And Then There Was One (22 page)

“No, Agent Streeter, I do not. All I know is that I made a terrible mistake. I told Maxwell what I told Dr. Katie — about him, how he was abusing Adam and Jake. I told him that she could never tell because I was her patient, but he went crazy on me. He sent me to Nevis, and told me to stay there. He wanted me out of the country just in case she, you know, didn’t keep what I said confidential.”

“Did he threaten her or her children?”

“Her, yes. That he was going to ‘get even’” He flicked his index fingers into apostrophes. “Her kids? He said like — how would she like someone screwing around with her kids?”

“Did he say anything more specific?” Camry leaned in closer to catch every word.

“No. But I’ll bet he used the same guy that he used to whack Olivia.” Here Kaninsky looked around. “Am I out of bounds here?”

“Meaning?” Streeter leaned closer.

“Look, I had nothing to do with this, but when Olivia, quote, fell overboard, unquote, Maxwell opened a bottle of expensive champagne. I mean, of course, he’d be glad to get rid of her. Truth is she’d turned into a bitch. Constant bickering. Over money. Over the boys. Typical stuff for divorce, I figured.”

Again, Streeter wondered whether he should advise the kid of his rights. He might be walking straight into a trap — an accomplice to murder? But Adam was not a minor, and he had showed up voluntarily. Streeter let him proceed.

“We ended up drinking two bottles. We were both pretty sloshed, and Maxwell was one of those loud drunks. On the way to bed he was slobbering all over me. “Vincent came though,” he said. “Vincent drowned the bitch. Now it’s just you and me, Adam.”

“This Vincent, any last name?” Streeter flipped through notes. Had he heard that name before?

“In the morning I asked Maxwell who Vincent was. He looked at me strangely and said, ‘Vincent who? What are you talking about? Just shut your mouth.’ He never mentioned him again. That was a couple of months ago.”

“So what’s your take on this Vincent?” Camry asked while Streeter poured though the file.

“Just that if what he said about Olivia and Vincent was true. I’m not saying it is. But what if — well, maybe this Vincent is the one who has the Monroe kids. Like if he can make a drowning happen, maybe he could make the children disappear.”

“When did you figure this theory out?” Streeter asked, wondering whether Kaninsky’s hypothesis made any sense. Tampa agents had followed Cutty to a club in Ybor City in Tampa. They now knew that he met with a guy known as Manny. According to informants, Manny Gonzalos ran an exclusive, pricey hit business. Highly respected, efficient, and completely invisible. No amount of digging had unearthed his real identity, but the Tampa agents speculated that the professional killer lived in Clearwater, and they had staked out the address. But now Manny had disappeared without a trace. If Manny was Vincent, then Vincent was gone.

“When I was in Nevis, I heard on the news that Dr. Katie’s kids were missing. That’s what made me think. Maybe he used that guy — Vincent.”

Agent Camry asked, “You ever hear him mention Vincent again since that night?”

“No, never. I forgot all about it until I heard about her missing children. That’s why I left Nevis and came straight here to talk to you. I used my own money to buy my airline ticket. I respect Dr. Katie, and if there’s anything I can do to help find her children —”

“Why did Maxwell send you to Nevis?” Streeter asked, trying to reconcile what Adam was saying with the scant information in the file. Why hadn’t the Tampa office made a bigger deal out of Manny? They’d missed the connection between Cutty’s former wife’s death and this Manny — or Vincent, a suspected hit man.

“Maxwell was going to meet me there. He said his lawyer would get
the case — you know — about what he did to his kids — dropped and that we’d unwind in the Caribbean. Maxwell had it all set up. A private plane to San Juan, then a yacht from there to Nevis. No customs. No nothing.”

“You didn’t think that odd, Adam?” Camry asked.

“Like I said, Maxwell did some bad stuff. I just did what he said.”

“So when you got there, he was a no-show, and you used your own money to come here?”

“Yeah, but I flew back, Nevis to San Juan to Kennedy to Detroit. I wanted to help Dr. Katie. That’s why I’m here.”

Streeter asked him to go over in detail the timing. The clock in his mind was calculating. Could Cutty have gotten those kids out of Detroit to Nevis? If so, when and from where? He picked up the phone. “Find out the jurisdiction in Nevis,” he said. “We need to get a search going on the island.”

“He told you to go to a certain address in Nevis?” Camry asked.

“Yes.” Adam pulled a scrap of paper out of his breast pocket. “But I never went there.”

“What?” Streeter’s head jerked up.

Adam handed over the paper. “I never went there because I got scared. I mean, with what he did to Olivia. Like he had her whacked. No way she drowned. Must have been pushed, man. Like I said, this guy Vincent. Maxwell wanted Olivia’s money and he wanted that house. He loved that house, wanted to live in that house with
me
.” Adam shivered and shifted in his seat. “That was before I ‘betrayed’ him. I got to thinking. What if Maxwell intended to off me? The Nevis thing could be a setup.” Adam shrugged his shoulders, but the grimace on his face was anything but casual. “I found a bed and breakfast over by the airport and used my own money. Then I came back when I heard about the little girls. I wanted to tell you all this. I’ve got a soft spot for kids. As far as Maxwell and I are concerned, we’re finished. I came to tell you what I know, then I’m going somewhere far away.”

“Do you know where Maxwell Cutty is?” Streeter asked.

“Right now?”

Streeter nodded, observing carefully as Adam lifted his shoulders in a “who cares” gesture. Either the kid was a primo actor or he suffered
from media deprivation. Hadn’t the shooting in Tampa reached the island of Nevis?

“Home, soaking in the hot tub, I suspect.”

“He’s dead, Adam.” Streeter delivered the blow, and saw that it hit hard.

“Maxwell?” Kaninsky’s reaction came out as a wail. Maybe the kid did have some feelings for his former sugar daddy. Then he straightened up in his chair. “You’re kidding me?”

When Camry asked whether they should detain Kaninsky, Streeter shook his head. “Do a polygraph. If he passes, let him go, but keep him local and under surveillance. Focus on Nevis and how Cutty could have moved the girls there. Do an extensive search of the island — house-to-house — if we can get local law enforcement to go along.”

As Camry led Kaninsky away, Streeter felt a surge of depression. The kid had guts coming in, but he offered little that would lead them to Alex and Sammie. Except a hit man known as Vincent. Could Vincent be Manny? If so, the Monroe children were in the hands of a professional hit man.

At eight Friday morning, Katie and Scott waited for Susan Reynolds to make rounds. They’d slept off and on, and as far as they could tell, Jackie had not stirred all night. The child seemed to be sleeping peacefully, her chest rising and falling in perfect rhythm. Every once in a while, Katie would lean over Jackie just to feel the egress of air. Now she and Scott were talking to her gently, about what they thought would interest her, had she been awake. If anything would entice Jackie, it would be Yankee baseball, but Katie knew that Scott had not been updated on the stats since he’d arrived in Detroit Sunday evening.

“I can’t wait for us all to be home,” Scott was saying. Katie thought she detected the tiniest motion at the corners of Jackie’s mouth.
Home
, she thought, would they ever be able to go home? How could they ever leave Sammie and Alex in Michigan here and go home to Florida?

As Scott kept up an upbeat monologue, Katie reflected on how she and Scott were handling the immensity of their constant dread.
They each seemed to cycle in and out of paralysis. In and out of hope. In and out of despair. In and out of sanity. They were trying to stay focused on Jackie, but images of Alex and Sammie kept careening around in her head and she suspected in Scott’s, too. She realized that all she could hope for, right now, was that either she or Scott would be in a coping part of the cycle of despair — hope — despair at any one time. If their despair cycles coincided, who would be there for Jackie? Would they lose Jackie, too?

Katie’s thoughts and Scott’s monologue were interrupted by a blend of female voices as the door opened, and Lucy, Susan Reynolds, and Katie’s sister Stacy walked in. In an instant Katie was on her feet, rushing into Stacy’s open arms. After the sisters’ tearful reunion, Stacy hugged Scott, and Katie greeted Susan and her mother. When Stacy went to Jackie and stroked her forehead, Katie thought she saw a glimmer of response as Stacy told Jackie how she’d just come back from an awesome hike in New Zealand. How much she’d love to take her there with her sisters, of course.

A light tap on the door interrupted Katie as she was about to ask Susan about Jackie.

“May I interrupt?” Agent Camry appeared, and was promptly introduced to Stacy, the eldest of the Jones sisters.

Scott rose to pull back a chair for Camry to join them.

“Thanks, Mr. Monroe, but could I have a word with you and Dr. Monroe?”

“You go ahead,” Stacy said. “Jackie will be fine with us.”

Once they had relocated to the patient room they’d been using as a conference center, Camry requested coffee from the security detail. As they took their first sip, she informed them that Norman Watkins had died without regaining consciousness. Not waiting for them to ask questions, she told them about Adam Kaninsky’s surprise visit that morning.

“Adam?” Katie’s heart jumped. “Does he know —”

“He claims he doesn’t know where your daughters are or even if Cutty arranged their abduction. But he does believe that Cutty had his wife killed. And that he used a professional killer, known as Vincent. Does he look familiar to you?” Camry showed them the police artist’s
sketch of a Hispanic-looking male based on the Tampa FBI investigation of the man they knew as Manny in Ybor City.

Both Katie and Scott shook their heads, their shoulders slumping in unison. They denied knowing this man.

Then Scott asked, “The ransom? Anything?”

“Not yet. And nothing credible yet on the reward. But the sketch of the woman who we think took them is in all the morning papers and on all the networks.”

Katie and Scott asked a few more questions, but they realized that Camry would let them know if there was anything new. And there wasn’t. Camry promised to update them immediately if something happened. Finally, she told them how sorry she was about Jackie. Was there anything that she could do?

“Could you bring us the morning paper?” Scott asked.

Camry left the room, returned with a stack of newspapers, set them down in front of Scott and Katie, and excused herself.

Katie and Scott sat across from each other, coffee in hand, silently reading the
Detroit Free Press
and
Tampa Tribune
version of what was going on in their lives. The tragedy of the abduction, the odds of finding the children alive after five days, speculation as to the hospitalization of the third triplet, the incompetence of the FBI. When Katie and Scott had scanned enough, they folded up the newspapers, and, hand in hand, left to join Jackie.

As they reached the door to Jackie’s room, Agent Camry rushed up to them. She handed Katie a formal-style, engraved envelope. “This arrived from the White House. It’s for Jackie.”

Katie fingered the White House seal, afraid that any message from the president had to be bad news. She gave it to Scott to open. Inside was a note, written on the first lady’s stationery. The letters were well formed and precise and there were two signatures at the end. In a voice that wavered, Scott read it aloud.

Dear Jackie,

We are praying everyday that your sisters Sammie and Alex are safe and that they come back home to you and your
mom and dad very soon. We hope that they are not too scared. And we hope that you are doing okay while you wait. We know how special having a sister is. And we want you to know that our parents and everybody in our classes at school are praying for your sisters.

The note was signed by the two daughters of the president.

Obama Family Reaches Out to Monroes as First Daughters Pen Note to Jackie.
— News at Noon
, Friday, June 19

Marge Spansky squeezed her legs together and checked the wall clock. She had to go real bad and couldn’t take a break for seventeen minutes. Thank goodness she’d broken down and got those adult diapers Dr. Steiner had suggested. She’d told him that she had these urges when all of a sudden she had to rush to the bathroom. A couple of times she hadn’t quite made it. Once at work, and once at the mall. Each time she’d raced for the toilet, but before she got into the stall, hot urine seeped down her leg and onto the floor. In the mall, no one had noticed, but at the Ford plant where she worked on the assembly line, two of her girlfriends had seen the puddle and had helped her clean up enough to go back to her workstation.

Marge had been humiliated, but Janie and Elmira had sworn that they wouldn’t tell a soul. She’d promised them that she’d go see a doctor since she hadn’t been in eight years. What was the point? Pap smears and breast exams, who needed them? Dr. Steiner chewed her out before he did an internal exam and sent her to have her breasts mashed. He even took some blood. She was fifty years old and he wanted to check for high cholesterol. Sure. What he wanted was a bigger take from her health care benefits. One good thing about unions and the auto industry was decent health care. And what did Dr. Steiner do for her? Advise diapers and tell her to do those stupid Kegal exercises with the rubber balls. With her benefits, wasn’t she entitled to surgery? Maybe she should get a second opinion. Somebody younger. Steiner must be pushing seventy. But he was the only doctor
she’d ever seen. He’d delivered all her children. Told her that the stress of having twins had been too much for her pelvic muscles.