“Of course. She was their rehearsal for Mary Claire. If you know anything about her disappearance, you’ll recognize the . . . what do they call it . . . the MO. We didn’t believe they’d harm Rain, but we were frantic they’d refuse to return her. She was ours. We’d formally adopted her, but if they absconded with her, we’d have no way of getting her back. They had no permanent address, no phone, no employment.” She shrugged. “We did as we were told. We received another call, telling us where to drop the ransom.”

“Which was where?”

“Near the back entrance to the Ravine. One of them kept me on the phone while Patrick drove over with the gym bag and tossed it out on the side of the road. Then he came home. The other kidnapper must have picked up the money and counted it, making sure the entire amount was there. They told us to wait an hour and then we’d find her in the park off Little Pony Road. She was asleep on a picnic table, covered with a blanket, so they weren’t entirely heartless. I don’t know what would have happened if they’d realized Patrick marked the bills before we had her back in our keeping.”

“She’d been drugged?”

“Clearly. She wasn’t completely out, but she was groggy. She was fine once the sedative wore off, whatever it was. She’d been properly looked after. Fed well, at any rate, and she was clean. We had her examined and there was no evidence of sexual abuse. Thank god for that.”

“What did she tell you about what went on?”

“Nothing coherent, bits and pieces. She was four—not what you’d call a reliable witness. The only thing she was upset about was that she didn’t get to keep the kitten. Aside from that, she wasn’t traumatized. No nightmares and no psychological problems in the aftermath. We were thankful she came out of it unscathed. To Patrick’s way of thinking, this was further support of his conviction that Greg and Shelly had a hand in it.”

“If the two of them took her, wouldn’t Rain have said so?”

Deborah shook her head. “One of the kidnappers wore fake glasses with a big plastic nose attached and the other dressed like Santa Claus. We’d taken her to see Santa on two previous occasions so she was used to seeing him. He made her promise to be a good girl and she was.”

“Here’s what I don’t get. If they’d already picked up the fifteen thousand, why kidnap a second child?”