I moved on to the next file, Patrick’s.
It was empty. I guess Patrick also knew where the key to the filing cabinet was hidden. Or maybe, being a lawyer, Patrick simply wanted to take possession of his own records, and Robert had given them to him. It wasn’t necessarily suspicious.
But then again, there was no one Lex would go to more lengths to protect than her brother. They were closer than any siblings I’d ever known, probably because of the shared trauma of their father’s suicide, and Patrick, as an up-and-coming young lawyer brimming with ambition, had a lot to lose if the truth of Danny’s death ever came out. Agent Morales had had Patrick in her sights for years; there had to be a reason for it.
Jessica’s file contained her various forms of identification, the marriage license between her and Robert, a ream of financial information, paperwork from two car crashes and two DUI arrests, and the records of her stints in rehab. Why did Jessica drink so much? Was she just the cliché of the rich, alcoholic housewife, or were there more specific demons she was trying to drown? If I had killed my youngest son, I’d want to live in a world of blurred oblivion too. Or if I was already loaded, it might make it easier for me to lose my temper with a high-spirited boy who liked to push buttons and accidentally take things too far.
Robert’s file was the last one in the back of the cabinet. There wasn’t much to it, just his birth certificate and some insurance documentation. Either the filer didn’t feel the need to keep a file on himself, or, more likely, most of it had been taken as evidence when he was indicted. I barely knew Robert Tate. We’d spoken on the phone a half a dozen times, but no one had mentioned the possibility of me going to visit him in prison after my first night here. Maybe because I knew him the least, he was at the top of my suspect list. It was preferable to imagine that a stranger and not one of these people I’d come to care about was responsible for killing Danny. Robert had already proved himself capable of criminal activity—although financial malfeasance was a far cry from killing someone—and his alibi the day Danny disappeared was thin. He’d been driving home from a business meeting in Palo Alto, so his movements for much of the day couldn’t be accounted for. And it wasn’t impossible to formulate a motive for him. The money all came from Jessica’s side; her family, the Calvins, owned a food packaging empire. Robert’s roots were much humbler, and when Danny disappeared, his business was in trouble. He was already dodging his taxes and embezzling from investors to keep it afloat, and the SEC was closing in. Maybe he’d planned to stage Danny’s kidnapping as a way to extract money from the Calvins to solve his financial troubles and stave off an indictment, but then something went terribly wrong and Danny died.
I liked this theory, but I had no real evidence for it, and it contained two major flaws: I had a hard time imagining Lex and Patrick going through with this charade in order to protect a stepfather who was already in prison, and it was hard for me to believe that any man who would save his children’s drawings and stories in his filing cabinet could have purposefully endangered one of them.
But no matter how many excuses I made, how much evidence I found for why someone wasn’t capable of this, there was one truth I kept circling back to. Someone in this family had killed Danny. I was wrong about one of them. And I was no closer to figuring out who.
? ? ?
I was back to eating lunch at school with Nicholas and Asher. Our shared experience with Lex had thawed some of the ice between Nicholas and myself, and I’d been doing my best to avoid Ren ever since she’d given me the brush-off. She often came over to my easel to chat for a minute or two before art class and said hi whenever she passed me in the halls, but I just couldn’t deal with her and the conflicting ways she made me feel right now on top of everything else. It was better for me to keep my distance.
Our eyes met across the courtyard, and she gave me a smile that made my stomach do a weird sort of flip. I’d been watching her without realizing it.
“Who is that woman?” Asher asked, interrupting Nicholas as he complained about his history teacher. “She keeps staring at us.”
Nicholas and I turned to look. I’m not sure what I was expecting, but it sure as hell wasn’t Agent Morales casually chatting with Dr. Singh under the awning of the science wing.
Despite the sunshine my skin went cold.
“Oh shit,” Nicholas said. “Lex is going to lose her mind.”
“Why?” Asher asked. “Who is it?”
“The FBI,” Nicholas said, already standing up. He marched toward the two women, and I hurried after him.
“Can I help you?” he demanded as he reached Agent Morales.
“Nicholas,” she said. “It’s good to see you again—”
“What are you doing here?” he said. “I hope you don’t think you’re going to talk to my brother.”
“Nicholas, please—” Dr. Singh said.
“You’re not supposed to be talking to him either,” he said. “Danny, go back to the table.”
Under any other circumstances I would have felt relieved or even touched that Nicholas was defending me. But I was too occupied with trying to figure out what Morales was doing here. I stared at her, trying to get some clue from her expression, and she just looked coolly back at me.
“You’re absolutely right, Nicholas,” Morales said, barely glancing away from me. “It was inappropriate for me to come here. I just wanted to check that you were okay, Danny, and to thank you again for being so helpful the other day. I know it must have been difficult.”
“No problem,” I said.
“Well, I’ll be going now,” Morales said. “I’m sorry to have disturbed your lunch.”
Morales and Dr. Singh headed back into the building, leaving Nicholas confused and me shaken. I had the distinct feeling a shot had just been fired across my bow.
Before I left school that day, I removed my baseball card from the book in my locker where I’d hidden it. I’d thought it would be safer here than at home, but obviously I was wrong. I’d need to find a better hiding place for the boy in the picture.
? ? ?
I was in Danny’s room going over my research again when everything changed.
Lex was out picking up dinner and Jessica was gone, but I kept the bedroom door locked just in case Nicholas or Mia decided to stroll in while I was going through my documents. I was taking pictures of everyone’s medical records from the files in Robert’s office and e-mailing them to myself so I could return them to the filing cabinet before anyone discovered they were missing. I didn’t know what might end up being useful, so I was collecting all the information I could get my hands on. A question was starting to form in the back of my head when Mia suddenly screamed.