“I know,” he said. “Me, too.” Then he remembered what Frank’s boss had said to him when he called: You’ll let me know if there’s anything I can do to help, okay? “Let’s go by my dad’s office. See if there’s anything there.”
Leewood Construction occupied a converted warehouse, complete with a large parking lot and a chain link fence. Connor had been here only once before. It had been a Saturday and the building, which was quiet on the weekend and surrounded by other warehouses that were equally quiet, had struck him as eerie. Frank had forgotten his laptop, he had explained, and said he needed to review a proposal before it went out on Monday morning. Some sort of big government job. Worth millions, if they got it.
Connor had been twelve at the time, and couldn’t understand the value of a multi-million-dollar contract. He just remembered complaining about being hungry and his father assuring him he wouldn’t be long.
Today, there was activity at all of the warehouses, and the lot at Leewood Construction was mostly full. Connor took a ticket from an automatic dispenser at the gate and found a parking spot for guests near the door.
The lobby was all old beige carpet and wood paneling. A receptionist, clacking away at her computer, asked how she could help without looking up.
“Is Victor in?”
Victor, aka Victor Leewood, owned Leewood Construction.
Perhaps it was invoking his name that got the receptionist to pay more attention to them than to her computer. Either way, she stopped the two-fingered hunt-and-peck clacking and looked Connor straight in the eye. “Who are you?”
He realized, now that he could see her face, she was older than he’d first thought. She had silvery white hair brushed back from her forehead and a coat of foundation thick enough to mask most of the wrinkles.
“Connor. Frank’s son.”
She placed a call from her desk and told them to wait. But with nowhere to sit, waiting meant standing.
There were no windows. On the wall behind them were a series of architectural photographs. Most were of tall glass buildings. There were also a few restaurants and retail locations. Connor recognized one—The Benchmark Diner—as a project his father had talked a lot about and assumed they were all Leewood Construction projects.
Fortunately, it didn’t take but a minute before Victor had emerged from the hallway behind the receptionist. He was wearing a plaid shirt and cowboy boots. Connor half-expected a “Howdy-doody” when he saw the man. What he got instead was “Which one of you’s Frank’s kid?” delivered in that same Brooklyn accent he had heard on the phone.
“I am,” Connor said.
Victor’s face crumpled in. He looked as if he was about to well up. He hugged Connor without asking or waiting for a cue that it would be welcome. Connor imagined this must be how Roland had felt when Olin had him locked in a bear hug. To avoid making it awkward, Connor hugged him back.
“I’m sorry,” Victor said. He let go, wiped his eyes with one knuckle.
At least he didn’t throw out a bunch of empty platitudes, Connor thought. He appreciated that.
“What can I do for you?”
“Do you mind if we check out my dad’s desk?”
“Sure. No problem,” Victor said, looking a little confused. “May I ask why?”
“It’s stupid, I’m sure. I just want to see if there’s anything there that could help us understand what’s going on.”
“I can’t imagine there would be, but . . .” Victor nodded. “If I was in your position, I’d want to look, too.” He turned around. “Come this way.”
Victor led them down a hallway lighted by buzzing fluorescents overhead. Every so often, one of them flickered like it needed to be replaced.
He turned a corner, silently passed a series of cubicles, then opened a door that Connor at first thought must be a closet. It wasn’t. The door Victor opened led to an office as big as Connor’s bedroom. It was furnished with an L-shaped walnut desk that faced the door, a small circular table with three chairs, a whiteboard mounted to the opposite wall, and a bookcase filled with unlabeled black binders.
“This is it,” Victor said. “Take all the time you need.” Then he left the boys alone and the door open.
Connor looked around the space. This was where his dad worked. It was a big part of his life, and there were little things everywhere that Connor could tell made this space uniquely his father’s. There were pictures of Connor and his mother on Frank’s desk. A collection of numbered and colored building blocks that were stacked on the bookshelf to make a pyramid (Frank had kept them since he was a boy and Connor remembered playing with them, as well). An anniversary card from Connor’s mom celebrating their first year together with “Two hearts, forever one” scrawled across the front in cursive.
It seemed like everywhere Connor looked, there was another reminder of his family and the love Frank had for them. Now he, too, wanted to cry. He pushed the emotion down. “Go through the binders. I’ll check the desk.”
“What are we looking for?” Olin said.
“I don’t know. Anything that seems out of the ordinary, I guess. Especially anything that’s got Roland’s name on it.”
“This seems like a long shot.”
Connor agreed, but he was going to look anyway. It couldn’t be a coincidence that Frank had met with Roland the same day he was abducted. Are you sure? asked a little voice from the back of his head. I’m sure, he answered, because whatever the two men had been up to, it couldn’t have been good if they didn’t want anyone to know about it. And just like one conspiracy theory makes it easier to believe another, bad things tend to follow bad things.
Sitting in the desk chair, Connor went through all four drawers, starting at the top left and working his way to
