“What are you saying, Sam?” They both looked to the door. Hailey was standing there with a woman who Finn presumed was Maria, Jonas’s mother. It was Maria who’d spoken, with sorrow and pity and love. She looked at Finn now and said, “Mr. Harrington, I’ve just overheard your exchange. My husband is upset, as you can imagine, but the reason he doesn’t want me to know is that we do not believe in an eye for an eye, just as we do not believe in capital or even corporal punishment.”
She stepped into the room. Once again, there was a slight resemblance to her son, most notably in the striking eyes, but it seemed that two averagely attractive people had combined to produce a beautiful child. Maria Frost looked less battered than her husband, no doubt thanks to the sedation.
Finn noticed that Hailey stayed in the doorway, looking on with a mixture of concern and awkwardness.
When Maria reached them, she looked down at her husband and smiled, then back to Finn as she said, “So you think Sam has been right all along, that our son was murdered?”
“I’m afraid I do.”
“You’re basing this on the result of some Internet searches he made?”
She sounded skeptical but he said, “Yes, and I’m also aware of how flimsy that sounds, but I’m still certain of it.”
She nodded, accepting his certainty if nothing else. “And you could do these things that you talked of to my husband?”
“I could and I would, but not without your approval, and not until I know the truth of what happened.”
“The truth? The truth is that our son died, and nothing we do will ever bring him back.”
She rested her hand on Sam’s shoulder and gave it a light squeeze. He looked up at her and smiled.
“I made our beliefs clear, but a belief is nothing until it’s tested. I wish we could have remained high-minded our whole lives, I wish it so much, but this is where we are. We won’t be going to the police, Mr. Harrington.” She turned and looked at him, and gave him a faint smile, something that looked like gratitude. And then she left the room.
Hailey remained still in the doorway, looking at Finn as if he’d transformed into a new person before her eyes. Finn gave her a reassuring smile, but she continued to stare blankly. He turned back to Sam.
“Sam, did you find Jonas’s Moleskine notebook? In his pockets or his jacket, maybe in his bag?”
Sam shook his head. “We searched everywhere, just for a note. It didn’t occur to me that the Moleskine was missing, but now that you mention it . . .”
“Maybe they took it.” Finn looked around the room, wondering where they’d picked him up. The Post-it note suggested he thought something might happen, but Finn couldn’t imagine them coming to the apartment. It was more likely that they’d waited for him as he got back from school. “Can I see where it happened?”
Sam nodded and stood, looking like an old man getting to his feet.
“And do you have a flashlight?”
“There are lights down there.”
“Even so.” Sam nodded and walked out of the room.
Hailey was still staring at Finn and he said, “You don’t have to come down to the basement. In fact, maybe you shouldn’t.”
“I’d like to.”
“Okay.”
“Did you mean what you said?”
“You weren’t meant to hear that.”
“But I did.”
He took a step toward her and noticed that she couldn’t help but brace herself, as if she no longer felt entirely safe with him. He stopped a few feet from her.
“The people I think did this, I have unfinished business with them, but even if I didn’t, and even though I only met Jonas a couple of times, I meant every word of what I said—I will find them and I will kill them.”
“Have you killed anyone before?”
He smiled a little and shook his head, and she seemed to understand and accept that it was a question he wouldn’t answer.
Sam appeared, holding out a flashlight, and Finn nodded and reached out for it.
And as they left the apartment, he realized that Jonas had not only played a part in helping Finn to see where he’d gone wrong these last years, he was now, inadvertently, helping him go back further still, to complete what should have been done in Kaliningrad.
Chapter Twenty-Six
When they got down to the basement, Sam pointed to an open doorway and said, “It’s through there. The light’s just inside. If you don’t mind, I’ll leave you here.”
“Thanks,” said Finn.
Hailey looked for a moment as if she’d changed her mind about seeing it herself, but she smiled sympathetically at Sam and said, “We’ll come up before we go.”
Sam nodded sadly and left.
Finn waited for Sam’s steps to reach the top of the stairs, then walked through the door and turned on the light. It was a big room, and though the central floor space was extensive, it was far from empty, with various wooden boxes and other old items stacked around the edges of the room, some of them under sheets.
There were wooden beams in the ceiling, and he guessed that Jonas had been tied up to one of them. There was a smell of disinfectant, and a patch on the stone floor that had been washed down and still looked damp, even now.
Hailey spotted it and said, “They washed the floor. But there wouldn’t have been any blood, would there?”