“Why on earth would you bother him about that with everything else going on?” I can’t believe it.
“There are new developments you’re unaware of. Some old developments have resurfaced too. It’s important or I wouldn’t bother you.” Yet as she says this I have my doubts.
There’s something Lucy isn’t telling me. I can see it in her face. I can feel it. Benton is involved, and I ask her again if he’s okay. She says he’s really busy, and I reply that all of us are. Then she proceeds to explain that Tailend Charlie’s latest audio clip was sent at the usual time, twelve minutes past six P.M. More than three hours ago, and my frustration boils over. I don’t see why this merits our undivided attention in the middle of a death investigation.
“I don’t mean to be rude,” I say to her. “But that’s not new information, Lucy. Every one of his crank communications is sent at six-twelve P.M. As you continue to point out, it’s intentional, and let me guess? The new recording is cookie-cutter identical to the others except for the content of the message. In other words the recording is canned and precisely twenty-two-point-four seconds long.”
“And two-twenty-four was the street address of your house when you and Mom were growing up in Miami.” Lucy isn’t going to back down from what she’s decided without the benefit of real evidence.
“Two-twenty-four and twenty-two-point-four aren’t the same thing at all.”
“Symbolically they are.”
“I’m not sure we should be so quick to assume intentional symbolism.” I pick my words carefully so she doesn’t get defensive. “The time stamp of six-twelve, the length of two minutes and twenty-four seconds, could be nothing more than meaningless remnants of programming code.”
“And six-twelve also is the exact time the bullshit nine-one-one call was made to the Cambridge police,” Lucy reminds me as if she didn’t hear what I just said.
“That’s true. But all of it could be coincidental …” I don’t finish because I know it probably isn’t.
I check my phone again. Nothing from Rusty and Harold, and I send Marino a text:
How are we doing?
“Listen, Aunt Kay,” Lucy says to me as I look down at my phone, waiting for an answer from Marino. “I don’t like to admit that I was at a disadvantage because of multiple things happening at once.”
She pats down the pockets of her flight suit, sliding out a small tin of her favorite cinnamon mints. They rattle softly as she opens the lid, offering them to me, and I think about her choice of words. Multiple, as in many. There’s something she’s not going to tell me, and I take a mint. The fiery-sweet flavor rushes up my nostrils, making my eyes water.
“When we talked a couple hours ago I was preoccupied with the nine-one-one call.” Lucy tucks the tin back in a cargo pocket, buttoning the flap. “I was tied up with trying to figure out what the hell happened, who was behind it and why. I can’t do everything at once.”
“Not even you can.” I move the mint to the other side of my mouth and take a sip of water.
She goes on making her case, claiming that early this evening we were attacked simultaneously on multiple fronts—and she uses that word again.
Multiple.
“The timing is deliberate. I believe we’re talking about connected attacks that involve the same person or persons. And that suggests to me there are more on the way,” she adds.
But the real problem isn’t what’s been done or might be next. Or how. Or why. It’s the who in the equation, and all along I’ve maintained it’s obsessive and dangerous to assume that behind every aberrant act is the same diabolical puppeteer.
I’m not naïve about Carrie Grethen. I’m intimately familiar with her nefarious proclivities and treacherous capabilities. I know what it is to be physically mauled by her, almost die at her hands, and work her crime scenes and autopsy her victims.
So it’s not as if she’s an abstraction to me. But unfortunately she’s not the only horror show, and I open the text that just landed. Marino writes:
A clusterf**k. Stay put for now. Nothing U can do.
I wish he hadn’t called the scene out here a clusterfuck. I hope that doesn’t come home to roost at some point.
“Suffice it to say that what little I could decipher in the audio file was worse than usual.” Lucy continues telling me about the latest harassment from Tailend Charlie. “It’s too close for comfort, and no telling about the rest of it.”
“What does Benton say?” I ask.
“I wasn’t going to get into it with him on the phone, not with other people around, especially a bunch of suits,” she answers, and I puzzle over how she can know who he’s with if he didn’t say. “And I sure as hell wasn’t going to bring up the stuff about Natalie,” she adds to my astonishment.
“You mean Janet, not Natalie.” I assume Lucy has misspoken.
“I mean Natalie,” Lucy says. “You’ll get it when you start thinking about her last few months, when Janet and I were frequently in and out of Virginia. Then you and Benton were with Natalie a number of times late in the game when she was in hospice in particular, and if you think back to some of the things she was saying? They take on a very different meaning now, a disgusting one.”
“I can’t fathom why you and Benton would be talking about her in the context of everything else.” I feel a flutter of uneasiness as I wait for the rest of the story.
“Remember the fights you and Mom used to have when you were kids?” Lucy adds to my confusion. “Remember what you nicknamed her after you got really pissed off?”
“SISTER TWISTER. BECAUSE OF her wicked pinching in addition to her other ambushes. Twisting and yanking your hair or cutting it off in your sleep or who the hell knows. Although to hear her tell the story it was you who was the nasty fighter.” Lucy reminds me of what I’ve not thought about in years.
“Dorothy’s always been quite the fiction writer.” That’s as much as I’m going to say.
I’ve spent most of my adult life being extraordinarily circumspect about what I tell Lucy about her mother.
“We’ve got to figure out who might know what went on in your house when the two of you were growing up in Miami.” Lucy plugs her phone into the charger on the countertop she’s perched on.
“Who besides my mother and Dorothy? And me obviously? No one comes to mind but I’ll give it some thought.” I open a closet and find a dark blue CFC windbreaker to put over my scrubs because I’m getting chilled.
“I suspect that certain things are connected and have been for a lot longer than we’ve realized,” Lucy says. “Going back to summer before last when Natalie was dying, and longer ago than that.”
“Such as?” I zip up the windbreaker, and it’s so big it hangs midthigh. “What things?” I open the stainless-steel refrigerator reserved for beverages and edibles, no evidence allowed. “Water or Gatorade?”
“Starting with I no longer believe her death was the private family matter we thought it was. Gatorade would be good. In a bottle, not a can.”
“Cool blue or lemon-lime?”
“There should be orange.”
“Natalie’s death wasn’t private?” I question as I root around for orange Gatorade. “As in someone was spying on her? I’ve not heard you mention this before as if it’s a certainty. I know only that Natalie was very paranoid. She worried she was being monitored.”
“She should have been worried. That’s what I’m getting at. I think someone was attempting to spy during her most intimate final weeks, days, hours, moments with all of us.” Lucy’s green eyes blaze. “I can’t say for sure how far it went because none of us were expecting surveillance or looking for it. So things could have been missed.”
“Because we didn’t take Natalie’s fears seriously enough,” I say.
“No we didn’t. And what I can’t swear to now is whether there were any other devices in her house or later in hospice. I wasn’t looking for them.”
“Any others?”
?
??Besides Natalie’s computers, specifically her laptop.” Lucy opens the bottle I handed to her. “But we can’t be sure what else might have gone on. I wasn’t conducting counterspy sweeps every time I went to Virginia. Janet wasn’t either. We didn’t think we had a reason.”
“And now you’re sure there was spying going on?” I ask, and Lucy nods. “As Natalie was dying?”
“During some of it, I’m guessing. We may never know how much.”
“It would take a very special type of degenerate to do something like that.”
“And we know exactly who fits the bill. I have a very strong feeling she’s up to something really special this time.”
She means that Carrie is, and I’m back to the same suspicion, only more strongly. Something else has happened. But she’s not sharing that information with me for some reason, and I keep thinking about Benton. She was talking to him earlier. I don’t really know about what. Lucy isn’t going to say a word if he’s told her not to, and I herd her back to what started this conversation.
I ask her if Natalie might have been aware of the nickname I coined for Dorothy when we were kids. Might she ever have heard someone mention Sister Twister?
“If so, I don’t know about it.” Lucy tilts back her head and takes a swallow of Gatorade.
“I’m wondering if the subject may have come up in Carrie’s presence years ago when she, Janet, Natalie and you were still friendly with each other.”
“I don’t think so.”
“I can’t see any other explanation for how some anonymous cyber-menace would know unpublished personal details about my family. Unless it came directly from the source,” I add.
“You mean unless it came from Sister Twister herself. My mother the mad pincher,” Lucy says, and I don’t correct her.
It’s not true that pinching and pulling hair were Dorothy’s real crimes but I’m not going to tell Lucy that. I’ve never elaborated on just how sneaky, untruthful and violent my sister could be, grabbing an arm, an ankle, and twisting the skin quick and hard in opposite directions. What was called a snakebite or Indian sunburn back then was her specialty.
When executed with sufficient skill and force, it’s quite painful and leaves little evidence beyond a redness that early on I learned not to complain about. If I did, Dorothy simply would say that I had a sunburn. Or I was suffering from an allergic reaction. As usual I was wrongly accusing her. I was trying to get her into trouble, and when questioned, she would concoct the most elaborately imaginative falsehoods to explain my inflamed sore flesh.
If I was sitting near the windowsill reading, and my arm or ankle got burned, she’d tell our mother. Or the sun hit me at a certain angle while I was sleeping. Or I must be coming down with a fever, a rash. Possibly I got a spider bite or was developing an allergy to gardenias, to mangoes. Or I was “coming down” with cancer like our father.
Dorothy got exponentially bolder and out of bounds as he got sicker. She decided he wasn’t able to stick up for Daddy’s pet anymore, rendering me defenseless, she assumed. I wasn’t. But I didn’t tattle or retaliate with corporal punishment.
There are better ways to deal with bullies, and in some respects I’m actually grateful to my sister. Thanks to her I learned the art of silence, the power of listening and the added potency that comes with waiting. As our father used to say:
A volte la vendetta é meglio mangiata fredda.
Sometimes revenge really is better served cold.
“What I’m wondering is if my sister might have mentioned the silly nickname to Natalie, to Janet.” I suggest this to Lucy because I’m seriously beginning to wonder who Dorothy has been talking to—not just recently but over the years.
“I don’t know,” Lucy says, “but there’s no way Mom ever passed on that story or anything else to Carrie.”
“Not unless we’re mistaken in what we’ve always assumed about the two of them not knowing each other. Are we absolutely certain of that?”
“They’ve never met and Mom knows nothing about her.” Lucy’s adamant, and I’m going to push harder.
CHAPTER 24
WHAT ABOUT IN THE very beginning?” I ask Lucy. “Are you sure you didn’t mention Carrie when you started your internship at Quantico? It would make sense when you went home to Miami or talked on the phone if you might have said something to Dorothy about your FBI supervisor, your mentor—especially one who gave you so much special attention.”
Carrie couldn’t have been more generous or charming, and Lucy was flattered out of her mind. She didn’t have a chance.
“I know you don’t like to think about it,” and I don’t want to be provocative, “but you were bowled over by her in the beginning. You couldn’t talk enough about her. At least to me.”
“I think you know why I didn’t mention her to Mom.” Lucy’s stare has turned hard and edgy. “I didn’t talk about Carrie or anybody else I so much as had a beer with.”
Dorothy is bitterly disappointed by her only child’s “lifestyle,” as my sister continues to refer to being gay. It doesn’t matter how many times I tell her that who any of us falls in love and partners with isn’t a lifestyle like belonging to the country club or living in the suburbs. My sister doesn’t get it. In my opinion she doesn’t want to get it because it’s easier for her to define Lucy as a bohemian or a tomboy, which is Dorothy’s euphemism for being gay. It’s easier if Lucy and I both suffer from penis envy, and that’s my sister’s euphemism for not being male-dependent the way she is.
Penis envy really is a thing, she loves to declare, preferably in front of our mother. Or more recently, in front of Marino when we were in Miami this past June and he was giving Dorothy motorcycle rides and who knows what else.
“There’s quite a lot Benton and I don’t discuss with Dorothy,” I reassure Lucy. “She wouldn’t have any idea who Carrie Grethen is unless you’ve shared that part of your life. Or someone else has.” Marino enters my thoughts, and I hope Benton is mistaken.
It gives me a sick feeling to think of Marino being sweet on Dorothy, of him talking to her about us or anything else that’s none of her business and is possibly dangerous. The idea is too galling, and I dismiss it.
“You’re saying that Tailend Charlie mentioned Sister Twister.” I get back to that because I want to make sure I’m clear on where it came from. “As you know, Lucy, I’ve not listened to the audio clip yet. So I’m assuming it’s not been transcribed or translated unless you got someone else to do it.”
“I haven’t and won’t,” she answers. “It’s important you do it since you’re the intended target. The recording was made for your benefit.”
“It hasn’t been translated and yet you know what it says?”
“Bits and pieces. Easy ones.” Lucy takes another swig of Gatorade. “My Italian may be clunky but I know sorella means sister, and I recognized Sorella Twisted or Sister Twister when I played the clip. I’ve heard the nickname from Mom when she’s regaled me with stories of how terrible you were to her.”
I feel another rush of resentment that’s as fresh as it’s old.
“I recognized your name, your initials, and the word chaos,” Lucy continues to describe what she could make out in the most recent audible harassment. “Apparently chaos in Italian is pretty much the same thing in English.”
“In Italian there’s no h. It’s spelled c-a-o-s.” I pronounce it for her.
“Yes.” Lucy nods. “That’s exactly what I heard. Chaos is coming, or something like that.”
She goes on to explain that the audio file is consistent with the others I’ve received since the first day of fall.
“Cheesy rhymes, insulting, and promising your death,” Lucy says.
In each of them the Italian-speaking voice has been synthesized. The lyrical baritone sounds like my father, who died when I was twelve.
SHE FINDS THE AUDIO file on her phone and turns up the volume as high as it will go, touching PLAY. The familiar computer-manufactured voice begi
ns loudly:
Torna di nuovo, K.S. A grande richiesta!
The rhyming cyber-threats greet me with the same opening line every time. Translated: Back again, K.S. By popular request, no less! And as I listen, I feel blood vessels dilate in my face. My pulse picks up.
I don’t want to hear a voice that sounds like his because then he’s in my mind again. As if my father’s still here. As if he’s still alive. But he’s not. What I’m hearing isn’t him, and he would never talk to me unkindly. He would never wish me dead, and pain flares. I go hollow inside.
“I don’t have time to deal with this now.” I tell Lucy to stop the recording, and she does. “You think Tailend Charlie is Carrie Grethen. That’s what you’ve come to tell me,” I address the elephant in the room.
“I think she’s behind it, that it’s part of something else she’s up to. Yes. That’s where I am in this.” Lucy’s face is defiant.
“You’ve decided it.”
“Because I know.”
“And I needed to be told immediately because if Carrie is Tailend Charlie?” I fill in the blanks. “Then maybe she’s also the one who disguised her voice and called nine-one-one about me. Maybe she’s doing everything that’s going on right now including magically interfering with the damn tent so I can’t work the damn scene.”
“Try not to get so irate. Especially not in this heat. It’s not good for you.”
“You’re right, it’s not.”
“I believe she’s in league with whoever Tailend Charlie is.” Lucy’s green eyes are unblinking. “Carrie’s found someone to help her. It’s her MO. It’s what she does when she’s mounting her next major offensive. She builds her army of two.”
“Her latest Temple Gault, Newton Joyce, Troy Rosado.” My mouth is as dry as paper, and I take another swallow of water, careful to keep my sips small so I’m not constantly looking for a piddle pack.
“She’s taken about a year to regroup after her last bloodbath when she killed Troy’s father. Then when she’d used up Troy she almost killed him. Carrie’s easily bored.” Lucy says these things as if there can be no debate. “You don’t really think she’s been sitting around doing nothing since then, do you?”