“Or she,” I say, just to be snippy.

“Excuse me?”

“You said ‘he.’ ‘He’ framed Shane. Why couldn’t it be a she? Hell hath no fury like, that sort of thing.”

Boss lady nods agreeably. “I stand corrected. He or she. Either is plausible, assuming that whoever has done this has attained a position of power, enabling them to orchestrate or take advantage. Mrs. Mancero doesn’t seem to have that much power at first glance.” Naomi pauses, gives me a thoughtful look. “It might be useful if you make a list of what we know and what we don’t.”

I’m still in a mood, and therefore resist. “We can’t know what we don’t know. Quoting the great philosopher Donald Rumsfeld.”

“Not even slightly true,” Naomi says, amused. “I’ve just pointed out a couple of things we don’t know. There are many more, and they’re all pertinent to the case and may help clear the way to a solution. Right and left columns, please.”

“You’re serious.”

This warrants a stern look. “When am I not?”

True enough. Fully aware there is merit to her suggestion, I begin to lay out the knowns and unknowns.

KNOWN

- MIT Professor Joseph Keener founds Quanta Gate, top-secret research facility, with financial backing of investor J. Bing

- Keener meets Chinese female, Ming-Mei (stage name?)

- Keener brings Ming-Mei to Boston

- Keener and Ming-Mei have baby, born in Cambridge

- Ming-Mei returns to Hong Kong with boy, Joey

- Ming-Mei reports Joey abducted from Hong Kong mall

- Keener goes to Hong Kong & China, searching for missing son; no result

- 18 months later, Keener contacts Randall Shane

- Keener receives video of Joey in custody of K. Mancero

- K. Mancero known to Shane from previous case

- Keener executed with Shane’s gun

- Blood evidence planted, Shane’s motel

- State police alerted via Homeland

- Shane abducted by covert ops, for purposes of enhanced interrogation

- J. Bing killed shortly after interview with Jack

UNKNOWN

- Did Prof. Keener pass secrets to foreign agents?

- Ming-Mei’s real name

- Ming-Mei’s relationships (if any) in Hong Kong

- Who abducted Joey in Hong Kong

- Why Joey was abducted

- Where Joey’s been held for the last 18 months

- Who brought Joey back to U.S.

- How K. Mancero got involved

- Present location of Joey

- Who killed Professor Keener

- Who framed Shane for the murder

- Why Shane is being framed

- What covert agency grabbed Shane

- Who killed J. Bing

- Why J. Bing killed

Very discouraging. Listed like this it makes it look like we don’t know much of anything worth knowing, but that can’t be true, can it? Surely it matters that we’ve identified the mystery woman, that we’re virtually certain Randall Shane has been framed by powerful enemies, that the boy is alive, that…wait, hold on.

Going back to the boy, five-year-old Joey, my pencil hesitates over his name like a nervous dowsing rod. Alive? Do we know that? We know he was alive when the video was shot, but that was before the professor was executed in his own home. At which point everything changed, did it not? With the father dead, is there any reason to keep the boy alive? Whatever leverage the child may have represented, surely that no longer applies. Would he not be expendable?

Taking my shorthand pad, I quick-walk back to the command center, drop it on Naomi’s desk. Busy at the phone, she barely gives me a glance.

“Alive or dead, your call.”

She looks up, cups her hand to the phone. “Alice?”

“Joey Keener, age five. Which column? Alive or dead?”

Naomi hangs up with a crisp “I’ll get back to you.” She glances at the shorthand notebook, which I’m ninety percent sure she can’t decipher, and leans back in her seat, signaling me to continue.

I say, “Whoever took the boy had a reason. To pry secrets out of his father, to make him cooperate, whatever. Didn’t that reason end when Keener died?”

“Quite possibly, but we knew that. We’ve known it all along. Nothing has changed.” Naomi’s expression remains maddeningly neutral, as if the subject under discussion is purely theoretical. “Not an hour ago, when we were discussing recent developments I said, ‘if he still lives,’ in reference to the boy. Odds for his survival can’t be calculated. He is either in one state or the other, alive or dead, and speculation on our part will have no effect on his survival. True, we have not yet established a scenario in which it makes logical sense for the abductors to keep the boy alive. Also true, we do not know the precise motivations for kidnapping the child in the first place, therefore our predictive results may be flawed. And the third truth, the one I suggest you cling to, is that Randall Shane believes the boy is alive. Those were among his very first words, upon regaining consciousness.”

“But the poor man had been drugged out of his mind,” I say, voice rising. “He’d been beaten by experts. He thinks they bored into his skull with a power drill and cut out part of his brain!”

“Nevertheless,” Naomi says, exuding patience, “everything we’ve learned about Randall Shane indicates that saving children is at the core of what keeps him alive. Even damaged, having survived the cruelest form of torture, he believes at the very center of his being that the boy survives. Further, we have established that he refuses to accept truly hopeless cases because he understands that peering into the abyss of endless grief is, for him, particularly dangerous. Therefore his certainty about the child is based on something solid, something real, some knowledge he has about the case that we’ve not yet been able to discern, and which he has not yet been able to communicate.”

“But you just said—”

“I know what I said,” she says, cutting me off. “And I know what Shane said. Forget the odds. Forget logic. This isn’t a quantum calculation. This is human hope, a form of energy that doesn’t conform to rules, or laws of nature.”

“So you’re saying, assume the boy is alive and go from there.”

She nods. “Trust Shane. Avoid the abyss.”

Chapter Thirty-One

Sneakers Make the Man