“You don’t need to come in with me,” she said. “The police must have finished their on-site investigation long ago.”
“They took his bedding, a throw rug in front of his bed, made a mess—but I didn’t blame them. They were looking for my son. We thought we could find him.” Alive. John hadn’t believed Peter was dead until they found his body. Most parents didn’t. Hope always lived.
Max hadn’t had that hope with her college roommate Karen. As soon as Karen went missing, she knew the worst had happened. And any glimmer of hope died when the police found the crime scene stained with so much blood no one could have survived such a brutal attack. And though they’d never found Karen’s body, Max had never harbored hope that she was still alive. Not then, and not now, ten years later.
“Other than you and Blair,” Max asked, “did they find any fingerprints in the room?”
“Jordan, our babysitter. Jane, our housekeeper. She comes in once a week.”
“What day does Jane come?”
“Fridays. But not anymore.”
“You fired her? She quit?”
“She quit. She came in after—after the police said we could go into Peter’s room. She came in to clean up and started crying. Told me she couldn’t, that she was heartbroken.”
“Was that before or after Blair was arrested?”
“Why is that important?”
“It could factor into why she quit.”
“After,” he whispered.
She would get Jane’s contact information and add her to the list of people to talk to.
“You can leave,” she said when they reached Peter’s door.
“I’m okay.” He stood at the threshold.
Peter’s room was spacious and airy like the rest of the house, only this was a room designed with a little boy in mind. Baseball everything—signed balls, photos, a trading card collection that filled a bookshelf. He had a signed poster of some guy from the Arizona Diamondbacks framed over his bed, and a poster of a young Derek Jeter from the Yankees—being a New Yorker for more than a decade, Max would have to be living under a rock not to have recognized him, even though her knowledge of baseball was limited.
The top shelf of Peter’s bookshelf held classic children’s books like Tom Sawyer and The Swiss Family Robinson—Max had read many of them, but it was clear these copies had never been touched. On a lower shelf were a collection of worn choose-your-own-adventure and Goosebumps books and an extensive collection of equally worn Marvel comics. Peter had a preference for Captain America and Spider-Man. Polar opposites in many ways, Max thought, one handsome and strong and patriotic, the other a quiet geek who wore a mask and kept his identity secret.
From the press reports, Peter had been kidnapped from his bedroom between midnight and 2:00 A.M. The family had an alarm system, but only used it when they weren’t home. The monitoring company had confirmed the pattern of use. John and Blair had gone to a party at the clubhouse and the teenage daughter of a neighbor who was also at the party came over to babysit Peter. Jordan Fellows was their regular babysitter and had known the family since they moved in five years before.
According to the public statement, the Caldwells had left the house just after 8:00 P.M. on a Saturday night at the end of April. Because it was the weekend, Peter was allowed to stay up and watch a movie with Jordan. She put him into bed at ten fifteen, and said she’d checked on him just before midnight because she’d heard him use the bathroom, which adjoined his bedroom. She saw him climbing back into his bed half-asleep, so she shut the door and went back to the kitchen where she was studying. John and Blair came home at two in the morning. They’d walked from the clubhouse. Blair had gone to check on Peter and he wasn’t in his bed. They searched the house, the backyard, the pool, and called 911.
Jordan had been a high school senior at the time. She was now a freshman at the University of Arizona. Max had reached out to her, but she hadn’t returned Max’s calls.
Peter had a bathroom off his room. It was functional and the only kid accents were a bath mat shaped as a dinosaur and a matching dinosaur toothbrush holder and cup.
Two large windows connected at the corner and looked out into the side yard as well as a grassy area behind the house. Each was screened and locked from the inside. Jordan had said she hadn’t checked the windows and didn’t remember if they were cracked open or closed. There was no direct line of sight to the neighbors, and while the golf course backed up to the Caldwell house, the course had closed at sunset.
There was also a sliding-glass door that went out to the patio. Why had the reports said the killer went in through the window? Evidence outside? The door would have been easier, though perhaps harder to get open.
Max crossed the room, unlocked the door, and opened it. A beep-beep sounded throughout the house.
“Child safety beeps—even when the alarm is off, the doors that go out to the pool beep.” John’s voice cracked. Max looked over at him and saw silent tears.
Max had seen enough. She walked out, leading John down the hall. “The public reports said Peter had been taken out of one of the windows, but there was no indication if it was forced or open.”
“We live in a safe neighborhood—Scottsdale is one of the safest communities in Arizona. Affluent. We have a gated community. Gated. Safe.” He shook his head, as if realizing he was repeating himself. “Peter liked to sleep with his window open.”
“Your babysitter couldn’t remember if it was open or closed—if it was wide open, wouldn’t she have noticed it?”
“Probably, I don’t know.”
Maybe, maybe not. Especially on a mildly warm night like the night in April when Peter was killed. Max had checked the weather report—the temperature at midnight was seventy-one degrees. The low was at 5:00 A.M., a “crisp” sixty-six degrees.
Max didn’t have access to the coroner’s report, but the news reports indicated that Peter’s body had been found buried in a sand pit on the edge of the golf course. Max had mapped it out based on the written report and the crime scene photos that had been available through both print and television media. The killer would had to have taken Peter—subdued or unconscious or already dead—across the golf course. That suggested they knew the area, at least marginally. But anyone who might have been outside in their backyard could have seen them, and even though it was late, there had been the annual golf membership party at the clubhouse and more people than residents had been in the community.