“He saw the light?” she asked, stunned.
His gaze snapped to meet hers. “Avery Cunningham was a liar, a drug addict, and a murderer. He was the lowest common denominator of society. After he supposedly underwent this miraculous ‘conversion,’ he nearly tore a man apart with his bare hands while he was high on crystal meth. Cunningham’s supposed redemption didn’t help his victim a bit. He was playing me with that story, painting a picture of himself as he lay on his death bed, trying to convince himself as much as me that he had a sliver of humanity left in him.”
“What did he do with Addie after he pulled her from the creek?” Alice whispered, dread and curiosity waging battle in her brain.
“He made a phone call to an old friend.”
Goose bumps rose on her arms. Something Dylan had told her last week leapt into her brain to mingle with the new information. Cunningham was already in prison on a separate murder charge. He’d killed a man a few months before when he’d been whacked out on methamphetamines. That, and Dylan’s tight-lipped wariness at the moment told her what she dreaded.
“Cunningham knew Sissy, didn’t he?” She turned to him when he didn’t immediately respond. “She was his meth dealer?”
He nodded once.
Alice felt a little numb, but she wasn’t surprised by the news. Not really. Men and women of the caliber of Avery Cunningham regularly pulled up into the drive of their shabby, garbage-strewn double-wide in Little Paradise. It was voices like theirs—rough, guttural, and at times, savage—that Alice regularly heard vibrating through the walls of her bedroom. That was Alice’s life. She was a mouse cowering in a den of pythons, constantly trying to disguise her vulnerability, to make herself darker and tougher than she was.
“Apparently, Sissy and Cunningham went way back,” Dylan said. “They met in Cook County Juvenile Detention Center back in the eighties.”
Alice swallowed thickly, trying to absorb this strange reality. Jesus. Had she and Cunningham ever been in the trailer at the same time? Typical Sissy, to welcome her daughter’s kidnapper and would-be murderer into their home with open arms. Cunningham had been an old crime buddy and paying customer, after all.
“According to Cunningham, Addie was pretty banged up after he fished her out of the creek,” Dylan continued gruffly. “She was drifting in and out of consciousness when he put her back in the car. At some point, she must have come to, though. He said he fed her while they were on the road. I think it was at that point that Cunningham realized something miraculous had happened. Addie was amnesic not only in regard to the kidnapping and Cunningham’s attempted murder, but also to her own identity. Sidney assures me that given the physical trauma she endured, in addition to all the psychological stress and fear, amnesia is a very realistic coping mechanism, especially for such a small child. Sidney thinks it also could have just been the fall that caused the amnesia, the heavy sedatives she’d been given, the trauma, or maybe it was a combination of all those things. For Cunningham, it must have been like the slate had been wiped clean of all his sins toward her. He also must have realized that in the state she was in, Addie would be less likely to betray him if they got her medical care. She couldn’t even remember her own name.”
“They told her that her name was Alice, and she believed it,” she said dully.
“There’s no reason she wouldn’t,” Dylan said forcefully. “She was a traumatized, injured, tiny little girl who had been ripped from her parents and almost died at the hands of a ruthless criminal.”
Alice nodded, trying to disguise her unrest. “Go on.”
His nostrils flared slightly as he stared at her, obviously reluctant.
“Please, Dylan.”
He briefly shut his eyes and inhaled. “Cunningham put a call in to Sissy and they agreed to meet at a hotel in Michigan City, Indiana. Sissy helped him put a dark rinse on Addie’s hair. Addie’s hair was a remarkable color—a rose gold. They needed to hide that telltale characteristic.”
Alice shook her head slowly. “For as long as I can remember, Sissy put a rinse on my hair. When I got a little older, she told me she’d been abused as a girl. She said she didn’t want me to be obvious pr
ey, there in Little Paradise. She was the one who taught me to hide myself. Darken my hair, hide my body, make myself look tougher. It was actually one of the few useful things she’d ever told me,” Alice said with a rough bark of laughter. “And now, I find out she had an ulterior motive, even for that. She was trying to disguise my identity, not protect me.”
“I’m sorry,” Dylan said after a pause.
She pulled herself out of her thoughts and focused on him.
“Go on.”
“Addie’s amnesia didn’t remit, and Sissy ended up taking her to a local ER. Her lack of memory made things easier. Whatever they told her—”
“Became reality,” Alice filled in, anger entering her tone. “That’s my first memory—or at least it was before coming here—waking up in the hospital,” she said, staring into space as she relived that fuzzy memory, now through an unveiled mind’s eye. Shivers of dread crawled beneath her skin. That feeling of belonging to strangers, to people whom she had nothing remotely in common with had started there, in those moments when she’d awakened in that hospital bed.
“Alice?” Dylan asked uncertainly.
She blinked. She realized she was hugging herself as if for warmth. Steeling herself, she dropped her arms.
“And Cunningham just gave Addie”—me, she screamed silently in her head—“to Sissy to raise after that? Why?”
Dylan shook his head slowly. “All I have there is speculation. I told you what Cunningham claimed. He says he regretted kidnapping and hurting that little girl . . . almost killing her. He didn’t want to continue in his mission, but was too much of a coward to take her back and risk getting arrested. But I think he also needed a female accomplice, and thought of Sissy. As the only witness, I’d told the police and FBI about the two males I’d witnessed who took Addie. They wore masks and hats, but I was positive that they were both men. A woman claiming to be Addie’s mother in the emergency room would have been less suspicious.”
“But why then give Addie to Sissy to raise on a permanent basis? I know you don’t know exactly why he did it, but you must suspect something,” Alice implored, desperate to understand.
He was sitting forward now, his elbows resting on his spread knees. He looked down at his clasped hands.