The Canary List: A Novel

by Sigmund Brouwer

  “I’m done discussing this with you, Mr. Grey.”

  “Then I’ll file a report. I can do that. I’m her neighbor.”

  Pamela Li turned to the receptionist.

  “He’s all yours. File it for him.”

  “Your name,” Young and Black and Tired said even before Pamela was gone, a hard flatness to her eyes. “Address and relationship to the missing person.”

  Crockett wasn’t a detective. But it didn’t take a detective to conclude that filing the report was going to be less than pleasant. It was just another reminder of how life would be for a man accused of abusing children.

  Thirty

  rockett didn’t know if he’d be able to learn a lot from Agnes Murdoch, but he was going to be alert for anything that remotely hinted at the need for DNA testing or a genealogy report.

  It was why he’d driven to Anaheim, almost within the shadows of Disneyland. The place was bleak to him now, as it baked in sunshine white through smog. Crockett pushed away memories of his time with Ashley there, not needing the weakness and where it could lead.

  Now he sat in a house that had been built before Disneyland, breathing through his mouth.

  “Talking when you should have been listening?” Agnes Murdoch said in a raspy voice. She pointed at Crockett’s face.

  No problem deciding how it had become so raspy. As she finished speaking, she reached across the armrest of her green couch, crushed the remnants of her cigarette into a nearby ashtray, and immediately lit another.

  “Wish I had a better answer,” he said, “but yeah.”

  “Other guy look worse than you?”

  “Wish I had a better answer,” he said, “but no.”

  Crockett turned his head to the side and stifled a cough. Cigarette smoke. Agnes’s ashtray—a statue of a cherub holding a plate above his head—looked suspiciously like it had been co-opted from a garden, that it was supposed to hold water for birds. Filled with twisted cigarette butts, it was the perfect height to stand at the edge of her couch. Reaching it took her no effort.

  “So, Crockett Grey, tell me why you’re here,” Agnes said with what looked like an unintentional scowl.

  Crockett sat forward. “I’m doing a little research, and Brad Romans mentioned you’ve had lots of foster kids over the years.”

  “Research?”

  “Well, I’m specifically asking about one child. You had Jaimie Piper for a while, right? Until your husband died?”

  “You get down to business, don’t you? Yes, George died. He was a good man. Hard worker. He died of lung cancer, bless his soul.”

  From information in the case file, Romans had told Crockett that Agnes was in her midfifties. Obviously she had not received the memo that linked smoking to cancer. Or the one that warned of the damage cigarettes did to skin. Blonde wig notwithstanding, she looked two decades older. Sitting on the saggy springs of an armchair across from her, Crockett was amazed at the depth of the wrinkles in her face, getting a visual of what might happen if Agnes stepped outside in a good rainstorm. He imagined those wrinkles filling with water, imagined Agnes stepping back inside her trailer, giving her head a shake, like a dog throwing water off fur, imagined the rainwater splattering in all directions.

  “Was Jaimie an easy child to live with?” Crockett began.

  Agnes’s eyes narrowed with calculation. “Why should I talk to you about Jaimie Piper?”

  Crockett was surprised. “Didn’t Brad Romans call ahead?” he said. “To let you know it would be okay to discuss her with me.”

  “Yeah, he called. Okay’s one thing. Lots of things are okay to do. But I still need a reason to do it.”

  “Fair enough,” Crockett said. “Well—”

  “I’ll take cowboy killers,” she said. “That’s a good reason.”

  Crockett felt what he’d call justifiable confusion.

  “Cowboy killers,” she repeated. “Marlboro Reds. Bunch of those hunkie cowboys in their ads died from them. A carton would be a great reason. I’ll even buy them myself and save you the errand.”

  Ah. She wanted cash. “A carton. That’d be what, fifty bucks?”

  She sneered. “Nonsmoker, aren’t you?”

  “Not at this moment,” he said, eyeing the smoke-filled room but avoiding the temptation to wave the fog away.

  “Hundred bucks gets you close,” she said. “The lousy government taxes people to death on cigarettes. How about a fat tax? Stuff burgers and fries down your gullet all day, kills you just as quickly as cigarettes. Except you’re fat and ugly when you die.”

  Instead of wrinkled and ugly? “Hundred bucks for a carton,” Crockett conceded, keeping his thoughts to himself. He’d be willing to pay for whatever information he could collect about Jaimie. Although he cared about her, his investigation wasn’t as much about helping as it was about looking for answers, any answers that might open the door a crack to exoneration. He wanted Jaimie to be safe, of course, but helping her had already gotten him into enough trouble. He needed to understand why someone seemed to be after her and why somebody was also after him. “Sure. I’ll pay it.”

  “Costs me gas and time to get to the store too.”

  “Twenty for that?”

  “Hundred. I’m not cheap.”

  “Fine.” Crockett clenched his jaw. “Two hundred for a carton of cowboy killers.” He’d see if Sarah Rinker’s legal fund covered it. If it came out of his pocket, still didn’t matter. Wasn’t like he’d be able to spend money if he went to prison.

  “Two hundred then. Ask what you want to ask.”

  “Tell me anything you remember about Jaimie Piper.”

  “Just a minute,” she said, enjoying the game of testing his patience. “It’s a little early in the day, but it’s five o’clock somewhere. You like vodka?”

  “No, thanks.” Crockett pulled out his wallet. He put two fifties on the coffee table. “Two more of these when I leave. Now please, tell me, you had Jaimie as a foster child when she was just a baby, right? What was she like?”

  “Jaimie,” Agnes said. “Easy one to remember. Social Services people said she’d be a lot to handle. Said the first family that had her just gave up trying to keep her. Said she cried and howled all the time, no matter what they did. First night with us, same thing. Until I gave her to George. She calmed right down. Didn’t take us long to figure out it was his golf bracelet.”

  “Golf bracelet?” Crockett felt like he’d stepped into a black-and-white television episode, spliced between The Twilight Zone and Abbott and Costello, where he was playing the part of the man who set up the punch lines. He couldn’t imagine that anyone who lived in this house was a golf enthusiast. It didn’t fit the profile.

  “George couldn’t hit a ball out of his shadow, but he loved the game. Bought every gadget in the world to try to fix his swing. He wore a copper golf bracelet on his left wrist. It was some kind of magnet meant to help circulation, make you less tired, all that stuff.”

  Crockett nodded as if this made sense.

  “See, he’s holding Jaimie in his left arm, and she went quiet right away. Remember now, she was hardly more than a baby. That arm’d get tired, so he’d switch to his right arm, she’d start howling. He’d switch back, she went quiet. Took awhile to figure it out, but it was the bracelet. She loved it. If we put her in the crib without it, she’d howl. Give her the bracelet, she’d settle right down. It was some kind of soother for her.”

  “Interesting,” Crockett said. “Make you think maybe she was demon possessed?”

  “Are you messing with me?” Another suspicious scowl.

  “You’re right. Bad joke.”

  “I promise you, the thing never failed. Even when she got older. We ended up buying her a smaller one as a bracelet. She wore it like jewelry. Probably still does, for all I know.”

  This wasn’t exactly helpful.

  “Did she act out a lot otherwise?”

  Agnes looked offended. “We were good parents, George and me
. We kept a good eye on all our kids. We didn’t do it for money. We were foster parents for love. I’ve gotten letters from some of them, grownups now, thanking us for giving them a home.” She took a puff of her cigarette, and Crockett detected a hint of sadness in her eyes. “And just so you know, we never smoked in front of them. Took it outside when the kids were around. Back when George was around.”

  Crockett was surprised by this woman’s genuine affection for her foster kids. He’d pigeonholed her immediately, based only on appearance. Okay, and on her demand for bribery. But humans were complex.

  “I don’t doubt you were a good parent,” Crockett said, and meant it. He had no real idea what he was looking for, or even how to best phrase the question. But there had to be something in the mystery that seemed to surround Jaimie’s family tree that led to someone framing him. Something that Dr. Madelyne Mackenzie wanted to find out too, as evidenced by her secret research.

  Or maybe there was no connection at all. But Crockett didn’t know what else to do, except flail around. The alternative was to stay at home, crawl back into bed, and wait for a trial that in all likelihood would end with a court-ordered separation from Mickey.

  “Anything weird about her family background?” Crockett asked.

  “Well, it’s funny you should ask,” Agnes said after a long pause. “There was a doctor’s appointment. We had all the records. We had them on Jaimie’s birth mom too. The doctor said that their blood types didn’t match, said that maybe we should look into it. What I said was that this was a foster-parents thing, that Social Services made mistakes all the time, maybe the original paperwork was wrong. The doctor was busy, moved right on, didn’t push us to find out. But I always wondered.”

  “Wondered?”

  “Sure. Was there a mix-up at the hospital? You know, like you hear it on that show with Maury Povich—wrong baby going home with wrong parents. But I never did track that down. Never thought it would matter that much, one way or another.”

  Thirty-One

  our face is looking slightly better,” Sarah Rinker told Crockett from behind her desk. “But you still need a little help on the cover-up front.”

  She reached into her purse and came up with a small round disc. After snapping open the disc, she pulled out a buff pad. Crockett realized it was some kind of makeup. The flaky light brown stuff. Had no idea what women called the stuff.

  “Don’t move,” she said. “Tilt your head back and close your eyes.”

  She leaned over him and gently applied the makeup, first to his neck, then to his face. Crockett gripped his armrests hard, as if he were flying through turbulence.

  She must have noticed.

  “Relax,” she said.

  Crockett tried. It never made sense to him anyway, gripping the armrests during turbulence. Like that would help if the plane went down.

  It took her a few moments to finish patting his face. Meanwhile, Crockett enjoyed the smell of her perfume.

  She stepped back. “See for yourself.”

  Crockett opened his eyes to a small circular mirror. “Uh, thanks,” he said. Most of his bruising was hidden.

  “You won’t draw frightened stares now. Use the makeup often.”

  She snapped the clamshell container shut, dropped it in his lap, then returned to sit behind her desk. “Now, down to business. Tell me about this e-mail attachment, which my secretary had to kill a few trees in order to print out for us. ”

  She nodded at a stack of paper on her otherwise empty desk. Her large, burnished, and predictably expensive desk.

  “Explain client confidentiality to me,” Crockett said. “For example, hypothetically, if you knew that a hypothetical client committed hypothetical computer crime, are you obliged to keep this hypothetical information confidential to protect your hypothetical client, or are you obliged to take this hypothetical information to the police?”

  “Tell you what,” she answered with an amused smile. “Lay out this hypothetical situation. Tell it in first person, hypothetically, of course. Just stop using the word hypothetical twenty times per sentence.”

  “So, uh, hypothetically … I made a call this morning,” Crockett said, “to a genetic scientist. I asked him to e-mail me this information.”

  “Genetic scientist. This, I’m sure, will be interesting. I love good stories.”

  Crockett told the story, starting with how Catfish had discovered that Mackenzie had posed as a man named Greg Biette in e-mail correspondence with a geneticist at the University of Tennessee, the fact that Madelyne Mackenzie had sent out a sample of blood from Jaimie Piper for DNA analysis about six months earlier, the fact that Mackenzie had hired a genealogist to look into Jaimie’s family history. And that her computer had a keystroke logging program on it. For good measure, he told Sarah about his meeting with Agnes that morning—during which Sarah interrupted and confirmed her client would be happy to reimburse Crockett for the money Agnes had gouged from him. He concluded by telling her about the bracelet and the doctor’s claim of mismatched blood types.

  When Crockett finished, both he and Sarah eyed the printed-out e-mail attachment as if it were the last unwrapped item under the tree on Christmas morning.

  Thirty-Two

  aymond Leakey had a huge headache.

  Not literally. He could deal with those. He knew he was verging on alcoholism and was fine with that. Pills could help him deal with headaches, and he had yet to let his drinking habits affect his work.

  His huge headache was right beside him, on a bus bench just off a busy street, almost within the shadows of the Vatican walls.

  His Eminence Ethan Saxon, the head of the archdiocese of Los Angeles. Legs crossed, arms crossed.

  Leakey sat on the bench, holding a folded newspaper. Leakey had not had time to take the usual precautions. Saxon hadn’t given him the time. Maybe the newspaper and the bus bench would convince any observers that it was coincidence that they were waiting for the same bus. Not likely. Cardinals did not use public transit in Rome. Saxon was too easily identified.

  “The man is not in jail,” Saxon said. Actually, hissed. “I thought you said you would take care of the problem.”

  “Maybe there wasn’t a problem in the first place.” Leakey was weary of coddling the cardinal, but there were orders from above. “There’s been no indication that the girl told him anything.”

  “Either that, or his lawyer is playing it smart and is hiding anything she said until it will have the most impact. You do know who represents him, don’t you? Where does he get that kind of clout?”

  “I know who represents him,” Leakey said. “Still trying to find out how it happened.”

  Saxon uncrossed his arms and his legs and leaned forward. “If I have to take the next step, I will.”

  Leakey asked the logical question. “What step?”

  “His neighbor. The old woman. It won’t be difficult to make it look like the teacher killed her.”

  “That would be very, very stupid,” Leakey said. “It’s under control. You don’t have to wait long for what you want.”

  “To me, it doesn’t appear to be under control. Plant some evidence that makes it look like the teacher tried to start the fire.”

  “Impossible. The forensic investigation is already complete.”

  “Then get rid of the teacher. Completely. If the girl told him anything, there is too much danger if he gets his lawyer looking into it. It’s a danger that will always hang over my head, no matter what position I have in the church.”

  Saxon was making it too easy on Leakey. Until now, there’d been a question of whether to come down on O’Hare’s side or Saxon’s side. What mattered to Leakey was whose name would be announced to the world when the white smoke was released. For Leakey to get his villa, he needed to be certain he chose the winner. Ahead of time.

  And Saxon was quickly becoming a man who needed to be cut loose.

  Thirty-Three

  ’m an audio,” Sarah said after she�
��d handed Crockett the stack of paper.

  “Read it to me.”

  The report was twenty pages long. At Sarah’s instructions, Crockett had skipped straight to the geneticist’s overview.

  “Audio?” Crockett echoed.

  “Some people learn better by seeing. Some through tactile, hands on. I learn best by listening.”

  “Ah, learning styles,” he said. “I am in the educational field, remember? Seven styles. The correct term for audio learning is aural. There’s also verbal, logical, social—”

  “Whatever,” she said. “Read the summary.”

  She leaned back in her chair and closed her eyes to concentrate, assuming Crockett would do as commanded.

  He did.

  In general terms, this analysis involves human DNA and the comparison of more than 32,000 genes and the inherent three billion or so nucleotides within those genes. (Nucleotides are strings of molecules that compose the structural units of DNA.)

  “Please,” she said. “Tell me this is going to get interesting. I’d rather sandpaper my eyeballs than listen to this.”

  He kept reading.

  In specific terms, the analysis of Jaimie Piper’s blood sample was based on a two-step process. The first step was to have the sample sent to an independent lab for high-throughput sequencing to decode the genome of Miss Piper.

  The second step involved searching for differences between Miss Piper’s genomes and the map provided by the HGP (Human Genome Project). The map includes both the genes and noncoding sequences of Miss Piper’s DNA.

  “Crockett,” Sarah groaned. “Shoot me. Please.”

  Crockett read on, obviously more interested in science than Sarah. He was already captivated.

  The difficulty in searching for anomalies between Miss Piper’s genomes and HGP’s map was the sheer volume of data. With 32,000 gene sequences, it was like looking for a needle in a haystack made of needles.