The Wig in the Window

by Kristen Kittscher

  I scanned Ralston’s face as her words settled over me. Her eyes seemed soft, almost understanding—like Ms. Gant’s. Grace practically knew more about the FBI than I did about feng shui, and she was confident. She’d been right about the car, after all. Maybe Ralston slipping us a code didn’t make sense, but it definitely made more sense than Agford cooking up some fake FBI encounter at the Seashell complete with a badge and a Texas accent. If Ralston was really FBI, though, that meant . . .

  “So we’re right?” Grace interrupted my thought before I could finish it.

  Ralston tucked her lips together and gave a slight nod. “I can’t tell you much, but two years ago a female suspect in her forties went on the run.” Ralston flinched at a sudden clattering of dishes from the kitchen. She leaned in closer. “We have good reason to believe Dr. Charlotte Agford is that woman.”

  My mind projected an image of Agford’s dead-eye smile and the beet-red smears down her cream sweater. The sound of my heartbeat drowned out the background murmur of the Seashell’s afternoon crowd.

  “Two years ago?” Grace repeated. “That’s about when Agford moved in.”

  Ralston nodded slowly. “Exactly. If you hadn’t called nine-one-one, things’d still be about as clear as a Texas river. Now we’re finally getting somewhere.”

  It took me a moment to understand what she was saying. “I thought the police had already—”

  She interrupted me. “Local law enforcement can’t find their own behinds with flashlights in both hands,” Ralston said, letting out a soft chuckle. “They ran a background check. Came up with nothing. That was the end of the story.”

  “Except that it wasn’t,” Grace said, breathless. She scooted forward in her seat.

  Ralston looked over to Grace and frowned ever so slightly. “That’s right. The bureau’s system flagged the background check as highly irregular.” She smoothed down her blazer lapel proudly as if she’d managed the feat herself. “Turns out the name Agford didn’t exist until two years ago.”

  “That’s what we suspected.” Grace looked at me smugly before turning back to Ralston. “So she murdered someone for real?”

  The couple next to us spun around again.

  I felt uneasy. How does a person just make up a name for herself with no birth certificate, nothing? And, if we had witnessed a real murder, how did Agford get away with the lies about the beets?

  “I’m not at liberty to divulge further details,” Agent Ralston said.

  “I knew we were right!” Grace said.

  It was times like this that I wished Grace could keep a poker face. My doubts about Ralston were fading, but I still didn’t buy that the FBI’s “unconventional methods” would really include sending a code to middle schoolers.

  I cleared my throat and looked at Agent Ralston. “Why aren’t you telling all this to our parents instead?”

  Grace glared at me. Ralston looked at me a long time, drumming her fingers on the table before she let out a long breath. “Now, Miss Young, I hate to sound impolite. And I hope you can forgive the question. But, in your experience, are parents good at keepin’ secrets?”

  They certainly weren’t. Even if they lied, you could sense they were covering up something. And, despite Agent Ralston’s honest blue eyes, I could feel her navigating around some hidden truth. The FBI not telling your parents a fugitive has it in for them? That was a recipe for disaster. Or at least a lawsuit.

  “Not particularly,” I said. “But—”

  “You see,” Ralston interrupted, “while the particulars suggest this Dr. Agford matches our suspect perfectly, if we’re wrong, we can’t have rumors about an innocent citizen flying round a small town like this. I’m sure y’all understand?”

  “Why can’t you just see it’s her?” I asked.

  “The boobs!” Grace shouted, nearly toppling her Diet Coke. Her beret flopped to the table. Startled, Ralston darted another nervous glance around the café. Several diners stared back. Grace lowered her voice to a whisper. “That’s it, isn’t it? She got plastic surgery, so you can’t tell it’s her. That and the wig, of course.”

  “Positive identification does present a challenge,” Ralston answered. “Now I’ve said more than enough. If the suspect finds out I’m talking to you—it’s a matter of life and death, you got it? This ain’t a game. It’s already too risky for me to be here right now.”

  “I knew it,” Grace blurted out. “I mean, she’s a fugitive, so clearly there’s already a warrant out on her. If you ID’d her, you should be able to make the arrest, pronto.”

  Ralston raised her eyebrows. I supposed she wasn’t used to twelve-year-olds who seemed to have read the entire FBI procedure manual. I expected her to compliment Grace, but instead she folded her arms and remained quiet. I noticed her blazer was frayed a little at the sleeves. An old yellow stain that looked like mustard dotted her lapel.

  “You must have gathered some DNA in Texas, right?” Grace barreled on, either ignoring or not noticing Ralston’s sudden silence. “So I guess you get something with her skin cells—that can’t be too hard—and then, bam, match ’em up, and on to the next case.” She shook her head. “God, your life must be so cool.”

  A hard edge crept into Ralston’s voice. “You let me worry about procedure, Miss Yang. Y’all are in enough danger as it is.”

  “Enough danger?” I echoed.

  Worry clouded Agent Ralston’s pale features. “I wasn’t kidding around when I sent you that code,” she said.

  I swallowed hard. The next morning I’d be at Agford’s again. I pictured her blood-red juice. The way she brandished the pruning shears in my face. Snip, snip.

  Agent Ralston read my thoughts. “Miss Young,” she said, “I want you to know we’re watching twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. Anything happens, we’re at your side faster than bee-stung mustangs. You got that?”

  I nodded. My throat felt like it was closing.

  “Sophie knows martial arts,” Grace said. “Well, tai chi. But that’s a martial art.”

  “Much better for self-defense than guns, even,” I added, looking pointedly at where I’d seen Ralston’s hidden holster.

  “Is that so?” Ralston asked. I couldn’t tell if she was actually impressed or just humoring me. “Well, I’m grateful for your help, ladies. But you’ll need to leave the real work to us professionals now.” She looked at Grace especially. “This mission . . .” Ralston’s neck tensed. “This mission can’t fail.”

  “So you’re going to arrest her?” I asked. If only they could lock Agford up before tomorrow morning. Maybe I could fake a crippling flu until the feds swooped in.

  Ralston nodded, looking pleased. “If it’s her, yes.”

  I let out a long breath. Could it really be over? I imagined my parents, so guilt stricken that they’d believed Agford instead of me, practically falling over themselves with apologies. I’d spend my weekends on the couch, feet up, chowing down on Doritos while flipping mindlessly through the channels. My parents wouldn’t even make me relinquish the remote to Jake. Fu dogs at the entrance? Sure! Grace wants to sleep over on a school night? You bet!

  “It’ll take some time, of course,” Ralston added. “But I don’t need to tell you that. You know exactly what happens when you jump the gun.”

  “A couple days or so,” I said. “Right.”

  “Well, no . . . ,” Ralston said. “I reckon we’ll need more time than that. We need to gather evidence. As I’m sure Miss Yang here already knows, that evidence has to be legally obtained. In other words, we can’t steal it.”

  “Maybe more like a week.” I nodded. I could handle that.

  “I’m sorry,” Agent Ralston said. She slid her hand forward on the table as though reaching out to me. “I know it’s hard to be patient. This is scary business you’re in the middle of. But if our case ain’t airtight—if she gets off on a technicality—this woman might disappear again. We’d have to start from scratch. Even worse, if she finds out w
e’re on her tail, there’s no telling what she might do.”

  “But the more time it takes . . . ,” Grace piped up. “Isn’t it just more likely something will go wrong?”

  “It’s a chance worth taking, Miss Yang,” Ralston said, her jaw flexing. “Slow and steady. It always wins the race.”

  Not in every race I’d witnessed. Apart from that fable with the hare and the tortoise, fast won every time. And let’s not forget that bunny took a five-hour nap midrace or something. What was this slow-and-steady business when my life was on the line? Speed is the essence of war, Sun Tzu said. You couldn’t tell me the FBI didn’t know about the General.

  “So how long before you have enough, do you think?” I asked.

  Agent Ralston sighed. “I wish I could tell you. I just don’t know. Could be two weeks, could be a month, could be three months. It’s just a matter of what we find out and when.” She scanned the restaurant quickly. “I’ve been here too long already. Never know who’s on the lookout.” She slapped down a business card. “Y’all can contact me here if you need me.”

  The card had the FBI seal in the upper left corner and listed the Austin field-office address as well as her direct line and email. Grace ran her fingers over the raised logo.

  Ralston reached into her jacket pocket. Our eyes widened a moment before she pulled out a pen. She slid back the card and scratched off her phone number. “Phone calls can be monitored, even from a landline. Use email instead. Nothing can break FBI email encryption. Helped write the program myself,” she said with a sniff. Ralston looked at us, her lips pulling into the slightest frown. “You’re gonna keep your heads, right, ladies? I need you to promise me that.” Her gaze was urgent.

  I promised. What choice did I have? Grace nodded, too, but I could tell her thoughts were already far away.

  “Now, listen up.” Ralston leaned forward. “I’m not going to let anything happen to you two. What was it my daughter always used to say? ‘I’ve got your back.’ That’s it.” She smiled. “Ladies, I’ve got your backs. I really do.”

  Chapter Twelve

  Impatient Bait

  “Months? It can’t take months. They’re the FBI!” I moaned to Grace as we made our way home along Luna Vista Drive. Maybe my dad was right when he grumbled about government inefficiency.

  The sun was still out, but the wind gusted. I zipped up my hoodie. Grace had given up on the beret. Her black hair flapped behind her as she strode ahead of me. My legs felt too unsteady to walk any faster.

  “Did you see her gun? I totally saw her gun,” Grace said, breathless. “It was, like, right there.”

  I turned to look for the sedan. The road was empty. Then an engine rattled, and the familiar blue car rounded the corner and idled by a stop sign. I couldn’t quite get used to being reassured by it.

  “Government sure gives them crappy cars, though.”

  “Shhh!” Grace said as she twisted around to check for Ralston.

  I rolled my eyes. “I don’t think her hearing’s supersonic.”

  A basketball thumped behind the gate of a one-story Spanish-style house we passed. Shoes shuffled on concrete; someone laughed. Life moved on cheerfully here in Luna Vista among the flame-red bougainvillea and swaying trees. On the other side of the street, a dad pushed a stroller, cooing at his kid. He had no idea an FBI agent was playing cat and mouse with a fugitive right here in town.

  “You think she’s a sharpshooter?” Grace asked. “She probably is. I wonder if she trained at Quantico.”

  I didn’t know what Quantico was, and I didn’t ask. “I hope Ralston’s sharpshooting is better than her driving,” I said.

  Grace prattled on as she kicked a pinecone ahead of her, offering up an endless stream of imagined run-ins between Ralston and mafia kingpins, drug lords, serial murderers, and kidnappers. “What do you think Agford did?” she asked before providing her own terrifying answers. I tuned her out. I had to—for my own sanity.

  “Don’t you think they’d want to move faster?” I interrupted.

  “You heard her. They don’t know that she’s definitely a fugitive, Sophie.” Grace sounded as reasonable as Trista, but she sure wasn’t.

  “C’mon,” I argued. “The FBI is looking for her. She said, ‘If they find us, we’ll rip out their throats.’ And what about the wig? And the convertible?”

  Grace slowed her pace and spun her beret around one finger. “Ralston’s been eavesdropping on our walkie-talkie sessions,” she said. “She knows what we’ve found. It obviously wasn’t enough. You heard her. The evidence needs to be airtight.”

  “I just don’t understand how it can be that hard,” I said, almost under my breath. It wasn’t like Grace was listening. In fact, you’d have thought she’d joined the bureau ranks, the way she was acting. Apart from the beret spinning, that is.

  “What if the FBI busts in and arrests some middle-school counselor?” Grace’s watches rattled on her wrist as she threw up her hands. A squirrel scurried up a nearby tree. “You think you have a public-relations disaster at school? They’d be dealing with worse than therapy and yard work, Sophie.”

  “Wouldn’t it look worse if some innocent middle-school kid got butchered by a fugitive they were tracking?” I shot back.

  Grace shook her head. She ran her fingers through her hair. “The FBI’s not going to let that happen,” she said.

  “Grace, nobody but us knows the FBI is tailing Agford,” I said. “If Agford killed an innocent kid and they captured her after, it’d just look like the murder had tipped them off. They’d be heroes, practically.”

  Hold out baits to entice the enemy, Sun Tzu said. The truth of my own words sunk in. Could we really be bait for Agford? The FBI could pluck a hair from Agford (maybe not from the wig, but still) and run a DNA test if they really wanted to know if they had their woman. Couldn’t they at least get fingerprints matched? Instead they were settling in for a months-long operation and hoping a four-foot-six twelve-year-old would Wild Goose Opens Wings her way to survival if the going got rough. Something else was happening.

  “You’re talking about you and me, you know,” Grace said, her voice growing quieter. “We’re the innocent kids.”

  “Exactly.” I looked up the road toward Agford’s. I couldn’t believe that tomorrow I was going to be there alone.

  “But it goes against every protocol,” Grace continued. “I haven’t even read about one case . . .” She stopped midstride and turned to me, her eyes wide. “Oh my God. You think the FBI has accepted that that might be how this all shakes out? They’re just waiting until . . .” She clearly couldn’t bear to finish.

  We stood in silence outside my house. The sky glowed pink. Behind us Mr. Valdez was out in his front yard with a hose, overwatering his lawn again. As usual Mr. Maxwell wore his short shorts and tube socks while he surveyed his geraniums.

  “Nah, you’re right,” I said. “We’re just kids. The FBI wouldn’t let that happen.”

  But I didn’t believe my own words. I pictured Agent Ralston’s eyes. They were such an honest blue, maybe I could have overlooked the worry that clouded them. Agent Ralston knew something we didn’t. Her fear ran deep. “This mission can’t fail,” Ralston had said. Were Agford’s crimes gruesome enough that Ralston’s higher-ups had decided they’d risk the worst to catch her?

  “We can’t just stand by and let this happen,” Grace said, as if she’d heard my thoughts.

  I looked behind us at the empty street, then at Agford’s house.

  “No,” I said. “No, we can’t.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  Famous Last Steps

  “I know it’s a long shot, but it’s our best chance, Sophie,” Grace said as she waited for me in my backyard the next morning, bundled up in a blue down parka, knit cap, and striped leggings that matched her scarf. The fog had drifted in from the coast overnight again, and it was still early enough to be chilly—though not exactly chilly enough to merit Grace rolling out her entire winter
collection at once. In a few hours, the sun would be beating down as usual—just in time for my last Saturday work shift at Agford’s.

  “In fact, it’s probably our only chance,” she added. “If you can get your hands on even the tiniest proof she’s not who she says she is, the feds can strike sooner.”

  “No pressure.” I let out a nervous laugh.

  “No pressure.” Grace patted me on the shoulder. “Seriously.” She unfurled a sketch that she’d drawn of our three houses and marked an X by her living room window. “I’ll be practicing piano here.” She added a dotted line to Agford’s. “I should have a direct view. As long as you’re cleaning the garage, like she said.”

  The day before, Grace had convinced her mom it’d be a good idea to skip Chinese school and practice for the all-day piano competition she had in LA that Sunday. It didn’t take too much convincing. Grace was so bad at piano that all her friends were years beyond her. At events she’d sit in a row next to her eight-year-old rivals while Mrs. Dr. Yang joked that Grace was “head and shoulders” above the competition.

  “So. I got seven fifty. You?” Grace glanced at her black digital watch. It looked lonely on her wrist.

  “Seven forty-nine,” I said.

  Grace adjusted her watch with a beep. “You ready?”

  “As ready as I’ll ever be.” I shuddered.

  Grace pressed something hard and plastic into my hand. It looked like the detached handle of a toy gun. “Pepper spray,” she explained, still clutching my hand. “One shot in the eyes, and she’ll be blinded long enough for your Dragon Spits Fire thing or whatever.”

  “Dragon Emerges from Water,” I said. “It’s my best move.”

  “Yeah. That. Anyway, it’ll buy you time to get away if anything happens.” Her parka rustled as she rubbed her arms for warmth. She looked at me intently, then adjusted her light blue knit cap and handed me her cell. She’d pilfered her dad’s again for the weekend. “Forget the FBI,” she said, raising her binoculars with a flourish. “I’ve got your back.”