18

In the days when he had worked as an undercover cop it had been easy for Detective Billy Collins to pass as a down-and-out drifter. Thin to the point of boniness, with a sharp-angled face, sparse graying hair, and mournful eyes, he was easily accepted by drug dealers as a likely customer to purchase a fix.

Now that he was assigned to the Central Park Precinct, and arriving for work in a business suit, shirt, and tie, together with his mild, self-effacing manner, people tended to dismiss him on first acquaintance as an ordinary, run-of-the-mill guy, who probably wasn’t too bright.

That judgment was shared by many suspected felons who were deceived by Billy’s routine questions and seeming acceptance of their version about a criminal event. For most of them, that turned out to be a serious mistake. Billy’s forty-two-year-old steel-trap mind retained information that had seemed trivial and unimportant at the time it was given, but when circumstances changed, he could retrieve that data from his memory bank in a heartbeat.

Billy’s private life was simple. Despite his funereal appearance, he had a keen sense of humor, was a good storyteller, and was devoted to his wife, Eileen, whom he’d started dating when they were in high school. He said she was the only person alive who considered him handsome, and that was the reason he had fallen permanently in love with her. His two sons, who fortunately for them resembled their very attractive mother, were both students at Fordham University.

Billy had been the first detective to arrive on the scene when the 911 call came that a three-year-old was missing in Central Park nearly two years ago. He had rushed there with a sinking heart. For him the worst part of his job was to respond to a crime involving a dead or missing child.

That hot summer day in June it had been Tiffany Shields, the babysitter, who sobbed hysterically that she had fallen asleep next to the stroller and when she woke up Matthew was gone. While every inch of the park was being searched and nearby visitors questioned, the divorced parents had arrived separately. Ted Carpenter, the father, had been on the verge of attacking Shields, who admitted that she had fallen asleep; Zan Moreland, the mother, had been eerily calm, a reaction that Billy had attributed to shock. Even as the hours had passed without a trace of Matthew, and not one single witness who might have observed him being taken had come forward, the mother had remained impassive in demeanor.

In the nearly two years since that day, Billy Collins had kept Matthew’s file on the top of his desk. He had scrupulously followed up on both parents’ explanation of where they had been when their child disappeared, and both their statements were backed up by other witnesses. He asked them about any enemies who might have hated them enough to kidnap their child. Zan Moreland had hesitantly confided that there was one person she did consider an enemy. He was Bartley Longe, a prominent interior designer, who scoffed at the idea that in any way he would kidnap the child of a former employee.

“That statement from Zan Moreland validates everything I have ever said about her,” Longe had told Billy, his tone furious and disgusted. “First she practically accused me of causing her parents’deaths, because if they hadn’t been on their way to pick her up at the airport, her father might have had his heart attack at home and wouldn’t have been in the accident. Then she told me that it was because she was working for me that she didn’t see her parents more often. Now she’s telling you that I kidnapped her child! Detective, do yourself a favor. Don’t waste your time looking anywhere else. Whatever happened to that poor child was because his deranged mother made it happen.”

Billy Collins had listened, but then trusted his own instincts. From what he had learned, Bartley Longe’s anger at Zan Moreland was triggered by the fact that she had become his business competitor. But Billy had quickly decided that neither Longe nor Moreland had anything to do with the little boy’s disappearance. In his heart and soul he firmly believed that Zan was a victim, a deeply wounded victim who would have moved heaven and earth to get her child back.

That was why when he received a call on Tuesday evening about a breaking development in the Matthew Carpenter case, Billy had been tempted to jump in his car and drive from his home in Forest Hills, Queens, to the precinct.

His boss told him to stay put. “For all we know those photos that were sold to that gossip magazine may have been doctored. If they’re on the level, you need to have a clear mind to start reworking the case.”

On Wednesday morning, Billy woke at seven A.M. Twenty minutes later, showered, shaved, and dressed, he was on his way into the city. By the time he arrived there, the photos that were published in Tell-All Weekly and online were on his desk.

There were six in all; the original three the English tourist had taken, plus the three he had blown up for the family album. They were the ones whose background seemed to indicate that Zan More-land had kidnapped her own son.

Billy whistled softly, his only physical response to the fact that he was both shocked and chagrined. I really did believe that sob-sister, he thought, as he studied the three photos that showed Zan bending over the stroller, then picking up the sleeping child, and finally walking down the path away from the camera. There’s no mistake, Billy thought as he went from one photo to the next. The long, straight auburn hair, the slender frame, the fashionable sunglasses …

He opened the file that was always on the corner of his desk. From it he extracted pictures that had been quietly taken of Zan by the police photographer when she rushed to the crime scene. The short flowered dress and the high-heeled sandals she was wearing when she arrived in the park that day were identical to the clothing worn by the kidnapper.

Billy normally patted himself on the back that he was an excellent judge of human nature. His sharp sense of disappointment in his own bad judgment was immediately vanquished by his overriding concern about what Zan Moreland might have done with her own son.

Zan’s alibi about her whereabouts that day had seemed straightforward. Clearly he had missed something. I’m starting with the babysitter, Billy thought grimly. I’ll pick apart Zan Moreland’s account of every minute of that day and find out how she’s gotten away with lying. Then by God, I’m going to make her tell me what she did with that little kid.