Deadline

“What a frigging Boy Scout.”

“Barely alive. Still attached to the placenta.”

“You’re breaking my heart.”

“That’s when he knew you are an irredeemable sack of shit.”

“Who’s gonna kill you now.”

Carl pulled the trigger, but Dawson had anticipated it and dropped. The bullet missed him. Carl roared in outrage and flung Amelia out of his way as though she were a rag doll.

That was his undoing. She was the only reason the SWAT-team snipers on the neighboring roof hadn’t fired before then. Now they had a clear target. As the gunfire erupted, shattering window glass, Dawson lunged forward to cover her and keep her down. SWAT officers barged through the door.

It happened within seconds.

“Are you hit?” Dawson asked Amelia.

Dumbly she shook her head.

As the room filled with SWAT officers, he crab-walked over to Carl, who lay on his back staring at the ceiling, his eyes open, his slack features forming an incredulous expression. Dawson grabbed the front of his bloody shirt and yanked him into a sitting position. The man’s bald head wobbled on his neck.

Dawson shook him until his unfocused eyes found him. Teeth clenched, he said, “Look at me, old man. While you’re burning in hell, remember my face. I’m the other son you left to die.”

Diary of Flora Stimel—November 27, 1977

He would be a year old today. I woke up remembering what the date was, and it’s kept me sobbing all day.

Carl asked me what the hell was the matter, and when I reminded him that this was the anniversary of Golden Branch, I thought he was going take my head off. He got so mad, he stormed out of the room. (We’re in some crappy motel in Colorado that has a dusty cow head on the wall.)

It’s okay with me that Carl left. Jeremy’s been acting up. I guess what they say about the twos is right. They can be terrible. Jeremy was being noisy and restless, jumping on the bed, and getting on Carl’s nerves. My crying was aggravating him. So it’s just as well that he went somewhere to cool off. While he’s gone, I have a chance to write in this diary. I’m way behind.

This seems like a good day to pour my heart out. My heart that’s broken. Broken hearts truly do hurt. I didn’t know that for a fact until I had to leave my baby in that awful old house up in Oregon. Carl told me he was born dead. I’m not sure I believe him, but I never heard the baby cry, and I sorta hope it’s true, because then I don’t have to feel so guilty for running off and leaving him. I’d burn in hell for sure if I’d left him there still alive. I think about that all the time. I guess you could say it haunts me.

And I wonder sometimes, what if Carl was wrong (or lied), and the baby was alive when we escaped, and some cop found him? Where is he now? Would he be in an orphanage or something? Or was he given away to a good family?

What if we crossed paths someday and didn’t even know each other? Maybe I would recognize him if he looked anything like Jeremy. Or he could have blond hair like mine. What color would his eyes be?

Why do I do this to myself? It’s torture to think about what he would look like and what he’d grow up to be.

Of course I look at Jeremy and wonder that, too. What kind of life is this for a child? I chose Carl. I chose this life. Poor little Jeremy has no choice except to go along. I guess if that other baby boy had lived, he would have gone along with our way of life, too. That’s a sad thought. Almost as sad as knowing that he died before taking his first breath.

And I’m sure that’s what happened. Carl wouldn’t be so mean as to tell me that the baby was dead if he wasn’t.

Wherever my other little boy is, I hope his soul is at peace.

Mine isn’t. It never will be. Not over this.

Chapter 29

I’m going to have a drink. Want one?”

“Please.”

“Anything you want, it’s on the house.” Dawson poured two minibar bottles of bourbon into glasses. “Somebody gets shot in your room, hotel management goes all out to make up for it. To say nothing of how bad they felt about my overlooked room-service order.”

After Carl was taken away, they had been questioned extensively by Knutz. Acting on Headly’s telephone call from his hospital bed, the FBI agent had assigned men the job of checking hospital security cameras. Others were sent to warn Dawson. He didn’t answer his cell phone or his room phone, but sheriff’s deputies, waiting in the lobby for their charge, verified that he was in his room and that Amelia Nolan was with him.

Knutz had been hesitant to bust in on a romantic rendezvous, but when a desk clerk remarked on an elderly man with a bouquet of flowers entering the hotel and going up in the elevator, Knutz mobilized a SWAT team from Savannah Metro.