Page 136 of The Confession Artist
“You know Allison, the dispatcher? Her sister died from a neurodegenerative disease, Huntington’s chorea, when her nephew, who she called ... what did she call him? I’ve never even met him. She never brought him by the station or anything. When I asked her why, she said,Would you bring a family member around these goons?”
“So?” Greene asks.
“It was Tom, that’s what she called him. She said she’d raised him since he was seven, just a year older than Sam is now. Okay, yes, it was Tom, not Leon.”
I sigh loudly, feeling silly but relieved, but before I even fully exhale, more details flash through my mind. Leon’s driver’s license.
Thomas Leon Spencer.
But he went by Leon. I jolt straight up in my seat. Greene is pulling out onto the street. I refuse to take my eyes off Sam and Allison standing in Jess’s window.
“Pull back in,” I say, keeping my eyes glued on them. “Allison is Leon’s aunt.”
“Leon?” says Greene. “Who’s Leon?”
Chapter 52
Allison inches up close behind Sam standing at the window.
“Stop,” I yell to Greene.
Allison taps Sam’s shoulder and says something to him. Sam keeps waving at me to complete our ritual. “Oh my God.” My voice rises. “It’s her.”
Greene puts on the brakes.
Allison sees us stop, puts her coffee down, and grabs Sam by the arm.Grabshim. Sam tries to twist away, but she yanks him to her and drags him away from the window.
Out of sight.
I leap out of the car as fast as I can. I pull my gun from its holster as I run back into the house, into the kitchen, but the back door is open.
“Sam,” I yell. “Sam! Allison!”
Water is running in Jess’s bathroom. She’s showering, safe. I run into the backyard and scan. To my right, more backyards. To my left is a farmer’s field. Beyond it, a wooded forest.
Where Allison yanks Sam, his legs resisting her efforts, into the woods.
I run.
Sam twists away from her grip. He breaks free and darts off to the right into the trees. Allison halts for a moment and yells for him, then continues running straight ahead.
Greene catches me as I enter the forest. I take a second to look around to see if I can spot Allison before I go in the direction I saw Sam dash. Allison is nowhere in sight. My fear for Sam skyrockets. I turn this way and that, scanning the woods. The forest is a sneaky cohort, every pine tree scheming to hide him from me, some areas thicker than others, the more open spaces profuse with prickly bushes grabbing at my ankles. I think of what they’re doing to his little legs.
“What’s going on?” Greene says, out of breath.
“Sam got away from her. I think he went that way.” I point to the right. More pines. I look down for footprints, but the ground is too thick with brush. “I’ll go after him there. You keep straight. Find her. And, Greene, if you see Sam before I do, donotlet anything happen to that little boy.”
I head to the right into a copse of dense lodgepole pines, looking for Sam’s green dinosaur pajamas.
I don’t want to call out loudly and broadcast my whereabouts to Allison, so I whisper his name. “Sam, Sam, where are you?”
I exit the dense trees and come into an opening. More bushes on my left, pines and cottonwoods in front of me and to my right. Pale light illuminates the forest. My pulse pounds like a hammer. Skinny and thick dark trunks mingle among the lighter papery ones of the cottonwoods.
If something happens to Sam? I can’t let myself go there. I have to find him. “Sam,” I call louder. Each step I take elicits a crunch from the dry fall underbrush.
I think I hear something off to my side in the tall bushes. I go toward the sound slowly, holding my gun up, my arm cocked when I hear the click of a gun’s safety unlatching behind me.
“Move and you die,” she says. “Lose the gun.”
