Torn

I open my purse and hand him a picture of Noah. A cheerful school photo taken at the beginning of the semester. I’ve printed up hundreds, handed them out in every village, town, and city within a five-hour driving radius, my name and cell number on back. Which so far has proved about as useful as those pictures of lost kids you see on milk cartons.

He looks at the photo thoughtfully and carries it with him, out the door.

I watch from the kitchen window, willing him to believe. It must be my heightened mothering instincts kicking in, because despite my frustration and anger—I saw the doubt in his eyes!—my first thought is that he’s not appropriately dressed for the weather. No coat or hat, and a thin flannel shirt that barely cuts the wind. And we get a wicked wind in the North Country at this time of year. The dark days of December, when the sun rises late and begins to fade like a dimmed-out lightbulb by midafternoon. You need insulated boots, not deck shoes. You need to cover your ears. At the very least you need an insulated vest.

At least most of us do. The big man’s breath steams as he talks into his little phone, but other than that he doesn’t seem aware of the cold air. Not so much as a shiver. Nearly noon, the warmest part of the day, and it’s barely thirty-one degrees.

He’s aware I’m watching and raises a friendly hand, smiles at me while he talks.

Yeah, I got a sad case here. Crazy as a bedbug. Thinks there’s been some big conspiracy because she can’t find enough of her kid to bury.

Some variation of that. He won’t be the first law enforcement guy to try and let me down easy. Usually they suggest I ‘see someone.’ Meaning get yourself fitted for a straitjacket, honey. Take some pills, zone yourself out. One of the New York State Police investigators who came around at my insistence put it bluntly: Sorry, ma’am, but blown-up isn’t the same as missing. Missing means there’s a chance the victim is still alive, however remote. Blown-up with positive DNA match means you need to talk to God, not me.

I did talk to God, you bet I did, but God didn’t respond, being too busy directing typhoons, earthquakes, epidemics, and ethnic cleansing. So currently I’m no longer speaking to Supreme Beings, and I refuse to take comfort in pretty notions like heaven. Not when I know in my soul that my little boy is alive somewhere. Alive and missing me almost as much as I miss him.

That’s what I believe.

After pocketing his phone, Randall Shane circumnavigates the house. Eating up yards with his long legs, swinging his long arms. Ignoring the dusting of snow on the partially frozen ground. Might as well be walking a warm beach in the sunshine instead of this cold, soggy reality. As he comes by each window he smiles and waves as if to say, look at me, I’m stretching my legs, just like I said.

Trying to figure out how to make his excuses, beat a hasty retreat.

I have the front door open as he comes around the house for the third time.

“Enough,” I say, and he enters, somewhat sheepish.

“The air is good up here. Gives you a real clean feeling in the lungs.”

“I’m not crazy or delusional,” I announce, marching around the leaf table the way he marched around my house. Hugging myself to force calm as I make my argument. “I know children can die. It may go against nature but it happens all the time. Disease, accidents, even murder. It happens. But it didn’t happen to Noah. It just didn’t.”

“Mind if I get some water?”

“Help yourself,” I say, gesturing at the glass-fronted cupboard.

He pours a glass from the tap. Drinks it, every drop. “Good water, too. I can see why folks live up here, this close to the North Pole.”

“Say what you’ve got to say,” I urge him. “I can’t stand this. Not knowing if you’ll help.”

He leans against the sink. “Help is a big word,” he says, very carefully. “I’m going to look into something but it may not help. You should know that.”

“Look into what?”

From his hesitation I pick up that he’s not sure whether or not he should be specific, to safeguard my feelings. Finally he nods to himself and goes, “The lab. I made a call. Confirmed that the DNA lab the State Police used has an excellent reputation. State-of-the-art facility, supposedly. Very unlikely they’ve been compromised or somehow got it wrong.”

“But possible,” I insist. “If Noah is alive they could plant a sample of his blood, right?”

Shane looks skeptical. “We’ll see. If I’m satisfied the lab work is correct, and your son was killed in the explosion, that’s the end of it.”

“It will never be the end.”

“Let me ask you this, Mrs. Corbin. If your son was hit by a car crossing the street, would you blame the grandfather or his cult followers? Bad things happen sometimes, regardless of wealth or connections.”

“You don’t have to tell me that! I know that! But if Noah was hit by a car his body would still be here!” I point out, aware that my voice has gone high and loud. “Noah wasn’t killed in that explosion. Nobody believes me, but I know he wasn’t.”

“Okay,” he says.

“You want to know how I know?”

He nods.

“Because of what Jed said. Months before the plane went down he said if he ever disappeared, ever vanished without an explanation, it would be because of his father. Because he’d been taken.”

“Your late husband knew your son was in danger?” he asks, looking startled.

“No. No. Jed meant if he disappeared. Jed himself. Then he laughed, because it was such a crazy idea, that he’d be abducted because of his own father. That the Rulers would want him, of all people—a man who disinherited his own father, cut all ties. What would they want with him? But it wasn’t crazy, was it? Jed died and they took Noah instead—Arthur Conklin’s only living descendent. And they did it in a way that means nobody will look for him. Nobody but me. I know it sounds like a fantastic conspiracy, sending a madman into a school to blow it up so they can steal a child. But it happened. They did it.”

Oh yes, I’m aware of how it must all seem, the paranoid rant of a mother driven mad by loss. But give him credit: Randall Shane didn’t flash me that look. The look I’d seen on the faces of so many cops and detectives. The look that said, best get away, leave this one to her misery.

Instead he nods and says, “I’ll look into it, Mrs. Corbin. Whatever I find, I won’t lie to you. Good, bad, or terrible, I won’t lie to you. That’s all I can promise.”

3. Letter Of Proof

A few minutes later he’s driving away in his black Lincoln Town Car. A big boat of a vehicle that tacks slowly out of my long, unpaved driveway, bumping carefully over the frost heaves before finally turning onto the main road and vanishing around a long curve.

Anybody else, I’d figure he’s gone for good. But Shane looked me in the eye and promised that whatever he decided he would return and tell me in person.

Which gives me something to cling to. He said it would take a day or so to check out the lab. So I’ve got one more day’s worth of hope. Hope that he’ll find something, maybe just a hint that maybe the crazy mom is onto something.

He did say an odd thing before folding himself into the big car. “You sure your husband told you the truth? That Arthur Conklin really was his father?”

My first reaction, knowing Jed, was to blurt, “Why would he lie?”

The big guy shrugged. “People have their reasons. Rich, famous people, it’s not exactly unusual when someone makes a claim to be related. They may even believe it. It happened with Howard Hughes, James Brown, JFK. Lots of famous and powerful people. I’ll bet, you go back far enough, it happened with the pharaohs.”

“Jed didn’t want to be related to that horrible man. He was trying to get away.”

“Have you ever been contacted by Conklin or his organization? Any of his so-called Rulers?”

Shivering in the cold, I shake my head.

“Something to think about,” he says before powering up the window.

Hours later that’s all I can think about.

Midnight finds me in the attic, going through boxes. Not in a frenzy, nothing like that. I’m being very cool and methodical. Some rational, robotic part of me has taken over and begun conducting a search for evidence that Jedediah hadn’t invented his connection to the father he sometimes called Monster Man. Monster Man not because Jed had ever been physically abused, but because his father had such monstrous ideas about human behavior.

There will be no recent correspondence, no original birth certificate, of that I’m almost certain. Jed burned all of that, his little hoard of what he called “sick memorabilia,” before we moved upstate. Eventually he obtained a legal passport—he had to have one for his job—but the required birth certificate had been altered from Conklin to Corbin. And that document he had forged before we met, while he was still attending Rutgers, already planning for a complete break with his cold and domineering father and the devoted followers who called themselves Rulers. According to Jed, no contact had been attempted in years. Not from his father or any of the Rulers. Certainly not since Noah was born. So it’s not as if we had saved Christmas cards from dear old Dad.

Jed had wanted a clean break and part of it was giving up the things that linked him to his past. But he hadn’t thrown everything away, because shortly after he proposed, after confessing to be the son of Arthur Conklin, the Arthur Conklin, Jed had read me a letter the legendary man had written to him years before, when Jed was twelve years old. A letter that pretty much explained what happened between them, although the actual, final break didn’t come until several years later, after Jed’s mother died and his father remarried.

The letter certainly existed at the time, of this I am certain. I have a clear image of it in my mind. It was creased, well-worn, resided in a tattered, folded envelope. For a long time Jed carried it in his wallet, as a reminder of why he’d made the break. That much I recall, Jed flapping it around as he read—come to think of it, he had it pretty much memorized—offering it as proof positive that cutting himself off from his famous father was something he had to do. Within the last few years he’d stopped carrying the letter. I know this because I bought him a nice ostrich skin wallet for his last birthday and watched as he transferred all his cards and cash, and I recall thinking to myself, he’s finally put away the letter, that’s good.

Unless he threw it away. But somehow I don’t think so. Somehow I think that if it ever came up with Noah, why he’d never met his grandfather, Jed would have wanted to show him, just as he’d shown me.

One o’clock in the morning comes and goes. Amazing how much stuff we’ve stowed in the attic. Boxes of canceled checks, bills, credit card receipts, tax forms. Tons of my own family junk, from broken dolls to obituary notices for both my parents, plus all the condolence cards, neatly sorted and bound with elastic bands. Which had, no surprise, disintegrated in the summer attic heat. The elastic bands, I mean, not the cards. Hallmark greetings live forever, apparently. Plus every sketch and coloring book Noah had ever made, from day care on.

I spend hours going through Noah’s drawings, reliving kindergarten, first grade, second grade, and so on. Right up to the last, furious drawings he’d made of a black plane falling from the sky. Not crashing—never crashing in Noah’s drawings—but falling like an angry leaf.

Eventually I get back to the task at hand, and just after dawn it finally reveals itself.

Jed had tucked it into one of the graphic novels he collected as a teen. Batman: The Dark Knight Returns. Of course, I should have known. Although he’d carried the letter as an adult, it dated from his boyhood, and so he’d stowed it away with something else that made a big impression on a twelve-year-old, namely Batman.

I hold the thing reverently, this tattered, wrinkled, finger-smudged envelope. Jedediah’s name and address is handwritten, inscribed in a firm hand. The boarding school where he had been sent against his mother’s wishes, and where he had been, for the first several months, miserable and homesick. Enough so that he had written to his imperious father begging to be allowed to come back home. This letter, the letter he saved as a reminder, is in response to that request.

Jedediah—Let me be crystal clear: the answer is no. You are to remain in school. During holidays and summer break I have given instructions that you will be boarded either on campus, or, when that is not possible, elsewhere. In your letter (there are a number of misspellings, by the way) you profess to loving your parents, in particular your mother, but this is merely reflexive and typical of an as-yet-unformed mind. As an expression of self, the bonding instinct we mistakenly call love can be a powerful tool for success, but in its lesser form, as an emotional attachment to others, love tends to weaken self-interest, thereby weakening the whole. Your mother now agrees that her connection to you is only biological, mere reproduction. Therefore she does not ‘love’ you any more than I do. Do not attempt to contact us again until after your 18th birthday, by which time your brain will have matured to its final adult form, and you may finally be ready to evolve into a fully developed Ruler. Until then, any attempts at contact will be rebuffed. Phone calls will not be taken and letters will be returned unread. In the meantime, work on forming your protective carapace. Form your adult self. When in doubt consult the manual. All answers lie within. The Rule of One is the One Rule.

That’s it. No formal closing, no yours truly or sincerely yours. But the handwritten signature is clear enough: A. Conklin. Not Dad or even the more formal Father, because terms of affection and familiarity are signs of mental weakness.

The manual he refers to is his bestselling book The Rule of One. All answers lie within. No ego at work there, eh? Jed almost always referred to the book itself in sarcastic or derogatory terms. The Sociopath’s Bible, or How to Be Selfish and Justify Your Greed in 900 Hard-to-Read Pages. Wisecracks covering the pain. He’d grin and roll his eyes, but deep down he meant it. He’d been a late child and an only child, born after his father had already become a reclusive cult figure, and in any case the old man believed that children were meant to be observed and perhaps, if they exhibited interesting behavior, studied. But not loved. Never loved. That had been made clear.

I have to fold that horrible, inhuman letter away quickly, store it back in the envelope before my tears dissolve the only physical proof I have that Jedediah didn’t lie to me about who he was and what he’d been through.

It’s a relief, really, to find that I can still cry.

Randall Shane might not consider the letter proof of anything because letters can be forged, but I know it’s real because I know where Jed hurt. Exactly where, and how to heal it, too.

You can’t fake a thing like that, not for ten years.

Not for ten seconds.

4. A Few Drops Of Blood

According to Shane’s in-dash GPS navigator, GenData Labs, Inc. is located in one of the new high-tech industrial parks situated a few miles west of the Greater Rochester International Airport. Which means it takes Shane, who habitually drives four miles an hour below the speed limit unless being chased or chasing, a little more than an hour to get there. An hour in which he listens to most of Herbie Hancock’s River album and tries not to think about how he’ll deal with Haley Corbin when he will undoubtedly have to return with the bad news.

For all he knows her little boy really was Arthur Conklin’s grandchild—he’ll run that down later, if need be—but her theory about the kid’s survival is so far-fetched that it strains the imagination. Wealthy, powerful families, however dysfunctional, can still be victims of random tragedy. Terrible events are not necessarily spawned by vast conspiracies, no matter who is involved. For instance, no one fed Governor Nelson Rockefeller’s son to cannibals in New Guinea—he got there all on his own, no conspiracy necessary. Joe Kennedy Jr., scion of the powerful Kennedy clan, risked his own life flying an insanely dangerous mission, like thousands of other brave pilots in WWII, and paid the price. No conspiracy necessary, or likely.

Sometimes a person is just in the wrong place at the wrong time. Breakfasting at Windows on the World on the wrong sunny morning in September. Shopping at the Santa Monica farmer’s market when a befuddled elderly driver steps on the gas instead of the brake, killing nine, injuring more than fifty. On holiday in Phuket when a tsunami rolls in without warning. Being struck and killed by a neighbor’s car. Total accident, just one of those things, even if you are the child of crime boss John Gotti. No conspiracy necessary. Bad luck doesn’t discriminate on account of income level or social connections or, in this case, because the victim may have a family connection to a reclusive, charismatic billionaire with a long history of getting what he wants, no matter the cost or consequence.

Okay, Mrs. Corbin has a point, it is unusual to have so little of the remains recovered after an explosion. Unusual, but by no means unheard of. Off the top of his head Shane can think of several exceptions, including a South Carolina fireworks factory and a gas leak in a Newark tenement, each of which turned several bodies into mere molecules. Forty pounds of C-4 doesn’t have the explosive power of ten thousand pounds of black powder, but it could certainly turn a small boy into blood and tissue, awful as that is to contemplate.

Not that he thinks Haley Corbin is delusional. She’s a nice young woman beset by random tragedy—her husband and now her son—and she’s grasping at straws and unlikely scenarios.

One thing gives him pause. In his years in the Bureau, and especially since he left, Randall Shane has seen enough exceptions to know that rules really can be broken, conspiracies can sometimes happen, and even paranoids sometimes have real reasons to fear. So he will check out GenData and satisfy himself that the lab got it right, that Noah Corbin is no more, and that will be the end of his involvement.

That’s what he keeps telling himself.

The first thing he notices, upon entering the large, one-story facility, is that security looks first-rate. Metal detector, armed guards with the sharp, neatly pressed uniforms. The guards restrict entrance to a single stream of visitors who must apply for a pass at the reception desk before attempting to enter the main building. Not that the place is inundated with visitors—at the moment there’s a FedEx guy with a trolley of small boxes—samples, one assumes—and Shane himself, who smiles and makes small talk as he gets wanded.

“All the lab workers come through here?” he asks amiably.

“Sorry, sir, we can’t discuss security.”

“Nah, sure, course not. Just professional curiosity. I’m guessing there’s another entrance for the employees. Got to be.”

“You’re good to go, sir. Show your pass and ID at Admin, they’ll guide you to your destination.”

The security seems overelaborate, actually, but he assumes it’s all part of the package. Assuring the legal system that forensic samples and items going through GenData are not contaminated or tampered with. No break in the chain of custody.

After another courteous inspection of his time-stamped pass and his driver’s license, Shane is waved into a bright, cheerful office with a view of a snow-dusted field and the woods beyond. He paces along one wall, checking out the framed degrees. Very impressive indeed.

A moment later he’s joined by a bright, cheerful woman who seems to be a perfect match for her office. Knee-length pleated skirt, a plain but elegant blouse, and a crisp cotton lab jacket—a ‘white coat’—that somehow looks good with the ensemble. Short blond hair, pixie cut to compliment small but lovely features and big green eyes not the least obscured by very stylish glasses. Might be forty but looks years younger. All she’s missing is the stethoscope and she could be a surgeon guest-starring on ER, the one who has a brief fling with the handsome but troubled pediatrician.

“Hilly Teeger,” she announces, offering a perfectly manicured hand. “Hilly is for Hildegard, so you know why I go with Hilly. You must be the FBI guy that called ahead.”

“Retired,” he reminds her. “I’m a civilian now.”

“I bet everybody wants to know if you played basketball. Or was it football.”

“It comes up,” he admits. “Neither. Not after high school.”

“Do you mind taking a seat so I don’t get a crick in my neck?”

Shane sits, keeps a pleasant, nonaggressive smile in place, well aware that his size can be intimidating, and that this isn’t a situation where intimidation would be helpful. He can’t shrink, but he can slump in his seat, make sure his voice remains on a light register.

“Pretty impressive bunch of degrees you’ve got there, Dr. Teeger,” he begins, glancing at the wall. “Harvard, McGill, Johns Hopkins.”

She waves away the compliment and leans back in her chair, keeping the desk between them. A desk that appears never to get used. “Hopkins was just a research fellowship. Lucky to get it.”

“So GenData doesn’t fool around. They hire a lab director, they go for the top tier.”

“We do our best,” she responds evenly. “This is just one of thirty-eight labs nationwide. How may we assist?”

Shane gets the distinct impression that somehow she’s taking his temperature. A very careful woman and, from what’s hinted in the wall display, vastly overqualified for her position. According to Google, the GenData corporation owns and runs a chain of testing facilities and does not engage in research. It’s basically a lucrative, high-tech factory, processing samples. Curious that it would employ a person with her qualifications. Research fellowships not being easy to come by at Johns Hopkins, where he’s pretty certain that little is left to luck.

“As I mentioned over the phone, I’m inquiring on behalf of Mrs. Haley Corbin, whose son’s remains were—”

“I know who she is, Mr. Shane,” she says. “The poor woman. What a horrible thing.”

“Then as you know, Mrs. Corbin is concerned that the results might have been wrong. That a mistake could have been made.”

“Hmm,” says Hilly Teeger, not sounding even slightly surprised. “May I ask in what capacity you’re representing Mrs. Corbin? Are you practicing law by any chance?”

“I’m not a lawyer. I’m a retired Special Agent.”

“Ah,” she says airily, as if amused by his response. “Once upon a time most FBI agents had law degrees.”

“Before my time,” Shane says, keeping it affable, non-threatening. “Are you concerned that Mrs. Corbin may be contemplating a lawsuit?”

“It crossed our mind. Our minds—mine and others in the company. GenData, the national entity, not this lab specifically, let me just say there have been lawsuits, okay? And not only in the forensic arena. Someone doesn’t like their BRAC analysis, or how the results are presented, they think that’s a basis for a lawsuit. It’s not, but sometimes they think it is. This is America, after all.”

“BRAC analysis?”

“Accounts for almost thirty percent of our business nationwide. We sequence DNA upon request and determine if there are mutations shown to indicate a genetic propensity for breast and/or ovarian cancer. It’s an early warning system of sorts.”