The Changeling Conspiracy

by Helen McCloy

Genres: Mystery; Traditional Mysteries; Thrillers

Synopsis

Adam Endicott did not want Sam Joel as a husband for his young daughter, Kate. His past was sketchy and, as a reporter on a small-town newspaper, his assets were meagre. Yet when Kate is abducted by a terrorist group, Sam is able to produce a large part of the ransom.

But paying the terrorists' demand does not bring back Kate. It only leads to another murder. When Sam decides to look for Kate himself he indeed finds a girl, but is it her? Can her experience have changed her this much? Is this the girl he loves, or a changeling?

Release date: March 14, 2014

Publisher: Orion Publishing Group

Print pages: 256

Sample

In his late sixties Adam Endicott was still nimble in mind and body.

That was why I noticed his hesitation now.

He didn’t speak until we were settled with our drinks in wing chairs on either side of the living-room fireplace.

Even then he was at a loss for words.

“Sam . . .”

“Yes?”

“How old are you?”

Direct questions were not Adam’s usual style either, but I answered just as directly: “Thirty-two.”

He sighed. “That’s what I thought. Do you know how old Kate is?”

“Not exactly.”

“Eighteen.”

I tried not to feel angry. A father who brings up a daughter who has no mother to share his concern is always defensive.

Adam had trouble going on. I did nothing to help him.

At last he said: “I’ve only known you two years, Sam. You don’t talk much about yourself. Have you ever been married before?”

“No.”

“When we first met you told me you had been a stringer for the Washington Post in Phan Rang. Why did you bury yourself alive on a small-town newspaper when you got back?”

“Perhaps I wanted to forget Vietnam.”

“Why should you want to forget Vietnam?”

“Doesn’t everybody?”

“I don’t want to forget Hué. Of course I was there as an archaeologist, not as a soldier or a newspaper man and—”

I was saved by the sound of a car pulling into the kitchen driveway. Greenwood is more country than suburb. The Endicotts’ place was an old farm with only a footpath to the front door.

In the kitchen Kate’s Scottie barked once. I couldn’t tell whether this was a joyous bark of recognition or a warning bark of suspicion. Robbie was the world’s worst watch dog,
who would welcome anyone who approached him amiably.

Could it be Kate herself he was greeting?

She was at the University of Connecticut now, with no car of her own, but there was usually a Greenwood boy on hand to drive her home for weekends and this was a Friday. That was one reason I
had picked this day to talk to Adam. I wanted to talk to Kate, too.

A boy’s voice said: “Hello, pooch!”

A girl’s voice said, more gently: “Down, Robbie!”

Quick steps pattered down the passage and Kate came into the room.

Her mother had been Vietnamese. Her native name meant First Light. To me she always had the quiet freshness of the moment just before dawn.

The first time I saw her, two years ago, she had been in a crowd of robust, uninhibited American high school girls and I thought then: She is like a flower in a vegetable garden. Perhaps I had
been in Asia too long.

The axis of her almond eyes was tilted, but she had missed the epicanthic fold in the upper eyelid which Mongolians are said to have evolved as an adaptation to extreme cold. Her people had
traveled far since that prehistoric time. The very word Vietnam means “people of the south.” Her richly black hair and ivory skin looked tropical.

Adam had given her a Western education, and yet . . . Once or twice I had surprised in her eyes, on her lips, that look dear to Buddhist scholars, the “archaic smile.” It is a blend
of irony and compassion, each honed to its finest edge. You see it only in the older Buddhist sculpture.

This afternoon she was looking as Western and liberated as she really was in rumpled shirt, jeans and sneakers, but under the shirt collar was a gold chain so delicate it was almost invisible.
Threaded on it was a single bead of carnelian minutely engraved with the Chinese characters for peace and longevity, the kind of thing Asiatic mothers and nurses have been putting around
babies’ necks for thousands of years. Kate always wore it no matter what else she was wearing.

She smiled at me as she kissed her father.

“Sam, you know Joey Alfieri, don’t you?”

The boy had followed her into the room. He was one of two or three pimply youths who had been trailing around after Kate ever since she was sixteen. His pimples were gone now, but he still had
the soft, unfinished face of a puppy.

She turned back to Adam. “Father, have you seen squatters in that old house in the woods down the road?”

She never called him “daddy.” The Vietnamese have two traditions of formality, Chinese and French. Some children still drop their eyes in the presence of elders. Some parents still
exact a vous from children they address as tu.

“How far down the road?” asked Adam.

“Three miles, at least. The roof’s falling in and all the windows are broken.”

“That’s the old Delano place. It’s been empty for years. What makes you think there are squatters there now?”

“We didn’t actually see any,” said Joey. “But we heard them just now as we drove past.”

I was watching Kate. “And you didn’t like what you heard?”

“No.” Her neat little profile was suddenly hard and precise as if it had been carved in chisel-resistant jade. Something had frightened her, but she seemed unable to communicate her
fear to her father.

“What was it?” I asked her.

Footsteps on the front porch. A tap on one of the front windows. “Anybody home?”

It was Isolda Marriott, who lived in a high Victorian house, all sharp points and angles, across the road, the only other house near this one.

She had a way of dropping in whenever she saw Adam’s car in the driveway. She was not a man-eater, just one of the “sentimentally unemployed.” Her marriage had ended in divorce
and her daughter, Clara, lived in New York. Isolda’s laugh was just a little too hearty when she told us that the only mail she got these days was junk mail and bills.

“Why, Kate!” It was a “carrying” voice, one of those that project to every corner of a Zoning Board or PTA meeting without a microphone. “I had no idea you were
here. Clara will be home tomorrow evening. Do call her. She misses you.”

“And I miss her,” said Kate. “She and I and Joey used to have such fun when we were all at school.”

“You mean after school,” said Joey. “It was never fun at school.”

“But doesn’t it seem like fun now we look back at it?”

“That’s what old soldiers say about old wars. Don’t let the past fool you.”

Isolda was trying to make herself small on a hassock near the hearth. Her parents must have foreseen that she would grow up on generous lines when they named her Isolda, but, instead of making
the most of her splendid height, she went through life in a permanent crouch trying to look like a sex kitten.

Adam brought her a drink. “Do you know if there are squatters at the old Delano place?”

“No, but I’m not surprised if there are,” she answered him. “It should have been boarded up years ago.”

“Who owns the place now?”

“Some bank probably. Do squatters worry you?”

“They worry Kate.”

Isolda turned to her. “Why?”

“When Joey and I passed the house just now we heard a child crying. Who would take a child to live in a place like that?”

“Only people who were quite desperate,” said Isolda.

“Or quite vicious,” said Adam.

Joey looked at his watch and rose. “I have to be getting home now, Kate. Want me to stop at the Delano place and find out what’s going on there?”

“I wonder if that’s wise,” said Adam. “There may be nothing to this but some young mother walking through the woods with a fretful baby.”

“It didn’t sound like that,” said Kate.

Everyone was drifting towards the kitchen with Joey. It was his quickest route to the driveway where he had left his car. Only Kate and I fell behind the others.

She seized the chance to whisper: “How did it go?”

My arm slid around her waist of its own volition.

“Not too good. He’s worried about my age and my past.”

“Oh . . .” It was more sigh than exclamation.

“Give him time. He’ll come round.”

I was leaning down to kiss her when Joey came to the door of the kitchen passage. “Kate, where are you?”

Before he could take it all in, my arm had dropped from her waist and I was smiling down at her instead of kissing her.

“That was a practiced manoeuvre,” she whispered. “Too practiced for a nice young man.”

“I’m not young and I never said I was nice.” I raised my voice. “What is it, Joey?”

“I just want to say goodbye to Kate and remind her we have a tennis date tomorrow.”

In the kitchen the back door was open. Adam flipped a wall switch and the twilight beyond the screen door became black night. The kitchen itself was now a hollow cube of light, like a brilliant
stage.

A low growl rumbled in Robbie’s chest and exploded in one curt bark, the canine sentry’s warning shot.

A car was pulling into the driveway. Glare from its headlights slashed across the unshaded windows as it turned and stopped.

“Who can that be?” Kate went to peer through the screen door.

I could just make out the dim figures of a man and a woman in the darkness beyond the fine mesh of the screen.

He mumbled something about an accident, then spoke a little more audibly.

“May we use your telephone?”

“Of course. Come right in.” Kate unlatched the screen door and threw it open.

Now I could see that both of them wore stockings pulled down over their faces.

The man aimed a revolver at Kate.

The woman seized her by one arm and began to drag her across the threshold.

“Let me go!” cried Kate.

Rob Roy was only a little dog, but he went for the woman’s ankles. She kicked him. She was wearing a man’s thick-soled boots under her long, limp dress.

I launched myself across the room. I was out of practice. I didn’t get to the gun in time. A blast burned my cheek and a blow struck my forehead.

The last thing I heard was a cry from Kate: “Not me! Oh, please not me!”

I had never realized before that kindness can hurt. Everyone in the hospital was so unnaturally kind that I was constantly reminded of my reason for being there. That hurt.

To survive, I had to detach myself from past and future. Time would only be manageable if I could chop it up into moments and deal with each one separately as it came.

Fight off nausea and dizziness. Lie still when a dressing is changed. Open the mouth for pill or thermometer. Let go and slide into oblivion when a needle pricks.

It didn’t work. I was haunted by unanswerable questions. Where was Kate? What was happening to her now?

After a while I began to suspect that the small detachment I had achieved was not voluntary. It was an effect of the pills and needles. I was losing control of my own mind and will.

This suspicion led to my first voluntary act since I had entered the hospital. When the little night nurse came with another pill early next morning as she went off duty, I took it meekly, but
stored it in my cheek before swallowing the tepid tap water in the paper cup. As soon as she left the room, I spit it out into a piece of paper tissue and flushed it down the drain in the
bathroom.

Oh, yes, I had a private bath. I was in what they call a semiprivate room, two beds and one bath. The other bed was empty, made up with that sterile hospital precision which makes a bed look as
if it never could be used for anything as human as sleeping or love-making.

Had Adam ordered this for me? Or was it standard hospital treatment in emergency cases if no other room was available? Or could it be that this privacy was really a form of detention in disguise
with a policeman on guard outside the door to keep me from talking to other people? Were the police suspicious of me?

Now my mind was clear of drugs I could think about myself and Kate. I knew how much I loved her now. For her sake I had charged a man with a loaded gun.

I also knew that if I loved her considerately I would leave her alone. What had I to offer her? Nothing, not even myself. I had no self.

A doctor arrived a little after nine, a neurologist, who put me through the usual tests for head injuries, pricking various parts of my face with a sewing needle to make sure that my nerves were
still working and testing the focus of my eyes.

“You were lucky.”

I said: “Kate Endicott was not so lucky. Is there any news of her?”

“No.” Sensibly he didn’t try to offer sympathy.

“How long have I been here?”

“Only one night.”

“Has there been a ransom demand?”

“It’s too soon.”

“How badly am I hurt?”

“A bullet-nicked bone at the temple, the thinnest part of the skull. A millimeter to the left and you wouldn’t be here. Fortunately for you, it was not one of those cyanide bullets
so fashionable among terrorists today, nor was it a dumdum. Your forehead was pistol-whipped. No fractures, according to X-rays, and no nerve damage according to your responses just now, but you
are still suffering from concussion and shock. You must lead a quiet life for some time to come.”

“I have a living to earn.”

“Your newspaper is giving you a month’s vacation with pay. They would like an eyewitness story from you as soon as you’re able to dictate it over the telephone. You’ll
have a scar on the right side of your forehead. If you don’t want to bother with plastic surgery you can wear your hair a little longer and—Are you listening to me?”

“No. When can I get out of here?”

“Not for forty-eight hours at least and then—”

“Impossible. I want to be with Kate’s father when the ransom demand comes.”

He looked at me thoughtfully. I could almost see his mind balancing alternatives. Then he surprised me.

“I think I’ll leave it to you. After all, you know more about how you feel than I do.”

“That’s an amazing admission for a doctor.”

“I’m just being clever.” He said it with a half-smile. “People born free rebel against coercion automatically, but give them responsibility and they think twice before
they do anything foolish. Just keep in mind that, if you take on too much too soon, you’ll be back here before you know it. There’s a state policeman who wants to talk to you now. Feel
up to it? He’ll wait, if I say he must.”

“I’d like to get it over with.”

So that was how I first met Captain Carew.

He was in mufti that morning, but even then there was something paramilitary about his lean, hard body and erect. . .