Local 104 of the Teamsters was supposed to present its check at the 11:30 segment. The Girl Scouts were scheduled for noon. On that Sunday, Molly’s brother’s first high school hockey game was scheduled to start at 11:00. The original plan was for Dr. Crane to take Matt to hockey, and Mrs. Crane to take Molly to the Convention Center for the telethon. Dr. Crane was an obstetrician, and he was called to the hospital early Sunday morning.
“No worries,” he told Matt. “Mom will take Molly to the telethon, and you can ride to your game with Wesley’s folks. I’ll go straight to the rink when I finish at the hospital.”
Mrs. Crane delivered Molly to the hotel at 11:40. She brought Molly jeans and a top to change into after the telethon appearance. They would drive to Matt’s game, where Dr. Crane would be, they hoped. The whole family would celebrate after the game at a Mongolian buffet they all liked.
Mrs. Crane arrived at the hotel with Molly just as Matt’s coach called. He said Matt had been injured on the last play of the first period. It was nothing serious, a twisted ankle, but they had taken him to the ER for x-rays. Matt was not at the hospital where his father was overseeing a prolonged breech delivery. That would have been too convenient.
Molly was in good hands with her Girl Scout Troop. After assuring her that they would record her part of the telethon and would watch it together, as many times as she wanted, Mrs. Crane took off at 11:45. Right after she left, the troop leader was informed that the girls would present their check at 12:30, during the longer break. Molly had half an hour to kill, and she did not want to sit down because she feared wrinkling her uniform. She asked the troop leader if she could walk up and down the hallway. The leader said it would be all right, as long as she stayed out of the lobby. “Stay back here by the meeting rooms.”
Molly walked down the hall toward the restrooms. Then, she turned and walked back toward the room where the telethon was being broadcast. On the way, she heard music coming from a room across the hall, and looking through the open door she saw a display of Indian pottery. The music was from a CD of indigenous instruments. The airy notes from a reed flute hung in the air. A sign at the front of the room read, “Antiquities Reclamation Initiative – University of New Mexico.”
At the front of the room was a bearded man showing some pieces of decorated pottery to a couple. At the other end of the room, a short woman with long gray hair was packing a wooden doll into a small wooden box and covering it with Styrofoam peanuts. Molly entered the room and approached the woman.
“Hello. Is this a sale?” Molly asked.
“It’s the opposite of a sale. We are rescuing antiquities from undeserving collectors and returning them to their indigenous creators,” said Eva Yellow Horn.
“Oh,” said Molly. She was not sure if the old woman meant she was selling things or not. Molly walked on a few steps and stopped at a table where several small, colorful items were displayed. They were little wooden dolls of some sort. Molly thought, at first, they were clothespin dolls. Her Brownie troop made big wooden clothespins as a fund raiser one year.
“How much are these little dolls?” Molly asked.
“These are called tihü. They are carved from cottonwood root, and each one represents a different kachina dancer. Kachinas are spirits of our ancestors. The tihü were given these stick dolls at kachina dances by the performers. This one is a stick rabbit. Children tossed the sticks at rabbits and played games with them,” said Eva. “This one was made before Columbus even thought of leaving Spain.”
She let Molly examine the little wooden figure, its paint still bright, and its feathers still intact. Osborne wanted a piece to carbon date, but Eva wouldn’t hear of it.
“Can I buy one?” asked Molly.
“No.”
Eva gathered up the tihü figures and carried them to the back of the room.
Molly watched as Eva packed the dolls into a box under one of the tables. Molly followed her.
Since the girl seemed interested, Eva continued talking. “In the ancient days, the kachinas visited the people. They were very powerful. Kachina spirits could hurl thunderbolts of lightning across the entire sky. They made the Earth shudder and the great rivers roar. They could nourish the land with rain and snow. Both man and beast feared and respected them. They danced in colorful, grotesque costumes. They enchanted the children with wondrous tales of the spirit world.
“Even though their power was awesome, the kachinas were friendly. Their main purpose was to help the people. They were the spirits of our ancestors, and they traveled from the spirit world to our villages to perform their solemn rituals. They came to make the land more fertile and the harvest more bountiful. They came to heal the sick and to bring peace and tranquility to all. Long ago, before the whites came, the people could see and talk to the kachinas.
“With the arrival of the white man, the people lost that power, and in time, the kachinas stopped coming, but the people never lost their faith. The stories of the great spirits have been handed down, and celebrations are held on special days simulating the great kachina dancers’ return.”
Molly was speechless. She felt she had been given a great gift by this wise old woman. No one ever talked to her so seriously, outside of school, before. Molly waited with her mouth slightly open, wanting to hear more.
“I have some coloring pages for kids.”
Eva and Osborne both laughed at the idea of distributing the pages with outlines of kachina mask designs to children, but Dr. Arellano insisted since it was his wife’s idea. Eva offered Molly a few pages with line drawings of masks. “These are some of the most popular kachina mask designs. Would you like a few?”
“Oh, yes. May I take some for the other girls in my troop?” Molly asked.
“Sure, there is a whole box of them here somewhere.”
Molly looked down at a box under the table near where Eva was sitting. She saw the corner of a small blue box, and looking closer she saw the box was marked “Coloring Pages.” Molly bent down to retrieve the box, and under it, she saw the most beautiful set of small matching pots she had ever seen. The decorations were so intricate, painted in delicate lines. Molly picked up one of the pots. It had a lid, which was hard to open but Molly persisted. She opened the pot and saw it contained the most beautiful orange-colored, fine sand.
“Put that back,” Eva said from behind Molly. “I use that for sand paintings. When I make a sand painting with the sand from these pots, I make a healing.”
“I’m sorry,” said Molly. “I found the coloring sheets.”
Eva took the small pot from Molly. It was one of the pots she found buried in the butte over her canyon. Eva gave Molly a stack of coloring pages, and Molly ran back to the telethon. Eva returned the small pot to the box beneath the table, and she looked toward the front of the room. John Osborne was talking to a couple about a pot they brought in from their collection. This exhibition had been a good idea, after all. They retrieved a number of excellent pieces of pottery, some jewelry, and even a bag of seeds in a leather pouch. It was good that their beautiful things were returned to the people.
Chapter Seventeen
Ted and Rachel entered Socoro on Sunday morning. They met in the empty parking lot, and Ted carried a small bag from Whole Foods with two banana muffins.
“I don’t think I’ve ever seen this parking lot empty,” said Rachel.
“I know,” said Ted. “Even on Christmas day, there is usually one poor slob working.”
“How do you know that?”
“I’m frequently that slob.”
They used their identification badges to enter.
The Socoro lobby had marble floors and deep maroon walls. Long panels of glass let in light for the trees and shrubs in copper pots. The space was full of light during the day, and the copper pots shone. At night, under artificial light, the trees looked out of place. The lobby at night alway
s made Rachel feel sad for the trees, because they could not rest in natural darkness.
The labs were on the upper floors, while the administrative offices were below ground. In addition to using identification badges to operate the elevators and enter the stairwells, lab employees had to pass through palm recognition devices to enter their labs. Technicians only had access to the labs where they actually worked, but scientists at Rachel’s level had access to other labs. All this security was to keep Socoro’s secrets safe. Keeping the company’s money safe took a different set of protocols. Many pharmaceutical companies receive grant money for their work, and money from large charitable foundations always comes with strings attached. Some grants allowed money to be used for lab supplies but not for office supplies, such as the paper needed to record data. Other grants funded the salaries of lab employees, but they insisted that test subjects be paid by the company. Every grant was different. Keeping the money strings untangled and the foundations happy was a very high priority for companies like Socoro.
Arriving at the security desk, Ted greeted the guards on duty. He knew all the security personnel by name. In college, he worked in loss prevention at a Target store. He knew what a boring, lonely job it was to stare at a bank of monitors in a closet-sized room. At least the guards at Socoro sat in the lobby, but on Sundays, they were watching monitors of empty hallways. Back at Target, there were customers on the screens, and some of them were pretty entertaining to watch.
“Hey, Mike, all quiet?” Ted asked.
“Very, but that’s how we like it,” said Mike.
“We’re heading to HR,” Ted said, then drew one index finger across his throat, like a knife. Rachel noticed the gesture. Mike did, too. He nodded and pressed some keys on his computer keyboard.
As she accompanied Ted to the elevators, Rachel asked, “What was that?” and repeated the gesture.
“I told him to cut the cameras outside HR and in the file room.
“Why?”
“FBI doesn’t need to know we were in there.”
“Isn’t that tampering with evidence or something?”
“The security cameras are for the company’s benefit, not for the FBI. We can turn them on and off if we want. Maybe we need to check the camera, or maybe, we covered it because the hallway was being painted or fumigated or something.”
“I get it,” Rachel said.
An elevator opened, and they stepped inside. Rachel swiped her ID badge and selected the floor where the human resources offices were located.
“Hey, it worked,” she said.
Ted laughed. “It’s not Socoro’s M.O. to deactivate an employee’s badge number in the security system without any notice, leaving the humiliated person futilely pressing the elevator buttons.”
“What is Socoro’s M.O. for terminating an employee? Just out of curiosity,” said Rachel.
“We politely walk the person out. We even carry their box of personal belongings, but only as far as the door, of course.”
Inside the HR offices, Ted unlocked the door to the file room. Rachel followed him inside.
“What are we looking for?” she asked.
“Socoro does background checks on all its employees. We look for criminal history and also credit history.”
“What does that tell you about a chemist or a biologist? I’ve known brilliant scientists who couldn’t balance their checkbooks. I had a professor in medical school, a brilliant virologist, whose wife gave him lunch money in a sealed envelope every day. I doubt he could make change.”
Ted laughed. “I once heard that at a fancy dinner in his honor, Einstein ate the fresh flower decorating his place setting.”
“Yeah, I heard that one, too. In the version I heard, the other guests at his table ate their flowers, so Einstein wouldn’t be embarrassed.”
“Do you think that’s true?”
“Probably,” Rachel said.
Ted walked to a small metal box hanging on the wall between two filing cabinets. On the side of the box was a small combination lock. He unlocked the box and took out several keys attached to numbered plastic tags. Then, he removed a piece of paper from his shirt pocket. He unfolded the paper and laid it on a small table in the center of the file room. He laid a handful of file cabinet keys on the little table, also.
“This is the list of everyone who has been on your team since the P1601 project began. I’ll take the top half of the list; you take the bottom. I’ll make us some coffee, and we’ll get started.”
Rachel set the bag of muffins on the table next to the list of names.
“At the risk of repeating myself, what are we looking for?”
Ted had gone into the HR office. There was a small coffee bar outside the file room. Rachel followed him. He put ground coffee into the basket and pressed the brew button. Ted turned to Rachel, who was reaching over his head for cups. Their faces were inches apart.
“Last night was, what? An anomaly? A lapse of self control? An attraction?”
“I don’t know what last night was. It was a lovely kiss. Can that suffice for now?” she asked.
“Sufficing. Let’s read files.” Ted took his coffee and returned to the file room.
“I suppose someone with a low credit score might be in need of money,” said Rachel. She stirred her coffee with a plastic stick, although she drank it black. Chewing on the plastic sticks was either a thought aid or a bad habit.
“That isn’t indicative of bad behavior, not just a low score alone. Most Americans got a little credit drunk over the last few years,” Ted said.
“Can you blame them? Right after 9/11, the President told them the best way to be patriotic was to shop.”
“I bought a leather recliner,” said Ted, raising his hand like a guilty second-grader.
“I bought an iPod. Beside the point.”
“As I said, credit is just one indicator. If there is a report of court proceedings, look for collection agencies as plaintiffs. Look for garnishments. Look for replevin actions.”
“What?”
“Repossessions. People with money problems might be tempted to pilfer grant money, but not necessarily. Anyone on your team have a sick spouse or parent? Maybe someone had to put a parent into a nursing home. Anyone have problems like that?”
“Not that I know of. Geez, how do I know so little about the people who work for me?” asked Rachel.
“You know what they reveal,” said Ted. “You can’t be expected to know more. Let’s go. Did I give you the top of the list, or did I take it?”
Ted and Rachel looked through the files and made a few notes. Nothing leapt out at them. No one had a sign by their name, saying “I’m the crook.” When all the names on the list were checked off, Ted took Rachel’s notes, carried the cups back to the coffee bar, and locked all the file cabinets. They exited the building and left in their own cars. Rachel wanted to take a hot bath. Ted had a lot to do before meeting the FBI the next morning.
On Monday, Labor Day, the FBI arrived at Socoro. Their entrance was very relaxed. The security team expected them. The agents waited, while the head of security called Ted, who was up and dressed and expecting the call. He did not go to the office to meet the agents, and he didn’t want to appear too compliant.
The agents waited in the maroon lobby, making phone calls and reading newspapers they brought along. Ted arrived with a box from Krispy Kreme Donuts. Ted, the security team, and the two FBI agents ate donuts and talked about the beginning of the college football season. The “raid” was more of a law enforcement mutual admiration society than anything. The security team, who were mostly young men without the means to go to college or waiting for a spot to open up in the police academy, were excited to be involved. The FBI agents were mostly veterans who eschewed the lack of action in local law enforcement. Then there was Ted, whose priority was supposed to be protec
ting Socoro, but who had more interest in protecting Dr. Rachel Bisette, especially recently.
After donuts and after Ted read through the search warrant, the FBI agents split up. One agent went with the head of security to the accounting department. The second agent headed to Dr. Bisette’s lab. Everything on the list attached to the search warrant was collected, copied, boxed, and out of the building by eleven o’clock. No press was on the premises, since their sources at the courthouse expected the search warrants to be executed on Tuesday.
Chapter Eighteen
On Monday evening, Dr. Crane grilled steaks for him, his wife, and Matt. He grilled drumsticks for Molly and her friends. At 10:30 that morning, Molly called the two girls she invited to the cookout and told them she was sick. She said nothing to her parents. They knew she was watching the taped telethon broadcast. Molly seemed a little lethargic all morning, but her parents thought she was tired from the busy day they had on Sunday.
Dr. Crane was starting to cook, when Molly called to her mother from the living room, “Mommy,”
“What is it, honey?” Mrs. Crane called back. She was mixing a big Caesar salad for the barbeque. Molly never called her “Mommy” anymore, unless she was sick.
“Mom, there’s something on the couch.”
“Clean it up.”
“I can’t. It’s blood.”
Mrs. Crane washed her hands. She had been expecting this. Molly lost a lot of her baby fat over the summer. Dr. Crane said it was her swimming, but a mother sees signs even an obstetrician misses in his own child. Mrs. Crane peeked at Molly’s development whenever she poked her head into the bathroom to coax her out of the shower.
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