DANNY PINE

Some people remember vividly where they were when Kennedy was assassinated. Or when the space shuttle Challenger blew up. Or when Princess Diana’s car crashed. Or when the planes struck the Twin Towers. Memories formed under intense emotions are seared into our thoughts, branded by the hot iron of trauma. Danny Pine had thought a lot about memory over the past seven years.

Everyone always wanted to know Why can’t you remember? At first it had been the police, though they thought he was lying. Then his parents. Then Dave, his ponytailed criminal defense lawyer. Then those filmmakers. Hell, even the generally uncurious felons at Fishkill. One of them, a psychiatrist convicted of manipulating patients into blowing him, even offered to hypnotize Danny. Ah, no thanks.

Nearly everyone was convinced that the truth—what really happened to Charlotte—was packed away in the deep recesses of his brain, and if they could just unlock the memories …

It wasn’t like his mind was a complete blank. Initially all Danny remembered were flashes of the party at what’s-his-name’s house. Fragments. Running out the back door when someone yelled Cops! A bonfire in a cornfield. The dented metal kegs of beer. Then waking up in his bed, a jackhammer pounding his skull, his little sister standing there with a concerned look on her face. The police are at the door. Where’s Mommy?

But slowly other things came back to him. The ponytailed lawyer said those memories—Charlotte at the party, her face twisted in anguish, I need to talk to you—weren’t helpful, so he might best keep them to himself.

One thing Danny Pine wished he could forget was his first day inside after his conviction. Them stripping him down, delousing him, shoving a folded stack of prison blues into his arms. Entering the gallery. The rapists and murderers and other scum in the rafters calling down to him and the parade of newbies.

Fresh meat! Fresh meat! Fresh meat!

The sound of his cell door clanging shut on the sweltering top floor, where all the horrid smells of the prison found a home. Looking back, as traumatic as it was, the experience was hardly unique. Every month Danny saw it play out again and again.

He was a different person now. Not a better person, different. When he was transferred to Fishkill last year, he held his head up defiantly as he made the walk that first day. This time the hard cases chanted, Fresh Fish! Fresh Fish! Fresh Fish! Not the most original people in the world, prisoners. The young guy in front of him was crying. Danny didn’t even warn him to stop.

By now Danny felt like a hardened lifer, and what passed for famous behind these walls. He’d never seen the documentary. But he understood it had been a big deal. The prison library had newspapers. He also received letters, “fan mail,” and had visits from high-priced attorneys. His father said that the new lawyers were the real thing, not in over their heads, like Ponytail. More like Louise Lester, his post-verdict lawyer from the Institute for Wrongful Convictions. Celebrities were tweeting about his case, and virtually the entire country had turned against his hometown, particularly those two cops who’d interrogated him. Even the president’s daughter—that’s right, the president of the United States—announced she was on Team Danny. But slowly, the attention, like his hope, faded.

Now things had turned dangerous for him. Word spread that his parents had left him a fortune in life insurance. You did not want to be known as someone with a fortune in this place. Worse, he’d heard that Damian Wallace had a beef with him. He didn’t know why. But in here it could be anything.

The stretch of hall he was walking that morning was the most dangerous—narrow halls, crowded, only two cameras at each end, none in the middle—so he was on high alert. He walked the line, his eyes hunting for threats. Looking for Wally. The downtrodden line of blue shirts flowed past, no shoulder bumps, no hard looks, no scuffles to create a diversion for the guards.

After surviving the hall without a sharpened toothbrush in his ribs, he exhaled with relief. This place. This fucking place! Fishkill had once been a hospital for the criminally insane and Danny swore he was going mad. Would he ever roam outside its bleak walls?

His aunt was trying to get him approved to go to the funeral. Good luck with that. The warden wasn’t the most compassionate guy around. He’d once told Danny he’d started watching the documentary but had to shut it off. “I know bullshit when I see it,” he’d said.

As Danny clambered up the metal stairs, he wondered if he’d ever see the man again, the one who’d held his last hope of getting out. Of looking at the moon. Of sleeping in. Of getting a juicy fast-food burger.

The man had arrived at the prison unannounced, lied and said he was one of Danny’s lawyers. It was the same day the Supreme Court had denied review of Danny’s case. Danny suspected the timing wasn’t a coincidence.

His name was Neal Flanagan, a greasy man in an expensive suit.

Flanagan said he worked for the governor, and for a cool mil Danny could be a free man. He didn’t actually say any of it, of course, probably scared that the prison recorded visits. No, he produced a sheet of paper with the offer written up. After Danny read it, Flanagan placed the paper in a folder and locked it in his briefcase.

“So do you think you can afford my rates?” Flanagan asked, pretending to be a potential new lawyer for Danny, a ruse for recording devices that probably didn’t exist.

“Where in the hell would I get that kind of money?”

“You’re famous.”

“I didn’t get any money from the TV show.”

“What about all those celebrities and do-gooders? They’ve got money.”

Danny rolled his eyes. But he couldn’t escape the feeling that something about the man, something about the whole thing, seemed legit. Well, not legit, but authentic. It didn’t seem like a setup.

“Look, when I get out, I’ll get plenty of offers. I can pay then and—”

“No work on credit, Mr. Pine. Talk to your father. Talk to your benefactors. And do it soon. This offer has an expiration date.”

“I make fifty-two cents an hour. And, even if I could borrow the money, how do I know you’re for real? What if I give you the ‘retainer’ and you just disappear?”

“We’d provide assurances.”

“What kind?”

“Get the money and you’ll find out.”

“Why? Why would he pardon me now, after everything…”

“Retirement planning.”

A week later Danny read that the governor was under investigation, and his attorney fixer—Neal Flanagan—had been indicted. And now the governor had resigned.

Retirement planning.

Danny had racked his brain about how to get that money. But he’d never told his father about the man, the offer, any of it.

He reached his cell and went inside. That was odd: his fat cellmate—who got off his ass only for food and to slug the three feet to the toilet—wasn’t on the bottom bunk.

That was when the hair on the back of Danny’s neck rose. And his cell darkened with the shadow of a man charging inside.

CHAPTER 42

MATT PINE

Matt walked into the diner, the familiar ring of the bell on the door bringing him back to when he was a kid and they’d go to Anne’s for breakfast on Sunday mornings. He had a vision of Danny sitting in front of a giant stack of pancakes, his mother stealing a bite with her fork. It was strange, the things you remembered.

Like the bar last night, the place seemed to go quiet at his presence. A beat of silence followed by murmurs. Today the looks weren’t so subtle, heads following him as he passed, necks craning. He threaded through the tables to a booth in the back. Special Agent Keller sat with a cup of coffee in front of her, steam wafting from the mug.

Matt slid into the booth across from her. The diner’s patrons were still giving him looks.

“Good morning,” Keller said.

“Morning.”

She regarded him. “You look … tired,” she said.

She was right about that. After meeting Jessica, he’d gotten two hours of sleep at most. He suppressed a yawn.

The waitress came over, topped off Keller’s coffee, asked if she needed anything. Matt could swear it was the same woman from when he was a kid. The same beehive hairstyle. She treated Matt like he was invisible.

Keller flicked Matt a glance, frowned. He wasn’t imagining it. The waitress was purposefully ignoring him.

“I’ll have a cup of coffee, please,” Matt said. He wasn’t a huge fan of coffee, but he wasn’t sure he’d get through the day without it.

The waitress made a noise in her throat. She hesitated as if she were going to refuse, but filled the mug without saying a word.

“Sure you wanna be seen with me?” Matt said to Keller after the waitress had left. “They are making your food, you know?”

Keller gave a close-lipped smile.

“I suppose they think no Pine should ever set foot in here—the diner where Charlotte worked,” Matt said.

“I’m not sure that’s it,” Keller said.