Page 84 of The Lie Maker

“He’s not where he’s supposed to be. He’s disappeared.”

“Aren’t they supposed to keep track of—”

“Yeah, I know, I know. I’ve been through this.”

I told her everything Gwen had told me. The various theories as to why my father might have disappeared, including the one that he’d gone back to doing what got him in trouble to begin with.

“So he could be dead,” Lana said. “He could be on the run from someone looking to get even. He could have gone back to being a hit man.”

“Yeah.”

“You really want to reconnect if it’s that last one?”

“I won’t know till I talk to him.”

“If your dad’s really in trouble, if someone’s really hunting for him, then you’ll want to do what you can to help Gwen find him. But if he’s gone back to being a hit man—God, I can’t believe I’m even talking about this—then helping Gwen means helping to catch him.”

“Yeah.”

We both thought about that for a moment. Finally, Lana asked, “I don’t suppose you remember that New Hampshire license plate?”

“I took a mental snapshot.” I tapped my temple. “It’s still up here. But he used lots of stolen plates.”

Lana pursed her lips. “What if, just this once, it was the real one?”

I thought about that. “Gwen could track it.”

“She doesn’t need to. She already knows where he’s been. She wants to know where he’s gone. But wouldn’t you like to at least know his name? Where he’s been all this time? We could do a little end run around Gwen.”

I smiled. “Okay.”

Lana smiled. “Give me the plate. I know someone who might be able to help.”

Forty-Two

The following morning, Lana left a message for Detective Florence Knight, asking her to call back when she had a moment. Her intentions were twofold. She wanted to know whether there had been any progress in the investigations of those two drownings, and she wanted Knight to check a New Hampshire plate number. Lana would say Knight owed her one for holding off writing a story speculating that the drownings might be homicides.

Lana had asked Jack to tell her as many details about the events surrounding his father’s work for Galen Frohm as he could remember. The internet was in its infancy when his father disappeared, and his mother went to great lengths to hide newspapers that made any mention of his crimes. So it wasn’t until a few years later that he was able to conduct online research on what his father had done, the names of the people whose lives he’d impacted. But some specifics had faded from his memory since then.

She also wanted to read all the material Jack had written about his father that he had passed on to Gwen. Maybe something there would jump out at her.

Around the time Michael Donohue was working for Frohm, and later cutting a deal to go into witness protection, Lana’s paper was converting its files from actual clippings to a computerized library system. And in the intervening years, it had gone back, decade by decade, to bring the clipping files into the database. So all Lana had to do was get into the system and start doing searches. And reciprocal arrangements with other newspapers’ systems allowed her to access their stories, too.

She started digging.

Michael Donohue had confessed to the killing of Abel Gartner, who ran a linen service that supplied all of Frohm’s Sleep Tight Tonite motels in the greater Chicago area. He had been ordered to do it by Frohm. As part of his relocation deal, Donohue had admitted culpability in Gartner’s death, which in turn helped build an even stronger case against Donohue’s boss.

Gartner had two children. Twins, as it turned out, although not identical. A daughter, Valerie, and a son, Kyle. They were in their late teens when they lost their father, so they’d be in their early forties now.

Hmm, thought Lana.

She imagined how they must have felt at the time. The man who murdered their father wasn’t given the death penalty. He wasn’t sentenced to life in prison. His punishment amounted to a new, government-assigned identity and a new place to live.

How hard would that have been to swallow?

They had to be bitter about that. Sure, Frohm got what was coming to him. He ordered the hit. But still. You’d want to see something happen to the man who actually took your father’s life.

Lana ran some Google searches on Valerie Gartner and Kyle Gartner. She got more results on Kyle, and she assumed it was the same Kyle, because he was the president and CEO of Gartner Linens. He’d taken over the family business. There were three business profiles on him in various trade publications over the years. Lana chuckled to herself. If Jack had gotten that job, maybe he’d have been editing Linen Life.