PART III:

The next morning, the alarm woke Gary up from his slumber at exactly 6.30. The Cat was waiting for him outside the door, on the paper. Gary stood for a moment at the threshold of his loft, looking at the paper, "Please, just one clue, just one clue, please…..." saying this he picked up the paper and quickly flipped through it, looking for a mention of the kidnapping. He found the article, which included the artist's sketch of the kidnapper, but there was nothing more, no clues, no nothing, just that the baby was still missing and the kidnapper was still at large. With a sound of rage and frustration, he threw the paper down on the floor beside the cat and stormed back into the room. Later, as he got dressed, he had the feeling that he had forgotten something, something important. But for the life of him, he couldn't remember what.

He went down for a much needed cup of coffee to find Marissa already in the office. He began, "How is ..." "She is still sleeping; I spoke to John on the phone just some time back." Marissa answered his question before he could complete it. She said something about Esther's condition, something about her blood pressure, but Gary was hardly listening. He was trying to why someone would take such a small baby, even he with his limited knowledge knew that such a small baby would have to be handled with extreme care, without being exposed to cold etc. And there had not been any call or ransom notes either. In fact the more Gary thought about it, the more he felt like it was not a kidnapping for ransom, but someone had just wanted the baby. His instincts told him not to voice his fears to Marissa, but the fear that the baby was lost forever stubbornly refused to go away.

Marissa insisted on working that day. She said she needed to keep busy so that she wouldn't have time to dwell on what had happened or what could happen. Gary agreed with her and opened up the bar. But business that was slow that day and there were no jobs for him in the paper either, though Gary kept checking it every five or so minutes. He found himself trying to remember what he had done the previous day that could have changed the paper. Marissa insisted that it was just chance, but Gary was not convinced. "It never changes without a good reason, usually only if I change something in the sequence of events leading to that…" Marissa finally had enough. "Stop it Gary, the whole morning today all you have been doing is blame yourself, check the paper, blame yourself some more… now you just don't make any sense… changing the sequence of events indeed! Why don't you just accept that the paper changed and try to help find the baby rather than waste time doing nothing!" She walked out of the room in a huff.

Gary was a little taken aback. He knew Marissa could get a little angry sometimes, but her outburst surprised him. Then he realized that every time he spoke about his fears for the baby, her worry would have increased some more especially as the baby was her own niece. He hurried out after her to calm her down, but found her getting into her coat. "You're leaving?" he asked incredulously. "No I am not, I am just going to take a nap and thought my coat and gloves would keep me warm!" she replied sarcastically. "Come on Gary, I'm tired of listening to you mutter about if you should have doe this or done that and so on. I'm so worried already, and John said that Esther seems to be going into depression…I don't know what to do… what if we never find her…" Marissa's voice broke. Her anger faded and her eyes filled up. Her composure had crumbled; Gary took a step forward and enveloped her in a bear hug. Marissa couldn't stand it any longer, she sobbed into his shoulders. "I'm sorry for yelling at you Gary, but I just… and Esther's been through so much already…" Esther's mother had died just after she had got married, then a year later, when they were expecting their first baby, she had suffered a miscarriage and gone into depression. When she knew that they were going to have another baby, her joy had no bounds. But it seemed that her world had come crashing down once more.

John was still in the same clothes he had been in the previous day when Gary and Marissa entered the room. He looked totally devastated. Esther was leafing through a magazine without showing the slightest bit of interested in it.

When she saw Gary and Marissa, she just looked up but didn't say a word. John got up from his chair and offered it to Marissa and went to find other chairs for himself and Gary. Gary stood at the entrance of the room without knowing what to say. He had only come because Marissa had insisted and he couldn't stand to see Marissa cry again. He didn't have anything to do anyway. He looked around, spotting a pile of gifts on the floor in the corner of the room. Marissa was going to take them back to either her house or Esther's house, because Esther couldn't bear to look at them without bursting into tears.

Just then it clicked in his mind, what he had remembered the last night before falling asleep. The woman in the store where they had bought the gifts for the baby. He hadn't seen her face very clearly, but now he realized that the woman from the elevator who was the kidnapper was the same woman from the store. That was why the woman in the elevator had seemed familiar. She had definitely overheard Marissa's conversation with the other woman she had met that day.