And Then There Was One (30 page)

“Go down there, take the stairs up, and sneak around and check the bedrooms. There’re two. One on each side of the main room, the one with the fireplace.”

“Hold this,” Spanky said, handing Marge the tire iron that he’d taken from his truck. “Shit, how am I supposed to fit through this space. Marge squeezed her eyes shut as he maneuvered his bulky frame through the rusty trapdoor. “Lemme have that back,” he grunted, holding out his hand for the iron.

“Remember, you’re in the basement,” Marge said. “When you go up the steps, tiptoe to the bedrooms.”

Marge was wondering whether she should get Jennifer out of the trunk when Spanky appeared at the front door.

“Ain’t nobody here,” he called.

“Don’t be so loud,” Marge whispered a warning. “Can Jennie come out now?”

“I said, ain’t nobody here, Ma. Let’s unload the stuff first, then I’ll get the kid. Gonna hafta ditch this car.” He jerked his head toward the nearby moonlit woods. “Any place to hide it around here?”

“Let me think,” Marge considered as they hauled plastic bags of groceries into the cottage. “But Spanky, we need a car. How will we get to the store?”

“Got enough to hold us a few days. Maybe we’ll have to ‘borrow’ a car. Shit, Ma, what the fuck do I know? I need time to figure it out, but the cops’ll spot the car right off. I’ll hot-wire some wheels once we get a plan.”

“There’s a swamp along the road. Evan always made us stay away. Maybe the car would sink enough so nobody’d see it, but it’s too dangerous tonight.”

“I’ll park it in back for now. But Ma,” he glared at her, “once I get that kid inside, you be sure to tie her up good. I don’t wanna run all over hell lookin’ for her, too.”

Marge took in a sharp breath. “Oh, my poor little Jessie. I hope she’s okay.”

“Your precious little Jessie, or whatever the fuck her real name is, is rattin’ on you right now. Forget about her. One will be just fine.”

Marge was too distracted by the baby carriages and high chairs and cribs in her mind to see the grin that spread over Spanky’s face.

FBI Action in Holly, a Detroit Suburb.
— Breaking News at Eleven, Friday, June 19

Streeter bolted out of the car and pushed past a clutch of agents with FBI emblazoned on their flak jackets. They’d done their job, invaded the suspect property and secured it. Now the case was back in his hands, at least until the director called the SAC again to question his competency. What did the SWAT commander mean,
nobody’s there, but they were, not long ago
? What had gone wrong?

Barging into the crushed door of the shabby frame house, Streeter demanded a report.

“Lot of shit in here you have to see,” the team leader started. “Hell, I don’t know where to start. This is real fucked up.”

“Get on with it,” Streeter said, following the agent down a flight of cement stairs.

“That informant, Talbott, looks like this is where he delivered the twin beds that your guys thought was a crock of bull.”

Streeter felt his face turn red from anger, or was it embarrassment?

“Didn’t mean for it to come out that way. We’re all just frustrated, that’s all. My men have been on call night and day. Then we get here too fucking late.”

“Just show me what you’ve got.” Streeter had no time to indulge his ego. “Geez, this is where they were?” He stared at the twin beds. One covered by a Cinderella comforter. The other bare except for the fitted sheet. Sleeping Beauty design. Just like Kellie’s, his youngest daughter. “How long ago?”

“Don’t think it was long. Found a carton of ice cream left out on a counter upstairs. Almost melted. Maybe three to four hours.”

“Shit.”

Streeter tried to focus. Agents from the field office had joined the SWAT commander at the site, and they relayed what they knew of Margaret Spansky, age fifty, and her son, Samuel, age thirty-three. Owner-occupants of record. Margaret Spansky, confirmed as the owner of brown Ford Escort; Samuel Spansky, as the owner of the Ford pickup parked at the side of the house. She was employed by the Ford assembly plant in Flint. No police record. Just an ordinary citizen. He an independent trucker, nonunion. Petty arrests, drunk and disorderly. No convictions.

“Check this out,” one of the agents said.

“What?” Streeter’s attention had lapsed momentarily. When he looked up, his whole body shuddered at contents of a plastic box held out for his inspection. Streeter felt a surge of bile fill his mouth and both hands flew to cover his mouth lest he vomit here in front of his peers and subordinates.

“We found this in the truck, tucked under the front seat along with a half-empty box of forty-four magnum hollow point shells.” The agent handed Streeter the case, made of clear plastic, like something you’d keep a baseball card collection in. Or a paper doll collection like his middle daughter, Kassie’s. She had a box just like that. As Streeter took the box, he sensed all eyes were on him. An agent handed him a pair of gloves.

He heard himself groan. “Oh, God, no.” Inside the box was a collection of little girls’ panties. Gingerly, with a gloved hand, he counted the individual items. “Twenty.”

“Other strange things,” the SWAT commander said. “Come on upstairs. This you gotta see.”

Streeter climbed two flights of stairs with several agents in his wake. En route, the commander pointed out the living room, nothing unusual. The kitchen, in disarray as if someone had thrown food around quickly. Like packing to get the hell out.

“Upstairs, you’re gonna see what appears to be the woman’s bedroom. Neat, nothing unusual. The son’s bedroom, also unremarkable except for a collection of child porn. Guy’s a real pervert.”

“Oh, God,” Streeter said again.
How was he going to tell Katie and Scott Monroe
?

“But now for the weirdo thing. There’s a third bedroom. Check it out.”

Streeter had peeked into the other two bedrooms, still shaking his head, but as he peered inside the third, he stopped short. A room decorated almost completely in pink: candy-striped wallpaper, carnation pink carpets, wall-to-wall shelves on two sides painted magenta and displaying a collection of eighteen-inch dolls in colorful, international costumes reminiscent of Disney’s “It’s a Small World.” Two identical cribs in hues of pink and lavender, tented with yards of hot pink satin canopies, dominated the room. Each crib held cuddly stuffed animals, all in soft colors. The closet door was open and inside he saw frilly dresses in pink, white, and yellow. There seemed to be two of each, ranging from toddler sizes to sizes that would fit his own daughters, Kloe, eight; Kassie, seven; and Kellie, five. And the Monroe triplets?

“She’s got kids?” Streeter asked. “Babies? But keeps the Monroe girls in the basement? Can somebody tell me what’s going on?”

Scott heard a soft knock on the door of Jackie’s room. He jumped up, hoping not to awaken Katie. At a quarter to one in the morning, he did not expect good news. In his sweats, he eased out the door, closing it quietly behind him. Streeter stood facing him, his expression grim.

Scott’s jaw dropped and his chest constricted. “What?” he whispered.

“We found the place where Sammie and Alex were taken.”

“You —” Scott slumped against the door. His bowels felt loose and his heart started to race out of control.

Stepping forward, Streeter grabbed Scott’s arm.

“Are they okay?” Scott knew they were not by the contortion of Streeter’s face.

“We don’t know. They’ve been moved from a house in Holly.”

Scott’s brain did not register the location.

“Holly’s about fifteen miles from the Auburn Hills Mall. But we know who has them.”

“Come in. I’ll get Katie,” Scott said. As reluctant as he was to wake her, she needed to hear this. Would either of them know the person
that Streeter was about to divulge? Was it the kidnapper who’d sent the ransom note? Is that why Alex and Sammie had been moved? To exchange them for the money in the morning?

Streeter followed Scott into Jackie’s small hospital room where Katie stirred on her cot.

Scott gently tapped her exposed shoulder. “Katie, you have to wake up.”

“What?” She opened her eyes, focused on the two men, and bolted upright. “What happened ?” She groped for the switch on the bedside lamp. “Scott, what is it?”

“Agent Streeter has something to tell us, babe.” Scott put a finger to his mouth and cast a glance at Jackie’s sleeping form.

Throwing off the sheets, Katie leapt out of bed and pulled a robe over her floor-length nightgown.

Scott took her hand. “Let’s just step outside,” he said, drawing her toward the door.

Streeter wasted no time. He spoke as they stood in the hall outside Jackie’s room. “Tonight we got a tip that led us to the woman who took your daughters. We went to her place. Sammie and Alex had probably been there, but they were not there when we got there.”

“Then they’re alive?” Katie slumped backward, against the wall.

Scott stared at Streeter, not daring to look at Katie lest his terror accelerate hers. “Who was the woman?” he asked. “We must know her since they got into the car with her. She must be related somehow to someone we know?”

Both listened silently as Streeter explained how they’d found the Spansky home. When he finished, each answered his anticipated question with a shake of their heads. The names meant nothing to either Scott or Katie.

“Margaret Spansky? Samuel Spansky?” Katie kept repeating, her eyes blinking as the looked back and forth from Scott to Streeter. “That name does not ring a bell. Scott, are you sure?”

“No, it does not.” He was sure of that. Scott never forgot a name. “Is there any tie to Norman Watkins’s sister and mother?”

“Or to Ken Franklin?” Katie added. “Why would Alex and Sammie willingly get into this Spansky woman’s car?”

“We’ll run down any connection. We have the car ID. We don’t
have them yet, but this is a big break. I have to get back now, but I’ll be in touch the instant I hear anything. Think hard about any connection.”

Streeter turned to leave, and asked, “How’s Jackie?”

“About the same,” Scott said. Maybe Jackie was responding just a tiny bit, or maybe it was his imagination.

During the drive, Spanky tried to figure something out. To get the reward money outright, he’d have to rat out his own ma. She might be loony, but she’d always stuck by him. She knew stuff about him and she never said nothing to nobody. And the more he thought about having Precious for himself, the more sure he was that he could pull this off. So he worked out a ransom plan. The singer-aunt had offered up a hundred grand, but she’d probably go for more so he’d already decided to double it. That sounded like enough. Where he was headed he wouldn’t need that much.

His next decision was where to send the note and how to send it. The Monroe family address in Florida? That didn’t make sense because they were staying with relatives in Auburn Hills. If only he’d paid more attention to the missing girls’ story when he’d been driving his rig, innocent as a lamb.

Back then in Spanky’s wildest dreams, he never could have imagined that Ma had those girls. That Scott Monroe’s daughters, the ones the whole world was looking for and praying for, were locked up in Ma’s basement? What a fucking piece of work. Now all he had to do was take advantage of her fucking craziness.

When they’d taken off with the remaining kid, he figured it’d be easy, but he still didn’t have a good plan. With Ma snoring on the opposite side of the house with Precious tied in beside her, he could finally think. In the car she’d been yapping the whole way about the kid suffocating. And once he decided where to send the note — or should it be a phone call — where would he tell them to put the money? Of course, it had to be cash. He had his stash with him: $34,350. Money that he’d skimmed off the top of his trucking contracts. More money than he knew what to do with even without the two hundred grand.

Before the Monroe kid popped onto his radar screen, Spanky had developed his own long-term plan. He was sick and tired of running
his rig up and down I-75, that ribbon of concrete, crowded with asshole drivers. Once he had enough money, his plan had been to cross the border into Canada by way of the Upper Peninsula, somewhere near Sault Ste. Marie. From there, he’d make his way north and west to Alaska. He’d head to the rough, remote territory north of Fairbanks, where nobody could find him. He’d pay cash for his patch of wilderness and live off the land, hunting his meat, fishing in the pristine streams. He couldn’t stifle a chuckle. Add the ransom money to his stash, he’d be comfortable for life. Wouldn’t have to take no shit from no one. And even better, just the thought of Precious made his blood tingle with anticipation.

When Spanky first came up with his Alaska plan, he hadn’t been sure whether Ma would go with him. He’d figured that when she heard she’d have to live in a cabin in the wilderness, maybe she’d decide to keep on working in the assembly plant. But now, with the kid, Ma was in like Flynn.

Spanky had no one he could trust as an accomplice. Should he get Ma and Precious to Canada first, and then come back and arrange the ransom drop somewhere? How best to do that with the cops looking for him once they found the other triplet? Not daring to risk crossing the Mackinac Bridge, he decided to steal a boat, cross Lake Michigan, and hang out at a campsite he knew.

The way things were working out, he’d have his dream life in Alaska, be able to take care of Ma, have Precious for himself, and more money than he ever dreamed. But first, he had to figure a way to get the money.

Unable to sleep, he got up, deciding to ditch the car in that swamp Ma pointed out. He couldn’t be too careful. He had to be crafty. He thumped his head with his fists. He had to figure out a plan.

Monroe Girls Spirited Out of House in Holly, Michigan.
— National News, Saturday morning, June 20

Sammie woke up to her own screams. She was trapped in a dark, stinky hole, things crawling on her skin, in her hair. “Mom,” she screamed, “get me out of here!”

She was afraid to open her eyes. But if she didn’t, how could she make the dream go away, get out of bed, go down the hall, and crawl in bed next to Mom. Then she remembered. She and Alex were still locked up in Maggie’s basement. Okay, she would just go lay down next to Alex, not wanting to wake up her sister or to let Alex know how scared she was.