Sitting back, Lucy waited for her stomach to settle.
Gladys was telling it to her straight. And Sandy had, too. Their stories matched explicitly.
“I only heard from that young woman once. Never even met her. But I never forgot her, either. I always kept her name and number just in case I ever heard anything. I’d have found a way to get her reunited with that girl. That’s one mama who needed her baby home.”
Sandy had kept Gladys Buckley’s number, as well. And Lucy found it when she’d been going through her mother’s things, getting rid of stuff, when it looked like they were going to lose their home her junior year of high school.
Sandy’s social security had come through in the nick of time and they’d stayed put. But Lucy had held on to the phone number.
And when she finally got her mother to tell her what Gladys Buckley did for a living, shortly after Lucy had graduated from the academy, she went straight to her mentor—Amber Locken—and volunteered to be an unwed mother in their sting.
She didn’t find Allie. But she got Gladys Buckley put behind bars.
“Why are you asking questions about Sandy?” Gladys asked softly. “Did they find her little girl?”
“I’m not at liberty to say.” Lucy gave the answer by rote.
She slid one more photo in front of the woman.
“Do you recognize this man?” Sloan Wakerby’s picture was current, but Sandy had recognized him.
Gladys studied the picture. And again she shook her head. “I’ve never seen him before in my life. And that’s not the type of face you’d forget.”
“You’re sure about that?”
“Absolutely sure. I know what you all think of me, selling babies for money, but the way I look at it, I was offering a service to people who needed it. The babies who came through my home were mostly drug babies, or the results of teenage pregnancies. They were unwanted. And I put them in the arms of parents who wanted them enough to pay a large sum.”
“You don’t think you ever sold any babies who’d been kidnapped by scum out to make a buck?”
“Not to my knowledge.”
Lucy had a mouthful to give the older woman—they’d discovered at least a dozen of the children that Gladys had sold had been reported missing—but she saved her breath.
“You ever hear of a guy named Sloan Wakerby?” she asked instead.
“Sloan? I’ve never known a Sloan in my life.”
If Gladys was lying she was damned good at it. But then, the woman had made a career out of lying in a big way.
But she’d kept records—listings that had allowed them to match more than a dozen missing children to their biological parents. And there’d been no Sloan or Wakerby listed in those records.
Lucy was done here.
“Thank you for talking to me.”
She gathered up her things, shook the woman’s hand and motioned to be let out.
She’d already had two strikeouts on this visit, and she had an entire evening ahead of her, filled with investigative avenues to pursue.
But first, she got into her Ford Escape, drove down to the river, headed southwest on the road along the shore and called the only person she wanted to talk to right then.
The one who’d care about both strikeouts.
The only one who’d understand.
She called Ramsey Miller.
He didn’t pick up.