Chapter 14 - THE PERSON AT THE WINDOW
Officers came within minutes. They searched the yard and neighboring street. Lewis inspected both photographs while Rachel took the children to the back bedroom.
“Ben is in custody,” I said. “Paul is, too. Who took that?”
“We’re checking the nearby cameras.”
The first photograph bothered Lewis. Noah’s seventh birthday had been more than two years earlier. Ben had kept photographs of him, but this one wasn’t from the blue house. A woman’s hand appeared at the edge of the image, setting down the cake.
Noah saw it before I could put it away.
“That’s Mrs. Bell,” he said. “She brought food sometimes.”
“Did she live with Ben?”
“No. She lived next door. She told me she had a grandson my age.”
Lewis found the woman within the hour. Mrs. Bell had moved away from the blue house the previous spring. When officers reached her, she admitted taking the birthday photograph. She said Ben had told her Noah’s mother had abandoned him.
“Why send it now?” I asked.
“She says she didn’t.”
A neighbor’s security camera showed who had left the envelope: a young man in a delivery vest. Officers found him at the shop where he worked. He said a woman had paid him to bring it. She’d handed him the envelope in a parking lot and driven away.
Mrs. Bell denied hiring him. Lewis compared the vehicle description with traffic cameras.
Rachel and I spent the evening with the children while officers worked outside. We ate pizza on the living room floor. Noah insisted on showing Lily how to make a paper plane that could loop back toward its thrower.
Lewis called after dark.
“We identified the car,” she said. “It belongs to Paul Granger’s wife, Elise.”
I remembered meeting Elise once at a holiday fundraiser. She had asked about Noah. I had assumed Paul had told her about my case because he cared.
“She says she sent the old photograph,” Lewis continued. “She wanted you to know Ben had let other people see Noah. She claims she took the new one to prove she knew where you lived.”
“That’s supposed to help?”
“No. We’re bringing her in.”
“Did she know about Paul?”
“We’re finding out.”
From the living room, Noah called, “Mom, watch this!”
His plane flew across the room, circled the lamp, and landed near my feet. I picked it up.
Lewis spoke again, quieter this time.
“Elise says she tried to contact you before. She says Paul intercepted her letters.”
“Can she prove it?”
“She saved copies. And Claire—one of the letters is dated four years ago.”
May you like
Four years. Noah had been missing for only a year when she wrote it.
I looked at the paper plane in my hand and wondered what it had cost her to wait.
