Bloodline(25)

I’m running through a mental list when I spot him out of the corner of my eye.

The hook-nosed man who mugged me in Minneapolis.





CHAPTER 16

I scream, a short, involuntary sound.

He turns quickly, for only a second, but it’s enough.

It’s him.

It’s not possible, but it’s true. He’s here. Here in Lilydale.

My blood pumps hot, and it’s telling me to run home to safety.

My brain is louder, however, and it’s trying to reason with me. It’s simply not possible that my mugger is somehow here in Lilydale. This is somebody who merely resembles him. And if I don’t face the look-alike now and verify it’s not my attacker, I will be forever glancing over my shoulder.

I jog toward him.

“Hey!” I say, my voice raised.

He’s walking away, but at my yell, he turns again.

He’s less than a block away, his porkpie hat shading his face, but I feel certain he’s the criminal who stole my wallet. Who hit me. Who knifed me. The main reason, even though I will never admit it to Deck, that I am now living in Lilydale.

My mugger—for that’s who he must be—darts into the nearest alley.

As I follow him, my heart shuddering against my rib cage, it occurs to me that our roles have switched: I am hunting him. But there’s no time for me to analyze what’s happening. I need to catch him, to see his face clearly. I reach the alley. It’s empty except for a large trash bin. There’s an opening on the other end, but it’s half a block away.

He can’t have made it all the way through.

Is he hiding behind the garbage bin?

I’m about to dash in and see when the hand comes down on my shoulder.

I scream, nearly jumping out of my clothes. I spin to see who it is.

Dennis Roth, the willowy Lilydale Gazette editor, Dennis Daddy Longlegs dispatching the news, is standing there. He’s visibly trembling. For a surreal moment, I wonder if he knows about my mugging.

“You shouldn’t be running when you’re pregnant.”

I open my mouth. Before I can plead my case, he holds up a hand.

“No time for that. I have the story of the century,” he says. He leans over, hands on knees, to catch his breath. He must have raced here. “Paulie Aandeg’s been found. After twenty-four years, the boy in the sailor suit has come home.”





PART II





CHAPTER 17

Dennis fills me in on the urgent walk—he refuses to let me jog—to the Gazette offices. I have to agree it’s quite the story. A child disappears without a trace in 1944, wearing a sweet little sailor suit (Miss Colivan was correct about that), and shows up twenty-four years later. Only Amory Bauer has met with him so far, but he’s convinced the new arrival might be Paulie. The man, who goes by Kris Jefferson, refused to tell Chief Bauer what happened all those years ago, but he said he’ll talk to someone at the paper when he’s ready.

The familiar thrumming of standing on the cusp of a big break crackles like fireworks across my skin. I don’t want to outright ask for the story for fear of being turned down, so I just keep asking questions.

Dennis opens the office and leads me to the newspaper morgue—I was right that the second door led to it, wrong about how provincial it would be. He lets me pull up the stories on microfiche, reading over my shoulder as I search. His breath smells like onions.

I discover only two articles. The first:

Lad Disappears in Lilydale

September 6, 1944

The tiny desk in the Lilydale Elementary classroom still has the paper sack six-year-old Paulie Aandeg brought to the first day of classes sitting on it. He was excited to start kindergarten. He packed crayons, a tablet, a pencil and a bag of potato chips. He took the potato chips when he was excused for lunch at 11:30 and left the rest. He hasn’t been seen since.

Wearing a hand-me-down sailor suit and new white shoes, Paulie attended his first day of school with considerable enthusiasm. He was walked there by his mother, Mrs. Virginia Aandeg, who sources say gave Paulie’s teacher instructions to keep Paulie until she picked him up. At 11:30, the teacher excused all the kindergartners for lunch. The distraught teacher, who asked that her name not be used, remembers Paulie stepping outside with a registration card in one pocket and the chips in another, but “he was a quiet child. I don’t recall him speaking all morning, and so when I didn’t see him return after lunchtime, I assumed he left with his mother.”

Paulie’s disappearance has rocked the tiny village.

Led by Grover Tucker, Stearns County sheriff out of Saint Cloud, and with the help of local police officer Amory Bauer, an extensive, coordinated manhunt took place, but not one clue was uncovered. “We won’t stop looking until we’ve found the child,” Officer Bauer said.

Lilydale businesses have closed today to help the search. Farmers have been urged to check their barns and cisterns, and housewives have even looked inside their furnaces for the missing child. Saint Cloud-based civilian air patrols have scoured the countryside, and men have walked hand-in-hand down the shallow Crow River on the edge of town, searching for any sign of Paulie.

Two schoolgirls claim to have seen Paulie walking toward the river shortly after lunch. Mrs. Robert Cunningham, a local resident, said she saw a child walking along a ditch carrying a piece of paper around 1:00 or 1:30 p.m.