The Dead Reckoner Volume One: Absolution and Desolation

after a few seconds. She dressed and left the bathroom. A woman just past sixty sat on her bed. She wore a frilly loose blouse and a checkered gingham skirt. She'd been wearing the beads around her neck for as long as Marianne could remember. The turquoise paint was starting to chip. In her lap, the woman held a stack of papers. Marianne tried to snatch them away, but the older woman clutched them against her chest.

  “This is my job, Mom.” said Marianne.

  “Is this even legal?”

  It wouldn't be if the law made any sense, thought Marianne. But laws didn't ever make any real sense, once you figured them out. Marianne was no lawyer, but she was sure the attorneys at Blue Water Capital, her employer, had been all over the ways this deal could rot. And of course they wouldn't leave you holding the bag, would they?

  Marianne said, “Yeah it's legal mom. What's illegal is you reading it.”

  Her mother held out the pages. “You shouldn't leave them out then.”

  Marianne found her suitcase, a black backpack with a laptop slot and a roller board. The pocket behind the laptop was unzipped. She grabbed her folder from her mother and slipped it in that opening.

  “I didn't leave it out.” she said.

  She dragged the bag off the bed and it hit the floor with a big thud. She extended the handle and rolled the bag across her apartment and into the little vestibule by the front door. Behind her, she heard her mother's cane clicking and thumping, clicking and thumping. The rubber stopper on the end was loose; it popped out when she pulled the cane off the floor and snapped back into place when the woman returned her weight to it. Marianne thought that someday that thing would fly off, leaving her mother to fold over and slide across the floor.

  Her mother said, “If you play this game, at best you'll loose yourself. At worst you'll get hurt.”

  “You don't understand what you're reading.”

  “You forget I went to law school.” said the older woman “How's this? There's a company called Polymath. Some of its employees are staging a coup. Blue Water is posing as a client, but they intend to conspire with these mutineers and take over the company. As for you, you're just a spy. You're going in there with nothing to protect you if people get wind of the plot. Did I get that right?”

  “Those facts don't describe everything. Reggie Binder, CEO of this company, is an ideologue who is using its technology to further his political agenda. In the process, he's driving it into the ground.”

  “You mean he's losing money because of his beliefs and that bothers you?”

  “It bothers me that he's risking the livelihoods of his employees.” said Marianne.

  Her mother went into the kitchenette. There was a partial wall there, with a window communicating between the kitchen and the rest of the apartment. She cracked a couple eggs into a pan and Marianne watched the steam rise over that wall. Her mother always was an excellent cook. The woman knew she could use her skill to lull her prey.

  Her mother said, “This isn't what we fought for.”

  “Who are these people that were doing the fighting?” said Marianne. “You and the other girls who dropped out of law school because you couldn't hang with the guys?” She wanted to bite her tongue the moment she said that, but instead she plowed on. “You always wanted women to be equals with men, but when the going got tough you dropped out of the fight. I'm holding my own against the most narcissistic men in the most cut throat industry in the world. How is that not what you fought for?”

  “Being equal to a man doesn't mean becoming one. You're still playing by their rules. You'll loose yourself and then they'll turn on you and beat you down. Honestly, you're more like your father.”

  “What's so bad about that?” said Marianne. “He worked hard. You're the one with all the debts and not three words of marketable skills to put on your resume.”

  “He used me up and left me.”

  “He died Mom.”

  Her mother sucked in a deep breath, holding back tears, and said, “He shot himself in the head when we were broke, when we needed him most. I raised you. I paid for your college. And what kind of thanks do I get for that, you ungrateful bitch?”

  The woman threw her hands over her mouth the moment those words left it. It wasn't Marianne's job to bite her tongue. She was still the kid and somehow entitled to tell her mother off whenever she pleased, but no mother ever forgives herself for loosing her temper with her child. Not even bad mothers. And Marianne's, in the end, wasn't bad at all.

  Marianne, for her part, found her calm. Despite having a sharp tongue, she didn't get where she was by escalating arguments into shouting matches.

  “Did it ever occur to you,” she said. “That maybe the men I work with aren't they way they are because they're men, but because they're survivors? I'm not becoming a man, I'm becoming a survivor.”

  Her mother was very quiet now. “It doesn't matter. You have to make a choice, between your morals and your career.”

  “You mean between your morals and my career.”

  “It's not just me you have to worry about. What about the baby?”

  The baby. She knew. Marianne wasn't ready for this. She was going to tell her mom before she told anyone else, including the father, but that was supposed to be after things settled down, after the deal with Polymath was done.

  Her mother went on, “You think you're hot stuff and that you've got the weight of Blue Water behind you, but you're going up against a man who built an entire company. You said he was an ideological fanatic, which means he's not going to give up, ever. What if he ruins you? What if all those survivors at Blue Water cut you off so you don't drag them down? Then where will you and your child be left?”

  “I have a plan.” said Marianne.

  “You and your plans.”

  The older woman turned off the heat, came back around the partition, and put her hand on her daughter's arm. She was crying. It hurt Marianne, but it also made her feel like a fool. One might ask, was she expressing real distress or just being manipulative? Marianne knew the answer was both. She wondered what the next volley was going to be. What would her mom say now to make her stay?

  “I've got my secrets too.” she said. “If you leave now, I might not be alive when you return.”

  FIVE

  Ruth Holland fought the panic that rose in her when she heard banging on the door. It had been months since the school fire and she was still on edge. She could even put a name on what ate away at her. It was that software and its creator, who'd had the audacity to speak to her son while he was in the hospital. Ruth still wasn't sure of Binder's true reason for coming. Whatever it was, her she was sure her encounter with him had been no accident. He had planned to meet her and that was more frightening than the fire itself.

  The knocking was insistent. It had started while Ruth was in the shower and kept up as she ran down the stairs, throwing her clothes on as she went. The house had been silent for the last week. Her sixth grader, Jason, had been away at camp for children with special needs. Sometimes his absence made her anxious too. The noises he made while wandering around the house put her at ease and even made her feel safer. She liked having her family close.

  She reached the door and flung it open. Before she could speak, she saw who it was and caught her breath. Jason was standing there with a woman about Ruth's age. It was six in the morning and the camp was two hours away.

  “I'm Miss Jewel.” said the woman. “I'm sorry to come to you like this.”

  Ruth knelt down and grabbed her son, looking him over.

  “What's wrong, are you okay?” she said. Jason was limp and didn't look his mom in the eye. Ruth said, “What happened to you?” Then, looking up at Miss Jewel, “What happened to him?”

  “He's fine.” she sighed. “I mean, he isn't hurt. We found him in the computer lab this morning. He'd disassembled every computer in there. We just can't handle this anymore.”

&n
bsp; Ruth stood, switching from concern to clear and present anger. She was a cop, after all.

  She said, “You're a camp made entirely for kids like this.”

  “I know -”

  “And shouldn't you keep places like your computer lab locked?”

  “Of course, but somehow he got in there.”

  “So?” said Ruth. “So – what? You're going to drop him off at six AM and drive off? I've got to get to work. I paid you up front. There's got to be some kind of legal obligation.”

  “I don't want to read the fine print to you.” said Miss Jewel. “But the policy states that we can return a child to his parents if our staff can't manage him.”

  “With no warning whatsoever?”

  Ruth was screaming now, and there were lots of reasons she didn't want to. For starters, Jason had put his hands over his ears. He was sensitive to loud noises, and the gesture always reminded Ruth of how she'd found him at the school. Then there were the neighbors to think of. They already thought Ruth was a little off. But sometimes you've just got to tell people how to find their own asses.

  Miss Jewel said, “Jason's not the only child there. We have to think of everyone's safety.”

  “Right.” said Ruth. “You've got kids that bite or shout or hit and your main concern is a little boy whose biggest crime is wanting to know how things work?”

  Miss Jewel started to speak, but Ruth threw her hands up and said, “Forget it, forget it. I know he's here now and there's no way you're