Chapter 9 - THE PAPER TRAIL
I had hired attorney Paul Granger after Noah disappeared. For three years, he’d helped me file records requests and follow every tip. He knew when I changed apartments, where I worked, and which investigators I hired.
“You’re sure?” I asked.
“We have payments from an account Ben controlled,” Lewis said. “We’re checking what they were for.”
I sat down. I remembered Paul telling me a sighting in another state was probably nothing. He had sounded kind when he said it. I had thanked him.
Lewis cautioned me that payments alone did not prove he knew where Noah was. I nodded, though my hands shook.
Daniel came into a separate room to speak with us. Lewis remained at the table. He looked at the chair opposite me, then sat.
“You said Rachel knew,” I began.
“I thought she did.” His voice was rough. “Ben showed me a copy of your appointment with Granger. He said it was a custody order.”
“I hadn’t even filed for divorce then.”
“I know that now.”
“Did you ask me?”
Daniel’s face tightened. “No.”
There it was. The choice that started everything.
He told me Ben had been a friend from a car repair shop. Daniel owed him money. Ben offered to help him take Noah away for a weekend and frighten me into agreeing to shared custody. Ben arranged the abandoned car and the story at the river.
“A weekend,” I repeated. “You staged your own disappearance with our four-year-old.”
“I thought I could call you once we were settled.”
“But you didn’t.”
“Ben took my phone. He said police were already looking for us. Then he showed me a news report saying the car had been found, and I panicked.”
Daniel stared at his hands. “I still could have gone to them. I know.”
“What happened eleven months later?”
“I found the original papers Ben made. There was no order. I told him I was taking Noah home.” Daniel looked up. “That night we fought. I fell and hurt my leg. Ben took me to a doctor under a different name. When I came back, Noah was gone.”
Noah had believed his father vanished that day. Daniel said he had spent years doing jobs for Ben, trying to learn where the boy was being kept.
“You could have gone to the police,” I said.
“Ben said he’d move Noah before I could find him. I believed him. I was scared they’d arrest me, too.”
“They should.”
“I know.”
Lewis slid a photograph across the table: a metal box recovered from beneath the bridge. Inside were fake custody papers, receipts, and letters addressed to me. The letters were unopened.
Daniel stared at them.
“I wrote every month,” he said. “Ben told me he mailed them.”
Lewis opened the top envelope. It held a photograph of Noah at five and a short note.
She read the first line, then went still.
May you like
“What?” I asked.
She turned the photograph over. On the back, in another hand, were directions to a storage unit and a date from last week.
