The Stolen (8 page)

“I do owe you a meal or two, but I’ll own up later. I got a question for you. When you’re investigating a disturbance, what happens if it’s a false alarm? Like a burglary or break-in is reported, but when the boys in blue show up there’s no evidence of anything illegal?”

“It’s investigated, man. Every one. Can’t say they spend a ton of time on it, but you gotta make sure it was a false alarm. God forbid it turns out you just missed a clue or someone really needed help and you left instead of lifting a finger.”

“That’s what I thought.”

“What’s this about, bro?”

“Not sure yet. I have a few questions about the Daniel Linwood disappearance that nobody’s in a rush to answer.”

“Kid who got kidnapped then dropped out of the sky, right?”

“That’s the one.”

“I feel for that family, man. Nobody deserves to go through that. My mom used to hyperventilate if I came home half an hour late from school, let alone five years. Good luck, Henry. If anyone’s gonna get those answers it’s you, you tunnel-visioned asshole. And hey, don’t forget about your tab. Steak and a beer within the week.”

“You can count on it.”

I hung up and ordered a pizza to be delivered to Curt’s house. I just hoped he’d finish it before Gloria got home, otherwise he wouldn’t be around long enough for me to repay the rest of the tab.

There had to be more to the Linwood story. Something I’d missed, perhaps. Something in Daniel’s voice, his word, his cadences.

I took the tape recorder from my desk, rewound the tape and pushed Play. I listened to the whole tape again. And when it was finished, I was pretty sure I’d discovered one pretty big question. Not to mention an explanation as to why I was confused by certain aspects of Danny’s statements. One huge question had been asked by Danny Linwood himself. Only the boy didn’t even know he was asking it.

P
aulina Cole forwarded three e-mails to her assistant, James Keach, then turned off her computer and put on her Burberry trenchcoat. James had asked several times if he could leave for the day, but each time Paulina answered him by not answering him—ignoring him was her favorite form of communication—and he soon slunk back to the cubicle zoo where the other peons sat and stewed. It had become somewhat of an amusing ritual. At the end of each day Paulina would send whatever hate mail she received to James, who would make copies for three departments: Human Resources, Public Relations and the
Dispatch
’s editor-in-chief, Ted Allen. Paulina had requested the
Dispatch
print her e-mail address at the end of every column. She invited readers to write in, and in fact went home depressed on the days where she got no hate mail. Pissed-off folks tended to be more vocal than satisfied ones, so the next day she would try even harder to kneel on the public’s pressure points.

She sent the e-mails to HR because it was mandated by corporate. PR wanted it in case any public figures wrote in. Ted Allen demanded it because he liked nothing more than employing a reporter who so riled up readers that they took time out of their busy (or tragically not busy) day to pen her a missive so vile that they would tell all their friends to buy the paper to
see what that bitch wrote.

When the media reporter for the
New York Gazette
had questioned Paulina’s ethics in reporting on a congressman she’d allegedly had a romantic liaison with years back, Cole responded in her column questioning the reporter’s manhood. More specifically, she stated her doubt that his manhood was longer than his pencil’s eraser. Both she and Ted had gotten a kick out of it, and HR needed a new folder to house all the letters she received. Naturally, the paper sold 50,000 more copies that day than the previous one, and her story was linked to by dozens of influential media Web sites. Nobody was better at riling up the bourgeoisie than Paulina Cole, and in today’s America people paid good money to be pissed off.

Paulina began her career in journalism nearly two decades ago working in the Style section at a New York alternative weekly paper. Boring easily of reporting on asinine trends and mindless models, Paulina took a job on the news desk at the
New York Gazette.
Widely considered one of the city’s most prestigious dailies, it was at the
Gazette
where Paulina first made a name for herself. And while her progress at the
Gazette
matched her drive, she quickly tired of the politics and backroom handshakes that were staples of the old boys’ club. Wallace Langston and Jack O’Donnell were dinosaurs, analogs in a digital world. The newsroom needed a swift stiletto in the ass, but they were too busy sniffing brandy to realize the world was passing them by. And when Wallace brought in Henry Parker, then stood by him when the weasel was accused of murder, it sickened Paulina more than anything in her career had before. And she was not a woman who sickened easily.

Leaving the
Gazette
was the easiest decision she’d ever made. To her, that newspaper represented everything wrong with the current system. Old. Stale. Clueless about technology, and out of touch with the average reader. People wanted pizzazz, something to shock them, something to ignite their senses. They didn’t care about politics unless there was sleaze behind the suit. Didn’t care about crime unless it was a celebrity drunk behind the wheel. So Paulina was happy to dig and dish the dirt. She was happy to be hated by the highbrow, embraced by the lowbrow. But everyone had an opinion.

Once safely nestled in the bosom of the
New York Dispatch,
Paulina had made it her goal to not only boost the paper’s circulation rates, but to do it at the expense of the
Gazette.
She would topple their leaders, set fire to the old guard and burn the paper to the ground. She’d laid the groundwork with her articles focusing on Henry, to the point where nearly half the city would answer “Henry Parker” when asked what was wrong with the current state of journalism.

But Henry was young. Not yet thirty, his proverbial balls had not yet dropped. Going after him was like shooting a fish in a barrel, and its ripples wouldn’t travel far. To truly bring down the
Gazette,
she had to stop worrying about the epidermis, and instead dig down to its skeleton. The old guard. The reporter the paper staked its very reputation on.

Jack O’Donnell.

For years Jack O’Donnell had been the public face of the
Gazette.
He’d won countless awards, brought respectability, integrity and readership to Wallace Langston’s newspaper. Yet during her tenure there, Paulina had noticed the old man begin to slip. His reporting had been shoddy, numerous quotes and sources had to be spiked by the managing editor. Not to mention the unmistakable odor that wafted from his desk, strong enough to make you fail a sobriety test just by inhaling.

It was only a matter of time before somebody took a sledgehammer to the pillar of the
Gazette,
and it was only fitting for it to be wielded by someone who’d seen the cracks up close.

Paulina turned off her office light, took the umbrella from under her desk. Her office had a beautiful view of the Manhattan skyline, twinkling lights amid the dark hues of night. The skies had opened, drenching the pavement, and the N train was several blocks away. As she strolled through the corridors of the
Dispatch,
Paulina stopped by the one office she’d asked Ted Allen to clear out for her a few months ago. A junior media reporter had been given the office, a reward for a promotion, but when Paulina informed Ted Allen what she had in mind, the young man was given a nice little cubicle by the Flavia coffeemaker.

The office was enclosed, sealed off. Exactly what she needed.

On Paulina’s orders, the office had been cleared out; not even a dustball remained. Instead three rows of shelves had been installed, forming a U around the walls. What was inside the office had to be kept a secret until her story was ready. And then the bombshell would drop.

Only two people had a key: Paulina and Ted Allen himself. The key was removed from the rings of the entire janitorial staff, and Paulina only entered when she was positive there were no looming eyes peeking over her shoulder.

Tonight, she had a tremendous urge to look inside. She needed to be reminded of what all her hard work was preparing for.

Checking once more to make sure she was alone, Paulina twisted the key in the lock, opened the door and flicked on the overhead light.

What she saw inside made her glow with delight. The way the room glittered, the light reflecting on everything she’d painstakingly gathered over the past few months. And her treasure trove was growing by the day. It was only a matter of time before the contents of this room, these seemingly innocuous items, changed the face of New York journalism.

Satisfied, Paulina turned off the light, closed the door and got out her umbrella, preparing for her journey into the rain.

“R
ight here,” I said to Wallace. He was holding a copy of the transcript of my interview with Daniel Linwood. I’d asked him to read it in its entirety before we spoke. So far he’d only read what was printed in the
Gazette.
There were many quotes that were cut for space, details that didn’t make it into the final piece. I wanted to see if Wallace noticed what I had just minutes ago.

I hadn’t noticed it upon my first few listenings. It was so subtle, yet because I was already skeptical of the whole situation, it stood out in neon lights.

“I’m not following, Henry,” Wallace said. He turned off the tape recorder. “Please, placate an old man whose hearing is going. Enlighten me as to what the hell you’re talking about.”

“First off,” I said, “Daniel mentions he heard sirens when he woke up. Yet there’s no record of any complaints or investigations by the Hobbs County PD in that vicinity. And when I spoke to the detective assigned to the case, he was only slightly more helpful than your average retail clerk. And then I heard this.”

I rewound to the spot in question. Then I pressed Play. When Daniel spoke that word, I stopped the tape.

“Brothers,”
I said. “Daniel Linwood talks about seeing his family for the first time when he got back home that day. He refers to his sister, Tasha, but then he uses the word
brothers.
As in plural. Daniel Linwood has one brother, James. There’s no record of Shelly and Randall having any other sons. And then he uses the word several more times. As though he can’t help it. Once is a slip of the tongue. Twice is a heck of a coincidence. Three times, like Danny says on the tape, that means something’s wrong.”

Wallace looked at the transcript, found what I was referring to, stared at it so intently I expected a hole to be seared through it.

“I think Daniel was referring to brothers because there was another brother in his life.”

“But you just said he only has one brother, this James. I don’t follow.”

“I think the other brother, the plural brother, was with Danny during the years he was missing. I think whoever kidnapped Daniel Linwood had another young boy. I think even though he can’t force himself to remember details of the past five years, Danny subconsciously
is
referring to it. I think whoever took him had another child, and Daniel was made to believe they were brothers. And even though James is his only biological brother, his memory still retains a stamp of some sort. A footprint of the lost years.”

“Is that even medically possible?” Wallace asked skeptically.

“In 1993,” I said, “medical records showed that Sang Min Lee, a thirteen-year-old Korean boy who’d been in a coma for three years, suddenly woke up and claimed to smell flowers. Sang’s mother had brought fresh roses to Sang’s hospital room every day for the first year of his hospitalization, then stopped when it became too expensive. Somehow Sang’s brain retained the memory of those smells, despite the fact that the boy himself wasn’t even awake.”

Wallace scratched his beard, put the papers down. I could tell he was thinking about this, debating whether my discovery warranted looking into, or was just a dead end that would eat up time and resources.

“Let me dig a bit,” I said. “I know there’s no way to tell right now, but if there is, and we can report exclusively…”

Wallace’s head snapped up. I stopped speaking. He knew my engine was running, that if he unleashed the harness I’d be on this like a dog on fresh meat. I was aching to run with this story. It burned to think that nobody else seemed to care where Daniel Linwood had been for five years, why he couldn’t remember anything about his disappearance or why the HCPD seemed content to vacuum it all up. I hated that if nobody stepped up, Daniel Linwood would just be another headline. A child with no past, whose future would always be clouded.

“This is awful thin,” Wallace said. “You realize it might have been a slip of the tongue. A fault in the recording. My mother used to call me Beth—that was my sister’s name, but she was just absentminded. There are a dozen ways to explain what Daniel said, not all of them having anything to do with some Korean boy.”

“But you and I both want to know whether there’s more.”

I looked at Wallace, trying to will him to say it. Then he looked up at me, hands folded in front of him.

“Check it out. Report back if you find anything. And if it turns out there’s another way to explain it, you stop digging
immediately.
We promised to treat the Linwood family with respect—the last thing we need is to accidentally hit a nerve that doesn’t need to feel pain. There’s a family at stake here, not to mention a town trying to rebuild. So use a pipe cleaner to dig instead of a pickax.”

“Gentle is my middle name.”

“That’s a goddamned lie,” Wallace said, “but I’ll give you the benefit here. Good luck, Parker.”

With Wallace’s blessing, I went back to my desk and took out the Linwoods’ phone number. I held the Post-it between my fingers and thought about the promise I’d made to Shelly. Her family had been torn apart, and it would take years before they could even hope to begin the reparations. By giving me access to their home and to their son, the Linwoods trusted me to do what was right. And I had every intent of doing just that.

First I had to make sure there wasn’t a simpler explanation.

I called the Linwood house. It went right to voice mail. An automated system saying, “The person you wish to call is not available at this time. Please leave a message at the tone.” I figured they’d disconnected their phone, changed their number to confuse the vultures. Only now I’d become one, too.

At the tone, I said, “Hi, Shelly, Randall, this is Henry Parker. I wanted to thank you for the other day. I did have one follow-up question, and I was wondering if one of you could give me a call back at the office. Again, this is Henry Parker at the
New York Gazette.
”

Then I hung up. And sat there. Twiddling my thumbs, chewing a number two pencil, praying the wait wouldn’t be long.

Perhaps the most difficult thing about being a reporter was waiting for a callback. If I was on deadline, and knew that one transforming piece of information was available yet just beyond reach, the minutes crawled by like hours. Waiting for that callback could drive you insane. I propped my feet up on the desk, stuck a pencil between my teeth and waited.

Thankfully I didn’t have to worry about my sanity, because my phone rang barely a minute after I’d hung up.

“This is Parker.”

“Henry, it’s Shelly Linwood.” She sounded apprehensive, a little concerned. She had probably assumed once my story ran I’d be out of her life.

“Shelly, thanks so much for getting back to me.”

“It’s no problem. We have to screen our calls, otherwise we’d never get off the line. We’re probably going to have to change our number.” She said this with an air of apology. She still saw me as a friend. Unlike the other vultures who wanted to pick the bones.

“I understand that. Again, I appreciate you and Daniel talking to me the other day.”

“It’s Danny,” she said, her voice less than enthusiastic. “That’s what he wants to be called now.”

“Right. I remember. Anyway, Mrs. Linwood, Shelly, I was going back over the tape of the interview, and something seemed a little strange to me.”

“Strange? How so?”

“When Danny is talking about reuniting with his family, he says the word
brothers.
As in more than one. And he says it several times. I know this is a silly question, but Daniel doesn’t have any other siblings besides Tasha and James, right?”

“That’s right.” The acceptance was gone. At that moment I knew I was an outsider again.

“Any close friends he might consider a part of the family? A cousin so close he might call him a brother?”

“No.”

“Has he mentioned anything to you about his abduction? Any memories that might offer a clue as to why he said that?”

“I said no, Mr. Parker.” Not Henry.
Mr. Parker.
“It’s just the five of us. Thank God. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a pot roast in the oven.” I checked my watch. It was eleven in the morning. Kind of early for a pot roast.

She didn’t wait for me to respond, and I knew when the line went dead Shelly Linwood would no longer be returning any more of my calls. I sent off a quick e-mail to Wallace.

Shelly Linwood doesn’t know where “brothers” came from. Got very defensive. Will update you on progress.

H

I tapped my pencil against the desk. Wherever Danny Linwood was during those years, there was another person he’d called “brother.” I was sure of it. Of course, there was a chance his mind had simply been damaged from the absence, but something in Shelly’s voice and the lack of cooperation from the HCPD told me if I asked more questions, I’d find very unhappy answers. Which meant they had to be asked.

I decided to take a stab at something, then work from there.

I performed a LexisNexis search for child abductions within the past ten years, then narrowed the search to cases where the child returned alive. Sadly, there were over one thousand reported cases of child abductions in the United States during that span, and less than fifty of those thousand children had been found alive. The others had either been found dead, or never found at all.

I searched through the results looking for any similarities, specifically cases, like Danny Linwood’s, where the abducted was returned to his or her home with no memory of their time gone.

I was surprised when one hit came back. Seven years ago, an eight-year-old girl named Michelle Oliveira disappeared outside of Meriden, Connecticut, following a playdate at a neighbor’s house. The Oliveiras lived just four houses down the block from their friends, a family of four named the Lowes, which explained why she was unsupervised upon her return home. The investigation turned up nothing but a tassel from Michelle’s hair that had been caught on a nearby branch. After a month the search was called off. Two years later Michelle Oliveira was declared deceased.

And three years after that, Michelle Oliveira appeared in her parents’ front yard in Meriden, in perfect health with the exception of some vitamin deficiencies. According to a newspaper report, Michelle had no recollection of the intervening years.

The police had conducted numerous interviews with Michelle, her parents and younger brother, as well as with the Lowe family. The records had been sealed off due to the victim’s young age. The abductor or abductors were never found. And Michelle went on with her life.

While Michelle clearly wasn’t a “brother,” it did make me wonder. Meriden was just a few hours from Hobbs County, and more important, it set a precedent for this kind of unexplained absence and subsequent reappearance.

I needed to see those records. Fortunately I knew someone who could help. Time to add another lunch to my growing tab.

Curt Sheffield picked up, but it took major convincing to get him to not hang up on me.

“Ain’t no way I’m going to even touch a child abduction case, bro. Not to mention that it’s in a different state, and I’d have to explain why I’m asking those kind of questions. If I tell them it’s to sate some reporter’s curiosity, I might as well tell them I deal crack while downloading underage porn. I’ll get booted faster than you can say ‘Starsky minus Hutch.’”

“So how could I get hold of those records if not through the police?” I asked, praying Curt’s reach extended beyond that of his precinct.

“Only other firms who have access to those kinds of documents are the legal aid societies. They keep a database of all child-related abuse cases. I’m guessing this falls under their jurisdiction.”

“Even if there was no evidence of actual abuse?”

“Just ’cause there ain’t no scars on the outside don’t mean they’re not on the inside.”

“That’s deep, Curt. You write poetry, too?”

“Yeah, I’ll Robert Frost your ass if you try to squeeze anything else out of me. Good luck, sorry I couldn’t help more.”

“Yeah, thanks for nothing.”

“When can I collect on that tab?”

“I’ll have my people call your people.”

“Yeah, whatever. Later, Parker.”

I had to get more information on Michelle Oliveira’s abduction, but I wasn’t going to be able to go through the police department. I sat there in silence, thinking about what Curt had said. The legal aid society.

I knew one person who worked at the legal aid society. But calling her would touch nerves much closer to my heart than Daniel Linwood.

I opened my desk drawer. I could almost sense it down there. It had been months since I’d spoken to her. But rarely a day passed when I didn’t feel that ache, that gnawing in my gut that seemed to only get worse over time.

Six months ago I’d made a choice. I decided I had to give her up. I told myself at the time it was the right thing to do. A man had to put his love before himself. And since Amanda had nearly been killed twice because of me, in my mind there was no other option.

So I said goodbye to Amanda. I hadn’t been truly happy in months. It didn’t take a great reporter to figure out the two were directly correlated. But I still couldn’t be with her.