Chapter 74
Thursday late afternoon
DuBois stood outside Interview Room Three watching Daniel Rourke through the glass. Rourke sat perfectly still at the metal table with cuffed hands resting calmly in front of him. No pacing, no demands, and no lawyer yet.
Urban stepped beside him holding a paper cup of stale coffee. “He’s either the calmest child abductor I’ve ever seen, or the craziest.”
“Both maybe.”
Inside the room, Rourke finally looked up toward the observation window, not nervously, just aware, like he knew exactly where they were standing.
Urban lowered his voice. “Do you really think he believed he was helping her?”
“I think somewhere along the way he convinced himself he did.”
Predators who enjoyed destruction were dangerous but the ones who rewrote it into love were even worse.
Urban shook his head. “Eight years.”
“Yeah. A five-year-old girl turned into a frightened young woman who apologized for surviving.”
DuBois had worked homicide long enough to stop pretending things shocked him. This one still did.
An officer approached down the hallway. “Hannah Caldwell’s officially confirmed through DNA we got from her father.”
Urban nodded. “There it is.”
It was real now. Hannah Caldwell was alive after eight years.
DuBois took the file the officer handed him. It contained initial statements, preliminary notes, and witness confirmations. Then he saw the line near the bottom. Witness states she observed suspect strike Todd Maddox in the head after Bay Mercer fled apartment.
She was a murder witness. That changed everything.
Urban read over his shoulder. “Well,” he muttered, “It looks like Bay’s walking.”
“She should.”
Neither man spoke for a second. Then Urban glanced toward the interview room. “Are you going in?”
“Yeah.”
“Do you think he’ll talk?”
“No.” But he still opened the door.
Rourke looked up calmly as DuBois entered and sat across from him.
“How’s Hannah?” Rourke asked.
He wasn’t concerned about his situation. Just Hannah.
“She’s safe.”
Rourke looked down at his cuffed hands. “You frightened her today.”
“You abducted her at five years old.”
A tightening crossed Rourke’s jaw. “She wasn’t safe there.”
Maybe he believed that once, maybe even now.
“You know what I can’t figure out?”
Rourke stayed silent.
“You had eight years to disappear completely. Why come back to San Diego?”
That finally got a reaction.
“Hannah wanted to.”
Interesting. DuBois waited.
“She remembered things,” Rourke said softly. “Places. People.”
“Like Sabre? The pancakes? Home?”
“You think finding her fixes this?”
DuBois didn’t answer because no, it didn’t. Eight lost years didn’t get repaired by handcuffs.
Rourke shook his head. “She’ll never belong anywhere now.”
That was his real fear. Not prison, but loss of control, loss of identity, and loss of the world he’d built around her.
“She belongs to herself.”
For the first time, anger flashed across Rourke’s face. “You don’t know what they’ll turn her into.”
“No. But I know what you already did.”
There was a long silence this time. Then DuBois finally said the thing he came in to say. “Hannah identified you.”
Rourke looked beaten. “She wouldn’t do that.”
“But she did.”