I&#39ll Be There (34 page)

Detective Sanderson hung up the phone once he had the news and found himself saying, for the rest of the day, ‘Not bad for a penny.’

Sam and Riddle wanted to split the money with Mr Yamada, but he flatly refused. His grandparents had lost their landscaping business during the forced internment of Japanese Americans during
World War II. Hiro’s father had been born behind the barbed wire at Tule Lake.

Hiro believed in returning property to rightful owners. After the story became public, the reputation of Medford Coin soared to new heights, and Hiro became a national expert on Indian Head
pennies, tracking the most famous collections and acting as the sales agent in many high-profile transactions.

Riddle had only heard Hiro’s name; he’d never seen it in print. And when he sat down with Debbie and wrote a letter and thanked him, he addressed it to Hero.

No one corrected him.

Sam sent Julio Cortez a certified cheque to the post office box address he’d been given. It was twice the amount that Sam had borrowed.

Julio thought it was only fair to give the overpayment to Buzz Nast, who bought a new jean jacket and shirt when he got back from his three months herding cattle. The woman in the general-supply
store who found Buzz the right size coat asked him to go with her after work for a coffee. Her name was Marla.

Instead, Marla and Buzz went to a bar called the Golden Horseshoe.

Eighteen days later, they drove all night to Las Vegas and got married. Marla’s dream was to raise miniature cattle. Buzz was a willing partner.

At the end of the summer, the dinosaur hunters – Crawford Luttrell, Dina Sokolow and Julian Mickelson – turned in to the Discovery Channel ninety hours of video
from their six-month expedition. The scientists all hoped that the network would see the merit in their work and continue to fund their ambitious paleontology research project.

But it was not to be.

The head of the network, Bernie Smeltzer, looked at a rough cut of a potential pilot for the show and said it looked dusty and boring. He passed on the programme, giving everyone involved two
weeks’ severance pay.

Three days later, an intern named Sarah Allen, who worked in the editing room, cut together the footage of Riddle being found. It caused a sensation when the new vice president of programmeming,
Wei Chen, was walking down the hall and heard people squealing.

Wei took the footage and, from it, the show
The Seekers
was born. The TV programme, starring the three scientists, was about discoveries of the sensational kind. Their second story was an
exposé of a woman who had lost her pinkie in a boating accident and believed that it was her finger that appeared in a fish sandwich at a fast-food restaurant two weeks later. The scientists
led the team doing the DNA testing to verify the claim.

Debbie and Tim let Riddle decide if he wanted to participate in the programme. He refused to do any additional filming, but he allowed the scientists to use the existing footage.

He then had Debbie and Tim donate the money he received to the paleontology programme at the University of Utah. Riddle hoped to one day study dinosaur bones at a very high level. He’d
caught the fever.

In Cedar City, Gertrude Wetterling locked herself out of her house one night after a bridge tournament. She had yet to master the new alarm system, which she’d installed
after Clarence had stolen her jewellery.

Gertrude tried to break into her own home by climbing a rose trellis up to the second story. The trellis was more ornamental than structural, and Gertrude fell to the ground and broke her
wrist.

Her daughter Els, who lived in San Diego, took the injury, on the heels of the robbery, as a sign. And two months later, Gertrude Wetterling was living in a retirement community with an ocean
view in La Jolla, California. The woman in the unit next to her had been a professional opera singer in Italy, and she and Gertrude listened to opera every afternoon for two hours. For Gertrude, it
was heaven.

With Gertrude gone, Mrs Dairy began wearing the gemstone-encrusted Christmas tree pin to church on Sundays.

She told the other parishioners that she’d found one like Gertrude had owned in an antique store in Skylar. Everyone admired the pin, and there were smiles all around.

Crystal from Superior Cuts entered the before and after pictures of Sam and Emily into the annual North American Hairstyling Awards. She won second place in the nationwide
contest, which was an all-expenses-paid trip to Miami to their annual convention.

While at the convention, Crystal met Wade Vilhelmsen, who owned ten salons in the Southwest. Wade hired Crystal to be his new general manager.

Bobby Ellis hooked up with Marylou Azoff the night of the prom after Emily walked out on him. He knew that Marylou had always liked him.

But Marylou’s mother was relocated to Denver when she got a job promotion, and the Azoffs left town in June. Bobby said they could still be a couple even though they weren’t in the
same state, but Marylou didn’t see it working out.

Once she was gone, Bobby announced that he now wanted to be known as Robb. With two
b
s.

He had a six-month, fourteen-point plan in place for a new identity.

Debbie and Tim Bell had decisions to make.

At first they thought that they’d simply have Sam and Riddle live with them. But their daughter was involved with Sam, and so that wouldn’t work.

But then the penny was sold at auction, and the boys had some resources. They decided to take an inexpensive apartment near the college. Sam would be eighteen on his next birthday, and Tim Bell
was in the process of arranging for him to get a scholarship into the college music programme.

The boys wanted to be together. For now, it was a solution. Riddle walked over to the Bells’ house every morning as soon as he woke up, which was always early now. Felix took to sleeping
in the boys’ apartment, so the two could be seen just after sunrise, walking across people’s lawns. Riddle didn’t like sidewalks.

The two cats stayed with Emily.

Late at night, several weeks later, in another state, Clarence Border lay awake in his airless jail cell, feeling the agonising pain of a missing limb. Because a foot that was
no longer there was moving.

At the same time, hundreds of miles away, Sam was in an apartment that legally belonged to him and his little brother. He was staring at the plaster ceiling, trying to fall asleep. He still
assumed that it was possible that he might open his eyes at dawn and discover that the last six months of his life had been a dream. He might wake to find that his old reality would be in
place.

And then in his mind’s eye he remembered first seeing Emily. Music was playing. She sang to him, off-key, ‘I’ll be there.’

For him and his brother, he now knew, that music was real.

Because all you had to do, really, was be willing to use your imagination.

And listen.