by Brad Parks
Thank you for allowing me to continue to serve you.
Sincerely,
Herbert Thrift
LICENSED PRIVATE INVESTIGATOR
Herbert Thrift & Associates
I sat at my desk, drumming my fingers for a minute or two, until I decided it didn’t really matter that Herb Thrift now knew who I was—not as long he was as confidential as advertised. I tapped out a quick e-mail, telling him he was welcome to enter my property as he pleased, just as long as he didn’t alert my wife. Then I turned to the large PDF file that came with his e-mail.
The document began with a log, tracing the movements of Roland Hemans, who was referred to only as “subject.” Each entry began with a time, and it was, as one would expect, fairly dull:
9:17 A.M.—Subject arrives in offices at 214 West Brambleton.
12:33 P.M.—Subject leaves 214 West Brambleton, travels on foot to Subway restaurant.
12:41 P.M.—Subject leaves Subway restaurant, returns to offices at 214 West Brambleton.
I quickly got bored with the narrative and went straight to the pictures. It was page after page of Roland Hemans getting into and out of cars, walking into and out of his home and office.
The only excursion he made on Friday was a trip to the Marriott in downtown Norfolk, where Leslie, Jennings & Rowley had set up what its lawyers were referring to as their “war room.” They had taken the unusual step of flying scientists in for depositions—normally, lawyers traveled to the deposed, not the other way around. It was the only way they could get them all done, given the extremely compressed timeline I had insisted on.
None of the photos were all that interesting until I got to Saturday morning. That’s when I saw Hemans leaving his home, stopping at the floral shop, then entering through the gates of Kensington Mews.
It was exactly as he had done the Saturday before. I clicked onto the next picture, of Hemans parking. Then came the photo of him getting out of his car with the flowers.
Herb Thrift was closer than I had been, with a much better angle, having wormed his way into the complex. And so he was able to give me a superior view of what came next.
There was a shot of Roland Hemans walking down an exterior hallway and then a shot of him standing outside a door.
And then there was a shot of the door being opened.
But not by Joan Smith.
By Jeremy Freeland.
* * *
The photo that followed was the real clincher, quite literally: It showed Roland Hemans hugging Jeremy.
Then, to eliminate any shred of doubt, there was one of them locking lips as the door closed.
That was the last photo. I went back and looked at the log. The time for Hemans’ entry to Kensington Mews was listed as 8:12 A.M. Then, at 9:17 A.M., there was: “Client phones, cancels surveillance of subject.”
But, really, I had already seen more than enough. Roland Hemans was having an intimate relationship with a member of my staff. Just a different one than I thought.
I probably sat there for five minutes, staring at that picture, wondering how I had gotten it so wrong. Certainly, I had misjudged Roland Hemans, falling into the stereotype that there was some correlation between masculinity and heterosexuality.
The other part of it was I simply hadn’t known Jeremy lived in Kensington Mews. I was reasonably sure he hadn’t when he first started working for me. He must have moved at some point, perhaps after overhearing Mrs. Smith talk about what a nice place it was.
As I scrolled through the pictures again, a few things started making sense. First was Jeremy’s initial request that I recuse myself from the case. He knew he couldn’t participate in a case where he was sleeping with the plaintiff’s attorney, but he also couldn’t tell me he and Roland Hemans were having an affair. I assumed Hemans—the married-with-children Virginia Black Attorneys Association Lawyer of the Year—was in the closet, deep enough he felt he couldn’t risk anyone finding out about him.
In Jeremy, he had found a careful, quiet lover, one happy to continue having their Saturday-morning trysts. The relationship had probably been going on for quite some time. How long ago did Jeremy say he had met Hemans? It was during a matter heard in the appellate court, obviously before he started working for me, so it had to be at least four years. I think he had said something like six or eight.
By now their romance had to be . . . well, almost like a marriage.
I thought back to the way Jeremy had sidled into my office that day he asked me to recuse myself, biting his lip the whole time. He had known from the moment Palgraff appeared on the docket that he was going to have to get us off the case. But he thought he had more time.
Then the thing exploded into the public eye and it was too late to do it quietly. When he couldn’t get me to drop the case voluntarily, he and Hemans came up with the plan to file the motion for recusal. Jeremy had fed Hemans most of the information for it. That was how Hemans had known Senator Franklin was Emma’s godfather.
Once it was filed, they figured I would drop the case and they wouldn’t have to worry about, say, Hemans winning a huge judgment then having it overturned when his relationship with Jeremy became public. Nor would they have to worry about Jeremy being fired at some future time when they chose to live more openly as a couple.
Their plan was sturdy. They just happened to throw it against a judge whose desire to hang on to the case was unyielding.
Now there was the question of what I was supposed to do with this sloppy bundle of newfound knowledge—these facts I couldn’t unlearn and pictures I couldn’t unsee. If I was operating under the guidelines of any ethics book ever written I’d call Jeremy into my office and fire him on the spot.
But ethics were not my top priority at the moment. Emma was.
Even if Jeremy accepted his termination and went away without a fuss, it would attract attention. That was the last thing I needed more of, whether it was from Congressman Jacobs, Jeb Byers, or anyone in the press. Furthermore, I couldn’t risk the reason for Jeremy’s dismissal becoming public. That would also lead to a forced recusal.
So it was decided. Once the Markman hearing was done, I’d deal with this. In the meantime? I had to bring this issue to a close. I couldn’t have Jeremy and Roland Hemans coming up with new and increasingly creative ways to get me off the case.
My computer screen was still filled with the final page of Herb Thrift’s PDF, the one that had the two most damning pictures on it. I hit the print button, then dialed Jeremy’s extension.
A minute later, he was in my office. Without a word, I grabbed the top sheet off my printer and slid it across the desk. “Look at that, please.”
Jeremy’s face, normally so symmetrical, went askew for a moment. He recovered it quickly enough. He had been sneaking around for six, eight years now. Perhaps he always knew they would be discovered someday.
“How did you get this?” he asked quietly. “Did you take this picture?”
“No.”
“Who did?”
“That’s not your concern,” I said.
“But how did—”
“Look, there’s only one thing you need to know. And it’s that this ends. Now. There will be no more attempts to get me off this case. Tell your boyfriend the same thing.”
His head was down as he studied the photos again. “Okay,” he said.
“You can go,” I said.
He didn’t. Instead, he brought his gaze up, nice and level with mine.
“Why aren’t you firing me?” he asked.
The question startled me enough that I almost answered it honestly. Then I got ahold of myself and said, “Just go.”
FORTY-FIVE
Back in our old life, which now seemed as distant as an ice age, Monday night would have signaled it was time for our weekly round of Hats and Dancing.
The
straightforward mechanics of the game were part of its charm. We had this bin of hats. Before the music started, everyone selected one piece of headwear—or more, if they were feeling especially silly. Once the song started, you danced in whatever manner the hat-music combination inspired in you. When it ended, you picked a new hat.
Since the invention of the game several years earlier, I don’t think we had missed a single Monday night. Yet this now marked the second consecutive Monday night no one dared touch the hat bin. Just like Sam and I wouldn’t have thought about doing Swim With Dad. By unspoken consent, we had decided most of our family rituals would be suspended until Emma’s return.
So that night, we passed the time as had become our custom of late. Alison and I ignored each other, pretending to be busy, while Sam watched far more television than was ordinarily tolerated. Then, when one of us decided his face had been infused with enough high-definition plasma, we engaged in some brief family time.
We had just finished up Battleship. Alison was upstairs, pushing Sam toward bedtime. I was in the kitchen, washing dishes, when I heard this pitiful noise.
It was coming from Sam. In the prekidnapping epoch, I probably would have allowed Alison to handle whatever small drama was transpiring. Not now. I flung down my pot scrubber and charged up the stairs two at a time.
“What’s going on?” I asked, a bit too loudly, as I entered Sam’s room.
There I found Sam, his head damp from his bath, his pajamas half-plastered to his still-wet body. He was standing in the middle of the room, sobbing.
“Emmabear is missing,” Alison said in a soothing tone.
Sammybear and Emmabear were such frequent—and itinerant—playmates that we typically had to put out an AMBER Alert for one (or both) at least twice a week. Ordinarily, it was a sign of business as usual, not a crisis.
It felt different this time. Way different.
“Well, okay, there’s no reason to panic,” I said, my voice rising. “Where did you last see her?”
Between gasps and anguished cries, Sam said, “I . . . I . . . d-don’t . . . know.”
“Come on, buddy, think. Where were you last playing with her?”
Sam wilted a little more. Alison said, “He doesn’t know, Scott. Give him a break.”
“I’m just trying to help here,” I said, my patience already fraying.
“You’re making it worse. It’s like you’re interrogating a witness.”
I threw up my hands. “I’m just asking if he has any idea at all where the damn bear is. That’s not interr—”
Sam started crying even louder. This wasn’t one of those calculated tantrums kids sometimes have. This was a pure, nuclear meltdown. His little arms were squeezed by his sides. His mouth had a hideous downward curl to it, like a horrified jack-o’-lantern.
“I j-j-just w-want Emma-b-b-bear,” he moaned.
“I told him we could find Emmabear tomorrow,” Alison said. “It’s late.”
Sam responded to this pronouncement with a renewed burst of anguish. He had been so brave—maybe too brave—keeping things bottled up. This was clearly about more than the bear. At the same time it wasn’t. Sometimes, with kids, you can accomplish an awful lot by focusing on the simple fix.
“He wants the bear,” I said. “Let’s find the bear.”
“Tomorrow.”
Sam bayed even louder. It was like a metal rake on my cerebral cortex.
“No,” I said, trying—and failing—to keep my tone measured. “We are going. To find. The bear.”
“Scott, it’s not—”
“Are you helping or are you not?” I asked, already looking under the bed. Then I moved on to behind the dresser, another frequent Emmabear hideaway. Then I rifled through his sheets (she sometimes got tangled up in them) and plowed into the pile of stuffed animals in the corner (where Emmabear had been known to hide in plain sight).
Alison was just gaping at me. Sam was rooted to his spot in the floor, still pitching a fit.
“Come on, buddy,” I said, kneeling and grasping his bony shoulders. “Give me some help here. Last place you saw Emmabear. You’ve got to have some idea.”
After another couple of desperate gulps of air, he said, “I think may . . . may . . . maybe the family room.”
I tore out of the room and down the stairs, barely touching the steps as I went. The family room was awash in Lincoln Logs, Hot Wheels, and Legos. We normally required the kids to clean up a toy before they moved on to the next one. We had gotten lax about enforcement lately.
After a cursory scan of the obvious spots, I looked under furniture. I lifted the coffee table, the sofa, the easy chair. Then I got into the sofa cushions and tossed them haphazardly about.
Next I spied the hat bin. That had to be it: Sammy wanted Hats and Dancing so bad, he and Emmabear had done their own imaginary round of it. I would find Emmabear underneath a fez or tucked beneath a beanie.
I emptied the bin, hat by hat, flinging each one on the floor until I reached the bottom of the pile. No bear.
The planters in the corner. Perhaps she was hidden in that houseplant jungle? I roughly slid each pot a foot or so to the side, which did not reveal Emmabear but did slosh dirty brown water onto the hardwood floor.
I moved to the entertainment center next. There were dozens of little nooks and crannies there, created by the television, the cable box, the speakers, the wireless router, the cable modem. Any one of those places could easily harbor a little teddy bear, and I was determined to leave no spot unexplored.
Failure wasn’t an option. The bear was somewhere. It had not simply ceased to exist.
I was getting warm from the exertion of pawing through so much stuff so quickly. I didn’t care. I was already on to the large cabinet where we kept our games. Surely, Sam had come to retrieve Battleship and left Emmabear in there by mistake.
Pulling on the handle, I unwittingly unleashed an avalanche of games. Trouble. Sorry. Candy Land. Chutes and Ladders. Monopoly. Some of the games had landed on their sides, splitting open. An array of dice, sand timers, plastic widgets, and game cards spilled across the floor. I no longer cared. Emmabear was all that mattered.
But she wasn’t in the cabinet. Or any of the drawers underneath. I checked each one meticulously, making sure there was not a single square inch that escaped my scrutiny.
My line of sight moved next to the built-in bookshelves on the far wall. Sam sometimes liked to fling Emmabear around. She could have landed on top of some books, then fallen behind them.
Systematically, starting high on the left and moving down and to the right, I began removing row after row, one double-handed scoop at a time, creating stacks on the floor. With each new attack, I told myself: This was the one. Emmabear was hiding here. I would move the next load and there she would be, with her little sewed-on smile. I visualized not only that success but then the satisfaction of presenting the bear to my weary son, whose tears would quickly give way to a grateful smile.
I was several hundred volumes into that effort when I heard Alison, speaking to me from the entrance of the room.
“You can stop now, Scott,” she said softly. “Sam’s been asleep for twenty minutes. I scratched his back and he dropped like a stone. He was just tired. We’ll look for Emmabear in the morning.”
I didn’t stop to acknowledge her. I had work to do.
“That bear is not your daughter,” she said. “Finding Emmabear is not the same as finding Emma.”
Another row of books was now at my feet on the floor.
“Scott, look at this room. Stop. And look.”
She gently grabbed my wrist before I could scoop up another load. It snapped me out of whatever trance I had been in. I had one of those rare moments where I was able to pull myself out of my body and take a good long look at the guy who inhabited it.
What I saw wa
s a stooped, balding, desperate middle-aged man. He was sweating. His shirt had come untucked. The room around him was thoroughly demolished, like it had been tossed by burglars. His wife was looking at him like she was frightened. He was coming unhinged.
I sat heavily on the floor, leaning against the nearly empty bookshelf. There were stacks of books on either side of me. Alison crouched nearby and patted my shoulder.
“It’s okay, honey,” she cooed. “It’s okay.”
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“It’s okay,” she said again.
I think she wanted to get closer but it was difficult, what with all the books. She rubbed my thigh instead.
And then I just lost it. I was suddenly weeping with my whole body. My stomach contracted involuntarily. My shoulders shook. I let it happen, not that I could have held it back if I wanted to. I spent all day pretending to be normal and I couldn’t do it anymore.
Alison moved a pile of books and knelt next to me, shushing me and wrapping her arms around me. The woman who had unknowingly spent her day being followed by a private investigator—a man I had hired—was now mothering me with all the tenderness that she had just used with her own child.
When I finally got some control of my abdomen back and wasn’t quite as hunched over, she pulled my head next to her chest and let me cry into her blouse.
Her boys were having a rough night.
We ended up finding Emmabear the next morning, sitting in Emma’s seat at the kitchen table.
Right where Sam had left her.
FORTY-SIX
As his Wednesday began—which did not happen until sometime in the midmorning—the younger brother was completing his routine check of the previous night’s surveillance footage.
Tuesday night had been like all the others. Now and then, he would catch sight of the person whose turn it was to keep guard—either a man or one of two women. But otherwise it was quiet. Just like the night before. And, really, like every night for more than a week.