A Son's Tale

“We’ve got a team at your house,” Elaine reminded Morgan, who’d already turned over a key and given the police permission to enter her premises. “Any calls would come to your cell phone and it’s here with you. Because of the circumstances, your relationship with the Whittiers, I’d rather you stay put, just until I can question them. I’m going to want to speak with you afterward to corroborate stories. Things are different this time since we have a suspect.”

“Okay.” Morgan was fine with staying.

Cal would be there soon.

Confused, wondering how she could even think about the man without going into a blind rage, Morgan turned her thoughts to the only thing that mattered. Getting Sammie home safely.

* * *

IT HAD BEEN A LONG time since Cal had been in a police station. He’d spent most of his years in a self-imposed prison to keep himself and his father away from the police.

Sitting with his father on one side of a table in a small, windowed interrogation room, he tried to find the absence of emotion that had seen him through life. Their attorney, Jim Brown, a man Cal knew from the junior arts league board, sat at one end of the table. Detectives Martin and Sanchez sat opposite Frank and Cal.

“We’ve already told our attorney that we’ll cooperate fully,” Cal said as soon as introductions were done. Martin had only acknowledged knowing Cal by a nod of her head. “My father and I have nothing to hide.”

He wasn’t going to wait to be interrogated, to let them run this interview. He wasn’t going to be trapped into saying something incriminating about his father by their twisted ways of wording questions.

“As I told Detective Ramsey Miller from the Comfort Cove Police Department in Massachusetts, my father and I have nothing to do with their missing box of evidence.”

Frank’s quick intake of air beside him was not comforting. Still, Cal couldn’t worry about his father at that moment if he was going to save him for the years to come.

He should have told his father about Ramsey and the missing evidence. He should have told Morgan about Claire Sanderson and the suspicions regarding his father.

He hadn’t. He’d done what he thought best, and it had all backfired. It was time to make things right.

He and Frank had been silent in the car on the way to the station, but they both knew this was somehow tied to Claire Sanderson.

Ramsay Miller had been poking around. Cal had been a fool to relax at all, to think even for a second that Miller would do as he’d said and inform Cal first if he found anything.

“We appreciate your willingness to cooperate,” Detective Martin said.

“I assume Miller is on his way down?”

“I called Detective Miller,” Martin said. “I haven’t heard back from him yet.”

“Neither my father nor I have been in Massachusetts, nor do we know anyone who has, nor have we hired anyone to visit the state for us. We have no use for the evidence stored in the Comfort Cove Police Department evidence room. As I’ve already stated, we have nothing to hide, just as we had nothing to hide twenty-five years ago. You already have our complete testimony on that score and Ramsey Miller is now in possession of the book I’ve been writing, which not only chronicles the events directly preceding and following Claire Sanderson’s disappearance, but also includes every bit of my research on that and other abductions that have taken place. My father is in no way connected to any other case on record.”

Frank sat up straighter. And Cal realized, hearing his own words, what he’d probably just exposed. To himself as well as to the rest of the people in the room. He’d not only researched other cases to try to explain Claire’s disappearance and therefore exonerate his father, but he’d done the research to convince himself that his father wasn’t living a double life.

“Mr. Whittier?” Martin waited until he met her gaze. Cal was having a hard time sitting still. He just couldn’t live his entire life under suspicion, going after nothing for fear of losing it, losing what he had when he went after it.

He’d lost Morgan’s trust by his own lies and omissions.

And that wasn’t Martin’s problem. He focused on the detective. Give her what she wants and get out.

“While we are indeed concerned about you and your father’s suspected connection to Claire Sanderson and you’re sitting here because of that connection, our primary concern right now is not Miller or Sanderson or missing evidence.”

“What is it, then?” Frank spoke up beside Cal.

Martin looked at Cal’s father, clearly suspicious. “Mr. Whittier, when was the last time you saw Sammie Lowen?”

“Yesterday afternoon. I took him to basketball tryouts. I saw him safely to the gym door. The coach was right there, checking the boys off his list as they arrived. Tryouts were closed. Before that, I saw him on Tuesday afternoon. My son brought him over for basketball practice. We were out in the driveway the entire hour and a half he was there. My son was in the house. Sammie’s mother picked him up just after five.”

“Have you seen or heard from him since yesterday?”

“No, I have not.” His father said evenly. Calmly.

How in the hell could he be so calm? The first time in twenty-five years his father had any association with a child—as a favor to Cal—and the cops were going to try to make something of it?