Page 14 of At Midnight Comes the Cry
For a second, Russ felt a wash of relief. After spending his entire adult life as a cop, his mind always, always went to the worst possible conclusion for any set of facts. The idea Kevin might have taken off camping instead of fatally tangling with some bad guy—that was an unexpected win.
Until he remembered the kid had been out of touch for two months. Hadn’t checked in with friends, family, or his job. He thought of all the disasters that could befall a person alone in the wilderness.
From the look on Sean’s face, he was running through that list as well.
God. Russ imagined himself in the man’s shoes, not knowing if his son was dead or alive. What had always been something that happened to other people was now standing next to him. He took a breath. “Okay, let’s take this one step at a time. Is Kevin an experienced outdoorsman?”
Sean nodded. “We had five boys and not a lot of money in the early years. Camping was what we did. All the boys had their own kit—sleeping bag, backpack—you know.”
“So hiking, then. Not just driving the family van to a campsite.”
“Not after they got older. They’re all good in the woods.”
“And Kevin had his own gear? Was it suitable for cold-weather camping?”
“Oh, yeah. I’ve a construction company, you know. Summer’s the busy season, so we did a lot of our outings in the fall. Once or twice in the winter, if the snow had held off.” Sean nodded again. “He knows how to be out in this. That’s good news.”
“It is. The next question is, where do you think he might have gone off to?”
“The Park would be my first guess. That’s where we always went.” For people living in their area, the Park meant just one thing: the Adirondack Mountains. “Although…” Sean looked out the windows at the dark waters of the Seneca. “He’s just as close to Canada, here. He might have driven up to Alexandria Bay and crossed over to Ontario.”
“He has a passport?” Sean gave him a look. “Sorry, dumb question. Have you spoken to any of his friends back home?”
“We did, yeah, after Hadley called us to see if we had heard from the boy.”
“Back in November.”
“Yeah, about a month ago. No one knew anything, and you know, they’re nice lads. If one of ’em thought Kevin might be in trouble, he would of told us.”
Russ picked up the stack of mail he’d saved. He might be able to find something in all that paper, but the really useful recent information wouldn’t be there. Passport control, or charges from a mom-and-pop store in Old Forge, or, even better, cell tower call records. For that, he needed the help of someone who was still a law enforcement officer.
Sean was giving him a look he was all too familiar with.You can fix this, right?Russ hoped like hell he could. He tapped the mail. “If Officer Knox can get a warrant, we can use these and whatever more recent info is available to narrow down Kevin’s location. In the meantime, you should contact the state forest rangers and the Environmental Conservation Police with a photo and any other identifying information you have.”
“We’ve got some vacation pictures that show the boy’s tent and his backpack.”
“That would be perfect. He doesn’t have to be officially declared missing. As long as he went camping and hasn’t checked in, the rangers and game wardens will be on the lookout for him.” And maybe they would find him. They were good at what they did. Dozens ofhikers and hunters went missing every year in the Park’s nine thousand square miles of dense woods, rugged mountains, deep lakes, and bad weather, and almost all of them were found.
But not all were found alive.
6.
THURSDAY, DECEMBER 4
Hadley Knox’s car was in the rectory driveway behind Russ’s. When Clare entered the kitchen, the smell of red meat and garlic rolled off the oven, a Russ special. Her preference was for mostly vegetarian dishes, but she wasn’t going to complain as long as she didn’t have to cook. “Hi!” she called. “I’m home!”
“We’re in here!” Russ’s voice was muffled. She followed it through the living room, which still had zero Christmas decorations up, and she’d better start thinking about that, and into their never-used dining room. For her first two years in the rectory, she’d used the space as storage, because, she had discovered, she had more invitations to eat out than she could deal with. Through sheer dread of her mother seeing stacks of cardboard boxes instead of a dining set, she’d cleaned the room out and furnished it with a secondhand table and chairs before the first parental visit to meet Russ. They still never used the space for eating, because at some point in the past one of her predecessors had walled up the door between the dining room and the kitchen behind it, meaning any food had to circulate through the long living room before arriving. Clare wasn’t wild about the idea of cold dishes warming or hot dishes cooling, and shereallydidn’t like the prospect of having to pop up and trot the long way around any time someone had forgotten the salt and pepper.
Russ seemed to have turned the place into a conference room; he was sitting with Hadley Knox, papers spread across the table as if it were tax time. Ethan was sitting on his ExerSaucer, gumming a zwieback. He looked… sticky.
“Hey, darlin’.” Russ had his glasses off so he could read. Hadley, engrossed in something on her laptop, wiggled her fingers vaguely.
“Hey.” She crossed around the end of the table to drop a kiss on his head. “How did the trip to Baldwinsville go?”
He seesawed his hand.
“What are you two working on? The finding Kevin project?”
Russ grunted. “I wouldn’t describe it as a project, exactly.”
