Silent Night (10 page)

All the hours of hanging around Hunter's building were a waste, Pete decided. From the time he'd seen Cally come home shortly before six, and the two detectives stop in around seven, it had been a big nothing.

He'd kept his powerful portable radio on the whole time he waited, switching between the police band, his station, WYME, and the WCBS news station. No word of Siddons at all. Shame about that missing kid.

When the ten o'clock news came on WYME, Pete thought for the hundredth time that the anchor in that slot sounded like a wimp. But she did have some real emotion when she talked about the missing seven-year-old. Maybe we need a missing kid every day, Pete thought sarcastically, then was immediately ashamed of himself.

There was a lot of activity in Hunter's building, people coming and going. Many of the churches had moved up the midnight services to ten o'clock. No matter what time they schedule them, some people will always be late, Pete thought as he saw an elderly couple hurry from the building and turn up Avenue B. Probably heading for St. Emeric's.

The woman who had brought Hunter's kid home earlier was coming up the block. Was she headed for Hunter's apartment? Cally planning to go out? he wondered.

Pete shrugged. Maybe Hunter had a late date or was going to church herself. Obviously, today wasn't the
day to get the story that was going to make his name as a reporter.

It'll happen, Pete promised himself. I won't always be working on this lousy ten-watt station. His buddy who worked at WNBC loved to ride Pete about his job. A favorite put-down was that the only audience for WYME were two cockroaches and three stray cats. “This is station Why-Me,” he'd joke.

Pete started his car. He was just about to pull out when a squad car raced down the block and stopped in front of Cally's building.

Through narrowed eyes, Pete observed three men emerge. One he recognized as Jack Shore crossed the street and got into the van. Then in the light from the building entrance he could make out Mort Levy. He didn't get a good look at the other one.

Something was breaking. Pete turned off the engine, suddenly interested again.

*   *   *

While she waited for Mort Levy, Cally took Gigi's Christmas presents from their hiding place behind the couch and set them in front of the tree. The secondhand doll's carriage didn't look that bad, she decided, with the pretty blue satin coverlet and pillowcase. She'd put the baby doll she'd picked up for a couple of dollars last month in it, but it wasn't nearly as cute as the one that
she'd wanted to buy from the peddler on Fifth Avenue. That one had Gigi's golden-brown hair and was wearing a blue party dress.
If she hadn't been looking for that peddler, she wouldn't have seen the wallet, and the boy wouldn't have followed her, and
. . .

She put that thought aside. She was past feeling now. Carefully, she stacked the presents she'd wrapped with candy-cane paper: an outfit from The Gap—leggings and a polo shirt; crayons and a coloring book; some furniture for Gigi's dollhouse. Everything, even the two pieces of the Gap outfit, was in separate boxes so at least it looked as though Gigi had a stack of gifts to open.

She tried to avoid looking at the largest package under the tree, the package that Gigi thought was their gift for Santa Claus.

Finally she phoned Aika. Aika's grandchildren always went home to sleep, so she was sure she could come over and stay with Gigi in case the cops arrested Cally after she told them about Jimmy and the little boy.

Aika answered on the first ring. “Hello.” Her voice was filled with her normal warmth. If only they'd let Gigi stay with Aika if they put me in prison again, Cally thought. She swallowed over the lump in her throat, then said, “Aika, I'm in trouble. Can you come over in about half an hour and maybe stay overnight?”

“You bet I can.” Aika did not ask questions, simply clicked off.

As Cally replaced the receiver, the buzzer from the downstairs door resounded through the apartment.

*   *   *

“The switchboard's on fire, Mrs. Dornan,” Leigh Ann Winick, the producer of Fox 5 Ten O'Clock News told Catherine as, carefully avoiding the floor cables, she and Michael left the broadcast area. “It looks as though everyone in our viewing area wants you to know that they're rooting and praying for Brian and your husband.”

“Thank you.” Catherine tried to smile. She looked down at Michael. He had been trying so hard to keep up his spirits for her sake. It was only when she had listened to his on-camera plea that she had fully realized what this was doing to him.

Michael's hands were in his pockets, his shoulders hunched under his ears. It was exactly the same posture Tom unconsciously fell into when he was worried about a patient. Catherine squared her own shoulders and put her arm around her older son as the door from the studio closed behind them.

The producer said, “Our operators are thanking everyone in your name, but is there anything else you'd like us to tell our audience?”

Catherine drew a deep breath, and her arm tightened around Michael. “I wish you'd tell them that we think I
dropped my wallet, and that Brian apparently followed whoever picked it up. The reason he was so anxious to get it back is that my mother had just given me a St. Christopher medal that my father wore through World War II. My father believed the medal kept him safe. It even has a dent where a bullet glanced off it, a bullet that might have killed him. Brian has the same wonderful faith that St. Christopher or what he represents is going to take care of us again . . . and so do I. St. Christopher will carry Brian back to us on his shoulders, and he will help my husband get well.”

She smiled down at Michael. “Right, pal?”

Michael's eyes were shining. “Mom, do you really believe that?”

Catherine drew a deep breath.
I believe, Lord,
help my unbelief
. “Yes, I do,” she said firmly.

And maybe because it was Christmas Eve, for the first time, she really did.

S
tate Trooper Chris McNally tuned out as Deidre Lenihan droned on about just seeing a St. Christopher medal, and how her father was named after St. Christopher. She was a well-meaning young woman, but every time he stopped for coffee at this McDonald's, she seemed to be on duty and always wanted to talk.

Tonight Chris was too preoccupied with thoughts of getting home. He wanted to get at least some sleep before his kids got up to open all their Christmas presents. He also had been thinking about the Toyota he had just seen pull out in front of him. He'd been thinking of buying one himself, although he knew his wife wouldn't want a brown one. A new car meant montly payments to worry
about. He noticed the remnant of a bumper sticker on the Toyota, a single word,
inheritance
. He knew the sticker had originally said, “We're spending our grandchildren's inheritance.” We could use an inheritance, he thought.

“And my father said . . .”

Chris forced himself to refocus. Deidre's nice, he thought, but she talks too much. He reached for the bag she was dangling in her hand, but it was clear she was not going to relinquish it yet, not until she had told how her dad said it was too bad that her mother hadn't been named Philomena.

Still she wasn't finished. “Years ago my aunt worked in Southampton and belonged to St. Philomena's parish. When they had to rename it, the pastor had a contest to decide which saint they should choose and why. My aunt suggested St. Dymphna because she said she was the saint of the insane and most of the people in the parish were nuts.”

“Well, I was named after St. Christopher myself,” Chris said, managing to snare the bag. “Merry Christmas, Deidre.”

And it will be Christmas before I get a bite out of this Big Mac, he thought as he drove back onto the Thruway. With one hand, he deftly opened the bag, freed the burger, and gratefully took a large bite. The coffee would have to wait until he got back to his post.

He'd be off duty at midnight, and then, he thought, smiling to himself, it would be time to grab a little shut-eye. Eileen would try to keep the kids in bed till six, but lots of luck. It hadn't happened last year and it wouldn't happen this year if he knew his sons.

He was approaching exit 40 and drove the car to the official turnaround, from which he could observe errant drivers. Christmas Eve was nothing like New Year's Eve for nabbing drinkers, but Chris was determined that no one who was speeding or weaving on the road was going to get past him. He'd witnessed a couple of accidents where some drunk turned the holiday into a nightmare for innocent people. Not tonight if he could help it. And the snow had made driving that much more treacherous.

As Chris opened the lid on his coffee, he frowned. A Corvette doing at least eighty was racing up the service lane. He snapped on his dome lights and siren, shifted into gear, and the squad car leaped in pursuit.

*   *   *

Chief of Detectives Bud Folney listened with no expression other than quiet attentiveness as a trembling Cally Hunter told Mort Levy about finding the wallet on Fifth Avenue. She had waived her Miranda warning, saying impatiently, “This can't wait any longer.”

Folney knew the basics of her case: older sister of Jimmy Siddons, had served time because a judge had not believed her story that she thought she was helping her brother get away from a rival gang bent on killing him. Levy had told him that Hunter seemed to be one of the hard-luck people of this world—raised by an elderly grandmother, who died, leaving her to try to straighten out her louse of a younger brother when she was only a kid herself; then her husband killed by a hit-and-run driver when she was pregnant.

About thirty, Folney thought, and could be pretty with a little meat on her. She still had the pale, haunted expression he had seen on other women who had been imprisoned and carried with them the horror that someday they might be sent back.

He looked around. The neat apartment, the sunny, yellow paint on the cracked walls, the bravely decorated but skimpy Christmas tree, the new coverlet on the battered doll carriage, they all told him something about Cally Hunter.

Folney knew that, like himself, Mort Levy was desperate to know what connection Hunter could give them between Siddons and the missing Dornan child. He approved of Mort's gentle approach. Cally Hunter
had to tell it her way. It's a good thing we didn't bring in the raging bull, Folney thought. Jack Shore was a good detective, but his aggressiveness often got on Folney's nerves.

Hunter was talking about seeing the wallet on the sidewalk. “I picked it up without thinking. I guessed it belonged to that woman, but I wasn't sure. I honestly wasn't sure,” she burst out, “and I thought if I tried to give it back to her, she might say something was missing from it. That happened to my grandmother. And then you'd send me back to prison and . . .”

“Cally, take it easy,” Mort said. “What happened then?”

“When I got home . . .”

She told them about finding Jimmy in the apartment, wearing her deceased husband's clothes. She pointed to the big package under the tree. “The guard's uniform and coat are in there,” she said. “It was the only place I could think to hide them in case you came back.”

That's it, Mort thought. When we looked around the apartment the second time, there was something different about the closet. The box on the shelf and the man's jacket were missing.

Cally's voice became ragged and uneven as she told them about Jimmy taking Brian Dornan and threatening to kill him if he spotted a cop chasing him.

Levy asked, “Cally, do you think Jimmy can be trusted to let Brian go?”

“I wanted to think so,” she said tonelessly. “That was what I told myself when I didn't call you immediately. But I know he's desperate. Jimmy will do anything to keep from going to prison again.”

Folney finally asked a question. “Cally, why did you call us now?”

“I saw Brian's mother on television, and I knew that if Jimmy had taken Gigi, I'd want you to help me get her back.” Cally clasped her hands together. Her body swayed slightly forward then back in the ancient posture of grief. “The look on that little boy's face, the way he put that medal around his neck and was holding on to it like it was a life preserver . . . if anything happens to him, it's my fault.”

The buzzer sounded. If that's Shore . . . Folney thought as he jumped up to answer it.

It was Aika Banks. When she entered the apartment, she looked at the policemen searchingly, then rushed to Cally and hugged her. “Baby, what is it? What's wrong? Why do you need me to stay with Gigi? What do these people want?”

Cally winced in pain.

Aika peeled up her friend's sleeve. The bruises caused by Jimmy's fingers were now an ugly purple. Any doubts that Bud Folney had about Hunter's possible cooperation
with her brother disappeared. He squatted in front of her. “Cally, you're not going to get into trouble. I promise you. I believe you found that wallet. I believe you didn't know what was best for you to do. But now you've got to help us.
Have you any idea where Jimmy might
have gone?
”