Chris Jordan - Torn

“Huh?”

“As seen on TV. In addition to being the pet name for my dimensional-force software, Kaboom is also the brand name of a toilet-bowl cleaner.”

“Charley, Charley, Charley.”

“The Chalk Man will have his fun, even if it means bathroom jokes.”

Shane shakes his head, grinning.

“As to your question, can one small boy be effectively atomized by that quantity of explosive, in the circumstances described? Kaboom came up with an answer-my software, not the aforementioned cleaner-where was I? Right, okay, the big answer from Kaboom is no. Almost certainly no.”

“Almost?”

“Nothing is certain in this quantum-haunted world,” Chalk Man admits with a sigh. “Not even with a fairly standard chemical combustion explosion. But aside from the physics, we have the evidence of the other two victims. Both bodies severely damaged in different ways. The cop was prone at floor level, the perp standing upright within a few feet of the blast center. You will have noted in the crime scene report that significant skeletal and bone fragments were recovered from both adult victims. The perp’s head was more or less intact. Separated from the rest of his body parts, granted, but nevertheless identifiable. You saw the grisly pictures, bro. He was still wearing his earbuds.”

“Strange things happens when stuff blows up.”

Chalk Man scratches his big honker. “That could be the title of my memoirs. Indeed, strange things do happen, not all of them predictable, no matter how good the software, and Kaboom is very, very good.”

“I have no doubt.”

“Bottom line, all things considered, and a dew-moistened finger up to the mystical wind for luck, The Chalk Man says it wasn’t the C-4 that made your boy vanish.”

“That’s what I was hoping to hear,” says Shane. “Thanks, Charley, you’re the best.”

“Is this an overnight? Can you do dinner? Trudy’d love to see you.”

Shane regretfully declines. He has another expert to consult, and miles to go, and promises to keep.

“He promised to come back, no matter what he decides.”

“And you believe him,” Helen says. “That’s good.”

Keeping my voice low, I make my case, wanting my friend to share my sense of confidence, my renewed sense of hope. “He found out more in two days than I have in six weeks,” I tell her. “That’s pretty amazing, right there.”

Helen beams. We’re in the library, her domain, and a hushed murmuring comes from the children’s reading nook, where a book is about to be ‘talked’ by one of the volunteers for the Every Day Reads program.

The daily book talk is Noah’s favorite part of a visit to the library. If I close my eyes I can almost hear him among the eager children, struggling to keep his voice down. It hurts, but no more than usual. I haven’t gotten used to the pain, but have come to expect it as a constant presence in my life. The fact that someone is finally following up on my suspicions has helped immensely-I’m no longer quite so alone.

“What’s he like?” Helen wants to know.

I shrug. “Kind of retro, I guess. Fortysomething. Get this-his hobby is visiting diners.”

“Diners? Are you serious?”

“As serious as pie à la mode. He loves those funky old roadside diners, what can I say?”

“Okay, a diner maven. What else? I heard he was really tall. Basketball player tall.”

“More like football player tall. Hey,” I ask suddenly, “what do you mean you heard? What did you hear?”

Helen smiles, her gray eyes alight with mischief. “Troy’s dispatcher has a five-year-old,” she explains, nodding at the reading nook. “That’s all she had, a physical description. Tall and yummy. Her words, not mine.”

Yummy. Sorry, but I don’t think of Shane that way. Any more than you’d be assessing the yummy factor when a fireman is carrying you out of a burning building. Later, maybe, after you’re safe.

I’m a long way from safe. Safe will be when I have my little boy back, then I can decide whether or not Randall Shane is yummy. Until then, all that matters is, is he willing to run into a fire?

“You said he doesn’t care about the money,” Helen prompts.

“Doesn’t appear to. Won’t take a penny until he’s convinced he can help me find Noah. If that’s part of a con, it’s a really good one. Plus, I think for him finding missing children is more of a life mission than a way to make a living. What happened, he lost his wife and daughter in a road accident.”

“Oh my god.”

“Which explains his sleep disorder,” I add.

“Excuse me?”

“Just before he left, the big guy finally revealed some of the gory details. How he and his wife and daughter had been coming back from Washington, D.C. How Shane was nodding off so his wife took over driving on the Jersey Turnpike, and that’s when they got hit by a truck whose driver was asleep at the wheel of his big rig. Car crushed, Shane the only survivor, waking up to find them both gone, his life forever changed. Sleep and death are now associated in his mind, hence his aversion to normal sleep. Or that’s what the shrinks have told him.”

“What a terrible thing,” says Helen, her eyes glistening.

“Yeah,” I agree. “You want to know an even more terrible thing? He tells me that, and my first reaction is to be glad it happened, because if it didn’t, he wouldn’t be helping me now. Isn’t that awful?”

Helen pats my hand. “No, my dear, it’s not awful. It’s human. We’re all human. Even your big, yummy knight in shining armor is human.”

“Not too human, I hope,” I say.

Home again, home again, where I’m not quite bouncing off the walls. Brain humming with all the recent facts and details…The bomber’s expensive new wheels, provided by person or persons unknown. The mysterious disappearance of the supposedly matching tissue samples. From a lab owned, however distantly, by Jedediah’s father. Whose famous book was found in the bomber’s wretched trailer. All of it more or less confirming my gut, that the whole terrible siege of the school had been a smoke screen-a literal one in those final moments-for whisking Noah away.

But why? For what purpose? What Arthur Conklin might want with a grandson he’d never met? Can’t bear thinking about that. Was it possible that the old man never knew the boy existed until Jed died? Was it the plane crash that set off a chain of events that turned me into the madwoman of Humble, wandering the streets in search of her lost son?

Possible, yes. From everything my late husband alluded to, his father would not be constrained by what we mere mortals consider right or moral, good or bad. What he wants he takes. No apologies. No consideration for the normal attachments of parent and child.

Okay, maybe the old man really doesn’t have a conscience. But even so why go to the enormous, complicated trouble of making it look like Noah was dead? Why not just kidnap him? Why go all Tarantino on it? Conklin had to be getting old, late seventies at least-maybe he thinks his grandchild is destined to take his place. But why not make contact? See if they could draw me into the fold? Make me a true believer? Surely they don’t think a ten-year-old boy can run their empire? And even if they do, why not go to court, seeking custody? With all their high-powered lawyers, no doubt they could find a way to make me look like an incompetent mother if they tried hard enough.

Calm down. Think clearly. There has to be something else. More going on than a man simply wanting to take control of the last of his estranged family by any means possible. Some madness at the root of the old man’s cult, some crazy thing they believe. Something I don’t get because I don’t understand-don’t want to understand-the philosophy or religion or whatever it is that made him such a selfish, greedy monster to drive a truly decent man like Jedediah from his heart.