Mean Evergreen (Mercy Watts Mysteries Book Twelve)

by A W Hartoin

  “Are you drunk?” I asked.

  “I might be if I was awake, but I’m not,” said Hobbes. “Call me later. I’ll be awake later.”

  “I think you have a suicidal student.”

  “Son of a bitch. I’m awake.”

  I explained the situation and the counselor calmed down.

  “You don’t know it’s one of our kids,” he said.

  “He’s an American, about seventeen,” I said. “It’s a safe bet.”

  “There is an international school in Degerloch.”

  “Does it matter if he’s yours or not?”

  Hobbes cleared his throat and said, “No, a kid in trouble is a kid in trouble, but I don’t know what I can do about it. You don’t have a name.”

  “I’ll send you the picture. You might recognize him,” I said.

  “Where did you get this picture?”

  “Let’s leave that alone, shall we?”

  “Jesus, you are trouble,” said Hobbes. “Go ahead and send it.”

  I sent the picture and a few minutes later, Hobbes called me back. “Sorry. That picture’s so grainy. It could be one of a dozen kids I know and I only have a segment of the population last names L through P. I sent it to Meredith. She’s got F through K, but it’s still a no.”

  “Would you tell me if you did recognize him?” I asked.

  He paused and thought it over. “I would, but I wouldn’t tell you who he was.”

  I named the boys on the list I’d made from Anton’s AP papers. “Could it be one of them? Are any of those boys writers?”

  “Not that I know of,” he said.

  “Can you ask around? See if anyone recognizes him?”

  “I still can’t tell you anything.”

  “You know what? I don’t care. I just want you to find him,” I said.

  “It’s that bad?” Hobbes asked and I could tell the fog of drink was lifting.

  “Yes, it is. I have an instinct about things and I’m usually right.”

  “The famous Watts intuition?”

  “That’s it,” I said. “Something isn’t right with this kid. He needs help and quick.”

  “Beyond the mental stuff…do you think he played a part in your kidnapping? We don’t have a troubled youth population, not like big cities. Crime with our kids is practically nonexistent.”

  “He knows something, Hobbes,” I said. “And it’s tearing him up.”

  He sighed and said, “I’m up. I’ll gather the troops and see if we can come up with something.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Thank you.”

  I hung up and ordered breakfast. Hopefully, Aaron wouldn’t be too peeved since I was going to his class. While I waited, I took a shower, doing all the little beauty things Grandma taught me. She had a lot of potions and stuff, so it took a while, and when I got out my breakfast was at the door with a very tired Novak clutching a huge mug of coffee.

  I took my tray and Novak slipped in to collapse on the bed.

  “What are you doing up?” I asked.

  “You called.”

  “I left a message.”

  “What did you want?” He spoke into the pillow and I could barely make it out.

  “Well, a conscious hacker might be nice,” I said.

  “I’m up.”

  “Could’ve fooled me.”

  Novak flipped over and I asked, “What is going on? You wouldn’t get up for me.”

  “My mother.”

  “What about her?” I asked. “Oh. Is she still coming for Christmas?”

  “She’s there.”

  “Where?”

  “In Paris.” He ran his hands through his half-cornrowed hair that looked…not great.

  I put my tray on the bed and took off the cloche to smell the heavenly scent of more eggs benedict. “Well, if you’ve got to go home, I get it. I never expected you to come here in the first place.”

  “She’s cleaning,” said Novak. “She called five times this morning and she’s cleaning my apartment.”

  I’d seen Novak’s apartment and she didn’t have much to do. He was a neat freak.

  “I’m surprised you let her in,” I said.

  “I didn’t. She sandbagged one of my associates and he let her in.”

  “Mom’s impressive.”

  He bared his teeth. “Yes.”

  “So what if she cleans? You like clean.”

  “The entry area. She’s cleaning my cover.”

  “Oh,” I said. “Well, that’s fantastic. I think I saw hepatitis on the floor.”

  “It’s not fantastic. Do you know how long it took me to get it to the perfect amount of crack house until no one wanted to come in?”

  “I do not and I think you’re crazy,” I said. “Hey. How about we get to work on my case? I’ve got a swell lead.”

  “Will it get you to the kid and your blonde perp within a short amount of time so that this flipping interlude will be over?” Novak asked.

  “Yes!”

  “Not interested.”

  “What in the hell? I’m paying you.”

  Novak flipped back half a head of hair. “Not enough.” He looked a little sleazy and sweaty and I got worried. Usually, I could spot a man with a jonesing for me a mile away, but this came out of nowhere. He was recommended. Spidermonkey wouldn’t let him within a mile of me if he was a problem. I stepped away from the bed.

  “I think you should go now,” I said, picking up my panic button.

  Novak’s eyes went back and forth between my eyes and the button a couple of times and then he burst out laughing. “Don’t flatter yourself.”

  “It’s not a compliment to me that you look creepy,” I said.

  “I look exhausted.” Once he got himself under control, he went into the bathroom, Noxzema’d his face, and offered me a deal. A pretty good deal as it turned out.

  “You want me to lie to your mother and say we’re a couple?” I asked. “And she’ll leave you alone for another year if I do?”

  “I’ll do all your snooping for free,” he said.

  “She’ll figure it out. I’m the sort of person that people know.”

  “My mother is not an internet person. She doesn’t know you.”

  “I don’t like to lie,” I said.

  He laughed again. “Since when? It’s practically your hobby.”

  “It is not.” I forked my poached eggs and glared at him.

  Novak calmed down and got serious. “This is a lot of money and you’re splitting some of the cost with the client right?”

  “I am.”

  “Think of the savings. You’ll make a nice profit on this one.”

  “It’s mean, making her think she’s got a hope of grandchildren at Christmas,” I said.

  He drew back. “She has more than a hope of grandchildren. She’s got sixteen already. My brothers are all married.”

  “Oh, well making her think you have a woman.”

  “I have women.”

  My doubts must’ve shown on my face because he said, “You don’t believe me.”

  “I do not,” I said.

  Novak went on to show me several very attractive women in various locations around Paris. He was in the photos and they did appear to be genuine.

  “So just show her those and she’ll go home,” I said.

  “I don’t want her to see my real women.”

  I threw up my hands. “Fine. But I’m not talking to her. Just pictures.”

  “Now?”

  We took a bunch of pictures in bed, cuddled up because it was more convincing and then he had a long conversation with his mother while I was supposedly in the shower. She was happy. He was happy. I felt dirty but profitable.

  Novak flopped back on the bed and said, “Not bad for a morning’s work. She’s going to see my brother in Madrid. He’s not raising his daughters right.”

  “Poor guy,” I said. “What about you? She hasn’t seen you.”

  “She really just wanted to for
ce a call and do some shopping.”

  “Whatever. Ready for what I’ve got?”

  I showed Novak all my research and he was mildly impressed, which was pretty good for me. He went and got three laptops and set up on the desk again while I ate.

  “What’s the priority?” he asked. “Sindelfingen?”

  “Weil der Stadt,” I said. “I think it started there.”

  “Good. Less Americans live there.”

  He got to work and I got into my mom’s Ancestry account. She uses the same password for everything so it wasn’t exactly a challenge. From Mom’s account, I was able to see Grandma’s. She’d done a lot of work on the family tree. Most of her research was to do with her own line, but she had the Watts stuff in there, too. Grandma was quite thorough in the tree making. She’d loaded pictures and there were tons of branches and these little leaf hint things connecting our family to other families. I looked at the pictures going back slowly. I wanted to see each face and compare. First, my dad and then Grandad and then there he was, Elijah Watts. Of course, I’d seen that very picture proudly displayed on the mantle at my grandparents’ house, but I never paid it much mind. It was just one face in a sea of faces. But this was a face that ought to have stuck out. It was not a Watts’ face.

  The photo was from WWII. Great-Grandpa sat in a foxhole cooking something in an ammo box. Every time I’d looked at that photo before it was the chunky concoction in the non-too-clean container that I focused on, not the heart-shaped face of a slender man with pale eyes. Elijah was smiling, despite the fact that he was filthy with matted hair and what could’ve been blood on one of his hands. It was a great face. The face of a man you’d like to know.

  Novak came over and stole some of my coffee. “Who’s that?”

  “My great-grandfather Elijah,” I said.

  “Kind of old for war, isn’t he?”

  “He was thirty-three in 1944.”

  “That is old,” he said. “Did he get drafted?”

  I clicked on some connected documents and found Elijah’s enlistment papers. “He volunteered,” I said.

  “That’s unusual. The older men usually had families and didn’t go.”

  “He wasn’t married yet. Grandad was born after the war.”

  “That explains it.” Novak went back to his search and I returned to Elijah’s picture. There was a weapon lying on a small backpack. The Mauser. My heart went out to my ancestor in a way it never had before. It was his weapon. I knew that, of course. But now it was our weapon.

  I clicked the link for Elijah’s parents and another picture came up, also familiar. It was Dad’s namesake, Thomas, in his uniform and he was, also, not a Watts as I knew them. He wasn’t thin, far from, with big meaty hands and powerful shoulders. Thomas did have a certain twinkle in his eye, like he knew a joke that he was itching to tell. That could be my dad, but nothing else of Thomas was in any of my uncles or cousins or Grandad, for that matter. You’d think the big nose and lantern jaw would’ve shown up somewhere, but it hadn’t.

  Next, I hovered my cursor over Gladys’ name and held my breath. I’d seen her face. Of course, I had. But now I was really going to see it. I clicked and she appeared. My family appeared. The Watts I knew. Gladys or Giséle was thin, tall, and pretty. She was holding a fat baby as though he might break apart in her grasp. The photo was black and white, so I had to take Grandma’s word for it that she was the origin of the Watts red hair. I clicked through a couple of photos and found the wedding picture. She didn’t appear pregnant, but the Edwardian dress and bouquet would’ve hidden that easily. It was a great photo and her face, something about her face…Gladys was smiling, but her eyes weren’t. Her jaw was clenched and I bet she had a death grip on those flowers, but was that fair? Old wedding photos from other eras were rarely the huge smiley things of today. Thomas didn’t look anything but stalwart and dignified.

  I went back to the photo with my great-great-grandmother holding Elijah and that was Gladys. She might be a nervous mother but there was none of that tightness. Her smile was genuine and sweet.

  “I know you,” I said.

  “What was that?” Novak asked.

  “I’ve seen her before.”

  “Who?”

  “My great-great-grandmother Gladys,” I said.

  He didn’t stop typing and was doing it at a speed that boggled the mind. “Your family has photos, don’t they?”

  “Yes, but I don’t know. I’ve seen her somewhere else.”

  “Where?”

  “No clue. She’s just so familiar. That smile.”

  “You’re just remembering other photos,” he said. “Don’t get worked up over it. Look at something else and then it will come to you.”

  “Is that what you do?” I asked.

  Novak turned around and said, “I do. Sometimes my algorithm isn’t working or a firewall will not fall and I just have to turn to something else. Then it works. My brain needs a break.”

  “My brain is busy. It doesn’t like breaks.”

  “Then it needs them all the more.” Novak turned back and typed even faster than before. None of my hackers from Uncle Morty to Spidermonkey ever worked in front of me before. They were very secretive about their methods and even their identity. Novak wasn’t Novak. I knew that much. Whether that whole mother thing was real was up for debate. Him hiding his home and office inside a crack house told me he’d do the oddest things to hide who he was, but right then I had a full view of his screens. Nothing was hidden. I’d like to say I could make heads or tails of it, but massive amounts of data was crossing his screens. I caught little things like internet providers, but the rest was a mystery my brain could never solve. He probably knew that and figured I was safe. Kinda insulting but accurate.

  I turned back to my computer and something I could understand. Grandma had conveniently attached Elijah’s birth certificate. Even though the certificate was pretty faded and the handwriting wasn’t the greatest, but I could make out the attending physician Dr. Walter Ames.

  Finding the doctor’s information was shockingly easy because he died seven months later of dementia at the age of seventy-seven.

  “Thomas, you wily bastard,” I said.

  “Did you get what you need?” Novak asked.

  “Some of it.”

  “Fun isn’t it?”

  “It actually is,” I said, and I clicked back to Thomas’ records. He knew that doctor well enough to get him to fill out a fake birth certificate and it was fake. No way a seventy-seven-year-old guy with dementia was attending births. Dr. Ames wasn’t a relative, so there was one other way he’d know him. “No, it can’t be that easy.”

  Novak chuckled and I stared at my screen. Dr. Walter Ames was the doctor on Thomas’ birth certificate. It was that easy. He went to who he knew. The marriage record was standard and nothing looked off about it. I had no reason to think it didn’t happen when it supposedly did. Since the whole snooping around thing was fun, I looked for an arrest record for Giséle Donadieu, but she didn’t exist, so I joined Mom to the international version of Ancestry and rooted around there. That was much more difficult. Gladys’ age on the marriage certificate said twenty-two and I assumed that to be in the neighborhood of the truth, but I couldn’t find any Giséle’s that fit the bill with Donadieu as a last name. The ones that were the right age didn’t appear to have left France.

  “Are you ready?” Novak asked.

  “Depends,” I said.

  “I’ve got five families in Weil der Stadt with boys between the ages of fourteen and twenty.”

  “That kid was not fourteen.”

  “For the sake of being thorough, I included him. Kids can fool you.”

  “Alright,” I said. “But he’s not.”

  Novak waved me over and I pulled up a chair. “Of the five families, two have kids checking out SCPs regularly and one is active on the wiki.”

  “Can I see them?” I asked.

  He pulled up two photos from Facebook
. They were white kids, average height, and fairly thin, but I shook my head. “I don’t think so.”

  “Look again.” He blew up the photos.

  The boys fit the bill, but I wasn’t feeling it. No spark of recognition. “It’s not either of them.”

  “That was my instinct, too, but you know how eyewitnesses get it wrong.”

  I leaned back and crossed my arms. “You’re right. It happens all the time. Can you check and see if any of the candidates read SCP-012?”

  “Good idea.” He began typing again and then said, “Or perhaps not. They all looked at it and viewed the various videos. It’s a pretty basic one.”

  “Alright. Who had Anton in school?” I asked.

  Novak chuckled. “All but one, the fourteen-year-old.”

  “Dammit.”

  “I know, but keep thinking.”

  “AP Gov?”

  “Three out of the four,” he said.

  “Any emails to Anton?”

  “A few about grades and test dates,” said Novak. “Nothing personal.”

  “Do you have any good news?”

  He shrugged and cracked his knuckles. “We’re narrowing things down.”

  “So no,” I said. “Can you show me all the faces?”

  “Sure, but you won’t like it.”

  I didn’t like it. I didn’t like it a lot. All five of those guys were practically the same guy. Sure the twenty-year-old was more mature than the fourteen-year-old, but the faces, I couldn’t pick one out. I’d looked at so many photos in the yearbook and in Anton’s photos, they were all blending. Was I looking for the face in the window or for one that was familiar from one of the photos?

  “Anybody jumping out?” Novak asked.

  I pointed at the twenty-year-old, but I didn’t know why. I didn’t think it was him.

  “I figured.”

  “Why?”

  “Check the expression. He’s unhappy. This was taken on vacation in Madrid. That’s a guy who didn’t want to pose. I picked it because it was the only photo that was dead on and close. Check this one.”

  Novak brought up another photo and I instantly said, “It’s not him.”

  He laughed. “Because he’s smiling, right?”

  I groaned and put my head in my head. “We need something else.”