“I can understand that. How long has it been since anyone actively searched for your son, Mrs. Payne?” I ask.
She walks around the table and places her hand on my shoulder. “Honey, I think two women who have been through what we’ve been through should be on a first name basis. My name is Bonnie. My husband, over there is Wesley. We don’t stand much on formality here.”
“Bonnie, I’m pleased to meet you, although I’m sorry for the circumstances. Jameson is a very nice man. You’ve done well raising him,” I add awkwardly.
Bonnie’s eyebrows fly up in surprise as she says, “You have no reason to be so polite with me. I know what my son’s reaction to you likely was — it probably wasn’t all that nice. If I know my son at all, he was probably more than a little rude to you. In fact, he probably hated you on sight. He doesn’t suffer fools lightly. Not that you’re a fool, of course. But when we were involved with the search groups initially, we encountered mostly idiots and con artists and very few people who knew what they were doing. I wouldn’t put it past Jameson to lump you in with all the riffraff who tried to help us the first time.”
I can’t help myself — I laugh out loud at Bonnie’s startlingly accurate assessment.
I blush. “Okay, you busted me. Things were a little rough in the beginning, but they’re better now. I think Jameson trusts where I’m coming from, or he would’ve never brought me to your home today.”
“That’s true enough. Jameson is very selective about who he shares our story with now. I’m still a little nervous about all of this. Honestly, I don’t know what the menfolk have been doing about this and I am afraid to ask. Wesley’s been so closed down over it all. He can’t even stand to teach anymore. It’s like all the students he saw in his classroom were mini versions of Toby. So, he had to retire. It was the most heartbreaking thing. Wesley was an amazing teacher, and one day changed his whole future.”
I reach up and place my hand over hers on my shoulder. “I’m sorry. That must’ve been so difficult; to have everything in your life unravel at once.”
“That was only part of it. I had to retire too because of my health issues. Losing Toby literally broke my heart and everything else in my life. Now, I just exist day to day. I pray day in and day out for Toby to come home I don’t know how to restart my life without my son. How does a person just lose their child? I was a competent adult who was in charge of dozens of children every day. I’ll never understand what went wrong. He was going to a safe place. How was I supposed to know that the public library was a dangerous place? Toby had been going to the library by himself since he was about eight. Does that make me a terrible parent?”
“No! It doesn’t make you an awful parent. It makes you the victim of terrible circumstances. There is a difference.”
“It doesn’t feel like there’s much of a distinction. I let Toby down in every way possible.”
“I understand why you feel that way, but we can’t go back and rewrite the past. We can only reconstruct what we know and try to fill in the blanks. Maybe there was a clue that was overlooked because the police were looking in the wrong direction. We’ll try to shine a different light on the case and see if we can generate some tips. How do you think Wesley will react to reopening Toby’s case?”
“I don’t know. As long as Jameson believes in what you plan to do, Wesley will probably come on board. He is as desperate to find our son as I am. If you offer an honest ray of hope, I think Wesley will jump all over it. He misses our boy as much as Jameson and I do.”
I stand up, turn around, and embrace Bonnie. “Okay, let’s go talk to him and develop a plan.”
Bonnie sobs against my neck for a moment. “Thank you for giving me back my hope. This is the first time in years I’ve been able to take a deep breath.”
CHAPTER 8
JAMESON
“DOES TRISTAN ALWAYS PUT YOU up like this when you travel?” Kendall asks as she shifts the laptop on the desk to remove the glare from the window.
“This is a downgrade from what he typically provides. I had to convince him that regular corporate extended-stay accommodations are fine for me. It’s an upgrade from military installations in the middle of the desert. I think sometimes Tristan forgets how spoiled he has become.”
Kendall twists her long hair off her neck and sticks a pencil through it. “I imagine you’d become accustomed to luxury a little at a time and you’d forget how hard it once was.”
I shrug. “I suppose so, but that’s just not my experience.”
Kendall smirks at me. “Says the man of a million gadgets.”
“Touché.” I spin my baseball hat around in my hands. “Even with my fancy gadgets and your media appearances, it’s been weeks and we’re not making any progress on my brother’s case. Maybe I set my parents up for failure again? While you were persuading my mom, I had to do a hard sell to get my dad to even consider trying again with Locate My Heart. Now, I wonder if I sent him on a wild goose chase.”
Kendall flinches and rolls the desk chair back toward the window. Her mouth grows tight, and she averts her gaze from me. I watch as she takes a deep breath before turning back. The look of disappointment on her face is heart breaking. “I never promised you this was going to be easy. Toby’s case is ice cold. We don’t even know if he is still in the area. He could be halfway across United States or in another country. We just don’t know. We can only guess what he looks like now based on the computer-generated age progression software. I have one of my best friends who is a sketch artist working on it to refine it based on what you looked like at seventeen. We are trying to overcome the perception that Toby’s disappearance was voluntary or that your parents had something to do with it. In short, we’re climbing a very steep mountain.”
“If you thought this was so hopeless, why did you encourage me to start down this path?”
“Because doing nothing guarantees no results. Your brother deserves a chance even if it’s slim. Maybe somebody, somewhere knows something. We have to turn over every stone. It only takes one good tip.”
“If there were clues just hanging around, don’t you think the private investigators my dad hired would’ve uncovered them?”
Kendall rubs her wrists, stretches out her thumb and flexes her fingers. She opens her mouth to speak and then closes it for a second. “It’s difficult to reconstruct someone else’s work years later. I have no way to determine how competent your investigators were,” she says after a moment.
“I should hope they were competent. You don’t even want to know how much money my dad paid for those people.”
Kendall sighs. “I wish I had better news for you, but the investigators homed in on your military background and your dad as potential suspects and didn’t look much further. I found some handwritten notes in the file and I recognized some names I work with from local stations. Apparently, the investigators weren’t shy about sharing their suspicions with the media either.”
“I suspected as much, but to have it confirmed is freaking unbelievable. They’re lucky I was not stateside when all this happened, or things could’ve gotten much uglier.”
Kendall presses her lips together in a grim line. “Let me guess? I bet you were making similar statements at the time. It’s not as if I don’t understand your frustration. Even so, it may explain why they focused in on you.”
“I never understood that theory. I wasn’t even in country when my brother went missing. What would I have to gain from his disappearance? I was out of the house and earning my own money.”
“The thing I have learned in this line of work is that you can’t stop what people assume about you. The story takes on a life of its own.”
“So, basically what you’re telling me is my dad was taking second and third mortgages out on the house to be able to afford an investigation on himself? That’s the definition of insanity.”
Kendall looks at me shrewdly. “Jameson, you are smart enough to have gone through these files yourself. Wh
at were you hoping I would glean from them that you didn’t?”
“I’ve been through those reports with a fine-tooth comb. It’s one of the reasons I was so skeptical of taking the job at Locate My Heart. We trusted these guys and told them about our private lives so they could find my brother. They took our information and betrayed us in the deepest ways. I don’t care how they talk about me, but the fact that they victimized my parents, not once but twice, is maddening. I was hoping that maybe I was reading things into the situation that weren’t there.”
“Even though I wish I could argue with your reading of the case, I can’t. The private investigators strongly suspected your parents and didn’t look any further. I question their ethical standards and their methods. I was not able to glean much else from their work with one small exception — their report did alert me to your brother’s social interactions prior to his disappearance. It opens up another door of potential leads.”
“Really? I wasn’t aware my brother had much of a life outside of books and watching geeky scientific documentaries on television. He was quiet and shy. He didn’t make friends easily.”
“That might be what it looked like in the real world, but in Toby’s corner of the universe, he was a rock star.”
“My brother? He was a rock star, how?”
“Toby had a thing for role-playing games.”
“I’m aware. As educators, my parents limited his access. I don’t know how involved he could’ve been, given those restrictions.”
“Could explain why he chose to spend so much time at the public library. Instant Internet access — no questions asked.”
“Even back then?”
Kendall giggles. “This might be a news flash, but we’re getting old. At least some libraries started offering Internet access about twenty years ago. Since your brother hasn’t even been gone half that long, I suspect he had no difficulty.”
I scrub my hand down my face in frustration. “I can’t believe I was so blind to that possibility. I just figured that mom and dad had Toby on such a tight leash, he couldn’t be involved in all that stuff.”
“Never underestimate a teenager’s ability to work around the rules if they have enough motivation.”
I know Kendall is teasing, but something about her comment rubs me the wrong way. “Are you saying this is even remotely Toby’s fault? That’s not fair. You didn’t even know him.”
“No! It’s not a comment on Toby or his character. It’s just an observation about life in general. It doesn’t matter what Toby did or didn’t do; nobody deserves to be abducted.”
“Abduction? Is that the official position of Locate My Heart? Has your investigation turned up something new that definitively supports an abduction theory?”
“Not necessarily I’m just thinking out loud here. I haven’t been in charge of this case long enough to make any official statements regarding what happened. I don’t think any of us know the full truth. It just seems more likely than not. As near as I can tell, no one reported seeing anything unusual.”
“Well, an abduction in broad daylight might be considered unusual.”
“It would be — but what if he went somewhere voluntarily expecting one thing, but getting another? There might not have even been an unusual scene to witness.”
My shoulders slump as her words sink in. “I don’t even want to consider it. Yet, it does fit with Toby’s personality. He was always concerned about other people. Maybe that got him into trouble that he couldn’t get out of.” I twist my back around and flex my shoulders. “Every night I kick myself that I didn’t spend more time with my kid brother teaching him hand-to-hand combat skills to get out of any situation, anywhere, anytime anyhow.”
Kendall slowly gets up from the desk and walks over to the bed where I’m propped against the headboard. She crawls up against my side and puts her head on my shoulder. It’s an odd sort of embrace.
“Jameson, you can’t do that to yourself. We all go back and think of things that we would’ve done differently, but you didn’t know this was going to happen. There’s no point.”
“What do you know about any of this? Is this all clinical psychobabble to you? You don’t know what it’s like to love someone and have them vanish without a trace.”
Kendall draws in a quick breath. “I do know.”
“Know what?” I demand.
“I know what it’s like to love someone and in a blink of time have them gone. I am intimately familiar with that pain — more than you can even imagine.”
“So, I was right.” I snap. “You’re doing all this for a reason.”
Tears fill her eyes and she looks away.
After a few moments she meets my gaze. “Look, I know you’re worried about your brother, but there’s no excuse for you to be an asshole. I don’t even know why I’m telling you this.”
“Tell me what? You haven’t said a thing that makes any of this makes sense.”
I’m not sure why I feel the need to press this point. It’s almost as if all the anger I’ve been tamping down and ignoring over the years is suddenly erupting into its own multi-headed monster. The pain, confusion, and anger on Kendall’s face are stark. Yet, I can’t seem to stop my vitriolic words.
“I don’t have to tell you anything. It’s not part of my job. Up until just now, I liked you, so I’ll share my pain with you — maybe it will help you understand why all this matters to me.”
“I suppose you have some big, long, elaborate sob story to tell me about how this has been your lifelong mission — if so, just save it. My parents and I have heard every single version of that story. Most of them didn’t turn out to be true.”
Kendall stands up and goes back toward the window. In a voice, so quiet I have to strain to hear it, she answers, “You can check the death records. I have nothing to hide.”
“Death records?” I confirm, afraid I had misheard.
Kendall whirls around on me and pins me with a direct gaze flashing with rage.
“Yes, death records. I once had a son, now I don’t.”
Her words hit me hard. I don’t know what I was expecting her to say — but that wasn’t it. “A son?” I stammer.
Kendall lets out a strangled sob as she says, “Crap! We’re not supposed to be talking about this. We’re working on finding your brother. This is not about my story.”
“I’m sorry, I made it about you. I was out of line. I’d like to know what happened, but you’re right. It’s none of my business.”
“It’s not as if it is a huge secret or anything. I knew it would have to come up between us sooner or later.”
I move over to the little love-seat and pat the space beside me. “I guess this is probably as good a time as any since I’ve already stepped in it.”
Kendall nods stiffly. “You’re right. There is no right time for this conversation.” She takes a seat next to me, but this time, she is not curled up against my side. Sitting as far away from me as she can, she perches on the edge. I guess I can’t blame her. It’s what I deserve for being a colossal jerk.
She sighs and draws in a couple of slow breaths as if she’s trying to gather herself. “At one point in my life, I had my definition of perfect. I was engaged to a man I thought would love me forever, and I had a beautiful baby boy named Quinn. Motherhood was everything that I thought it would be and more. I was blissfully happy.”
Kendall reaches up and massages the tattoo on the back of her neck.
“When he was about four months old, Quinn was feeling a little under the weather, so I went to the drugstore to pick up some fever reducer, some decongestant, and diapers. I remember feeling worried about his cold, but relieved that I didn’t have to cart him into the store with me because he’d been crying so much. It was like a little moment of freedom.”
I want to kick myself for causing her to relive all of this again. Why do I always have to push so hard?
Kendall swipes at the tears on her cheeks as she continues. “I can’t b
elieve I was ever mad at Quinn for crying. I’ve missed the sound of his cry every day since.”
“I wish there was something I could say —”
“I know. Everyone does. There’s nothing that can be said or done. When I went to the store, I was a happy fiancée and an overtired mother. I returned home to a houseful of police officers, EMTs, and Lyle’s family. Quinn was gone.”
“What happened?”
“My fiancé, Lyle volunteered to stay home with Quinn. It didn’t happen very often because I was breastfeeding and didn’t want to be far away. Lyle could tell that I was getting some cabin fever, so he convinced me that a quick trip to the store would give me a chance to catch my breath. He reminded me that parenting is supposed to be about being partners. He told me to tag him in. We treated it like a big joke because Lyle was such a fan of wrestling. Lyle said Quinn had one of those epically explosive poopy diapers, so he gave him a quick sponge bath and put him in his Star Wars jammies and laid him down for a nap.”
Kendall blows her nose and clears her throat.
“Lyle was studying to take a real estate exam for his new job. After a while, it occurred to him he had not heard Quinn cough in a while. Quinn had been sick for nearly three weeks and developed a distinct persistent cough. We had taken him to the doctor a couple of times, and although the doctor was polite enough, he basically told us to stop worrying over a childhood cold. I felt silly being a stereotypical new mom calling the doctor for routine stuff.”
“Sometimes, it would be handy if children came with operational manuals.”
Kendall smiles wanly at me. “It would’ve been nice. In this case, I don’t know if it would’ve helped. When Lyle went to check on Quinn, he wasn’t breathing. Lyle started CPR but wasn’t able to revive him.”
“Do they think he died as a result of his cold?”
Kendall shakes her head. “I don’t know that anyone was able to entirely rule it out, but the death certificate lists SIDS as Quinn’s cause of death.”
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