CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
About thirty-five minutes later, they found it.
“Wynn. Roscoe Wynn.” George’s voice sounded tired.
Sam rubbed at his eyes, looked again.
“Repeat that, George? What was that name?”
“Wynn. Roscoe Wynn. With a Y.”
He checked the fuzzy letters once more. There was a Roscoe Wynn, but another name was listed before it.
“Not Wotan? Peter Wotan?”
“No. It goes from Williams to Wynn. No Wotan. You think that’s it?”
“Not yet,” Sam said. “Let’s be thorough. It looks like there’s only a dozen left.”
Which was true, but at the end, as he felt a thrill of excitement course through him like a drink of cold water on a hot day, he knew who his dead man was.
Peter Wotan.
No longer John Doe.
Sam looked at the list again.
Peter Wotan.
Let’s find out who you are, he decided.
* * *
An hour later, he didn’t know very much more.
Using the long-distance operators, calls to the B&M office in Boston confirmed that Peter Wotan had boarded the express train from there to Portland. Sam even got a home address, 412 West Thirty-second Street, Apartment Four, in New York City. But a series of additional operator-assisted long-distance calls to various police precincts in New York City—he shuddered to think of what Mrs. Walton would say about next month’s long-distance bill—revealed that the address was a fake.
Fake address.
Fake name as well?
Where to next?
He looked to the clock on the near wall.
Time to go home, that’s what.
* * *
Toby was a handful at dinner, wanting to bring an Action comic book to the table and trying to sneak it in during a dessert of lime Jell-O. Distracted, Sam spoke sharply to him, sending him to his room in tears. Toby stormed out, yelling, “You never let me have any fun!” It took everything for Sam not to go after him and swat his butt. Sarah had asked him questions about his workday all during dinner, and he found himself giving her one-word answers.
Finally, when Toby had gone to bed and they were in their own bedroom, he stood by the door and remembered again what had happened just over twenty-four hours ago. “That was a real close run last night.”
“I know, I know,” she said. She was sitting on the edge of the bed, brushing her hair. The radio was on. It seemed like Sarah had found a new dance station, though it was peppered with bursts of static. Then the dance music stopped and was replaced by Bing Crosby singing “Oh, What a Beautiful Morning.”
“Do you?”
She turned, put the hairbrush down, her eyes teary. “Yes, I do. I truly do. I know I went too far with the last one, and it won’t happen again. I … Hearing those Legionnaires at the door really scared me. It really did.”
“All right, then, it’s done. If we’re lucky, they just came by scare us.”
She picked up the hairbrush, lowered it again. “If so, they did a good job, didn’t they? You know …”
“Go on.”
“There was a time when getting involved in politics … it was fun. Innocent. Like back when Dad first ran for city councilor, right after Mom died. He needed to get out of the house, stay busy, and I was so proud of him. Not even a teenager, and I was passing out leaflets and sliding brochures under doors. We’d stay up late at night at City Hall, watching the ballots get counted. That’s when I got the first taste of it, you know. By working on Dad’s campaigns, I knew one person could make a difference.”
“Still can,” he said, thinking that she was echoing what Walter Tucker had said.
She shook her head. “Not like before—not after Long got elected. Now you can still make a difference, but you can end up in jail. Or worse. And clothing donations—after the Underground Railroad, that’s all I have the taste for.”
“That sounds good. Look, what’s going on with Toby? Why is he acting up?”
“I wish I knew. Sometimes”—she looked at him, smiling—“I think the little guy takes after his uncle. A real hell-raiser.”
“Lucky us,” he grumbled. “It’s going to be a long ten years before he’s old enough to be on his own.”
She didn’t say anything, and then he turned away, and she looked surprised. “Sam, where are you going?”
“Just going to make sure the doors are locked,” he answered. He went through the house, taking his time, checking everything, making sure every window and door was locked, but he knew it was a futile gesture. Nothing was safe anymore, not your life, not your job, not when Legionnaires could show up on your doorstep on a whim.
When he got back to the bedroom, the light was off, the radio was off, and in the darkness he stripped and pulled on his pajamas. It took him a long time to fall asleep. Slipping away, he heard Sarah whisper, “I do love you so, Sam.” He reached up to her hand, gave it a loving squeeze, and then fell asleep.