“Can you tell me what time the cradle alarm sounded?” Angie prompted. She’d heard her father’s side of the story. Now she wanted as many other viewpoints as possible.
“It was around midnight,” the nurse said softly. “As Christmas Eve turned into Christmas morning—just before the cathedral bells started to peal. I was busy at the nurses’ station when the alarm rang. We’d experienced false alarms before—sometimes curious folks would open the door just to see what was inside. But that night was different.” Jenny stared into the bassinet, a distant look entering her eyes, as though she were seeing right back into the past. “I opened the doors, and . . . the little girl just sat there, staring at me, blood pouring from her mouth as she clutched that stuffy bear. I . . . it was a shock, like nothing I’ve experienced.” Jenny paused, collecting herself. “She must have been taken from some place of shelter in a great hurry given that she was so underdressed for the weather. No time to even put on her shoes. And I imagine she did own shoes because the soles of her feet seemed in fairly good condition. She was very thin, though.”
“What happened next?” Angie prodded.
“I yelled for help. ER staff rushed to my assistance. We got her into surgery, controlled the bleeding while checking vitals. The doctor on duty sutured her mouth. A nurse trained in forensics was called in. She . . . uh . . .”
“Did a rape kit?”
“Basically, yes. And took photos while we worked. Our primary focus, however, was patient care. Then the police arrived, asked questions. A pediatrician was brought in, and a social worker. Signs of malnourishment and possible vitamin D deficiency were present. I don’t think she spent much time outdoors in sunlight. Her age was estimated to be around four—dental calcification and eruption, long bone growth, epiphyseal development, closure of growth plates and bones—it all happens at a fairly predictable pace. However, she was small for her estimated age.”
Tension coiled like a serpent in Angie’s belly. With a very carefully measured voice, she said, “So there were signs of neglect.”
“Long term, in my opinion. Perhaps her whole life.”
Angie inhaled slowly. “And . . . evidence of sexual abuse?”
“We found no overt signs of sexual trauma. No anal or vaginal tearing or perineal bruising. But that doesn’t always mean . . .” Jenny cleared her throat and reached into her pocket, extracting a tissue. “There were contusions on her body. Some older, some more recent. Some on the insides of her thighs. Evidence of a fractured left radius that had gone untreated.” She blew her nose. “I’m sorry. There’s always the one case that gets to you. For me, this was it.”
“I know,” Angie said quickly. “I work in the sex crimes unit on the island. I know how it feels to be faced with an innocent child, or a young woman, helpless in the face of adult abuse, neglect.” She knew it with every molecule of her being, that feeling. It was why she’d become a cop. It was what kept her in sex crimes. It was what got her out of bed every morning. But not in her wildest dreams had she ever thought that her drive—her fierce passion for justice in special victim crimes—might have been shaped and fueled by her own suppressed childhood traumas, a life of abuse that she might have endured before she was found here, in the arms of Saint Peter’s cradle, on that Christmas Eve. A past she could not remember.
Jenny’s lips flattened, and she nodded. “While we were working on the child, others apparently heard gunshots and screams outside the church, around the same time as the bells started. Someone said they’d heard a woman scream. Some witnesses heard tires screeching. Police interviewed everyone who’d come out of Midnight Mass and some people from the restaurants across Front Street. One of our orderlies who had been taking a smoke break out on a balcony upstairs reported seeing a dark van racing down the street, but he didn’t know it had been the cause of the squealing tires. Apart from that, no one seems to have witnessed anything else. Back in the eighties, the streets in this area of the city were pretty empty at that time of night.”
“What evidence, specifically, did the VPD investigators ask you to keep quiet about?”
Jenny hesitated as she cast her mind back. “There was a sweater, left in the cradle with the child.” She wiped her hand across her mouth as if to obliterate something that suddenly tasted bad. “A purple woman’s cardigan—buttons down the front. Size medium. Common Sears brand at the time. We figured it had been put inside the cradle to keep the girl warm.” A pause. “There were some really long dark-brown hairs caught in the fabric and some short dark-blonde ones. There was also what looked and felt like small amounts of drying semen.”
A sickness stirred in Angie’s gut. “What made you think it was semen?”
“It fluoresced under UV light, which would have been due to the presence of molecules such as flavin and choline-conjugated proteins, indicative of seminal fluid.”
“They bagged this sweater and took it into evidence?”
“Along with photos of everything, plus the girl’s dress, underwear, the teddy bear, and the rape kit. They took samples from the blood smeared on the outside of the cradle door, and they found two bullets, one they dug out of the wall, and there were some shell casings. None of which we could talk to the press about.”
Which meant there would have been a ballistics report, lab serology results, ABO blood type analysis, microscopic hair analysis—evidence now gone forever thanks to outdated police policy. Angie swore softly. “That old evidence could be retested today using modern DNA technology not available in the mideighties.”
“I’m so sorry.”
Angie sucked in a deep breath. “And the child didn’t utter a word, not once? The whole time she was here?”
“No. And we didn’t know whether that was because of shock or a lifetime of neglect—under those circumstances delayed speech is not uncommon. When no one came forward, and she couldn’t, or wouldn’t, tell us her name, the cops started calling her Janie, as in little Jane Doe. She stayed at the hospital a few weeks before being released to the system. While she remained here in our care, social workers and a psychologist visited regularly. Police tried many times to question her with their assistance, but Janie Doe just stared at them. A forensic artist also came to do a sketch. She drew Janie without the wound across her mouth, and that illustration was published in all the papers, put up in posters around town, and run on the television news—all asking if anyone knew this child.”
“I saw that sketch in one of the digitized articles,” Angie said quietly. “So they did all that and still no clues?”
“It ate at me, Angie,” Jenny said. “It consumed all of us who’d worked ER that night and who’d helped nurse our little Jane Doe back to health.” A strange look crept into the old nurse’s features. She cast a quick glance over her shoulder. “I know I shouldn’t have done it. But I did.” Quickly, she dug into her tote and removed an unsealed envelope. She held it out to Angie.