The Faithful (3 page)

Six miles past Encampment, he slowed for the turnoff onto Forest Service Road 550, a gravel lane that cut south and west into the belly of the forest. Sumner gritted his teeth and slowed to a crawl.

CHAPTER FOUR

As soon as Sumner was out of sight, Ora pulled her iPhone out of the back pocket of her skirt and punched in the code to unlock it. She pressed the next numbers from memory; there were no contacts stored in her phone.

Father Narda answered, his voice gravelly, before the first ring was complete.

“He’s on his way. Driving a gray Ford Edge,” she said, dumping her tepid coffee in a bin by the automatic door.

“How does he look?”

“Like shit. Like he hasn’t slept in six months.”

“Do you think he’s fighting against his programming?”

“How should I know? He came off the plane like his ass was on fire. Went straight to the john. He was in there for almost twenty minutes.”

“And then?”

“And then nothing. He came out looking like a man who’d just dropped a huge load. He rented a car and took off.”

“Hmm.” His voice was so rough she could feel its vibration, and she instinctively pulled her ear away from her phone.

“Do you think he made you?”

Ora snorted. “Are you crazy?”

Well, it wasn’t really a lie, just not a direct answer. Sumner most certainly
had
made her, just as she intended. But her dad didn’t need to know that.

“Okay.” The line went dead. No thank you, no good-bye.

“Where’s the love, fucker?” she muttered, deleting the call history and tucking the phone into her back pocket. She reached into her cleavage, glaring at the trucker who slowed to catch a glimpse, and pulled out a prepaid Samsung. As it powered up, she moved back to the Peaks Cafe.

“Hey, it’s me. I’m on my way back. I’ve just got to lift a letter out of a UPS drop box.”

CHAPTER FIVE

“Who’d you have to sleep with to make senior special agent?” Special Agent Carl Robertson’s voice was crackling before Josh even had the phone to his ear.

“Your mother,” Josh retorted. No different from in the schoolyard, there was unwritten FBI protocol to follow: when in doubt, always insult a fellow agent’s mother. Josh waded through the necessary banter and then asked, “What can I do for you, Carl?”

“Think I’ve got another one for your collection,” Carl said, his tone turning serious.

“Oh yeah? What’s the story?” Josh sat up and grabbed a pen out of the FBI coffee mug on his desk.

“Nine-year-old boy in Clatsop County, Oregon. He went missing from a cyclo-cross competition on the county fairgrounds.”

“What in the world is that?”

“Some kind of bike competition. Anyway, he wasn’t competing; he was there watching with his dad. Dad says he went to get a hot dog and disappeared into thin air. That was four days ago.”

“And the dad?”

“I met him today. I doubt he’s involved. He’s a drunk, but with reason. Wife committed suicide last Valentine’s Day. His son is all he’s got left.”

“What makes you think it’s one of mine?”

“Remember that Kerry case a couple years back?”

Josh swiveled in his chair. They stared back at him. Forever frozen. Forever lost. Forever pinned to his mural of tears. Some of the photos were almost fifty years old, curled at the edges with age. The most recent was from four months ago.

Josh scanned the photos until he found her, low down on the left. Jessica Kerry, a six-year-old who was snatched from a mall in Portland during the Christmas season almost three years before. She was blonde and freckled, captured with one bottom tooth missing.

There were exactly 778 photos on the wall, and Josh knew each one by name. It averaged out to fifteen or sixteen new cases a year, although some years there had been almost no disappearances, and other years, like 1998, there had been more than thirty.

On the surface there was nothing to link the cases, other than the fact that they all disappeared without a trace. The kids were black, white, Hispanic, and Asian. They were from every part of the country and every socioeconomic class.

On top of that, all the cases were flimsy on evidence. More often than not, there were no witnesses. When someone
had
seen something, the description of the suspect was always different. One time it was an older white man with silver hair. Next it was an African-American woman in a business suit. Then it was a twentysomething hippie type with dreadlocks who smelled like patchouli and BO. Always different. The suspects were as varied as the kids who went missing.

Before computers caught up, and before Josh came along with his deep and never-ending personal obsession, law enforcement had never connected the dots between the cases. There were only a few connections, but they were there.

“Yes, I remember,” Josh confirmed.

“Well, there was blood found at the scene. We typed it. It’s not human.”

“Lamb’s blood?”

“You got it.”

Josh’s gaze traveled across the wall of faces until he found her. The red hair. The Coke bottle–green eyes. More than two decades later, Ryanne Jervis’s kidnapping still haunted him. “I’ll see you in about five hours.”

According to Hollywood, FBI agents travel by special jet. In reality, they are subjected to the same traveling schedules and frustrations as the average American citizen. They even fly coach.

The earliest flight he was able to book was on Alaska Airlines, and it didn’t leave Dulles until 5:10 p.m. With the time change he would get into Portland, Oregon, just before 8:00 p.m. He choked back his frustration and booked the flight online, then called Special Agent Carl Robertson to let him know when he would arrive. Carl offered to pick him up and drive him the hour and a half to Seaside.

Josh left the office at 2:30 and headed to his Falls Church, Virginia, townhome to pack a bag, take a quick shower, and change his suit. He was back on the road twenty minutes later, and made it to the airport in less than thirty minutes.

The metal briefcase that held his Glock 22 firearm and ammunition had to be checked, and he waited while it went through the security screening. Once it cleared, the officer handed back the key to the protective case, and Josh found a Starbucks.

He bought a large coffee and a
Washington Post
with which to pass the time until boarding, and a blueberry-bran muffin and a fruit-and-cheese platter to take onboard for his dinner.

The flight was uneventful, but after almost six hours of cramming his six-foot-three frame into a coach seat, he was stiff and fighting a dull headache. Carl met him at baggage claim and led him through the short-term lot to his company-issued Chevy Suburban.

Josh placed his bags in the trunk and took a minute to load his Glock, which he holstered against his rib cage. Once ensconced in the passenger seat, he asked Carl if there were any new developments in the case.

“There’s been nothing. The vendor remembers Jack. Says he was alone. Bought a couple of hot dogs and drinks. We found the dogs and the two spilled drinks about fifty feet away, covered in blood. One of the dogs had a bite out of it.”

Carl paused as he paid the cashier, then pulled through the gate and navigated the twists and turns toward the on-ramp for I-205 South. Once they were on the freeway he pulled a file folder out of the center console and passed it to Josh.

“It’s all in there, if you want to catch yourself up.”

Stapled to the inside page was a photo of the boy. Jack Barbetti was a good-looking kid. He had light-brown hair cut close to his head and large, almond-shaped brown eyes. His crooked teeth would require expensive orthodontic work. Smooth-skinned, his cheekbones were just starting to push out with the promise of the man he would become.

Would have become. Josh felt the familiar ache in his chest. If Jack Barbetti was case number 779, he would never be seen again.

The Barbetti home was on a small street of clapboard, single-level homes, a block and a half off the beach. It was painted a bright yellow with pale-blue trim, and the yard was artfully appointed with tufts of sea grass and driftwood.

The front door had a two-foot-square inlay of blue-and-white sea glass, which surrounded the word “Welcome” in shades of green. The windows were aglow, making the home look incongruously cheerful.

A makeshift shrine surrounded the mailbox: a pile of wilting flower arrangements still in their plastic, a few teddy bears, and a large sign that said “May God bless Jack and bring him home safe!”

The smell of brine and rotting fish assaulted Josh’s nostrils as he emerged from the vehicle and stretched out his long frame. He could hear the waves crashing against the shore. Patches of beach were lit by the dim glow of streetlamps, and beyond lay the vast black of the Pacific.

He tightened his tie and buttoned his suit jacket, then followed Carl up the path. A battered red Ford F-150 was tucked into the left side of the carport; the other side was vacant save the oil stain on the cracked concrete.

There was a tinfoil-wrapped casserole on the stoop, and Carl picked it up and took a peek at the attached card. It smelled like noodles and cheese.

“I let Mr. Barbetti know we were coming,” he said quietly as he knocked on the door.

They heard shuffling inside, and a moment later the door opened. Keaton Barbetti might once have been a handsome man, but grief and alcohol had taken their toll. His sandy hair was tangled and sticking up on end. His blue eyes were bleary and puffed with tears and lack of sleep.

He was barefoot, wearing gray sweatpants and an Oregon Ducks T-shirt with a rip near the left armpit. A week’s worth of scruff covered his face and the scent of whiskey rippled off him in waves, like cartoon stink lines. Josh did his best not to wrinkle his nose.

“The FBI is bringing me food now?” His voice was raw with grief.

Carl gave him a half smile. “Trust me, you wouldn’t want anything I managed to cook.”

Without another word, Mr. Barbetti stepped back from the door and headed into the living room, leaving the agents to close the door and follow him in. Carl left the casserole on the hall table on top of a pile of unopened bills.

The living room was a mess of scattered bottles, newspapers, and takeout wrappers from Taco Bell and Subway. Mr. Barbetti sat down on the couch and reached for a glass of amber liquid in which a couple of ice cubes were melting. They clinked against the side of the glass as he took a long swallow.

Despite its more recent neglect, it was obvious a woman had once lived in the home. The late Mrs. Barbetti’s touch was everywhere: in the seashell lamp on the side table, the overstuffed yellow cotton couch and chair, and the rainbow rag rug that covered the hardwood floor.

The walls were decorated with paintings of ocean and forest scenes. Josh spied an “EB” neatly scripted in the lower corner of the nearest painting, a beach scene in which a young boy was building a sand castle.

It took him a moment to realize the artist must have been the deceased wife, Emma Barbetti. To his untrained eye, she’d had talent. The ocean was deep and mysterious, the waves somehow alive, and the curve of the boy’s back managed to capture the brief innocence of toddlerhood. He wondered if the boy was Jack, and his chest tightened with frustration.

How many more? How many more innocent children would disappear into the abyss while he chased after them in utter futility? Would he go to his grave still chasing these shadow children, never knowing what had happened to them?

He turned back to Mr. Barbetti, yet another frantic and terrified parent in another sad living room looking at him with the same desperate hope. And once again, he had no hope to give. He never did. It was his life, and he felt like the worst kind of failure.

“Mr. Barbetti, I’m Senior Special Agent Joshua Metcalf of the FBI. I’m here to help find your son.” He tried to sound calm and authoritative, like an FBI agent should, but he felt like such a fraud.

“Oh yeah? And how are you going to do that?”

“The first thing I’d like to do is hear what happened the day Jack disappeared.”

“Look, I appreciate your help.” Mr. Barbetti dropped his empty glass onto the coffee table with a clumsy clatter. “I really do. I hear you came all the way from DC. But I don’t see how going through the whole story for the millionth time is going to really do anything.”

“New details often emerge during the retelling,” Josh explained. “And one new detail can make all the difference.”

Mr. Barbetti studied Josh with bleary eyes, debating. Josh closed his mouth and waited. In his experience, people felt compelled to talk after a tragedy. They needed to tell the story. It helped to process the horror and grief, to make sense of the unthinkable. Mr. Barbetti was no different.

With deliberation, he refilled his glass. “Don’t think I don’t know what you’re thinking, Agent whatever-your-name-is. I can handle plenty more than this before my lights go out.”

“I’m glad to hear it,” Josh said.

“Lots of experience,” Mr. Barbetti said, nodding into his glass. “Years and years . . .”

“Mr. Barbetti,” Josh said when the silence had stretched too long, “why don’t you start with that morning? When did you wake up?”

He made a noise that was more sob than sigh. “Nine, maybe? It wasn’t any different from any other morning . . .” He looked up, meeting Josh’s eyes with apparent effort. “I’d caught quite the Irish flu the night before.”

“Meaning you were drunk.”

Mr. Barbetti tipped his head in acknowledgment. “Yessir. That I was. Good old Jimmy Beam’s like a neighbor that keeps comin’ over and then ignoring the cue to leave at the end of the night. So the morning started with my head in the toilet.”

Jack was eating a bowl of Cheerios when Mr. Barbetti finally entered the kitchen, wearing yesterday’s sweatpants. It hurt his heart, he admitted, to see the quick once-over his nine-year-old gave him.

“He’s too young to have eyes that old, you know?” he said, and Josh nodded.