“The other man stabbed Dylan,” Sidney said when Dylan didn’t immediately respond. “He’s lucky he wasn’t killed.”
He felt Alice’s anxious stare on his profile. “I woke up in a hospital bed the next afternoon,” Dylan said gruffly.
“How bad were the injuries?” Alice asked.
He shrugged. “Pretty bad. But I was fourteen, and healthy, and I healed fast enough.”
“That’s where you got those scars,” Alice said, glancing down to the side of his torso. He nodded.
“I was afraid to ask you about them. Why didn’t I before?” she said almost to herself, shaking her head slightly. His concern mounted.
“Are you okay?” he asked her pointedly. She nodded and cleared her throat.
“Do you want some more water?” he asked.
“No,” she said distractedly. “Did you see them? The kidnappers?”
“They were wearing masks and hats. All I could give the police and the FBI was my best guess on their heights and weights and their clothing descriptions.”
“And a description of the damage you managed to give the man you tackled with your fist,” Sidney added dryly.
“It wasn’t enough,” Dylan said.
“It was more than most grown men could have done, being attacked like that unexpectedly by men willing to kill to accomplish their crime. You were only a boy, Dylan.”
A flash of irritation went through him at Sidney’s familiar litany. It’d been Alan’s regular speech as well.
“So the kidnappers were never caught or found?” Alice asked.
“Dylan found them,” Sidney said. “Just recently. One of them was dying, and the other was already dead. Both of them are dead now. They died in two different Michigan penitentiaries.”
“But I thought you said they weren’t caught.”
“Do you really want to hear this part now?” Dylan asked her doubtfully.
She nodded. Damn it, he was having trouble reading her. He looked at Sidney, who nodded once. He sighed and continued.
“One of the men was brought in to a Detroit police station for a serious assault charge ten months after Addie Durand was kidnapped. He had multiple arrests on his record, but none, including this arrest, had anything to do with the Durand case. The FBI’s investigation into the Durand kidnapping had been cooling fast as the weeks passed by, and then months. The expected ransom note never came. Leads to Addie or her kidnappers never panned out.”
A weariness hit him as he said the words. Maybe it was a remembered pain of all those months and years of waiting as hope slowly faded until it was nothing but an aching, cruel memory. Or maybe that pain lived in his bones still, and had knitted to the very fabric of them.
As if to fortify himself, he looked at Alice’s face.
“This man’s name was Jim Stout, and when they brought him in to the police station, he was intoxicated. He was put into a holding cell so that he could sober up before he was interrogated. But while he was still drunk, he confessed to the kidnapping of Addie Durand to one of the arresting officers. Apparently, he confessed because he was under the mistaken impression the Durand kidnapping was why he was being arrested. He wanted to make it clear that while he was one of the kidnappers, he’d never murdered the girl.”
“Murdered?” Alice asked. She looked blank with shock.
“According to Stout, Addie Durand had died when his partner, a man by the name of Avery Cunningham, had accidentally administered a lethal dose of the sedative they’d planned to use to keep her under control following the kidnapping. Stout was blabbing, panicked, and drunk to boot, because he didn’t want to have the charge of child murderer pinned on him. He soon passed out in the cell. When he woke up, and was confronted with his confession, everything was different. He must have realized how stupid he’d been to confess such a thing when he didn’t understand his current charges or have a lawyer present to protect him. He recanted, and no matter how much they pushed and pried, neither the police, the district attorney, nor the FBI could get him to open up ever again about a hint of Addie Durand.”
“I don’t understand,” Alice said, and Dylan once again heard that hollow shock in her tone. He glanced at Sidney doubtfully, but the doctor was studying Alice’s face closely. Feeling highly uneasy, he placed his hand above Alice’s knee and squeezed slightly. She was wearing shorts. It was good to touch her, skin to skin. “What about the other man?” she asked. “The one Stout said killed that little girl?”
“Cunningham was already in prison on a separate murder charge,” Dylan said. “He’d killed a man a few months before when he’d been whacked out on amphetamines. Cunningham denied everything Stout had referred to during his drunk confession. To make a very long story short, a trail could never be picked up that provided sufficient evidence to make a formal charge against the two men. The FBI and police were convinced, however, that these two were the kidnappers of Adelaide Durand. And they believed they were also responsible for her murder.”
Beneath his hand, he felt Alice’s skin roughen.
“They just got away with it?” she croaked.
“It wasn’t like they went scot-free,” Sidney said. “Cunningham already had a life term. Stout’s assault charge was for a beating that had nearly been fatal. Given his past arrest record and the general suspicion that he was likely one of Adelaide Durand’s kidnappers and an accomplice to her murderer … well, let’s just say the judge made it certain that Stout wasn’t ever going to walk outside a prison’s walls.”