The Chosen One

by Sam Bourne

  She went back. Had she nudged the controls on the machine too fast? What had happened to page five?

  She lined up page four and inched the wheel along. Up came page six. She did it again, even more slowly. There was no mistaking it. Four was followed by six. There was no page five.

  After she had tracked him down, the librarian did nothing to conceal his irritation at being interrupted about such a banal matter. As he accompanied her back up the stairs, he asked a series of questions that assumed she was at fault, bungling the operation of what was a pretty elementary machine.

  ‘You see,’ Maggie demonstrated, partly relieved to see that the problem had not magically corrected itself – a habit that, in her experience, afflicted all machines whenever she summoned assistance. ‘Four. Then six. No five.’

  ‘Maybe it was just a page of ads and so was not transferred onto microfilm?’

  ‘I thought of that,’ Maggie replied, immediately spooling to the several pages comprised solely of ads which had nevertheless made the transfer onto microfilm.

  ‘Well, that is odd, I grant you,’ he said finally, his voice softening. ‘I’ve never seen that before. I’ll need to report that right away. This is library property. You’re sure you didn’t do anything to it?’

  Again, Maggie had to bite back a sharp reply. ‘Completely sure. Are there any other copies of that day’s newspaper around, do you think? What about at the office of The Daily World itself?’

  ‘They gave their entire hard-copy archive to us eight or nine years ago.’

  ‘So hard copies exist somewhere?’

  ‘They did. But we couldn’t afford to store them. So we put them on microfilm.’

  ‘The originals were destroyed?’

  “Fraid so.’ His disappointment seemed sincere. ‘It happened to dozens of American papers. Their whole archives – just incinerated. Some papers were saved, by collectors. But not this one.’

  ‘So you’re telling me that page five of The Daily World for that date has vanished? It doesn’t exist anywhere?’

  ‘Not quite. The World digitized some of its archive. So if you know what you’re looking for, you can search their database. You just-’

  ‘The whole point is I don’t know what I’m looking for.’

  He gave her a look, as if she had just confirmed his earlier, low assessment of her.

  ‘What I mean is, I’ll know it when I find it. It relates to this town or this area on that day.’

  ‘But you don’t know what “it” is, right?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  The librarian drew up his shoulders and adopted the demeanour of an official. She saw him looking at the bruise on her forehead. ‘Are you sure you need to deal with this today? Maybe you could take a break and come back tomorrow…’

  Maggie took a deep breath. Of course, she looked like a wreck; worse, even: mad. She had an idea. ‘Forgive me for being so demanding. And thank you for your help. It’s possible I’ve made a mistake with the year. Do you think I could trouble you for microfilm copies of the same paper and the same dates – but for the following year?’

  He eyed her warily, as if dealing with an animal he hoped he had pacified but which could turn wild at any moment.

  She smiled, a move that usually worked wonders but which seemed to have little impact on this man. When it became clear she was not going to give up, he sighed and said, ‘March 15, 16 and 17, right? For the following year?’

  ‘If you would.’

  This time she checked the page numbers first. All three sets were complete, no pages missing. She started with the newspaper for March 15, exactly a year after the date Victor Forbes had gone to such trouble to secure for posterity.

  The front page once again offered nothing of obvious relevance, a story about a new defence contract that would benefit Boeing, one of the state’s big employers, with knock-on effects for suppliers in Aberdeen. More mundane, local tedium on the subsequent pages.

  Maybe she was chasing down the wrong alley here. Maybe the event Forbes had in mind was some national or international happening, some political landmark, far away from Aberdeen and the little Jackson-Baker soap opera. Perhaps she needed to be searching not the Aberdeen Daily World, but the New York Times or Washington Post.

  She would check one last time, working from the last page back to the front. Sports, agony column – no emotional confession of jealousy from an R Jackson: she checked – letters, financial, ads, puff piece about a local hotel reopening…

  Maggie had not read the story properly first time round, just taking in the headline and scanning the text for names. But this time she caught the caption.

  Staff at the Meredith Hotel prepare for today’s grand reopening, one year to the day since the blaze that nearly destroyed the establishment.

  46

  Transcript of Meet the Press on NBC for Sunday March 26:

  Host:Topic A – the imperilled presidency of Stephen Baker. A week of extraordinary revelations and now the clock ticking on impeachment. Where does that leave the President? Let’s ask our roundtable. Tom, let’s start with you: can Baker survive this thing?

  Tom Glover, Politico.com:The only two people who know the answer to that are those two conservative Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee, David.

  Host: And it is just two now, since the third member of that group-

  Tom Glover: That’s right, since he made clear he won’t vote for impeachment, it’s down to just those two. You know, the majority is so wafer thin in the House – just a few votes separating the parties – that it only needs a tiny defection for the President to be in big trouble.

  Host: So what’s going through their minds, Michelle?

  Michelle Schwartz, Wall Street Journal: Well, this weekend, I guess they’ll be listening to people in their home districts, David. What do they make of Stephen Baker? Do they still like him? Do they still trust him?

  Host: And what are you hearing?

  Michelle Schwartz: I’m hearing that he remains in deep trouble. People felt blindsided by the medical revelations-

  Tom Glover: Yeah, but Michelle, I think that ended up as a net positive for the President. People warmed to his candor, his very clear sincerity and his message that mental health-

  Michelle Schwartz: Maybe if that had been the only thing: that one revelation and the President makes a great speech. We all know Stephen Baker is a brilliant speaker.

  Host: You say that like it’s a bad thing, Michelle. [Laughter.]

  Michelle Schwartz: My point is, fine if it had ended there. But then we get the Iranian Connection which-

  Tom Glover: Which is still just conjecture at this stage. No one’s proven anything except an Iranian citizen – this man Hossein Najafi – made it to a White House reception. You know Stephen Baker is not the first president to have gatecrashers at his parties.

  Host: Well, let’s see what we do know about this story. The Washington Post has run an extensive piece of reporting on the Iranian Connection, let’s flash some of that up here. Here’s the quote:

  Experts in forensic accountancy say it’s possible that the donation made by Mr Najafi, though paid out of a US bank registered in Delaware, may have been sourced from the Cayman Islands and, prior to that, originated in a bank in Tehran used by the Army of the Guardians of the Islamic Revolution, better known as the Revolutionary Guards.

  Tom Glover: Lot of ifs in that, David.

  Host: So that’s the quote. What do you make of it, Michelle?

  Michelle Schwartz: As so often, it’s about context. I think we should be honest and mention the third leg of this particular stool – and that is the death of Vic Forbes. If-

  Tom Glover: Oh, come on-

  Michelle Schwartz: If it wasn’t for the persistent questions that arise from that-

  [Crosstalk. Inaudible]

  Tom Glover:…about Stuart Goldstein? I mean if we’re going to start mentioning mysterious deaths. What, are we gonna sit around on Meet th
e Press wondering which Republican took out Goldstein? And unlike Forbes, that man was a proven servant of the American people. I mean, this is undignified-

  Michelle Schwartz: I wasn’t saying-

  Tom Glover:-and it’s unseemly.

  Host: All right, predictions for the week ahead. Michelle?

  Michelle Schwartz: I don’t want to offend Tom again, but I think it all depends on what more comes out about the late Mr Forbes. If there is something, combined with the Iranian Connection, then I think that will spell the end for the President.

  Host: Tom?

  Tom Glover: Well, I hate to agree with my colleague here but I think she’s right. It shouldn’t hinge on the Forbes episode, but I fear it does. If another shoe drops on that – something which changes our view of how he died or what he was about to say – then that could change the calculus.

  Host: All right, thanks to you both. Good to have you with us. Coming up after the break…

  47

  Aberdeen, Washington, Sunday March 26, 11.29 PST

  Maggie tried first to do it the official way, to see if there was a paper trail left by institutions and follow that. But she hit a series of predictable dead ends, made all the more final by the fact that it was a Sunday and every important office was closed. She called the Aberdeen Fire Department and asked if they kept records of their work – what she had in mind was the basic logbook, listing the call-outs of any given night – going back nearly thirty years. Four phone calls led eventually to a duty officer who said they did keep such records, though he wasn’t sure how far back they went. Besides, they couldn’t just show sensitive information to a member of the public: it would require the written consent of the Chief. She would have to submit a form…

  Next she tried the police department who gave the same answer less politely.

  So she went to the Meredith Hotel, giving the concierge – an Asian-American man close to sixty – the same smile that had so conspicuously failed to melt the librarian.

  ‘I know this sounds like a very odd question,’ she began, doing her best to learn from her mistake at the library and not sound insane. ‘But I wonder if you could tell me who is the longest-serving employee at this hotel?’

  ‘Excuse me?’

  ‘Who has worked at this hotel the longest?’

  Without warning, he stepped out from behind his small, stand-up desk and headed through the hotel’s revolving door, raised his arm, and summoned a cab he had spotted the way an osprey can spy a fish below the surface of the ocean from one hundred and thirty feet.

  Having ushered the waiting guest towards the taxi, helped with loading the bags and pocketed a one-dollar tip with a grateful smile, he returned to Maggie and her odd question. For what was a small hotel in a middling town, he seemed rather a grand concierge.

  ‘Longest serving? That would be me, Miss.’

  Good. Just as she had hoped. ‘I’m researching the history of this area and I wonder if you could help me with something. I understand there was a fire here many years ago.’

  ‘Before my time, Miss.’

  ‘I thought you said you-’

  ‘I’ve worked here fifteen years. But that was-’

  ‘More than twenty-five years ago.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘And there’s no one else here who has memories of that night?’

  ‘Like I say, no one here has worked longer than me.’

  ‘What about the owners?’

  ‘Changed hands eight years ago. This hotel is part of a chain owned out of Pennsylvania now.’

  Maggie’s face must have displayed her disappointment because he seemed hurt, eager to please again. ‘What do you need to know?’

  ‘Anything you can tell me.’

  He leaned on his desk. ‘I heard it was a very big fire. Destroyed the interior of the hotel. They had to rebuild and redecorate. Hotel was closed for a year.’

  All of which had been covered in the anniversary story in the paper.

  ‘And no clue how it started?’

  ‘They say that was a mystery. Though one of the older cleaners – she’s dead now – she said it was cigarettes, set the curtains on fire. On the third floor.’

  ‘But nobody died.’

  ‘Where do you hear that?’

  Maggie pulled from her pocket the photocopied Daily World cutting about the reopening she had taken from the library. With a quick glance, she checked it again now. Nowhere did it mention any fatalities. She had assumed everyone had survived. She looked back at the concierge. ‘Do I have that wrong?’

  ‘I think you do, Miss. The anniversary was a couple weeks back, right?’

  ‘Yes. It was.’ She smiled again. ‘I’m impressed you know the date, just like that.’

  ‘Well, it’s difficult to forget. They come here every year.’

  ‘Who comes?’

  ‘The family. March 15, every year. They lay a wreath outside the hotel. Very polite, always ask permission.’

  ‘The family?’

  ‘Of the person who died. In the fire.’

  ‘And they did this last week?’

  ‘Yep. Same as always.’

  ‘What’s the name of the family?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know, Miss. They never say.’

  ‘And do you still have the wreath?’

  ‘I threw it out just yesterday.’

  Damn. She wondered about slipping him a twenty, asking him to go look out back, but decided against it. Bound to arouse suspicions. She thanked him for his time, handed him a five-dollar bill and left. Five minutes later she was in the loading bay behind the hotel, with its giant trash cans and handful of parking spaces. Bracing herself for the stink, she flipped open the lid of the first dumpster. Just glass bottles. There was a blue one full of paper and then, next to it a large black one, with its lid ajar.

  She heaved the black dumpster open and was assailed by the stench. It was full of black bin bags, but several had burst, with food scraps and rotting peelings leaking out. Breathing through her mouth, she gingerly pushed a bag to one side and leaned further into the bin. She heard the sound of footsteps behind her. She wheeled around, her heart thudding, imagining how easy it would be for anyone who wanted to simply to shove her inside. There was a man a few yards behind her – but he was just a hotel guest, unlocking his car and preparing to drive away.

  She went back to her task, tearing at each bag, watching as old fish guts, rock-hard slices of bread and a wad of bloodstained tissues spilled out.

  She had all but given up when she glimpsed the dark green edge of it. Using the lip of the bin as a fulcrum, her body see-sawed into the dumpster and she hooked it out. The wreath was in a sorry state, the flowers dead and brown, the greenery wilted. But there was a small, white card still attached to it, though it was damp and buckled and stinking. Chucking the wreath back into the garbage, she examined the card. It bore a single word, handwritten in ink that had run but was still legible.

  Pamela.

  48

  Aberdeen, Washington, Sunday March 26, 11.51

  She had been hoping for more, a last name at least. She wondered if she was travelling ever further down the wrong path, piling error upon error, taking one false turn after another. What if Forbes’s date referred to something else entirely, nothing to do with Aberdeen? Even if it did relate to something that had happened in this town, how could she be sure it was the fire he had had in mind? It was possible that none of this had any bearing whatsoever on the death of Victor Forbes. She caught a reflection of herself as she left the hotel – the new hair, the bruise, the face still pained from the wounds she had sustained less than two days ago – and wondered what the hell she was doing.

  For a moment she imagined hailing a cab to the airport and running away. She could buy a ticket to anywhere. Maybe she could turn up at Liz’s flat, ask to sleep on the sofa, get to know her nephew. There would always be a bed for her at her parents’. But then Maggie reminded herself that the sweet lady w
ho had sabotaged her car on Friday night had been ready to kill without discrimination; then she remembered what Liz had said, how no one was trying to kill her because she knew nothing. She had already drawn her sister in too deep – plumbing the depths of the Hades that lurked beneath the internet – it wouldn’t be fair to expose her to anything worse.

  New York? The idea filled her with instant warmth. Instantly, too quick for her to stop it, an image floated into her head – she was standing in Uri’s apartment, the pair of them smiling at each other the way they smiled before a kiss.

  But now rational thought caught up, trapping the image that had escaped and throttling it with reality. That apartment was no longer her territory. Hadn’t she heard another woman padding along those hardwood floors? Wasn’t there now another woman stepping out of the shower and shaking her hair dry before that strange, blemished Tunisian mirror, another woman sleeping on those sheets?

  She could, of course, go back to Washington with her tail between her legs. But Washington was not kind to losers. And the President was there, the President who was relying on her: she would be consigning him to failure too.

  No, there was no running away. She owed it to Stephen Baker, to Stuart and to herself to find out what – and who – was behind this, wrecking the Baker presidency and several lives in the process. She could not rest till she had.

  She pulled out her BlackBerry and made a bet with herself. If there was any man who, on principle, would ensure his number was in the local phone book, it would be him. She called directory assistance and asked for the home number of Principal Ray Schilling.

  She wondered if he would be surprised to hear from Ashley Muir, still alive and well. What if he too had been in on the plot to send her car skidding into oblivion on Friday night? If he had been, he had done a good job hiding it.

  After a few pleasantries, and an apology for disturbing him at home on the weekend, she went straight in. ‘Mr Schilling, something you said stayed with me. “I remember all the students I teach.” That’s what you said.’