by Jason Pinter
“Is that even medically possible?” Wallace asked skeptically.
“In 1993,” I said, “medical records showed that Sang Min Lee, a thirteen-year-old Korean boy who’d been in a coma for three years, suddenly woke up and claimed to smell flowers. Sang’s mother had brought fresh roses to Sang’s hospital room every day for the first year of his hospitalization, then stopped when it became too expensive. Somehow Sang’s brain retained the memory of those smells, despite the fact that the boy himself wasn’t even awake.”
Wallace scratched his beard, put the papers down. I could tell he was thinking about this, debating whether my discovery warranted looking into, or was just a dead end that would eat up time and resources.
“Let me dig a bit,” I said. “I know there’s no way to tell right now, but if there is, and we can report exclusively…”
Wallace’s head snapped up. I stopped speaking. He knew my engine was running, that if he unleashed the harness I’d be on this like a dog on fresh meat. I was aching to run with this story. It burned to think that nobody else seemed to care where Daniel Linwood had been for five years, why he couldn’t remember anything about his disappearance or why the HCPD seemed content to vacuum it all up. I hated that if nobody stepped up, Daniel Linwood would just be another headline. A child with no past, whose future would always be clouded.
“This is awful thin,” Wallace said. “You realize it might have been a slip of the tongue. A fault in the recording. My mother used to call me Beth—that was my sister’s name, but she was just absentminded. There are a dozen ways to explain what Daniel said, not all of them having anything to do with some Korean boy.”
“But you and I both want to know whether there’s more.”
I looked at Wallace, trying to will him to say it. Then he looked up at me, hands folded in front of him.
“Check it out. Report back if you find anything. And if it turns out there’s another way to explain it, you stop digging immediately. We promised to treat the Linwood family with respect—the last thing we need is to accidentally hit a nerve that doesn’t need to feel pain. There’s a family at stake here, not to mention a town trying to rebuild. So use a pipe cleaner to dig instead of a pickax.”
“Gentle is my middle name.”
“That’s a goddamned lie,” Wallace said, “but I’ll give you the benefit here. Good luck, Parker.”
With Wallace’s blessing, I went back to my desk and took out the Linwoods’ phone number. I held the Post-it between my fingers and thought about the promise I’d made to Shelly. Her family had been torn apart, and it would take years before they could even hope to begin the reparations. By giving me access to their home and to their son, the Linwoods trusted me to do what was right. And I had every intent of doing just that.
First I had to make sure there wasn’t a simpler explanation.
I called the Linwood house. It went right to voice mail. An automated system saying, “The person you wish to call is not available at this time. Please leave a message at the tone.” I figured they’d disconnected their phone, changed their number to confuse the vultures. Only now I’d become one, too.
At the tone, I said, “Hi, Shelly, Randall, this is Henry Parker. I wanted to thank you for the other day. I did have one follow-up question, and I was wondering if one of you could give me a call back at the office. Again, this is Henry Parker at the New York Gazette.”
Then I hung up. And sat there. Twiddling my thumbs, chewing a number two pencil, praying the wait wouldn’t be long.
Perhaps the most difficult thing about being a reporter was waiting for a callback. If I was on deadline, and knew that one transforming piece of information was available yet just beyond reach, the minutes crawled by like hours. Waiting for that callback could drive you insane. I propped my feet up on the desk, stuck a pencil between my teeth and waited.
Thankfully I didn’t have to worry about my sanity, because my phone rang barely a minute after I’d hung up.
“This is Parker.”
“Henry, it’s Shelly Linwood.” She sounded apprehensive, a little concerned. She had probably assumed once my story ran I’d be out of her life.
“Shelly, thanks so much for getting back to me.”
“It’s no problem. We have to screen our calls, otherwise we’d never get off the line. We’re probably going to have to change our number.” She said this with an air of apology. She still saw me as a friend. Unlike the other vultures who wanted to pick the bones.
“I understand that. Again, I appreciate you and Daniel talking to me the other day.”
“It’s Danny,” she said, her voice less than enthusiastic. “That’s what he wants to be called now.”
“Right. I remember. Anyway, Mrs. Linwood, Shelly, I was going back over the tape of the interview, and something seemed a little strange to me.”
“Strange? How so?”
“When Danny is talking about reuniting with his family, he says the word brothers. As in more than one. And he says it several times. I know this is a silly question, but Daniel doesn’t have any other siblings besides Tasha and James, right?”
“That’s right.” The acceptance was gone. At that moment I knew I was an outsider again.
“Any close friends he might consider a part of the family? A cousin so close he might call him a brother?”
“No.”
“Has he mentioned anything to you about his abduction? Any memories that might offer a clue as to why he said that?”
“I said no, Mr. Parker.” Not Henry. Mr. Parker. “It’s just the five of us. Thank God. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a pot roast in the oven.” I checked my watch. It was eleven in the morning. Kind of early for a pot roast.
She didn’t wait for me to respond, and I knew when the line went dead Shelly Linwood would no longer be returning any more of my calls. I sent off a quick e-mail to Wallace.
Shelly Linwood doesn’t know where “brothers” came from. Got very defensive. Will update you on progress.
H
I tapped my pencil against the desk. Wherever Danny Linwood was during those years, there was another person he’d called “brother.” I was sure of it. Of course, there was a chance his mind had simply been damaged from the absence, but something in Shelly’s voice and the lack of cooperation from the HCPD told me if I asked more questions, I’d find very unhappy answers. Which meant they had to be asked.
I decided to take a stab at something, then work from there.
I performed a LexisNexis search for child abductions within the past ten years, then narrowed the search to cases where the child returned alive. Sadly, there were over one thousand reported cases of child abductions in the United States during that span, and less than fifty of those thousand children had been found alive. The others had either been found dead, or never found at all.
I searched through the results looking for any similarities, specifically cases, like Danny Linwood’s, where the abducted was returned to his or her home with no memory of their time gone.
I was surprised when one hit came back. Seven years ago, an eight-year-old girl named Michelle Oliveira disappeared outside of Meriden, Connecticut, following a playdate at a neighbor’s house. The Oliveiras lived just four houses down the block from their friends, a family of four named the Lowes, which explained why she was unsupervised upon her return home. The investigation turned up nothing but a tassel from Michelle’s hair that had been caught on a nearby branch. After a month the search was called off. Two years later Michelle Oliveira was declared deceased.
And three years after that, Michelle Oliveira appeared in her parents’ front yard in Meriden, in perfect health with the exception of some vitamin deficiencies. According to a newspaper report, Michelle had no recollection of the intervening years.
The police had conducted numerous interviews with Michelle, her parents and younger brother, as well as with the Lowe family. The records had been sealed off due to the victim’s young age. The abductor or
abductors were never found. And Michelle went on with her life.
While Michelle clearly wasn’t a “brother,” it did make me wonder. Meriden was just a few hours from Hobbs County, and more important, it set a precedent for this kind of unexplained absence and subsequent reappearance.
I needed to see those records. Fortunately I knew someone who could help. Time to add another lunch to my growing tab.
Curt Sheffield picked up, but it took major convincing to get him to not hang up on me.
“Ain’t no way I’m going to even touch a child abduction case, bro. Not to mention that it’s in a different state, and I’d have to explain why I’m asking those kind of questions. If I tell them it’s to sate some reporter’s curiosity, I might as well tell them I deal crack while downloading underage porn. I’ll get booted faster than you can say ‘Starsky minus Hutch.’”
“So how could I get hold of those records if not through the police?” I asked, praying Curt’s reach extended beyond that of his precinct.
“Only other firms who have access to those kinds of documents are the legal aid societies. They keep a database of all child-related abuse cases. I’m guessing this falls under their jurisdiction.”
“Even if there was no evidence of actual abuse?”
“Just ’cause there ain’t no scars on the outside don’t mean they’re not on the inside.”
“That’s deep, Curt. You write poetry, too?”
“Yeah, I’ll Robert Frost your ass if you try to squeeze anything else out of me. Good luck, sorry I couldn’t help more.”
“Yeah, thanks for nothing.”
“When can I collect on that tab?”
“I’ll have my people call your people.”
“Yeah, whatever. Later, Parker.”
I had to get more information on Michelle Oliveira’s abduction, but I wasn’t going to be able to go through the police department. I sat there in silence, thinking about what Curt had said. The legal aid society.
I knew one person who worked at the legal aid society. But calling her would touch nerves much closer to my heart than Daniel Linwood.
I opened my desk drawer. I could almost sense it down there. It had been months since I’d spoken to her. But rarely a day passed when I didn’t feel that ache, that gnawing in my gut that seemed to only get worse over time.
Six months ago I’d made a choice. I decided I had to give her up. I told myself at the time it was the right thing to do. A man had to put his love before himself. And since Amanda had nearly been killed twice because of me, in my mind there was no other option.
So I said goodbye to Amanda. I hadn’t been truly happy in months. It didn’t take a great reporter to figure out the two were directly correlated. But I still couldn’t be with her.
There had been times over the past few months where I had wanted to call, where I’d gone so far as to pick up the phone and dial everything but the last number on her cell phone, nearly crying when I hung up before pushing the final key. Nights where the booze loosened up my inhibitions, and only that last vestige of clarity prevented me from calling. Like that terrible night six months ago, today there was only one choice to make.
Amanda worked for the New York Legal Aid Society. She would have access to Michelle Oliveira’s records. She could help the investigation. She could provide answers.
She could also throw it back in my face.
And I would deserve it.
Maybe this was the opening I needed, I wanted. A way to tell myself it wasn’t about her, even though deep down I couldn’t even fool myself. Maybe it was fate. Or maybe fate was a cruel son of a bitch.
Before I had a chance to think again, I picked up the phone and dialed.
Amanda picked up on the first ring.
“Hey,” I said. “It’s me.”
10
The girl woke up with a slight headache. Her first thought was that she’d fallen, maybe hit her head on the sidewalk or bumped into the same tree she’d rammed her bike into the other day. But she didn’t remember putting on a helmet, didn’t remember actually falling. And she only rode her bike when her mommy was watching. And right away she felt the terror that she was alone.
She stood up warily. Her breathing was harsh, and she felt hot tears rush to her eyes. She reached out for her bed, the couch, some familiar sign. But she found nothing. She grew desperate and called out. There was no answer.
The room was pitch-black. Had her mommy just put her to bed, accidentally left the Bratz night-light unplugged? No, there was a smell in the room, something different, something rotted. She didn’t belong there. Yet when she cried, nobody came.
The girl smelled something that reminded her of her dad’s breath after he came home on Sunday evenings. Mommy said he was watching the football games at the bar with his friends. His breath had that sweet smell, and her mom never let her get too close to him when he was like that. There was a smell in the air that reminded her of that. Reminded her to be afraid of getting too close.
After a few minutes her eyes adjusted. The room was small, about the size of her baby brother’s bedroom. There was a small bench by the wall, and the floor was made of wood. A slit of light shone from a crack under the door, but other than that she couldn’t see a thing.
Her throat began to choke up. She didn’t know this place. She wanted to feel her mommy’s arms. Wanted to smell her daddy’s sweet breath.
Suddenly she remembered walking home from the park, remembered feeling a hand clamp over her mouth. She couldn’t remember anything past that.
The girl let out a cry of help, then ran toward the door. She gripped the knob and twisted as hard as she could, but it didn’t budge. She pushed and pulled and cried, but the door stayed shut.
Finally she collapsed onto the floor and began to cry.
She wiped the snot away from her nose. She needed a tissue. She could wipe it on her clothes, but she loved the sundress she was wearing. Bright pink with pretty sunflowers. Her mom had picked it out for her at the mall, the same day she’d bought that nice barrette in the shape of a butterfly that mommy wore to the park.
She began to cry again. She screamed for her mother. For her father. And nobody came.
Then she lay back down, curled into a ball, and hoped maybe somebody could hear her through the floor.
And that’s when she heard footsteps.
She sat back up. Looked at the door. Saw a shadow briefly block out that sliver of light. She wiped her eyes and nose. She held her breath as the doorknob turned. Then nearly screamed when it opened. She would have screamed. If she wasn’t too scared.
There was a man in the doorway. He was bald, with thinning hair and glasses that were too small for his head. He was wearing light jeans with a hole by one knee. On his hands were leather gloves. When she saw the gloves, she finally managed to scream.
The man flicked a switch on the outside of the door, and a lightbulb came on, bathing the room in harsh white. She closed her eyes, blinked through the glare, then opened them. The man was now barely a foot in front of her. He was staring at her. Not in a scary way, not like bad men on television did. In the way her daddy did when he tucked her in at night. He’d taken the gloves off. He held them out to her, then made a show of putting them in his pocket.
“Don’t be scared,” he said. “I would never hurt you.”
The man reached out, took her chin in his hands. They were callused, rough. She was too scared to move, felt her head pounding, mucus running down her nose and onto his hand.
When he noticed the snot on his fingers, the man reached into his pocket. She closed her eyes. When she opened them, he’d taken out a handkerchief and was wiping her nose, her face.
“That’s better,” he said. He had a glass of water with him. He handed it to her. “Go on. Drink some.”
She took it, her hand trembling. She didn’t know what was in it, whether he’d poisoned it, whether he’d spit in it, but she was so thirsty she downed almost all of it in one gu
lp. When she was finished, he took the clean side of the handkerchief and wiped her mouth.
Then he handed her two small pills. She looked at him, looked at the pills.
“You must have a bad headache,” he said. “This will make you feel better.”
Then he smiled at her.
She didn’t know how he knew about her headache, but if the pills would help…
“How do you feel?” he asked.
“Hurts,” she moaned.
“It won’t for long.”
She looked at him. He was wearing a wedding ring. It was polished and it gleamed something pretty.
He stood up. Motioned for her to do the same. The girl stood up reluctantly, then smelled the aroma of pancakes coming from somewhere. Her favorite.
“Strawberry and chocolate chip. Fresh off the griddle,” he said, smiling. “Let’s get you fed, you can meet your new mommy and new brother, and then I’ll show you to your room.”
She took the man’s hand, his grip gentle, and followed him out of the darkness.
11
It would have been easy to say no. For years she’d grown accustomed to disappointments, to a life that never quite went the way she planned.
The wound still hurt terribly. Doing this could rub salt in deep. And who knows? Another few weeks, few months, and the pain might have begun to die down. And given a few years, she might have never thought about him again. Things would have gone back to the way they were before the day they met.
None of that mattered, though, because when Henry called, for the first time in months his voice coming over the phone, she agreed to meet him almost immediately.
Just a few years ago, Amanda had nothing, no friends, nobody to trust but herself. Her life had been a series of halfhearted relationships, embarked upon mainly because that’s what she assumed was normal. That’s what she was used to. Men who were more interested in their own success than how it could be used to make others happy. She’d grown weary of that scene, and at some point, like many other girls her age, Amanda Davies had simply given up.