Andrew Kaufman - The Lion, the Lamb, the Hunted - A Psychological Thriller

“I think he likes you,” the receptionist said with a wink.

“Yeah,” I said, trying to speak around his canine kisses, “who ever would have thought?”

She smiled. “Sometimes a little love is all it takes.”

No truer words…

She told me the poor thing had been abused and neglected for years. The talk around town was that Flint kept him chained to that post ever since he was a puppy. Day in, day out, nobody paying attention to his needs, physical or emotional.

All alone in this world.

“Where’s he go from here?” I asked, still kneeling and running my hands through his fur.

The receptionist shrugged and frowned.

And that was the beginning: A whole new life.

For us both.

Chapter Fifty-Seven

The mighty lion tumbled.

Warren Samuel Strademeyer, the beloved senator, was exposed for the entire world to see. A kidnapper. A murderer.

The trial lasted nearly a month, and I sat through every minute of it, listening to all the lurid details. It would have felt like some horrific movie, only it was all about me.

Warren and Jean’s peculiar connection to the notorious Bill Williams was finally revealed. As it turned out, they both knew him. He also grew up in Rose Park, Georgia. While Warren and Bill were never friends growing up, he knew exactly who to call when he needed someone to carry out my kidnapping. Warren had the money, and Bill had the mind for it; they were a perfect match. I never figured out whether those horrible stories Jean had told about him were actually true, and to be honest, didn’t want to.

Flint Newsome was another one of Warren’s casualties, albeit, a very shady one. During my kidnapping investigation, Warren had paid him to lose the evidence—well, the boot print, anyway—but he couldn’t just take that; it would have seemed too obvious. So he paid Flint to take it all, hide it for a few days, then return it, minus one very important piece, of course.

Apparently, Newsome owed somebody money for a bad gambling debt and figured he could dig into Warren’s deep pockets to get it. Around the same time we started investigating in Corvine, he called Warren, trying to blackmail him, saying he still had the boot print, which he’d kept in his safe all these years. He chose the wrong man. Bill was already in town, and Warren gave the go-ahead to get rid of him. Bill took the print and then Flint’s life.

Camilla never had a son named Benjamin. It was Patrick, and he hadn’t died when I was two. He died while she was a pregnant, unwed sixteen-year-old. Warren convinced her to abort the child, then later sold her on the idea that I could be a replacement for him.

But I couldn’t, even after she gave me his name.

It only took the jury about four hours to come back with their verdicts. Kidnapping, murder for hire, obstruction of justice, and evidence tampering—guilty on all counts. No mercy from the judge, either, who gave him three consecutive life terms. The distinguished gentleman from Georgia became inmate number 23433-068 at Talladega Federal Correctional Institute in Alabama.

I watched as they loaded him into the van headed for prison. A horde of reporters and photographers jockeyed around me for a good position, all trying to capture the moment. Just before getting in, Warren looked up at the commotion, and our eyes met briefly. Somewhere in the unspoken conversation between us, we knew that this was really the end. Then he climbed inside and the door slammed shut.

I never saw him again.

Warren died of a massive heart attack after serving less than twelve months of his sentence. Of course, the press covered it heavily. I watched file video taken while he was in prison and barely recognized the man, saw a mere shadow of the powerful politician I’d once known. Though he’d only been there for the better part of a year, it might as well have been twenty. Bound, shackled, and shuffling along, he was at least fifteen pounds lighter, appearing disheveled, diminutive, and weak. The once-burnished silver hair had turned ashen, as had the flawless, tanned complexion. Gone too were the custom tailored suits, once his hallmark, now traded for a drab prison uniform. A pathetic image if I’d ever seen one: the picture of a man who’d lost it all. A man waiting to die.

I chose to continue living as Patrick Bannister. Nathan Kingsley seemed like a fable to me, a story I’d never read. Nathan may have been the name I was born with, but Patrick was who I had become. I stuck with what I knew.

And it seemed that Patrick Bannister was destined to become an overnight celebrity…for all the wrong reasons. Good Morning America, Dateline NBC, 48 Hours Mystery : I appeared on all of them, but even that wasn’t enough to quench the public’s insatiable thirst for the unsavory. It was hard to go anywhere without flashbulbs shooting off in my face, the tabloids constantly hounding me, the attention reaching a fevered pitch. For a while, I spent a good part of my time hiding out. Eventually, fresh new scandals hit, and the press moved on from me. I was finally able to begin my new life, assimilating it with the old—the one I’d never come to know. The real one. Nathan Kingsley never really died, and Patrick Bannister never really lived. It took me some time to come to terms with the irony, that my entire life had been nothing more than a lie. Warren and his clan of misfits had robbed me of something essential, something that most people take for granted: an identity, a sense of self—and the worst part of all, just to save his lousy career. Of course, in the end it did just the opposite.

The fact that my kidnapper was also my father would be a burden I’d have to bear. I would live with that. Seeing justice served made it a little easier. Finding out that Camilla wasn’t my mother, for some reason, didn’t seem quite as hard—maybe because she never felt like much of one to me, anyway.

I still speak to CJ often. She’s now one of my closest friends, always will be. After my story broke, I gave her the exclusive rights. My wounds were still too tender, and I wasn’t comfortable writing about them. But I wanted the story told fairly, and that’s just what she did. The book came out a year later, shot to the top of the New York Times Best Sellers List , and then the awards began piling up. She moved back to Dallas, became the star reporter for The Tribune News , and married a coworker shortly after. She’d finally paid her dues, finally got everything she deserved, and I couldn’t have been happier for her.

We met at LAX shortly after the book went to number one; she was making her way to Hollywood for a consultation with one of the major film studios. Her book was on its way to the Silver Screen. So was my life.

I barely recognized her when she got off the plane.

“My God,” I said, still locked in her hug, “you look amazing.”

She pulled back, took me in, then shook her head with a great big smile and a tear in her eye. “You don’t know how much I’ve missed you, Pat. You just don’t know.”

Then we stood there for a long time, just grinning at each other like two stupid teenagers. We couldn’t help it—we’d been through so much together.

We had dinner together and spent every minute of it laughing and catching up.

She put down her menu and gazed at me. “You look wonderful, Pat, you really do. I still can’t figure it out—as good looking as you are, as nice as you are, how come nobody’s snagged you yet?”

“Guess I’m not snaggable.”

“Nonsense,” she said, waving it off with a hand.

Just then, the waitress came over.

“Iced tea for me,” I said, “and a Tom Collins for—”

“Actually,” CJ said, placing her hand over mine, “just a soda water for me.”