When I Found You Read Online Free PDF Page B

shouldn’t have given you any information at all. We haven’t even had time to notify her next of kin yet. I’ll have to have a firm talk with the guy who told me you were her father. He’s put me in quite an awkward position.”
    Oh, poor Mrs. Bates, Nathan thought. Her daughter dead, and here she didn’t even know the news yet. And Nathan did. It seemed sad, somehow, that he should be feeling pity for her before she even knew she’d become a pitiable figure. Well, an
even more
pitiable figure.
    “I never said anything to suggest I was her father, I assure you.”
    “Well, bad assumption on his part, I guess. Maybe he figured nobody else would visit her. But it was highly unprofessional, let me tell you. You could help me out a great deal, Mr… .”
    “McCann.”
    “… Mr. McCann, if you could keep this under your hat for a couple of hours. The media will be all over this soon enough, but it’s very important that her next of kin be notified properly before they hear it on the radio or read about it in the paper. I’m sure you understand.”
    “I have far too much respect for poor Mrs. Bates to allow such a thing to happen to her.”
    “Thank you. Well, not to be rude, but I’d best get going on doing this difficult thing all over again. Can you find your way back to the parking lot?”
    “I’m certain I can,” Nathan said, and rose to go.
    “Mr. McCann,” the detective said. Before Nathan could get out the door.
    Nathan turned back. Watched a swirl of dust motes, stirred by his movement, fly in the beam of light from the broken window. Wondered what the detective would do for warmth when the snow began to fly.
    “If you don’t mind my asking, Mr. McCann, what were you going to say to her?”
    Nathan pulled on his leather gloves as they spoke. “Say to her?”
    “Yes. I just wondered — for purely personal reasons, mind you — about the purpose of your visit. I mean, here she did this unimaginable thing and left you to clean up from it, and I just wondered what you came to say to her.”
    “Nothing, really. I had nothing to say to her. I was hoping she would have something to say to me.”
    “Ah. I see. You wanted to know why. Why the woods? Why not a hospital? Or an orphanage? Why not put the kid in a basket and leave it on somebody’s doorstep?”
    “Yes, exactly.”
    “Well, don’t think you’re the only one who wanted to know. Don’t think she didn’t hear the question plenty. From all the detectives who questioned her. And from the other inmates. Lots of the women in here are mothers. In fact, we had to keep her apart from the general population for her own safety. But we had no way to keep her so far apart that she couldn’t hear the comments.”
    “And what did she have to say in her own defense?”
    “Nothing. Not a word.”
    “She never spoke?”
    “Not a word. So maybe she had a reason but wasn’t saying. But my theory? My theory is that she didn’t know the answer herself. World is full of people so troubled they don’t even understand themselves. You could offer them a thousand dollars to explain their motivations, but they can’t tell you what they don’t know. And most of those miserable creatures find their way through here soon enough. So, I’m sorry, Mr. McCann. If there was a reason, it died with her. But if you ask me, it’s a question that never had an answer. Because there’s just no explanation that makes a lick of sense.”
    “I suppose you’re right,” Nathan said. And stood mute for a moment. “But she wasn’t the only one in on it. There was the boyfriend as well. I wonder what he would say.”
    “If you’re willing to put up with another of my theories … Day before yesterday his mother came in and made bail. Mortgaged her house to make bail for the boy. Now, it’s just a gut feeling, mind you. Call it a detective’s intuition. But I’m hoping that poor woman has family to take her in when she loses that house. Because I saw the look in