The Stolen Read online

  “What did you do, Shelly?” I asked.

  Shelly began to weep. She held her head in her hands. I felt a modicum of remorse for this woman, but it soon went away.

  “I told Benjamin the route Danny took to get home from practice,” she said. “Six-thirty every night. I made him promise not to hurt my baby. He told me he wouldn’t.”

  “What else did Benjamin say?”

  “He promised me a family would take care of him. They knew about his diabetes and they would care for him,” Shelly said through bloodshot eyes. “And I believed him. At least I wanted to. I needed to know my babies could grow up and lead full lives. I’ve seen what this town can do to people. I wanted my sons to have something better.”

  “Is that what Danny has now?” I asked. “Something better?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “But if he can get out of here and ends up in a safe office, making money, starting a family instead of rotting behind bars or in the dirt, then yes. He has something better. I know you can’t possibly understand that, Henry. Wanting your child to not just survive but live a life. Maybe one day you will. But you can’t right now.”

  “No,” I said. “I can’t.”

  45

  I woke up the next morning, pleasantly surprised that sleep had come so easily. I think it was more due to the complete lack of energy in every one of my muscles, the utter exhaustion I felt, than any sort of blissful conscience.

  As soon as we returned from the Linwood residence, I’d gone straight to the Gazette to write up my story. Amanda had given me a long, deep hug, and for the first time since we’d started speaking again, a hug was all I wanted.

  The story was difficult to write. That so many people had been so deceitful, purposefully putting so many lives at risk, it was hard to fathom how any of them could have felt they were doing the right thing. I heard over the wire that the police had apprehended Robert and Elaine Reed in a suburb just outside Chicago. Caroline Twomey was in the process of being returned to her family. The police had reopened the kidnappings of both Danny Linwood and Michelle Oliveira. They still didn’t know who kidnapped them, and they believed Gray Talbot had inoculated himself from that knowledge. It was Ray Benjamin who was the button man. And Gray had killed him to seal off the investigation. There was a chance those families who held the children would never be found, never be prosecuted. We got lucky with Daniel Linwood.

  The Reeds were found at a hotel outside Chicago. They’d driven halfway across the country after fleeing Harrisburg. The manager became suspicious when all of the family’s credit cards were declined, and Elaine Reed attempted to use an expired driver’s license as identification.

  They claimed, like Shelly Linwood, that they were doing it to protect their son, Patrick. That Benjamin had threatened them, as well. And now Patrick would likely spend most of his childhood in foster care, and his parents would have to deal with the legal ramifications of what they’d done.

  The children’s lives would go on. But they would never be the same.

  It’s always the innocent who are forced to suffer.

  Like Shelly said, maybe in a few years I would understand. When I had a family of my own, children I would do anything to protect, maybe that kind of sacrifice would feel justified.

  But not right now.

  I looked forward to seeing the paper, so when I rolled out of bed the first thing I did was go to the front door to get my morning delivery.

  My neighbor down the hall, the lovely Ms. Berry, all eighty nightgowned years of her, must have been thrilled to see me standing there topless in my boxers. I waved hello. She retreated back inside. Maybe she wasn’t so thrilled.

  I took the paper inside, laid it on the table and read.

  When I was through, my emotions were mixed. I was happy with the story, but not the outcome. All I could say is that Gray Talbot’s operation would be shut down, and the man would certainly spend years behind bars.

  Caroline Twomey was returned to her family. It remained to be seen what would happen to her parents. I assumed they were accessories, like the Linwoods. And it was only a matter of time before the Oliveira case was reopened, as well.

  So many lives shattered by greed and fear. And I still wasn’t quite sure who the villains were.

  I took a hot shower, feeling like a year’s worth of crud had built up, caked my skin an inch thick. I let the water run in and out of my mouth, felt the steam coat my face. It felt good.

  When I washed up, I packed the paper, got my stuff together and headed to the newsroom. Though the story was a difficult one for me to write, I knew Wallace and the crew would be thrilled. It was a huge get, the kind of story that would not just have people talking today, but would ripple for months if not years. It made me glad that Wallace would be proud. Though I secretly hoped Jack would be, too. I still resented what he’d done to himself, resented that he might have jeopardized his legacy, but his validation meant more to me than he likely knew.

  I took the train down to Rockefeller Plaza, remembering I’d have to return the rental later that day.

  The plaza was already crowded by the time I walked over. Tourists were perched on the benches, taking pictures of the grandness of the area. People stood outside the shops waiting for that first door to be cracked open.

  I’d never been much of a sightseer when I was younger. Wonders never really amazed me like they did most folk. I chalked it up to my profession, where everything had to come with some sense of detachment. If you got too personally involved in a story, it could come back to haunt you in more ways than you could imagine. I thought about my last few major stories, beginning with being sought for a murder charge a few years ago, to hunting William Henry Roberts after that. And now, with Gray Talbot behind bars and the lives of several families never to be the same, I wondered if I’d mistakenly forgotten all that. If I’d gotten too close, whether by chance or by choice.

  Once this was over I wanted to step back, reevaluate my situation. I loved my job, and that wouldn’t change until they dragged me out of the newsroom, kicking and screaming while I tried to beat off Security with a legal notepad. There was room to grow. Personally and professionally. And with all the time spent chasing murderers, liars and politicians (who managed to encompass both), it was time to take stock.

  The wall clock read 9:05 when the elevator opened on to the newsroom floor. I expected some sort of jubilation, maybe a pat on the back or two. I’d cracked a huge case that would have ramifications potentially all the way to the top. A man considered a potential front-runner for the biggest job in the land would now be spending at least eight years behind bars. There was something sad about ruining a career. Ending a life. And I wondered where Hobbs County would be today if Gray Talbot had never thought of a boy named Daniel Linwood.

  I walked to my desk looking for my colleagues, looking out for Wallace. The pride quickly turned to fear when I noticed all the reporters were sitting at their desks. They were silent. Their faces ashen gray. Some were at work, but it was perfunctory.

  Evelyn Waterstone passed by. She gazed up at me for a moment, her mouth opening. For the first time I could remember, Evelyn Waterstone looked sad. She said two words to me, “Sorry, Parker,” and walked on.

  I didn’t know what to do, but something had bitten the newsroom of the New York Gazette. I had to find out. The only person who didn’t look like they were drowning in their own sorrows was Frank Rourke.

  There was no love lost between Frank Rourke and me. We’d had a pretty intense falling-out over the shit bag incident last year, and since then never really attempted to patch things up. I never felt the need to gain his approval. My work would accomplish that in my stead.

  Rourke was yapping away on his desk phone—something about preseason football—so I walked over when he hung up and stood over his desk, waiting to hear what he said.

  Rourke didn’t notice me at first. He just sat there drinking coffee out of a Thermos the size of my head. Then when
he turned around and saw me standing there, the smile disappeared. My stomach dropped when I realized he had the same look on his face Evelyn had minutes earlier.

  “Parker,” he said. “Listen, man…I don’t know what else to say. But I’m sorry. This sucks majorly.”

  “What does?” I said. “I just got here, please, everyone else looks like they have one foot in the grave.”

  Rourke said, “Oh, man, you didn’t see it?”

  “See what? Speak to me, goddamn it.”

  Rourke spun around, looked at the desk across from him. Then he stood up, went over and began rifling through the garbage can. I wondered what the hell he was doing, but then when I saw him take a newspaper out of the can, that queasiness returned. He handed it to me, front page out, and said, “Like I said, this sucks.”

  I unfolded the front page and held it up. It was a copy of this morning’s New York Dispatch. When I read the headline, in huge bold print, I nearly threw up.

  The headline read: A Lush Life: Jack O’Donnell and All the Booze That’s Fit to Print.

  The byline was credited to Paulina Cole.

  The two l’s in all were liquor bottles. Below the headline were two pictures. And both made me sick to my stomach.

  The first picture looked to have been taken in some sort of storage room. It was about the size of a walk-in closet, with three rows of shelves traversing the space.

  Every single space was lined, front to back, with empty bottles. Wine. Beer. Whiskey. Bourbon. The caption below the photo read: Jack O’Donnell Downs in One Year What Most People Drink in a Lifetime!

  The second photo, the one that made me clench the paper into a wad in my hands, was of Jack. Lying in the hospital. Tubes running through his veins.

  I recognized the setting. It was taken after I’d brought Jack to the hospital after he nearly choked to death on his own vomit. Somebody had snuck into the hospital and photographed Jack while he was unconscious and recovering from alcohol poisoning. I couldn’t imagine the kind of black heart needed to do such a thing.

  I took the paper without saying another word to Frank and took it to my desk. There I read the entire article, every single word. And when I was done, I crumpled it up, took it to the incinerator on our floor and chucked it into the darkness.

  Paulina Cole had done one of the worst hatchet jobs on Jack I’d ever read. Somehow she’d gotten one of the porters in Jack’s building to collect the liquor bottles from the recycling bin every morning. Easy, since he occupied the entire floor himself. The bottles were then brought straight to Paulina Cole. Every single one was fingerprinted to confirm that Jack had in fact drunk them himself. No other fingerprints were found on any of the bottles. And there must have been several hundred in the photograph. And he’d drunk them all himself over the span of one year.

  The article described how much alcohol must have been absorbed by Jack’s bloodstream over that year. It also made mention of every correction in every story that Jack had written that same year, comparing it to his previous work. It portrayed Jack as a man whose professional life was now ruled by one of the most aggressive bouts of alcoholism ever seen in the newsroom, whose work had depreciated to the point where his stories were filled with more holes than an O. J. Simpson alibi.

  Then the story took a more macro perspective, going into great detail about how the Gazette promoted Jack as one of the legends of New York journalism. Paulina ended her story with the following paragraph:

  “It can be said that a news institution can be judged on one thing, and one thing only: the reputation of the men and women who report the news. Jack O’Donnell is a man whose reputation, built over years more through joviality and cronyism than true journalistic integrity, has opened a window into the true nature of this black-and-white beast. And what an ugly, ugly creature it is.”

  The next thing I knew I was going straight for Jack’s desk. It was unoccupied. But worse than that, it was empty. The computer was off. There were no odds and ends on the countertop. There was nothing.

  I marched to Wallace Langston’s office and threw open the doors. The editor-in-chief was on the phone. His face was ashen. I knew the feeling. He motioned for me to take a seat. I declined.

  When he hung up the phone, I said, “Wallace, what the fuck is going on? Where is Jack?”

  Wallace sighed and leaned back in his chair. I knew my anger was misplaced, but my mind was going a thousand miles an hour in a hundred different directions. “Jack is on leave,” he said.

  “On leave? What the hell does that mean?”

  “I assume you saw the story in today’s Dispatch,” he said.

  “I just finished it.”

  “Well, word came down from Harvey Hillerman himself that Jack had two choices. An extended personal leave to deal with his demons in a treatment center. Or the termination of his employment with the Gazette.” Harvey Hillerman was the president and CEO of the Gazette. If it came from him, it meant Jack had no way out.

  “And?”

  “And as of this morning, Jack O’Donnell is no longer an employee of this newspaper.”

  I felt as if a cannonball had hit me square in the stomach. My knees went weak, and I fell into the chair across from Wallace.

  “He can’t do that,” I said. “Jack is this newspaper.”

  “No, he’s not, Henry. Jack has done more for this paper than any employee in its history. But we are not one and the same. You’ve seen Jack over the past few months. You know things have been going downhill. He was hospitalized just last week.”

  “Yeah, and I know that damn picture is out there for everyone to see.”

  “You need to think about Jack,” Wallace said. “The man needs help. More than what you or I can do. If he chooses to do it on his own, so be it. My take is that he didn’t want to be forced into doing anything. That doesn’t surprise me. It’s always been the way he’s worked.”

  “So what now?” I said. “We just keep working like nothing ever happened?”

  “That’s impossible,” Wallace said. “Jack’s been here so long some of his blood does run through this paper’s veins. But we have to move on. You’ve done some amazing work in your time here, Henry. Jack has put down his mantle for now. And I expect you to be one of the people to take it. To carry it with pride.”

  “You don’t take that because it’s been thrown down,” I said. “You earn it. I can’t just take Jack’s place. Nobody can.”

  “That’s true. So just do your job to the best of his ability. Learn from his mistakes. Don’t let your problems overwhelm you. Because at the end of the day, you’re remembered for the end of your career, not the beginning. And the saddest part of all this is a generation might only know the Jack O’Donnell on the cover of today’s newspaper.”

  I couldn’t listen to any more. I slammed the door to Wallace’s office and left the building. Hailing a taxi, I instructed the driver to take me to Twenty-Seventh and Park. The offices of the New York Dispatch.

  I left the cab, throwing the fare at the driver, and entered the building through the revolving door, feeling as if I could tear the walls apart with my bare hands. A security guard stopped me as I approached the turnstiles. He said, “Sir, you’ll need to check in and show your ID.”

  I went to the security post. Another guard sat there looking bored. “Who are you here to see?”

  “Paulina Cole. New York Dispatch.”

  “Do you have an appointment with Ms. Cole?”

  “No.”

  “Does she know you’re coming?”

  “No.”

  The guard looked confused. “Sir, can you state your business with Ms. Cole?”

  “That’s between me and her.”

  The guard eyed me suspiciously. Then he said, “I’m going to have to pat you down.” I let him. He found nothing. “Let me call upstairs.”

  He picked up the switchboard phone and dialed a few buttons. I was growing impatient. I needed to see that bitch face-to-face.

 
; The guard put down the phone and said, “Sir, Ms. Cole is not picking up her phone. I can leave a message that you stopped by.”

  “I can wait for her upstairs.”

  “No, sir, I can’t let you do that.”

  “Listen, asshole,” I said. “I’m seeing Paulina Cole today. Whether you let me upstairs or not.”

  Just then I heard a commotion by the revolving door. Several voices were congratulating someone. A throng of people surrounding one person.

  Then they parted and Paulina Cole continued walking toward the turnstiles.

  She saw me and stopped. She was startled for a moment, then a slow smile spread across her face.

  “Hi, Henry,” she said. “It’s been so long. Have you been keeping up with the news?”

  “You fucking bitch,” I said, starting toward her. I didn’t take more than two steps before I felt a pair of hands grab my arms and pull me backward. The security guards were holding me. I thrashed and struggled to get free. “He was a friend to you,” I spat. “How could you?”

  “It was easy,” she said, stepping forward. “And you know what probably angers you the most, Henry? That every word of it is true.”

  I tried to pull free, but then the two guards began dragging me outside. We passed by Paulina. She raised her hand, waved a sarcastic goodbye before the guards shoved me through the doors and out onto the street.

  I tumbled onto the sidewalk, then scrambled to my feet. The guards stood there with their hands across their chests.

  “Sir,” one of them said, “if you don’t leave the premises, we will be forced to call the authorities.”

  I took one step forward, hatred boiling inside me, but then I stopped. Jack had been broken. Defeated. Getting arrested would affect nobody but myself. Jack had been an idol to me for years. I owed him more than that.

  I left the Dispatch and took the train up to Jack’s apartment. The whole way I sat there shaking, not knowing what to say, what to think. After everything with Daniel Linwood, now that Amanda and I seemed to be on good terms, I’d finally felt like things were on the right track. No more days drinking at bars by myself. No more nights sleeping at the office because I couldn’t face my own bed.