The Stranger
Page 55

“Great. I’m forwarding you a Facebook link. Four people are in it. See if you can get me addresses on any of them and find out anything else you can about the picture—where it was taken, who else is in it, anything.”
“Priority?”
“Top. I need the info yesterday.”
“Got it. Hey, we did a killer version of ‘The Night Chicago Died’ last night. Not a dry eye in the house.”
“You can’t imagine how much this means to me right now,” Adam said.
“Wow, this is that important?”
“More.”
“On it.”
Adam hung up and got out of bed. He woke up the boys at seven and took a long, hot shower. It felt good. He got dressed and checked the time. The boys should be downstairs now.
“Ryan? Thomas?”
It was Thomas who replied. “Yeah, yeah, we’re up.”
Adam’s mobile phone buzzed. It was Gribbel. “Hello?”
“We got lucky.”
“How’s that?”
“That link you sent. It came from the profile page of a woman named Gabrielle Dunbar.”
“Right, what about it?”
“She doesn’t live in Revere anymore. She moved back home.”
“Fair Lawn?”
“You got it.”
Fair Lawn was only a half hour from Cedarfield.
“I just texted you her address.”
“Thanks, Andy.”
“No problem. You going to see her this morning?”
“Yes.”
“Let me know if you need me.”
“Thanks.”
Adam hung up. He started down the corridor when he heard a noise coming from Ryan’s bedroom. Adam moved closer to the shut door and placed his ear against it. Through the wood, he could hear his son’s muffled sobs. The sound was like shattered glass rolling across his heart. Adam rapped his knuckles on the door, braced himself, and turned the knob.
Ryan was sitting up in bed sobbing like a little boy, which, in a sense, he still was. Adam stayed in the doorway. The pain inside him, fueled by helplessness, grew.
“Ryan?”
Tears made everyone look smaller and frailer and so damn young. Ryan’s chest hitched, but he still managed to say, “I miss Mommy.”
“I know you do, pal.”
For a second, a bolt of anger boomed through him—anger at Corinne for running away, for not staying in touch, for faking that damn pregnancy, for stealing the money, for all of it. Forget what she had done to Adam. That wasn’t an issue. But hurting the boys like this . . . that would be far harder to forgive.
“Why isn’t she answering my texts?” Ryan cried. “Why isn’t she home with us?”
He was about to offer up more platitudes about her being busy and needing time and all that. But the platitudes were lies. The platitudes just made it worse. So this time, Adam settled for the truth.
“I don’t know.”
That answer seemed oddly to soothe Ryan a little. The sobs didn’t suddenly stop, but they did begin to decelerate toward something more akin to sniffles. Adam came over and sat on the bed with Ryan. He was going to put his arm around his son, but somehow that felt like the wrong move. So he just sat beside him and let him know he was there. It seemed enough.
A moment later, Thomas came to the doorway. All three of them were together now—“my boys,” as Corinne always called them, joking that Adam was just her biggest child. They stayed in the room, unmoving, and Adam realized something simple but somehow profound: Corinne loved her life. She loved her family. She loved the world she had fought so hard to create. She loved living in this town where she’d started out, in this neighborhood she cherished, in this home she shared with her boys.
So what had gone wrong?
All three of them heard the car door slam. Ryan’s head snapped toward the window. Adam instinctively went into protective mode, getting to the window fast and positioning his body in such a way as to block his boys’ view. The block didn’t last long. The two boys came up to him, each on one side, and looked down. No one cried out. No one gasped. No one said a word.
It was a police car.
One of the officers was Len Gilman, which made no sense because the side of the vehicle read ESSEX COUNTY POLICE. Len worked for the town of Cedarfield.
Coming out of the driver’s side was a county officer in full uniform.
Ryan said, “Dad?”
Corinne is dead.
It was a flash, no more than that. But wasn’t that the obvious answer here? Your wife goes missing. She doesn’t communicate with you or even her children. Now two cops, one a family friend, one from the county, show up at his doorstep with grim faces. And really, wasn’t that the logical assumption all along—that Corinne was dead and lying in a ditch somewhere and these grim-faced men were there to deliver that news and then he’d have to pick up the pieces and carry on and grieve and be brave for the boys?
He turned and started down the stairs. The boys fell in line behind him, Thomas first, then Ryan. It was almost as though there had been an unspoken adhesion, a bond formed by the three survivors to stand together and take the oncoming blow. By the time Len Gilman rang the bell, Adam was already turning the knob to open the door.
Len startled back and blinked.
“Adam?”
Adam stood there, the door half-opened. Len looked behind him and spotted the boys.
“I thought they’d be at practice by now.”
“They were just about to leave,” Adam said.
“Okay, maybe you could let them go and then we could—”
“What’s going on?”
“It’s better if we talk at the precinct.” Then, clearly for the benefit of the boys, Len added, “Everything is fine, boys. We just have some questions.”
Len met Adam’s eye. Adam was having none of it. If the news was bad—if it was going to devastate them—it would be just as devastating if they heard now or after practice.
“Does this have something to do with Corinne?” Adam asked.
“No, I don’t think so.”
“Don’t think?”
“Please, Adam.” He could hear the plea in Len’s voice now. “Get the boys off to practice and come with us.”
Chapter 40
Kuntz spent the night in his son’s hospital room, semi-sleeping on a chair that half folded out into what no one would really call a bed. When the nurse saw him trying to stretch his stiff back in the morning, she said, “Not very comfortable, is it?”