He told Adriana to sit and wait, not to move. Perhaps a mistake but an innocent one. Jesus, Holy Mother, please let it have been Beth"s younger brother, Bick. Charley swiveled his eyes, concealed by his dark D&G sungla.s.ses, back toward the entrance and saw no delighted Eliza, opening her arms to receive her baby.
Charley nodded to the officer. "We are going to need your help," he said.
The officer asked a guard to bring Vincent Cappadora and his family out.
Vincent and Rob had just finished posing for photos with their statuettes while a CNN reporter asked them questions. But when Vincent saw Charley Seven coming toward Ben and Eliza, Charley"s face gray as cement, looking as though he"d walked a hundred miles on hot sand beside the tall police officer, Vincent consciously smiled for what he believed, simply from the sense in the air, like burning, would be the last smile for a long time to come.
Vincent could not imagine what could go so wrong it could cause a police officer to walk into the Academy Awards. Was someone ill? Hurt? The officer kept on walking toward them. Then, like a house of cards on fire, he flashed onto the only member of his family who had come to California but not to the awards.
Vincent began to run toward the doors and was close enough that it was he who caught Eliza when her knees buckled under her and her eyes rolled back.
CHAPTER EIGHT.
Still clutching his statue, Vincent stalked the lobby, from reporter to reporter, from microphone to microphone, giving interview after interview.
He said he would tell anyone anything. He said that winning the Academy Award was the worst mistake of his life.
He offered the statue to anyone who would give him any information about the couple seen with his niece.
He offered a reward of $50,000.
He offered a reward of $100,000.
"My family is only a family," Vincent said to the reporters. They saw a handsome young man, made beautiful by grief, with his shirt undone and tears in his eyes-appealing the way Beth used to think that Pat was at that age, like someone who needed a good meal and looking after, someone to wipe the grief from his gray eyes. The female news reporters felt their hearts pound in their stomachs and flubbed their openers. "I am only a guy. I don"t care about my movie or my award. I only care about Stella and my family. I"m Stella"s G.o.dfather. Ben is my only brother. We lost my brother. We ... you have to understand. We all did this one time and no one can do this more than one time. My family can"t stand any more. All our lives, this thing has been like the only thing that made us who we were. We were the family who lost my brother and my brother came back. We hated it but we lived up to it. We shouldn"t have to-no one should have to-feel this ever ... and not twice in one life."
The lead detective, Bill Humbly, finally had to stop Vincent: His appeals were clogging the phone line with crazies who wanted a hundred grand and an Oscar statuette so that legit people were hanging up in disgust. They had eight hundred calls the first hour and one decent tip. It came from the doorman at the Paloma, who"d accepted three dollars from a couple with a baby who said the woman"s father was picking them up to let the dad park in the circle long enough to load the baby in. At around the same time, two young women, sisters, who had heard that Angelina Jolie was staying at the Paloma, although she was not, were nursing c.o.c.ktails when they saw a couple slip into the backseat of a small Toyota SUV, brand-new, driven by an older man in a golf cap or a baseball cap.
Connecting the dots, the police determined that this happened just before Adriana made her call.
All the witnesses described the car as dark in color. They described the driver as white and middle-aged-eliminating two-thirds of the American population and leaving the other hundred million or so.
The only babies in the hotel that night were a starlet"s newborn and her ten-month-old son, in the care of her mother, and a nominated actor"s one-year-old twin boys.
And Stella.
Detective Humbly had decided to get his partner, Melissa Rafferty, to run purchases and thefts on the auto when he heard someone pounding down the lobby behind him, obviously in pursuit.
"Wait up!" Candy pleaded. "Wait up!" All the uniforms had identified him as the lead detective. "I need to talk to you. I know the girl who was taking care of the baby.... I know the whole family!"
"Stay right here," the detective said. He flashed a gold shield. William R. Humbly. A supervisor, then. A detective sergeant, as she had been twenty-two years ago-a token, the first girl in the area and the youngest. The least likely to become chief and yet she had. "I"m going to get someone to talk to you. We have five interview rooms. We"ll put you next in line."
As the detective took a step to guide her toward the line of conference rooms where a close-up of Stella in her baptismal gown, looking directly at the camera, was slapped over another placard, Candy stopped. The guy might not care much about what she had to say, but she gambled he would care enough at least to hear it. Simply stopping, she had learned, worked as well with a person as it did with a dog.
The detective in the tee just a little too small, under a cotton-and-linen sport coat, did what she expected. He stopped too and looked back.
"This kidnapping was planned," Candy said.
"It"s still not clear that this even was a kidnapping. Are you a member of the media?"
"No," Candy said. "I was involved with the investigation of the kidnapping of Ben Cappadora, the baby"s father. I"m Candace Bliss," she said. "I led the investigation ..."
"I"m not sure what you mean by "leading" the investigation. Were you ... part of a team from the Center for Missing and Exploited-"
"They didn"t have a.s.sist teams on the ground then," said Candy and took her badge out of her jacket pocket.
"You were a police officer," said Humbly.
Candy replied evenly, "There"s no "was" about it. How many years in are you? Ten?"
"Nearly twelve."
Candy said, "I am twenty-nine years in. I"m the chief of police in Parkside, Illinois."
"I apologize, Chief," Humbly said and smiled briefly. "But I want you to know. We"re doing everything at warp speed. We issued an Amber Alert fifteen minutes in, so there"s been a preempt of regular broadcasting ..."
"I"m familiar with the Amber Alert plan. We were one of the states that threw in for it early on. It"s magnificent. It doesn"t rea.s.sure me."
"Pardon me, ma"am, but are you ... involved in some other way?" Detective Humbly asked.
"I"m her grandmother."
"Her grandmother? I thought her grandmother is the mother of the guy with the movie...."
"That is her father"s mother. I"m her mother"s mother. My daughter is the mother of the baby, Eliza Cappadora. The families became friends and our kids fell in love, long story short."
"I see. I"m so sorry, Chief Bliss. We want you to know that we"ll do everything in our ..."
"I know you will," Candy said, kindly. "I know it"s b.a.l.l.s to the wall for a kid. I just want to be kept in the loop. Somehow."
Oh no, Humbly thought, but he said, "Okay. I"ll tell you what we"ve got going. Well, the Amber Alert ..."
"Do you think anyone will tip to it? On Oscar night?" Candy asked.
"Absolutely," Humbly said. "The Oscar win makes it a double-shot news story. Now they"ll be running descriptions of Stella every ten minutes, breaking into whatever else is on TV, especially the awards ceremony. A bazillion people are watching. If it had to happen ..."
"Don"t say it was a good time," Candy said and smiled in case she sounded too harsh. "What"s your gut? I think she"s still alive."
Candy"s hunch was not sentimental. The facts as she understood them from Charley Seven and his niece didn"t immediately turn her stomach the way the facts that surrounded Ben"s kidnapping had. For one, Ben was hauled away with such disdain for his comfort that one of his little shoes was pulled off and left behind. For another, he wasn"t the right age to be fake-adopted by someone who wanted a baby. Most babies looked like most other babies. Little boys, older than a year, had distinctive features. They were more likely to be the prey for people who loved little boys in ways that flattened the imagination. So Ben should have been dead by the time Beth and Candy met.
But Adriana Ruffalo described the couple who came to the hotel room to take Stella as relaxed, unhurried, and charming. They knew how to hold a baby. They commented on how big she"d gotten and made her giggle.
Humbly went on. "And we just got a picture of the baby printed up, maybe you saw that, and TRAK will disseminate that through agencies and volunteers to law enforcement and the media. We already have someone a.n.a.lyzing and enlarging stills from the security-cam footage of the couple walking away with her. And that"s going to be blasted out as soon as it"s in good enough shape, which should be in ten minutes ... we"re trying to trace the car but we only got a view of the rear and the plate was removed."
"You have a picture of the couple who took Stella?" Candy pressed her fingers to the place between her eyes. "Of course you do. The security here would be unbelievable. That"s amazing luck." The Paloma had the kind of tony clientele who paid their $650 a night expecting thirsty towels and caviar-laced moisturizer, and it had its own computerized locking system. There was a routine security scan of each floor at two-minute intervals-not only on Oscar night but every night. p.i.s.sed-off beauties and beaux in event finery were now lined up behind tourists in pajama pants and Green Bay Packer T-shirts, waiting to be interviewed and released with instructions to remain in the area. No one expected to find the couple among the guests-only to find someone who"d seen them.
Detective Humbly said, "We have a good picture of them standing at the elevator, facing the camera, with her holding the baby. The baby"s face isn"t visible but the time stamp and the proximity to the room is exactly right, and the baby bag they brought is an unusual design. It has what looks like a fetus on it ..."
"It"s an ultrasound picture," Candy said. "I bought it. It"s not an ultrasound picture of Stella but it"s somebody"s. It"s a black patent-leather bag ..."
"Yes, and there was also a green bag with some squiggles and question marks on it."
"Stella"s clothes were in the bag."
"They"re both blond and attractive and well-dressed."
"That should narrow it down in California," Candy said, then quickly added, "Actually, I apologize. That level of composure is a good thing in this case ... so is taking all the baby"s gear. It suggests that they want the baby to ... keep. Not to rape and suffocate."
"Sure. That much is clear but ..." There was a big "but" that Humbly wasn"t going to bring up unless she did.
"And that there were two of them. A team. Like a husband and wife, although I"m sure they weren"t. Couples don"t kidnap children," Candy went on.
Humbly thought, but didn"t say, They do if they are well paid. Or threatened. "They do, once in a while," he said. "Had a couple stole two kids from the same yard a few years ago. Instant family. We got them before they hit the freeway ..."
Looking down, searching for her cell phone, Candy noticed that in the process of ripping off her designer dress and pulling on her jeans, shirt, blazer, and holster, she had torn two of her nails deep down to the quick. She couldn"t even feel the pain. It was as though she were examining another woman"s hand.
Candy and Humbly sat down on a pair of sofas across from the interview rooms. So far, the Amber Alert or a tip from someone who saw one of those photos was their best hope. Some experts griped about the alert system, which was named after Amber Hagerman, kidnapped in broad daylight in full view of a neighbor who heard her screams, and found days later, a few miles from her home, her throat cut. Skeptics said that an Amber Alert brought out more confessors and creeps than tipsters and wasted valuable time. Still, occasionally it actually worked. A caller to a radio talk show had suggested it: Now police issued the same kind of bulletin to the media for a missing child that was issued for severe weather. All fifty states used some form of it. In some places, a tone was played and programming was interrupted while the child"s picture was displayed.
Humbly opened his notebook. "So you say you know the girl who was caring for the baby and you"ve spoken to her ... before or after?"
"Before and since ... since we were all moved up to the Frank Sinatra Suite." At the request of the management and the police, who wanted access to the room where Adriana had cared for Stella for two days, the family members had been given a series of rooms in the huge, gla.s.s-walled penthouse.
"Was this while she had the baby with her?" Humbly asked.
"Yes. Not the second time, obviously. But for the past two days, repeatedly. To her and her family." Candy watched as nine of ten people who walked past the plainclothes standing around all but tripped to stare at them. They might as well have been uniforms, she thought. They would have attracted less attention wearing clown outfits. Candy believed that detectives in plain clothes should dress like detectives on TV, in slinky tops and tight jeans or leather jackets and khakis, like people. Like this Humbly here. But take them out of their blues and police invariably wore black and navy blue together, or shirts tucked in nice and tight or denim skirts with sensible shoes-like nuns without habits. "Why do plainclothes dress so bad?" she asked. Humbly stared at her as though she"d grown a beard. Why had she said that? Why did her mind keep slipping away from her, into weird corridors, and then Stella"s face come roaring back out at her, larger than life, larger than death? She took a deep breath.
"I first met Adriana years ago," Candy said. "She was a teenager in Chicago. Ben and his brother, the guy with the movie, they"ve known her since childhood. Eliza met her only yesterday. But she felt good about Adriana. She still does. My daughter expressed breast milk for the baby before she put on her evening dress and also purchased cans of formula as a backup. She put them all in the refrigerator. Stella"s extra diapers and clothing were on the tall dresser. The room should be covered with prints ..."
"It"s a hotel room, ma"am. It"s probably got prints from Tony Bennett. And for there to be a match, the people who did this would already have to be in the system. But we"ll try. Of course," Humbly said.
"What else did you say you were doing?" Candy asked Humbly.
He said, "We"re going to use the press to the maximum." News crews had set up-even foreign press, in town for the Academy Awards. Humbly explained that they invited full media cooperation, as well as volunteers who pushed the images of Stella"s face in close-up and the blond couple out even onto cell phones and pagers.
Candy finally found her phone in an inside pocket and popped it open. Her gut coiled and nearly bent her double. How could so much time have pa.s.sed?
Stella had now been missing for the magic number.
Three hours.
Despite the fact that such technology as the Amber Alert had slightly improved the odds, most abducted kids-including the little girl from Texas after whom the system was named-were dead within three hours of being taken. Statistics proved it over and over.
"Are you okay?" Humbly asked.
"I"m not," Candy said. "It"s been three hours. Not much has changed since the Lindbergh kidnapping. If a kid is found dead after an abduction, that kid was killed within three hours of being taken."
"I don"t go for that," Humbly said. "This is my case and we will find her."
"That"s n.o.ble, but ..."
The two looked at each other for a minute that seemed to stretch out between them like a shred of molten gla.s.s. Humbly was afraid she could read his mind. The abduction was well organized and timed and the couple had moved down the hall with the ease of vacationers. Stella was pretty, round and cooey and racially desirable, still little enough for whoever got her to pretend that they"d given birth to her. California"s adoption laws were so ludicrous that anyone could find a sc.u.mbag lawyer with an Internet license who would make everything look tidy. If it weren"t for the publicity and if Stella had been brought to L.A. from Mexico-or Kansas-she would grow up as the daughter of some very nice gay couple up in the Swish Alps above Beverly Hills, drive a five-hundred-dollar pink toy Jeep when she was four, and have every lesson known to humankind. Humbly figured the couple was foreign-Canadian, French, Swiss, Dutch, German. Not Mexicans. Mexicans could have their pick of beautiful babies off the streets for what it would cost to buy a good meal in New York. Some shady "family lawyers" dealt exclusively with would-be parents who were Germans. Germans had plenty of money, were nearly neurotically discreet, and readily sh.e.l.led out a couple of hundred grand to the attorney and ten grand to a couple of other shills for a few days" work. Some of it went to a couple of young people who posed as the birth parents, who were often unrelated and met each other the day before. The real woman who"d given birth got five hundred bucks and a walk back across the bridge to Mexico. The wish to have a child was so huge and overpowering that couples would look the other way in circ.u.mstances that stank like five-day-old fish. With a fake certificate from the Ninth Circuit Court, City of Los Angeles, and enough breast milk and formula to get her to Berlin or Zurich or Toronto, Stella could be on a Swissair flight by now, with flight attendants competing to cuddle her. Stella had even come with diapers. Cute, expensive dresses. Like a dolly with a trunk. Full-service deal.
Instead of saying this-he hoped devoutly Candy didn"t have the same sense-Humbly switched leads: "We don"t have any reason to like Adriana for this. She had no idea who the people were ... and Charles Ruffalo"s business interests are insignificant in this context. That guy just fell apart. n.o.body can fake that kind of grief."
"But how could she give the baby to that couple? Even if she did think they were relatives?" Candy asked.
"You said yourself you had a good gut about her," Humbly answered. "She believed it was one of the other people with you. Like your friend, Betty ..."
"Beth," Candy said. "The other grandmother. The father"s mother."
"So it"s not implausible. It"s Oscar night, worse than Halloween. Put yourself in the mind of a twenty-one-year-old whose brother was just part of the team who won an Oscar. If she believed Eliza called her for real."
So ...
Humbly snapped his fingers. "Wait! You! I just put this together and it embarra.s.ses me that it took me so long! It should have hit me when I caught the call. Ben Cappadora. The Cappadora case. You found Ben Cappadora. You"re that person. I"ve been reading about the movie the brother made. I thought I might go see it with my wife. It happened when I was a kid."
"I didn"t find him. I talked to the perp, face-to-face, like your guys out here did with the Polly Klaas case, two days after the kidnapper took Ben. It could have ended right there. Instead, it took nine years."
Jesus, thought Humbly, how does she live with that? But he said, "I remember actually your case had some bearing on my wanting to be a cop. It"s funny how all the things in your life catch up."
"Kind of," Candy said and asked, point-blank, "They"re pros who"ll sell her, right?"
"Look," Humbly said. "Look ... no."
Humbly didn"t want to have to say what he had to say. He"d sooner have given up his middle name-Francis; he didn"t like it anyway-than tell this nice lady that she needed to stop being a cop and be a grandma starting right now. With her history, it would be like telling her to hold her breath until the little kid was found.
"I intend to stay. I intend to help find her," Candy said.
"That"s the thing, though. I can"t control where you go, ma"am. But I can"t let you be part of the investigation."
"Why not? I have absolutely unique experience here," Candy pressed him. "You"ll let an FBI agent in. Some suit! You don"t know my daughter. Or Ben. My daughter and my granddaughter are all I have. Just the job. And them. So you see ..."
Humbly stared at the ceiling. He scrubbed at his face. "That"s it exactly. You"re too close in. You"re way too close in. And ma"am, you know it."
"No!"
"Yes, ma"am. Yes. You do."
Now I will have to go back there, Candy thought. I will have to walk back down the hall to the ornate bank of elevators and whoosh up to the eleventh floor and use the key to let myself into the room where they had tried to film Eliza pleading with the kidnappers to give her back her baby, but failed because, each time, Eliza got ten seconds into the prepared sentences and began to scream, I want my baby! I want to feed my baby! A nurse pract.i.tioner staying in the hotel had come to put hot compresses on Eliza"s b.r.e.a.s.t.s and wrap her in bandages, but Eliza pushed her away and insisted on expressing the milk. Don"t you think these people will find my daughter? This is America! They found my husband when he was little. Are you trying to make me act like my baby is dead? Why would you want my milk to go away?
Ben, handsome and steady and calm, did better.