Other Worlds Than These

by John Joseph Adams

  “The parents have—had—U.S. passports.”

  Ruby gave a short laugh. “If they’ve got passports, then they’ve got Social Security cards and birth certificates.”

  “And we looked those up—”

  “We?’”

  “This task force I was on,” he said, a bit sheepishly. “It was a state-level operation with a federal gateway.”

  Here comes the jargon, Ruby thought, willing her eyes not to film over.

  “Anyway, we looked up the numbers. They were issued in New York, as were their birth certificates. There was no activity of any kind on the numbers—no salary, no withholding, no income, no benefits. According to the records, these people have never worked and never paid taxes.”

  “Call the IRS, tell them you’ve got a lead on some people who’ve never paid taxes. That’ll take care of it.”

  “Tried that,” Pasco said, his half-smile faint. “The IRS records show that everything is in order for the Nakamuras. Unfortunately, they can’t seem to find any copies of their tax returns.”

  “That doesn’t sound like the IRS I know,” Ruby said sceptically.

  Pasco shrugged. “They’re looking. At least, that’s what they tell me whenever I call. I have a feeling that it’s not a priority for them.”

  “But what about the rest of it? The birth certificates? You said they were issued in New York?”

  “They’re not actually the original birth certificates,” Pasco said. “They’re notarised copies, replacing documents which have been lost. Some of the information is missing—like, where exactly each of them was born, the hospital, the attending physician, and, except for Alice, the parents’ names.”

  Ruby glanced heavenward for a moment. “What are they, in witness protection?”

  “I’ll let you know if I ever get a straight answer one way or another on that one,” Pasco said, chuckling a little, “but I’d bet money that they aren’t.”

  “Yeah, me, too.” Ruby sat for a few moments, trying to get her mind around everything he had told her. None of it sounded right. Incomplete birth certificates? Even if she bought the stuff about the IRS, she found that completely implausible. “But I still don’t understand. Everything’s computerized these days which means everything’s recorded. Nobody just pops into existence, let alone a whole family.”

  “It’s not against the law to live off the grid,” Pasco said. “Some people do. You’d be surprised at how many.”

  “What—you mean living off the land, generating your own electricity, shit like that?” Ruby gave a short, harsh laugh. “Look at that photo. That’s not a picture of a girl whose family has been living off the grid. She’s got an orthodontist, for chrissakes.”

  “I’m not so sure,” Pasco said. “We had the Nakamuras on our radar, so to speak, when they entered the state. However they had been covering themselves before they left the Caymans, whatever they’d been doing to stay invisible, they weren’t doing it any more. They left an easy trail to follow. I found them in a northland hotel near the airport. They were there for a week. At the same time, the task force was investigating some fraudulent activity elsewhere in the same area. It seemed that the Nakamura case was going to converge with it.”

  “What was it, this other activity?” Ruby asked.

  Pasco made a face. “More identity theft. I can run you through the long version later if you want but the short version is, be careful what you do with your utility bills after you pay them, and if you insist on paying them over the phone, don’t use a cordless phone or a mobile.” He paused; when she nodded, he went on. “Anyway, we had enough evidence for a warrant. But when the police got there, the house was abandoned. The only thing they found was the body of Alice Nakamura in one of the bedrooms. Her birth certificate, school photo, library card, and passport were lying next to her on the floor.”

  “How did she die?”

  “Natural causes. Heart failure. I forget what the condition’s called but the coroner said that a lot of kids on the transplant lists have it. Alice Nakamura wasn’t on any of those. There are no medical records for her anywhere, in fact. And it turned out that her passport was a forgery.”

  Ruby blinked. “So much for homeland security.”

  “It was an excellent forgery, but a forgery nonetheless, as there was no record of her ever applying for a passport, let alone receiving one. Unlike her parents.”

  “If this is some kind of conspiracy, it’s the most random and disorganized one I’ve ever heard of,” Ruby said, frowning. “Not to mention that it doesn’t make any sense. Unless you’ve actually been speaking a language that only sounds like English but all the words mean something entirely different and I haven’t really understood a single thing you’ve said.”

  Her words hung in the air between them for a long moment. Pasco’s face was deeply thoughtful (not deeply regretful; she stamped down on the memory again), practically contemplative, as if she had set out a significant issue that had to be addressed with care. Inside her, the Dread pushed sharply into the area just under her breastbone.

  “I’m sure that’s how everything probably looks when you see it from the outside,” he said finally. “If you don’t know a system, if you don’t understand how things work or what the rules are, it won’t make any sense. The way a foreign language will sound like gibberish.”

  Ruby grimaced at him. “But nothing’s that strange. If you listen to a foreign language for even just a minute, you start picking up some sense of the patterns in it. You recognize it’s a system even if it’s one you’re not familiar with—”

  “Oh?” Pasco’s half-smile was back. “Ever listened to Hungarian?”

  She waved a hand at him. “No, but I’ve listened to Cantonese and Mandarin, simultaneously at full volume when my grandparents argued. You know what I mean. For a system—or anything—to be completely incomprehensible, it would have to be something totally—” She floundered, groping for a word. “It would have to be something totally alien. Outside human experience altogether.”

  Her words replayed themselves in her mind. “Christ,” she said, massaging her forehead. “What the hell are we talking about and why?”

  Pasco pressed his lips together briefly. “You were saying that there are a lot of things about my case that don’t make any sense.”

  “You got that right, my man,” she said feelingly and then let out a long sigh. “I suppose that’s the human element at work.”

  “Pardon?” Now he looked bewildered.

  “People are infinitely screwy,” she said. “Human beings can make a mess out of chaos.”

  He surprised her by bursting into loud, hearty laughter. She twisted around in her seat to see that the whole room was staring at them curiously. “Thanks, I’ll be here all week,” she said a bit self-consciously and turned back to Pasco, trying to will him to wind down fast. Her gaze fell on the notebook screen again.

  “Hey, what about her retainer?” she asked, talking over his guffaws.

  “Her what?” Pasco said, slightly breathless and still chuckling a little.

  “On her teeth.” Ruby tapped the screen with her little finger. It felt spongy. “Were you able to trace it to a particular orthodontist?”

  “She wasn’t wearing a retainer and they didn’t find one in the house,” Pasco said, sobering.

  “And what about her parents?”

  “The Nakamuras have dropped out of sight again.”

  “Popped out of existence?”

  “I thought so at first,” he said, either oblivious to or ignoring her tone of voice. “But then that girl turned up on the roof yesterday, which leads me to believe they were still around. Up to that point, anyway. They might be gone by now, though.”

  “Why? You think they had something to do with the girl’s death?”

  “Not intentionally.”

  Ruby shook her head. “Intentionally, unintentionally—either way, why? Who is she to them—the long-lost twin of the girl who died of heart
failure?” Abruptly the Dread gave her stomach a half-twist; she swallowed hard and kept talking. “How long ago was that anyway, when you found Alice Nakamura?”

  Pasco hesitated, his face suddenly very serious. “I didn’t find her. I mean, I only pinpointed the address. I wasn’t there when the police entered the house. The Geek Squad never goes along on things like that. I think the other cops are afraid of geeks with guns.”

  “But you’re cops, too.”

  “Exactly. Anyway—” He swivelled the notebook around and tapped the keyboard a few times. “That was about five and a half weeks ago, almost six.” He looked up again. “Does that suggest anything special to you?”

  Ruby shook her head. “You?”

  “Just that the Nakamuras have managed to lay pretty low for quite a while. I wonder how. And where.”

  Ruby wanted to ask him something about that but couldn’t quite figure out how to word the question. “And you’re absolutely sure that girl—Alice Nakamura, I mean—died of natural causes?”

  “None whatsoever. Also, she wasn’t abused or neglected in any way before she died, either. She was well taken care of. She just happened to be very sick.”

  “Uh-huh.” Ruby nodded absently. “Then why would they just go off and leave her?”

  “If they didn’t want to be found—and judging from their behaviour, they didn’t—then they couldn’t carry her dead body along with them.”

  “All right, that makes sense,” Ruby said. “But it still leaves the question of why they don’t want to be found. Because they’re in on this identity theft thing, conspiracy, whatever it is?”

  “Or because they’re victims of identity theft who have had to steal a new identity themselves.”

  Ruby closed her eyes briefly. “OK, now we’re back to not making sense again.”

  “No, it’s been known to happen,” Pasco insisted. “For some people, when their identity gets stolen, the thief does so much damage that they find it’s virtually impossible to clear their name. They have to start over.”

  “But why steal someone else’s identity to do that?” Ruby asked. “Why not just create an entirely new identity?”

  “Because the created identity would eventually trace back to the old one. Better to get one with completely different connections.”

  Ruby shook her head obstinately. “You could still do that with a brand new identity.”

  Pasco was shaking his own head just as obstinately. “The idea isn’t just to steal someone’s identity—it’s to steal their past, too. If I create a new identity, I really do have to start over in every way. That’s pretty hard. It’s easier if I can, say, build on your already-excellent credit rating.”

  “Obviously you’ve never tried to steal my identity,” Ruby said with a short, humourless laugh. “Or you’d know better than to say something like that.”

  “I was just giving an example.”

  Ruby let out a long breath. “I think I’ll pay the coroner a visit, see if there’s anything he can tell me about how Alice Nakamura’s twin died. Maybe it’ll tell us something about—oh, I don’t know, anything. In a way that will make sense.” She stood up to go back to her desk.

  “Hey—” Pasco caught her wrist; the contact startled her and he let go immediately. “What if she died of natural causes?”

  “Jesus, you really can dream things up, can’t you.” Ruby planted her fists on her hips and gave him a hard look. “That would be entirely too much of a coincidence.”

  “Natural causes,” said the coroner’s assistant, reading from a clipboard. Her ID gave her name as Sheila St. Pierre; there was a tiny Hello, Kitty sticker under the St. She was a plump woman in her mid-twenties with short, spiky blonde hair and bright red cat’s-eye glasses and, while she wasn’t chewing gum, Ruby kept expecting to hear it pop every time she opened her mouth. “Aneurysm. Tragic in one so young, you know?”

  “You’re sure you have the right chart?” Ruby asked tensely.

  “Unidentified Oriental adolescent female, brought in yesterday from a roof-top in east midtown, right?” Sheila St. Pierre offered Ruby the clipboard. “See for yourself.”

  Ruby scanned the form quickly several times before she was able to force herself to slow down and check each detail. “How can a thirteen-year-old girl have a fucking aneurysm?” she said finally, handing the clipboard back to the other woman. “The coroner must have screwed up. Where is he? I want to make him do it again.”

  “There’s no do-overs in post-mortems,” Sheila St. Pierre said, making a face. “What do you think we’re working with here, Legos?” She shifted her weight to her right side and folded her arms, hugging the clipboard to her front. “How about a second opinion?”

  “Great,” Ruby said. “Where can I get one?”

  “Right here. I assisted Dr. Levitt on this one and I saw it myself firsthand. It was an aneurysm. Case closed. You know, an aneurysm is one of those things anybody can have without even knowing it. You could have one, or I could. We just go along living our lives day in, day out, everything’s swell, and suddenly—boom. Your head blows up and you’re history. Or I am. Or we both are. Most people have no idea how thin that membrane between life and death can be. But then, isn’t it really better that way? Better living though denial. Who’d want to go around in a constant state of dread?”

  Ruby glared at her but she was turning away to put the clipboard down on a metal table nearby. “At least it isn’t all bad news,” she said, holding up a small plastic bag between two fingers. There was a retainer in it. “We did manage to identify the girl from her dental records.”

  “I didn’t see that on that report!” Ruby snapped. “Why wasn’t it on there? Who is she? When were you going to fucking tell me?”

  Sheila St. Pierre tossed the bag with the retainer in it back on the table. “Which question would like me to fucking answer first?”

  Ruby hesitated and then looked at the retainer. “Where did that come from, anyway? I didn’t see one at the scene.”

  “Well, it was there. Nobody looked close enough till we got her on the table. Her name is Betty Mura—”

  “What’s her address?” Ruby demanded. “And why didn’t you call me?”

  “I did call you,” Sheila St. Pierre said with exaggerated patience. “You weren’t at your desk so I left a message.”

  Ruby had to force herself not to lunge forward and shake the woman. “When was that?”

  “As near as I can tell, it was while you were on your way over here.”

  “Give me that information now!” Ruby ordered her but she was already picking up the clipboard. She slid a piece of paper out from under the form on top and handed it over.

  “Thank you,” she prompted politely as Ruby snatched it from her.

  “You’re welcome,” Ruby growled over her shoulder, already out of the room.

  There was a ticket on her windshield; another skirmish in the struggle to keep the area in front of the municipal complex a strict no-parking zone, this means you, no exceptions, especially cops. Ruby crumpled it up and tossed it in the backseat as she slid behind the wheel. She clipped Betty Mura’s home address to her visor. A West Side address, no surprise there considering the girl’s clothes. But what had she been doing on a roof in east midtown? What had she been doing anywhere in east midtown, and how had she gotten there? She might have died of natural causes but there had definitely been something unusual going on in the last hours of her life.

  She went to start the car and then paused. First she should call Rafe Pasco, tell him she had the girl’s name and address and she would pick him up.

  The image of his head resting on the pillow beside her flashed in her mind; irritation surged and was immediately overwhelmed by the Dread in a renewed assault. She had a sudden strong urge to close her eyes and let her head fall forward on the steering wheel and stay that way until the next Ice Age or the heat death of the universe, which ever came second.

  She took a steadying breath,
popped her cell phone into the cradle on the dashboard, put it on speaker and dialled the squad room. Tommy DiCenzo answered; she asked him to put her through to Pasco.

  “Can’t, Ruby. He’s not here, he left.”

  “Where’d he go?” she asked, but as soon as the words were out of her mouth, she knew the answer.

  “Coroner’s office called—they identified your rooftop girl from her dental records. He took the name and address and left.”

  “Did he say anything about coming to get me first?” Knowing that he hadn’t.

  Tommy hesitated. “Not to me. But I got the impression he thought you already knew, since you were on your way over to the coroner’s anyway.”

  “Shit,” she muttered and started the car. “Hey, you wouldn’t happen to know Pasco’s cell phone number, would you? I don’t have it with me.”

  “Hang on—”

  “Tommy—” But he had already put the phone down. She could hear the tanky background noise of the squad room: footsteps, a phone ringing, and Tommy’s voice, distant and indistinct, asking a question. A few seconds later he picked up the phone again.

  “OK, ready?”

  “Wait—” she found a pen, looked around hurriedly and then held the point over the back of her other hand. “Go.”

  He dictated the number to her carefully, saying it twice.

  “Thanks, Tommy,” she said, disconnecting before he could say anything else. She dialled the number he’d given her, then pulled away from the curb as it began to ring.

  To her immense frustration, it kept on ringing for what seemed like a hundred times before she finally heard the click of someone picking up.

  “Rafe Pasco speaking—”

  “Goddamit, Rafe, why didn’t you call me before—”

  “I’m in the Bahamas for two weeks,” his voice went on cheerfully, cutting into her tirade, “and as you can see, I didn’t pack my cell phone. Sorry about that. But you can phone my house-sitter and talk to her if you want. It’s your call.” There was another click followed by a mechanical female voice inviting her to leave a message after the beep.

  Ruby stabbed the disconnect button and redialled. The same thing happened and she disconnected again, furious. Was Pasco playing some kind of mind-game or had he really just forgotten to change his voicemail message after his last vacation? Either way, she was going to have a hard time not punching him. Weaving in and out of the traffic, she headed for the freeway.