Gone, Baby, Gone (Kenzie & Gennaro #4)(110)

“Patrick?”

“Huh?”

“You still with us?”

“Not with a criminal record, you can’t.”

Angie touched my arm. “What did you just say?”

I hadn’t realized I’d said it aloud. “You can’t get a job driving for UPS if you have a criminal record.”

Ryerson blinked and gave me a look like he thought he should produce a thermometer, see if I had a fever. “What the hell are you talking about?”

I glanced back at Kneeland Street, then looked at Ryerson, then Angie. “That first day he was in our office, Lionel said he’d taken a bust—a hard bust—once, before he cleaned his act up.”

“So?” Angie said.

“So if there was a bust, there should be a record of it. And if there’s a record of it, how’d he get a job working for UPS?”

Ryerson said, “I don’t see—”

“Ssshh.” Angie held up a hand, looked in my eyes. “You think Lionel…”

I shifted in my seat, pushed my cold coffee away. “Who had access to Helene’s apartment? Who could open the door with a key? Who would Amanda readily leave with, no fuss, no noise?”

“But he came to us.”

“No,” I said. “His wife did. He kept saying, ‘Thanks for listening to us, blah, blah, blah.’ Getting ready to brush us off. It was Beatrice who put the pressure on. What did she say when she was in our office? ‘No one wanted me to come here. Not Helene, not my husband.’ It was Beatrice who kept this thing alive. And Lionel—he loves his sister, okay. But is he blind? He’s not stupid. So how does he not know about Helene’s association with Cheese? How does he not know she has a drug problem? He acted surprised when he heard she did some coke, for Christ’s sake. I talk to my own sister once a week, see her only once a year, but I’d know if she had a drug problem. She’s my sister.”

“What you said about the criminal record,” Ryerson said. “How’s that play into it?”

“Let’s say it was Broussard who busted him, had him on a hook. Lionel owed him. Who knows?”

“But why would Lionel kidnap his own niece?”

I thought about it, closed my eyes until I could see Lionel standing in front of me. That hound-dog face and sad eyes, those shoulders that seemed to have the weight of a metropolis pushing down on them, the pained decency in his voice—the voice of a man who truly didn’t understand why people did all the shitty, neglectful things they did. I heard the volcanic rage in his voice when he’d blown up at Helene in the kitchen that morning we’d confronted her about knowing Cheese, the hint of hatred in that volume. He’d told us he believed that his sister loved her child, was good for her. But what if he’d lied? What if he believed the opposite? What if he thought less of his sister’s parenting skills than his own wife did? But he, the child of alcoholics and bad parents himself, had learned how to mask things, to cover his rage, would have had to in order to build himself into the kind of citizen, the kind of father, he’d become.

“What if,” I said aloud, “Amanda McCready wasn’t abducted by someone who wanted to exploit her or abuse her or ransom her?” I met Ryerson’s slightly skeptical eyes, then Angie’s curious, excited ones. “What if Amanda McCready was abducted for her own good?”

Ryerson spoke slowly, carefully. “You think the uncle stole the child…”

I nodded. “To save the child.”





31





“Lionel’s gone,” Beatrice said.

“Gone?” I said. “Where?”

“North Carolina,” she said. She stepped back from the door. “Please, come in.”

We followed her into the living room. Her son, Matt, looked up as we came in. He lay on his stomach in the middle of the floor, drawing on a pad of paper with a variety of pens, pencils, and crayons. He was a good-looking kid, with the smallest hint of his father’s hound-dog sag in his jaw but none of the weight on his shoulders. He’d inherited his eyes from his mother, and the sapphire blazed under his pitch-black eyebrows and the wavy hair atop his head.

“Hi, Patrick. Hi, Angie.” He looked up with benign curiosity at Neal Ryerson.

“Hey.” Ryerson squatted by him. “I’m Neal. What’s your name?”

Matt shook Ryerson’s hand without hesitation, looked in his eyes with the openness of a child who’s been taught to respect adults but not fear them.

“Matt,” he said. “Matt McCready.”

“Pleased to meet you, Matt. Whatcha drawing there?”

Matt turned the pad so we could all see it. Stick figures of various colors appeared to climb all over a car three times their height and as long as a commercial airliner.

“Pretty good.” Ryerson raised his eyebrows. “What is it?”

“Guys trying to ride in a car,” Matt said.

“Why can’t they get in?” I asked.

“It’s locked,” Matt said, as if the answer explained everything.

“But they want that car,” Ryerson said. “Huh?”

Matt nodded. “’Cause it—”

“Because, Matthew,” Beatrice said.