The call came from a pay phone in Cooperstown in upstate New York. Molly had been in the Jackson house since eight that morning, trying to keep the momentum going in Wyoming. There were only so many TV and radio shows in the state, and she was dredging the river now, trying to get repeats. Sam was once again in his makeshift studio. He’d just finished a live hook-up with some TV show from Casper, a lowbudget current events program hosted by a man who’d gotten rich selling mining equipment to the coal industry and now was on television just because he wanted to be. Sam had spent the past five minutes informing him that—at the current rate of immigration—in ten years Muslims would outnumber Christians in the country. Sam claimed that Frank Barton opposed the necessary changes to immigration policy that would prevent that from happening. Neither claim was true but the host—who knew a little about marketing—was buying everything that Sam sent his way.
The call came in on Rachel’s phone. The FBI was on site, the usual crew. When the phone rang, Heyward opened the link to the server while Dugan yelled for Sam to come out of the den. Molly followed.
“Is your husband there?” Jo asked when Rachel answered. Her voice, coming from Heyward’s computer, was calm.
“Yes, he’s here,” Rachel said. She had been upstairs when the call came in, and hurried down as the phone was ringing. Molly watched Sam as he moved to sit at the island off the family room. He poured a cup of coffee.
“You got the package?” Jo asked.
“Yes,” Rachel said.
“So your husband now believes we have your daughter?”
Sam, spooning sugar into the coffee, smiled as if someone was telling an old joke, one he’d heard so many times it wasn’t funny anymore.
“Yes, he does,” Rachel said. “Absolutely.”
“Okay,” Jo continued. “You tell him this is what he’s going to do. He’s going to pay one million dollars to an offshore account. You’ll get the info when the money’s ready. And then he’s going to drive to Laureltown and he’s going to tell the parents of the children who were killed how wrong he was. He’s going to tell them it was not their fault that their babies were murdered. He’s going to ask them to forgive him. Then he’s going to go on TV and tell the country the same thing. I would very much like him to be sincere when he does it but I’ve come to the conclusion that he might not be capable of sincerity. But maybe he can fool the people who listen to him. He obviously is capable of that. Okay, you have that?”
“Yes,” Rachel said quickly. “Can I talk to Vanessa? Is she with you?”
“Get your husband to do what I say and you can talk to her in person,” Jo said. “I’ll call you in twenty-four hours.”
The line went dead. Dugan looked at Heyward.
“Cooperstown, New York,” Heyward said.
“We should have asked her for a memento or two from the Hall of Fame,” Sam said.
Molly stared at him in disbelief and then looked at Rachel, who was still holding the phone to her ear, as if trying to extend the contact by sheer will. She seemed not to have heard Sam’s remark. When she finally lowered the phone, she turned to him.
“Okay,” she said, her voice rising. “How do we set this up?”
“Set what up?” he asked.
“We only have twenty-four hours,” Rachel said. “We can go to Laureltown this afternoon. Somebody has to contact the parents, get them together. You can do the TV thing tonight, right? The network will give you air time.”
Sam smiled again, then glanced at Dugan, who was not looking at either of them. He was staring at the floor, like a man who’d stumbled into an embarrassing situation and wished he was someplace else.
“What the fuck are you smiling about?” Rachel demanded of Sam.
“Am I smiling?” he asked.
She turned to Dugan. “Your guys have to coordinate this. Somebody has to talk to the parents in Laureltown.” Her mind was in overdrive now. “What if they won’t agree to meet? But some of them will. We can only talk to the ones who will. They have to understand that, right? The kidnappers, I mean.”
Dugan nodded and glanced at Sam, who took a slow drink of coffee before wiping his mouth with the back of his hand.
“Nobody’s going to Laureltown,” he said. “You need to slow down, Rachel. We’re one step closer to finding these people. And when we do, we’ll get Vanessa back, and they’ll go to jail.”
Rachel approached him. “No. We give them what they want and we can have her back tomorrow. Detective Bell even said that. Give them what they want.”
“That scenario would require me to go on television and eat shit,” Sam said. “I’m in the middle of a political campaign that has positioned me as the one man in this country who doesn’t eat shit. Do you know what the term No Surrender means?”
“Do not tell me that, Sam,” Rachel said desperately. “We have to do this. We have to do this and then you can get back to campaigning. I’ll help. I’ll even go to Wyoming with you if you want. I’ll do anything you want me to do. But we have to do this. Please, Sam.”
Molly watched Rachel Jackson as she crumbled, there in her own house, in front of strangers, her hands shaking, her voice cracking. Molly turned away and walked out of the room, going back to the den, where she had a radio interview scheduled for two o’clock. From there she heard Sam Jackson answer his wife.
“No,” he said.