Noah's Rainy Day (36 page)

An expression of surprise registered on her sallow face. “I always carry a video of little Max with me everywhere I go. I thought you were wondering why I chose that particular video.”

Streeter’s eyebrow arched and I managed to exchange a glance with the chief, telegraphing that this woman was nothing but weirdness.

“So let me get this straight. You just happened to have a video of little Max in your purse, you just happened to have a phony ID in your purse, and you just happened to have a fistful of cash, enough to bribe the airline employee to get you a seat on the plane on Christmas Eve.” The rare expression of Streeter’s sarcasm was totally lost on the nutty nanny.

“Agent Pierce, you have this all wrong. I always carry the passport and a video of little Max in my purse. And Mr. Williams gave the cash to me as my Christmas bonus yesterday morning. So that was unusual. I did stop at an ATM, just in case.” Judy Manning shot an apologetic look my way. “I found your sister’s passport. She must have lost it years ago, before Mr. Williams married the Mrs. I was going to let Mr. Williams know, but I . . . I decided against it. I didn’t do anything wrong.”

“What do you mean, you didn’t do anything wrong? You posed as my sister. Were you planning to abduct little Max all along and pin the crime on her?” I balled my fists, ready to throw some punches at her for involving my sister. “And why in the hell were you stalking me last night?”

She buried her face in her hands, rocking side to side as she moaned. Streeter shot me a look that told me to back off. I knew I’d made a mistake the second the words left my mouth. I let my emotion—my sister’s involvement—take priority over my job.

“Ms. Manning, do you know where the boy might be?” Streeter’s voice was calm.

I was on the edge of my seat, staring at the woman across from me, embarrassed that I had caused her to start pulling out clumps of her own hair, the straggles a raggedy mess.

“Or who might have taken him?” Gates mumbled, but I didn’t think Manning had heard him through her sobbing.

She shook her head, her face down on the table, her shoulders racked with sobs and her fingers clutching her hair.

“Where do you think Maximillian Bennett Williams III is? Ms. Manning?” Streeter pressed.

I didn’t realize I’d been holding my breath until she began to shout, “I don’t know! I don’t know! I lost him. He was on the plane with me. He sang ‘Feliz Navidad,’ just as I’d taught him. And then he was gone.” She was sobbing, swiping her nose with a sleeve and wiping her face on the inside of her shirt.

“What do you mean, you lost him?” Streeter asked.

“He was just gone. When I got off the plane. Normally, escorts make unaccompanied minors wait until everyone else deplanes and then take the child to the next gate. But he was already gone by the time I made it up the aisle. I was in the very back row by the bathroom. The last row. And by the time I deplaned, every seat was empty. Empty. No little Max.”

She buried her face in her hands again, bending at the waist and rocking back and forth, as she wailed, sobbing and moaning. “I lost him. I lost him. My boy. My poor boy.”

There she goes with calling little Max her boy again. She’s totally bonkers, if you ask me.

Streeter shared a look with Tony and me and then said, “Ms. Manning. Can I be honest with you?”

She sat up, wiped her face, and stared at him—her eyes puffy and red, her nose a purplish rose color, and her hair bedraggled. She not only looked twenty years older but wasted. “Of course.”

“My observation is that you love little Max dearly.”

“Like he was my own flesh and blood.”

“Did you ever have hopes you would raise him that way? As your own flesh and blood? As your son?”

She shook her head. “Not hopes. Reality. He was my son.”

That confused me. By the looks on the others’ faces, it confused them, too.

Streeter leaned forward. “You were the nanny, not the mother.”

“You’re wrong. I was the mother and the father to that boy. The Williamses simply owned him. They were the sperm and egg donors.”

I just couldn’t imagine Max entrusting his child to this
Hand that Rocks the Cradle
crazy lady or why he didn’t see her neurosis.

“You clearly love little Max,” Streeter said, even more calmly than before. He was starting to creep me out, too. Didn’t he recognize the whack job in front of him? “What would you do if you
had
found little Max last night?”

“I would have …” her voice trailed off and her glance slid toward the windows. “I don’t know.”

“Oh, I think you do.”

“I didn’t have much money. But that wouldn’t have mattered to little Max. We would have been fine. At least he’d be safe. With me. I could have eventually made it back to Manchester. In time.”

“So you thought about it? Taking him from DIA if you found him?” Streeter coaxed.

Her eyes flicked back to his face, flitting to every square inch of his rugged, granite features. “Of course. He’d be safe.”

“With you.”

“With me,” she said, raising her chin.

“And what would you have told the Williamses?”

“I …” she lowered her eyes. “I thought about it. But I doubt I would
have ever found the courage to take him. I’d have called Mr. Williams. Brought little Max back home. To NYC.”

I shivered, thinking of how vulnerable parents must feel about leaving their children in the care of others, people like Judy Manning who became so openly attached that she admitted to thinking about kidnapping him. Predators came from every angle for these young, naïve children. Streeter noticed me shiver and I felt his leg press against mine to comfort me. I was grateful to him for that, for allowing me to work through my emotions as I stared into the face of evil.

Streeter added, “And what would you say to me if I told you we’d found him hurt or dead?”

She pulled her hands away from her face and leveled a glare at Agent Pierce with her beady, dark gray eyes appearing positively maniacal. She jabbed a finger at Streeter’s nose and warned through clenched teeth, “If someone so much as touched one hair on my boy’s head, I would find them and rip them apart, limb by limb, and drag them skinless. I’d let them die a slow, painful death.”

Streeter’s nostrils flared. Was that a look of amusement on his face? “Who do you think was capable of doing this to your boy?”

“I have plenty of names. Bad people. Mr. Williams does business with a lot of them. And he seems to anger everyone he works with.”

She started listing names; some were familiar from the list provided by Max earlier and some were new. Then she started in on names from Melissa’s dealings, people who had threatened her over the years in the course of being a supermodel: stalkers, crazy people, jealous people, desperate people who might take extreme measures to make their point or extract their pound of flesh from the Williamses, as Manning put it. I found it both odd and interesting that never once did she mention either Max or Melissa’s potential suspects.

When she had exhausted her list of names, Streeter said, “Well I think we’re about done here, Ms. Manning. You’ve been quite helpful.”

“You won’t be sharing what I’ve told you with Mr. Williams, will you?” she said, suddenly realizing how much she had revealed.

“Specifically, what wouldn’t you want us to share?” Streeter asked.

“That I disobeyed him,” she said, as if telling us she had contemplated
kidnapping the child and moving him to England wasn’t the single biggest revelation, not to mention a crime. This woman truly wasn’t operating on all cylinders, from what I could tell. “That I flew here. On the same plane as little Max. He has exacting standards. And I’ve made mistakes in the past, mistakes that nearly cost me my job.”

“Do you think Mr. Williams’s exacting standards had any relevance on little Max’s disappearance?”

“If you’re asking me if I think either Mr. Williams or the Mrs. was capable of staging the boy’s disappearance, I can most assuredly tell you ‘yes.’”

“Tell me about the text you sent Mrs. Williams this morning,” Streeter said.

Judy Manning’s expression morphed yet again. “She’s horrible. And she should pay for what she’s done to—”

The door flew open. Melissa Williams rushed toward Judy with Max close on her canary-yellow heels. “I thought that was you! Where is he? Where’s little Max, you crazy bitch?”

Before we could stop her, Melissa had rounded the table and stood over our witness. In a flash, Judy rose to her feet and leveled a punch to Melissa’s gut, screaming, “Where’s my boy?”

Melissa reached out and grabbed Judy’s hair, yanking with both fists. Judy’s thin body was tossed to the floor like a rag doll, Melissa landing on top of the nanny in a brawl. The women went at each other, clawing and scratching, punching and shoving. It looked like a fair fight between a rabid, miniature pit bull and a giant canary. Max was trying to pull Melissa off Judy as the two women accused each other of abducting little Max.

Gates attempted to intervene and Judy Manning slugged him in the mouth. Streeter was calling for back up and I heard Phil calling on his radio. Max had his arms snaked around Melissa’s shoulders. I took quick steps to do the same with Judy Manning, only I was too late.

At the instant Max restrained Melissa, Nanny Judy rose quickly to her feet. As she moved to level a powerful swing intended for Melissa’s face, Max pulled Melissa back, lost his footing, and fell backward to the floor, Melissa falling on top of him. In the commotion, I hadn’t noticed Manning grab the pistol from the holster clipped to my pants, leveling the barrel of my 9mm Sig Sauer at Melissa Williams’s beautiful forehead.

Several other pistols were pulled and aimed in a fraction of an instant, the chief, Streeter, and Phil training their weapons on Judy Manning.

“Where is he?” Manning screamed. “My son? Where did you take him, you narcissistic witch!?”

“Don’t shoot! Put it down,” Streeter growled.

“What did you do? Who took him?” Nanny Judy growled at the stunned model sprawled across her ex, and she stepped closer to the pair.

“What are you talking about?” Melissa Williams whimpered, scrabbling backward so fast her feet came out of her shoes and she bumped into Max, who also crab-crawled away from Judy Manning. “He’s not your son. He’s our son, you crazy bitch.”

“Judy, you’re not helping,” I said. “Give me my gun. Seriously. Before you do something stupid.”

“Where is he?” Judy Manning hadn’t heard a word Streeter or I had said. She had snapped. She took another step, this time twisting her foot on a yellow spike heel.

Instinct made me lunge at Judy and tackle her as if I’d been a lineman all my life. My gun discharged close to my ear as I threw my arms around the tiny lunatic, our shoulders slamming against the floor. I actually heard her head bounce against the tiles and my pistol skitter across the floor.

For several moments, nobody moved. Judy Manning lay still on the ground beside me, knocked out cold. Melissa panted as she rolled off of Max. Streeter was at my side instantly and was helping me to my feet, handing me my pistol, which I clipped back in my holster. Officers and agents poured into the room as Gates dabbed at his bloody nose and split lip.

Everything had happened so fast. An instantaneous eruption and then the room grew eerily silent. My ears were ringing, but the sounds were starting to reach through the ear-piercing shot that had deafened me.

I noticed Manning moan as she sat up, blood dripping from her head. Phil rushed to her side. In a low voice—maybe he was shouting—Phil said to Streeter, “We need medics.”

Melissa’s gaze slid from the hole in the drywall toward her canary yellow, spike-heeled shoe, and she froze in horror at what might have been if
not for the nanny tripping. Max embraced her as she repeated, “She doesn’t have little Max. She doesn’t have him. Max, who does? Oh no!”

At the same time, Judy Manning was mumbling something similar. “If she doesn’t have him, who does? Who has little Max?”

In the chaos, my Quantico training came rushing back with a flood of data that made me realize who it was we should be looking for, thanks to the insane obsession of Judy Manning. My mind raced for the first time with certainty toward the idea that little Max was not taken by his dad for monetary maneuvering in a bitter divorce as I had first suspected, was not taken by his mom for publicity as I had speculated, or by a kidnapper for ransom, but by someone with far worse intentions than Nanny Judy. I shuddered, fearing we might all be too late, wasting time focusing on those closest to the boy instead of on the real perpetrator. A pedophile. Or murderer.

Streeter’s tender embrace—his strong, warm hand wrapping around my waist—steeled my resolve to stay focused.

“Streeter, we have to hurry. Before it’s too late.”

Noah

I HEARD FOOTSTEPS APPROACH
and the door swung open. They must have been startled to see my disheveled bed empty. Dad hurried around my bed. “Noah, what are you doing over by the window?”

I had rolled out of my bed and inched my way across the floor to the full-length picture window in my room again. My favorite spot. When Mom and Dad bought the home seven years ago, Dad had suggested they install a window that was all the way to the floor so that when I was lying on the floor in my room, I could see outside and enjoy the sunlight. Here I was. By the window. Only this time, it was the boy I wanted to see.

My dad and mom stood watching me tap on the window with my awkwardly contracted and contorted fist.

“You should be exhausted. You usually sleep for a day or longer after a seizure like that, Noah. Are you okay?”

I didn’t smile. No, I was not okay. I was exhausted from the seizure. I heard my doctor say that every five minutes of my major seizures was the equivalent of running a marathon. Hell yes, I was tired. And hell no, I wasn’t okay. Maximillian Bennett Williams II was right next door and I had to get someone to listen.

I arched my back and flipped myself over onto my stomach. Lifting my head and shoulders and propping my weight on my thin elbows, I craned my neck to see into the neighbor’s yard below from my second-story window vantage point. I had been waiting for what seemed like an hour to see if the boy would come out to play again. Or come to the window. I was looking for an image, a shadow, or any movement at all in the neighbor’s yard below.