“I see. Did Kim believe your brother was connected to Nicholas in some way?”
The woman sighed.
“As I mentioned, she knew it was likely a dead end. I’m afraid I can’t be of more help, sir. My husband just pulled in to the driveway and I have to go.”
Max thanked Jody for her time and disconnected the call.
He dialed zero for the operator.
“How can I connect you?”
“I’d like the number for the newspaper, Up North News, in Traverse City, please.”
“Connecting you now,” the woman said.
“Up North News,” a gruff voice barked into the phone.
“I’m trying to reach Abe Levett.”
“Hold,” the man snapped.
A younger man came on the line. “Abe Levett here.”
“Abe, Hi. My name is Max Wolfenstein. I’m calling about an article you wrote for Up North News almost two years ago. You interviewed a man named Percy Hobbs.”
Abe didn’t speak for moment, and Max heard muffled talking as if he’d covered the phone with his hand as he spoke to someone.
“Max, I do remember Percy Hobbs, but I’d prefer to call you back from my home phone. I’m on my way out the door in five minutes. Can I call you back in twenty?”
“Yeah, sure.” Max rattled off his number, wondering if the reporter was giving him the brushoff.
Twenty-five minutes later, the phone hadn’t rang and Max paced back and forth in his kitchen.
Seeking a target for his anger, he cursed Abe Levett under his breath. He opened a cupboard and grabbed a cup, slamming the glass on the counter too hard. The shattering glass was drowned by the ringing of his telephone.
Max stared, dazed at the shards of glass flecking his gray and white checked counter.
The phone rang a second time, and he snatched it up, still stunned at the shattered glass.
“Yes?” Max said, half-expecting the voice of his mother or Jake to be on the other end.
“Abe Levett here. Is this Max?”
“Yes, it’s me,” Max sighed, lifting his phone and drawing out the cord as he walked to his table and slumped into a chair.
“Percy Hobbs called me about claims of a child abduction by a doctor at the Northern Michigan Asylum.”
“And was it true?” Max asked, thinking of the stories by two separate unrelated witnesses of a black van with ties to the Northern Michigan Asylum.
“I could not substantiate those claims,” Abe admitted. “But if you want my gut. I think there was a kernel of truth. Was the whole elaborate story true? That’s hard to say.”
“Can you tell me about them?”
“Hold on,” Abe told him. He spoke to someone on his end of the line.
“Orla, can you grab my notes on Percy Hobbs from the December 1981 file?”
Max waited, listening to rustling in the background.
Orla, Abe had said, a unique name and one Max remembered. He’d read about her in the newspaper. She’d been one of the women abducted by the serial killer from the Leelanau area. Abe Levett had broken the case wide open. He’d also written a long series of articles about corruption at the Northern Michigan Asylum.
Abe cleared his throat, murmuring out loud to himself for a moment.
“Okay yeah, yeah. I remember. He was rather clandestine about the whole thing. He’d found something while traveling in the Amazon, something other worldly he’d claimed, and a doctor from the asylum had stolen it. The doctor was kidnapping children in order to use this thing. He wouldn’t give me specifics, but he wanted attention brought to the doctor and the children. The doctor, as you can imagine, was furious and sued us for liable. My editor’s a maverick, but he didn’t want to take this one on.
“I tried to corroborate Percy’s story, but he went into the institution right after this all went down. I couldn’t validate any of his claims. He did travel to the Amazon, and he lost two traveling partners. I could trace that information through flight records and a few interviews with the family of his colleagues who were lost in the rainforest.”
“Has anyone contacted you about this recently, Abe. Did a woman named Kim Phillips call you?”
“No, I’m sorry. You’re the first I’ve heard speak Percy’s name in a year.”
“Can I ask why you wrote his story? I feel as if most people would write off such outrageous claims as nuts.”
“I’ve seen too much, Max. And I know people. Was his story true? He believed it with every ounce of his being. He believed it, and when I tried to interview the doctor, he came off all wrong. Slick as ice. He knew just what to say, but his eyes told me something else. The man lied. He lied as if it were his nature. And let me tell you another thing, that asylum has more skeleton’s in its closet than a graveyard has bones in the ground.”
“But how could you let it go, then? I mean, if you believed this doctor was abducting children,” Max heard his voice rising.
“Whoa, slow down. I didn’t have any proof. Not the name of one single missing child. I wrote that article thinking some parents might come out of the woodwork to tell me about their missing kids. None did. Not a single one.”
37
Ashley hopped up and down as she stood on the stoop of Sid’s house, pounding on the front door.
Despite the events of the previous days, the thought of buying her new bike chased away the dark clouds that had been accumulating. She’d thought of nothing else since she’d woke at nine o’clock that morning.
Sid’s mother, Gloria, pulled the door open, eyes wide.
“Goodness, Ashley, give that hand a rest,” she said, narrowing her eyes at Ashley’s raised hand.
Ashley dropped her arm. “Is Sid home?” she asked, barely able to contain her excitement.
Gloria cocked her head. “He’s home, but he has dinner at his grandmother’s house in exactly two hours. Which means I expect him to walk back through this door at four forty-five pm. And no going in the woods.”
Ashley nodded up and down.
“Yes, ma’am. I promise.”
“Sid!” Gloria called, retreating into the house. “Ashley is here.”
Sid popped his head into the hallway and grinned. “Hey. I just finished my model airplane. Want to see?”
Ashley shook her head. She pulled the wad of cash from her back pocket.
Sid clapped his hands together. “Yes! You’ve got the rest?”
“Twenty-two dollars exactly,” she said, waving the bills as if she’d just won the lottery.
“Mom, I’ll be back in a little while,” Sid called.
Gloria returned to the front hall, her face pinched with worry.
“I mean it when I say don’t go in the woods, you two. If I so much as hear from a neighbor you chased a frisbee into the trees, you won’t be leaving this house for a week, Sidney. Understand?” She stared at Sid and then shifted her attention to Ashley.
Both kids nodded their agreement, though Ashley was secretly grateful her own mother hadn’t worded her warnings so strongly.
Sid stuffed his feet into his tennis shoes, not bothering to untie them first, and followed Ashley out the door. He grabbed his bike from the garage, and she climbed on behind him.
Ashley tilted her head back and let the warm breeze blow her long dark hair out behind her. Her body seemed weightless, light as a feather. It was a term she’d uttered plenty of times when they played light as a feather, stiff as a board, but not a sensation she’d ever truly experienced.