In Oakland he bought an old Honda, paid cash for it, and an hour after his call to Phillip Addison, he was on the road to Tahoe. It seemed a lot safer to use a different car than he'd been using while following her for the past month, in case someone in the neighborhood had seen him. Now that Waters and the others had murdered four cops, the risk was greater for all of them, and for Peter, going to Tahoe increased the risks further. But he knew he had no choice in the matter. Addison was right. Peter didn't trust them with Sam, and he didn't want anything worse to happen than already had.

Long before he reached Vallejo, photographs of Peter and Carlton Waters had been circulated all over the state on police computers. Peter's now-abandoned license plates and the description of his previous car were circulated with them, along with extreme confidential warnings not to publish any information, as there was a kidnap in progress. Peter didn't stop along the way, and drove within the speed limit, to avoid incident. And by then, Addison was already under surveillance by the FBI in France. And all Fernanda needed now was a phone call from the kidnappers, so the police and FBI could find Sam.





Chapter 15


All the police photographs they needed had been taken by that night. The men's families had been notified, the bodies were at funeral parlors, what was left of them. The wives and families had been told the circumstances, that a child's life was hanging in the balance, and no one could talk, or tell the truth until the boy had been released by his captors. They understood, and all had agreed. They were good people, and as cops' and agents' wives, they knew the difficulties of the situation. They were dealing with their own and their families' grief, with the help of trained psychologists in both departments.

By then profiling experts were at work on Peter Morgan and Carl Waters. Their respective rooms had been searched extensively, friends interviewed, and the manager of the Modesto halfway house had supplied the information that Malcolm Stark and Jim Free, both parolees, had left with Waters, which spawned fresh investigations, and the dispersal of more mug shots, profiles, and APBs over the Internet to law enforcement agencies around the state. The FBI profilers in Quantico were adding their expertise to that of the SFPD. They had spoken to Waters's, Stark's, and Free's parole agents and employers, Peter's parole agent, who said he scarcely knew him, and a man who claimed to be Peter's employer but appeared not to know him at all. Three hours later, the FBI profilers had ferreted out the fact that the company that alleged to employ Peter was actually an indirect subsidiary of a company Phillip Addison owned. Rick Holmquist correctly suspected that Peter's job was a front, which made sense to Ted as well.

Ted had also called the industrial cleaning service they used at homicide scenes, or the one they recommended. They were tearing Fernanda's kitchen apart that night. They even had to pull out the granite and strip the room, thanks to the weapons that had been used and the devastating physical damage they had caused. Ted knew that by morning, the place would be stripped and no longer elegant, but it would be clean, and there would be no visible evidence, in terms of bloodstains at least, of the grim carnage that had taken place there when the officers were killed and the kidnappers got Sam.

Four more officers had been assigned to her, all cops this time. Fernanda was upstairs lying on her bed. Ted had been there all day and evening. He never left. He made whatever calls he had to make from his cell phone, while camping out in her living room. And there was a trained negotiator standing by, waiting for the kidnappers' call. There was no question in anyone's mind that it would come. The only question was when.

It was nearly nine o'clock at night when she came downstairs, looking gray. She hadn't eaten or had anything to drink all day. Ted had asked her a few times, and then finally he had left her alone. She needed some time to herself. He was there for her, if she wanted him. He didn't want to intrude on her. He had called Shirley a few minutes before, and told her what had happened, and that he was going to spend the night with his men. He wanted to keep an eye on things. She said she understood. In the old days, when he was on a stakeout, or working undercover in his youth, sometimes he'd been gone for weeks. She was used to it. Their crazy lives and schedules had essentially kept them apart for years, and it showed. Sometimes she felt she hadn't been married to him in years, not since the kids were small, or even before that. She did what she wanted, had her own friends, her own life. And so did he. It happened a lot to cops and their wives. Sooner or later, the job did them in. They were luckier than most. At least they were still married. A lot of their old friends weren't. Like Rick.

Fernanda wandered into the living room like a ghost. She stood and looked at him for a minute, and then sat down.

“Have they called?” Ted shook his head. He would have told her if they had. She knew that, but had to ask. It was all she could think of now and had all day.

“It's too soon. They want to give you time to think about it and panic.” The negotiator had told her that too. He was upstairs, waiting in Ashley's room, with a special phone plugged into their main line.

“What are they doing in the kitchen?” she asked with no real interest. She never wanted to see the room again, and knew she'd never forget what she'd seen there. Ted knew it too. He was relieved to know she was selling the house. After this, they needed to get out.

“Cleaning it up.” She could hear a machine pulling out the granite. It sounded like they were knocking the building down, and she wished they would. “The buyers may want to put in a kitchen,” he said, trying to distract her, and she smiled in spite of herself.

“They put him in a bag,” she said, staring at Ted. The scene kept running through her mind over and over, even more than the one in the kitchen, which had been unforgettable too. “With tape over his mouth.”

“I know. He'll be okay,” Ted said again, praying it was true. “We should hear from them in a couple of days. They may let you talk to him when they call.” The negotiator had already told her to ask for that when they did, to prove that he was alive. There was no point paying ransom for a dead kid. Ted did not say that to her. He just sat there, looking at her, as she stared at him. She felt dead inside. And looked it outwardly. Her face was somewhere between gray and green, and she looked sick. Several neighbors had asked what had happened earlier. And someone said they'd heard her scream. But when the police canvased the neighborhood, no one had seen anything. The police had given out no details.

“Those poor men's families. This must be so awful for them. They must hate me.” She looked at Ted searchingly, feeling guilty. They had been there to protect her and her kids. Indirectly, it felt like her fault, as much as the kidnappers'.

“This is what we do. Things happen. We take the risk. Most of the time, things turn out okay. And when they don't, we all know that's what we signed on for, and so do our families.”

“How do they live with it?”

“They just do. A lot of marriages don't survive.” She nodded. Hers hadn't either, in a way. Allan had chosen to bail out rather than face his responsibilities, and left her with a mess, rather than trying to clean it up himself. Instead, he had left her to do it. That had been occurring to her more and more recently. It had occurred to Ted too. And now she had to face this. He felt sorry for her. All he could do to help her was do everything he could to get back her son. And he intended to. The captain had agreed to let him stay at the house for the duration. It was going to start getting dicey once they called.

“What am I going to do when they ask me for money?” She'd been thinking about it all day. She had none to give them, and wondered if Jack could drum some up. It was going to take a miracle, she knew, depending on how much they wanted. Probably a lot.

“With any luck at all, we'll be able to trace the call, and move in on them pretty quick.” If they were lucky. If. Ted knew they had to find them fast, and free the boy.

“What if we can't trace their call?” she said almost in a whisper.

“We will.” He sounded sure, to reassure her. But he knew it wasn't going to be as easy as he wanted to make it sound. They just had to wait and see what happened when they got the call. The negotiators were standing by.

She hadn't combed her hair all day, but looked pretty anyway. She always did to him.

“If I get you something to eat, will you try to eat it? You're going to need to keep your strength up, for when they call.” But he knew it was too soon. She was still in shock from everything that she'd seen and survived that day. She just shook her head.

“I'm not hungry.” She knew she couldn't eat. All she could think of was Sam. Where was he? What had they done to him? Was he hurt? Dead? Terrified? A thousand terrors were racing through her head.

Half an hour later, Ted brought her a cup of tea, and she sipped it, sitting on the floor in the living room, hugging her knees. He knew she wouldn't sleep either. It was going to be an interminable wait for her. For all of them. But hardest for her. And she hadn't told the other kids. The police had agreed that she should wait until she heard something. There was no point panicking them, and it would. The local police at both locations had been notified, and they were on standby for both Ashley and Will. But now that they had Sam, Ted felt the other two were safe, and his superiors agreed. They weren't going to try to grab the other two. They had all they needed now with Sam.