* * *
“Tell me again,” Zach said, “that you didn’t know that was going to happen.”
It was a half hour later, and Jen was on her phone with him.
“We’d heard rumors, that’s all.”
“You—”
“Zach, I’m phoning to make sure you’re okay, not to have an argument.”
He let out a huff of air. “I’m … pissed off. I’m really upset.”
“I tried to find you and Ximena.”
“We were near the back. Hadn’t even gotten to the FBI building. The SWAT—”
“—Ultras—”
“—troops attacked from behind, but we got away. God, what an idiot.” And then as if he might think we misunderstood, “Whoever that guy was. No one seems to know who he was.”
“Any idea why he chose the FBI building?” Jen asked. I’d already asked her the same question, wondering if it had anything to do with the FBI issuing reports around the street treatment.
“Dunno. Probably because no one likes the FBI.”
I felt Jen thaw. “See,” she said, “there are some political things we agree about.”
There was a brief hesitation, and then he laughed. A tentative, nervous laugh, but still a laugh.
Jen said, “I better go.”
“Enough fraternizing with the enemy?”
“You’re not—”
“Teasing you. Tonight?”
“Tonight.”
After they hung up, Jen told me to pull up the sheet on the spray painter. Got a name. Saw a dozen charges. “Who is he?” Jen asked. I searched. Damn it, he didn’t actually exist.
32
“Ximena’s really pissed off.”
“She must be,” Jen replied. Just she and Zach having dinner at the kitchen table. The air tense, that morning’s demo still on both their minds.
Zach studied her as if trying to decide if she was being sarcastic.
“I’m serious,” Jen said. “I like her.”
“That guy, what’s he been charged with?”
“Assault causing bodily harm, resisting arrest, defacing government property, and disturbing the peace.”
“Jesus.”
“And article four of the 2027 Urban Terrorism Act. Zach, did you find out anything more about him?”
Zach shook his head.
They ate silently until Jen said, “This is really good,” not so much because it was, but to break the silence.
Zach set down his knife and fork.
“Jen, I can’t have them do it.” She knew he meant his mother and father. “It’s just, well, I love them more than anything, and they don’t deserve to die.”
“I got my test results.”
He looked at her with alarm.
“On Tuesday. I didn’t want to tell you.”
He started to speak but caught her expression.
“I’m positive, Zach. I …” A few tears escaped her eyes, but she steeled herself. “I don’t want to cry, Zach. I don’t want to let myself cry.”
But when he laid his hand on hers, she couldn’t stop the quiet sobs of fear and defeat.
She wiped her eyes. She talked about getting the results. How she was scared to tell him.
“Scared?”
“Not of anything you’d do or say. Scared to say it out loud.”
“It’ll be okay.”
“It’s funny. All I’ve been able to think about for the past year was finally having Mother out of my life forever. I knew it might save me, but it was all so abstract. But this changes it, doesn’t it? I sign those papers, I’m killing her so I can live.”
“You’re—”
“Of course I am, and you know it.”
“But you said it yourself: she might not last for another five years.”
“Then it’s okay to kill her?”
“No,” he said. “But I want you to live.”
“And her to die?”
“That’s not what I said.”
“It’s all pretty awful, isn’t it?”
“Yeah.” Zach shook his head. “It is.”
“Your parents, I don’t want them to die either. But I want us to live and have a place and …”
“I know.”
“Do you think they’ll agree? Not exiting?”
“I have a few months to convince them.”
“Zach, I’m still going to sign those papers.”
They were silent for a long time.
The sun set.
The kitchen grew dark.
She starting to get up. “I’ll get the light.”
“No, wait,” he said.
“What?”
“If we could get the treatment—not the stuff that’s killing people—but if we could somehow get it … would you?”
She could not make out his expression, which meant he couldn’t make out hers.
* * *
With an unspoken agreement, they spent the rest of the weekend without once mentioning exit or the treatment or the demonstration. That lasted until Sunday night. Jen was reading a book; Zach was writing out the schedule for planting a big garden, assuming the weather cooled down a bit and the rains started again in the fall. It was handwritten in neat columns of dates and plans. Month Day: Work Item.
Zach had just written October 20: and had his pencil poised as if to write down a task, when he stopped. His eyes fixed on the distance.
“Jen, remember your Bible quotes?”
“What about them?”
“Maybe they weren’t quotes. Maybe it was some sort of code for dates.”
He was quiet for a moment, then said, “Acts could be April or August.”
“Acts 12:19.”
“Could be April or August twelfth or nineteenth.”
“Or two dates,” she said. “Twelfth and nineteenth.”
“And that makes sense for the Bible passage that didn’t exist.”
“John 9:16.”
“Could be January, June, or July. But this doesn’t work for Ephesians. Last I checked, no month starts with E.”
“But she wrote it ‘Spesians.’”
“September.”
“September fourth or eleventh. Or fourth and eleventh.”
“Jen, see the pattern? In each set, add seven to the first and you get the second number.”
Like giving counterfeit treatments. One week apart.
* * *
After that, all Jen could think about for the rest of Sunday evening was the one person she really needed to speak to.
On Monday afternoon, she was back on the rooftop, facing Captain Brooks. Strange things had been happening that day around the station. When she tried to find the captain in the morning, his assistant said he was at a meeting. Hammerhead had a different take: “Three guys I never seen come and take him away.”
“You mean like arresting him?”
Hammerhead laughed at the absurdity of this. “Then again,” he said, no longer laughing, “they were definitely escorting him to their car.”
The captain was back four hours later.
Someone had left out a couple of plastic chairs on the roof, perhaps from a lunchtime break, and Brooks, looking more tired than Jen had ever seen him, was leaning heavily on one of them.
“This better be good,” he said.
Shit, she thought. “It’s, well—”
“Detective, it’s been a hell of a day. Spit it out, will you?”
“I think I figured out who’s distributing the treatment, at least one of them.” She told him about the stolen Bible and the missing receipts. She told him what was written on the missing slip.
“You remembered all that?”
“Chandler helped. I thought they were Bible quotes. You know, chapter and verse. But one verse didn’t exist, and none of them seemed worth quoting. I think they’re actually dates, in a simple code, one week apart. And each date, one month apart—July, August, and September. I think it was Odette Johnson’s note to herself. She was helpin
g run a clinic for the co-ops. She was working with doctors. I’m guessing they were the ones administering this Eden.”
“The one that’s killing people.”
And here Jen hesitated. It just wasn’t consistent with her impression of Mary Sue and Ximena. Nor even Devin, who seemed a hothead, but not a murderer.
“It’s smart work, Jen. But you’re right to hesitate. I don’t think it’s them … It’s not them. Forget that.”
“But—”
“I’ve got—”
“Sir, there’s one other thing. At the demo about exit, that guy who tried to spray paint the FBI building.”
“What about him?”
“He doesn’t exist.”
“Where is he now?”
“He was released on bail. With an electronic anklet. But we just checked and the anklet is back in inventory.”
He shook his head in disgust. “It still happens.”
Jen didn’t need to be told this. In fact, whenever she heard that violence had broken out at a demonstration, or some fringe group had smashed up windows, she figured it was because a police agent provocateur had done it or pushed someone into it. Violence didn’t win you allies; violence made you easy to isolate and discredit.
Under his breath, the captain muttered, “Special Assignments.”
“Sir?”
“Nothing. To use the old cliché, above your pay grade.”
Jen almost rolled her eyes.
Brooks must have noticed. He said, “I guess no one says that anymore.”
“Sir, I think that went out with pumpkin spices in coffee.”
He smiled. For the first time in recorded District 1 history, Captain Brooks smiled. A weary smile, perhaps, but there it was.
Then, just as quickly, the smile departed to a distant galaxy, and his face sagged under the weight of exhaustion. He slumped down onto the plastic seat and leaned forward, propping his elbows on his knees. He rubbed at the scar above his eye.
Jen didn’t quite know what to do with this, so she started to wander to the edge of the roof to look out at the view.
“Don’t go over there,” he barked. “I don’t want anyone seeing you.”
This whole roof business, she thought, is so weird. But she turned back, and he waved a hand at the other chair. When she sat down, it felt as if they’d come up for a friendly chat, which made her feel not relaxed, but awkward and stiff.
“Tell me, Jen … tell me why you became a cop.”
“I don’t know. Decent pay, a real job. Do some good.”
“That’s a beauty contest answer.”
“That was a beauty contest question. Sir.”
This time he didn’t smile.
What the hell, she thought. “Actually, I wanted to put people like my mother in prison.”
He looked at her sharply.
“She was abusive, sir. Really abusive. No one big act, just years of misery inflicted on me.”
“And now you’re arresting parents who don’t kill themselves.”
“Well, we—”
“You know what I mean. It’s all pretty fucked, isn’t it?”
To Jen, it felt like hearing a priest swear.
“That’s what my boyfriend’s been telling me. I don’t know what I think.”
“So, have you changed anything. Done good?”
“I don’t know. I try.”
The obvious then occurred to her. His questions were as much to himself as to her.
“Sir, why did you?” He seemed not to hear her. “You know, become a cop?”
He now looked at her with suspicion.
“Sir, I read this article about the DC18, by a journalist who lives at my mother’s retirement home,” she said.
“Let me guess. Gabriel Cohen.”
Jen nodded.
“Jesus,” he said. “Twice in one day.” He was talking to himself. “Nothing for years, and now twice in one fucking day.”
He looked up at her, his hard eyes clawing into her face. She willed herself not to flinch, but it did no good and she dropped her gaze.
“Listen to me carefully,” Brooks said. “If anyone asks you about us coming up here, don’t lie. Say we did, tell them the number of times. But don’t tell them what we discussed. Say we never talked about work. Say I told you to leave your phone downstairs and turn off your synth. Say we talked about everyday things, the weather, that I asked you what you liked eating, we talked baseball, I asked what you did on your time off. That I never said much, that I never hit on you, that I’d ask you questions and you’d talk. And if they say you’re bullshitting them, say you thought it was weird yourself. But you thought it was because I was lonely. Since my wife died—that sort of thing. Say you figured I needed someone to talk to, figured I needed a woman to talk to, just about boring, ordinary things. Say you figured I was embarrassed to talk, and that’s why I had you turn off your synth.”
“Sir, I don’t—”
“You don’t need to understand. Right now, you just need to listen.”
He waited until she nodded.
“I need to hear it. A promise.”
“Sir, I promise.”
“This is to save your skin. And maybe do that bit of good you talked about.”
“And then?”
“Don’t trust a soul.”
She thought of Les. Of Zach. Of Chandler. “No one?”
Pain was now etched into those hard eyes of his. “If they’re still breathing, don’t fucking trust them.”
33
Monday, August 13—13:52:48
Jen popped me out of diagnostic mode. When she left me, she had been an anxious preteen heading for her first merit badge test; now, the agitated woman in my head was pulsing anxiety off the chart.
“You okay, boss?”
No response. Bad sign. The captain must have chewed her out good.
“And don’t,” she added, “pump me with your damn drugs.”
I was going to say they were her damn drugs, but I decided to can it.
Earlier, while she had waited for Brooks to return, we had spent the morning digging up whatever we could about Teena Archambault, the woman in the foyer of Richard O’Neil’s club. There were reams of info—reams being another one of those near antiquated words humans hang on to, this one referring to a large stack or packet of paper. Although I guess not totally antiquated, since Jen and I had hidden behind reams of paper in the print room of said club—
Where was I? I’m finding as my mind expands, it’s becoming harder to stick with one train of thought.
Start again. There were reams of info about her career and good community deeds, photos of her shaking hands with other movers and shakers, and stories about what her one child was up to. Nothing explicitly said she was one of the Timeless, but then again, nothing ever did. There was no official list, you just assumed if some ultra-rich eighty-year-old showed up on a skateboard with their tongue newly pierced, he or she had gotten the full treatment. It was sort of like the old days in Hollywood, when actual people still played the role of stars and there were A-list and B-list actors, even though there were no actual lists.
As we’d suspected, it did seem she had indeed taken the treatment and had chosen to look in her late sixties. Her current position was senior vice president for government relations for GPRA, which probably meant she was the de facto ruler of several countries. She’d been recruited not only for her industry experience, but for her Rolodex—aha! another antiquated word—that included names in very high places. She seemed to spend no time at the GPRA Tower in London, or in any of their other offices, for that matter. She had homes in Zurich and Manhattan, and a superyacht wherever it wanted to be.
Finally, in the mid-afternoon, we knew we were closing in. There she was, in a photograph taken at a Fourth of July party at the White House, standing between the president and vice president, both of whom seem pleased as punch to be with her.
By four, we found her—or at least the building
in DC where she was working. The Dwight D. Eisenhower Executive Office Building, or EOB, home of the offices of the vice president of the United States, along with many White House staff.
“Chandler,” Jen said, “grab your coat.”
* * *
When I was young, I never got awed by anything I saw. Things were things. But after hanging around the dump we call our District headquarters and visiting more buildings and homes than anyone other than a bio-computer could count, I’ve developed not only a large database but also an appreciation for style. The EOB had it in spades, especially, I read as we headed over on foot, after its 2027–2028 renovation. I’ll spare you the architectural tour, but let’s just say that the interior circular staircase was worth the price of admission. Jen said she could see why the building was her housemate Ava’s favorite.
The security check made the airport routine look like flipping a latch on a toilet cubicle. Eventually, we made it through and took the elevator up to an office on the fourth floor. A pleasant-looking young man sat at an ornate cherrywood table, which held a neat stack of papers, an oversized coffee mug, and a computer screen that looked like a sheet of glass poised above the table.
Jen produced her badge. “We’d like to ask Ms. Archambault a few questions concerning an ongoing investigation.”
“One minute,” he said. He went to a door, knocked, and disappeared inside.
We sat down on one of two chairs that served as a reception area. This place obviously wasn’t set up to entertain the masses.
He returned and repeated, “One minute.” Nice and polite. Neatly dressed. He sat at his table, his back to us.
Perhaps they count differently in these higher reaches, but one minute it wasn’t. Jen read on her phone. Boring stuff. I said we should look around the office. Nothing to see, she said, but she graciously scanned the room for me. It was elegant like no office I’d ever seen, but there was nothing that gave away what they were doing there. You win, I said.
She continued reading. After a while, she must have gotten bored, too, because she spent some time watching the nice-looking man as he read through a paper report, hand-writing notes on the side.
His phone rang. We looked up again. He listened. “One second,” he said, “let me check his calendar.” Head down, I said, and Jen pretended to read her phone but watched him, head lowered, looking up through her lashes. He pulled out a drawer under the ornate table and rested his fingers on his mousepad. The clear screen above his desk darkened. Only when he looked at the screen did it come to life. He touched an icon. Jen could make out a calendar, but it was all fuzzy, like hers before she typed in her secondary password. His hands seemed to hover over his keyboard.
The Last Exit Page 20