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Stanford said, “Everyone, this is Bill Whitten.”
Bill Whitten said hello, and Tracchio introduced himself and the rest of us in a general way. Whitten’s fear and anger had tightened his throat so that his voice was a strangled croak.
“You have to understand what you’re doing to us,” he said. “They said if we called the police, they’d kill our little girl. Our house could be bugged! They could be watching us now. Do you understand?”
The fax machine behind Tracchio’s desk burped, and a sheet of paper clattered into the tray.
“Hang on a second,” Tracchio said, lifting the fax out of the machine. He put the paper on his desk for us to read.
WE HAVE ERICA. CALL LAW ENFORCEMENT, AND SHE DIES.
IF WE FEEL ANY HEAT, SHE DIES.
AND THEN WE’LL TAKE RYAN.
OR KAYLA. OR PATTY.
KEEP QUIET, AND ERICA WILL STAY HEALTHY. YOU WILL RECEIVE A NEW PICTURE OF HER EVERY YEAR. YOU MAY EVEN GET A PHONE CALL. SHE MAY EVEN COME HOME.
BE SMART. BE QUIET.
ALL YOUR CHILDREN WILL LIVE TO THANK YOU.
The note was eight months old, but the cruel language made the horror jump off the page. It felt as fresh as if the crime had just happened.
All the faces around the desk registered shock, but it was Macklin who grabbed the paper, gripping it as if he could wring the kidnapper’s throat by proxy.
Tracchio retrieved a second page from the fax machine.
“I can’t make out the pictures,” Tracchio said to Stanford.
“Erica was photographed against a blank white background in the clothes she was wearing when she was taken. The other photos are snapshots of the Whittens’ older kids at school. And there’s one of Kayla shot through her bedroom window. We’ll have the whole package analyzed.”
I was thinking, Sure, they’ll try to collect prints and traces from the envelope and its contents, but what Stanford isn’t saying in front of the Whittens is that every dead Jane Doe in the country will be compared to the stats and DNA of both Helga Schmidt and Erica Whitten.
There was no doubt in my mind that the letter and the photos were a ruse to buy time.
Erica Whitten and Helga Schmidt were both dead.
But what had the kidnappers gained?
What did they want?
I was reeling with violent images featuring small girls and their equally helpless nannies when my cell phone rang. It was Inspector Paul Chi saying, “An emergency call just came in to the squad, Lindsay. Someone was attacked at the Blakely Arms.”
Chapter 89
CONKLIN AND I STEPPED OUT of the Blakely Arms elevator onto a carpeted hallway on the sixth floor and saw two cops halfway down the hall outside the door to apartment 6G. I recognized Officer Patrick Noonan, who was bucking to move into homicide.
“What happened here, Noonan?”
“A bloody mess, that’s what, Sergeant. The victim’s name is Ben Wyatt. He’s been living in the building for about a year.”
Conklin held up the police tape and I ducked under it, Noonan still talking. “The assailant came through the door,” Noonan told me. “Either the door was open, the vic let him in, or the perp had a key.”
“Who called it in?”
“Woman next door. 6F. Virginia Howsam. H-o-w-s-a-m.”
