All ends are deaths.
A man with a sandwich board passed her. He wore a beanie, even though it was at least eighty-some-odd degrees. His sandwich board read: Sell your used phone for BEST PRICE. He passed through the intersection without waiting for a walk signal.
Why would Penny say he had an interview here if he didn’t? Was he running some hustle? Maybe he was grifting money, promising he could pay back his lenders once he got this fictional job? Or maybe he was just talking. From the little Tillman knew of Penny, he sounded like someone who appreciated the sound of his own voice and didn’t pay much attention to the words themselves. The sort of person to isolate your attention, breathe it in, and exhale it back slowly into a forgotten, blackout night. But why would his daughter have picked him up to bring him to a fake job interview just so he could run a hustle?
None of it was right. All of it was wrong.
A horn screamed, tires screeched as a car stopped inches away from the man with the sandwich board. He turned to face the driver, threw up his arms, and yelled, “Watch yourself, asswipe.”
Her phone rang in her pocket. It was Jeremiah.
“Yeah?” she answered.
She heard a phone ringing in the background, the jostle of Jeremiah’s phone changing between his hands, pressing against the fabric of his shirt, bouncing in moving strides. When his voice finally came through, the background was perfectly quiet. “I need you to listen very carefully.”
She was picturing him. His voice was a proxy for the person moving through a life disconnected from her own. She saw him in his tweed suspenders, the collared shirt too tight against his neck, walking down the hall and ducking into a precinct stairwell for a quiet space amid the chaos.
“Where are you?” she asked. “Are you standing in the stairs?”
“Do you trust me, Tilly?”
“Don’t call me that.”
“Stop. Listen. I need you to answer me. Do you trust me?” Jeremiah’s voice was rushed and whispered. Emerging from his throat. She saw him backed into the corner of the stairwell, holding his phone over his mouth, cupping it with his hands, shielding his whispers from echoing down the concrete passage.
“Sure. I trust you.”
“Then you need to listen carefully.”
“You said that already.”
“OK, so…” But then there was a rustle, the echoing sounds of footsteps, a holding pause. “I can’t talk for long. People everywhere. But OK, we have two Liber-teens. The FBI just brought them in. Stetson’s keeping it below the radar. No one knows we have them. I only heard about it through Tom Williams—you know him, right? I guess he’s friends with one of the agents that brought them in.”
“Jesus,” Tillman whispered. “Why is Stetson so hell-bent on these kids? He must know they didn’t make that video. He’s not that stupid.”
“Just listen,” Jeremiah hushed. “I’m going to ask again: Do you trust me?”
“Why?”
“It’s yes or it’s no.”
“If those are my only options, then yes, I trust you. Would you please tell me what in the hell?”
“Good. Because I trust you, too. I trust you when you say the Liber-teens aren’t responsible for that video. And I trust you when you say that the gunman is using the Liber-teens as a distraction. I trust you when you say these things. Should I?”
She paused to think about it. Did she even trust herself? It was a question that had presented itself in so many different forms throughout the past few weeks since her administrative leave, and actually long before that, if she was being honest. Did she trust herself enough to ask someone else to trust her? It was something she didn’t have the space, the time, the energy to consider fully.
“You can trust me,” she said. “Now tell me what the hell is going on.”
She heard in the background another echoing set of feet bounding down the stairs. Jeremiah waited until they passed and then another few seconds more. “I don’t know where you are right now, but you need to be back at your apartment as soon as possible.”
“Why?”
“Please. Just do it.”
“I need to know what’s going on. What I’m getting into.”
“Just get there. You said you trusted me.”
“What in the hell?”
The phone rustled again, and this time she thought he would hang up. But after a few seconds of pause, he came back. In a whisper that elided his voice entirely, “It’s better you don’t know. Please be there, Tilly.”
“Just tell me what’s going on—” she demanded to an ended call, a mute phone held in her unshaken hands.
She saw the man in the sandwich board fading down the street, a shrunken body dissolving into the afternoon traffic of daytime wanderers, blithe and lost, a single static figure losing shape in the moving parts of a day unwinding.
Tillman put her phone in her pocket. She turned back to the hotel doors, caught sight of her reflection in the glass doors. Sleep-deprived and sunken eyes staring back. A woman desperate for something.
She took off in a sprint in the direction of her apartment. An L back to her apartment would arrive within twenty minutes, but this wasn’t soon enough. And so she ran fast. Faster than most. Faster than all. She barreled through the lazily drifting passersby, breathing in careful measures, saving each lungful of exhaust and diesel fumes and humid backwash of a yesterday-rain.
Of course she trusted Jeremiah. She was a woman running across Chicago. Yes, she trusted him. History being what it was, what it is, what it always will be. That stubborn object she couldn’t move no matter how hard she tried. Throw your full weight against something immobile and impassive, you only hurt yourself. And Tillman had hurt herself enough already to know this to be true.
27 A ROOM MUCH LIKE THE ONE WE’RE SITTING IN NOW
NECTARINE HALOGEN COVERING CONCRETE WALLS painted canary yellow. A metal table bolted to the floor. A camera staring from the upper corner of the walls, the only other presence in the room. She felt it, the intrusive insistence of its curious longing, its vacant stare. A red light blinking below its single eye. Wren shied beneath it, unable to escape the horrifying sensation of being seen, of being studied during the lowest moment of her life.
Agent Jorgensen had brought her straight through the station, past security and past booking. He’d handcuffed her at some point and then had later removed the cuffs. This much she knew. But the moments separating her from her apartment to this place were a single strand of images intermixed into something almost unrecognizable, a schizophrenic film reel. There had been a short car ride at some point. She was sure of that. She had lain in the back seat, the kiss of leather against her cheek, as the car rounded corners, sped through intersections. She swayed passively with each shift of centripetal force, a rag doll rumbling in the back seat, falling to the floorboards.
And now, this room. Aesthetically bare, but purposefully so. She’d seen enough cop dramas in her life to know that everything in this room was arranged painstakingly so as to make her feel claustrophobic to the point of spilling whatever confession might save her from drowning in charges. She knew the detectives or feds or whoever the hell was coming to talk with her were likely waiting in some nearby room with computer monitors, watching her through the camera, studying each movement she made for some idea of how best to deal with her, which gambit to deploy. So she did not move. Static and still. But this in itself, she feared, revealed more than she’d like about herself.
After what felt like an hour—there was no clock in this room—a knock sounded on the door. It swung open, and in walked Agent Jorgensen. She recognized him first by his smell. Musk cologne. He was nearly as tall as the doorframe, but moved about soundlessly as he dragged a chair from the corner of the room to the table. He smoothed his black tie as he sat down.
His entire presence reeked of compensatory masculinity. What girl from his youth had jilted him so badly that it had led him to reclaim his manhood by working for t
he FBI?
“So, Wren,” he said, folding his hands in front of him. She saw deep red fissures spreading from his fingers to his forearm, and she remembered digging her fingernails through his skin. She wished she’d dug even deeper, scraping the calcium right off his bones. “Is that a nickname or something?”
She didn’t say anything, just stared forward, the camera in her periphery.
“We know who you are, you know. We have your information. So Wren seems like a funny name for someone with your given name. I’m just curious, is what I’m saying. Where does the name Wren come from?”
He smiled, a practiced peel of his lips. She could see him staring into his mirror each morning, rehearsing the face he would wear that day. A sentient robot trying on human masks.
“Is it one of your screen names? Your tag? Your avatar? Your nom de guerre?” He laughed, leaning forward, inviting her to join. She didn’t. Instead, she fixed her stare on the residual trace of blood from his shredded hands. He pulled his hands away from the table and laid them in his lap.
“Are you a Cubs fan, Wren? Jesus, they’re looking good this season, aren’t they? If Martinez keeps healthy, there’s no telling.”
She said nothing.
“You don’t want to talk,” he said, leaning back in his chair. “You think I’m trying to lower your defenses to get you to talk, which you’d be correct to assume. But the reason I’m doing that is because, believe it or not, I’m here to help you. But the only way I can help you is if you talk with me. So what do you say? Can we have a conversation?”
Wren said nothing.
“OK. Let me guess. You figure you can outmaneuver me with your silence,” he said. “But right now, I’m telling you that your silence is only going to ruin you. Every minute of silence is a nail in your proverbial coffin.” He paused, letting the words hang still. “But maybe you’re not even fully aware of the position you’ve found yourself in. So let me break it down for you.”
“I want a lawyer,” she muttered. She hadn’t planned to say it. But she was glad she did. It was what she was supposed to say, even though she didn’t have a lawyer.
He bobbed his head, bringing a pen to his lips, pressing it against his star-white teeth. “You’re certainly entitled to one. And if you’d like that, I won’t ask you any more questions until your legal representation arrives. However, if you don’t mind, may I just lay out your charges? It might be useful information to pass along to your lawyer, assuming you have one.”
She crossed her arms, squared her eyes on the wall behind Agent Jorgensen. The vectors of concrete blocks stacked atop each other. Neat, tidy, built to last.
“I’m taking your silence as an affirmative,” Agent Jorgensen said, more to the camera than to her. Checking off liabilities. “You are being charged with two counts of computer intrusion and one count of access device fraud. That’s the bill as of the moment. Not too bad, all things considered. However, we’re also talking with your friend. What’s her name? I honestly don’t recall at the moment.” He snapped his fingers. “Help me out. What’s your roommate’s name?”
Roommate. Hearing such a trivializing and reductive word pass the lips of a quasi-alpha, pomade-slick FBI agent was maddening. But it also felt intentional, a ploy to make her speak, so she stopped herself from educating him on what “roommates” are capable of feeling and doing, and instead, she continued to remain silent.
“Well, whatever her name is, we’re speaking with her, and she’s being very, very cooperative. And I don’t blame her. See, we have very good reason to suspect that you, and perhaps what’s-her-name, are involved with the criminal group the Liber-teens.” He paused, as though waiting for some desired effect from her that did not come. He breathed in sharply, leaned forward. “Are you familiar with the Liber-teens, Wren? Nothing? All right. Well then let me ask you this: Are you familiar with someone by the name of Nikolas Wilson?”
She couldn’t help but flinch.
Agent Jorgensen smiled. “Mr. Wilson put in a call to the police this morning. He told them he’d had what you might call a ‘run-in’ with you yesterday. Don’t worry, he offered what I assume to be the whole story. He acknowledged he’d acted like an ass. Seemed sincere, too, if you’re asking me. He also said that he knew you back in your college days. Said you were an informatics major. Something of a rising star, as well. But then he said that shortly after this recent occurrence he had with you, he woke to find all of his money transferred from his private account, along with some of what you might call compromising personal information stolen from his phone. Mr. Wilson also informed us that not only might you have a motive to perform this particular hack, but you also had, and I’m quoting Mr. Wilson here, ‘freakish-good skills.’ That’s high praise, right? It’s a compliment, I think. He seems to think highly of your abilities, even after what allegedly transpired between the two of you.”
Wren felt a million buzzing points of electricity beneath her skin. She wanted to shrink into herself. She wanted to leap across the table and dig her thumbs into this man’s shining eyes.
“The rest is somewhat serendipitous. The police flagged Mr. Wilson’s report and turned this information over to us, since it involves a hack, which I don’t need to tell you has become something of a red flag considering present circumstances. We received the information Mr. Wilson provided but, honestly, we didn’t think much of it at first. I think you’ll be the first to admit that that particular hack performed against Mr. Wilson was rather rudimentary. Nothing too extraordinary.”
I did it all in four minutes, she wanted to say. Let’s see any of you—all of you—try to do that.
“But even though it seemed insubstantial, we did some digging. And come to find out, Mr. Wilson was right. You really are quite talented. Maybe had you chosen a different life for yourself, you could have had a wonderful career working for us. We have wonderful benefits. Good health care. Exceptional dental. But that’s beside the point. What I mean to say is that we pored through old case files of Liber-teen hacks, but this time with your IP and your apartment’s ISP—both of which were attained with a warrant, I should add. I’m told by some of our techs that you kept your IP encrypted with some pretty advanced software. Rest assured, they were duly impressed, but unfortunately for you, they were able to decrypt it after what I’m told was a strenuous process. Anyway, we found that you—or at the very least, your IP—have been involved in some serious criminal activity that the Liber-teens have since claimed credit for. The most damning piece of evidence, I’d say, was when we traced the ME report hack back to you. Yeah, that’s not good. You might call that ‘red-handed.’ I imagine this is all surprising to you—a federal agency actually knows what the hell they’re doing. But it’s true, or else you wouldn’t be here, would you?”
He seemed to expect a response that he knew wasn’t coming. He was enjoying this unilateral interrogation, savoring each word that passed through his bleached smile.
“And imagine our surprise when we find that your roommate—whose name and information we attained with an appropriate warrant, of course—also took part not only in unsavory and highly illegal activities that the Liber-teens claimed responsibility for, but also the very same ME report hack. But here, let me make a long story short for the sake of time. We will soon have enough evidence to charge both you and your roommate with at least four Liber-teen hacks—the ME report included—each of which straddle several federal offenses. To be clear, we’re talking at least twenty, thirty, forty, fifty years each, once we’ve added it all up. Considering we’ve already charged you for hacking Mr. Wilson’s personal data, not to mention your, well, your aggression”—he held up his river-red-streaked hands—“you’re looking at an additional five years if you’re lucky. But here’s where this becomes important.”
He straightened up, loosened his tie.
“If—actually, no, when—we’re able to tie you and your friend to this whole Kingfisher mess—you know, the two dead hostages—well, tha
t’s going to be get ugly really fast. Because we’re not stupid. We know you all had something to do with that video and everything that’s happened since. We have your cyber fingerprint on the ME report hack, and it won’t take much waxing poetic in front of a court to convince them that you, personally, had something to do with the videos, maybe even the murders themselves. And at that point, Wren, you’re looking at a life sentence. Maybe even a death sentence. That’s not good.”
He cracked his neck, cracked his knuckles. “Now that we have the scary stuff out of the way, let’s cut to the not-so-scary stuff. I know for certain you’ve done a lot of illegal things, but I want very badly to believe that you didn’t have anything to do with those videos. Maybe you only provided assistance in some form to whichever of your friends made the videos. I know there are a lot of you Liber-teens. However, I’ll be perfectly honest with you—we don’t know how many of you there are. And I know you don’t know their God-given names. We know enough about you all to know how the Liber-teens do business. No names, no identifying info. And, truth be told, I respect the thought that goes into the way you kids operate. It’s impressive. But I’m guessing you know exactly who pulled that trigger. You know exactly who helped coordinate it. You know their screen names, and you know a way to get in touch with them. And here’s where you should be listening very carefully: if you cooperate with us, we can work with you. We have some, well, what you might call leeway. Maybe we even make your police server hack disappear from your charges. We just want to find whoever is killing those innocent people. Even if it was you yourself, if you were involved with those murders, we can be a little more forgiving in our prosecution if you come forward with a confession right now. Time being something of the essence.”
He paused, offering a silence into which she might speak. She didn’t.
The Reign of the Kingfisher Page 26