“It’s not a claim!” Luke said, sitting forward in Mr. Jackson’s easy chair. “It’s the truth!”
“Bad word choice, maybe. Let’s have your story, Luke.”
Luke considered this, then said, “Will you do something for me first?”
“If I can,” Tim said.
“Look outside. See if that other guy is still there.”
“Norbert Hollister?” Tim smiled. “I told him to scram. By now he’s probably down at the Go-Mart, buying lottery tickets. He’s convinced he’s going to be South Carolina’s next millionaire.”
“Just check.”
Tim looked at Wendy, who shrugged and said, “I’ll do it.”
She came back a minute later, frowning. “As a matter of fact, he’s sitting in a rocking chair over at the depot. Reading a magazine.”
“I think he’s an uncle,” Luke said in a low voice. “I had uncles in Richmond and Wilmington. Maybe in Sturbridge, too. I never knew I had so many uncles.” He laughed. It was a metallic sound.
Tim got up and went to the door just in time to see Norbert Hollister rise and amble away in the direction of his going-to-seed motel. He didn’t look back. Tim returned to Luke and Wendy.
“He’s gone, son.”
“Maybe to call them,” Luke said. He poked at his empty Coke can. “I won’t let them take me back. I thought I was going to die there.”
“Where?” Tim asked.
“The Institute.”
“Start at the beginning and tell us everything,” Wendy said.
Luke did.
11
When he was finished—it took almost half an hour, and Luke consumed a second Coke during the telling—there was a moment of silence. Then Tim said, very quietly, “It’s not possible. Just to begin with, that many abductions would raise red flags.”
Wendy shook her head at that. “You were a cop. You should know better. There was a study a few years back that said over half a million kids go missing each year in the United States. Pretty staggering figure, wouldn’t you say?”
“I know the numbers are high, there were almost five hundred missing kids reported in Sarasota County the last year I was on the cops there, but the majority—the great majority—are kids who come back on their own.” Tim was thinking of Robert and Roland Bilson, the twins he’d spotted on their way to the Dunning Agricultural Fair in the wee hours of the morning.
“That still leaves thousands,” she said. “Tens of thousands.”
“Agreed, but how many of those disappear leaving murdered parents behind?”
“No idea. I doubt if anyone’s done a study.” She turned her attention back to Luke, who had been following their conversation with his eyes, as if watching a tennis match. His hand was in his pocket, touching the thumb drive as if it were a lucky rabbit’s foot.
“Sometimes,” he said, “they probably make it look like accidents.”
Tim had a sudden vision of this boy living with Orphan Annie in her tent, the two of them listening to that late-night kook of hers on the radio. Talking about the conspiracy. Talking about they.
“You say you cut your earlobe off because there was a tracking device in it,” Wendy said. “Is that really the truth, Luke?”
“Yes.”
Wendy didn’t seem to know where to take it from there. The expression she looked at Tim said Over to you.
Tim picked up Luke’s empty Coke can and dropped it into the take-out bag, which now contained nothing but wrappers and chicken bones. “You’re talking about a secret installation running a secret program on domestic soil, one that stretches back God knows how many years. Once upon a time that might have been possible, I suppose—theoretically—but not in the age of the computer. The government’s biggest secrets get dumped onto the Internet by this rogue outfit called—”
“WikiLeaks, I know about WikiLeaks.” Luke sounded impatient. “I know how hard it is to keep secrets, and I know how crazy this sounds. On the other hand, the Germans had concentration camps during World War II where they managed to kill seven million Jews. Also gypsies and gays.”
“But the people around those camps knew what was going on,” Wendy said. She tried to take his hand.
Luke took it back. “And I’d bet a million bucks the people in Dennison River Bend, that’s the closest town, know something’s going on. Something bad. Not what, because they don’t want to know. Why would they? It keeps them going, and besides, who’d believe it, anyway? You’ve still got people today who don’t believe the Germans killed all those Jews, as far as that goes. It’s called denial.”
Yes, Tim thought, the boy is bright. His cover story for