Cho asked an agent to help him locate the aunt. Before the agent could leave, a phone rang in the hallway.
It was the state laboratory.
The technician had found something inside the cassette case: a folded strip of paper pressed beneath the felt lining. The ink was nearly invisible, but under ultraviolet light the writing appeared.
A telephone number.
And beneath it, four words:
IF THE FIRST PLAN FAILS, CALL JUNE.
Walter stared at the paper.
“Thomas knew,” he said.
“Knew what?” Eli asked.
“That the first plan would fail.”
He rose with difficulty and walked to the window. Outside, the morning traffic moved through town as though nothing had changed.
“My son didn't just leave us a letter,” Walter said. “He left us a way to find him.”
• • •
June Bell answered the telephone on the fourth ring. Her voice was thin but alert.
“Hello?”
“Mrs. Bell? My name is Daniel Cho. I'm with the State Bureau of Investigation. I'm calling about your nephew, Thomas.”
The line went silent.
“Mrs. Bell?”
“I wondered when someone would call.”
Cho sat straighter. “You know where he is?”
“I know where he was supposed to go.”
“Can you tell us?”
June took a breath. “Thomas came to see me in November of 2004. He was thin and scared. He had a different name, a new jacket, and a bruise under his eye. He said he couldn't contact his parents because the people looking for him would use them to find him.”
“Did he say who those people were?”
“He said the company had friends in places where reports went to die.”
“Did he tell you where he was going?”
“He said a man in Pennsylvania could get him across the border. He said he would call when it was safe.”
“Did he call?”
“Once. In 2007. He said he was alive. He asked me to tell his father that he was sorry, but not to look for him.”
Walter covered his mouth.
Cho lowered his voice. “Do you still have that number?”
“I wrote it on the back of a photograph. I kept it because I knew one day someone would ask.”
“Can you read it to me?”
June did.
The number belonged to a small freight company in western Pennsylvania. It had been dissolved years earlier, but its former owner was still alive.
Cho sent two agents to locate him.
Walter remained by the window after the call ended. Eli stood beside him.
“He was alive,” Walter said.
“Yes.”
“For three years.”
“Yes.”
“And he never called home.”
Eli did not try to soften it. “He may have believed he was keeping you safe.”
Walter nodded, but his eyes were wet. “I wish he'd trusted me enough to let me be afraid with him.”
• • •
The former freight-company owner was named Samuel Pike. He lived in a white farmhouse outside Erie and answered the door holding a shotgun. When the agents showed their badges, he lowered it but did not invite them inside.
“I don't know any Thomas Bell,” he said.
The agent showed him a photograph.
Pike's face changed.
“I said I don't know him.”
“You helped him travel in 2004.”
“I helped a lot of people.”
“Did you take him across the border?”
Pike looked past the agents toward the road. “Who sent you?”
“The State Bureau.”
“That's not what I asked.”
The agent explained that the investigation concerned an attempted destruction of evidence and a twenty-two-year-old disappearance. Pike finally opened the door.
Inside, the farmhouse smelled of coffee and wood smoke. Pike sat at the kitchen table and stared at the photograph.
“He called himself Thomas Reed,” he said. “I didn't know his real name until years later.”
“Where did you take him?”
“Buffalo. He crossed into Canada with a work crew. I gave him a ride and a little money. That's all.”
“Did you know he was being hunted?”
“I knew someone had scared him badly.”
“Did he ever contact you again?”
Pike hesitated.
“Yes.”
“When?”
“About six months ago.”
The agents exchanged a look.
“What did he say?”
“He asked whether I still had the old number for his aunt. I told him I did. He said he might need it.”
“Did he tell you where he was living?”
“No. But he asked about a town in Maine. A place called Harbor Point.”
The agent wrote it down.
“Did he say why?”
Pike shook his head. “Only that he was coming home soon.”
• • •
Harbor Point was a fishing town on the Maine coast, two hundred miles from the Canadian border. The state bureau located a Thomas Reed who owned a small repair shop near the harbor. The driver's license photograph was older than the man in the records, but the eyes matched.