The Survivors

by Robert Palmer

  Scottie laughed and we headed for the exit.

  The people on the far platform continued to stare. I gave them a silly wave, wanting to show even strangers that I was right as rain. In my mind, though, I could still hear the howl of the wind and feel the tremble of the platform as the train drove down on me.

  Thanks, Scottie.

  THIRTY-EIGHT

  Back at the hotel, Scottie slept while I read the digital camera patent from beginning to end. It took me more than an hour, and I spent another hour studying the schematics. A lot of the technical descriptions were beyond me. Faced with something like that, the Internet can be a wonderful teacher. I read through it a second time, stopping again and again to look up some concept or definition.

  Around dawn, the tablet and I both ran out steam. I dozed off, dreaming fitfully about lenses and CCD sensors and smashed wine glasses. Mickey Mouse made an appearance, dancing around our old dining table.

  I woke in stages, feeling the lump on my head and then feeling how cold the air was from the open windows. Scottie wasn’t in his bed. I turned and found him asleep on the floor in front of the door. His eyes opened as I sat up.

  “What are you doing over there?” I said.

  “Making sure you don’t get out again.”

  “I’m all right, Scottie.”

  He gave a sleepy grin. “Okey-doke.”

  “Is it really ten o’clock?” I said.

  “Yeah. I know a great diner for Sunday brunch.” He got up and stretched. “I’m going to take a shower first.”

  I found the power cord for the computer and went back to work. When the shower went off, he stuck his head out the bathroom door. “Find anything interesting?”

  “Lots. We’ll need to talk it over.”

  “Not until later. I’m so hungry I could eat a toad.”

  “I’ll be scarred forever with that image.”

  He rolled his eyes. “Jerkwad.”

  The diner Scottie had in mind was a few blocks from his home in Mount Pleasant. If I’d had my way, we would have stayed away from that neighborhood, and anybody who might be looking for us there. But Scottie was suddenly angry at the world, so I didn’t argue. His mood swing started when we got in the car, and he tried to switch on his tablet. “Dammit, you ran the battery down!”

  “It’ll be good for you to do something else.”

  He gave me a cold stare.

  “Look, I’m sorry. It’s not the end of the world.”

  “For you maybe.” He shut his eyes and didn’t say another syllable until I made it to Mount Pleasant and parked.

  From there, things spun downhill. The diner was packed, and we had to wait for seats at the counter. The server dropped off menus and Scottie said, “Where’s Jeanine? Doesn’t she work on Sundays?”

  “What am I supposed to be, her mother?” the woman shot back.

  I put my hand out to stop the tantrum I knew was coming. “Scottie, why don’t you wait outside. I’ll get us some food and bring it out.”

  “No, I want—”

  “We’ll find someplace quiet to eat.”

  He cursed and marched out the door.

  Ten minutes later I met him on the sidewalk. “Here, take this.” I handed over a cup of coffee and a bag with ham and eggs and sausage and hash browns. “There’s a bench in that park over there.”

  “I know a better place,” he grumbled.

  “OK. Show me.” We started down the sidewalk. It was a gray day with a gusting breeze, and leaves scudded underfoot. “So who’s Jeanine?”

  “A girl—woman.”

  “Do you like her?”

  He kicked at one of the leaves. “Not really.”

  Like talking to a twelve-year-old.

  “If you don’t want to talk about Jeanine, tell me about this place we’re heading for.”

  He smiled, though he clearly was fighting it. “It’ll be better if I show you.”

  When we were boys, we played in the woods near my house. It was a four- or five-acre parcel, mostly pines. One summer, we built a fort, and, as the months went by, we added on and tore things down. By our last summer together, we’d settled on a simple design: a web of paths that led to a cleared circle with two large boulders. Sometimes we had battles there, using the boulders as cover while we pitched pine cones at each other. Other times we just sat on the rocks, telling jokes, scheming to conquer the world.

  With that history behind us, I wasn’t surprised that he led me off the street and into Rock Creek Park, to a cleared space with a large stone outcrop and a smaller boulder next to it.

  “Let me guess,” I said. “You get the bigger one.”

  “Damned straight.”

  He hopped on the outcrop and sat down cross-legged. The boulder was shaped like a chair. I settled in and took a drink of coffee. Though I could hear traffic, I couldn’t see any streets. The only house in sight was two hundred yards away, with just the rooftop showing.

  “That’s my house,” he said, seeing where I was looking. “I come out here all the time. Sometimes I sleep on that rock where you are. It’s my favorite spot anywhere.”

  A hideout is a neat thing for a couple of kids; it’s a sad place for an adult.

  I pulled some food from my bag, scrambled eggs wrapped in wax paper. “What was it that upset you this morning?”

  He peered in his bag and wrinkled his nose. “While you were taking a shower, I called Mrs. Rogansky to see if I had any messages. My boss phoned last night. He told her if I don’t finish the project I’ve been working on by Friday, I’ll have to see the people in human resources. That’s another way of saying I’ll be fired.” He pulled out his packet of eggs and a plastic fork. “I can’t lose my job. Nine years I’ve been there. It’s the only thing I feel right doing.” He poked at the food. Out here, without plates and tables, his OCD was a real nuisance. He couldn’t get anything square. “I wish I’d never started this, that I’d never heard of Eric Russo or any of the rest of them.”

  “I hear you on that.” But it was far too late to go back, for either of us.

  We ate for a while. The eggs were cool and gluey; the sausage was as tough as garden hose. “We’ll have to find a way to wrap this up pronto,” I said.

  He saw I was putting my food back in the bag and he laughed. “This stuff is awful, isn’t it?”

  “It’s your favorite restaurant.” I gave him a slanted look. “You’ll have to introduce me to Jeanine someday.”

  “If you promise to keep your hands to yourself.”

  So we put the food away and sat on our rocks and schemed. Not that we were trying to conquer the world, but we ran through as many theories as we could, hoping the pieces would begin falling into place. We started with what we remembered—that someone had come to the house the night of the shootings. Whoever it was had killed my father and had been on the back porch when my mother shot herself. They came in and found Scottie and my brothers in the closet.

  “Russo?” Scottie said. “He would have hated your mother for filing that Bar Association complaint. When she died, all his troubles went away.”

  “Maybe,” I said. “But what connects him with the plans she took from Braeder?”

  “Maybe the plans aren’t important.”

  “It’s got to have something to do with that. You saw the way Bowles reacted when you asked him what my mother took. He didn’t know what to say, so he blurted the first thing that came into his head. I’m sure he was telling the truth. I saw those plans that summer in our dining room.”

  “How’s that?”

  I told him about the night I went downstairs for the glass of milk, the photos on the dining table, the spilled wine.

  He whistled. “Your mom was going to hit you? My mother used to smack me all the time, but yours—never.”

  “That night she almost did. I’m sure they were the same plans as the ones in that patent you found. And there’s more. While you were asleep, I did some research.” I saw the look on his face.
“Don’t laugh. I know how to use a search engine. I found a couple of articles about that digital camera. It was for military use only, in guidance systems for smart bombs. It was the first big defense contract Braeder got. A lot of the guidance system components were classified under the Secrecy Act—no disclosure to the public. The camera wasn’t as sensitive, so the application was placed in the regular Patent and Trademark Office database. That one contract made Braeder a top player. A little fish jumped right up to big shark.”

  Scottie said, “You saw those photos in your dining room during the summer?”

  “That’s right. Definitely while we were on summer vacation from school. Remember my comic books?”

  “Yeah, your parents let you keep a big box of those in your room.”

  “Only during the summer when I didn’t have to go to sleep early. I’m sure they were there that night.”

  “And that was after your mother was caught with the plans.”

  “The story we got was that the security men took the plans back to Braeder, and the photographs, too. She must have had another set of the photos or kept the negatives. The security men didn’t find them when they searched the house.” I picked up a pebble and pitched it at a tree. “Since I found out she lost her job, I’ve tried to imagine what my mother did with her time. I figured she went to a museum or someplace like that to hide out. Maybe she was up to something else, like going to the Patent and Trademark Office to do patent research.”

  “There’s another thing,” Scottie said. “Did you notice whose name was on the patent?”

  “I did. It was Lois McGuin. She was listed as the inventor. That’s not some honorary title. My lawyer friend Tim Regis told me only the original creator of any invention is able to file for a patent. I don’t think Lois could invent a new recipe for toast. She had a science background, but she was a glorified personnel manager. She told me so herself.”

  He shook his head. “That doesn’t make any sense at all.”

  “Maybe not yet. But we know a few things for sure now. In March that year, somebody used the information in the file to prepare a patent application. Lois McGuin was listed as inventor. The file got put away in the file room at Braeder and blue-flagged so nobody would remove it. Three months later, my mother found it, took it home, and photographed it. She must have thought it was important. The people at Braeder thought it was important, too, enough to fire her and create a big mess at the office.”

  Scottie said, “After she got caught with the plans, why didn’t she tell Ned Bowles what was going on? It’s clear she wanted to keep her job. That’s assuming she didn’t take the plans so she could sell them.” He saw my expression and put up his hands. “I’m with you on that. I told you I didn’t think your mother could steal anything.”

  “Maybe she didn’t trust Bowles. Or maybe she was trying to protect him from something. That’s the way Markaris operates, putting screens up around Bowles at every corner.”

  Scottie stretched out, tucking his hands behind his head and looking at the sky. “What do we do now?”

  “For one thing, talk to Jamie Weston. She’ll be interested in hearing someone tried to run us off the road last night. She may be able to do something with that partial license plate number I got.”

  Scottie sat up and clasped his arms around his knees. “You think she’ll help with that?”

  “It won’t hurt to ask.”

  “Do you suppose whoever was in that SUV was trying to kill us?”

  “I guess that’s something I don’t want to think too hard about.”

  We were quiet for a moment, spinning our own thoughts, and I said, “Since I had my session with Dr. Rubin, I’ve been remembering all kinds of things from when we were kids. Like those photos of the camera plans. Before I left the room last night, something else came to me. It was when we started hide-and-seek. I was at the window in the bedroom, and I saw my mother come into the yard. I always knew she said something, but last night was the first time I could catch part of it. She said, ‘Did you kill Brookey?’”

  “Brookey—your cat?” Scottie was grinning, as if I’d made a joke.

  I nodded.

  “That’s just weird,” he said.

  “Imagine you only had a few seconds left before you were going to shoot yourself. What kind of thing would you say?”

  “Not anything about my dead cat, I hope.”

  “She said something else. Last words. I wish I could get that, too, but it’s just not there.”

  Scottie picked at a patch of lichens on the rock. “That session with Rubin—she may have given you the idea you could remember hearing things. Maybe that isn’t the way it is. Your mind might be making stuff up.”

  I laughed. “Now you sound like me.”

  Scottie looked at me, and his eyes were shadowy. “Maybe that’s because you’re beginning to sound like me.”

  We’d reached the end, as much speculation as we could handle. We headed back to the car and, along the way, found a trash can and dropped the bags of food in. “Mrs. Rogansky will give us lunch,” Scottie said. “We can go in the back door. Nobody will see us.”

  My phone rang, and I checked the number before I answered it. “Jamie, hi. I was going to call you.”

  “Cal, I need to see you,” she said.

  “Sure, I—”

  She started talking, and I listened without saying anything. She went on for so long that Scottie began to chew on his fingers.

  “What is it?” he said when she hung up.

  I slipped the phone in my pocket and stared at him. “Howard Markaris is dead.”

  THIRTY-NINE

  Weston had given me two orders: get down to the Tidal Basin as fast as I could, and keep Scottie out of it. I pulled his backpack and bicycle from the car and told him to go home. Before he could argue, I said, “Weston told me that’s how it’s got to be. Let’s play it her way for now.” I watched him trudge back into Rock Creek Park.

  The Tidal Basin is a big area, and I wasn’t sure how I was going to find her. It turned out not to be a problem. All around the FDR Memorial there were cars with flashing lights, and the police had Ohio Drive, next to the Potomac, blocked off. I pulled in there and spoke to the first officer who walked up. He was a DC cop. Some of the other cars were from the US Park Police.

  “I’m Cal Henderson. I’m supposed to meet an Agent Weston, FBI.”

  At the mention of the FBI, the cop muttered, “That’s dandy.” He stepped away and talked into his radio, then indicated I could pull up on the grass. “She’s down there—” He pointed with his chin. “—between the visitors’ center and the Basin.” That was a couple hundred yards away. They were keeping the gawkers far back.

  Weston saw me coming and detached herself from two men she’d been talking to. One was her partner, Tyson Cade. The other was a big, bull-necked man with a shaved head.

  She greeted me with a nod. “Is that your boss?” I said.

  “The one and only Sheldon Arles. He likes to be called ‘sir.’ Don’t forget that.”

  “What happened to his ear?”

  “I shot him.” She gave a worn-out shake of her head. “That’s why I’m on his drop-dead list, and why they call me ‘Near Miss’ around the office. It was his fault, and beyond that it’s just another long story. Come on, follow me.”

  “He could have that fixed,” I said as we headed through the cherry trees to the Basin.

  “Plastic surgery? That’s for wusses, not rough, tough G-men.”

  Out in the water, four swimmers were maneuvering around a flat-bottomed boat.

  She said, “People saw something floating out there early this morning. They didn’t think anything of it. Then some kids brought one of those paddle boats over and saw it was a body. The Park Police had a hell of a time getting a boat and crew in here to pull him out. The ID in his wallet says it’s Howard Markaris. You and Glass were with him at a party last night at Ned Bowles’s house?”

  “Not the par
ty. They wouldn’t let us stay for that. We were in the house with Bowles and Markaris.”

  “Doing what?”

  Bowles must have already told her; that’s how she connected Markaris to me so fast. But obviously she needed to hear it from me. “We went to talk to Bowles about my mother, why he fired her from Braeder.”

  “You argued?”

  “Everything was friendly. We were going to talk later, but that didn’t work out.”

  The swimmers had the body next to the boat. The two men onboard maneuvered a big net under it.

  “How did he die?” I said.

  The sun had come out, dappling her cheek with little cherry-leaf shadows. “Not sure yet. The people on the boat say he’s got a crushed skull, maybe from a rock. We’ve got people searching the area for it and extra divers in the water.”

  The men on the boat heaved, and Markaris’s body rose like a netted fish, limp and dripping. His white hair flashed against the gunwale before he thumped to the deck.

  “One of the Park Police guys knows a lot about the water here,” she said. “There’s almost no current. If the killing took place on this side of the Basin, it would take about twelve hours for the body to drift out that far.”

  The show was over on the boat, so she turned to me. “Are you all right?”

  “Yeah. It’s just not a normal thing: talk to a man yesterday, and today he’s—” The boat motor coughed to life. “—cargo.”

  She nodded. “I need to ask, where were you twelve hours ago?”

  That would be a while after midnight. “Asleep. A hotel in Crystal City.”

  “Can anybody verify that?”

  Scottie could—no, he couldn’t. He’d gone for a walk. And if I wanted to be perfectly honest, I couldn’t guarantee I hadn’t gone wandering in my sleep, had an episode I didn’t remember.

  “I was at the Castle Inn. I paid cash and registered under the name of John Grayson—my father’s first name, my mother’s last. The desk clerk didn’t pay much attention, but I think he’d remember us.”

  “Us?”