There was a knock on the door.
“Leaving in five minutes,” said Mary Sullivan. “Almost ready?”
“Almost,” the boy replied. “Be there in a minute.”
He stood in front of the floor-length mirror in the guest bedroom and looked at himself. Blond hair, green eyes. One ear seemed to sit a little lower than the other, but nothing so obvious that anyone would notice. He needed a haircut, or—then again—maybe he didn’t. Maybe he liked his hair a little shaggy. There was nothing, he thought, particularly different or unusual about him. And while he recognized the face in the mirror, he couldn’t attach a name, an address, a personality, or anything else to the person he saw looking back at him. No family. No history. Nothing.
And how did he know so much about Monet, or that painting in London? That didn’t seem normal at all. In fact, it was downright weird that a twelve-year-old kid would know so much about stuff like that.
Shouldn’t I be freaking out? he thought.
But he wasn’t freaking out. And that worried him. And he could tell that it also worried Mary Sullivan, although she was doing her best to hide it from him.
He grabbed his jacket from the bed, pulled it on, and zipped up the front. It was time to go. He couldn’t stare at himself in the mirror forever.
Mary and Camille were waiting at the front door. Camille was bundled up in a thick red ski jacket with white polka dots and a matching wool cap. The temperature had dropped below freezing overnight and still hovered just around thirty degrees. All the boy could think about was how much Camille looked like a giant strawberry.
“All set?” Mary asked. “Is the sweater warm enough? Do you want a thicker jacket? Camille might have something you could wear.”
The boy shook his head. Mary had given him a thick sweater and washed the rest of his clothes. He was willing to put up with a little cold weather—he could only imagine what kind of jacket he might end up wearing if Mary pulled something out of Camille’s closet. “I’m fine.”
She offered him a pair of gloves—light blue with sparkles. “Camille’s extra pair,” she said apologetically.
“No thanks,” the boy replied. He thrust his hands deep inside the pockets of his jacket. “I’ll be okay.”
Mary laughed. “I understand,” she said with a wink. She handed him a knit cap. “You’ll need this,” she said. “It’s a bit of a walk to the Metro station, but don’t worry—the hat is sparkle free.”
The boy pulled the cap down onto his head, then followed Camille and her mother out the front door, down the steps, and to the narrow brick sidewalk. It was cold outside, but the air felt refreshing on his face.
As he walked along the sidewalk, he felt objects in the pockets of his jacket. He pulled out three pennies, a wad of lint, and a paper clip from the left pocket. Deep in his right jacket pocket he found an old tissue and a small rectangular piece of black plastic. The piece of plastic had a small hole at the top and was engraved with white letters and numbers:
WB
WEST
28
He held the small collection of items from his pockets in his right hand as he walked.
“What’s all that?” asked Camille, who was walking beside him. Her words formed little clouds of frost as she spoke.
“Just pocket junk,” he said. He picked out the pennies and stuck them in his pants pocket. He looked around for a trash can to toss the rest of the bits and pieces away, but there wasn’t one nearby. He stuffed it all back into a jacket pocket, figuring he could throw it away when he got to the museum.
“My mom’s really embarrassed. This isn’t the first time he’s pulled this sort of stunt, but nothing as bad as this. Last year he just walked out of school after lunch one day and made his way over to the local movie theater. Nobody knew where he was, and everybody freaked out. We had teachers, my parents, neighbors, and the police looking for him all afternoon. Around five o’clock he called home and asked Mom to come pick him up. Claimed he had gotten food poisoning at school, passed out, and woke up in the theater. Can you imagine? Food poisoning. Nobody believed him, of course, but what could they say? Anyway, yesterday he told Mom that he was going to spend the night with one of his friends down the street—Jack Dudley. Mom called Jack’s mom and made sure it was okay. School’s out for Christmas, so Mom didn’t care if he spent the night. Anyway, ’bout seven o’clock last night Mom called down to the Dudleys to check on him. Turns out he never showed up. Apparently he had called Mrs. Dudley and told her that he was sick and was going to stay home. Everybody freaked out again, but Mom didn’t want to call the police because of what happened last time. We went to the movie theater, the mall, Dairy Queen—everywhere he liked to go. Spent all night looking for him.”
The young man stopped speaking for a minute to take a sip of coffee. He wore a beat-up Baltimore Orioles baseball cap and thick black-rimmed glasses.
“So I’m driving around this morning,” he continued, “looking for the little delinquent, when I get a text from one of my friends who had stayed in DC for the holidays—I go to school here at George Washington. He sends me a link to an article in the Post and asks if I recognize anyone. I almost ran off the road. There was Taylor—on the front page of the newspaper.”
“Taylor?” asked Detective Neil Wasberger. “Your brother’s name is Taylor, right?”
“Yes, sir. Taylor Patrick Howell. He’s twelve years old, the youngest kid in our family. He lives in Winchester, Virginia, with my mom, my dad, and my middle brother.”
“And you are David Howell?” Detective Wasberger furiously scribbled notes on his small notepad. Wasberger was a huge man—as wide as he was tall, and he was very tall. He stared down from his seat at the small, thin young man sitting in front of him. He had briefly considered calling Detective Evans to let her know that someone had shown up to claim the boy—to see if she wanted to come in and conduct the interview. But he had ultimately decided against it. It wasn’t as if he were interrogating a criminal mastermind or something.
“Yes, sir,” replied the young man. “My dad’s out of the country on business, and Mom is real upset—especially since it’s getting near Christmas. I told her I would come get him.”
“And the name in the jacket?” The detective glanced at his notes. “It was Arthur, not Taylor.”
David Howell laughed. “That’s my middle brother—Arthur. With three boys, everything gets passed down. Sorta surprised he didn’t have one with my name in it.”
The detective nodded and made a notation in the file. The explanation made sense.
The young man leaned across the desk and handed a Virginia driver’s license to the detective. “Here’s my ID,” he said. “Just in case you need to see it.”
The detective looked at the license and handed it back. He then gave the young man a pen and pad of paper.
“I need your contact information,” said the detective. “Address, home phone number, cell phone.”
The young man jotted down the information and handed the pad back. The detective noticed a small tattoo on the inside of David’s wrist. The young man caught Detective Wasberger staring at the tattoo and held up his wrist for the detective to see better. The tattoo was an image of a fleur-de-lis.
“Fraternity symbol,” the young man said. “Kinda stupid, I suppose, but all the guys got one. My mom said it was trashy-looking.”
“Listen to your mom,” the detective said with a smile as he pulled back his sleeve to reveal a tattoo of Mickey Mouse riding a motorcycle on his forearm.
The young man laughed.
The detective glanced down at his notes. “I don’t suppose you have any photos—”
“Of Taylor?” the young man interrupted. “Yes, sir. I’m sorry—I should have given you this earlier.” He handed over a photo of the boy standing in front of the Washington Monument, next to a tall man with blond hair.
“That’s my dad,” David said. “He’s a lawyer.”
The detective placed the photo next to the photograph in the file. It matched perfectly. The boy was a mini version of his father, even if he didn’t look a thing like his older brother. The mystery had been solved. Case closed. Detective Wasberger handed the photo back.
“Like I said, Mom’s real embarrassed,” said the young man.
“Tell your mom not to worry,” replied the detective. “It happens more than you think.”
The young man breathed a sigh of relief. “So it’s okay if I go pick him up?” he asked. “I’d like to try to get him home before it gets dark. Mom’s mad at him, but she’s also worried sick.”
“We can make that happen,” said the detective. “I just need to get some paperwork filled out, put in a call to social services, and then set up a time for . . .”
David slumped back in his seat. The disappointment was evident on his face.
The detective paused. He knew that it would take forever to get in touch with social services and fill out all the necessary paperwork. And besides, he had robberies, homicides, and other real crimes to investigate. There was no sense in making this harder than it had to be.
The detective wrote down a name, address, and phone number on a piece of paper and slid it across the desk. “Your brother’s in temporary foster care,” he said. “That’s the contact information for the foster parent. I’ll give her a call and let her know you’ll be picking up your brother.”
The young man reached across the table, grabbed the detective’s hand, and shook it vigorously. “I can’t tell you how much this means to my family,” he said. The detective could hear the emotion in the young man’s voice.
“Just doing my job,” replied Detective Wasberger.
“If you don’t mind,” David said, “do you know where in the museum my brother was found?”
The detective glanced down at his file. “According to the security report from the National Gallery, he was found in Gallery 83 on the main floor of the West Building. Doesn’t mean a whole lot to me. Went through the museum once when I was on a high school field trip—never been back.”
The young man shrugged. “Yeah,” he replied, “guess it doesn’t really matter.”
The detective closed the file. “Do you want me to go with you to pick him up?” he asked. “You know, to put a scare in him for running away and lying about it?”
“Don’t worry,” David said. “I’ll put a scare in him he’ll never forget.”
Dorchek Palmer made his way out of the police station. It was cold, and the day seemed to be turning colder by the minute. There was a security camera directly above the entrance to the station and a camera on each corner of the building. Palmer kept his cap pulled down low and tilted his head ever so slightly away from each camera he passed. He pulled out his phone and dialed it with his left hand. Palmer was right-handed, and it felt awkward using his left hand—but he knew that every detail mattered. Everything he did had to lead in a different direction—to a different person.
“Five minutes,” he said into the phone before ending the call.
He then bent over and carefully tied his shoes—bright red Chuck Taylors. He positioned himself so that the cameras could get a good view of his feet.
Palmer checked his watch—a thick black sports watch. It was time to go.
He headed west until he ran into Sixth Street. He took a right and headed north. A minute later a black SUV pulled alongside him. He opened the rear passenger-side door and quickly got in. A black trash bag sat on the seat beside him. He removed his hat, jacket, glasses, watch, and shoes and placed them into the bag. He pulled on a pair of well-worn leather loafers, a black wool jacket, black leather gloves, and a burnt orange skullcap.
“Wipe,” Palmer said.
The man sitting in the front passenger seat tore open a small foil package and handed a wet wipe to Palmer. He cleaned the temporary tattoo off the inside of his wrist and dropped the dirty wipe into the trash bag. He then tied up the bag and handed it to the man in the front seat.
On the floorboard of the car was a black shoulder bag. Palmer retrieved an iPad from the bag and started punching in the information provided by the detective. Within minutes he had pictures of Mary Sullivan and her daughter and the address of their house sent to his team. A moment later he had retrieved her vehicle information and distributed that as well. He then pulled up the website for the National Gallery of Art and located an interactive map of the West Building. He located Gallery 83—the gallery in which the boy had been found. Below the image of the map of the main floor—Gallery 83 highlighted in deep blue—were images of the significant works of art that could be found in that particular gallery.
Uh oh, Palmer thought.
It couldn’t be a coincidence.
Palmer put the iPad away and stared out the window. The car turned down Seventeenth Street and moments later stopped in front of the World War II Memorial. Palmer grabbed the shoulder bag and exited the car, which immediately sped off. He started walking swiftly toward the Lincoln Memorial.
It had been only ten minutes since he had left the police station, but time was already running short.