The Stolen (2008)
Page 3
I had to stop myself from laughing, considering I was
afraid of my own apartment and came here precisely so I
could avoid the braying of testosterone-drenched i-bankers.
“Trust me, it’s not confidence,” I said. “Just comfort.”
“See, that’s confident right there!” Then she extended
her hand. “I’m Emily.”
“Henry,” I said. For a moment I waited, then shook her
hand. Didn’t want to be rude.
“I’m here with some old college friends who are in
town for the weekend,” Emily said, “but we’re probably
going to ditch this place soon and go somewhere else
more, like, alive. I know you’re happy to be by yourself—”
she used finger quotation marks to accent this statement
“—but it might be cool if you came with us.”
Right then I could see the night laid out before me. Two
paths. I could accept Emily’s invitation, and presuming I
played my cards right, that electric sensation of skin on
skin would later become a wildfire.
Or I could sit here, sip my beer, stare at my reflection
in the mirror and think about all the other paths I’d simply
passed right by.
“I appreciate the offer, Emily,” I said. “But I think I’ll
stay here for the night.”
“You sure?” she said.
“Sure.”
“Suit yourself.” She grabbed a clean napkin from the
bar, removed a tube of eyeliner from her purse and painstakingly drew something on the paper. When she was
done, she smiled, handed me the napkin and walked away.
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Jason Pinter
Her phone number was written in black, smudgy ink.
Emily offered one last wave as she went through the door,
pausing for a moment to give me one last chance to reconsider. I raised the rest of my beer to her. She shrugged and
left. Then I let the napkin fall to the floor.
I downed the last of my beer. Seamus took a pair of
empty pitchers down off the bar and came over to me.
“Another?” he said.
I looked at my glass, felt the buzz swirling in my head
and decided against it.
“That’s it for me tonight.” He took my glass and went
to serve a man shaking his glass for a refill. I stood up,
steadying myself as the blood swam to my head. When my
equilibrium settled, I left the bar.
I checked my phone. Four missed calls, beginning at
11:00 p.m. They were all from the same prefix, which I
recognized as the Gazette. I checked my watch. Late jobrelated calls were no longer a nuisance; they were a part
of my life. Perhaps that’s why I turned down another beer.
Somehow I had a feeling I’d have to return someone’s call
while relatively sober.
I walked down to the corner and bought a pack of Certs,
slipping one in my mouth to try to remove the beer aftertaste. Then I dialed the Gazette. Wallace Langston, editorin-chief, picked up his private line on the first ring.
“Henry, Christ, where the hell’ve you been?”
“It’s a Friday night. You don’t pay me enough to have
a 24/7 retainer.”
“Okay, you don’t want to answer your phone, I have
half a newsroom of reporters who’d drop their off days
faster than a hot iron for what I’m about to tell you, so let
me know if this is an inconvenient time.”
“What if I said it was?”
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29
“I’d say two things,” Wallace said. “First, you’re a liar.
It sounds like you’re standing on the street, which means
you can’t be that busy. Second, I’d say I don’t give a crap
because if you turn down this assignment, I can find
another reporter who’ll grab it faster than you can hang
up.”
“Sounds like a hot one,” I said. “So maybe I’m interested.”
“Hot isn’t the word,” Wallace said. “Scorching. Actually no, forget that. The only appropriate word is exclu-
sive. ”
“Oh, yeah? What kind of exclusive?”
“You hear about this Daniel Linwood case up in
Hobbs County?”
Immediately my buzz wore off. “Kid who was kidnapped
five years ago and suddenly reappeared on his parents’
doorstep, right?”
“So you follow the news. Glad to know we pay you for
something. Daniel Linwood was five years old when he
disappeared from his parents’ home in Hobbs County,
New York. That was five years ago. One moment he’s
playing outside, then all of a sudden he’s just gone. No witnesses, nobody saw or heard anything. His disappearance
shakes the Hobbs County community to its roots. There’s
a media frenzy, politicians come out of the woodwork to
show their support, but the cops come up empty. Then last
night, Daniel shows up at his parents’ house like he’s been
at the movies. Not a scratch on him. And get this—the kid
has as much memory of the past five years as I have of my
first marriage. He doesn’t remember where he’s been, who
took him or how he even got home. Half the known world
is waging war to talk to Daniel and his parents and get the
story, but up until now it’s been radio silence.”
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Jason Pinter
“Until now?” I said.
“Until you,” Wallace said. “I’ve been calling the Linwoods for twenty-four hours nonstop.”
“I bet they appreciate that,” I said snidely.
“Shut up, Parker, or I’ll smack that booze right off your
breath.”
“You don’t know I’ve been drinking,” I said, regretfully
slurring the last word.
“I’ve worked with Jack O’Donnell for more than twenty
years. You can’t fool a professional bullshit detector. Anyway, tonight I get a call from Shelly Linwood out of
nowhere. She says she’s ready to talk. And before I can say
another word, she says she and Daniel will talk to you, and
only you.”
“Me?” I said. “Why?”
Wallace said, “Shelly knows she can’t keep silent
forever, that at some point she and Daniel will need to
speak to the press. So she said when he does speak to
someone, she wants it to be to a reporter he won’t be intimidated by. Someone who doesn’t remind him of his
parents. She wants Daniel to talk to someone he can trust,
whom she can look in the eye and know he won’t exploit
her son. Between all of that, I offered you. And she
accepted.”
“Holy crap, are you serious?” I said. “This is a major
story, Wallace. We’re going to make a lot of reporters
pretty jealous.”
“And I’m going to revel in it,” Wallace said. “This is
your story now, Parker. Daniel Linwood has probably been
through a kind of hell you and I can’t even imagine, and
his parents have spent almost five years assuming their
oldest son was dead. Be gentle. Daniel is ten years old, and
we still don’t know the full psychological damage he’s
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31
suffered. If you press the wrong button, touch the wrong
nerve, he and Shelly will clam up fast. And the D
ispatch
will be on top of this as fast as Paulina Cole can get up to
Hobbs County.”
“I’d die before Paulina scoops us,” I said.
“Don’t make it come to that, Henry. The Linwoods are
expecting you tomorrow at two. Get there at noon, spend
a few hours checking out the neighborhood for local color.
But if Daniel wants to talk to you at one-forty-five, twofifteen or three o’clock in the morning, you’ll have your
tape recorder ready to go.”
“You got it.”
“That means going home right now and sobering up.”
“I’m on my way.” This included a hot shower, a fresh
set of clothes, suit and tie. I prayed these were all at the
ready, otherwise an all-night Laundromat would soon be
graced by my clothes’ aromatic presence.
“Call me before you leave tomorrow,” Wallace said.
“And I mean that. Call me. I don’t want to come into the
office tomorrow and see you asleep and drooling on your
keyboard. You have a home. Go there.”
I said nothing. Telling Wallace that my apartment didn’t
feel like a home was neither his business nor concern. All
he cared about, and rightfully so, was this story. I’d been
granted leeway the past few years most young reporters
never got. Many in my position would have been shown
the door, either landing in the safety net of a small-town
paper or spewing angry blogs about the dumbing-down of
American media. I had no desire to do either, and preferred
to help from the inside. Big-time news was in my blood.
A while ago Jack O’Donnell had told me that to truly
become a legend in your field, you had to lead a life with
one purpose. You had to devote yourself to your calling.
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Jason Pinter
Splitting your passions between that and other pursuits—
hobbies, family—would only make each endeavor suffer.
The past few months I’d whittled down my extracurriculars to nothing. All for stories like this.
“You’ll hear from me first thing tomorrow morning,” I
said. “And, Wallace?”
“Yeah, kid?”
“Thanks for the opportunity.”
“Don’t thank me, thank Shelly Linwood. I’m not the
only one counting on you to do the right thing.”
The call ended. I stood there in the warm night, the
sounds of the bar and the street fading away. This night
held nothing else for me, but tomorrow presented a golden
opportunity. So many circumstances surrounding Daniel
Linwood’s disappearance were a mystery, and because
the boy himself couldn’t remember, I wondered how
much, if any of it, would ever come to light. I wondered
if never getting that closure would bother the Linwood
family. Or if they were just thankful to have their son
back.
I put the phone in my pocket, went to the corner and
hailed a cab back to my apartment. For a moment I
wondered if, like Daniel Linwood, I was returning to a
place both strangely familiar, yet terribly foreign at the
same time.
3
The Lincoln Town Car pulled up at 10:00 a.m. on the dot,
shiny and black and idling in front of my apartment as
inconspicuous as a black rhinoceros. I’d heeded Wallace’s
advice and gone home, sleeping in my own bed for the first
time in weeks. I stripped the sheets, used a few clean
towels in their place, and got my winks under an old
sleeping bag.
I woke up at eight-thirty, figured it’d be plenty of time,
but it took forty-five minutes to clean the crud out of my
coffee machine and brew a new pot, so by the time the
driver buzzed my cell phone I was tucking my shirt in,
making sure my suit jacket was devoid of any lint. Unfortunately I missed the open fly until we’d merged off the
West Side Highway onto I-87 North. My driver was a
Greek fellow named Stavros. Stavros was big, bald and
had a pair of snake-eyed dice tattooed on the back of his
neck that just peeked out over the headrest.
I sipped my Thermos of coffee, grimaced and doublechecked my briefcase. Pens, paper, tape recorder, business
cards, digital camera in case I had a chance to take some
shots of the neighborhood surrounding the Linwood residence in Hobbs County. Perhaps we’d use them in the
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Jason Pinter
article, give the reader a sense of local color recorded words
could not.
Hobbs County was located about thirty miles north of
New York City, nestled in between Tarrytown and the
snuggly, wealthy confines of Chappaqua. Just a few years
ago Hobbs County was an ingrown toenail between the
two other towns, but recently a tremendous influx of state
funds and pricey renovations had things moving in the
right direction. Good thing, too, because statistically,
Hobbs County had crime rates that would have made
Detroit and Baltimore shake their heads.
According to the FBI Report of Offenses Known to
Law Enforcement, the year before Daniel Linwood disappeared, Tarrytown, with 11,466 residents, had zero
reported murders, zero rapes, one case of arson (a seventeen-year-old girl setting fire to her ex-boyfriend’s baseball
card collection), zero kidnappings and ten car thefts. Each
of these numbers were microscopic compared to the
national average.
That same year, Hobbs County, with 10,372 residents,
had sixteen reported murders, five rapes, nine cases of
arson, twenty-two car thefts and two kidnappings. If
Hobbs County had the population of New York City, it
would be on pace for more than twelve thousand murders
a year.
Hobbs County was literally killing itself.
One of those two reported kidnappings was Daniel
Linwood. The other was a nine-year-old girl whose body
was later found in a drainage ditch. Since then, those crime
rates had dropped like a rock. This past year, Hobbs had four
murders. One rape. Eleven car thefts. And no kidnappings.
There was still a lot of work to be done, but something had
lit a fire under Hobbs County. It was righting itself.
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35
And then Daniel Linwood reappeared, hopefully speeding the cleansing process even more.
The rebuilding had naturally raised property values,
and between the drop in crime and influx of new money,
Hobbs County found itself awash with wealthy carpetbaggers interested in the refurbished schools, reseeded
parks and investment opportunities. Five years ago you
could have bought a three-bedroom house for less than
two hundred and fifty thousand dollars. Today, if you
scoured the real estate pages and found one for less
than three quarters of a million, you’d be an idiot not to
snap it up.
While there was no getting back Daniel Linwood’s lost
years, his family could at least be thankful he had come
back to a town far safer than the one he’d left.
“Only been to Hobbs once,” Stavros piped in from the
front seat. “Few years ago. Pro football player goi
ng to
visit his aunt just diagnosed with Hodgkins. She lived in
the same house for thirty years, give or take. Guy told me
he’d tried to buy her a new place, get her out of the life,
but you know how old folks are. Rather die at the roots
than reach for a vine. You know, even if the client’s only
booked for a one-way trip, I’ll usually offer to hang around
in case they decide they need a ride back to wherever.
Hobbs, though, man, you could offer me double the rate
and I would have jetted faster than one of them Kenyan
marathon runners. Not the kind of place you want to be
sitting in a car alone at night. Or anytime, really.”
I eyed those dice tattoos. Wondered what it took to
scare a man who wasn’t afraid to get ink shot into his
neck with a needle.
“I hear the town is different now,” I said. “A lot’s
changed in five years.”
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Jason Pinter
“New coat of paint, same cracked wood underneath,”
Stavros said. “You don’t start from the ground up, poison’s
still gonna be there. Anyway, you’re booked for a return
trip, right? I’m sure you’ll be fine, long as you’re finished
before the sun goes down. The dealers and hoods come out
thinking you’re the po-lice.”
“I really think you’re wrong,” I said, my voice trying
to convince me more than Stavros. “Anyway, when we get
there, I don’t think you’ll have to worry too much about
being alone. If I know the press, they’ll be camped out at
this house like ants at a picnic.”
“That so? Where exactly you headed?”
“Interview,” I said. “A kid.”
“Not that kid who got kidnapped. Daniel something,
right?”
“Daniel Linwood, yeah.”
“Hot damn, I’ve been reading about that! Awful stuff.
I mean great he came back, but I got a six-year-old and I’d
just about tear the earth apart if she ever went missing.
Those poor parents. Can’t even imagine.”
“Better you don’t.”
We merged onto 287, then headed north on Route 9,
driving past a wide white billboard announcing our entry
into the town limits.
Hobbs County was covered in lush green foliage, the
summer sun shining golden through the thick leaves. Trees
bracketed sleepy homes, supported by elegant marble
columns. I lowered the window and could hear running
water from a nearby stream. This was NewYork, but not the