"It was."
"Was the boy yours?"
"No."
"Whose?"
"He belongs to a woman named Vanessa Brooks. She works on the 38th floor of this building. She is upstairs in a conference room. I would like to take him to her now."
Vance looked at him for a long moment, and the exasperation in her eyes softened into something quieter. "Go," she said. "I will be up in twenty minutes. I will need statements from all three of you, but they can wait that long."
Harlan picked up his portfolio and walked back through the revolving doors into the lobby.
Isaiah was still standing beside the security desk, his hand still on the strap of his backpack. He had not looked toward the windows. He had not asked Frank a single question.
Harlan crossed the lobby and held out his hand. "Come with me, Isaiah."
The boy took his hand. It was the first time anyone in that building had ever held Harlan Whitfield's hand, and the first time in many years that Harlan had let his own hand be held.
They walked together toward the elevators, past the polished floor and the high ceiling and the long bank of brass mailboxes, and Harlan understood as he walked that something in the architecture of his ordinary morning had been permanently rearranged.
Vanessa Brooks was waiting for them in the small conference room on the third floor. She stood when the door opened, and her hand went to her mouth in the same way it had on the security footage. And then she was kneeling on the carpet with her son in her arms, and for almost a full minute, no one in the room spoke.