Jen’s heartbeat mashed the accelerator from zero to sixty in one second flat.
Stay cool, sister.
With as close as she could get to a neutral voice, she said, “Which store?”
“Makes computers and phones. Crazy place. Crazy people.”
“Did they tell your mom something?”
“They always be tellin’ her somethin’.”
“Always?”
“Ever since she started workin’ there.”
16
For over an hour and a half, Delmar Johnson Jr. stumbled through answers to Jen’s questions, often missing the point entirely or finding amazingly obscure ways to say yes or no. Jen never once had the impression he was lying, dissembling, or trying to obscure the facts. He wasn’t a bright guy, but neither she nor Chandler ever doubted he was telling the truth.
When the conversation finally wrapped up, Jen rushed back to the station, where she was pleased to find the office empty. Chandler brought up government and employment records on her computer and she filled in Delmar’s story.
Odette Johnson was sixty-three, her husband sixty-four. Odette had been a nurse at Medstar Washington Hospital Center until arthritis in her right hand made some tasks very difficult and, rather than accommodate her disability, the hospital fired her under the provisions of the 2029 Great Jobs for All Act. She was unable to find a new job, and so as best she could, she cared for people in their homes for bad pay, often under lousy working conditions, and with eventual dismissal when she couldn’t handle many of the physical tasks—some days merely opening a bottle of pills was excruciating, if not impossible. She supplemented her income by helping a friend clean homes, although that job also proved difficult.
Approximately a year earlier, Odette had gone to Zombies to buy a reconditioned phone—it was the cheapest place in the neighborhood and trusted by the local folks. There, she got to talking about her work. Another co-op member may have overheard this conversation and asked her about a medical problem or mentioned that few of them had proper health care coverage. Whatever it was, Odette started visiting the store every couple of weeks as an impromptu visiting nurse. (“They wasn’t even paying her nothin’ at first,” Delmar said. “She said they was young and needed her.”) Folks from other stores or services in their network started to come around.
“Who?” Jen had asked, and Delmar had looked at her like she’d asked for the middle name of the man on the moon.
Both Odette and some co-op members had approached doctors they knew, and before long, she was working three nights a week at an informal clinic held at the Zombie co-op for members of various co-ops in the city. The pay was modest, but it was better than what she earned house cleaning or doing home nursing care, and they added in-kind goods and services: food, clothes, transportation, and repairs. “The food sure got better around this place,” reported Delmar, “I got to say that.” That was also why they had a decent screen—a sixty-fourth birthday gift from her to her husband. “She said she got it saving credits from her work,” Delmar said, but he had no idea what “credits” were.
Odette was an avid reader. Delmar said: “She always come home with a heap of books from the library. Real books. You never see no one read like her.”
And Eden?
That seemed to have started more recently. “Hold on. Maybe when the cherry blossoms was doing.”
That made it late February or early March these days. More than four months before she died.
“That’s when she starts talking ’bout it. Saying that’s where she’s goin’. Saying that’s where we all was goin’.”
“Did she ever tell you where it was? Or not even exactly where, but whereabouts?”
He scratched his stomach.
“Or what it was,” Jen pressed, “or how to get there?”
He said, “Got to have been then.”
“What?”
“With the trees all out.”
“Why’s that?”
“We have two of them out front. You see them?”
“You probably wouldn’t call me a tree person.”
“Well, they was out and Mom, she says to me, ‘I imagine this just what Eden gotta look like.’”
“She said that?”
“Ain’t that what I’m tellin’ you?”
“But no idea where it is?”
This time he rolled his eyes.
“Okay, let me ask you this … Delmar, you still with me? Delmar, is there any chance it was some sort of medicine?”
“You mean like cough medicine?”
“I was thinking a bit more serious. Like the treatment.”
“Oh, that’s a good one. If it was, then they coulda got it for me and I wouldn’ta needed to shoot them, would I?”
* * *
Six PM. Hours left of sunlight, but sun no longer throbbing. Jen zapped up a small smoothie, slipped into her running clothes, and headed toward Rock Creek Park.
She ran, her mind buzzing and darting: Her interview with Delmar Junior. Threats from Captain Brooks. Teko Teko Mea. The disappearance of Child’s Play. All of it racing in circles.
She passed the restaurant where she and Zach had had their first date. As she ran, conversations with him and conversations with herself about him swarmed her mind, ambushing her with anxiety, anger, and dread. She was annoyed with Zach, annoyed with the things that had seemed hard and now seemed insurmountable in their relationship, annoyed that it wasn’t effortless to be with him, annoyed with his politics and social concerns. But then she thought, No, that’s not totally true, for lately she had found herself agreeing more and more with him on these things. But, God, why did they always have to talk about this stuff? What difference could any of them make?
Differences or not, she’d done him wrong. She hadn’t trusted him in the simple way that Les trusted Christopher. How could she not have told him about Chandler? Yes, she had obediently followed the rules, but the real reason she’d stayed quiet was because she knew he’d be devastated.
She almost changed course so she could go to him that very minute to apologize. But somewhere along the wooded trails, up and down hillsides, beautiful even with the leaves drying up on the trees and the creeks down to a trickle, she blocked her thoughts about Zach long enough to think about work. She followed one thread and then another to piece together what she knew about Eden.
By the time she made it home, it was clear that four things didn’t add up.
One: Odette Johnson had said, and Delmar Junior had confirmed, that she talked about getting to Eden. She never spoke of getting hold of the treatment; she never said she was going to “get some Eden.” But it seemed, according to what Olive Ortega had told them, that this was the street name for the counterfeit, black-market treatment.
Two: Gray Suit’s hostility toward her. Les had said the guy probably hadn’t been talking about her, but a day later, she’d had Chandler repeat the conversation. Although he heard only what she heard, it was pretty clear Gray Suit had been speaking about her.
Three: the disappearance of Child’s Play might’ve had a simple explanation. If Eden was an illegal drug and Child’s Play knew about it, then Gray Suit’s guys probably wanted to question him while also keeping the lid on the drug’s existence. It was possible whoever was in charge might have spirited him away. But, no, that didn’t explain how thoroughly he’d disappeared. She had tried to bring up his sheet and discovered that everything but his most basic ID was now sealed tight.
Finally: the timeline. According to Delmar Junior, his mother had started talking about Eden four or four and a half months earlier, after she began working with the co-op people. The cherry blossom memory was one of the few concrete things Delmar had said. It rang true. Yet Gray Suit said the first report they’d received came in the middle of the summer, only a month before he met with them at the station. You’d think that with all their phone, text, email, and internet surveillance, plus their snitches, if something as important as a counterfei
t treatment had been out there since at least the early spring, they would have gotten wind of it.
She badly needed to speak to someone from the co-op.
Her mind lurched back to Zach. It was important for her investigation to call him, to press him on contacting a co-op member. But it was important for her relationship, she supposed, to let him have his space. Then again, also important for her to apologize for not telling him sooner.
She dialed his number.
“Oh,” he said when he heard her voice.
Yep, she thought, wrong choice to call.
But they could get over this hump, move on, be happy again. She wanted to stay with him, and so she would apologize. Talking to him was not the wrong choice.
“I know you don’t want to talk yet, but I need to ask you something. I could drop by wherever you are,” she said hurriedly, not letting him sneak in a word edgewise.
“I, um—”
One minute later, she was on her bike and flying.
Zach was working late on a lovely street in Mt. Pleasant. It was one of his regular clients, and Jen had visited there before. In recent years, the unusually heavy rains would turn the backyard into a jungle, but now, what Jen saw when she arrived resembled a burnt-out sheep pasture in Greece.
Zach looked tired. Dead leaves were tangled in his hair, and dirt and sweat were smeared across his bare chest. But when his beautiful hands brushed away a thatch of hair that had tumbled into his eyes, the familiar gesture aroused Jen’s feelings of tenderness and desire. She wanted to hold him. To feel her face against his chest, dirty or not. Tell him how sorry she was that she hadn’t told him. Reassure him about Chandler in the way she’d been reassured before the implant procedure. Make this better.
And yet, she hesitated. He looked wary, he seemed unsure.
They did not kiss. They did not touch.
“Hey,” he said.
“Hey back.”
“This is …” he said.
“Yeah.” She added, “We should …”
“I don’t think I’m ready to talk.”
“I was going to say, talk sometime.”
“Yeah.”
Start with the apology, she thought. But she realized that as soon as she apologized, and if he accepted the apology for not telling him, the logical question was whether she’d have it removed. She could not imagine doing so; she could not imagine not having Chandler with her when she worked. Still, she must apologize. She would do so before she left. But first …
“Zach, can you try again to reach the people from the co-op?” she asked.
“Why’s it so important?”
“Remember the Fourth of July? When those two people were killed?”
“Of course I do.” His tone was harsh. He sucked in his breath, as if he hadn’t meant it. But Jen knew how much he hated the horrors she saw each day.
Time to show some trust, she thought. She said, “I need to tell you something I’m not supposed to. I feel silly saying this, but I need you to promise not to tell anyone.”
He waited to hear what she would say. She waited for him to promise not to tell. She blinked first. “Well, do you?”
“Jesus. If you tell me not to tell anyone, then of course I won’t.”
“Fine,” she said. “There’ve been reports of an illegal street version of the treatment. We arrested someone for assault who said they were trying to buy it. She referred to it as Eden.”
“I still don’t see a connection to the co-op.”
“Right before she died, Odette Johnson—one of the people who got shot—said they were planning on getting to Eden. And it turns out she worked sometimes at the co-op. She was a nurse and did a clinic there. Her son says she started talking about Eden after she started working there.”
He stared at her, anger written on his face. “You think they’re drug dealers?”
“I’m not saying that. I’m trying to figure out how or even if it fits together. I need to talk to them. Find out about her, about her work there, and ask if they know anything about Eden.”
“And if they’re connected?”
“No harm, as long as they’re not scamming people.”
“They don’t scam. They don’t rip off. And they don’t push drugs.”
“Then can you try again to contact them?”
She could see his mind wrestling. And knowing what she did about him, she was guessing he was still hurt, still angry, but that he also realized he was being petulant and that she was showing him trust. And, sure enough, the Zach she loved won out.
“I guess I better ’fess up,” he said.
“What?”
“I did reach them.”
“What! You said to my face that you couldn’t.”
“They asked me not to tell anyone.”
“Meanwhile, you’re on my case about Chandler.”
“There’s no comparison. One is a friend—”
“And more important than me?”
“—who asked me to keep a personal secret. Another is the news that you have a living thing inside you, doing—I don’t even know what this thing is doing.”
“But you lied to me,” Jen argued.
“They know you’re a cop.”
“How would they know that?”
“I told them. What’s wrong with that? Suddenly ashamed of your job?”
Her phone rang. The nursing home. Her first thought was she’s finally dead.
But the bubbly administrator bubbled an over-the-top greeting.
“Not now!” Jen barked, and hung up.
She knew that now she was being the petulant one but, unable to stop herself, she turned and walked away without another word.
17
Tuesday, July 17—08:47:51
We sat on a bench in the crowded waiting area. Jen said it was uncomfortable; I took her word for it. Next to us, a man waited for his own court appearance. He was scared. I knew this because his skin was popping off micro-explosions of fear gas like a new war was gearing up.
08:48:07.
A lithe Black woman arrived in the waiting area and cautiously looked around. “Victim,” I said. Jen is okay at recognizing people, but last time we saw Makela Franklin, she’d been decked out in yellow running gear. Now she wore a crisp white shirt and metallic slacks that matched the aluminum lunchbox purse that every other professional seems to be toting this year.
DA Celeste Delong burst in, panting, and came to us first. “Damn elevator’s out again. You ready?”
Jen said she was. Celeste huffed her way across the crowded room and started talking to Ms. Franklin. We watched the two of them. Celeste asked her something, Ms. Franklin shook her head no. Celeste spoke. Ms. Franklin shook her head again.
“Chandler, what are they saying?” She stared at their lips for me. Strictly speaking—well, any speaking—we shouldn’t be listening in on a conversation between a DA and the victim and chief witness, but I translated.
“‘I’m not sure anymore.’
“‘When we talked, you were certain what happened. How’s this possible?’
“‘Just is.’
“‘Ms. Franklin, this is really important. This guy’s a Nazi. He wants to kill people like us. He attacked you. I want him in jail.’
“‘I wasn’t really harmed.’”
Jen said, “Shit.”
At 09:00:00 on the dot, an entourage paraded in. As a sea of anxious people parted, I thought Moses and the Israelites had landed. The short procession headed to the courtroom door, glancing neither left nor right. Lawyer David Samuels was in the lead, followed by defendant James O’Neil, dressed like a preppy Yale undergrad in a brochure photo. Richard O’Neil, clothes on, was serious, but calm. Two women and a man carried briefcases and a file box.
“Trying to intimidate everyone,” Jen muttered to me. Part of Jen’s job was to educate me about the quirks of human behavior. But this time I thought she had it wrong.
“No,” I said. “I don’t think th
ese types need to try at all. You’re looking at power on legs.”
If Jen could have stared at me in surprise, I would have felt those eyes of hers bearing down. Damn if I wasn’t getting smarter by the day.
They stopped in front of the guard at the door. Samuels whispered to James, who smoothed down his hair and hid his smirk under a winning collegiate smile. Richard looked around as if he’d just sailed into an expensive restaurant and was checking for friends.
The guard announced our case and opened the doors.
Unless you’re a lawyer or the defendant in a murder case who might be wearing normal clothes for the last time in your life, courtrooms are astoundingly boring places. Forget everything you’ve seen on TV. This place makes watching a bowl of oatmeal cool down seem exhilarating.
The first item was a defense request to empty the room of the public and the media. Don’t even ask me to repeat the arguments, and anyway, much was said in hushed tones directly to the bench. Apparently they were persuasive. The judge booted out forty-one people.
Procedural matters dragged on for two hours. Jen was just about dozing off when her name rang out. Samuels was saying, “As we mentioned to Your Honor, we requested a closed trial because Detective Lu has a synthetic implant. We would like permission to question this implant directly.”
Back and forth arguments. Celeste lost. “Damn,” said Jen. But I was going to have my day in the sun.
I’ll spare you the details. Makela Franklin said she didn’t recognize the defendant. Yes, perhaps he was the one who yelled at her and then ran away, but she couldn’t be certain. And it might have been an entirely different person who pushed her down the minute before.
Celeste called Jen to the stand. Jen made the mistake of looking away from Celeste, and for a second our eyes rested on Richard O’Neil. A hint of a smile raised the corners of his mouth. He nodded at her—an infinitesimally small nod, but he might as well have shouted instructions.
I felt it; I sensed it. A micro-battle flashed like lightning through Jen’s brain. Richard O’Neil burned bright. For a second, I wondered who was going to win out: Jen, dazzled by this man, or Cobalt Blue, the cop keeping her oath.
The Last Exit Page 11