by Rysa Walker
Taylor’s eyes narrow, but she takes the keys and sighs. “Sure. I’m a team player. I’ll pay our tab, find a campground, park that hulking monstrosity, and babysit. Because, you know, that’s what children do.”
Fayetteville, North Carolina
November 2, 2019, 3:56 p.m.
We find a parking spot a few blocks away and head toward the café with a couple of minutes to spare. I wish we could have parked closer, because I feel like we’re conspicuous. There was no time to make it to a shopping mall, so we had to settle for Walmart. Aaron looks reasonably professional from the waist up, but his pants are nearly an inch too short. My shoes pinch like hell, and they’re hideous. One consolation is that I will never have to worry about Deo stretching them out by trying to squeeze them onto his feet. He’d be far more likely to toss them into the nearest dumpster.
“Don’t be nervous,” Aaron says. “If all goes well, the only thing you’ll have to do is press the button on my phone to start recording. And take notes.”
“That doesn’t seem redundant to you? Because I’m thinking you could push the button, and I could take notes later. That way, I could just wait in the car.”
Aaron ignores my hopeful smile. “Nice try, but no. You’re with me. Like I said, I’m pretty sure you’ll just need to play the role of assistant, but the café might be crowded, given that this is pumpkin-spice-everything season. If it’s a happy, peaceful crowd, I’ll be fine, but . . .” He shrugs it off. “Anyway, a successful attorney can’t be seen jotting down his own notes, can he? I need my assistant for that.” He straightens his tie and shoots me an over-the-top smug look.
“If you can convince anyone that you’re a successful attorney in those pants, you should quit this detective gig and take up acting.”
“Hey, no dissing the suit. There wasn’t a lot to choose from.” He gives me a head-to-toe appraisal and says, “You did okay, though. That looks really nice on you.”
“Thanks.” It’s the first time he’s seen me in a skirt—actually, the first time I’ve worn one in years. It’s one of those sweater skirts that likes to travel north, requiring me to tug it down every couple of steps. I’m pretty sure Aaron’s compliment is aimed less at the outfit and more at the legs it keeps revealing, but I’m perfectly okay with that.
The guy we’re meeting, Dean Skolnick, is Magda’s “local source” on ties between the missing kids and Delphi. He’s forty-one, white, a former reporter with the local paper who now does freelance jobs and teaches occasional classes in journalism at a nearby community college. His photo reveals a resigned smile, dark glasses, and a receding hairline. Divorced two years, no kids. Originally from Pittsburgh. MA in journalism from University of North Carolina. A 680 credit score. Libertarian. An arrest eight years ago for possession of less than one ounce of marijuana. DIRECTV customer. Owns a Camry. And that was just what I gleaned from the first of the three pages of info Magda gave us.
The café is a funky, brightly colored little shop that sits next to a small theater. I spot Skolnick through the window as we approach, pouring a stream of coffee into the trash bin to make room in his cup. I’d have said that Magda’s background check left no stone unturned, no skeleton unearthed, but I now know something that was not in his dossier. Skolnick drinks his coffee extra light.
Aaron pauses in the doorway, taking the mental temperature of the place. The interior is narrow, cramped, and, just as Aaron feared, it’s packed.
“Everything okay?”
“Yeah, it’s cool. Well, except for the toddler.” He nods toward the back. I can’t actually see the kid, but sure enough, a loud wail pierces the air, followed by the crash of a plate onto the floor. “He needs a nap. Hopefully, they get him out of here soon. Otherwise I might lapse into a temper tantrum in the middle of our interview.”
“Ha. Funny.” He doesn’t respond, so I add. “You are joking. Right?”
Aaron tries to keep a straight face, but his mouth twitches and then erupts into a grin. I give him a sharp nudge with my elbow.
“Yes. I’m joking. Come on, let’s do this.”
Skolnick is dressed in jeans and a flannel shirt. A computer case is slung over one shoulder, and he’s taken his milky brew to the only empty table, a two-seater near the front window. A green accordion file folder sits next to his cup.
“Dean Skolnick?” Aaron extends his hand, flashes the ID badge, and prepares to launch into the cover story that Magda or someone in her employ cooked up. Our firm is investigating clients for a potential class action suit against a pharmaceutical company that may have caused personality disorders in children whose parents took the drug. “I’m Will Collins, with Binkley, Dar—”
“Save your acting skills. I already know who you’re working for and why. Bell contacted me last year based on a couple of articles I wrote, but I didn’t have anything concrete. Now, though . . .” He glances around us and then lowers his voice. “The only reason I agreed to talk at all is because she’s paying me enough to get out of town. Fresh start and all that. So pull up a chair and let’s get this over with.”
I exchange a look with Aaron. Magda gives us a metric ton of information on this guy but leaves out the part where he’s a paid informant. We could have worn our jeans. Lovely. Just freakin’ lovely.
Since there are only two chairs and since the toddler seems to be winding up for another shriek, I suggest that we take the discussion outside.
“Good idea,” Aaron says with a note of relief.
Skolnick is less enthusiastic, but he gathers his things, and we retreat to a patio squeezed between the buildings. It’s an alcove, really, with brick walls on three sides. The area is mostly empty thanks to an overcast sky and wind gusts that send leaves skipping down the sidewalk and whirling beneath the tables.
Once Skolnick finally picks a table, he parks himself in the chair that faces the street, and we take the other two. I push the record button on Aaron’s phone, and Skolnick begins.
“You already know I was a reporter. I covered military life, not policy issues, but things that had an impact on the community. Good and bad. PTSD, the Military Ball, effect of deployment on the kiddos, that kind of stuff. They’ve got one person covering all of it now. Pretty much every local newspaper has cut a third to a half of their staff in the past decade, so I wasn’t exactly shocked when I got the pink slip a few months back . . . especially since I’d been butting heads with my editor about this story.”
Skolnick chews a bit of dry skin off his lower lip and looks around nervously before continuing.
“The whole thing really started a while back, just a few years after I began work at the paper. We had a bunch of murders here in town—not exactly unusual, but more than the typical number that year. Many of them were chalked up to PTSD after Afghanistan. The four soldiers who killed their wives—those even got national press. There was some speculation about it being caused by a malaria drug they took, and that may have been a factor, I don’t know. But on top of the murders, we had a whole slew of violent episodes . . . again, a lot of people coming back from war, so that’s to be expected, but I noticed a pattern. There were far more episodes in a specific unit within the PSYOPS battalion, or whatever the hell they’re calling it now. Significantly more . . . like by a factor of ten.
“But here’s the kicker. When I start looking back through the crime files, I find out it’s been that way for nearly a decade. So I dig around, and am promptly told to stop digging around—not just by the paper but by the military. Nothing to see here, move along. And so I did. I was a new reporter, and I wanted to keep my job. Also the incidents seemed to be tapering off. But even though I dropped it, the thing always sat at the back of my mind, you know?”
Aaron and I both nod, and Skolnick goes on. “So, flash-forward to earlier this year, late April, maybe early May. Like I said, I’m the one who covered all of the slice-of-life military stories, so if some kid from Bragg won a science fair or whatever, that was my beat. Well, this t
ime it was a quiz bowl instead of a science fair . . . you know, kind of like Nerd Jeopardy?”
The nerd qualifier seems unnecessary, but I simply nod again.
“Anyway, one of the girls who was just abducted was on the show, and she was smoking everyone else. Expert in every topic. Real whiz kid. Four rounds of competition, and she didn’t get a single question wrong. So, of course, I’m assigned to do a write-up. I didn’t bother with an interview—just watched a clip of the show and typed up a few paragraphs about the local Einstein, along with a picture of her holding a trophy, proud parents in the background. The story’s done, and I’ve moved on to the next assignment, but I happen to click back on the article for some reason a few weeks later, and I notice the comments. Usually, I’d get one or two for a story like that. They’re linked to Facebook, so you’ll see, ‘Grandma is so proud of you, sweetie!’ And maybe a crude comment or two, or a bit of spam, if interns aren’t moderating the section close enough.”
He chugs a bit of his coffee-flavored milk and then continues. “This time we had three or four dozen. Not a single atta-girl in the bunch. Couple of them are calling her Scary Clary—her name’s Nicki Clary—and the overall consensus among commenters is that she’s a dirty rotten cheat. I would’ve just written it off as teens being assholes, but there’s a few parents in the mix, too. Apparently, when Clary was in eighth grade, one of her teachers had a glitch in the multiple-choice test program she was using. It spat out the wrong grading key. The teacher is grading away, and Clary gets her usual A-plus-plus. But her other top students are going down in flames, so the teacher checks, and it’s the wrong key. Of course, the kid says she didn’t cheat, and the teacher doesn’t see how she could have cheated, how she could have gotten access to the key, unless maybe she’s hacked into the teacher’s home computer system or whatever. So she purposefully rigs it the next time. Prints out a key, but Clary’s version of the test has the questions in a different order. And sure enough, Clary hands in a test with all the right answers, except they’re attached to the wrong questions.”
Skolnick goes on. His eyes still dart around at the slightest noise, but he also seems to like the sound of his own voice and opts for many words when a few would get him out of here faster. The short version is that the teacher filed an academic dishonesty report. Clary’s parents filed a lawsuit. School backed down, because even the teacher had to admit she had no idea how the girl could have gotten the test key. The incident would most likely have been forgotten by the students if not for the fact that the teacher shifted to essay exams whenever possible for the rest of the year. That pissed the students off enough to cry foul when they heard about Nicki Clary’s quiz bowl win.
“To be honest, I’d still have ignored the story if I hadn’t scrolled back up to look at the picture and something clicked. The last name Clary isn’t all that common, and the dad’s face looked familiar. So I check back, and sure enough, he’s one of the guys who lost his cool back in 2002 or 2003. Supposedly a nice guy, but someone bumped his shoulder in the line at Wendy’s, and he went mental, started banging the other guy’s head against the counter, then pulled out a knife. If it hadn’t been for a couple of Rangers in line who subdued him, that would’ve been another murder on the books that year, and—”
“So, how old is the daughter?” Aaron asks. “Nicki?”
Skolnick shakes his head, clearly annoyed at the interruption. “I don’t know. She was a sophomore last year. Sixteen, maybe? She was born a few months after her dad’s court-martial, so you do the math.”
I don’t have to do the math. I just flip to the second page of Magda’s spreadsheet. Nicola Clary is listed about halfway down. Fifteen, actually, since she skipped a grade—which is no surprise, given her ability. Her school photo reminds me a little of an adolescent Amy Schumer. Blonde and curvy but with a more guarded smile. I slide the page over to Aaron.
“Yeah, that’s her,” Skolnick says, glancing at the picture.
“Was her dad given a dishonorable discharge, or what?” Aaron asks.
Skolnick shakes his head. “Actually, I suspect the fact that his wife was pregnant—and maybe the rumors about the malaria drug—convinced them to go easy and just slap him with an Article 15.”
I have only a vague idea what that means, and the question in my head lures Daniel to the front.
It’s sort of an administrative punishm—
Don’t care, Daniel. Busy right now. If I want to know, I’ll google it later. Or I’ll check Abner’s file. He was in the Navy. So if I need to know military lingo or Morse code, I’ll comb through his memories.
I’m. Trying. To. Help.
Daniel slinks back, and I return to the outside world, already in progress, where Skolnick is giving me an odd look.
“Sorry . . .” I debate which of my standard excuses to use. Oncoming migraine? Didn’t sleep well? But the point is moot, since Skolnick’s already back to his story.
“So, yeah, anyway, the comments on that story aren’t just talking about the Clary kid. They go off on a tangent and start talking about this Lentz kid, who sent three pencils flying toward a teacher at once, without even touching the pencils. Some say that the pencil story is bullshit, but the others are swearing on a stack of Pokémon cards or whatever that they’re telling the truth. And then someone says, do y’all remember Jeremy Bieler’s brother, that little kid who ripped off the arcade last summer? Of course, I hadn’t heard of either of those kids, but the last names seemed familiar—and when I went back and checked, both had a parent who lost their shit back in 2002. So I decided to dig a little deeper, even though I was pretty sure my editor—”
Brakes squeal on the street in front of us, and Skolnick jumps so hard that coffee splashes onto his shirt. But it’s just a mom in a minivan, angry at a delivery truck that stopped suddenly on the other side of the road.
Skolnick curses, then goes inside. To get napkins, I guess.
“Why do you think he’s so jumpy?”
“Don’t know. I’m not picking up any threats, aside from that driver being really pissed and . . . the baby in there who needs a nap. But Skolnick’s reaction does have me wondering why he’s leaving town in search of a fresh start.” He takes my hand across the table. “What was going on with you a minute ago? When you tuned out?”
“It was nothing.” I’d really rather leave it at that, but Aaron’s eyebrow quirks upward, and even though it really was nothing, I don’t want him to think I’m keeping secrets again. “Daniel was just trying to be helpful, fill in some info.”
When I mention Daniel, Aaron’s face closes a bit. It’s a subtle change, like a wisp of cloud passing across the sun, but I wish I’d kept quiet. Especially when he lets go of my hand.
But dropping my hand could partly be due to the fact that Skolnick’s back, dabbing at his shirt with a paper towel. “Where the hell was I?”
“Some kid was ripping off a fun center,” Aaron says.
“Yeah, Hunter Bieler. Five years old at the time. He was at one of those summer day camps because his mom works and his dad’s not in the picture anymore.”
I scan the list that Magda gave us. Hunter Bieler is wearing one of those cheesy smiles that kids paste on for their school photos. He’s a little older than five here, missing a couple of teeth, and his curly reddish-blond hair is unruly. Cute kid. Dillon Lentz is also on the page, only a bit younger than the Clary girl.
“These day camps take the kids on field trips a few times a week,” Skolnick says. “Like this miniature golf and arcade place over on Skibo Road, where each kid plays a round of golf and gets a handful of tokens to play the video games, foosball, whack-a-mole, whatever. Only one of the high school kids working behind the counter notices that the kids from this one camp are having an amazing streak of luck. Well, as much as you can at one of those places. He realizes he’s paying out way more of those cheap-ass prizes than usual on Fridays. So he starts watching a little closer and sees all the kids keep circling back to
this one little guy, Hunter, who’s extraordinarily lucky. Every time Hunter touches a machine, it’s like he’s flipped a switch—the thing starts spitting out tickets. And he’s the generous type, because he shares the tickets with all of his buddies.”
“Did they figure out how . . . or if . . . he was doing it?” Aaron asks.
“Nope. Even after management gets involved, they can’t prove anything. I mean, was it the kid’s fault if their machines were malfunctioning? The owner even grabbed Hunter’s arm and pressed it against the machine. And, of course, nothing happened . . . well, nothing aside from the camp taking Happy Town arcade off their weekly rotation and the kid’s mom threatening a lawsuit ’cause the owner manhandled her baby boy.”
Skolnick finishes off the last of his coffee.
“Same thing with flying-pencil boy. He was in a classroom for kids with behavior issues, and they had a camera set up in the back as a monitoring device. It did indeed show three pencils flying toward the teacher. But both of Lentz’s hands were in the frame, so the video evidence cleared him. In fact, it cleared the entire class.”
“So,” Aaron says, “who did they think threw the pencils?”
“Good question. And also one of the many questions swept under the rug, not just in this case, but every time something weird happens in this town. Maybe it’s . . . what do they call it? Cognitive . . . something . . .”
“Dissonance?”
He points a finger at me and nods. “Yeah. That. Three teachers lost their jobs in Cumberland County, but Tamara Blake, this school counselor, who was one of my sources before she got herself killed, said there’s a lot of that dissonance stuff going on. I can’t get any info out of the teachers at the DoD schools inside Fort Bragg, but I’m guessing it’s the same there. Nobody wants to be called crazy for saying they’ve got kids in their classrooms who can read minds or make the blinds dance up and down just by looking at them. Or turn the computers on and off without going near them. The teachers who say that kind of stuff go on administrative leave and then end up working at Hardee’s. Or land in a mental hospital. So they just say nothing. Grit their teeth and hope they get a freak-free class next year.”
