The file was thick. It held ninety-three pages of information gathered by the detective about Anwen and Gregory Meier. It also held the diary I’d kept from the day I went to visit the Meiers in New Jersey until the day before Lily confessed to kidnapping her son. Once she had told me the truth, I felt no need to write about what I thought was the truth anymore. I felt no need to write about anything at all. It had changed from being what was feared to what was from that moment on.

As Lincoln grew older and more untrustworthy, I’d twice moved the box to a safety-deposit box at our bank. But having it there made me extremely uneasy and both times I’d brought it back. To lessen the risk of discovery, I put the “Lily documents” at the bottom and covered them over with stock certificates and other boring papers that had no immediate value or interest to a snooper or a thief.

Even reading through the papers from the detective agency, one would have thought I simply had an inordinate interest in a couple named Meier. People who had tragically gone through one harrowing experience after another and only barely survived to crawl out on the other shore of life. Those Xerox copies alone said nothing.

It was my diary. I could quote specific, damning passages from it here, but what would be the point? You have already heard my questions, alarm, and pain from that time. The diary Lincoln found and read said it all. Except for the one other thing I discovered the night of Lily’s confession. But seeing the shit and that deadly green folder so neatly side by side on the desk, I did not think of that one other thing. The hideous smell got stronger, closer; it made me want to retch. I walked over and sat down in the chair. Breathing through my mouth, I bent forward and plucked the photograph out of the top of the glistening brown pile. It was of our son squatting on this desk, shitting onto this plate. He was grinning at the camera and giving it the finger. Written in thick black marker across it was: “Look what I found!”

The telephone rang. I glanced at it. It seemed a hundred miles away on the other side of the desk. I didn’t have the strength to reach across the few inches for it. It rang again. It rang again.

“Hello?”

“Dad!” His voice sounded so happy. “Now, I thought you’d be home. Get my message? It must be pretty ripe by now. What did you tell old Lil to get you home so fast? I bet you hightailed it over to see if I’d be there. Right?”

“Something like that. Lincoln—”

“Shut up. I don’t want to hear a word from you. I’ll hang up if you start talking. I’m at the airport. I took your extra Visa card and am going to use it for a while. I already got a few hundred out of a money machine with it. Bet you didn’t know I knew your code, didja? Do not call Visa and stop the card, understand?”

“Yes, use it, but listen—”

His voice grew more confident. “Good, right. I’m catching a plane to New York in ten minutes. Just so you and Mommy know, and don’t worry. Then I’m going to get a car and drive out to visit Mr. and Mrs. Meier. We need to have a good long talk together.”

“Lincoln—”

“Shut the fuck up! I’m going to talk to them and then I’ll think about you. Maybe. Maybe I’ll come back, maybe not. Don’t try to follow me. Besides, there isn’t another plane to New York for three hours. I checked. Even if you try, it won’t do you any good.

“Stay away. You owe me that, asshole. You and Lily owe me a lot more than that. Stay away until I get in touch with you. In the meantime, the only money I’ll have will be from your credit card, so do not cancel it.”

I had to say just one thing to him. I had to chance it. “Lincoln, the Meiers—”

“Shut up!” The line went dead.

Before doing anything else, I took the plate from the desk, shook what was on it into the toilet, and flushed. Then I rinsed the plate in fresh water until it was clean again. Not good enough. Taking it to the kitchen sink, I poured on liquid bleach and let it sit in that chemical bath a few minutes before cleaning it off with scalding water and soap. Still unsatisfied, I put the plate into the empty dishwasher and turned the machine on. I wonder what Lily thought later, opening the door and seeing only one plate. Strange things afoot that night in the Fischer household.

I didn’t want to be around to tell her what had gone on in the last hours. For a short time I considered admitting everything, including Lincoln knowing because he’d read the diary I’d kept hidden from her for years. But that would demand a discussion meant for a night when we had hours to weigh and argue and hopefully come to a peace with each other about my having kept the book around in the first place. There was no time now. Lincoln was about to board a plane to New York and do whatever the hell he planned to do with the Meiers once he got there.

I called flight information at Los Angeles Airport. The boy had told the truth—the plane just now leaving for New York was the last for three hours. No, there were no flights to Newark either. One to Hartford in an hour, another to Philadelphia in two. Both cities were too far away to be of any help. I needed New York or New Jersey but neither was available for one hundred and eighty minutes, plus flight time. For a while I felt hopeful on realizing that even with a valid credit card, an auto rental place won’t rent a car to a sixteen-year-old. Right! He’ll have to stay in the airport till he can figure a way out, which will buy me badly needed time. Yet this was also the young man who kept a loaded .45 pistol taped to the back of his dresser and had found my most secret of secrets. Which meant, of course, he was enterprising enough to find a way to Somerset, New Jersey, a lot sooner than I would.

Since I had no idea if they still lived there, the next step was to call New Jersey information and ask if Anwen and Gregory Meier still lived in Somerset. They did. Goddamnit, they did. In that strange and spooky house that was supposed to be a replacement for their lost child.

I sat and thought, then hopefully called a couple of different charter airlines listed in the phone book to ask how much they charged to rent a private plane and pilot to fly East. The prices were insane, but I was willing to do it until they said they’d need at least three hours, minimum, to arrange it. I called the airports in Burbank, Sacramento, and San Francisco. Nothing worked. There were flights to New York from these places but not the right connections to get me to them in time.

Seconds after I put the phone down after the last futile call, it rang again. Praying it would be Lincoln so I could tell him the one essential thing he didn’t know, I snatched it up. Only to hear Mary Poe’s voice.

“Hello?”

“Max, it’s Mary. I’m calling from the car phone, so it’ll be a bad connection. Lincoln’s gun is definitely real, and it’s stolen. The serial numbers say it’s part of a shipment of guns from a truck that was hijacked in Florida six months ago. It’s also a major league weapon, very high-powered shit. Terrorists love Glock guns because they’re made mostly out of plastic and can be snuck by airport metal detectors. It’s no Saturday night special, Max. It’s the kind of piece that gives you the willies even when you carry a gun yourself. But you say it’s still there? Then it’s all right. Just take it down and hold it in your lap, or stick it in a safe till boyo gets home.”

I got off as quickly as I could, after asking her to be sure not to tell Lily about the gun. Having no idea how long I would be in the East, I went into our bedroom and packed a small bag with jeans, a couple of shirts, underwear… enough for three or four days. I knew I had to write Lily a note explaining some of this so she wouldn’t go mad with worry when she returned and found both of us gone. But what could I say? “I am running after our son, who has discovered he was kidnapped…” What could be said? There was no time to think about it. I wrote that he had run away, possibly with Elvis and Little White. I was going to try to find him before anything bad happened. That was why I’d run out of the restaurant earlier—because he told me he’d had enough of us and was going to go and live life on his own. It was the kind of lie that left out enough to be almost true. She would go for it and that was all I could hope for at that moment. Lily was stubborn about Lincoln, but not stupid. She knew how angry he was and how unpleasant he could be. Hearing he’d flown the coop would not surprise her. I wrote I would call her the minute I knew anything.