The Stolen (24 page)

“T
omorrow,” Paulina said. She was sitting at her desk, leaning back in her desk chair, the one the assistants commonly referred to as the “bitch throne.” She’d caught James Keach referring to it as such one day, but rather than admonish the boy, she merely laughed and told him not to be shy about it. From that day on, James commonly referred to the chair with that moniker, using the slight whisper of a child who can’t believe his parents permit him to curse in the house.

The copy was set. The pictures had been laid out. She’d pored over every inch of the article with greater focus than any story she could remember. She couldn’t say for sure whether this piece would be her crowning moment as a journalist—in fact, she wasn’t sure she’d want it to be—but in many ways it meant the most to her. It represented a clear turning point in her career, and would mark perhaps the first official shot of the war. To this day it had been the newsprint version of Russia versus the U.S. No casualties, lots of trash talk and hidden agendas everywhere they turned.

Paulina’s article would change all of that. So while nobody quite knew just who fired that first shot at Lexington and Concord, in the future they could pin this one to her blouse. The Parker stories had been small potatoes. Going after a baby fish as though people would care. To this point, Henry hadn’t been in the game long enough for people to truly care. Like Stephen Glass and Jayson Blair, the sting would have been worse if they had the tenure of, well…Paulina laughed.

A bottle of Dom was waiting in her fridge. Myron’s phone number was on her cell phone. At first she debated calling him again—the last thing she needed tonight was another pity party—but ending the night with a good drink and a great lay would be the perfect capper. The end of the beginning, the beginning of the end.

And even though she hadn’t seen him in many months, Paulina rather wished she’d be able to see the look on Henry Parker’s face in the morning.

T
he sun bathed Hobbs County in a beautiful mélange of reds and golds. This could be such a breathtaking town, I hated to think so much evil had taken place here. When I parked the car in the lot by the construction site, I took a moment to take it in, to breathe it in. You didn’t get many views like this in the city, one of the trade-ins you had to make to live there. I didn’t mind so much. Spending my whole childhood growing up way out West, I’d seen enough sunsets to quench a lifelong thirst. Living amid the steel and bustle of New York didn’t quite feel like home yet, but it was getting there.

I turned off the car and parked outside the site.

The mall was coming up well. Steel beams were exposed everywhere. Tools and wheelbarrows and mixers were scattered about. I had no idea where I was supposed to meet Reggie Powers. I figured there would be some sort of office structure set apart, or he’d just be waiting for me outside. Yet as I took a quick look around, there was no sign of him.

As I walked through the construction area, dipping under low beams, peeking around corners, I felt a queasy sensation in my stomach when I realized there wasn’t a single person in sight.

Powers’s secretary had told me Reggie would be at the site all day. But there were no other cars on the lot. No discarded papers or bags. No sign that any human beings had even set foot here today. Why would Reggie be here all day if nobody else was?

A terrible suspicion grew that I was alone here. Or even worse, not as alone as I thought.

“Hello?” I called out. My voice echoed through the structure. A chill ran through my body, and I held the backpack tighter. “Mr. Powers?”

Still nothing.

I exited the structure, walked around the exterior.

Several cranes were standing tall over the skeleton, long steel beams lying at their feet. The cement trucks were quiet, side elevators dark.

“Reggie Powers!” I called again. When again there was no answer, I decided it’d be best to get the hell out of there.

I began to jog back toward the car, winding my way around the side of the building. As I passed a blue van, I saw something that made me stop in my tracks. My breath caught.

Beside the van I could make out a human hand splayed out on the ground. As I crept closer, I could see the fingertips coated with blood. The hand belonged to a black man.

The body was on the ground in an awkward position. The right hand was splayed out above the man’s head, the left arm at a ninety-degree angle. The legs were crumpled, one stuck beneath the man’s torso. A single hole was in the center of his head, and a pool of blood had begun to dry.

I didn’t need to check the wallet to know that Reggie Powers had been murdered.

I whipped around, looking for something, anything. He’d clearly been dead a little while, so whoever had done it had either fled the scene, or was waiting for me.

I took the cell phone from my pocket. Dialed 911. I felt panicked as I waited to be connected, every second not knowing what the hell was happening. Was Powers already dead when I called his office? Or had he come here with the intent to meet with me, then was murdered by someone who knew…

Then I knew it. Powers meant to set me up. He knew nobody would be at the construction site. He must have told somebody before he arrived. And that somebody took him out. Somebody who’d begun to think Powers was better off dead. Somebody who felt he’d become a liability.

And when I heard the click of a gun safety being removed, I knew immediately that Raymond Benjamin had killed him.

“Step away from the van, Parker.”

I put the cell phone in my coat pocket. Every muscle in my body was numb.

I recognized the voice. I’d heard it that night at the house on Huntley, as this man tried to torture information out of me.

I slowly turned around. Hands above my head.

Raymond Benjamin was standing ten feet away from me. He held a gun in one outstretched hand. The scar on his cheek seemed to glisten in the darkening sky. His face was a mask of anger and frustration.

“I didn’t want it to come to this,” he said. “Killing is an ugly, ugly thing. If you’d just let it be, Parker, this wouldn’t be happening.”

“Petrovsky. Powers. You killed them both, and for what? To hide your dirty secret? I know what all this is,” I said. “All this by your hand.”

Benjamin took a step closer. “Parker,” he said. “I’m sorry you won’t have a chance to know any better.”

The sky exploded, a yellow blast echoing in the night, and I shut my eyes and waited to die. When after a moment I felt no pain, felt nothing at all except the wind on my face, I opened them. Raymond Benjamin was dead on the ground. Smoke wafted from a bullet hole in his back, right where his heart had beat its last breath. And standing there, smoking gun in his hand, was Senator Gray Talbot.

“I
t was you all along,” I said, staring into the senator’s cold eyes. “You were behind the kidnappings. Hobbs County and Meriden were your pet projects so you could look good come voting season. That way you could come off looking like some great savior, when in reality you were feeding people the same poison you claimed to be eradicating. You and Raymond Benjamin found children who were born with diabetes, whom you could subject to these sick experiments to rob them of years of their lives. You take them away, then use their disappearances as leverage to get good press, gentrify the towns. The crime rate plummets. Property values go up. In come landowners who are more willing to vote for you. You bring in Reggie Powers to rebuild the town. You steal lives for political gain, you fucking monster.”

Talbot shook his head like a teacher whose student was too stupid to understand a simple equation. “That’s the black-and-white version,” Talbot said. “But who’s really losing here? These kids lose a couple years of their lives, but when they come back their towns aren’t criminal beehives anymore. Their schools aren’t run-down. Drugs aren’t sold on their blocks. It’s a small sacrifice for a lifetime of happiness, for them and their families.”

“So one life is worth shattering if it saves another, is that right? The ends justify the means?”

“They always do,” Talbot said. “And if I’m reelected because of it, if this leads me to the governor’s mansion or, heaven look upon me, the White House, it will be because I take steps weaker men aren’t willing to take. If you can sacrifice one life to save others, don’t you have to do that? As a human being?”

“I don’t buy that,” I said. “Reggie Powers contributed thousands and thousands of dollars a year to political campaigns. Want to bet if we looked up his history of donating to your fund, we’d find a little more than ‘Good Samaritan’ money?”

“Reggie had a good heart,” Talbot said, and I detected a hint of real sadness. “He was a true hero. But he was compromised. Just like the Reed family, it was only a matter of time before Reggie’s heart got the best of him.”

“So you’re tying up your loose ends,” I said. “Dmitri Petrovsky. Reggie Powers. Ray Benjamin. Everyone who knew about this is dead. And if we hadn’t found them first, the Reeds would be, too. All those lives, you’re actually trying to say these people’s deaths are worth furthering your demented cause?”

“Without a doubt, absolutely. You cannot put a value on one life, Henry. But I can tell you that a hundred lives, a thousand lives, are worth more than a simple few. The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time, with the blood of patriots and tyrants. Those children, these men, were our patriots. They gave their lives to prevent others from suffering in the future. Men like Raymond Benjamin are our tyrants. He represents everything wrong with our culture. And so while he was a means to an end, so, too, did his blood need to water the ground.”

“And Daniel Linwood,” I said. “Michelle Oliveira. Caroline Twomey. Their blood funds your campaign, too.”

“If my platform must stand on a column these children have provided, so be it. I can live with that. I am sorry, Henry. Consider yourself a patriot. Your death will save lives.”

“One thing before I, you know, go,” I said.

“Yes, Parker?”

“The blood might choke the ground,” I said, taking my still-connected cell phone from my coat pocket. “But with my plan I get a signal pretty much anywhere.”

Talbot looked at me with horror, and right as he raised the gun to fire, I heard the sound of several sirens approaching. Talbot turned around to see a police cruiser pull into the construction site, followed by half a dozen more along with two ambulances.

A dozen cops leaped from their vehicles, guns raised, pointed at the silver-haired senator.

“Drop your weapon!” a cop yelled. “Drop it now or we will take you down!”

Talbot looked at me, and for a moment I saw a fear and confusion in his eyes that brought terror to my heart. He raised the gun an inch, aiming straight and true at me, and for a moment I believed the senator would end my life along with everything else.

Then he lowered the gun, his eyes dropping to the ground, and the gun clattered on the gravel.

Instantly he was pinned down by three police officers, who handcuffed him and then picked the man up. Standing by one of the cruisers were the two detectives who’d questioned Amanda and me after we’d escaped from Huntley. Their faces were blank, unbelieving, as they watched Senator Gray Talbot pushed into the back of a police car, which then pulled away.

I stood there in the waning daylight, looked up at the sky and took a long, sweet breath. There was one more task to be done. One more terrible question that needed to be answered.

T
he money trail was there. A spot-check of Gray Talbot’s campaign finance reports showed a yearly influx of $50,000 dollars from a company called Shepherd Incorporated. Shepherd was owned by Reggie Powers, a shell company set up separately from Powers Construction. Yearly withdrawals from Shepherd, Inc. were being matched to Gray Talbot. And everyone knew what they would tell us.

Finally the story came together. Several of the players, I knew, had to believe the bullshit Gray Talbot was spewing. Several of them had to feel that what they were doing was right. That to destroy evil, you had to commit evil. That getting your cause noticed was justification for it all.

It was easy to be cynical. Both Amanda and I came from broken homes, where we could never believe a parent would go to such lengths to allegedly protect us.

Gray Talbot hired Raymond Benjamin to be his eyes, his ears, his gun. All orders went through Benjamin, nothing went to Gray. Benjamin was his wall of protection.

Benjamin, a Hobbs County native, approached Dmitri Petrovsky in order to obtain hospital records of infants born with childhood diabetes. They screened children who would be most susceptible to Korsakoff syndrome. Once Petrovsky came back with a name, a plan was put in motion.

The child would be kidnapped. Petrovsky would develop a nutritional plan that would keep the child’s thiamine levels at a level dangerous enough to cause minor brain damage, enough to bring an onset of Korsakoff, but not so severe that it would endanger the child’s life.

When the child was gone, when the police search turned up fruitless, that’s when Gray Talbot stepped in. He would trumpet his concern for the welfare of the community. Talk about how crime rates were unacceptable. That children were being snatched from their families.

Millions of dollars would be pumped into the communities through donations, federal and state funding. Police forces would be bolstered. Neighborhood watches on patrol. Broken streetlights fixed. Homes made safe again.

And real estate would slowly creep up.

That’s when Talbot would enlist the help of Powers Construction. Reggie would come in with his trucks and his men, level the homes consumed by crack, rebuild houses that would attract more money than the neighborhood had ever seen.

Talbot would gain a wealthier, more affluent constituency. Powers would make millions from the sweetheart deals. And the communities would be better off.

Everybody won.

Except the children.

Amanda sat in the seat next to me, the radio turned to a soft rock station. The music they played was unthreatening, wouldn’t offend any sensibilities, lyrics that couldn’t harm a fly. That’s all we wanted at that moment. Serenity. Emotionlessness.

The next few hours would be difficult. We didn’t want it to start until it absolutely had to.

After I’d gone on record with the police, handed over my cell phone and explained everything that had happened, I called Amanda immediately. I told her what we had to do. I wasn’t sure how the night was going to end, but if we didn’t ask that one final question, I didn’t know if I’d ever sleep again.

I steered the car, unable to help but think about Danny Linwood, how in some ways we both had lost years from our childhood. The difference was I had a choice. My memories and experiences helped mold me into what I was now. Danny would need time, years perhaps, to even know who he was.

We arrived at the house shortly past ten o’clock. The porch lights were out. The street was dim save a few lampposts. Turning the engine off, I walked up to one, felt the metal, inspected it. It was well cared for. No graffiti. No damage. It was doing its duty without any interference. Illuminating a world that was, for better or worse, now a safer place.

“You think they’re asleep?” Amanda asked.

“No way. At that age I fought tooth and nail for every extra minute. I’d sneak an AM/FM radio into bed so I could listen to ball games, maybe a book and a flashlight. I hope kids haven’t outgrown that.”

“Not outgrown it,” she said. “They just have more options now. Portable video games, iPods, televisions the size of a quarter. It’s a miracle they don’t spend half their time choosing which one to watch.”

We stepped up to the porch. I saw the wind chimes again. In a moment they’d be ringing their tune.

I pressed the doorbell, heard a chime go off inside the house. There were footsteps, a woman’s voice shouting something. Then the screen door opened, and Shelly Linwood was standing right in front of us.

She was wearing a terry-cloth bathrobe, her hair done up in rollers. I saw a child run past behind her. Tasha, if I remembered correctly.

“Henry? Henry Parker?” she said, unsure of what to make of this late-night visit.

“Mrs. Linwood,” I said. “I need a minute of your time.”

“I was just doing my hair,” she said. She looked eager to get back to that, but the look on my face told her we weren’t leaving anytime soon. Resignedly, she said, “Come on in.”

She held the door open for us, and we walked inside.

“Mrs. Linwood, this is Amanda Davies. She works for the New York Legal Aid Society. She’s a good friend of mine, and I just thought it would be good for her to meet Danny. Danny might have some questions she can answer. And if not, he’ll make a new friend.”

I saw a mop of hair peek from behind a doorway. Shelley turned around, said, “Danny, come in here. You remember Henry, right?”

Daniel Linwood tentatively stepped into the room. He’d gained a few pounds since I last saw him, his hair a little longer. His eyes seemed more frightened, his gait more awkward.

“Danny,” I said. “This is Amanda.”

She stepped forward, knelt down slightly so she was at his level.

“Hey there,” she said. “I’m Amanda. Mind if we chat for a bit? I’d love to see your room.”

“Show her your Xbox,” Shelly said. Danny nodded reluctantly, led Amanda past us and up the stairs.

“Can we sit?” I said. Shelly nodded.

We went into the living room, sat on the same couch where I’d interviewed Danny not too long ago.

“How is he?” I asked.

Shelly sighed, scratched her neck.

“I get a call from his school almost every day. Kids picking on him. Giving him wedgies. Stealing his lunch money. It wasn’t like this before.”

“He’s a different person now,” I said. “It’s going to take a long time for him to find himself.”

“I know,” she said. “God, I know.”

“Mrs. Linwood,” I said. “I want you to hear this from me. And only from me. I want you to know what I know.”

She looked up, her eyes big and brown and watery. “Yes?”

“You knew about Daniel’s kidnapping. You knew it was going to happen. You knew he would be taken. And you probably told them when they could do it. Know that I know. Because you’ll have to live with that. Live with everyone knowing what you did.”

Her mouth fell open. She stared at me, shaking her head, openmouthed.

“No,” she said. “My Danny, I didn’t—”

“Shelly,” I said. “You’ve been lying too long. I know why you did it. I know you met Raymond Benjamin.”

Shelly just sat there, her lower lip trembling.

“When I spoke to Danny, you even brought him a tray of food. Vegetables that would help replenish the thiamine levels that were so low in his brain. Food high in vitamin B1. Did Petrovsky tell you to do that?”

Shelly sat there, stone silent.

“Did he come to your house? Raymond Benjamin.”

She continued to stare, then a tear streaked down her cheek as she nodded.

“Yes,” she said.

“What did he say?”

“He told me,” Shelly said, sucking in air and wiping her face, “that this town was tearing itself apart. That he’d grown up here, and there were only two options for boys Danny and James’s age. Prison or the grave. Raymond said he’d been to prison, but that’s only because he got caught.”

“And he offered you a deal,” I said. “Right? He would take Danny away for a few years. He would be gone, but he would be safe. And by doing that you would give your children a chance to grow up in a neighborhood where they’d be safe. Where they could make something of themselves.”

Shelly nodded. Then she stood up. Went over to the mantel, and took down a framed photograph. She handed it to me.

It was an odd picture. I’d noticed it during my interview with Daniel. And now I thought about the photo I found in Robert Reed’s wallet and it all made sense.

The photo was of Shelly’s younger son, James. The shot had been taken from about five feet behind him. He was wearing a knapsack, baggy jeans. He was unaware of the photographer.

I turned the frame over and removed the knobs that held it in place. When the backing came off, the back of the photo was visible. One word was printed on it.

Remember.

“Raymond Benjamin gave that photo to me,” she said. “He told me he’d taken it himself. He said if he could get that close to James, others could, too. People who meant him more harm than he did. He said it was a fair trade. A few years of Daniel’s life would guarantee the safety of my whole family forever. Daniel would, in a way, be a hero. I never understood how my son could be a hero giving his life for a cause he didn’t understand or even know about. I just wanted to believe in some way he was doing it for the future of James and Tasha. And he said that anytime I began to doubt myself or what I’d done, to look at that photo and remember what could happen to the rest of my family.”

“What did you do, Shelly?” I asked.

Shelly began to weep. She held her head in her hands. I felt a modicum of remorse for this woman, but it soon went away.

“I told Benjamin the route Danny took to get home from practice,” she said. “Six-thirty every night. I made him promise not to hurt my baby. He told me he wouldn’t.”

“What else did Benjamin say?”

“He promised me a family would take care of him. They knew about his diabetes and they would care for him,” Shelly said through bloodshot eyes. “And I believed him. At least I wanted to. I needed to know my babies could grow up and lead full lives. I’ve seen what this town can do to people. I wanted my sons to have something better.”

“Is that what Danny has now?” I asked. “Something better?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “But if he can get out of here and ends up in a safe office, making money, starting a family instead of rotting behind bars or in the dirt, then yes. He has something better. I know you can’t possibly understand that, Henry. Wanting your child to not just survive but live a life. Maybe one day you will. But you can’t right now.”

“No,” I said. “I can’t.”