The Tulip Eaters

“Yes, of course.” Impatience rose in her. “Who was he? How did he know my mother? Do you have any idea why he killed her?”

Richards shrugged. “We asked the Dutch police to obtain a warrant to search his home, which they did yesterday. All they found was a bed and a few chairs. Looked like he hadn’t been there in a while.”

All she wanted now was to jump up from the bench and run—somewhere! It was maddening getting these useless bits of information in drips and drabs.

She stood and paced. “Are they going to find his family? He must have children, friends, maybe an employer. Someone will know why he did this and who was with him. And who took Rose!”

Richards flicked his cigarette on the ground and looked up at her. His eye twitched. Nora stopped. She remembered that twitching when he first saw her mother’s body on the floor. When she was hysterical about Rose and he tried to calm her down. “What is it? What aren’t you telling me?”

Richards avoided her eyes. “It looks like we’re at another dead end.”

“What do you mean?” She made him meet her eyes.

“We just got another call from Dutch Immigration,” he said quietly. “Apparently the ‘Wim Bakker’ whose information was on the passport is not the man who killed your mother.”

“But that doesn’t make sense!”

“The Dutch police have confirmed that Wim Bakker is a heroin dealer who was arrested when he went through Immigration in Amsterdam six months ago. He is now in prison.”

Nora shook her head several times. She needed the puzzle pieces to fit and they didn’t. “But how would this man who killed my mother get his hands on a fake passport?”

Richards stubbed his cigarette out on the grass and straightened. “Dutch Immigration says that because of Bakker’s incarceration, the killer could have gotten it anywhere. When a Dutch citizen is wanted for arrest, the typical protocol is for his passport number and photograph to be placed on a list for the Immigration agents to check in case the criminal tries to leave or enter the country. If the agent finds such a number on the list, they’re supposed to confiscate the passport and immediately alert airport security so the suspect can be taken into custody.”

“So why didn’t that happen?” Nora was furious. “Why was he permitted to go to Schiphol, waltz through Immigration, take a transatlantic flight and enter the U.S.?”

“Because he had an excellent forgery. He replaced his photograph with that of Wim Bakker, but he didn’t change the fingerprints.”

“But wasn’t the passport number the same?”

Richards shook his head. “One digit was altered.”

“How could that happen? Are they just idiots? People must try to get away with this all the time.”

“They told us that the forgery must have been done by a professional.”

“The black market?”

Again Richards shrugged. “They don’t know. Whoever did it had specific knowledge of the special papers and symbols used, the particular sequence of numbers and precisely what information was required.”

“Are the Dutch police going to figure this out?”

“It’s out of their jurisdiction. Immigration is in charge and they’re looking into it.”

Nora sat and felt her shoulders sag with hopelessness. “That’s the Dutch way of saying that they’ve done all they’re going to do.”

Richards stood. “I wish I had better news.”

Nora turned away, forcing herself not to cry. She heard her voice come out in a defeated whisper. “Me, too.”

They walked silently back to her car. Before Richards turned off the path toward his own vehicle, Nora grasped his arm. “What about prints? Did the crime investigators find any?”

Richards shook his head. “We have the killer’s prints, obviously.”

“No, no! I mean the kidnapper. He didn’t necessarily wear gloves, did he? Surely he touched something—the front doorknob, the furniture, maybe even Rose’s bassinet.”

“Well, if the killer wore gloves, we have to assume his accomplice did, too. Besides, we’ve dusted the entire place,” he said wearily. “We did find a few latents, but the FBI isn’t ready to say anything until they’ve run them through Quantico.”

“And when in hell will that be?”

Richards looked at her, surprised. “Soon, Nora. We’re pressuring them.”

Nora thought a moment. “What about footprints?”

“It appears that there was a struggle and movement on the staircase to your mother’s bedroom, and other footprints in the entryway and dining room.”

She looked up at him, feeling almost hopeful. “Maybe they were looking for something. Maybe that’s why they were all over the house?”

Richards shook his head. “We combed the house thoroughly taking prints, seeing if anything seemed to be disturbed. But other than the furniture that was in disarray, nothing else was tossed. When you confirmed that your mother’s jewelry and other valuables were still in the house, it might fit the profile of a robbery gone wrong. That might account for your mother’s murder, but it doesn’t explain the kidnapping. The last thing a robber caught red-handed would do is to take off with an infant.”

“Maybe they didn’t find what they were looking for and the struggle got out of hand before they could.”

“Who knows? It still doesn’t make sense that the accomplice didn’t steal something.”

“Except my child.” She shook her head. “I can’t imagine that my mother would let Rose out of her sight or out of her arms, no matter what the struggle.” She looked up at Richards and finally let her tears fall. She was furious to feel so helpless.

Richards took Nora’s shaking hands into his own. They were warm, but Nora drew no comfort from them. He probably does this for every mother with a missing child, she thought. She withdrew and began pacing again. If she kept her feet moving, maybe something else would come to her. Something had to come to her.

“Once the FBI processes the prints we found in the house, we’ll send them on to the Netherlands. Maybe the killer had a record and they are on file. Maybe the partials we found—they must have belonged to the accomplice—will turn something up, as well.”

“You told me it was unlikely that latent prints would do us much good.”

“We’ll see.”

“‘We’ll see, we’ll see.’ That’s all I ever hear from you people.”

She stood and started to walk to her car. She flung a look back at Richards and spit out her next words. “I’m sick of this. No one is doing enough. You don’t have one damned lead about my daughter and she’s been gone for three days. I’m going to figure this out for myself.” She flung open the car door and started to climb in.

Richards held the door open. “Nora, wait!” His voice brooked no argument. “You can’t do that. You don’t have the resources to track this down and you’ll just do more harm than good.”

Nora yanked on the door, but he held it fast. “Let go,” she said in a menacing voice.

“Obviously, this isn’t the time for us to continue this conversation,” he said tersely. “We’ll discuss it later. But there’s one last thing you need to keep in mind. You have no choice right now but to stay at home.”

“And why is that?”

“Because you have to be there if the kidnapper calls.”

Nora got in and slammed the door closed. She felt a cold resolve as she rolled down the window and met his hard glance. “You know as well as I do that if that bastard wanted a ransom, he would have called days ago.” She refused to give way to tears. “I’m going to find my daughter. You tell your people to lead, follow or get the fuck out of my way.”