Forgotten (10 page)

ELEVEN

H
er quest for the name of her lost boy apparently no longer necessary, Portia put the file containing the lists in her bottom desk drawer. She made the call to Elena Duffy and left a message with the department secretary giving the Oldbridge police chief a heads-up about Christopher Williams’s memorial service and promised to call back with details when she had more information. She sat at her desk, tapping her fingers on the worn wooden surface and wondered what to do next.

Identifying the boy had consumed her for the past several days. Now that she no longer had to piece together the puzzle of his identity, she felt a slight letdown. She’d been thinking of the boy as
hers
since the moment Woods had refused to give up his name.

When Woods had said “This one is mine,” her thought had been
No, he isn’t. He’s mine.
Now the boy was no longer lost, and he was no longer hers. She’d wanted to be the one to find him, wanted to be the one to send him home. She would still do
that,
she reminded herself. She’d still be instrumental in identifying him, but…

She knew she should be happy that the boy would be going home after all these years, happy that his family would be able to lay him to rest at last. And she
was
truly happy about those things. But for some reason, she’d seen him as her personal challenge, her quest, and that bound her to him in a way she could not explain or describe. Woods naming the boy would seemingly sever the tie: She was no longer relevant to the boy’s identity, and that saddened her.

She probably should have just picked up and gone out to the prison, as Woods had asked her to do. By now she’d be there, and tonight another family would be getting news about their lost boy. But she’d done the one thing she’d told Woods she wouldn’t do: play games.

She opened the drawer and pulled out the file. One boy was about to be named, but there were others who were still missing. She’d follow up on the calls she’d made on Saturday and see if she could cross any names off the list.

She was disappointed at having to spend the rest of the afternoon leaving messages for the same people she’d tried to contact two days earlier. At six thirty she was about to shut down her computer for the day when her cell phone rang.

“Hello, Jim Cannon,” she said after glancing at the phone’s display.

“Ah, I love caller ID, don’t you?”

“I do. Lets you send all those unwanted calls right to voice mail where you can delete without even listening to your whiny cousin or obnoxious neighbor or that character you met in a bar the night be fore. What’s not to love?”

“After that, I guess I suppose I should feel flattered that you picked up my call,” Jim said, and she wasn’t sure if he was kidding or not.

“Well, this is business. I’m assuming this is about your attempts to find some contact information on Doug Nicholson?”

“Right.” Was there a trace of disappointment in his voice? If so, he didn’t dwell on it. “I had Danielle look back through the files that we have here in the storage room. So far, she hasn’t been able to come up with anything, but there are quite a few boxes of material and only so many hours in a day. I did ask her to keep looking, and I’ll take a spin through them if I have time this weekend.”

“I appreciate your help.”

“Sorry I wasn’t able to put my hands on some thing right away. If it helps at all, Danielle seems to remember that he lived somewhere up around Scranton back then.”

“Danielle’s worked for you that long? She looks so young.” As soon as the words were out of her mouth, Portia wanted to bite her tongue. This was a business conversation. The age of his cute little blond receptionist or assistant or whatever was totally irrelevant.

“She’s been with me since I opened my first office. Back then, she was my only employee, and she only worked part-time because she was still in school.”

“Oh. Well. Nice that she’s been so dependable and loyal.”
What
? She fairly shrieked at herself.
Could you have said anything more lame?

“She is that.” Jim continued on as if he hadn’t noticed. “I can’t imagine how I’d get along without her.”

She decided she was better off not even trying to respond to that. For some reason, the thought of Danielle being totally indispensable just seemed to set her off. She didn’t want to question why, didn’t even want to go there.

“Well, thanks for the tip about Scranton. Maybe we’ll get lucky. Maybe I’ll ask Sheldon about his brother tomorrow and see what he has to say.”

“Ask him about his mother while you’re at it.”

“I planned to. Dr. Rollins mentioned that she was living in Las Vegas.”

“You’re going to have to find out what her current name is.”

“Her current name?”

“She changes husbands a lot. When Sheldon was first arrested, her last name was Lewis. By the time he was sentenced, it was Davey.”

“Charming.”

“What was her first name again?”

“Rhona.”

“Her maiden name?”

“No idea. Don’t think I have that.”

“I’ll see if I can locate her with what I have.”

Portia sat in front of her computer and searched first for Douglas Nicholson in every conceivable way, but all she turned up was an eighty-seven-year-old man in Erie, a twenty-two-year-old in Johnstown, and a thirty-year-old woman in Bedford. There was nothing for a Rhona Woods, Rhona Lewis, or Rhona Davey in any of the databases.

Damn, she thought, where was Will with his mad computer skills when you needed him?

She turned off her computer for the day and gathered her notes to take home. There was always tomorrow. In the morning she’d go through a contact at Pennsylvania’s Department of Motor Vehicles and see if there was a hit. And, she reminded herself, there was always Sheldon, though she’d rather conduct her search for his family without his knowledge.

F
or some reason, talking to Portia Cahill always set Jim Cannon on edge. He’d tried analyzing why; she was hardly the first beautiful woman he’d ever seen. And it wasn’t that she was an FBI agent. He’d had dealings with others over the years. The federal tag didn’t intimidate him. In the end, he decided, it didn’t really matter why. It only mattered that she set off a buzz in his head that he’d felt only once or twice before in his life.

Was it his sparkling wit, his sharp intellect, his athletic build, that kept her calling?

“I wish,” he muttered as he packed an unfinished brief into his worn brown leather case.

“What’s that?” Danielle stuck her head into the office. “Are you talking to me?”

“Just thinking out loud.”

“Something going on?” She narrowed her eyes as she came into the room. “Anything you want to talk about?”

“Nope. But thanks.” He finished packing up his papers. “By the way, were you able to find the rest of the Sheldon Woods files?”

“I wasn’t aware I was supposed to be looking for them.” She sat on the arm of one of the wing chairs.

“If you didn’t find them all when I asked you the first time, then one would assume you’re still looking for them.”

“I’ll go down to the basement tomorrow and take another look. We’re still looking for something on Woods’s family? The brother? The mother? The father? Any other siblings?”

“I don’t know that there were other siblings, but yes, that’s pretty much it.”

“This is for that FBI agent, right? Cahill? The woman who was here the other day?”

“Yes.”

“She called again.”

“I know, I spoke with her a little while ago.”

“No, I mean since then. About ten minutes ago.”

Jim frowned. “Where was I? Why didn’t I get the call?”

“I think you were in with Jordan going over the Lasher file. I started to write you a note but then I saw you were getting ready to leave, so I…”

“What did she say?”

“She said the memorial would be on Saturday morning at eleven at the cemetery, and she left directions.” Danielle handed him a slip of paper. “I was going to e-mail them to you.”

“Thanks.” He glanced at the directions. The cemetery was in the Williamses’ hometown, about an hour or so away. Certainly doable.

“Are you going to go with her?”

“Who?”

“You know who. Portia Cahill.” She paused. “What kind of a name is Portia, anyway?”

He recognized the tone as that of a younger sister looking out for the interests of her older brother.

“You don’t like her, do you?” he asked.

“She’s just all cool and professional. And she doesn’t like me. I can tell.”

“Maybe if you’d take that stick out of your butt where she’s concerned you’d get along better.”

Danielle made a face and he laughed.

“You’re not yourself when you talk to her.”

“Oh? Who am I?”

“Some starstruck teenager is what you look like to me.”

“I admit she intrigues me.”

“Intrigues you?” Danielle snorted. “Is that what they call it these days?”

“Say what’s on your mind, Dani.”

“She’s going to be nice to you until she gets what she wants out of your files and then she won’t re turn your calls because she’s moved on to the next case and doesn’t need you anymore and you’re going to feel like a chump.”

“There’s a word I haven’t heard in a long time.”

He grinned.
“Chump.”

Danielle glared at him.

“It was one of Dad’s favorite words,” she reminded him. “I like to haul them out every once in a while just so I don’t forget.”

“I heard Finn call one of his friends a little weasel the other day.” Danielle’s son—Jim’s nephew—was so like their father.

“Another one of Dad’s.” She got off the chair and patted him on the arm on her way out of the room. “Just keep reminding yourself it’s only business between you and Miss FBI, okay?” She paused in the doorway. “It is just business, right?”

“Right.”

“Right,” she repeated, the word dripping with more than a little skepticism. “I’ll see you later at the house. Finn has play practice tonight, so I’ll be a little late.”

“Aren’t you late picking him up?” Jim glanced at his watch.

“He had tee-ball this afternoon. Sean’s mother was picking both boys up from school and taking them to the field. I told her I’d pick them up after, so I need to get going.”

“Okay.” He turned off his office light and walked with his sister through the dimly lit reception area. When they reached the elevator, he said, “Hey, Dani? I appreciate the intentions, but you don’t really have to watch my back.”

“Someone has to.” She punched the down button.

Later, when he should have been working on a brief he had to file in the morning, he found himself in the attic, looking through the storage boxes he’d stashed up there when he first moved back home the year his father died. At Jim’s urging, Danielle had left an abusive relationship, taking her six-month-old son with her, and moved into the house they’d grown up in. She was eighteen years old at the time, the last of his family, and Jim was determined to protect her and her son from Dani’s ex-husband. He knew a restraining order was useless against a man like Steve Bennett, who wouldn’t give a rat’s ass about the consequences if he got it into his head to come around and see what kind of damage he could cause. Jim’s presence in the house was more of a deterrent than a piece of paper—he’d long ago recognized Bennett for the bully and the coward that he was, and Bennett had always backed away whenever Jim was around.

So while it had pained him somewhat to give up the independent life he’d made for himself before their father’s death, the need to keep an eye on the last remnants of his family was more important to him. Besides, he told himself, it wasn’t forever; it was just for now, or until he believed that Bennett had lost interest and moved on with his life.

“Jim, are you up there?” Dani called from the foot of the attic steps.

“Yes. I seem to recall putting some files up here when we moved out of the old office in the city.” He leaned over the railing at the top of the stairs. “I thought I’d take a look before I had you tear up the storage room tomorrow.”

“Hey, Uncle Jimmy!” The force that was his six-year-old nephew flew up the steps. “I hit the ball every time today! Every time!”

“We’re going to have to start calling you Babe.”

“It’s hot up here.” Finn made a face. “I’m not a babe.”

“That’s Babe as in Babe Ruth. One of baseball’s all-time greatest hitters. And he was a lefty, just like you. And it is hot. I opened the window but there isn’t much of a breeze tonight.”

“Oh.” Finn thought it over, then raised a freckled face to Jim’s. “I thought Ruth was a girl’s name.”

“Ruth was his last name.”

“And his first name was Babe? That’s silly.”

“His real name was George. Babe was just a nickname.”

“Why?”

Jim sat on the top step. “That’s a good question.”

“That means you don’t know.”

“Right. I guess we’ll have to look it up.”

“But not tonight,” Dani said from the second floor. “It’s already past Finn’s bedtime and he still has homework.”

“He’s too young for homework,” Jim told her.

“Yeah, well, tell that to Mrs. Ramsey.” Dani gestured to her son to come down.

“I want to see what Uncle Jimmy’s doing,” Finn protested.

“I’m just looking through some old boxes of papers,” Jim told him. “Nothing very exciting.”

“If it’s not exciting, why are you…”

“Finn Bennett. Now.” Dani’s hands were on her hips, a sign of her impatience.

“Okay.” Finn turned to his uncle. “Will you come in to say good night?”

“I will,” Jim promised, resisting the urge to tousle the boy’s hair.

“Maybe we could read the book about Max again,” Finn said hopefully as he hopped down the steps, pausing on each one.

“You read that one last night,” Dani reminded him as he neared the bottom. “And the night before, and the night before that.”

“Yeah, but it’s our favorite, right, Uncle Jimmy?”

“That’s right, buddy. Can’t get me enough of those Wild Things.”

“See, Mom?” Finn’s chatter faded away as he and his mother made their way to the first floor.