“Jesus,” Vicky breathed. “Easy, Frankie.”
“What? I’m sorry if you don’t like the term, Vick, any more than you liked looking at the videos, but that’s fucking reality. I’m not going to bullshit you, crime in Mexico gave me a way to stay straight in this country—I never did actually go to high school, I just got hold of one school’s curriculum and the books and learned when I wasn’t at work till I got my GED. And by then, dude, I was good enough to go here, to one of the best criminal justice schools in the country. A fact that we don’t need to share with SUNY, I’m assuming, especially since it was when I found out that you two maestros had joined the online faculty that I chose Albany. I don’t mind telling you that I coulda gone to a whole lot of places—but I wanted to learn from the best.” There was a momentary pause, and Frankie smiled, very genuinely this time. “Don’t let your heads explode about it or anything. But the point is, none of the four dead kids we’re talking about had the skills or the chances I did, any more than most of the kids I grew up with down here did. They all got caught in a system that leads you in just one direction: foster care. But nobody gives a shit, from the governor on down—just make those kids disappear, man, stigmatize them, deport ’em, ‘anchor babies,’ all that bullshit. And bullshit is what it is…”
Frankie’s last words, poignant as they were, had struck me like a shot. “Of course,” I murmured. “Frankie—you just said it. Or part of it. ‘Anchor babies.’ When each of you hears that term, what do you immediately think of? The Southwest, right, and citizenship? But that’s only part of what the debate’s about. On a deep psychological level, these ‘anchor babies’ are also anchors to, reminders of, a plain fact: that the Southwest can’t function without the presence of illegals anymore. People may not like it; they think that if they eliminate the anchors, Americans will be unchained, will step forward and clean houses, pick fruit, tend yards. But they’re free to do that now, yet they won’t. And this kind of psychological insecurity and overcompensation, it doesn’t stop in that part of the country, or with illegal immigrants—there are other ‘anchors,’ other reminders of our social predicaments, and that’s what these four kids were. When they’re trying to turn New York City into a dormitory for the super-rich and make the upper Hudson into a new Silicon Valley, nobody wants to say that a lot of people are being left so far out of the prosperity that they’ll abandon their own kids to survive. Yet if we, or anybody else, end up exposing the conditions behind these deaths and then tying them to models of success like the Augustines, that’s a conversation that has to be had. Anything else is preferable—even a serial killer. It’s the idea we had from the start, but all the pieces are falling in place to confirm it, now: the problematic kids, if they won’t accept their secret arrangements, will be offered no help; and we will be discouraged at every turn from concluding that anything other than murder is behind their deaths. Curtis Kolmback got assigned to all five cases, not just because they thought they could control him, but because he truly wanted to believe that a serial killer was at work: he knew that right now that’s what the public craves, and he saw a straight shot up to promotion and publicity. But in the end, even Curtis couldn’t take it. Not when he found out the lies they were asking him to tell.”
“And your experience on the mountain,” Linda said, weighing the matter. “It wasn’t just pragmatic: it was supposed to look ritualistic, supposed to make you think there was a twisted mind operating close by, like the kind in TV and movies. Anything, other than…”
She didn’t want to finish her statement, but Mei-lien, who had the most direct experience of such phenomena, did: “Anything other than an institutional attempt to quietly remove the problem of these children, and then, if they should somehow die, to create a false narrative of their deaths.”
“And that was the mistake of returning to the office in Albany,” Vicky added. “Which explains the arranged death scenes, and the suicides in the first place. Those four wanted to come back and do things legally, but they didn’t know how high the whole scheme went. They were assuming that the system would sit up and listen, would reward them, and that they wouldn’t have to just wait on line like every other kid. But the opposite was true: all that crap sent them to the back of, and maybe off, the line. And with both the legal and the illegal paths blocked…Yeah, suicide wouldn’t seem so crazy.”
“Especially since,” Frankie said, “once you get a chance to live a better life, it gets ripped away again, and you can’t see any way to get it back. Yeah—I saw more than a few kids I knew OD or just plain cut their wrists over that kind of depression.”
“Indeed,” I said, pausing for a moment with bittersweet satisfaction at just how well they’d done. But I couldn’t let the sadness show, couldn’t let the meeting get bogged down again. “And so…” I tried to rally. “The fact that they were turned away in Albany tells us what else? Colleen?”
“It tells us,” she answered, never missing a beat, “that this conspiracy—and let’s not kid ourselves, that’s what we’re talking about—reaches up pretty high, in the first place, but doesn’t include everyone along every step of the way. And that’s totally typical of government corruption. You pick the people you need, starting with overly ambitious types lower down—foot soldiers—and then you treat everybody else, high or low, as a potential problem.”
“Yes,” said Mei-lien, who had good reason to know. “It is the same everywhere.”
“Good,” I said. “So put that together with your belief that there are almost certainly two women involved: Ambyr Kurtz being one, the other must be a local official who meets Colleen’s criteria. I’m assuming you have a nominee?”
“We do,” Mei-lien replied. “But speculation now becomes particularly difficult and dangerous.”
“Yes,” I said. “And it is for precisely that reason that I wish you, for now, to keep it to yourselves.” Groaning protests went up, but I held a hand to them. “No. Given the work you’ve done, I suspect your candidate is the correct one. But you mustn’t speak about it or, certainly, write it down, unless and until something happens to Dr. Li and myself. At that point, you will present the case in full to my aunt, who will take it to the head of the state legislature. Can I rely on you for all this?”
The Councillors looked very taken aback—all save Frankie: “Don’t sweat it, Doc. We got this one. You guys do what you need to do, and if we have to, we’ll handle the fallout.”
“Linda?” I asked, eyeing our sole New Yorker and knowing her misgivings.
But I needn’t have worried. “You’ve convinced me, Doctor,” she said. “This is too important.” She lifted one hand in the air in resignation. “So maybe I have to get a job in another state—worse things have happened. They always need criminal investigators in New Jersey, that’s for sure.”
“Thank you, Linda,” I replied; and suddenly, knowing that the long meeting was finally coming to an end, and that I would have to face another, far more complex encounter with Ambyr afterward, my spirits began to flag, a feeling I tried not to show. “Very well, then: Dr. Li and I will be as much in touch as we can be from our hotel in New York, and we will convene again to consider the results of our little excursion when we return. I’m sorry we kept you all so long—”
“No hay pedo,” Frankie assured me; then he gave me a small grin, one that indicated he knew at least some of what I was about to have to go through, and was trying to offer support.
“Thanks, Frankie,” I said. “And I do, sincerely, want to thank you all: you have more than lived up to our hopes for this exercise. You may not have bargained for as much responsibility as you’ve ended up with, but that’s the price of real brains and real independence. You’re seeing many of the things we’ve studied put into action, now. I can only hope it’s going to assist you, moving forward in your careers. And with that said—anything else?” They each mumbled in the negative as their heads shook. Then we said our final farewells, after which, one by one, their scre
ens went black.
All save Vicky’s: she continued to scrutinize me, and I waited for her to speak, which she finally did after an increasingly difficult minute or so: “It can’t be as easy as you’re making it sound, Doctor. I just can’t accept that.”
Finally allowing myself to breathe deeply, I fell into my chair behind the desk and put a hand to one aching temple. “Ah, Vicky,” I said quietly. “Of course it isn’t. In fact, to tell you—” I glanced at Mike, who looked about as miserable as I felt. “To tell both of you the truth, this trip to the city doesn’t scare me half so much as the thought of how I’ll survive the time until we leave tomorrow. But you know, Vicky…” I tried to smile. “Should you find that you’ve learned too well, here, and can’t get a job inside an official agency in California, you may want to consider teaching. You have the talent for it, you’ve shown us that much. I don’t know how you feel about the Northeast, but—Dr. Li and I would be happy to find a place for you with us at SUNY. And on the occasional investigation or two.”
She laughed just a bit. “Thanks. I’ll keep that in mind as a last resort. No offense, of course.”
“None taken,” Mike answered. “We’ll see how you feel about it a few months from now—assuming, that is, that Dr. Jones and I are still fucking alive to renew the offer…”
And then, after a few more polite farewells, Vicky was gone, too, leaving me to face only Mike’s scrutiny—which was neither as hard nor as mystified as I’d expected. “It’s Donovan, isn’t it?” he asked. “The ‘candidate.’ ”
“Of course it’s Donovan,” I said, disgusted at the thought. “Who else? Smart, good-looking, scarily ambitious, and an absolute chameleon. One with a family. When these kids met up with her, she’d have had no trouble being whatever each needed her to be: mother, big sister, friend, confidante, romantic object—she’s the perfect complement to Ambyr. I just didn’t see it soon enough, for Derek…”
Mike paused before asking the next, the inevitable, question: “How are you going to get through the night, L.T.?” He produced two cigarettes. “As long as the subject’s been brought up.”
We had by now worked straight through the dinner hour at the house, so I lit my smoke and sat back. “The only way possible: by making sure that Ambyr doesn’t suspect anything’s wrong. We have to keep her close, and keep Lucas in the dark. It’s the only way the whole scheme will work.”
“Jesus.” He absorbed that, then pressed: “Just when did you really start to suspect? And why?”
“Ah, Mike,” I moaned. “Do we have to do this?”
“Considering that you’ve been fucking keeping it from me?” Mike answered, his tone far less contentious than he had every right to be. “Yeah, we do.”
I took a deep drag off my cigarette, let the nicotine do its dirty, energizing work, then said, “I don’t know, exactly. I know I was alarmed, at first, by the fact that she’d sent the boys up to us in the beginning; but then I told myself to stop being so paranoid, and shoved it into the back of my mind, or tried to. The contradictory assertion stayed there, of course. No, I don’t think that I was ever really sure she was safe. Not deep down.”
“Bullshit,” Mike said. “You were in love with her. You are.”
“Which does not preclude suspicion. And as far as a specific trigger goes…” Pausing again, I glanced at the cigarette in my hand. “You know,” I said, chuckling humorlessly, “there are times when I think it was something Clarissa said. The night I asked her to assess Derek.”
“Yeah, well,” Mike answered, taking his turn to stand and walk about a bit, brushing his hair into that 110-volt stand. “It figures that Clarissa would have been the first to make her.”
“She wasn’t. And she didn’t,” I answered, pointing my cigarette at him. “And I don’t want her to find out about Ambyr. Not for the moment, anyway. No, it was something else, something in passing. A detail: a key. Clarissa asked me, yet again, if I planned to give up smoking, and didn’t I think losing one leg to cancer was enough. She always manages to forget that it was the Jones genes that caused my osteosarcoma, not smoking.”
“But why the hell would that little question push you over the edge?”
“Because Ambyr never asked it. I mean, even the biggest pains in the ass I’ve ever dated, when they heard that I’d lost a leg to cancer and saw me smoking, they always asked if it was a smart idea. But Ambyr never did. And it’s not like she’s accepting of things: when she does object to something, Jesus, she’ll let you know in a voice that’s pretty chilling. I had tried very hard to block the other things out, but when I learned the details of her relationship with Derek—which was only after he disappeared—well, it started to become pretty unavoidable…”
“And her credit card stuff? Don’t try to tell me you developed hacking skills during this case.”
“No,” I answered. “That was easier—and I’m surprised you didn’t notice it. When we were signing that authorization document at their house, a couple of opened household bills were on the table. One was her monthly credit statement. I glanced over it, and saw a couple of strange charges. Strange for her, I mean. Like that Chinese joint in Cambridge. Others, too. Didn’t think much of it at the time. I tried very hard not to think much of any of the things about her that just didn’t fit, at the time…” Rousing myself, I tried to become as earnest as I could: “But I mean it, Mike—no telling Clarissa or Lucas anything. Not until the time comes when it’s inevitable. If it does come.”
The last statement was a tactical error: “ ‘If’?” Mike repeated incredulously. “L.T.—don’t add being a sucker to your list of mistakes: not only will that time come, it’s here, now. Just think about tomorrow: you’re really going to go on this trip, and leave her in the house alone with Clarissa?”
“I need Ambyr to take care of Marcianna while we’re gone,” I answered, half-aware of how bizarre it would initially sound.
“What?” Mike moved my way, hands in the air. “Your fucking cheetah? I’m talking about you putting Clarissa’s life in danger!”
“That won’t be a problem,” I said, trying to keep my overworked nerves in check, now. “I’m going to speak to Happy and Chick about staying here, in the downstairs staff rooms. I’ll tell them to be ready for anything, but won’t give them any…specifics. And Pete and Steve will work shifts, I know that, so that one of them will show up every day, and Mitch’ll be by.” That seemed to mollify Mike a bit; but only a bit, so I went on: “Besides, there is that one little issue you mentioned: her feelings for me, and mine for her. I have to think that’ll count for…something.”
Mike scrutinized me very gravely. “L.T.—did you lie to our little Council? Are you so deluded that you think you’re going to find a way to solve this case without turning Ambyr in? Make Cathy Donovan take the fall, and save the poor, misled blind girl?”
“I don’t know,” I answered quietly. “I don’t think so. But there’s something else, something just as important: the why. What’s in this, for her? The money? Getting out of this place? Is she being coerced by someone, for reasons we don’t know? I need to find out, before the cops—”
“Trajan!” Mike hollered. “If what we’ve said and heard here tonight is true, that young woman, blind and fucked over by life in whatever ways she might have been, is complicit in a whole string of nasty—no, fuck that, of contemptible things! And you’re considering prolonging it all, just so—”
“All right, Mike, enough!” I had finally exploded, after so many hours of holding my feelings back; yet as my thunderclap subsided all I could do was stand and walk toward the hatch. “I don’t know exactly what I’m considering. But there’s Lucas to think of, what his life will be like—”
“That’s just bullshit projection,” Mike shot back, following me down the steel steps. “You’re worried about what your life will be like, and you’re saddling the kid with it—you know that.”
“I don’t know what I know, Michael!” I said, clutching my
temples as if to keep the conflict raging between them from cracking my skull. “Except that…” Pulling myself together, or at least trying to, I continued on toward the microwave and threw some frozen meat into it. “Except that I need to feed Marcianna. And I need her to be safe, while we’re gone.”
And then, as if on cue, Marcianna began to issue that peculiar chirrup of hers, which sounded, on this night in particular, especially alarmed, lonely, and heart wrenching. Hearing it, Mike calmed down some, soon saying, “Well, then—you’d better go, sounds like she’s getting impatient.”
“That’s not what that sound is,” I said quietly, as I went to the mouth of the hangar and Mike fell in beside me. “I figured that one out at about the same time that—other things fell into place. It’s him. The assassin they’ve got roaming that ridgeline. She’s been calling like that when she detects him—sees him, smells him, hears him, whatever. He’s up there now, Mike, and he’s the real danger. But as long as Ambyr’s here and thinks everything is fine, he won’t make any move against us; probably on her orders. So don’t tell me it’s all so simple. Because, ironically, she’s our best insurance against some further outrage; but only as long as she thinks that we’re not onto her…” I retrieved my alter ego’s thawed dinner. “I’m doing the best I can with the information we have—and trying, probably failing, not to let my own feelings screw with that too much.” I took another deep breath, then glanced at Mike, who appeared suddenly more sympathetic. “Anyway—I’m going to the enclosure.”