Sufficient Ransom (5 page)

She let out a deep breath. “Kika came here ready to take Travis, Richard.”

“She
threatened
to take him, Ann. There’s a difference.”

Ann knew there was nothing she could say to convince her husband of the very real danger she and Travis had faced, alone. A scientist, Richard drew conclusions based strictly on logic and evidence. It would take more than a few visits from Kika Garcia to shake his calm.

“Aren’t you glad it’s all over?” she asked.

Richard’s lifted his hand and let it fall in apparent frustration. “Of course I’m glad.” His voice took on an earnest tone. “Look, Annie. This whole CPS thing tried us both. To be accused of such things—no one should have to go through that. Especially you, the best of mothers. Though you never give yourself credit. But that’s a different story. From the beginning Stewart said CPS didn’t have a case. Remember how he explained the whole CYA business?”

It was true. Ann had convinced herself that CPS would make good on their threat, despite their attorney’s assurance that the charges would be dropped. But CPS was a government agency, with the power of the law behind them. And it’s not like they hadn’t done this sort of thing before. The Internet was rife with stories of agents ripping children from their homes on trumped up evidence. And Kika kept coming to the house. At night, no less! Ann just wished her husband would stop minimizing her concerns.

Richard heaved a sigh. “It’s my own fault.”

“What?”

“I should have waited for Stewart before I got on that plane. A thirty million-dollar deal’s at risk, Ann.”

Her voice took on a conciliatory tone, though she was annoyed that Richard seemed more concerned about his job than her feelings. “You said yourself this company is perfect partner material. They’re not going to kill the deal because you had a family emergency.” She forced a smile. “Come, honey. Let’s not talk about this any more. We’re done with CPS. Travis is safe.”

After dinner, Travis insisted on playing in the backyard in his sandbox. Ann figured the least she could do was let her son have some fun after putting him through two boring days hiding from Kika. Besides, she reasoned, the yard was fenced in and gated—he would be fine. “Fifteen minutes!” she called out as Travis dashed out of the kitchen into the yard. “It’ll be dark soon.”

Ann and Richard sat together at the kitchen table. A cool breeze drifted in through the open French doors. Ann was sipping a glass of red wine. Richard was tracing his finger along the rim of his empty glass, his gaze turned inward.

“What is it, Richard?” she asked. “Why’re you so upset?”

He was still looking down. “This is not the way to happiness, Ann.”

“What do you mean?”

“There’s always a crisis.”

“This
was
a crisis,” she said. “That crazy kept coming here, giving ultimatums and making threats.”

Her husband’s hazel eyes looked peeved. “It’s like you wanted it to be a crisis.”

“What’re you talking about?”

“If there is no danger you make one up,” he said.

“I didn’t make up Kika stalking us,” she said. “Or the abuse charges.”

He searched her face with weary eyes. “I guess I’m trying to make a wider point.”

Ann had a glimmering that her husband was right. She knew that she blew things out of proportion all the time, but the knowledge that she reacted this way didn’t seem to help her. She kept making the same mistakes, over and over.

Richard let out a sigh. “It’s late. Let’s get Travis to bed.”

Ann’s hand fell to the table in a gesture of resignation. “I’m tired of being the one who needs to change.”

“Then do something about it.”

“Now I need a shrink?”

He pushed his chair back and stood up. “You need to slow down and think, Annie. You’re so busy always rushing from one thing to another you don’t know what you’re doing half the time.”

“So now I don’t think?” she said.

Her husband shook his head apparently disappointed she was being so flippant. “The CPS business was bad,” he said. “Decent people shouldn’t have to go through that crap. And this latest thing with Kika. Okay fine. She came at night and scared you. You went to a hotel. Understandable.
Then what do you do? You forget everything Stewart said about nothing coming of the charges. And you leave me a hundred messages that the sky is falling and I have to come home. Or else!”

“Do you want a divorce? Is that what you’re saying?” The second the words came out of her mouth Ann realized she was being overly dramatic again.

Richard placed his hands on the table and brought his face close to hers. “No! I don’t want a divorce. What I want is for you to get some perspective. You let your emotions lead you around by the nose. Granted, the CPS thing was godawful. But it’s not just that. You make a crisis out of everything. The big and the small.”

Ann felt chastened. Her husband was right—she couldn’t stop obsessing about all kinds of things.

Richard lowered himself into the chair, his voice softer. “It doesn’t have to be this way. The whole Kika thing, you solved it yourself. You didn’t need me.”

She started to cry. “I needed you.”

He cupped her face gently in both hands. “You’re stronger than you think, Annie.”

Ann felt her defensiveness slipping away. She couldn’t stand for her husband to be angry with her. She always said the smartest thing she ever did was to marry Richard. He was her strength and her happiness. He made her feel safe. Though she knew he loved her, she sometimes wondered if he wouldn’t be happier with a wife, who was, as he put it, less of a drama queen.

He heaved a sigh. “It’s dark out. Let’s get Travis in.”

Ann stood up. “I’ll call him.” She peered out into the backyard. “Time to come in, honey!”

No answer.

She stepped onto the patio. “No time for a story if you don’t get in the house, Travis!”

Richard stood beside her.

“He’s hiding.” Ann ran to the side of the house, to the darkest corner of the yard. The security light was out. “Richard!”

He came running. “I’ll look on the other side.”

Ann could hear Richard calling for Travis. She followed him to the front yard. There was no sign of their son.

9:00 P.M
.

A
nn Olson stood in her kitchen feeling like an animal shoved into a cold, airless box. The two detectives who had responded to their 911 call were combing the backyard for clues to Travis’s whereabouts. Like a drumbeat on her brain, pummeling away at her incredulity, at the innocent part of her that never before believed that true evil existed, the reality of her son’s disappearance forced itself upon Ann, choking her with sobs.

When Richard tried to take her hands in his, she pushed him away. “You didn’t believe me!” she said. “You said I make everything a crisis. Now do you think I’m crazy?”

His eyes were tortured. “Please don’t do this, Ann.”

Together, the Olsons faced San Diego police detectives Tom Long and Will Pruitt. Tom Long was in his mid-thirties, medium height, muscular, with short dark hair, and intelligent, gray eyes. His partner, Will Pruitt, looked quite a bit older—late-fifties, or so. He was overweight, with sand-colored hair, and pale brown eyes. He smelled like cigarette smoke.

“Standard procedure to record everything,” Detective Long said, indicating the kitchen table where he had placed a tape recorder. He addressed Ann. “Mrs. Olson, you said your six-year-old son, Travis, disappeared from your backyard and you think Child Protective Services agent, Kika Garcia, took him. Is that right?”

Ann swallowed hard. “She threatened me the other night,” she said. “My husband was out of town. She came to the house and demanded to see Travis. When I refused, she told me I was about to lose my son. Those were her very words.”

“So you think Ms. Garcia made good on her threat.”

Ann nodded. “Exactly.”

“You would agree with that, Mr. Olson?”

Richard shrugged. “Who else would do it?”

“It’s not like we have a bunch of enemies,” Ann added. “Kika’s the only one.”

Tom Long’s voice was sympathetic as he looked from Ann to Richard. “You may or not be aware that three other children have disappeared in San Diego this year. The most recent case was just a few days ago.”

Ann remembered the banner hanging from the bridge announcing the search for the little girl whose Mexican nanny had apparently kidnapped her. She shook her head. “Those cases have nothing to do with us.”

“Before we go down that road,” Tom Long said, “let’s back up and start with your movements today.” He indicated the kitchen table. “Mind if we sit down?”

Detective Pruitt moved toward the kitchen door. “I’m going to look around the ground floor. See if anything’s amiss.” He left the room.

“We’ll start with you, Mrs. Olson,” Tom Long said. “Tell me where you were. What you did. What your son was doing. Who was watching him. That sort of thing.”

Though logically Ann understood that the police needed to rule her and her husband out in their son’s disappearance, emotionally it felt like a betrayal. As if they could ever do anything to hurt a child. At a lull in the interrogation, Ann heard Will Pruitt in the hallway, talking on his phone. “Who is Officer Pruitt talking to?” she asked Tom Long.

“Will’s feeding information to another member of our team,” the detective replied. “So they can start looking into things.”

Richard looked impressed. “You set up a team already?”

“When a second child went missing in June, the chief set up a task force dedicated to finding the children. A detective—in your case, me—leads with assistance from his partner and others. On an as needed basis.”

“Doesn’t the FBI handle kidnapping cases?” Richard asked.

“If the victim is taken across state lines, the FBI gets involved. If that ends up being the case, we’ll work closely with them.”

Detective Pruitt entered the kitchen, his thumbs working a handheld device. Looking up, he said, “We’ll be pulling info on parolees and local
offenders from the Child Register and Offender Database. We’ll get their GPS coordinates and see if we can’t narrow down a suspect. Meantime, I want to take a look at the side gate one more time.” He left room again.

Ann seemed at a loss. “We told you what Kika said. Why don’t you go after her?”

Tom Long’s voice was reassuring. “Understand Mrs. Olson, we have to look into everything. Including Ms. Garcia. I’d like to take a look at your son’s room. The more we know about him the better off we’ll be.”

What if Kika didn’t take Travis? What if a sex offender stole into the yard and took hold of him? What if—

Richard seemed to sense her rising stress. Squeezing her arm gently, he said, “I’ll take Detective Long upstairs, Ann. We’ll be back in a few minutes.”

Ann’s conviction that the social worker had made good on her promise to take Travis was growing stronger. Not only did Kika unjustly accuse her of child abuse, she came to their house without her boss’s approval determined to “save” Travis from her and Richard. She was nothing more than a deluded stalker and a kidnapper.

Detective Pruitt returned to the kitchen, slightly out of breath. “The only prints on the gate latch belong to you and your husband, Mrs. Olson. There’s a table next to the gate. You say your son is nearly four feet tall? Maybe he got up on the table and climbed over the fence.”

“He’s never climbed anything like that before,” Ann said, trying to keep her voice down so the detective wouldn’t discount what she had to say. “I’m telling you, Kika Garcia kidnapped him.”

The younger detective and her husband returned to the kitchen. Tom Long addressed his partner. “Will, when did the Amber Alert go out?”

“Ten minutes ago,” Detective Pruitt said as he headed to the door. “I’m going out to talk to the neighbors. See if anyone caught anything on videotape.”

Ann tried to again explain to Tom Long about Kika. “Talk to our lawyer. He knows all about what she did.”

The detective’s phone rang. “Excuse me,” he said, turning away to answer it.

Richard took her hand in his. “Don’t worry, Annie. We’ll get him back.”

His call ended, Tom Long leaned over the kitchen table to check on the tape recorder. He said to the Olsons: “I understand the police were called here a few weeks back. Want to tell me about it?”

Her face warming, Ann hesitated. She was ashamed to tell about her screaming fit. Finally she said, “It all started when Travis’s teacher, Amanda White, called CPS on us. You see, Travis came to school all bruised one day. He’d jumped off his swing a bunch of times when a babysitter was watching him. It was an accident. When Amanda White saw the bruises and heard that the police had been here before, she assumed the worst. CPS sent Kika to interview Travis at school.
Twice
. Then she came here. The rest you know.”

Detective Long’s voice was calm. “But why would a CPS agent kidnap a child when they work with the law?”

Ann wiped tears from her eyes. “She thought we were harming Travis. Since the law couldn’t do anything about it, she did. It’s as simple as that.”

Tom Long’s lips came together as he nodded his head once. “We’ll send a patrol car over to Ms. Garcia’s house and see if we can get to the bottom of this.” He reached for his folder across the kitchen table and thumbed through the papers. “We should hear back from patrol pretty soon. We’ll get these photos back to you as soon as possible. We have both your statements—”

Ann drew a sigh, relieved the detective was taking her concerns about the social worker seriously. Richard reached over and smoothed her hair back from her face. This time she didn’t push him away. None of this was her husband’s fault.

Will Pruitt entered the room carrying a small box. “Got video from two of your neighbors’ security cameras.” His expression as he looked at
Ann was reassuring. “This could very well be what we need. We’ll update you as soon as we look through it.”

Detective Long’s phone rang. Several minutes later, he hung up the phone, frowning. “Ms. Garcia’s not home. We’ll head over to her place and see if we can’t figure out where she may have gone. Meanwhile, call me if you hear anything.” He handed Richard his card. “I promise you we’ll get to the bottom of this.” He patted Richard on the back. Then he and his partner left the house.