I have finally managed to access my old email account when Rachel turns into a parking lot at a PGA golf store off the Garden State Parkway. I am looking for an email from eight years ago. The search engine helps me find it. I read it just to make sure. Then I read it again.
“David?”
The PGA store parking lot is huge, much too large for the store, and I wonder what else is going to be built here. There is a car parked alone in the distant corner near the woods, a Toyota Highlander. I can see a golf course through a strip of trees. Convenient location, I guess.
“What happened with Cheryl?” Rachel asks.
“She went through with the sperm donation.”
Silence.
“Did you know?” I ask.
“No.” Her voice is soft. “David, I’m sorry.”
“It doesn’t change anything.”
She doesn’t reply to that.
“Even if I’m not the biological father, he’s still my son,” I say.
“I know.”
“And he is mine. Not that it matters. But I know it.”
“I know it too,” Rachel says as she parks next to the Toyota Highlander.
A man in a Yankees cap gets out of the Highlander.
Rachel says to me, “Let’s go.”
She leaves the keys, and we head for the Highlander. The man in the Yankees cap says, “Drive out in the lane hugging the tree line. The CCTV doesn’t cover that area.”
We switch cars. Simple as that. Rachel’s attorney arranged it. We both realized as soon as we left the hospital that we couldn’t trust that Ronald wouldn’t make a call or that somehow our covers weren’t blown.
Rachel pulls back onto the highway. The man with the Yankees cap left us new burner phones on the car seat. We set them up so that any communications to our old burners will be forwarded to us. There is also a hammer inside one of those reusable grocery store bags. At a Burger King up the highway, I jump out with our old burners and the hammer. Once inside the bathroom, I close myself into a stall, obliterate the burners with the hammer, dump the remains in a garbage bin.
Rachel picked up food at the drive-thru. I always hated fast-food restaurants. Now a Whopper with fries feels like a religious experience. I scarf it down.
“What’s our next move?” she asks.
“Only two leads left,” I say, between bites. “The amusement park and the fertility clinic.”
“I asked Hayden to get us all the pictures from the company photographers.” We hit a red light. Rachel checks her phone. “In fact…”
“What?”
“Hayden came through.”
“He sent the photos?”
The traffic light turns green, so Rachel says, “Let me pull over and take a look.”
She veers onto the ramp for a Starbucks and parks. Rachel fiddles with the burner. “They’re in some kind of cloud we have to access. The files are too big to download.”
“Can we do that on a burner?”
“I think we’re going to need a laptop or something. I have mine, but they might be able to track it.”
“I think we need to take the chance.”
“I have a VPN. That might be enough.”
Rachel reaches into her bag and takes out a superthin laptop. She turns it on and gets to the relevant page. We don’t want to stay on too long, so we fly through the photos. They are all taken in front of that corporate banner/backdrop.
“How long should we sit here and go through this?” she asks.
“I don’t know. Maybe you should drive? A moving target might be harder to locate.”
“I doubt it, but okay.”
I keep going through the photographs. I speed through a bunch, but this feels like a waste of time. If you’re going to an amusement park with a kidnapped boy, you don’t pose in front of the welcoming screen. Or do you? It’s been five years. He’s grown. Everyone believes he’s dead. No one is doubting it. So maybe you do. Maybe you figure enough time has passed. No one is going to spot a boy they believe is dead. And even if it is somewhat risky, what else can you do? Keep the boy locked up in a cage forever?
I skip around, but it all feels futile. I start blowing up photographs, trying to look in the deep background, because that, I figure, is where the gold lay. The files are so large that I can magnify and see pretty much every detail in every shot. At one point, I spot a little boy who might have been about the same age as Matthew, but when I zoom in, the similarities are only on the surface.
I hear a phone buzz. It is coming from Rachel’s burner. She checks the number and picks it up. She signals for me to move closer so I can listen.
“Hello?”
“Can you talk?”
“Yes, Hester.”
Hester Crimstein, I know, is Rachel’s attorney.
“You’re alone?” Hester asks. “Just say yes or no. Don’t say any names.”
She means my name, of course. In case someone is listening in.
“I’m not alone,” Rachel says. “But it’s safe to talk. What’s up?”
“So the FBI just paid me a visit,” Hester says. “Guess who is now considered a ‘person of interest’?”
Rachel looks over at me.
“You, Rachel,” Hester says. “You.”
“Yeah, I kind of guessed that.”
“They have you on video from your sister’s hospital walking with an alleged escaped convict, so your cute new hair? It isn’t a good disguise anymore. I told the FBI it’s not you on the video. I also told them it’s a photoshop. I also told them if it is you, you’re clearly under duress. I told them some other stuff too, but I don’t remember it all now.”
“Any of that help?”
“Not a bit. They’ve issued an APB on you. A photo featuring your new do will be on the news any minute now. Fame awaits.”
“Terrific,” Rachel says. “Thanks for letting me know.”
“One last word to the wise,” Hester says. “To the world at large, your brother-in-law is an escaped murderer. The worst kind. A child killer. He stole a gun from a prison warden. He assaulted a police officer who remains hospitalized. Do you understand what I’m telling you?”
“I think so.”
“So let me make it clear then. David Burroughs is considered armed and extremely dangerous. That’s how he’ll be treated. If he’s found by law enforcement, they won’t hesitate to shoot. You’re my client, Rachel. I don’t want any of my clients caught in a crossfire. Dead clients don’t pay their legal bills.”
Hester hangs up. I stare down at the computer screen at a picture of three men in their early thirties on a Ferris wheel. The men are all smiling. Their faces are red, and I wonder whether it’s from sun or drink.
“You should let me do this on my own,” I tell her.
Rachel says, “Shh.”
I smile. She won’t listen and I’m not going to push it hard anyway because I need her. My fingers are still fiddling with the screen, zooming in close, and then a thought comes to me.
“The picture of Matthew,” I say.
“What about it?”
“You said your friend Irene showed you a bunch of photos?”
“Yes.”
“How many?”
“I don’t know. She probably blew up ten, fifteen of them.”
“I assume after you saw Matthew, you looked through them all?”
“I did, yeah.”
“How did she take them?”
“What do you mean?”
“Film, digital, phone—”
“Oh, right. Her husband Tom is a photo buff. But I don’t know. I asked Irene about other photos, but she said that’s it.”
I turn toward her. “Can we reach Pretty-Funny Irene?”
“I tried right before I visited you, but they were in Aspen for a wedding. I think they came back last night. Why?”
“Maybe she or Tom can blow the picture up. Or other photos. Like we can do here. Get a better look. Or whoever brought Matthew there, I don’t know but it seems they kept him away from the professional photographers. The only person we know who got a shot of him is Tom.”
“So maybe we can find some other clue in his photos.”
“Right.”
Rachel mulls that over. “I can’t just call Irene.”
“Why not?”
“If I’m on the news as a person of interest and Irene sees that…”
“She may call it in,” I finish for her.
“I would say it’s likely. She’s certainly not going to welcome me with open arms.”
“She might not be here at all.”
“We can’t take that chance, David.”
She’s right. “Where do the Longleys live?” I ask.
“Stamford.”
“That’s only about an hour from here.”
“So what’s our plan, David? We just drive up and I ring her doorbell and say I want to look at the photos?”
“Sure.”
“She might call the police then too.”
“If she heard the reports, you’ll see it on her face and we can run.”
Rachel frowns. “Risky.”
“I think it’s a chance we have to take. Let’s head up that way and then we can decide.”
* * *
The orphanage in the tiny Balkan nation called the baby Milo.
Milo had been left for dead in a public bathroom. No one knew who his parents were, so he was brought to the orphanage. He looked healthy, but he cried all the time. He was in pain. A doctor diagnosed him with Melaine syndrome, a rare but fatal inherited condition caused by a faulty gene. A child rarely survives past the age of five.
Under most circumstances, a boy like Milo would be dead within weeks. Reaching the age of five and living in any kind of comfort would require a massive amount of money, and even this orphanage, one of many funded by a generous American family, wouldn’t use that much of its limited resources on a child who had no chance. One would have to use extreme measures at great cost to prolong a life that would be miserable and painful in any event.
Better, most would agree, to arrange for a peaceful, even merciful, death.
Except that wasn’t what happened.
Hayden Payne, a member of the generous American family, heard about this boy’s plight. Why a scion of the Payne fortune would hear about this particular case or take such a strong interest no one was certain. People gossiped, of course, but unbeknownst to most working there, Hayden had put in a request that if a boy matching this general size and physical description was located, he should be notified. When Hayden heard the boy was also in ill health, his interest became more acute. Why such a man would care to find a boy fitting this specific profile was a question no one at the orphanage dared to ask.
Why? Simple. Because the Paynes funded the orphanage.
Whatever their shortcomings, the facts were the facts: No Paynes, no orphanage, no saved children, no jobs.
To everyone who witnessed Hayden with the little boy, however—and that wasn’t a great number of people—Hayden Payne was a godsend. He did all he could for Milo. This was so important to Hayden. He did all in his power to make certain that the little boy’s short life would be rich with pleasure. No expense was spared. Nearly every day, Hayden took the boy on exciting adventures. Milo was a fireman for a day and got to ride on a big truck. He was a policeman on another and loved pressing the siren button as they drove. Hayden took the boy to football matches where he got to suit up with the players and watch from the field. Hayden took Milo to horse races and car races and town fairs and zoos and aquariums.
Hayden made Milo’s short life as great as it could be.
He didn’t have to, of course, but this became important to Hayden. The truth was, if Hayden hadn’t intervened, Milo would have died long ago and in pain. Thanks to Hayden—thanks to Hayden’s generosity—the boy’s limited days were happy and fun-filled. In Hayden’s mind, he should be commended for what he did. He didn’t have to do it this way. He could have been more pragmatic about it. He could have taken a healthy child that no one would miss. That would have been easier for Hayden. It would have worked far better because then Hayden could have done the deed faster and with less risk. But no, Hayden bided his time instead. He did the right thing. The moral thing. He found a life that would have been lost anyway, made it special and sparkly. All of us have a limited time here on Earth. We understand that. Milo’s time was both extended and tremendously enhanced because of Hayden Payne.
And then one day, when the time was right, when the boy was exactly the right size and weight, when the plan was laid out perfectly and, even with the medicine, little Milo was starting to suffer again, Hayden flew him on a private jet to the United States. He drove him to a home in Massachusetts. He gave the boy a small sedative, one that wouldn’t show up in the bloodstream, just enough so he wouldn’t feel anything. He took him upstairs to the other boy’s bedroom. He gave the other boy the same sedative and brought him to the car. He had already made sure the whiskey, the father’s favorite, contained a slightly stronger sedative.
Then Hayden put Milo in the other boy’s Marvel-themed pajamas.
Milo was asleep in bed when Hayden raised the baseball bat above his head. He closed his eyes and thought about Professor Tyler and that bully in eighth grade and that girl who wouldn’t stop screaming, all the times he had lashed out before, always with good reason. He channeled that rage and opened his eyes.
Hayden hoped and believed that the first blow killed Milo.
Then he raised the bat again. And again. And again. And again.
When he arrived with the boy at the Payne estate, when he finally could feel safe, that, oddly enough, was when Hayden Payne started to panic.
“Pixie, I have to tell you something…”
What had he done? After all the planning, all the years waiting to make this wrong finally right, why was he suddenly consumed with doubt? Suppose, he voiced to his grandmother, he had made a terrible mistake. Suppose the boy wasn’t really his. Could he somehow go back in time and make it all okay?
Was it too late?
But as always, Pixie had been the prudent, calm, rational one. She sent Stephano to make sure Hayden had made no mistakes, left no clues that could lead them to Payne. Then just to quiet any doubts, she had Hayden do a paternity test. It took a full day for the results to come back—a day that felt like an eternity to Hayden—but in the end, Pixie proudly announced that the test confirmed that Hayden had done the right thing.
Theo—once known as Matthew—was his son.
Pixie’s voice knocked him back to the present. “Hayden?”
He cleared his throat. “Yes, Pixie.”
“You sent her the photographs,” Gertrude said.
“From two of the four photographers,” Hayden said. “They were nowhere near where we were. I also looked through them myself.”
“Either way, I think you and Theo should go now.”
“We’ll leave in the morning,” Hayden said.