The Newman Resident (27 page)

Richard turned around. The massive, grey Cathedral Church of Saint John the Divine loomed before him, as mammoth as some mountain from the Bible. It was Episcopal, his family’s religion, and he’d visited it several times as a student. He watched the church like it might move. Or talk to him.

“Come on, Richard,” Harold said as he and the others started walking past the Children’s Sculpture Garden, on their ways toward the front doors of the Cathedral.

“What are we doing here?” Richard asked, following. “We’ve got to find Christopher.”

“That’s what we’re doing here.”

They walked up the steps and entered through the door just to the side of the great center doorway. The foyer was dark and felt like a castle, old and permanent. Someone was speaking, but Richard couldn’t make out the words. Harold led the way. Richard’s eyes became better adjusted to the light as they entered the nave, so large and tall and inspiring he almost felt like he was still outside. The air was heavy, almost damp, like he was in some special place of nature—a space created by God rather than people. He began to piece together why they were there.

Before him were row after row of wooden chairs filled with people. Two, probably closer to three hundred people—all looking straight ahead. Before them stood not a member of the clergy presenting a sermon, but a man in jeans and a Yankees sweatshirt, pointing to a map of Manhattan. Next to it was a large television that was turned off.

Joseph, Harold, and Rebecca stepped aside as Richard walked forward, deliberately, as if too quick a movement might destroy the scene before him. The speaker at the front saw Richard and stopped talking. The other people turned and saw Richard for
the first time. Without anyone saying a word, they all stood as he walked up the aisle.

One man, standing near the front, raced down the aisle to Richard. “We’ll find him, big brother,” David whispered as they hugged. “I promise.”

CHAPTER
SIXTY-THREE

W
ith David at his side, and Joseph and the Solomons following closely behind, Richard walked up the aisle, his mind absorbing the surroundings. He glanced at the people on his left and right, still standing, but didn’t recognize anyone. They were all strangers, New Yorkers who’d never met Richard or Carol or Christopher, but who cared enough to help.

They stopped when they got to the front. Harold walked over to the map and reviewed the plan. When they thought Christopher was still at Newman, they were going to send everyone to march on every television station and newspaper in the city. Now that they could assume Christopher was out, they would keep some people at the school, send some to the media, but have most of them canvas Manhattan in specific search teams, looking everywhere for the little boy. Rebecca mentioned that the police had been notified, but she didn’t expect them to help. There were a lot of missing children, the sergeant had explained to her, and this one had only been missing for a few hours.

Harold asked Richard about any special places Christopher might go to. Richard mentioned some of the sites they’d visited
together, but he really didn’t know where he’d go. Rebecca assigned teams.

Harold checked to make certain everyone had a chance to download the photos and videos of Christopher Carol had sent him. And he suggested some teams take the subways, since they were faster and since there was a whole city underground that had to be included in the search.

It didn’t take long for Harold to finish up, then Joseph stepped forward. “I won’t be long,” Joseph began. “We have a little boy to find, and we must do so before it grows dark. I just wanted to tell you what a good thing you’re doing. We’re looking for Richard’s child, but we’re also looking for all our children who are lost, not because they wandered away, but because someone sent them away, in one way or another. It’s time to bring them home.”

Harold reminded search teams to call in every hour, then everyone started filing out. Richard watched as the people made their way outside to search for his little son. He’d never felt stronger, more capable of finding Christopher, but he still had no idea how it would be possible. Where could he be? And what if he didn’t want to be found? Christopher was wounded, thinking his own father had betrayed him. Maybe he wasn’t just on the streets, but actually hiding. It might be impossible to find him.

“I think you’d better stay here, Richard,” Harold said.

“No, I’ve got to look.”

“If one of the teams finds Christopher and brings him back, he’ll be surrounded by strangers until you can get back here. We’ll do a good job of looking.”

“What about me?” David asked from behind. “Christopher knows his Uncle David. I’ll stick around so you can look.”

“Thanks,” Richard said, smiling at his brother.

“Which team do you want to go with, Richard?” Harold asked.

“I won’t need a team—it might slow me down.”

“All right,” Harold said. “I’m going to be staying here with the coordination team. The city is yours.”

Richard asked if Harold had heard anything back about the encrypted files, but his friend at the firm said they were almost impossible to crack. When David overheard, he asked for a copy of the files to see if he could decrypt them himself.

Outside on the steps, Richard paused for a moment and looked up into the sky. It was a dark, overcast day, starting to drizzle. He couldn’t see the sun, but there was only a handful of hours left of daylight. The search would be an entirely different enterprise once it turned dark.

He ran down the steps and walked down Amsterdam to 110th Street, Cathedral Parkway. Without thinking about it, his pace quickened, until, by the time he’d turned on 110th and was heading toward Broadway, he was running. His face was wet, and his eyes burned from the polluted drizzle, but he kept running, not sure where he was going. He wanted to be alone to listen to his instincts, sense his feelings. But his instincts weren’t saying anything, and all he felt was wet. He crossed Broadway and headed down into the subway station to go south, making it to a train just as it was about to leave.

Where could Christopher have possibly gone? He didn’t want to duplicate efforts with the search teams, and he wished he’d paid better attention when Harold was reviewing the plan.

Richard looked at his watch: a few minutes after three o’clock. He’d get off at 79th and go to the Natural History Museum. Regardless of how Christopher might feel about his father, maybe he’d go there to look at the dinosaurs. On the other hand, he wouldn’t be thinking about dinosaurs at a time like this. Richard stared out the window at the subway walls rushing by. He couldn’t let himself feel hopeless.

The train stopped at 79th and Richard got off, looking everywhere for any sign of a little boy. He headed east on 79th, almost running toward the museum.

He stopped for a moment when he got to the grounds. Nothing out of the ordinary. Richard ran into the huge building and went straight to the information desk.

“Excuse me,” he said to the uniformed woman behind the desk. He held out his phone so she could see the photo of Christopher. “Have you seen this boy today? He’s six years old, about this tall.” He held out his hand to show his son’s height.

“No, but another group of people came in about fifteen minutes ago asking about this same boy,” she said. “It was a different photo, but it looks like the same boy. Christopher...let’s see….”

“Carson.”

“That’s it. But he hasn’t been in all day. We’ve notified the tour guides to keep an eye out for him. And the group gave us a phone number to call if we see him.”

“Thank you. Please let us know.” Richard stepped back, looking around the large entry area of the museum. “Do you mind if I go to one certain place, just to make sure?”

“No, go right ahead.”

Richard headed down the hall toward the dinosaur display. He knew there wasn’t much chance he’d find his son there, especially if no one had seen him all day, but he couldn’t leave without checking. There were about twenty people in the dinosaur area, but only three children. None of them was his son. Christopher had talked and talked about climbing all over the bones, half hoping that his father would give him permission. They had spent most of their time at the museum in this very spot, walking among what was left of the prehistoric monsters, trying to top each other’s story of how exciting and dangerous it must have been back then. “Sometimes
the cavemen would wake up in the middle of the night and see a T-Rex sitting in the cave, staring at them.” “Not just staring at them. Building a fire ready to cook them.” “He wouldn’t cook them. He’d eat them alive!” “But the cavemen would wake up just in time to fight the T-Rex barehanded, and win.” Richard shook his head—the stories were over with and now they were dealing with real danger.

When he got to FAO Schwartz, the manager met with him and notified the employees to search their areas for Christopher. He accompanied Richard as they looked throughout the store, ending up in the Lego section.

“We’ll keep looking for him, Mr. Carson,” the manager said as they took the escalator down. “When you do find him, please be sure to call me so I can have you both come down as my personal guests.”

Richard thanked him and walked out onto the street. He’d already been to the old IBM building, where he and Christopher had eaten hot dogs, but no one had any information. He’d talked to probably a dozen people already. At first, they always seemed worried about talking to a man with such a bruised and cut face, but the minute he explained about his missing son, without exception they became concerned about the little boy.

He called Harold. No one had tried to leave or enter the school. Apparently, Newman’s people must have been making some phone calls, though, because the police commissioner had personally called them at the Cathedral and said he was coming to talk with them.

“Is that going to be a problem?” Richard asked.

“Not now,” Harold said. “We’re doing everything legally. We have permits to assemble at Newman and the media offices. We
notified the police when we first organized that there was a missing child and we’d set up a search effort. I guess that’s how the commissioner ended up getting our number. He can’t do anything now, except try to scare us. By tomorrow, though, he might find some judge somewhere who will revoke our permits. As long as Joseph is with us, I’m not too afraid of the legal process.”

Richard asked to speak with his brother. David told him he’d just finished talking with their parents. They were worried, of course, and wanted to come down to Manhattan, but David had encouraged them to stay home. They said they’d contact the members of their church and hold a special prayer vigil. He said he’d been working on the files but hadn’t hacked into them yet.

“How are you holding up?” David asked. “Want me to meet you somewhere?”

“No, thanks, I’m doing okay. Just keep working on those files and be there if they find Christopher. Any word from Carol?”

“Yeah, she’s called two or three times. Worried out of her mind. Blames herself. Said she called her mother. Told her the whole story.”

“Oh, great. What did the great Defender of the School say?”

“You won’t believe this, but she said she’d contact her lawyer and let him know that no more funds were to go to that place and to look into suing Newman. The rats are jumping ship, brother. I can’t believe—wait a minute.” Richard could hear his brother say something to someone else. “You’ve got to go to CNN, Richard!”

Richard went to CNN on his phone and saw a reporter with a quiet crowd of people gathered on the steps of Newman. The anchorwoman in Atlanta asked him the status of the situation, and he explained that the superintendent still refused to be interviewed. He mentioned a rumor that Dr. Newman himself was there, but no one had entered or left the building for hours. The
network cut to scenes in front of newspaper offices and television studios while the reporter talked of how the major media outlets were being besieged with concerned parents.

The next image on the CNN report was a photo of Christopher when he was five years old. The reporter said the boy had somehow left the school, and encouraged viewers in Manhattan to help in the search.

CHAPTER
SIXTY-FOUR

T
he lions stood guard on either side as Richard sat on the front steps of the library, his head in his hands. He rubbed his face, not even bothered by the pain he felt when he touched his bruise. The library staff had been helpful and concerned. A group of people had come in earlier looking for the same boy, they’d said, and the staff had already done a search of the building without disturbing the patrons. They’d placed a security guard at the front entrance specifically to keep her eyes out for the little boy.

Hundreds of people were looking for his son—one librarian mentioned he’d even heard about Christopher on the radio during his break—but something was still missing. They wouldn’t find his son by playing the odds or throwing a lot of people at the problem.

He looked at his watch. Six o’clock. It had to quit getting later. The sky was just one huge, shapeless cloud. It had stopped drizzling, but could rain at any moment. He’d been to every place he could think of.... What was missing?

Richard headed down the steps to Fifth Avenue, but stopped. He felt like he should stay there, but it didn’t make any sense.
Christopher wasn’t going to come running up the steps and say “Hi, Dad.” He had to keep moving. Time was running out.

His phone indicated a new text from David.

“Take a look at these files, then call me.”

Richard opened the attachment and saw the documents he’d copied at the school. They explained about the Seven Cubs: seven children specifically chosen because of their exceptional aptitude and intelligence for a program designed to exponentially increase their capacity for learning. He didn’t recognize all of the names, but Tanya was listed as the “gazelle,” Samuel the “leopard,” and Christopher the “lion.” They’d determined that Christopher had the most potential for responding to their experiment favorably and increasing his learning abilities, so he was chosen to be the last “cub”—the one who would benefit from what they learned by trying their theories out on the other six.