Time to go. Reaching into her pocket for the car keys, she found the IT memo. She unfolded the single short page, read it once, quickly, then a second time, more closely, key phrases jumping out: …riddled with spyware…more sophisticated than the usual commercial…not a product by amateurs…escaped the antivirus software…spoofed Task Manager…follow every keystroke…every Web site or e-mail…of a quality used by federal government, usually with a warrant…
And Kellen had said he had the goods on a major political figure. And had left the evidence to her.
Julia Carlyle was still, as she had always been, a dedicated agnostic. Nevertheless, sitting alone in the empty, dying chapel, she bowed her head and prayed.
CHAPTER 13
MOTHER AND DAUGHTER AND FRIEND
(I)
“CAN I TALK TO YOU, honey?” said Julia, stepping into her second-eldest child’s room.
Vanessa, hunched over the computer with her friend Smith, shrugged her shoulders, but also clicked away the instant messages that popped up all over the screen whenever she was online. It was natural, her mother knew, for a teenager, caught in these invented years between the freedom of a child and the burdens of an adult, to protect a private sphere. Still, she worried about the friends her daughter made online and the secrets she shared or discovered. Rainbow Coalition, curled on Vanessa’s lap, glared at Julia as she might at an intruder. Smith, pierced nearly everyplace her ghostly-pale flesh showed around her heavy black outfit, did not even look up. Outside the windows, the night sky was clear and beautiful, but more snow was in the forecast for morning.
“Vanessa?”
“Uh-huh.” Laconic, even vaguely disrespectful, as she always was around Smith, who had been, a couple of years ago, a mousy white thing named Janine Goldsmith. Her close-cropped head was bobbing as she examined some object held in her lap. Julia wondered if she might be stoned.
“I’m talking to you, Vanessa.”
“I hear you.”
Julia moved closer, her gown brushing the floor because she had kicked off her heels the instant she and Lemaster had walked in the door. It was Friday, and another fancy dinner, this time a fund-raiser for a college fund for minority students. Julia had mostly danced while Lemaster had mostly worked the room.
“Vanessa,” said Julia again. “Vanessa, would you mind turning around? And turning the music down?” For the incomprehensible sounds were surprisingly loud in the room, even if nearly undetectable in the hall.
“Nope.” Vanessa swiveled in her chair, grinning at her mother as Smith continued to toy with what Julia could now see was some sort of electronic thing that probably had not even been invented a month ago and would be all the rage a month hence, for her indulgent parents, angrily divorced, believed that they could purchase their way back into their daughter’s good graces. Vanessa winked. She wore glasses instead of contacts, as she often did late at night. A robe covered loose pajamas. Her feet were stuffed into bunny-rabbit slippers so ancient and floppy that Julia wondered how she could walk without stumbling. She had asked this afternoon if she could have her eyes lasered. It was Friday, and Smith was sleeping over, but, despite the hour, she showed no signs of readiness for bed.
Julia said, “Hello, Janine. How are you?”
Smith did not budge. Kids today.
To Vanessa: “I’d like to talk to you.”
“Kay.”
“You’re a woman of few words tonight.”
“Yep.”
This was Vanessa’s New England Yankee persona, one of several identities from which she selected when protecting a vulnerability near her core. Vincent Brady had warned them not to be distracted by what their daughter showed on the surface.
“Is everything okay, honey?”
“Uh-huh.” Idly stroking Rainbow Coalition’s pudgy neck.
“Can we talk privately?” Wanting to put Rick Chrebet’s question without Rick Chrebet; but also furious at herself for asking permission. Yet she had no clear way to relate to her daughter. They still had reached no agreement on whether Vanessa would be attending the Orange and White Cotillion after Christmas, and Julia was reluctant to order her to go. She also was no longer sure her orders would be obeyed.
Oh, God, what was wrong with her child?
“Smith is private,” said Vanessa. Her hand trembled, but she was able to make it stop. “I tell her everything anyway.”
Smith let out a small grunt that might have been sorrow or glee, disagreement or excitement or even a snore. The device in her lap had a small screen. A DVD player?
Julia said, “May I see you outside for a second, please, honey?”
Vanessa nodded grimly, as if to say duty called, but Smith looked up briefly, her pallid face sharp and disapproving, as if manners were out of fashion.
When they were in the gallery, the wide balcony between Vanessa’s bedroom and the bridge to the master suite, Julia leaned close and said, “Is she okay? Janine?”
“She’s under a vow of silence. Until the violence stops.”
Oh, well, that explained everything. “Ah, honey, listen. I won’t take long. I’ve been wanting to ask you—”
“Four.”
“What?”
“The number of times I ran into Kellen Zant.” Grinning. “I’ve been waiting for you to ask.”
(II)
JULIA SHIFTED HER WEIGHT on aching feet. She had allowed herself a full day to cool down before raising the question, because, had she pressed Vanessa in the first hours after Chrebet’s visit, she would have been fiery indeed, and her relationship with her elder daughter was difficult enough. Lemaster was downstairs talking to Flew, who had met them on their arrival, fulfilling some undisclosed errand. “Excuse me a sec,” she told Vanessa, because she had noticed that Jeannie’s door, decorated with her perfect little poems, was open a perfect little crack. Julia crossed the wide landing and knocked. The only response was scampering feet. “Go to sleep, Jeannie.”
Julia waited for the muffled acknowledgment, then turned back to Vanessa, drawing her down onto the sofa because standing hurt too much. “Do you want to tell me about what happened with Kellen Zant?”
“I’m willing to tell you.”
With an effort, Julia withheld a cranky response, refusing to imitate, as she too often did, her own impulsive and short-tempered mother. “Please stop, Vanessa. Tell me.”
“If you want.” She rubbed her eyes, then cast a glance of almost passionate longing at the door to her room. Julia wondered whether her daughter was thinking of Janine—no, Smith now—or of the computer. It occurred to Julia that her daughter was awfully tired and should probably be in bed. But Vanessa and Smith would stay up until dawn, doing whatever it was that they did. “The first time I ran into him was at the div school library, I think like November. A year ago. I think.”
Julia, who could never recall her daughter suffering such memory problems before, was still at the first hurdle. “You ran into Kellen…in Kepler?”
“Uh-huh. When I was doing research for my term paper. I was coming out of the archives, and he was in the reading room—”
“Wait, honey. Wait. Are you sure?”
“No, Moms. I’m making it all up.” She made a sound. Distress? Anger? “Yes, Moms, I’m sure. I was even kind of surprised, because I figured, you know, he’s the big economist, the big bad corporate consultant, and Dads is always talking about how he doesn’t really do any scholarship, so what was he doing in the library? Especially the div school library? But there he was. And after that, um, like January. Then maybe in the summer. And then this fall. September or something. One more time at the div school, and one time at the Historical Society—”
“The Harbor County Historical Society?”
“Yes. And I saw him after school one day, too.”
“He came to the high school?”
“He was, like, passing by in his car when I came out. He asked if I wanted to get a cup of coffee or something.”
“That
bastard,” said Julia before she could stop herself, wishing afresh for the chance to kill him all over again. “Honey, what…what did you two talk about?”
“You know. School. The weather. How good my hair looked today.”
“He talked about your hair?” said Julia, sinking fast.
“Uh-huh. And how I was the spitten image of my mother. Only Kellen said spitting. Got it wrong.” A shy smile danced over her lips and was gone. “How he liked my taste in clothes. How smart I was. Word games. He liked word games. He pestered me, Moms.” Shuddering. “He’d e-mail me and IM me and call me up. It got kind of creepy. He was too old to be calling me.”
“Oh, honey, he didn’t…I mean, the two of you…Please tell me…”
“I didn’t sleep with him, if that’s what you mean! That’s too gross for words!” Vanessa’s head tipped forward and she covered her eyes. She rubbed her temples. She had to be sick by now of answering questions all the time, and here was her mother making it worse. Already Julia almost regretted trying.
Except that she needed to protect her daughter from…whatever.
“I’m sorry you had to go through that, honey.”
“Me, too. It was like he was stalking me. Like I said. Creepy.”
“I wish you’d told me or your father. We’d have handled it.”
“Well, it’s been handled, hasn’t it?” said the teenager tartly.
A pause while they thought this through together. Vanessa’s face slowly fell as the implications of her own comment sank in, and a wave of revulsion swept over Julia, as a wicked little voice assured her that Kellen had deserved his fate. Then Julia asked the question that had been rolling around in her head ever since Rick Chrebet’s visit.
“Honey, did he ask you about your paper?”
“My paper?”
“The one on Gina Joule.”
Vanessa dropped her eyes and laughed harshly. “Oh, Moms, come on. He didn’t care about my term paper. He cared about getting in my pants.”
“Oh, honey—”
“Creepy pervert. He was like forty-nine or something, flirting with a teenager. Wanted me to have coffee with him.”
Still Julia fought to keep her head above water, not missing the forest for the trees, and as many other metaphors as she could mix, as long as she got her answer. “So he never…ah, he didn’t ask you about what really happened to Gina that night?”
Vanessa’s head snapped up, braids flying. “Nothing really happened to Gina, Moms. Didn’t you read my paper? It was DeShaun Moton who killed her. Remember?” Retelling the story anyway, another habit she shared with her father. “Gina had this big fight with her mom, she went storming out of the house, she walked around. DeShaun stole the BMW, he spotted this cute white girl near the Green on his way out of town, he pulled over, he flirted a little bit, and Gina, stupid little thing that she was, got in. Probably because she was mad at her mom. Girls do stupid things when their moms make them mad. I mean, no girls we know, but, um, generically. Anyway, DeShaun drove her over to the beach, tried to do what guys do, they fought, she drowned. And DeShaun, well, he got the hell out of Dodge. Only he was stupid, too. Five, six days later he’s back, he steals another car, the cops chase him, bang, he’s dead. Okay, right, I know, they shouldn’t have done that, but he was guilty as sin, Moms. I mean, come on. The evidence was clear. Sure, people wanted DeShaun not to be guilty, because he was black and Gina was white, and, you know, black men getting lynched for killing white girls, that’s a pattern as old as—” Vanessa did not seem to be able to decide what the pattern was as old as, and, for a moment, her mouth worked soundlessly. This time Julia had the good sense to let her daughter fight her own way out of it. “Go back and read the paper, Moms. I’ve seen the records of the case. It wasn’t even close. Open and shut. They had witnesses. They had his past record. They had everything. Sure, there was a riot, but the rioters were wrong. I wanted them to be right. That’s why I wrote the paper, to prove DeShaun was innocent. But he wasn’t innocent.” Vanessa stopped again, and brushed at her arms and chest, as if to wipe away the remnants of her tirade. She smiled as if the rest had never happened, and spoke calmly. “Anyway, he shouldn’t have been bothering me. Kellen. It was creepy.”
“I know. I’m sorry, honey.”
“And I honestly don’t know what Kellen was working on, Moms. He didn’t tell me. But if by some chance he really was looking into what happened to Gina? Well, if he decided it wasn’t DeShaun who did it, and told the world? He’d be lying, Moms.”
“You’re very sure?”
“Hey, remember what Dads told me, before I sat down to write my paper? He said a student who does a research paper is supposed to become like one of the world’s leading experts on his subject. Her subject. Well, here I am. I’m the world’s leading expert on Gina Joule. And, yes, Moms, I’m very sure it was DeShaun Moton. So was the family, I guess, because they dropped their lawsuit against the Landing. Didn’t even get a settlement.”
“Did you tell Kellen?”
“Of course not.” Eyes wide with disbelief. “We never talked about it. I told you. Kellen didn’t care who killed Gina. He cared about looking at my legs. It was creepy.”
“So those phone calls—”
“He kept wanting to get together. He was a sicko.” Calm again. Like throwing a switch. “Don’t tell Dads, okay? He’ll have a fit. I mean, the guy’s dead. Let him rest in peace.”
Julia had been thinking much the same thing. “And that was it? The sum total of your relationship?”
Vanessa’s head snapped up again, and Julia knew she had chosen the wrong words. “We didn’t have a relationship! I just told you! I mean, come on! That’s gross!”
Janine poked her head out the door as if to see if her buddy needed defense. Julia stared at her until, pierces and all, she vanished again. Vanessa, meanwhile, had never stopped reciting: “We weren’t even friends, Moms. We weren’t anything. I was minding my own business, and he came along and bothered me, okay? Guys do that sometimes, even older guys. I’m sure that happened to you, too.”
“That wasn’t what I meant, honey. Honestly.”
Children, but especially teenaged girls, own a variety of disdainful stares, and Vanessa favored her mother with one of the best. “Sure, Moms.”
“Honey—”
“And, see, now that I know you guys were an item? It makes sense. He was bothering me because he figured it would bother you.”
Julia was stunned by the profundity of this insight—and its likely truth.
“I’m sorry you had to go through that, honey. Truly sorry. Oh, honey.” Offering a hug, which Vanessa, still as a statue, neither accepted nor refused. “He was a terrible man. He was.” She wondered whom she was trying to persuade. “He had no business doing any of that. I’m so proud of you, the way you handled it—”
Vanessa’s quiet reply withered her. “Oh, Moms, you don’t have any idea how I handled it.”
A dangerous idea began to form in Julia’s mind, an idea she had been beating back and beating back, ever since her conversation with That Casey at the multiplex. She beat it back again.
“Well, I’m proud of you, honey. And I love you.”
“Was there anything else?” said Vanessa, with all Lemaster’s hauteur. “Because I really am okay, I promise. And I’d kind of like to get back to what I was doing.”
“Ah, no, nothing else,” said Julia, hiding her exasperation, blaming herself for being so bad at drawing her children into serious conversation. “Oh, by the way, honey, what exactly are you doing?”
“Saving you guys a pot of money with MP3s. But don’t worry, I’m mainly ripping CDs I borrowed from Casey and using a file-swapper nobody’s heard of, this really cool Korean site. Don’t get that look. It’ll be fine. My anti-hunterbot systems are enabled. RIAA”—she pronounced it ree-ah—“will never find me.”
“And how would you describe what you’re doing if your first language was English?”
; “Downloading music.”
“Oh.” An uneasy pause. Julia tried to figure out when she had become so powerless over her adolescent daughter. It occurred to Julia, not for the first time, that not one of her children had a single close black friend, other than kids they knew through their parents: exactly what Mona had warned her about when they moved out of the city. “Legally?”
“No.”
“Well, don’t, then, okay?”
“Sure, Moms.”
“Vanessa?”
“Yes, Moms.” Hand on the knob, no longer masking her impatience. Julia felt certain her daughter was lying to her, but could not figure out about what.
“What’s that thing Janine’s playing with? The, ah, the electronic thing?”
“Her name is Smith now, Moms. It’s a protest, remember?”
“Tell me.”
Vanessa could be punctilious even in describing mischief. “It sniffs cellular networks for ESN and MIN. It’s supposed to work even under AMPS and NAMPS. We’re testing it.”
“In English, please. It does what?”
“Clones the cell numbers. You know, to make free calls.” Vanessa saw her mother’s face go gray. “Don’t worry. She’s not using it for profit. She found the plans online and just wanted to see if she could build one.”
Julia remembered, with a pang, when Janine Goldsmith took consecutive first prizes in the school science fair. And when Vanessa would not have helped her do…whatever she was doing. The other thing she remembered was that Lemaster had opposed the sleepover. Julia had wangled it out of him to buoy Vanessa’s spirits.
“Tell her to put it away, okay? It’s a teensy bit against the law. And wrong, too,” Julia added, but afterthoughts carry little moral heft.
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