Page 57 of Protecting Silver
“What the hell?” the siblings all asked as one.
Chapter 27
“It’s all my fault,”Beatrice said, and the elder adults in the room all looked at her and admonished her.
“It is not!” Then, Dan grabbed her hand and held it tight. He looked around the table and nodded once. “Okay, I think some family history is needed here. Your grandmother and I had three children. Jack was our oldest, then there was Douglas, and a few years younger than him was our daughter, Sally. Jack was killed while serving his country. There was nothing we could do about that. Sally was still in high school, and your parents had just started dating.”
“We had been going out for at least eight months by the time of Jack’s death,” Anna said quietly.
“Oh, anyway, they continued to date, then got married. Shortly after they married, Sally graduated from high school and went to college down in Cheyenne in the fall. A little over a year later, Anna gave birth to Mikey. Sally was in her second year of college, and she came home to surprise us, and to meet her nephew when he was what?” Dan frowned and looked at his daughter-in-law for answers. “Two, three months old?”
Anna shook her head. “No, Mikey was three weeks old when she came home. It was like you, Daniel, just popped in for a few days. She arrived around chore time on Friday night, and left after Sunday dinner. She wanted to be back to her dorm for the night, because she had an early morning class on Monday.”
“When she left here,” Dan picked up the story again, but this time he wrapped his arm around his wife’s shoulders. “The weather was fine, and it’s only a three-hour drive back to the campus. She pulled out of here around one that afternoon, giving herself plenty of time to get back to her dorm, and settled in for the night. The closer she got to her destination, the colder it got. We believe the temperature dropped almost thirty-five degrees in less than an hour. It didn’t snow, but the bridges started icing up. Oh, and if I forgot to mention this, I’m sorry, but it was raining the entire way back to college.”
“Shit,” Daniel said, and shook his head. “Let me guess, the bridges froze.”
“Yes, however, we were told that Sally was following a safe distance behind a tractor trailer, and it jackknifed on the bridge, she had nowhere to go, and there was a snow plow sanding the roads behind her. They too had no place to go. By the time they were able to get the larger vehicles pulled away from Sally’s car, it was too late. The ME said that she probably died on impact.”
Anna took up the story then. “Well, Sally’s death devastated us all, but we got on with our lives. When Mikey was thirteen months old, I became pregnant with Bruce. I had no problems with either Mikey’s nor Bruce’s birth. Around the time Bruce turned three months old, Mom started getting sick.”
“It was my lungs,” Beatrice said. “It took some convincing, but after talking to the doctors, and specialists, it was decided that I should spend the winters in warmer weather. By the time your grandfather and I made the decision to go to Florida for the winter, Anna was pregnant again, with Daniel.
“While we were in Florida, it took me only a week to realize that I couldn’t survive there. The humidity was worse on my lungs than the cold winters here in Wyoming. So, your grandfather booked us a six-week cruise, and we spent the worst of the winter touring the Bahamas, the Virgin Islands, and the Caribbean. While on that cruise, we met and became friends with another couple. One thing led to another, and we began discussing our medical issues. This couple was from Vermont, and they too needed the warmer weather for the winter. They tried Florida, just as we did, but then ended up going to Arizona. After we arrived back in Florida, it took us a week to put our small house on the market. It sold within the first week. We left all the furnishings, which weren’t much, packed our clothes and drove from Tampa to Arizona.”
“In less than a week, I knew we’d made the right choice. The dry heat was better for my lungs than anything Florida had to offer. We had called home to tell Doug and Anna about the cruise, then again about going to Arizona. They assured us everything was fine.”
“Which it was,” Anna said as she reached over, and took Beatrice’s hand in hers. She looked at her children, and nodded. “There would have been plenty of time for them to come home at their pre-designated time, however, Daniel had a different timeline than the rest of us.”
“Me? What did I do? I wasn’t even born yet.” Daniel frowned at his mother.
“My water broke six weeks before you were due to be born, and your father and I had to scramble to get a babysitter and get me to the hospital.”
“It was late at night,” Douglas spoke. “Mikey and Bruce had been asleep for hours. We had it all planned out that Mom and Dad would watch the boys when Anna went to the hospital to have Daniel. Because they were still in Arizona, and no matter how fast they drove or flew, they would never get here in time before Anna had to go to the hospital. I scrambled around and called our neighbor, who called a friend of theirs, who called their friend, who called their babysitter. In hindsight, I should have been more diligent with her. All I can remember was that she was young, like in her early twenties, and she had blonde hair, and drove a beat-up car. As soon as she arrived, I gave her less than a five-minute rundown on the boys, then I had to get Anna to the hospital.”
“Less than forty-five minutes after I arrived at the hospital,” Anna said, “They wheeled me into surgery for an emergency C-Section. After Daniel was born, he was taken to the NIC-U and put on a ventilator, because he was so early. He only weighed three pounds and two ounces when he was born. We knew the minute he was born that he would have to stay in the hospital until he reached his original due date.”
“Damn,” Daniel said as he shook his head at the news.
“Your mother developed complications from the surgery, and had to stay in the ICU for a week. We arrived at the hospital around ten o’clock on a Monday night, you were born shortly before midnight. I kept calling home and leaving messages with the babysitter, thinking she was playing with the boys, or didn’t want to answer someone else’s phone. I didn’t make it back home until late Wednesday afternoon. I made sure you were going to make it, and your mother was out of the woods before I left the hospital. I remember when I arrived home, I had to stop at the end of the driveway and put the truck into four wheel to make it up the lane. I saw no other tracks on my way in.”
“And?” Nancy asked when everyone remained silent for several moments.
“And I walked into absolute chaos.” Douglas sighed as he shook his head, and rubbed the back of his neck. “Bruce was running around buck naked, the TV was playing a cartoon, and the volume was way up, and there were boxes of cereal scattered from one end of the house to the other. After I cleaned the cereal off Bruce’s body, I put a diaper on him, and carried him to his room, thinking the babysitter was dealing with Mikey. I walked into the room the boys shared at the time to silence. With Bruce in my arms, I ran around the house like a mad man calling for Mikey. No answer. That was when I realized the babysitter’s car hadn’t been in the driveway. I immediately called the local police. Less than four hours after they arrived, Agent Decker arrived.” Douglas pointed to the other man at the table, and everyone turned as one to stare at him.
“Mikey’s disappearance was my very first case as an FBI agent. I did everything by the book,” Decker began. He looked directly at Daniel, and nodded once. “I don’t have to tell you the first people I checked out.”
“No.”
“Who?” Nancy asked.
Daniel looked around the table at his family, and nodded once. “In any kidnapping, or domestic situation, the immediate family are the number-one suspects until they are ruled out. I’m not saying that’s always the case, but about seventy percent of all kidnappings are done by family members, especially if the parents are going through a divorce or a custody battle.”
“And I found none of that in Mikey’s case. I ruled out Anna and Douglas within the first two hours. Because, hello, they were in the hospital with your birth. Douglas had told me that he’d contacted his parents to come home, and before they even arrived, they were ruled out. Everyone had a rock-solid alibi. Once Dan and Beatrice arrived, with Anna tucked safely in the hospital, I strongly recommended that Douglas take Bruce, and his parents, and check into a hotel for the next week.”
“Why?” Bruce asked in confusion. “If you’d already ruled them out, why did they have to leave the house?”
“Because, I called in the crime lab and had them dust for fingerprints from the rafters to the basement. I had them stay the extra days away, so that after the prints were taken, then I called in a clean-up crew to remove all the fingerprint dust. I didn’t want Anna to have to come home from the hospital and see that.”
