Free I'll Walk Alone by Mary Higgins Clark Page B

magazine may have been doctored. If they’re on the level, you need to have a clear mind to start reworking the case.”
    On Wednesday morning, Billy woke at seven A.M. Twenty minutes later, showered, shaved, and dressed, he was on his way into the city. By the time he arrived there, the photos that were published in Tell-All Weekly and online were on his desk.
    There were six in all; the original three the English tourist had taken, plus the three he had blown up for the family album. They were the ones whose background seemed to indicate that Zan More-land had kidnapped her own son.
    Billy whistled softly, his only physical response to the fact that he was both shocked and chagrined. I really did believe that sob-sister, he thought, as he studied the three photos that showed Zan bending over the stroller, then picking up the sleeping child, and finally walking down the path away from the camera. There’s no mistake, Billy thought as he went from one photo to the next. The long, straight auburn hair, the slender frame, the fashionable sunglasses …
    He opened the file that was always on the corner of his desk. From it he extracted pictures that had been quietly taken of Zan by the police photographer when she rushed to the crime scene. The short flowered dress and the high-heeled sandals she was wearing when she arrived in the park that day were identical to the clothing worn by the kidnapper.
    Billy normally patted himself on the back that he was an excellent judge of human nature. His sharp sense of disappointment in his own bad judgment was immediately vanquished by his overriding concern about what Zan Moreland might have done with her own son.
    Zan’s alibi about her whereabouts that day had seemed straightforward. Clearly he had missed something. I’m starting with the babysitter, Billy thought grimly. I’ll pick apart Zan Moreland’s account of every minute of that day and find out how she’s gotten away with lying. Then by God, I’m going to make her tell me what she did with that little kid.

19

    T iffany Shields was still living at home, completing her second year at Hunter College. The day that Matthew Carpenter disappeared had been a turning point in her life. It wasn’t only that she had been in charge of Matthew and had fallen asleep, it was that whenever the case came up in the media, she was branded as the careless babysitter who had not only not bothered to strap him into the stroller, but who had stretched out on a blanket and, as one reporter wrote, “passed out.”
    Almost every article referred to the hysterical call she had made to 911. The tape of it was played on some of the TV coverage. In the past two years when a child was missing anywhere, Tiffany had been forced to read or hear that it was or wasn’t a Tiffany Shields-sleeping-babysitter kind of situation. Whenever she read or heard those media reports, Tiffany’s anger at the unfairness of it grew into a block of solid fury.
    The day was still vivid in her mind. She woke with what felt like the beginnings of a cold. She canceled plans to meet some of her girlfriends to celebrate their impending graduation from Cathedral High School. Her mother had gone to work at Bloomingdale’s where she was a sales clerk. Her father was the superintendent of the apartment building where they lived on East Eighty-sixth Street. At noon, the phone rang in their apartment. If only I hadn’t answered it, Tif fany thought over and over again in the next twenty-one months. I almost didn’t. I figured it was some tenant calling to complain about some damn leaking faucet.
    But she did answer it.
    It was Zan Moreland. “Tiffany, can you possibly help me?” she had pleaded. “Matthew’s new nanny was supposed to start this morning and just phoned that she can’t be here until tomorrow. I’ve got a terribly important appointment. It’s with a potential client, and she’s not the kind of person who would care about my babysitting problems. Would you