“Ah, well, that explains it.”
“We went there last summer. Man, I love Paris. The Quai des Orfèvres, Place Dauphine, duck confit with sautéed potatoes at the Caveau du Palais…”
Pinch me, I’ve got to be dreaming!
Alice decided to take advantage of the situation. “If your wife would like, I could give you both a tour of the precinct next time you’re in France.”
“Wow, that’s very kind. She—”
“But first, I need your help,” she said, taking off her army jacket and her sweater. She pulled down the neck of her T-shirt and pointed to the rectangular implant under her skin.
“What is that?” he asked, frowning.
“That’s exactly what I’m trying to find out.”
He washed his hands with antibacterial soap and examined the upper part of Alice’s chest, pressing on the skin so he could make out the little rectangle. “Does this hurt?”
“Not really.”
“It looks like some sort of miniature pacemaker. Do you have heart problems?”
“No. I don’t even know who implanted this thing or how long it’s been there.”
Unfazed, the doctor said, “Let’s take a chest X-ray so we can get a better look.”
Alice nodded. Mitchell gave her a paper gown and left the room; she removed her T-shirt and bra and put the gown on. Two minutes later he came back and brought her to the X-ray room. An X-ray tech told her where to stand. Alice did as she was told.
“Take a deep breath and hold it,” the tech said. “Okay…”
She heard a click.
“Now breathe normally. We’re going to get another view.”
The process was repeated, then Dr. Mitchell asked Alice to follow him into an adjoining room. Mitchell sat down behind a bank of monitors, pulled up the images on the screens, and made a few adjustments. “Well, that’s something I’ve never seen before!” he exclaimed, pointing at a white rectangle.
“Is it a microchip?” Alice asked.
“I can’t imagine what kind it would be,” he replied, scratching his head.
“I was thinking an RFID chip,” said Alice. “You know, radio-frequency identification—the kind they use on pets. I went to a conference about this last year, for work. Apparently in South America, some rich people get them implanted so they can be found quickly if they’re kidnapped.”
“The army uses them more and more with soldiers sent into combat.” Mitchell nodded, still staring at the X-ray. “The chip stores all their medical information. If something happens to them, the doctors have immediate access to their medical files with a quick scan. That type of procedure is becoming more common, but those chips are much smaller, no bigger than a grain of rice. Yours is pretty big.”
“So what could it be?”
The physician frowned in concentration. “I’ve seen quite a few articles in medical magazines in recent years about researchers developing electronic chips that can deliver regular doses of medicine. It’d be a convenient way to treat certain conditions. It’s already used in medication for osteoporosis, for instance, but in that case the chip would be in your abdomen, and it would also be much bigger.”
“So?”
“I still think it looks like a pacemaker.”
“But I told you, I don’t have any heart problems!”
The doctor returned to his monitor and zoomed in on the chip.
“The shape of your implant is nonstandard, but I’m pretty sure it’s made of titanium,” he said.
Alice moved her face closer to the screen. “All right, assuming it is a pacemaker…I have a colleague with one, and he needs surgery every seven years to have the battery changed.”
“Yeah, that sounds about right. Generally, the operation takes place every six to ten years. And most pacemakers have lithium batteries.”
Alice gestured at the image. “How could there be batteries in such a small device?”
Looking pensive, Dr. Mitchell said, “I imagine yours doesn’t have a battery.”
“Then how would it work?”
“Maybe some kind of self-generating system. A piezoelectric sensor that would transform the movements of your rib cage into electricity. That’s one of the methods they’re currently working on to reduce the size of pacemakers.”
He took a plastic ruler from the console and used it as a pointer. “You see this slightly rounded part that looks like a notch?”
Alice nodded.
“I think it’s a connector that links the pacemaker to your heart via a catheter.”
“So where’s the catheter?”
“Nowhere. That’s exactly why it’s strange.”
“So what is the pacemaker connected to?”
“Nothing,” the doctor admitted. “The way it’s currently configured, it can’t send electrical impulses.”
Doubtfully, Alice asked: “Could you remove it?”
“One of my colleagues might be able to, but it would require an operation and more tests.”
Alice’s brain was working at a hundred miles an hour. “One last thing. I checked, and I don’t have any wounds at all on my chest, neck, or armpits. How could it have been implanted without leaving any trace?”
Mitchell bit his lip. “Either you’ve had it for a long time…”
“Impossible. I would have noticed.”
“Or it was implanted via another opening.”
To the doctor’s amazement, Alice unbuckled her belt, removed her ankle boots, and pulled off her pants. She examined her ankles, her legs, knees. At the top of her thigh, she noticed a transparent Band-Aid, and her heart began to pound again. She peeled it off and found a small incision.
“Yeah, my guess is that’s where it was introduced,” the doctor said, looking closely at the wound. “The implant is so small that they could have placed it using a catheter.”
Perplexed, Alice put her clothes back on. This investigation had moved beyond the realm of the baffling, frightening, and surreal and was now becoming completely insane.
“So, to sum up,” she said, “I have a pacemaker with no battery and no catheter that is not connected to any of my organs?”
“It makes no sense, I agree,” Mitchell said, “but yeah.”
“Then what does it do?”
“That’s exactly what I’m wondering.”
19
In the Land of
the Living
NIGHT FELL SLOWLY.
The final rays of the setting sun blazed like a fireworks display. The forest was incandescent. In the foreground, the maples, ashes, and birches were a whirlwind of bright flames, the larches all gold and the lindens pure fire. Then the golden-brown glow of the beeches, the black blood of the sumacs and red oaks, the crimson embers of the rowan trees. And, farther off, a high green wall of pines was overhung by the angular, mineral mass of mountains.
In Greenfield, Gabriel had filled the car with gas, added oil, and found a new spare tire. When Alice met him at the garage, she told him the latest news from Seymour about the origin of the Glock and where her Audi had been found. Instinctively, she decided not to tell him about the foreign body she had discovered under her skin. She wanted to know more about it before she shared this unlikely piece of information.
They began driving again, but on I-91 near Brattleboro, a fuel tanker had overturned and gas had spread everywhere, so emergency services had closed that part of the interstate.
Forced off the highway and onto minor roads, Gabriel had to drive more slowly. At first, Alice and Gabriel had cursed their bad luck, but gradually they let themselves be lulled by the peacefulness of the land they were driving through. They listened to a local radio station that played rock standards—“American Pie” by Don McLean, “Me and Bobby McGee” by Janis Joplin, “Heart of Gold” by Neil Young—and they even bought cider and cinnamon doughnuts from a roadside stand.
For nearly an hour, their investigation was put on a back burner.
The landscape was picturesq
ue, punctuated by footpaths, covered bridges, spectacular views, and mountain streams. Mostly full of rolling hills, the area became flatter for several miles and they found themselves on a country road passing through a succession of pretty villages, timeless farms, and wide-open fields where cows grazed.
For a while, Alice was calmed by the purr of the engine. The region reminded her of family vacations in Normandy when she was young. Time seemed to have stopped here. Whenever they drove through a village, they felt as if they had gone back a hundred years. It was like living in a New England postcard of old barns with pitched roofs and trees with flame-colored leaves.
The spell was abruptly broken when Alice opened the glove compartment to get her gun. When she had first joined the police, she used to make fun of her older colleagues who carried their weapons even when they weren’t on duty. But as time passed, she became just like them—she needed the weight of the gun against her ribs in order to feel at ease, to feel like herself.
The pistol was where she had left it, strapped inside its leather holster, but next to it, she found a child’s toy, a metal car painted white with blue racing stripes—an exact replica of the Mustang Shelby they were driving at that moment.
“What’s this?”
Gabriel glanced at the toy. “Just one of Kenny’s little gadgets, I assume.”
“It wasn’t here earlier.”
Gabriel shrugged. “Maybe you didn’t look properly.”
“I’m sure that the glove compartment was empty when I put my gun in it,” Alice barked.
“Does it matter?” Gabriel scowled.
“I thought we were being honest with each other.”
He sighed. “Okay. Barbie’s cousin gave it to me. Very nice guy, actually. He collects Hot Wheels. He must have at least three hundred of them. Unbelievable, isn’t it?”
“You’re right. It is unbelievable,” she repeated, staring into his eyes.
Exasperated, he raised his voice: “What? Look, the guy was just being nice. He offered me this toy and I took it to be polite. That’s all. Do we really have to spend the whole evening discussing it?”
Alice exploded. “Stop treating me like an imbecile! Are you seriously trying to convince me that this guy and you became so friendly that he gave you a car from his collection? And anyway, the price tag is still on the box.”
Gabriel gave her a hostile stare before lighting the cigarette that he had tucked behind his ear. He took a few drags. The odor of tobacco filled the car, and Alice lowered her window to get rid of the smoke. She kept staring hard at her partner, scrutinizing his dark eyes, his angry expression, hoping to pierce his secretiveness and guess at some hidden truth.
And suddenly, it came to her: “You have a son,” she murmured, as if talking to herself.
He froze. There was silence.
She went on. “You bought the toy for him.”
He turned toward her. His black eyes gleamed like oil. Alice realized she had touched a nerve.
“Yes,” he admitted, taking a drag on his cigarette, “I have a little boy. I just wanted to get him a gift. Is that okay with you?”
Embarrassed, Alice wasn’t sure she wanted to continue this conversation. But she did anyway, asking in a soft voice: “What’s his name?”
Gabriel turned up the volume on the radio and shook his head. He had not expected this untimely intrusion into his privacy.
“I think we have more important problems to deal with, Schafer.”
His expression grew sad. He blinked several times and finally said: “His name is Theo. He’s six.”
From his intonation, Alice realized that this was a painful subject.
Moved, she turned down the music and made a peace offering. “It’s a nice little car,” she said, holding the miniature Shelby. “I bet he’ll like it.”
Suddenly, Keyne grabbed the toy from her hand and threw it out the window. “It’s no use. I never see him anyway.”
“Gabriel, no!”
She gripped the steering wheel, forcing him to stop the car. Incensed, he slammed on the brakes, pulled over to the side of the road, and leaped out of the car.
Alice watched him walk away in the rearview mirror. They were on a narrow road that wound down toward a valley. She saw Gabriel sit on a rocky outcropping that jutted into the void like the plank of a ship. He finished his cigarette and immediately lit another one. Alice got out of the car, picked up the toy from where it was lying on the grassy roadside a few yards back, then walked up to Gabriel.
“I’m sorry,” she said, joining him on the rock.
“Don’t sit there, it’s dangerous.”
“If it’s dangerous for me, it’s dangerous for you too.” She leaned forward and saw a lake down below. The ephemeral palette of fall colors was vividly reflected in the water.
“Why don’t you see him more often?”
He made a dismissive gesture. “He lives in London with his mother. It’s a long story.”
She stole a cigarette from him, but the wind made it difficult to light. He handed her his and, just when she was least expecting it, unburdened his heart to her.
“I haven’t always worked for the FBI. Before I joined the Bureau, I was a street cop in Chicago.” He narrowed his eyes, letting the memories rise to the surface of his mind. “Chicago is where I was born, and it’s where I met my wife. The two of us grew up in Ukrainian Village, the neighborhood where a lot of the Eastern European immigrants live. It’s a pretty quiet place, northwest of the Loop.”
“Were you in the homicide unit?”
“Yeah, on the South Side, which covers some of the city’s toughest neighborhoods: Englewood, New City…”
He took a long drag on his cigarette before continuing. “Those areas are all run by gangs. They’re places of fear and despair, and as a cop, there’s not much you can do. Whole neighborhoods under the control of little thugs with guns who think they’re Scarface. They rule through terror.”
Memories filled his mind. A past he preferred to keep at a distance but that was now, against his will, submerging him again.
“Don’t you ever get the feeling that we—cops, I mean—are working for the dead? If you think about it, they’re our real clients. They’re the ones we’re accountable to. They’re the ones who haunt us at night when we fail to find their murderers. My wife often used to complain about that: ‘You spend more time with the dead than the living.’ I guess she was right, when it comes down to it—”
Alice interrupted Gabriel. “That’s not true! We work for their families, for the people who loved them, to allow them to grieve, to give them justice, to make sure that the killers never do it again!”
He frowned doubtfully and continued his story. “Well, one day, I decided to really help the living. In Englewood, I was in daily contact with a mediators’ association. They were all types of people, a lot of them social workers and local ex-cons, who had joined together to try to do what police, as representatives of the law, couldn’t—smooth things out, de-escalate conflicts, reduce tensions. And, most important, save the people who could still be saved.”
“The youngest ones?”
“The ones who weren’t drug addicts yet. Sometimes, the volunteers would blur the lines of legality. A few times, I helped them ‘exfiltrate’ young prostitutes from the neighborhood by providing them with fake IDs, some money seized from arrested drug dealers, a train ticket for the West Coast, a place to stay once they got there, the promise of a job…”
Like Paul, Alice thought in spite of herself.
The forest was reflected in Gabriel’s eyes, giving his gaze a disturbing intensity. “I was so sure I was doing good, I didn’t realize the risks I was taking. I’d decided to ignore all the warnings and threats I received. That was dumb—pimps and drug lords don’t just sit back and take it if you rob them of their livelihood.”
He kept talking, silences punctuating his words. “In January 2009, my wife’s younger sister was supposed to go skiing for the
weekend with her friends to celebrate her birthday. She asked to borrow our SUV, and we agreed. I can still see myself, standing on the porch, waving and saying, ‘Be careful, Joanne! Take it easy on the black diamonds!’ She was wearing a pom-pom hat that evening. Her cheeks were red with cold. She was eighteen. Full of life. She got behind the wheel of the Jeep, turned the key in the ignition. And…the car exploded. Those bastards in Englewood had planted a bomb in my car.”
Gabriel took his time lighting another cigarette with the butt of the last one. Then he began speaking again.
“The day after her sister’s funeral, my wife left, taking our son with her. She moved to London, where some of her family live. It all happened very fast after that. She filed for divorce and her lawyers got to work smearing my name. They accused me of being violent, being an alcoholic, going to prostitutes. They came up with false witnesses and used text messages taken out of context. I wasn’t able to fight back, and she got sole custody of Theo.”
He took a final drag on his cigarette and crushed it against the rock.
“I was allowed to see my son only twice a year. So one day, I cracked. I went to visit my wife in England. I tried reasoning with her, but she dug her heels in. Her lawyers did their stuff and they got a restraining order. Now I’m not allowed to see Theo ever again.”
A look of resignation passed over his face. Night was falling. The wind had grown stronger and it was getting cold. Touched by his story, Alice put her hand on his forearm. Suddenly, the phone rang, bursting the bubble of their intimacy.
They looked at each other, aware that the half-open door to this secret garden was about to close. She picked up.
“Seymour?” she answered, switching on the speaker.
“I found the sugar factory. I’m here now. Shit, this place is scary. Out in the middle of nowhere. This must be where they shot Evil Dead, right?”
“Tell me what you see.”
“It’s like the antechamber to hell.”
“Come on, don’t exaggerate.”
“And it’s pissing down, and I don’t have an umbrella.”
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