The Pinocchio Syndrome

by David Zeman

  “The Muslims and their terrorists are the primary threat to the civilized world,” Grimm said. “But there are other groups that may be deemed to be objectionable. Communists. Criminals. Jews. Homosexuals.” He laughed. “Certain intellectuals. People with inconvenient ideas. Certain reporters, I imagine. Shall I go on?”

  “What makes Goss think people will stand for this?” Karen asked incredulously.

  “I’ve heard him explain it over and over again,” Grimm said. “We’ve sat together late at night discussing it. He’s quite eloquent. There are two phases. During the first phase the entire thing is disguised as an epidemic. Just like HIV. And if, over time, a grain of the real truth finds its way into the public consciousness,‘They’ll get used to the idea.’ Those are Goss’s words.”

  “Who will get used to the idea?”

  “Everyone. In exchange for a peaceful, prosperous world order, people will dry their tears over a billion or so dead. Especially if those who died were inconvenient when they were alive. Nonproductive economically, a nuisance politically.”

  “Jesus Christ,” Karen breathed.

  “It will simply be deemed that the Pinocchio Syndrome chooses its victims in mysterious ways,” Grimm concluded. “People will accept that. And over time, over the decades, people will get less curious, less sensitive. The Syndrome will be part of life. Like cancer, it will not be cured. The undesirable groups will be weeded out, and a few desirable groups will be affected here and there, just to make it look good. Population control will be much less of a problem, because the Syndrome will descend on areas where population growth is excessive. On the whole life will be better. People won’t complain.”

  “World domination,” Karen said quietly.

  “Precisely. Domination of the world by its most civilized peoples. Removal of the least civilized, the least necessary.”

  Karen turned around in her seat.

  “Don’t do that,” Grimm ordered, pulling the bill of the cap over his face.

  “Sorry,” Karen said. “I wasn’t thinking. I wanted to ask you how this can be stopped.”

  “That’s going to be your problem,” Grimm said. “Goss has taken elaborate security measures. And he has some influence within the executive branch and the intelligence community. But he also thinks no one would believe a story like this if it was told to them. It’s simply too big. Too fantastic.”

  “I see.” Karen herself was having trouble taking in the enormity of the horror Grimm had described. The end of the free world was at hand. A dictatorship a hundred times worse than Hitler was poised to unleash itself on the human race.

  Grimm seemed to read her mind. “There is always a chance. No one believed Hitler and the death camps when the news first hit the media. No one believed Stalin and his purges—not at first. But over time they learned to believe. It can happen. No one ever really believed Iran-Contra. But they did believe the Pentagon Papers. They did believe Watergate.”

  Karen nodded. “I see.”

  “The truth is very fragile,” Grimm said. “Most often it can’t compete with lies. Or with illusions, or with myths, or with rumors. But sometimes the truth can hold its own. Sometimes it can even win.” He laughed. “It all depends on the reporter. And, of course, the beholder. What good did the truth do the Simpson prosecutors? What good did it do the Iran-Contra committee? The truth about Kennedy was known in 1964, but it could never compete with the cover-ups and the myths.”

  Karen said nothing. He was right. Her career had shown her how often untruth defeated truth. But sometimes, for reasons that are not clear, the truth is heard.

  “The factor that makes the difference can seem very small,” Grimm said. “A reel of audiotape, a trail of blood, or of money. A voice on the phone. A face in a picture.”

  “What are you saying?” Karen asked.

  “Whoever kidnapped Susan Campbell did the one thing that could have upset the plan,” Grimm said. “I don’t know who it was. Goss doesn’t know who it was. As you’ve seen, Campbell couldn’t deviate from the plan. He refused the demand. He had no choice. If you want to stop it, find Susan Campbell and the people who have her. In that direction there’s a chance. But you’d better find her before Goss does.”

  Karen was looking through the windshield at the Washington Monument, which suddenly seemed rather cruel, spearing the sky. Glittering and cruel and empty, a phallic reminder of man’s rapacious ambition.

  “I’m trying,” she said. “Can you help?”

  Grimm shook his head. “You know all I know. The rest you’ll have to find out for yourself.”

  The back door opened suddenly. Grimm was getting out.

  “Wait!” Karen cried.

  The door slammed. To Karen’s surprise Grimm did not run away. He walked coolly to the front of the car and stood illuminated in her headlights. He pulled the cap around until it faced backward. She saw a high hairline, sallow, lined skin, thin lips.

  For one instant he raised the sunglasses. His eyes were blue. They looked oddly distorted. Perhaps by a drug, or perhaps by a knowledge that was unbearable.

  He smiled. He winked. Then he lowered the sunglasses. His right hand came up. In it was a gun. Karen flinched, shrank back against her seat.

  But the gun was not pointed at her. It was in his mouth. It went off with a roar that echoed off the government buildings gathered in the darkness to protect the republic.

  Grimm dropped like a stone and lay crumpled in his own pooling blood.

  Karen had cried out without hearing herself. She felt tears running down her face. Gasping, she put the car into reverse and pulled it away from the body. She caught a glimpse of blood running toward the gutter as she jerked the wheel and drove off.

  75

  —————

  Hamilton, Virginia

  April 21

  INGRID CAMPBELL’S funeral was held at the Presbyterian church in the small town nearest to Judd Campbell’s Chesapeake Bay home. Because of the continuing crisis of Susan Campbell’s abduction, no one outside the immediate family was invited. However, most of the local people knew Ingrid, and those who wished to attend were allowed entry to the church.

  The pastor spoke of Ingrid’s unfailing loyalty to her family and of her love for people. Ingrid had given a great deal of her time to charitable causes. A wealthy woman in her own right thanks to the trust fund Judd had set up for her years before, she had no use for money in her personal life, and gave away almost everything she had. There were at least a dozen families in the town who had benefited from her generosity. The service was thrown open to them after the pastor’s eulogy, and several townspeople spoke warmly of Ingrid’s kindness and concern.

  The graveyard service would not be held for another few weeks. Judd Campbell had made this decision without telling anyone why. The real reason was that he still hoped Susan would come home. Susan had looked upon Ingrid as a beloved older sister. She would want to be present for the service.

  After the funeral Judd sat at home answering sympathy calls from friends and relatives while Stewart, who had come from Baltimore, sat with Michael. Stewart’s wife, June, had brought groceries for a small supper and had cooked for the men. She noticed that Judd seemed to want to be in the same room with her. She felt his eyes on her while she cooked. She realized that, for the first time in the life of the Campbell family, there was no woman in this house. Judd was a man who needed the care and attention of women. That was why he had been so dependent on Ingrid after Margery died, and on Susan after Michael got married. He would be lost now.

  Stewart took off his glasses during the dinner hour. June noticed his resemblance to Judd, which was becoming sharper as Stewart grew older. The Scotch-Irish features, the intense blue eyes, the high forehead. It was strange that Stewart, the sibling who liked Judd the least, resembled him the most. Ingrid had taken after her mother, and Michael’s dark hair and eyes seemed to have come from some corner of Margery’s family that had remained submerged for gen
erations.

  June took her leave after supper, but Stewart stayed on. He saw the despair in the faces of his father and brother. Though he was not comfortable in Judd’s house, and had no expectation that Ingrid’s death would bring him closer to Judd, he sensed an almost unbearable tension in Judd and even in Michael. It was as though the two men had gone beyond mere grief and were on the point of exploding.

  “What do you hear from the law enforcement people?” Stewart asked his father.

  “Nothing.” Judd spoke with his perennial contempt for the government. But anguish sounded eloquently in his voice. Steward realized he had said the wrong thing. This was the worst possible night to remind Judd of Susan.

  The three men spent the evening watching TV in the living room and occasionally exchanging remarks about Ingrid. The evening was a huge failure. They could not console each other. Stewart felt like a fifth wheel. He had left the family long ago and stubbornly resisted the efforts of both Ingrid and Susan to bring him back. In this he was his father’s son after all, for no man was more stubborn than Judd Campbell. It was too late to retrace his steps. When he spoke sympathetically to Judd of Ingrid, Judd looked at him as though not seeing him.

  After a while Stewart directed his remarks to Michael. But Michael himself seemed unreachable. And why not? His sister was dead, and his wife was very probably dead also.

  Outside the house the waves crashed and thumped more loudly than usual. Gulls screamed as though in agony. Everything was falling apart, Stewart mused. The life his father and brother had taken for granted all these years was gone. How would they begin to put it back together? Especially if Susan did not come back . . .

  Stewart stayed up with them until midnight, but then took his leave and went upstairs to the bedroom he had occupied as a teenager. He sensed that there was something between Michael and Judd that excluded him. A depth of sorrow, perhaps, or a thread of memory or love that would be their shared lifeline to Ingrid.

  Stewart had brought a book of historical essays on the Civil War with him and tried to read it as he lay in his bed. But he could not concentrate and soon turned out the light. If there was conversation downstairs he could not hear it. The insistent waves drowned it out. He lay in silence for a long time, thinking of Ingrid. Then he fell into a dark, miserable sleep.

  Stewart was wrong about Judd and Michael. No intimacy joined them as they sat in the living room, their faces lit by the flickering of the soundless television screen. Michael looked off into space, his eyes misty, but no tears flowing down his face. His jaw was set in an incongruous, stubborn expression, like the man in the old joke who waited for the other shoe to drop.

  Judd was watching Michael out of the corner of his eye. He had waited for Stewart to leave so he could concentrate his attention completely on Michael.

  Judd knew the expression on Michael’s face. It was the look Michael had worn after Margery died. It was also the look Michael wore when he refused the demand of the terrorists who held Susan.

  Tonight Judd was seeing that look again.

  But tonight, for the first time, Judd looked at that stony, tortured face in a new way. It was not the face of the son he loved and understood, but the face of a stranger.

  76

  —————

  Washington

  April 27

  THE REALTY office was respectable, but hardly elegant.

  It was located in a strip mall in Congress Heights, not far from the Greater Southeast Community Hospital. The agent did a certain amount of business selling homes and apartment buildings, but the majority of his income came from apartment rentals and leases on dilapidated downtown houses.

  His name was Tyrone Crocker. He wore a white dress shirt with a frayed collar and a clip-on tie that had seen better days. An extra hole had been punched in the leather belt that covered his paunch. He wore a gigantic digital watch and several rings. His few strands of hair were plastered carefully over a bald freckled head. He smelled of Sen-Sen and cigarettes.

  He had come down in the world considerably since his days with White & Abercrombie, selling seven-figure residences in Georgetown and the suburbs. A messy divorce, a scrape with the law over some shady contracts, and a bit of substance abuse had taken the luster off his career.

  He sat behind his desk, looking at Karen Embry. She wore a white cotton dress with delicate shoulder straps and a low-cut bodice. She carried a large purse and wore low-heeled shoes. She looked fresh and prim, but her outfit did not conceal the alluring curves of her body.

  She had told him she was looking for her older sister.

  “She had a falling-out with my mother,” Karen said. “They’ve never really gotten along. I tried to keep the lid on things, but they finally got out of hand. There was a big fight, and Judy left without even taking her things.”

  Karen managed a look of wounded family feeling. “Judy is hotheaded,” she said. “The funny thing is, that’s what she has in common with Mom.”

  The realtor was watching her face. Clearly he appreciated her good looks. He seemed sympathetic.

  “What makes you think she rented a house?” he asked.

  “She can’t stand apartments. The noise of other people’s plumbing bothers her. She hasn’t lived in an apartment since college. Even if it puts a strain on her finances, she’ll always rent a house.”

  Karen was not saying what was in her mind. Assuming that Justine Lawrence moved to Washington as the final stop on her odyssey, Karen had postulated that Susan Campbell was being sequestered somewhere in the city. It was far easier to hold a person prisoner in a house than in an apartment. Houses had basements, attics, windowless inner rooms that apartments lacked.

  It was logical to assume that Susan’s captors would not place her in a fancy area full of nosy neighbors, gardeners, and handymen. They would choose a small, inexpensive house in an urban neighborhood where everybody minds his own business. The noisy airplanes audible on the tape of Justine’s ransom demand suggested the inner-city areas close to the major airports.

  Tyrone Crocker was the seventh rental agent Karen had visited. She had gradually refined the cover story of herself as Justine’s younger sister in order to put those she questioned at their ease. She could hardly tell them anything remotely resembling the truth.

  “Uh-huh.” The realtor hid his skepticism under his friendly face. “Well, I haven’t had anyone by that name rent anything.”

  “She might have used an alias,” Karen said. “Not that she’s in trouble with the law, or anything like that. She just wouldn’t want my parents to catch up with her. That’s how strongly she feels about the whole thing.”

  Hearing this, the realtor could not hide his suspicion. He always demanded identification from all his renters. It was a basic precaution. So many skipped out on overdue rent, it was the nightmare of his life. He had to vouch for the renters to the landlords.

  “Of course,” Karen assured him, “the rent would never be a problem. She would always pay on time. She’s very scrupulous about things like that. She saves her money.”

  Tyrone nodded. “Right.”

  “May I show you her picture?” Karen asked, fiddling in her purse. “That might refresh your memory. If she’s been here, that is.”

  “Sure. Why not?”

  Tyrone put on his reading glasses as Karen handed him an enlargement of the Polaroid snapshot of Justine Lawrence that had been used for her name tag at the Webster Groves Mental Health Clinic in St. Louis.

  “It’s not that recent,” she said. “She hasn’t been around the family much, so we haven’t taken many pictures.”

  Tyrone looked thoughtfully at the picture. “Son of a gun,” he said. “That’s her.”

  “Really?” Karen’s face lit up.

  “Yeah. I pride myself on my memory for faces.” His eyes narrowed. “This looks a little different, though.”

  “Really? In what way?”

  Tyrone studied the photograph. “The hair looks darker
here. When I showed her the house she seemed sort of blondish.” Something else seemed to be on his mind.

  “I know you have to be observant in your job,” Karen said placatingly. “I’m sure you notice things that ordinary people wouldn’t be sharp enough to see.”

  He gave Karen a slow evaluative look. He was wondering whether the information she wanted was worth money to her.

  “Please don’t feel hesitant to say what’s on your mind,” she said. “Judy has had her problems over the years. Mentally, I mean . . .”

  He nodded. “Right. I wasn’t going to say anything. She did seem strange. Her eyes . . . They had that look, you know? I’ve dealt with a lot of people in my time. Some of my properties are halfway houses. Mental patients kicked out of state hospitals when the funding dried up, things like that.” He looked at the picture. “Your sister had that look. Also—”

  “You’re very understanding,” Karen prodded. “I appreciate that. Did you notice something else?”

  “Her left wrist as she was signing the contract,” Tyrone said. “It had cut marks. Scars.”

  “Yes, that’s her.” Karen smiled. “That’s wonderful news. I can hardly wait to see her. Mr. Crocker, you’ve been a great help.” She opened her purse and took out a pen. “What’s the address?”

  Once again the rental agent looked suspicious. “I’m not going to have any trouble out of this, am I?”

  Karen shook her head earnestly. “You won’t. I promise. I just want to see her. Just to make sure she’s all right. She’ll be happy to see me. We get along wonderfully. It’s Mother she can’t stand. I’ll be eternally in your debt. And I promise you’ll never have a problem about the rent. I’ll guarantee it myself if you like.”

  “Is she on medication?” he asked.

  “Oh, goodness, no,” Karen smiled. “That all ended a long time ago. She doesn’t need it anymore. You must have seen for yourself that she’s very responsible, very stable.”