“You don’t think that’s her real name?”
“I mean, maybe. It’s a little on-the-nose, though, right? Destroyer-god and all that.”
“How about Sheila?” Maggie asked. “That’s the name she gave us.”
“Sure. It’s pretty close to the same thing. Yeah. Yeah. That seems like something she’d do.”
He tapped the image from the video feed.
“You watched this, right?” he asked.
“I haven’t had a chance to see the video, no.”
“Then you don’t really know what she can do.”
“I don’t need to watch,” she said. “I already know.”
“No you don’t. It’s not…nobody who doesn’t see her in action can understand what she’s capable of. Not really. This is next-level.”
Maggie leaned back and took in the entirety of the man before her.
Even when he was beaten and bruised, as he was now, Nick had a certain master-of-the-universe confidence that was impossible to ignore. When he went to trial, and talked about all the crimes of the EJF, it was with pride. He gave the impression that these things were done in his name, by worshippers who loved him. It was a neat trick that she didn’t entirely buy into, even if everyone else appeared to. His silver tongue and good looks supposedly talked a dozen trust-fund kids to live a criminal life on the run in the name of a barely coherent philosophy. He convinced Sharon to abandon everything in the name of the same cause. They committed murder for him, a blue-eyed blond-haired Charlie Manson.
And up until this moment, at the table, Maggie assumed whatever Sheila/Shiva was doing, it was done in Nick’s name, whether he actually told her to do it or not.
But that wasn’t right at all. She had it exactly backwards.
“You’re afraid of her,” Maggie said.
“Oh, absolutely.”
“Is that why you’re being so forthright now? Because it would have been great if you mentioned her earlier.”
“I can only talk about her because she’s already been outed, and not by me.”
He held the photo up in his shackled hands.
“This was her coming-out party,” he said. “She could’ve left Bernard to take the rap. We already knew what she was capable of, right? Now, Shiva wants you to know, and it’s not gonna matter what I give up; she’ll do what she wants and then disappear. If you haven’t already figured that out, now I’m telling you. She can’t be stopped, Maggie, and truth is, I’m glad I’m in here and not out there.”
Maggie nodded.
“Shiva, then,” she said. “Don’t suppose she gave you a last name?”
“Yeah, actually.”
“Really?”
“I didn’t take it seriously. Seemed like it was just some kind of weird joke with her that I wasn’t in on, because it didn’t match the first name she was giving us, at all. Kinda matches Sheila, though, so now I’m wondering if she was being honest with me that one time. I mean, it’s possible.”
“What was it?”
“It was, um, something Irish…and Sheila is Scottish, right? I used to know this kinda thing. That’s why I’m wondering now…because Shiva, that’s Indian, doesn’t go right with an Irish surname, you know?”
“Nick…”
“Sorry, I’m trying to remember…Yeah. Corrigan. Pretty sure that’s what she said.”
Maggie had been interrogating suspects off and on for nearly her entire adult life. She was highly skilled at not reacting to the information she was being provided. In this moment, she was pretty positive she failed.
“Shiva Corrigan,” Maggie said. “That’s what she said her name was.”
“Yeah, or Sheila Corrigan. That sounds like a real name. Do you recognize it?”
“I’ve heard the name before.”
She reminded herself that Nick probably had enough access to the news to have come across the name Corrigan Bain at least a few times by now, and he could therefore be screwing with her.
The problem was that it made sense. Corrigan’s first name was his father’s surname. Someone turning up with the same surname and the same skillset was too impossible to be a coincidence. But for Nick to have made that up, he’d have to know Corrigan’s family history first.
“So,” she said, trying to get back to the questions, “Bernard joined at the same time as Sheila?”
“That’s right.”
“And this was when?”
Nick smirked.
“Sorry, Maggie, I’m thinking about how this is going to sound.”
“It sounds however it sounds. Just talk.”
“Thing is, you’re gonna lose the audience if I keep going. I won’t even be in the room, and I can hear them. They’ll say I’m doing this to get out of here or…well, shit, I don’t know. If I was talking to anyone other than you, I wouldn’t keep going.”
“Nick, if you don’t keep talking, I’m going to strangle you.”
“Fine. Patsy.”
“What?”
“That’s what I’m gonna say next. I’m a fall-guy, a patsy, the guy set up to take the blame.”
Maggie sat back, stared at the ceiling for several seconds, considered turning off the audio recording and going back to Boston with “Shiva Corrigan” as a starting point, and then reminded herself he was at least giving some real answers for a change.
“Who set you up?” she asked. “Sheila and Bernard?”
“Shiva turned up when we were just going around handing out leaflets and all that other crap. Nothing criminal. Well, no, I take that back, one time we heard about a big meeting between oil company execs at this hotel, so we set up a picket line and called in a bomb threat, so the oil guys would have to go outside and hear us. Wrong hotel but, anyway, we did do that. But that was all. She hooked up with us not long after.”
“I remember that. That was before Sharon went AWOL.”
“I know. This is what I’m saying. The idea to use real bombs, that was all Shiva and Bernard. I didn’t want to do any of that, and I told her as much, but…you know what she can do. I didn’t think anyone else would go along with it though. I was wrong there. She knew exactly what I should say to get everyone to sign up. And for the record, I didn’t even recruit Sharon myself.”
“Was Sheila the one to get the explosives off the base?”
“That was Sharon and Bernard. He had this gizmo he would wear when he went out. I think it connected the two of them together. It was some weird high-tech shit. Don’t know where that came from.”
“All right,” Maggie said. She stood up to pace and run through everything she already knew about Nick, to update all of it with this new information. Then she thought about the cigarette she’d be having as soon as she was back outside. “For the record, what you’re telling me is that you were an unwilling participant in all of this, and that the real orchestrator of your terrorist cell is this woman you called Shiva.”
He laughed.
“I told you this would happen. The skepticism, right? I hear it. But look, I wouldn’t say entirely unwilling. I mean, don’t knock being a cult leader until you’ve tried it, right? The sex was pretty good, too.”
“You had a sexual relationship with the woman you’re so afraid of, you’d rather stay in here than have your sentence commuted? Because she can’t get to you?”
“I was getting sex from all over. Shiva was great, though. Really…really great, and the threat of death kind of worked for me.”
“Who picked the targets?”
He looked perplexed for a half-second because this was a strong redirect from the sex conversation.
“She did,” he said. “Her or Bernard. He was the one conveying the information a lot of the time, but I assumed the orders came from her.”
“Did they explain their reasoning?”
“No.”
“Did you ever try to work it out yourself?”
“You asked me these questions before,” he said. “After the arrest.”
She an
d other members of her team had taken full advantage of the lax regulations regarding the interrogation of a terror suspect, to question him for over twenty-four hours before his lawyer got anywhere near the room. That he never mentioned Shiva or Bernard said a lot about how afraid he was of her.
“I did,” Maggie said, “but that was when we’d been led to understand that you picked the targets.”
“Well, same answer. If there’s an explanation for who she wanted us to kill, I never worked it out. He built all the bombs, by the way.”
“I thought Sharon did that.”
“She took the fall for it, but it was him. And another thing…I can’t prove this, okay? But the ones that didn’t go off, I think they didn’t go off on purpose.”
“The unexploded bombs provided us with the evidence we needed to catch the entire cell,” Maggie said. “Are you telling me Sheila wanted that to happen?”
“Draw your own conclusions, agent. To me, it means she really wanted to kill the ones who actually got killed, and only wanted you to think she wanted to kill the other ones, to keep you from figuring out the connection.”
She smiled, and nodded, and paced some more.
“That’s a very shrewd observation, Nick,” she said.
They had, of course, run the biographical information of every victim and near-victim against every other victim and near-victim already. If there was some kind of consonance between sub-groups on those lists, she’d have known about it a long time ago.
That didn’t mean it wasn’t a good observation, just that he might be drawing the wrong conclusion.
“Sheila took your little group and turned it into a terrorist cell, and you don’t know why. She killed or almost killed a hand-selected group of individuals, and you don’t know why. She—or Bernard, now—arranged so that the cell would eventually get arrested, and you don’t know why.”
“That’s about right.”
“What about the message she sent to the media?”
“I’m not following. What message?”
“After the State House, she issued a statement to the media: Free them. We assume she meant you and Sharon.”
“Oh, that. I think that was for us. I mean, hold the theme, right, that it’s all some big plan I orchestrated, but I’m pretty sure she did that so you guys would send someone to talk to us. I assume Sharon got a visit too.”
“She did, yes. You didn’t offer anything, then.”
“Nah. The agent they sent wasn’t half as charming as you.”
“Right.”
“Plus, that was the point. As soon as I got those details I got the message just fine. See, that wasn’t a demand directed at you, it was a threat directed at us.”
“You really are safe in here,” Maggie said.
He shrugged.
“Sure, as safe as I can be. I mean, if she wants me dead, I’m dead. Just the way it is.”
Maggie nodded, and sat back down.
“Look, Nick, I can’t get you out of here. You don’t want to get out of here anyway, but you know I couldn’t make that promise in good faith. But I can get you other things, for being cooperative. How’s the food here?”
Nick had been on a Paleo diet when they arrested him. Needless to say, that was no longer the case.
“It’s terrible.”
“I can help you with that,” she said.
“Can you really?”
“It’s just a few phone calls. But you have to give me something I can really work with.”
“What, I haven’t already?”
“Where did she come from, Nick? I know you said you don’t know, but you’ve got to have something. You met her for the first time in California, right? Is she from there originally?”
“No, definitely not. Too pale. All right, yeah. I don’t think either of them are from this country originally.”
“Bernard’s last known address was in Quebec,” Maggie said. “We knew that.”
“Yeah, but no, not Canada. That hardly even counts. Do they have television in Canada?”
“I think probably, yes.”
“American TV, and movies. Someone who grew up in Quebec would have a grip on most of your basic pop culture references, right?”
“Nick, I’m not an expert on Canadian cultural norms. What’s your point?”
“Shiva didn’t. I don’t know Bernard too well, but she sounded like she was raised in a cave or something, when it came to that stuff.”
“That’s pretty thin.”
“Oh, and she talked in her sleep one time.”
“What did she say?”
“No idea. It wasn’t in English. But it also wasn’t in French; I know what that sounds like.”
“Russian, German, what?”
“I don’t know. Honestly, I didn’t think about it at all until just now, so I’m a little worried any guess I have will be based on me misremembering it.”
“Or she was just babbling in gibberish.”
“Yeah, maybe. I don’t know.”
“All right. Foreign. Not Canada.”
“If I think of more, I’ll let you know.”
“Okay, Nick. Thanks.”
She turned off the record button on the phone and slid it off the table.
“I don’t think I can get you any Paleo diet food,” she said. “But I can try.”
“Actually, I’d kill for a burger right now,” he said. “I mean, not literally. You understand.”
Part III
Family Feud
17
Nobody’s heard from @MDevereaux for nearly the same span of time nobody’s heard from K. I think we can all agree he’s not really dead, so, I mean, it’s obvious isn’t it?
* * *
They ran off together. Right?
—comment from @LooperSuper7, FindTheBostonFixer.com
Erica’s impression of what it must be like to be in law enforcement was permanently colored by television shows, which was sort of amazing given how little TV she actually watched. Not just recently—it almost went without saying that she didn’t absorb a ton of network programming in her flat in Japan—but for most of her life.
Yet she still had that sense about how things were supposed to go, especially as regards to the expository meeting. That was the part in the program where people who knew what was going on would sit down with people who did not yet know what was going on, and exchange information, when the whole point of it was actually to give information to the audience.
Five days after Erica, for the first and hopefully only time in her life, picked up a gun and shot another human being in self-defense, she was in one of those meetings. It was also five days since Corrigan Bain woke up, which was considerably more important, as far as Erica was concerned, because that had to mean this was all nearly over, and she could go back to Japan, where nobody was (probably) trying to kill her. This was in stark contrast to the Boston area, which seemed strangely bent on having her killed.
The people at the table were a lot more interested in what Erica did five days ago than what Corrigan did five days ago, which just seemed weird.
Justin Axelrod put the small rectangular box—the focus of so much of Erica’s time for the past five days—in the middle of the table. Justin was the SAIC, which Erica learned (she had to ask) stood for Special Agent in Charge.
“Dr. Smalls,” Justin said, “just to level-set everyone here; can you tell us everything you have on this device?”
“Sure,” she said, standing. The unnamed agent, manning the laptop/projector combo at the other end of the room, pulled up a Powerpoint presentation Erica slapped together that morning—under protest, because she hated Powerpoint presentations. She’d been forced to present extremely complicated things in this format many times over, during her collegiate career, and found the limitations in text—and over-reliance on visualized points—so constrictive, it was impossible to use Powerpoint without getting something wrong. Some things couldn’t be simplified without ending up incorr
ect.
She would rather have drafted a long text document and told everyone to read it before the meeting. She was pretty sure that would never happen.
The first slide in the Powerpoint began with a brief summary of the theory of quantized time: the chronoton, and the malleability of the future.
Erica was really proud of the introductory section, especially for how she managed to use non-technical terms to explain everything. So when Justin stopped her on the third slide, only two minutes in, she was sort of annoyed.
“Everyone, you have access to this deck, which is an excellent deep-dive into the concepts. I think we need to skip ahead, though, if that’s all right, Dr. Smalls.”
“Of course,” she said. It wasn’t all right, and she didn’t work for him, so she could certainly say as much, but she didn’t.
“I think we’d all like to understand how you employed this little box, and how we can use it to our advantage.”
Erica flashed back on the moment, not so long ago and not so far from where she was now standing, when she came face-to-face with the woman Karen identified as Sheila (or Shiva, depending on who was talking) Corrigan. It was an unwelcome memory that Erica would probably have to deal with at some point, maybe professionally. For now, it was helpful that the memory was fresh, because the details mattered.
“I don’t know how we can use it to our advantage,” she said. “I can only tell you how I used it.”
“And how was that?” he asked.
“I plugged it in.”
Justin was an older man, fit, with white hair that was starting to creep back from his forehead. Erica kind of liked him, especially when he smiled in a semi-flirty way, as he was now doing.
“Maybe more detail this time,” he said. “I appreciate this is all complicated, and you’re trying to meet us halfway. Give us a little more.”
Maggie rolled her eyes in the tiniest of unintentional micro-expressions, then looked at Erica again.
Fixer Redux Page 25