“We’ll return it as soon as we have copies made,” Pendleton said.
“Keep it as long as you have to.” The truth was, I hated to part with it. The empty place on the mantel reinforced my hollowness. “Anything else—anything at all—just ask.”
What they need more than anything, I thought, is for God to answer my prayers.
3
Throughout, the phone had rung frequently. I’d been vaguely aware that a policeman had answered it. Now he handed me a list of who’d called, mostly reporters wanting an interview—TV, radio. What had happened would be all over the state by evening.
“Jesus, Kate’s parents.” Hurrying, I left Webber and Pendleton in the living room. In the kitchen, my bandaged hand shook when I pressed numbers on the telephone.
“Hello?” an elderly man said.
“Ray …” I could hardly make my voice work. “Sit down. I’m afraid I’ve got bad news.”
It made me sick to have to tell them, to hear their lives change in a minute. Neither of them was in good health. Even so, they immediately wanted to drive the three hundred miles from Durango through the mountains to Denver. I had a hard time convincing them to stay home. After all, what were they going to accomplish in Denver? Kate’s father was breathing so fast that he sounded like he was going to have a heart attack.
“Stay put,” I said. “All we can do now is wait.” I had a terrible mental image of Kate’s father rushing to get to Denver, losing control of his car, and plummeting down a gorge. “You can wait just as easily at home. I’ll let you know the instant I learn anything.”
Setting down the phone, I took a deep breath, then noticed Webber and Pendleton at the entrance to the kitchen.
“What?” I asked.
“We just got a call from the Wyoming state police,” Webber said.
I braced myself.
“A woman from Casper’s been reported missing. Saturday evening, she was en route from visiting her sister in Sheridan, which is about a hundred and fifty miles north of where she lives.”
“You think my brother carjacked her?”
“The timing fits. Just after dark, she would have approached the rest stop where the Wyoming state police found your wife’s Volvo. If the woman had to use the rest room …”
Inwardly, I flinched as I imagined Petey coming at the woman and how terrified she must have been.
“She was driving a 1994 Chevy Caprice,” Pendleton said. “Apart from the fact that she was driving alone, her abductor probably singled her out because that type of car has a large trunk. He kept heading north. The Wyoming police gave the license number to the police in Montana, who found the Caprice at a rest stop on Interstate Ninety near Billings.”
“Were my wife and son …”
“With the Caprice? No.”
Something about Pendleton’s tone made me suspicious. “What about the woman who owned it?”
He didn’t answer.
“Tell me.”
Pendleton glanced at Webber, who nodded as if giving permission.
“Her body was in the trunk.”
“Dear God.” I didn’t want to know, and yet I couldn’t stop from asking, “What did Petey do to her?”
“Tied her hands and covered her mouth with duct tape. She”—Pendleton’s voice dropped—“had asthma. She choked to death.”
Thinking about the woman’s desperate struggle to breathe, I could barely concentrate as Webber explained that Petey could have driven the Caprice from Casper, Wyoming, to Billings, Montana, that same night. He’d presumably carjacked another vehicle at the Billings rest stop. As the driver got out of the car to go to the bathroom, Petey would have lunged from the shadows.
I imagined how horrifying it would have been for Kate and Jason, pressed next to the dying woman in the dark, the air foul, feeling her thrash, hearing her muffled choking sounds, her frenzied movements, her strangled gasps slowing, getting weaker, stopping.
“It’s never going to end,” I managed to say.
“No, we could be close to boxing him in,” Pendleton said. “You predicted right. He was headed to Montana. Probably back to Butte. Billings is on the interstate that leads there. The local police don’t have any criminal record for someone named Peter Denning. But they’researching for a man who matches this guy’s description, especially that scar on his chin. The driver of the most recent vehicle he carjacked will soon have somebody report him or her missing. Once the Butte police get the make and license number of the vehicle, they can narrow their search. Meanwhile, they’re checking motels and any other places they can think of where your brother might be able to hide your wife and son. Butte’s not a big city. Believe me, if he shows himself, he’ll be spotted.” “But what if Petey senses the danger and leaves?” “We thought of that. The Montana state police have unmarked cars along the interstate, watching for any white male in his thirties who’s driving alone. As soon as the FBI processes his fingerprints, we’ll have a better idea of who we’re dealing with. The way he operates, he’s had practice. He’s probably got a criminal record, in which case the feds will come up with a recent mug shot we can distribute.”
4
One of the callers on the list the policeman had handed me was from my office, so I had to phone and again explain what had happened. Saying it out loud reinforced the nightmare. Several times, I heard the buzz of call waiting. Twice, I switched to the incoming call in case it had something to do with Kate and Jason, but both times it was a journalist, and after that, I didn’t pay attention to call waiting.
The moment I hung up, the phone rang again. We had caller ID, but most times I’d found it was useless, a lot of the calls listed as UNKNOWN CALLER or, in this case, BLOCKED NUMBER. But I answered anyhow, and of course, it was another journalist; after that, I let the policeman answer the phone.
When the lab crew finally left, Webber, Pendleton, and everybody else going with them, the house had never felt so empty. My footsteps echoed off the hardwood floors as I went upstairs. Fingerprint powder smudged furniture, and clothes remained on the bedroom floors. I sat on Jason’s bed, inhaling his boy smell. I went into the master bedroom, picked up one of Kate’s blouses, and pressed it to my face.
I have no idea how long I remained there. The phone rang again. Ignoring it, I went into the bathroom, took off my borrowed clothes, and tried to take a bath without getting my bandaged hands and my stitched left forearm wet. Dirt and dried blood floated from me. Steam rose, but instead of the water’s heat, what I felt was spreading pain as the effect of the pills the doctor had given me began to wear off. The extent of my bruises was appalling. I did my best to shave, then put on fresh clothes, but I begrudged their comfort, telling myself that I didn’t deserve it, given the hell that Kate and Jason would be going through.
The doorbell rang. Limping, I needed extra time to get downstairs. Meanwhile, the bell rang again and then again. If this is a reporter … , I thought. When I opened the door, I saw a straight—backed man in a dark suit, with polished shoes and short, neat, slightly graying hair. His lean face was all business.
“Mr. Denning?”
Behind him, out on the street, a camera crew started forward.
“I’m not giving interviews.” I stepped back to close the door.
“No, you don’t understand. I’m FBI Special Agent John Gader.” The man showed his ID. “I kept phoning, but no one answered, so I took a chance and drove over.”
“I was … I didn’t … Please, come in.”
As the reporters neared the house, I shut the door and locked it.
Gader opened his briefcase and took out several small electronic devices. “These are voice—activated tape recorders.” He linked one to the living room phone. “Is there a phone in the kitchen?”
He installed a recorder there also. “We’ll deal with the rest of the house later. I’ve already obtained a court order to have your phone tapped and all calls traced, but it never hurts to have a backup system. If the man wh
o took your wife and son phones to demand a ransom, we’ll have a recording of it here, as well as through our intercept at the phone company.”
“There won’t be a ransom demand.”
“You never know.”
“I do know. My brother doesn’t want money. He wants my wife and my son.”
“Your brother?” Gader sounded as if he knew only the general parameters of the case.
So, yet again, I explained what had happened. Gader pulled out a pocket—size tape recorder and took notes as a backup. He assured me that the Bureau would give my case its full attention. After he left, it was as if he’d never been present.
Emptiness again enveloped me.
This can’t have happened, I thought, straining to convince myself. I’m having a nightmare. I’ll wake up soon. Kate and Jason will be back. Everything’ll be perfect, the way it was.
But when I woke in the night, pain racking my body, I reached next to me and was confronted by the emptiness on Kate’s side of the bed.
Nothing had changed.
As the days stretched on, the Butte police failed to catch Petey or find any sign of Kate and Jason. The Montana state troopers finally stopped watching the interstate.
5
“He isn’t your brother.”
“What?”
“The man who took your wife and son isn’t Peter Denning,” Gader said as he stood at my front door. “His name’s Lester Dant.”
I felt as if I’d been shoved. “You mean Petey used the name Lester Dant as an alias?”
“No. The other way around.”
“For God’s sake, what are you talking about?”
“The prints the crime—scene crew found in your house belong to a man named Lester Dant.” Gader stepped inside. “Here’s the file we have on him. Background. Social Security number. Criminal record.”
Bewildered, I sat in the living room and stared at the photograph that came with the documents. Complete with chipped tooth and scarred chin, Petey’s face confronted me from a mug shot that had been taken in Butte.
But the file identified the man as Lester Dant. He’d been born in Brockton, Indiana, a year before Petey was born. Over the years, he’d been arrested for, but never convicted of, auto theft, armed robbery, and manslaughter.
“Dant did time for extortion, drug dealing, and rape,” Gader said. “It’s a miracle he didn’t kill you all in your sleep. See where the Butte police have a record on him? Lester Dant got in a bar fight and put a man in the emergency ward. He was released from jail a week before the CBS Sunday Morning broadcast you were on.”
“But …” My sense of unreality intensified so much that the living room seemed to tilt. “How did he know so much about Petey?”
“They must have crossed paths,” Gader said. “Maybe your brother saw the CBS Sunday Morning show and talked about it with some people he knew, including Dant. Later, in private, Dant got more specifics from him and decided to pay you a visit.”
I raised my voice in dismay. “My brother hung around with people like Dant?”
“Maybe your brother had as rough a life as Dant claimed.”
“But why in God’s name didn’t Petey come to see me himself?”
Gader stared at me, and I tensed with the realization that Dant might have killed Petey to prevent him from interfering.
“It doesn’t make sense,” I told Gader. “If Dant’s this vicious, why would he have packed clothes for my son? Why would he have taken Jason along instead of …” The words caught in my throat.
“Killing him?” Gader looked uncomfortable. “I’m not sure that’s a topic you want to get into.”
“Let me decide that. Answer me.”
Gader exhaled slowly. “It’s probable that Dant took your son to put pressure on your wife. By threatening to hurt Jason, he could force your wife to submit to him.”
I felt as if I’d been struck in the face. “No.”
“I’m sorry, Mr. Denning. You asked me to be candid.”
“Petey … Lester Dant …”
“Fingerprints don’t lie.”
“There’s got to be a mistake. What Petey told me about when we were kids and how he was abducted—”
“What Dant told you. He probably kept buying your brother drinks to keep him talking, supplying details.”
“But it all felt so real. I’m sure he was telling the truth.”
“Listen, some of these con men are good—enough actors, they could have won Academy Awards if they’d gone straight.”
“It’s just that …”
“Everything was a lie. The name of the town in West Virginia where he told you he was held prisoner.”
“Redemption.”
“There’s no such place.”
“What?”
“Other parts of his story don’t hold together, either. He told you he got the scar on his chin last summer when he fell off a ladder on a roofing project in Colorado Springs.”
“That’s right.”
“Well, our agents showed Dant’s photograph to all the roofing contractors in that area. Nobody recognized him. The same with the construction contractors. If somebody had gotten a two—inch gash on his face, they’d remember it, they say. It would have required stitches, but the hospitals in the area don’t have any record of a construction worker coming in last summer with that kind of injury. However, the Colorado Springs police have a security—camera tape of a man who looks like Dant beating a clerk in a liquor store robbery. A police car chased his vehicle into the mountains. He may have gotten the injury to his face when his car skidded off a curve and tumbled into a draw. There was blood but no driver when officers climbed down to examine the wreckage.”
Bitterness twisted my voice. “Yeah, Petey has a habit of vanishing.”
“You mean Dant.”
“Sure… . Dant.”
“We’ll get him,” Gader said. “The money he took from you won’t last long. Eventually he’ll have to steal again. One mistake. That’s all he has to make, and we’ll get him.”
“Eventually.” The word that Gader had used stuck in my throat. I tried not to think about what was happening to Kate and Jason.
6
So a man who was my brother or who wasn’t my brother but who was pretending to be him had abducted my family and torn my world apart. He’d covered his trail by fooling me and the police into thinking he was going to Butte, Montana. Then he’d vanished off the face of the earth. No other motorists were reported missing for that time period, which meant that the police didn’t have a license number and a description of a carjacked vehicle to focus their search. There were numerous reports of stolen cars. Hundreds in Montana, Wyoming, and Colorado. Thousands nationwide. But when any of these were located, Petey (I still couldn’t bring myself to call him Dant) was never linked to them. Perhaps he’d switched license plates with another vehicle. The owner of the other vehicle might have taken quite a while to notice that the plates had been switched, by which time Petey might have stolen another car or switched plates again. Or perhaps Petey had taken the money he got for the things he stole from my house to buy an old car and then showed a fake ID to register the car under an alias that the police didn’t know he had. Perhaps. Could have. Might have.
The local TV stations repeated the story. The networks picked it up, especially CBS, which included excerpts from the Sunday Morning segment that Kate, Jason, and I had been in. They emphasized the sick twist that a man who claimed to be my long—lost brother had vanished again, this time with my family. I got calls from men who claimed to have taken Kate and Jason. In graphic detail, they described the torture they inflicted. The police traced the calls, but nothing was learned, except that some people love to aggravate the suffering of others. Several of the callers were charged with obstructing the investigation, but none ever went to jail.
Despair and lack of sleep gave me headaches. I went through the motions of working, but my staff ran the business. I spent most of my time in a t
rance. As the search lost momentum, it became obvious that unless Petey—again I tried to substitute Dant’s name, but I couldn’t manage to do so—unless Petey stumbled into a policeman, he was never going to be found, especially if he grew a beard to cover the scar on his chin so his mug shot would no longer resemble him.
Blurred photos of Kate and Jason appeared on milk cartons and in mailers. Have you seen this woman and this boy? the caption read. But if I couldn’t recognize the indistinct faces, I couldn’t imagine anyone else being able to. I’d never paid attention to the faces on those milk cartons and those mailers when it was someone else’s wife or child who was missing. How could I hope that anyone would pay attention when it was my wife and child who were missing?
Friends were supportive initially: phone calls of encouragement, invitations to dinner. But after a while, many wearied of my despair. Unable to come up with fresh expressions of sympathy, they kept their distance.
A few remained loyal, though, and it was from my next—door neighbor, Phil Barrow, that I learned how things could get worse. I was listlessly raking dead leaves in my front yard, vaguely aware that autumn had once been my favorite time of year, frost in the air, wood smoke, the rattle of dead leaves, and now it meant nothing, when I happened to look up and see Phil hug his sweater tighter to his chest, then step off the sidewalk and approach me.
“How are you doing, Brad?”
Kate had once told me that no matter how shitty either of us felt, we should always answer “Never better.”
Phil’s shoulders moved up and down as if from a bitter chuckle. “Yeah, I can see that. You’ve been raking that same pile of leaves for about an hour.”