The Program

by Gregg Hurwitz

  He’d freed up his morning to sit with the case file, but on his walk down the hall, the sight of Ginny’s room empty had pulled him up short. He’d taken a moment leaning on the jamb, gazing in. He’d hoped to offset the shock with productivity but was having a sluggish go at it. Thus far he’d done little more than fail to defend his breakfast plate.

  He glanced back down at his notepad, in which he’d listed the lingo he’d gleaned from his conversations with Reggie.

  Pro, Neo, Common-Censor/Common Sensor? Trigger, Orae/Oray? Gro-Par/Grow-Par? Lilies, Inner Circle.

  “You gonna eat that?” Dray’s fork flashed past before he could respond. Staring at his sole extant sausage, he realized he’d better stop thinking and start eating.

  “Sounds like it’s gonna be tough to get to the girl.”

  “Yes.”

  “And then, when you do, she won’t even want to be rescued?”

  “Yes.”

  “No crime has been committed here, right? That you know of?”

  Tim tapped his fork absentmindedly against his orange-juice glass. “No.”

  “And this would be a bad time for me to revisit why the hell you’re doing this to begin with?”

  “Yes.”

  Dray paused midchew. “Just checking.”

  Tim’s cell phone rang, and he rose to grab it before it sambaed off the kitchen counter.

  “Hi, Deputy, this is Katie Kelner, Leah’s former roommate. Listen, you said to call if anything came up...?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, I was going through one of my books—well, I thought it was my book, but I guess it got mixed up with Leah’s, since she was taking Shit Lit, too.”

  Tim watched helplessly as Dray swooped down on his last sausage. “Uh-huh.”

  “She left a card in it, like an appointment card, for a bookmark, you know? And it was from the Student Counseling Center. I guess she was seeing a shrink.” This last word Katie whispered severely—odd that anyone in Malibu would believe the term required a lowered voice.

  “Does it have the date of the appointment?”

  “Yeah, it says December seventh at two o’clock.”

  A little more than a month before Leah had disappeared from campus. “You said, you know, to call if I thought of anything.”

  “And I’m glad you did.”

  “Some of the stuff I said when you were here... I’m, uh, I’m not an awful person, you know.”

  “I don’t think you’re an awful person.”

  “What do you think?”

  He thought that life hadn’t smacked her around enough yet for her to realize she didn’t know everything. “That’s irrelevant.”

  She let out a dismissive little laugh. “Well, you don’t know me. Who cares what you think?”

  “To be honest, not too many people.”

  Getting information out of therapists was generally an exercise in futility, but since Tim was already planning to visit the Pepperdine registrar’s office, he figured he might as well pay a courtesy call to the Student Counseling Center afterward.

  He’d parked and was crossing campus at a good clip when the cell phone chirped.

  A high male voice: “Mr. Henning wants to see you.”

  “Who’s this?”

  “He’d like an update on your progress.”

  “Who’s this?”

  “I work for Mr. Henning.”

  Tim had encountered enough Mr. Hennings in his life to recognize a power play shaping up. “If he wants to talk, have him call me himself. I don’t deal with intermediaries.” Tim snapped the phone shut. About a minute later, as he negotiated a river of students flooding from the Thornton Administration Building, it rang again. “Yeah?”

  “I’m a very busy man, Mr. Rackley.”

  “You and me both, Will.”

  “Yet you insist on a personal phone call.”

  “This isn’t a budget meeting. I’m protecting your confidentiality. And your daughter’s. That’s how this goes.”

  “Fine.” The line went dead.

  Tim’s phone sounded a third time. “Hi, Tim, this is Will Henning. I’d like to see you.”

  Without the sarcastic tone, it might have been funny. “Where are you?”

  “I work from home now.” He added defensively, “I get more done here.”

  “I’ll get to you sometime this afternoon.”

  “When?”

  “When I get there.”

  Tim followed the signage to the registrar’s counter only to find himself in line behind ten or so students. He waited with them so he could watch the proceedings. Dropping a class proved to be a protracted negotiation involving substantial paperwork. It took a good half hour for the line to dissipate, during which Tim noted nothing to indicate a recruitment ploy like the one Reggie had described.

  The registrar, an octogenarian with a kindly demeanor and prodigious eyeglasses, informed Tim that she’d run the office for the past thirty-five years and assured him that no funny business had gone down under her tenure. For confidentiality purposes, she didn’t permit student workers in the office, and the two women she oversaw had been there for years. A brief talk with both of them was enough for Tim to put the flimsy lead to bed.

  He zagged back across campus in the car, following the blue signs. The Student Counseling Center proved to be a beige and brown modular home sandwiched between a parking lot and a scrubby hill. It seemed more like a school nurse’s station in a welfare mountain-state town than the therapy center for a high-tuition Malibu university.

  The potted plants lining the ramp brushed Tim’s jeans on his way up. With its blue carpet and paneled walls, the interior typified modular décor’. Seemingly out of place was the well-dressed woman behind the petite reception desk, whose cheery, first-name-basis nameplate announced her solely as ROBBIE.

  Her pert face tightened a bit when he introduced himself. “Confidentiality is absolute here, Mr. Rackley.”

  “Please, call me Tim.”

  “We adhere to the guidelines of the American Psychological Association.”

  “Are all the therapists psychologists?”

  “No, Mr. Rackley. Most are licensed social workers, but the same confidentiality guidelines apply to them.”

  “Do students need to be referred here?”

  “They can come directly if they’re an undergraduate or a student at the law school, GSBM—”

  “GSBM?”

  “Graziado School of Business Management.”

  “Would you be allowed to disclose when a particular student first came in?”

  “Absolutely not.”

  A girl emerged from a back room, the floor creaking with her steps. She shuffled to get around Tim, but there wasn’t much room. “I’m sorry to interrupt.”

  “That’s okay,” Robbie said. “We were just wrapping up. Maybe you could show the gentleman out.” She busied herself clearing her desk.

  When it was clear Robbie wasn’t going to acknowledge him again, Tim followed the girl out. She held the door for him but stumbled over a potted plant when she turned. Tim caught her arm to steady her, and she let out an embarrassed giggle. “Sorry. I’m such a klutz. I get nervous, you know, when people see me here. I always think they’re wondering what’s wrong with me—” She blushed. “God, shut up, Shanna.”

  “You should see me waiting at the clinic for my results to come back.”

  Shanna stared at him, eyebrows raised, and then her face broke into a smile and she hit him lightly on the arm.

  They walked down the ramp together. Two girls sat talking in a Range Rover parked in the first row of the lot beside Tim’s Acura, not ten yards from the trailer’s entrance. The therapy rooms emptied out directly into a major campus parking lot.

  So much for absolute confidentiality.

  “I just transferred in from Brigham Young this semester. It’s kind of... not been the easiest transition, you know? Are you a student here? You seem old. I mean, not that way, but.
..” Shanna’s face colored again, her hand over her mouth. Substantial diamond studs gleamed in her ears. “Just don’t pay attention to me, okay?”

  The front doors of the Range Rover opened simultaneously. The two girls climbed out and headed toward them, the long-limbed driver smoothing a paisley cotton skirt over her underlying bell-bottom jeans. Tim figured them for friends of Shanna’s—they’d clearly been waiting, keeping an eye on the Student Counseling Center.

  The shorter girl wore a red T-shirt under a pair of overalls, her hair thrown back in a ponytail. “Hey, there. How you guys doing today?”

  “Good,” Shanna said uncertainly.

  “I’m Julie, and this is Lorraine. We’re having a group gathering tomorrow night at our apartment, and we wanted to invite you guys.”

  They showed off perfect smiles.

  “Oh,” Shanna said. “That’s nice.”

  Lorraine reached out and touched Tim gently, her well-manicured nails tapping his forearm. “We’re gonna have a great talk and drinks and everything.”

  Tim’s mind moved instinctively to intolerance, hardwired from years of dealing with pyramid schemers, religious zealots, time-share hucksters. He was about to open his mouth to issue his customary rebuff when realization struck.

  Julie, voice lowered with compassion, patted Shanna on the side. “You seem a little down.”

  Tim turned with Lorraine, who was beaming brightly and strolling to his side, facing him flirtatiously across the ball of her shoulder. Her auburn hair was pulled back severely in a clip so it conformed tightly to the shape of her head. He strained to hear Shanna’s response to Julie, but Lorraine, still circling, said, “You’re a bit mature to be a student here, aren’t you?”

  He feigned bashfulness. Putting his hands behind him, he worked off his wedding band and dropped it in the back pocket of his jeans. “Well, I hooked up with a great counselor when I went to GSBM. She still sees me on the side now and then when I hit a bump in the road.”

  Lorraine’s eyes fluttered wide. “GSBM? I love business. A lot of us do. We’re going to talk about things tomorrow night that could really help your career.”

  Shanna was now out of sight behind his back; Julie and Lorraine had skillfully maneuvered them apart so they were facing opposite directions.

  Isolating the prey.

  Lorraine nodded at the Student Counseling Center. “Sorry to hear that things are kind of shitty right now.” She stroked his forearm again, lightly. Smelling of a fruity, pricey skin cream, she stood to his side, lipstick glimmering moistly, torso swaying slightly so her firm breasts moved beneath the sweetheart neckline of her blouse. Since the girls had approached in a team of two, Lorraine’s come-on felt not threatening, but friendly and flattering. A confused college kid wouldn’t stand a chance.

  Campuses teem with predators—rapists, muggers, stalkers. But this particular brand, so appealingly packaged, was all the more insidious for its harmless demeanor.

  Behind him he heard Julie say, “Your haircut’s the bomb.”

  And Shanna’s nervous giggle. “Thanks. I just got it done at Frederic Fekkai.”

  A whispered joke. The girls laughed together. Tim wanted to turn to look, but Lorraine was drilling him with eye contact. Though the two recruiters acted almost identically, Lorraine was less soft than Julie, the strings of her manipulation more visible.

  Julie was the lure, Lorraine the closer.

  “Anything you want to talk about?” Lorraine asked.

  Tim chewed his lip, as if debating whether he should open up. “It’s still hard for me to say, but I got, uh, divorced a few months ago—”

  “That sucks. It must have been terrible.”

  “Pretty rough, yeah. And on top of it, work’s been insanely stressful. I started up this little company a few years ago and grew it pretty aggressively. We were just bought out, which is great, but the ride hasn’t exactly been relaxing, and now I’m sort of at loose ends about what to do with myself.”

  Her face held a predatory elation. “Having a company bought out? At your age? That’s incredible. “ A warm smile. “What’s your name? I want to remember it when I see it in the Wall Street Journal.”

  Tim fished out the last fake identity he’d used. “Tom Altman.”

  “We’d really love to have someone like you join us tomorrow. Will you come?”

  “What kind of thing is it?”

  “Just a lot of cool people hanging out, figuring out how to improve ourselves. That’s important to you, isn’t it?”

  “I don’t know.” Tim shook his head. “It sounds a little weird.”

  “I bet you didn’t get a company bought out by thinking inside the box.”

  “Nope. I did it by figuring out how to fit square pegs in round holes.” Tom Altman, dream Neo.

  Lorraine said, “There ya go.”

  “Hey.” Shanna was on her tiptoes, looking at him over Julie’s shoulder. “What do you think? Are you gonna go? I’ll go if you do.”

  Julie grinned. “It’s gonna be really eye-opening, Tom.” Even while working Shanna, she’d kept an ear out for his name. “What do you say?”

  “Sure,” he said. “I’ll check it out.”

  Lorraine and Julie squealed with delight. “Great call! I promise it’ll be worthwhile.”

  Julie wrote down the address for Tim. Lorraine offered Shanna a ride back to her dorm, and they all turned to the parking lot. Tim stopped short. Dinged and dented beside the Range Rover, the Acura Integra was not a car befitting Tom Altman. Not a car befitting a deputy U.S. marshal either—Tim had pulled it out of a junkyard last year when he’d needed an untraceable vehicle. He hesitated, not wanting to broadcast ownership.

  The three headed to the Range Rover. It was new—no license plate to memorize.

  Julie glanced back. “You need a lift to your car or something?”

  “No. I think I left my keys inside.”

  As he started back toward the trailer, the Range Rover pulled out behind him, Shanna waving from the backseat.

  ELEVEN

  Leah spent the morning polishing the Teacher’s shoes with another Lily, a plump, timid girl named Nancy. You had to be a virgin to be a Lily; in fact, only virgins were allowed in the Teacher’s cottage. More than a hundred pairs of shoes were lined on shelves in the walk-in closet off TD’s front room, each with its own jar of polish. A laminated sheet of paper tacked to the inside of the closet door held directions— counterclockwise circles, no excess polish, be sure to turn your head from the shoes if you sneeze.

  Nancy kept applying too much polish to the heels, and Leah wiped it off for her, showing her how to apply the correct amount. Leah found the monotony of the task soothing, as the Teacher had promised.

  Wax on, wax off. Perfection in the details, character through process. The wisps of black-dyed hair sticking out at Nancy’s temples were almost as baffling as the Flashdance-cut sweatshirt she wore off one fleshy shoulder. Nancy sat back on her heels, working a loafer, arms jiggling, her circles going clockwise. “Dr. TD says I have a need to infuriate men. He says he can tell from how I act.”

  “How do you act?”

  “Difficult, I guess. I keep messing up the rules. I can’t keep them all straight. He says I’m vengeful. I hold back a lot from male authority. I don’t have the strength to Get with The Program yet.”

  They kept polishing, Leah’s eyes darting between her own work and Nancy’s. “Nancy. You have to do the circles the other way. Like this. It’s an honor being able to practice on TD’s stuff.”

  “I know, I know. Damnit. I’m sorry.” Nancy’s lips trembled. “There’s so much pressure here I can’t think, you know? Everyone’s telling me what I do wrong all the time.”

  Leah’s mouth moved with the answers before she even thought. “You want to take ownership of your choices. You know you’re responsible for your own experience.”

  Nancy was crying now. “If I screw up any more, I’ll be gone. I don’t know what I’d d
o without Dr. TD, without The Program.”

  “You’re only a victim if that’s what you choose.” Leah took up an oxblood loafer. “Nancy, stop crying.”

  Nancy sniffled and wiped her nose. It struck Leah that her pity felt more like empathy. Nancy’s bad dye job tugged at her heart—like any superficial attempt at change, it would be met with customary disinterest from the world. Nancy would never get anywhere until she stopped setting herself up for failure. She wouldn’t find strength in mirrors and the expectations of others.

  Nancy touched Leah’s shoulder, leaving a black smudge. “I’m sorry. You were right. I think I’m just emotional right now.” She tried a smile, but her lips were still trembling.

  The polishing took nearly two hours and left them with cramped hands and polish smeared up to their wrists. They each did their best to wash up in the bathroom. As they finished, TD entered. He’d been conducting a meeting in the modular with Stanley John, a young commercial-real-estate shark who was his second in command.

  TD wore a polo shirt, untucked over a pair of pleated cargo pants that accentuated his slim, girlish hips. His freckles were pale, as if faded from childhood; they extended even to his ears and lips. Just below his mouth, a neatly trimmed patch of hair bristled. His head seemed slightly too small, even for his thin frame, a minor imperfection he’d brilliantly overcome by wearing his coarse brown hair puffed out. Leah had never experienced someone so capable of projecting his mood.

  She kept her eyes lowered, as she’d been told. “Hi, TD.” The privilege of using his nickname brought a flush of pride.

  “Hello, Leah.” He slid his hand into her hair, cupping the curve of her forehead. He wore no watch or jewelry; Janie had informed Leah that his energy sometimes conducted an electric charge, and metal could shock him. “Good morning, Nancy.”

  Nancy smiled, blushing. “Hi, Teacher.”