Two Little Girls in Blue (2 page)

Suddenly frightened, she listened intently. What was that sound? In an instant of sickening awareness, she identified it: soft footsteps. A hint of equally soft breathing. The acrid smell of perspiration.
Someone was behind her.

Trish tried to scream, but only a moan escaped her lips. She tried to run, but her legs would not move. She felt a hand grab her hair and yank her head back. The last thing she remembered was a feeling of pressure on her neck.

The intruder released his grip on Trish and let her sink to the floor. Congratulating himself on how effectively and painlessly he had rendered her unconscious, he turned on his flashlight, tied her up, blindfolded and
gagged her. Then directing the beam onto the floor, he stepped around her, swiftly covered the length of the hall, and opened the door to the twins' bedroom.

Three-year-olds Kathy and Kelly were lying in the double bed they shared, their eyes both sleepy and terrified. Kathy's right hand and Kelly's left hand were entwined. With their other hands they were trying to pull off cloths that covered their mouths.

The man who had planned the details of the kidnapping was standing beside the bed. “You're sure she didn't see you,
Harry?”
he snapped.

“I'm sure. I mean, I'm sure,
Bert,”
the other responded. They each carefully used the names they had assumed for this job: “Bert” and “Harry,” after the cartoon characters in a sixties beer commercial.

Bert picked up Kathy and snapped. “Get the other one. Wrap a blanket around her. It's cold out.”

Their footsteps nervously rapid, the two men raced down the back stairs, rushed through the kitchen and out to the driveway, not bothering to close the door behind them. Once in the van, Harry sat on the floor of the backseat, the twins wrapped in his beefy arms. Bert drove the van as it moved forward from the shadows of the porch.

Twenty minutes later they arrived at the cottage where Angie Ames was waiting. “They're adorable,” she cooed as the men carried the children in and laid them in the hospital-style crib that had been prepared for them. With a quick, deft movement of her hands she untied the gags that had kept the little girls silent.

The children grabbed for each other and began to wail. “Mommy . . . Mommy,” they screamed in unison.

“Sshhhh, sshhhh, don't be scared,” Angie said soothingly as she pulled up the side of the crib. It was too high for her to reach over it, so she slipped her arms through the rails and began to pat their dark blond ringlets. “It's all right,” she singsonged, “go to sleep. Kathy, Kelly, go back to sleep. Mona will take care of you. Mona loves you.”

“Mona” was the name she had been ordered to use around the twins. “I don't like that name,” she'd complained when she first heard it. “Why does it have to be Mona?”

“Because it sounds close to ‘Momma.' Because when we get the money and they pick up the kids, we don't want them to say, ‘A lady named Angie took care of us,' and one more good reason for that name is because you're always moaning,” the man called Bert had snapped.

“Quiet them down,” he ordered now. “They're making too much noise.”

“Relax, Bert. No one can hear them,” Harry reassured him.

He's right, thought Lucas Wohl, the real name of the one called “Bert.” One of the reasons, after careful deliberation, that he had invited Clint Downes—“Harry's” actual name—to join him on the job was because nine months of the year Clint lived as caretaker in the cottage on the grounds of the Danbury Country Club. From Labor Day to May 31st the club was closed and the gates
locked. The cottage was not even visible from the service road by which Clint entered and exited the grounds, and he had to use a code to open the service gate.

It was an ideal spot to hide the twins, and the fact that Clint's girlfriend, Angie, often worked as a babysitter completed the picture.

“They'll stop crying,” Angie said. “I know babies. They'll go back to sleep.” She began to rub their backs and sing off-key, “Two little girls in blue, lad, two little girls in blue . . .”

Lucas cursed under his breath, made his way through the narrow space between the crib and the double bed, and walked out of the bedroom, through the sitting room, and into the kitchen of the cottage. Only then did he and Clint pull off their hooded jackets and gloves. The full bottle of scotch and the two empty glasses they had left out as a reward for success in their mission were in front of them.

The men sat at opposite ends of the table, silently eyeing each other. Staring with disdain at his fellow kidnapper, Lucas was reminded once more that they could not have been more different in both appearance and temperament. Unsentimental about his appearance, he sometimes played eyewitness and described himself to himself: about fifty years old, scrawny build, average height, receding hairline, narrow face, close-set eyes. A self-employed limousine driver, he knew he had perfected the outward appearance of a servile and anxious-to-please employee, a persona he inhabited whenever he dressed in his black chauffeur's uniform.

He had met Clint when they were in prison together and over the years had worked with him on a series of burglaries. They had never been caught because Lucas was careful. They had never committed a crime in Connecticut because Lucas did not believe in soiling his own nest. This job, though terribly risky, had been too big to pass up, and he had broken that rule.

Now he watched as Clint opened the scotch and filled their glasses to the brim. “To next week on a boat in St. Kitts with our pockets bulging,” he said, his eyes searching Lucas's face with a hopeful smile.

Lucas stared back, once again assessing his partner in crime. In his early forties, Clint was desperately out of shape. Fifty extra pounds on his already short frame made him perspire easily, even on a March night like this, that had suddenly turned cold. His barrel chest and thick arms looked incongruous with his cherubic face and long ponytail, which he had grown because Angie, his longtime girlfriend, had one.

Angie. Skinny as a twig on a dead branch, Lucas thought contemptuously. Terrible complexion. Like Clint, she always looked slovenly, dressed in a tired T-shirt and ragged jeans. Her only virtue in Lucas's eyes was that she was an experienced babysitter. Nothing must happen to either one of those kids before the ransom was paid and they could be dropped off. Now Lucas reminded himself that Angie had something else going for her. She's greedy. She wants the money. She wants to live on a boat in the Caribbean.

Lucas lifted the glass to his lips. The Chivas Regal
felt smooth on his tongue, and its warmth was soothing as it slid down his throat. “So far, so good,” he said flatly. “I'm going home. You got the cell phone I gave you handy?”

“Yeah.”

“If you hear from the boss, tell him I have a five
A.M
. pickup. I'm turning off my cell phone. I need some sleep.”

“When do I get to meet him, Lucas?”

“You don't.” Lucas downed the rest of the scotch in his glass and pushed back his chair. From the bedroom they could hear Angie continue to sing.

“They were sisters, we were brothers, and learned to love the two . . .”

T
he screeching of brakes on the road in front of the house told Ridgefield Police Captain Robert “Marty” Martinson that the parents of the missing twins had arrived home.

They had phoned the police station only minutes after the 911 call came in. “I'm Margaret Frawley,” the woman had said, her voice shaking with fear. “We live at 10 Old Woods Road. We can't reach our babysitter. She doesn't answer the house phone or her cell phone. She's minding our three-year-old twins. Something may be wrong. We're on our way home from the city.”

“We'll get right over there and check,” Marty had promised. Because the parents were on the highway and no doubt already upset, he'd seen little use in telling them that he already knew something was terribly wrong. The babysitter's father had just phoned from 10 Old Woods Road: “My daughter is tied up and gagged. The twins she was minding are gone. There's a ransom note in their bedroom.”

Now, an hour later, the property around the house and the driveway had already been taped off, awaiting the arrival of the forensic team. Marty would have liked to keep the media from getting wind of the kidnapping,
but he knew that was hopeless. He had already learned that the babysitter's parents had told everyone in the hospital emergency room where Trish Logan was being treated that the twins were missing. Reporters would be showing up anytime. The FBI had been notified, and agents were on the way.

Marty braced himself as the kitchen door opened and the parents rushed in. Beginning with his first day as a twenty-one-year-old rookie cop, he had trained himself to retain his first impression of people connected with a crime, whether they were victims, perpetrators, or witnesses. Later he would jot those impressions down. In police circles he was known as “The Observer.”

In their early thirties, he thought as Margaret and Steve Frawley moved hurriedly toward him. A handsome couple, both in evening clothes. The mother's brown hair hung loose around her shoulders. She was slender, but her clenched hands looked strong. Her fingernails were short, the polish colorless. Probably a good athlete, Marty thought. Her intense eyes were a shade of dark blue that seemed almost black as they stared at him.

Steve Frawley, the father, was tall, about six foot three, with dark blond hair and light blue eyes. His broad shoulders and powerful arms caused his too-small tuxedo jacket to strain at the seams. He could use a new one, Marty thought.

“Has anything happened to our daughters?” Frawley demanded.

Marty watched as Frawley put his hands on his wife's arms as though to brace her against possibly devastating news.

There was no gentle way to tell parents that their children had been kidnapped and a ransom note demanding eight million dollars left on their bed. The absolute incredulity on the faces of the young couple looked to be genuine, Marty thought, a reaction he would note in his case book, but appended with a question mark.

“Eight
million
dollars!
Eight million dollars!
Why not
eighty
million?” Steve Frawley demanded, his face ashen. “We brought every dime we had to the closing on this house. We've got about fifteen hundred dollars in the checking account right now, and that's it.”

“Are there any wealthy relatives in either of your families?” Marty asked.

The Frawleys began to laugh, the high-pitched laugh of hysteria. Then as Marty watched, Steve spun his wife around. They hugged each other as the laughter broke and the harsh sound of his dry sobs mingled with her wail. “I want my babies. I want my babies.”

A
t eleven o'clock the special cell phone rang. Clint picked it up. “Hello, sir,” he said.

“The Pied Piper here.”

This guy, whoever he is, is trying to disguise his voice, Clint thought as he moved across the small living room to get as far away as possible from the sound of Angie crooning songs to the twins. For God's sake, the kids are asleep, he thought irritably. Shut up.

“What's the noise in the background?” the Pied Piper asked sharply.

“My girlfriend's singing to the kids she's babysitting.” Clint knew he was furnishing the information the Pied Piper wanted. He and Lucas had been successful.

“I can't reach Bert.”

“He told me to tell you he has a five
A.M
. pickup to go to Kennedy Airport. He went home to sleep, so he turned off his phone. I hope that . . .”

“Harry, turn on the television,” the Pied Piper interrupted. “There's a breaking story about a kidnapping. I'll get back to you in the morning.”

Clint grabbed the remote button and snapped on the TV, then watched as the house on Old Woods Road came into view. Even though the night was overcast, the
porch light revealed the house's peeling paint and sagging shutters. The yellow crime-scene tape used to keep the press and onlookers back extended to the road.