Текст книги "Six Years"

Автор книги: Harlan Coben

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Текущая страница: 11 (всего у книги 18 страниц)

“She didn’t?” Julie gave a halfhearted shrug. “Maybe you two weren’t as close as you thought.”

“She came with me to campus and she never said one word about him. Why?”

Julie considered that for a moment. “He left us twenty-five years ago, you know. I was five years old. Natalie was nine. I barely remember him.”

“Where did he go?”

“What difference does it make?”

“Please. Where did he go?”

“He ran off with a student, but that didn’t last. My mother . . . She never forgave him. He got remarried and started a new family.”

“Where are they?”

“I don’t know and I don’t care. My mother said he moved out west someplace. That’s all I know. I had no interest.”

“And Natalie?”

“What about her?”

“Did she have an interest in her father?”

“An interest? It wasn’t up to her. He ran off.”

“Did Natalie know where he was?”

“No. But . . . I think he’s the reason Natalie was always so screwed up when it came to men. When we were little, she was convinced that one day Dad would come back and we’d be a family. Even after he remarried. Even after he had other kids. He was no good, Mom said. He was dead to her—and me.”

“But not to Natalie.”

Julie didn’t reply. She seemed lost in a thought.

“What?” I asked.

“My mother is in a home now. Complications due to diabetes. I tried to care for her but . . .” Her voice faded away. “See, Mom never remarried. She never had a life. My father took all that away from her. And yet Natalie still longed for some kind of reconciliation. She still thought, I don’t know, that it wasn’t too late. Natalie was such a dreamer. It’s like finding Dad would prove a point—like then she could meet a man that would never leave and that would prove that Dad didn’t mean to leave us either.”

“Julie?”

“What?”

I made sure that she was looking directly into my eyes. “She met that man.”

Julie looked out her back window, blinked hard. A tear ran down her cheek.

“Where is Natalie?” I asked.

Julie shook her head.

“I won’t leave until you tell me. Please. If she still has no interest in seeing me—”

“Of course she has no interest,” Julie snapped, suddenly angry. “If she had an interest, wouldn’t she have contacted you on her own? You were right before.”

“About what?”

“About being delusional. About wearing those rose-tinted glasses.”

“Then help me take them off,” I said, unfazed. “Once and for all. Help me see the truth.”

I don’t know if my words reached her. I would not be dissuaded. I looked at her and maybe she saw that. Maybe that was why she finally caved.

“After the wedding, Natalie and Todd moved to Denmark,” Julie said. “That was their home, but they traveled a lot. Todd worked as a doctor for a charity. I forget the name of it. Something about beginnings maybe.”

“Fresh Start.”

“Yes, that’s it. So they traveled to poorer countries. Todd would do medical procedures on the needy. Natalie would do her artwork and teach. She loved it. They were happy. Or so I thought.”

“When was the last time you saw her?”

“At the wedding.”

“Wait. You haven’t seen your sister in six years?”

“That’s right. After the wedding, Natalie explained to me that her life with Todd was going to be a glorious journey. She warned me that it might be a long time before I saw her again.”

I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. “And you’ve never gone over and visited? She’s never come back?”

“No. Like I said, she warned me. I get postcards from Denmark. That’s it.”

“How about e-mail or talking on the phone?”

“She doesn’t have either. She thought that modern technology was clouding her thinking and harming her work.”

I made a face. “She told you that?”

“Yes.”

“And you bought it? What if there was an emergency?”

Julie shrugged. “This was the life she wanted.”

“Didn’t you find this arrangement odd?”

“Yes. In fact, I made a lot of the arguments you’re making now. But what could I do? She made it clear—this was what she wanted. This was the start of a whole new journey. Who was I to stand in the way?”

I shook my head in disbelief and to clear it. “When was the last time you got a postcard from her?”

“It’s been a while. Months, maybe half a year.”

I sat back. “So in reality, you don’t know where she is, do you?”

“I would say Denmark, but in truth, no, I guess I don’t. I also don’t understand how her husband could have been living with another woman in South Carolina or any of this. I mean, nothing makes sense anymore. I don’t know where she is.”

A sharp knock on the door startled us both. Julie actually reached for my hand as though she needed comfort. There was a second knock and then a voice called out.

“Jacob Fisher? This is the police. The house is surrounded. Come out with your hands in the air.”

Chapter 23

I refused to say a word until my attorney—Benedict—was present.

That took some time. The lead officer identified himself as Jim Mulholland of the New York Police Department. I couldn’t figure out that jurisdiction. Lanford College is in Massachusetts. I had killed Otto along Route 91 still within that state. I had ventured into Vermont and when they picked me up I was in New Jersey. Other than taking public transportation through Manhattan, I could not figure out how the NYPD could possibly be involved in this mess.

Mulholland was a burly man with a thick mustache that brought on visions of Magnum PI. He stressed that I was not under arrest and that I could leave anytime, but boy, they would really, really appreciate my cooperation. He chatted politely, if not inanely, as he drove me to a Midtown precinct. He offered me soda, coffee, sandwiches, whatever I wanted. I was suddenly hungry and accepted. I was about to dig in when I remembered that it was guilty men who ate in custody. I had read that somewhere. The guilty man knows what is going on, so he can sleep and eat. It is the innocent man who is too confused and nervous to do either.

Then again, which was I?

I ate the sandwich and even enjoyed every bite. Every once in a while, Mulholland or his partner, Susan Telesco, a tall blonde with jeans and a turtleneck, would try to engage me in conversation. I would shake them off and remind them that I had invoked my right to counsel. Three hours later, Benedict showed up. The four of us—Mulholland, Telesco, Benedict, and yours truly—sat around a table in an interrogation room that had been done up to not be overly intimidating. Of course it wasn’t as though I had a lot of experience in interrogation rooms, but I always expected them to be somewhat stark. This one was more a soft beige.

“Do you know why you’re here?” Mulholland asked.

Benedict frowned. “Really?”

“What?”

“How did you expect us to answer that exactly? With a confession perhaps? ‘Oh yes, Detective Mulholland, I assume you’ve arrested me because I shot up two liquor stores’? Can we skip amateur hour and just get to the heart of this?”

“Listen,” Mulholland said, adjusting himself in the chair, “we’re on your side.”

“Oh boy.”

“No, I mean it. We just need to clean up some details, and then we all go home better people for what happened.”

“What are you talking about?” Benedict asked.

Mulholland nodded at Telesco. She opened a folder and slid a sheet of paper across the table. When I saw the mug shots—front view, side view—my blood hummed in my veins.

It was Otto.

“Do you know this man?” Telesco asked me.

“Don’t answer.” I wasn’t about to, but Benedict put a hand on my arm just in case. “Who is he?”

“His name is Otto Devereaux.”

The name sent a chill through me. They had shown me their faces. They had used at least Otto’s real name. That could only mean one thing—they never intended for me to leave that van alive.

“Recently, your client stated that he had an altercation with a man matching Otto Devereaux’s description on a highway in Massachusetts. In that statement, your client said that he had been forced to kill Mr. Devereaux in self-defense.”

“My client retracted that statement. He was disoriented and under the influence of alcohol.”

“You don’t understand,” Mulholland said. “We aren’t here to bust his chops. If we could, we’d give him a medal.” He spread his hands. “We are all on the same side here.”

“Oh?”

“Otto Devereaux was a career scumbag of almost biblical proportions. We could show his full oeuvre, but it would take too long. Let’s just lead with some of the highlights. Murder, assault, extortion. His nickname was Home Depot because he liked using tools on his victims. He enforced for the legendary Ache brothers until someone decided that he was too violent for them. Then he worked on his own or for whatever desperate bad guy needed a true sicko.” He smiled at me. “Look, Jake, I don’t know how you got the drop on this guy, but what you did was a blessing for society.”

“So,” Benedict said, “theoretically speaking, you’re here to thank us?”

“Nothing theoretical about it. You’re a hero. We want to shake your hand.”

No one shook hands.

“Tell me,” Benedict said, “where did you find his body?”

“That’s not important.”

“What was the cause of death?”

“That’s not important either.”

Benedict said, smiling broadly, “Is this really the way to treat your hero?” He nodded toward me. “If there is nothing else, I think we will be leaving now.”

Mulholland glanced over at Telesco. I thought that I saw a small smile on her face. I didn’t like it. “Okay,” he said, “if that’s how you want to play it.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning nothing. You’re free to go.”

“Sorry we couldn’t help,” Benedict said.

“Don’t worry about it. Like I said, we just wanted to thank the man who took this guy out.”

“Uh-huh.” We were both standing now. “We can find our way out.”

We were nearly out the door when Susan Telesco said, “Oh, Professor Fisher?”

I turned.

“Do you mind if we show you one more photograph?”

They both looked up at me as though they couldn’t be bothered, as though they had all the time in the world and my answer was meaningless. I could look at the picture or I could walk out the door. No biggie. I didn’t move. They didn’t move.

“Professor Fisher?” Telesco said.

She slid the photograph out of the folder facedown, as if we were playing blackjack in a casino. I could see the glint in her eye now. The room dropped ten degrees.

“Show me,” I said.

She flipped over the photograph. I froze.

“Do you know this woman?” she asked.

I didn’t reply. I stared at the photograph. Yes, of course, I knew the woman.

It was Natalie.

“Professor Fisher?”

“I know her.”

The photograph was black-and-white. It looked like a still frame from some kind of surveillance video. Natalie was hurrying down a corridor.

“What can you tell me about her?”

Benedict put a hand on my shoulder. “Why are you asking my client?”

Telesco pinned me down with her eyes. “You were visiting her sister when we found you. Would you mind telling us what you were doing there?”

“And again,” Benedict said, “why are you asking my client?”

“The woman’s name is Natalie Avery. We’ve previously spoken at length to her sister, Julie Pottham. She claims that her sister lives in Denmark.”

I spoke this time. “What do you want with her?”

“I’m not at liberty to discuss that.”

“Then neither am I,” I said.

Telesco looked at Mulholland. He shrugged. “Okay, then. You’re free to go.”

We all stood there, playing this game of chicken. To mix metaphors, I had no cards here so I was the first to blink. “We used to date,” I said.

They waited for more.

Benedict said, “Jake . . . ,” but I waved him off.

“I’m looking for her.”

“Why?”

I glanced at Benedict. He seemed to be as curious as the cops. “I loved her,” I said. “I never really got over her. So I was hoping . . . I don’t know. I was hoping for some kind of reconciliation.”

Telesco wrote something down. “Why now?”

That anonymous e-mail came back to me:

You made a promise.

I sat back down and pulled the photograph closer. I swallowed hard. Natalie’s shoulders were hunched. Her beautiful face . . . I could feel myself well up . . . she looked terrified. My finger found her face, as if somehow she could feel my touch and would find comfort. I hated this. I hated seeing her so scared.

“Where was this taken?” I asked.

“It’s not important.”

“The hell it isn’t. You’re looking for her, aren’t you? Why?”

They looked at each other again. Telesco nodded. “Let’s just say,” Mulholland began slowly, “that Natalie is a person of interest.”

“Is she in trouble?”

“Not from us.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“What do you think it means?” For the first time, I saw the facade drop and could see a flash of anger on Mulholland’s face. “We’ve been looking for her”—he grabbed the photograph of Otto—“but so were he and his friends. Who would you rather found her first?”

I stared at the photograph, my vision blurring and clearing, when I noticed something else. I tried not to move, tried not to change the expression on my face. In the bottom right-hand corner, there was a time-date stamp. It read: 11:47 P.M., May 24 . . . six years ago.

This picture had been taken a few weeks before Natalie and I met.

“Professor Fisher?”

“I don’t know where she is.”

“But you’re looking?”

“Yes.”

“Why now?”

I shrugged. “I missed her.”

“But why now?”

“It could have been a year ago. It could have been a year later. It was just the time.”

They didn’t believe me. Too bad.

“Have you had any luck?”

“No.”

“We can help her,” Mulholland said.

I said nothing.

“If Otto’s friends find her first . . .”

“Why are they looking for her? Hell, why are you looking for her?”

They changed subjects. “You were in Vermont. Two police officers identified you and we found your iPhone up there. Why?”

“It is where we dated.”

“She stayed at that farm?”

I was talking too much. “We met in Vermont. She got married in the chapel up there.”

“And how did your phone end up there?”

“He must have dropped it,” Benedict said. “By the way, can we get it back?”

“Sure. That can be arranged, no problem.”

Silence.

I looked at Telesco. “Have you been searching for her for the last six years?”

“In the beginning. But not so much in recent years, no.”

“Why not?” I asked. “I mean, well, the same question you asked me: Why now?”

Again they exchanged a glance. Mulholland said to Telesco, “Tell him.”

Telesco looked at me. “We stopped looking for her because we were sure that she was dead.”

I had somehow expected that answer. “Why did you think that?”

“It doesn’t involve you. You need to help us here.”

“I don’t know anything.”

“If you tell us what you know,” Telesco said, her voice suddenly hard, “we forget all about Otto.”

Benedict: “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

“What do you think it means? Your client claims self-defense.”

“So?”

“You asked about the cause of death. Here’s your answer: He snapped a man’s neck. I have news for you. A broken neck is rarely the result of self-defense.”

“First off, we deny that he had anything to do with the death of this felon—”

She put her hand up. “Save it.”

“It doesn’t matter,” I said. “You can make all the threats you want. I don’t know anything.”

“Otto didn’t believe that, did he?”

Bob’s voice: “Where is she?”

Mulholland leaned close to me. “Are you dumb enough to think this is the end of it? You think they’ll just forget about you now? They underestimated you the first time. They won’t do that again.”

“Who are ‘they’?” I asked.

“Some seriously bad men,” he said. “That’s all you need to know.”

“That makes no sense,” Benedict said.

“Listen to me closely. They can find Natalie first,” Mulholland said, “or we can. It’s your choice.”

Again I said, “I really don’t know anything.”

Which was true enough. But more than that, Mulholland had left off one last option, much as it might seem like a long shot.

I could find her.

Chapter 24

Benedict drove. “You want to fill me in?”

“It’s a long story,” I said.

“It’s a long drive. Speaking of which, where am I going to drop you off?”

Good question. I couldn’t go back to campus, not only because I was unwelcome, but as Detectives Mulholland and Telesco reminded me, some very bad people might be interested in finding me. I wondered whether Jed and Cookie were part of the same bad people as Bob and Otto or if I had two different groups of bad people after me. Doubtful. Bob and Otto were cool professionals. Grabbing me had been another day at the office. Jed and Cookie were bumbling amateurs—unsure, angry, scared. I wasn’t sure what that meant, but I suspected that it was important.

“I’m not sure.”

“I’ll start back toward campus, okay? You fill me in on what’s going on.”

So I did. Benedict kept his eyes on the road, nodding every once in a while. His face remained set, his hands always at ten and two. When I finished he said nothing for several seconds. Then: “Jake?”

“Yes?”

“You need to stop this,” Benedict said.

“I’m not sure I can.”

“A lot of people want to kill you.”

“I was never popular to begin with,” I said.

“True enough, but you’ve stumbled into some serious doo-doo.”

“You humanities professors and your big words.”

“I’m not joking,” he said.

I knew that.

“These people in Vermont,” Benedict said. “Who were they?”

“Old friends, in a way. I mean, that’s the weirdest part. Jed and Cookie were both there the first time I met Natalie.”

“And now they want to kill you?”

“Jed thinks that I had something to do with Todd Sanderson’s murder. But I can’t figure out why he’d care or how he knew Todd. There has to be some connection between them.”

“A connection between this Jed guy and Todd Sanderson?”

“Yes.”

“The answer is obvious, isn’t it?”

I nodded. “Natalie,” I said.

“Yep.”

I thought about that. “The first time I saw Natalie, she was sitting next to Jed. I even had a passing thought that maybe they were dating.”

“Well then,” Benedict said, “now it sounds like all three of you have something of a connection.”

“Meaning?”

“Carnal knowledge of Natalie.”

I didn’t like that. “You don’t know that for sure,” I protested weakly.

“May I state the obvious?”

“If you must.”

“I’ve known my share of women,” Benedict said. “At the risk of bragging, some might even call me an expert on the subject.”

I made a face. “Risk?”

“Some women are just trouble. You understand what I’m saying?”

“Trouble.”

“Right.”

“And I guess you’re going to tell me Natalie is one of these women.”

“You, Jed, Todd,” Benedict said. “No offense, but there is only one explanation for all this.”

“And that is?”

“Your Natalie is a big ol’ can of crazy.”

I frowned. We drove a little more.

“I have that guest cottage I use as an office,” Benedict said. “You can stay there until this all cools down.”

“Thank you.”

We drove a little more.

“Jake?”

“Yeah?”

“We always fall harder for the crazy ones,” Benedict said. “That’s our problem as men. We all claim we hate the drama, but we don’t.”

“That’s deep, Benedict.”

“Can I ask you one more thing?”

“Sure.”

I thought I saw his grip tighten on the wheel. “How did you happen to see Todd’s obituary?”

I turned to face him. “What?”

“His obituary. How did you see it?”

I wondered if the confusion was showing on my face. “It was on the front page of the college website. What exactly are you trying to ask?”

“Nothing. I was just wondering, that’s all.”

“I told you about it in my office—and you encouraged me to go down to the funeral, remember?”

“I do,” Benedict said. “And now I’m encouraging you to let this go.”

I didn’t reply. We drove for a while in silence. Benedict interrupted it.

“One other thing that’s bothering me,” he said.

“What’s that?”

“How do you think the police found you at Natalie’s sister’s house?”

I had wondered the same thing, but now I realized the answer was obvious. “Shanta.”

“She knew where you were?”

I explained about my calling her and my stupidity in keeping the disposable phone. If the police can track you by your phone, it stood to reason that if they knew the number (which would have popped up on Shanta’s caller ID), they could track you by a disposable phone too. I still had it in my pocket and debated chucking it out the window. No need. The cops weren’t the ones I was worried about anymore.

After President Tripp requested my departure, I had packed a suitcase and my laptop and stored them in my office at Clark House. I wondered whether someone might be, I don’t know, staking out my campus house or that office. It seemed like overkill, but what the heck. Benedict had the idea of having us park far away. We looked to see if there was anything suspicious. There wasn’t.

“We can send a student in to pick up your stuff,” he said.

I shook my head. “I already got one student hurt in this.”

“There’s no risk here.”

“Still.”

Clark House was closed. I carefully entered via the back entrance. I grabbed my stuff and hurried back toward Benedict’s car. No one shot me. Score one for the good guys. Benedict drove to the back of his property and dropped me off at the guest cottage.

“Thank you,” I said.

“I got a bunch of papers to grade. You’ll be all right?”

“Sure.”

“You should see a doctor about your head.”

I did have a residual headache. If it was from some kind of concussion, exhaustion, stress, or some combination of those, I had no idea. Either way I didn’t think a doctor could help. I thanked Benedict again and settled into the room. I took out my laptop and set it up on the desk.

It was time, I thought, to do some cyber-sleuthing.

You may wonder what qualifies me to be a top-notch investigator or how I would know how to cyber-sleuth. I’m not and I don’t. But I know how to type stuff in a Google search field. That was what I started to do now.

First, I searched for a date: May 24, six years ago.

That had been the date on the surveillance photograph the NYPD had shown me. It stood to reason that whatever had happened that day, well, it was probably a crime. It might have been reported in the news. Was that a long shot? I guess. But it could be a start.

When I hit the return button, a bunch of hits about a tornado in Kansas popped up first. I would need to narrow this down. I added “NYC” into the search field and hit the return button again. The first story told me that the New York Rangers had lost to the Buffalo Sabres 2 to 1. Second link: the New York Mets beat the Arizona Diamondbacks 5 to 3. Man, we are a sports-obsessed society.

I finally located a site that ran daily New York newspapers and their archives. Over the past two weeks, the front pages of many newspapers were discussing the brazen string of bank robberies in New York City. They hit at night and left no clue and had earned the nickname “the Invisibles.” Catchy. Then I hit the link for the archives for May 24 six years ago and started cyber-paging through the metro sections.

Top stories for that day: An armed man attacked the French consulate. Police took down a heroin ring operated by a Ukrainian gang. A cop named Jordan Smith accused of rape was having his day in court. A house fire in Staten Island had been deemed suspicious. A hedge fund manager from Solem Hamilton had been indicted in some kind of Ponzi scheme. A state comptroller was accused of ethics violations.

This didn’t help. Or maybe it did. Maybe Natalie had been part of the Ukrainian gang. Maybe she knew the hedge fund manager—the surveillance photo looked like the lobby of an office building—or the state comptroller. Where was I on that day six years ago? May 24. School would have been coming to a close. In fact, classes would probably be over right around then.

Six years ago.

My life had been in turmoil, as Benedict had recently reminded me at the Library Bar. My father had died of a heart attack a month earlier. My thesis wasn’t going well. May 24. That would have been right around the time Professor Trainor had thrown his graduation party with the underage drinking. I had wanted him seriously censured, putting a bit of tension between Professor Hume and myself.

But my life wasn’t the point here. Natalie’s was.

The surveillance photograph had been taken May 24. I thought about that for a moment. Suppose there had been some kind of crime or incident on May 24. Okay, right, that was certainly the possibility I had been going on, but now I was following through on the thought. If the incident took place on May 24, when would the papers report it?

May 25, not May 24.

This was not a brilliant insight, but it did make some sense. I found the papers for May 25 and again searched the metro sections. Top stories: Local philanthropist Archer Minor was gunned down. A fire in Chelsea kills two. An unarmed teen was shot by police. Man kills his ex-wife. High school principal arrested for embezzling school funds.

This was a waste of time.

I closed my eyes and rubbed them. Giving up sounded really good right now. I could lie down and close my eyes. I could keep my promise and honor the wishes, it seemed, of the woman I thought was my true love. Of course, as Benedict had pointed out, maybe Todd and Jed thought that Natalie was their true love. A flush of something primordial—let’s call it jealousy—whooshed through me.

Sorry, I didn’t buy it.

Jed wasn’t attacking me as a jealous lover. Todd . . . I didn’t know what the hell was going on there, but it didn’t matter. I couldn’t back away. I wasn’t built that way—who is, really? How could any reasonable person live with so many questions left unanswered?

A small voice in my head replied: Well, at least you’d live.

Didn’t matter. Couldn’t be done. I had been attacked, threatened, assaulted, arrested, and I had even killed a man . . .

Whoa, hold the phone. I had killed a man—and now I knew his name.

I leaned forward and googled a name: Otto Devereaux.

I expected to find an obituary on top. I didn’t. The first hit was a forum for “gangster enthusiasts.” Yes, for real. I clicked into the discussion boards, but you had to create a profile. I quickly did.

There was a topic called “RIP, OTTO.” I hit the link:

Holy crap! Otto Devereaux, one of the toughest mob hit men and extortionists, got his neck snapped! His body was dumped on the side of Saw Mill Parkway like some piece of garbage. Respekt, Otto. You knew how to kill, bro.

I shook my head. What next—a fan site for convicted pedophiles?

There were about a dozen comments from people remembering some of Otto’s most horrible deeds and, yes, praising his work. They say that you can find any sort of depravity on the Internet. I had stumbled across a site devoted to admirers of violent gangsters. Some world.

On the fourteenth comment, I hit pay dirt:

Otto is being laid to rest at the Franklin Funeral Home in Queens this Saturday. The funeral is private, so you can’t go to pay your respects, but admirers can still send flowers. Here’s the address.

The post listed an address in Flushing, Queens.

There was a sketchpad on the desk. I grabbed a pencil and leaned back with it. I wrote down Natalie’s name on the left. I wrote down Todd’s beneath it. I jotted down other names—mine, Jed, Cookie, Bob, Otto—any name I could come up with at all. Delia Sanderson; Eban Trainor; Natalie’s father, Aaron Kleiner, and mother, Sylvia Avery; Julie Pottham; Malcolm Hume even. All of them. Then on the right side of the page, I drew a timeline from top to bottom.

Go back as far as I could. Where did this first start?

I didn’t know.

So back to the beginning.

Twenty-five years ago, Natalie’s father, who taught here at Lanford, had run off with a student. According to Julie Pottham, dear old Dad had relocated and remarried. The only problem was, there was no sign of him anywhere. How had Shanta put it? Like father, like daughter. Both Natalie and her father had seemingly vanished into thin air. Both were completely off the grid.

I drew a line connecting Natalie and her father.

How could I learn more about this connection? I thought about what Julie had said. Her information about her father’s remarriage came from her mother. Maybe Mom knew more than she was saying. Maybe she had an address for Dad. Either way, I needed to talk to her. But how? She was in a home. That was what Julie had said. I didn’t know which home and somehow I doubted that Julie would be forthcoming. Still, it couldn’t be too difficult to track Mrs. Avery down.

I circled Sylvia Avery, Natalie’s mother.

Back to the timeline. I moved up through the years until I reached twenty years ago when Todd Sanderson was a student. He had nearly been expelled after his father’s suicide. I thought back to his student file and his obituary. Both had mentioned that Todd had made amends by launching a charity.

I wrote down Fresh Start on my pad.

One, Fresh Start had been birthed on this very campus in the wake of Todd’s personal turmoil. Two, six years ago, Natalie told her sister that she and Todd were going to travel around the world doing good works for Fresh Start. Three, Delia Sanderson, Todd’s real wife, told me that Fresh Start had been her husband’s passion. Four, Professor Hume, my very own beloved mentor, had been the faculty adviser during Fresh Start’s creation.

I started tapping the paper with my pencil. Fresh Start was all over this. Whatever “this” was.

I needed to look into that charity. If Natalie had indeed traveled for Fresh Start, someone there might at the very least have a lead on where she was. Again I started doing web searches. Fresh Start helped people get new starts, though the work seemed a bit unfocused. They worked with kids who needed cleft palates repaired, for example. They helped with political dissidents who needed asylum. They helped people with bankruptcy issues. They helped you find new employment, no matter what issues you’ve had in the past.

In short, as the mantra on the bottom of the home page said, “We help anyone who truly, desperately needs a fresh start.”

I frowned. Could that be more vague?

There was a link to donate. Fresh Start was a 501(c)(3) charity, so all contributions were tax deductible. No officers were listed—no mention of Todd Sanderson or Malcolm Hume or anyone. There was no office address. The phone number had an 843 area code—South Carolina. I dialed the number. An answering machine picked up. I didn’t leave a message.

I found a company online that investigates various charities “so that you may give with confidence.” For a small fee, they would send you a complete report on any charity, including an IRS Form 990 (whatever that was) and a “comprehensive analysis with full financial data, mission-driven decisions, officers’ biographies, charity holdings, money spent on fund-raising and all other activities.” I paid the small fee. An e-mail came to me saying that the report would be in my e-mail the following day.