The Stolen

by Jason Pinter

  “And where was that?”

  “Doubleday Field,” Danny said. “I played peewee baseball there.”

  “What position?”

  “Third base.”

  “Like A-Rod,” I said.

  “No, he’s a shortstop for the Rangers.”

  I was about to disagree, when I remembered that in Danny’s mind, he was correct. The year Danny disappeared, Rodriguez hadn’t yet become a Yankee, hadn’t yet changed positions. I wondered how much else of Danny Linwood’s world had changed unbeknownst to him.

  “What happened then?”

  “I remember hearing a siren. Like a police car or an ambulance. And then I just started walking home.”

  “You knew how to get home?”

  “Yeah, I used to walk home every day with…” Danny searched for the rest of his sentence.

  “Cliffy Willis and his mother,” Shelly offered quietly. Danny looked at her angrily, then the reaction slipped away.

  “Where did you walk?” I asked.

  “Home,” he said. “Past the corner store and that brick wall with the graffiti of the boy that got shot a long time ago. I got scared for a second when I saw the police car pull up at the field I just left, but I didn’t think I did anything wrong so I just went home.”

  “Were you hurt?”

  “No. Maybe a little tired, s’all. The doctors said they found something in my system, dia-something.”

  “Diazepam,” I said. “It’s a drug used to sedate. The police report said it was administered a few hours before you woke up. When you woke up, that’s when it wore off.” I said this as much to Shelly as Daniel. “I’m sorry, keep going.”

  “So, anyway, I walked home, knocked on the door. James opened it. I knew it was James, but he was, like, three feet taller than I remembered. And all of a sudden everyone is squishing the life out of me. Mom, Dad, Tasha, my brothers.” I saw Shelly smile, the pillow gripped tight in her arms.

  “Brothers?” I said.

  “James,” he said, “my brother.”

  “Right,” I continued. “Do you know how long you were gone?”

  “Mom says almost five years.”

  “Does it feel like you’ve been gone a long time?”

  “Not really,” Danny said. “I mean, it’s hard when I, like, go to do something and can’t do it. Like there used to be a radiator in my room where I could turn up the heat, but now we have these electronic-control things. And I don’t recognize anything on TV, which sucks. All of a sudden my brothers and sister are, like, old.” I felt a strange mental tugging sensation. Something Danny had said triggered it, but I couldn’t quite put my finger on it.

  “Danny, I know the police have probably asked you these questions already, but did you have any enemies at school? On the team? Someone you were scared of?” He shook his head vehemently.

  “I remember breaking up with my girlfriend once and she got mad and cried, that’s it.”

  “You had a girlfriend?” Shelly said. “When was this?”

  “Mom, come on,” he said.

  “What, you can tell the whole world but you can’t tell me?”

  Danny looked at me, his eyes pleading. I smiled at him. Six-year-old Danny Linwood with a girlfriend. I wondered if she’d missed him, or even understood what had happened.

  “Mrs. Linwood. Shelly,” I said, looking at Danny from the corner of my eye. “I need to be able to talk to your son with his full concentration. I know this is hard and you have a lot to catch up on with Danny, but I need this to do my job.”

  “Your job.” She sneered. “My job is my son.”

  “I know that. All I want to do is tell the truth about your boy. Trust me, I don’t want to upset your family at all.”

  “Mom…” Danny said softly. This was likely the first chance Danny had had to talk about what happened, and it seemed to even be a bit cathartic for him.

  “You’re right. I’m sorry. Henry, please.”

  “Thank you,” I said politely. “Danny, what was the last thing you remember before you woke up on that field?”

  “I remember being at baseball practice,” he said. “I don’t know if that’s the last thing that happened. But I remember Mike Bursaw got hit in the knee by a line drive and was crying, and Coach was going to send him to the nurse but Mike wouldn’t let him. And I remember watching the Yankees on TV and my dad saying Jason Giambi couldn’t get a hit to save his life, which is weird because he used to be so good. I mean, I had his poster on my wall, and every night I’d tell it to go three-for-four with a home run. I noticed the poster wasn’t on my wall anymore. My dad said he took it down but didn’t tell me why.”

  I didn’t have the heart to bring up the fact that Jason Giambi had admitted using steroids, and his deteriorating performance was likely the result of his body breaking down. Danny Linwood was going to have enough problems reentering society; tearing down his boyhood heroes would happen eventually. Yet I understood his father’s hesitance to wield the sledgehammer.

  “Do you remember feeling pain?” I asked.

  “No.”

  “Do you remember a face, someone unfamiliar, something frightening you?”

  “Not really.”

  “Do you remember anything about the past few years? Sights? Sounds? Memories?”

  Daniel sat there for a few moments. He seemed almost to be in pain, searching his thoughts as hard as he could for something, straining to find what wasn’t there.

  “A room,” he said. “Like mine, but…I don’t know.”

  “How like yours?”

  “I think there were toys, but I don’t know.”

  “Okay…what was the first thing you thought when your mom came out the door that day? The day you came back?”

  “I remember being kind of confused. She didn’t hug me like that when I came back from school or practice usually, so I kind of knew something was different. I was a little scared, like something might have happened to James or Tasha or my brothers. When my dad got home and started crying, that’s when I started crying, too. Like maybe I was sick and didn’t know it or something. All those TV shows where someone gets sick and then everyone is really nice to them, it’s usually because they’re going to die.” Again I got that feeling. There was more to what Danny Linwood was saying than even he knew.

  I noticed Shelly Linwood’s lip trembling. She was aching to say something, gather her son up and hold him. My heart hurt for her.

  “How did you find out what actually happened?”

  “I still don’t know what happened,” Danny said, anger rising.

  “I didn’t mean…Who told you that you’d been gone?”

  “My mom,” he said, looking at Shelly. “She took me in here, sat me down where you’re sitting. James and Tasha and my dad were with her. Then Mom told me.”

  “What did you think when she told you?”

  “I didn’t believe her,” he said. “I thought it was, like, April Fools’ or something.”

  “How did you realize she was telling the truth?”

  “My dad showed me the Derek Jeter baseball rookie card he bought me for my birthday a while ago. He told me to look at the back. He said he’d bought the card the year I was born, 1996, Derek Jeter’s rookie year. Jeter was twenty-two. Then he showed me a brand-new Jeter card. From this year. And on the back of that card, Jeter was thirty-three.”

  “How did you feel?”

  “Scared. Upset. I mean, he’d been my favorite player and I didn’t get to watch him grow up.”

  “What did you think about what your parents told you?” I clarified.

  “Really scared,” Danny said. “I cried, I think, because I didn’t know what else to do. But I didn’t really know why. I mean, I didn’t feel sick, I wasn’t hurt, it’s not like I missed anyone, it was just…like, weird. Like you know when you wake up from a nap and you’re not really sure what time it is?”

  I nodded. The past few months of my life could have been accurately describe
d that way.

  “Do you think it’ll be hard going back to school? Starting your life again? Just being a kid?”

  Danny chewed his lip, looked at his mother. I could tell it was killing her to stay quiet, but she also knew her son needed to heal. And talking would help that process.

  “I don’t feel different. And I probably won’t until I go back and, like, see people. Or like today when I want to watch a show but don’t recognize anything that’s on. I don’t even really recognize myself, if that makes sense.”

  “In what way don’t you recognize yourself?”

  “Just, ways.”

  “Like what?”

  He eyed his mother, a look of worry on his face. “I don’t know if I can say with my mom here.”

  “Say whatever you need to, baby,” Shelly added, for once chiming in at the right time.

  “Well…I don’t think I remember having hair down there.”

  I snorted a laugh without thinking. Shelly’s face turned beet-red.

  I said, “Moms don’t usually like hearing things like that.”

  Danny shrugged. “She told me to say whatever I needed to.”

  “She sure did.”

  “How’s your mom taking it?” I said. I looked at Shelly. She knew I needed this from him, as well.

  “I don’t know. Fine, I guess. I mean, she’s always hugging me and kissing me. I mean, like the kids don’t have enough to make fun of already, I don’t want to show up at school covered in lipstick.”

  “She missed you is all,” I said.

  “Yeah, I know, but she could back off a little bit.”

  “I was your age once,” I said. “I kind of wish my mom was more like yours.”

  Danny laughed. “Yeah, right,” he said. “I guess she’s just glad to have me back.” Shelly was nodding, her face in the pillow. Danny looked somewhat at ease. I knew that likely wouldn’t last long.

  “My mom told me you got in trouble a while ago,” Danny said. “She looked you up in the newspapers when she found out you were coming. Was she telling the truth? Were you in trouble?”

  I felt the air rush from my lungs. I nodded. “Yeah, she’s telling the truth.”

  “What did you do?”

  I took a breath. “Some people thought I hurt someone,” I said.

  Danny looked at me, riveted.

  “Did you?”

  “Not on purpose,” I said.

  “What did it feel like?”

  I thought for a moment, then said, “Probably a little like what you’re going through. I felt like a stranger everywhere I went. Like nobody knew who I really was, they just saw what they read about or watched on TV.”

  “That’s what’ll happen to me, right? People will think I’m some freak weirdo when they don’t even know who I am.”

  “They’ll think that for a little while. Then it’s up to you to prove them wrong.”

  “I don’t see why they need me to prove anything,” he said quietly. “It’s not like I’m a different person or something.”

  I couldn’t say this to Danny, but no matter what he or Shelly wanted to believe, he was a different person. Scandals resonated for a long time. Perceptions died hard.

  Danny took a celery stalk, munched on it, leafy threads stuck between misaligned teeth. Shelly watched approvingly. Danny would need braces, that was for sure. No escaping that part of adolescence.

  “I don’t remember the house being so clean,” Danny said. “And the color on the walls outside used to be gross.”

  “I had it repainted a few years ago,” Shelly said. She turned to me. “I wanted things to be clean in case…in case my boy ever came back. I wanted him to know things would be different.”

  “You never lost hope, did you?” I asked.

  “Never.”

  “Do you think things will be different?” I asked Shelly. “For Danny and your family?”

  She gave me a smile, weaker than she likely thought it came off.

  “Yes, they will. For the first time I truly know my babies will be safe.”

  Danny and I both looked at her, wondering just how she could be so certain.

  5

  I listened to the recording of my interview with Daniel on the ride back to the city. I tried to focus as much on Danny Linwood’s cadences, his voice inflections, as what he actually said. I’d spoken to abducted children before, as well as men and women responsible for kidnapping children. The children were always withdrawn, as if a piece of their soul had been sucked out. Only they never knew why. The luckier ones, the ones that were found quicker, had withdrawn into a shallower hole. Eventually they could rejoin society, restart their lives. The ones like Daniel, who were removed for years, they weren’t so lucky. It was fortunate enough they beat the tremendous odds to survive, but more than likely they’d be stuck in that hole their entire lives. They would spend as much time scrabbling for footing as they did living. With Daniel Linwood, it was as though four-plus years had simply been lopped off clean. No ragged edges to be caught on. Just a gaping hole that left barely a trace.

  When Stavros dropped me at Rockefeller Plaza, I entered the Gazette and headed to my desk. First I would have the tape duplicated, then transcribed. I couldn’t promise Daniel and Shelly that they would see my story before it ran, but I had given them my word that Daniel would be treated with respect. Right before I left, Shelly Linwood told me that Paulina Cole had been calling every fifteen minutes, begging her to reconsider giving me the exclusive. Apparently Paulina promised to set Shelly up with the Dispatch’s parent company, which had subsidiaries in television, film and publishing. News would be the beginning. Film deals and book deals would follow. The money would come rolling in.

  According to Paulina, “The Linwoods will no longer be victims. They’ll be a brand name for survival.”

  Shelly said their family wanted no part of it. Once my story ran, what she wanted more than anything was for her children to lead normal lives. Shockingly, Haley Joel Osment cast as Danny didn’t fit in.

  I sat down at my desk, checked my messages. There was one from Wallace asking me to stop by as soon as I got back. There was another from Jack O’Donnell asking if I wanted to grab a beer and a shot after work. Both sounded like great ideas.

  I walked into Wallace’s office, found the editor-in-chief balancing the phone in the crook of his neck while simultaneously typing on his keyboard. The receiver fell twice, and finally Wallace gave up, slamming it back in the cradle and offering a string of colorful profanities.

  “You know they make earpieces for people just like you,” I said.

  “No way. Next thing you know I’ll have a chip implanted in my cerebellum instead of a laptop. I know I can’t stop technology, but I can keep it from plowing me over like a Thoroughbred. I swear, this industry was more efficient before stupid Al Gore invented the Internet.”

  “Hey, once the Atlantic swallows the city up, the Internet will be the least of your concerns. So what’s up?”

  “You talked to the Linwoods?”

  “I did,” I said, holding the tape recorder out for him.

  “Fantastic.” He looked at his watch. “How’d it go?”

  “I got as much as you can expect from a ten-year-old who fell into a black hole and can’t remember the last five years of his life. You get as much from looking at Shelly Linwood’s face as you do hearing the story. Just heartbreaking. Strange, though. The kid disappears for almost five years, yet talks and acts like your typical ten-year-old. Nobody has any idea where Danny Linwood went, but somehow his body and mind developed like a normal adolescent boy’s.”

  Wallace looked a minimum of disturbed by this, more distracted if anything. I had to remember that Wallace had been in this industry for longer than I’d been alive. He’d seen atrocities like this day after day, year after year. My conscience hadn’t calloused over the years. Stories like this still angered me.

  “That’s good work, Henry. I need thirty inches for tomorrow’s page one
. I swear, Ted Allen over at the Dispatch is probably trying to bug this building as we speak to get what’s on that tape.”

  “Shelly Linwood told me Paulina Cole all but offered her body and soul in exchange for this interview.”

  “Just what the world needs, another forty-year-old woman sleeping with a toddler. For the sake of Daniel’s future and his sanity, he’s lucky his mother picked us.”

  “For Danny’s sake, sir.”

  “Danny?”

  “That’s what Daniel Linwood prefers to be called now. Danny.”

  “I’m taking it this is a new development.”

  “Shelly doesn’t seem too keen on it.”

  “Makes you wonder just what happened to Daniel—Danny—during the past few years,” Wallace said. “Speaking of memory lapses, have you spoken to Jack today?”

  “Not in person, but he left me a message about grabbing a drink after work.”

  Wallace’s faced showed a mixture of anger and concern. “You’re going to politely decline that offer,” he said.

  I was about to ask why, but didn’t need to. Over the past year I’d noticed a change in Jack’s drinking habits. One-martini lunches had turned into three shots of Jim Beam. Drinks after work turned into drinks during work. Veins began popping up where I hadn’t seen them before, the old newsman’s equilibrium always seeming a little off. It was clear Jack was developing a problem. Either that, or the problem was already here and we’d just been enabling him, turning a blind eye for months.

  “Anytime Jack requests your company for a drink,” Wallace continued, “make it clear you don’t approve and you’re more than aware. A little humiliation goes a long way for a proud man. That’s all we can do short of sending him to rehab.”

  “Would that be such a terrible thing?” I asked.

  “Actually, yes. Our circulation has been flat since your reporting on William Henry Roberts last year. Paulina Cole has the Dispatch breathing down our necks, and Ted Allen is using every dirty trick in the book to up their numbers. Giving out more free newspapers than high schools give out condoms, dropping thousands of copies in Dumpsters and recording them as part of their circulation.”