The Stolen, page 2
‘You didn’t hear anyone come in?’ Wozza moved his weight from foot to foot and the floorboards of the old place creaked.
‘No! I didn’t hear anything.’ Maddy’s voice rose.
‘Were you up the back of the house?’ I asked.
She shook her head. ‘I took a shower. I always take a shower when he goes down for his morning nap. It’s too hard otherwise. Then I brought the washing in. Did some folding.’
‘Did you leave the side down like this?’ Wozza was pointing at, but not touching, the side of the cot.
Maddy’s brow furrowed. ‘No … I always put the side up.’ She looked at us hopefully, like the revelation might be a clue.
‘They’re a bugger to figure out how to work the catch,’ said Wozza, leaning over to take a closer look. Wozza had three girls and, I suspected, a lot of experience with cots. ‘So someone who knew which lever to push …’ He trailed off, lost in thought.
‘How old is Ethan?’ I asked. My knowledge of babies was limited. I looked around the room. ‘Could he have gotten out of the cot somehow?’
Maddy shook her head. ‘He’s seven months old.’
Wozza looked concerned. ‘They can’t do much at that age,’ he said to me in a low voice. ‘No way he could get out by himself.’
‘He is just learning how to roll.’ Maddy’s bottom lip trembled.
‘Who else is here?’ I asked. So far it was just Maddy and her panic filling the room. No sign of the baby’s father.
‘I—I …’ Maddy choked on her words. ‘I’m on my own. Ethy’s dad … he didn’t stick around.’
Wozza took out his notebook. ‘Is there a custody dispute?’
Maddy put a hand to her forehead and rubbed. Closed her eyes for a moment. Opened them and looked straight at Wozza. ‘It’s complicated. He just …’
‘Is he on the scene at all?’ I asked, my voice gentle. It was important to keep things calm; we needed to get as much information as we could.
‘He comes around when he feels like it. He tries to get in and see Ethan and if he’s polite about it, I let him. But …’
‘He’s not always polite?’
Maddy’s answer was quiet. ‘No.’
‘Does he threaten you?’ asked Wozza.
She looked uncertain, then shrugged. Sometimes, threats were subtle.
‘Do you think he’s done this?’ I asked, nodding towards the empty cot.
Maddy looked worried at the thought, but I could see her processing it. Seemed like every fibre of her being wanted to say no, but logic was forcing her to think otherwise.
Wozza turned a page in his notebook and took down the father’s details. Josh McCreedy, aged twenty-five, lived off Main Street with his parents.
As Wozza was writing, I noticed some sort of monitor on the side of the cot. ‘What’s that?’ I pointed.
An intake of breath. ‘The baby monitor!’ Maddy hurried from the room. We followed her down the hall to a big open room out the back. She picked up her phone from the bench, tapped it a couple of times to open an app. A picture of the empty cot emerged. She hit rewind. Wozza and I flanked her, fascinated. Fuzzy lines on the screen showing an empty cot, empty cot, empty cot … then shadows moving, legs, hands, a sleeping baby, the side of the cot pulled up, shadow legs retreating, baby sleeping. Baby safe.
A kidnapping in reverse.
My heart pounded as Maddy switched to play and we all watched, mesmerised, as golden-haired Ethan lay asleep, a curl at the top of his head swept up in a comical wave. Little fists clenched, one on each side of his face. Long pale lashes. A bright orange dummy. Rosebud cheeks. The camera pointed downwards, onto the baby. I guessed the whole point of a baby monitor was to watch the baby, not to spot kidnappers. So when the shadow legs appeared beyond the cot, it was impossible to see who it was. A hand appeared at the side of the cot rails, then the side of the cot slid down easily. Two hands reached for the baby. Picking him up. Baby disappearing from view. Legs turning. Walking away. Cot empty.
Maddy began sobbing. ‘It’s him. It’s Josh.’
Wozza looked worried. ‘How can you tell?’
Maddy wiped her nose with a tissue and rewound the video footage. ‘See that?’ Her voice was unsteady. She hit pause. There was a shadow of a tattoo on the hand reaching for the baby. On the side, close to the wrist.
Wozza squinted at it. ‘Some kind of bird?’
‘An eagle,’ she said in a quiet voice. ‘That’s because birds travel between the land and the sky, between Earth and Heaven. That’s what he always says. He got it when his brother died last year.’
‘Try to ring him,’ said Wozza. ‘Maybe he just …’ Then he stopped.
I watched his face. He didn’t want to say it, didn’t want to suggest an innocent explanation for the missing baby. Cops knew better.
Maddy tapped the contacts on her phone and called Josh McCreedy. She hit the speaker button so the sound of ringing filled the room. It went to voicemail. A deep voice said, ‘It’s Josh. Leave a message.’ Then a beep.
‘Where’s Ethan?’ Maddy screamed into the phone. ‘Bring him back!’
I put my hands over hers and clicked the end-call button. Gave her a moment to take a deep breath.
‘While you’ve got your phone there, can you find a couple of photos of Ethan and Josh and message them to me?’ I pulled a card out of my pocket so she had my number. It was heartbreaking to watch her scrolling through what must be hundreds of photos, all featuring the same blond-haired, blue-eyed baby. She finally scrolled back far enough to find one which featured Josh holding Ethan. The baby looked newborn and I guessed that was the last time Josh had featured in Maddy’s photos. She added the most recent photo she had of Ethan, taken that morning. He was dressed in the same outfit he was wearing in the baby-monitor video.
As soon as the photos pinged on my phone, I sent them to the police communication centre at D24, then followed up with a phone call to put a KALOF—a keep-a-look-out-for—alert for Josh McCreedy. I turned to Maddy. ‘What sort of car does he have?’ She described his car and I repeated it for the operator. ‘He’s driving a Holden Gemini. 1977. Lime green in colour. Personalised number plate. JOSHMC.’
I stepped away from Wozza and Maddy and moved into the hallway. ‘We’re going to need roadblocks set up, and uniforms at his house.’ I checked my watch. How far could Josh McCreedy have driven? Fifteen, twenty ks? That’s if he was heading out of town.
I finished the call and walked outside the house. Instructed the uniforms to begin canvassing the neighbours. Shouldn’t be hard. By now most of them had come out to see what was happening. Police cars in a quiet street will do that. A quick scan of the scene told me all the houses on the same side as Maddy’s place backed onto bushland. I called our senior sergeant. Told her we needed Crime Scene at the house, and the SES to do a search around the property and the adjoining national park just in case Josh McCreedy had dumped the baby nearby.
I finished the call and slipped back into the house.
‘Keen on the old cars, is he?’ Wozza was saying. Sounded conversational, but I knew he was fishing for information. If Josh McCreedy had taken his baby son, then we needed to know as much about him as we could.
‘Yes,’ Maddy murmured, distracted.
‘Do you mind if I …?’ I nodded towards the kettle.
‘A cup of tea sounds good,’ she said.
I moved around to the other side of the bench and put the kettle on. The cups were on a shelf above the sink. I took three down and set them on the bench. The teapot and tea cannister were next to the kettle.
Wozza gestured for Maddy to take a seat at the kitchen table. Half of its surface was covered in laundry, neatly folded with lots of jumpsuits, some plain white and others featuring cartoon animals. Next to the neat piles of clothes was a tub of dummies and little plastic spoons and small bumpy rubber toys. For teething? Around the room were nappies and wipes and creams and lotions. A nice pram was parked near the sliding-glass back door. It never occurred to me that babies needed so much stuff.
‘Why do you think Josh would have taken Ethan?’ Wozza asked as soon as they were seated.
‘I don’t know. I have no idea why he would do this.’ Maddy reached for the pile of baby clothes and rested a hand protectively on top of them.
‘Would he have known about your shower routine?’ I asked.
‘He always criticised me about it. He told me I shouldn’t wait till the baby was asleep before I took a shower. He said to just let Ethan cry.’
Sounds like a tosser, I thought.
‘Did he have a key?’ Wozza asked.
‘I made him give it back when he moved out.’ Maddy suddenly gasped. ‘The spare key!’ She got up and hurried down the hallway. We followed her outside and watched her squat next to a pot plant on the verandah and reach behind it. She pulled out a small rock. It was one of those fake rocks you hide keys in. She clicked it open. Empty.
‘Did he know it was there?’ Wozza asked.
She nodded miserably and we all went back inside and resumed our positions.
‘What can you tell us about Josh?’ I poured water into the teapot and brought it and the cups to the table.
Maddy began her story. Nothing out of the ordinary. Accidental pregnancy after dating Josh for six months. Maddy was living in her parents’ Deception Bay holiday home and working as a teacher at the local Catholic school. Josh moved in and immediately expected her to take care of him. He was lazy and petulant. And soon, gone.
‘At first, I figured he’d just lost his brother, so I cut him some slack, but the shine wore off pretty quickly. He’d play video games all day on the couch and he’d shout for a beer.’ Maddy rolled her eyes. Small smile. ‘Instead of a beer, I offered him a time machine so he could go back to the 1950s.’ She shook her head. ‘As if!’
‘You asked him to leave?’ I poured tea.
‘Sure did. I was committed to the baby, but I did not want to have to deal with him as well. He didn’t value-add.’
‘Huh?’ said Wozza.
‘You know, add value to what I had here. He didn’t bring anything to the table. So, what was the point?’
I admired her directness.
‘And I didn’t think he was that interested in Ethan. That’s why this doesn’t make sense.’ Maddy sipped from her mug of tea.
Wozza and I looked at each other. This wasn’t about the baby. If it was Josh who took Ethan, this was about her.
‘Would he do this to hurt you?’ I asked.
Maddy’s eyes widened. Something hit home. ‘Our last argument. He said, “You love the baby more than me,” and I said, “No shit, Sherlock!”’ She put her cup of tea down and her hands flew to her mouth. ‘What have I done?’
At that moment, Maddy’s phone pinged. A text. She picked it up from the table and swiped the screen open. ‘It’s from Mum. I called her and Dad right after I called you. They’re on holidays up in Mildura but as soon as I told them about Ethan, they said they’d pack up and head down here straight away.’ She paused and read the text. Muttered, ‘Oh no, oh no,’ over and over while she frantically swiped at the screen.
‘What is it?’ I hurried around behind her to see what she was doing.
‘Mum just saw a notification on Insta. Josh posted a picture of Ethan.’ She opened the app and scrolled down until the baby appeared. Ethan in a car, lying on the front passenger seat. There was a one-word caption written underneath the picture.
Revenge.
CHAPTER 3
BREWING TEMPEST
We stationed uniforms at Maddy’s house in case Josh McCreedy returned with the baby, then we drove Maddy to the Deception Bay police station to get her statement. By phone, we’d co-ordinated the search for the baby and contacted the Search and Rescue Squad in Melbourne. Wozza had also called in a favour from a mate at the Air Wing, so a helicopter was on its way too.
Maddy had packed a baby bag in anticipation of Ethan’s return. He’d need nappies and a bottle. She sat in the interview room with the bag on the floor beside her. Ready.
‘We need as much detail as you can give us,’ I said, opening my laptop to take down her words. ‘Any places you know Josh likes to go. Friends. Anything.’
Maddy had a look of steely resolve. Wozza left us to it and slipped out of the room. He would head back to the house to co-ordinate the crime-scene examiner and the SES. He also had the tech department monitoring Josh’s Instagram feed, looking for locations and clocking the times he was posting. Of grave concern was the fact that the photo showed baby Ethan lying on the front passenger seat. There was no sign of any kind of baby seat or child restraint. An angry ex-boyfriend, a stolen baby. Josh clearly wasn’t concerned about his son’s safety. But how far would he go to hurt Maddy?
Another selfie appeared at 10.47 am. It had been taken at the top of the Devil’s Corner, a convergence of cliffs on the coast of Deception Bay. The image showed Josh grinning and the baby crying. The caption read: I hope you enjoy your independence! In both photos, Ethan was wearing the same jumpsuit as he was in the baby-monitor video, so it looked like they were taken today.
‘He’s hungry,’ said Maddy, when the second picture dropped. ‘He’s an hour overdue for his feed.’ She clutched at her stomach, like the pain was too much to bear, then leaned forward until her forehead was almost touching the table we were sitting at.
‘What do you think Josh means by the caption?’ I asked.
Maddy sat up again and rubbed her face with her hands. ‘It sounds like he’s not going to bring Ethan back, doesn’t it?’ Her lips quivered as if she was trying not to cry.
She was right. It did sound like that. I didn’t say it out loud though. I moved between Maddy and the muster room, which had been hastily converted into a command post. More pictures appeared. One posted at 11.36 out by the old roadhouse that had shut down. The caption for that one was Payback’s a bitch. How does it feel? Then a time gap, and a new one at 1.35 near the silos on the edge of town. The caption for that was especially worrying: It’s over. I’m gonna end it.
‘He’s threatening to kill Ethan!’ Maddy screamed when the last one came through.
She was right.
Each time another photo dropped, our new senior sergeant, Amanda Filipovic, directed two uniformed members who’d arrived as reinforcements from neighbouring towns to the sites in the hope Josh and the baby were still there. It was a vain hope. The techies decoded the time stamps on the photos and checked them against the time of posting. There was a consistent delay. Josh was taking photos, then moving on before he posted them.
Returning to the interview room with some tea for Maddy, I found her sobbing. I sat down next to her. ‘We’re in the process of tracking his phone.’
‘You won’t be able to.’ Her voice hiccoughed from crying. ‘He turns off his location services. He always boasts that he can’t be tracked.’
‘Maddy,’ I said, trying to reassure her, ‘that makes no difference to police. If he has the phone on—and clearly he has because he’s posting to Instagram—then it’s pinging off towers.’
A glimmer of hope. ‘So you can find him?’
‘We’re just getting the search signed off. A senior officer needs to authorise it, but in a time-sensitive case like this, it shouldn’t take long. Once the request is logged, it should take about half an hour and then we’ll find him.’
Maddy checked the time on her phone. ‘Ethan is completely overdue for a feed.’ Her worry was palpable. I could see her screen was filled with messages of support from friends. She flinched every time her phone pinged but she couldn’t look away in case one of the messages was from Josh.
I left Maddy in the interview room and made my way to the new senior sergeant’s office. My old boss, Bill Wheeler—Wheels—had taken sick leave a couple of months ago. His claim of PTSD coincided with a close scrutiny of his management style, and made a mockery of our many colleagues who were genuinely coping with the debilitating condition. Amanda, his replacement, was a relocation from the city. Unlike her predecessor, Amanda’s door was always open. I paused at the entrance to her office. She looked up from her computer.
‘Any luck on the phone search?’ I asked.
She tapped some keys. ‘Yep, it’s been authorised by a commander in the city. Paperwork is in. Techs are on it. Shouldn’t be long now.’
‘How about the roadblocks?’
She shook her head. ‘Nothing. Although, from the pictures he’s posting, he’s staying local.’ She looked worried. ‘I gotta say, I’m concerned about the revenge messages he’s posting with the photos. I saw a case like this before, in Melbourne, and it didn’t end well.’
The case she was talking about had made the headlines when a father had taken his small child and taunted the mother on Facebook. At the time, it felt beyond belief that a father would kill a toddler, but now it was sadly believable.
‘Did you work the case?’ I asked Amanda.
‘Not directly, but I knew people who did.’
‘We just need to keep looking.’ I took a deep breath.
‘I don’t know Deception Bay well enough yet to contribute much in the way of suggestions for where to look.’ Amanda glanced out her window at the storm sky outside.
‘Once we get his phone location, it won’t matter. We’ll know where to look.’ I clenched and unclenched my fists, trying to set aside any thoughts about getting my hands on Josh McCreedy. It was hard to fathom a man who valued terrorising his ex more than he valued his own baby.
‘Air Wing is sending a helicopter,’ said Amanda. ‘Impressive.’
‘It was Wozza—reckons he has friends in high places.’
‘He’s talking about the Air Wing, right?’ Amanda’s voice held a faint trace of amusement, the best she could muster under the circumstances.
I nodded. ‘Correct.’
‘Their ETA is ten minutes. They’re going to do a sweep from the air. Bit hard to hide a lime green car. They’re worried about the weather though.’
