except I had a nice surprise when David Joseph agreed to use his manpower to investigate costume rentals. I’ll have to tell you,” he added quickly, “that doesn’t mean he’s bought into my theory about the abduction the way I described it to you yesterday. The best I could get from him was ‘That’s possible. It might lead to something. We’ll look into it.’”

  “At this point, I guess I have to grateful for anything,” I said.

  He stared at me a moment, his gaze intense. He didn’t look critical as much as he looked concerned. I actually brushed back my hair and then wondered if I had forgotten to put on lipstick.

  “You look tired today,” he said, sitting back.

  “It’s difficult not to. I don’t sleep well, but I didn’t sleep well especially last night.”

  “I hope that wasn’t because of what I put you through yesterday.”

  “No, it was more about what I put myself through by returning to the scene of the crime.“

  He asked, “Did you tell your husband about the things I said, and did that create some problems at home?”

  Before I could respond, the waitress brought my drink.

  “Would you like something with it? They have great appetizers here,” Sam said.

  “No, no, this is fine.” I took a sip and smiled. “I remember drinking these when I was in college. My girlfriends thought I was pretending to be sophisticated. My mother actually introduced me to them. My parents were more liberal-minded back then. They thought it was proper to permit their daughter to imbibe, but mainly at home. My mother was quite the little Bohemian in her day, and my father was no slouch when it came to causes about which he felt strongly.”

  “And now?”

  I shrugged. “Reformed liberals are like reformed smokers, their biggest critics.”

  He laughed and then nodded to the waitress, who had stood by waiting and listening, apparently fascinated with what I was saying. She smiled at him and left us.

  “I guess I was rambling a bit there.”

  “No, no,” he said, and then obviously had a sudden thought. “You’re not on any medication that prohibits alcoholic beverages, are you? I suppose I should have asked you that first.”

  “Not yet,” I said, and drank some more. “But that looms in my near future, so maybe I should enjoy this while I still can. John is pushing the new-therapist idea with possibly a new prescription.”

  “Oh,” he said, without indicating agreement or disagreement with the idea.

  I looked around the tavern again. There were some framed prints of idyllic country scenes on the walls and interesting sconces. “It’s a very nice little place,” I said. “From the waitress’s reaction, I guess you’re a regular here, huh?”

  “Home away from home thing. I’m not much of a cook. In fact, the last thing I recall making for myself was a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, and I didn’t do all that great a job of that. Too messy.”

  “My husband can cook and bake well when he wants to. Like with everything else he does, he’s a perfectionist.” I knew the way I said “perfectionist” made it sound like a profanity.

  “Getting back to my first question, did you tell your husband anything about our meeting yesterday?”

  “No.”

  “Was that because of the way I categorized it back at the mall? Fantasy police work?”

  “Sort of,” I said. I sipped some more and added, “As I said, he’s now insisting I have more therapy. I didn’t want to give him more reason.”

  Sam nodded and sipped his own drink. “To be honest, I would have thought you were continuing to have it. It would be understandable in your situation, of course, and maybe very necessary.”

  “I’m sure it is. I’m not the easiest person to live with these days, and that includes how I treat my friends and our closest neighbor, Margaret Sullivan, who’s an honorary member of the family.”

  “And your babysitter, right?”

  “Yes. You remember. I’m impressed.”

  “I’ll confess that I spent a few hours going through the FBI file last night in between things.”

  “Between things? You really don’t sleep.”

  He laughed and watched me finish my drink. He was still nursing his. “I don’t think I should ask if you want another,” he said.

  “I do.”

  “Then at least have something to eat with it.” He signaled the waitress. “You’ll like the spanakopita. It’s a Greek pastry with spinach and feta cheese.”

  “I know what it is.”

  “I’m sure you do. They make their own here. Woody’s wife, that is. She’s half Greek and half English. She does a great shepherd’s pie, too.”

  “Shepherd’s pie? The moment I walked in, I thought this place reminded me of an English pub.”

  “As I said, my home away from home,” he said. “How about the spanakopita?”

  “Fine,” I said.

  He ordered a platter for us and another Cosmopolitan for each of us, too.

  “All right,” he said when the waitress left us again. “David’s doing another favor for me. He’s getting me the scan they ran on other abductions in the state that involved children around Mary’s age. I’ll have the results tomorrow.”

  “So, they already looked into that idea about it being a random kidnapping?”

  “Sure.”

  “Why didn’t they ever say anything about it, especially when they left hunkering down at our house?”

  “In the beginning, they were focusing too hard on this being a personal thing, someone deliberately after your daughter. Once they got off that, they put the case in their computers and ran out some similar MOs. They have other agents in other parts of the state and even around the country looking into these, but so far, nothing’s come up concerning your Mary. At least, the way I see it.”

  “You mean, there was no abduction of a girl around Mary’s age that possibly involved someone in a Santa costume?”

  “No.”

  “But if they were serial kidnappers, they would use a Santa costume only during the holidays, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “But they might have don
e it somewhere else around the same time.”

  “Exactly. And there’s been nothing similar reported about any of the other abductions during that period. That’s why David Joseph wasn’t that excited about my theory. He recalled how it had turned out to be a dead end when I first looked into it.” He twirled the little bit left in his glass. “Speaking of that, I remember your husband wasn’t terribly keen on talking about Mary’s belief in Santa and that sort of thing.”

  “He just doesn’t know what Mary’s dreams and illusions are. Sometimes John has trouble talking to children, his own child included. He isn’t in any way cruel to her, nothing like that. He’s somewhat oblivious, focusing on other things. He has this hobby. He gets lost in it for hours sometimes. He puts ships in bottles. That and watching football are his biggest distractions from his work. He reads a great deal, too.”

  “Not things you can share so much with kids Mary’s age, I guess.”

  “He did try to turn Mary into a football fan, but she wasn’t as enthusiastic as he would have liked.”

  “A football fan? She’s a little girl and just a little more than five, right?”

  “Now going on seven,” I said. “I think her recent birthday was the darkest day of my life. John and I hardly said a word to each other all that day, and I couldn’t eat a thing. I took a sleeping pill in the afternoon and then another in the evening, but I woke up in the middle of the night in a sweat, trembling, and spent the rest of the night in Mary’s little bed, curled up in a fetal position. John didn’t wake me before he left for work, but he knew I was in there.”

  “Damn,” Sam said. “I’m so sorry for the pain you’re going through.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Getting back to Santa Claus . . . how much of a big deal was made of him in your home? I hate to dwell on it, but . . .”

  “As John told you, I don’t think we did anything more than any other family does for their small children. Nothing unusual was said about Santa, by us or by Margaret. As far as I know, that is. I mean, Mary asked the same sorts of questions other children might, maybe even more serious questions. She’s an extraordinary child.”

  “What sorts of serious questions?”

  “How old he really is, how he can read so many letters, how he can deliver all the presents in one night. Stuff like that.”

  “Interesting. A child like that might be more apt to pay attention to someone in a Santa costume, like why was he there and not working on his preparations for Christmas or whatever.”

  “Yes, I can believe she would wonder and even ask him.”

  “Precocious?”

  “Yes, very, but she’s John’s daughter, too. I’m not surprised.”

  “You sound both proud and angry about that,” he said.

  “I have no idea what I sound like anymore. I feel like something is rotting inside me.”

  “I understand. Tell me more about her.”

  “Like what?”

  “Anything special, unusual, something someone else might notice.”

  “You mean, something that would attract a pervert or a serial child kidnapper?”

  He shrugged.

  “You saw her pictures, right?”

  “Remarkably beautiful, yes. Almost unreal. That smile, the glow in her face.”

  I smiled through the tears that were forming. “Some people think she is a little angel.”

  “I’ll bet.”

  “No, I mean literally.”

  “Pardon?”

  “They say they see a glow around her sometimes, and then there was that incident with Molly Middleton’s child, Bradley.”

  “What incident?”

  “I call it an incident. Bradley’s mother calls it a miracle. Bradley is a seven-year-old who suffered from acute lymphoblastic leukemia. At the time, he was being treated with chemo and radiation, but we all heard that he wasn’t doing well. John says children have an eighty-five-percent survival rate with that form of the disease. It looked like Bradley Middleton was falling into the fifteen percent.”

  “And?”

  “This is ridiculous, of course.”

  “I’m interested. Please go on.”

  “Molly visited me one Saturday. She brought Bradley along, and he spent most of the time with Mary. Kids who are two, three, even four years older than her don’t seem to feel it’s beneath them to talk and be with Mary. Anyway, the following week, we heard that Bradley was suddenly reacting to treatment dramatically. As far as I know, he’s now in the eighty-five percent.”

  “And some people attribute that to the time he spent with your Mary?”

  “Those who know, thanks to Molly’s big mouth.”

  He sat back. The waitress brought our platter of spanakopita. I reached for one. They were hot, but I used a napkin.

  “What did your husband have to say about all that?”

  “Why?”

  “Well, with his religious beliefs and all. Did he get upset about it?”

  “No. Actually, we didn’t talk that much about it. John just shook his head. He did say that desperate people are more susceptible to miracles.”

  “More susceptible to miracles? What does that mean?”

  I shrugged. “That they’ll grab on to anything that gives them hope. He hates that the church at one time sold holy relics, and he has no interest in going anywhere like Lourdes. He and Margaret have little arguments about it sometimes. She says God works in mysterious ways and could work through someone on occasion. He didn’t disagree with that, but then again, he would never criticize Margaret Sullivan because of her religious beliefs.”

  “Have you ever told this story to David or his people?” Sam asked.

  “What story? What would I tell them? It’s a bit fantastic, isn’t it? And how can that have an impact on any investigation?”

  “So, you don’t hold the same beliefs that your husband and your friend Margaret hold, that God works mysteriously and could do something miraculous through a child?”

  “It seems a stretch for me. John and I have had some heavy theological discussions from time to time. He enjoys that sort of thing. He’s actually very tolerant when it comes to what other people believe. It’s almost as if . . .”

  “As if what?”

  “He knows he’s right and can afford to be tolerant. Most of the time, that irks me,” I admitted.

  Sam smiled. He took a spanakopita, and I took another and held it up.

  “These are good. You were right,” I said. I leaned back after sipping some of my second Cosmopolitan. “This is actually the first time I’ve enjoyed eating and drinking anywhere, even home. Thank you.”

  He looked embarrassed and sipped his drink. “I’d like to talk to Mrs. Middleton,” he suddenly said.

  “What? Why? You can’t be thinking Molly had something to do with Mary’s abduction, can you?”

  “No. At least, not deliberately.”

  “What are you thinking, then?”

  “You know how a good writer or a good artist doesn’t like anyone reading or looking at his unfinished work? Well, a good detective doesn’t like to express his ideas until he’s got something to go on. I made that mistake yesterday talking about Santa Claus.”

  “And I thought I was the paranoid one,” I said.

  “If you don’t have some paranoia, you can’t be a good detective,” Sam said. He took a small pad out of his jacket pocket and flipped it open. “What’s her address? Do you have her telephone number handy?”

  “Really?”

  “Dead serious,” he said.

  I took out my cell phone and went to the contacts list to read him Molly’s address and number.

  “Good,” he said, closing his pad.

  “Maybe I should phone her first,” I said. “She’d probably call me instantly after seeing or s
peaking to you anyway.”

  “I’d rather you didn’t.”

  “Why?”

  “We detectives have more success speaking to people when they have no time to prepare. Not that I’m saying she has anything to hide,” he quickly added. “Look,” he continued when he saw the disturbed expression on my face, “in most cases, people aren’t aware of clues. They don’t realize what they have seen or heard and how something could be beneficial. When they’re guarded, worried about saying the right things, they’ll skip stuff. It’s only natural.”

  I nodded. “I don’t know what’s natural and what’s not anymore,” I muttered. “Including myself.”

  “Let me tell you something, Grace. Despite how hard you are on yourself, you’re holding up pretty good under the circumstances.”

  “Is that what you think?”

  “Yes.”

  “And I thought you were a good detective,” I said, and he laughed.

  “Are you originally from here?” he asked.

  There was always a moment in a conversation with someone you didn’t know all that well when you felt the mood change, become more relaxed. The way you had measured how you spoke, what you said, even how you looked, seemed to slip away. You were no longer afraid of being too revealing, too honest. That moment came then with Sam Abraham. Maybe, I thought, it’s the vodka in the Cosmopolitan.

  “You mean California? Yes. I grew up in Woodland Hills. The only time I left the state was to go to college in Oregon, Willamette University. I majored in English, but I resisted going into teaching and never got my MA. My father found me a good job. I was well on my way to becoming the manager of a software retail outlet when I met John.” I paused. I knew he was expecting to hear more. “I’m afraid I don’t have a terribly interesting story.”

  “Depends who’s listening,” Sam said.

  “Yes. I have to keep reminding myself that I am speaking to an L.A. detective. Did you always want to be in law enforcement?”

  “Yeah, I guess. My father was a state CID investigator in Pennsylvania. My older brother married and moved to Texas, where he became a county sheriff. I started there thanks to him, but I wanted to do more, so I attended the University of Phoenix and got an associate’s degree in criminal justice. Then, with my brother’s connections, I found a position in L.A.”