Briggs Correctional Officer Ted Weston told Max and Sarah his story once, twice, thrice. Max and Sarah stayed quiet for most of it. Max nodded encouragingly. Sarah stood leaning against a corner of the prison office they were using as an interrogation room, arms folded. When Ted finished his tale for a third time, proudly winding down with how he spotted the warden and the prisoner getting into the warden’s car, Max kept nodding and then he turned to Sarah and said, “I like that last part best. Don’t you, Sarah?”
“The part about spotting the warden’s car, Max?”
“Yes.”
“Yeah, me too.”
Max started plucking his lip with his index finger and thumb. He did this to stop himself from biting his nails. “Do you want to know why Sarah and I like that part best, Ted? I can call you Ted, right?”
Ted Weston’s smile was uneasy. “Sure.”
“Thanks, Ted. So do you want to know why?”
Weston gave a half-hearted shrug. “Sure, I guess.”
“Because it’s true. I mean it. That part of the story—the way you looked out the window and spotted the car and did kind of a ‘whoa hold up a moment’ thing—when you tell that story, your face beams with honesty.”
“It really does,” Sarah added.
“Like you’re using a high-end moisturizer. The rest of the time—like when you’re telling us about how you took poor sick David Burroughs to the infirmary late at night—”
“—in a way that defies all protocol,” Sarah added.
“—Or how he turned on you suddenly—”
“—with no motivation.”
“You’re right-handed, aren’t you, Ted?”
“What?”
“You are. I’ve been watching you. Not a big deal except whenever you’re telling us about getting Burroughs from his cell and taking him to the infirmary, your eyes look up and to the right.”
“That’s a sign you’re lying, Ted,” Sarah said.
“It’s not foolproof, but it’s accurate more often than not. If you are really trying to access a memory, a right-handed person—”
“—eighty-five percent of us anyway—”
“—looks upwards and to the left.”
“And the darting eyes, Max.”
“Right, thanks, Sarah. This is kind of fascinating, Ted. I think you’ll like this. Your eyes dart around a lot when you lie. Not just you. That’s most people. Do you want to know why?”
Ted said nothing. Max continued.
“It’s a throwback, Ted. It’s a throwback to an era when humans felt trapped, maybe by another human, maybe by an animal or something, and so their eyes would dart around looking for an escape route.”
“Do you really buy that origin story, Max?” Sarah asked.
“I don’t know. I mean, no doubt about it—darting eyes usually indicates a lie. But if that’s the origin, I don’t know, but it’s a compelling story.”
“It is,” Sarah agreed.
“Darting eyes,” Ted Weston repeated, trying to look confident. “I don’t need to take this.”
Max looked back at Sarah.
Sarah nodded “Very manly, Ted.”
Weston stood. “You don’t have any proof I’m lying.”
“Sure we do,” Max said. “Do you really think we’d just rely on that eye thing?”
“He doesn’t know us, Max.”
“He doesn’t indeed, Sarah. Show him.”
Sarah slid the bank statement across the table. Ted Weston was still standing. He looked down at it. His face lost color.
“Sarah was kind enough to highlight the important part for us, Ted. Do you see that?”
“You should have asked for cash, Ted,” Sarah said.
“Yeah, but then where would he have put it? It’s nice they kept the amounts under ten grand. Figured no one would notice.”
“We did.”
“No we, Sarah. You. You noticed. How was Ted here to know you’re the best?”
“I’m going to blush, Max.”
Sarah’s phone buzzed. She stepped aside. Ted Weston collapsed back into his seat.
“Do you want to tell me what really happened,” Max asked him in a stage whisper, “or do you want to get thrown into general population and see how the other half lives?”
Ted kept staring at the bank statement.
“Max?”
It was Sarah. “What’s up?”
“Facial recognition may have gotten a hit on our boy.”
“Where?”
“Getting off a train in Revere Beach.”
* * *
“You can’t stay,” Aunt Sophie tells me. “The FBI was here this morning. They’ll be back.”
I nod. “Can I talk to him?”
She tilts her head to the side and looks sad. “He’s asleep. The morphine. You can see him, but I don’t think he’ll know you’re there. I’ll take you up.”
We pass the piano, the one with the lace top and all the old photographs on it. I notice that Cheryl and my wedding picture is still front and center. I don’t know what to make of that. Most of my friends in this neighborhood have at least two or three siblings, often a lot more. I was an only child. I never asked why, but I suspect that whatever caused my issue may have been hereditary, the worst kind of “like father like son,” which could have led, of course, to no son at all. But that’s speculation on my part.
I take the chair next to his bed—Dad’s old desk chair—look down at him. He’s sleeping, but his face is twisted up in a grimace. Aunt Sophie stands behind me. I love my father. He was the best father in the world. But I also don’t really know him. He didn’t believe in sharing his feelings. I have no idea what his hopes and dreams were. Maybe that’s best, I don’t know. We get a lot of grief nowadays about that, about men bottling up their feelings, about toxic masculinity. I don’t know if that was it or not. My dad fought in Vietnam. His dad fought in World War Two. My grandmother told me that the two men who came home were not the same as the ones who left. That’s obvious, of course, but my grandmother also said that it wasn’t that they had changed, but that whatever they had seen over there, whatever they had done and experienced, these men felt the need to keep it locked away. Not for their sake, but because they didn’t want to expose those they loved to those horrors. These men weren’t cruel or distant or even damaged. They were sentinels who wanted to protect those they loved, no matter what the cost to themselves. When Matthew was born, I tried to remember every single thing my father had done with me. I wanted to be that kind of dad. I wanted to make him feel safe and loved and strong. I wondered how my dad did it, like a child watching a master magician. I wanted to know his secrets so I could perform them for Matthew.
I love my dad. He would come home exhausted, change into a white T-shirt, and go outside to throw a ball with me. He took me to Kelly’s for a roast beef sandwich and a shake on Saturdays for lunch. He’d let me tag along to the dog track and explain about the favorites and the odds. I cheered him on when he pitched for the Revere Police softball team, especially when they had their annual game against the firefighters. He taught me how to tie a tie. He let me pretend-shave with him when I was seven, lathering up my face and giving me a razor with no blade in it. He took me to Fenway Park twice a year to watch the Red Sox. We would sit in the bleachers and I’d get a hot dog and Coke and he’d get a hot dog and beer and he’d buy me a pennant of the opposing team so I’d remember the game. We watched the Celtics over at Uncle Philip’s house—he had the big-screen TV. My dad never made me feel like a nuisance or burden. He valued his time with me, and I valued my time with him.
But all that said, I don’t know my father’s hopes and dreams, his worries and concerns, how he felt about my mother dying or if he wanted more or less from this life.
I sit now and wait for him to open his eyes and recognize me. I expect the miracle, of course—that my coming home would somehow cure him, that my very presence would make him rise from the bed, or at least, he’d have a moment or two of clarity and a final word of wisdom for his only child.
None of that happened. He slept.
After a while, Aunt Sophie said, “It’s not safe, David. You should go.”
I nod.
“Your cousin Dougie is away for the month on a shark expedition. I have the key to his place. You can use that for as long as you need.”
“Thank you.”
We rise. I study my father’s limp hand for a moment. There used to be such power in that hand. It’s gone now. The knotty muscles on his forearm as he would work a screwdriver or wrench are gone too now, replaced with spongy tissue. I kiss my father’s forehead. I wait one more second for his eyes to open. They don’t.
“Do you think I did it?” I ask Aunt Sophie.
“No.”
I look at her. “Did you ever—?”
“No. Not for a second.”
We leave him then. I realize that I will probably never see my father again, but there is no time or need to process that. My phone buzzes. I check the message.
“Everything okay?”
I tell Aunt Sophie that it’s Rachel. She’s half an hour out. I text her Dougie’s address and tell her to come in through the back entrance.
“Rachel’s helping you?” my aunt says.
“Yes.”
She nods. “I always liked her. Shame what happened. You’ll be safe at Dougie’s. Both of you. Contact me if you need anything, okay?”
I hug her then. I close my eyes and hold on. Then I ask something stupid, something that has been annoying me like a sore tooth I keep probing with my tongue: “Did Dad think I did it?”
And because Aunt Sophie can’t lie: “Not at first.”
I don’t move. “But then?”
“He’s an evidence man, David. You know that. The blackouts. The fights with Cheryl. The way you used to walk in your sleep as a teenager…”
“So he…?”
“Not on purpose, no.”
“But he thought I killed Matthew?”
Aunt Sophie lets go of me. “He didn’t know, David. Can we leave it at that?”
* * *
With the bob cut, I barely recognize Rachel.
“What do you think?” she asks, trying to keep the mood light.
“Looks good.”
And it does. The Anderson sisters have always been considered beautiful, albeit in different ways. Cheryl, my ex, was a little more traffic-stopping. You noticed her. It hit you right away. Rachel’s beauty came at you slower and grew with time. She had what Aunt Sophie called—and she meant this in the best of ways—an interesting face. I got that now. What society would call imperfections made it more like a painting where you keep discovering new things every time you look at it and it changed depending on the time of day or light in the room or angle at which you stood. The bob suited her, I guess. It accentuated the cheekbones or something, I don’t know.
I fill Rachel in on what’s happened with Hilde and Eddie and the Fisher family. As I do, the phone chirps with a text from Eddie:
Don’t come back here. Cops were here looking for you.
I write back that they seem to know I’m around. He replies:
Revere’s crawling with them. Meet is at Pop’s Garage. 280 Hunting Street in Malden. 3PM. Can you get there?
I tell him I can.
Pull into the bay on the left. Come alone. That’s what they told me to tell you.
Rachel is reading over my shoulder. Dougie is a fifty-four-year-old bachelor, and the place is done up as if to prove that. The walls are all dark wood paneling like a dive bar. He has a dart board, and a huge-screen TV takes up an entire wall. The carpet is green shag. The chairs are faux leather recliners with metal poking through the footrests. There’s an old oak bar with oversized neon beer signs—one for Michelob Light, one for Blue Moon Belgian White hanging over the bar. The place was dark when I came in except for those neon signs. I didn’t turn any lights on or off, so right now they provide the only illumination.
“I’ll drive you,” Rachel says.
“You saw the ‘come alone’ part?”
“I still don’t get it,” she says. “The Fishers are all about extortion and drugs and prostitution, stuff like that. Why would they be involved in Matthew’s…” She stopped. “I don’t even know what to call it.”
“Let’s call it kidnapping,” I say.
“Okay. Why would they be involved in that?”
“I don’t know.”
“And you expect them to just tell you?”
“We don’t have any other leads.”
“But maybe we do,” Rachel says, opening up her laptop. She clicks on a file, and photographs start downloading. “I started going through various image searches in line with what we know about Irene’s photo from Six Flags. We know the location. We know the date. I started with that. I looked up on Instagram, for example, any photo that was tagged for Six Flags on that day. I spread it out three days forward to start because I figured some people wouldn’t get to posting right away. Then I did image searches of Irene and her family, hoping that maybe they’d be in photographs someone else posted, all hoping maybe we’d get another glimpse of Matthew.”
“And?”
“And the search came up with six hundred eighty-five photos and videos from across social media—Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, TikTok, whatever. We have a little time. I figure we could go through them.”
They are organized in time sequence—time posted, not time taken—and then further subdivided by social media outlet. I see couples and families on rides, getting on rides, coming off rides, waving from the Ferris wheel or the merry-go-round or hanging upside down on roller coasters. I see posed shots, candid shots, distance shots of the rides. I love rides. I was always the adult who would readily volunteer to take cousins, nephews, nieces—anyone—on the harshest coasters there were. My dad loved rides too, even when he got older. I think about that now. I took Matthew a few times. He was obviously too young for any of the major roller coasters, but he loved the little train, that airplane ride, the slow boats. Matthew looked like my dad. That’s what everyone said, and once again, after my visit to my dad, I can only think about what passes down, from my grandfather to my father to me to Matthew. It’s all there in the echoes.
Some of the photos are of people driving to the park. Some are with animals from the park’s drive-thru safari. Some are with ice cream or burgers or waiting on long lines. Some feature dressed-up characters like Batman or Bugs Bunny or Porky Pig. Some are of arcade prizes like a stuffed turtle or blue dog or assorted Pokémon characters.
Amusement parks are diverse melting pots. There is every creed, religion, what have you. I see boys in yarmulkes and girls with head coverings. Everyone is smiling.
There are a surprising number of group shots with ten, twenty, or even thirty people. We stop here and zoom on every face. The children I understand. We are trying to find Matthew, of course. As for the adults, we are both looking for anyone we recognize in any way, anyone who might be—I don’t know—suspicious.
We find Tom and Irene Longley and their two boys in a group photo with sixteen other people. We take our time with that one, but we get nothing.
I check my watch. We may not have time to get through them all before I need to head to my meeting at Pop’s Garage in Malden. We start picking up the pace, realizing we can go through them later, when we pass another photograph of the Longley family with actors dressed up as yellow Minions from the Despicable Me movie.
Rachel hits the button to continue, but I say, “Wait.”
“What?”
“Go back.”
She clicks back.
“One more.”
She does. It’s the Longleys. Just the Longleys. No one else in the photo. But that isn’t what catches my eye.
“What are they standing in front of?” I ask.
“Looks like one of those screens for corporate events.”
It is one of the backdrop banners people use to advertise the movie being premiered or the company holding an event, normally decorated with a repeat logo. But that wasn’t the case here. There are various logos.
“I think Irene said they were at a corporate event,” Rachel said. “I told you that her husband works for Merton Pharmaceuticals. That’s their logo over there.”
There are others. I see one for a common over-the-counter pain medication. I see one for a popular line of skin care products.
“It’s a huge conglomerate,” Rachel says. “They own food brands, pharmaceuticals, chain restaurants, hospitals.”
“Do you think they rented out the whole park?”
“I don’t know. I can ask Irene. Why, what’s up?”
“There are other photos like this, right? In front of the banner?”
“Yeah, a bunch, I think. We’re just getting to them now. Usually, you take a picture like this when you come in, but I guess they wanted to wait to the end of the day.”
“Keep clicking,” I say.
I see it on the third click. When I do, I feel my entire body freeze.
“Stop.”
“What?” she asks.
I point to a logo on the bottom right. I’d been able to see part of it with the Longley family, enough to make me pause, but now I can see it clearly. Rachel follows my finger. She sees it too.
It’s a stork carrying three words in what looks like a sling:
BERG REPRODUCTIVE INSTITUTE
Rachel stares another second before turning to me.
My mouth feels dry. “That’s where she went,” I say. “Cheryl, I mean.”
“Yeah, so?”
I say nothing.
“What does that have to do with anything, David? I mean, this company also owns pizzerias. You’ve been to those.”
I frown. “My marriage didn’t fall apart because of a visit to a pizzeria.”
“I don’t understand what you’re trying to say here.”
“Your sister went to that”—I make quote marks with my fingers—“‘institute’ behind my back.”
“I know,” she says in a voice so soft and gentle it almost feels like a caress. “But it led to nothing. You know that too.”
“Except it didn’t.”
“What do you mean?”
“I stopped trusting her.”
“You didn’t have to, David. Cheryl was in pain. You could have understood that. She didn’t go through with it.”
I see no reason to argue and perhaps she’s right. I stare at the logo and shake my head. “This isn’t a coincidence.”
“Of course it is. I just wish you could have understood.”
“Oh, I understood,” I say, my voice surprisingly matter-of-fact. “I was shooting blanks. It was putting a strain on our marriage. Cheryl figured maybe she could get pregnant with a donor and claim the baby was mine. I’m surprised she just didn’t fuck another guy and cut out the middleman.”
“That’s not fair, David.”
“Who’s she married to now, Rachel?” I counter. “You didn’t tell me that part.”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“It’s Ronald, isn’t it?”
She says nothing. I feel my heart crack again. “Just a friend. That’s what she kept saying.”
“That’s all he was.”
I shake my head. “Don’t be naïve.”
“I’m not saying Ronald didn’t hope for—”
“It doesn’t matter,” I say because it’s true and I can’t listen to another word of this. “The only thing I care about now is finding Matthew.”
“And you think this”—she points at the stupid stork logo—“is the answer?”
“Yeah, I do.”
“How?”
But I don’t have the answer, so we sit in silence for a while.
After some time passes, Rachel says, “Are you still going to meet with that Skunk guy?”
“Yes.”
“You better go then.”
“Yes.” I look at her. “What aren’t you telling me?”
“Nothing,” she says.
I keep looking at her.
“It’s just a coincidence,” Rachel says. “Nothing more.”
And I don’t know if she’s trying to convince me or herself.