Chương 3
Renee asked the children if they would speak with her in another room. Owen refused immediately. Lily asked whether Steel would still be there when they came back.
“Yes,” he said.
“Promise?”
He almost answered too fast. Promises made quickly had a way of becoming lies slowly.
“I’ll be in this room unless the police ask me to move,” he said. “If they do, Major Hayes will tell you where I am.”
Lily looked at Marco.
Marco put his radio on the table and crouched beside her. “I’m the one with the beard. Hard to lose me.”
Owen stared at him. “My bear has a beard.”
“That’s why he looks trustworthy.”
Owen examined the worn face of the teddy bear. “He doesn’t have one.”
Marco touched his own beard. “Then one of us is overdressed.”
A sound escaped Lily that might have been the beginning of a laugh. It vanished almost immediately, but Steel saw it.
Renee took the twins into an adjoining office. Owen carried the pretzels and the bear. Lily left the boarding pass on the table.
For the first time since the jet bridge opened, Steel had nothing to protect them from with his body.
The airport police supervisor sat across from him. His nameplate read KELLER.
“Colonel, I need you to understand something before we continue.”
Steel nodded.
“Your rank gives you no authority here.”
“I understand.”
“Your relationship to the children does not automatically give you custody.”
“I understand that too.”
“And because you were a witness to part of the incident, your account will be taken separately.”
“Of course.”
Keller glanced at Marco. “Major Hayes will also be interviewed.”
Marco lifted the abandoned packet of bottled water. “Do I get one of these, or are they evidence?”
Keller stared at him for a moment.
Marco put it down. “That was poorly timed.”
Steel almost smiled. He did not.
Keller opened a notebook. “Start with why you were at Gate 17.”
Steel told him. He described seeing the twins near the bakery, speaking to them, learning Vanessa had boarded, notifying the gate agent, and requesting police assistance. He did not embellish. He did not mention the feeling that had moved through him when Lily first looked up. Feelings were not evidence.
“Had you expected to meet them?”
“No.”
“Had Mrs. Mercer told you she was traveling?”
“No.”
“When did you last speak with her?”
“The day after Daniel died.”
“What did you discuss?”
“Funeral arrangements. The children. Whether she needed help.”
“What did she say?”
“That everything was handled.”
“Did you offer to take the children?”
Steel looked at the officer.
“I offered to come to Ohio after the funeral.”
“That wasn’t my question.”
“No.”
“Why not?”
Steel could hear the printer in the corner. He could hear Vanessa speaking in the hallway as another officer escorted her to a separate room. Her heels made small, precise sounds against the tile.
“I was scheduled to assume a new assignment in Germany.”
“Still are?”
“Yes.”
“And you did not believe you could care for two five-year-old children.”
“I did not know whether she wanted me to.”
Keller waited.
Steel corrected himself. “I did not ask.”
“Were you named in any guardianship document?”
“Daniel once said Claire had listed me as a preferred guardian in her will. After Claire died, Daniel remained their legal parent. I don’t know what documents he completed later.”
“Did you follow up?”
“No.”
“Why?”
The answer he had used with himself involved deployments, command responsibilities, Claire’s illness, Daniel’s resentment, and Vanessa’s insistence that the children needed stability. None of it changed the shape of the word.
“I avoided it.”
Keller wrote something down.
Steel’s jaw tightened. He was accustomed to reports that divided conduct into decisions, conditions, and contributing factors. Avoided it was not the language he would have used in an official memorandum. It was the language Claire would have used.
She had possessed an unkind accuracy when frightened.
Six months before she died, she had called him from the hospital and asked whether he would take the twins if the treatment failed. He had been in a temporary operations center in Kuwait, surrounded by fluorescent lights and men pretending not to listen.
“Daniel is their father,” he had said.
“I know who Daniel is.”
“You’re talking as if—”
“I am talking as if the doctor used the word metastatic, Adrian.”
He had closed his eyes.
She had waited.
“I’ll make sure they’re okay,” he had said.
“That isn’t an answer.”
“It’s the answer I can give you right now.”
Claire had been quiet for so long that he checked the phone screen to see whether the call had dropped.
Then she said, “You always sound most certain when you’re leaving yourself room to escape.”
Keller’s pen stopped.
“Colonel?”
Steel returned to the operations room.
“I failed to maintain contact,” he said. “That’s relevant. Put it in the statement.”
Keller studied him, perhaps deciding whether the admission was genuine or tactical. “Everything is relevant until it isn’t.”
The interviews lasted nearly three hours.
The airline provided passenger records showing Vanessa had purchased her Lisbon ticket eleven days earlier. The children’s Cleveland tickets had been purchased the previous night using reward points from Daniel’s account. No unaccompanied-minor service had been booked. No adult had been identified to receive them. The airline had sent an automated warning that children of their age could not travel alone, but the reservation remained active because the birth dates had been entered incorrectly, making both twins appear fifteen.
Vanessa told investigators the incorrect dates were a website error.
The station manager said the dates had been entered manually.
Vanessa said she had intended to ask for help at the gate.
May you like
The gate agent said Vanessa had boarded without mentioning the children.
A camera near the bakery showed her seating Lily and Owen at a small table at 2:14 p.m. She handed Lily the boarding passes, spoke for approximately forty seconds, then walked away with the silver suitcase. Lily followed her for several steps. Vanessa turned, pointed toward the table, and continued toward Gate 17.
