Two Little Girls in Blue (33 page)

The walls of the basement office were covered in knotty pine, a finish that reminded Marty of his grandmother's recreation room. The large clipboard behind Shafter's desk was filled with cartoons depicting home-cleaning situations.

“I've got some new ones, Marty,” Shafter said. “Really funny. Take a look.”

“Not now,” Marty responded. “Stan, I need to talk to you about the Frawley house.”

“Fine, but your guys grilled all of us after the kidnapping.”

“I know they did, but there're still things to cover. We're following any inconsistency, no matter how trivial, in our hunt for those kidnappers. You can understand that.”

“Yes, I can, but I hope you're not insinuating that
any of my people lied to you.” The bristling tone in Stan's voice, and the way his barrel chest suddenly swelled as he straightened up in the chair, reminded Marty of an angry rooster.

“No, I'm not looking at your people, Stan,” Marty reassured him quickly. “And this is probably just one more of the many dead ends we've been running into. To put it simply, we believe that someone staked out the house and learned beforehand which bedroom the twins would be in. As you know, the house is a lot bigger than it looks from the outside. There are five bedrooms, anyone of which would have been appropriate for the little girls, yet someone knew
exactly
where to go. The Frawleys moved in the day after your people did the cleanup. Margaret Frawley tells us there were no strangers in the house before the kidnapping. We doubt that someone would have had the nerve to try to sneak in and case the place.”

“You mean . . .”

“I mean someone knew exactly where to go upstairs. I believe that your staff would never deliberately lie, but on the other hand, in your statement you said you had stopped in to inspect the house near the end of the day. Not one of your people mentioned that.”

“They must have thought you were asking if an outsider came in. They count me as part of the crew. Go talk to any of them again. They'll be back soon to pick up their cars.”

“Did any of you know which room had been selected for the children?”

“We all knew. The parents were driving up that night to paint it. The cans of blue paint were stacked in the big back room, and the white carpet was rolled up in the corner. They'd even dropped off some of the toys and a hobby horse, and they were in there as well.”

“Did you discuss that with anyone, Stan?”

“Only Sonya. You know my wife, Marty. She could be an investigator for you. She was in that house years ago when old Mrs. Cunningham had some charity event there. If you can believe it, she was trying to get me to consider buying it when Mrs. Cunningham passed on. I told her to forget it.”

Stan Shafter smiled, indulgently. “Sonya was excited when she heard that identical twins were going to live there. She wanted to know which room the twins would be in, or if they had separate rooms, and if they had put up Cinderella wallpaper for them because that's what she would have done. I told her the twins were in the same room, the big one in the back corner, and I told her it was going to be painted sky blue and have a white carpet. Then I said, ‘Sonya, now let me have a beer in peace with Clint.' ”

“Clint?”

“Clint Downes. He's the caretaker at the Danbury Country Club. I've known him for years. We do a general housecleaning there every season before the club opens. Clint happened to be here when I got back from the Frawley house, and I asked him to stay for a beer.”

Marty stood up and reached for his uniform hat.
“Well, if anything occurs to you, give me a call, Stan. Okay?”

“Sure. I look at our grandkids and try to think of one of them being gone for good. I can't handle it.”

“I understand.” Marty climbed the first few stairs, then turned. “Stan, this guy, Downes. Do you know where he lives?”

“Yeah, in the cottage on the grounds of the club.”

“Does he regularly drop in on you?”

“No. He wanted to tell me that he's accepted a job in Florida and would be leaving soon. He thought I might know someone who'd like to apply for the job at the golf club.” Stan laughed. “I know Sonya can wear most people down, but Clint was polite enough to act real interested in what I was telling her about the Frawley home.”

“Okay. See you.”

Back in his car, returning to the station house, Marty thought about what Shafter had told him. Danbury isn't my jurisdiction, but I think I'll call Carlson and pass this on to him, he decided. It's probably another dead end, but since we're all grasping at straws, we might as well give this guy the once-over, too.

O
n Saturday evening, dressed in casual clothes, seeking to blend in with the dozens of other passengers, Agents Sean Walsh and Damon Philburn stood in the Galaxy Airlines baggage collection area at the international arrivals terminal of Newark Liberty Airport.

They both wore the exasperated expressions of travelers who, after a long flight, can't wait to see their bags tumble onto the carousel. In fact, they were actually watching a thin-faced, middle-aged man who was there waiting for his luggage. When he reached down and plucked a nondescript black suitcase from the carousel, they moved immediately to either side of him.

“FBI,” Walsh told him. “Do you want to come quietly or make a scene?”

Without answering, the man nodded and fell in step with them. They herded him to an office in a private area of the terminal where other agents were guarding Danny Hamilton, a frightened twenty-year-old who was wearing the uniform of a baggage handler.

When the man accompanied by Walsh and Philburn saw Hamilton in handcuffs, he turned ashen and blurted, “I'm not saying anything. I want a lawyer.”

Walsh laid the suitcase on a table and snapped
open the locks. He put the neat piles of folded underwear, shirts, and slacks on a chair, then took out a pocketknife and slit the edges of the false bottom of the suitcase. When he ripped it off, the hidden contents of the bag were revealed, large packages of white powder.

Sean Walsh smiled at the courier. “You're going to need a lawyer.”

Walsh and Philburn could not believe the turn of events. They had come here to speak to Richie Mason's co-workers to see if they could learn any shred of information that might connect him to the kidnapping. They started to talk to Hamilton and had immediately sensed that he was unduly nervous.

When they pressed him, he adamantly denied any knowledge of the kidnapping but then broke down and admitted that he knew Richie Mason was getting cocaine shipments at the airport. He said that Richie had given him five hundred dollars on three or four occasions to keep quiet about it. He'd told them that late this afternoon Richie had called to tell him that a shipment was coming in, but he couldn't be there to meet it.

Richie had told Hamilton to meet the courier at the carousel. From Richie's description, he would recognize him because he had seen him at the airport with Richie before. He had instructed Hamilton to give the code words “Home Free,” and the courier would then know that it was safe to give the suitcase containing the cocaine to him. Hamilton said that Richie had told him
to hide the bag at his apartment and that he would contact him in the next few days and let him know how he would retrieve the bag.

Sean Walsh's cell phone rang. He opened it and listened, then turned to Philburn. “Mason's not at his Clifton apartment. I think he's taken off.”

“M
argaret, this may be another blind alley,” Agent Carlson warned as they drove from Lila Jackson's home to the caretaker cottage where Clint Downes lived.

“It's not another blind alley,” Margaret insisted. “The one impression Trish had before she was knocked out was that of perspiration on a heavyset man. I knew, I knew, I just knew that if I spoke to that sales clerk, she would be able to tell me something that would help. Why didn't I do it sooner?”

“Our office is having a check run on Downes,” Carlson said as he drove through downtown Danbury, headed toward the club grounds. “We'll know soon if he's ever been in trouble. But you've got to realize that if he's not home, we have no grounds for breaking into that house. I don't want to wait for one of our agents to get here, so I'm having a squad car from the Danbury police meet us there.”

Margaret did not respond. Why did it take me so long to go back and talk to Lila? she thought, castigating herself. Where is that woman, Angie? Is Kathy with her?

Overhead, the clouds were finally clearing, blown away by the crisp late-afternoon wind. But it was after five o'clock, and darkness was setting in. Margaret
called home during the drive to the golf club and learned from Dr. Harris that Kelly had fallen back asleep. Then the doctor told her that Kelly seemed to be communicating with Kathy and added that she had experienced a severe coughing spell.

Lila Jackson had told Carlson they would have to park at the service road gate. As they got out of the car, the agent ordered Margaret to wait in the car. “If this guy is connected to the kidnapping, he could be dangerous.”

“Walter,” Margaret said, “if that man is there, I am going to talk to him. Unless you're planning to restrain me physically, you'd better just accept that fact.”

A squad car pulled up beside them, and two cops immediately got out, one with sergeant's chevrons on his jacket. They listened to Carlson's brief rundown about the clothing purchase at Abby's Discount and how the impression the babysitter had the night of the kidnapping coincided with the way the sales clerk described Clint to them—heavyset and perspiring.

Like Carlson, they tried to persuade Margaret to wait in the car, but when she would not be dissuaded, they told her she would have to stand back until they were sure there would not be any resistance from Clint Downes to letting them in and to answering their questions.

As they approached the cottage, it was obvious to all of them that their precautions were unnecessary. The building was in darkness. The open door of the garage showed them that there was no vehicle inside. Bitterly
disappointed, Margaret watched as the police went from window to window of the cottage, shining lights inside. He was here this afternoon around one o'clock, she thought. That was only four hours ago. Did Lila frighten him off? Where would he have gone? Where did that woman Angie go?

She walked over to the garage and flipped on the light. Inside, to the right, she saw the crib that Clint had taken apart and stacked against the wall. The size of the mattress caught her eye. It was nearly twice the size of the mattress of a standard crib. Had it been bought because someone knew that two children would be sleeping on it? As the FBI agent and the Danbury police officers hurried over from the cottage, Margaret walked to the mattress and put her face against it. The faint familiar odor of Vick's VapoRub filled her nostrils.

She spun around and screamed at the law enforcement officers, “They were here! This is where they kept them! Where did they go? You've got to find out where they took Kathy!”