In Death 23 - Born in Death

didn’t want to talk about it, I didn’t press.”
    “If you think of anything, even if it doesn’t seem important, I want you to contact me. Twenty-four/seven.”
    “I will. We love Tandy. All of us will do anything we can to help.”
     
    E ve tried another hunch and contacted Tandy’s midwife.
    “This is Randa.”
    “Randa Tillas, Lieutenant Dallas.”
    “Tandy.”
    “Nothing yet.”
    “Well, damn it.” She was a striking black woman with the faintest hint of the islands in her voice. Her rich brown eyes filled with concern. “I contacted members of her birthing circle, in case she was spending a couple of days with one of them. But no one’s heard from her since Wednesday.”
    “Any member of that circle have a problem pregnancy?”
    “I’ve got one with high blood pressure and another on bed rest, but nothing major, no.”
    “Maybe a birthing coach who’s had trouble conceiving, or carrying to full term.”
    “I don’t have full medical on coaches, but that sort of thing usually comes up during the class. I’d try to discourage coaching by anyone who might be in a dark place. It wouldn’t be good for them, or the mother.”
    “Did she ever talk to you about the baby’s father?”
    “Some, yes. It’s important for me to know as much as the mother is comfortable telling me. For a single mother, more so. Especially one, like Tandy, without family support.”
    “Can you tell me what she told you about him?”
    “I’m treading a line here, but I’m worried enough I’m stepping over it. He was someone she dated for about a year back in London. I think she was very much in love with him. The pregnancy was unplanned, and wasn’t something he wanted or was looking for. She decided it was something she wanted, so she broke things off and moved to the U.S.”
    “Long way to go.”
    “I thought so, but she said she’d wanted everything fresh, and it seemed reasonable. I’d say she’s very resolved to have this baby and to raise it on her own, with no murky feelings toward the father. She was very spare on the details about him, but she did slip once or twice and call him by name. Aaron.”
    “That helps. Thanks. Anything else, contact me.”
    “I’m going to go through my file on her, and ask the other members of the team if she spoke to them about anything that seems important. We all want her and the baby back, safe and healthy.”

14
    SHE WENT OVER THE DATA PEABODY SENT TO her computer on like crimes. IRCCA had popped a few for her. Abductions, abduction/murders, rapes, rape/ murders. Abductions where the baby had been delivered then stolen, and the mother left behind.
    Alive or dead.
    In the majority of the abductions, the woman had known her kidnapper, or had had previous contact.
    Eve separated them into known or unknown, into family strife, cases where the abductor had been mentally ill, and those done for profit.
    She culled out the rapes into a separate file.
    Then she worked them geographically.
    There had been cases in New York with similar elements, and those involving family members of the victim she separated out again. She set aside those cases where the perpetrator was doing time, earmarking those to check other family members, and any possible contact with Tandy.
    She outlined Missing Person cases where the investigator found the woman had gone into a shelter to escape an abusive relationship, or simply walked out. And others where neither mother nor child had ever been found.
    Because Tandy had come from London, Eve moved there next. A smattering of like cases again, but none that had any outward link to hers.
    So she branched out to Europe.
    The most interesting was a case, still open, in Rome where the missing woman had walked out of her regular OB exam in her thirty-sixth week, and poofed. Like Tandy, earlier in the pregnancy she had relocated to another city, moving from Florence three months before she went missing. She was single, had no family in that area. She’d been healthy, and lived alone. Unlike Tandy, this woman had applied for and received paid maternity leave during her second trimester.
    A struggling artist, she had been in the process of finishing a mural of a fairyland on the walls of the nursery she’d outfitted in her apartment.
    Or was it ‘flat’ in Italy, too? Eve wondered.
    Sophia Belego had been missing for nearly two years. Gone without a trace.
    After making a note of the investigator’s name, Eve stewed over the time difference.