“It’s also why neighbors aren’t seeing anything or hearing anything. The vics are letting their killer in! And once he’s inside, it’s easy enough to muffle sound.”
“The victim thinks up to a point that they truly want to kill themselves.” Emma Jan picked up the narrative. “They know there’ll be consequences for anyone who helps them die—Dr. Kevorkian did prison time for helping patients kill themselves, terminal patients who were going to die anyway. They threw his ass in jail for it. So these guys, they’re motivated to help the killer. They’re sneaking him inside and making sure he can get away safely. They’re thinking they don’t want the poor guy to get caught. So when it goes bad…”
“… they’ve already set up their killer’s escape route.” The thought. The thought of what must have gone through their minds when they realized they were going to be murdered, and that their killer would get away. I shuddered all over and looked down … the hair on my arms was trying to fluff up.
George was rubbing his forehead. “I think that’s what Shiro meant.”
“What?”
George looked at me. No. Through me. “Come on out,” he told me (?). “You know you want to.”
chapter thirty-three
“That is why their homes are so tidy!” I moved as if to leap to my feet, only to find I was already standing. Ah. Cadence and her wandering-while-randomly-touching-things affectation.
“Heeeeere’s Shiro!”
I ignored him. “Remember, they fully expect to die that day, so they know the police will be called. They know strangers will be walking through their homes; they know family will have to go through their things. They are obsessively tidying their homes with that in mind.”
“That’s amazing. You’re gonna be dead; who cares if somebody sees your dirty underwear?”
“Some people have things called feelings, George, and those feelings make us care about what other people think, even those we do not know.”
This time, it was George’s turn to shudder and get goose bumps. Heh.
“We wondered how he or she or they was cleaning their homes, or how he or she or they was getting their victims to do it under duress … they were not doing it under duress! They were doing it of their own volition.” I grinned down at George. “You were quite right. I did want out. That has been bothering me and bothering me.”
“What a fuckin’ genius, this guy! This is the perfect MO if you wanna kill people but hate all the prep and the mess.” George was unable to keep the admiration from his tone. “This guy. Man.”
“Perhaps you shall have cocktails after we catch him or her or them,” I suggested.
“Don’t tease,” he begged. “Listen, should we even be looking for him at this point?”
“Even for you,” Emma Jan said quietly, “that’s too much.”
“Hear me out! He’s going to suicide clubs, maybe finding his victims online or whatever, but he knows they’re people who want to kill themselves. They’d do it themselves if they had the balls, right? They don’t, so he wants to help.”
“I give up on you.”
“I get what you’re saying,” Emma Jan said, “but it’s still against the law. He’s still murdering them.”
“Does this mean the groups he frequents— When this gets out, that if you joined their group you could’ve been murdered, will they get more members or less?”
I pinched the bridge of my nose, willing the headache away. Unfortunately, George—honestly puzzled, which somehow made the whole thing worse—continued with, “Shouldn’t we be more interested in a killer who kills people who don’t want to die?”
“Well…”
“Do not get caught in the trap of his so-called logic,” I warned. “I admit it happens sometimes. But you will never forgive yourself later.” I turned to the bewildered sociopath. “She is correct. It is against the law. We will catch him and stop him. The end.”
“Okay, but for the record: I don’t get it.”
“For the record, we do, so fear not.” I looked at Paul. “You brilliant man. However do you do it?”
“I told you. He comes to them because he believes he believes he thinks they want to be orange. Then they won’t, they won’t be orange. He tries to make them be, but he can only make them be blue.” Paul shook his head. “I can feel how mad he is when they won’t be orange.”
We digested that in silence. Even having him explain it was of no help; the man was not of our world(s). Then, from George: “At least now we know what to look for.”
In fact, I did not. The idea of his or her or their thought process was still so new to me. Funny, too, how we had no proof of any of it, had yet to catch him or her or them. And yet we all knew we were right. We could feel it. And so I raised my eyebrows at George, hoping to be still more enlightened.
“The ones who didn’t pussy out. The ones he—”
“He or she or they,” I corrected.
“Yeah, thanks, please die screaming, Shiro. We look for the ones he was able to be the savior for. Because I’ll bet there were some who didn’t chicken out. Those will be the assisted-suicide crime scenes without all the rage. Cross-check enough names, and I bet our guy will pop up. He’s gonna fry for the ones he made help themselves, but he’ll be caught by the ones who stuck to the deal.” George glanced around the table. “Doncha love it?” he asked, delighted.
Yes indeed. Was that our failing or our strength?
chapter thirty-four
Of course, with our new understanding of Sussudio’s motives, the first place to start was Dr. Gallo. Paul went back to his programming, Emma Jan went back to researching other suicide help groups, and I, well aware of George’s predatory interest in what may or may not have transpired between Dr. Gallo and me last night, could show no hesitation: “I shall contact Dr. Gallo at once.”
“I’ll bet,” he leered.
“Stop that.” I would not rise to his childish antics. “Of course you must come with me.”
“Perv!”
“To interview him again.” I turned and gave him a look, and he clutched both ears and backed away.
“Just calling it the way I see it, ma’am, and keep your fingernails to yourself, you horrible bitch. You’re not fooling anybody.”
“No?”
He snorted, an unlovely sound. “You want him so bad you’re practically vibrating.”
True. Yet irrelevant. “And regardless of what people think they see, George Pinkman, I am a petite Asian-American woman. I am the part of a tall blond midwesterner who thinks she is Asian-American and not gangly.”
“You spend waaaay too much time listening in on my and Cadence’s private conversations.”
I snorted, another unlovely sound, but some absurdities can only be met with a snort. Even those who know better, as George did, as I did, often forgot that whatever our thoughts to the contrary, Adrienne and Cadence and I were the same person. We were personality quirks, not people, and no more a separate individual than Paul’s synesthesia was a separate person from him.
(It has taken years of therapy for me to admit this, for Cadence to admit this. Adrienne admits nothing, though she did set our doctor’s desk on fire. Now he sees us with no fewer than three extinguishers in the office, one within hand’s reach at all times.)
All this ruminating about something it had taken me years to acknowledge to avoid a simple truth: George and I had to go through all that nonsense to hide how delighted and uneasy I was at the opportunity to see Dr. Gallo less than sixteen hours after I nearly raped him in his own backseat.
(Pathetic.)
Yes.
On our way to the doctor’s place of business, we stopped in to see Michaela, who was, for a wonder, not slicing phallic-shaped vegetable matter but working quietly at her laptop in her office. She was bent forward and typing so intently her silver hair had swung into her face. Her hair was normally kept under stern control with clips, headbands, and/or the force of her will.
“We ha
ve some excellent insight into Sussudio,” I told her without preamble after her distracted “Come” in response to my knock. “And are going to see Dr. Gallo to follow up new leads. Also, Cadence discussed the funding issue with Paul Torn.”
“Coward,” she said, not unkindly.
“Yes indeed.” I would take a bullet (and, in fact, had) before choosing to comfort someone deeply upset. I never knew what to do with my hands (pat, pat) or what to say (“There, there”). Cadence had a gift, in that she did not especially enjoy upsetting people, either, but did not shy away from comforting them. “He took it well.”
“You mean she told him in some clumsy transparent way, and then he—what’s the saying? lost his shit?—but she broke it down for him and so he decided not to blow up the building on a trial basis, leaving you and your worthless partner shivering with relief.”
“Why, it’s like you saw the whole thing on closed-circuit television.”
She smiled, a rare and lovely thing. “Well done, all of you. Well, some of you. And now off you go.”
“Off we go,” George said once we were on the way to my car. (I flatly refused to be devoured by his Smart Pure coupe twice in two days.) “You know, I wonder if this funding thing was maybe inevitable.”
“What does that mean?”
“You mean, like, literally? What do those words I just said literally mean, or where am I going with this? Because if it’s the latter, you should have said the latter.”
“George…” How could he make my head hurt without ever touching me?
“Maybe there’s no BOFFO at all.”
“Shush.” There were too many paranoids about, Saturday or no. And schizophrenics. And—“Just shush.”
Sensible when his safety was on the line, he changed the subject. “I get why you’re in denial about Gallo. Hey, he’s a compelling guy, if you like tall lean doctors with strong hands and flashing eyes, a good heart, and a mysterious past.”
I swallowed a giggle at his accurate summation.
“But if you’ve just got an itch, for the zillionth time—”
“You are having a terrible idea and it is coming straight out of your mouth.”
“—then come to your old pal, Georgie! I’ve got the ram for your ramrod, whatever that means. One hop in the sack with moi and it’s itch-be-gone!”
“I could kill you with a grain of sand,” I reminded him.
“I know! And I bet you’d look super hot while graining me to death. Sanding me to death? Either/or, don’t care. I’ll go quietly if you promise to have sex with my corpse. I’ll need that in writing, by the way. And notarized.”
George Pinkman was a walking talking migraine. There were times I actually felt my temples throb when he spoke. That really happens. Blood vessels dilate under stress and your body can sense the change in pressure if you pay attention.
He went back to his odd earlier subject once he was belting himself into my passenger seat. “Come on. An elite branch of the FBI staffed purely by nutjobs? Armed nutjobs, often heavily medicated?”
“So, what?” I started the car, a used Ford Fusion hybrid. Normally I would disapprove of buying another car owner’s pile of problems on wheels, but in this case I was buying our friend Cathie’s problems, and her problems with the car had more to do with her OCD than with the products built and maintained by the Ford Motor Company. “BOFFO does not exist? We only dream we work here? It is an illusion, a hologram?”
“Of course not, dumbass. But what if it’s not BOFFO? What if it’s another agency, maybe even for-profit. Not the government at all. Ooh, what if BOFFO pulled an Alias and we only think we’re working for the CIA and we’re really working for SD-6?”
“I do not understand what you just said.”
“Holy shit!” George was clearly thinking out loud. “Does that make you Sydney? You’re self-righteous and annoying enough.… So does that make me Michael Vaughn or Marcus Dixon? I vote for Dixon, because of his sheer bad-assery. And Michaela is definitely Arvin Sloane.”
“George, you are not speaking words I understand.”
“Then listen hard! What if BOFFO’s not only lost funding, what if it was never part of the FBI?”
“But we were all recruited. We all went through the training.”
“But not at Quantico.”
“No, of course not. Most agents don’t even know about BOFFO.” At George’s triumphant silence, I added, “As they don’t know about the black ops agencies. We all know they are unconstitutional as of 1972 and we all know they still exist. Of course your average field agent would know nothing about them. We are the same.”
George shook his head. “I dunno, Shiro. I’ve been thinking about it even before Michaela sprung her little ‘You’re maybe all fired but maybe not either way shut up about it’ surprise. I’ve been thinking about it for a couple of years.” He paused. “Okay, since she recruited me.”
“But if you had concerns all this time, why not say anything earlier?”
He shrugged. “Why would I? I don’t care if we’re real or not. I get to do stuff like arrest Jesus and trick Emma Jan into looking into mirrors. Why would I fuck with that?”
“You are a simple creature, George.” I said that not without admiration. He was a wretch, but he also spent little time on self-examination-induced fretting. It freed him up to do whatever nasty things he did by himself. To himself, most likely …
“If you think about it, it makes sense.”
“I have, and it does not.”
“Look, I know you collect mom figures and think she can do no wrong—”
Shocked, I cried, “I do not!” Right? Correct.
“It’s no secret Michaela has money. She didn’t get that Lexus on a government salary.”
I nodded as we drove across town to Regions—Dr. Gallo ran one of the local blood banks. (That was how we met, in fact—Cadence makes us all donate platelets.) Even the AiC could not expect to make more than $95,000 a year, and that was with at least a decade of experience.
“Well, what if BOFFO was always a lie? The good-enough-for-a-five-star-restaurant kitchen? All that amazing equipment, just for the boss? All the shrinks in-house, the meds, the hours of therapy, our get-out-of-jail-free cards—tell me that doesn’t cost a mint and a half.”
“But there are several unprofitable government agencies.”
“Yeah, like, all of them. But we’re allowed to be super expensive with no real return?”
“There is a return. We catch killers no one else can.”
“Sure. But for who?”
“Whom.”
“Sure, focus on my grammar, not my words. That’s not typical or anything.” He covered his earlobes again and added, “I’m just saying, it’s weird. Not BOFFO-weird. Weird-weird.”
I shook my head. “I believe in Michaela. She would not lie.”
“Why?”
“What?” I was so rattled I nearly drove through a red light. It was only four miles to the hospital, and it was taking entirely too long. Why couldn’t George focus on the dreadful things he would wish to do to, say, the attractive brunette jogger waiting for the light?
“Why wouldn’t Michaela lie? She’s killed people, but— Whoa, look at that hot bitch in the jogging bra waiting for a— Hey, baby, I got your green light right here! Anyway, Michaela’s shot more people than I have, but lying’s a no-no? Even if she thought, in her twisted Arvin Sloane-y mind, it was for the greater good?”
I shook my head so hard I was momentarily dizzy. “She wouldn’t. She would not.”
“All right, take a pill. No, literally. I can see this is upsetting you, which normally would be awesome for me in sooo many ways. But I hate the taste of air bags and that’s twice you’ve almost rear-ended someone.” He mimed zipping his lips closed, then ruined it by talking. “Subject closed. At least until we can talk about it without me dying in a horrific car crash.”
He was half right, at least.
I thought about how I had been r
ecruited, and knew in my heart that George was wrong about all of it. BOFFO was not a lie. It was the finest thing we had ever done.
How, then, could it not be real?
chapter thirty-five
When I first saw Michaela, it was through prison bars.
“Ah,” she said, spotting me. “Right on time, too. Excellent.”
I waited while the guards took the chains off her but left the handcuffs on. They were both men in their late twenties, strong, fit, and in their prime, but they were very, very careful with the woman almost old enough to be their mother. She looked surprisingly good in (1) orange and (2) a jumpsuit. She took a seat across from me and they left us in the interview room, though I could see at least one guard standing just outside the door.
“We could have rescheduled,” I told this older woman in her early forties, who looked like a socialite and was under arrest for a brutal homicide. (Yes, I know, all homicides by definition are brutal. This one particularly so.) “The Minneapolis Star isn’t going anywhere.” (I had no way of knowing that the newspaper was in fact about to be swallowed by a merger, and was indeed going somewhere.)
“I loathe postponements.”
“That would explain why you waived your—”
“We aren’t here to talk about me, young lady.”
“We aren’t?” Since I was the journalist, and she was the subject, that came as a surprise.
“After you graduate, what are your plans?”
“Ah…” This was a complicated question for anyone, never mind my sisters and me. Of course we wanted to work. We wanted to get a home of our own, something not affiliated with the hospital where we’d lived most of our lives. That was not easily done when a third of us was psychotic and a third of us was a coward. That left the bulk of responsibility on me, and frankly I resented it. Wouldn’t anyone? “I hope to—”