Learning to Swim (9 page)

When he turned back around he was once again the cool businessman, in perfect control, hair back in place. “If you have harmed my son, I will kill you,” he said, almost pleasantly. “If this is a hoax, I will probably also kill you.”

We stared at each other a long moment. If this was innocence, it wasn’t what I expected. If it was guilt, it was terrifying.

“May I have some water?” I asked, my voice catching. He made a small violent movement, but restrained himself. He gestured toward a fancy watercooler in the corner. I walked to it on unsteady legs, ran water into a mug that sat nearby and drank, for once not concerned about germs. I carefully set the mug down and turned back to him. He was watching me unblinkingly.

I realized my entire plan had been absurdly naïve. I’d been insane to think I had the ability to face down either raw evil or deep
anguish. Dumond either was responsible for his own wife’s death and his son’s near-death, or had suffered a life-shattering tragedy. And I had no idea which.

Time ticked by. I forced myself to breathe steadily. “Okay,” I said. “I’ve found a boy who may be your son.”

“Let me guess,” he interrupted, lip curling, French accent slipping through. “You need a cash deposit to remember where my son is. For this I get perhaps a small clue, but to remember exactly where he is you will need more cash, eh?” He nearly trembled with rage.

“No, no, no,” I said. “You don’t understand,” and God help me, my voice cracked again. I go years without crying—in public, anyway—and then I’m about to turn on the spigot for the third time in two days.

It stopped him for a moment, halted a tirade that I sensed had barely started. He abruptly gestured at a chair, and in that moment I thought I saw something besides rage: a flicker of despair, a deep sadness.

I sat, warily, on the edge of one of the leather chairs. I thought of a small boy, waiting for me, trusting me. Needing a parent who loved him.

“I’ve found a boy I think is your son,” I said. “But before I tell you where he is”—I held up my hand as he moved involuntarily—“I need to know what happened.”

He stared at me. “What do you mean?”

“How it happened. How Paul disappeared.” My voice rose. “Why there was no newspaper coverage. And why you’re here instead of in Montreal.”

He eyed me, gauging the advantages and disadvantages of humoring me, of telling his story. At last he did, flatly and with little expression, leaning up against the edge of his desk.

He’d come home from work one afternoon to find his wife and child gone, along with her car, and a scribbled note saying she was going on a holiday. She had taken breaks before, especially during the winter, but had never before taken Paul. But the nanny had had the day off, and he assumed it had been spur of the moment. Some
clothing and jewelry and her laptop were gone. He’d called their condo in Florida and then her friends. Nothing.

A few days later a neighbor wandered over with a misdelivered envelope that had sat in their mailbox while they had been out of town. It was a ransom demand with a deadline that had passed, threatening to kill both mother and child if he went to the police or failed to pay.

Paralyzed, he waited. Next a packet arrived at work. He’d obviously not cared about his wife, the note said, and she was dead, but he had another chance to get his son back. It included a Polaroid of a frightened Paul, perched on a chair in a room he didn’t recognize.

He’d followed directions, leaving a bag of money near a park bench. Next came another note with a new photo, demanding more money. He paid. No Paul. Another demand, another photo. Now he went to the police, who orchestrated a fake payoff and staked out the drop site. No one showed. Three days later another demand, threatening to send Paul home in small pieces. Against police advice, he followed payoff instructions with as much as he could raise. Nothing. One more demand, but by this point he knew it was futile, and turned it over to the police. And then it all stopped. No more ransom demands, no more mysterious packets. Nothing—as if nothing had ever happened, as if wife and child had never existed.

He told neighbors that Madeleine and Paul had gone to Florida for the winter; the police had kept the story quiet. If any journalists had learned of the kidnapping, they had cooperated. Finally he sold the house and moved to Ottawa. One letter was forwarded from Montreal from someone claiming to have Paul, but with no contact info. He kept a Québec private investigator looking, with a standing offer of a reward. Nothing.

He recited it dispassionately, as if telling someone else’s story, and then looked at me.

“You think you know where Paul is,” he said, without expression.

“Do you have a picture of him?” I asked.

Barely shifting his weight off the desk, he pulled out his wallet, opening it to a snapshot of a dark-haired boy perched on a rail of a
boat, laughing into the camera. He was younger and plumper than Paul, with a carefree look I’d never seen on Paul’s face.

But it was him, without a doubt.

This was when I had to decide. I had a natural antipathy to anyone as attractive, polished, and wealthy as this man, and he’d given me a first-hand example of his frightening rage. But what swayed me was the very flatness of his tone as he told the story, as if his anguish was so intense he had to keep it tightly bottled up. I could not imagine him harming his child.

I took a deep breath, and made a decision that would change lives, for better or for worse. “Yes,” I said. “He’s with a friend of mine in upstate New York. I found him two days ago.”

It seemed that the world should shift at this point, but Dumond didn’t blink. “How?” he asked.

The question caught me off guard. I wasn’t ready to trot out the ferry story: it was too involved, too unlikely, too traumatic. I didn’t know how to answer. He repeated it: “How did you find him?”

“He was on the ferry coming into Port Kent,” I said carefully, and that part was true. “He was alone, and told me he had been kidnapped.”

His eyes narrowed. “Why do you think it is my son?”

This wasn’t going at all as I had expected. I hadn’t considered his doubting me. “He says his name is Paul Dumond. And that his parents are Philippe and Madeleine Dumond, from Montreal. He says he was taken before Christmas.”

A long silence. Then he asked, “Where has he been?”

“I don’t know. The ferry was coming from Burlington, Vermont, but they could have driven from anywhere.”

“And his mother?” The question was casual.

My throat tightened. I hadn’t considered that I would have to tell this man that his son had heard his mother being shot. I wished I could lie and say I didn’t know, but I’m a terrible liar. And he needed to know. “Paul says … Paul says she was shot soon after they were taken.”

Dumond raised an eyebrow, but gave no other reaction. “He saw this?”

“No,” I whispered, “but he says he heard it.”

He stood suddenly. He had made his decision. I could be a lunatic or a criminal; I could be playing a horrible hoax, but he had reached a decision: he would go see the boy—now. We would go to New York, in his car. I would leave my car here, in the garage under the building. He had no intention of letting me out of his sight.

“Don’t you want to call the police?”

“Later. First I need to see the boy.”

Spending three hours in a car with Paul’s father hadn’t been in my script. But I could see his point: he didn’t want to run the risk of my getting away from him. And he was, after all, the person I’d decided to turn Paul over to.

“All right,” I said after thinking it through. “But you need to call the police, tell them I said I found your son, and that you’re going to go see him.”

We stared at each other. But on this I wasn’t giving in. I was all too aware that I could be making entirely the wrong decision about a man who may have plotted the murder of his wife and child. With deliberation, he picked up his desk phone. As he punched in a number that he read off his cell phone I could see the wedding band on his ring finger. He pushed the speakerphone button and I heard voice mail kick in.

Dumond shoved a pad of paper and pen at me, making a writing motion as he spoke. “Yes, this is Philippe Dumond and I have spoken to you about my son’s kidnapping last winter from Montreal. I am with a young woman whose name is”—I’d figured out what he wanted and hastily printed on the pad—“Troy Chance, from Lake Placid, New York. She says she found my son at the ferry station in the New York town of Port Kent, day before yesterday. We are traveling to New York State now so I can determine if this is my son.” He rattled off his cell phone number, hung up, and stood.

I followed him out of the office as he spoke briskly to his secretary, and then he strode beside me to my car, waiting with barely restrained impatience as I scrabbled to move map, water bottle, and other odds and ends from the passenger side. I’d never realized how
much stuff I travel with. He directed me curtly into a slot in his underground garage and waited while I got my things. As I rummaged in the glove box for my ID and phone, I slipped the tape recorder out of my blazer pocket and into the compartment. If the worst happened, someone would find the tape of our conversation. Like the schoolteacher from Maryland years ago who had recorded her conversations with her teenaged carjacker, trying patiently to talk him out of killing her, but failing.

He silently ushered me into a black Mercedes a few spaces over. Awkwardly, I sat in the leather seat and buckled up.

“What about—” I started.

“What?” he asked sharply, as he backed the car out.

“I thought maybe … shouldn’t you, well, take along something of Paul’s? I mean, he’s been gone for a long time. Does he have a favorite toy, a teddy bear or something?”

He looked at me as if I were crazy. But I could remember Paul saying his father didn’t want him. Maybe the kidnappers had told him this; maybe he’d just assumed it because his father hadn’t come and rescued him. But having a tangible reminder of happier times couldn’t hurt.

Again he made a quick decision. We veered away from downtown and toward an elite area with winding roads and stately homes of diplomats and a few embassy compounds, with private homes mixed in.

We stopped at an elaborate Tudor home nestled behind a tall wrought-iron fence with a hedge thickly entwined. The gate swung open when he fingered a gadget in his car. He parked in front of the house and ushered me in front of him, through the heavy oak door and across the polished floor of the hallway.

He moved fast. He punched off an alarm, then stalked down a corridor. He paused to pull down a soft black bag from a hallway closet, and continued down the hall and into a room. I followed, tentatively. From the doorway I could see a child’s furniture: oak bunk beds with matching dresser, desk and chair, rocker, and toy box. Otherwise the room was bare, with a row of stacked boxes still sealed with
movers’ tape. Dumond moved to the boxes and ripped four or five of them open, one after another. In silence he rooted through them, grabbing a stuffed bear, a truck, and action figures and cramming them into the bag. I didn’t say a word; I scarcely breathed. My throat tightened. Here was Paul’s childhood, boxed away, carefully moved into a new room. Waiting for the boy who had spent the last five months alone in a tiny room.

As quickly as he’d started, Dumond was finished. Back down the hallway, up a short flight of stairs to what seemed to be a loft area. I sat on the stairs to wait. He reappeared a few minutes later with a packed leather bag.

“Let’s go,” he said, and we strode in silence across the shiny hallway, our heels clicking on the marble, and climbed into the Mercedes.

D
OES HE SPEAK ENGLISH
?”

“What?” I asked, startled. We’d traveled in silence the first half hour. He had no idea if I was telling him the truth. If he was innocent, he wouldn’t want to get his hopes up that he was about to see his son. If guilty, he was probably working out how best to get rid of me. I was working hard not to consider the second option.

I felt as if I’d suddenly stepped into a movie without having seen the script. Had he been involved? I hoped the hell not. Was I doing the right thing taking him to Paul? I hoped the hell yes. Was I in danger? I had no idea. The Ottawa police knew he was with me, and knew where we were headed. But either way, this man was going to take one small boy out of my life forever.

He grimaced. “This boy you say is Paul.”

“No. At least not much. Did your son … ?”

“He speaks a little, but we spoke French at home.” I knew that most Québec schools didn’t let kids study English until third grade or so. Which seems to me a tad exclusionary, especially in a country that’s officially bilingual.

Silence for a few moments.

“Is he healthy?” he asked.

“He seems fine. I had a friend who’s a nurse look him over.”

More miles in silence. We zoomed past an exit, and I could see McDonald’s arches in the distance. My stomach rumbled. I had a packet of peanut butter crackers in my bag, but I couldn’t picture
myself pulling them out and crunching them down in this car with its spotless leather seats.