I Will Find You(88)

“You okay?” Rachel asks.

“Peachy.”

Rachel has her burner. She calls mine. I answer. We do a quick test where she speaks and I listen. Now I’ll be able to hear her conversation with Irene or Tom or whoever answers the door, if indeed someone is home. Primitive but hopefully effective.

“I left the keys in the car,” she says. “If something goes wrong, just take off.”

“Got it. I have the gun too. If you’re caught, just tell the cops I forced you.”

She frowns at me. “Yeah no.”

I burrow back down and wait. We don’t have headphones of any kind, so I press the phone against my ear. It feels weird hiding in the backseat of a car, but that’s the least of my issues.

Through the phone, I hear Rachel’s footsteps and then the faint echo of the doorbell.

A few seconds pass. Then I hear Rachel say softly, “Someone’s coming.”

The door opens and I hear a woman’s voice say, “Rachel?”

“Hey, Irene.”

“What are you doing here?”

I don’t like that tone. No doubt in my mind: She knows about the APB. I wonder how Rachel is going to play it.

“Do you know those pictures you showed me from the amusement park?”

Irene is confused: “What?”

“Were they digital?”

“Yes. Wait, that’s why you’re here?”

“I took a photo of one with my camera.”

“I saw that.”

“I’m wondering whether I could see the others again. Or the files.”

Silence. It’s not a silence I like.

“Listen,” Irene says, “can you just wait here and give me a second?”

I know what I’m about to do is stupid, but I’m working off instinct again. Instinct is overrated. Going with your gut is the lazy man’s way. It’s an excuse to not think or consider or do the heavy lifting needed in good decision-making.

But I have no time for that.

When I roll out of the car, the gun is already in my hand.

I sprint toward the front door. Even from this distance I can see Irene’s eyes go wide in surprise. She freezes. That’s good for me. My worry is that she will step back into the house and close the door. But I have the gun raised.

Rachel says, “David?” but she doesn’t have time for the “what the hell are you doing?” before I reach Irene and say in a half yell/half whisper, “Don’t move.”

“Oh my God, please don’t hurt me!”

Rachel shoots me a look. I shoot her one back saying I had no choice.

“Look, Irene,” I say. “I just don’t want you to call the police. I won’t hurt you.”

But her hands are up and her eyes are growing wider.

“We just need to see the photos,” I say to her. I lower the gun and take out the photograph in my pocket. “Do you see that boy? The one in the background.”

She is too terrified to take her eyes off me.

“Look,” I say a little too loudly. “Please?”

Rachel says, “Let’s move this inside, okay?”

We do. Irene only has eyes for the gun. I feel bad about this. No matter how this turns out, she will never be the same. She will know fear. She will lose sleep. She lost something today, and I took it from her the moment I took out the gun. That’s what any kind of threat or violence does to a person. It stays with them. For good.

“I’m not going to hurt you,” I say, but I’m babbling now. “I’ve spent the last five years in jail for killing my son. I didn’t do it. That’s him in the picture. That’s why I escaped. That’s why Rachel and I are here. We are trying to find my boy. Please help us.”

She doesn’t believe me. Or maybe she doesn’t care. Instinct is working here for her too. The most primal instinct—survival.

“He’s telling the truth,” Rachel adds.

Again I don’t think it matters.

“What do you want from me?” Irene asks in a panicked voice.

“Just the pictures,” I say. “That’s all.”

Three minutes later, we are in Irene’s kitchen. There are dozens of photos stuck to the refrigerator of Irene and Tom and the two boys. She sits at the kitchen block and with a shaking hand, she opens her laptop. I notice the way she keeps glancing at the refrigerator. I don’t know if she’s finding strength in her family or reminding me that she has one.

“It’s going to be fine,” I tell Irene. “I promise.”

That doesn’t seem like much of a comfort to her. I feel the pang again, not for myself, but for what I’m doing to her. She’s an innocent in all this. I try to find some consolation in the fact that when I’m vindicated, whatever hint of PTSD that I’m leaving her with today may vanish.

“What do you want me to do?” Irene asks.

Rachel tries to put a comforting hand on her shoulder. Irene shrugs it off.

“Just bring up the photographs from that day, please,” I say.

Irene mistypes, probably due to nerves. I have tucked the gun away so that she can’t see it anymore, but it remains the proverbial elephant in the room. Eventually she clicks on a folder and a bunch of thumbnails start crisscrossing the screen.