Completely paralyzed in shock.
Chapter 15
“Where was Peter? You said he wasn’t there. What was he doing?” I asked.
Mary’s gaze was back, and she looked at me.
“Oh, he had gone into the shop to buy new shorts. In the lobby.”
I looked up at Brad, who stood next to my chair. “Any surveillance cameras catch this?” I looked at Peter, sitting on the couch with his wife. “Just to rule you out as a suspect.”
Brad shook his head. “I’m afraid not. The resort only has surveillance cameras in the lobby. Not by the pool or anywhere else.”
I figured as much. Otherwise, they’d probably have a pretty good shot of the kidnapper by now.
“Did you buy anything?” I asked. “Anything that will show up on a credit card statement and show the time?”
“I bought sunglasses, yes, but I paid cash,” Peter said. “They didn’t have any shorts that I liked.”
“But, the woman behind the counter can vouch for that?” I said.
Peter shrugged. “I guess so.”
I noted it on my notepad for later. This would provide Peter with an alibi, and that might come in handy later. Especially in the eyes of the media, who would throw themselves at the parents.
“All right, then back to the pool area. You had the search party out. Did anyone say they saw anything?” I asked.
“A woman saw a man carrying a child,” Brad said. “In his arms like the child was sleeping. But she couldn’t say if it was Cole.”
I nodded. “That could be something.”
“But Cole wouldn’t let someone carry him,” Mary said, concerned. “Not if he didn’t know him.”
I nodded. “It’s not unlikely that it is someone you know. In most cases, it is someone close to the family.”
It was such a cliché and sounded even worse as it left my lips. Still, it was the truth, and we had to look at this possibility first.
Mary scoffed. “That’s what you said last time too. But Odell wasn’t close to the family. We didn’t even know him.”
I swallowed, then exhaled. That was another thing that I hadn’t liked about our case against him. But Odell was formerly convicted of having molested children. He was staying at the hotel at the time of their disappearance, and we did find Maggie’s swimsuit in his room. He argued that he had stolen it from her mother’s bag to have a memory of her, but the prosecutor and the jury never bought that. Neither did I. On top of it all, Odell had been seen near Blue Hole Lake in Key West, where the body of Blake washed up a few days after they disappeared. His truck was parked by the lake, and he was fishing there. Other fishermen testified to having seen him there regularly. In court, he had laughed at this and asked if it was illegal to fish now because he didn’t get the memo. Odell had been mocking them all through the trial like it meant nothing to him, and I had been convinced that meant he was guilty.
Had I just been fooling myself?
Doubt had started to nag in the pit of my stomach, and it wasn’t a pleasant feeling. It was painful for me to open this can of worms. If Odell wasn’t our guy from back then, then who was? And had he been roaming out there for the past ten years, pleased with himself for having gotten away with double murder?
Yes, doubt had found its way inside my mind, but I couldn’t let Mary and Peter see that. So far, there was nothing in this guy’s methods that told me it was the same—except the fact that he had chosen the same family.
“There’s something else,” Peter said suddenly, sounding like a light gasp was caught in his throat. “Something I just remembered.”
I looked at him, narrowing my eyes. “And that is?”
“Cole mentioned having met a secret spy last night before I tucked him in. He said he had met a real secret spy by the pool.”
My eyes grew wide, and my pulse quickened. Mary breathed raggedly. She could barely look at her husband.
“Why? Why didn’t you tell me this, Peter?”
He threw out both his arms. “I don’t know. I guess I didn’t think much of it. Kids say a lot of stuff. Cole talks constantly; I don’t know what he says half the time. I can’t treat everything like something bad is about to happen.”
It was obvious that Mary was fighting her increasing rage. She pulled away from him on the couch and dug a wedge between them.
“You didn’t think much of it? How could you not think much of it when Maggie said the exact same thing on the day she disappeared? How can you be so…so…?”
She stopped herself. I had known and seen the Marshalls through what I believed to be the toughest time in their life, and I had not known them to ever point fingers at one another. They had stood together through it all the first time, but now, I saw something in Mary’s eyes that I hadn’t before.
I saw a hint of blame.
“To be completely honest, I thought he was just making it up,” Peter said. “I kept thinking that it was strange, but also that this sort of thing couldn’t possibly happen twice. Besides, the guy was in prison about to be executed; it couldn’t be the same guy who had murdered Blake and Maggie. That was impossible, so it had to be a coincidence, right?”
He rose to his feet with a deep sigh, then walked to the window, rubbing his forehead. I got up too to grab a cup of coffee from the cart that the hotel personnel had rolled inside the room. Brad pulled me aside.
“What are they talking about? This is news to me.”
“One of the twins, the girl, Maggie, told her parents she had met a secret spy by the pool. It was one of the things that was never told to the public.”
Brad looked down at me, his eyes growing wide.
“Does that mean…?”
“That we caught the wrong guy?” I asked, trembling slightly at the very thought. I had been so sure back then. “It’s definitely a possibility. Or it could mean that this guy has profound knowledge of our investigation back then. Either way, it doesn’t look good if you ask me.”
Chapter 16
THEN:
The woman at the restaurant was called Pamela. Pamela worked with Roy’s dad, and they had known each other for years, Roy quickly learned. Just as he also quickly learned that she wasn’t going to go away anytime soon. After that dinner at the restaurant, she seemed to show up in all kinds of places, like when Roy’s dad asked if he wanted to go to the zoo with him, she was suddenly there…what a coincidence. And now she had brought her two-year-old daughter along with her.
“How fun that we should meet like this,” Pamela said with a light shrug as she narrowed her eyes in a smile.
Roy wasn’t amused. Especially not by the small child who kept running around, giggling goofily, and grabbing his legs when they were eating lunch outside at the little grill in the middle of the zoo.
“Aw, she likes you already, Roy,” Pamela said.
“Well, she is such an easy child,” his dad said and leaned close to Pamela’s face. The way he smiled when looking at her made Roy’s stomach turn to knots. “Always happy, isn’t that right, Roy? She’s just such a thrill to be with.”