She reaches the outskirts of Detroit and turns off at the exit for John R, following the same route she and Sam used to take when they brought Zach to the art museum. Back then, lot after empty lot still lay mounded with the rubble of whatever building had stood there before the ’67 riots. Drunks staggered down the middle of Woodward Avenue, in no danger of getting hit even in broad daylight. Steam rose from the manholes in a hellish, post-apocalyptic way. In the back seat, Zach must have taken in their conversations about how the residents made do with no electricity. How garbage piled up in the streets. How the police failed to respond to 911 calls. How rats roamed the schools and children crowded into classrooms with thirty or forty students. No wonder Zach is moving here to rehab a factory. Wouldn’t Sam be proud of his son? Certainly, he wouldn’t have wished for Zach to live a safer, easier life in Palo Alto.
She drives down Michigan Avenue. The meters are good only for a few hours, so she pulls into a lot where, for five dollars, she can park for the rest of the day. She grabs her backpack and—the wind has picked up—her jacket. At the guard booth, an older black man in a uniform is killing time with two companions.
“Cheer up, honey,” the guard says. “Most of the folks who walk in that building, they do walk out again.”
Maxine gives them a thumbs-up sign, even though she knows what he really means is that a white woman in decent (if rumpled) clothes is more likely to emerge unscathed from her encounter with the government than any of the three of them.
Beyond the lot, the street dead-ends at a set of barricades designed to fend off a truck of exploding fertilizer or a squadron of jihadis. The Federal Building rises above the windswept plaza, a Brutalist tower thirty stories tall. A helicopter buzzes her from above, as if the government already has her under surveillance. She ducks into the revolving doors. Two uniformed officers stand beside a metal detector; the wall beyond is decorated with a psychedelic mosaic, as if some bureaucrat in the 1970s wanted to convince the citizens of Detroit their Uncle Sam wasn’t a forbidding old fuddy-duddy. Or maybe the mural is meant to provide something pleasant to look at while you are being searched, like the poster taped to the ceiling above her gynecologist’s examination table.
The FBI has its own entrance, to the right of the main lobby, and Maxine isn’t allowed to pass through the detector there until she states her business to the guard behind the glass.
“Um, hi,” she starts. “I need to see an agent. Because otherwise, this man, this criminal …”
The guard lifts his hands, palms outward. “If you’ll just show me your ID, ma’am, we can process you through and you can talk to someone on the other side.”
“Oh,” she says. “Sure. Here’s my driver’s license. And my University of Michigan ID. I teach there. I’m a professor.” She knows this sounds foolish, but as an employee of a state institution, maybe she can claim a kind of camaraderie with this federal official.
The guard examines the two IDs. Hands them back. Buzzes her through. She is met by two stout guards, one of whom turns sideways so he can fit through his own detector.
“Here you go.” He lays out two plastic bins. “If you would just put your bag in there. And your jacket? And your watch? And any other metal you might be wearing? And if you will allow me to take your cell phone? I will give you this ticket, and you just remember to ask me for your phone on your way back out.”
She steps through the detector, surprised an alarm doesn’t shriek at the guilt and fear clotting her head. So many people believe the government can read their minds. But how could anyone read her thoughts when she doesn’t understand those thoughts herself? Even if the government were trying to read her brain, how could anyone decipher the complexity of her feelings for Thaddeus Rapaczynski, or her complicity in his crimes?
The guard on the other side pulls the felt-covered metal springs from her bag and regards these quizzically.
“Oh,” Maxine says. “Those.” Her heart races at the memory of the snakes flying in her face. “Those are part of the evidence I need to show to the FBI.”
The guard rotates the springs in his hands. Stretches and compresses them. “Can’t see how anyone could do much harm with these.” He seems equally skeptical that these felt-covered bedsprings are going to solve a crime. He replaces them in her pack and rezips the zipper. “You have yourself a very pleasant day,” he says, and Maxine finds herself touched by how welcoming these guards have been. Shocked, really. Because she grew up in the sixties? Because it’s the nature of a government to be distrusted?
She walks down a short hall and enters a surprisingly stylish waiting room. A middle-aged white woman with dyed magenta hair sits on a backless sofa opposite a wizened black man in a shiny gray suit who is balancing a fedora on his knees. Maxine approaches the glassed-in office. A severe young white woman with short black hair looks up.
“Hello,” Maxine says. “I’m a professor. At the University of Michigan. And I have reason to believe a former student of mine wrote the manifesto in yesterday’s newspaper. Not yesterday. The day before. I see very distinct similarities. Language. Turns of phrase. Quotations from a novel we studied in my class.”
The young woman leans forward so she can look Maxine up and down. Maxine hasn’t washed her hair in days. She can’t remember the last time she brushed her teeth.
The woman smiles suddenly, as if she, too, has remembered the importance of presenting a friendly face to the public. “An agent will be happy to meet with you and hear what you have to say.” She makes a call, then directs Maxine to take a seat.
The sofa is as uncomfortable as it looks. She gets up and makes a circuit of the waiting room. There is a giant seal with DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE FEDERAL BUREAU OF INVESTIGATION emblazoned around the rim. A video console provides a portal to any and all information a citizen might need as regards the FBI. An embossed plaque honors the only Michigan agent to have lost his life in the line of duty—in a car crash, but still. The agent was a former All-American running back. Active in his church. The father of four young children.
Maxine finds herself admiring the portrait of Barack Obama. Having spent so many decades flinching at the portraits of Nixon, Reagan, the elder Bush, then the younger, she can’t believe the current president is someone she would love to meet. She sees him thanking her for bringing to justice the serial killer who eluded capture for so many years. Sees herself bowing her head as he slips a medal around her neck. Then she motions him down to whisper that Thaddeus Rapaczynski isn’t the demon he is made out to be. As a student at Harvard, he was the object of a sinister, sadistic experiment. He never felt loved. By today’s standards, he might be classified as autistic. The president nods, places his long, narrow hand consolingly on her arm.
She settles back on the sofa. The woman with magenta hair points at Maxine and tells her, “I have a pretty good idea where to find that bomber guy they’re looking for.”
“You do?” Maxine says.
“My father-in-law.” She rolls her eyes. “He lives with us up in Macomb. Lost his job at the tool-and-die—this was, like, eighteen years ago? My husband bought him a trailer, parked it out back. What does the old man do? He covers the windows with cardboard. Won’t let any of us inside. I offer to clean the place up. But no. He hardly bathes. When you do catch a glimpse of him, his hair is all dirty and long, and he wears one of those sweatshirts with the hood. And those aviator sunglasses? Rants about the government. Doesn’t matter if it’s a white guy or a black guy in charge, hates each and every one of them.
“But what he hates even more are robots. Robots took his job. Robots, and computers. When he isn’t holed up in that filthy trailer, he’s combing the dump. Soldering. Sawing. Running off his mouth about robots and computers and how our lives are being ruined because the government keeps track of every sneeze and fart and we’d all be better off if we went back to living in the woods and earnin
g our feed by the sweat of our brows.
“My husband thinks I’m trying to get rid of the old man. But my father-in-law has the skills. Plus, he did something with explosives in the Korea War. I won’t have it on my conscience if it’s him been sending those bombs. What’s the motto? You see something, you say something? Well, I seen my father-in-law, and now I’m here to say a thing or two about him.”
“Yes, ma’am,” the older black man pipes up from the other sofa. “You see something, you are obliged to come forward and speak what you know.” He fingers the rim of the fedora in his lap. “The missus and me, we don’t want to go getting anyone in trouble. Those young men renting our apartment probably not doing anyone no harm. Engineering students, they said when they signed the lease. Good boys, studying at Wayne State. Don’t mean to hold anyone’s country of origin or the color of his skin against him. But the missus, she sees what those boys bring into that apartment. Pieces of this machine, pieces of that machine. Wires. Batteries. Other young men stop by, they’re speaking all the time in Arab. Praying, I think. I have nothing against a man getting down on his knees to pray. The missus and I, we would still be getting down on our knees if it weren’t so hard getting up. But beards? The young men have beards. And sometimes they’re wearing those flowy gowns. A man ought to be able to wear a beard. Ought to be able to wear what he wants in the comfort of his own apartment. But the missus, she point out to me, anything blowing up down there on the first floor, we’re going to be going to their paradise along with them.”
The woman pats the man’s hat. “How could you and your wife live with yourselves? Any more than I could live with myself, knowing I’d let my father-in-law keep mailing his bombs.” She faces Maxine. “And you? You see something, too?”
Maxine feels sorry for the woman, as if she is pinning her hopes on a lottery for which Maxine holds the winning ticket. “Well, there is something I think the FBI ought to be aware of. About someone who may or may not have committed a crime.”
“What sort of crime?” the woman asks. But before Maxine can answer, a short, slight male agent comes into the waiting room and says, “Professor Sayers?,” and the woman’s expression changes, as if Maxine slipped a bribe to the woman behind the glass to be taken before her turn.
“If you will,” the agent says, guiding Maxine inside. He is a scrawny, fussy man with wire-rim glasses that make him resemble the band director who tried to teach Maxine to play the clarinet in elementary school, a man who so idealized music in the abstract he couldn’t believe it should be allowed to be produced by actual human children.
“Special Agent Bird Dog,” the agent says, and Maxine needs a minute to figure out he is saying “Burdock.” He indicates she should proceed down a corridor whose shiny modernity surprises her—she had been expecting the institutional drabness of every other government office she has ever been in. Maybe the war on terror has been good for the FBI. Especially in Detroit, with its high population of Arab residents.
“Sorry.” The agent leads her past door after door. “Busy day.”
She summons the courage to ask if everyone is here because of the manifesto.
“Most.” He takes a seat behind the desk and motions her to sit in the other chair. “And then there’s everyone who thinks he’s spotted a jihadi.” At that, Special Agent Burdock launches into a diatribe against citizens who don’t understand that the Federal Bureau of Investigation was designed to solve interstate kidnappings, bring down organized crime, figure out who is or is not a communist. “When I started out,” he says, “most of the tips were about aliens landing at the old SAC airbase up near Sault Ste. Marie. Now everybody’s sure his neighbor is Al-Qaeda. Thing is, you can’t dismiss the new tips out of hand the way you could the aliens.” He places a legal pad and a pen before him. “Okay, professor. Before we get started, I’m just curious. What are you a professor of?”
She hesitates. If she tells him she directs something called the Institute for Future Studies, he will dump her in a mental drawer crammed with all the lunatics raving about UFOs. Nothing she says will bring back Thaddy’s victims. She can’t restore Arnold Schlechter’s eyesight or missing fingers. Maybe, if she identifies his assailant, Schlechter will remember her name. But she doubts he will ever thank her.
“I study the way all this new technology is going to affect our lives.”
He lifts an eyebrow, the way her music teacher used to do when he suspected she hadn’t practiced. “So? Whose side are you on?”
Not “which side,” but “whose.” The FBI no doubt favors the newest, most far-reaching technologies with which to listen, spy on, investigate. And Maxine? After all the years she has spent studying the future, does she favor progress? Innovation? Despite the detrimental cosequences Thaddy fears? Maybe. Yes. But there are so many more sides to choose from than she used to think.
The agent waves off his own question. “You’re here because you have information that might assist us.” He stops twirling the pen, daring Maxine to tell him something he considers worthy of committing to his pad.
She can’t bring herself to say Thaddy’s name. If Zach is the only person to whom Thaddy confided his location in Montana, won’t he guess Zach betrayed him? What if Thaddy is condemned to death? How will she and Zach bear knowing Thaddy is being strapped to a gurney, injected with those terrible drugs, left to writhe and die in agony? Maybe she will visit him and apologize. Not for turning him in. For her earlier failure to credit his pain. To hug him. Will she talk to him through one of those glass dividers? What will happen if she meets Thaddy’s mother? Would Thaddy’s mother have turned in her own son? Would Maxine have turned in Zach?
She opens her mouth and explains to Special Agent Burdock how, when she read the bomber’s manifesto, certain of his phrases struck her as familiar. How, as soon as she had the chance, she dug up her former student’s essay and noted his references to the Conrad novel.
The agent stops her. “You have this student’s essay?”
She removes it from her backpack. “I’ve circled the similarities. The places where the student’s language echoes the bomber’s. Some of the parallels aren’t exact. But I think you will find these passages to be convincing.” She hates any pleasure she might derive in turning the screws on Thaddy’s shackles tighter. As if finding these similarities reflects well on her.
“Excuse me.” The agent pushes back from the desk. “The supervisory agent who has been handling the Technobomber case for us … I would like to see what he makes of all this.”
Special Agent Burdock is gone a long time. The walls are solid—no two-way mirrors. But Maxine can’t shake the sensation she is being watched. She peers out through the Venetian blinds. On the sidewalk, behind a metal fence, someone has set up the sort of picnic table and patio furniture you would find in a suburban yard. The area is shrouded with plastic greenery; apparently even the FBI is afraid of being watched.
Another half hour passes. She imagines Special Agent Burdock googling to see what he can turn up about Professor Maxine Sayers. She has googled herself often enough to know the answer: her book, Empty Attics: How the Digital Revolution Is Robbing Us of Our Most Resonant Objects, currently rated a million and a half on Amazon; six articles in social-science journals, which she intends to collect and publish as The Pros and Cons of Immortality; an editorial about the limits of artificial intelligence she penned for The Washington Post, along with the hateful responses she received from readers who seemed offended that a woman dared to express her opinion on technology; a handful of caustic put-downs on RateMyProfessor.com from students who found her grading to be too harsh (although she rarely gives anything lower than a B), her jokes unfunny, her opinions old-fashioned, her clothing too frumpy (although two students, bless their hearts, awarded her the chili-pepper symbol that indicates she is hot, or was hot, when the last of the chilis was awarded ten years earlier).
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nbsp; The door opens and Special Agent Burdock comes back in, followed by an associate he introduces as “Supervisory Special Agent Chance,” although when the agent hands Maxine his card, she realizes the name is “Shauntz.” Darker and heftier than his colleague, with a rectangular face and hair so shiny and black Maxine assumes he dyes it, Supervisory Special Agent Shauntz reminds her of the star of the detective series her mother used to watch in the 1970s. It’s as if the detective on that show screwed up and was transferred from Hawaii to this far less glamorous department in Detroit.
But Shauntz is anything but a screw-up. As Burdock explains, his superior officer was one of the first agents assigned to the case, a profiler who, with his training in psychology, would surely have solved the crime if only their higher-ups in Washington hadn’t shifted the investigation to the West Coast. Clearly, Burdock is in awe of the man, to the point where he seems to fawn on his every move.
Seeing that his boss has nowhere to sit, Burdock goes out and returns with a third metal chair, which Shauntz twirls backwards before he sits, leaning across his arms in such a casual way Maxine feels he is trying a bit too hard to make her comfortable.
“So,” he says. “Professor Sayers. Agent Burdock here tells me you have reason to believe you know the identity of our friend who is sending all these exploding gifts.”
She begins at the beginning and tells Supervisory Special Agent Shauntz everything that happened in the past few days. At relevant points, she extracts from her backpack the evidence that supports her point. So compelled is she to convince Shauntz she is not another wacko that she plunges into a description of how lonely Thaddy was in graduate school, how alienated, how depressed, how starved for female contact, skidding to a halt only moments before she would have offered up the story about Thaddy’s aborted attempt to convince a psychiatrist to change him into a woman so he might find comfort in a woman’s touch. She won’t cheapen his pain by serving it up as an anecdote. Although later, driving home, she will realize this is precisely the sort of testimony that might soften a jury and allow them to sentence the defendant to life in prison rather than death.
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