36.
“It’s my baby,” Alice said. “You can’t arrest someone for taking her own baby.”
“Sure you can,” Nancy said. “Only this isn’t your baby. And even if it were, it wouldn’t be legal for you to take her, to hurt her, or put her somewhere she isn’t safe.”
“She’s my baby.” Alice spoke in a monotone, as if the conversation bored her. “It took me a long time to find her, but now that I have, you can’t make me give her back. I never wanted to give her up in the first place.”
“Alice…” Sharon put a cautionary hand on her shoulder, but Alice shook it off. On Alice’s left, Rosario Bustamante rolled her eyes and looked around the interview room, as if hopeful a bar might suddenly materialize. She had arrived on a wave of gin fumes, Nancy couldn’t help noticing, but there was nothing to suggest that the older woman was the least bit impaired. She looked rumpled, but no more so than Sharon, who had been getting ready for bed when summoned here.
“She’s my baby,” Alice said. “I knew it the moment I saw her.”
Alice had been repeating this one assertion over and over, her own Baltimore catechism, refusing to elaborate, indifferent to the evidence the detectives offered to the contrary. Told that the DNA evidence had already established Brittany Little was, in fact, the daughter of Maveen Little, Alice had shrugged and said: “Then you did it wrong. You better double-check.” Asked where the child was, she said she wouldn’t admit to anything until they conceded the girl was hers.
And so they had gone, around and around, until it was going on eleven o’clock.
“Look, this isn’t productive,” Sharon said. “Make us an offer. Maybe a misdemeanor.”
“What misdemeanor?” Nancy’s voice was hoarse from exhaustion, and she sounded a decade older than she had that morning. It was a good effect, actually. She wished she could cultivate it at will. “She’s all but confessed that she took the child. There’s no turning back from that.”
“She’s confused, she’s suggestible. She doesn’t know what she’s saying.”
“I know exactly what I’m saying,” Alice said. “That girl is my baby. They took her away from me so no one would find out what happened to me when I was in Middlebrook. But now everyone is going to know.”
Frustrated by the girl’s stubborn will, Nancy left the interview room. Helen Manning was sitting with Infante, drinking a soda, as carefree as if she were just passing time in some teachers’ lounge. Infante’s jowls were blue-black, the bags under his eyes darker still, his hair shiny from being slicked back with his palms over and over again. He looked like the world’s most tired werewolf. Nancy tapped him on the shoulder and nodded toward the interview room. They had been taking turns all evening, spelling one another. Lenhardt had come in, but even he conceded he had nothing to bring to the interviews. Nancy and Infante were marathon dancers, obligated to shuffle to the end together or be disqualified.
“What’s this about the baby, Mrs. Manning?” Nancy asked, sliding into the chair Infante had vacated. “Why does Alice think this child is hers?”
“Please-call me Helen. I think of Mrs. Manning as my mother.”
She had made this plea before, more than once, but Nancy continued to ignore it. “Why does Alice think this baby is hers?”
“Oh, she doesn’t really. I mean, she’s very fixated on this issue, but she knows her child was put up for adoption. She thinks because she never named the father that the adoption wasn’t legal. But given Alice’s circumstances, I had the power of attorney. If she hadn’t hidden the pregnancy from me into her third trimester, I would have forced her to get an abortion.”
Nancy wouldn’t be surprised to learn that Alice had concealed her pregnancy for just that reason.
“She got pregnant while in the juvenile facility?”
“Oh, yes. Shocking, isn’t it? We begged Alice to tell us who the father was. Because lord knows, he might still be out there, preying on other girls. But she was quite stubborn. She thinks the man loved her. Which I’m sure is what he told her. Don’t they always? It was a mess, actually, getting the courts to allow the adoption. But Sharon helped.”
“So who adopted the child?”
“Not this Maveen Little woman. This is not Alice’s baby.”
“We know that.” It was hard, concealing her exasperation with Helen Manning. But any sign of irritation only wounded the woman, bringing on a pretty fit of weeping that slowed everything down. “But do you know who did? Was it an open adoption?”
“Oh, no, it was confidential. I wanted Alice to move on, to forget about it.”
“So why is Alice so convinced that Brittany Little is her child?”
Helen Manning lied so badly, so baldly, that there was almost a perverse charm to it. Now, for example, her eyes drifted to the acoustic ceiling tiles overhead as if they were the most fascinating bit of decor she had ever seen.
“I haven’t the faintest idea.”
“You know, we’ve been very patient with you, Mrs. Manning.”
“Helen.”
“We’ve been very patient with you, Mrs. Manning,” Nancy repeated. “We have not treated you as an accessory to this crime, or accused you of shielding your daughter or withholding information we need. But that moment is coming, sooner rather than later. The time is past where you can keep anything from us, for any reason.”
“Alice doesn’t confide in anyone, even me.” Helen leaned forward and lowered her voice. “She’s always been a little secretive. Self-contained. And she’s not the most, well, normal young woman. This could be all in her head. She may not have anything to do with the kidnapping. She could think the girl is hers because she saw her on television, and it got all mixed up in her head.”
“Why would she even think that?”
Helen sighed, looked away. Now it was a poster on the wall, an admonition to wear seat belts, that demanded her unwavering gaze.
“You have to understand. She had been obsessive on this topic since she came home. Where was her baby? What had happened to it? How could I give it up? Why hadn’t I kept the child and raised it? She wouldn’t leave it alone, and the simple truth-that the child had been put up for adoption and I had no idea where she was-didn’t satisfy her. She kept hounding me for answers. I had to tell her something.”
“And?”
“I made up a little story that would provide a sense of closure. So I said I had seen her little girl in the Catonsville area-they have such pretty houses over there, lovely old Victorians. I knew Alice would like that. I said the baby had wonderful parents and she was beautiful, with café-au-lait skin and amber hair, which fell in ringlets. Oh-and that she had a birthmark on her left shoulder blade, like a little shadow of her heart.”