Torn

by Chris Jordan

  I’m having a bad day. A bad day in a bad life, that’s how it feels. I thought finding Jed’s letter would make me feel better. Wrong.

  Randall Shane smiling, though, that has to be a good thing.

  “What?” I ask, whipping open the door, my voice pitched like a broken whistle. “What?”

  “Something fishy’s going on,” he says, striding into the kitchen and placing the carrier case on the leaf table. “Got any coffee?”

  A few minutes later we’re both seated at the table, sipping high-test. There’s something very different about this version of Randall Shane. The big man is more animated, there’s a light on behind his pale blue eyes, and oddly enough despite the palpable excitement there’s something more relaxed about him. As if he’s stopped holding his breath, feels free to inhale deeply.

  This is the guy I read about on the Web. The guy they raved about on missing person blogs. The guy who makes things happen, who finds kids that can’t be found. This is the self he didn’t want to reveal until he was convinced there was a shred of hope to cling to.

  I feel like weeping, but don’t. This is a time to show strength.

  “Impressive lab,” he begins. “Just opened in the last six months and already they’re getting work from most of the state agencies, plus tons of stuff from the private sector. Apparently there’s something called BRAC analysis that’s really big right now. These folks can find DNA on the head of a pin, literally. They’ve got protocols in place that make the old FBI lab look like something in Boris Karloff’s basement.”

  “Boris Karloff?”

  “Old movie dude. You’re too young. Once played Frankenstein’s monster.”

  “I thought that was Robert DeNiro.”

  “Later, much later. Anyhow, the lab is state-of-the-art and they pride themselves on transparency. That’s what the lab director told me. Dr. Hilly Teeger-she has a truly amazing number of advanced degrees in medicine and biology. I believe you’ve spoken to her.”

  “Three or four times, yeah. Wasn’t much help. Very polite and trying to sound like she cared, but she wouldn’t say ‘yes.’ Just all that stuff about protocols.”

  “Sensitive topic. Because they violated their own protocols, not to mention local, state, and federal protocols. Dr. Teeger never mentioned this?”

  “Not like that. All she kept saying was, the original results were confirmed, they couldn’t run the tests again.”

  “Yeah, well, that’s because they messed up.” Shane stirs a teaspoon of sugar into his cup, explains that he needs the energy. “Didn’t sleep last night, the sugar helps.”

  “You say messed up? How did they mess up?” I ask. “I kept calling, they kept saying ‘results confirmed.’ Like there was nothing more to be done. Then I asked to have the, um, tissue returned, so I’d have something to bury. They said that couldn’t be done, because of protocol. Always with the protocol.”

  “You wanted the tissue back to bury? Or to have tested elsewhere?”

  “Tested someplace else,” I admit. “That’s not Noah.”

  “The blood spatter was a match,” Shane points out.

  “They matched to the samples taken when Noah had his tonsils out. Plus they reveal genetic markers that confirm you are his mother, from the oral sample you provided.”

  “But you said something was fishy. What? Why are you smiling?”

  He nods eagerly. “Sorry. I’m a bit wired, not explaining things in the right order. There’s no doubt the blood spatter is a match. But when you requested another test, the tissue samples turned up missing. I phoned the lab technician who handled the material-who by the way has been terminated-and he seems completely baffled. He has no satisfactory explanation of how the tissue sample vanished from the lab, other than to assume it was somehow diverted to the incinerator. Which totally should never happen.”

  “But it did.”

  “Absolutely it did. That’s why they kept stalling you. You’ve got the basis for a major lawsuit and they know it.”

  “I don’t care about a lawsuit. I just want them to admit that Noah wasn’t killed in the explosion.”

  Shane shakes his head. “They won’t. They’ve retested the blood spatter and come back with a perfect match. That’s their only concern-identification-not proof of life or death.”

  “I don’t get it,” I say, feeling even more helpless than usual. “What’s good about this? What made you change your mind?”

  Shane reaches across the table, gently touches my tightly folded hands. “It’s relatively easy to contaminate a scene with a little blood spatter. Blood can easily be drawn from a living person. Cut your cuticle, you’ve got blood. But tissue is more difficult to fake. The details are gruesome and we needn’t go into them, trust me on that. But we’ve seen people trying to fake their own deaths by squeezing out a few drops at a crime scene. It happened after 9/11, if you can believe it. A guy planted his own blood in the Trade Center wreckage, a few days later his ‘widowed’ wife files for a big payoff. They almost got away with it, too. The jerk got himself arrested at a stripper bar a few months later, which pretty much proved he was alive.”

  “So you think Noah is alive.”

  Shane gives me a startled glance, leans back in the chair, which creaks ominously. “I didn’t say that. We don’t know that yet. All we know is that the tissue samples collected at the scene were, at the very least, compromised. Which warrants further investigation.”

  “That’s it?”

  “That’s a lot, Mrs. Corbin. Yesterday I thought this was going nowhere.”

  “But you looked so happy coming to the door! You were smiling,” I say in an accusatory tone. It feels as if his smile was some sort of betrayal.

  “That’s because of the other thing,” he says.

  “What other thing!” I demand.

  “I was just getting to it,” he says. “The other thing I found out. That’s what kept me up all night last night, running it down. Took me hours to work back through all the companies and legal entities. But what I finally determined is that the holding corporation that owns GenData and several other related enterprises is in turn owned by a private equity firm controlled by legal representatives of Arthur Conklin and his organization. The Rulers.”

  “Oh my god,” I say again, heaving a huge sigh of relief. While at the same time there’s a chill creeping up my spine.

  “I told you I wouldn’t lie to you,” Shane says, concerned. “This is an interesting and possibly very important development, but it doesn’t prove your son is alive.”

  “Maybe not,” I tell him, unable to focus through tear-blurred eyes. “But it proves I’m not crazy.”

  7. Driving Mr. Shane

  The new Randall Shane-the energized version fueling himself on caffeine-waits for me to mop up my tears, get myself together, and then opens up his laptop and starts to take notes, typing rapidly. He wants to know everything, all of my suspicions, all the things that convince me Noah somehow survived.

  But first he wants me to share what I know about Arthur Conklin.

  “I know he’s a coldhearted bastard,” I tell him, and produce the letter Jed saved for all those years.

  Mr. Shane carefully unfolds the worn pages and reads. He sighs and shakes his head once or twice and when he’s done he carefully folds it up, hands it back to me. “I’d say your assessment is generous. Plus it fits with what little I know. Egocentric professor writes famous book about how to get rich by being selfish, follows his own advice.”

  I put the letter away. “The amazing thing is, even after all that, Jed didn’t really hate him. He needed to cut himself off, but he never really hated him. Said his father couldn’t help being who he was, that something was missing. Believe it or not, he felt sorry for him.”

  “So you never met Arthur Conklin?”

  I shake my head. “We assumed he didn’t even know I existed. Or about Noah. I thought we succeeded in starting a new life. We both did.”

  The big ma
n nods to himself. “Okay. I get it why your husband wouldn’t want anything to do with his father, but why did he feel the need to take a new identity? Why didn’t he just stop going home for Christmas?”

  “It wasn’t just his father,” I explain. “It was the people around him. They treat his stupid book almost like the Bible. So to them Jed was sort of like the son of God. Except they don’t believe in God, so that doesn’t really make sense, does it? Whatever the reason, they were always trying to draw Jed back in. As if they could use him somehow. That’s what he was afraid of, why he changed his name, started over. He always said they’d put him in a cage. A golden cage.”

  He looks puzzled. “Did he mean an actual cage?”

  I shake my head. “More like they’d keep him in luxury, give him everything he wanted, except they’d never let him go. Never let him be himself.”

  “And he walked away from all that. Wealth and power.”

  “He didn’t walk away, he ran. And I ran with him.”

  Mr. Shane clacks away, typing in his notes. “Okay,” he says, looking up. “I’ll see if the FBI cult experts have any helpful insights. But first I want to get a handle on exactly what happened here in Humble. The events leading up to the explosion. You mentioned a state policeman who knew the suspect?”

  “Yeah, Trooper Thomas Petruchio, with the ERT. Sweet kid. He’s the nephew of our town librarian, that’s how I know him. He went to school with Roland Penny.”

  More notes. Again he looks up. “What’s this about a schoolteacher you haven’t been able to contact?”

  “Irene Delancey, Noah’s homeroom teacher. He adores her. I spoke to her briefly a few moments after the explosion. She told me that while they were all being held hostage, Noah slipped down below the seats for a while, but she was sure he was with the rest of his classmates when the smoke started. It was crazy in there, a panic because of the gunman and the smoke, and nobody could see a thing. They all linked hands but somehow Noah got separated. One second he was there, the next he was gone. She was devastated, said she could never go back into the school without thinking of Noah. I think she blamed herself.”

  He checks his notes. “So she quit her job and left town, is that correct?”

  “Yes. Once I was thinking straight-and that’s up to question, I guess-I tried to contact her but had no luck.”

  He folds down the lid of the laptop. “Okay, several leads with potential. That gets us started. Can I ask you one more thing?”

  “Sure.”

  “How are your driving skills?”

  The last and only time I’ve ever been in a Town Car was on the way to Newark Airport for a spring break extravaganza. Me and the mall girls heading for a wild weekend in Cancun, or so we thought. Only we never got out of Newark because the chartered flight got canceled. As it turned out, a scammy Internet travel agency had taken our money and promptly gone out of business. So the limo excursion to the airport was a giggle fest, but the bus ride home was very subdued.

  Obviously I wasn’t driving the hired car that day, so I had no idea how wide the Town Car is compared to, say, my Subaru wagon, which you can probably fit in the Lincoln’s trunk. Big or not, it still has a steering wheel and a couple of pedals, so I know how to drive it, more or less.

  “When in doubt, slow down,” Mr. Shane cautions.

  Turns out he’s a nervous passenger, always touching the invisible brake on his side, but assures me I shouldn’t take it personal. It’s not me, it’s him.

  “I never allow myself to drive when I haven’t had a good night’s sleep,” he explains. “That’s how accidents happen.”

  I didn’t sleep much, either, but decide not to share. Twelve ounces of strong coffee and I’m good to go. Driving has never been one of my problems or anxieties, I’m always happy to take the wheel, and within a few miles the Townie and I have come to an understanding.

  First stop is the state police barracks in Montour Falls, just south of the Finger Lakes. An hour on the road, winding through some lovely countryside, and when Randall Shane finally decides I’m not going to run us into a tree he concentrates on his laptop. Funny to see such a large man hunched over such a small machine. He can cover the keypad with either hand, which makes it look awkward or even comical, but he nevertheless has a delicate touch and seems to be very comfortable navigating from site to site. If only he were that comfortable navigating on the open road.

  “I saw that!” he exclaims, barely looking up from the screen. “Was that a dog?”

  An animal has just shot across in front of us, a furry blur. I barely had time to tap the brakes before it was gone, and am surprised he noticed. Must have great peripheral vision.

  “Fox,” I say. “It made it.”

  “Bad luck, running over a fox.”

  “No doubt. But the fox is fine, she’s hunting mice by now.”

  Mr. Shane glances up from the laptop, gives an odd look. “You know what fox prey on? I thought you were a New Jersey girl.”

  “Plenty of fox in New Jersey,” I protest. “But you’re right. In my other life I never paid attention. Up here, all you have to do is look out the window. Nature beckons.”

  He looks pleased at my explanation. “I like that-nature beckons.”

  “So you live in Connecticut, right? I bet they have fox in Connecticut.”

  “Yeah, they do. A few.”

  “And deer.”

  “Lots of deer. Deer have become a problem.”

  “Wife, kids?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “The bio stuff on the Web didn’t mention family, but I’m guessing you have a wife and kids.”

  He glances away, looks out the side window. “Once upon a time. No longer.”

  He says it in a way that convinces me he didn’t lose his family in a divorce. Something bad happened. Is that why he’s made such a name for himself, recovering missing children, because he lost someone close? My instincts tell me not to press the point, that he’ll tell me about it in his own time.

  The GPS advises us to bear to the right, confirming what I already know, and a few minutes later we’re cruising into the village, which isn’t much larger than Humble in population, and Mr. Shane is sucking in his breath and going, “Wow!”

  “Pretty impressive, eh?”

  I slow to a stop so he can get a gander at the Falls, which come steaming out of Lake Seneca and drop a hundred and sixty-five feet at the end of Main Street.

  “So that’s why they call it Montour Falls,” he says.

  “Yep. The Indian name of the waterfall is Chequagua. But the village is named for Catherine Montour, who was a Seneca chief, so I guess it counts.”

  Shane grins at me. “And you know this how?”

  “Wikipedia. Noah did a report on old Catherine, she’s very famous in these parts. Our local Sitting Bull. Plus Helen and I drove out here to see Tommy.”

  “Trooper Thomas Petruchio.”

  “Helen calls him Tommy. So does his mother.”

  “Yeah? What do they call him at the barracks?”

  “They call him Trooper.”

  “Good to know,” says Mr. Shane, satisfied.

  As I’m turning into the Finger Lakes Troopers headquarters, he clears his throat and goes, “We haven’t discussed this, but it’s better if I see Trooper Petruchio on my own.”

  “No problem,” I say with a shrug. “Man talk, eh?”

  Mr. Shane gives me a look. “More like there may be things he’d rather not discuss in the presence of a victim’s mother. Especially one who’s a friend of the family.”

  “Like I said-man talk. Don’t worry about it, Mr. Shane. I’ll do what you need me to do, and you’ll tell me what I need to know, right?”

  “Absolutely,” he says. “And it’s just Shane, please. No mister.”

  8. Answer Me That, Batman

  Shane loves that spit-and-polish smell of the barracks. Reminds him of his own days at the FBI Academy in Quantico, when he was young, desperate to im
press, and invigorated by the competition. Unlike a lot of the recruits, that was as close as he ever got to the military. Although an argument could be made that the academy ordeal was every bit as difficult as regular army boot camp. He’d loved the endless running, the obstacle courses, the forensic science labs, the intensive classes, even studying for the exams-everything but the indoor firing ranges. Not because he had anything against guns-he’s always loved the oiled, mechanical satisfaction of a well-made firearm-but because for whatever reason he was a lousy shot and struggled to make a passing grade. Which may have had something to do with the turn his career took, come to think of it. More toward software, gadgets, and technical intelligence gathering than shoe leather on the street.

  He’d been making up for that since leaving the Bureau. More street, less software. And the only gadget he truly relies on these days is his own brain. He still knows his way around a computer, of course, but his most reliable hard drive is between his ears. And that brain is nagging him right at the moment, questioning his judgment, telling him that despite a couple of puzzling coincidences there is really very little chance that Mrs. Corbin’s child is still among the living.

  So why chase ghosts? Better to concentrate on helping her accept reality, and then move on to a case more likely to produce positive results. The mother-and-child reunion is what he’s all about, after all, the satisfaction of making things right in a deeply flawed world. One thing he knows for certain: his considerable skills don’t include raising the dead.

  Trooper Thomas Petruchio is currently on shift, but after some minutes of back-room discussion, his commanding officer agrees to make him available for a brief interview. Special circumstances, he says. Implying that it’s not Shane’s connection to the Bureau that’s allowing him to get a foot in the door, it’s a local courtesy being extended to a grieving parent.

  “I appreciate it,” he says as he’s led down a corridor so clean it squeaks under his boat shoes.