Chapter 4
The blanket was Leo’s.
Detectives confirmed it before dawn.
No one would tell me much because I was only the responding officer, but Lucy kept asking for me.
So I stayed.
At six in the morning, Emily Whitmore arrived from Houston with her brother and two FBI agents.
I had seen desperate parents before.
Emily looked beyond desperate.
She looked hollowed out.
When she saw Leo through the nursery glass, she made a sound that emptied the hallway.
A nurse caught her before she fell.
“My baby,” she sobbed.
Leo was stable.
Dehydrated.
Hungry.
Scared.
But alive.
Emily pressed both hands to the glass.
Her brother turned to Karen.
“Where was he?”
Karen looked at me.
I stepped forward.
“A five-year-old girl found him and carried him for help.”
Emily turned slowly.
“Where is she?”
Lucy was in the next room.
When Emily entered, Lucy pulled the blanket to her chin.
Emily knelt far away, careful not to scare her.
“Are you Lucy?”
Lucy nodded.
Emily’s voice broke.
“You saved my son.”
Lucy looked down.
“I gave him crackers.”
“You kept him warm.”
“I tried.”
Emily cried harder.
Lucy whispered, “Are you mad at Mommy?”
Emily wiped her face.
“I don’t know everything yet.”
“Brent made her scared.”
“I believe you.”
Those three words changed Lucy’s face.
Not happy.
Not relieved.
Just stunned.
Like belief was a new language.
By noon, Brent started talking.
Not because he felt guilty.
Because he wanted a deal.
He said Madison had delivered Leo to the duplex.
He said Sarah panicked when she realized the baby was kidnapped.
He said he planned to sell Leo back to “the man who paid first.”
Karen asked, “Who paid first?”
Brent smiled.
“Ask the father.”
Emily’s brother nearly went through the interrogation-room glass when he heard.
Leo’s father, Charles Whitmore, arrived that afternoon in a tailored suit with a lawyer.
He did not run to the baby.
He asked for “privacy.”
That alone made every officer in the hallway look twice.
Emily stood in front of him.
“Did you do this?”
Charles looked offended.
“Our son was abducted. Have some dignity.”
Emily slapped him.
The sound snapped through the corridor.
“Dignity?” she screamed. “He was in a filthy apartment while you held press conferences.”
Charles touched his cheek.
Then he looked past her at Lucy.
For half a second, recognition crossed his face.
Lucy hid behind me.
I looked down.
“You know him?”
She whispered, “He came before.”
Charles heard her.
May you like
His lawyer grabbed his arm.
Too late.
