Chapter 4: The Tape
The recording was dated March 18, 2005.
One day after Nathan disappeared.
Thomas sounded exhausted.
Charles sounded angry.
“You told me the baby was safe,” Thomas said.
“He is.”
“Then bring him back.”
“It’s too late.”
Margaret gripped the recorder until her knuckles turned white.
On the tape, Thomas began to cry.
“I only wanted to frighten her. I never agreed to this.”
Detective Brooks paused the recording.
“What did he want to frighten you about?”
Margaret sat slowly.
Twenty years of marriage passed through her mind.
Thomas had been controlling, proud, and terrified of scandal.
But she had never believed him capable of harming their child.
Then she remembered the weeks before the birth.
“I told Thomas I was leaving him.”
Emily stared at her mother.
“You were getting divorced?”
Margaret nodded.
“He had been drinking. Gambling. Losing money through investments Charles arranged. I told him I would take Emily and the baby.”
On the recording, Charles spoke again.
“If she leaves you, she takes half the company.”
Thomas replied, “I don’t care about the company anymore. Find my son.”
Charles’s voice became cold.
“You should have thought of that before you asked me to solve your problem.”
The tape ended.
Brooks looked toward the empty doorway.
“This wasn’t a kidnapping for ransom.”
Margaret understood.
“It was leverage.”
Charles had arranged for the baby to disappear temporarily, believing Margaret would stay with Thomas out of fear and dependence.
But something had gone wrong.
Nathan had never been returned.
Police traced Charles’s phone.
The final signal came from an abandoned lakeside property owned by the Whitman family.
They found Charles inside an old boathouse.
He was sitting in a chair with blood on his temple.
A woman stood behind him holding a pistol.
She was in her late sixties, with silver hair and a nurse’s steady hands.
Laura recognized her photograph immediately.
Evelyn Cross.
The nurse who had sold Nathan.
Evelyn pressed the gun against Charles’s neck.
“Tell them to leave,” she said.
Charles looked at Margaret.
“I’m sorry.”
Evelyn smiled.
“He isn’t sorry yet.”
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Then she revealed the final secret.
“Nathan wasn’t the only baby taken that night.”
