“Told you,” Atticus broke in, smug.
“But not for drugs or alcohol. It’s a treatment program for juvenile sex offenders run by the church. It’s billed as an alternative to prison. If these boys went there, it’s because they were ordered there by the courts.”
“Wouldn’t you have seen that in their backgrounds?”
“Not if the records were sealed or expunged,” Calliope said. “Records for juveniles are often hidden so they don’t ruin the rest of their lives.”
“Can you unseal them?” Adam asked.
Calliope scoffed. “I can now that I know they exist, but it’s going to take more than five minutes. I’ll call you back.”
There was no goodbye, so Noah returned to his file box. Beneath the stack of pictures was a photo album with a pink and blue pastel patchwork bear. Noah’s hands trembled, every fiber of his being telling him to just hand over the album to Adam. Instead, he turned the page and came face to face with a photo of himself.
He couldn’t have been more than five. He sat on that race car bed from the cabin, wearing a t-shirt and shorts. His eyes were hollow and he stared up at the camera with a pain and desolation that made Noah dizzy. Under the photo were the words: Our Boy.
The album fell from Noah’s hands, clattering on the table, capturing the attention of the room. Adam swiped it before Noah could reach for it again, flipping open the cover and then thumbing through it, the muscle of his jaw ticking as he scanned the pages.
“What is it?” Noah asked, voice dull.
“Exactly what you think it is,” Adam said, handing it to his father. Noah had to fight the urge to rip the album from Thomas. Hadn’t he already been humiliated enough? Did they all have to share in his tragedy? Thomas grimaced as he opened the book, fanning through it, just as Adam had, though with more speed.
“Let me see it,” Noah said, voice trembling.
Thomas gave him a sad smile. “No. I won’t. There’s literally no reason for you to see this.”
Part of Noah was grateful, while the other part hated that they got to see him at his worst but he didn’t. “How will I know who they are if I can’t see their faces?”
Thomas closed his eyes, his face pained. “There are no faces but yours. Please, I know you want to be tough, but you can never unsee this. Just…let us protect you, just this once.”
Adam snarled, his own hands trembling, not with fright but with rage. “I want them dead, Dad. All of them. I don’t care if it puts us on the map. They all need to die. Screaming. Bloody. Bruised. Writhing in agony. Every fucking one of them.”
Noah would usually try to rein in Adam’s homicidal fury, but, this time, it felt good. Just. Necessary. Every one of them deserved to die screaming, and he didn’t want Adam less angry. He just wanted to watch.
Thomas kept a grip on the album as they continued to excavate the boxes. More photos, more albums, more boys. Noah might have been the first album, but he was by no means the last. Each with their own disgustingly childish album cover. Noah wasn’t permitted to see any of them. He really didn’t want to see. It was one thing to know it was him being hurt, it was something else altogether to see another child suffering the way he had.
The boomerang chirped beside Noah’s thigh. Thomas reached over and pushed the button. Calliope’s somber voice flooded the room. “Incoming,” she said.
A screen lit up on the wall beside the white board and a picture of a boy in his early teens appeared. It was a mugshot. “Wayne Holt, arrested at the age of thirteen for assaulting his six-year-old neighbor. Was sent to New Horizons instead of a juvenile detention center because the judge felt he shouldn’t ruin a young boy’s life after ‘one mistake.’”
“Pretty big fucking mistake,” Atticus muttered, sounding disgusted.
“That’s not all. Paul Anderson was also there that summer, as was Conan Greevey. All under the watchful eye of Father O’Hara, the program director.” A series of pictures began to fill the screen, ten total, all men who were around the same age Holt was when Noah lived with him. His stomach rolled. “Noah, do any of these men look familiar?”
“Yeah.” He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. “One, six, seven, nine and ten.”
“Raphael Nunez, Judd Dunnigan, Julian Keys, David Krebs, and Phil Armstrong. All part of the program. All with expunged records. All went on to have jobs that allowed them to work closely with children,” Calliope said. “I’ll send you everything I have on them, but I think we’ve found our major players.”
“Not all of them,” August said. “I have at least three more names that you didn’t list who are somehow tied to this. They were selling the content. VHS tapes, then DVDs. There’s payment information, emails, IP addresses. Many of them are overseas but most are right here in the US. This is a much bigger operation than we imagined but, from what I can gather, it’s all run by those men you mentioned, all under the direction of Father O’Hara.”
“Yeah, curiously, nothing to incriminate Gary or Holt, except maybe the use of the cabin.”
Noah frowned, trying to put the pieces together. “That’s why he sent this to Gary. He was handing over the keys to the kingdom. He wanted to be able to burn it all down once Gary died. Why?”
“Who knows? We’re never going to understand whatever twisted bond these two shared. But I think we have more than enough to agree these men all need to be eliminated, no?” August asked his father.
Thomas nodded. “Yeah, but once we kill one, the others are going to go to ground.”
Adam met Noah’s gaze and gave him a gentle smile before he looked at his brothers. “Then let’s take them out all at once.”