But in my mind, I’m mulling over the strange timing of the vacations and why Caroline didn’t tell Rory she was leaving. Still no text from her since the last one on Sunday night: Don’t worry, Friend. All is well.
“Do any of those kids happen to be in Caroline’s study group?”
“I don’t know. She did mention a Melissa once, but I’m not sure which Melissa.”
Back home, I toss the supplements in the trash and make Rory a grilled cheese sandwich and a mango smoothie. He polishes it off in a few gulps. “Do you believe Caroline’s really in Norway?”
As much as I want to put Rory at ease, I can’t lie to him. “There are some details I should probably let you in on, but they don’t go beyond this room.”
He frowns. “What details?”
I tell him about Gray Stafford’s appearance on the beach that morning last year, the trawler, Nicole and our conversation. I leave out the part about sandwiches in the parking lot.
“Android phones ping back to Google every fifteen minutes?” he says.
“Yup.”
“Then why doesn’t everybody use iPhones?” he wonders.
“That doesn’t solve the problem, kiddo. Those ping back to Apple.”
I tell him about the woman in the bathing cap, Ivy, her early-morning swims at Montara. I watch his face as he mentally connects the dots. “You have to find Ivy.”
36
Investigators of animal reproductive behavior note the existence in mammals of paternity uncertainty and maternity certainty. Is there a winner? Is there a loser?
It’s 5:00 a.m. on Wednesday, day three of the test. I leave a note for Rory on the kitchen table and toss a collapsible beach chair in the Jeep. Ten minutes later I’m pulling onto Highway 92. I pause at the top to look out over the sprawling Skylawn cemetery before plunging down the other side of the mountain and into the fog. I drive past the horse farms and pumpkin patches, artichoke fields and trailer parks and stop for coffee at Three Sisters. The place is already filled with farm laborers, tech workers, and aging Half Moon Bay hippies.
Montara Sate Beach is two and a half miles south of Devil’s Slide. Due to the limited parking and the difficult climb down the steep hill, it’s far less popular than Pacifica State Beach and Rockaway Beach to the south. The towering cliffs, golden sand, and the fog layer hovering over the deep blue water make it feel like a hidden, undiscovered gem.
I climb down the precarious path and set up my chair at the peak of a small berm with a clear view of the entire beach. It’s just before 6:00 a.m., and the beach is deserted, chilly, the sun glowing softly on the hillside to the east. I pull out my binoculars and paperback, Martin in Space. I finally drove down to Kepler’s and bought a copy for myself.
I sip my coffee, keeping my eyes on the two paths leading down to the beach. The water looks deceptively smooth and glassy, but the turbulent shore break announces to anyone paying attention that this is no place for children and tourists. With the severe drop-off, infamous riptides, and northern currents, it’s not safe for swimmers or surfers either. Ivy is either crazy, as Elsa suggested, or self-destructive. My bet is on the latter.
At 6:10, I notice movement in the parking lot. Two guys appear on the northernmost path, carrying fishing poles and ice chests. After that, nothing. I open the book and read. I’m three chapters in, the part where Martin slips into the lobby of the Grand Hôtel in Stockholm to escape the rain. He meets an American businesswoman, Grace, and they have an amusing, vaguely inappropriate conversation. It’s a great scene, but I understand why Rory never mentioned it to me.
At 6:34, I see headlights approaching from the highway. The motor whines and the brakes squeal as it pulls off into the dirt lot. I peer through my binoculars. The car, a silver Suzuki Samurai, disappears from view. I shift my gaze to the far path. Several minutes pass, and still no one appears. I text Rory: You up?
Yep
There’s a plate of biscuits and bacon in the fridge. Zap them in the microwave for thirty seconds. Good luck on the test!
I feel a little guilty for not being there this morning. He has a ride set up with a kid named Bradley and his mother, but no one should have to start the day with that pair. The mom talks a mile a minute, and Bradley doesn’t seem to have discovered deodorant.
A woman appears at the top of the path and begins the descent. She’s wearing sweatpants and a baggy green hoodie with a big letter O on the front. She skitters down the path with the agility of a mountain goat. She drops her bag, shimmies out of her sweatpants, and yanks the Oregon sweatshirt over her head, revealing shoulder-length brown hair and a swimmer’s body clad in a one-piece bathing suit: broad shoulders, muscular build, all enveloped in a thin layer of fat.
For several minutes she stands staring out over the water, apparently unfazed by the biting wind. I imagine she’s studying the tides and currents, mentally preparing herself for the swim. Over the years, I’ve visited this beach dozens of times, but I’ve never seen anyone go in past their knees. It’s too dangerous.
I’m starting to wonder if she’s changed her mind when she reaches into her bag for a wet suit. She works the wet suit up over her legs, hips, and arms, then grabs the long tail to the zipper and pulls it up over her head. She stops for a moment, head turned in my direction. Has she noticed me? I drop the binoculars into my lap. She’s definitely looking this way. One count, two counts, three.
She takes a step in this direction, hand raised over her eyes. Did she see the binoculars?
Several seconds pass, but then she turns back toward the water and whips her mass of hair into a ball atop her head, quickly fastening it. She reaches into her bag once more and pulls out something small and red. As she stretches the red cap over her head, tucking in the loose strands of hair, I know I’ve come to the right beach on the right day.
She moves her big hands along the smooth red surface of her head, affixing her goggles. I pick up the binoculars again, more careful this time. Watching her, I understand Elsa’s fascination. Ivy Blankenship isn’t beautiful. She isn’t even striking by any traditional definition. When she wandered onto the beach in her dingy sweats, she was nondescript, like so many of the longtime residents of the coast—people who are drawn to the ocean, hiding from something or someone, moving around inconspicuously under bulky layers of clothing to shield them from the coastal fog, damp air, and unpredictable weather. The appeal of Ivy Blankenship is in the transformation. Standing on the beach, gazing out over the water, compact and chiseled, she is the caterpillar that turns into—not a butterfly, that’s wrong. A caterpillar that turns into a warrior.
She bends her knees deeply, explodes into a single jump-squat, and jogs toward the shoreline. No hesitation as she hits the water and dives headfirst into an imposing wave breaking just short of the beach. She disappears for several seconds, emerging in a flash of red on the other side of the wave, midstroke, powering through the cold, relentless tide, out past the second set of breakers.
She swims toward where the sharks are known to congregate, fearless, before turning north and working her way up the coastline, against the currents, against the shifting wind. She never speeds up, she never slows down, she never changes her stroke. It’s amazing to watch. Eventually, she reaches the far outer edge of the cove, and her red cap pops up to survey the situation. She stops swimming, treading water as the current swiftly carries her back down the beach.
I will her to turn back, worried she won’t make it. Maybe she’s taken it to too far this time. Maybe she misjudged her strength. But then, at the last moment, just before the currents would push her out toward Devil’s Slide, north past Pacifica, east to the Farallon Islands, then beyond—Hawaii, Japan, Vladivostok—she ducks under the water and swims powerfully for the shoreline. I watch the red cap plunging and lifting, plunging and lifting.
That cap, moving inexorably through the water, tells me she’ll be fine. And it tells m
e something else: it could have been her. She could have done it. She could have carried a weak, gaunt, terrified teenage boy through the punishing waves back to shore.
Finally, she emerges from the ocean. Mist rises off her body, the morning sun casting her in a golden glow. She looks eerie, unreal, like some comic book hero come to life. I glance at my phone, startled to realize it’s 8:05. She was out there for more than an hour.
Pretending to read my book, I watch her pull off her suit, towel off, and pull on her sweats. Seamlessly, she transforms back into a caterpillar. When she reaches the bottom of the path and steps out of sight, I grab my bag and chair and scramble up the other path. Just as I reach the parking lot, her Suzuki pulls out. I climb into my Jeep and follow her.
I can’t say how, but somehow, I know for certain: Ivy Blankenship did carry Gray Stafford out of the ocean.
She saved him. But from whom? And why?
Was she involved in his disappearance or only his recovery? Was she doing a good deed or making up for a bad one?
More important: what, if anything, does she know about Caroline?
37
An algae plant the size of Algeria could eliminate all CO2 emissions from air travel, while also producing enough carbon fiber for a productive electric car plant. Is there hope for the future, or is it too late?
Two miles south of Pescadero, Ivy turns left and up into the hills. She stops at a deli and reemerges a few minutes later with coffee and a bag of groceries. As we wind into the mountains, I struggle to keep a safe distance and still maintain an eye. If she noticed me on the beach, she doesn’t seem to notice me now. Fortunately, my beat-up Jeep fits right in.
She turns right toward La Honda. In the early seventies, with the arrival of the Merry Pranksters, La Honda earned a reputation as a weird, wild, and occasionally wonderful place. Eventually, the ideals of free love and chemically expanded minds gave way to disenchantment and a far more sinister drug culture. Today, many of the old, run-down cabins have been reclaimed by the forest, inhabited by bikers, or turned into meth labs.
A mile up the winding, narrow road, Ivy pulls into an unpaved driveway beside a tiny cabin. There are no other cars out front. I note the fading address on the leaning metal mailbox. Ivy grabs her duffle and gets out. There’s no way to stop or turn around without drawing attention to myself, so I drive past, glancing in the rearview mirror to see if she notices me. She looks up, her gaze lingering on my Jeep until I round the next curve.
I drive down to an abandoned trailhead, park, and pull a notebook out of my bag. After jotting down her license plate and address from memory, I call in to the New York comm center. The rotor from my old squad answers the phone. I ask after the kids, we talk about the Mets, but then I hear a commotion on the other end, so I get to the point.
“I need some info on an address.” I worry that my current status is too tenuous for such a request, but he doesn’t miss a beat.
“Sure, ready to copy.”
I give him the address of Ivy’s cabin.
“We don’t have CLETS access here, so I’ll have to connect to SF and email you the info.”
“Thanks,” I say, feeling grateful, for the umpteenth time in my career, for a helpful voice on the other end of the line. The organization is a family—albeit dysfunctional—and once you belong, well, you belong. For better or worse.
More than once, Fred accused me of prioritizing my FBI family over our own. He even joked, not always kindly, that George was my real husband. I denied it, but there were times when I’d find myself out in the middle of the night working a case and realize I hadn’t had a real conversation with Fred in weeks, that all of my most meaningful interactions had, indeed, been with George. Invariably, I tried to dial it back, spend more time at home, but the job always pulled me back in.
I drive back up the hill and find a spot where I can watch Ivy’s house from a safe distance. An hour passes and nothing happens. I settle into the familiar groove of boredom, listening to a podcast on my phone, watching. My phone pings with an email. The address comes back to Ivy as of six months ago, give or take. The car is registered to the brother with an address in Campbell, California. He has two decade-old DUIs, a nasty domestic dispute, and one D&D, but he cleaned up his act after starting the job at the VC. Ivy’s DMV is the surprise. It’s from a few years ago, and she doesn’t look so great. The girl in the photo in no way resembles the warrior from the beach.
Finally, at 11:05, Ivy emerges from the front door in shorts and a T-shirt, spends a few minutes stretching, then takes off. As soon as she crests the hill, I get out of the Jeep and move quickly toward the house, determined to get inside. It’s risky. I have no search warrant, and who knows how long she’ll be gone. But what choice do I have? Although the chances of Caroline being in the house are small, I have to check.
At the abandoned cabin next door, I slip down the driveway and into the woods behind the houses. I watch for movement inside Ivy’s place. Seeing nothing, I sneak out from behind the tree line and up the stairs leading to her back deck. A lounge chair with a bright-red cushion sits next to a portable Coleman grill. The door is locked, but the shade is open. The cabin is no more than six hundred square feet, and I can see nearly all of it, but the bathroom door is closed.
The place is tidy, spartan, a twin-size bed against the wall, a pine table and small dresser, two wooden chairs, and bookcase. There are no pictures on the walls, nothing on the counters, no dishes in the sink. The kitchenette contains a coffee maker and an old toaster. If not for the shiny silver laptop on the table and the Steve Prefontaine biography on the bed, it would look like a monastic room at one of those Buddhist retreats near Big Sur.
No sign of Caroline. Still, I need to get inside.
The tools in my wallet are enough to pop the aging lock. I open the door, pause on the doorstep for several seconds. I’ve done some things in my career that I needed to do to get to the truth, things that might not look great on paper. Until this moment, breaking and entering wasn’t one of them. I step inside.
I cross to the bathroom, hand on my gun, and open the door. Empty. I pull the door closed, go to the table, and open the laptop. It’s on sleep mode, and it boots up in seconds. No password protection.
I do a quick search of Ivy’s files. I open up Word and scroll through the file names, but nothing stands out. I open the iPhoto tab, but Ivy doesn’t take many pictures. There are just a few dozen a year dating back to 2014, including shots from the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass festival, a picture of her in front of Amoeba Records, a coyote at Crystal Springs. Nothing of note. I try to access Facebook, Instagram, and Gmail, but find no automatic logins.
I run my palms under the mattress, behind the few books on the shelf. I rifle through the dresser and under the bathroom sink, careful to leave everything exactly as I found it. Nothing. Outside, I step off the porch and retrace my steps back to the Jeep. I put the car in neutral, rolling down the road, the smell of pine and tar rising up through the open windows. As soon as I’m far enough away for the neighbors not to hear, I turn the key in the ignition.
38
The category is music. What do the white keys tell us? What do the black keys tell us?
At pickup Wednesday afternoon, Kyle checks both ways before leaning down to talk. “Update on the French girl. When I talked to the registrar yesterday, remember, Caroline had no excused absences on the schedule. But today, she told me Caroline has excused absences all week.”
“Why the discrepancy?”
“She said the call from the parents came on Monday, and the message had been misplaced.”
“Does the registrar seem like the kind of person who misplaces things?”
“No, but a substitute answered the phone call and put the message on a Post-it instead of in the book. Anyway, I wanted to let you know I’ll be out of commission for a few days.”
“Again?
”
“Chief put me on training, a car-stop in-service, starting tonight down in Santa Cruz. I’ll let you know when I get back.”
I thank him and pull forward. Rory climbs into the front seat. “How’d the test go?”
“Easy. Tomorrow is the long essay part. Kobayashi says this is where we really distinguish ourselves.” Rory mimics Kobayashi’s prayer hands, his monotone, Zen-like voice: “The long essay is the difference between mere success and everlasting greatness. Reach for the stars and you will pierce the clouds.”
As we pull out of the parking lot, the levity quickly fades.
“No word from Caroline?”
He shakes his head. “It doesn’t make sense. If she were really on some cruise, she would definitely text me.” He pushes the door lock button up and down, over and over, click-click-click. “Did you find the swimmer?”
“Yes. I made a visit to her house.”
“So, what did she say?”
“I haven’t talked to her yet. You only get the element of surprise once. As soon as I talk to her, it’s out there, things change, evidence gets destroyed.”
Of course, there’s another reason I hesitated before talking to Ivy. It’s just bad opsec. You shouldn’t do a conversation like that without backup. People are unpredictable, especially those with nothing to lose. Of course, I took a lot of chances in the past, but that was before Fred died.
“But you have to do something,” Rory insists. “It’s not about evidence.”
“In the end, it’s always about evidence.” I pull into the driveway and kill the engine. “Beyond that, I need to decide who to talk to first, Ivy or the boat owner, Murphy, or someone else altogether. Once I talk to someone, they’re going to alert the others.”
Ideally, I would interrogate the one who planned the Gray Stafford and Lamey twins kidnappings. You want to go as far up the food chain as possible. Certainly not Ivy, probably not Murphy—but who?
The Wonder Test Page 16
