The Stolen (2008) Read online

  I had to stop myself from laughing, considering I was

  afraid of my own apartment and came here precisely so I

  could avoid the braying of testosterone-drenched i-bankers.

  “Trust me, it’s not confidence,” I said. “Just comfort.”

  “See, that’s confident right there!” Then she extended

  her hand. “I’m Emily.”

  “Henry,” I said. For a moment I waited, then shook her

  hand. Didn’t want to be rude.

  “I’m here with some old college friends who are in

  town for the weekend,” Emily said, “but we’re probably

  going to ditch this place soon and go somewhere else

  more, like, alive. I know you’re happy to be by yourself—”

  she used finger quotation marks to accent this statement

  “—but it might be cool if you came with us.”

  Right then I could see the night laid out before me. Two

  paths. I could accept Emily’s invitation, and presuming I

  played my cards right, that electric sensation of skin on

  skin would later become a wildfire.

  Or I could sit here, sip my beer, stare at my reflection

  in the mirror and think about all the other paths I’d simply

  passed right by.

  “I appreciate the offer, Emily,” I said. “But I think I’ll

  stay here for the night.”

  “You sure?” she said.

  “Sure.”

  “Suit yourself.” She grabbed a clean napkin from the

  bar, removed a tube of eyeliner from her purse and painstakingly drew something on the paper. When she was

  done, she smiled, handed me the napkin and walked away.

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  Jason Pinter

  Her phone number was written in black, smudgy ink.

  Emily offered one last wave as she went through the door,

  pausing for a moment to give me one last chance to reconsider. I raised the rest of my beer to her. She shrugged and

  left. Then I let the napkin fall to the floor.

  I downed the last of my beer. Seamus took a pair of

  empty pitchers down off the bar and came over to me.

  “Another?” he said.

  I looked at my glass, felt the buzz swirling in my head

  and decided against it.

  “That’s it for me tonight.” He took my glass and went

  to serve a man shaking his glass for a refill. I stood up,

  steadying myself as the blood swam to my head. When my

  equilibrium settled, I left the bar.

  I checked my phone. Four missed calls, beginning at

  11:00 p.m. They were all from the same prefix, which I

  recognized as the Gazette. I checked my watch. Late jobrelated calls were no longer a nuisance; they were a part

  of my life. Perhaps that’s why I turned down another beer.

  Somehow I had a feeling I’d have to return someone’s call

  while relatively sober.

  I walked down to the corner and bought a pack of Certs,

  slipping one in my mouth to try to remove the beer aftertaste. Then I dialed the Gazette. Wallace Langston, editorin-chief, picked up his private line on the first ring.

  “Henry, Christ, where the hell’ve you been?”

  “It’s a Friday night. You don’t pay me enough to have

  a 24/7 retainer.”

  “Okay, you don’t want to answer your phone, I have

  half a newsroom of reporters who’d drop their off days

  faster than a hot iron for what I’m about to tell you, so let

  me know if this is an inconvenient time.”

  “What if I said it was?”

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  “I’d say two things,” Wallace said. “First, you’re a liar.

  It sounds like you’re standing on the street, which means

  you can’t be that busy. Second, I’d say I don’t give a crap

  because if you turn down this assignment, I can find

  another reporter who’ll grab it faster than you can hang

  up.”

  “Sounds like a hot one,” I said. “So maybe I’m interested.”

  “Hot isn’t the word,” Wallace said. “Scorching. Actually no, forget that. The only appropriate word is exclu-

  sive. ”

  “Oh, yeah? What kind of exclusive?”

  “You hear about this Daniel Linwood case up in

  Hobbs County?”

  Immediately my buzz wore off. “Kid who was kidnapped

  five years ago and suddenly reappeared on his parents’

  doorstep, right?”

  “So you follow the news. Glad to know we pay you for

  something. Daniel Linwood was five years old when he

  disappeared from his parents’ home in Hobbs County,

  New York. That was five years ago. One moment he’s

  playing outside, then all of a sudden he’s just gone. No witnesses, nobody saw or heard anything. His disappearance

  shakes the Hobbs County community to its roots. There’s

  a media frenzy, politicians come out of the woodwork to

  show their support, but the cops come up empty. Then last

  night, Daniel shows up at his parents’ house like he’s been

  at the movies. Not a scratch on him. And get this—the kid

  has as much memory of the past five years as I have of my

  first marriage. He doesn’t remember where he’s been, who

  took him or how he even got home. Half the known world

  is waging war to talk to Daniel and his parents and get the

  story, but up until now it’s been radio silence.”

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  Jason Pinter

  “Until now?” I said.

  “Until you,” Wallace said. “I’ve been calling the Linwoods for twenty-four hours nonstop.”

  “I bet they appreciate that,” I said snidely.

  “Shut up, Parker, or I’ll smack that booze right off your

  breath.”

  “You don’t know I’ve been drinking,” I said, regretfully

  slurring the last word.

  “I’ve worked with Jack O’Donnell for more than twenty

  years. You can’t fool a professional bullshit detector. Anyway, tonight I get a call from Shelly Linwood out of

  nowhere. She says she’s ready to talk. And before I can say

  another word, she says she and Daniel will talk to you, and

  only you.”

  “Me?” I said. “Why?”

  Wallace said, “Shelly knows she can’t keep silent

  forever, that at some point she and Daniel will need to

  speak to the press. So she said when he does speak to

  someone, she wants it to be to a reporter he won’t be intimidated by. Someone who doesn’t remind him of his

  parents. She wants Daniel to talk to someone he can trust,

  whom she can look in the eye and know he won’t exploit

  her son. Between all of that, I offered you. And she

  accepted.”

  “Holy crap, are you serious?” I said. “This is a major

  story, Wallace. We’re going to make a lot of reporters

  pretty jealous.”

  “And I’m going to revel in it,” Wallace said. “This is

  your story now, Parker. Daniel Linwood has probably been

  through a kind of hell you and I can’t even imagine, and

  his parents have spent almost five years assuming their

  oldest son was dead. Be gentle. Daniel is ten years old, and

  we still don’t know the full psychological damage he’s

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  suffered. If you press the wrong button, touch the wrong

  nerve, he and Shelly will clam up fast. And the D
ispatch

  will be on top of this as fast as Paulina Cole can get up to

  Hobbs County.”

  “I’d die before Paulina scoops us,” I said.

  “Don’t make it come to that, Henry. The Linwoods are

  expecting you tomorrow at two. Get there at noon, spend

  a few hours checking out the neighborhood for local color.

  But if Daniel wants to talk to you at one-forty-five, twofifteen or three o’clock in the morning, you’ll have your

  tape recorder ready to go.”

  “You got it.”

  “That means going home right now and sobering up.”

  “I’m on my way.” This included a hot shower, a fresh

  set of clothes, suit and tie. I prayed these were all at the

  ready, otherwise an all-night Laundromat would soon be

  graced by my clothes’ aromatic presence.

  “Call me before you leave tomorrow,” Wallace said.

  “And I mean that. Call me. I don’t want to come into the

  office tomorrow and see you asleep and drooling on your

  keyboard. You have a home. Go there.”

  I said nothing. Telling Wallace that my apartment didn’t

  feel like a home was neither his business nor concern. All

  he cared about, and rightfully so, was this story. I’d been

  granted leeway the past few years most young reporters

  never got. Many in my position would have been shown

  the door, either landing in the safety net of a small-town

  paper or spewing angry blogs about the dumbing-down of

  American media. I had no desire to do either, and preferred

  to help from the inside. Big-time news was in my blood.

  A while ago Jack O’Donnell had told me that to truly

  become a legend in your field, you had to lead a life with

  one purpose. You had to devote yourself to your calling.

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  Jason Pinter

  Splitting your passions between that and other pursuits—

  hobbies, family—would only make each endeavor suffer.

  The past few months I’d whittled down my extracurriculars to nothing. All for stories like this.

  “You’ll hear from me first thing tomorrow morning,” I

  said. “And, Wallace?”

  “Yeah, kid?”

  “Thanks for the opportunity.”

  “Don’t thank me, thank Shelly Linwood. I’m not the

  only one counting on you to do the right thing.”

  The call ended. I stood there in the warm night, the

  sounds of the bar and the street fading away. This night

  held nothing else for me, but tomorrow presented a golden

  opportunity. So many circumstances surrounding Daniel

  Linwood’s disappearance were a mystery, and because

  the boy himself couldn’t remember, I wondered how

  much, if any of it, would ever come to light. I wondered

  if never getting that closure would bother the Linwood

  family. Or if they were just thankful to have their son

  back.

  I put the phone in my pocket, went to the corner and

  hailed a cab back to my apartment. For a moment I

  wondered if, like Daniel Linwood, I was returning to a

  place both strangely familiar, yet terribly foreign at the

  same time.

  3

  The Lincoln Town Car pulled up at 10:00 a.m. on the dot,

  shiny and black and idling in front of my apartment as

  inconspicuous as a black rhinoceros. I’d heeded Wallace’s

  advice and gone home, sleeping in my own bed for the first

  time in weeks. I stripped the sheets, used a few clean

  towels in their place, and got my winks under an old

  sleeping bag.

  I woke up at eight-thirty, figured it’d be plenty of time,

  but it took forty-five minutes to clean the crud out of my

  coffee machine and brew a new pot, so by the time the

  driver buzzed my cell phone I was tucking my shirt in,

  making sure my suit jacket was devoid of any lint. Unfortunately I missed the open fly until we’d merged off the

  West Side Highway onto I-87 North. My driver was a

  Greek fellow named Stavros. Stavros was big, bald and

  had a pair of snake-eyed dice tattooed on the back of his

  neck that just peeked out over the headrest.

  I sipped my Thermos of coffee, grimaced and doublechecked my briefcase. Pens, paper, tape recorder, business

  cards, digital camera in case I had a chance to take some

  shots of the neighborhood surrounding the Linwood residence in Hobbs County. Perhaps we’d use them in the

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  Jason Pinter

  article, give the reader a sense of local color recorded words

  could not.

  Hobbs County was located about thirty miles north of

  New York City, nestled in between Tarrytown and the

  snuggly, wealthy confines of Chappaqua. Just a few years

  ago Hobbs County was an ingrown toenail between the

  two other towns, but recently a tremendous influx of state

  funds and pricey renovations had things moving in the

  right direction. Good thing, too, because statistically,

  Hobbs County had crime rates that would have made

  Detroit and Baltimore shake their heads.

  According to the FBI Report of Offenses Known to

  Law Enforcement, the year before Daniel Linwood disappeared, Tarrytown, with 11,466 residents, had zero

  reported murders, zero rapes, one case of arson (a seventeen-year-old girl setting fire to her ex-boyfriend’s baseball

  card collection), zero kidnappings and ten car thefts. Each

  of these numbers were microscopic compared to the

  national average.

  That same year, Hobbs County, with 10,372 residents,

  had sixteen reported murders, five rapes, nine cases of

  arson, twenty-two car thefts and two kidnappings. If

  Hobbs County had the population of New York City, it

  would be on pace for more than twelve thousand murders

  a year.

  Hobbs County was literally killing itself.

  One of those two reported kidnappings was Daniel

  Linwood. The other was a nine-year-old girl whose body

  was later found in a drainage ditch. Since then, those crime

  rates had dropped like a rock. This past year, Hobbs had four

  murders. One rape. Eleven car thefts. And no kidnappings.

  There was still a lot of work to be done, but something had

  lit a fire under Hobbs County. It was righting itself.

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  And then Daniel Linwood reappeared, hopefully speeding the cleansing process even more.

  The rebuilding had naturally raised property values,

  and between the drop in crime and influx of new money,

  Hobbs County found itself awash with wealthy carpetbaggers interested in the refurbished schools, reseeded

  parks and investment opportunities. Five years ago you

  could have bought a three-bedroom house for less than

  two hundred and fifty thousand dollars. Today, if you

  scoured the real estate pages and found one for less

  than three quarters of a million, you’d be an idiot not to

  snap it up.

  While there was no getting back Daniel Linwood’s lost

  years, his family could at least be thankful he had come

  back to a town far safer than the one he’d left.

  “Only been to Hobbs once,” Stavros piped in from the

  front seat. “Few years ago. Pro football player goi
ng to

  visit his aunt just diagnosed with Hodgkins. She lived in

  the same house for thirty years, give or take. Guy told me

  he’d tried to buy her a new place, get her out of the life,

  but you know how old folks are. Rather die at the roots

  than reach for a vine. You know, even if the client’s only

  booked for a one-way trip, I’ll usually offer to hang around

  in case they decide they need a ride back to wherever.

  Hobbs, though, man, you could offer me double the rate

  and I would have jetted faster than one of them Kenyan

  marathon runners. Not the kind of place you want to be

  sitting in a car alone at night. Or anytime, really.”

  I eyed those dice tattoos. Wondered what it took to

  scare a man who wasn’t afraid to get ink shot into his

  neck with a needle.

  “I hear the town is different now,” I said. “A lot’s

  changed in five years.”

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  Jason Pinter

  “New coat of paint, same cracked wood underneath,”

  Stavros said. “You don’t start from the ground up, poison’s

  still gonna be there. Anyway, you’re booked for a return

  trip, right? I’m sure you’ll be fine, long as you’re finished

  before the sun goes down. The dealers and hoods come out

  thinking you’re the po-lice.”

  “I really think you’re wrong,” I said, my voice trying

  to convince me more than Stavros. “Anyway, when we get

  there, I don’t think you’ll have to worry too much about

  being alone. If I know the press, they’ll be camped out at

  this house like ants at a picnic.”

  “That so? Where exactly you headed?”

  “Interview,” I said. “A kid.”

  “Not that kid who got kidnapped. Daniel something,

  right?”

  “Daniel Linwood, yeah.”

  “Hot damn, I’ve been reading about that! Awful stuff.

  I mean great he came back, but I got a six-year-old and I’d

  just about tear the earth apart if she ever went missing.

  Those poor parents. Can’t even imagine.”

  “Better you don’t.”

  We merged onto 287, then headed north on Route 9,

  driving past a wide white billboard announcing our entry

  into the town limits.

  Hobbs County was covered in lush green foliage, the

  summer sun shining golden through the thick leaves. Trees

  bracketed sleepy homes, supported by elegant marble

  columns. I lowered the window and could hear running

  water from a nearby stream. This was NewYork, but not the