Forgive not forget

‘I’m not sure if there is a God.
But I’m sure as hell there is a Devil,
for only him could have written
this play I lived.’

That is John Fulton. Married with the love of his life Lia and together with their son Bob, soon to be 10 years old, they live an idyllic life.

But paradise breaks down when Bob disappears on his birthday. And it’s not the only thing that breaks.

Two days before, Lia had said she had to go on a business trip. She promised she would be back on time for Bob’s birthday party. John is not happy about it, but accepts.

A strange package arrived at John and Lia’s residence the day before Bob went missing. It is a rather expensive birthday present for Bob, from an unknown sender. By phone, John questions Lia about it, and she says it has to be a mistake. At his office, John asks his assistance Ian to check such hypothesis. Ian finds out there’s no mistake. That is really a present for his son, Bob.

At night, John calls Ian again and asks him to come to his home, to talk about the present.

Lia arrives home on the morning of her son’s birthday. She wakes up John, but with some difficulty. He had a bottle of gin last night. They go wake up their son. After all, it’s his big day. But Bob is not in his room. He’s not anywhere. John and Lia turn the house upside down, looking for their son. They search the neighborhood - nothing. Lia blames John, for he drank the night before. They quarrel.

Back home, Lia calls the police. Detectives Peter and Beth are assigned to the case. But they inform the Fulton’s that for 24 hours they’ll have to treat the matter as a missing person’s case, hoping the boy returns home within this period.

But then, Lia receives a message on her cell-phone. It’s from Bob. The boy’s voice is slightly choked by sobbing. Now, Peter and Beth treat the case as kidnapping.

The detectives comb Bob’s room. They find a blood stain on the boy’s pillow. A sample is taken for analysis. The boy’s baseball cap is missing, too.

By talking to neighbors, the detectives find out John is a recovering cocaine addict. Det. Beth has a personal problem with that, for her brother is in the same situation, and she does not believe a drug addict can ever recover.

A K-9 unit is called to track the kid. But the tracks lead to a lake, and the K-9 dog loses Bob’s scent. However, footprints reveal Bob walked there with an adult.

All eyes focus on John, for his past cocaine problem.

A nosy reporter runs to the detectives to talk about this weird guy who lives nearby, named Salazar, accused of molesting a minor some years back, a pariah in the neighborhood.

Det. Peter goes talk to Salazar at his home. Salazar claims he’s innocent, he did time in prison for a crime he didn’t commit. However, through a window, Peter sees Bob’s baseball cap on a bed inside a kid’s room Salazar keeps in his house. Peter arrests Salazar, but has to release him later, because Bob is not found in Salazar’s house.

With all eyes now focusing on John and Salazar, a DNA analysis of the blood sample from Bob’s pillow reveals that the kid is Lia’s son, but not John’s.

Ian, John’s assistance, also discovers that every year a birthday present is sent to Bob, but Lia has been hiding them all. John only got the last one, because his wife was out on a business trip.

Severely confronted, Lia admits she had an affair with a Muslim oil tycoon named Bailey Gamal, ten years before.

Det. Beth goes to Gamal’s penthouse and talks to him. He’s pretty sure he is Bob’s biological father. That’s why he sends the kid a birthday present every year. He also reveals it’s a sacred belief that a boy should be raised by the father. Gamal looks shocked when Beth tells him Bob had been abducted, but the detective is unconvinced.

The idyllic life of John and Lia definitely takes a turn, to become a spiral mess of dark secrets and sordid revelations.

Every new discovery takes Peter and Beth farther and farther away from finding the truth and rescuing Bob. Looks like these two detectives will have a real hard time cracking this one.