No Time To Wave Goodbye Part 12

The vacant mountain acreage, higher up and deeper into the San Juan Diego range than their second home, would be donated to the Nature Conservancy. Some years earlier, Bryant had bought his brothers' share of the inherited and undeveloped land.

Bryant had forged Claire's spidery signature.

On everything.

From the second long drawer, to her left as she sat in Bryant's chair, Claire pulled out the big leather-bound checkbook. There were many checks made out to cash over the past month, in sums that Claire believed were unlike Bryant's usual prudence-$35,000, $25,000, $14,000-and the notations in the margins were "services rendered" and nothing more.

She stood to reach for a leather binder embossed with the initials JBW. In it was a single sheet of paper. It read, Jacqueline, my bird, my angel, Jacqueline, my hope, my heart, my prism, my mirror. I avenge you with my every breath.

Claire's cell phone rang and again she jumped. Suddenly, it seemed that she was part of an alien landscape, a child in a haunted house.

The ID said Rob Brent. She didn't know a Rob Brent.

Claire said, "h.e.l.lo?"

"Claire, it's Vincent."

"Vincent."

"I hoped I could talk to Bryant."

"He's ... not here, Vincent. He's at a business meeting in Los Angeles."

"Claire ..."

"I was to meet him at the airport."

"Which airport?" Vincent asked.

"LAX."

"Are you going on a trip?"

"Vincent, I a.s.sume this is about the letter to The New York Times. I'm sure that's good news. I know it is. I hope it is."

"Claire," Vincent asked gently, "where are you and Bryant going?"

"It's our twenty-fifth-anniversary trip. To Italy. We went there on our honeymoon. I'm not sure what to do now. I haven't left home." Claire's voice trembled; her stomach was now rampaging, like an empty cage with a wild bird released into it blinded-whirling and crashing against the sides. "Vincent. I've found some ... things."

"What things?"

"I don't think I should really talk about this without Bryant."

"Claire, I need to talk to you in person."

Claire said, "Yes. But Vincent, you must know, Stella is really fine. She is fine. I am sure of it."

"Did he tell you?"

"No," Claire said. "I'm afraid I can't speak anymore now, Vincent." Claire put down the phone and when it began to ring again, she turned off the ringer and absently opened her novel. The words might as well have been the katakana that Blaine studied in her j.a.panese cla.s.s. Claire's eyes blurred with tears she wiped at with the heels of her hands. My bird, my angel, my prism.... Claire phoned the car service and canceled. She turned back on the heat that she had lowered because they would be gone and wrapped herself in a thicker shawl that was tucked on her closet shelf.

She thought of the gladsome childhood she had known and how, sadly, there was no love lost between her husband and her father, who considered Bryant pretentious. Bryant no longer permitted Claire to invite the Putnams to her home. She had believed that, after Jacqueline was lost, there would be a thaw born of a family's mourning. It had not yet happened. But Claire cherished her single trip each year to Chicago. She played game after game of cutthroat bridge with her quiet brother, who taught creative writing at the University of Illinois. Each time she witnessed how erudite and jovial, active and companionable, her parents still were in their eighties, she thought of how she and Bryant might have been ... if life had taken a different turning.

Now forty-four years old, Claire had never had a major illness, not even a twinge of arthritis.

She had years of hours and days and months that would gradually accrete ... become years, and decades. What was to become of her now? She went into the kitchen and turned on the electric kettle.

Claire heard a soft knock at the door. Pa.s.sing to the front door, she glanced out the window and was not surprised to see Sarah Switch, the young woman who was the sheriff of Cisco County.

"Come in," Claire said, putting out her hand. "h.e.l.lo. I think we've met."

"Yes. At the library ball. I'm afraid I wasn't the belle of the ball, but I tried. I'll bet you know why I'm here," said Sheriff Switch.

"Yes, I do. It's about my husband and the Cappadora baby. Are you going to arrest me?"

"Of course not. Mrs. Whittier, I'm just here to wait for the others to get here so we can talk this all out. They'll be here on a flight from Los Angeles that arrives in a few hours."

"Yes, but it's important, before we do, to call Vincent Cappadora. I don't think I told him that I know where Bryant would take the baby, if he has her. And it's important that he know now."

"How do you know?"

"From things Bryant purchased. I went through our credit-card statements. He would take her to our summer house in the mountains. It's remote and sort of off the grid. Well, it's not really remote. It's just twenty miles from here. There are other people, mostly from farther away, who have homes up there. But Bryant always liked to keep the place really basic, like a cabin. A cabin with a gourmet kitchen and five bedrooms. But we have our own generator and so on if the power goes off ..."

"Why would you think he would take her there? Why not a hotel or a house with whoever helped him ... take her away?"

"I don't know for certain. It's a hunch. But I know Bryant. He's very predictable in his routines."

"Why wouldn't he just go to Mexico with her? You were going away. The baby's a dark-haired little girl who wouldn't look out of place. He has his pa.s.sport if you were going on an international trip anyhow," Sheriff Switch argued.

"No, he wouldn't do that. The letter said he was going to leave Baby Stella in a safe place. I'm sure that he was, or is, going to do that and then he'll meet me at the airport as we planned. He bought provisions ... things. For a baby. All that is on our American Express bill. He wouldn't have needed a Land Rover to drive around Los Angeles or San Francisco, and I mean a true Land Rover, not one of those street vehicles. But he used to drive up to our summer house in a big pickup truck. It was big enough for the four of us. But not for a baby and her gear. Do you see?" Claire said urgently.

"You have a point, but he could as easily go somewhere else...." Sarah Switch said.

"Bryant doesn't intend to keep Stella Cappadora! His plan would be to drop her off somewhere safe, maybe a hospital right here in San Francisco. Why would he go to another state or another country? He'd go to our summer place. It's close and it would be a place to keep her safe until he was ready to drive down to Los Angeles. Maybe he's already on the way. I'm sure he knows that the weather says that it's going to snow again up there. Tonight and at least for the next few days. Our flight to Rome isn't until late, very late tonight. Bryant is very skillful, but I'm worried he might not be able to get out if he waited. So he won't wait."

"We will call Vincent, Mrs. Whittier."

"Please call right now," Claire said. "I'm sure Stella is already at a safe place. Have you called the hospitals?"

"The state police and the volunteers are doing that now. Everyone in every church or ER or home health care agency in California, at least all the ones we can find, will be on alert and have a copy of Stella's picture within the hour," said the sheriff.

"Are you afraid of your husband?"

"No, I'm not," Claire said. "But whoever walks up to Bryant should be. Especially in our summerhouse in the mountains. He has at least three rifles. He's strong and fit and he's not ... in his right mind."

CHAPTER THIRTEEN.

They arrived in Durand, the Whittiers' tiny hometown just outside San Francisco. With relative ease, they found the Whittiers' spare but palatial stone house on Paramount Street. Vincent's gut guess, combined with Claire Whittier's account of the bizarre contents of her husband's office, had pushed all of them out of the face-off poses they'd held since the ugly scene at the hotel between Beth and Ben.

Ben still would not speak to his brother except to answer yes-or-no questions, but to Candy, who watched the two with the semidetached eye of an aunt rather than a mother, his silence seemed to savor more of shame than aggression. Ben acknowledged his parents, his eyes downcast. Eliza was eager to hug Beth and Pat at the least opportunity, as if to apologize for her husband. Kerry shuttled between her brothers like a human viaduct, trying to heal with soft words. Eliza was busy doing something that Beth remembered doing herself-trying not to know what was going on for fear she might learn something that would devastate her.

Ben and Vincent were straining at the bit, eager to try something. Anything.

But having flown north from L.A. and been rushed from San Francisco International Airport to a forest ranger's station, they were now all standing around a room the size of an apartment kitchen, listening to what Candy thought amounted to a territorial p.i.s.sing match.

"Because it would be suicide to go up into those mountains on foot in this weather," Sarah Switch told Bill Humbly and Agent Joel Berriman. The predicted snow had already begun to fall, steadily and then heavily. "There's not enough snow for a snowmobile and it's too slushy to ski. If we take a big vehicle, we might as well drive five feet and park it because it's going to go down up to the wheel wells. The snow and frozen muck are deeper up there than down here."

Berriman kept pacing back and forth between the young, stern sheriff and Humbly, announcing himself over and over as "from the Bureau"-as though the blond-haired Sarah Switch, who towered over both of them, was not only exasperated but ignorant. If Berriman said one more thing about "the Bureau," Humbly had decided, he would trip him.

"We have good reason to believe that this baby is in danger," said Bill Humbly. "This guy could be really unstable. You heard what his wife said. We don't know how taking care of a baby would fit in with his obsession. And the baby's health could be in danger ..."

"Why do you think that? He was specific about saying she was in good health," said the sheriff. The woman must be six-two easy, Humbly thought. Humbly imagined someone trying to say her name three times fast. On second thought, she was very good-looking, sort of a beach-volleyball-type lady, maybe no more than thirty-five years old, if that. Switch had driven herself up from her office in a small brick building on Center Street in Durand, a few miles outside town, to the ranger's building. She wanted the police and the Cappadora family to get a look at the country they were so eager for her rescuers, mostly volunteers, to go bounding into-and how forbidding it was in this state of weather. She wanted to tell them how merciless it could be. On a dry day in summer or fall, or even with a nice packed-down snow in winter, driving up to the Whittiers' summer home, just twenty miles north and east of Durand, would be nothing to worry about. The house, like other hunting cabins and bigger family homes, lay up a very gradual mountain road. In summer or fall, there would be others around, if anyone did get a flat tire or break an axle. But that would likely not happen. The trip would be nothing more than a b.u.mpy little ride. A good truck would ignore the rocks and the damage winter storms left. An off-road recreation vehicle would make it smooth sailing.

But early spring was tricky. The temperatures in Durand, and even farther south, in the city of San Francisco, could be deceiving. The mountain canyons were colder. They held on to the winter longer. This year, the combination of the wet snow and temperatures that let conditions alternately freeze and thaw made it treacherous. A friend of Sheriff Switch's who was as experienced a hiker as Sarah was herself had put a ski wrong in one of the lower meadows the previous week and snapped an ankle. There was that crazy, tragic case of the family with the little kids who decided to take them camping-from the very trailhead where the ranger station stood-and gone only about five miles in.

Which had been enough for a tragedy.

In her car, she'd brought Claire Whittier and her daughter, Blaine, who'd come home in the early afternoon, courtesy of a company jet volunteered by the father of one of her roomies. The Whittier women sat silent, hands clasped. On the way, Switch had spent time worrying about the officers she'd meet from Los Angeles and how they would try to boss her around, just as they were doing. But Switch knew her territory. Cisco County covered half a million acres geographically but was home to only six thousand full-time inhabitants. Despite all that country, Switch's experience with kidnapping amounted to zero. The thought that the baby might be in danger from the creepy guy who Claire Whittier had described turned her guts to water. She would later tell Bill Humbly that her experience with homicide amounted to one event-a domestic between a lovely half-Miwok woman and her Anglo husband that had been bubbling in a slow cooker for as long as anyone could remember: There was a sort of bet about who would get in the fatal blow and who would get in the way of it. It turned out to be the husband who went down, the weapon a large-sized can of tomato paste.

There had been deaths. Mountain deaths over the years. Stupid hikers and backpackers, five or six, who'd done the equivalent of going deep-sea diving alone. There were harder types who said fools like that deserved what they got.

Switch thought n.o.body deserved a slow and terrifying death.

But the people who did rescues for her were as important as the Cappadora baby. Except that she was a baby.

Humbly tried to appeal to Sarah Switch's womanly instincts.

"Here's just one example. What if there was enough formula in those bags for three or four days, no more? This is the sixth day. But more than that, he very likely has no idea how to care for a baby on his own ..." Humbly said. "And I don't think he would take the chance of having the people who took her along with him. I don't think they'd put themselves in that kind of harm's way, if they were the type who'd do this to begin with."

Berriman said, "We think that that so-called couple were either paid by Whittier or owed him something because of a defense he did, probably for someone close to them, since they're not in the system ..."

"Or if they are," Humbly put in, "it's not with current names or hair color or birthdays. You heard what we found out about the car rental. That it was under the name of a girl who was kidnapped and murdered in Beth Cappadora's neighborhood when Beth was a young girl too? That was how we knew it was someone who knew the family ... how we knew for sure, that is."

"I read the fax you sent over before you came up," said Switch. "But I don't see why Whittier would have any need to take care of the baby himself. Why wouldn't he just keep his hands off and let them take care of the baby and drop her off? If he did, they'd be the ones in trouble."

"They'd be in trouble along with him. All that stuff in his office nails him," said Berriman. "And even if it didn't, we're talking someone who's quite a few bubbles to the left of plumb, Sheriff. You saw that letter. We don't think someone with a crazy ego like that would want to, well, share the credit for this. Either he's making a point or he thought he was making a point and now he knows he isn't. Either way, it's not good for the baby."

Before Switch could speak again, Ben Cappadora stepped up and thrust his shoulder back. He said, "What is all this conferencing about? Is my daughter up there or not? Is anyone going up there for her? Is there a hunting cabin or something up there or isn't there?"

"It's a lot bigger than a hunting cabin," said Blaine Whittier, coming up behind him. "Sam, I'm trying to help, so please forgive me for saying anything. It's a big house, like, not as big as our house back there in Durand, and not on a street. But it's on a real road and it has all the comforts. If my father is there with Stella, she's safe."

"Yeah, right," said Ben. "I'm certain of it."

"I mean ... I'm sorry," Blaine said. "The house is safe."

Sheriff Switch explained to Ben how the weather complicated what might otherwise be a simple decision to have a look-see. She didn't mention that everyone's fear of what Bryant Whittier might do was a more vital consideration.

Bill Humbly took over again. "Sheriff. What we figure is that the so-called couple who took her either went back under whatever white-collar rock they crawled out from under, where they probably don't have big sungla.s.ses and blond hair, or they're speaking Spanish by now."

"Why?" the sheriff asked.

"Three people doesn't make for a secret," Detective Humbly went on. "They could start blackmailing Whittier right back if they forget they have their own skeletons in their own closets ... which means he's probably on his own by now and he might have the jits ... maybe he didn't mean for it to go this far or he didn't know what it would be like if it did."

The sheriff leaned back in what Humbly a.s.sumed must be a form of repose taught only to people who grew up in the mountainous West, her thumbs hooked in her belt.

"That makes sense," she said. "But I still don't get the fired-up need to go right now. I don't get why you presume that the person who abducted this child and who owns a virtual mansion down here in town and another one up in the San Juan Diego Mountains and has the means and know-how to get there through this much snow is too clueless to buy formula or change a diaper," she said. "If he's even up there. Or ever was."

"Sheriff, please," Humbly began. "I'm not saying for sure. There's a good chance though. What if she's crying nonstop? What if he flips out?"

Switch pursed her lips and fiddled with the end of her thick braid. Finally, she said, "Well, what we can do is a hasty search of this immediate area, see whether any vehicle has pa.s.sed through here in the past week. I can get the forest service to help, but they're shorthanded because of that case with the campers who got stranded in the snowstorm a few days ago," she began. "You read about that. And we have a group of Eagle Scouts trained in Operation Find."

Eagle Scouts, Humbly thought. Okay, this was going to be a kid movie. It needed only a Baldwin brother.

"I'm going to have to a.s.sert ..." Berriman began.

"Stop," Humbly and Switch said together.

Switch went on, "The weather is unstable, of course. And that's what worries me. Bryant Whittier has been away from home for what, nearly a week? He may have gone in with her twenty-four hours before the first snowstorm, not the one we're having now, which, by the way, isn't even a snowstorm by our standards. The campers were found two days ago. Those people who took the baby, back in Los Angeles, if they were working for Whittier, might also have brought supplies up there. They might have brought the baby up here. But since the snow, maybe they're not sufficient. He may not be able to get out, even with that big honking truck he bought." She paused to think as she leaned over the topographical maps that were laminated on the ranger's desk. "Now from what Blaine here said, presumably he has some kind of water source. It's not a little shack. There's plenty of water up there. That's really all he needs. A day isn't going to make a difference. Let the weather settle down. And no one said we wouldn't try to get someone to fly over. I'm just not sending anyone up there on a foot search. Or a snowmobile either." She turned to the FBI agent. "And sir, I am the sheriff of Cisco County. I a.s.sign the case number. I decide if and in what way a search will proceed. I decide what manner of and how much help we request from federal agencies or other jurisdictions. I welcome you here, but let's be clear on this. We have one tracker, our best pro, who we thought was going to lose two fingers from exposure because of that camping rescue ..."

"What does that have to do with us? Why didn't he wear gloves?" Humbly asked. "This is a helpless baby! If the G.o.dd.a.m.ned sheriff's deputies up here don't know how to keep warm, who does?"

The sheriff then made the threat gesture of the primal female. She shoved up her sleeves and crossed her arms. They were considerable arms, with tame, tended oval nails stained a whimsical sparkled burgundy color but muscles that Humbly was sure she could use to knock a door off a small refrigerator. She said, "It wasn't a matter of the rescue tracker wearing gloves, sir. The team took every necessary safety precaution based on known predictions. No one could have predicted the drop in temperature to ten degrees."

"I'm not insulting him," Humbly said. "I know s.h.i.t ... stuff happens."

"Her," said Switch. "Our team leader on that rescue was Lorrie Sabo. She spent a full day in the hospital. I put her on mandatory rest for a month."

"Or her! For the love of Mike. This guy Whittier is a nut! It doesn't matter what he says he is in a letter! His own wife thinks he's snapped his cap! We aren't just talking about a water shortage. Or not having diapers. If you send a helicopter up there, you might as well send a marching band. He'll hear it and he could kill the baby if he panics."

Pat held Beth against his chest as she began to sway.

Candy and Vincent gripped each other's hands-Candy grateful that Eliza, who could not stop crying, had agreed to stay back in Durand at the Lone Star Inn, where they would all sleep later.

"The intelligence we have is shaky. Mrs. Whittier is sure, but we don't really know if anybody's up at their house. You have the word of a civilian who has, well, a righteous obsession with this case that this might be a place where Bryant Whittier would go. That it's his family refuge. His guy cave."

"And now her daughter says the same thing," Detective Humbly reminded the sheriff. "Blaine Whittier is manifestly mentally robust and got a wacko call from her father earlier this week." He gestured at the crowd who stood a few paces away, inside the ranger's building-all the Cappadoras except Eliza, Candy, and George, as well as Claire and Blaine Whittier.

They all stared at the sheriff.

"You've done more with less," Berriman said. "We all have."