A Score & A Decade

Chapter 12

"Yeah, hello mom. Or should I say...Diana Park?" Zoe sneered.

"Zoe, what nonsense are you talking about?" Her mother snapped, trying to sound nonchalant, but Zoe could sense the apprehension in her tone.

"You know just well what I'm talking about." Zoe snapped, irritated that her mother was pretending instead of just confessing.

"No, I don't," Her mother said.

"Ok fine. You want to pretend, then let me explain. You're Diana Park, the woman who was involved in the kidnapping of the four-year-old girl Roselle Rodney 30 years ago." Zoe growled.

"Zoe, I really don't know what - "

"STOP PRETENDING!" She yelled into the phone, all patience forgotten.

"Alright! Alright, alright. I'll tell you the truth. My name isn't Andra Kai. But it isn't Diana Park either. My real name is Anna Dirk."

"How many names do you have?" Zoe asked, chafed.

"Just the three."

"Just," Zoe emphasized, sarcastically.

"You want to listen, don't you? Well, I was always just Anna Dirk. But one day, I fell in love with a man named Jonas Thompson, or as you know him, William Park.

Here, Zoe let out a little gasp.

Andra continued, "He was charming and rich and just..." She paused. Then, "He was rich, very, very rich. But I never saw him work. So one day, a few years into our relationship, I asked him where he got his money from. He then introduced me to his business." She said, almost wistfully.

"What business?" Zoe asked, the tension in her voice noticeable.

"He kidnapped children and sold them off to the highest bidders."

Zoe took a sharp intake of breath. "He was a human trafficker?"

"Basically," Andra said.

Oh god. Roselle was trafficked away to some rich businessperson and god knows what had happened to her.

"Should I continue?" Andra asked.

Thinking about Roselle, about Louise...Oh god, Louise. How would she ever tell her?

"Yes...yes please." Zoe rasped.

"I was young, you have to understand. I was young and in love. So when Jonas asked me if I wanted to join him, he promised that we could stay together forever. So of course, I was in love, Zoe, I agreed."

"How could you?" She whispered, her voice sounding splintered to her ears.

"I told you, I was young and in love. Either way, I was in. We would go together to so many different parts of the world, posing as a couple, taking new names each time, kidnapping a child, selling them off, and getting stacks and stacks of money. It was a sort of dream life, but not really." She said, with various emotions in her voice - wistfulness, sadness, a twinge of regret.

"Please stop. I don't want to hear how happy you were by selling off kids." Zoe said bitterly.

Andra sighed through the receiver, "I suppose you want to hear about Roselle Rodney. Well, would you believe me if I told you that we would throw darts to pick the next place where we would go? That time, we were tired from a job in Brazil. We wanted to do something domestic. So we closed our eyes and picked a random place, and it ended up being a neighbourhood in New York. The same neighbourhood that Roselle lived in."

"It seems a bit haphazard to me; throwing darts," Zoe said.

"We just needed a child, we didn't care where the child was from. Anyway, we decided to visit the neighbourhood to see a potential target. As we walked down the street of the neighbourhood, we overheard two people talking. They were talking about a little girl named Roselle Rodney who had made a bracelet for her father that he always wore and how cute it was.

She was the first child we had heard of in that neighbourhood and we had already found out that her father wore something distinguishable. Instances like that were rare, and we decided that this Roselle Rodney would be our next target.

We realized that both Eric and Jonas looked awfully alike and decided that this job was a gift of the gods. It was too good to be true.

With some spying, we saw that every time Eric Rodney was gardening, his bracelet would fall off. He would roll his eyes, let out a little huff, pick it up and set it in a corner somewhere, and get back to work. After his work, he'd put it back on and go inside. This time, however, when his back was turned, Jonas, who was skilled in stealth, snuck into the garden, pocketed the bracelet and ran off with it.

We knew that the first thing Roselle would recognize about her dad was that bracelet. So, that day in the park, we had come all prepared. There was a slight detour when the three women came to talk to us, but later on, when Louise Rodney's back was turned, Jonas went to Roselle pretending to be her dad, and quickly and cleanly as we had always done before, we slipped off."

"And the divorce? That was fake wasn't it?" Zoe asked, tears freely falling. Never before had a case ever made her feel like this.

"Of course it was. We got 'divorced' two days later and I moved out, Roselle with me. Jonas met us at a spot which we had decided before shortly." Andra said, her voice starting to get a little rough.

"And then you sold Roselle off, so you don't know what happened to her," Zoe said, whimpering a bit.

"No actually. This is the part you probably haven't solved. When I made off with Roselle, she cried, of course, she did. She was a child after all. But later, she quietened. She was polite and sweet, and she tugged at my heartstrings. She was like no other child we had ever kidnapped before. She asked for her parents in a small voice, not bawling and kicking like the other children. She was different. I didn't know how a four-year-old could be so mature, but as I said, she was different.

When Jonas and I met up at our spot, I begged him. I begged him so much that he agreed -" Here, she stopped.

"Agreed to do what?" Zoe asked slowly.

"You can't be mad. I had grown to care for Roselle you see - "

"Agreed to do what?" Zoe asked, louder this time. She felt like her heart was breaking, the shards falling, cutting her skin.

"Zoe, you have to understand. Please - "

"AGREED TO DO WHAT?" She bellowed, and let out a sob because she wasn't stupid. Because deep inside, she knew, she knew.

"We kept the child, Zoe, and we raised her. You are Roselle Rodney."