“What are you talking about? My father? You didn’t know my father.”
He reached inside his coat and pulled out a yellowed envelope. “I never met your father. But I did know him.”
“You know nothing about my father.”
“You think it was by chance that your father, this landscaper, could pull strings at a university two states away and get you a job in the astronomy department, of all places? I got a call from a colleague in St. Louis who said he knew of a young woman looking for a job at the university, and that her father supported our work. What do you think that meant?”
“This is insane.”
“Read this.” He held out the envelope. “He only had one request of me, and I failed him. Please, Lynn.”
He held up the envelope to show the handwriting on the front. In Daddy’s bold, decisive letters, were Steven’s name and the address of the astronomy building.
I took the envelope and slowly opened it. The pages inside were rigid with age and still smelled faintly of pipe smoke.
Dear Dr. Richards,
I want to thank you for bringing Lynn into your fold. I am not at all surprised to hear that she is exceeding all of your expectations. My girl has always been remarkable.
I also want to thank you for so readily taking my phone call all those months ago. I didn’t know if you would, given that I had to limit my interactions with your peers for many years now.
I simply couldn’t risk what happened to my wife happening to Lynn.
Daddy’s words began to blur, and I blinked, holding the paper closer.
As I told you on the phone, Lynn doesn’t know the truth, and I honestly hoped she never would know. Yet I’ve always been plagued with guilt that she doesn’t know her own true story. When you become a father, all you ever want to do is protect your children. I thought that when she moved to Illinois, she would finally be safe. But I fear that one day she will return to our land, and I beg you, sir, to do everything in your power to keep that from happening. I am not a well man, and if it comes to it, you must explain to her why she must never move back. In order for her to understand why, you have to know what happened.
Lynn was five when they took her. There had been a wicked storm, and she and I were on the porch, watching the fireflies come out, late on an August evening. She wanted so desperately to chase them. I must have dozed off, and the next thing I knew, I awoke to a terrible light in the trees and ladybugs swarming everywhere. I couldn’t find Lynn, and when I went to look in the woods, I found her shoe. My wife, Freda, and I looked through the night. You have to remember how remote our home was then—we barely have neighbors now, almost twenty years later. There was no one to call for help that late.
My wife and I didn’t sleep, and I was preparing to head into town to find help the next morning when this man shows up. Dr. Rex Martin. He said he was a professor who lived in St. Louis and had received several reports from the area of power outages and lights coming from the heavens. I told him that all I cared about was finding my missing daughter. He calmly put his hand on my arm and said that my daughter was gone. But he thought he knew where she would be.
Those words would change my life. I would regain my daughter and lose my Freda.
What happened over the next six months is something that I still cannot fully comprehend. Where Dr. Martin led us, and what we found. Freda kept pushing us until we found Lynn. My brave, brave wife would never would stop. She sacrificed herself in the end so we could escape.
It is a story perhaps for another time. It’s still too painful for me to think about. In the end, I returned home with only my little girl.
I had to concoct two stories: that Lynn had gotten sick with a brain tumor and we took her to have it removed in St. Louis, and that Freda died of a sudden heart attack and was buried in her home state of Missouri. Of course, there was no surgery; nothing was ever removed from Lynn, but it was all I could come up with to explain our absence and Lynn’s lack of memory when we finally found her. And thanks to Dr. Martin, I was even able to produce forged medical records for Lynn and a death certificate for Freda. We were private country people with almost no family, so there weren’t many who even knew us well enough to mourn.
By the Grace of God, Lynn finally began to accept me as her father and relearned everything. If you didn’t know, you’d have thought she had a normal life. I’ve done everything in my power to give her one.
Even when Dr. Martin and others in your profession needed to come and study the woods and the location where all the people have vanished, I was hesitant. I let them come once and only once. I could not risk more. It cost Freda her life having to enter your world of secrets and shadows.
And now, the most important person in my world is in your care. I fear I will not live long enough to explain all this to her, and it’s why I felt better about deceiving her into thinking she was getting a job in the agriculture department. I need you to teach her what you know about the missing, and if I don’t survive, explain to her why she cannot return to our home.
She will fight you on this. This is our land, and Lynn is a homebody. She sees Illinois as a temporary location, but it must become more than that. Dr. Martin believes the devils come back from time to time, and I cannot risk the possibility that she could be taken again.
She will be stubborn. Her husband, Tom, is a good boy, but he too will have difficulty believing all this, so you must start with her. She is deeply rooted in reality, as am I. I wish I could go back to the beliefs I had before this, where the only purpose of the stars was to bring us light in the dark. Now I cannot look too long into the heavens for fear of what I might see.
Sincerely,
Bud Stanson
I read the letter twice. I wanted to find a chair and collapse into it.
It couldn’t be. Not me. That happened to all those other people whose disappearances I’d researched.
Not me.
But it explained the bell. The day he entered the woods with the strangers. Why he could never speak of my mother. His last words to me not to raise my children near the woods. I tried to fold the letter up and place it back in the envelope, but my hands were shaking too hard.
“How could you have kept this from me?”
“Because I was angry. You broke my heart. I realize now that I was a self-involved, self-important jerk. Your father wanted you to know about what happened to you on your own terms. I intended for you to learn it either from him or, in time, from me. And when you left me and I found out you returned home, I assumed your father would tell you, and you would come back to me. When you didn’t, I thought you had made your choice.”
“My choice?” I held up the letter. “My father couldn’t speak when I moved back home. He couldn’t explain this to me. I settled there. I raised my family there. And they were all in danger! You let this happen!”
“I know that.” He took a step towards me. “It’s all my fault. I even tried telling you, so many times. All those years ago, you asked me how we could keep encouraging families, telling them that sometimes the abducted come back. But how do you explain to the woman you love that of all the missing we were researching, she was the only one who ever did?“
“That’s what I was, wasn’t I? A test case,” I said, my eyes narrowing. “The Researchers who constantly peppered me with questions—they just really wanted to ask if I remembered anything about being abducted. You all were studying me. I was a glorified test subject—”
“No. You were never that. We all had fallen in love with you—”
I placed Daddy’s letter in my purse. “I should have never trusted you.”
“It’s why I had to go into hiding. They know that I know.”
“I don’t even care to know who they are.”
“Your husband’s employer.”
He took off his glasses and rubbed between his eyes. “When I first heard that your—our—grandson had vanished, I immediately feared the worst. I knew if I suddenly sho
wed up, after all these years, with a wild story of you being abducted as well, it would have made an already bad situation worse. But I had to do something. I started with downloading the maps of your property, so I could know where to start searching. That was my first mistake. Not two hours later, I was summoned to the office of our esteemed dean, who promptly fired me for using university equipment for personal use. An anonymous tipster, he said, had alerted him. I was escorted out and blocked from all my work. I rushed home to find FBI agents carrying all my belongings out of my house.
“It was no coincidence. I should have known they would be monitoring any outside internet searches. Especially from anyone who worked in astronomy. So I had to run, with only the shirt on my back. And when you’re my age, that’s not easy. I couldn’t contact you or anyone. Even getting cash out of an ATM was out of the question, since they were monitoring that too.”
“Steven, please—“
“It’s vital that you know how far they’ll go, Lynn, because of what I’m about to tell you. If it hadn’t been for the Corcillium, I wouldn’t have been able to even find out about the other missing people from your property.”
“Corcillium—?” I asked, and then stopped. I knew the name. I’d heard it, all those years ago, when that Researcher had tried to convince Steven to take me deep into what he had called the underground.
“Consider them … a board, of sorts, that governs the Researchers’ work. I knew someone was distributing information to us, but I never knew who. I was so destitute that I was living in a homeless shelter when they found me. They not only rescued me, but their resources allowed me to find out about the others abducted from your woods. It took me some time, but once I had the information, I immediately headed for Nashville. When I reached out to Barbara, she told me that you’d come searching for me first. As soon as I heard about William, I wanted to come to you. But you know the danger. There was a time when you came face-to-face with the Suits yourself.”
“I don’t live in that world anymore. I was young and naïve and, frankly, desperate for anything that would have saved me from my marriage at the time. You could have been doing research into chimpanzees and empowered me like you did, and I would have thrown myself into that too.”
“I don’t believe that. It took you a few months to figure out the climate patterns and the commonalities in these cases when it took me years to realize them. You could have done anything with your life.”
“You know nothing about my life.”
“Listen: I think I know where William is.”
“He’s still alive?” I asked, a twinge of hope swelling in my chest.
He nodded. “What I’ve learned from the Corcillium in just the past few months makes me believe we can find him. But Lynn, there are risks—”
“Steven, please. You owe it to my father to tell me. Tell me what you know—”
“We go together, then. I’ll tell you everything when we get in the car,” he responded, looking around the room. “I don’t dare say much more here, as I’ve come to learn they have ways to monitor everything—”
“Tell me now. Right now.”
“I’m not talking about losing a job and having all your property seized by the government. No one has returned alive from where we’re going. But I want to find William too—”
The door suddenly beeped and Barbara pushed through. “Jesus, Steven, they’re here! They’re all wearing FBI jackets, coming up the stairs.”
“What?” he asked, now angrily scanning the room. “Dammit, I knew it!”
“They’re coming now!”
“Go out the back stairs and take your car, like we talked about. Take it and run. Now, Barbara!” Steven ordered.
“Come with me,” she pleaded.
“I’ll be right behind you,”
She gave us one last, fleeting look before running out.
“What’s going on?”
Steven rummaged through his duffel bag and brought out a folded-over envelope. He leaned in close and whispered softly, “Put this in your purse.”
“What is this?”
“Look for your star.”
“What are you talking about? I don’t understand—”
“Lynn, the Argentum theory—“
The door thudded. A second later, it smashed open, and agents dressed in SWAT jackets swarmed in. Steven moved past me, holding up his hands.
“You got me, OK? You got me. Don’t hurt her.”
“We have no intention of hurting her,” one of the agents said, seizing Steven and cuffing him.
“Dr. Richards, you are under arrest on a charge of domestic terrorism and kidnapping,” declared another agent, her voice muffled under the full protective mask she and the others wore. “Where is William Chance?”
“This won’t silence me,” Steven grunted, grimacing in pain. “Don’t believe them, Lynn!”
They turned him around, and he twisted back to me. “Remember what I told you!”
The agents forced him out the door and into the hall. He stumbled, and they yanked him around the corner.
I started to follow. “Please, don’t—”
“Mrs. Roseworth, I’m so sorry,” said the female agent, her ponytail now loose from where it was tucked into her shirt. “Are you all right?”
I nodded once. “I’m sorry it came to this. We had to follow you until Dr. Richards could be found. We knew he would, at some point, reach out to you. Senator Roseworth said you used to work for him.”
“My husband knows?” I asked, dazed.
“He does as of tonight, when we told him we were moving in. I want you to know we’re going to find that woman, his accomplice. We’re tracking her now. She may know the location of your grandson. Let’s go, your family is anxious to see you.”
She took off her mask, and slipped a cigarette between her lips. I blinked in recognition.
“I know you don’t like cigarette smoke.”
“But you’re Tom’s press person,” I stammered, thinking that it wasn’t that long ago when she sat at my kitchen table. “Why are you wearing an FBI jacket?”
“Let’s get you home,” she said, sneaking a quick drag and gently taking my arm.
TWELVE
“I’m sure you are more than capable of driving,” Deanna said, the red and blue lights of the police escort flickering on her face, “But after what you just went through, I thought it might be best for you to rest a bit. I know I’ve asked you already, but do you need anything? I have an extra water in my backpack.”
“Where are you taking him?”
“Likely the Davidson County jail. He’ll be booked there.”
I kept watching the snow that was starting to fall. “May I ask your actual name?”
“It’s Deanna. Deanna Ruck. I used my real name when I was assigned. There was no need to tell your husband otherwise. He thought I was a specialist in crisis communications.”
“Why did you have to lie to him?”
She tapped on the steering wheel. “Your husband will understand. Sometimes the FBI does things in order to protect and serve important people in Washington.”
“Why not come clean from the beginning that you were an agent assigned to him?”
“Because I wasn’t assigned to him. I was assigned to you.”
I looked at her. “What do you mean?”
“We identified Dr. Richards as a possible suspect pretty quickly. We’ve seen the map of your property he kept in his safe, along with the articles about your family. I know you’ve seen them too. We thought he might reach out to you.”
“You followed me to Champaign?”
“We found William’s jacket in the basement of Dr. Richards’s house. We have a team there now, looking for any trace of him.”
“Why would he leave William’s jacket there?”
“Because he was on the run, Mrs. Roseworth. Our intelligence shows he’s been involved in this antigovernment group linked to domestic terrorism. He obviously has some
sort of obsession with you and your family, and he harbored some kind of vendetta towards your husband. He thought if he kidnapped William, he could hurt the senator.”
“What you’re saying doesn’t make sense.”
“It makes perfect sense.” She looked at me briefly. “It needs to make sense.”
I let that one sink in. “What does that mean?”
“No one has to know that you went in search of him. No one has to know about your relationship. It’s really going to be in the best interest of everyone involved that you have a long talk with your friend Roxy and decide that keeping all this quiet will allow your family to move on. Questioning our investigation would only force us to disclose everything.”
I sank back into the seat. “You all really think this is going to work?”
“What do you mean?”
“You get your suspect, and I get my family back? The problem is that it isn’t true, and I’ll never know what happened to my grandson.”
“Dr. Richards kidnapped your grandson, Mrs. Roseworth. We have William’s jacket and enough evidence to convince any jury. If he starts to blather on about his alien abduction theories, everyone will think he’s insane.”
“William wasn’t wearing a jacket.”
“Did I say jacket? I meant pajama top.”
I turned back towards the window, closing my eyes.
“I’m glad we could ride together, Mrs. Roseworth. Your family has already been briefed on all this: How one of Dr. Richards’s operatives contacted you and insisted you come alone to get information on his whereabouts. How you bravely went, hoping to get information, and how we trailed you without your knowledge. You’re a real heroine in all this. You might even get a profile in People magazine.”
“I don’t read that magazine.”
“I know you’ll do the right thing, Mrs. Roseworth. Your husband is home from Washington, and your entire family now knows. They’ll be waiting for you. After you catch up with them, you’ll encourage your friend Roxy to sit up with you until you fall asleep. The two of you can use that time to get on the same page.”
“Or what?”
The Darkest Time of Night Page 14
