Surrender, New York

by Caleb Carr

  “I suppose ‘friend’ is too much?” I ran my hands over Marcianna’s head and neck, as she moaned for more attention.

  “Okay, then,” Lucas said, clearly ready, at long last, to tackle the subject. “You’re my friend. And you’re gonna try to tell me, based on what I’ve been hearing you and Mike say up in the plane—”

  “You’ve been listening to Mike and me?” I asked, genuinely surprised.

  “Yeah,” the kid answered, his tone as yet noncommittal. “And the pair of you seem to think that I can learn to forgive Ambyr, someday; maybe even forget that she walked out. On us both.”

  “She didn’t walk out on us, Lucas,” I said. “She was chasing something, something she never got to have: a life like anybody else her age. And she honestly thought she was doing good by the throwaways, along the way. Maybe she even did, for some; we’ll never know. But listen to me: don’t ever question how much she cares about you. This isn’t like your parents.”

  “Yeah?” He began to pick up pebbles and throw them back at the ground, hard. “Well, it sure as shit feels the same way. And it’s got kinda the same effect, doesn’t it? I mean, what’s gonna happen to me, anyway?”

  “Well, that’s where it really is different,” I answered, a little tentatively. “Your parents left you flat. Ambyr knew that something like this might happen; and she sent you up here to get involved in the case, but also—she knew it would be a safe place for you.”

  “How do you mean?” Lucas asked; and while he was trying to maintain his stony demeanor, there was plainly hope in his voice.

  “Well—” Trying for a moment to find a subtle way of putting it, I found that there wasn’t one; and so I just plowed on through: “Ambyr wanted this to be your foster home. I’ve talked to Clarissa about it, and we’re both willing.”

  Lucas paused; not with real surprise, but with some disbelief, nonetheless. Then he said, very quietly: “No shit?”

  “No shit. But there’s conditions.”

  “Uh-oh.”

  “You have to stay in school. You can’t become a fuck-up, and you pull your weight around the house.”

  “Oh,” he answered brightly, relieved. “That’s it? Well, shit—I can do all that.”

  “I know you can,” I said with a certain nod. “In return, you’ll keep working with Mike and me, and learn the criminal sciences as long as you want to. If your interests change, fine, but you have to be serious about them.”

  “No, no, I want to stick with what we’ve been doing,” he said anxiously. “Then, someday, maybe I’ll go to college, even.”

  “That’s the general idea. Clarissa and I will find a way to make it work, though by then, with the training you’ll have, you should be able to get a scholarship to any first-rate school of criminal justice.”

  A broad smile crept into Lucas’ face, broader than I’d seen in a long time. “Really? Well—fuck me…” And then, just as quickly, the shadow loomed again: “And Ambyr?”

  “What about her?” I asked, perhaps more coldly than I’d intended.

  “What’s gonna happen to her?”

  “Well, she didn’t actually kill anybody, and she wasn’t responsible for staging the death scenes. Nor did she have a hand in Derek’s actual death. Mangold, Mike, and I will make all that clear. She was only complicit in an illegal adoption service, or whatever you want to call it, so she’ll probably get a light sentence in some minimum security joint. Be out in a couple of years.”

  “No,” Lucas said. “What I mean is, are you gonna make me go visit her?”

  “Do you want to go visit her?”

  “I don’t know.” He started tossing his pebbles harder. “I’m pissed at her, but—she’s my sister. My family. I guess.”

  “So, you’ll give it time, and go see her when you’re ready. She can’t expect more than that.”

  “And if she tries to come back here?” he asked, very tentatively.

  “Lucas,” I said. “You’re looking way too far ahead. Let’s just try to get the next couple of steps squared away. If you want to see her, someday, or if she tries to come back, and you don’t want her to, well…we’ll handle it.”

  “Hunh.” Lucas dropped his handful of pebbles. “How about you?”

  “Me?”

  “Sure.” Lucas started stroking Marcianna’s neck again. “She fucked you over almost as bad as she did me. Worse, in some ways.”

  Taking a deep breath, I said only, “I’ll have to deal with it when it happens, too, Lucas. All we can do.”

  Lucas glanced around, sadness touching his features. “I miss Derek, sometimes,” he said quietly. “And I hate to think of him…on that tree.”

  “We can have it cut down, it’s on our property.” A look of uncertainty entered Lucas’ face, so I went on: “Seems a shame, though. Kids love to play there. And it wasn’t the tree’s fault.”

  “Yeah. That’s true…” Standing up, Lucas took Marcianna’s face in his hands once more; and it became clear to me how very much she was going to be a part of his ability to recover from his latest round of losses. “It is true, isn’t it?” he said to her, shaking her head just a little from side to side, very gently. In return, she knocked him to the ground with a simple, happy movement of her neck, and in seconds was atop him, causing him to laugh and holler simultaneously.

  And then a new voice was added to the chorus: Mike’s. “Finally!” he called from the top of the pasture, where he emerged from behind some shrubs with Gracie Chang—who’d been paying regular visits to Shiloh—in tow. “We’ve been sitting here for ten minutes, getting grass stains on our asses, waiting for you three idiots to finish your private time!”

  “Stop it, Mike,” Gracie said, slapping at him. “We have not.” Then she called to us, with a smile that bespoke no lingering effects of her crash, “But do you guys mind if we come down?”

  I just held up my arm and smiled in return, and they made their way to us. Gracie was fascinated to watch the interaction between Lucas and Marcianna, which gave Mike a chance to sit beside me and light a cigarette. Himself watching Lucas as the kid wrestled and laughed, Mike grew obviously pleased that both our colleague and our young apprentice had recovered so much of themselves; and he called, “Don’t you ever fucking run out of energy, kid?”

  “Nope!” Lucas declared, rolling away from Marcianna and then falling victim again as she pursued him. “Come on, Gracie, try it, she’s actually a riot.”

  “I think I’ll just stay a spectator, thanks, Lucas,” Gracie answered; yet she made no move to join Mike and me, meaning that something was on my partner’s mind.

  Mike watched Marcianna and the kid, shaking his head and letting out a chuckle. “Well,” he said. “Everybody’s got their own way of healing up, I guess.” Taking a drag of his cigarette, he added, “So I guess you told him, hunh? About staying on here?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “I told him. Give me a smoke, will you?”

  Fishing a cigarette out of his shirt pocket, he handed it to me and offered a light. “And he’s cool with the whole thing?” I nodded in reply. “What about you—you sure you’re cool with it?”

  “Well,” I sighed. “I’m sure it’s the best thing for him. Maybe for me, too.”

  “Yeah?” I could feel Mike eyeing me. “And what about your—health? What did the doc say when you went yesterday?”

  “He said,” I answered slowly, “that whatever the ‘strenuous activity’ was that I’d put the affected areas of my body through this summer, I hadn’t done myself any favors.”

  “And what’d you tell him?”

  “I told him it was worth it.”

  Nodding, Mike tried hard to find another subject. “Hey—Clarissa just happened to mention to me, on my way down here, that you made some claim to maybe knowing what old Colonel Jones was talking about, that night he rode into Surrender for the last time.”

  “Yeah,” I said, nodding. “I might.”

  “Well?” he pressed impatiently. “S
hare, dude—what was it?”

  Hearing these words, Gracie finally joined us. “Yes, Trajan, I’d like to know that, too.”

  I paused, gathering my thoughts. “It’s just my opinion,” I answered, still watching Marcianna carefully, to make sure she didn’t overexert herself. “But—I think he’d had enough. Enough of watching young people die for the plots and schemes of ambitious, supposedly responsible adults. I don’t mean during the war; I’m talking about after it, first in the border states and then here. Think of those two stupid young men they sent up from town that night, a century and a half ago; then think of the kids that died before and during this case. Think of Latrell. Derek. All to preserve people in power, or to advance those who were trying to get it. ‘Advancement by blood,’ Frank Mangold said. Not that blood isn’t necessary sometimes—the Colonel genuinely believed that slavery was a fundamental crime, which was what gave him the strength to make it through the four years of fighting. But then it ended, yet down where he was they were still lynching young men, black and white. He thought he’d gotten away from it when he came to Surrender. And those kind of crimes—the crimes he saw the night he rode into town, the kind of crimes we’ve seen…All caused by fear, ambition, corruption, and greed. And you really cannot escape any of it, in this country.”

  Mike and Gracie both weighed that for a long couple of minutes before Gracie asked, “Is there anywhere you can escape it?”

  “Doubtful. Just have to fight it, that’s all.” I sighed, almost groaning as I did. “But you get tired. You just get so damned tired…”

  “Yeah,” Mike said. “You do.” He tried to switch gears: “So how about Cathy Donovan? Will she roll on the people she was working for, to get a deal?”

  “Donovan?” I said. “I doubt it. But who knows? She may fool the whole courtroom. We know she wants a career in politics. Rolling over on her bosses and claiming coercion may give her that. We can only hope that our testimony, and Frank’s, and her recorded words, will counteract it. But, in the legal language of the day, ‘we have no CSI,’ no ‘forensic evidence,’ not on her, so anything’s possible. Hell, we’ve seen murderers walk, without forensics. And the machine in this state is as powerful as ever. So…”

  Gracie paused before asking, “And Ambyr?”

  I shook my head. “I don’t know. I just don’t know anything about Ambyr, anymore. Maybe I never did. Still…” I tried to snap out of it, to become the criminal analyst again: “In the end, she didn’t actually orchestrate the death scenes. That was Donovan’s and Shea’s boys. Which may count for something. And in court, she’ll play the poor blind girl who tried to do something good, you can bet on that.” I couldn’t keep it up. “But I just—have to stop thinking about it…”

  We all sat silently on the rocks for a moment, listening to Lucas and Marcianna and to the stream behind us; and when Mike did speak again, it was very quietly: “Well. Given all that, I’m not sure I should tell you this, but—Pete Steinbrecher just called. That’s why we came down.”

  I could only laugh a little, blowing smoke out as I did. “Don’t even tell me…”

  “Yep. Another case. Simple homicide, says the good Dr. Weaver. Pete and Steve’re not so sure.”

  Lucas’ head had already shot up from the ground. “What’s that?” he called to us, with an eagerness that was very surprising and, being so, totally characteristic. “Another case?”

  “Oh, shit,” Mike murmured, crushing out his butt, poking a hole in the ground with his finger, and burying all of it save the filter, which he pocketed. “Haven’t you had enough, kid?”

  “No fucking way!” Lucas declared. The three of us rose and approached him, as I retracted Marcianna’s lead and brought her in by my side, where she began to try to shove her head into my jacket pocket. “You know what they say, Mike,” Lucas went on. “When you get into a really bad car crash—oh. Sorry, Gracie, I was just—”

  But Gracie only smiled, very generously. “That’s all right, Lucas, go ahead.”

  “Well,” Lucas resumed: “Alls I was gonna say is, the first thing you gotta do after a car crash is get back behind the fucking wheel.”

  Mike began to shake his head, and I let the three of them go on ahead at a faster pace. “That is not the expression, you ignorant urchin,” Mike said. “It’s ‘If you fall off a horse—’ ”

  “A horse?” Lucas echoed in disbelief. “Who the fuck’s got a horse?”

  “Shut up and listen to me, will you?” Mike said, trying to remain patient: “ ‘If you fall off a horse, you have to get right back on again.’ ”

  “Why the hell would you do that?” Lucas asked in disbelief. “You fall off a horse, you stay the fuck away from horses, that’s what you do. You’re all scrambled up in your head, Mike—nobody uses horses, anymore, and everybody uses cars—”

  “That’s not the point!” Mike finally cried. “It’s a proverb!”

  “Forget proverbs,” Lucas retorted. “I wanna hear about this case…”

  We kept on walking, but I maintained a nice, slow pace, because Marcianna had had about enough exercise for the day. “You tired, girl?” I said; to which she looked up at me anxiously with her golden eyes, her face marked so sadly and permanently by the long, black tear tracks running down her face from them. “Okay,” I said, finally digging out the few dog treats in my pocket that she’d been unable to reach. “God knows you’ve earned them…”

  After she’d finished briefly dicing and swallowing the things, she pulled alongside close, keeping her body tight against my good leg: not for support, I knew, but simply to make sure that I knew she was there.

  For:

  Jim Monahan and Dennis Whitney

  and everyone at Thorpe’s in Hoosick Falls:

  They have fought to preserve a way of life

  and business that has kept many people

  going, most of all this author

  And for:

  Arnie Kellar, whether he likes it or not.

  The list of authors who have fought to reveal the endemic corruption, failure, and mistakes that have characterized modern American forensic science on the local and federal levels is finally though slowly growing longer, despite the endless mythicizing of the field in print and on screens large and small: an imbalance that should concern every citizen of this country. It would be impossible to list all the pioneering authors here, but among those who have paved the way, special mention goes to D. Kim Rossmo, happily mentioned in this book, a few of whose views—expressed in his key text, Criminal Investigative Failures—I might take issue with, but whose willingness to speak and teach so many more truths in the face of great odds has been unqualifiedly honorable. Similar thoughts were inspired by Michael Lynch, Simon A. Cole, Ruth McNally, and Kathleen Jordan’s Truth Machine: The Contentious History of DNA Fingerprinting, Cate Shepherd’s Emotional Orphans, Dennis J. Stevens’ Media and Criminal Justice: The CSI Effect, Gary Greenberg’s The Book of Woe: The DSM and the Unmaking of Psychiatry, and of course, the National Academies’ Strengthening Forensic Science in the United States: A Path Forward. I’d also like to give special mention to Sarah Burns, David McMahon, and Ken Burns for their documentary, The Central Park Five. Anyone wanting to know precisely how it is possible for police to achieve the shockingly fallacious results through interrogation that they often do should sit down and watch it.

  It hardly need be said that these are but a fraction of the sources relied on for this book; but they are a very good starting point for anyone who wishes to explore how criminal science has been so terribly perverted during its century-old transformation into forensic science.

  On a personal level, the completion of this book owes much to many people, some of whom have been mentioned, many of whom have not. Of the latter, I must include my aunt and uncle, John and Kathy Von Hartz whose love and support has meant more than they may ever know; Prudence Munkittrick, who has always been a sounding board and the very best of beloved friends, and who has pursued
a teaching career that fills me with pride and admiration; my mother and her husband, Francesca and Bob Cote, who’ve gone the extra mile; Scott Marcus, whose generosity and willingness to participate in the madness of the music room has helped provide a pressure valve; Jessica Weisner, part-owner of the Princess (ironically, for such she is, and not because of any address); my stepsister, Christine Speicher, who has always swooped in with mad, enthusiastic plans; my honored old friend Ezequiel Viñao, always stalwart; John Tobin, the last of the true St. Luke’s boys, and the definition of a great New Yorker; Jim Turner, who never gives up on anybody or anything; Elizabeth Gray, whose compassion has been both consistent and sudden; and Jim Martinez, the very definition of what a banker should be, just as his brother Marcus is one of the finest GP’s and diagnosticians I’ve ever met (and one hell of a courageous man). Thanks, too, to Michael Weinberg at Columbia Presbyterian; to Kindred Harland; and, as always, to my good friend and medical guardian, Bruce Yaffe; and speaking of “always,” there is Tom Pivinski, who absolutely defines the word. A special thanks must also go to Bill Puretz, with whom I have profited from many hours of high-speed enlightenment, laughter, and affection.

  To my agent, Suzanne Gluck, and to her indefatigable and indefatigably kind and patient assistant Clio Seraphim, who is every bit as wonderful as her name, my thanks for working so hard to get me through. Special thanks, too, to Eve Attermann for her wise counsel. To my L.A. hit girl, Debbie Deuble, deepest thanks as well. At Random House, this book has traveled a long and sometimes confusing road that was straightened by the brilliant and dedicated Caitlin McKenna; would that we had been able to do business long ago. And thanks to Sally Marvin for helping with the rollout, and to Carlos Beltrán for taking a sketch and making it a wonderful cover.

  In addition, I must thank the other members of my Quintet on the Internet for their patience, insight, and friendship: the visionary Frank Schell, my old colleague and close friend Jon Lellenberg, Elizabeth Gray, once again; and Jamie Linville, my only literary friend in New York (now London), who remained loyal when things got tough. Thanks also to my colleagues, Michael Walsh, who offered some very timely advice at a moment of deep personal trouble, and Dan Stashower, whose regular communications have reminded me that the endeavor we call writing goes up and down for us all, but must still be pursued, and Dana Kinstler, wise, dedicated, and still lovely.