The chief turned back to the microphone. “The suspect is also a person of interest in a missing persons case.” He hit a button on the remote and the image above Archie’s head changed. Archie saw the boy’s parents flinch and their grip on each other tighten. The room got louder. “Patrick Lifton,” the chief said, quieting the press with a hand. “Age nine. He went missing from Aberdeen, Washington, a year and a half ago. We believe that this is the boy that Detective Sheridan rescued from the river last night.” He paused. “As you know, the boy went missing from Emanuel Hospital several hours after that.”

Archie wondered how that was going to play in the media.

Eaton must have wondered, too. Because this was when he decided to turn things over to Archie.

Archie stepped forward, adjusted the microphone, and looked out at the crowd. Fifty flashbulbs went off. Archie cleared his throat. He had prepared remarks. They were on index cards in his pockets. But he was having second thoughts. This guy wanted control. It’s what fed him.

Someone needed to challenge that. Archie needed to fight him for the boy.

“Patrick Lifton is alive,” Archie said into the mike. “He is either wandering the streets or he is in the custody of the serial killer who stole him from his parents. Either way, I will find him.” Archie looked directly at the boy’s parents sitting in the front row. “I. Will. Find. Him.” He looked back up at the crowd, and this time addressed the row of TV cameras. “Patrick Lifton is going home.”

Archie sighed. His head hurt.

“Any questions?”

Chapter 40

CHAPTER

40

Susan had to stand at the back of the hospital conference room during the press conference. Archie had taken questions for twenty minutes. She had kept the Patrick Lifton angle off the record, and now Archie and the chief had announced it to the world without so much as a heads-up. She was a little bitter about that before she remembered that her problems were petty compared to Patrick Lifton’s. The mood in the room was grim, but once the press conference ended, it was Armageddon as everyone scrambled to get stories in. Susan managed to get a chair in the chaos. She was sitting cross-legged on it, with her laptop on her knees, typing up a stringer piece on the press conference for the Times, when she smelled Stetson.

“Oh,” she said, as Derek took a seat on one of the plastic folding chairs next to her. “That’s good. You’re alive.”

“You finally noticed,” he said. He worked his jaw a little. “Saw the online piece for the Times.”

“Yeah,” Susan said. She gestured to the press badge on the lanyard around her neck. “I’m covering the press conference,” she said.

Derek examined the badge. “You totally printed that out on your computer,” he said.