A Plea for Help

Steve watched Sierra-Lynn stagger from the interrogation room after three hours. His instinctive pity and concern pushed him to want to help her, but she was not the woman he remembered. She had trouble putting one foot in front of the other, and despite himself, he dispatched an officer to drive her home.

She looked worse than she did earlier, and he would not be the man he was if he lacked concern for her welfare. He struggled to wrap his head around the thought that Sierra-Lynn Mills Parker, the girl he had known since they were children, believed herself psychic. It did not rhyme with the mental image he had of her—the brilliant ADA groomed by Mark Waller, her former boss, to take his place from the moment she walked into his office.

He saw officer Sera Reed unobtrusively take Lynn’s arm to lead her down the slippery steps and struggled to equate the force of nature, ADA Parker—the woman who fearlessly orchestrated the eradication of the Brown Cartel—with this broken-winged swallow.

This Lynn Mills was not the same person who helped him catch and convict the serial killer Adam Lind when four other ADAs failed to even get an indictment against the billionaire playboy. If Tommy could see her, he would not recognize the woman he adored in this poorly groomed, shoddily dressed vagrant with the sloppy bun.

No makeup lent color to her pale face. She had cut her unmanicured nails to the quick, and Steve would wager his salary she had not shaved her legs in weeks. Judging from the baggy fit of her clothes, she had recently lost an unhealthy amount of weight.

Sierra-Lynn gave up on herself, stopped caring, and even living. Her behavior displayed all the classic signs of mental illness, but he could not stop following the interview on his laptop earlier.

Minute traces of ADA Parker remained in her manner as she relayed her story. She somehow had details they did not release to the press, but he would never accept her “seeing” them in a damned “vision.”

She claimed the intruder gained access to the boy’s room through a glass door on the second story. Yet the mother insisted that she locked the door before putting the boy to bed. Lynn said the door was unlocked, and it often happened—a direct and unverified contradiction to the mother’s story. He could not tell if Lynn lied or played a part. She was not the open book she was when they were younger.

Steve had interviewed the mother himself, and his “bullshit detector” gave him no sense that she lied about this, but then again, the door showed no signs of tampering. Someone either let the intruder inside or forgot it open. The latter seemed more likely than the former. Steve had texted Roberts, directing him to ask Lynn if the mother had left the door unlocked.

Lynn glanced at Eric, frowning as he read Steve’s text, and then seemed to look right through the camera at Steve. It unsettled him.

“No, Officer Roberts, the mother did not leave the door unlocked, nor was it the father. I would guess the nanny, a grandparent, or the cleaner. It is the only room with an outside door not directly facing a neighbor. I would reason it offered some privacy to someone who wanted to take a smoke break,” Lynn answered before Roberts asked.

Her performance almost impressed Steve until he remembered Roberts wore glasses when he read or wrote, and he never dreamed Lynn would stoop to such cheap tricks. The fury of his disappointment drove him to reach out to turn off the monitor... but then he noticed Robert’s glasses lying on the table.

Eric had a habit of not wearing them around beautiful women, and even in her current state, Lynn had not lost her looks. Were the glasses on the table the entire time? He hesitated before leaning back to watch the rest of the interview, but made a mental note to check his theory.

“The door wasn’t directly across from the bed. The wind stirred the striped blue and white curtains, and I did not see the intruder’s face in the dark. He was tall and hesitated in the doorway while taking stock of his surroundings in a... practiced manner,” Lynn continued, seemingly lost in thought.

Steve shook his head, scoffing at the fact that she “conveniently” did not see the man’s face. Those curtains would be visible in some of the press photos, and tall had no meaning.

“How tall?” Roberts asked, squinting at his phone.

“Please put on your glasses, Officer Roberts. I don’t mind,” Lynn suggested with something of her old charm. It stabbed through Steve to hear her sound so much like the Sierra-Lynn he remembered, but she was not the same woman.

Steve chuckled as the tall, dark blond man with his denim eyes blushed while putting on his glasses with noticeable relief.

“They suit you,” Lynn remarked, and Roberts cocked his head at her, obviously trying to decide if she was distracting him by buttering him up or if she might be sincere. Steve scoffed again.

“He was six foot two, lean, wearing dark pants of an expensive make. His knitted navy sweater did not fit with his pants or his Italian leather loafers. Something covered his head... a stocking, and he reached for the door with his left hand,” Lynn clarified, wincing with the distinct discomfort of a headache, and Steve pushed aside his instinctive concern.

She often had headaches in her younger days, and Steve recognized the signs. Were those headaches responsible for her delusions?

Six-two was a generic height, and the dark clothes were a given. The pants and loafers were an odd detail, but the sweater seemed bizarre. Her idea that the intruder was left-handed might have been interesting... if it was not as unproven as the rest of her theories.

“The pattern on the boy’s duvet was of red-and-brown airplanes in a cloud-covered blue sky. The intruder touched it with reverence before using a syringe to inject the boy with something in the same instant that he put his hand over Nathan’s mouth. He wore expensive black leather driving gloves, and the gold watch on his arm was valuable—a Cartier perpetual motion type of antique design. The watch has sentimental value to him, and he wears it even though it no longer works,” she continued with an odd intensity.

This whole thing sounded more and more like crap to Steve... except that her description of the pants jarred something in his mind. Steve scrolled down the evidence log. Forensics found a piece of black, custom-made fabric created by a factory in Germany that specializes in gentleman’s clothing for the wealthy.

They had disregarded this evidence since the Brunswicks hosted a dinner party for their affluent friends earlier in the month, but who climbs a trellis in thousand-dollar pants? Someone who kidnaps a boy wearing a gold Cartier watch, the little voice in his head nagged.Why did he even entertain the notion? He wondered with disgust before texting Roberts.

“You said the intruder had a practiced manner. Did you mean he entered the room on other occasions, or did you mean practiced at kidnapping?” Roberts asked on cue.

Lynn glanced at the camera again before focusing on Roberts. She sure had the hang of this game; Steve’s quiet anger stewed.

“At kidnapping,” Lynn answered without hesitation.

Did she presume to resurrect her career by turning this into a serial case? Her glance wandered from Roberts to the camera with a frown, and he almost wondered if she somehow heard his thought.

Bullshit.~

She turned back to Roberts, pointedly ignoring the camera, and Steve almost laughed when he realized he felt slighted.

“He took the boy with such gentle care, but in his head, he already planned what would happen next. He got some lady to phone in a ransom demand, knowing the parents would pay. It kept you busy while he did what he wanted to do,” she hesitated, taking a deep breath. “He planned everything around the fact that when you figured out the ransom was bogus—and with you having no way of determining that he taped Nathan crying for his Mommy almost twelve hours earlier—it would be too late,” she leaned forward, looking Roberts in the eye.

“You keep telling the media you’re searching for the boy, but you are searching for a body. More than twenty-four hours have passed, the odds of Nathan being alive are low to none by your own measure,” her statement made Steve scowl.

They never released information about the fake ransom, the tape, or the duvet to the public. How did she learn this?

“The mother said Nathan wore red Spiderman PJs to bed, but it wasn’t true. He wore blue flannel PJs because he spilled orange juice on himself. Someone helped him dress and hid the sticky clothes in the laundry room. Nathan wasn’t supposed to drink juice in bed,” this revelation made Steve pay attention.

“The mother insists there were no visitors,” Roberts countered without looking at his notes. The young officer was close to being a detective, and Steve liked his style.

“How could she tell? She was up in her study all evening. Her husband had to take care of Nathan, but he watched football in the entertainment room after putting his son to bed. Whoever changed his clothes also changed his sheets. The parents keep the laundry room locked. That means this person had keys to both the laundry room and the house, which would suggest a family member,” she didn’t even waver in either her facts or assumptions.

“Do you suggest Nathan died shortly after being abducted?” Roberts asked, changing the subject, and she scowled at him.

“Yes, Nathan Brunswick died the night of his abduction,” her words gave Steve an odd chill.“His killer drove out of the city, up a mountain path to an abandoned house where he promised Nathan everything would be fine.” She hesitated, closing her eyes as if she wanted to stop the images crowding her head.“He tricked Nathan into thinking his mommy was on the phone and recorded his voice. Then he took him outside... where the hole in the ground lay waiting.” A slight shudder spiked through her body, and she wrapped her arms around herself as if she were cold.“He swathed Nathan in cling wrap from his feet to his head, dropped him in the hole as he suffocated, and buried him,” she could barely speak the words, and they shocked Steve, despite his disbelief.

“Do you expect us to tell this to his parents? This load of speculation?” Roberts almost lost his cool, and Steve had a feeling he stopped just short of saying bullshit.

Lynn looked him in the eye with a steely gaze that cowed bigger men than him, and Roberts did not flinch, impressing Steve.

“They took the highway north on the N18 and entered the national park at marker 17 before driving for another two hours. And no. I expect you first to find the body, and then you can tell the parents whatever the hell you want,” her eyes blazed with conviction, and Steve didn’t know what to think. This was all so elaborate, but most delusions were.

She shivered with cold, and Steve’s frown turned to a scowl. Roberts had already taken off his jacket, blazer, and tie while she seemed to freeze with her coat on.

Roberts asked his questions from every angle, but her answers never varied or changed. Sometimes she would grow still, and an additional detail would emerge as if she plucked it from the ether, convincing neither man. Despite knowing they did not believe her, she kept going, and this unsettled Steve. What was her purpose? Delusion? Something else?

He almost wanted to admit that her consistency indicated something other than delusion. Despite being pressured by Roberts, she did not spiral out of control, as most unstable people did when their beliefs were questioned.

When Roberts realized she could not continue, he ended the interview.

Lynn seemed to have researched the Brunswick’s, but she had said things she had no way of finding out. She would be Steve’s number one suspect if he did not know her so well, and she had an alibi. She spent that night in jail for public intoxication, which turned out to be low blood sugar.

His thoughts returned to the present as he leaned forward and opened the interview log again. He did not press play; he simply stared at her face for the longest time–his fingers tapping against his desk.