Unthinkable

by Brad Parks

  “Yes, sir,” I said, chastened. “I assure you, you have nothing to worry about.”

  I had succeeded in shunting him back toward the front door. He was on his way out.

  But before he left, he fixed me with a meaningful glare.

  “All right, then. You have a good day.”

  CHAPTER 23

  JENNY

  After the strangeness of that video—followed by an even stranger visit from a police officer—Jenny had been trying to get Nate on the phone.

  She couldn’t concentrate on anything else until they spoke.

  But Nate wasn’t answering. Which wasn’t like him. He was usually so starved for adult conversation he picked up by the second ring.

  What was he doing, anyway? Was this because of Robert McBride? Was he busily continuing to make inquiries on behalf of McBride’s aggrieved family, involved in a case he shouldn’t have been anywhere near—for reasons Jenny could not begin to guess?

  Was that what he had been doing when he dumped the girls on her parents the other day? And yesterday, when he dropped the girls off with Kara Grichtmeier?

  She kept calling him, getting no answer, trying to focus on her work, failing, then calling him again.

  Finally, on her fourth attempt, he answered with a terse “Hi.”

  “Hey, do you have a second? I really need to ask you about something.”

  “That’s funny,” he said, in a way that sounded like nothing was funny at all. “I really need to ask you about something.”

  “Okay, but I think I need to go first. Why did you tell Dominion State Hospital you’re representing someone named Robert McBride?”

  There was a hiss of silence on the other end. Then:

  “How do you know about that?” he asked.

  “Their in-house counsel called here looking for you. Nate, what’s going on?”

  “I . . . I’m just doing a favor for someone.”

  “Who?”

  “A college buddy of mine. I don’t think you ever met him. He called me up out of the blue this week. He knew I was in Virginia and that I was a lawyer, so he asked me to help him out with his brother.”

  “His brother. The one who committed suicide in a mental hospital.”

  “Yeah,” Nate said. “I mean, how was I supposed to say no?”

  “Oh, I don’t know, maybe because you’re not currently licensed to practice law in the Commonwealth of Virginia?”

  “No one checks for that sort of thing. All he wanted was for me to make a phone call or two. If it got any more serious than that, I was going to refer him to someone else.”

  “Nate, that doesn’t matter. This isn’t giving random legal advice over cocktails. This is calling a state agency and claiming to represent someone. You could get disbarred for that. Why didn’t you just ask me to make the call?”

  “You’re busy. I didn’t want to get you involved.”

  “Well, I’m involved now. I just talked to their in-house counsel. She said this guy had some kind of a setback in his treatment where a guard overheard him talking about some things he shouldn’t have, and then the doctors were informed. It sounds like it pushed him over the edge. She sent me this video. I’m supposed to forward it to you.”

  “All right, then forward it to me,” Nate said.

  Jenny paused and turned it over in her mind for a moment. Favor or no, it was foolish of Nate to have involved himself in something like this. It could jeopardize his chance to ever practice law again, something she assumed he would want to do in a few years, when the girls reached school age.

  But forwarding the email was now the quickest way out of this potential mess. Once Nate saw the video, he’d tell his college buddy, and that would be the end of it.

  “Fine. I’ll send it,” she said. “But you have to promise me it’s over after this. You could get in real trouble for this. Heck, I could get in trouble for playing along. Promise me it’s over.”

  “I promise. And I’m sorry you got involved. But to be honest, that feels like the lesser of our problems right now.”

  “And what does that mean?”

  “I just got a visit from a detective asking me about why I choked you this morning,” he said.

  Jenny gave the phone a hard squeeze. It had been mortifying to have the detective show up at her workplace. White-shoe law firms like Carter, Morgan & Ross didn’t get visited by police officers very often. Jenny was sure she was currently the talk of the entire floor, if not the entire firm.

  But she could deal with idle office gossip. To have the detective also visiting her home was far more troubling. She was already worried about Nate feeling overburdened with his home duties. What if he snapped around the girls?

  “Hang on, let me close the door,” she said. She quickly crossed the room before returning to the phone. “Okay, I’m back.”

  “What did you tell the guy?” Nate asked.

  “I didn’t tell him anything.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Exactly what it sounds like. I told him I had nothing to say and then I asked him to leave.”

  “Nothing to say?” Nate burst.

  “I have the right to remain silent.”

  “I’m not talking about your . . . your legal rights,” Nate sputtered. “I’m talking about the truth. I didn’t choke you. Couldn’t you have just told him that?”

  “I didn’t want to give him anything. I just always remember this criminal defense attorney I did a symposium with when I was a two-L. He had this whole bit about, ‘You give them nothing and what do they have . . . ?’ He made the whole class say, ‘Nothing.’ And then he made us repeat it like five times.”

  “Well, sure, but—”

  “Honey, there’s no telling what this cop’s real angle is. The really clever ones never come at you straight. They can lie to you, mislead you, do anything they want. We don’t even know what he’s actually investigating. The whole choking thing struck me as a front for . . . something else.”

  “Like what?”

  “I don’t know. That’s the point. It just struck me that the safest, smartest thing to do was keep my mouth shut—at least until I had a chance to talk with you. That’s why I’ve been trying to call you. This guy was from the Youth and Family Unit. Maybe you were at the park and something happened with the girls—”

  “Nothing happened with the girls.”

  “But I didn’t know that,” Jenny said. “All I knew was this cop was suddenly asking questions. Point is, I didn’t want to give him something on the record that I’d later regret saying for some reason I couldn’t even imagine. You give them nothing and what do they have? Nothing.”

  “I . . . I guess.”

  “Honestly, I was hoping he wasn’t even going to bother you. I thought once he got stonewalled by me that would be the end of it.”

  “I’m not so sure that’s the end of anything,” Nate said. “He pretty clearly didn’t believe me when I denied it. He probably thinks you’re a battered woman, too scared of me to say anything, and that’s why you clammed up.”

  “Well, let him think what he wants. It doesn’t really matter.”

  “Do you have any idea where this accusation even came from?” Nate asked. “He wouldn’t tell me.”

  “He wouldn’t tell me either.”

  Neither of them spoke for a short while.

  Then she volunteered, “I’m sure it was an anonymous tip or something. The police are probably required by law to follow up. But really it was just some crackpot calling, inventing a few details, then hanging up.”

  “Why would someone do that?”

  “Oh, who knows,” she said. “It’s kind of creepy. Someone just deciding to make a call and inventing something like this.”

  “Very creepy.”

  “Maybe it was one of the neighbors or something.”

  “We don’t even have neighbors,” Nate pointed out. Which was true, at least in the immediate sense. The town house to their left was c
urrently for sale and unoccupied. The town house to the right was owned by a man who kept saying he was going to move down from New York and never did.

  “Well, not that we share a wall with. But this is a city. Maybe someone walked by, heard one of the kids crying, and thought it was something else. Maybe someone forgot to put on their tinfoil hat and is getting signals from beyond. I have no idea. But I know it didn’t happen, and you know it didn’t happen. That’s all that matters.”

  “Well, yeah, except now this Khalilu guy has opened a file on me. He said they might charge me.”

  “He’s just trying to scare you. There’s no evidence. You can’t charge someone based on one anonymous phone call.”

  “Still, just the accusation is—”

  “Unsettling,” she said, finishing the sentence for him.

  “More than unsettling. It feels like a violation.”

  “I know, I know,” she said. “And maybe I’m just saying this because I’ve had a little more time to process this, but put it out of your head, okay? It’s nothing.”

  “It doesn’t feel like nothing.”

  “I’m sure it doesn’t. And we can talk more about it tonight if you want. But right now I really have to get back to work. Sorry, I just haven’t gotten nearly enough done today with all these distractions. If I’m going to have any chance of getting home at a decent time—”

  “Sure. Just get back to work. I love you, okay?”

  “I love you too. Give the girls a kiss from Mommy. I’ll see you tonight.”

  CHAPTER 24

  NATE

  My heart was pounding so hard by the time I hung up the phone with Jenny I had to sit down.

  The combination of lying to her about Buck McBride and at the same time being falsely accused of choking her was triggering some kind of panic attack in me.

  I was worried I was going to pass out. Which is not exactly an option for someone who is the sole caregiver to two preschoolers.

  After a few minutes of deep breathing, the feeling began to subside, enough that I was able to stagger back into the living room and join the end of the girls’ dress-up play. I made all the right noises of engagement—oohing and aahing and whatnot—but the whole time my mind was elsewhere.

  I honestly didn’t know what to make of this sudden and incredibly ill-timed accusation of domestic violence.

  It was possible Jenny was right, that some random crank had, for reasons known only to him or her, decided to toss this spiteful incendiary bomb into the middle of my life.

  But really? It didn’t feel all that random. This was part of the bigger something that was happening to me. I was just too small to be able to see it.

  It was, of course, possible this was the work of Lorton Rogers and the Praesidium. Sure, Rogers said he wanted me to get away with killing my wife. But, come on, did he really?

  Assuming Rogers represented CP&L—and not some secret society—he wouldn’t care if I rotted in prison for the rest of my life. He’d probably even prefer it, because it would keep me out of the way. Planting a domestic violence report would help assure that.

  Then again, what if it wasn’t Rogers? What if there was yet another actor, still unknown to me?

  It honestly troubled me that Jenny hadn’t just straight up told the cop I didn’t choke her. Yes, I understood her logic. And, yes, it wasn’t unusual for my brilliant wife—with that ten-steps-ahead genius—to reach an unorthodox conclusion about the best course of action.

  But at a certain point, why not just tell the detective the truth? We didn’t have anything to hide.

  Did we?

  I felt like a housefly batting itself against a window, thinking I would soon reach the wider world, totally unaware I was never going to get there.

  Once I got the girls down for a nap, I was going to return to monitoring the weather in Oklahoma.

  But first I checked my email.

  There was a forward from Jenny, which contained a link to a video that had been posted to a file-sharing service.

  In short order, I was looking at a man lying on a bed, propped on one elbow, facing the far wall in what I assumed was a patient room at Dominion State Hospital.

  It was dark in the room except for some ambient light coming in from the parking lot. The camera must have had an infrared day/night filter, because Buck—if this was, in fact, Buck—appeared to be a lighter shade of gray than his surroundings.

  On the bottom right of the screen was a time-and-date stamp, which told me this video had been taken at 1:41 a.m. Wednesday morning.

  At first, very little was happening. The man seemed to be working on something that his body was keeping shielded from the camera. His hands and forearms were busy. Now and then an elbow would flare. But mostly he was just lying there.

  Then he swung his legs around so he was facing the camera and setting his feet on the floor. And, yes, it was Buck. Even in black and gray, his features were quite clear.

  He was clenching something in his fist, though it was difficult to tell what it was. And, in any event, he was already on the move, grabbing a chair from the corner of the room and placing it in the middle.

  Then he stood on the chair, and it suddenly became very obvious what he had been holding in his hand.

  An extension cord.

  That had been tied into a noose.

  What happened next seemed to move almost too fast. He reached up toward an exposed fire sprinkler head in the ceiling. The plug on the free end of the extension cord had been sheared off, such that it was thin enough that he could thread it through the supporting brace of the sprinkler head. He tied three quick granny knots and tugged hard on the cord, to make sure it was secure.

  Then, without any hesitation, he slipped his head into the middle of the loop and kicked away the chair.

  He dropped, his feet stopping maybe a foot above the floor. His legs flailed, furiously trying to find firm ground. His hands clawed at his neck. His body was reflexively fighting the terrible thing that was happening to it.

  The battle didn’t last long. There were a few spasms and jerks toward the end. But soon he was just hanging there, completely still.

  The video ran for another two minutes. Nothing changed. Then it ended.

  If I believed what my eyes had just shown me, Buck McBride hadn’t been murdered by CP&L or anyone else. He really had committed suicide. In which case . . .

  No. Couldn’t be. This had to be some kind of incredibly well-done deepfake. A powerful computer, applying the latest in machine learning, could easily create footage convincing enough to fool an amateur like me. CP&L could have then hacked Dominion State Hospital’s security camera system—I was sure that wouldn’t be hard—and planted the video.

  That was clearly it. I watched the video several more times, pausing it and zooming in on the screen, looking carefully for signs of fakery. There was nothing obvious.

  Next I googled how can you tell a deepfake and confirmed my basic understanding that, actually, if it was well done enough, you couldn’t. That’s what made them so pernicious.

  Once the girls woke up from their nap, I tried to put it out of my mind. The video was really just more evidence that CP&L and Lorton Rogers were sophisticated operators with a lot of resources at their disposal—something I knew already.

  Besides, it was snack time. Then game time. Then I acknowledged we were basically out of food and badly in need of a trip to the grocery store.

  By the time we returned, it was approaching four thirty. I put Cate in the corner of the living room, where there were some of her favorite toys, and some plastic barriers to keep her from getting free and hurting herself. I turned on Dora the Explorer for Parker so I could put the groceries away in relative peace.

  As I did so, I powered up the small TV we had in the kitchen and tuned it to CNN, which was reporting on the latest ridiculousness from Washington. I kept half an eye on it as I stored the cold stuff.

  Then I stopped cold myself.

&nbs
p; The bottom of the screen read, BREAKING: CHURCH SPARED TORNADO’S WRATH.

  I increased the volume in time to hear the anchor toss the story out to a local correspondent in Oklahoma, and to footage shot from the air—from a helicopter, it appeared—that looked a lot like the Cornerstone Assembly of God I had seen in that satellite photo earlier in the day. It was a closer view, but there were fields on all sides, and I recognized that semicircular parking lot.

  The sanctuary was the same rectangle.

  But the square building that had been behind it was gone.

  The walkway that had led to the building was now like a trailer link with no trailer—just a thin extension that led to nothing.

  It was easy to make out the path the tornado had taken on its way toward the church property. It was this jagged gray line in the earth, the shape of a lightning strike, standing out vividly against the green around it.

  The area where the gymnasium had once stood was scattered with debris. Pieces of siding. Parts of trees. Piles of junk you couldn’t even identify from that high up.

  Total devastation.

  I realized I was holding my breath. As I slowly let it go, a voice-over intoned: “The National Weather Service has estimated it was a category F-four tornado, with winds above two hundred miles an hour. It touched down about a mile from a nondenominational Christian church, the Cornerstone Assembly of God, at approximately one fifteen central time.”

  The screen switched to footage that had been shot from the ground. A tractor, its cab planted on the ground, its wheels pointed toward the sky. Mature trees uprooted and lying on their sides. Cornstalks parted like a biblical Red Sea.

  And then a building—had it once been a gymnasium?—which was now just a concrete pad with a few steel ribs jutting up from it at strange angles. There was no roof, no hint the building ever even had one.

  The view changed again. It was now a pleasant-looking older woman with a round face and glasses. Beneath her was CONNIE BILSON, CHURCH SECRETARY.

  I actually gasped. It was the Connie I had talked to earlier, the Connie who had answered that not-fake phone number from the three-year-old church listing.