Long lost

I hesitated. "Eunice was his mother's name."

Mrs. Garner moaned.

"It sounds as if he was punishing…"

"His mother. Punishing his mother. God help me." Her voice cracked with despair. "Hurt him. Remember your promise. When you find him, hurt him."

"You have my word."

4

All the way to my car, I tried not to let Mrs. Garner see my discouragement. "When you find him," she'd said. But I no longer believed that I would. With no information about where Lester Dant had gone that night, I hadn't the faintest idea what to do next. Worse, I didn't see the point of trying. Lester was far more disturbed than the FBI's information about him had revealed. I couldn't imagine him keeping Kate and Jason alive.

Grieving for them, I slumped behind the steering wheel. Hate fought with grief. "Hurt him," Mrs. Garner had pleaded. Yes, hurt him, I thought. Furious, I drove past well-maintained lawns and neatly trimmed hedges. I reached a four-way stop and turned to the right. At the next four-way stop, I turned to the left. No reason. No direction.

I went on that way, at random, for quite a while, driving through the prosperous farm town until I realized that I was passing certain homes and stores for what might have been the fifth or sixth time. Fatigue finally caught up to me, making me stop at a motel called the Traveler's Oasis on the edge of town.

It was almost five, but for me it felt like midnight as I carried my suitcase and backpack into a room that faced the parking lot. Too exhausted to survey the Spartan accommodations, I returned to the car for my printer and laptop computer. I wondered why I'd bothered to bring them. They took up space. I hadn't used them.

Maybe it's time to go home, I thought.

In Denver, it was two hours earlier. I picked up the phone.

"Payne Detective Agency," a man's familiar voice said.

"Answering the phone yourself?"

Payne didn't reply for a moment. "A

"Is my voice that recognizable?" I imagined the portly man next to his goldfish tank.

"You've been on my mind. When you called the last time, you were in South Dakota. You said you'd get back to me, but you didn't. I've been worried. What are you doing in…" I heard Payne's fingers tapping on a computer keyboard. "The Traveler's Oasis in Loganville, Ohio."

"Sounds like you've got a new computer program."

"It keeps me distracted. What are you doing there?"

"Giving up."

"I'm sorry to hear that. I figured that as long as you were in motion, you wouldn't do anything foolish to yourself. You didn't learn anything, I gather."

I sat wearily on the bed. "The opposite. I learned too much. But it hasn't taken me anywhere."

"Except to the Traveler's Oasis in Loganville, Ohio."

Payne tried to make it sound like a joke, but it didn't work. "I was hoping to find a pattern," I said into the phone.

"Sometimes a pattern's there. We just don't recognize it."

"Yeah, well, my pattern's been aimless." Something Payne had said caught up to me-the somber way he'd said it. "A

"We'll see."

"… Oh."

He hesitated. "A lump on her breast, but it might just be a cyst. The doctor's doing a biopsy."

I took a tired breath. "I'll say a prayer."

"Thanks."

"Before all this began, that isn't something I'd have said."

"That you'd pray for somebody?" he asked.

"The last few days, I spoke to a couple of ministers and a very religious, very decent lady. I guess some of their attitudes wore off on me. The trouble is, I also learned about a man whose parents turned him into a monster. Lester Dant."

"You believe in him now."

"Oh, I believe in him all right. God help me."

"Another prayer," Payne said.

"I'll be starting home tomorrow. I'll phone as soon as I get back. Maybe you'll have the results of the biopsy by then."

"Maybe." Payne's voice sank. "Have a safe trip."

I murmured, "Thanks," and hung up.

Please, God, keep his wife healthy, I thought.

I lay on the bed and closed my eyes. The draperies shut out the late-afternoon light. I wanted to sleep forever.

Please, God, I hope you didn't let Kate and Jason suffer. I couldn't help thinking about the good and bad things that religion could do to people. I couldn't help thinking about Lester Dant ru

5

The shock of the idea made me sit up. I found myself standing excitedly, thinking about what Lester Dant, posing as my brother, had told me more than a year earlier.

"As I wandered from town to town, I learned that an easy way to get a free meal was to show up at church socials after Sunday-morning services."

Jesus, I thought, he would have continued doing what worked. He'd have gone to another church in another small town. Payne had been right. The pattern was there. I just hadn't recognized it.

In a rush, I arranged my computer and printer on a table next to the bed. I unplugged the room's phone from the wall and attached my own phone line, co

The next thing, I logged on to an Internet geography site and printed a map for Ohio, along with ones for the surrounding states of Michigan, Indiana, Kentucky, West Virginia, and Pe

The maps gave me hundreds of names. Too many to be of use, but a start. I made the list more practical by eliminating the names of towns that were on the extreme reaches of the other states. I further reduced the list by eliminating Indiana, convinced that Dant would have avoided going back to where he'd been imprisoned. That left Ohio, Michigan to the north of it, Kentucky and West Virginia to the south, and Pe

But the towns in them weren't what I cared about. What I wanted were the names of churches in those towns. I typed "Churches in Ohio" into the Internet's "Search For" box. A list appeared, complete with their locations and their Web site addresses. I matched them with the towns on my list. I did the same with churches in Kentucky, West Virginia, Pe

A loud knock on the door distracted me.

I jerked my head in that direction.

Sunlight had long since faded from behind the draperies. I looked at my watch. Almost seven hours had passed. The hands were close to midnight.

The loud knock was repeated. "Mr. De

When I stood, my legs ached from having sat so long. I went to the door, squinted through the tiny lens, and saw an elderly man in a jacket and tie. I kept the security chain on the door when I opened it and peered through the five-inch gap. "What is it?" The stark floodlights in the parking lot made me blink.

"I just wanted to make sure that everything was all right. Our computer shows that you've been on the phone since around five o'clock, but when I tried to access the line to make sure you hadn't fallen asleep and left the phone off the hook, all I got was static."

"I've been catching up on office work."