I'll Walk Alone (8 page)

18

I
n the days when he had worked as an undercover cop it had been easy for Detective Billy Collins to pass as a down-and-out drifter. Thin to the point of boniness, with a sharp-angled face, sparse graying hair, and mournful eyes, he was easily accepted by drug dealers as a likely customer to purchase a fix.

Now that he was assigned to the Central Park Precinct, and arriving for work in a business suit, shirt, and tie, together with his mild, self-effacing manner, people tended to dismiss him on first acquaintance as an ordinary, run-of-the-mill guy, who probably wasn’t too bright.

That judgment was shared by many suspected felons who were deceived by Billy’s routine questions and seeming acceptance of their version about a criminal event. For most of them, that turned out to be a serious mistake. Billy’s forty-two-year-old steel-trap mind retained information that had seemed trivial and unimportant at the time it was given, but when circumstances changed, he could retrieve that data from his memory bank in a heartbeat.

Billy’s private life was simple. Despite his funereal appearance, he had a keen sense of humor, was a good storyteller, and was devoted to his wife, Eileen, whom he’d started dating when they were in high school. He said she was the only person alive who considered him handsome, and that was the reason he had fallen permanently in love with her. His two sons, who fortunately for them resembled their very attractive mother, were both students at Fordham University.

Billy had been the first detective to arrive on the scene when the 911 call came that a three-year-old was missing in Central Park nearly two years ago. He had rushed there with a sinking heart. For him the worst part of his job was to respond to a crime involving a dead or missing child.

That hot summer day in June it had been Tiffany Shields, the babysitter, who sobbed hysterically that she had fallen asleep next to the stroller and when she woke up Matthew was gone. While every inch of the park was being searched and nearby visitors questioned, the divorced parents had arrived separately. Ted Carpenter, the father, had been on the verge of attacking Shields, who admitted that she had fallen asleep; Zan Moreland, the mother, had been eerily calm, a reaction that Billy had attributed to shock. Even as the hours had passed without a trace of Matthew, and not one single witness who might have observed him being taken had come forward, the mother had remained impassive in demeanor.

In the nearly two years since that day, Billy Collins had kept Matthew’s file on the top of his desk. He had scrupulously followed up on both parents’ explanation of where they had been when their child disappeared, and both their statements were backed up by other witnesses. He asked them about any enemies who might have hated them enough to kidnap their child. Zan Moreland had hesitantly confided that there was one person she did consider an enemy. He was Bartley Longe, a prominent interior designer, who scoffed at the idea that in any way he would kidnap the child of a former employee.

“That statement from Zan Moreland validates everything I have ever said about her,” Longe had told Billy, his tone furious and disgusted. “First she practically accused me of causing her parents’deaths, because if they hadn’t been on their way to pick her up at the airport, her father might have had his heart attack at home and wouldn’t have been in the accident. Then she told me that it was because she was working for me that she didn’t see her parents more often. Now she’s telling you that I kidnapped her child! Detective, do yourself a favor. Don’t waste your time looking anywhere else. Whatever happened to that poor child was because his deranged mother made it happen.”

Billy Collins had listened, but then trusted his own instincts. From what he had learned, Bartley Longe’s anger at Zan Moreland was triggered by the fact that she had become his business competitor. But Billy had quickly decided that neither Longe nor Moreland had anything to do with the little boy’s disappearance. In his heart and soul he firmly believed that Zan was a victim, a deeply wounded victim who would have moved heaven and earth to get her child back.

That was why when he received a call on Tuesday evening about a breaking development in the Matthew Carpenter case, Billy had been tempted to jump in his car and drive from his home in Forest Hills, Queens, to the precinct.

His boss told him to stay put. “For all we know those photos that were sold to that gossip magazine may have been doctored. If they’re on the level, you need to have a clear mind to start reworking the case.”

On Wednesday morning, Billy woke at seven A.M. Twenty minutes later, showered, shaved, and dressed, he was on his way into the city. By the time he arrived there, the photos that were published in
Tell-All Weekly
and online were on his desk.

There were six in all; the original three the English tourist had taken, plus the three he had blown up for the family album. They were the ones whose background seemed to indicate that Zan More-land had kidnapped her own son.

Billy whistled softly, his only physical response to the fact that he was both shocked and chagrined. I really did believe that sob-sister, he thought, as he studied the three photos that showed Zan bending over the stroller, then picking up the sleeping child, and finally walking down the path away from the camera. There’s no mistake, Billy thought as he went from one photo to the next. The long, straight auburn hair, the slender frame, the fashionable sunglasses …

He opened the file that was always on the corner of his desk. From it he extracted pictures that had been quietly taken of Zan by the police photographer when she rushed to the crime scene. The short flowered dress and the high-heeled sandals she was wearing when she arrived in the park that day were identical to the clothing worn by the kidnapper.

Billy normally patted himself on the back that he was an excellent judge of human nature. His sharp sense of disappointment in his own bad judgment was immediately vanquished by his overriding concern about what Zan Moreland might have done with her own son.

Zan’s alibi about her whereabouts that day had seemed straightforward. Clearly he had missed something. I’m starting with the babysitter, Billy thought grimly. I’ll pick apart Zan Moreland’s account of every minute of that day and find out how she’s gotten away with lying. Then by God, I’m going to make her tell me what she did with that little kid.

19

T
iffany Shields was still living at home, completing her second year at Hunter College. The day that Matthew Carpenter disappeared had been a turning point in her life. It wasn’t only that she had been in charge of Matthew and had fallen asleep, it was that whenever the case came up in the media, she was branded as the careless babysitter who had not only not bothered to strap him into the stroller, but who had stretched out on a blanket and, as one reporter wrote, “passed out.”

Almost every article referred to the hysterical call she had made to 911. The tape of it was played on some of the TV coverage. In the past two years when a child was missing anywhere, Tiffany had been forced to read or hear that it was or wasn’t a Tiffany Shields-sleeping-babysitter kind of situation. Whenever she read or heard those media reports, Tiffany’s anger at the unfairness of it grew into a block of solid fury.

The day was still vivid in her mind. She woke with what felt like the beginnings of a cold. She canceled plans to meet some of her girlfriends to celebrate their impending graduation from Cathedral High School. Her mother had gone to work at Bloomingdale’s where she was a sales clerk. Her father was the superintendent of the apartment building where they lived on East Eighty-sixth Street. At noon, the phone rang in their apartment. If only I hadn’t answered it, Tif fany thought over and over again in the next twenty-one months. I almost didn’t. I figured it was some tenant calling to complain about some damn leaking faucet.

But she did answer it.

It was Zan Moreland. “Tiffany, can you possibly help me?” she had pleaded. “Matthew’s new nanny was supposed to start this morning and just phoned that she can’t be here until tomorrow. I’ve got a terribly important appointment. It’s with a potential client, and she’s not the kind of person who would care about my babysitting problems. Would you be an angel and take Matthew out to the park for a couple of hours? I just fed him and it’s his naptime. I promise you he’ll probably sleep the whole time.”

I used to mind Matthew once in a while when the nanny had an evening off and I loved that little guy, Tiffany thought. But that day I told Zan that I thought I was getting sick, but she was so insistent that I finally gave in. And ruined my life in the process.

But on Wednesday morning, as she glanced at the morning paper over a glass of orange juice, Tiffany had two reactions. Explosive anger that Zan Moreland had manipulated her, and unbelievable relief that she would no longer be the victim of Matthew’s disappearance. I told the cops that I had taken some antihistamines and felt kind of groggy and that I didn’t really want to babysit, she thought. But if they come back to talk to me again, I’m going to rub it into them that Zan Moreland
knew
I was feeling tired. When I picked up Matthew, she offered me a Pepsi. She said it would make me feel better, that the sugar in it was beneficial when a cold was coming on.

Looking back, Tiffany thought, I wonder if Zan may have put something in that soda to make me really sleepy? And Matthew never even stirred while he was in the stroller. That’s why I didn’t bother him to put the strap on … He was out like a light.

Tiffany reread every word of the story and studied the photos carefully. That’s the dress Zan was wearing, she thought, but the shoes aren’t the same. By mistake, Zan had bought two pairs that were alike and had another pair that was almost the same. All of them were high-heeled beige step-in sandals. The only difference between the two styles was that one crossover strap was narrower than the other. She gave me one of the identical pairs with the narrower strap. We were both wearing them that morning. I still have them.

I’m not going to tell that to anyone. If the cops knew they may want my sandals and by God I
earned
them!

Three hours later, when she checked the messages on her cell phone after her history class, Tiffany saw that one of them was from that Detective Collins who had questioned her over and over again when Matthew disappeared. He wanted to talk with her again.

Tiffany’s narrow mouth hardened into a slit. Her normally pert features suddenly lost their attractive, youthful expression. She pressed the button to return Billy Collins’s call.

I want to talk to you, too, Detective Collins, she thought.

And this time I’ll be the one to make
you
squirm!

20

G
lory was putting that gooey stuff on his hair again. Matthew hated it. It made his scalp feel burned and some of it almost got in his eye. Glory rubbed hard to catch it, but the washcloth went in his eye and it hurt. But he knew that if he said he didn’t want her to put the stuff in his hair, she would only say, “I’m sorry, Matty. I don’t want to do it, but I have to.”

Today he didn’t say one single word. He knew Glory was really mad at him. This morning, when the doorbell rang, he had run into the closet and closed the door. He didn’t mind this closet at all because it was bigger than some of the other ones, and it had a light big enough that he could see everything. But then he remembered he had left his favorite truck in the hall. It was his favorite because it was bright red and had three speeds, so when he played with it in the hall he could make it go very fast or really slow.

He had opened the closet door and ran to get it. Just then, he saw that Glory was closing the door and saying good-bye to some lady. After Glory locked the door she turned around and saw him. She looked so mad he was scared that she would hit him. “Next time I’ll stick you in the closet and never let you out,” she had said in a mean, low voice. He’d been so scared that he ran back into the closet and started to cry so hard that he couldn’t get his breath.

Even after a while, when Glory said it was all right to come out, that it wasn’t really his fault, that he was just a little kid, and that she was sorry she had yelled at him, he still couldn’t stop crying. He was saying, “Mommy, Mommy,” over and over, and he wanted to stop but he couldn’t.

Then, later, when he was watching one of his DVDs, he heard Glory talking to someone. He tiptoed to the door of his room, opened it, and listened. Glory was on the phone. He couldn’t hear what she was saying but her voice sounded really mad. Then he heard her shout, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” and he could tell she was really scared.

Now he sat with the towel around his shoulders and the stuff dripping on his forehead and waited until Glory told him to get over to the sink, that it was time to rinse out his hair.

Finally she said, “Okay, I guess you’re about ready.” When he leaned over the sink, she said, “It’s really too bad. If you ever get the chance, you’ll be a cute redhead.”