“But that didn’t have to be the only option. They could try to find her parents and see why they had abandoned her, as he claimed,” countered Pine.
“I said that very thing to Ito. And that they might find other relatives who could take her in.”
“And his response?”
Blum added, “And you said, ‘at first’？ Does that mean his story changed?”
“Yes, it did. That’s when things started getting really weird. Ito next told us that she really hadn’t been abandoned. He moved us away from the girl so she couldn’t hear and said that the parents had been trying to kill Mercy when he happened by. He rescued her from them, and they ran off. He said they were probably clear out of the state by now.”
“They were trying to kill their own daughter and Ito just happened to be passing by?” Pine said, her tone full of derision. “And why would he care if she heard that or not? If it had really happened, she would have known her parents were trying to kill her!”
“I know how it sounds now,” said Atkins in a defensive tone. “But we had just been woken out of a deep sleep and had a child dropped on us. We weren’t thinking too clearly.”
“I’m sure no one would have been,” said Blum in a soothing tone.
“Thank you for saying that,” said Atkins with a grateful look. She wiped her nose with the Kleenex. “It was all a nightmare.”
“So you believed what Ito said?” asked Pine.
“He was very convincing. And why would he lie? Why would he show up at our place with a child like that?”
“He lived in Trenton, New Jersey. Did he say why he was in Georgia running around in the middle of the night?”
“He said he was coming to visit us. As a surprise.”
“Andersonville is south of where you lived,” said Pine. “He would never have reached that town if he were simply coming to visit you.”
“But we didn’t know that because he never said anything about Andersonville. He never told us where he’d found her.”
“Okay, so you took Mercy?”
“Yes. We didn’t know what else to do. Len wasn’t thrilled about it, but I couldn’t see any other way.”
“And what happened to Ito? Did he leave that night?”
“Yes, he said he was going back to where he’d gotten Mercy to see what was going on.”
“Yes, that’s exactly what he did,” said Pine. She knew that the next morning Ito Vincenzo had gotten into a fight with Tim Pine outside their house. He had accused Tim of kidnapping and killing his own daughter, even though he knew that was not true.
“And did you ever see him after that?” asked Pine.
“No, he never came back. But he wrote letters and he sent some money every year. I would use it to get Becky things.”
“Yeah, I know about the payments he made. That was how we found out about you in the first place. So you never contacted him about Mercy? Never asked him to come and get her? Or whether he had found out anything else about her?”
“Well, he never called us about anything, and we didn’t think trying to pressure him would do any good.”
Pine shook her head, looking incredulous. “Okay, let’s get back to the photo I showed you and fast-forward in time. Are you saying you couldn’t tell from the state of Mercy that day that something was wrong? She was filthy and had wounds and bruises and marks on her skin.”
Atkins’s eyes once more filled with tears. “Look, I don’t want to get into trouble.”