“You just have to choose,” Rory says. “Remember what you used to say? Action always beats reaction.” His face is red, as if he’s going to cry. I haven’t seen him cry in so long. I know he still does. I’ve heard him, late at night in his room.
But he’s right. I have to choose. What started with reading files and interviewing a reluctant witness, dipping my toes in to a defunct investigation, is about to get real. A brief, off-the-record stakeout is one thing. Confronting the suspect is another level entirely.
Years ago, I worked a case with the Israeli internal service, Shin Bet. It was a real lesson in getting things done. With them, there was no such thing as scheduling meetings or appointments. If something was worth doing, you did it then, no wasting time. At their core, they believed that the world would probably be here tomorrow, but then again maybe it wouldn’t.
“You’re absolutely right,” I say. “I’ll go talk to her.” And with that promise, I’m all in. I’ve let him down in so many ways. I can’t let him down on this.
39
You are on an island where sheep outnumber people by more than three to one. The temperature is cold and a breeze blows in from the north. Fish are the greatest natural resource. You could be in Calais by tomorrow night if the seas are calm and a ship’s captain is willing to take you on. Where are you?
On Wednesday night and Thursday morning, my texts to George go unreturned. He’s probably off the grid. I have no case, no authority. I also don’t know anyone from the San Francisco office well enough to call in a favor of this magnitude. In the afternoon, unwilling to wait any longer, I go upstairs and get my gun. I throw my handcuffs, baton, pepper spray, and small green notebook into my messenger bag. I pull my drop phone out of the safe and use the slipstream to make up a nonattributable email account.
I find Rory in the library, reading Martin in Space, again.
“I’m going out. I’ll be out late.”
He looks up from his book. “You’re going to talk to Ivy?”
“Yes.”
“Good.” I can see there’s something else he wants to say.
“What?”
“Do you think of yourself as a protective parent?”
“I suppose, but not overprotective, I hope. Why?”
“Three kids went missing, and now this thing with Caroline. You’re worried about Caroline, but you’re leaving me alone. Which means you’re not worried about me.”
“Go on.”
“So I’ve been trying to figure out why you’re not worried about me. Why we’re not on the next flight out of this town where kids keep disappearing and nobody wants to talk about it. Nobody even seems that concerned. It’s weird. And then I had this crazy idea.”
“What’s that?”
“Caroline, Gray Stafford, and the twins share one important thing in common, don’t they?”
“Technically, they have a lot in common.”
“Yes, but the other day, you asked me something that got me thinking.”
I get the feeling that we’re being watched. I glance out the window, and there’s Mister Fancy, sitting in our backyard, staring in. “Whatever’s on your mind, Rory, you can say it. But only here. Only with me. Do you understand?”
“It’s about the test, isn’t it?” Rory waits for me to deny it. I don’t.
He continues. “Marc Rekowski took off with his family. Jordan Kingsley won a contest to spend ten days on the set of a Martin Scorsese film in Bucharest, and Melissa Madsen is auditioning for music programs way out of her league. You wanted to know if those kids were in the special class with Caroline, so I asked around. They were. Every kid in that study group got called away during the test. And the blonde mystery woman tried to talk Caroline out of taking it, but Caroline refused.”
I look at him, waiting.
“The only kids who go missing,” he says, “are the ones who might fail.”
40
Does the economy reward honesty or dishonesty? Design four strategies that a simple shop owner might devise that would tip the balance in his or her favor. How might this apply to literature?
I wind into the hills of La Honda, dimming the Jeep’s headlights as I round the bend toward Ivy’s place. Her car is parked out front, and there’s light glowing in the cabin’s small windows. I park up the hill and roll down my window. The night fills with the sound of barking dogs and other, unseen creatures. La Honda is teeming with raccoons, skunks, foxes, coyotes, mountain lions. And biker gangs. Always biker gangs. A party is raging somewhere up the road, but right now, it’s Ivy I’m worried about. With her chiseled frame, her bare home, her lack of internet presence or ties to anything or anyone, her treacherous morning swims, she’s an unknown quantity. She appears to have little accountability and no fear of death, nothing to lose.
I consider how I should approach her. With the weak, it’s always best to base your approach in strength. With the strong, it’s more complicated. Strong people thrive on having an opposing force to confront.
I grab my messenger bag and slide my gun into the small of my back. It’s in the tiny holster I brought back from my temporary deployment to Tel Aviv. The firearms unit hates it, but it’s the most effective way to conceal the weapon without sacrificing speed or flexibility. I exit the Jeep, close the door softly, and walk down the street, grateful for the cover of darkness. At Ivy’s cabin, I move up the stairs and stand to the right of the door.
I knock. Several seconds of silence followed by the sound of bare feet moving across the wood floor. The porch light comes on, two locks click, and then the door opens. Ivy is wearing her green hoodie, a big O on the front.
“Special Agent Lina Connerly,” I say, flashing my creds.
She squints to see into the darkness, glancing past me, probably to see if I’m alone, calculating her options. Then she takes a deep breath. “So,” she mutters, resigned. “This is how it happens.”
“May I come in?”
She’s still trying to decide her next move. In any encounter, this is the crucial moment. Her breathing has slowed.
“It won’t take long.” I try to sound relaxed, nonthreatening.
“Do I have a choice?” She steps aside, cracking the door farther.
“Everyone always has a choice. The best one for you, right now, is to talk to me.”
Inside, she sits on her bed, motions me to the chair. “I’ve been expecting you.” She motions with a hand toward me. “Okay, maybe not exactly you.”
“What were you expecting?”
“Somebody bigger. No offense. A SWAT team maybe.” She chuckles, but in her laughter, I can hear the trace of fear, maybe defeat. “I guess that’s just television.”
“I know some guys who would send the SWAT team, but I prefer this.” The door to the bathroom is open. Ivy is alone. “Maybe we can just talk.”
“I expected you guys to show up a year ago. Every morning, I waited. I heard that people always get arrested at six a.m., something about warrants and the court. For a couple of months, I set my alarm for five forty-five every morning, got dressed, and just sat there, waiting.”
“But nothing happened.”
“I figured it was a matter of time. But after a few months, when no one showed up, I felt relieved. Maybe I wasn’t in any trouble after all. That’s when I got back into swimming.”
“Montara, no less. Jumping into the deep end.”
“Maybe I was secretly hoping to drift out to sea one day, go so far I couldn’t fight my way back.”
“But that didn’t happen.”
“Not in the cards, I guess.”
“Or, maybe you’re just too good of a swimmer?”
Ivy slides her hand across the quilt. I can see almost all of her possessions from my chair. Six books on the shelf, two button-down shirts hanging on wall hooks, a bathing suit drying by the space heater, a w
et suit on a hook. In the dresser, I know there are three T-shirts, one sweatshirt, two pairs of sweatpants, one pair of jeans, underwear, and two more bathing suits. One pair of red Nikes waits by the door. I’ve never before known a woman to have only one pair of shoes.
I pick up the Prefontaine biography on the table. “Good book.”
“You read it?”
“Years ago. I liked the movies too.”
Ivy leans back against the bed pillow. “As a kid, I tacked a quote of his on my wall. ‘Anything less than your absolute best is an insult to the gift you were given.’ Sometimes it inspired me, but sometimes it made me feel rotten.”
My father dreamed I would be a track star is the thing I almost say, but then I don’t. In these situations, the ring of truth is always preferable to the actual truth. “Track seems easier than swimming,” I say instead.
“Don’t know about that.”
“With track, if you run out of steam you don’t drown.”
“True.” She breaks into a smile and unfolds her arms, slowly letting down her guard.
I want to ask her about Caroline, but I don’t. Not yet. From a behavioral perspective, it’s complicated. There are two trains of thought, and most people in the intelligence field subscribe to the first: if you need to ask a critical question like something about WMD or counterterrorism, you must ask it as soon as possible, because you may not get another chance. While I understand the logic, I tend to go the other way. I never ask a question until I know I’ll get a truthful answer. If you ask too early, while your subject’s defenses are up, if you ask before you build rapport, you’re more likely to get a nonanswer or an outright denial. Once someone lies to you, it’s hard to walk it back. The lie, in some form or another, will sit there for a long time, maybe forever, an unmovable obstacle to a genuine relationship.
“I like your place.”
“Not much to it.”
“Minimalism. There are loads of books about it now. People are making a fortune writing books about having nothing.”
“It wasn’t by choice. I had lots of stuff, but then, well, I had to get out of a situation in a hurry.”
I nod. “I’ve been trying to get rid of stuff too.”
She tilts her head. “How’s that working out for you?”
“Fine if you don’t look in my garage.”
“At first, having nothing bothered me. For a few weeks, I missed my stuff. I’d wake up thinking I was going to put on a certain shirt or pair of shoes or drink my coffee out of my favorite mug, or I’d want to write something down and realize I didn’t even own a pen. But I came to appreciate it. When you don’t have any money and you don’t have any stuff, you can focus on what’s important.”
She gets up from the bed, walks over to the table, and sits across from me.
“What do you miss most?” I ask.
“I had a little orange thumb drive with all of my photos. Thousands of them. My mother liked to take pictures. She’s dead now.”
Ivy’s words hang in the air. There’s something on the tip of my tongue, something I want to say, something I would say to a trusted friend or a colleague, certainly not something I should say here, to Ivy. I say it anyway.
“My husband died a few months ago.”
Ivy looks up at me, surprised, her sympathy battling with her curiosity. I wonder if she’ll ask it. One beat, two beats, three. Then she does, because some people can’t help themselves: “How?”
“A car accident in New York City. The guy who hit him was texting. Twenty-four years old.”
She cringes. “Did he live? The guy who hit your husband?”
“Yes, but he’ll never walk.”
“That must be satisfying, in a way.”
“No, it isn’t.” I don’t tell her how he sent a letter asking to meet me two weeks after Fred died. How I couldn’t read the whole letter, never even got through the first paragraph. How I stuck the letter back in the envelope and put it in the bottom of a desk drawer back at my office in New York. How I haven’t opened it since, but I know it’s there in my desk. And when I return to my desk, at some point, I’ll have to decide what to do with it.
I shake my head, trying to erase the image of the letter in the drawer. I focus on Ivy. It feels strange to be talking about Fred here, mildly inappropriate, although I know he wouldn’t mind. “Happy to be of use,” he would say. With someone strong like Ivy, showing vulnerability is an effective way to defuse tension, reducing the likelihood of a physical confrontation.
“I like to think my mother’s death was an accident too,” Ivy says, though she doesn’t explain.
I reach across and put my hand on top of hers. She stiffens. I sense she hasn’t had physical contact in a long time. “I have to ask you a question.”
She doesn’t pull away.
“Do you know where the girl is?” My voice is low, almost a whisper. Quiet brings people together. It’s less confrontational, more conspiratorial.
There’s a flash of confusion on her face. “What girl?”
This clearly wasn’t the question she expected. But she knows something, and she’s calculating how much to reveal. I don’t take my hand from hers. It’s not easy for me—I’ve never been big on touching—but it is elemental. The physical connection, if done in the right way at the right time, is just one more key to building bonds, creating an atmosphere where the truth becomes possible. I wait for her to fill the silence.
She shakes her head, looking at me as if I’m the one who’s confused. “But, it was a boy.”
I know in that moment that she wasn’t involved in whatever has happened to Caroline. “You mean Gray Stafford.”
“His name was Gray?”
“Yes.”
She pulls her hand away, stricken. “They never told me.”
“Were there others before him? After him?”
Her head snaps up, and she looks me directly in the eyes. “No, God no!”
“The twins?”
She looks confused. “Twins?”
“Have you heard of a girl who went missing recently?”
“A girl? No.” Ivy covers her mouth with her hand. She stands abruptly and moves away from the table. My hand instinctively moves to the small of my back.
She stops at the kitchen counter and gets a paper towel to blow her nose. Her shoulders shake. She turns to face me, her back against the sink. I can’t see her hands. The redness around her eyes, spreading across her cheeks, makes her seem like less of a threat. Still, I can see her lean muscles, her strength.
“How is he?” she asks. “The boy.”
“Gray is okay, physically at least. He’s back in school.”
“I think about him. A lot. I was so happy that woman was there on the beach. The boat owner—”
“Murphy?” I venture.
She nods. I wait.
Ivy drops the paper towel in the trash, stalling. But she doesn’t stall for long. She’s obviously been wanting to tell her story for a while, just waiting for her confessor to show up.
“Murphy wanted me to drop the kid at San Gregorio, but when I saw that woman on the beach, I told Murphy that was the place to do it. Once I got back to the boat, Murphy was determined to get out of there as fast as possible. I stood on the deck with the binoculars, watching the boy standing on the beach with the woman. Later, I wanted to track her down, thank her in some anonymous way, but I had no way to figure out who she was. I kept looking online, waiting to read about the boy who appeared naked on the beach, but I never could find anything. Strange, right? How does that not make the news?”
“How did you get involved? Was it Murphy?”
“God no. He knew less than I did.” She comes back over and sits down. “I always assumed Murphy would slip up and get us caught. He was in a bad way after it went down. I don’t think he knew what h
e signed up for any more than I did.” She frowns. “Was it Murphy who gave you my name?”
“No.”
“Who, then? Travis?”
“Travis?”
Ivy catches herself and gives me a look. It’s one I’ve seen many times, that look of dismay people get when they catch themselves talking to me fast and casual, as if we’re friends. You need to spot it quickly and pull the conversation back before they correct themselves and stop talking.
“Can I get a glass of water?” I ask.
“Help yourself. Cups beside the sink.”
I pour water for both of us, keeping my eyes on her the whole time. I return to the table.
Ivy is biting her lip, contemplating how much to tell me. “Travis,” she finally says. “I got involved through Travis.”
“What was his role?”
“He owed a guy a favor. He was terrified, and he said he needed me to be there. He needed me to do the hard part, because he didn’t know anyone else who could swim in the ocean. And he didn’t know anyone else who would care enough to do it right.”
“So he had something resembling a conscience.”
“No, no.” She dismisses the idea with a wave of her hand. “Travis only cares about Travis. He said if the kid drowned, the guy would come kill us all.” She hesitates. “I shouldn’t be talking to you, should I? I always told myself that when this moment arrived, I would hire a lawyer before I said a word. I even picked one out on the internet, guy in Petaluma. I put his number in my cell.”
“Who’s the attorney?”
“Duane Lipinsky.”
“The guy with the commercials? If you need an attorney I’ll help you find a real one. But for what it’s worth, in my experience, every person who talks to me straight, no bullshit, ends up far better for it.”
She narrows her eyes at me. “Will I need an attorney?”
“You can always get one. Anytime. Hopefully, though, if we do this right, we can avoid that. It will be tricky. You have to trust me.”
Ivy sits in silence for several seconds, calculating. “Travis and I went to school together.”
The Wonder Test Page 17
