I'll Walk Alone - Mary Higgins Clark [72]
“You loved him so much,” Dean snapped. “Then you do think he is dead.”
“He is not dead. He called out to me this morning.”
The detectives could not conceal their astonishment. “He called out to you this morning?” Billy Collins demanded.
“I mean, early this morning, I heard his voice.”
“Zan, we’re leaving now,” Charley Shore said, himself clearly rattled. “This inquisition is over.”
“No. I’m going to explain. Fr. Aiden was so kind when I met him last night. I know that even Alvirah and Willy don’t believe that I’m not the one in those photos in Central Park. But Fr. Aiden gave me a sense of peace that stayed with me all night. Then just as I was waking up this morning, I heard Matthew’s voice as clearly as though he were in the room and I knew he was still alive.”
This time, when Zan stood up, she pushed back the chair so quickly that it toppled over. “He is alive,” she shouted. “Why are you torturing me? Why aren’t you searching for my little boy? Why won’t you believe me that those photos are not of me? You think I’m crazy. You’re the ones who are blind and stupid.” Her voice now hysterical, she screamed, “ ‘There are none so blind as those who will not see.’ In case you don’t know, that’s a quote from Jeremiah in the Bible. Two years ago, when the pair of you wouldn’t listen to me about Bartley Longe, I looked it up.”
Zan turned to Charley Shore. “Am I under arrest?” she demanded. “If not, let’s get the hell out of here now.”
46
Alvirah had called Zan’s office and learned from Josh that Charley Shore had taken Zan to the police station for questioning. And then Josh told her about the one-way ticket to Buenos Aires and the orders Zan had placed with their suppliers.
With a heavy heart, Alvirah filled Willy in on that conversation when he returned from his morning walk in Central Park. “Oh, Willy, I feel so helpless,” she sighed. “There’s no mistake about those pictures. Now Zan has bought herself a one-way ticket to Buenos Aires and is ordering stuff for a job she doesn’t even have.”
“Maybe she thinks they’re closing in on her, and is planning to run away,” Willy suggested. “Listen, Alvirah, if she did take Matthew out of the stroller, maybe he’s in South America with a friend. Didn’t Zan tell you that she speaks a couple of languages, including Spanish?”
“Yes. She moved around with her parents a lot when she was growing up. But oh, Willy, that’s as much as saying that Zan is a schemer. I don’t think that’s true. I think the problem is that she has lapses of memory, or is a split personality. I’ve read a lot about people like that. One personality simply has no idea of what the other one is doing. Remember that book The Three Faces of Eve? That woman was three different people and one didn’t know about the other. Maybe Zan, in another persona, took Matthew from the stroller. Maybe she did give him to a friend who took him to South America and in that persona is planning to join him.”
“This split personality stuff sounds like hocus-pocus to me, honey,” Willy said. “I’d do anything for Zan, but I honestly think she’s mentally ill. I just hope that when she was irrational, she didn’t do anything to that little kid.”
While Willy was out on his morning walk, Alvirah had been cleaning the apartment. Even though they had put most of the lottery money they’d won in triple-A bonds and solid stocks so that they had a nice dividend income, she had never been able to bring herself to hire a cleaning woman. Or at least, when she did try one at Willy’s urging, she had immediately realized that she was three times as fast and ten times as thorough as the person they hired to come in once a week.
Now their three-room apartment overlooking Central Park South was sparkling, and the sun that had finally broken through was cheerfully reflected in the shiny surface of the glass-topped coffee table and the mirror on the back wall that reflected the park. Vacuuming and dusting and mopping up the kitchen had helped calm Alvirah, and while she was working she had put on her