PETER LED ROGER AWAY FROM the roadside to a flat boulder at the edge of the swamp. Using the flashlight, he sat the man down and examined the laceration in his scalp. It was about a half inch long but superficial, and Peter doubted it would require stitches. He asked Roger if he was hurt anywhere else and got only a vacant stare. Gingerly touching the bump on his own head, he sat next to Roger and turned the flashlight off.
They sat in silence for a while, nothing left to say, watching the occasional vehicle speed by on the roadway, listening to the lively chatter of insects and night birds in the swamp. The air was cool and Peter started shivering in his wet clothes, the ebbing rush of adrenalin making him feel ill. The whole thing seemed unreal to him now, sitting here at the side of a road he’d never been on before, miles from home, alone under a starlit sky with a man he barely knew, a man driven by an obsession Peter not only understood but had freely adopted as his own. The quiet was maddening; in it, all Peter could hear was the kidnapper getting farther away.
It wasn’t long before he heard the sound of sirens approaching fast, and he got up to flag down the first police car. Roger didn’t move, just sat there with his elbows on his knees, staring at his hands. Peter told the officer what had happened, saying he couldn’t be sure in which direction the van had fled after their vehicle left the road, assuring him that neither of them had been seriously injured. The officer said he’d have an ambulance dispatched anyway, then repeated into his radio exactly what Peter had told him.
Another police car appeared now, slowed, then kept on going. Within seconds an unmarked car ground to a halt behind the first cruiser. The driver introduced himself as Staff Sergeant Laking, his handshake firm, his expression grim in the glare of head lights. The tall, freckled woman who got out on the passenger side said her name was Sergeant Taylor and identified herself as the lead investigator. Peter shook her hand too, saying he was pleased to meet her, apologizing for his filthy clothes. She told him not to worry, then glanced at the Corolla in the swamp and asked the officer to call for a tow truck.
Peter led the investigators over to Roger and made the introductions, but Roger only grunted, not responding when Laking held his hand out to be shaken. Sergeant Taylor asked Peter if he was sure his friend hadn’t been seriously injured and Peter said, “I’m a doctor,” and told her he was confident Roger was fine. Then he led them a discrete distance away and said, “I think I should explain how we came to be involved in this thing.”
Sergeant Taylor said, “Are you telling us it’s more than coincidence?”
“Much more,” Peter said, glancing back at Roger, who was staring at them now. “To do it properly, though, I’m going to need a computer.”
* * *
Graham felt the van come to a stop and let his eyes open halfway, hoping he was finally back home. But they were parked in a row of cars behind a long brick building with a bunch of red doors. The ceiling light came on now, making Graham squint, and he heard the man say, “Okay, kiddo, we have to change cars.” Then he felt a sting in his leg and saw a needle stuck in him, right through his jammies, and now the man was squeezing something into him with his thumb, saying, “Sorry, little man, but we’ve got a long drive ahead of us and you’re going to have a nice little nap.” The man pulled the needle out and Graham started to cry, hiding his quiet sobs in his pillow.
The light went off and the man got out of the van with his hair on, locking the door behind him. Graham watched him go to the small silver car parked next to them on Graham’s side and take something out of his coat...a set of keys. Then he turned his back to Graham and unlocked the car door. Graham rubbed his eyes and saw the man get in behind the wheel. He wanted to see what the man was doing in there, thinking maybe he could climb out the other side and run away, but his head felt funny now, heavy, like his neck couldn’t remember how to hold it up anymore.
Graham lost track of things for a while, then he heard the man’s voice, the man saying something that didn’t make sense. It was hot in the van and Graham was very sleepy. When the man picked him up and Graham felt the cool night air on his skin, he curled his hands under his chin and rested his head against the man’s chest, thinking his daddy had him now and he’d fallen asleep again on the drive home from Grandma’s.
A little smile found his lips and he knew that soon he’d be safe in his own bed.
* * *
After performing a cursory neurological assessment, the paramedic closed the wound in Roger’s scalp with a butterfly bandage and suggested he see a doctor should he experience any dizziness or headache over the next twenty four hours. The tow truck, Jonesy’s Towing, arrived as Peter and Roger climbed into the back seat of the unmarked car.
Both men were quiet during the half-hour drive to the Oakville police station, Peter at one point almost falling asleep in the quiet hum of motion. When they arrived, Sergeant Laking showed them to a staff restroom, suggesting they take a few minutes to clean themselves up. He returned a short time later with some bright orange prison fatigues, saying that if they didn’t mind, they could pull these on over their dirty clothes. Peter thanked the Sergeant, agreeing that it was a good idea.
Surprising Peter as they were pulling on the fatigues, Roger said, “You look right at home in those,” and grinned.
Peter felt a knot loosen in his chest. No artist at quick comebacks he said, “I’m sorry he got away, Roger.”
“Yeah, me too.”
Lowering his voice, Peter said, “They’re probably going to interview us separately.”
“Why do you say that?”
Peter said, “C.S.I.,” and both men chuckled. Then, more soberly, Peter said, “I thought I might just...leave out the stuff about David. You know. Keep it simple.”
Roger said, “You and I met four years ago at the boys’ daycare. You saw that Missing Person photo of the Dolan kid at work and brought the resemblance to my attention, but after discussing it we decided it was probably just a coincidence. When I saw the news about the Cade boy on TV, I got in touch with you right away and asked you to make the trip to Oakville with me. I wanted to be there when they caught the guy but I didn’t want to do it alone. It was simple curiosity that took us into the Cade’s neighborhood.”
“What if they ask us why we didn’t notify the police the instant we made the connection? If it was the resemblance of these other kids to Jason that brought us down here, why didn’t we speak up right away?”
“Because we could hardly believe it ourselves.”
Peter said, “I suppose,” but he was worried.
Laking came back a few minutes later and led them through a big room partitioned into work stations, most of them abandoned at this hour. Sergeant Taylor got up from one of the desks and fell in step with the men, following them along a narrow corridor to a series of offices with plain gray doors. Laking held the door to the first one open and said, “Mr. Mullen, why don’t you come ahead in here with me.”
Roger glanced at Peter, then did as he was told.
Peter followed Sergeant Taylor through the next door and, at her polite invitation, sat at the desk in the corner of the room, facing a flat screen computer monitor.
There was a tape recorder on the desk and the policewoman turned it on, telling it the date and time, then saying that she, Sergeant Vickie Taylor, was the interviewing officer and that he, Peter Croft, was the interviewee.
Then she pulled up a chair and sat next to Peter saying, “Okay, show me.”
Peter said, “I need the Internet,” and Vickie took over the keyboard, logging in and getting him online. Peter brought up the Child Find site and clicked on the letter D. When he scrolled down to Clayton Dolan’s photograph and enlarged it he heard Vickie Taylor draw a sharp breath.
Now he said, “Do you have a printer?” and Vickie took over the keyboard again. A printer on a side table hummed to life and spat out a color copy. Vickie picked it up and said, “Who—?” and Peter said, “Wait,” clicking on the M now, clicking again to bring Jason Mullen’s smiling face into center screen. He said, “This is Roger’s son.”
Vickie said, “Oh, my God,” and printed this one out too.
* * *
Staff Sergeant Laking sat at his desk with the pictures of the three kids lined up on the blotter in front of him. He said, “Unbelievable,” and looked at Vickie, seated in the chair across from him. “Pretty clear we’ve got a serial on our hands.”
Vickie said, “Looks that way.”
“What did you make of the doctor?”
“I think there’s more to his story than he’s admitting,” Vickie said, “but I don’t think there’s anything criminal going on. I don’t believe he’s involved. It got a little weird when I told him his name popped up on CPIC, though. Turns out he ‘saw’ the face of the Mullen boy’s kidnapper in a dream or a vision of some kind. Mullen was desperate, so he talked a cop friend of his into letting Croft go through some photo line-ups. I got the copper on the horn a few minutes ago, staff Sergeant by the name of Bernie Eklund up in Sudbury. Said he checked Croft out and the man came up clean. Croft’s own son died recently and he and Mullen attended the same bereavement group.”
“Strange, but benign.”
“That’s how I felt,” Vickie said. “What was your impression of Mullen?”
“About the same, though he didn’t mention anything about visions.”
“I can understand his reluctance. So how do you want to proceed?”
“We’ll need copies of the case files on these other abductions,” Laking said, “but I’m not sure it’s going to make much difference.” He pointed at the data under the photos. “I mean, look at his intervals here. If we can’t pick this guy up on the evidence we’ve already got—or just get plain lucky—how long before he surfaces again? Three years? Longer?” Laking shook his head. “If we don’t nail him now, before he holes up for good, we’re going to have to hope for a DNA match. And if he’s not in the system...”
Vickie nodded. She was dog-tired and felt a migraine coming on.
Laking said, “Did you hear we got the van?”
“No, where?”
“Stashed behind a motel, five miles down the road. Guy doubled back after he lost our two friends. Must have had a second vehicle waiting, or an accomplice. Nobody saw anything.”
“I take it the van was stolen?”
Laking nodded. “Off a long-term lot at Pearson International. Lifted the plates off an SUV in the parking lot of a strip mall right here in town, after he tried to grab the kid in the park.”
Vickie thought of Cade’s wife screaming blame at her and felt a fresh stab of guilt. “I really believed he’d rabbit.”
Laking said, “Me too, Vick, me too.” He reached across the desk and patted her hand. “But you’ve got to let it go. It’s not your fault and I’m going to need you sharp.”
Vickie nodded. “What are your thoughts about motive?”
“Outside of the usual? Nothing yet.”
“What about the wig?”
“What about it?”
“Disguise or part of his kink?”
“I think it was just a disguise. We were looking for a bald guy, not a big frumpy broad with a bad dye job. Bates and McNamara had no idea what hit them, so I’d say the ruse worked rather well.”
Vickie checked her watch. It was almost five-thirty. She said, “What do you want to do with Mullen and Croft?”
“Let them go. I don’t imagine they’ll stray very far; not for the time being at least. Any word on their car?”
“Jonesy towed it to the Esso on Elgin; says it’s wet and smelly, but it runs. He found Frank’s gun in it. I’ll have someone drop them off there now.”
“Sounds good. See you back here in ten? We’ve got a press conference at seven. It’s gonna be a long day.”
Vickie stood. “Okay, Rob, see you in ten.”
* * *
Peter fed some more quarters into the big Esso station vacuum cleaner and got busy on the slop in the back seat. The rug was soaked with the stuff, rancid water mixed with dark ropes of algae. Fortunately, since they’d gone into the swamp nose first, the trunk wasn’t so bad, the mat back there just a little damp. Their luggage had been spared too, and Peter couldn’t wait to find a hotel and get out of these foul clothes.
Roger was sitting on the curb by the car wash, drinking a Swiss cream soda and staring at his feet. Peter was worried about him, this brooding silence he kept lapsing into. Since they'd left the police station, every attempt Peter had made at conversation had been met with either a blank stare or a dismissive grunt. Part of him wanted to just drive home now and be done with it; but it was almost dawn, the eastern skyline a pale sapphire, and he was bone tired. And though his gut told him the kidnapper had gotten away, he couldn’t let go of the hope that something still might break in the case, some fresh piece of evidence surface that would finally lead to closure for Roger.
The vacuum cycled down and Peter thought, Good enough.
The car was going to need body work and a professional cleaning anyway; right now he just wanted to make it halfway tolerable to drive.
He put the rubber mats back in and told Roger he was done. Roger tossed his empty pop can into the garbage and got in the car. Peter drove the short distance to the pumps and topped up the tank, then merged into morning traffic. Sergeant Taylor had told him there was a hotel about a mile east of the Esso station and Peter found it without difficulty. He got them registered in a room with two double beds and Roger followed him along the carpeted hall.
At the door to the room, as Peter fiddled with the card key, Roger put a warm hand on his shoulder and said, “Thanks, man.”
Peter faced him. “For what?”
“For everything. Hanging in. Being a friend.”
Peter felt himself blushing. “Glad to do it, Roger. And for what it’s worth, I still think they’re going to catch this guy.”
Roger said, “I hope you’re right,” and Peter unlocked the door, holding it open for Roger.
Brushing past him, Roger said, “Dibs on the shower,” and Peter felt the tension break like spring ice. Feeling giddy from fatigue, he tossed his bag on the bed closest to the door and said, “You got it. But this puppy’s mine.”
Roger dropped his bag on the other bed and started peeling off his clothes. Peter dug a T-shirt and a pair of scrub pants out of his bag and went into the bathroom to change. When he was done, he came out to find Roger sitting on the foot of the bed in his shorts and undershirt with the TV on, flipping through the channels with the remote. He stopped at a news update on the kidnapping, the reporter saying that police were no longer looking for the white van, which had been found abandoned behind a local motel, and that an Amber Alert was now in effect.
Without looking at Peter, Roger hit the mute button and said, “I can’t believe he got away.”
“Me neither,” Peter said, sitting on the edge of his bed. “We were so close.”
Roger looked at him now, his eyes darker somehow, discs of blue steel. “I wanted to beat it out of him, you know? Make him tell me what he did to Jason. Then I wanted to kill him.”
Peter had to look away from the savage intensity of that gaze. At different times in his life, he’d wondered about people who killed; wondered what it took and whether he would have it should a situation demand it of him: wartime, protecting his family, defending himself. When it came to protecting his family, he’d always believed he could. But in Roger’s eyes he saw no trace of doubt. If Roger got his hands on this man, he would kill him if he could, without qualm or hesitation.
Peter glanced at the silent television and saw a composite of the kidnapper, obviously computer-generated, the lines smoother than those created by the sketch artist in Sudbury. The sight of it startled him, that rigid, emotionless face, and for an instant he flashed on the face in his dream.
Now he heard Roger get to his feet. Heard him say, “Guess I’ll grab that shower,” then heard his undershirt coming off over the chain that was always around his neck. There was a jingling sound and Peter turned to see a pair of dog tags tumble out of Roger’s undershirt as he pulled it over his head, one of them silver, the other gold. Lamplight flared off the thin metal wafers and Peter felt a click in his throat—for a moment, he couldn’t breathe—then he gasped and wobbled to his feet, his heart beating so fast he could feel its frantic bound in his skull. Startling Roger, he plucked the dog tags off his chest, almost breaking the heavy ball-chain. He saw Jason’s name engraved on one of the tags and said, “Where did you get these?”
Roger frowned. “Summerfest, five years ago. It was Jason’s idea. He got a pair exactly the same, except his say ‘Dad’.” He tugged the tags out of Peter’s hand, letting them fall back to his chest. “Why?”
Peter’s gaze rose to meet Roger’s. His mouth was as dry as dirt. “I know who took Jason,” he said. “I know where she lives.”
* * *
Just before dawn—around the time Peter and Roger were leaving the police station in Oakville to retrieve Peter’s car—Graham Cade awoke in a strange bed with a terrible, aching fog in his head. He said, “Oh,” and lifted his head off the pillow, surprised at its leaden weight. The light on the ceiling was off, but Graham could see pretty well in the pale morning glow that shone through the window beside the bed.
He was in a child’s room, faded Batman wallpaper and a bunch of old toys on wooden shelves, some of them spooky-looking in the purple shadows. His memory was fuzzy, and for a moment he had no idea where he was or how he came to be here.
Then he remembered and his eyes filled with tears.
A familiar voice said, “Don’t cry,” and Graham saw his kidnapper sitting on a chair at the foot of the bed. She was a woman now, wearing a dress and her long black hair but with no lipstick, her dark eyes soft and moist-looking as she rose from the chair to sit next to him on the bed. She reached out to touch his face and Graham stiffened, the woman saying, “That’s okay, sweetheart, the scary part’s over now. You’re safe. Safe here with me.” Now she did touch his face, her big hand warm and soft against his cheek, and Graham let her, the feeling somehow comforting in this creepy room. She said, “I’ve got some clean clothes laid out for you on the dresser over there.” She pointed and Graham saw a brown shirt folded neatly on top of a brand new pair of jeans, the paper tags still on them. He didn’t like blue jeans when they were new, that stiff feeling against his skin, but he didn’t complain.
Now she tousled his hair and rose to her feet beside the bed. She said, “Do you remember where the bathroom is?” and Graham shrugged. Wherever he was, he didn’t remember ever going to the bathroom here. The woman said, “That’s okay, it’ll all come back to you soon,” and walked to the door, turning to face him as she pushed the door open. “Why don’t you get dressed,” she said, smiling now, tilting her head to look at him with her wet eyes. “The bathroom’s right at the end of the hall if you need it. When you’re ready, come ahead downstairs and I’ll make your favorite breakfast. Then I’ll explain everything.” Wiggling her fingers at him, she said, “It’s so nice to have you home, honey.”
Then she was gone.
Graham pulled the covers over his head and wept, hoping his mommy and daddy were okay, praying they would come for him soon.
* * *
Peter unzipped his computer bag and dug out the material he’d compiled on the Dolan boy. With trembling hands he spread the various printouts on the thin bedspread, Roger watching in stony silence over his shoulder. Peter found a still he’d copied from the video of Margaret Dolan’s media appeal and held it up for Roger to see.
Roger said, “Yeah, so?”
“It’s her,” Peter said, the truth of it buzzing through his bloodstream like an amphetamine. “I didn’t tell you about this, but I went to see her over the summer, thinking—I don’t know—I just got this idea it might help, you know, find Jason. And she’s different now, Roger, much heavier, built like a man.” He glanced at the TV but the composite was gone, the anchor detailing another story on the muted set. Peter said, “With her head shaved, heavy like she is now...”
Roger gave him a skeptical look. “Listen,” he said, “calm down, okay? The last thing I want to do right now is go running off on a wild goose chase.”
Peter said, “I’m calm,” and handed him the grainy still. “Her name is Margaret Dolan. She has another son named Aaron. He’s around eighteen, mentally challenged. I saw him when I was there.” Now he pointed at the dog tags on Roger’s chest, saying, “May I?” Roger nodded and Peter scooped the tags into his palm, raising them up for Roger to see. “Aaron had a pair of these around his neck, one silver, one gold. The same kind of chain.”
Roger slipped the tags out of Peter’s hand into his own. “Are you sure?”
“I’ve never been more certain of anything in my life. It’s her, Roger. It’s her.”
“But why?”
And even as Roger posed the question, it all came together in Peter’s mind, the sad, twisted logic of it. “The loss of her son shattered her mind. I saw it in her eyes the day I talked to her.” He told Roger about her attempt on her husband’s life and her prolonged incarceration, saying that at the end of it, she came out permanently scarred. “By the time she got back home, the desire to find her son had already become an obsession.”
Roger was nodding and Peter could see that he understood. “Then, somehow,” Peter said, “probably just dumb luck—she sees Jason.”
“And thinks he’s her son.”
“Exactly. So she grabs him and disappears.”
“Jesus Christ. But why not stop after Jason?”
“Remember what you told me about the times you thought you’d seen Jason? Like that day in the mall. He’s still only six when you see him, right? Even though he’d be almost ten now?”
“That’s right.”
“So this woman, all she’s got left is a mental image of the kid at six—or a photograph she carries with her everywhere—and she becomes fixated on that. She sees Jason and grabs him, believing she’s found her son. But time goes by and Jason starts growing up. After three years he looks almost nothing like the kid in the photograph anymore.” He found the age-enhanced shot of Clayton Dolan and showed it to Roger. “See? Even her own son looks different after a few years. So she wakes up one day, looks at Jason and thinks, ‘This isn’t my kid,’ and starts looking for the next six-year-old.
Pale as a ghost now, Roger said, “So what does she do with Jason?”
Peter just shook his head. He had no answer.
Roger’s hands closed into fists. “Where does she live?”
“On a farm about thirty minutes west of Ottawa,” Peter said. Then he was reaching for the phone saying, “We’ve got to tell Sergeant Taylor—” and Roger caught him by the wrist, squeezing so hard Peter’s fingers sprang apart and the handset clattered to the floor. He tried to pull away and couldn’t.
Roger glanced at the fallen handset and released Peter’s wrist. The veins in his neck were fiercely engorged and Peter realized the man wasn’t breathing, his skin an unhealthy plum color, the capillaries in his eyes magnified behind a film of raging tears. Then he let out the breath he’d been holding and sank to the edge of the bed gasping for air, his body shuddering, the tears falling freely now. He looked at Peter and said, “I’m sorry, man, I’m sorry,” and Peter sat next to him on the bed, slinging an awkward arm around his shoulders, saying, “Jesus, Roger, what’s wrong?”
Roger buried his face in his hands, scrubbing away the tears. So many tears. He said, “The night Jason was taken...” but he shook his head, the words refusing to come. Now he cursed bitterly and said, “The night Jason was taken...I was drunk. I was mad at Ellen, that stupid argument we had over the phone, and after I tucked Jase in, I sat in front of the tube and got plastered. Fucking idiot.” He faced Peter now, the tears getting away on him again. “Usually I’m a light sleeper, you know? The neighbor’s dog farts and I’m awake. But that night I was full of booze, and I slept through my son’s abduction. The fucker came right into my house and I slept through the whole thing. When I think of what must have been going through Jason’s mind that night—some stranger taking him out of his bed with a smelly hand pressed over his mouth to keep him from screaming—I want to put a bullet in my brain so I can’t hear his voice anymore. Peter, they had to go right past my bedroom door to get out of the house. The damn thing was open. I could have seen them go by...”
Peter felt the weight of this confession slam into his chest like a drop kick. Self loathing was coming off Roger now in waves as he cursed and damned himself to hell, the heat of his anguish palpable in the room, a thrumming turbine eating the air.
Then he was on his feet, replacing the handset in its cradle, fixing Peter with an expression that was at once beseeching and coolly menacing. He said, “I need you to tell me exactly where this woman lives. Then I need you to make a decision. Either you’re coming with me—because I’m going there, right now—or you’re not, in which case I’m going to have to borrow your car. If you decide not to come, I need you to give me enough lead time to get there and find out about my son before you call the police. This is my last chance, Peter. I don’t want a bunch of cops busting in with their guns blazing before I get a chance to talk to that woman.”
“Talk to her?”
“That’s all I want to do. Just find out what she did to Jason.”
“A while ago you wanted to kill her.”
“That was before I understood.”
“And what if you find out she, you know, did something bad to Jason?”
“I don’t know. I can’t say.”
“What about the Cade boy?”
“I don’t think she’d hurt him.”
“What about back there on the highway? If you hadn’t taken the ditch, we’d probably all be dead.”
“Nobody wants to harm a child, Peter. No sane person, anyway. I believe she was counting on that. And she was right.”
Peter turned away from him and sat on the foot of the bed, trying to clear his mind. His first instinct was to call the police; it was the obvious—and sane—thing to do. Let them handle it. There was more at stake here than Roger’s son, who, as much as Peter hated to admit it, was probably already dead. There was also Graham Cade, another innocent child who was almost certainly still alive. And Peter’s take on the stunt Maggie Dolan had pulled with the boy on the highway was very different from Roger’s. It was his belief that in that moment, the woman’s feelings had been much like his own on the day David died, the woman thinking, If we can’t live together then we’ll die together, her love for her son that deep. And he was far more worried about Roger going in there hotheaded than he was about the police. If Graham Cade ended up hurt or dead because of any action Peter was responsible for or condoned, he would never forgive himself.
He looked at Roger and said, “Can you give me a few minutes?” Roger was actually vibrating, his knuckles bone white, his nostrils flaring like those of a race horse. He looked at his watch. “What for?”
“To decide,” Peter said, standing. “I’m going to go outside, sit somewhere quiet for a few minutes and think this all through, okay? I want to do what’s best for everyone. Maybe it’s the nature of the work I do, but I can’t rush into things, Roger, not when they matter this much.”
The man looked ready to explode; but he said, “Alright,” and his shoulders sagged a little, some of the tension leaking out of him. He said, “I’ll wait for you here.” But something had changed in his eyes: the beseeching in them had vanished; now there was only menace. He said, “But I’m asking you, Peter—as a friend—don’t call the cops without talking to me first.”
Peter said, “I won’t,” and opened the door. As he closed it behind him, he saw Roger pick up the map off the bed, the one he’d used to find the Dolan farm.
* * *
Graham smelled bacon cooking and his tummy groaned under the covers, that empty feeling squirming around inside him. He sat up in bed and swung his legs over the side, sliding off the edge to the cool linoleum floor. He took a step toward the dresser, but he felt dizzy and had to lean against the bed until the sensation passed. He had a headache now and his ribs hurt from throwing up.
When his head stopped spinning, he slipped out of his jammies and put on the clothes the woman had left for him, the stiff new jeans hurting as he slid them over the needle hole in his leg. There were no socks or shoes, so he folded his jammies on the pillow and pulled the covers up, making the bed the way his mother had taught him.
Then he went into the hall in his bare feet, following that sweet smell of bacon. The floor out here was made of wood, smooth gray boards that squeaked when he stepped on them, and the raw plaster walls were painted yellow. The sun was coming up now, its warm light spilling into the room next to Graham’s, making the big wooden dresser in there seem to glow.
Graham thought, Her room, and hurried past.
He had to pee really bad, but there was a third room, beside the bathroom at the end of the hall. The door to that room was closed and Graham heard a sound in there, a cough, maybe...or a growl. The sound frightened him and he kept on walking until he got to the top of the stairs. Then he paused, gazing down the steep gray steps to another linoleum floor and a door beyond that, thinking about something he’d half-seen on the dresser in the woman’s room. He froze there a moment, torn between his curiosity and his desire to get away from whatever was behind that closed door, whatever had made that sound.
Then, very quietly, he tip-toed back along the hall, past the bathroom and that scary closed door—no sound from in there now—to the woman’s room.
Standing in the doorway with the staircase railing behind him, he thought he could hear the bacon sizzling in its pan down there, and the woman softly singing, a happy sound, a harmless sound.
He took a breath and scooted into the room, his feet all sweaty, leaving shiny footprints on the floor. There was an oval-shaped mat beside the bed and he stopped for a moment to stand on it, rubbing the soles of his feet on its nubby surface. His eyes found the thing on the dresser he’d noticed before—a picture in a wooden frame the same brown color as the dresser—and what really confused him about the picture was that he was in it, smiling in the arms of the woman downstairs, his curly blond hair lit up by the sun, a Band-Aid on one bare knee. The woman was thin in the picture and her dark hair was short, almost like a man’s...but it was her. Those were her eyes.
Graham felt dizzy again, his heart thumping hard in his chest. Going on tip-toes, he moved closer to the picture and picked it up, looking closely at it now, wondering why he couldn’t remember. He knew about twins, knew he didn’t have one, so the boy in the picture must be him.
So why couldn’t he remember?
A raised voice behind him said, “Ma?” and Graham spun to face its source, the picture slipping through his fingers to the floor, the glass shattering at his feet.
There was a tall, skinny boy standing in the doorway, nearly naked in a pair of baggy underwear that looked dirty, a grubby fist screwed into one sleepy eye. He had a chain around his neck with two shiny pieces of metal on it Graham knew were dog tags, like the ones on the soldiers in his brother’s X-Box games.
Now the boy hollered, “Ma, Clayton busted your pitcher,” and Graham heard the woman coming up the stairs, her feet making loud booms against the risers, and Graham felt something warm squirt out of him. He heard the woman say, “For God’s sake, Aaron, go put some clothes on,” then she was staring in at Graham, her eyes as round as saucers, and now she turned on the boy and slapped him hard on the back of the head. “See what you did?” she said, slapping him again. “You scared your baby brother and he wet himself. Now go on, get yourself dressed and stay in your room till I tell you otherwise, hear?”
The boy said, “Yes, Ma,” and thumped off down the hall.
Graham looked down at himself and saw that he really had peed his pants. His eyes filled with tears and now the woman was coming toward him. Afraid she was going to slap him too, he cringed and said he was sorry; but then she lifted him up and hugged him, not minding that his new jeans were all wet. “Thank God you didn’t cut your precious little feet,” she said, carrying him into the bathroom now, saying, “Let’s get you cleaned up.” Saying, “You saw the picture, huh,” then sitting him on the toilet seat and turning on the water in the tub, testing it with her fingers the way his mommy did. “I wanted to wait till later to talk to you about this,” she said, “but I guess now’s as good a time as any.” She knelt in front of him on the bathroom floor and unbuttoned his shirt. “You go ahead and get yourself in the tub like a good big boy,” she said. Then she was standing, telling him she’d be right back.
She went out the door, closing it behind her, and Graham did as he was told, taking off his shirt and his soggy pants and climbing into the tub, a deep one with feet shaped like claws clutching smoky crystal balls.
The water was perfect and Graham leaned back against the sloping wall of the tub, swishing his legs back and forth to get the pee off them.
* * *
There was a picnic table under a shade tree behind the hotel and Peter sat on it now, watching sunbeams spill through the foliage to dapple the lawn. There was a breeze working back here with a breath of fall in it—that damp, sweet smell of goldenrod and rot—and it sent a chill through him, pebbling his arms with gooseflesh. It was going to be a beautiful day—but not for the Cades, both of them shot and without their boy; not for the families of those two policemen. Maggie Dolan had crossed the line, all the way over this time, compounding her kidnappings with murder.
And yet, God help him, Peter understood. The woman was acting out of the deepest, most fierce breed of love. The tragedy was that she was wrong. Had either child actually been her own, no parent in the world would have faulted her actions. As it stood, only her fractured state of mind made what she’d done even remotely defensible. Either way, once caught, she’d be facing a lifetime of incarceration.
Which brought him back to that single, nagging worry: out there on the highway, the woman had been prepared to die and take the child with her, anything to avoid having him ‘stolen’ from her again. If threatened again, might she not choose a similar path? Murder-suicides were frighteningly common; in Maggie Dolan’s mind, what better motive than this?
But did this strengthen the argument for letting the police handle the situation? Or weaken it? Maggie Dolan had murdered two police officers in cold blood, dispatching them execution-style in the front seat of their own car. How much sympathy would the cops have for a person who could do a thing like that, insane or otherwise?
The trick was to diffuse the situation without setting the woman off, this exceedingly dangerous woman who would clearly do anything to protect the child she believed was her own.
The more Peter thought about it, the more he realized he would have to do this on his own. Approach the woman not with aggression but compassion, try to break through the barrier of her delusions. And even as the thought came to him, he felt that rush of love he’d always felt in David’s presence, the same fleeting feeling that had haunted him over his long summer weeks of inaction.
He thought, Okay, sweet boy, and felt a simple, blissful peace he hadn’t experienced in months. He basked in it a moment, this contented, almost childlike sense that everything was as it should be, then he made his way back inside.
* * *
There was a bar of soap in a wire dish and Graham used it to wash himself off. He didn’t want anyone to see him with no clothes on, so he bathed quickly and climbed out of the tub, using a big white bath towel to dry himself off. He put the brown shirt back on, then wrapped the towel around his waist and hurried back along the hall to the room he’d slept in. His jammies were still on the pillow and he grabbed the bottoms, pulling them on as the woman came back upstairs. He heard her push the bathroom door open, then heard her say, “Sweetie?” with the same raw fear in her voice he’d heard in his father’s voice last night, when he hid behind the hamper.
Something jarred uncomfortably in his young mind as he realized home was only one sleep behind him; it seemed like a very long time ago.
Then the woman was coming down the hall, her footfalls heavy on the floorboards. Graham said, “I’m in here,” because he didn’t want to make her mad, and she smiled coming through the doorway, carrying a plate of bacon and eggs in one hand and a couple of big books in the other. She said, “There you are,” set the plate on the dresser and dropped the books onto the foot of the bed. Opening the closet now, she said, “You scared me, you little scamp,” and brought out a Batman dinner tray. Then she plumped his pillow against the middle of the headboard and lifted him up to lean against it on the bed. She set the tray across his knees and put the plate on it, a kid’s fork already tucked under the eggs. Graham wasn’t hungry anymore—and he was allergic to eggs—but he picked up a piece of toast to nibble on. The woman said, “There,” picked up the books and sat down beside him, her hands resting on the books that Graham now saw were photo albums. She took a big breath and blew it out; it smelled like Listerine, the burny kind his Grandma always used. Graham munched his toast, waiting.
Now she opened the top album and looked inside. Graham heard her say, “Aw, look at you. Sweet baby boy.” He tried to see what she was looking at but couldn’t, the big brown album cover blocking his view. He leaned his head back to try again and she let the cover fall closed.
Turning to look at him, she said, “There’s some things I have to tell you, sweetheart. Things you might have a hard time believing.” She patted the photo albums on her lap. “But I can prove them to you, if you’ll give me the chance. Will you do that for me?”
Graham nodded. He had no spit in his mouth now and couldn’t swallow his toast, a dry ball of it stuck to the inside of his cheek. He put the rest on the plate, away from the runny eggs.
She said, “Oh, this is so hard,” and Graham realized she was crying. He watched her bring a knot of Kleenex out of a pocket in her dress and use it to wipe her eyes. “It seems like such a long time ago now,” she said, “but it really isn’t. I mean, look at you. You’re still the same. I couldn’t believe it when I came home from work that day and they told me you were gone. Do you remember that day, baby? The day the bad man took you?”
Graham was confused. She was the bad man and of course he remembered. It happened just last night. But he didn’t think she was talking about that so he said, “No.”
“No, I didn’t think you would. Do you know what brainwashing is?”
Graham believed he did. His brother Greg explained it to him once when they were watching a cartoon movie that had brainwashing in it. He said, “Is that when someone tells you so many fibs about something you end up believing them?”
She tousled his hair again, saying, “My, aren’t you the clever one. That’s exactly what it is.” Now she looked right at him, using her fingers to tilt his chin so he had to look right back at her. “Well, that’s what they did to you.”
Graham said, “Who?” continuing to look up at her after she took her fingers away.
“The people who stole you from me.”
Now Graham was totally lost. He said, “But...you stole me, from my mommy and daddy.”
“See, honey? That’s the brainwashing part.”
She opened the top album again, angling it so Graham could see inside. The first page had four baby pictures on it, the baby a boy in a blue plastic bathtub, grown up hands Graham knew were the woman’s supporting his blond head, washing his plump little body with a face cloth.
Pointing at the first picture, the woman said, “I know it’s hard to believe, honey, but this is you. You were born at Mercy Hospital in Arnprior one minute before midnight, Christmas Eve nineteen ninety-five, just like the Baby Jesus, practically.”
Graham peeled the dry ball of bread out of his mouth and set it on the tray, rolling it out of sight under the edge of the plate. His stomach felt sick again.
She said, “Your real name is Clayton Dolan, after my daddy, Clayton Barr.” She took his hand in hers and squeezed it. Then she said, “And I’m your ma,” and Graham could barely hear her after that, a dull buzz starting up inside his head. Far away, he heard her say, “That boy you saw prancing around in his drawers this morning is your big brother, Aaron. He was a difficult birth, got stuck coming out and the lack of oxygen made him slow. But he’s a good boy and he loves you to death. I know he’s glad to have you back.”
She turned some more pages in the album now, mostly baby pictures in this one, and Graham watched without seeing, knowing that what she was saying couldn’t be true. His mommy was always telling him what a terrific memory he had. He even remembered his second birthday party, when his daddy brought a pony home in a trailer and Graham rode it around in the back yard, his daddy walking along beside him, holding him tight so he couldn’t fall off. Sometimes out of the blue he would say, “Remember when the pony pooed on the grass?” and his mommy and daddy would laugh, telling him they couldn’t believe he remembered that. But he did.
The woman moved the top album to the bottom and flipped the second one open, the pictures in this one harder for Graham to dismiss. Here was one of a blond boy climbing onto a school bus, the woman saying, “Here you are on your first day of school, such a brave little boy, not a peep coming out of you,” and it was him. And there were so many others—even one of him riding a pony, except in this one the woman was holding him so he wouldn’t fall and there was a barn in the background, not his yard at home.
“You don’t have to call me Ma right away,” the woman was saying, “but I’d like it if you did. Because these people you’ve been living with stole you from me, baby, and put all this stuff in your head about being someone else. About being their boy instead of mine. I bet they treated you nice, huh. Gave you whatever you wanted?”
Graham didn’t get everything he wanted, but he nodded.
“You see, Clayton, that’s how they trick you. You’re just a kid, you don’t know any better. And maybe they drug you at first, I don’t know. I’ve read about how it’s done, but I can’t say how they did it to you. But they did.”
She took his face in her hands, the tray almost spilling when his knees came up, and kissed him softly on the forehead. And though Graham understood none of this, he felt only love coming from this woman and he thought that if he just did what he was told, his mommy and daddy would find him soon and take him back home.
He just had to do what he was told.
She said, “Is there anything you’d like to ask me?”
Graham thought for a moment and said, “Where’s your real hair?” and the woman laughed.
She said, “I had to shave it all off so they’d think I was a man. People are easy to fool, Clayton. They believe what they want to believe. On the news they’re saying I’m the kidnapper, can you believe that? But they’re looking for a man.” She slipped the wig off her head and Graham shivered looking up at her. “A bald man.”
She rested the clump of black hair on top of the photo albums; it looked like a dead animal and Graham shivered again, his tummy doing sick little flip flops now. She said, “They’re never going to find us,” and Graham lurched off the bed and ran to the bathroom, just making it to the toilet before his stomach turned.
But there was nothing left inside him.
* * *
They were on the road by 7:15, heading east on the 401 doing the speed limit, Saturday morning traffic rolling along smoothly at this hour. On the way out of Oakville, Peter had pulled into a McDonald’s and ordered Egg McMuffins to go and they’d eaten them in silence, not tasting the food, just filling the hole. Peter had estimated the trip at about five hours and, since neither of them had slept in the past twenty-four, suggested they split the drive into shifts, giving the free man a chance to rest. Incredibly, as soon as he was done eating, Roger tilted his seat back, closed his eyes, and fell asleep. Peter’s mother had always told him that was a sign of a clear conscience, being able to just pop off like that, and in his scattered musings as he drove, Peter thought, Here’s the exception that proves the rule.
He couldn’t begin to fathom the depth of Roger’s guilt. It made him think of a patient he’d had recently, a courageous old girl in her seventies with rheumatoid arthritis that had plagued her since her teens. She was having a knee replacement, and Peter elected to do her awake, under spinal anesthesia. Every movement the woman made caused her pain, and Peter did his best to get her positioned without hurting her too much. It was like handling balsawood, her frailty that extreme, her twisted hands and misshapen feet looking as if someone had flattened them with a hammer, the knee they were replacing swollen to the size of a melon. Peter had to struggle to get the spinal, the soft-tissue spaces in her back narrow and ossified, and the woman sat stoically through it, never complaining as he poked and prodded with the three-and-a-half inch needle. And when he finally found the spot and injected the drug, Peter heard her sigh, a sound of immeasurable relief, a sixty-year burden of suffering suddenly, gloriously lifted. And though they both knew the respite was only temporary, the two of them reveled in it, spending the next couple of hours chatting and telling jokes.
Peter imagined that Roger’s guilt must be something akin to this old woman’s pain, a pitiless, unflagging presence that colored every aspect of life until, like some insatiable parasite, it sucked its victim dry, leaving only a husk. The tragedy was that in Roger’s case, should his son never be found alive, the only effective anesthetic for his suffering would be death. And perhaps not even then.
He took the Lindsay-Peterborough exit off the 401 and followed 115 north to the Trans Canada, Roger snoring restlessly beside him, talking occasionally in his sleep, abrupt, unintelligible bursts that sounded angry and made Peter’s skin crawl. The Trans Canada would take them right past the town of Arnprior. From there it was only a twenty-minute drive to the Dolan farm.
Following a brief discussion in the hotel room earlier this morning, the two of them had agreed upon the ground rules, at least in principle, Peter insisting that he approach Maggie Dolan alone, Roger conceding only reluctantly—and with the proviso that he be in the car while Peter made his bid, out of sight in the back seat or even the trunk if need be. “If she goes ballistic on you,” Roger had said, “you’ll be glad we did it this way.” Considering the damage the woman had already done, Peter was inclined to agree. Still, he was counting on a civil response to a civil approach.
And yet, the more he thought about it on this balmy, late-summer morning, the more unnerved he became. Maggie Dolan had already demonstrated her willingness to do whatever it took to protect what she believed was her own. Pondering it now, Peter was hard pressed to imagine why she would see him as anything other than a threat.
It was madness, all of it. And all he had for counsel was this crazed, volatile man—Maggie Dolan’s first victim—and the vague, possibly imaginary nudgings of his own dead son.
Peter shifted uncomfortably in his seat, an ache awakening in the center of his skull, the nidus of a dark and growing foreboding.