“I just went to the drugstore,” Maggie said.
“Drugstore?” Did his words not register with her? The drugstore?
“I asked Brianna to come over and babysit at Callaberry Street, only for that one hour. No one really lives there, you know. Like, over there.”
She pointed toward the other side of the Edgeworth duplex. Then put her hand back on the baby’s flannel, twisting her fingers into the fabric.
Jake took out his cell. Here we go. “I’m recording this, okay, Maggie?” Risky to interrupt. But if she agreed, it could be kickass evidence.
Maggie nodded.
“Okay?” Jake had to get her to say it out loud, so it was on the recording. In Massachusetts, the law prohibited secretly recording audio, even by cops. Jake couldn’t risk losing this potential evidence.
“Okay, you can record,” Maggie said.
“So you were saying about no one living there. In Brianna’s apartment.”
“It wasn’t Brianna’s. Len just uses his vacant apartments as, I don’t know, way stations. Anyway, Len wasn’t supposed to come to pick up baby Diane until later that evening. Brianna didn’t know, of course. She was a registered foster mother, so she sometimes filled in as a babysitter if we needed help. She was good with kids. I was supposed to be there, watching the kids until Len came, but I had to get my stuff for Anguilla. You know? I couldn’t take them with me.”
She stopped, then started again. “I was only gone for an hour. An hour.”
Jake thought back, thought of the fragrance in the kitchen. He’d thought it was cleaning solution. But it was really-“Sunscreen,” he said. “You went to get sunscreen.”
“Yeah. But the bottle cracked open when I threw the drugstore bag. After I saw what Len had done. It was horrible. So horrible.”
Jake watched her face as she remembered. Decided to let her fill the silence. Let her explain what this was all about. Once they started, the ones who felt guilty always kept talking. They’d held it in for so long, sometimes getting to tell was their only solace.
Maggie took a deep breath, her arms tightening around the baby. “Len told me Brianna had tried to keep Diane from him. Said she didn’t believe it was… arranged, and she thought he was trying to steal the baby. Hurt her. A four-month-old baby! She threatened to call the cops. She died, protecting Diane.”
Jake stared at her, imagining the scene. Brianna, somehow in the wrong place at the wrong time. About the rest, he still had no idea. But he’d act as if he did. “So Brianna didn’t know about your plan.” Whatever it was.
“No. Of course not. I tried to see if she was still alive, you know? But it was… too late. And Len was bleeding, too. Phillip and Phoebe, they were asleep, with their teddies, in the other room. They were all set with their new family, and I was going to stay over with them, drop them off the next morning on my way to the airport. But Len had arranged for Diane’s potential new parents to meet her that afternoon. At the lawyer’s. He had come to get her. But he was early. And-”
“Diane’s new foster family, you mean?”
“Oh, no. No. Not foster family.”
Her expression said-don’t you get it? And no, he didn’t. “Then-?”
“Adoption. Private adoption,” Maggie said. “I mean, it all takes so long. The red tape is horrendous for foster care, and adoption is even worse, and there are so many foster kids, and so many files, no one can possibly keep track of them all. No one’s counting. No one but me. All I had to do was find kids with no relatives, fix the paperwork, and poof. One at a time, I saved them. One at a time, they disappeared from the nightmare. And they lived happily ever after. As they should.”
“So you were taking kids out of the foster system and-”
“For their own good! Len arranged it all. And it worked perfectly, every time. Until Brianna. He said she was freaking out, that she grabbed a pan from the stove to keep him away from Diane. Keep him from taking her. There was nothing he could do, Len said. He had to grab the other pan. And…” Her voice trailed off.
“Leonard Perl,” Jake said. The landlord. The landlord here, and on Callaberry Street. No wonder he hadn’t answered their phone calls to Florida. He’d been right here in Boston. “Leonard Perl. Correct?”
“Yes,” Maggie whispered. “Finn’s uncle. Well, foster uncle. So then we-”
“Called nine-one-one,” Jake said. Finn? Who was that?
Maggie nodded. “Yes. We had to get out, of course. But we knew police would come, and they’d make sure Phillip and Phoebe were taken care of. Len’s lawyer told their new parents some story, the kids’ birth mother reneged, claimed parental rights or something. It happens. We knew they’d be returned to the system, poor things. All I had to do was quickly restore their records, you know? Those were the files I gave you. But at least we saved the baby. I gave up my vacation to stay with her. Her adoption arrangement is almost final.”
“Brianna’s purse.” Jake understood now. Why there’d been no stuff. Brianna Tillson didn’t live there. Neither did Maggie. “You took that, too.”
Maggie nodded.
“Yes?” Jake remembered the recording. “I need you to say it.”
“The purse. Yes.” A tear trickled down Maggie’s face. She made no gesture to wipe it away, and it landed on the baby’s fuzzy blanket. “She lived alone. Wasn’t fostering a child. There was no one to miss her.”
Jake paused, watching this poor misguided woman. Seeing how she cradled that little girl. The baby she had stolen from the system-and how many others?-convinced she was doing a good deed. Convinced she was saving lives.
Not what the law would call it. The law would call it falsifying official records and abducting children from the legal protection of state custody.
“Margaret Gunnison, it is now seven thirty-two P.M. on Wednesday. You’re under arrest for the kidnapping of Diane Marie Weaver, for the attempted kidnapping of Phillip and Phoebe Lussier, and for being accessory to the murder of Brianna Tillson. You have the right to remain-”
“Will you take care of Diane?” Maggie said. She stood, touching the baby’s wisp of colorless hair with a finger, then leaned down and kissed Diane on the forehead. She handed Jake the pink bundle, not trying to hide the quiet tears now coursing down her cheeks. “Will you? Nothing that’s happened is her fault. There’s a loving family still waiting for her. You can’t keep her from that. You can’t.”
63
Ella clicked off her phone, regretting, instantly, her promise to Jane Ryland. She felt the muscles in her back go stiff, the ones in her neck, too. Her car was impossible. With the heat on it was too hot. With the heat off it was too cold. She’d finally decided to take steps. Important steps, on her own, but then she’d blown it by calling Jane.
She banged her hands against the steering wheel. The horn gave a little beep. She jumped, stomach clenching, and waited in the heart-pounding silence to see if any lights went on in the homes nearby.
Nothing.
Snowflakes sparkled through the streetlights, blowing almost sideways at times, hypnotic and relentless. The weather was about to get hideous, dark and hideous, but maybe that would make her plan easier. Because she was going in.
She was.
She felt the hard edges of Lillian’s keys in her hand. If she didn’t do this now, she’d lose her nerve. She’d get in, look quickly, get out. How would she know where to look? Lillian’s office, certainly. She’d been there before. Not like she was invading anyone’s privacy. Not like Lillian was going to catch her. She laughed out loud, then clapped a hand over her mouth.