Silent Night

  She felt Michael fishing in her shoulder bag. He pulled out the cellular phone. “I’ll dial Gran,” he told her.

  9

  In her apartment on Eighty-seventh Street, Barbara Cavanaugh clutched the phone, not wanting to believe what her daughter was telling her. But there was no disputing the dreadful news that Catherine’s quiet, almost emotionless voice had conveyed. Brian was missing, and had been missing for over two hours now.

  Barbara managed to keep her voice calm. “Where are you, dear?”

  “Michael and I are in a police car at Forty-ninth and Fifth. That’s where we were standing when Brian . . . just suddenly wasn’t next to me.”

  “I’ll be right there.”

  “Mom, be sure to bring the most recent pictures you have of Brian. The police want to give them out to all the news media. And the news radio station is going to have me on in a few minutes to make an appeal. And Mom, call the nurses’ station on the fifth floor of the hospital. Tell them to make absolutely sure that Tom isn’t allowed to turn on the TV in his room. He doesn’t have a radio. If he ever found out that Brian was missing . . .” Her voice trailed off.

  “I’ll call right away but, Catherine, I don’t have any recent pictures here,” Barbara cried. “All the ones we took last summer are in the Nantucket house.” Then she wanted to bite her lip. She’d been asking for new pictures of the boys and hadn’t received any. Only yesterday Catherine had told her that her Christmas present, framed portraits of them, had been forgotten in the rush to get Tom to New York for the operation.

  “I’ll bring what I can find,” she said hurriedly. “I’m on my way.”

  For an instant after she finished delivering the message to the hospital, Barbara Cavanaugh sank into a chair and rested her forehead in her palm. Too much, she thought, too much.

  Had there always been a feeling haunting her that everything was too good to be true? Catherine’s father had died when she was ten, and there had always been a lingering touch of sadness in her eyes, until at twenty-two she met Tom. They were so happy together, so perfect together. The way Gene and I were from day one, Barbara thought.

  For an instant her mind rushed back to that moment in 1943, when at age nineteen and a sophomore in college, she’d been introduced to a handsome young Army officer, Lieutenant Eugene Cavanaugh. In that first moment they’d both known that they were perfect for each other. They were married two months later, but it was eighteen years before their only child was born.

  With Tom, my daughter has found the same kind of relationship with which I was blessed, Barbara thought, but now . . . She jumped up. She had to get to Catherine. Brian must have just wandered away. They just got separated, she told herself. Catherine was strong, but she must be close to the breaking point by now. Oh, dear God, let someone find him, she prayed.

  She rushed through the apartment, yanking framed photographs from mantels and tabletops. She’d moved here from Beekman Place ten years ago. It was still more space than she needed, with a formal dining room, library, and guest suite. But now it meant that when Tom and Catherine and the boys came to visit from their home in Omaha, there was plenty of room for them.

  Barbara tossed the pictures into the handsome leather carryall Tom and Catherine had given her for her birthday, grabbed a coat from the foyer closet, and, without bothering to double lock the door, rushed outside in time to press the button for the elevator as it began to descend from the penthouse.

  Sam, the elevator operator, was a longtime employee. When he opened the door for her, his smile was replaced by a look of concern. “Good evening, Mrs. Cavanaugh. Merry Christmas. Any further word on Dr. Dornan?”

  Afraid to speak, Barbara shook her head.

  “Those grandkids of yours are real cute. The little one, Brian, told me you gave his mom something that would make his dad get well. I sure hope that’s true.”

  Barbara tried to say, “So do I,” but found that her lips could not form the words.

  * * *

  “Mommy, why are you sad?” Gigi asked as she settled onto Cally’s lap.

  “I’m not sad, Gigi,” Cally said. “I’m always happy when I’m with you.”

  Gigi shook her head. She was wearing a red-and-white Christmas nightgown with figures of angels carrying candles. Her wide brown eyes and wavy golden-brown hair were legacies from Frank. The older she gets, the more she looks like him, Cally thought, instinctively holding the child tighter.

  They were curled up together on the couch across from the Christmas tree. “I’m glad you’re home with me, Mommy,” Gigi said, and her voice became fearful. “You won’t leave me again, will you?”

  “No. I didn’t want to leave you last time, sweetheart.”

  “I didn’t like visiting you at that place.”

  That place. The Bedford correctional facility for women.

  “I didn’t like being there.” Cally tried to sound matter-of-fact.

  “Kids should stay with their mothers.”

  “Yes. I think so too.”

  “Mommy, is that big present for me?” Gigi pointed to the box that held the uniform and coat Jimmy had discarded.

  Cally’s lips went dry. “No, sweetheart, that’s a present for Santa Claus. He likes to get something for Christmas, too. Now come on, it’s past your bedtime.”

  Gigi automatically began to say, “I don’t want to . . . ,” then she stopped. “Will Christmas come faster if I go to bed now?”

  “Uh-huh. Come on, I’ll carry you in.”

  When she had tucked the blankets around Gigi and given her her “bee,” the tattered blanket that was her daughter’s indispensable sleeping companion, Cally went back to the living room and once again sank down onto the couch.

  Kids should stay with their mothers . . . Gigi’s words haunted her. Dear God, where had Jimmy taken that little boy? What would he do to him? What should she do?

  Cally stared at the box with the candy-cane paper. That’s for Santa Claus. A vivid memory of its contents flashed through her mind. The uniform of the guard Jimmy had shot, the side and sleeve still sticky with blood. The filthy overcoat—God knew where he’d found or stolen that.

  Jimmy was evil. He had no conscience, no pity. Face it, Cally told herself fiercely—he won’t hesitate to kill that little boy if it helps his chances to escape.

  She turned on the radio to the local news. It was seven-thirty. The breaking news was that the condition of the prison guard who had been shot at Riker’s Island was still critical, but was now stable. The doctors were cautiously optimistic that he would live.

  If he lives, Jimmy isn’t facing the death penalty. Cally told herself. They can’t execute him now for the cop’s death three years ago. He’s smart. He won’t take a chance on murdering the little boy once he knows that the guard isn’t going to die. He’ll let him go.

  The announcer was saying, “In other news, early this evening, seven-year-old Brian Dornan became separated from his mother on Fifth Avenue. The family is in New York because Brian’s father . . .”

  Frozen in front of the radio, Cally listened as the announcer gave a description of the boy, then said, “Here is a plea from his mother, asking for your help.”

  As Cally listened to the low, urgent voice of Brian’s mother, she visualized the young woman who had dropped the wallet. Early thirties at the most. Shiny, dark hair that just reached the collar of her coat. She’d only caught a glimpse of her face, but Cally was sure that she was very pretty. Pretty and well dressed and secure.

  Now, listening to her begging for help, Cally put her hands over her ears, then ran to the radio and snapped it off. She tiptoed into the bedroom. Gigi was already asleep, her breathing soft and even, her cheek pillowed in her hand, the other hand holding the ragged baby blanket up to her face.

  Cally knelt beside her. I can reach out and touch her, she thought. That woman can’t reach out to her child. What should I do? But if I call the police and Jimmy does harm that little boy, they’ll say it??
?s my fault, just the way they said that the cop’s death was my fault.

  Maybe Jimmy will just leave him somewhere. He promised he would . . . Even Jimmy wouldn’t hurt a little boy, surely? I’ll just wait and pray, she told herself.

  But the prayer she tried to whisper—“Please God, keep little Brian safe”—sounded like a mockery and she did not complete it.

  * * *

  Jimmy had decided that his best bet was to go over the George Washington Bridge to Route 4, then take Route 17 to the New York Thruway. It might be a little farther that way than going up through the Bronx to the Tappan Zee, but every instinct warned him to get out of New York City fast. It was good that the GW had no toll gate at the outgoing side where they might stop him.

  Brian looked out the window as they crossed the bridge. He knew they were going over the Hudson River. His mother had cousins who lived in New Jersey, near the bridge. Last summer, when he and Michael spent an extra week with Gran after they came back from Nantucket, they had visited them there.

  They were nice. They had kids just about his age, too. Just thinking about them made Brian want to cry. He wished he could open the window and shout, “I’m here. Come get me, please!”

  He was so hungry, and he really had to go to the bathroom. He looked up timidly. “I . . . could I please . . . I mean, I have to go to the bathroom.” Now that he’d said it, he was so afraid the man would refuse that his lip began to quiver. Quickly he bit down on it. He could just hear Michael calling him a crybaby. But even that thought made him feel sad. He wouldn’t even mind seeing Michael right now.

  “You gotta pee?”

  The man didn’t seem too mad at him. Maybe he wouldn’t hurt him after all. “Uh-huh.”

  “Okay. You hungry?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Jimmy was starting to feel somewhat secure. They were on Route 4. The traffic was heavy but moving. Nobody was looking for this car. By now, the guy who parked it was probably in his pj’s watching It’s a Wonderful Life for the fortieth time. By tomorrow morning, when he and his wife started to holler about their stolen Toyota, Jimmy would be in Canada with Paige. God he was crazy about her. In his life, she was the closest he had ever come to a sure thing.

  Jimmy didn’t want to stop to eat yet. On the other hand, to be on the safe side, he probably should fill up the tank now. There was no telling what hours places would keep on Christmas Eve.

  “All right,” he said, “in a couple minutes we’ll get some gas, go to the john, and I’ll buy sodas and potato chips. Later on, we’ll stop at a McDonald’s and get a hamburger. But just remember when we stop for gas, you try to attract attention and . . .” He pulled the pistol from his jacket, pointed it at Brian, and made a clicking noise. “Bang,” he said.

  Brian looked away. They were in the middle lane of the three-lane highway. A sign pointed to the exit marked Forest Avenue. A police car pulled abreast of them, then turned off into the parking lot of a diner. “I won’t talk to anyone. I promise,” he managed to say.

  “I promise, Daddy,” Jimmy snapped.

  Daddy. Involuntarily, Brian’s hand curled around the St. Christopher medal. He was going to bring this medal to Daddy and then Daddy was going to get better. Then his dad would find this guy, Jimmy, and beat him up for being so mean to his kid. Brian was sure of it. As his fingers traced the raised image of the towering figure carrying the Christ child, he said in a clear voice, “I promise, Daddy.”

  10

  At lower Manhattan’s One Police Plaza, the command post for the Jimmy Siddons manhunt, the escalating tension was visibly evident. Everyone was keenly aware that to make good his escape, Siddons would not hesitate to kill again. They also knew he had the weapon smuggled in to him.

  “Armed and Dangerous” was the caption under his picture on the flyers that were being distributed all over the city.

  “Last time, we got two thousand useless tips, followed up every useless one of them, and the only reason we ever got him behind bars last summer was because he was dumb enough to hold up a gas station in Michigan while a cop was on the premises,” Jack Shore growled to Mort Levy, as in disgust he watched a team of officers answer the flood of calls on the hot line.

  Levy nodded absently. “Anything more about Siddons’s girlfriend?” he asked Shore.

  An hour ago one of the prisoners in Siddons’s cellblock had told a guard that last month Siddons had bragged about a girlfriend named Paige, who he said was a world-class stripper.

  They were trying to trace her in New York, but on the hunch that she might have been involved with Siddons in Michigan, Shore had contacted the authorities there.

  “No, nothing so far. Probably another dead end.”

  “Call for you from Detroit, Jack,” a voice bellowed above the din in the room. Both men turned quickly. In two strides Shore was at his desk and had grabbed the phone.

  His caller did not waste time. “Stan Logan, Jack. We met when you came out to pick up Siddons last year. I may have something interesting for you.”

  “Let’s have it.”

  “We never could find out where Siddons was hiding before he tried to pull the holdup here. The tip about Paige may be the answer. We’ve got a rap sheet on a Paige Laronde who calls herself an exotic dancer. She left town two days ago. Told a friend she didn’t know if she’d be back, that she expected to join her boyfriend.”

  “Did she say where she was going?” Shore snapped.

  “She said California, then Mexico.”

  “California and Mexico! Hell, if he makes it to Mexico we may never find him.”

  “Our guys are checking the train and bus stations as well as the airports, to see if we can pick up her trail. We’ll keep you posted,” Logan promised, then added, “We’re about to fax her rap sheet and publicity pictures. Don’t show them to your kids.”

  Shore slammed down the phone. “If Siddons managed to get out of New York this morning, he could be in California right now, maybe even Mexico.”

  “It would be pretty tough to get a plane reservation at the last minute on Christmas Eve,” Levy reminded him cautiously.

  “Listen, somebody got a gun in to him. That same somebody may have had clothes and cash and an airline ticket waiting for him. Probably managed to get him to an airport in Philadelphia or Boston, where no one’s looking for him. My guess is that he’s met up with his girlfriend by now and the two of them are heading south of the border, if they’re not already eating enchiladas. And I still say one way or the other the go-between had to be Siddons’s sister.”

  Frowning, Mort Levy watched Jack Shore go to the communications room to await the faxes from Detroit. The next step would be to forward pictures of both Siddons and his girlfriend to the border patrol in Tijuana, with the warning to be on the lookout for them.

  But we still have to cover the cathedral tonight on the one-in-a-million chance that Jimmy’s offer to surrender was on the level, Mort thought. Somehow neither possibility rang true to him—not Mexico, not the surrender. Would this Paige be smart enough to lie to her friend on the chance that the cops might come looking for her?

  The coffee and sandwiches they had ordered were just being delivered. Mort went over to get his ham on rye. Two of the women officers were talking together.

  He heard one of them, Lori Martini, say, “Still no sign of that missing kid. For sure some nut must have picked him up.”

  “What missing kid?” Levy asked.

  Soberly he listened to the details. It was the one kind of case no one in the department could work on without becoming emotionally involved. Mort had a seven-year-old son. He knew what must be going through that mother’s mind. And the father so sick he hadn’t even been told his son was missing. And all this at Christmastime. God, some people really get it in spades, he thought.

  “Call for you, Mort,” a voice shouted from across the room.

  Carrying the coffee and sandwich, Mort returned to his desk. “Who is it?” he asked as he took the re
ceiver.

  “A woman. She didn’t give her name.”

  As Mort pressed the phone to his ear, he said, “Detective Levy.”

  He heard the sound of frightened breathing. And then a faint click as the line went dead.

  * * *

  WCBS reporter Alan Graham approached the squad car where he’d interviewed Catherine Dornan an hour earlier when he had done an update on the story.

  It was eight-thirty, and the intermittent gusts of snow had become a steady flow of large white flakes again.

  Through his earphone, Graham heard the anchorman give the latest information about the escaped prisoner. “The condition of Mario Bonardi, the injured prison guard, is still extremely critical. Mayor Giuliani and Police Commissioner Bratton have paid a second visit to the hospital where he is in intensive care after delicate surgery. According to the latest report, the police are following up on a tip that his assailant, alleged murderer Jimmy Siddons, may be meeting a girlfriend in California with the final destination, Mexico. The border patrol at Tijuana has been alerted.”

  One of the newsmen had been tipped off that Jimmy’s lawyer claimed Siddons was turning himself in after midnight Mass at St. Patrick’s. Alan Graham was glad that the decision had been made not to air that story. None of the police brass really believed it, and they didn’t want the worshipers distracted by the rumor.

  There were few pedestrians now on Fifth Avenue. It occurred to Graham that there was something almost obscene about the breaking stories they were covering this Christmas Eve: an escaped cop killer; a prison guard clinging to life; a seven-year-old missing boy, who was now the suspected victim of foul play.

  He tapped on the window of the squad car. Catherine glanced up, then opened it halfway. Looking at her, he wondered how long she would be able to maintain her remarkable composure. She was sitting in the passenger seat of the car next to Officer Ortiz. Her son Michael was in the back with a handsome older woman whose arm was around him.