Mercy, page 7
“Mrs. Atkins?”
“Yes?” The voice was now both worried and intrigued.
“I’m with the FBI. I’d like to talk to you.”
“The FBI? Is this some sort of joke?”
“No, it’s not.” Pine took out her shield and placed it against the dirty sidelight next to the door. She could see a woman’s blurred, wrinkled face studying the FBI badge through the glass.
“Okay, what is this about?”
“Your son, Joe Atkins.”
“Joe? He’s long since dead.”
“I know. That’s what we want to talk to you about. Please, it’s important.”
They could hear the lock being turned back and the door slowly opened.
Wanda Atkins was nearly eighty now, shriveled and withered by the years into something both hard and soft. She had on khaki pants and a white blouse, and wore thick white orthopedic shoes that looked as though they weighed about two pounds each. She was also using a metal cane with a curved handle and a wide bottom for support. Her hair had been permed beyond all reasonable recovery, with tufts missing and revealing pink scalp underneath. Her face was a mass of embedded concentric lines, and her eyes were set deep in the shrunken hollows of the sockets. Still, they were youngish eyes paired with the tanned skin and bedlam of wrinkles; the effect was a bit unnerving, like Pine was watching the woman age right in front of her.
She had a cannula in her nose, and a long oxygen line connected to it went down to the floor and then out of sight into the house.
“Now what is this about Joe?”
“May we come in?” asked Pine.
Atkins glanced at Blum, who said, “We’re just here for information, Mrs. Atkins.”
Perhaps comforted by Blum’s age and innocuous appearance, Atkins stepped back so they could move into the house. They were immediately hit by mingled odors of bleach, mustiness, and fried foods.
“You’ll have to excuse me. I have to give Len his medication,” said Atkins, moving past them. “He needs them right on time.”
They followed her into the next room. The house was cluttered with cardboard boxes stacked up and piles of unread, folded newspapers and magazines and what looked to be insurance and medical papers. Dust had accumulated on every surface that Pine could see. Two large oxygen tanks sat in holders against one wall, along with a portable oxygen concentrator that was connected to the line attached to Atkins’s cannula; there were also boxes of tubing and what looked to be a CPAP machine on a table. Two aluminum walkers were perched against a wall. A blood pressure monitor hung on a stand, and a gurney with collapsible sides was set against another wall. Prescription bottles lined one table and sat next to an elongated pill dispenser organized by days of the week. The dispenser’s bins were chock-full of pills.
It looked like an ICU room in the suburbs.
Strapped into a wheelchair was, Pine assumed, Len Atkins. His bald head and withered body listed to one side, his tongue was hanging out, and he was drooling onto a bib tied around his neck. He looked like the roughened shell of a human being nearing its expiration date.
Atkins poured some liquid from a brown bottle into a small measuring cup, eyeing the dosage carefully, and then poured that into a glass of water. She then placed a straw in the glass.
“Len? It’s time, sweetie. You need to drink this.”
Len perked up a bit, his gaze running around the room until it found his wife standing right in front of him. She put the straw in his mouth and he started to suck on it. It took about a minute but he got the liquid down. She wiped his mouth and put the glass down.
She turned to them and said in a very low voice, “He had a stroke last year. The doctors say this is as good as he’s going to be. He can’t walk or talk or do much of anything else, really. I think he can understand most things. We have an aide that comes in four times a week. But on days she’s not here, it’s tough. Most times I get the lady next door to help. She’s in her thirties and very strong. And I’m not without disabilities, either.” She glanced at the oxygen tank. “I have pretty bad COPD. Please, God, never pick up a cigarette. It’s not pretty. And I’m ashamed to say I still can’t kick the nicotine habit. But what the hell does it matter now?”
Pine said, “Well, with all this oxygen around, it might matter a lot if some of it leaks.”
“That’s why I vape. No need for matches. We can leave Len here if you want. And talk in the kitchen about Joe.”
“You said he can understand things?” said Pine.
“Yes.”
“Then if you don’t mind, I’d prefer that he listen in.”
Atkins stiffened at this remark, but raised no objection.
Chapter 15
PINE SHIFTED STACKS OF PAPERS and mail out of the way to make room for her and Blum to sit. Atkins perched on a piano bench in front of an old, scarred upright, its row of white keys yellowed by time, too much sunlight, and lack of care.
“Now what’s this about Joe?”
“We’ve been to your old trailer in Georgia,” began Pine. “It’s full of snakes.”
She scowled. “I’m not surprised. We didn’t even bother to sell it. We just left. Nobody would have wanted that thing. Over the years we got all new furniture.”
“And you moved here about, what, eighteen or so years ago?”
“Something like that. Look, what is this about?” she added sharply.
“It’s about this.” Pine took something out of her pocket. It was the photo of Len and Wanda Atkins and Mercy that Pine had found in the attic of Ito Vincenzo’s beach house in New Jersey.
She held it up for Atkins to see. The woman blinked rapidly and then let out a little gasp, her shaky hand going to her quivering lips.
“That’s you and your husband. And this is a woman that you called Rebecca Atkins. But her real name is Mercy. She was kidnapped by a man named Ito Vincenzo from her home in Andersonville, Georgia, and brought to live with you. We know that Ito and your husband served in Vietnam together, and Len saved Ito’s life. So that’s why he brought her to you, I suppose. I’m not sure, but he might have been under the mistaken impression that your husband could never father a child because of the wounds he suffered, not knowing that you already had a son. But at that point in your life I suppose you didn’t want to care for a six-year-old, so you turned her over to Joe and Desiree.”
Atkins’s eyes filled with tears and she put a hand over her mouth and started to cough uncontrollably. Blum rose and hurried into the kitchen, and Pine could hear water running. Then Blum came out with a full glass of water and handed it to Atkins. The woman drank it down and composed herself, taking long breaths, greedily sucking on the supplemental oxygen provided by the cannula.
Pine put the photo away and looked expectantly at the woman. Now that she was finally facing a key person in her sister’s life after the abduction, she was not leaving without making significant progress in her search.
Atkins pulled out a Kleenex from her pants pocket and rubbed her eyes and nose, shifting the cannula to the side to do so.
“Didn’t realize how chunky I was back then,” she said. “I’ve lost quite a bit of weight since that picture was taken, but Len is just as bald as ever.” When she saw Pine staring stonily at her she hurried on. “You’re right. Len knew Ito and did save his life. But we had Joe before Len went to Vietnam. And Ito and Len kept in touch over the years. He knew about our having Joe.”
“Then maybe he came to you because you were the only ones he knew who lived close to Andersonville. But I’m more interested in what took place when Ito brought Mercy to you.”
“He showed up in the middle of the night, pounding on the door, waking us up. Scared the hell out of me. I remember it so clearly. Ito was really shaken up, nervous as hell, almost out of his mind with panic.”
“Where did he say he got Mercy?”
“He said Becky, or Mercy, had been abandoned. That she didn’t have anybody.”
“And did he say how he came to have her?”
“He said he found her on the side of the road, just walking along.”
“And she didn’t tell you otherwise? She was six. She could talk. She knew things. She didn’t tell you that her name was Mercy and that Ito had taken her away from her family?”
“Not that I recall, no,” said Atkins, not meeting her eye. “She was very quiet, didn’t say nothing. I tried to get her to eat or drink something but she wouldn’t. She seemed terrified.”
Pine sat back. “And later you didn’t see all the news coverage and flyers and everything with Mercy’s picture on them? You lived barely two hours from where she was taken. The state of Georgia was saturated with news about her abduction.”
Atkins glanced anxiously at her husband. “I…I don’t…It was such a long time ago and all. And there wasn’t anything about it when Ito showed up with her.”
“Because no one knew she had been abducted at that point. But now comes the big question. Why didn’t Ito, or you, take Mercy to the police? When you find an abandoned child, that’s what you do, right?”
Atkins looked extremely nervous now. “I…I asked Ito that. I said, well, we need to call in the authorities, they’ll know what to do.”
“And how did he respond to that?” asked Blum.
Atkins twisted her hands in her lap and sucked heavily on her oxygen. “At first, he…he said that he had been in foster care growing up and that it would be a nightmare. He said the authorities would do that to her. And she might be abused and heaven knew what else.”
“But that didn’t have to be the only option. They could try to find her parents and see why they had abandoned her, as he claimed,” countered Pine.
“I said that very thing to Ito. And that they might find other relatives who could take her in.”
“And his response?”
Blum added, “And you said, ‘at first’? Does that mean his story changed?”
“Yes, it did. That’s when things started getting really weird. Ito next told us that she really hadn’t been abandoned. He moved us away from the girl so she couldn’t hear and said that the parents had been trying to kill Mercy when he happened by. He rescued her from them, and they ran off. He said they were probably clear out of the state by now.”
“They were trying to kill their own daughter and Ito just happened to be passing by?” Pine said, her tone full of derision. “And why would he care if she heard that or not? If it had really happened, she would have known her parents were trying to kill her!”
“I know how it sounds now,” said Atkins in a defensive tone. “But we had just been woken out of a deep sleep and had a child dropped on us. We weren’t thinking too clearly.”
“I’m sure no one would have been,” said Blum in a soothing tone.
“Thank you for saying that,” said Atkins with a grateful look. She wiped her nose with the Kleenex. “It was all a nightmare.”
“So you believed what Ito said?” asked Pine.
“He was very convincing. And why would he lie? Why would he show up at our place with a child like that?”
“He lived in Trenton, New Jersey. Did he say why he was in Georgia running around in the middle of the night?”
“He said he was coming to visit us. As a surprise.”
“Andersonville is south of where you lived,” said Pine. “He would never have reached that town if he were simply coming to visit you.”
“But we didn’t know that because he never said anything about Andersonville. He never told us where he’d found her.”
“Okay, so you took Mercy?”
“Yes. We didn’t know what else to do. Len wasn’t thrilled about it, but I couldn’t see any other way.”
“And what happened to Ito? Did he leave that night?”
“Yes, he said he was going back to where he’d gotten Mercy to see what was going on.”
“Yes, that’s exactly what he did,” said Pine. She knew that the next morning Ito Vincenzo had gotten into a fight with Tim Pine outside their house. He had accused Tim of kidnapping and killing his own daughter, even though he knew that was not true.
“And did you ever see him after that?” asked Pine.
“No, he never came back. But he wrote letters and he sent some money every year. I would use it to get Becky things.”
“Yeah, I know about the payments he made. That was how we found out about you in the first place. So you never contacted him about Mercy? Never asked him to come and get her? Or whether he had found out anything else about her?”
“Well, he never called us about anything, and we didn’t think trying to pressure him would do any good.”
Pine shook her head, looking incredulous. “Okay, let’s get back to the photo I showed you and fast-forward in time. Are you saying you couldn’t tell from the state of Mercy that day that something was wrong? She was filthy and had wounds and bruises and marks on her skin.”
Atkins’s eyes once more filled with tears. “Look, I don’t want to get into trouble.”
Blum said, “All we want is the truth, Mrs. Atkins.”
Pine added, “We know more or less what happened the night your son died. What we don’t know is exactly how he died, or what happened to Desiree and Mercy.”
“Why would you think we would know about that?”
They heard a grunt and turned to see Len Atkins holding up a stiff arm and pointing at his wife. He grunted again. He apparently had been listening to the entire conversation and was not happy with the direction it had taken.
Atkins seemed to be able to decipher this. She put her hands in her lap and said in a resigned tone, “It was Desiree, you have to understand that. Joe had his issues, but Desiree? That woman was the devil. Not at first, not when they got married, but later, that’s when her true colors came out.”
“We’ve talked to the former sheriff where you used to live, Dick Roberts. He told us about…Desiree. He called her the ‘voodoo lady.’ He said he was called out one night because Desiree was torturing a dog.”
“Dick was a good man. And he was right about Desiree. She was pure evil.”
“Did you know they were holding Mercy in a prison out behind their house?”
Atkins’s top lip trembled. “Am I going to go to jail?”
“Not if you answer our questions truthfully,” replied Pine, trying to keep both her emotions and patience in check. “Let’s go back to the beginning for a minute. What happened after Ito dropped her off with you and then left? How did she end up with Joe and Desiree?”
Atkins scrunched up the Kleenex and laid it aside. She glanced once at her husband and then began: “The next morning, in the cold light of day, we were frantic. I mean, we believed what Ito had said, but there were still so many questions. And we didn’t want to get into trouble. And we didn’t know what to do with the child. She was scared and dirty and confused. We kept her for a few days and were wondering what the hell to do. Len found Ito’s number and called him, but no one answered. He left messages, but Ito never called back. We were thinking about taking her to the police and telling them what Ito had done. I mean, we couldn’t keep her. Then, when Joe and Desiree came by, we told them what had happened. Joe immediately said, ‘We’ve always wanted kids. We’ll adopt her and raise her.’ Well, that seemed like a good solution to me and Len.”
Pine gave her an incredulous look. “Mrs. Atkins. How could you possibly do that without checking to see whether Ito Vincenzo was really telling the truth? We’re talking about a human being, not a puppy. A guy shows up in the middle of the night with a kid? And you just take her and that’s it?”
“I know, I know,” said Atkins miserably. “But Ito seemed very earnest. And he really seemed to care about the girl. And we couldn’t think of a reason why in the world he would have kidnapped a child and brought her to us. We trusted him.”
Pine sighed heavily and sat back, scrutinizing the woman. “Did you know that there was another little girl involved that night? Mercy’s twin sister. Ito did a nursery rhyme, ‘eeny, meeny, miny, moe,’ to choose which one to take. Then he struck the other little girl so hard he shattered her skull. She almost died.”
Atkins’s hand flew to her mouth and fresh tears sprouted from her eyes. “Oh dear God. Why would he do that? Why?”
“He did it for his brother, who was a mobster with a grudge against Mercy’s family. He took Mercy and almost killed her sister to punish the parents.”
“A m-mobster? Ito?”
“No, Ito ran an ice cream parlor in Trenton. His brother was the mobster in the family. He shamed Ito into doing what he did. But it doesn’t excuse Ito’s crimes.”
“No, no, of course not. But we knew nothing about any of that.”
“So Joe wanted her, and you let Desiree take the girl even though you knew Desiree was, as you said, evil?”
“Well, we didn’t know that then. Back then, she was just sort of odd. I actually thought having a little girl to dote on and raise would be good for her. And I believed Joe would make a good father. They had been trying for kids and it hadn’t worked, so this seemed like a blessing. And Desiree seemed eager to have her, too. It was her idea to name her Rebecca.”
“But did you ever question Mercy about where she came from?”
“Well, yes, now that I recall.”
“And what did she say?”
“Well, she said that Ito had taken her from her parents because her parents wanted her dead, which matched up with what Ito had told us. It was all so horrible. Poor little child. Can you imagine parents saying that?”
“Mercy really told you that her parents wanted her dead?” said Pine skeptically.
“Well, come to think, I believe she said that’s what Ito told her.”
Pine shook her head at the woman’s obliviousness. “And in the days that followed you never thought that this girl could be the same child who had been abducted in Andersonville? Because it was all over the news by then.”
“Look, Len and me, we kept to ourselves. We didn’t watch the news and we didn’t go out much. If you’ve been to our old trailer you know we didn’t have any neighbors. I’d never heard the name Mercy till you mentioned it. I swear.”
