be going to that mini golf place and then playing a few hands at Caesars or getting a steak at Gallagher’s or splitting a funnel cake on the Boardwalk. But he’d blown it a long time ago.
“He’s missing,” Del said, tears coming to his eyes. “No one knows what happened to him. The cops are on it, but you know that’s not enough. So I hired some people. You know the kind. You probably wouldn’t approve, except when it came to your boy, you’d kill, right?”
Again no answer. The doctors had explained that there was no hope. She was brain-dead. They had encouraged him to let her go. Others had done the same in both gentle and forceful tones. Maria’s sister had even tried to sue to become medical proxy, but Maria had named him and so she lost. Everyone wanted to pull the plug. Making her live like this, day after day, month after month, heck, maybe year after year, was cruel, they claimed.
But Del couldn’t let her go.
Not yet. Not until she forgave him. He begged her every day for forgiveness. He begged her to come back to him, to let them be what they were, what they always should have been. In short, he said all the things he should have said before the accident.
Some days Del actually thought that redemption was possible. Some days he thought that Maria would open her eyes and she would see all that he’d done for her, all the sacrifice, all the devotion. She would have heard all the words he’d said during his visits to her bedside, and she would forgive him. But most days, like right now, he knew that would never be. He knew that what he was doing was indeed cruel and that he should let her go, and move on with his life. He and Maria had been divorced now for longer than they were married. Del had been married twice since. He was with Darya now.
Then other days-rare days but they were there-Del wondered whether he intentionally held on to her out of spite. Maria had never forgiven him and that ruined everything. Maybe, subconsciously, he was angry with her. Maybe keeping her alive was payback. God, he hoped not, but some days he couldn’t shake the feeling this was all nothing but a grand selfish gesture.
Del wasn’t good at letting go. He couldn’t let go of the only woman he ever loved.
And he couldn’t-would never-let go of his son.
“I’m going to find him, Maria. I will find him and I will bring him here and when you see him, I mean, really, when your boy is back home and safe…”
There wasn’t more to say. He sat next to her and fingered the Saint Anthony medal. He loved this medal. He never took it off. A few weeks back, he’d noticed that Carlton wasn’t wearing his. His son had replaced it with some crappy two-bit dog tags like he’d really been in the military or something, and, man, when Del saw that he hit the roof. How dare he? The idea of his son replacing his Saint Anthony medal, the one his sainted mother had given him, for those poser dog tags, had enraged Del. When Carlton shrugged and countered that he liked the dog tags, that his friends all wore them, that they looked “cool,” Del had come close to hitting his son. “Your grandfather wore dog tags while storming Normandy, and believe me, he never thought they were cool!” Del’s real name was, in fact, Delano, named for Franklin Delano Roosevelt, his parents’ hero. Carlton walked away then, but when he went out that night, Del noticed with some pride that the Saint Anthony medal was back around his neck-along with the dog tags.
The kid was learning the art of compromise.
When Del’s cell phone rang-Darya had recently made the Black Eyed Peas’ “I Gotta Feeling” his ringtone-he snatched it up quickly. The song, with its famed “Tonight’s gonna be a good night” chorus, felt particularly obscene in here. He put the phone to his ear and said, “Flynn.”
“It’s Goldberg.”
Del Flynn heard something strange in the cop’s tone. Normally Goldberg was strictly seen-it-all bored, but he seemed strangely agitated now. “You got news?”
“Do you know what those two lunatics of yours did?”
“That’s not your concern.”
“The hell it’s not. It’s one thing to rough up a whore, but this guy was a-”
“Hey,” Flynn said, cutting him off. “You really want to share your concerns over a phone line?”
Silence.
“It’s a mess,” Goldberg said.
Flynn didn’t much care. He only cared about one thing: finding Carlton. “Don’t worry about that. I’ll clean up the mess.”
“That’s what I’m afraid of. That couple you hired-they’re psychos, Del. They’re out of control.”
“Let me worry about them,” Del Flynn said, taking his wife’s hand in his. She felt cold as stone. “Just help us find our son.”
There was a brief pause. “About that,” Goldberg said.
The agitation was gone from his voice. What replaced it sent a chill straight through Del’s heart. “What?”
“The blood we found in that park. You remember?”
“I remember.”
“We don’t have a firm DNA test or anything. That can take weeks. And really it might not mean anything at all. I mean that. So let’s not get ahead of ourselves.”
The knot that had been in Del Flynn’s stomach since Carlton vanished tightened. “But?”
“But based on the preliminary findings,” Goldberg said, “I believe the blood at the park belongs to your son.”
27
Broome leaned in closer. “Cat got your tongue, Megan? I asked you about your old beau, Ray Levine.”
At the mention of Ray’s name, Megan felt her heart tumble down.
“Hello?”
“It’s not what you think,” she said.
“Gee, I didn’t expect that line. Let me come back with an unexpected one of my own: What’s not what I think?”
Megan didn’t even know what to say, how to explain it. She flashed back again to last night, to how she felt in Ray’s arms, to Lucy looming above them almost protectively.
“How could you lie to me like that?”
“I didn’t lie.”
Broome slapped something down on the table. “Did Ray Levine take this picture?”
It was the anonymous picture of Carlton Flynn in the park.
“I know your old squeeze used to be a big-time photojournalist-and I saw your face when I first showed this to you. So let’s stop with the lies, okay? Ray Levine took this picture, didn’t he?”
Megan didn’t reply.
“Answer me, damn it. If he’s innocent, he’s got nothing to worry about.”
“Right, sure,” Megan said. “Just like that Ricky Mannion guy you told me about. How long has he been in prison?”
Broome sat next to her. “Eighteen years for something he didn’t do. You want to help him get out?”
“By having him trade places with another innocent man?”
“Hey, Megan, I know he used to be your boyfriend and all, and, man, that’s just so sweet, but this is a hell of a lot bigger than you guys or your summer romance or whatever game you two were playing with Stewart Green.”
“Game?”
“Yeah, Megan, game. The night Stewart Green disappeared-Ray Levine was there, wasn’t he?”
She hesitated just long enough.
“Damn,” Broome said. “I knew you were holding something back-I just didn’t know what. So let’s follow this through, shall we? Ray Levine was at the park the night Stewart Green vanished and-lo and behold-seventeen
