I'll Walk Alone - Mary Higgins Clark [59]
“You are saying that you believe your ex-wife got rid of your child because he had become a liability?”
“That’s exactly what I’m saying. She’s a born martyr. How many people have lost their parents in an accident and even though they’re grieving, have gone on with their lives? If she had asked me to take full custody of Matthew, I would have done it in a heartbeat.”
“Did you request full custody?”
“That would have been like asking the earth to stop revolving around the sun. How would that have looked in the newspapers?”
Ted stood up. “I have nothing more to say to you except this. I assume that by now you have checked out those photos that were taken in Central Park. Unless they are doctored — and you have given me no indication that you think that is the case — then I want to know why Alexandra Moreland has not been arrested. You have proof positive that she stole my son. Clearly she lied to you every step of the way. I’m sure there is a law about withholding a child from the other parent who has visitation rights. But the charge you really should be pursuing now is that Matthew was abducted and murdered by his own mother. What are you waiting for?”
As he pushed back his chair and stood up, Ted Carpenter, tears running down his cheeks, again demanded, “What are you waiting for?”
39
It was not just the pain in his arthritic knees, which he ruefully referred to as his nocturnal visitor, that kept Fr. Aiden awake for a good part of Wednesday night. It was the woman who had confessed to being part of an ongoing crime and an impending murder, the woman whose name he now knew: Alexandra Moreland.
The incredible irony of meeting her at Alvirah and Willy’s apartment! Between two and four in the morning, Fr. Aiden relived every second of those few moments they had been together. It was apparent to anyone that Zan, as Alvirah had called her, was suffering. The expression in her eyes was like that of a soul in hell, if such a comparison could be imagined. She had said, “God has forgotten that I exist.”
She truly believes that, Fr. Aiden thought. But she did ask me to pray for her child. If only I could help her! When she confessed, she was clear about what she was doing, and about what was being planned. No mistake about it, and no mistake that it was her.
Alvirah, who knew Zan well, had recognized her face on the security camera in the church and said that she was absolutely the person in those Central Park pictures. If I could only broach the subject that if Zan has a split personality, they might try to have a doctor give her some medication to release what is hidden in her mind, Fr. Aiden thought. But I cannot reveal anything, even if it would help her… .
He would pray that in another way, some way, somehow, the truth would come out to save her child, if it was not already too late. After a while his eyes began to close. Just before dawn, he woke again. Zan’s face filled his mind. But there was something else. Something he had dreamed. And it troubled him. There was a seed of doubt in him, and he didn’t know where it was coming from.
Once again he whispered a prayer for her and her little boy, then mercifully fell back asleep until his alarm woke