The Wonder Test

by Michelle Richmond

  “What do you know about Mr. Stafford’s priors?” I ask.

  “You mean the stint at Lompoc?”

  “Precisely.”

  “He did his time, appeared to get out of the business.”

  “What does he do now?”

  “Sells software for a start-up that’s about to go public. Why? You think what happened to Gray is somehow connected?”

  “Don’t know.”

  “Doesn’t square with the Lamey twins, though,” Kyle observes. “It would mean the two cases aren’t connected.”

  “Agreed.”

  At the end of the road, we come to a parking lot. The temperature has dropped twenty-four degrees since we left Greenfield. We get out of the car, passing a small red house set into a flat patch of ice plant. The paint is peeling, and plastic toys litter the patio. Stones have been stacked in rows in a futile attempt to keep the sand at bay. The truck in the driveway is green, the California Fish and Game logo painted on the side. In front of the house, the sandy path narrows. We follow it another few hundred yards down to the beach, where the surf is pounding the shore.

  “Where are the surfers?”

  “It’s because of the layout.” Kyle gestures toward the ocean with both hands. “Sets splitting both ways, a dangerous shore break.”

  “You surf?”

  “Dude, I live in a mobile home in Pacifica. Of course I surf.” He narrows his eyes playfully. “What, it wasn’t in my file?”

  “You think there’s some warehouse in DC filled with files on regular citizens?”

  “Isn’t there?”

  “There’s a warehouse, all right, but it’s not in DC. It’s called Google.” I look up and down the beach both ways. It’s eerily deserted. “Tell me the story of the day Gray came back.”

  He points south. “Stafford was walking from that direction. And Nicole was alone, over here on a piece of driftwood when she saw him.”

  I do a double take. “I don’t remember a Nicole from the file.”

  “She asked to be kept out of it, and Crandall agreed. He didn’t think it was relevant. I had to really work to get it out of him.”

  “So he just omitted her from his write-up?”

  “Pretty much.”

  “What was her deal?”

  “Tech exec from the city. Originally from Chattanooga, Tennessee, went to Stanford.”

  “So why did she want to be anonymous?”

  “This isn’t what you’d call a popular beach. The parking lot is sparse, lots of privacy. You remember that Explorer with the blacked-out windows when we pulled in?”

  “Yes.”

  “On cold days, at lunch time, there’s usually a car or two off in the corner.” He’s trying to put it delicately, which is, to be honest, a little insulting.

  “Nicole was screwing someone in the parking lot?”

  He blushes. “Something like that.”

  “You just said she was alone when she saw Gray.”

  “She was. She met the guy in the parking lot. When they were finished, he left, and she went for a walk alone on the beach.”

  “Anything else Crandall left out of the file?”

  “Probably plenty.”

  “I want to talk to her.”

  I regret it as soon as the words leave my mouth. Do I really want to get more involved? Reading files is one thing. Doing interviews is something else. As soon as your name appears on a write-up, you’re in it, you’re on the 6(e) list, you’re a case participant. It can be a slippery slope, leading to an appearance at grand jury, an unwelcome stint at trial, all of it. But Rory was right when he said, “You need to work.” In fact, I want to work. I feel a familiar tug, anticipation, the magnetic pull of the unsolved case drawing me in.

  “Sure. I’ll call her. She’ll be thrilled.”

  Kyle pulls out his phone, goes through contacts, dials a number. After he introduces himself, there’s a long pause. When he asks to meet, there’s an even longer pause. “You could come to the station instead,” he says in a voice I haven’t heard him use—more Officer Kyle than Apprentice Kyle. It seems to do the trick, because the next words out of his mouth are: “No, I’ve got your address. See you in half an hour.”

  He slides the phone into his pocket. “Up for a ride to the city?”

  13

  Economist and former Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan famously endorsed the theory that sales of men’s underwear (the Men’s Underwear Index, or MUI) served as a valuable economic indicator. Plot your MUI predictions for the years leading up to and following the next recession.

  Nicole is waiting for us in the lobby when we arrive. Before we even say hello, she enters our names into the reception desk computer. The machine spits out badges bearing the words INDUSTRY CONTACT. We slip the lanyards around our necks and follow her into the elevator.

  As we walk the long hallway past the beanbag chairs and dining areas, I get the feeling that this famous, feared, mildly respected tech company is really just a stock symbol and a slick website being run out of a building that resembles the food court at a shopping mall.

  We step into a café, quiet save for the clicking of laptop keyboards. Nicole leads us to a dimly lit booth, and Kyle and I slide in side by side. She returns moments later with three coffees and slides into the seat across from us, attempting to shield her face from prying eyes. It’s no use. Two young men pass our table, greeting her cheerfully. She doesn’t want to be here with us, but now that she’s been seen by her colleagues, she has given up her defenses. She tells us about the morning on the beach, the “sandwiches” in the car, the strange figure in the distance, shuffling toward her. Her eyes are almost frantic. I can tell she hasn’t been sleeping well.

  “And when did you realize it was a boy?” I ask.

  “I don’t know.” She shudders. “I mean, I knew in that last ten feet it was human, but it was so white. So bluish white, and the completely bald head, the lack of hair anywhere. His skin was translucent, shivering, so cold, I could see his veins through his skin. He was tall enough to be fifteen or sixteen, I guessed. But he was so gaunt and weak he struck me as much younger.”

  “What did you do?”

  “I asked the boy if he was okay, even though it was obvious he wasn’t. He didn’t reply. Then I took off my coat, wrapped him up in it, and called nine-one-one. The operator said to stay right there, so I just held him in my arms, trying to warm him up. He was trembling, his lips blue. He didn’t meet my eyes. He was humming, this terrible, high-pitched noise. The firemen arrived within six or seven minutes. But still, those minutes standing there with that frozen, traumatized boy felt like hours.”

  “Did he say anything at all?”

  “No, he just kept humming, shaking.”

  “Could you see where he came from?”

  “Somewhere down the beach.” She bites her lip. I wait for her to fill the silence. Several seconds tick by. She shifts uncomfortably in her seat. “Is he okay?”

  “He’s with his family,” Kyle says.

  “But is he okay?”

  “Hard to tell, but at least he’s back in school.”

  Nicole lets out a deep sigh, almost as if she has been holding her breath all these months. “Thank God.” She swipes a tear from her face, sits up, looking first at me, then at Kyle. “Did you catch the guy?” The tiny twitch of her mouth, barely perceptible, gives me pause.

  As we’re getting into the cruiser, I ask Kyle: “Why doesn’t it mention in the file that Stafford had no hair when he appeared on the beach?”

  “I asked Crandall the same thing.”

  “What about the Lamey twins? Also hairless?”

  “No, but they did have an unusual smell.”

  “I didn’t see that in the file.”

  “Crandall wasn’t big on details, as you’ve noticed.�
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  “What kind of smell? Sweat? Feces?”

  “The opposite.”

  “What’s the opposite of feces?” I say, laughing. I can’t help it. In the Behavioral Analysis Program, BAP—a special division of the Behavioral Analysis Unit focused on counterintelligence—we used to laugh at the most inappropriate things. It was a way of releasing tension, or maybe it’s just that inappropriate things are funnier.

  “It was the absence of smell. Like a cloak of unsmellability. At least that’s how the nurse described it to me.”

  “What nurse? I thought Crandall handled that case?”

  “Yes, but when I got to the job, I was curious, and the Lamey case hadn’t been officially closed yet. I tracked down one of the nurses who’d received the twins at the hospital right after they were found. When she told me about the absence of smell, it sounded like a clue.”

  “Or the absence of a clue.”

  “Have you ever heard of Febreze?”

  “The cleaning product?”

  “Not a cleaning product, a deodorizing product, invented by a chemist at Procter and Gamble. A pretty amazing feat of chemistry really, it’s an inorganic compound, microscopically small, shaped like a doughnut. And it doesn’t smell like anything. The shape traps the odor molecule, blocking it so that the smell is undetectable. But when Procter and Gamble first sold the product, it was a total flop. In cleaning products, it turns out, people don’t want clean so much as they want the smell of clean. Anyway, long story short, P&G relaunches the product with a trademark scent, and it makes millions.”

  “So are you saying the twins were doused with Febreze?” I ask.

  “All I know is, both kids had a rash over their entire bodies, which cleared up within days of their return. The doctors found traces of beta-cyclodextrin in one of the twin’s urine.”

  “The key ingredient of . . .”

  “Febreze. Though, apparently, it’s not unusual for people to have that chemical in their urine.”

  I’m beginning to wonder how much else was missing from the Lamey file. “Did the kids mention anything about it? Or were they mute, like Gray Stafford?”

  “Not mute, but they hadn’t talked much before and they certainly didn’t start after they returned. Eventually, their mother was able to surmise that they had been kept in a room with bunk beds, wherever they were.”

  “Were they fed?”

  “It was hard to tell, because they were extremely picky eaters. They’d lost a dangerous amount of weight, but that might have just meant they didn’t eat what they were given.”

  “Anything else?”

  “They didn’t hear any human sounds.” He glances over at me.

  “What do you mean? Were there pets? Machines? Road noise?”

  “There might have been horses.”

  “Really?”

  “One of the twins was afraid of horses when she returned. Never had been before. I know the file says ‘learning disabled,’ but that’s not quite accurate. Someone who knew more about these things, someone not like Crandall, in other words, would probably have asked the parents if the children had Asperger’s. The twins gave us nothing. In fact, they seemed totally uninterested in shedding light on anything that had happened to them. And unlike Gray, they didn’t seem overly traumatized, except for the horse thing.”

  We wind back along 92, heading inland, emerging from dense fog into sunshine. “There was a news story a few years ago,” I say, “about a father and his twelve-year-old son who survived overnight in the Atlantic Ocean after their fishing boat capsized. The father was terrified, but the boy seemed to think the whole thing was a great adventure. He had autism, and his neurological difference allowed him to stay calm. It saved their lives. He didn’t sense the danger. Could that be what happened with the Lamey twins?”

  “Possible. The Febreze thing is just my theory. Their mother thought the rash could be from something else. She said they were both allergic to black walnut trees. Before Chief Jepson told me to leave the case alone, I wasted an entire weekend researching black walnut trees. I had this vision of myself solving the mystery, you know, finding the villain camping out in a tent in a black walnut orchard.”

  “With horses.”

  “Exactly. But it doesn’t really work that way, does it?”

  “Sometimes it does. I can’t tell you how many weekends I’ve spent on details like that. Occasionally, it pans out.”

  Kyle takes the Black Mountain Road exit, cruising into Greenfield, slowing to take the hairpin curves. On Robinwood, a deer darts out in front of us. Kyle swerves and brakes expertly, not too hard, the stunned deer staring at us for several moments before leaping into the brush. As we pull up in front of my dad’s house, I have one more question for Kyle. “What reason did Chief Jepson give you when he told you to quit investigating?”

  “He insisted there was no there there. Chief said my primary job as a new officer on the force was to be, and I quote, ‘a comforting presence for the good citizens of Greenfield.’”

  14

  Government employees must manage natural resources according to the principle of “maximum sustainable yield.” Would a similar perspective be productive for parenting? Why would Malthus agree or disagree with your answer?

  It’s four in the morning and I can’t sleep, so I pull on a windbreaker and shorts, grab my bike, and roll out of the garage. The momentum of the hill pulls me down the same path. I feel like a ball on an unleveled billiard table, always rolling toward the same corner.

  It was my father who suggested the bike rides, back when I was an anxious kid. It started with the paper route, but over time it morphed into a kind of ritual, an almost-spiritual practice, a way to settle my mind. In the years since—in California, Florida, Arkansas, New York City—I’ve logged tens of thousands of miles, maybe hundreds of thousands. I once calculated that I had biked the six-mile loop around Central Park nearly four thousand times.

  I don’t have fancy gear or a racing helmet. I don’t wear a ridiculously tight onesie bearing the name of an Italian coffee company. I do, however, own a top-of-the-line bike. It’s orange, with yellow tires, a fine leather saddle, handmade by a highly sought-after craftsman in Vermont, whose signature graces the crossbar. It arrived via FedEx nine days after Fred died, at our fourth-floor walk-up at Ninety-Second between Columbus and Central Park West. The delivery guy buzzed up: “You’ll have to sign for this one.” I pushed and wrangled the huge box up all sixty-five stairs. I had no clue what could be inside. No card, no invoice. Just this sleek, beautiful bike, smelling of rubber and leather.

  Fred and I had admired a similar bike in the craftsman’s shop in Burlington more than a year earlier. Rolling it around the living room, I knew this purchase had been months in the planning, and I also knew it was the finest thing I owned—more expensive than my engagement ring, possibly even our car. Fred must have worked feats of financial magic in order to purchase it. One day, if I ever dig myself out of this mess, I’ll balance the checkbook, organize the credit card statements, and discover exactly how much he paid. But for now, it remains a mystery: a beautiful, bittersweet mystery and the final reminder of a wonderful, imperfect marriage.

  Inside the Royal Donut Shop, the guy at the counter recognizes me.

  “Hey,” he says. “It’s the FBI lady. What can I get you?”

  “One old-fashioned, please, and two raised chocolates.” The old-fashioned is for me, the raised for Rory. I fish around in my pocket for the twenty-dollar bill I always keep there, but I can’t find it. I glance over at the ATM, but of course I don’t have my card. I start to apologize and say I’ll come back later, but he hands me a bag—it feels like four or five doughnuts—and interrupts my apology.

  “Don’t worry about it.”

  On the ride back up the hill, I pass the Shirley Jackson house on Forestview, the one she memorialized i
n The Road Through the Wall—a novel about a seemingly perfect town full of dark secrets. I never even realized she’d lived here until long after I moved away. At some point in high school or college, most students read Jackson’s short story “The Lottery,” a classic horror tale about the evil committed by ordinary citizens in an ordinary town. Perhaps you remember it: each time the lottery comes up, a citizen is randomly selected and stoned to death by his or her friends, neighbors, and children.

  Minutes later I’m in Greenfield, pedaling toward the cul-de-sac where Gray Stafford lives, my bike tires gripping the smooth asphalt. There are five houses on the cul-de-sac. As I roll past each home, telltale blue lights illuminate the lawns and driveways, motion sensors bringing the security cameras to life. I imagine the lenses following me from house to house, street to street. I don’t even recognize the Stafford home from the photograph; a tall wooden fence has been erected around the property. I think about Nicole’s story of the day she found Gray Stafford on the beach. I turn the story over in my mind.

  I roll back along Eucalyptus beside the golf course. From here, I can see the back of the Delacroix place. It stands out among the neighboring houses, with its concrete fence, glass walls, and oversized sculptures holding court over the expansive green lawn. I pedal the mile uphill to my father’s house, leaning into the pain, legs burning.

  15

  In Mexico during the late 1990s and again in Serbia in the fall of 2005, frogs fell from the sky. How might this be possible? How might it be impossible? In your answer, discuss whether the intersection of science and religion is moving, and, if so, in which direction.

  I’m clearing out a file cabinet in my father’s study Saturday morning when my phone starts ringing downstairs. I feel that Pavlovian panic I’ve had ever since I got the call about Fred—something must be wrong—but then I remember Rory is at his study session. He’s fine. By the time I reach it, the call has gone to voicemail. It’s my friend and colleague George Voss.