David Morrell - Long lost

"We haven't spoken to each other in years. But recently, I heard that he'd come back to town. This was the church we used to go to. So I thought someone here might have seen him."

"You want to be reconciled with him?"

"With everything that's in me, Reverend. But I don't know where he is."

"I haven't seen him since…" The minister thought about it. "Last July, when Mrs. Warren died. Of course, he was at the funeral. And before that, the last time I saw him was… Oh, probably two years. I'm not even sure he's in town any longer."

"Mrs. Warren?"

"She was one of the most faithful in the congregation. Only missed one service that I can remember. When Pete showed up two years ago and volunteered to do handiwork for the church for free, Mrs. Warren took a liking to him. She was amazed by how completely he could quote Scripture. Tried to trick him several times, but he always won."

"That was my dad's doing, teaching Pete the Good Book."

"Well, your father certainly did an excellent job. Mrs. Warren finally offered him a handyman's job on her property. Our loss, her gain. When she missed that service I mentioned, I was convinced she must be sick, so I telephoned her, and I was right-she had a touch of the flu. The next time she came to church, Pete wasn't with her. She told me that he'd decided to move on."

"Yeah, Pete was always like that. But you say he was here for her funeral?"

"Evidently, he'd come back and was working as her handyman again. In fact, the way I hear it, she left her place to him."

"Her place?"

"Well, she was elderly. Her husband was dead. So were her two children. I suppose she thought of Pete as the closest thing she had to family."

"Sounds like a kind old lady."

"Generous to a fault. And over the years, as she sold off portions of the farm her husband had worked-it was the only way for her to survive after her husband died-she made sure to let eighty acres around her house go wild for a game preserve. Believe me, the way this town's expanding, we could use more people like Mrs. Warren to preserve the countryside."

"Reverend, I'd appreciate two favors."

"Yes?" He looked curious from behind his glasses.

"The first is, if you see Pete before I do, for heaven's sake don't tell him that we've spoken. If he knows I'm trying to see him, I'm afraid he'll get so upset that he might leave town."

"Your argument was that serious?"

"Worse than you can imagine. I have to approach him in the right way and at the right time."

"What's the second favor you want?"

"How do I find Mrs. Warren's place?"

Two miles along a country road south of town, I reached a T intersection. I steered to the left, and as the minister had described, the paved road became gravel. My tires threw up dust that floated in my rearview mirror. Tense, I stared ahead, hoping that I wouldn't see a car or a truck coming toward me. The countryside was slightly hilly, and at the top of each rise, I was afraid that I'd suddenly come upon an approaching vehicle and that he'd be driving it. Maybe he wouldn't pay attention, a quick glimpse of another driver, but maybe he paid attention to everything. Or maybe he wouldn't recognize me with my beard, but if he did, or if he recognized Kate's Volvo (Jesus, why hadn't I thought to bring another car?), I'd lose my chance of surprising him. I'd have even less chance of finding Kate and Jason.

Sweating, my shirt sticking to my chest, I saw the expanse of thick timber and undergrowth that the minister had said would be on my left. I passed a mailbox, a closed gate, and a lane that disappeared into the forest. Mrs. Warren's house was back there, the minister had said, where she could watch the deer, the squirrels, the raccoons, and the rest of what she'd called "God's children" roaming around the property. Relieved that I hadn't seen anybody and hence that no one had seen me, I kept driving, more dust rising behind me. At the same time, I couldn't help worrying that the reason I hadn't seen any activity was that Petey wasn't there, that he'd moved on. Petey. Yes.

Each X ray had shown a particular tooth with four roots that grew in distinctive directions. The child's had been smaller and less pronounced than the man's. Nonetheless, it hadn't been difficult to see that one had evolved into the other. Not that I'd relied on my opinion. Before going to the various churches, I'd made sure to be at a dentist's office when it opened. With cash I'd gotten from a local bank, I'd paid the dentist a hundred dollars to examine the X rays before he attended to his scheduled patients. He'd agreed with me: Man and boy-the X rays had belonged to the same person.

So there it was. The man who'd claimed to be my brother had told the truth. The FBI had been wrong. Lester Dant hadn't assumed Petey's identity. Petey had assumed Lester's. But that disturbing discovery settled nothing. The reverse. It prompted far more unnerving questions to threaten my sanity.

This was clear. After Petey had tricked the police into thinking that he was heading west through Montana, he'd taken Kate and Jason in the reverse direction-back to Woodford. Because he no longer had to lay a false trail by abandoning vehicles that he'd car-jacked, it wouldn't have been hard to avoid capture. All he had to do was carjack a vehicle that had a license for a distant state. The driver wouldn't have been expected for several days. By the time he or she was reported missing, Petey would have reached Mrs. Warren's property and hidden the car. Meanwhile, he'd have switched license plates several times and hidden the car owner's body somewhere along the interstate.

Mrs. Warren. Petey had been confident that he could intimidate her, because that's what he'd done a year earlier. At the church where I'd learned about Petey and Mrs. Warren, the minister had mentioned that Petey was Mrs. Warren's handyman, that she never missed Sunday service except for an uncharacteristic absence one Sunday two years earlier, one year before Petey took Kate and Jason from me. Petey must have done something so dismaying to Mrs. Warren that she found it impossible to go to church that Sunday. When the minister phoned her, certain that only something dire would have kept her away, she'd claimed that she had the flu. The next Sunday, she'd been in church again. Meanwhile, she'd said, Petey had left the area.

The minister's phone call had probably saved Mrs. Warren's life. His concern for her must have made Petey think that the minister was suspicious, must have driven Petey away. But when Mrs. Warren felt safe, why hadn't she confessed the horrors that had happened out there? The answer wasn't hard to figure. Like Mrs. Garner in Loganville, she'd been ashamed to let the other church members know what Petey had done to her. What's more, Petey had no doubt terrified her with a threat to return and punish her if she caused trouble for him.

Maybe she started feeling secure again, but then, to her fright, Petey came back a year later. He might have found a way to hide Kate and Jason from her. No matter-her torment resumed. He intimidated her severely enough to make her put him in her will. "He feels like a son to me," she'd have been forced to tell her lawyer, coached to sound convincing. Petey would have stood next to her in the lawyer's office when she signed the document, a reminder of his warning that if she turned against him, he'd make sure that she spent her remaining years in agony. Then he'd have kept her a prisoner at the house while he dropped a word here and there among the congregation that she hadn't been feeling well lately. That way, people would have been prepared when she died. After all, as the minister had said, Mrs. Warren was elderly. Maybe one night she passed away in her sleep-with help from a pillow pressed over her face.