by Caleb Carr
“I see it, asshole, because I’ve watched all of it happen, since way back. Anybody would have seen it, except you. Look, go feed your other girlfriend—but don’t take too long. Sounds like we’d better not be late for dinner tonight.” He clasped my shoulder with his free hand and grinned. “Plus, it sounds to me like you’re gonna get lucky, on one of your last nights of real freedom…”
On that note, I turned and left the hangar at a very slow pace, making my way up to Marcianna’s enclosure in like manner. I followed Mike’s advice, though, and didn’t spend long inside the fence: just as much as was necessary to reassure Marcianna that everything between us was all right. Then I returned to the farmhouse, went to my room, washed up some, got a fresh shirt on, and finally made my way down toward the dining room, where the others were already assembled. Clarissa, Mike, and Lucas appeared to be having a jolly enough time, while Ambyr was clearly waiting for me to get there before she relaxed entirely. Once I had and she did, dinner passed very pleasantly for us all; a slightly unreal atmosphere, given what the coming days held in store.
“All right,” I eventually said, levering myself upright with my cane and the grip I had on the table once the last postprandial drinks had been consumed. “I think that’s about it, for tonight—”
“Ah-ah-ah,” Clarissa warned. “I’m afraid I can’t let you off quite so easily, nephew. The rest of you, scurry along to your rooms. I need a brief word, Trajan.”
My heart sank a little at the thought of what might be coming. Mike said good night to everyone, and Lucas did likewise; then my spirits lifted a little when Ambyr slowed as she neared me, paused by my side, and folded the fingers of her right hand tight into mine, letting the top of her head brush ever so lightly against my cheek.
“I’ll see you later?” she asked.
Clarissa was deliberately staring down at the table to afford us a moment, so I tilted my head over and kissed Ambyr’s cheek softly, a move she returned with that desperate hunger of hers. “Of course,” I said; then she followed the others, long since having learned to navigate the stairs and halls.
My great-aunt indicated the seat next to hers. “Park it, nephew.” I did as told. “Trajan,” she said quietly. “I wanted to make this very clear, but not in front of the others—don’t screw this up.”
I couldn’t help but chuckle, a bit exhaustedly. “Which ‘this’ do you mean, Clarissa?”
“Not the Kurtzes—you know they’ll be welcome here, for as long as it takes. But this case. I can just finance your trip to New York; but you and Mike have got to maintain your incomes. So don’t let anything jeopardize you with the university. Do you understand what I’m saying?”
“We’re aware, Aunt,” I said, chuckling again and rising back up. “It is constantly on both our minds. And we wouldn’t want you to have us on those terms, believe me.” I kissed the top of her head. “We’re walking a very thin line—don’t think we don’t know it.”
“Yes,” she replied. “You certainly are…”
Touching her hand as she nodded once or twice, I began the long walk toward the staircase, knowing how difficult what she’d just said to me must have been for her, and how very true it was: Shiloh, however it may have looked to outsiders, was a relatively small farm, and, like all small farms, it was a shoestring operation. Every mouth fed had to belong to a contributing body, and Clarissa was already stretching things for Ambyr and Lucas. Such were all unpleasantly hard truths; and recapitulating them inside my head was a process that bore down on me with increasing weight as I made my way upstairs and into my room, where I barely had time to get my clothes and my prosthesis off before, without realizing it, I fell into a deep sleep.
I was brought around by a feeling to which I still hadn’t readjusted: a powerful warmth along the whole of my body. I became conscious of it even before I was fully awake, for it utterly invaded the dream state that I had achieved. It was Ambyr, of course, herself naked and holding tight against the back of me in the bed. I rolled over sleepily, finding that I was much more rested than I would have thought possible, considering the hour or so that I believed I’d been asleep.
“What time is it?” I whispered to her, seeing darkness outside.
“Four a.m.,” she replied, beginning to move those tender yet strong hands all over me. “You’ve been out a long time—so have I. Doesn’t seem like it, does it?”
“No,” I answered, rolling over toward her. “But that’s a good thing. We both needed it.”
“Yes, sweet one,” she whispered, touching her lips to mine, as a warm breeze that had begun to blow in the afternoon kicked up once again through the window. Her embrace became tighter, her kisses more determined, and each of us simply faded away into the night.
The night, where in the distance, for reasons I was once again unable to explain, Marcianna began to issue that strange chirrup of hers…
{v.}
At the appointed hour on the following day, throughout which a heavy, humid but quiet rain fell, Mike and I locked ourselves into the JU-52, using the usual interior hatch mechanism. Then we sat at the desk once again and the screens opposite us came alive with the faces of our Council. Mike had so configured our laptop that just by slapping the space bar we could mute any sound we might be making, and I asked him, after he explained this prudent measure, to pull the framing of our camera shot back farther than it had been the day before, to allow me to be seen when I began inevitably pacing behind our desk: I knew that the subjects under discussion would require my most focused thinking, which always occurred when I was unencumbered by the pain of a chair.
“Good afternoon, all,” I announced, touching the hard copy of the case file that lay on the desk between Mike and me. “I trust you’ve had time to go over the materials thoroughly.”
“Yes, I think so,” Linda Walker said, taking the lead again, with the somehow always-imposing backdrop of the faded, dirty yellow brick of the Bronx project in which she lived clearly visible through the window before which she sat.
“One question though, Doctor,” Frankie Arquilla noted, double-checking his printout. “Why ‘Cheetahfucker’?”
That set the others laughing a little, which was another healthy indicator: because, quite contrary to the grim moods that are often displayed by television shows, humor during the process of a murder investigation is a quality necessary to the preservation of sanity; and so, instead of discouraging the reaction, I smiled and tried to join in it. “That is Professor Li’s idea of funny,” I said to them all, smiling. “Due to the fact—”
“Due to the fact,” Mei-lien Hsüeh cut in softly, her accent taking the hard edges off many of her consonants, “that five years ago, you received a permit to keep a cheetah, one that no refuge would accept due to feline leukemia, on your great-aunt’s farm.” She held up a copy of the permit. “With respect, sir, it is a matter of public record.”
“Well done, Mei-lien,” Mike chuckled. “How did you find time to dig that up?”
“It took very little time, Dr. Li,” Mei-lien answered. “And was easily downloaded.”
“Well, then,” I pronounced. “The bar has already been set rather high, in terms of research—”
“But why do you even have a cheetah, Doctor?” Vicky Ferrier asked, those West Coast features full of puzzled concern. “I mean—aren’t we supposed to be discouraging private ownership of exotic animals?”
“We are,” I said, trying to move quickly past it; to which end I related, in as few words as possible, Marcianna’s history. “So you see, Vicky,” I concluded, “it was either bring her here or watch her get a fatal needle in her vein. And I couldn’t bear the second option. But yes, if I were to find out that, say, Frankie, was hiding a tiger in his Arizona apartment, I would have to report him.”
“Okay,” Mike added. “So much for the cheetah fucker—for ‘Cheetahfucker,’ sorry. What were your general reactions to the rest of the case?”
“Just one more thing about the mater
ials,” said Vicky—the sole member of the Council who had graduated that summer—as she looked through her own notes. “Was it really necessary to send us the links to those porn clips without identifying them? I mean, that was some disturbing stuff.”
“Exactly the point, Vick,” Mike answered. “Would you have believed they existed, without seeing them? And would you have watched them, if you’d known what they were?”
Vicky drew in a long, sad breath as she looked up. “Probably not,” she conceded.
“And remember,” I added, “that’s just what’s publicly available on free sites; the stuff that can get you arrested if you subscribe to it is far worse, as you’ll likely learn during your career. But it’s important that you understand how large the—market for such things is. As well as the market for such children. In addition, you needed to know why the Patricks were such easy prey for the state. I’m sorry if you thought we meant to offend, Vicky, but—”
“No, no,” Vicky answered, waving me off. “I get it. But, man…” She shook her head and flicked a long strand of golden hair behind her ear. “Pretty tough to take.”
“Indeed,” I told her. “So—anybody else with an initial comment?”
“Well,” Colleen said softly, her hand never seeming to lift from the business of taking notes, “I’d like to point one thing out: somebody involved in this case has been playing pretty fast and loose with the law, Professors. And it looks to me like it must be somebody high placed.”
“Okay, Colleen,” I replied, inwardly glad to hear her say as much. “Explain.”
She shrugged. “I just don’t see how the ME alone could have suppressed the theory that this tech who got killed, Kolmback, put forward, about Shelby Capamagio being murdered by a serial killer. Medical examiners can’t shut up a whole department—not unless they want to be shut up. No, I’d say his own superiors tried to discourage Kolmback as soon as he had the idea, probably right after the Kozersky girl died; yet they were simultaneously discouraging any other theories that were being put forward. The whole thing doesn’t appear consistent: they allowed the idea of a serial killer to get loose, but wanted no actual proof of it. So, in effect, they were deliberately trying to prevent any actual solution from being reached. But getting back to Kolmback, the head of the FIC, this Nancy Grimes, seems to have pulled him in tight and kept him isolated, by making him the tech at all five crime scenes. Kolmback probably thought that it was a step up, at first; then, by the time he figured out that he’d been made part of a plot to hide a scandal that most people don’t even know about, and that his bosses were determined the public would never know about…it was too late.”
Both Mike and I breathed a little easier: she had hit on all cylinders, which meant that they had indeed done their homework. “Impressive, Colleen,” I said. “Particularly in your analysis of the seemingly contradictory aims of law enforcement, which I believe will be clarified, among this group. Anything more—anybody?”
“Yeah,” Frankie said, half-lifting one hand. “Since at least some of these ‘runaway parents’ seem to be coming to my part of the U.S., I gotta ask: what is up with that? ‘Throwaway children’? It’s really, officially recognized as a category of homeless kids in New York State? That is crazy.”
“Check the Arizona Department of Child Safety, Frankie,” Mike said. “See if it’s there, too.”
“I did,” Frankie answered, looking mildly insulted. “It ain’t, Doc. They got throwaways just like most states, but that’s just another name for kids who’ve been chucked outta their houses.”
“Correct,” I replied. “An entirely different category.”
“Right,” Frankie said with a nod. “But ‘throwaways’? Nothing.”
“How deep did you dig?” Mike asked.
“Doc.” Frankie’s indignant look spread into a confident smile. “This is me, Frankie Arquilla—”
“Oh, Jesus,” I heard Colleen breathe in annoyed familiarity as she scribbled on.
“You know I am the master of research,” Frankie continued, either not having heard his classmate from Boston or pretending that he hadn’t. “I checked all through their Web files, I called them, I even went down to the nearest office, hit up somebody I deal with there sometimes. And they never heard of it. Nunca.”
“I suppose they may have been telling the truth,” I answered. “It hasn’t been officially recognized in some states—but the mere contention should give you an idea of exactly how desperate the New York authorities are to keep this case from involving that subject. Even the explanation that a serial killer of children was at work would be preferable—if indeed any explanation had to be officially endorsed—so far as our governor is concerned.”
“And then there’s that,” Linda said, a little reluctantly. “One of us, at least, might like to get a job in New York State, someday, or even with the Feds—and you imply at one point, with supporting evidence, that the cover-up might extend that far. It’s not that I doubt it; in fact we may have more facts to support it. But are we sure our security measures are good enough?”
“We should be fine on that score, Linda,” Mike cut in, nodding quickly. “Skype’s encryption protocols are already fairly good, although technically hackable. But I’ve backed them up with some of my own.”
“Okay—what else?” I asked, getting impatient and uncomfortable in my chair, then standing to begin pacing. “Let’s open with the theory that the deaths were all suicides: any argument?”
Vicky cleared her throat, her rather dazzling blue eyes locking with mine. “No, we can’t find any reason to argue with that, Doctor. The only one that might be open to question is the mummified boy—”
“Whose death does not form a part of the core of this case,” I said quickly. “As harsh as it may sound, his importance lies elsewhere.”
“We understand that, Dr. Jones,” Vicky volleyed, with a peculiar sense of warning. “And we’ll return to it. But there are immediate questions about the circumstances of his death that we found striking. First of all, mummification: we’ve never heard of that process being involved in a modern case, and certainly not as a tool for some frame by law enforcement.”
“Though we oughtta emphasize that we’ve heard of state bureaus doing frame-ups with kids’ bodies before—right, Collie?” Frankie teased.
“My name is Colleen, Frankie,” she said, still quietly, but with some annoyance. “And I’m from Boston, remember? There aren’t many kinds of frames that I haven’t heard of. But this one is new.”
“Yet ‘new’ is often the rule, in this racket,” I added. “And so, Vicky—do you have a point?”
“Only that you seem to have been so preoccupied, maybe understandably, with the boy’s condition, with the BCI’s using him, and finally with your own plan to use him to defeat that scheme, that, well…” Her face became very quizzical, but something more, too; it was just a touch, I was sad to see, disillusioned. “It never occurred to you to dig any deeper? Into why a kid would choose that method of suicide, assuming it was a suicide? Or into his background and circumstances? Maybe contact his family?”
“We were split on this one, by the way,” Linda added. “While we understand how Vicky and Colleen felt, Frankie, Mei-lien, and I also got why you pursued the course you did. You knew that the BCI would have had the name of the boy and his contact information, and you assumed, or at least the three of us assume that you assumed, that the county law—Sheriff Spinetti and Deputy Steinbrecher—would get hold of it, too, and pass it on.”
“Correct, Linda,” Mike said. “Or, Spinetti and Steinbrecher would find out about the kid before the BCI, which would have been even better.”
“Hmm,” Vicky noised, still more than a little judgmentally. “And did they do either thing?”
“Not yet,” I said, somewhat elusively. “But if you’ve learned something that can speed that process, we would of course be anxious to hear it.”
“We have and we can,” Colleen said, flipping a few
pages in her notes to check and earmark something. “But we’ll get back to that…”
“And you may not be as anxious to hear our opinions as you think,” Vicky added.
“No?” I slowed my pace, then came to a stop and locked onto Vicky’s sapphire stare again. “Look, no cat-and-mouse games, here, any of you: if you have something to say, let’s hear it.”
“Well,” Colleen replied, “we need to do that by moving to a different topic, one that we think is very basic to how you have conducted the case, and to how officials in your state have responded. But Mei-lien is going to take it from here for a bit.”
“Thank you, Colleen,” Mei-lien said, as gently as ever. “Yes, and so, I must turn our attention not to the dead children that are being referred to as ‘throwaways,’ in this case, but to the three living examples: the Kurtz family. The young woman, Ambyr, and the two boys for whom she has served as guardian, Lucas Kurtz and Derek Franco. First, if I may be allowed to review, you made the boy Lucas a part of your investigative team: we all understand what you hoped to gain from that, from having so young an agent monitoring his peers in the locality, and advising you of their habits. And we have agreed that it was a safe decision. Also, as I have already told my colleagues, I come from a different part of the world, where childhood has a different meaning, and where children are often employed for such purposes. So it was perhaps less shocking to me than to them.”
Which was why, I now saw, they were letting her take the lead. “That’s very understanding of you, Mei-lien,” I said, despite a feeling of growing unease. “Next?”
“Next, yes, there is Lucas’ sister, Ambyr Kurtz. You decided to involve her, as well, for reasons that are somewhat more…” Mei-lien searched hard for a tactful word: “…complex.”
“Though we agree that it was another good move,” Frankie added. “So was bringing her and Lucas to your farm, where they’d be safe from the law, along with the kind of media crap that they got a look at that morning when you held your—briefing.”