by Diane Capri
Mainly, she wanted to confirm that the Whitings were good people and their son was well loved and cared for and, well, actually theirs.
She took a deep breath, stepped out of the car, walked up to the front door, and pressed a large white doorbell button. Inside the house, a gong chimed with deep and extended resonance. She dropped her purse. The strap had come unbuckled. She bent to retrieve it, adjusted the strap, and hoisted it back onto her shoulder.
A white car drove by and parked further down the street while she waited.
Jess peered in through the frosted glass. She saw no one inside. Elisha had said the Whitings weren’t at the hospital. Now, it appeared they weren’t home, either.
She rang the bell again and listened to its deep boom. Another minute went by. She was patient, used to waiting for people who were struggling to make the decision to either talk or not. But there was no one inside, she was sure of it at this point.
At least that meant she wouldn’t break her promise to Nelson. She shrugged. She’d find a way to talk with the Whitings another time.
She followed the driveway around to the back. The garage took up half of the real estate behind the house. The driveway had been integrated into a path and patio, a broad expanse of concrete across the width of the house. Near to her was a back door, and on the other end, double patio doors. On the concrete, four chairs were neatly arranged around a table. An umbrella poked up through its center. It was tied closed. As if no one had used it in a good long while.
She looked through the kitchen window. The surfaces were clean. There were no dishes in the sink. A small breakfast table sat in the corner, its disturbed chairs the only evidence anyone had ever used the room. Barbara Whiting was certainly a neat freak.
“Can I help you?” An old man, a gardening fork in his hand, leaned over the fence.
Jess smiled. “I’m looking for the Whitings.”
“They’re not in.” He wasn’t hostile, merely informative.
Jess waved toward the window. “I know. I just…” She cleared her throat. “I just wanted to offer my sympathies.”
The old man frowned.
“For their son. Peter.”
The man’s eyebrows inched down and wrinkled his face in a deep frown. “Peter?”
“That’s right.” Jess nodded. “He fell from a tree.”
The wrinkles on the man’s forehead softened. “But he’s okay, right?”
Jess bit her lip. “Okay…but not great.”
The old man inched backward. “I didn’t know.”
“It happened yesterday. Early morning.”
The man shook his head and tutted.
“Have you seen them since yesterday afternoon?”
The man continued to shake his head. “Last night, I think. Late. And gone again early this morning, like always.”
Jess shifted her weight. “Do you know…Peter?”
The man waved his hand. “Course. Known him since he was a baby.”
“Do you know why he might have gone over to Randolph yesterday morning?”
The man screwed up his nose. “Randolph?”
“He was in Randolph when he fell.”
The man shook his head. “Might have gone with his dad to fly his model plane, I guess.”
“He was alone, though.”
“He wouldn’t do that. He’s fearless, that kid.” The man shook his head. “But…too young to go that far alone.”
Jess nodded. “Has he lived here all his life?”
“Most of it.” The man closed his eyes briefly, as if he was trying to remember when the Whitings moved in next door. “Had his first birthday here.”
Could that be true? If it was, then Peter couldn’t be her son. Her Peter had celebrated his first birthday with her. “How long ago was that?”
The man closed his eyes again, thinking. “I can’t remember.” He tapped the top of his head. “Not as good as it used to be.”
“But he was happy?”
“Course. Bright kid. Good as gold. Never a moment’s trouble.” He grinned. “He’ll be an astronaut or a CEO or something, you just watch.”
Jess looked back at the house. “Where did they live before here?”
“Other side of Seattle. One of the islands.” He screwed up his face with concentration. “Can’t remember now.”
Jess waited. The old man shook his head. “Nope. Can’t remember.”
“Well, thanks anyway.” Jess turned to go.
“Wait. What’s your name?”
“Kimball. Jess Kimball.”
“I see Barbara or John, I’ll tell them you stopped by,” he said.
“Thanks.” Jess smiled at him and turned to go. The buckle on her bag had come undone again, and it fell onto the small strip of flower beds close to the house. This time, the bag’s flap opened and dumped half of its contents on the ground. She knelt and collected her possessions. When she stood to leave, the old man was gone.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Jess started the car and sat trying to solve the problem with her bag’s buckle. Maybe the rock with Peter’s DNA on it had been too much weight for the bag and the weight had damaged the buckle or something. She pushed the prong into a smaller hole and snugged the frame tight. She slipped the end of the strap into its retaining loop. The buckle stayed closed after several hard tugs. It should be fine until she could find a better solution.
A sharp rap on the driver’s side window startled her. She glanced up. The old man stood outside her door. She lowered the window.
“It was Vashon. I remember now. Where John and Barbara used to live. Vashon Island.” He tapped his temple. “Not as bad as I thought it was.”
She thanked him and smiled for good measure.
He shuffled from foot to foot. “You said Peter wasn’t doing great.” He took a deep breath. “Is he…I mean…gonna be okay?”
Jess’s skin tingled. She took a deep breath, but gently, not wanting to overplay her concern. “He’s in the ICU.” She smiled reassurance. “He has good people looking after him.”
The old man’s eyes glazed over. “Damn.” He leaned on the window frame and exhaled. “Good kid.”
Jess nodded. “We’re all hoping for the best.”
He offered a strained smile and waited a moment longer before he straightened up with a groan.
“By the way, where does Mr. Whiting work?” she asked.
The old man’s expression was totally blank while he tried to dredge up the answer. And he grinned again when he finally grasped it. “Wilson’s Paint. Highway 47. Bit of a commute. Council made them move the company outside of town after one of their places had an explosion. Big one. Down in Arkansas or somewhere like that.”
Jess nodded.
He turned, and wandered toward his house, and turned back. “Forty-seven. Can’t miss it. Thirty minutes.” He waved.
Jess raised her window and brought Wilson Chemical and Paint Company up on her phone. The map indicated it was a thirty-minute drive, just as the old man had said. She rested her phone on the dashboard and pressed the button for route guidance. As a mechanical voice told her to turn right out of the driveway, a white car passed, heading out of the dead-end street. She followed it to the junction. The white car turned left. She turned right.
She followed I-47 as it jinked around hills and mountains. The freeway lay alongside a river that twisted and turned with even more regularity than the freeway. She crossed and re-crossed the water before encountering a flat area with a group of large buildings far off the highway. A road-grime covered sign announced the entrance to Wilson Chemical and Paint. She waited for an eighteen-wheeler to pull out before heading down the well-worn road to the buildings.
Jess cruised the length of the large and almost full parking lot. The view from the road was misleading. What had appeared to be a group of buildings was actually one building that had been subject to endless additions. One side of the building was lined with eighteen-wheelers backed up to open loading d
ocks. Forklift trucks rumbled in and out. Burly men lugged barrels between giant metal racks. A sound like the grinding of rocks shook the windows of her rental. Jess didn’t know what work John Whiting performed at the plant, but she was pretty sure it was hard and honest work from the look of the place.
Her phone bleeped, and the mechanical voice announced that navigation was lost. She looked at the display. The signal strength bars were gone. She dialed her office. The phone made a long beep and ended the call with a message that no networks were available.
It wasn’t just the work that had cut John Whiting off from the news about his son, then. He was far enough away from civilization to have left the cell phone era. It was easy to see how he hadn’t noticed the news in such a remote place.
The machine that sounded like it was grinding rocks changed its pitch, and the vibration moved from the rental’s windows to her teeth. She backed out of the parking lot, trying to put more distance between her and the source of the noise. Another eighteen-wheeler passed her, charging hard down the well-worn path to the freeway. She followed in its dust.
The Whitings were, by all visible signs, good people. They seemed to have worked hard for what they had. They surely loved their son. They’d been dealt a blow they didn’t deserve, and she’d overreacted. It might be time to call this one another false lead and move on. Maybe.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
The air cooled fast. Blackstake swore. The temperature and humidity of fall in the northwest combined to suck the heat out of the car. He couldn’t keep the engine running, and he couldn’t get out. So he sat still, his shoulders down, his head lined up with the headrest. His gaze flitting between the side and rearview mirrors.
His phone buzzed. He knew the number. He pressed on and waited for the caller to speak.
“Status?”
“Bamford. Whiting’s house,” he said.
“Are they there?”
“No.”
“Then she’s looking for something.”
“Probably.”
“She won’t find anything, will she?”
“Absolutely not.”
The call ended. There was no thank you or goodbye. He was used to the abruptness. It wasn’t a slight, it was respect. Mutual understanding. No chitchat was necessary or desired.
He placed his phone back in his pocket.
At last, he saw activity in the mirrors. The reporter in her green jacket.
He had a little longer to wait. Then he would make good on his promise. Perhaps he would get lucky, and deal with two problems at once.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Jess returned the way she’d come. She traveled through Bamford and saw no hint of a surveilling police cruiser. She turned at a small sign marked for through traffic, skirted the main street, and stopped at a gas station. The sun wasn’t bright, but the glare from the wet roads was tiring, so she bought a pair of cheap sunglasses.
Her phone rang as she walked back to her car, her assistant’s number on the display.
“Mandy?”
“Hey. No luck with Peter Whiting. A few born around the country in the right time frame, but not in Bamford.”
Jess screwed her face into a grimace. “Arrgh.”
“Jess?”
“I should have told you. He wasn’t born in Bamford. The Whitings moved there after Vashon.”
“Vashon?”
“An island, off the coast of Seattle.”
“Wait a minute,” Mandy mumbled to herself. “No, no Peter Whitings born in Vashon. The nearest I have to Bamford is Kids Own Medical Center. Fourteen years and three months ago.”
“Peter Whiting?”
“Check. Born to John and Barbara.”
“Fourteen years ago?”
“And three months. Why?”
“You’re sure?”
“That’s what it says.”
“Can you send me what you have?”
Jess heard typing and the swoosh noise of Mandy’s computer sending an email. “Presto, it’s all yours.”
“You sure you have the right Peter Whiting?”
“Peter David Whiting. He’s the only one I can find anywhere near Bamford born in the last fifteen years to a John and Barbara Whiting.”
A hard lump had formed in Jess’s throat when she heard the middle name for the first time. Her son was Peter David, too. She had trouble getting her question out. “Where’s the Kids Own Medical Center?”
“Portland.”
Jess swallowed. “As in Oregon?”
“Yeah.”
“Wow.”
“What’s up?”
“That’s a long way to go to have a baby for someone who lives in Vashon, Washington.”
Mandy blew out a long breath. “Visiting someone, maybe?”
“Maybe. Can you do something else? Find out where the Whitings have lived over the last fifteen years. They live in Bamford now, but before that.”
“I thought you said they lived in Vashon.”
“I did, but that was before I knew they had a baby in Portland. And look for family, too.”
“Okay. Call you back in a bit.” Mandy hung up.
Jess checked Mandy’s email. It was all text. Computer generated. It listed John and Barbara Whiting as the parents of Peter Whiting. The text listed the birth date, June 15, fourteen years and three months ago, and the location, Portland.
Did the Whitings live in Portland and move to Vashon for a short while before settling in Bamford? And if their boy had celebrated his birthday three months ago, why did they have trouble remembering his age? And why had they decided he was thirteen, not fourteen?
Her son’s birthday was not something Jess would ever forget, and she couldn’t imagine any parent who would. Peter David Whiting’s birthday, according to this, was the same month her Peter was taken.
The possibilities made her stomach churn. For whatever complex or convoluted reason, this boy could be her Peter. Could be. A long way from certain. But was this boy Peter David Whiting? Or was he Peter David Kimball?
She put her hands on the steering wheel. Was she over-thinking all of this? There had to be an answer linking the disparate facts. All she had to do was find it. She could ask the Whitings, and she would. After she had a firm handle on the truth.
She started her car and typed Vashon Island into her navigation system. There were no bridges to the island. She searched her phone’s GPS for ferries. She found two routes, one from a place called Fauntleroy, somewhere north of the airport, and the other closer, from Tacoma via the Point Defiance-Tahlequah Ferry. She chose the closest.
A yellow line snaked across the screen, and a woman’s mechanical voice prompted her to turn left. Jess pulled out onto the road and followed the voice to I-5 and north toward Tacoma.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
The ferry was signposted several miles before the terminal. She ignored her navigation systems, which routed her around a nearby state park, and followed signs to a double lane road that ran onto a pier. She stopped short of the pier, behind several cars, lined up as if they were about to race across the water. The clouds had thinned, and the rain had finally stopped.
She left her car and read the board that explained fares were collected onboard the ferry. She checked the schedule. Twenty minutes to wait, and the air was fresh, with the crisp tang of salt. She felt stiff from the drive, so she walked the area.
To the left of the pier was a half-full parking lot. Foot passengers sheltered under a bus awning. A small building that looked like it might sell coffee was shuttered. On the other side of the pier, hundreds of small boats were packed into a marina that ran as far as she could see. There were floating boat houses, white buildings with roll-up doors, for the more expensive craft. The wind whipped breakers to white foam crests suggesting a choppy crossing, but the island looked barely a mile away.
Her phone rang. Mandy’s name appeared on the display. Jess answered. “What did you find?”
“I sent you an email wi
th the address. According to the tax records, the Whitings lived in Vashon for four years before moving to Bamford.”
“Sure?”
Mandy sighed. “I mean it could have been a mistake that I copied down four years of tax records, payment dates, and zip codes. Typed them up and sent them to you. Along with a screenshot, I might add.”
“Okay, okay,” Jess grimaced. “So, when did they move to Bamford?”
“Fourteen years ago.”
Jess walked in a small circle. “Fourteen years?”
“Fourteen years and three months to be exact.”
“When Peter was born.”
“Seems like.”
“Is that when they sold their Vashon place?”
“Yep. And it’s when they bought the Bamford place. Sold one, bought the other.”
“According to tax records.”
“Don’t scoff. You know how careful cities are with their taxes. Don’t want to miss a penny.”
Jess took a deep breath. “So, fourteen years ago, they are living in Vashon, they move to Bamford, and she gives birth to a boy in Portland.”
“It happens.”
“And three months after his birthday, the parents can’t remember their son’s age.”
“That happens, too.”
“It does, but in this case, the neighbor in Bamford said they turned up with a boy. He wasn’t born in Bamford, they arrived with him.”
“Well,” Mandy said. “Because he was born in Portland?”
“I think the neighbor would have remembered that. I mean, you don’t go away for the weekend and come back with a baby.”
“Maybe they stayed over in an apartment for a while.”
“But why? They had a perfectly good house.”
“Maybe the house needed work? They could have stayed in an apartment. Would have made sense with a baby. And no, I can’t look up every apartment in Washington to see where they lived.”