We took two shovels to the garden and tried to figure out what de Groot meant by knoll.
“He said, ‘On top of a lovely grassy knoll,’” Digby said. “What even is a knoll?”
“Like a hill?” I said.
Digby surrendered and looked it up on his phone. “Another term for a small, low, round natural hill or mound.”
We looked around. Nothing really fit that bill.
“That thing?” He pointed at a small grassy incline to one side.
“That just looks like a big pile of dirt they made to shield the garden,” I said.
“His guys might’ve told him it was a knoll. I doubt he spends a lot of time looking at his backyard dirt piles,” Digby said. “For all he knows he has Mt. Everest back here.”
I looked at it again. It was smaller than a hill but it was most definitely much bigger than any dirt pile I would ever want to dig up in the middle of the night. But I didn’t want to be a party pooper.
“Where do we dig?” I said.
“He said the top,” Digby said. “So let’s start at the top.”
We trudged up the slope and without having any other clues to tell us where to start, we just started digging where we stood. Within five minutes, my arms were tired. The second after I acknowledged that, I felt blisters starting to form on my palms.
I was just debating whether I should take off my hoodie and wrap it around the shovel handle when I noticed Digby standing perfectly still, staring at the ground. He dropped his shovel. And then I realized. There he was, standing at the end of his insane nine-year odyssey. I wondered what he was thinking.
TWENTY-THREE
“So this is what closure feels like,” Digby says.
I don’t know what to say to that, so I just stand next to him.
“Closure sucks,” Digby says. “Now what?”
He isn’t asking for suggestions. He is telling me something I already understand. I’ve often wondered what he would do once it was over.
“What did I expect, right? It’s like they say. The truth is almost always disappointing.” Digby turns to me. “But . . . now what? Other than me, talking in clichés.”
I wonder what this means for Digby and me. At the heart of everything, he and I are partners in crime, and now the crime spree is winding down.
“This isn’t the time to think about what’s next,” I say, putting the shovel back in his hand. “Now we keep digging.”
We are about to get going again when a pair of flashlight beams comes out of the main house’s back door and bobs toward us.
“Do we run?” I say.
By now we can see that Art and Jim are the ones holding the flashlights. Digby and I push our shovels into the dirt, and lean on them while we wait for Art and Jim to climb up to us.
“Are you kids going to dig up this entire knoll of dirt?” Art says.
I jump when I hear him use the word knoll.
“So it was you?” Digby says. When Art is silent, Digby picks up his shovel, pushes the cutting edge of the shovel’s blade against Art’s chest, and says, “It was you.”
“It was both of us,” Jim says, then he pauses. “But, technically, it was neither of us.”
Digby raises the shovel to neck level and points it at Jim. “I’m not in the mood, man.”
“She isn’t dead, kid,” Art says. “We were taking you to the boss because he thought it was time to let you know that. He was going to explain that your sister didn’t die nine years ago.”
Digby gets in Art’s face. “What are you talking about? De Groot just told me she was dead. He told me that her body is buried right here.” Digby uses the shovel’s handle to poke Art in the chest. “This is not a knoll, by the way. It is a dirt pile.”
“We don’t work for de Groot . . .” Jim says. “I mean, we do but we get our instructions from his lawyer, Mr. Book. He’s our boss.”
“That’s who we were taking you to see,” Art says. “When you locked us in the bathroom.”
“Wait. Sally Digby isn’t dead? Sally Digby is alive?” I say. “Then where the hell is she?”
“That’s why Mr. Book needs to talk to you.” Art turns to Digby and says, “If we drive you to Mr. Book, can you please not murder us in the car?”
Digby stares at him, stunned. After a while, he says, “The night is young. I can’t make any promises.” He body-checks Art as he walks down the incline, and says, “I’m driving.”
* * *
• • •
Luckily, when we get to the car, Digby is sensible enough to hand me the car keys. Partially, though, he lets me drive because it allows him to keep a hold on his shovel handle—which he does while angrily glaring at Art and Jim in the backseat.
Finally, Digby can’t stand it anymore and he says, “Just tell me where she is.”
Art sighs. “You’re going to want to hear the whole story from the boss. Context is going to matter a lot.”
“And this ‘context’ will help me understand why you people destroyed four lives with kidnap, murder, and extortion?” Digby says. “Now that is some context. I do need to hear that.”
“You’ll get it when the boss explains,” Art says. “He has a way with words.”
“Book. The lawyer,” Digby says. Art nods. Digby says, “We’re going to his office? At that office park?” When Art nods at that, Digby says, “Well, since I know who Book is and where he’ll be, I don’t really know why I need to keep you two around.”
“Um, Digby?” Half of me thinks he wouldn’t actually do anything crazy, but the other half is uncertain enough to make me nervous.
“I could just give myself a mental wellness treat and ask you to get out so I can run you over with your own car,” Digby says.
“Kid,” Art says. “Don’t force me to use my—”
“Your gun?” Digby takes out a gun from under his jacket and points it at Art in the backseat. “This gun? Why don’t you give me yours too?” Digby motions at Jim, who does as he says.
“Hey. Be careful where you point that. If she hits a bump . . .” Art says. “You’re going to have a huge mess to get rid of.”
“Well, at least I’m prepared,” Digby says, and pats the shovel’s handle with his free hand.
“Put it away, Digby. What are you doing?” I say. “Put it away or I’m stopping the car and this party is over.”
Digby puts the two guns away and says, “You’re lucky she’s here.”
“I don’t know why you’re so sore, anyway. This is good news,” Art says. “Aren’t you happy your sister’s actually alive?”
“No, no.” I make eye contact with Art in the mirror. “Don’t do that.”
“Too soon?” Art says.
“Be-yond too soon,” I say.
* * *
• • •
Only one room is lit up in the whole office park and Book’s shiny black monster of a Bentley is the lone car in the lot when we drive up. We park and all four of us walk into the building in a loose who-goes-first huddle because really, it isn’t clear who’s in charge of whom.
“Princeton,” Digby says. “I’m nervous.”
“It’s okay to be nervous,” I say. “But since you are nervous . . .”
“Give you the guns,” Digby says. “Yeah.” He nods and then hands both guns to me.
I don’t like the feel of them—cold and dense and slippery in my hand—so I drop both guns in the small pond by the building’s entrance.
Jim curses.
“Oh, man,” Art says. “That’s my personal carry . . . and it’s a fifteen-hundred-dollar piece.”
“Fifteen hundred dollars for a gun? A man with his priorities so far out of whack doesn’t deserve to even have fifteen hundred dollars,” I say, even though I’m secretly appalled at having wrecked something so valuable.
Book is sitting in his chair, staring at the door with a stony-faced expression that I recognize from my father. It is the displeased frown of a man who believes time is money and has been kept waiting.
“I’ve been here for an hour and a half,” Book says.
Dead-eyed and as lifeless as the marble bust they’ll put up outside whatever college library he’ll donate to, Jonathan Garfield Book has the silver-fox, old-boy, school-tie arrogance my father’s been trying to fake all his life. This Book guy definitely knows where all the bodies are buried. Or not buried, as it now turns out.
Digby takes one of the bottles of mineral water from Book’s desk and says, “Am I supposed to say sorry?” And then Digby knocks down Book’s very full penholder before walking over to peruse one of Book’s shelves of file folders.
I can see from the way he’s frowning at the mess on his desk that it really bothers Book. He desperately wants to right the cup and put the pens and pencils back in place but controls himself.
Digby sees this too, clearly, because he starts knocking down picture frames and chamber of commerce–type crystal doodads from the shelves.
“Please. Do not do that,” Book says. “You are being a child.”
“Oh, I’m sorry, what?” Digby tucks the shovel under his arm so that it sticks out behind him and then abruptly turns so that the shovel’s blade scores an angry black scar into the wall before smashing into and knocking over a fully loaded drinks cart. Broken glass everywhere. “My little baby ears didn’t catch that.”
Book closes his eyes and takes a deep breath. I’m sure he has done this to calm down but I don’t see how it could work, because the smell of alcohol from the broken liquor bottles is so strong that I have started to cough.
“Do you have your mother’s research with you?” Book says.
“Do you have my sister?” Digby says.
Book smiles and says, “Well, I didn’t keep her for a pet if that’s what you mean.”
“Then where is she?” Digby says.
“I don’t know exactly,” Book says. “But she isn’t dead. Or, at least, she wasn’t dead when I last saw her. Who knows what she’s been up to since. Nine years is a long time.”
Digby uses the shovel to sweep off all the stuff on Book’s desk and perches on the top so he’s looming over Book. “Yes, nine years is a long time.” And then he punctuates that by thrusting the shovel sideways so that it shatters the window behind Book.
Through gritted teeth, Book says, “If you would just calm down, I can explain everything to you and you will see that, in fact, I have done you and your sister—”
I see Digby start to tense up again and realize I should step in since we are running out of inanimate objects for Digby to deflect his anger onto.
“No, no, no,” I say. “Don’t try to bright-side him. Just tell him what happened.” I take the shovel out of Digby’s hand and say, “But. If you don’t stop trying to make yourself look like you’re somehow the good guy, I will give him back his shovel.”
Book nods at Art, who moves to pat Digby down.
“Hey,” Digby says. “What? Are you checking if I’m recording?”
Book somehow finds a way to arrange his already funereal face into a darker grimace.
“I committed treason today,” Digby says. “We are way past recording devices and gathering evidence for the prosecution.”
“All right,” Book says. “The first thing you should know is that by the time these two called me nine years ago, things were already in motion. They had already taken your sister and had her locked up in a warehouse—”
Digby says, “So your defense is that you didn’t have anything to do with planning the kidnapping—”
“Nothing,” Book says. “That was one hundred percent the product of Hans de Groot’s fevered imagination.”
“You’re an accessory after the fact. You’re a lawyer. We know you know that,” I say.
“The old man heard about what your mother was working on about six months after his doctor told him he was sick,” Art says. “Jim and I were worried when he had us follow her around town. But we did it anyway . . .”
“You were stalking my family?” Digby says. “Is that what you mean when you said you were like the friend I didn’t know I had?”
“We didn’t know what else to do,” Art says. “And I haven’t had a good night’s sleep ever since. Hand to God.”
“Trust me—some of the other guys de Groot has working for him . . .” Jim says. “Things would’ve turned out even worse.”
Digby turns back to Book. “What exactly does he want with my mom’s research?”
“Hans de Groot was diagnosed with a rare form of an already uncommon neurodegenerative disease ten years ago. The doctors had never seen his variant of the disease before and so they couldn’t give him a clear prognosis. And that uncertainty sent de Groot down the yellow brick road,” Book says. “He thinks your mother’s work will allow him to live forever. Some fantasy about her tiny robots rewiring his DNA.”
“And it wouldn’t have . . . ?” Digby says.
“Of course not. Ridiculous,” Book says. “Nine years ago, your mother was in the very earliest conceptual stages. Timothy Fong is only now working out the practicalities. It took more than two hundred million dollars to get him this far, and Dr. Fong’s timeline projects fifteen more years before they even produce something they can test in a human body.” Book laughs. “It will not happen in Hans de Groot’s lifetime.”
“How do you know so much about Dr. Fong’s funding and timeline?” Digby says.
“Because as of three months after my employer took it upon himself to commission your sister’s kidnapping, I started the boring but legal process of buying a controlling chunk of Perses Analytics for the de Groot family,” Book says. “If only he had asked, I could have gotten him what he wanted without all this fuss.”
Digby is silent but I can tell from his neck muscles twitching that he is having the same cascading thoughts that I am.
“Wait. But if he already owns the company, then why did de Groot make us steal this data?” I say. “What was all this for?”
“He doesn’t know,” Book says. “With Hans de Groot’s niece, I arranged to buy Perses from behind an impenetrable stack of corporate identities. And we have kept that fact from him ever since.”
“What for?” I say.
“Because the fact remains that all the king’s horses and men will not be able to put old Humpty together again,” Book says. “His niece feels—and the doctors somewhat agree—that believing the answer is still out there has extended his life well past all expectations. He has even outlived the doctor who told him about his disease.”
“So that’s it?” I say. “You’ll never tell him?”
“Well, as long as he is alive, his niece possesses his votes by proxy on the board and I report to her, so, no, if she and I have our way, I do not think Mr. de Groot will ever find out,” Book says.
“And so, what? You people just run around behind these de Groot morons picking up after them while they ruin innocent people’s lives?” Digby says.
Book, Art, and Jim share a pained look.
“I’ll tell you, kid, I don’t want to be doing this anymore either,” Art says.
“And you? Is this what you thought your life would be?” Digby says to Book. “You sat in your Harvard classroom and thought, Yeah, when I grow up, I want to be a bag man flunky.”
“Of course not. But spending thirty years living on circuit court wages waiting for one of nine seats to open up and be handed to you . . .” Book says. “It seemed like a bad bet to me.”
“And how’s this working out for you?” Digby says. When Book doesn’t answer, Digby says, “Where is she?”
“I have already told you. I don’t know,” Book says.
“Wh
at did you do with her?” Digby says.
Book says, “Well, clearly, we could not just put her back.” He points at Art and says, “I had him find her a good home.”
Digby stares at Art. “And?”
“I had a contact. A phone number from a guy I was in the service with. I think he said it was someone inside the local PD,” Art says. “I never got a name, never heard a voice, never saw a face, never knew what the plan would be. It was just fixed one day.”
“How?” Digby says.
“He told me to put the money in a safety-deposit box in a downtown bank and told me to put the key on a necklace that your sister wore,” Art says. “Then, one night . . .”
Art and Jim look at each other.
“You’re kidding,” Digby says. “They kidnapped her away from you idiots.”
“We went into the room the next day and she was just . . . gone,” Jim says.
“You’ve got to understand. It was all happening so fast and even while it was happening, all we wanted to do was get ourselves out of the situation,” Art says. “When she disappeared . . . we were just glad it was over.”
“Excellent,” I say. “And that’s the end of the trail?”
No one says otherwise. Digby and I stand there, silent. All the old questions have been answered and we can’t yet put into words the new ones.
And then, like a man in a dream, Digby walks to Book and slowly puts his hand in Book’s pocket. “I’m taking your car. You will not report it missing for one week,” Digby says. “If you report it before next Sunday, I will turn in this recording.” Digby pockets the keys and pulls out his phone to show Book that it has recorded the entire conversation.
“But . . .” Book says. “The treason you’ve admitted to—”
“I’m a minor. Who was coerced.” Digby points at Book. “By you, baby.”
Book points at his keys in Digby’s pocket and says, “But that’s a Mulsanne. How are you going to explain suddenly having a three-hundred-fifty-thousand-dollar car?”
“Oh, I’m not keeping it,” Digby says. “I’m giving it to a couple of strung-out drug dealers who need cash to get out of town.” When that makes Book go pale, Digby claps him across the shoulder and says, “Oh, cheer up. You can get your insurance to buy you a new one next week. This one should be on a cargo ship to Dubai by then.”
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