“I had doubts,” he said, his voice a little quieter now. “We all did, I guess. But at the end of the day, the two boys were gone. We followed every angle we could find. Stranger abductions like this—breaking into a house, asking for a ransom—are extremely rare. So we looked hard at the parents. We looked hard at the families, the neighbors, the teachers.”

“How about the nanny?”

“Au pair,” he said.

“Pardon?”

“She wasn’t a nanny. She was an au pair. Big difference.”

“In what way?”

“An au pair is like an exchange program. They’re always from a foreign country. In this case, Vada Linna—yep, I remember the name—was from Finland. They are usually young. Vada was eighteen. Her English was fair at best. They are supposedly there in part on something of a cultural education, but most people go with them because they’re cheap labor.”

“You think that was the case here?”

He thought about it. “Nah, I don’t. Not really. The Baldwins have a lot of money. I think they bought into the whole international experience stuff and loved the idea of having their kids in the company of a foreigner. From what I understood, Brooke and Chick treated Vada well. That whole angle—it’s one of the reasons I hate the press so much.”

“What is?”

“When the crap hit the fan, the media had a field day with all of that slave labor–au pair talk. You know—privileged rich girl Brooke Baldwin hires poor, cheap worker so she can get her hair done or lunch with the ladies or whatever. Like she wasn’t already victimized enough. Like losing her son was somehow her fault.”

Myron remembered reading a bit about the controversy at the time. “Vada’s story about the break-in,” he said. “Did you believe it?”

Huber took his time on this one. His hand rubbed his face. “I don’t know. I mean, the girl was clearly traumatized. She may have been fudging some of the details, trying to make herself look better or something. Like we’ve both noted, there were parts that didn’t add up. But that could have been the language barrier too. Or the cultural barrier, whatever. I wish we’d had more time with her.”

“Why didn’t you?”

“Vada’s father showed up within twenty-four hours. Flew in from Helsinki and hired a shark lawyer. The father demanded to take her home. The ordeal was too much for her, he said. He wanted her to get care in Finland. We tried to stall, but we had no reason to hold her. So he flew her home.” Neil looked up. “Truth? I would have liked another crack at Vada.”

“Do you think she was involved?”

Again he took his time. Myron liked that Neil Huber was trying to give him thoughtful answers. “We looked at her hard. We went through her computer history. There was nothing. We checked her text messages. There was nothing there that stood out. Vada was just a teen alone in a foreign country. She had one friend, another au pair, and that was about it. We tried to work out various theories where she’d been in on the kidnapping in some way. You know. Maybe she gave the kids to an accomplice. Then the accomplice tied her up. They make up a story about a kitchen break-in. That kind of thing. But nothing added up. We even explored the possibility that maybe Vada was a psycho. Maybe she snapped and killed them and hid the bodies. But nothing came of that either.”