Say Nothing

by Brad Parks

  She was now looking at Sam. “Don’t you have school today, Sammy?”

  “Half day,” Alison improvised. “Student-teacher conferences.”

  “Oh,” Karen said, now looking around. “Where’s Emma?”

  The question seemed to freeze Alison, and I wasn’t doing much better with it. I just couldn’t come up with another ad-libbed answer that would be satisfactory. If I said Emma was inside playing, Karen would want to visit her. If I said Emma was sick, Karen would want to comfort her.

  It was Sam—who had not been coached to keep his mouth shut—who blurted out, “She’s with the men.”

  * * *

  This was what led, four hours later, to the convening of an emergency family meeting. It was called with the understanding that what was going to be shared had to be kept in the strictest confidence.

  It had certainly occurred to me, during the remainder of the afternoon, that Karen’s visit was less impromptu than it appeared; that Alison had surreptitiously called her and instructed her to come over and ask questions until we were cornered into a confession.

  Or maybe Alison had been right. We were never going to be able to keep this from her family. Whether Karen’s appearance was truly chance or whether it had resulted from a minor act of sedition on Alison’s part, it was only a hastening of the inevitable. The Powells were too tightly knit to keep secrets from one another.

  As an only child, I am endlessly fascinated by the Powell sisters: three women, born thirty-five months apart and raised almost as triplets, who have remained so close into adulthood.

  It’s just a complicated dynamic. There are jealousies born long ago—about who got what when, who had it easier or harder, who was given what freedom at what age—that live on. They morph into slightly less infantile form, perhaps. But the scoreboard still exists, somewhere. Everyone still remembers that Jenny was allowed to get her ears pierced at a younger age, that Alison got to go on the high school band trip to England, that Karen took the family’s used car off to college.

  In some ways, no one is tougher on one another than sisters. Like parents, they’re hyperaware of one another’s past foibles and faults; but, without the infinite parental capacity for love and forgiveness, they judge one another far more harshly for them.

  I swear there are times when they really might kill one another. Until, of course, one of them is in trouble or threatened by an outside agent, in which case they band together into an unbreakable front.

  Internally fractured yet externally united. The world over, it’s the very definition of sisterhood.

  As the kids rambled noisily upstairs, we gathered the adults in the living room. Alison’s mother, Gina, was sitting in an easy chair. She obviously knew something was up but had this unflappable grace about her. There is probably no other way to survive all those years of being a military wife.

  Alison’s two sisters were stationed on the couch, a Queen Anne–style piece that didn’t really seat more than two people comfortably.

  The oldest sister, Karen—she had taken her husband’s last name, Lowe—shared Alison’s build and coloring but little else. She was pure firstborn: domineering, a lightning rod for confrontation, highly competent, and fiercely self-sufficient. Ever since Wade died, she had taken over the role of paterfamilias, calling the shots both for her nuclear family and for her extended one. She was a stay-at-home mom, having left a job in benefits administration after her second child was born. Her four kids were neatly spaced two years apart, exactly as planned. The youngest was now six, born eight days after the twins. Karen had talked about rejoining the working world now that her kids were in school, but nothing had come of it yet.

  The middle sister, Jennifer—she was still a Powell—looked less like Alison. She was darker complexioned, had rounder cheeks, and was shorter. But, personality-wise, they probably had more in common, to the point where they were more or less best friends. Jenny’s family role was that of the peacekeeper, although that meant she had a tendency to go along with things that she found untenable for too long, until the dam holding back her anger simply burst. Like Alison, she had chosen a helping profession, working as an emergency room nurse at a large local hospital. Unlike Alison, she was childless. This made her the de facto “cool aunt,” the one with the time and energy to lavish on nieces and nephews.

  As best I had been able to figure their childhoods, Karen had been a go-getter from the start, a high achiever who was vice president or secretary of half the clubs in school, all while being a National Merit semifinalist and her class salutatorian. Then came Jenny, who was completely disinterested in building her résumé, instead spending her time and energy cultivating a large group of friends at every stop they made. Then came Alison, who studied both of her sisters and decided to be like Karen, albeit a slightly more accomplished iteration—she was president of all the clubs, a National Merit finalist, and the class valedictorian.

  In some ways, little had changed over the years. Alison was still the Golden Child, the prettiest of the three, the one who did everything right. Jenny was still the Popular One, amiable, cheerful, and easy to like. And Karen was still the Boss, who ruled with the consent of the other two.

  All three had husbands, although I was always a little uncertain as to how we fit into the larger drama that was the Powell sisters. At best, we were supporting cast.

  Karen was married to Mark Lowe, a thoughtful, quiet man who worked with computers and seemed content to let his life be controlled by his spouse. That he spent so much time indoors was at least partly genetic. He had red hair—so red, it had actually been orange when he was a kid—and pale enough skin that he slathered on sunscreen before mowing the lawn. He fit certain computer-geek stereotypes, inasmuch as he was the last guy you wanted on your sports team but the first guy you called if your wireless router was acting up.

  Jennifer was married to Jason Bundren, a career salesman who was sort of Mark’s opposite. He was loud and swaggering, a big, beefy ex-jock who enjoyed his position as the strapping son-in-law whenever Gina needed some heavy lifting done. His latest job involved selling large-scale sewage equipment to municipalities and the military. Without kids of his own, he was stuck in a kind of eternal adolescence, one that revolved around cars, football, and guns. He and Jennifer had actually met on a firing range.

  With the family arrayed before her, Alison assumed a position in front of the fireplace. The tension in her face was obvious, as was the strangeness of this sudden emergency meeting. Everyone quieted as she began talking.

  Alison laid out the ground rules: They couldn’t tell anyone what they were about to hear; they couldn’t act on the information, not even in a manner they thought benign or helpful; they had to respect our wishes in how we were going to handle everything; their only role was to listen.

  “Is that okay?” Alison asked.

  Once she saw heads around the room bobbing, she told all.

  Gina was the first to cry, followed quickly by Jenny and Karen. Alison held her composure until she was done. Then Gina and Karen and Jenny mobbed her with hugs and consoling words. I could see Alison gaining strength from being able to share her burden.

  It was take-charge Karen, who had a four-hour head start on absorbing this news, who was the first to break from the scrum and move on to next steps.

  “So, what’s your plan? What are you going to do about this?”

  She had aimed the question at me.

  “That’s just it, Karen. We’re not going to do anything,” I said, deliberately choosing the plural pronoun. “We’re going to follow our instructions, say nothing, and hope this is all over with soon.”

  “But you don’t even know what case they’re looking to control,” she said.

  “It doesn’t matter. When these people contact me and tell me what ruling they want, I’ll make it. We have no leverage here.”

  Karen chewe
d on this for a moment. Almost literally. You could see her jaw muscles clenching. The family, collectively, seemed to be holding its breath.

  “We can’t sit here and do nothing,” she said. “Not while Emma is out there and in trouble.”

  “Karen,” Alison said sharply. “You promised.”

  “Well, just hold on. I’m not saying calling the cops. I’m just saying”—she groped for an idea—“I mean, do we have any lines of communication open with these people? Can you talk to them at all?”

  “No,” I said, shaking my head. “The texts have been manipulated to obscure their origination point. And the call came from a restricted number.”

  “Well, surely, the phone company can tell you what the number was. They’ve got—”

  “Not without a warrant,” I said. “And I can’t issue a warrant and have it carried out without involving law enforcement.”

  Karen was unbowed, looking at Mark. “Do you have any friends who could hack the phone company’s computers and get information like that?”

  Mark seemed a little horrified. “That’s not really what I do, dear,” he said softly. “I mean, I wouldn’t even know where to—”

  “Forget it. I’m just trying to think through our options,” she said. “What if we put Sam under hypnosis? They say that a good hypnotist can get people to remember all sorts of things they don’t realize are in their memories.”

  I looked at Alison pleadingly. “We questioned Sam as thoroughly as we could,” she said. “Even if he could give a sketch artist a flawless description of the men, what would we do with it? It’s not like we can put up wanted posters at the post office.”

  “Okay, okay, I’m just brainstorming here,” Karen said, and now turned back to me. “We need to go through your cases systematically. I bet if we crunched it enough, we could narrow down which one it might be.”

  “I have several hundred cases on my docket. There’s no way—”

  “There have to be a few that are really desiring a certain outcome.”

  “It’s federal court, Karen. They’re all desiring a certain outcome. No one goes to court because they want to lose.”

  “Have you even tried to identify the possibilities?”

  “No,” I said, trying to keep my patience with her. “Because, okay, hypothetically, let’s say I’m able to narrow it down to three or four cases. It’s probably impossible to do that, and it would take at least two months to even start, but never mind that for a moment. Let’s say I can do it. What do I do at that point, walk up to the six or eight plaintiffs and defendants and say, ‘Hi, you’re not blackmailing me by any chance, are you?’”

  “There’s no need for sarcasm,” Karen said, bristling.

  My mother-in-law was the one who stepped in with: “Karen, honey, this has been hard enough—”

  “I know, I know,” she said. “If you don’t want to do anything, I’ll respect that. A promise is a promise. I’m just saying, if it was my daughter, I don’t know how I could just sit there and let this happen.”

  And there it was: Bossy Karen throwing out the challenge to man up.

  But I wasn’t going to take the bait. There was nothing to be gained from it.

  * * *

  Our colloquy broke up shortly after that, and some members of the family peeled off.

  Jennifer had a shift at the hospital that night, so she and Jason were first to go. Gina made noises about not wanting to drive at night and excused herself.

  That left Karen, Mark, and their mob of children. I was happy they stayed. Sam could use some good cousin time. At the very least, they would keep him distracted.

  Turning our efforts to dinner, we ordered pizzas for the kids. Alison and Karen retreated to the kitchen to cook food for the grown-ups. Karen insisted they open a bottle of wine, wearing down Alison’s initial objections.

  Getting the sense they needed a little sister time, I asked Mark to join me on the back deck. My brother-in-law was adequate company, and I liked him well enough. He was a dedicated husband; a caring father; steady, solid, and dependable in all areas of life. Certainly, he was preferable to Jenny’s husband, the lamentably paramilitary Jason.

  As we went outside, the September sun was setting slowly behind us, bouncing its colors off the opposite bank of the York River, making Mark’s red hair look like it was on fire.

  “So,” he said, after getting himself settled into a chair. “It seems almost ridiculous to ask, but how are you doing?”

  All I did was shake my head. I knew he meant well, but how I was doing couldn’t be put into words.

  He continued: “I mean, I can’t imagine. This is . . . to say it’s my worst nightmare come true doesn’t even come close.”

  Mark wasn’t chatty by nature. In a group, when it was all three sisters and all three husbands, he almost never said a word. I recognized he was making an effort to reach out.

  I just couldn’t summon the emotional energy to engage in the conversation he was trying to have.

  “You know what? I’m sorry,” I said. “If I even try to think about this anymore, I’m going to go crazy. Can we talk about something else?”

  “Oh yeah. Geez, I’m so sorry, I was just—”

  “Don’t worry about it. Seriously. Just . . . distract me, please,” I said, groping around for a safe topic. I came up with: “How’s work going?”

  Eager to appease, Mark launched into what was basically a monologue about his efforts to slay the digital giants. His job involved optimizing computer networks for an investment company called the Whipple Alliance, and I think he was pretty good at it. I didn’t really understand the intricacies, but there were instances where the traders—including the boss, Andy Whipple—could make a fraction of a cent more per transaction if it could be completed a few nanoseconds quicker, something that starts to matter when you make millions of transactions a year.

  Mark used to work for the Whipple Alliance up in New York City. It was a confluence of events that led him and Karen down here. First, Karen decided to stay at home with the kids, meaning they were trying to survive on one salary, no easy thing in the New York area. Then Wade Powell died and Karen began making noises about wanting to move closer to her widowed mother. Mark was able to convince his superiors he could do his job from anywhere.

  In many ways, we were just following the trail they had laid down for us when we came down here five years ago. We had kids. We returned “home” to raise them—home for a military brat being wherever your family was last stationed.

  As Mark talked, twilight approached. When our wives joined us, I could tell, from the way they were wobbling, they had finished off the first bottle of wine and had opened a second. It had clearly been a bit much for their empty stomachs to handle.

  Some of the substance-abuse counselors whom I ordered defendants to see would say this was dangerous behavior: self-medicating out of an inability to handle reality. But I didn’t blame them. At the moment, reality flatly sucked.

  “How’s it going out here?” Alison asked.

  “I’ve just been boring Scott with work stuff,” Mark said.

  “Oh, work.” Karen snorted, spilling a little bit of her wine as she flopped down. “Did you tell him you keep letting Gary and Ranjit take credit for everything you’re doing?”

  Karen turned to me and continued: “Do you know what they’ve started calling him? Lowe Man. As in, Lowe Man on the Totem Pole.”

  “That’s just a joke,” Mark interjected.

  Karen ignored him. “These two a-holes up in New York, anything Mark does, they go to the boss—not their direct boss, the boss’s boss. And they’re all, like, ‘Oh yeah, that thing that’s allowing you to make millions of dollars? That was totally my doing.’ When really it was Mark’s. But Mark never says a word.”

  Mark coughed uncomfortably. “They’re not . . . they’re
not fooling anyone. The truth is in the code. They can see what each log-in has—”

  “You think any of those traders understand code? Jesus,” Karen snapped. “You know what Andy Whipple understands? He understands making gobs of money and banging strippers. You’re deluding yourself if you think he has a clue.”

  “Andy is a lot more savvy than—”

  “Then why don’t you ask for a raise like we talked about?” Karen demanded. “Why don’t you be assertive for a change? Maybe Scott here could teach you. Judges have to be assertive, right?”

  There was finally a pause in Karen’s rant. Alison cleared her throat and the glance she shot at me said, Please make this stop.

  I stood up and offered a meek, “Let’s eat.”

  FOURTEEN

  The monitor was thirty-four inches from corner to corner, and it cast a bluish light on the back wall of the bedroom.

  “Go back some more,” the older brother said. “I want to see when the car arrived.”

  The younger brother nodded and fiddled with his laptop computer. There were three images on the big screen. One of them was now peeling backward, showing not just one car, but another . . . and a third.

  “You should have been watching more carefully,” the older admonished. “You play that computer game. We are not here to play games.”

  The younger brother didn’t reply. He was not in the mood to be lectured.

  “There,” the older said. “Start there.”

  The younger brother clicked the play button. The picture on the screen was of a farmhouse with a wraparound porch. Between the three views on the screen, the brothers could see a 270-degree wedge of the front and sides of the structure. The middle camera showed a hundred feet of grass and dirt driveway in front of the house. Each side camera, when panned all the way out, captured another broad slice of the grounds, all the way to the edge of the forest.

  The lenses providing those images were so tiny that not even a squirrel climbing one of the tree trunks they were affixed to would have necessarily noticed them. Three small wireless transmission boxes, silently sending their signals to the Internet, were hidden nearby.