A few minutes later, I realized I was lost inside the school. I turned back toward the guidance office, but couldn’t find it again.
Three boys were sitting in a row outside a closed door. They had the same limp hair in their eyes, the same skinny legs. As I hurried past, one whistled. They laughed, and one of them, grown bold, called after me in a sultry voice, “Hey, baby.”
They were Joshua’s age. Over my shoulder, I gave the boys what I hoped was a warning glare. But then I thumped into something, hard, and started to fall. I felt arms trying to catch me and grabbed at them. “Whoa, now,” a man said.
I looked up. Bo Ransey held me in his arms. “Sorry,” I whispered, pulling out of his reach.
“No problem, my fault.” He released me without a glance. “Steve-O,” he yelled down the hall. “What the hell am I getting called in for now? Get your stuff and get out to the truck.”
One of the boys separated from the others, high-tops dragging.
“Is that your son?” I asked. “I mean—your other son?”
Bo turned back to me. He was gray around the eyes. “Oh,” he said. “No, this here is my sister’s kid.” The boy stood at our elbows, his eyes on the floor. Down the hall, the other two were having fits on his behalf. “Good as mine, though, right, Steve-O?”
The kid’s eyes darted between us. “Yeah,” he said. I recognized the little creep’s voice. Hey, baby.
Ransey knocked his nephew on the shoulder. “Go on. Be there in a second.”
The boy seized his opportunity as Ransey turned to me. “Look, really,” he said, his voice going soft. “Do you know anything? Are they not telling me something?”
“About Aidan?”
“Yeah, Aidan. What else could I—?” He looked tired. “Do you know where she took him?”
“I don’t—I don’t know anything,” I said, which was the truth. Nothing was certain except that a baby was missing and a woman was dead. Nothing. For all I knew, this man in front of me had killed his family, that nanny. And he was tainting my process, big-time. “It’s better that you talk to the sheriff. All I was doing there was—”
“The note, right?” He shook his head. “I heard about what you do. I don’t believe in that crap, I can tell you that.” He drew his palm over his face. “I don’t believe in it at all, but if it helps find my boy and gets him back OK, I’ll believe Santa Claus is married to the damn Easter Bunny, all right?”
His voice rang down the hall. The boys had gone still.
Finally Ransey folded his arms and took a step back from me. “Look,” he said, gentle again. “Who knows what you see when you look at me—I’m not perfect. But I just want my kid back. She had no reason to take him. No reason to take him away from me.”
I stood under his pleading eyes, believing him. But then I’d often taken things at face value. People were liars. In the end, and maybe after a long time, they would show you who they really were, how far they would go.
I only trusted what was written down. I might also give some credence to things I’d witnessed myself. What I’d seen was that love was no guarantee, that you could grieve the damage you’d done yourself, that being sorry wouldn’t keep you from doing it again. The same hand that could caress you could swing at you with velocity. The same hand.
I nodded to Bo Ransey and let myself pass him, ready if he reached out to stop me. I followed the path the nephew had taken, anxious to be away from this place. Outside, I took a deep breath, skirted the Ransey truck with the boy inside the cab, and kept going. If Aidan’s mother had taken him away, there was a reason. If I couldn’t believe that, I couldn’t begin to sleep at night.
Chapter Six
On the way home from the school I stopped at the café on the square for a copy of the Spectator. As I dropped the change into the man’s hand, I noticed a few checks taped to the back counter, almost out of sight. The account numbers were marked out, and the narrow man’s narrow hand had scrawled DO NOT ACCEPT across each one. I recognized the snakes-coiled twirls in Ransey in the signature line of one of them.
“On second thought,” I said, “I’ll take a hot tea, too.” While the man turned to make my drink, I dug out more cash and leaned low over the counter to get a better look. The second check was also a Ransey, I thought, maybe even the hand of Aidan’s mother. But the writing was so small I couldn’t quite read the name. The third check taped to the wall was older and curled in on itself. As I squinted at it, the proprietor placed the steaming cup under my chin and narrowed his eyes at me.
Outside, I cast the hot water into the trash without even adding the teabag and sat at one of the sidewalk tables with my paper. A beautiful young woman smiled out from the front page, a small child in her arms. I checked the caption. The nanny, Charity Jordan, with an infant Aidan.
I skimmed the article. She was twenty-four. The child of Mr. and Mrs. So-and-So Jordan. Unmarried. She had cared for Aidan Ransey since he was six months old, living in most days but retaining residence at her parents’ house. Sheriff Keller had given a similar recitation of the facts the morning I’d met him. His delivery had seemed coldhearted, considering the subject. But now I recognized his approach. Bullet-pointed thoughts were how I dealt with important details, too. The higher the stakes, the more important it was to be clear, concise, free of sentimentality.
Though it seemed a little sentimentality might be spared. Only twenty-four, still living with Mom and Dad, and found on the floor of a public toilet with her head bashed in.
Lower on the same page, another photo. This one was full color, too, but it didn’t need to be. The woman in it was thin, small, stark against a white wall. Shifty. How could a single photo convey so little confidence in a human being? It had the feel of a mugshot. Wasn’t this woman, Aidan’s mother presumably, also technically missing? The caption gave her name as Leila (Coyle) Ransey.
I paused over the name, the first I’d seen it. The mother. His mom. She had been called many things in my presence but not her own name.
I looked between the two images for a long moment, bothered, but by what?
Deeper in the story, a “source” was claiming that a note left behind at the Ransey household was the work of Mrs. Leila Ransey. A handwriting expert had been called in.
I swallowed hard. Well, at least they hadn’t mentioned my name or my FBI connection. That was the sort of statement that packed our suitcases.