The Stolen - Jason Pinter [78]
I looked around my apartment. Humble even by
humble's standards. I knew when I moved to New York
that it was one of the most expensive cities in the world,
but nothing prepared me for three-dollar cups of coffee or
twelve-dollar movie tickets. I was paying about sixty
percent of my income to a landlord I never met, who took
longer to fix my air-conditioning than it would have taken
me to install a hot tub into a Buick Skylark. I had no idea
how long it took Jack to make a decent living, but I hoped
it wasn't too long in the waiting.
Twenty-five minutes later my buzzer rang. I peeked
out the window, saw Amanda standing on the street. She
looked up at me, waved. I let her in.
She came upstairs and sat down across the couch from
me. Hands folded under her chin. Her hair fell over her
shoulders, worry lines at her eyes. Though she was still
beautiful, the past few years had aged her slightly. We'd
been through so much together, yet strangely I'd known
this girl for less than two years. I still saw that brown hair
and remembered that on the day we met, despite the circumstances, she had made everything stand still, if only
for a moment. Women like Amanda, who were beautiful
almost in spite of their lack of effort, beautiful without
trying at all, they didn't come along too often.
We sat there in silence. It was the kind of quiet I hadn't
experienced with many other women. I longed for that
sense of confidence. Of comfort.
After a few minutes had passed, Amanda said, "What
do you think the cops will do now?"
"You mean the dedicated men and women of the Hobbs
County PD? Probably nothing. I'd bet my life savings that
220
Jason Pinter
the same guy that mistook me for a barbecue started that
fire, but I can't imagine the cops will work very hard to
prove it. They want to wipe this whole mess under the bed
and be done with it."
"What about Petrovsky?"
"I don't know. They claim they never found a body,
either in the driveway or inside the bonfire. All they did
was file a missing persons report when his secretary said
he didn't show up at work. Petrovsky isn't married, no
children, no real family in the States, so until enough time
has gone by they won't have anything breathing down
their necks. And the press won't be putting pressure on
them if there are no weeping widows or no orphaned
children to plaster on the front page to stir sympathies."
She looked sad. "It's like a crime was never even
committed."
"It wasn't," I said. "Until a body turns up. Or we catch
these assholes."
"If someone is willing to kidnap two children, kill a
doctor, torture you and set a house on fire, I have a feeling
they wouldn't think twice about disposing of a body."
"Tomorrow," I said. "We start from the other end. We've
been looking for what happened to Michelle Oliveira and
Daniel Linwood, who kidnapped them and why. And we
haven't made a lot of headway on that end. So now we
follow this." I took a crumpled piece of paper from my
pocket. Tossed it at Amanda. She uncrumpled it, read it.
"The receipt," she said. I nodded.
"Toyz 4 Fun," I replied. "Let's see who was buying a
young girl some early Christmas presents. And I'll bet
whoever it is has another child. Someone who hasn't been
reported missing yet. Someone who in a few years is
meant to be another Danny Linwood."
27
James Keach walked down the off-white hallway, still
shaking after nearly tripping over an old man and his
walker, just thankful he didn't rip the old guy's IV from
his arm. James's jacket was unzipped, one hand in his
pocket while the other one hung loose. Just like Paulina
had taught him.
Be cool, she said. If anyone asks, you're visiting a
relative. It's okay to be nervous--nobody likes being in a
hospital--but nurses and orderlies are trained to sniff out
anyone who doesn't belong. You belong, right, James?
Just tell yourself you belong and you'll act like it. Just
don't be a pussy, James, and you'll be fine.
He still couldn't get over that word. His friends used it
in casual conversation