Six Years

I shook my head. What next—a fan site for convicted pedophiles?

There were about a dozen comments from people remembering some of Otto’s most horrible deeds and, yes, praising his work. They say that you can find any sort of depravity on the Internet. I had stumbled across a site devoted to admirers of violent gangsters. Some world.

On the fourteenth comment, I hit pay dirt:

Otto is being laid to rest at the Franklin Funeral Home in Queens this Saturday. The funeral is private, so you can’t go to pay your respects, but admirers can still send flowers. Here’s the address.

The post listed an address in Flushing, Queens.

There was a sketchpad on the desk. I grabbed a pencil and leaned back with it. I wrote down Natalie’s name on the left. I wrote down Todd’s beneath it. I jotted down other names—mine, Jed, Cookie, Bob, Otto—any name I could come up with at all. Delia Sanderson; Eban Trainor; Natalie’s father, Aaron Kleiner, and mother, Sylvia Avery; Julie Pottham; Malcolm Hume even. All of them. Then on the right side of the page, I drew a timeline from top to bottom.

Go back as far as I could. Where did this first start?

I didn’t know.

So back to the beginning.

Twenty-five years ago, Natalie’s father, who taught here at Lanford, had run off with a student. According to Julie Pottham, dear old Dad had relocated and remarried. The only problem was, there was no sign of him anywhere. How had Shanta put it? Like father, like daughter. Both Natalie and her father had seemingly vanished into thin air. Both were completely off the grid.

I drew a line connecting Natalie and her father.

How could I learn more about this connection? I thought about what Julie had said. Her information about her father’s remarriage came from her mother. Maybe Mom knew more than she was saying. Maybe she had an address for Dad. Either way, I needed to talk to her. But how? She was in a home. That was what Julie had said. I didn’t know which home and somehow I doubted that Julie would be forthcoming. Still, it couldn’t be too difficult to track Mrs. Avery down.

I circled Sylvia Avery, Natalie’s mother.

Back to the timeline. I moved up through the years until I reached twenty years ago when Todd Sanderson was a student. He had nearly been expelled after his father’s suicide. I thought back to his student file and his obituary. Both had mentioned that Todd had made amends by launching a charity.

I wrote down Fresh Start on my pad.

One, Fresh Start had been birthed on this very campus in the wake of Todd’s personal turmoil. Two, six years ago, Natalie told her sister that she and Todd were going to travel around the world doing good works for Fresh Start. Three, Delia Sanderson, Todd’s real wife, told me that Fresh Start had been her husband’s passion. Four, Professor Hume, my very own beloved mentor, had been the faculty adviser during Fresh Start’s creation.

I started tapping the paper with my pencil. Fresh Start was all over this. Whatever “this” was.

I needed to look into that charity. If Natalie had indeed traveled for Fresh Start, someone there might at the very least have a lead on where she was. Again I started doing web searches. Fresh Start helped people get new starts, though the work seemed a bit unfocused. They worked with kids who needed cleft palates repaired, for example. They helped with political dissidents who needed asylum. They helped people with bankruptcy issues. They helped you find new employment, no matter what issues you’ve had in the past.

In short, as the mantra on the bottom of the home page said, “We help anyone who truly, desperately needs a fresh start.”

I frowned. Could that be more vague?

There was a link to donate. Fresh Start was a 501(c)(3) charity, so all contributions were tax deductible. No officers were listed—no mention of Todd Sanderson or Malcolm Hume or anyone. There was no office address. The phone number had an 843 area code—South Carolina. I dialed the number. An answering machine picked up. I didn’t leave a message.

I found a company online that investigates various charities “so that you may give with confidence.” For a small fee, they would send you a complete report on any charity, including an IRS Form 990 (whatever that was) and a “comprehensive analysis with full financial data, mission-driven decisions, officers’ biographies, charity holdings, money spent on fund-raising and all other activities.” I paid the small fee. An e-mail came to me saying that the report would be in my e-mail the following day.

I could wait that long. My head throbbed like a stubbed toe. My craving for sleep was overwhelming, emanating from the marrow of my bones. Tomorrow morning I would head to Otto Devereaux’s funeral, but for now, the body needed rest and nourishment. I took a shower, grabbed a bite to eat, and slept the sleep of the dead, which, based on what was going on around me, seemed apropos.

Chapter 25

Benedict leaned into the car window of his own car. “I don’t like this.”

I didn’t bother responding. We had been through this a dozen times already. “Thanks for letting me borrow your car.”

I had left my car with its altered license plate on the street in Greenfield. At some point I would have to figure out a way to retrieve it, but it could wait.

“I can go with you,” Benedict said.

“You have a class.”

Benedict didn’t argue. We never miss class. I had hurt enough students, in ways small and big, by taking up this bizarre quest. I wouldn’t allow more to pay even a minor price.

“So your plan is to show up at this gangster’s funeral?”

“More or less.”

“Sounds like less to me.”

Hard to argue. I planned on staking out Otto Devereaux’s funeral. My hope was that I could somehow learn why he attacked me, who he worked for, why they were searching for Natalie. I wasn’t big on the details—like how I’d accomplish this—but I had no job right now and sitting around idly waiting to be found by Bob or Jed didn’t seem like a terrific alternative either.

Better to be proactive. That was what I would tell my students.

Route 95 in Connecticut and New York is basically a series of construction areas masquerading as an interstate highway. Still I made decent time. The Franklin Funeral Home was located on Northern Boulevard in the Flushing section of Queens. For some odd reason, the picture on their website was of Central Park’s beloved Bow Bridge, a place you’ve seen lovers get married in pretty much every romantic comedy that takes place in Manhattan. I had no idea why they had that, as opposed to the photographs of their actual funeral home, until I pulled up to it.