“It wasn’t even mine.”
“Oh?”
“It was my dad’s. And to be clear, I didn’t ditch you. I didn’t decide to move to Rhode Island without consulting my girlfriend.”
“You decided to throw my house key in my face.”
I bit my lip so hard I tasted blood. “I did not throw it, Catherine, and if you think that’s what happened, you’ve obviously rewritten a lot of history.”
“Metaphorically, you threw it. Anyway, I didn’t come here to relitigate the entire thing. I came here to give you your stuff back.”
“Great. Thank you.”
“Well, okay.”
“Take care of yourself.”
“Okay.”
Catherine moved off the porch and onto the stair that creaked like a haunted house when anyone stepped on it. I saw her stiffen but she didn’t say anything.
“Catherine.”
She turned around.
“Do you really want the last thing you ever say to me to be okay?”
“Do I want it to be the last thing I ever say to you? No.”
“Then?”
She turned and walked down the narrow path that ran the length of the fenced-in yard and ended at the gate along the alley. Then she looked back over her shoulder at me. “I’ll see you when I see you.”
She lifted the latch on the gate and stepped into the alley and walked away.
I went back into the apartment and dumped the box out on the top of my washing machine. A hoodie I’d forgotten about, a bra that wasn’t mine, and three pairs of wool socks.
“What a crock of shit,” I said to no one.
* * *
I had an email from my new best friend at the Toledo PD records desk with two run sheets that outlined visits the cops had made to Constance’s office at Nora Health.
RP indicates that her cell phone has been receiving disturbing phone calls from [number redacted]. Caller is a teen or young adult male who always says he needs to meet with her. When informed that this won’t be possible unless he gives his name, he hangs up. Office already has caller ID and UC private security staff. Call to nonemergency line today because caller indicated that he “has information [she] wants or else people will die.” Detective F/U on phone number recommended.
And then just the other day, the day after I’d hit redial on Rebecca’s phone: RP has been dealing with harassing phone calls for several weeks but it seemed to have tapered off until another call yesterday. F/U on address.
The second police visit that Arlene had seen must have been the follow-up, or maybe Constance or her staff had contacted a detective directly when more calls came in.
I was still contemplating this when Constance finally called me back. “I’m going to Chicago in the morning for a business meeting,” she said, “but if you can come by the Nora Health office this afternoon, we can talk. My security guy says you’re not a crank.”
“Well, I don’t know about that.”
She laughed. “Are you in Toledo?”
I was already shoving my computer into my bag. “Close, I’m close.”
CHAPTER 18
Nora Health’s headquarters occupied a two-story brick building outside of the city. The exterior looked like it could’ve been any type of business, from a call center to a medical clinic, but it had been redone inside in that warehouse-chic style that was popping up everywhere, exposed ductwork and polished cement floors. Behind the front desk was a massive flat-screen television on which Constance Archer-Nash’s face was floating while I waited for her to be available—She changed the way you receive health care, read the text. Now, empower her to change the way the health care industry works. Constance CAN! The slideshow went on to inform me that Nora Health started as a tiny organization called the Northwest Ohio Reproductive Alliance run out of Constance’s parents’ basement.
When Constance finally granted me an audience, she wasn’t what I expected. The woman in the photos on the website had been put-together and manicured and easy-breezy; in real life, Constance was lying in the dark on a leatherette sofa with an ice pack across her eyes, flush-faced and stressed, nail polish flaking off in jagged chunks.
“Things are intense right now,” she said, which was clear from the attitudes of everyone inside the office. Phones were ringing, screens were flashing, and I saw at least two people weeping openly at their desks on the other side of Constance’s fishbowl of an office. “I wish I could go back in time and tell myself that mounting a Senate campaign is a full-time job and not the smartest idea when you already have a full-time job.”
“Is it really a surprise?”
“I guess that’s the worst part—no. But you know, my parents raised me to believe I can do anything, including run for the US Senate while also running a multimillion-dollar start-up.”
“It’ll be worth it, when you win.”
“Yes. You’re right. If I win. But on top of all that, our CRM platform had another attempted data breach overnight. I have a migraine and I just cannot at the moment.” Despite her beleaguerment, she was impeccably dressed in a wool dress, navy, with gold buttons at the collar. “But I’m really very interested to hear what you know about these phone calls.”
“Your CRM what?”
“Customer relationship management platform,” she said. “Basically, what’s under the hood of what we do. User data, profiles, medical information. We use a company based in Chicago that does this for Nora Health and my campaign, plus a lot of other campaigns and progressive causes—that’s where I have to go tomorrow to deal with this mess, something I so don’t have time for right now. But if it’s bad here, I’m sure trash cans are on fire over there.”
“Medical information was exposed?”
“Attempted data breach.” Constance touched a hand to her forehead. “As far as they can tell, everything is okay. But this type of thing is terrifying, you know? Data warfare. It’s unreal. It happens somewhere every day—you hear it in the news all the time, such-and-such data breach, check to see if your info is posted on the dark web. The 2016 election broke the way things are done in this world, it seems like. But it also opened the door for scrappy nobodies like me, so.”
I gestured around the warehouse-cool office. “A nobody doesn’t start all this.”
Constance smiled. “Okay. True.”
“So tell me about these phone calls. I want to hear your theories before I tell you mine.”
“We can’t prove it but I’m sure it’s the fetus-van people.”
“Excuse me?”
“You’ve probably see them. They set up on freeway overpasses and public events with these giant, graphic photos, allegedly of aborted fetuses, though who even knows what they’re actually pictures of. They have a panel van they drive to events, with one of those vehicle wraps—the pictures are plastered all over the sides and hood of it. That’s why we call them the fetus-van people, but they’re actually called Life Begins.”
I nodded. Columbus had its own fringe contingent, which operated out of an office on Broad Street not far from my apartment. “You’ve had trouble with them before?”
“That’s a word for it. Do you know how Nora Health works?”
“Only what I saw on the screen in your lobby.”
Constance sat up slowly. “Basically, we figured out a way to eliminate barriers for women to receive low-cost reproductive health care. Doctors in private practice can sign up to see a limited number of patients through our platform without changing the entire structure of their practice. A woman buys a yearly membership to the service. After that, she gets access to Nora’s patient portal, where she can go online and see which doctors in her area have availability that day, or at least that week, for various health services, not even limited to reproductive health.”
“Nice.”
Constance nodded. “It’s a win for doctors because they can attract new patients this way, and it’s a win for patients because they have access to a network of vetted medical
professionals with a willingness to be flexible about payments. It sounds like an extremely simple concept, but it’s been revolutionizing the landscape.”
“So what do the fetus-van people object to? It doesn’t sound like this is about abortion access at all.”
“No! It’s not. But everything is so reductive with these people. You can say, ‘I don’t think women should die from treatable bacterial infections,’ and their response is, ‘You’re going to burn in hell, you baby-killing harlot.’” A flare of pink spread across her cheeks. “A staff member showed me this clickbait article about us after we got seed-round funding, published by the fine folks of Life Begins. The headline was something like, ‘Toledo Abortion App Puts Babies At Risk.’”
“Abortion app.”
“Yes.”
“Wow.”
“Right?”
“Could someone even get an abortion from a Nora Health doctor?”
Constance nodded. “Yes, if the doctor operates at a facility that is allowed to perform them. But like you said, Nora is about health care access, not abortion access.”
“It’s hard to imagine how anyone can be opposed to women receiving necessary medical care. I know that plenty of people are. It’s just hard to understand.”
“Oh, I know. But these wing nuts don’t care. Plain and simple. A reproductive health clinic does so much for so many women. Here in Toledo, there is literally only one abortion provider left. One. Planned Parenthood doesn’t even perform them here. So all of the work Planned Parenthood is doing is prevention and birth control. But because Planned Parenthood is linked to dead babies in the addled minds of these fetus-van people, that’s it. All the good work doesn’t matter.”
“Have they ever shown up here at the office?”
“No, that’s what I’m saying, they always stop just short of crossing a line. On one hand, that’s a good thing. On the other hand, I wish they’d cross it already so we could file charges.”
I thought about the explosion at my office building. “Be careful what you wish for. Are you familiar with the Keystone Christian Fellowship?”
Her eyes narrowed slightly. “I feel like I’ve heard of them.”
I showed her Aiden’s picture on my phone. “I think this is the kid who’s been calling you. He’s the stepson of the group’s pastor. It’s ostensibly a church, of the fundamentalist flavor.”
Constance looked at the image. “Wow, he’s an actual kid.”
“Sixteen.”
She shook her head. “And why do you think he’s the one who has been calling me?”
“The calls have been coming from a woman’s house, in Perrysburg. She’s dead—she fell while hiking in Columbus about a month ago. In the meantime, he’s been hiding out at her house.”
“What’s your connection to him?”
“My client’s mother is the woman in question,” I said, “and mostly what I need is to find him to figure out what happened to her. In the process of that I came across your problem.”
Constance’s color paled a little. “This woman—she was murdered?”
“I don’t know.”
“Fuck. What’s her name?”
“Rebecca Newsome. Know her?”
She shook her head. Her mind was elsewhere now, and I felt bad for making the situation seem worse. “I have another meeting at three. I’m sorry but can I give you a call if I remember anything else?”
I handed over a business card and said, “One more thing. Did you ever record the calls?”
“No. They never really last long enough for me to do that. It’s more the volume—lots of hang-ups. No messages. I don’t even know how he got my number, actually.”
I wasn’t sure either; I hadn’t had any luck figuring out who the number belonged to when I first tried. But data warfare was the new black, so it probably wasn’t all that much of a mystery.
CHAPTER 19
Neither Aiden nor his car were at Rebecca’s house or the rental property. The back door to the latter was unlocked, though. The house was dark and dusty and cold, but enough light came in through the bare windows for me to see that a folding cot, Army green, stood along the back wall, heaped with quilts and a crocheted blanket in Bowling Green brown and orange in place of a pillow. There was a laundry basket at the foot of the bed, half full. I lifted the hem of a khaki jacket; its pockets were empty. Below the jacket was a white shirt—similar to the one he’d produced from his backseat at the St. Clair Club—embroidered with the Horizons Academy logo.
I looked through the rest of the basket at jeans and another uniform shirt and six identical black tees.
I also found an electric space heater, wrappers from activated-charcoal hand warmers, a puffy pair of gloves, three hats, a large trash bag half full of discarded fast-food bags, and half a dozen empty Mountain Dew two-liters.
So Aiden had been living here for who knew how long.
I wondered what had brought him to her house the other day? The temperature? It had gotten cold in a hurry, and the electric had been shut off recently here.
Or maybe he just really wanted to order a sub.
I checked out the rest of the house but found nothing other than dust bunnies and an impressive cobweb stretching across the top of the stairs.
Aiden Brant was going to be difficult to find again.
* * *
It was early afternoon. I stopped by the Creedle house and rang the festive doorbell—it made more sense now that I knew about Joel’s involvement in the church—but got no answer. Somewhere inside, the shaggy white dog whined. The blue Audi wasn’t parked in the driveway, or in the garage. A red one was there, though, like a matching set. I had to jump to see through the decorative glass panel in the garage door, since it was attached to the house and had no separate entrance. The space looked orderly enough, no flashing lights that said “CLUE.” Just power tools and athletic equipment.
I did a lap around the house. Through gauzy curtains I could see a nice place done up in a poor man’s version of luxury—brocade furniture, faux Tiffany lamps, an enormous replica version of a medieval tapestry that I recognized from my one semester as an art history major as The Knight. It hung in what appeared to be the living room, which also contained cream-colored carpet and an enormous grand piano.
After I finished my fruitless tour of the house’s exterior, I went back to the driveway and looked up and down the street. The neighborhood was quiet.
The house beside the Creedle place was a more angular version of the everystyle McMansion, with dark wood and dramatic front windows shaped vaguely like the blade of a guillotine. I rang the doorbell, which made a normal chiming sound, but got nothing in response.
I tried the house on the other side, a brick colonial with a HATE HAS NO HOME HERE sign between the hedges. The woman who opened the door had smudges of flour on her forearms.
“Sorry,” I said, “I didn’t mean to interrupt.”
“It’s okay, I’m sick of this anyway.” She smiled. She was about forty with brown hair threaded with grey and a nice smile, warm. “Can I help you?”
“I’m trying to get in touch with your neighbor, Nadine. I was wondering if you’ve seen her today.”
A furrow of concern creased the woman’s forehead. “Come in, and let me wash my hands.”
* * *
Her name was Danette Carrasco, and she was in the process of making six dozen cupcakes for her son’s school Halloween party. “And he specifically requested from scratch. Like he even knows what that means. Those cupcake mixes from a box? They’re designed to be just as delicious. He said he’d help me, but of course that’s not happening.” She finished washing her hands at her fancy no-touch sink and dried them on a dish towel. “To be clear, I don’t know Nadine that well. She just moved here about a year ago, maybe a little less.”
“I sense a but.”
The corner of Danette’s mouth bunched up. “I don’t know Joel that well either. But I’ve always had a feeling about him. Y
ou know, the feeling you get when you meet someone who is just not for you, not your kind of person?”
I thought of the sign in her yard. I doubted she had purchased that from a Keystone Fellowship fund-raiser. “You mean the church stuff?”
She winced, just a little. “I was raised with Jesus. Don’t get me wrong. A person’s faith is nobody else’s business. But the Keystone Fellowship is strange.”
“How so?”
“They’ve been around since I was in college, at least. I went to UT and there was a group of students who were just, you know, everybody knew they were Keystones and unless you wanted to get involved with all of that, just stay away. Even if they invite you to do cool things, which they did, sometimes. But it was always guise for a Bible study. My roommate—sophomore year, I think—she was friends with one of them for a while. Very high-pressure tactics to get people to commit to the group and all that. Seemed kind of cultish to me. But when you’re young, everything has the power to sweep you off your feet, doesn’t it?”
I nodded. “Must be terrifying, then, having kids in this world.”
“Oh, it is. I worry so much. And honestly, watching Joel next door with his boys—it’s chilling.”
I waited.
“There’s something about the way he acts to those kids. It’s like, they’ll be running around after school, when nobody is home, whooping and hollering and being, well, boys. Then Joel will drive up and they just get so quiet and well-behaved. Like a switch flips.”
“Is he abusive to them?”
“Not that I’ve ever seen or heard. But of course, that’s only what I can see or hear across the yard. They’ve just always been like that, even when they were probably nine or ten. We moved in about five years ago, this was shortly before his first wife killed herself. Oh—you didn’t know about that.”
I shook my head. “No. Go on.”
“Trish. I only met her once. Very much the same type as Nadine, to be honest.”
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