Free Counterfeit Son by Elaine Marie Alphin Page A

part-time clerk in a liquor store, but he must have lied about his age—he was only nineteen when he was arrested.
    Cameron stared at the caption beneath the photograph, so paralyzed by memories that he could barely breathe. Cougar had been arrested because of the boy Pop had let him take. He remembered that night, hearing the two men quarrel. Cougar had been with Pop when they'd picked up the boy—Alan Wells was his name. Pop had been telling the boy what to do, but Cougar kept trying to take charge. Finally Pop had told him to take the kid and get lost—he never wanted to hear from him again. And Cougar had hauled the boy out to his pickup and roared away, spitting gravel from the drive so hard it hit the living room windows. Pop had been angry that night. Cameron shut his eyes and tried to blank out the memory of how Pop had taken out his fury on him.

    Then, a couple of days later, the police had come. Pop had ordered Cameron to be quiet or he'd kill him, and despite what Diana and Detective Simmons thought, Cameron had known the threat was true. He'd sat at the bare wood kitchen table, staring blindly at his world history notes, listening to the rise and fall of voices in the living room until he heard his name.
    "Mr. Scott says you have a son, Mr. Miller, name of Cameron. Is he here today, sir?"
    He'd felt his stomach tighten into knots and wished he could run down into the cellar and hide in the corner with the file cabinet until the cops left. He remembered all too clearly how Pop had told him the cops would take him away and lock him up because he was so bad. Cameron didn't want them to see him.
    "May we speak to him, please, Mr. Miller?"
    And Pop had led them into the kitchen, to show them his son doing his homework like a good boy.
    The cops had been polite. He'd told them he was Cameron Miller and that he didn't really know the man they were talking about. He'd said that his father called the man Cougar, and that Cougar sometimes came and drank beer with his father, but that Cameron didn't stay up with the men.

    The cops had shown him a picture of Alan Wells and asked if he'd ever seen the boy, and Cameron had stared at it, remembering the boy's tears that night and wondering if Cougar had killed him. Neither of the cops had seen past his blank stare and tried to help him. Finally he'd shaken his head and said he didn't think so, and asked softly if it was someone he was supposed to know from school. The cops had gone away a little later, and Pop had slapped him on his sore back and grinned at him, telling him he'd been good for once.
    Cameron blinked his eyes, trying to focus on the present instead of the past. Reading the newspaper articles now, he saw that Alan Wells hadn't been killed. He'd gotten away from Bill Scott's house, and run and told the police.
Good for him,
Cameron thought. That was one boy who wasn't in Hank Miller's files.
    The articles said that Alan had remembered the license plate of the pickup and described Scott's house. He'd told the police there was another man in an out-of-the-way house, but he hadn't been as clear about that one. They'd arrested Scott, and Alan had identified him. It was Scott who'd told the police about Hank Miller. According to the newspaper, the police had gone to Miller's house but had found no evidence to confirm Scott's accusations. They'd found a quiet widower with a steady job and a son who went to school regularly and didn't make any trouble. Miller and his son were both open about knowing the man, but they said they knew nothing about Alan Wells, and there was nothing to indicate that they were lying. In a police lineup, Alan Wells had failed to identify Miller. Cameron guessed the boy had been too frightened that night to remember Pop's face clearly.

    There had been more than twenty missing boys on the files at that time, and the police had wanted to indict Scott for all of them, despite his insistence that Miller was to blame. His lawyer had said that