going to pursue this, try to find your son.”
Larry said, “Oh, sure. Please. You’re nothing like that big guy.”
“Didn’t like him one bit,” Emma muttered.
“Dalton Crowe?”
“That was his name. I told him to leave. I wasn’t going to pay him any reward. He laughed and said I could stuff it. He was going after the bigger one anyway, you know—the fifty thousand the county offered.”
“When was he here?”
“Couple days ago.”
In his notebook Shaw wrote, D.C. present at offerors’ house. June 9.
“Now, let me tell you how I approach this. It won’t cost you anything unless I find Erick. No expenses. If I locate him, you’ll owe me that $900.”
Larry said proudly, “It’s $1,060 now. One of my cousins came through. Wish it was more but …”
“I know you’ll want me to bring him home to you. But that’s not my job. He’s a fugitive and I’d be breaking the law if I did that.”
“Aiding and abetting,” Emma said. “I watch all the crime shows.”
Colter Shaw tended not to smile but when meeting offerors, he occasionally did, to put them at ease. “I don’t apprehend. I deal in information, not citizen’s arrests. But if I can find him, I won’t let the police know where he is until there’s no chance he or anybody else’ll be hurt. You’ll need a lawyer. Do you know one?”
The regarded each other once more. “Fellow did our closing,” Larry said.
“No. A criminal lawyer. I’ll get you some names.”
“We don’t have … I mean, we could work out a home equity thing, I guess.”
“You’ll have to. He needs good representation.”
Shaw reviewed his notes so far. His handwriting was small and had once been described as balletic, it was so beautifully drawn. The notebook wasn’t ruled. Shaw didn’t need guidance. Each line was perfectly horizontal.
For another twenty minutes Shaw asked questions and the couple responded. Over the course of the interview, he noted that their adamant view that their son was innocent seemed objective; they simply could not accept that the son they knew had committed this crime. The idea bewildered them. The sole perp had to be Adam Harper.
When he felt he had enough information for the moment, he put away the pen and notebook, rose and walked to the door. The parents agreed to send any new information they heard from the police or friends or relatives Erick had contacted for money or other help.
“Thank you,” Emma said at the doorway, debating hugging him, it seemed. She did not.
It was the husband who was choking up. He fumbled whatever he was going to say and just gripped Shaw’s hand. Larry turned back to the house before the first tear appeared.
As he walked to the Winnebago, Shaw was reflecting on the one subject he had not mentioned to Emma and Larry: his policy not to accept a reward from family members if the search revealed that their missing loved one was dead. No reason to even bring up the possibility, even though it seemed more or less likely to Shaw that their second child had been murdered as soon as Adam found he had no more use for the boy.
Why should I talk to you?” the man scoffed.
Dressed in a faded jacket of cracked brown leather, jeans and boots, Adam Harper’s father, Stan, continued to stack cartons of motor oil on a dock. He was a ship’s chandler, an outfitter, and apparently getting an order ready to load onto a delivery boat when it arrived back in the berth.
The air was richly scented, pine and sea waste and petroleum.
“I’m helping Erick Young’s family find their son. The last the police knew, he and Adam were together.”
“You’re after that reward, I’ll bet.”
“I am, yes. Now, is there anything you can tell me about Adam that could help? Where he might go? Friends, relatives he’d be staying with?”
“Put that away.” Nodding at the notebook and pen in Shaw’s hand.
Shaw slipped them into a pocket.
“Don’t have any idea.” Harper was solid as a tree, with sandy-gray hair and a rosy complexion, nose slightly ruddier than cheek.
Erick’s family had offered money for someone to find their fugitive son; Stan Harper had not. As far as Shaw knew, he might hope his son successfully escaped from the law. There was no reason for him to say a word. Still, he wasn’t stonewalling. Not exactly. Three stacked cartons later, Harper turned. “He was always a problem. Moods this, moods that. Said it was like bees buzzing around him all the time. Made it hard on us too, you can believe. He didn’t get that. It was all about him. Trouble at school, counsellors calling all the time. Had some fights, him and me.” A glance toward Shaw. “But that’s fathers and sons. Happens to everybody. Easier for us when he quit school and started working trades. Day labor, mostly. If he was on staff, he’d get fired in a split.”
Shaw would tread lightly with his next question. Bigotry, he’d found, was often handed down from parents to children like hair color and heart trouble. He had no problem calling out a racist, but at the moment his mission was to gather information. “The incident at the church? The cross, the graffiti. Did he ever talk about doing anything like that?”
“Never heard him. But I gotta say, me and him, we didn’t talk about much of anything. After Kelly passed—after my wife passed—he went even further away. Hit him hard. I was like, it’s coming, her passing, and I tried to get ready. Adam, he just didn’t think she’d ever … Denied it, you know?”
“Any friends in supremacist groups? Was he a member of any community like that?”
“What’re you, like a bounty hunter?”
“I make my living finding people.”
Whether this answer satisfied or raised questions, Shaw couldn’t tell. Harper hefted two big cartons at once with little effort. They must’ve totaled fifty pounds.
Shaw repeated the question about neo-Nazis.
“Not that I ever heard but he was … you know, was impressionable. He met some musicians once, and for a year that was all he was going to do. Be a heavy metal star. That was the whole world to him. Then he gave it up. Was going to build skateboards and sell them. That went no place. Fell in with a bad crew in high school, shoplifting and drugs. He did whatever they wanted.
“You know, when I heard from the cops about the church, I wasn’t surprised. Not like oh shit surprised. I figured he’d snapped. I could feel it coming. Since his mother died.”
Stan
