“Okay, thanks. I appreciate that.”

“Adam?”

“Yeah?”

“Odds are, your Corinne stole this money. You know that.”

“If she did, she had a reason.”

“Like she needed to run away. Or to pay off this blackmailer.”

“Or something we aren’t thinking of yet.”

“Whatever it is,” Rinsky said, “you don’t want to give the cops anything that can incriminate her.”

“I know.”

“You said she was in Pittsburgh?”

“That’s what we saw on that phone locator, yeah.”

“You know anybody there?”

“No.” He looked over at Eunice. She smiled at him and lifted her tea. A perfectly normal domestic scene to an outside observer, but when you know her condition . . .

A memory hit Adam.

“What?”

“The morning before she disappeared, I came downstairs. The boys were at the breakfast table, but Corinne was in the backyard talking on her phone. When she saw me, she hung up.”

“Any idea who she called?”

“No, but I can look it up on the web.”

Old Man Rinsky stood up and gestured for Adam to have a seat. Adam took it and brought up the website for Verizon. He typed in the phone number and the password. He knew it by heart, not because he had a great memory, but because for things like this, he and Corinne always used the same approximate password. The word they used was BARISTA, all caps, always. Why? Because they had decided to come up with a password while sitting in a coffee shop and started looking around for a random word and, voilà, there was a barista. The word was perfect because it had absolutely no connection to them. If the password needed to be longer than seven characters, the password was BARISTABARISTA. If the password required numbers, not just letters, it was BARISTA77.

Like that.

Adam got the password right on his second try—BARISTA77.

He clicked on the various links and reached her recent outgoing calls first. He’d hoped that maybe he’d get lucky, that maybe he’d see that she’d called someone a few hours ago or late last night. Nothing doing. In fact, the last call she’d made had been the one he was now searching for—a call made at 7:53 A.M. the morning she ran off.

The call had lasted only three minutes.

She had been outside in the backyard, talking softly, and hung up as he’d approached. He had pushed it, but Corinne had refused to tell him who was on the phone. But now . . .

Adam’s eyes traveled right to the phone number on the screen. He froze and stared.

“You recognize the number?” Old Man Rinsky asked.

“Yeah, I do.”

Chapter 31

Kuntz dumped both guns into the Hudson River. He had plenty more, no big deal.

He took the A train to 168th Street. He got out on Broadway and walked three blocks down to the entrance of the hospital that used to be called Columbia Presbyterian. Now it was known as Morgan Stanley Children’s Hospital of NewYork-Presbyterian.

Morgan Stanley. Yeah, when you think of health care for children, the first name that comes to your mind is the multinational financial giant Morgan Stanley.

But money talks. Money is as money does.

Kuntz didn’t bother showing his ID. The security guards at the desk knew him too well from his too frequent visits. They also knew he’d once been NYPD. Some, maybe most, even knew why he’d been forced to leave. It had been in all the papers. The libtards in the media had crucified him—wanting him not only to lose his job and livelihood but even wanting him locked up on murder charges—but the guys on the street backed him. They got that Kuntz was being railroaded.

They got the truth.

The case had been in the papers. Some big black guy resisting arrest. He’d been caught shoplifting at a grocery store on Ninety-Third, and when the Korean owner confronted him, the big black guy pushed him down and threw a kick. Kuntz and his partner, Scooter, cornered the guy. The guy didn’t care. He growled and put it simply: “I ain’t goin’ wit’ you. I just needed a pack of smokes.” The big black guy started to walk away. Just like that. Two cops there, he’d just committed a crime, and he was just going to do as he pleased. When Scooter stepped in his way, the big black guy pushed him and kept walking.

So Kuntz took him down hard.

How was he supposed to know the big guy had some kind of health condition? Seriously. Are you really supposed to let a criminal walk away like that? What do you do when a thug won’t listen to you? Do you try to take him down nicely? Maybe do something that puts your life or your partner’s life in jeopardy?

What dumb assholes made these rules?

Long story short: The guy died and the libtard media had an orgasm. That dyke bitch on cable started it up. She called Kuntz a racist killer. Sharpton started with the marches. You know the drill. Didn’t matter how clean Kuntz’s record was or how many citations for bravery he’d received or how he volunteered with black kids in Harlem. Didn’t matter that he had his own personal problems, including a ten-year-old boy with bone cancer. None of that meant a damn thing.

He was now a racist murderer—as evil as any of the scum he’d ever busted.

Kuntz took the elevator to the seventh floor. He nodded at the nurses’ station as he hurried toward room 715. Barb was sitting in that same chair. She turned toward him and gave him a weary smile. There were dark circles under her eyes. Her hair looked as though it’d taken a late bus to get here. But when she smiled at him, that was still all he could see.

His son was sleeping.

“Hey,” he whispered.

“Hey,” Barb whispered back.

“How’s Robby?”

Barb shrugged. Kuntz walked toward his son’s bed and stared down at the boy. It broke his heart. It gave him resolve.

“Why don’t you go home for a little while?” he said to his wife. “Relax a little.”

“I will in a few,” Barb replied. “Sit and talk with me.”

You often hear that the media is a parasite, but rarely was it truer than in the case of John Kuntz. They swarmed and devoured until there was nothing left. He lost his job. He lost his pension and his benefits. But worst of all, he could no longer afford to give his son the best treatment available. That had been toughest on him. Whatever else a father is in this life—cop, fireman, Indian chief—he provides for his family. He does not sit by idly watching his son in pain without doing all he can to alleviate it in some way.