MARY CLARK - Piece of My Heart

As Leo kept Summer at rapt attention, Laurie snuck a peek at the screen of her phone. A new message from Langland: That’s it! We got our warrant. We’re going in NOW. Also got a warrant for Summer’s arrest. Backup coming your way.

Less than a minute later, two uniformed officers from the NYPD entered the coffee shop. Laurie knew their names were Carrie Brennan and Stan Wojcik and that they’d been waiting in the florist delivery van for further instructions from Detective Langland.

“You want to do the honors, Dad?” Leo was still an active member of the department since he’d joined the antiterrorism task force.

“Summer Carver, you’re under arrest for the kidnapping of Jonathan Alexander Buckley.”

Chapter 46

Chief Dawson flashed a thumbs-up to Detective Langland, signaling for her to take the lead. Once Summer Carver had said the magic words that she would free Johnny in exchange for Leo’s supposed confession, Judge Marshall had found probable cause to issue the search warrant they’d been waiting for.

Langland rushed toward Toby Carver’s porch, followed by Chief Dawson and a flank of five other uniformed officers. A second team approached the house from the rear.

Boom boom boom! Langland pounded her fist against the front door. “Police! We have a warrant! Open up!”

No response, as expected.

She stepped out of the way and held up her fingers. One… two…

In time with her count, Dawson and one of his sergeants swayed with a battering ram.

Three!

The wooden door broke away from its frame from the weight of their force.

Twelve law enforcement officers swept through the house, weapons drawn, wearing bulletproof vests. A sweep is more science than art, a systematic search to make certain that no one catches the police off guard. Inspect all corners. Cover every blind spot and move on.

“Clear!” Langland yelled as she swept through the kitchen.

“Clear!” a man’s voice echoed from the den.

She heard the sounds of kicked doors and footsteps stomping through the house.

Finally, she reached the far end of what appeared to be the master bedroom on the second floor. A set of mirrored sliding glass doors was cracked open by three inches on one side. She approached the closet slowly, keeping her back against the bedroom wall to limit her exposure to a gunshot.

Chief Dawson appeared at the threshold of the bedroom. Catching his eye, she pointed to the closet doors. He extended his weapon, ready to cover her if she drew fire. When she reached the closet, she used her left foot to roll one door to the side and then quickly shifted her body backward to distance herself from whoever might be hiding inside.

But once the door was open, she saw nothing but hanging clothes and an overflowing laundry basket. She moved to the other side of the closet and pushed open the doors in the opposite direction.

“Clear!” she yelled, hearing the distress in her own voice.

She worked her way back to the front door, registering the deflated expressions on the faces of her fellow law enforcement officers.

To be absolutely certain, she walked the property again, inside and out. She inspected every square foot of the four-acre lot, and then walked through each room of Toby Carver’s bungalow once more, opening each and every drawer for any clue that a child had been in the house.

Chief Dawson was waiting for her on the front porch, hands on his hips as he watched three departing patrol cars leave a trail of dust on the dirt road to the house.

“I sent the rest of my guys home,” he explained. Dawson was probably in his mid-sixties. He had a kind and gentle face.

“Thank you again for everything. I really thought we were going to save Johnny today.”

“I only worked one child abduction case in my career, back when I was still NYPD, but I know what you’re going through. You wanted to make a different kind of phone call right now.”

Once Langland was alone in her car, she fought back tears as she pulled out her cell phone. She pictured Marcy and Andrew Buckley, glued to the phone, waiting for an update. They’d recognize her number on the caller ID. They’d picture their son being rescued, carried to a waiting car where he’d be consoled and comforted.

And then Langland would have to break their hearts all over again: if Johnny Buckley had been in this house in the last week, he wasn’t here now.

Chapter 47

Even before Leo Farley had taken his retirement, he was focused more on running the administrative parts of the NYPD than on individual criminal cases. It had been more than a decade since he had personally cuffed a suspect. His interrogation skills were similarly unused. But once he was “in the box,” as they said, with Summer Carver, he felt those old muscles fall right into place. Maybe police work was like riding a bicycle.

Because Summer was so clearly obsessed with Darren Gunther, it had been decided that Leo would be the one to handle her interrogation, at least initially. She was more likely to make a misstep in the same room with the man she believed had framed her beloved.

To Leo’s surprise, Summer immediately waived her right to a lawyer after receiving Miranda warnings at the coffee shop. Just as quickly, she insisted that she had not kidnapped Johnny. “I only said that to get you to admit what you did to Darren!”

Leo pushed back. “That doesn’t make any sense, Summer. What kind of strategy is it to implicate yourself in a serious felony, just to help your boyfriend?”

“Check my phone. I recorded our entire conversation. So it worked, didn’t it?”

“Of course it didn’t work , Summer. You thought you were tricking me with a cell phone recording? We had a judge monitoring that entire conversation. We were the ones playing you, and we did it for a reason. You’re the one who kept saying that Johnny was missing because of my bad karma. That justice would balance the scales. Why would you suggest such a thing if you don’t actually have possession of this innocent boy?”

“I only pretended to have him. Toby came up with the idea after I talked to Laurie last night. She’s the one who compared Darren being locked up with Johnny being kidnapped. I told Toby what she said, and I guess it planted the seed.”

“So the two of you decided to interfere in the investigation of a missing child? To waste a full day when police could have been trying to find him?”

“It wasn’t even one day,” Summer protested. “We set up the meeting last night. I was going to post your confession on the internet as soon as I left that stupid coffee shop, and then tell you I had nothing to do with that boy’s disappearance!”

If Summer was telling the truth, she and her brother had highjacked a kidnapping investigation to gain a momentary advantage in their bid to get Darren Gunther out of prison. The more logical explanation was that she was lying. Leo was about to press her again for more details about the abduction when his cell phone buzzed against the table.

It was from Detective Langland.

He left Summer alone in the locked interrogation room to answer the call. This is it , he thought. She’s going to tell me they found Johnny. Please.

Instead, he heard the disappointment in her voice immediately. “The brother’s house was a bust, Leo. We didn’t find him.”

His shoulders heaved forward as if he’d been punched in the stomach. “Were we too late? Did they move him?”

“I don’t know. We searched every inch of the property. There’s no sign of Johnny anywhere. No indication that he was ever here, in fact.”

Despite his follow-up questions, there was nothing more to learn. When he hung up the phone, he forced himself to take five deep breaths. He had been so certain. This was supposed to be the day they brought Johnny home. Had it all been a waste of time?