Page 67 of The Boy Who Cried Bear
Now I have his full attention.
“Oh,” I say, “I should probably mention that I wrote the letter.”
He freezes. “What?”
I poke the letter. “I made this up, including Dana’s so-called real name. You wanted a confession, so I wrote one for you.”
Louie rises slowly, plants his hands on the desk, and leans toward me. Across the room, Dalton rocks forward but stays where he is.
“You made this shit up?” Louie says.
“Yep.” I look him in the eye. “Why did you want her name and story, Louie? Skip the bullshit about giving it to us. We can get it, along with the investigator’s report that confirms it. We don’t need this confession. So why did you need it?”
He blusters about how he was only trying to help.
“Sit down, Louie,” I say.
“I don’t have the kid. I never did. I—”
“Sit.”
It takes Dalton moving forward before Louie obeys.
“I didn’t do anything,” Louie says. “I was only trying to—”
“Stop talking and listen. You are our number-one suspect, and if you don’t shut the fuck up and listen, then I’m going to open that door and let you walk out with everyone knowing we think you took Max.”
Genuine panic lights his eyes, his bluster evaporating. “But I didn’t. I—”
“Are you listening to me? Or do you want me to send you on your way?”
He stops talking.
I take the note. “I wrote exactly what you expected to read, and it still wouldn’t have helped Max, so stop telling me that was your plan. See this?” I point to part of the note. “You specifically demanded her real name, because that’s what you need to track down her story in the outside world.”
It takes him a moment to screw up his face in exaggerated confusion. “Why would I want to track her down?”
“Not Dana. Her story. What she saw. Who’s after her. Because that’s the golden egg.”
He tries to find words but only makes choked noises.
I push the note toward him. “Get her name. Get her story. Then, once you’re back home, find whoever is targeting her and offer to sell whatever information you have.”
He stares, and then gives a belated “What?”
“You might not have kidnapped Max, but you did something nearly as heinous. You took advantage of a child’s disappearance. You pretended to want to help, but all you wanted was useful information. You got what you could from us, but what you really needed had to come from Dana herself. So you pretended to have Max to extort information you could sell to someone who wants her dead. You were willing to trade her life—and the lives of her children—for a bit of cash.”
His mouth works, but he can’t seem to find words.
“Oh, sorry,” I say. “A lot of cash. You wouldn’t do it for a few grand. It’s only the big money that’s worth sacrificing lives for, isn’t it? You were willing to see innocent people murdered—”
“She’s not innocent. She can’t be.”
I stare at him until sweat trickles down his face.
“So that would have made it okay,” I say. “If Dana has done something, it would be okay to sell information that could have led to the death of her and her two children.”
“They wouldn’t hurt the children.”
