by Steven James
As people passed through the revolving doors at the front entrance, she had a thought: Out of the cage, into the world.
Last winter, Patrick had taken her to Johannesburg, South Africa, while he taught a three-day seminar at the Council of the Africas Crime Analysts’ Symposium, and it had struck her that in one of the most violent cities in the world, the upper class and above live in walled-in subdivisions patrolled by armed guards, with their houses protected by electric fences, security systems, guard dogs, and barred windows and doors.
When Patrick asked what she thought of the city, she’d told him, “The free people live behind bars and the criminals are allowed to run free.”
And after a moment, he’d answered, “I guess that’s a pretty accurate description.”
So here you go again—people deadbolt themselves into their hotel rooms, their cells, while the killers from this week walk around the city. Free.
Cages and freedom.
A zoo by another name.
And that brought the primate center to mind again.
Belle and the mirror self-recognition test.
Even Patrick could tell how much it had troubled her.
The deal wasn’t so much the research they were doing; that all seemed humane enough, as far as any research on animals goes. What bothered her were the implications. After all, the researchers weren’t just studying the neurology of violence but also the neurology of self-awareness, of morality.
Sure, at school she’d learned about evolution—mostly still the outdated theories that we evolved from gorillas, chimpanzees, or other modern knuckle-walking quadrupeds instead of Ardipithecus ramidus, but whatever—whether or not any of that was the case, or if natural selection had any divine intervention, she’d never really considered that there was a continuum of consciousness between humans and other animals.
A continuum of morality.
It didn’t take a genius to put two and two together and realize that if, as Dr. Risel had said, all human traits and behavior can be found in rudimentary form in the animal kingdom, then the difference between humans and animals would be merely one of degree, not of kind.
And that was the idea that bothered her.
In essence, nothing except time and mutation would separate us from other animals. Behavior that we consider to be moral would have developed fundamentally out of natural selection as the most beneficial behavior for propagating the species. And if that were the case, morality would be simply functional—determined by the biological imperatives of reproduction and survival.
What is good for the species is good.
What is bad for the species is bad.
Morality would be utilitarian, nothing more.
She was staring at the front doors of this giant human cage sorting through her feelings toward all of this when she saw a man step into the hotel, pause, and look around.
The man was Paul Lansing.
Her father.
57
She quickly slid down in the chair and turned her head to the side so he wouldn’t see her.
What is he doing here!
He was following her. He had to be following her!
She unpocketed her cell to call Patrick, but before she could speed-dial him, she had a thought.
Paul thinks Patrick has an anger problem . . . that he’s violent . . .
If Paul was following her—which obviously he was—then he would definitely have seen Patrick enter the hotel with her. So he would know that her stepfather was close by . . .
What is Paul trying to do?
There was no way to know for sure, but she didn’t trust him, and considering the custody suit, she couldn’t shake the thought that he was here to somehow ruin her chances of staying with Patrick.
She looked around for a sneak-off route, but as she did, Paul somehow picked out her face from all the others in the crowded lobby and started toward her.
No, no, no!
She put the phone away, grabbed her purse, and was picking up her laptop so she could leave, but as she did, she thought of a way to turn the tables on Paul, especially if he was trying to set up Patrick—if that was his little plan after all.
She left her laptop open.
Tapped at the keys.
Chelsea Traye had covered the shooting six years ago, and it hadn’t taken her long to help Marianne find the right raw footage. Now she was sitting on one side of me, Marianne on the other. Nick stood behind her, taking in the room, obviously impressed.
Marianne was downloading the network’s archived video footage, sending it through her system’s audio recognition program, flagging references to the words “Mollie Fischer,” “Lincoln Towers,” “Gunderson,” “primate,” “metacognition” and a dozen other keywords I’d given her.
“This program tags spoken words,” Marianne explained to us, “then grabs twenty seconds of audio on both sides of them so you can listen to the phrase in context.”
The files and video clips were piling up by the second. I was astonished by the amount of material the station had, and I realized most law enforcement agencies don’t even have the capability for this depth and breadth of research.
I certainly wouldn’t have time to listen to all of this audio right now. “Can you transcribe the audio files into text files?” I noticed Nick holding his cell in his right hand, tapping at the keys with the other. “You need to put that away in here,” I said. “Or you’ll have to leave.”
He looked embarrassed. “Sorry.”
He pocketed the phone, and Marianne said to me, “Sure, I can get you text files.”
She let her fingers loose on the keyboard, and a string of text messages appeared on the screen before me, hyperlinked to place markers in the video footage. And I began scrolling through the hundreds of snippets of text, looking for anything that might relate to Mollie Fischer’s abduction.
58
“Paul,” Tessa said as he approached her. “What are you doing here?” She tried to keep her voice even.
“I came to apologize.”
“Really.”
“Yes.”
“How did you know where I was?”
“One of my lawyers knows Mr. Lees, the manager. He mentioned that the FBI had showed up again and—”
“You’re almost as bad a liar as . . .” She hesitated. “Some people I know.”
He eyed her. “Would you believe I followed you here from your house?”
She shook her head. “Patrick would have noticed. He would have seen your car.”
Paul spoke softly. “Very few people would have.”
She stared at him questioningly. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Nothing.”
“Well, all right, you came to apologize. So apologize.”
“There are some things we need to talk about. Can I have a seat?”
“That’s not an apology.”
“I’m sorry that I was a little overbearing at the museum.”
“A little?”
“Please?” He gestured toward the chair.
She slid her purse and still-open laptop from the chair beside her to the end table and looked away as a way of acquiescing. He sat down, then she eyed him. “I already know what you’re here to talk about—the custody thing.”
“Patrick told you.”
“Of course he told me. I’m his daughter.”
She’d chosen the word daughter on purpose and waited for Paul to dare correct her, but he just accepted it and said, “I want what’s best for you.”
“Then leave me alone. Leave us both alone. You were never a part of my life before, and we all got by just fine. I don’t like how you took advantage of my mom and I don’t like how you questioned me about Patrick. And I don’t want you around me. End of story.”
“I hear what you’re saying, but remember the letter? The one I sent to your mother when she was planning to abort you? I wanted to be a part of your life. From the very start.”
She
hated to admit it, but that much was true, the letter had been unequivocal.
“Why?”
“Why what?”
“You barely even knew Mom. You told me you didn’t love her. Why did you want to be a part of my life?”
“Because I’m your father.” His voice was soft, sincere.
She was quiet.
“Look,” he said. “I came here to clear the air, to tell you what I did before I went to live in Wyoming.”
“I thought you came here to apologize.”
“Both.”
“I already know what you did. You worked for the Wyoming Game and Fish Department.”
“Not quite.”
“Oh, so that was a lie too.”
“I worked for the government.”
“Yeah? So?”
He waited as if he were expecting her to catch on.
Of course she knew that the phrase “I work for the government” was often used as a thinly veiled way to avoid admitting that you worked for the FBI or the DEA or CIA. Or maybe the ATF. You didn’t have to be a Washington insider to know that.
“What?” she said. “Are you telling me you were a spy or something? Oh, or maybe an assassin? A special forces black ops guy?” Then she leaned close and whispered, with faux admiration, “Are you the real G.I. Joe?”
He didn’t argue with her. And his silence seemed to be a way of making his case.
Enough of this.
“Either tell me what you came here to tell me or get lost.”
“I worked for the Secret Service, Tessa.”
“Yeah, right.”
“It’s true.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“How did I manage to follow you this morning without being seen? Without letting an experienced FBI agent notice he was being tailed?”
Patrick had no reason to think he might have a tail. Duh!
“Prove it. Show me an ID or something.”
To her surprise, Paul reached into his pocket and produced a credentials case similar to Patrick’s.
Her stepfather had been so intense about her not dating older guys that he’d taught her how to spot fake IDs, and when she studied Paul’s creds, even though they were six years out of date, they looked legit.
He tried to protect you when that sculpture shattered at the museum . . . He knows people at the Capitol . . . Used to live in DC . . . Patrick couldn’t dig up any dirt on him at all; the Secret Service could have done that—erased his record . . .
She gave him back the ID. “If what you’re saying is true, my mom would have told me.”
“I was in the middle of the application process when I met her. She knew that having a family, having attachments—especially children—was not . . . Well, let’s just say, when the government is looking for people willing to lay down their lives, they don’t want you to have any reason to hesitate.”
“And children and girlfriends are good reasons to hesitate—is that the deal?”
“Yes. The Secret Service doesn’t give the highest priority to applicants with lots of attachments.”
The vasectomy? Is that why he got it?
“So you’re saying I was a liability to your career. How nice.”
He ignored that. “I’m not sure what your mother was thinking, but I’ve always believed that she left because she wanted to protect both of us.”
“Or maybe she just didn’t want to be anywhere near you. Have you ever considered that?”
“Yes. I have.”
She eyed him. “How would it protect me? If she left you?”
“Family members of Secret Service agents are often targeted by people who might want to compromise that agent.”
Though she hated to admit it, some of what he was saying actually seemed to make sense. “Why are you telling me this now?”
“I didn’t want there to be any secrets between us.”
“Really? Who is Julia?”
“There is no Julia. I visited the Hirshhorn the day I flew in, chose a sculpture, and decided that its creator would be my reason to be in the city.”
“When all the while the real reason you’re here is to try to get custody of me.” She didn’t offer that as a question.
“You turn eighteen this fall. I couldn’t wait until then or it would be too late to get to know you before you moved away to live on your own.”
“You lied to me.”
“If I would have told you the truth up front, would you have agreed to see me yesterday?”
“I don’t know. But at least I’d trust you more than I do now.” As she mentioned that, she felt a slight sting of hypocrisy—after all, she’d deceived Patrick in almost the same way. And it’d probably had the same effect on him.
Paul didn’t reply.
Despite herself, she was starting to believe him. “How did you get into sculpting then?”
“I took some classes at a community college.”
That would explain why he knows, like, nothing about art and had to read all the explanatory plaques at the museum.
“So how come you live in the middle of nowhere? Were you fired from the Secret Service—and I’m not saying I believe you were ever actually in it, but if you were—were you fired or did you quit?”
“It was a mutually agreeable arrangement that I leave.”
“Explain ‘mutually agreeable arrangement.’”
He glanced around the atrium for a moment, then leaned closer and lowered his voice even more than he’d been doing for the conversation up until then. “Six years ago I was protecting Vice President Fischer when there was an attempt on his life, here, at the Lincoln Towers Hotel.”
59
Tessa said nothing.
“You were only eleven, you probably don’t remember that.”
“No. I do.”
“Really?” He sounded doubtful.
“I have an above average memory.”
She thought about the shooting and recalled that the gunman had missed the VP and was killed by—
Oh.
“You shot the guy? Is that what you’re saying?”
He shook his head. “No, I didn’t kill the assailant.”
“Well, then why was it mutually agreeable that you leave?”
He was quiet. Seconds passed. “Tessa, when Hadron Brady began shooting, I dove for cover. I didn’t return fire; I didn’t throw my body in the line of fire to protect the vice president. Rather than embarrass the service any further, I resigned, and they agreed to help me disappear so my actions wouldn’t reflect negatively on the agency.”
She processed everything. “You ran for cover?”
He nodded but said nothing.
He’s a coward. Your dad is a coward!
She told herself that obviously he’d been afraid when the shots were fired, but then she realized that if Patrick had been there, he might have been afraid, anyone would’ve been, but he wouldn’t have hidden, run away, backed down, dove for cover. He would have protected the person he was guarding. No matter what.
“What are you thinking?” Paul asked her.
“I’m thinking that if all this is true, you should have told me the first time we met, at your cabin.”
“I was trying to wait for the right time.”
“What makes this the right time?”
A small hesitation. “Apparently, it’s not.”
She felt a swarm of emotions. None of them good. “I think I’m done talking now.”
“Yes, well.” He rose. “I’ll see you later. I won’t meet with you without Patrick’s permission next time. I promise.”
She had the sense that she should say something about the custody case—So what’s happening with that? Are you still gonna go through with it?—or maybe she should tell him that she forgave him for not being up-front with her, but instead of any of that she just watched him walk away.
He’s a coward. That’s all he is.
Your father is a coward.
She waited until
he’d left the hotel before she tapped the keyboard to pause her computer’s video chat program that she’d been using to tape their entire conversation.
Then she scrolled down.
And clicked “save.”
I might have found something.
In the footage, in addition to mentioning room 809, the room in which we’d found the wheelchair, there were several references to room 814. It wasn’t clear if Hadron Brady, the shooter, had stayed in it or simply used it temporarily to snap his rifle together, but when I cross-referenced that room number against the maid’s records detailing which rooms were made up yesterday afternoon, the timing worked. The maids had cleaned it.
Timing and location.
The two rooms the killers chose were the same ones Brady had used.
Before telling Marianne what I’d noticed, I thanked Nick and Chelsea for their help, excused them, and they grudgingly collected their things and left the room.
“What is it?” Marianne asked.
I pointed at the screen. “Is anybody staying in that room?”
She looked it up. Shook her head. “No. Not since Tuesday.”
So if the killers used it; evidence might still be present.
But then why would the maids have serviced it?
This whole case was beginning to remind me of a cave system—a series of subterranean passageways that you can’t identify by looking only at the surface—you only find the connections when you actually climb down and start picking your way through the tunnels.
And the next tunnel I needed to explore was above me, on the eighth floor.
Tessa knew that she could wait here of course, wait for Patrick—however long that might be.
Or she could call him, but this wasn’t exactly the kind of thing you tell someone over the phone: “By the way, my dad stopped by to let me know he’s a cowardly ex–Secret Service agent. Oh yeah, and he’s been following us all morning. Talk to you soon. Ciao.”
And if she phoned Patrick and said she wanted to talk to him about something later, he’d just worry.
No, she needed to tell him in person.