James Patterson - Kill Alex Cross

One thing I kept coming back to over and over on this case was how personal the kidnapping felt. There had been no indication that Ethan and Zoe might be returned to their parents under any circumstances. Just like Rodney Glass had lost his own child forever? There wasn’t anything more personal than that, was there?

I also thought about the last time we’d spoken. “Ethan’s my little lunch buddy,” he’d told me. There would have been plenty of opportunities to gain Ethan’s confidence. Maybe enough to have learned about Zoe’s secret cell phone while he was at it.

Not to mention that someone had gotten Ray Pinkney high as a kite on the morning of the kidnapping. And someone had also very likely drugged Ethan and Zoe into unconsciousness before pulling them off campus. The fastest way to do that is by injection. Not that you have to be a nurse to know how, but it doesn’t hurt.

By the time I’d run through it all in my mind, I was ready to move on this, pronto.

Molly Johnson was the closest thing to immediate family I could find for Rodney Glass. She’d never taken his name when they were married, and the two had been divorced for over four years now — since about six months after the death of their son. She agreed to meet me at the end of her lunch shift, hostessing at the Fire House Restaurant in Harrisburg. I left DC right away and was waiting for her in the parking lot by the time she came out. We spoke right there in my car.

“I don’t know how much help I can be,” she said. “I didn’t even know Rod was back in the States. A friend told me he’d gone into the Peace Corps.”

“He’s been living in Washington for three years now,” I told her.

“Gosh, really? Time flies.”

She stared out the window and absently fingered the gold crucifix around her neck. I could tell she was nervous. All she knew so far was that I wanted to ask about her ex-husband. So why was she so jittery?

“So I’m guessing you two didn’t part on very good terms,” I said.

“No. After our son died — Zachary — it got... pretty bad between us.”

“Can I ask how he died?” I said.

She smiled, the way people do when they’re trying not to cry. “The actual cause of death was severe malnutrition,” she said. “But in terms of why his organs started shutting down, we never did get an answer. They just kept passing us from specialist to specialist.”

“That must have been a nightmare for you, for both of you. I’m sorry,” I said.

Without any prompting, she took a red leather wallet out of her purse and opened it to show me a school picture of a very cute little boy. He had Rodney Glass’s same dark hair and pale blue eyes. I felt a pang of hurt for the parents.

“He wanted to be a doctor, like his dad,” she said. “Or at least, like his dad was going to be. Rod was in med school when Zach got sick. The nursing thing was supposed to be temporary. Funny how life turns out.”

“And you said things were difficult between you afterward?” I asked.

She nodded as she put away the picture. “Rod changed. I mean — to be fair, we both changed. But he just got so... paranoid. And so angry, angry, angry. I think on some level, he blamed himself. Like he never got to be the doctor who could save his own son, you know? But on the outside, he blamed everyone else.”

“And when you say everyone—”

“I mean everyone ,” she answered. “The doctors, the hospital, the whole messed-up healthcare system. We didn’t have any insurance at the time, so you can imagine. If you’d asked him then, he probably would have said it was the system’s fault that Zach got sick in the first place.”

Molly stopped suddenly and turned to me, as if something had just occurred to her. “What’s he done, anyway? Is Rod in some kind of trouble?” she asked.

I’d been gauging her carefully the whole time, trying to figure out how much was too much to say here. I didn’t want to leave without getting everything I could, so I went ahead and took a calculated risk.

“Molly, I told you before that Rodney’s been in Washington for the last three years. But what I didn’t say was that he’s been working at the Branaff School for most of that time.”

She looked at me blankly. Apparently, the name didn’t mean anything to her.

“It’s where Zoe and Ethan Coyle are enrolled. It’s where the kidnapping occurred.”

“Wait,” she said. “Are you saying Rod’s a suspect in that kidnapping?”

“Technically, anyone who works at the school is on our list,” I said. It was the kind of answer I had to give, but she understood perfectly.

Now her whole demeanor changed. Suddenly she seemed twice as shaky and nervous as before. Her hand treaded back up to the crucifix and her eyebrows knitted together.

“I just can’t believe that. No. I mean... he couldn’t possibly... could he?”

“I don’t know, Molly,” I said quietly. “Could he?”

It took her a long time to answer. She bowed her head and closed her eyes for several seconds. Her fingers were all over the cross and I wondered if she was saying a prayer. And also if she was involved herself.

When she looked up again, she was trembling all over.

“There’s something I have to tell you,” she said. “Maybe something important.”

“It was a few months after Zachary died,” Molly Johnson started in. “Things had gotten pretty awful between me and Rod. But then one night, out of the blue, he came home and said he wanted us to go for a drive.”

She was still staring off into the distance, not really focusing on anything — except maybe the memory of that night. We’d obviously opened some kind of Pandora’s box. I kept my mouth shut for the time being and just listened to her.

“Honestly, Detective, the last thing I wanted at that point was to go anywhere with him, but we’d been fighting so much, it just seemed easier to say yes. So I got in the car and he started driving.

“After a while, Rod took out this thermos he used for work. He told me he’d filled it on the way home, at this place where I always liked the hot chocolate. It seemed like he was trying really hard to be nice, so I went ahead and drank some. I didn’t even think about it until later, but he never had any of the cocoa. Just me.”

It seemed pretty clear where this was headed now. I could feel the dread climbing up my neck, thinking about Molly, but also about Ethan and Zoe.

“Pretty soon, I started feeling sleepy,” she went on. “Like weirdly sleepy. It came on so fast, I didn’t even get to wonder what was happening.

“The next thing I knew, I was waking up in this... place. Like a basement, or a cellar. I don’t even know what it was. I remember it smelled like dirt, if that makes any sense.”

“Molly, do you have any idea where this was?” I asked. I couldn’t hold back my questions anymore. “Do you remember where he took you? Anything about the ride there?”

She shook her head. “Believe me, I’ve wondered, but that whole time is just a foggy dream in my mind. He left a cooler with sandwiches, and some water, and I’m sure the food and water had more of whatever was in that hot chocolate. But it was like I didn’t even care. I barely remember any of it. Sometimes I even wonder if it happened at all.”

“I think it did, Molly. Please go on. How long were you there?” I asked.

“Three days. I was in and out the whole time. Then, at some point, I woke up again and I was just... back home. In my bed. There was a note from Rod, trying to apologize, and all of his things were gone.”

She took a long, deep breath and looked over at me for the first time since she’d started her story. She was still shaking, but not as much as before.