Читать книгу Torn - Chris Jordan, Chris Jordan - Страница 18

The bank teller thinks I’m nuts. It’s there in her eyes. Which means she’s heard about me. The crazy mom from Humble, the one whose son got blown up in the school. The one who won’t accept reality, who keeps handing out pictures to strangers. The one folks will cross the street to avoid, if at all possible.

“How would you like this, Mrs. Corbin?”

“A bank check would be fine,” I tell her.

She doesn’t want to make eye contact. As if looking me in the eye might somehow be dangerous. As if crazy is catching. “Who should I make it out to?” she asks warily.

“Make it out to ‘cash.’”

“Cash? That, uh, that means anyone can endorse it.”

“I know what it means.”

She’s troubled by the transaction and goes off to confer with her supervisor. Who glances over at me and shrugs. I’m no lip reader, but it’s pretty obvious what she says to the nervous teller: It’s her money.

Two minutes later I’m out of there, check in my purse. Which leaves me plenty of time for the twenty-three-mile drive back home. Plenty of time for me to think about what I’m going to say to the man after giving him the check.

Wondering how much time ten thousand dollars will buy me.

He’s expected, having called not ten minutes ago, looking for directions. But still the doorbell makes me jump. Everything makes me jump these days—cars backfiring, thunderclaps, loud whistles, whatever.

A glance in the peephole confirms my visitor’s identity. Randall Shane, retired Special Agent of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, now working as a civilian consultant, if you can get him. Type missing child hopeless case into Google and up pops Mr. Shane. Legendary in law enforcement circles, supposedly. Gets results when no one else can. A blurry head shot on a Web site gave me a vague idea of what he looks like, but nothing has prepared me for the man on my front porch pressing the bell.

He’s huge. Lean but large.

When I crack open the door he introduces himself and then says, “You must be Haley Corbin. If I’ve got the right place.”

“You’ve got the right place…. Come in.”

He ducks his head as he comes through the doorway. The farmhouse ceilings are low and he doesn’t clear the old fir beams by all that much.

“Good thing you’ve got a crew cut,” I tell him. “Another inch you’d be bumping your head.”

Startled, he looks up and touches a big hand to a beam. “Nah,” he says gently, “plenty of room. You’ve got seven feet at least. That leaves me five or six inches. All the room in the world.”

“It might be better if you sit down,” I suggest, indicating a pumpkin-pine leaf table in the kitchen. “Coffee?”

“Coffee would be great.”

I get busy with the coffeemaker. “Was it a long drive?”

“Not so bad,” he says, carefully settling onto a spindle-back chair as if he’s afraid it might collapse under him.

“Must have been six hours, if you came up through Binghamton.”

“Seven,” he says, touching a hand to a neatly trimmed Vandyke that’s delicately streaked with gray. “I stopped for lunch. More like a late breakfast, actually. They have a nice diner there, in Binghamton. Danny’s Diner, on Main Street. It’s an old Sterling.”

“Excuse me?”

“Sorry. A Sterling diner,” he explains. “Manufactured by the J. B. Judkins Company. I’m kind of a diner fan. They evolved from lunch wagons. I like lunch wagons, too, but there’s not many left.”

“Here you are. Cream or milk?”

“Just black,” he says. “That way I know what I’m getting.”

We smile at each other as he sips the coffee. He’s trying to smile as though it’s every day he drives all the way across the state of New York to chat with a crazy mom. I’m trying to smile as though I’m not actually deranged and therefore he won’t be wasting his time.

“Very good,” he says, tipping the cup.

“I’ve got the check I promised you,” I tell him, fumbling in my purse.

He sets the cup down. “This is a courtesy call,” he says firmly. “No retainer necessary. I thought I made that clear.”

“Take it,” I insist, more or less blurting it out. “Ten thousand dollars if you’ll listen to my story. Really listen.”

I place the envelope on the table between us. He leans forward, ignoring the envelope. “No charge for listening, Mrs. Corbin.”

I take a deep breath. “Just so you know, money isn’t a problem. My husband had a million-dollar rider on his life insurance. Plus what the airline paid after the crash. All of it’s available, if that’s what it takes.”

“We’re not there yet,” he says.

There’s a distinct vibe coming off the big man. I get the impression that money is never Shane’s prime concern.

“You read the media reports?” I ask anxiously. “Clicked on the links I sent you?”

He nods. His eyes are an unusual shade of pale blue. Clear and cool and liquid, the color of melting icicles. According to the brief bio I found on the Web, he’s in his late forties. But broad of shoulder, long of limb, he looks remarkably fit for any age, and I’m pretty sure my first impression was correct: he’s a little shy, physically, maybe overly conscious of his size. A big guy who would by nature prefer to blend in, but can’t. A gentle giant type.

Let’s hope not too gentle. I need a warrior, someone who will stand up and fight against overwhelming odds.

“So,” I ask, “what do you think?”

Now he’s the one to take a deep breath. “It all seems pretty straightforward. Your son was killed in an explosion. His remains have been identified. A DNA analysis from a reputable lab confirms the finding.”

I nod carefully, concentrate on keeping my cool. Knowing that a meltdown will send him packing, taking with him all hope of ever seeing my little boy again. “That’s what it says in the reports. That there’s no doubt.”

“But you have doubts.”

“More than doubts,” I say, adamantly. “Certainties.”

“Sudden death is always difficult for the survivors,” he points out.

“When my husband died, I accepted.”

“The death of a child is different. It goes against all the rules.”

“They never found his body. Did you read the coroner’s report? All they found were a few bits of tissue, a few drops of blood.”

“Bombs are the worst, Mrs. Corbin. Sometimes there’s almost nothing left.”

I know all about nothing left.

“When my husband’s plane crashed it hit the ground at three hundred miles an hour,” I tell him. “That’s what they estimated. Collision with a small plane sheared off one whole wing of an Embraer 190. Spinning down at three hundred miles an hour, can you imagine? The fuel tanks exploded on impact. The wreckage was strewn for half a mile. They had to identify his body through dental records.”

He nods, grim-faced. “That’s pretty standard.”

“Dental records,” I repeat. “So even after a plane falls two miles and explodes into the earth there were still teeth to identify. An intact lower jaw. That’s why they went with the dental records.”

“What a terrible thing,” he says softly, as if he has some idea what it must have been like, making that ID. “I’m so sorry.”

“Teeth, a jaw,” I say, listing the gruesome details. “Enough to identify, enough to convince me. But there was nothing left of Noah. Nothing. Not a hand, not a finger, not a tooth. Not a fingernail, for that matter. The coroner said he must have been right on top of the C-4 when it detonated. He’d never seen anything like it, not in thirty years as a coroner and medical examiner. They found enough of Roland Penny for positive identification. Same for Chief Gannett. But not one identifiable body part that would be linked to Noah. Until the DNA results came back.”

He sighs, grimacing behind his short, salt-and-pepper beard. “DNA analysis is definitive, Mrs. Corbin. The odds are a million to one.”

“More like a billion. Unless they’ve been faked.”

He gives me a searching look. Not dismissively, but as if he really wants to know. “Why would the results be faked?”

“To make it look like my son has been killed, when in fact he’s been abducted.”

To give him credit, Mr. Shane does not break eye contact. He’s not obviously repulsed by what most have judged magical thinking. The grieving mom can’t cope with losing her little boy and so her poor addled brain creates scenarios wherein her child somehow remains alive, against all odds, against all reason.

“Go on,” he says, not needing to add convince me. That’s a given. That’s why he has traveled all those miles. To hear me out. To be convinced he isn’t wasting his time.

“It has to do with my husband,” I begin. “Who he was and what he told me a year or so before he died.”

Shane sits up a little straighter. I already had his attention but now he’s focused. “Go on.”

“Jed lived under an alias since before we married. His real name was Arthur Jedediah Conklin. ‘Corbin’ wasn’t much of a change but it was enough to hide his real identity.”

“And why did your husband feel the need to change his identity?”

“Because his father is Arthur D. Conklin.”

It takes a moment for the name to register, but when it does his eyebrows twitch. “The Arthur D. Conklin?”

I nod.

“Well, that changes everything.”