I thought about Danny Zuker breaking in and sitting on my own bed. “You told your husband?”

“Of course.”

“And?”

She took her time on this one. “I think he finally understood the danger. But it was too late.”

“What did he do?”

“Aaron left. For our sake.”

I nodded, seeing it now. “But you couldn’t tell Natalie that. You couldn’t tell anyone. They’d be in danger. So you told them he ran off. Then you moved away and changed your name.”

“Yes,” she said.

But I was missing something. I was missing a lot, I suspected. There was something that wasn’t adding up here, something niggling at the back of my brain, but I couldn’t see it yet. How, for example, did Natalie come across Archer Minor twenty years later?

“Natalie thought her father abandoned her,” I said.

She just closed her eyes.

“But you said that she wouldn’t let it go.”

“She wouldn’t stop pressing me. She was so sad. I should have never told her that. But what choice did I have? Everything I did, I did to protect my girls. You don’t understand. You don’t understand what a mother has to do sometimes. I needed to protect my girls, you see?”

“I do,” I said.

“And look what happened. Look what I did.” She put her hands to her face and started to sob. The old woman with the walker and tattered bathrobe stopped talking to the wall. Beehive looked like she was readying herself to intervene. “I should have made up some other story. Natalie just kept pressing me, demanding to know what happened to her father. She never stopped.”

I saw it now. “So you eventually told her the truth.”

“It ruined her life, don’t you see? Growing up thinking your father did that to you. She needed closure. I never gave her that. So, yes, I finally told her the truth. I told her that her father loved her. I told her that she didn’t do anything wrong. I told her that he would never, ever, abandon her.”

I nodded along with her words. “So you told her about Archer Minor. That was why she was there that day.”

She didn’t say anything. She just sobbed. Beehive was having no more of this. She was on her way over.

“Where is your husband now, Miss Avery?”

“I don’t know.”

“And Natalie? Where is she?”

“I don’t know that either. But, Jake?”

Beehive was by her side. “I think that’s enough.”

I ignored her. “What, Miss Avery?”

“Let it go. For all our sakes. Don’t be like my husband.”

Chapter 31

When I reached the highway, I flipped on my iPhone. I didn’t think anyone was tracking me but if they were, they’d find me on Route 287 near the Palisades Mall. I didn’t think that would help them very much. I pulled over to the right. There were two more e-mails and three calls from Shanta, each more urgent than the last. That added up to five. In the first two e-mails, she politely asked me to contact her. In the next two, her request was more urgent. In the final, she threw out the big net:

To: Jacob Fisher

From: Shanta Newlin

Jake,

Stop ignoring me. I found an important connection between Natalie Avery and Todd Sanderson.

Shanta

Whoa. I took the Tappan Zee Bridge and pulled over at the first exit. I turned off the iPhone and picked up one of the disposables. I dialed Shanta’s number and waited. She answered on the second ring.

“I get it,” she said. “You’re mad at me.”

“You gave the NYPD that disposable number. You helped them track me down.”

“Guilty, but it was for your own good. You could have gotten shot or picked up for resisting arrest.”

“Except I didn’t resist arrest. I ran away from some nut jobs who were trying to kill me.”

“I know Mulholland. He’s a good guy. I didn’t want some hothead taking a shot at you.”

“For what? I was barely a suspect.”

“It doesn’t matter, Jake. You don’t have to trust me. That’s fine. But we need to talk.”

I put the car in park and turned off the engine. “You said you found a connection between Natalie Avery and Todd Sanderson.”

“Yep.”

“What is it?”

“I’ll tell you when we talk. In person.”

I thought about that.

“Look, Jake, the FBI wanted to bring you in for a full-fledged interrogation. I told them I could better handle it for them.”

“The FBI?”

“Yep.”

“What do they want with me?”

“Just come in, Jake. It’s fine, trust me.”

“Right.”

“You can talk to me or the FBI.” Shanta sighed. “Look, if I tell you what it’s about, do you promise you’ll come in and talk to me?”

I thought about it. “Yes.”

“Promise?”

“Cross my heart. Now what’s this about?”

“It’s about bank robberies, Jake.”

* * *

The new rule-breaking, live-on-the-edge me broke plenty of speed laws on the way back to Lanford, Massachusetts. I tried sorting out some of what I learned, putting it in order, testing out various theories and suppositions, rejecting them, trying again. In some ways, it was all coming together; in others, there were pieces that felt too forced for a natural fit.

I was still missing a lot, including the biggie: Where was Natalie?

Twenty-five years ago, Professor Aaron Kleiner had gone to his department chairman, Professor Malcolm Hume, because he caught a student plagiarizing (really, just outright buying) a term paper. My old mentor asked him, in so many words, to let it go—just as he had asked me to do with Professor Eban Trainor.

I wondered whether it was Archer Minor himself who threatened Aaron Kleiner’s family or had it been hired hands of MM? It didn’t matter. They intimidated Kleiner to the point where he knew that he had to make himself disappear. I tried to put myself in his place. Kleiner probably felt scared, cornered, trapped.

Who would he go to for help?

First thought again: Malcolm Hume.

And years later, when Kleiner’s daughter was in the same situation, scared, cornered, trapped . . .

My old mentor’s fingerprints were all over this. I really had to talk to him. I dialed Malcolm’s number in Florida and again got no answer.

Shanta Newlin lived in a brick town house that my mother would have described as “cutesy.” There were overflowing flower boxes and arched windows. Everything was perfectly symmetrical. I walked up the stone walk and rang the doorbell. I was surprised to see a little girl come to the door.

“Who are you?” the little girl said.

“I’m Jake. Who are you?”

The kid was five, maybe six years old. She was about to answer when Shanta came rushing over with a harried look on her face. Shanta had her hair tied back, but strands were falling in her eyes. Sweat dotted her brow.

“I have it, Mackenzie,” Shanta told the little girl. “What did I tell you about answering the door without an adult around?”

“Nothing.”

“Well, yes, I guess that’s true.” She cleared her throat. “You should never open a door unless an adult is around.”

She pointed at me. “He’s around. He’s an adult.”

Shanta gave me an exasperated look. I shrugged. The kid had a point. Shanta invited me in and told Mackenzie to play in the den.

“Can I go outside?” Mackenzie asked. “I want to go on the swing.”

Shanta glanced at me. I shrugged again. I was getting good with the shrugs. “Sure, we can all go out back,” Shanta said with a smile so forced I worried it required staples.

I still had no idea who Mackenzie was or what she was doing there, but I had bigger concerns. We headed into the yard. There was a brand-new cedar-wood swing set complete with rocking horse, sliding board, covered fort, and sandbox. As far as I knew, Shanta lived by herself, making this something of a curiosity. Mackenzie jumped on the rocking horse.

“My fiancé’s daughter,” Shanta said in a way of explanation.