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Ebook ISBN: 9781101985618
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Names: Parks, Brad, 1974–, author.
Title: Say nothing : a novel / Brad Parks.
Description: New York : Dutton, [2017]
Identifiers: LCCN 2016018767 (print) | LCCN 2016023336 (ebook) | ISBN 9781101985595 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781101985618 (ebook)
Classification: LCC PS3616.A7553 S29 2017 (print) | LCC PS3616.A7553 (ebook) | DDC 813/.6—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016018767
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
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I’m married to an amazing woman who, many years ago, told me to chase my dream. Then she made it possible in all the days since.
This one—especially this one—is for her.
CONTENTS
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
CHAPTER THIRTY
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
CHAPTER FORTY
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER FORTY-NINE
CHAPTER FIFTY
CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE
CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO
CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE
CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR
CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE
CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX
CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER FIFTY-NINE
CHAPTER SIXTY
CHAPTER SIXTY-ONE
CHAPTER SIXTY-TWO
CHAPTER SIXTY-THREE
CHAPTER SIXTY-FOUR
CHAPTER SIXTY-FIVE
CHAPTER SIXTY-SIX
CHAPTER SIXTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER SIXTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER SIXTY-NINE
CHAPTER SEVENTY
CHAPTER SEVENTY-ONE
CHAPTER SEVENTY-TWO
CHAPTER SEVENTY-THREE
CHAPTER SEVENTY-FOUR
CHAPTER SEVENTY-FIVE
CHAPTER SEVENTY-SIX
CHAPTER SEVENTY-SEVEN
Acknowledgments
About the Author
ONE
Their first move against us was so small, such an infinitesimal blip against the blaring background noise of life, I didn’t register it as anything significant.
It came in the form of a text from my wife, Alison, and it arrived on my phone at 3:28 one Wednesday afternoon:
Hey sorry forgot to tell you kids have dr appt this pm. Picking them up soon.
If I had any reaction to this unexpected disruption, it was only mild disappointment. Wednesday was Swim With Dad, a weekly ritual revered enough in our family to deserve capitalization. The twins and I had been partaking in it regularly for the past three years or so. While it had started as a predictable disaster—more the avoidance of drowning than actual swimming—it had since evolved into something far more pleasurable. Now age six, Sam and Emma had become ardent water rats.
For the forty-five minutes we usually lasted, until one of them got that chatter in the teeth that told me they were done, all we did was enjoy one another. We splashed around. We raced from one end of the pool to the other. We played water games of our own invention, like the much-beloved Baby Hippo. There’s something about having genuine fun with your kids that’s good for the soul in a way nothing else is, even if you’re forever stuck in the role of Momma Hippo.
I looked forward to it in the same way I cherished all the weekly rites that had come to define our family’s little universe. Friday, for example, was Board Game–apalooza. Sunday was Pancake Day. Monday was Hats and Dancing, which involved, well, dancing. With hats on.
And maybe none of this sounds terribly sexy. Certainly, you wouldn’t want to slap it across a Cosmo cover—HOW TO GIVE YOUR MAN THE BEST PANCAKE DAY OF HIS LIFE! But I have come to believe a good routine is the bedrock of a happy family, and therefore a happy marriage, and therefore a happy life.
So I was miffed, that Wednesday afternoon, when the enjoyment of our little routine was taken away from me. One of the benefits of being a judge is having a certain amount of say-so over my own schedule. My staff knows that, no matter what crisis of justice may be visiting us on a Wednesday afternoon, the Honorable Scott A. Sampson will be leaving his chambers at four o’clock to pick up his kids from after-school care so he can take them to the YMCA pool.
I thought about going anyway and swimming some laps. Doughy forty-four-year-old white men with sedentary jobs ought not pass up opportunities for exercise. But the more I thought about it, being there without Sam and Emma felt wrong. I went home instead.
For the past four years, we’ve lived in an old farmhouse alongside the York River we call “the farm,” because we’re creative that way. It’s in a rural part of the Virginia tidewater known as the Middle Peninsula, in an unincorporated section of Gloucester County, about three hours south of D.C. and many steps off the beaten path.
How we ended up there is a story that starts in Washington, where I was the go-to policy guy for an influential US senator. It continues with an incident—might as well refer to it as The Incident, also capitalize
d—that landed me in a hospital bed, which tends to encourage the rethinking of one’s priorities. It ends with my appointment as a federal judge, sitting in Norfolk, in the Eastern District of Virginia.
It was not, necessarily, what I had envisioned for myself when I first picked up Congressional Quarterly as a sixth grader. Nor was it your conventional put-out-to-political-pasture assignment. From a workload standpoint, federal judges tend to be like ducks: There’s more going on under the surface than anyone quite realizes.
But it was certainly better than where The Incident might have ended for me, which was the morgue.
So I would have told you, all things considered, I had it pretty damn good, with my two healthy kids, my loving wife, my challenging-but-rewarding job, my happy routine.
Or at least that’s what I would have said until 5:52 P.M. that Wednesday.
That’s when Alison arrived home.
Alone.
* * *
I had been in the kitchen, cutting fruit for the twins’ next-day lunches.
Alison was emitting her usual coming-home sounds: opening the door, putting down her bag, shuffling through the mail. Every day, from nine to five thirty, she works with children who have intellectual disabilities that are so severe, their local school systems lacked the ability to accommodate their needs. It is, from my perspective, grueling work that would absolutely wipe me out. Yet she almost always comes home in a good mood. Alison is a veritable force of nurture.
We’ve been together since our sophomore year of college. I fell in love with her because she was beautiful and yet also found it endearing that I could name all 435 members of Congress, along with the states they represented and their party affiliations. If you’re a guy like me and you find a woman like that? You hang on to her for all you’re worth.
“Hey, love,” I called out.
“Hey, hon,” she answered.
What I didn’t hear, I immediately realized, were the twins. A six-year-old human is a noisy animal; two six-year-olds, even more so. Sam and Emma typically enter stomping and banging, chattering and humming, creating their own little unselfconscious cacophony.
The only thing more conspicuous than the racket they make is the absence of it. I dried my apple-damp hands on a towel and walked down the hallway to the foyer so I could investigate.
Alison was there, her head bent toward a bill she had opened.
“Where are the kids?” I asked.
She looked up from the bill, perplexed. “What do you mean? It’s Wednesday.”
“I know. But you sent me a text.”
“What text?”
“About the doctor,” I said, digging into my pocket so she could read it. “It’s right here.”
Without bothering to look, she said, “I didn’t send you any texts about any doctors.”
I suddenly knew what it must be like to sit on a beach when all the water mysteriously rushes away, as happens just before a tsunami. You simply can’t imagine the size of the thing that’s about to hit you.
“So, wait, you’re saying you didn’t pick up the twins?” Alison asked.
“No.”
“Does Justina have them?”
Justina Kemal is the Turkish college student who lives rent-free in our cottage in exchange for a certain amount of childcare each month.
“I doubt it,” I said. “It’s Wednesday. She—”
My phone rang.
“That’s probably the school,” Alison said. “Tell them I’ll be right there. Jesus, Scott.”
Alison was already grabbing her keys from the bowl. The number was coming up as RESTRICTED. I hit the answer button.
“Scott Sampson,” I said.
“Hello, Judge Sampson,” came a voice that sounded thick, deep, and indistinct, like it was being put through a filter. “It must be nice to have your wife home.”
“Who is this?” I asked stupidly.
“You’re probably wondering where Sam and Emma are,” the voice said.
There was a surge of primal juices in my body. My heart began slamming against my rib cage. Blood raced to my face, roared in my ears.
“Where are they?” I asked. Again, stupid.
“Skavron,” the voice said.
“Skavron,” I repeated. “What about it?”
United States vs. Skavron was a drug sentencing scheduled for my courtroom the next day. I had spent the early part of the week preparing for it.
“You will receive your instructions about the verdict we want in a text message tomorrow,” the voice said. “If you want to see your children again, you will follow those instructions exactly.”
“What instructions? What do—”
“You will not go to the police,” the voice continued. “You will not approach the FBI. You will not notify the authorities in any way. Your children remaining alive and unharmed depends on you going about your business as if nothing is wrong. You will do nothing. You will say nothing. Do you understand?”
“No, wait, I don’t understand. I don’t understand anything.”
“Then let me make it clear to you: If we even suspect you’ve spoken to the authorities, we’ll start chopping off fingers. If we know for a fact you have, we’ll do ears and noses.”
“I got it. I got it. Please don’t hurt them. I’ll do whatever you want. Please don—”
“Say nothing,” the voice warned.
Then the line went dead.
TWO
The front door was still open. Alison’s eyes flared.
“What’s happening?” she asked. “What’s going on? What do you mean, ‘don’t hurt them’?”
I couldn’t immediately answer her. I couldn’t even breathe.
“Scott, talk to me.”
“The children . . . They’ve been”—I had to force myself to say the word—“kidnapped.”
“What?” she shrieked.
“This voice . . . He said . . . He wanted a verdict in this case I’m hearing and . . . He said if we go to the police he’ll start chopping off”—I involuntarily brought my hands to my face and gasped for air—“chopping off fingers. He said we have to say nothing. Say nothing or . . .”
My heart was thrashing. I felt like there wasn’t enough oxygen in the world, even though I swear I was sucking it in as fast as I could. My chest was being crushed by some huge, unseen hand.
Oh God, I thought, I’m having a heart attack.
Breathe. I had to breathe. But I couldn’t get my lungs to fill, no matter how desperate I was to make it happen. I yanked at the collar of my shirt, which was buttoned too tight. No, wait, it was my necktie. I was being strangled by it.
I brought my other hand to my neck so I could tear away whatever clothes were impeding the flow of blood to my brain. That’s when I realized: I wasn’t wearing a tie anymore.
My face was a furnace. I was suddenly sweating out of every pore. Pins and needles attacked my feet and legs. They weren’t going to hold me much longer.
Alison was screaming at me. “Scott, what is going on? What do you mean they’ve been kidnapped?”
I watched, with surreal detachment, as the veins in the side of her neck bulged.
“Scott!” she said, grabbing my shoulders and shaking me. “Goddamn it, Scott! What’s happening?”
To me, the question was unanswerable. But Alison, apparently expecting some kind of reply, started banging on my chest and raving, “What’s happening? What’s going on?”
Her fists kept striking me until it occurred to me I should shield myself from the blows. As soon as I brought my hands up to ward her off, she dropped to the floor, hugging her knees and sobbing. It sounded like she was saying, “Oh God.” Or maybe she was saying, “My babies.” Or both
.
I bent over to pull her up—what this would accomplish, I had no idea—but couldn’t manage it. Instead of lifting her up, the effort just brought me farther down. I sank to one knee, then both knees. The corners of my vision had gone blurry. I felt myself losing consciousness. I let out a loud moan.
Some dimly functioning part of my brain told me that if I was going to die, I should lie down. I let myself fall to my side, then rolled onto my back. From there, I stared up at the ceiling, gasping and waiting for everything to go black.
Except it didn’t. My face was still flushed and I swore the top of my skull was going to erupt from the heat. But it was slowly dawning on me that meant there was too much blood going to my head, not too little.
I wasn’t having a heart attack. I was having a panic attack.
Panic attacks don’t kill you. I had to will my body to start operating, even if it didn’t want to. Sam and Emma needed me. They needed me more than they ever had in their entire lives.
This thought brought me back to my hands and knees. I crawled over to the wall, leaned against it, and managed to hoist myself up. I shut the front door—why, I don’t know—then looked down to where I had dropped my phone.
I picked it up and started searching for a number in my contacts. The desire to help my children was suddenly as strong as the desire to keep breathing had been just moments before.
“What . . . what are you doing?” Alison asked.
“I’m calling the marshals.”
The US Marshals Service oversees my safety while I’m at the courthouse. Outside the courthouse, I’m the responsibility of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. I didn’t have any FBI numbers stored in my phone, but I did have the chief deputy marshal in charge of the courthouse. He, in turn, could call the FBI.
“What?” Alison demanded.
“I’m calling the chief—”
With extraordinary speed, Alison leapt to her feet and knocked the phone out of my hand. I watched it skitter into the corner.
“Are you out of your mind?” she asked.
“Why did you—”
“You’re not seriously calling the marshals service.”
“Yeah, I—”
“Absolutely not,” she said, a shrill spike in her voice.