by J. L. Brown
The silence in the house was deafening.
A soft voice. “Hello?”
Jade turned. Matt held his wife with both arms. She wore a pink bathrobe. Once fuzzy, it was now worn in several places. Enormous slippers in the shape of Goofy, the Disney character, adorned her feet.
Jade placed the photograph back where she found it.
“Honey, this is Agent . . . uh,” Matt looked at her, apologetic.
“Jade. Jade Harrington.”
“This is my wife, Jenny.”
Her bloodshot eyes fluttered to Jade and widened. “Jade Harrington! The agent from the TSK case?”
Jade had solved the Talk Show Killer—TSK—case four months ago, becoming a sudden and unwilling celebrity.
Jenny knelt before Jade and hugged her legs. Crying. “I’m glad you’re here. I don’t understand. Why would my baby commit suicide? We were happy. We loved him so much.”
Embarrassed, Jade didn’t move. She looked at Christian. Matt pried his wife from Jade’s legs, and guided Jenny to the sofa facing the hallway. Jade and Christian moved to chairs opposite them.
“Ma’am. I’m not here in an official capacity. Christian and I work together. I’m just here for support.”
He meant more to her than that, but didn’t think the situation warranted further explanation. She also didn’t say she was sorry for their loss. She knew loss. No words from a stranger could comfort them.
To Jade, Jenny Thompson said: “The police just left. They took my boy.”
“The coroner,” Matt murmured.
“Tell me about your son,” Jade said, in the soothing voice she reserved for victims’ families.
“He loves rap music. Plays it morning and night. Do you like rap music?”
“This isn’t really about me.”
“Baseball. He loves baseball. He was proud of his cap. He wore it everywhere.” Jenny smiled. “I remember when his coach gave it to him, he couldn’t wait to put his initials inside it.” She stopped smiling. “But he’s lost interest.”
Jade couldn’t stop herself. “Were there any signs he was suicidal?”
Matt stiffened next to his wife. “No.”
After a pause, Jenny said, “Well . . .”
Jade leaned forward, ignoring Christian’s glare. “What? What is it?”
Jenny glanced at her husband. “Tyler seems different. He isn’t eating as much as he normally does. And he complains a lot about stomachaches and headaches.” Jenny spoke of her son in the present tense. As if he were still alive.
“Anything else different about him? How was he doing in school?”
“He used to be an A-B student. Lately, it’s been Cs and Ds.”
“Was he sleeping?”
Jenny shook her head, her body crumpling. She leaned against her husband, whose arms enveloped her.
Christian stood. “I’m going to check on Amanda.”
“She’s upstairs with the children,” Matt said.
Christian shot Jade a warning look before he left.
If he didn’t want me asking questions, he shouldn’t have brought me. Or left me alone with them.
Jade waited for his footsteps to fade. “Did Tyler leave a note? An email? A text?”
Matt shook his head.
Jenny’s head popped up from his shoulder.
“How would we know? They . . . the police . . . took everything. His laptop, his tablet, his phone.” She didn’t wipe away her tears. “Can you find out for us, Agent Harrington?”
CHAPTER SIX
Washington, DC
“Ninety days and nothing,” he said into the microphone, shifting his bulk in the chair. “I hate to say ‘I told you so,’ but I told you this would happen if those people elected Whitney president. So, even though I hate to do it . . . I told you so!”
Cole Brennan laughed, a high-pitched giggle that seemed incongruous coming from a man of his size.
“Our new president has accomplished absolutely nothing in her first ninety days in office. Just like every Commiecrat before her. It’s a disgrace.”
He glanced at the TVs mounted on the yellow and orange wall, each tuned to a different network: FOX, MSNBC, CNN, ABC, and CBS. No breaking news.
“Let’s try to help her out, shall we? What should she be doing? I’ll take your calls now. Go!”
He gazed at the computer screen with the list of actives. “What do you think, Jonah from Oklahoma?”
“Cole Brennan! Wow, man! It’s an honor to talk to you.”
“I know. What’s on your mind?”
“What you’ve been preaching for years, man. We need to stop all these illegal aliens from entering our country.”
“Couldn’t agree more. Our former president—God bless that ol’ cowboy—reneged on his promise to build a fence. A fence is too easy to circumvent, anyway. What we need is a wall to keep them out. A great big wall. The Great Wall of the USA. Bigger than the Great Wall of China. And we need a true visionary—a man—to build it and get the Mexican government to pay for it. A win-win.”
“A great wall that’s free. Great idea, Cole. My town hasn’t been the same since the damn aliens took all our jobs. Anything you could do to keep them out—better yet, send them back—would be appreciated.”
“Don’t think that’ll happen during Whitney’s only term, but I’ll do my best. Probably going to be the opposite. Next caller. Mason from Alabama. Go!”
“Hey, Cole, love your show. How about keeping the Muslims out of our country? London elected one as their mayor, and now the mayor of New York City is one, too. They’re taking over the world! What are we going to do to prevent that from happening?”
He took a sip of his ever-present sweet iced tea. “Well, she’s going to let everybody in. Even radical Islamic terrorists. It’s going to be like Motel 6. ‘We’ll leave the light on for you.’ But not all Muslims are bad, Mason. There are good Muslims. We just need a stricter process to keep the bad ones out. Wouldn’t you agree?”
“You can keep ’em all out, as far as I’m concerned.”
“The Statue of Liberty says something like ‘give me your tired, poor, et cetera, et cetera,’ but it doesn’t say anything about ‘give me your filthy, your Islamist, your terrorist.’”
“You got that right, Cole.”
He took several more calls in the same vein before wrapping up the segment. “Where is the candidate that represents our views? A real honest-to-God conservative who will make America great like it used to be. Is anybody out there? Hello? Hello?”
He sighed. “Well, everyone, we’ve run out of time. This is Cole Brennan protecting your life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness. Join us again tomorrow for ‘The Conservative Voice.’”
CHAPTER SEVEN
Washington, DC
Christian leaned into her fourth-floor office at the Federal Bureau of Investigation headquarters, a hand on each side of the door frame. “Got a minute?”
The question that wasted her time more than any other.
Jade looked up from a case file. She glanced at the numerous files stacked neatly on her desk and back at him. “Not really.”
“Tough. We have a visitor downstairs.”
They navigated through the throng of agents traversing the lobby in all directions. Jenny Thompson sat on a low couch, her hands resting on her lap. She didn’t rise as they approached.
Jade sat next to her. “Mrs. Thompson.”
Christian remained standing next to Jade.
“I didn’t tell you about the bruises. The scratches.”
“On Tyler?” Jade said.
“His arms. His legs. Chest. Back. Face. Especially his face.”
Jade’s gut told her what had been happening to Jenny’s son. Softening her voice, she said, “At your house, you mentioned some of your son’s symptoms. Do you think he was being bullied?”
Jenny shook her head. “I told Matt that Tyler was going through teenage stuff. Girl problems. Teachers. Homework. Parents.”
Jenny scrunched up her face. “If he was being bullied, I would’ve known.”
The likelihood of Tyler telling his mother he’d been bullied was low. Not something a lot of kids—especially teenage boys—would discuss with their parents.
Jade would know.
Jenny hesitated. “They found pictures.”
“Who?”
Jenny’s jaw set. Voice clipped, she said, “The police found . . . pictures of him on the Internet. Naked pictures. Buck naked.”
Jade glanced up at Christian.
He stared at his sister-in-law. “Tyler?”
“The police said . . .” She fell silent for a moment. “Someone took pictures of my son in the shower at school. In the locker room.”
Jade started to take Jenny’s hand and then thought better of it. “Is that why they think—?”
“There’s a Twitter account,” Jenny said, tears flowing down her cheeks. “Dedicated to my boy. A ‘fan’”—she made air quotes—“account, and it has the vilest, nastiest tweets about my son. That he was gay and had a small penis and that he liked his baseball teammates a little too much. Someone tweeted: ‘Nobody loves you.’ It received over a hundred ‘likes.’”
“Jesus,” Christian said.
Jenny’s voice rose, her breathing heavy. “People shouldn’t be allowed to say whatever they want on the Internet, right? And take your picture without permission? They can’t get away with this. Can you do something?”
Other agents glanced at them as they passed by.
Jade said, “There’s nothing we—the FBI—can do. Maybe the county police can trace who created the account.”
“They said it was created from a public computer, and they’re having a hard time tracing it. I want answers! I need to know who did this to my son!”
“Mrs. Thompson, you’re going through a horrible time, but I must ask you to calm down.”
“Calm down? Calm down? I don’t want to fucking calm down. My son is dead!”
She started to rise, but Christian grasped her in a one-armed bear hug and returned her to the couch. “Jenny, if we’re going to help you, you must get ahold of yourself.”
She waved at Jade. “But she said there’s nothing you can do. You can’t fucking help me. Can you bring my son back? Can you find out who did this to him?”
Christian and Jade looked at each other, but didn’t respond.
After a few moments, Jenny’s breathing steadied.
Jade ventured another question. “What else did the police say?”
“They’re worthless. They can’t help me. No one did anything to help my son. Not even me. Tyler was smart. Cute. Almost beautiful.” Jenny Thompson gave her a defiant look. “But one thing I know for sure. I know my son. And he wasn’t gay.”
“How can you be sure?” Jade said.
“They won’t leave us alone,” Jenny said, ignoring Jade’s question.
Jade glanced at Christian bewildered and back to Jenny. “Who?”
“Reporters. Camped outside our house. Fire questions at us as we try to get in our car. Follow my kids to school and Matt to work. I can’t watch the news.”
She put her hands over her ears and bent at the waist.
Someone in the Fairfax County police department had allegedly leaked to the media that Tyler Thompson had been cyberbullied. You couldn’t turn on the TV without seeing the elaborate “Bullycide” logo next to Tyler’s adorable high-school yearbook picture with the faux forest behind him.
Jenny sat up. “There’s more.”
What now?
Christian tensed.
“The police also discovered that Tyler exchanged texts with a girl at school. I didn’t know her. He never talked about her. Never showed me her picture. But from the texts I could tell he really liked her.”
“Who was it?” Christian asked.
The infinitesimal smile that appeared on Jenny’s face at the thought of her son’s happiness disappeared quickly. “I don’t know. Turns out the girl played a joke on my son. All those fucking kids ganged up on him. That bitch never cared for him. The bullying wasn’t what got to him.” Jenny looked at Jade. “When Tyler found out that girl was laughing at him behind his back, that’s what did it.
“That’s why he took his own life, Agent Harrington.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
The White House, Washington, DC
Whitney packed the stack of briefing materials into her case and made her way up to the residence. It was only seven p.m., but she needed a break.
She had the rest of the evening to herself. Grayson was in Missouri running the family firm, Fairchild Industries, and her children were off at school: Chandler was a senior at the University of Missouri, and her daughter, Emma, a sophomore at Princeton. Whitney had not seen them since Easter.
She was alone. Well, alone if you didn’t count the Secret Service. Or the White House staff. Or the residence staff. Or the military staff.
Setting the briefcase on a stand by the front door, she walked to the wine refrigerator in the living area and selected a bottle of 1997 Opus One. On the sofa, she tucked her legs under her. Holding the wine glass in one hand, and the remote in the other, she flipped through the channels on the flat-screen stopping on MSNBC. Another rally in progress.
Over the last week, rallies—protests?—had broken out in several major cities across the country, the one televised now in Philadelphia. The protesters seemed to come from all walks of life. Different races. Different ages. Different genders. Different religions.
Whitney turned up the sound.
“What we’re seeing now is different from the Occupy Wall Street movement of years ago,” said the red-headed male MSNBC commentator in front of a fake vista of the Liberty Bell. “These protests are more urgent, more desperate, and they don’t seem to be going away anytime soon.”
She sipped her wine. Because the problem isn’t going away anytime soon.
“What do they want?” the anchor in the studio asked.
“To close the gap. According to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, wealth for the rich has increased two hundred and seventy-five percent while increasing only forty percent for the middle class. For the poor, twenty. The top twenty percent own sixty percent of the wealth in this country.”
More like eighty-five percent. The American people underestimated the share of wealth owned by the wealthiest individuals. But people were waking up. Reports had come in that income inequality protests were not only happening in front of businesses and banks, but also gated and other exclusive communities. Protesters had barred residents from entering their own homes. Fights had broken out in airports over first-class upgrades. In airplanes over the use of the bathroom in the forward section by coach passengers unwilling to wait with the four hundred other passengers for the three restrooms in the rear.
After a commercial break, the studio anchor introduced Evan Stevens, an influential liberal blogger. Handsome, with a short, trimmed beard and dark hair combed into the latest style, Stevens was a fastidious dresser. Everything about him seemed to be studied perfection. He railed against income inequality, an issue he had been battling for a long time.
People were starting to listen.
After several minutes, she muted the television and glanced at the stand in the foyer. The briefing books awaited her. Although she had a spacious office next door in the Treaty Room, usually, when she worked from “home,” rather, upstairs, she ended up here. On the sofa.
Whitney closed her eyes, trying to forget—temporarily—this issue that had concerned her for years. The issue that could undermine not just her presidency, but her country.
Income inequality.
The outside wants in.
CHAPTER NINE
Fairfax, Virginia
Still pumped up, literally, from lifting free weights after practice, Zach Rawlins guided his BMW around the final cu
rve before the entrance to his parents’ subdivision. Since his father purchased the car and made the payments, the Beemer didn’t really belong to him. A technicality his father reminded him of often.
Wending his way through the neighborhood, he needed to hurry. His father didn’t like for him to be out late on a school night, especially when he had the car. Zach’s mind drifted to his conversation with Kaylee after third period. She was captain of the junior varsity cheerleading squad for football, basketball, and baseball; he was captain of the JV baseball team. Handsome—everyone had told him so since he was a kid—a good student, and a jock. What’s not to like?
They were perfect for each other.
Brianna, also a cheerleader, wanted to go out with him—she hinted she wanted a lot more than that—but he never settled. He wanted only the best. The best car. The best girl. He lived in the largest house in the neighborhood. If you didn’t want the best, why bother?
After all, he was his father’s son.
Zach slowed to turn into his driveway. For such a well-to-do neighborhood, the developers had skimped on lighting and neglected to install enough street lamps. The yard was shrouded in darkness. He looked up at the house. Most of the lights were turned off, his mother no doubt in the living room drinking a highball and watching The Real Housewives of some American city. He didn’t understand how she could watch those shows all the time. They were stupid. All the drama.
His father probably wasn’t home yet, working late at the office again. Good. No rush.
He parked twenty feet away from the garage, the inside of which was reserved for his parents’ cars. Grabbing his backpack from the passenger seat, he opened the car door. Before he could slam the door closed, he heard a soft scraping sound in an otherwise still night.