Read Every Fear for Free Online

teens. She had a bead ring in her brow. The open page of Perelli’s notebook was filled with his neat script.
    “This is Shannon Tabor, who works here.” Perelliturned toward the back of the store and a woman in her fifties, out of hearing range with two uniformed officers. “Down there is Betty Kim. She owns the store. Shannon, this is Detective Grace Garner.”
    Grace and Shannon nodded to each other.
    Earlier, over the phone, Berman had briefed her and Perelli about what the women had seen. But Grace and Perelli needed to hear their accounts firsthand before taking them to the squad room later for formal statements, Grace explained, as she opened her notebook.
    Shannon, who’d already been crying, rolled her eyes and sobbed.
    “How many times do I have to tell you—it’s not my fault! I just want to go home!”
    “Nobody’s pointing any fingers, just tell us what happened.”
    “I was sweeping the front. Maria asked me to watch Dylan while she came inside. I didn’t see or hear anything. Then my friend calls me on my cell. I could see Maria was done and getting ready to come out to get Dylan. I thought she was coming out, so I went in the store, okay ?”
    “Who called you?”
    Shannon sniffled and looked away.
    “Shannon. We don’t have time. Tell me, or I’ll find out.”
    “Cody, my boyfriend. He’s twenty-one and my mom would freak if she knew, okay ?”
    “Cody who?”
    “Whitfield. He’s working on the reno of the Lincoln house. He’s a carpenter.”
    “I want his name, number, everything. I want to know why he called you at that time.”
    “It was just to talk.”
    “About what?”
    “Going to a concert.”
    “Did you notice any strange vehicles, or anything out of the ordinary before it happened? Anything at all?”
    Shannon covered her mouth and shook her head.
    “I didn’t see anything,” she sobbed. “Is Maria going to be all right? We tried to help her. There was so much blood. She wouldn’t stop bleeding, then her whole body started to, like, convulse, oh God! Is she going to be all right?”
    “We don’t know.”
    “You have to find Dylan!”
    “We’re doing all we can. It’s important you tell us everything you think of now, anything you can remember.”
    Grace went to the back of the store to talk to Betty Kim. Her bifocals hung from a chain around her neck and she was touching a crumpled tissue to her eyes.
    “Could you tell me what you saw?”
    Betty Kim blinked several times.
    “A van, a dark van stopped. I don’t know what type. A person got out, could’ve been a man or a woman, they were wearing a hat. They picked up the baby and got back in the van. But it was fast. Like a dream—so fast I thought it wasn’t even happening.”
    Grace looked around the store.
    “Do you have a security camera?”
    “No, my old one broke.”
    “Can you remember anything distinguishing about the van, or the suspect? Anything?”
    Betty Kim buried her face in her hands and shook her head.
    Grace’s phone rang.
    “It’s Berman. They found the tape.”
    Grace and the other detectives huddled around Arnie Rockwell’s monitor as Berman cued the tape, then played it in slow motion.
    Again, because of the angle it was mounted on the wall, the camera only permitted a partial view of the street, in the top portion of the screen. Only Shannon Tabor’s shoes and broom brush could be seen. Then the small wheels of Dylan’s stroller and Maria Colson’s shoes came into the frame.
    There they are.
    Maria vanished, leaving only Shannon and the stroller. A moment later, Shannon left the frame, leaving the stroller alone. Seconds ticked by until a shadow entered the frame. Only a partial view of the lower part of a van—its wheels, rocker panels—maybe a Dodge. It was red. It stopped and blocked the stroller from view. A shoe emerged from the van but the image flared, then disappeared from the frame.
    Only the van was visible now.
    Then nothing.
    Then the van began pulling away,