Act of Betrayal Read Online Free PDF Page A

to go. I thought he’d make it.”
    He plucked a small school picture from the folder and held it in his work-worn hand, studying it solemnly for a moment before giving it to me. There was no earring, tattoo, or gang colors. Blond and apple-cheeked, Charles wore his pale hair neatly combed. Merry blue eyes regarded the camera with the innocence of early adolescence. His smile was engaging, with a hint of prankish humor.
    â€œYou’re sure he’s not staying somewhere, with a friend or a relative?”
    â€œThe only one who doesn’t live here in Florida is his grandmother, Lillian, in New York”
    â€œHas she heard anything?”
    He shook his head. “She’s elderly and ailing. We never told her. It’d be too hard on her.”
    â€œShe doesn’t know?”
    â€œWhat could we tell her? We don’t know anything. We drove up for three days last summer, said he was at camp. She’s always badgering us for new pictures and wanting to know why he stopped writing her like he used to. We keep lying, telling her he’s been real busy with school and baseball.”
    I glanced at the big clock mounted over the newsroom, hands rocketing relentlessly toward deadline. “Where do you work, Mr. Randolph?”
    â€œThe Quicky Lube at Biscayne Boulevard and Sixty-eighth Street.” He fished a business card from his shirt pocket. It identified him as Jeffrey Randolph, Manager.
    â€œThank you. I’m on deadline right now, have to finish a story for our street edition.”
    He swallowed, closed his file, and began to get to his feet, face resigned.
    â€œThen I’d like to come by and talk to you some more.”
    He reacted as though he’d heard a gunshot.
    â€œI’ll try to be there by four,” I continued, ignoring his startled expression, “unless I’m sidetracked by a breaking story. I’ll call you before I come.”
    Something that had been nagging me during our conversation suddenly triggered my memory. “Hold on a minute,” I said, scrolling through the MISSING file, through “overset” left out of stories about misplaced Miamians and lists with names, dates, and descriptions of others, handy for matching to the skeletal remains and unidentified corpses that surface all too frequently.
    I found it. Blond hair, blue eyes, age thirteen. Virtually the same description. That had to be what I remembered.
    â€œDoes your son know a boy by the name of Butch Beltrán?” I asked.
    Randolph squinted. “The name Butch sounds familiar. I don’t know about that last name. Have to ask my wife.”
    â€œProbably no connection,” I said, checking the date. “This Butch has only been missing since March.”
    Thousands of people become missing persons in Miami every year. Most surface quickly. Some wear sheepish grins and don’t want to talk about it. Others can’t. They are found in the morgue. A few stay lost forever.
    I watched Jeffrey Randolph walk out of the newsroom. Where is his son? I wondered. Dead? If so, why hadn’t his body surfaced? Corpses tend to turn up. If he ran off to hitchhike across America it was way past time for his adventure to end, for him to call home for a bus ticket or be picked up by the cops somewhere. Missing people are real-life puzzles.
    I finished the bomb follow, wrote a short on the overturned septic tanker, and did cutlines for an aerial Lottie had shot of the traffic mess from a chopper. Then I called the medical examiner’s office.
    Unidentified corpses are buried in a trench dug by a backhoe, mourned only by jail inmates who perform the labor. They spend eternity in an unmarked common grave beside the poor whose bodies go unclaimed.
    Unidentified skeletons are boiled in meat tenderizer to remove all remaining shreds of flesh. The bones are then stored in stacked boxes.
    Photos and dental records are kept on all those unidentified. Occasionally someone