The Stolen

14

I marched into Wallace Langston's office and sat down.

He was poring over a pile of loose pages. He simply looked up and stared at me.

"I don't recall that chair offering you a seat," he said. I stood back up. Without missing a beat, Wallace said, "Now you can sit down, Henry. What's up?"

I took out the tape recorder, put it on the desk in front of

Wallace. "I just spent the day in Meriden talking to Michelle

Oliveira's old music teacher, Delilah Lancaster. She-"

"Michelle who?" he said. I forgot for a moment that

Wallace had dozens of other stories being run past him, and that even though this was hugely important to me, I needed to show him that I was right about my suspicions.

"Seven years before Daniel Linwood disappeared, a girl named Michelle Oliveira vanished from Meriden, Connecticut. For almost four years there was no trace of her. No suspects, no arrests, nada. Then, just like Danny Linwood, she shows up at her parents' doorstep without the vaguest idea what happened. No scrapes, no bruises, and police can't figure out what the hell happened or where she'd been."

Wallace slowly put down the pages. I had his full attention.

"I thought that whole 'brothers' thing was strange, but it seemed clear to me that after Daniel was kidnapped, he retained some information from his time gone. I wanted to find out if this was a common occurrence for kidnapping victims. Upon running a search, I found this Oliveira girl, who disappeared in the exact same way. Michelle was very close to her music teacher, this Delilah Lancaster, so

I figured she might be able to shed some light and maybe help me understand Danny's case better. During the interview today, it turns out that in between Michelle Oliveira's disappearance and return, the girl learned an entire new violin sonata. Somehow she'd had access to both instruments and music books. So not only was she kidnapped, but she was kidnapped by somebody who knew her well enough to know she was a violin prodigy."

Wallace looked at me, looked at the recorder. "She played violin, this Michelle Oliveira?"

"A prodigy," I said. "She's at Juilliard now."

"There's no chance she started studying this sonata before she disappeared, and simply finished it later?"

I shook my head. "I asked Delilah that. She said they were using a workbook in which that specific sonata was not a part of the lesson. When they resumed lessons after

Michelle returned, suddenly this ten-year-old has turned into Yo-Yo Ma."

"How did Lancaster explain it?"

"She couldn't," I said. "And neither could Michelle.

Delilah asked her where she learned it, but Michelle didn't know."

"And Lancaster believed her?"

"Without a doubt. Like Danny Linwood, it's an imprint on her brain, the moves in her muscle memory. Unconscious. I did leave several messages for the Oliveiras but haven't heard back yet, and frankly I'm not expecting to.

But something strange is happening to these kids while they're gone. Obviously somebody took them, and they're retaining a piece of memory from their time away. It's not much, but it definitively links Michelle Oliveira and

Daniel Linwood. I don't know how or why, but their disappearances are connected."

"This is stunning stuff, Parker. And where did you get all this information on Oliveira?" Wallace asked.

"I… Most of it from newspapers. Lancaster was interviewed by the Journal-Record. "

"You just happened to come upon this?"

"I dig deep," I said, thinking of Amanda, not wanting to get her into any trouble.

Just then there was a knock at Wallace's door. We both turned. Our jaws simultaneously dropped when we saw the striking figure in the doorway.

"Gray," Wallace said. I recognized the man immediately, but for the life of me couldn't imagine why he was here.

The man entered, striding up to Wallace with casual confidence.

Wallace said, "Henry, you've met…"

"Senator Talbot," I said. "We met just the other day."

Gray Talbot smiled at me. "Hello, Henry," he said. "I hope I'm not interrupting anything."