Ryan and his troop traveled all night. Hannah couldn't walk so soon after giving birth, but Abigail's underground railroad connections were already paying dividends. They borrowed a horse and wagon from an abolitionist who ran a tavern along the St. Louis-Vincennes Trace. Then they headed north. Hannah and her baby rode in comfort (nineteenth-century comfort, that is) all the way to Litchfield. Ryan, of course, hadn't forgotten what Hezekiah had told him about finding another leaphole.
They were halfway to Springfield. Just before sunrise, they found the house with the oil lamp burning in the window.
"That lights the way," she said. For many years, lamps were used all along the secret routes of the underground railroad to tell runaway slaves where it was safe to stop.
The Litchfield abolitionist was an old woman named Whitmore who baked the most delicious walnut bread Ryan had ever tasted. They ate their fill and then spent the daylight hours sleeping in the cellar. At nightfall, they were back in the wagon headed north again. Around midnight, Hannah's baby started to cry. And cry. And cry.
"What's wrong with him?" asked Hannah. She was riding in the back, trying to console her child.
"Ain't nothin' wrong with him," said Abigail. "He's two days old. That's what babies do when they got something to complain about."
"I don't know what he's fussin' about," said Hannah. "He ain't wet, and he ain't interested in eatin' none."
Ryan recalled how car trips seemed to put his little sister Ainsley right to sleep, but a wooden-wheeled wagon on a rutted dirt road was an entirely different ride. "Maybe it's all this bouncing around in the wagon that has him so upset," said Ryan. Let's stop a minute and see if he'll fall asleep."
Ryan steered them off the road. The wagon stopped behind a cluster of elm trees. Traveling with a runaway slave was risky any time of day, so it made no sense to be out on the open road if they weren't moving. They had to be on constant lookout for slave catchers.
"I'll take the south watch," said Ryan as he climbed down from the wagon.
"I'll take the north," said Abigail.
The two of them walked back to the road and then split. They positioned themselves about twenty yards apart, Ryan looking south for slave catchers, Abigail looking north. The wagon was completely hidden from view in the forest, but Ryan could hear Hannah's voice in the wind. She was singing her baby to sleep. Every time she stopped singing, however, the newborn started to cry again. Putting little L'new to sleep was going to take longer than expected.
Alone in the moonlight, Ryan's thoughts turned toward Hezekiah. He missed him, and it turned his stomach to think that he was back in the unmerciful hands of Old Man Barrow and his slave catchers. Hezekiah didn't deserve to be a slave. No one deserved that. Even criminals were protected from "cruel and unusual punishment," and Hezekiah was hardly a criminal. He was a hero who had sacrificed himself for his friends. For that, he would live the rest of his days in slavery. Ryan didn't know whether to feel sad or angry. He felt both.
His emotions, however, were more complicated than that. They stemmed from something deeper than the fact that Hezekiah was gone. Ryan wished he could feel the same sense of pride about his own father.
That hurt more than anything.
Ryan scanned the forest around him. The wagon was surrounded by tall, straight trees. In the darkness, they reminded him of iron bars. Prison bars. If he squinted, he could almost see his father standing behind those bars in the orange jump suit, his eyes filled with sadness, as he looked Ryan in the eye and said, "I didn't do it, son."
Ryan shook his head, trying to free his mind of the image. But he couldn't fight it. He hadn't slept well since losing Hezekiah. He was mentally and physically exhausted. His thoughts kept bouncing back and forth from Hezekiah's being hauled away by slave hunters to his father sitting alone in some prison cell. Slowly, against his own will, his thoughts took an even deeper turn toward his father. Ryan didn't want to go there, not even in his memories, but in his mind's eye he was reliving that awful day when the police had come to take his father away.
A swirl of blue lights swept the yard outside Ryan's bedroom window. He peered out from behind the curtain and saw two squad cars pulling into the Coolidge driveway. The car doors flew open, and men in dark blue police uniforms raced up the walkway.
Next came the pounding at the front door, the firm knock of authority.
Ryan hurried from his room and stopped at the top of the stairs. His father was already at the door. "What's going on, Dad?" said Ryan.
"Just go back to your room, son."
Ryan started down the hall, but he didn't return to his room. He ducked around the corner and kept watching and listening as his father opened the door.
Two police officers flashed their badges, along with an older man who was wearing a white shirt and red tie with the knot loosened at the throat. He looked like one of those detectives on television. "Is Dr. Coolidge at home?" he asked.
"No, she's at work."
"Are you Mr. Coolidge?"
"Yes, I am."
"We're with Metro-Police. We have a search warrant for these premises," he said as he presented the document.
"What's this about, officer?"
"We're here to execute the warrant, not answer questions. May we pass, please? Or are you resisting?"
"I'm not resisting. I just want to know what this-"
"Where's the master bedroom?"
"Upstairs to the right."
"Thank you." The detective and two officers blew past him and started upstairs. Two other officers suddenly appeared in the doorway, as if standing guard.
Ryan pinned his back to the wall and allowed the police to pass. They said nothing as they hurried by him and disappeared into his parents' bedroom. Ryan's father climbed halfway up the stairs, his eyes meeting Ryan's.
"Dad, what are they looking for?"
"Just don't worry, Ryan. It's going to be okay."
He spoke in that too-calm tone of voice that parents used to reassure themselves as much as their children. With a detective and two police officers rummaging through their house, Ryan had no reason to believe that everything was going to be okay.
Ryan stood behind his father outside the bedroom door. It took only a few minutes for the police to emerge. The detective was wearing latex gloves, and he was carrying something under his arm. It was Mr. Coolidge's camera bag.
"What do you want with that?" asked Ryan's father.
"Follow me, sir."
The detective led the way downstairs to the foyer. Ryan's father went with them. Ryan was watching from the top of the stairs as the detective laid the camera bag on the floor. One of the police officers was recording with a hand-held video camera.
The detective said, "Mr. Coolidge, would you please open the camera bag."
Ryan's father looked puzzled, but he did not object. The bag was about the size of a standard backpack, and it had a number of different zipper pockets on the front and sides. Mr. Coolidge unzipped the main compartment, which revealed nothing but a camera.
The detective said, "Open the side pocket, please. The one on the left."
Ryan's father obliged. This time, however, as he peeled back the open flap, his face turned ash white.
"Would you remove the contents, please?" the detective said flatly.
Mr. Coolidge had clearly heard him, but he suddenly couldn't move. "I-I don't know how this got here."
"Sir, please remove it."
His hand shook as he reached into the side pocket. He pulled out something that, from Ryan's distance, looked like a bright green piece of glass or a rock. A moment later, however, Ryan recognized it. His father was holding the precious stone that had choked that little girl on the beach. It was the same huge emerald that she had sucked off her grandmother's ring. Two weeks had passed since Ryan's mother saved the child's life, but Ryan would never forget a jewel like that one.
"Does this emerald belong to you?" the detective demanded.
"No, of course not."
The detective opened a small plastic bag and said, "Place it in the bag, please."
Ryan's father dropped the emerald into the bag, and the detective sealed it shut.
"Mr. Coolidge, do you have any idea how much this stone is worth?"
"I'm sure it's quite valuable "
"It's been appraised at thirty-one-thousand dollars, sir. You want to tell us how it ended up in your camera bag?"
"I don't know how."
"This is your camera bag, isn't it?"
"Yes, but I don't have any idea how that emerald ended up there. I really don't."
The officers exchanged glances, obviously skeptical. The detective said, "Would you mind coming downtown with us, sir? We'd like to ask you a few more questions."
"My wife is still at her mommy-and-me class with our daughter. I can't leave my son here by himself."
"Officer Tenet will be happy to walk your son over to a neighbor's house."
"Can't this wait until my wife comes home?"
The detective sneered. "I'm trying to be nice, sir. Don't force me to arrest you in front of your own child."
"Arrest me? For what?"
"For the last time, sir. Let's talk about it downtown. For your boy's sake."
Mr. Coolidge glanced toward Ryan, then swallowed the lump in his throat. "All right. Take my son to the Alvarez house. They live right next door."
The officer went to Ryan and led him downstairs. As they crossed the foyer, Ryan saw real fear in his father's eyes, which gave him even greater concern. "Dad, what's going on?"
"We'll talk more about this later, Ryan."
"But that's the emerald that flew out of that baby's mouth at the beach. What's it doing in your camera bag?"
"Ryan, be quiet."
"Are they saying you stole it?"
"I said we'll talk about this later," he said sternly. "This is obviously a mistake."
The police officer whisked Ryan out the door, as if he couldn't get the boy out of the house fast enough. Ryan was confused and angry at the same time. He had been so proud of his mother for saving that little girl's life. Dr. Coolidge had been the talk of the town. She'd been on the television news, her picture in the newspaper. She was a local hero. And now this? How could his father have spoiled everything? How could he have stooped so low as to steal the emerald that had popped from a choking baby's mouth?
As Ryan entered the neighbor's yard, he gave a quick glance over his shoulder. What he saw nearly knocked him off his feet-his father disappearing into the back seat of a police car, his head lowered in shame.
Ryan had seen plenty of cop shows on television. He'd seen criminals stuffed into squad cars on the nightly news. And he'd watched dozens of them look into the cameras and say exactly what his father had just told him: It was all "a mistake."
Yeah, right. They always said it was "a mistake."
He wanted to believe in his father's innocence, but he was already having doubts. How could a thirty-one-thousand-dollar emerald end up in his camera bag by "mistake"?
That was all Ryan wanted to know.