The road dipped, rose, dipped again, and that’s when I saw the first fire truck. It was a long hook and ladder coming slowly down toward me. On such a narrow road out in the middle of that nowhere, the red truck looked twice as large as it was. Wherever it was going, it was in no hurry to get there. Up in the open cabin, the driver and another man sat with their helmets off, smiling. The passenger was smoking a cigarette. We made eye contact and he lifted his cigarette hand in a small half-wave. Another two men stood on the ledge at the back of the truck holding on to silver handles. Both of them were in full uniform and one leaned his head against the truck, looking either exhausted or asleep standing up. I kept driving, only faster now. Why was that truck out here? Where had it been so early in the morning? I saw the smoke about a quarter of a mile further down the road. A police car passed going in the other direction.
Smoke tells the whole story. When it’s slow and spirally, aimless, you know a fire has lost its fury or its energy. Without seeing the flame itself, you can be sure its back is broken and will go out soon. If the smoke is hard and fast and billows straight up into the sky, the fire is a bad one, still very alive and dangerous.
A wispy brown pillow of smoke hung unmoving in the pale pink morning sky over the Meiers’ house. Some was still rising off the burned part of the building, but it was more an afterthought than anything else. Two fire trucks and a police car were parked on the road in front. Firemen were curling thick gray hoses back into form and generally wrapping up their work before leaving. Three policemen stood close together, comparing notes. People stood around on the street and the edges of the Meiers’ lawn watching the goings-on. I parked my car back from the mass of other vehicles and got out slowly. The house was unmistakable except for one thing. Standing there looking at it, I realized the bat wing was gone. The vaguely asymmetrical addition I’d seen pictured in the architecture magazine was no longer there. In its place was a black, scorched, collapsed mess of burnt pieces of things scattered across a wide area, standing, piled, smoking: the metal frame of a butterfly chair, a wooden table that had oddly been burned on only one side, leaving it two legs to stand on, books strewn across the ground. Had the bat wing been their library?
“Tar.” An old woman came walking toward me and slowed a few feet away. It was clear she wanted to tell someone what she had heard. “One of the firemen says he thinks it was the tar. They’ve been working on that kooky roof for weeks and he says the gasoline must’ve hit right on the tar for the whole thing to’ve gone up so fast. Who on God’s green earth would want to burn their house down?” She thought her question over and suddenly stared at me with new, suspicious eyes. “You from around here, sir?”
Despite a hole as deep as hell in my heart and growing, I thought fast and managed to come up with “I’m from the newspaper. They sent me out to see what’s going on.”
“You’re from the Spectator? Well, my name is Sandra Hagen, in case you want to use me as your source.”
I could tell she loved being able to use that word. “Thank you, Mrs. Hagen. Listen, I just got here. Could you tell me what happened?”
Clearing her throat, she threw back her head as if the television cameras were already rolling. “Anwen wasn’t around last night. She had to be up in New York for some thing or other. Brendan was here by himself and was the one who saw the guy who did it.”
“Brendan? Excuse me, did you say Brendan?”
“Yes, Brendan Meier, that’s her son. Don’t you know about him? That’s a story too! You ought to write that one up first. Do one of those two-part series on them. It’s a family that’s had more troubles than Job.”
“Brendan was kidnapped as a child.”
“Right. And they searched till they found him. Rumor has it the Meiers spent a couple hundred thousand dollars looking. Then her husband, Greg, died right after they found the boy.”
“I don’t believe it! They found him? I’ve never heard of that happening.”
“It’s amazing. But anyway, Brendan was home last night when this guy threw these bottles full of gas at their house. He heard something outside, which must have been the glass breaking, and ran out. Whoever did it was still standing there on their lawn, watching the whole thing go up. Can you imagine? Nedda Lintschinger, who lives in that house there, the blue one? She woke up at the sound and looked out the window too. Said she saw two men on the lawn and recognized Brendan in his pajamas ‘cause he’s such a tall boy, you know? Their house was on fire but the strangest thing was, these two guys were just standing there talking! Nedda said it looked like they were having a nice chat.
“Suddenly out of nowhere, the other guy starts screaming, ‘What? What? What?’ Just like that, then kicked Brendan you-know-where. The poor boy fell down but the other wouldn’t stop. Stood right there kicking and kicking him. Now that’s what Nedda said. I can only tell you what I heard, but she swears it’s what she told the police, so I guess it’s true.
“Whatever, the crazy man kept on kicking poor Brendan. Then he lit up another bottle and threw it against the house. Finally Nedda ran for the phone to call for help and didn’t see what else happened. All we know is the nut was gone by the time she got back to look. Brendan’s lying on the ground, not moving. She thought for sure he was dead. Thank God he wasn’t. He’s in the hospital with some broken ribs and a cut-up face, but they say he’ll be all right.”
Thanking her for her help and listening while she spelled her name so I’d get it right in print, I left Mrs. Hagen and walked over to the policemen. Luckily I always carry one of those small pocket tape recorders in case an idea comes to me. Introducing myself as a reporter for the Spectator, I asked what had happened and held the recorder in front of them. Their story was basically the same. They’d gotten a call reporting the fire and a possible assault in progress. When they sent officers to investigate, they found a burning house and an unconscious teenage boy on the lawn. No sign of the perpetrator. Fire presumably caused by Molotov cocktails igniting buckets of roofing tar which stood near the building. The Meier boy was in satisfactory condition at the hospital and was going to be all right. No idea who the “perp” was. They kept repeating that word—“perpetrator.” “perp.” Brendan said he’d never seen the other before. It was a boy, however, that much was sure. A teenager dressed like a punk, but the outfit might only have been camouflage, a costume to throw them off the track. Damage to the house was “expensive but not fatal.” The cop who said it liked the line so much he repeated it for his friends. If I waited a day or two, I could interview Brendan at the hospital. But I didn’t need to, because I already knew exactly what had happened.
Lincoln had read my file on the Meiers and in one dreadful implosive flash knew we weren’t his parents, Lily had kidnapped him.
How could he have remained sane? He did. But he came to the restaurant knowing. He flew East knowing the only thing he wanted to do now, in those first hours of his new life, was see his real parents and punish them. Yes, punish them for not finding him. For not looking hard enough; for not having spent all their time and energy and money to get their son back. Whatever they’d done over the years was not enough. Yes, he read the file and saw what tragic, wrecked lives they’d led since his disappearance, but he didn’t care. Whatever they’d suffered, he was the one who’d been kidnapped, violated, forced to live a life away from his natural family.
Nor did it matter that we had given him everything we could; we were kidnappers, criminals, monsters. The same words that raged through my head a decade ago when I discovered Lily’s secret. And still did. And still did.