by Liana Brooks
She clicked the link and read on. “Local boy Jamie Gardner has been placed in foster care following the accident that killed his mother, Dolores Nelson (46). The boy’s father is also a local resident but waived parental rights. Miss Nelson and Mr. Gardner divorced three years ago, after their son’s autism diagnosis.” The article went on for several more paragraphs about how the rise in neurally atypical children in foster care was draining national resources and listed several clinics that would test for genetic abnormalities.
Right—this nonsense.
It was before she was aware of the outside world, but for a few years the public had believed that there was a way to determine if a fetus would be neurally atypical—unable to act like a “normal” person—with the goal of either preparing the family for the “horrors” of a high-needs child or to persuade the parents to terminate the pregnancy. It was a shot of snake oil, but for a few years the abortion rate had skyrocketed as media outlets proclaimed it was the end of crime. No more sociopaths, no more narcissistic personalities conning people out of money, no more unusual children who didn’t quite fit into the standard models for schools. No more square pegs in round holes.
She tasted bile on her tongue and realized her blood pressure was rising.
Poor Jamie had been born into that mess. His mother was old enough that her pregnancy would have been considered high-risk even with gene therapy. Born less than ten years after the Yellow Plague had erased half of humanity, at the height of clone technology and the height of antihospital sentiment.
She’d bet a milkshake that Miss Nelson hadn’t even gone to the doctor for basic birth control. That was the old States back then, and very few birth-control measures were sold over the counter. Not when the whole world was rushing to repopulate. The poor woman had probably thought it was her patriotic duty to have a child, like some chilling remake of 1984.
According to the date on the article, Jamie had gone into foster care thirteen years ago. It wasn’t hard to imagine his never getting adopted. Being bounced between foster homes and crèches that weren’t much better than Shadow Houses without the constant threat of death. And then? Where would a boy with a dead mother and a hateful father wind up?
With Peter Pan in Neverland. In the swamps of Florida with the other lost boys.
Her lips twitched into a smile. There was a whole group of barely educated man-children playing at being pirates. It was so laughably obvious she wondered why no one had thought of it before. Checking her hunch would mean a late-night run to the precinct, but if she was right, she’d just found a way to track down the pirates and find Jamie’s killer.
CHAPTER 11
The difference between animals and man is the latter’s willingness to change their circumstances. A dog may sense the coming storm, but it will never reach out to move the clouds.
~ excerpt from the Oneness of Being by Oaza Moun I1—2072
Sunday March 23, 2070
Florida District 8
Commonwealth of North America
Iteration 2
Gant’s hands shook as he finished wiping down the stolen car and slammed the door shut behind him. Everything was going wrong. The man they’d taken hadn’t known anything about the Timeyst Machine and kept saying Troom was dead. And the cop Donovan had killed hadn’t looked dead to him although Donovan swore he’d gotten her.
He should have snapped Donovan’s thick neck the minute that blundering fool stepped into his house. Everything was fine until then. And what did Donovan know anyway? Detective Rose couldn’t have been close to finding him.
Shivering in the hot morning sunshine, he stripped off the gloves. Dumping them near the car he’d just wiped down wouldn’t help. There were too many ways to pull a fingerprint. But he’d passed a friendly-looking apartment complex on his way downtown, and a pair of cleaning gloves in the Dumpster there wouldn’t draw anyone’s attention.
Walking the few miles back to the motel would cool his head. Settle him down. Maybe give him some good idea of how to deal with this mess. Donovan was keeping calm about the disaster, but it was clear he wasn’t going to find a solution.
He scratched at the stubble on his chin. Zoetimax didn’t exist here. Donovan had taken a shower last night, and Gant had taken the chance to use the stolen tech he’d been hoarding to look. English was his birth language, but he hadn’t used it since he went to school, but it wasn’t rusty enough for him not to know that the maps were wrong. None of the search engines brought up familiar names or places.
Donovan didn’t have the drive to get back. Last night, Gant had caught him looking at a Want Ads site for jobs. As if they were going to settle in and stay here!
He’d never worked a nine-to-five job in his life. He’d lifted his first wallet at nine. At fifteen, he’d pulled his first second-story job. By the time he’d reached adulthood, he already had a reputation. People respected him. More to the point, they paid him what he was worth. That was what he was going back to: fame and luxury.
He hadn’t broken out of prison to work at an office-supply store.
Gant shook his head and pretended to take an interest in the ants scurrying across the sidewalk as a man with a very large dog jogged past. The dog gave Gant a sympathetic look and loped off after its master.
Sighing, Gant walked past the shrubs toward the pink apartments. Cute, tropically themed balloons were tied by the community pool. There was a playground with a bright blue plastic slide that was probably hot enough to fry eggs on. He didn’t care about any of it—what he wanted was the large green Dumpsters at the back of the property.
A woman doing laundry looked out the window and waved at him. Gant waved back. Like skulking, people remembered the emotions they felt rather than the faces they saw. An angry man stalking through the complex was going to get remembered; an average-looking guy who waved a friendly hello to the neighbors wasn’t.
He chucked the gloves in the Dumpster. Turned. Froze. A very familiar face was approaching him.
Gant rubbed his eyes.
The gray car drove past and parked not thirty feet from where he stood. Gant stood motionless as Detective Rose stepped out of the car, wearing the most casual clothing he’d ever seen on her. Logically, he knew the woman had times when she wasn’t wearing power suits or courting future voters, but he’d never imagined something as casual as jeans.
His eye twitched.
Detective Rose took a handful of bags from the trunk of her car and climbed the apartment steps two at a time. Not once did she notice that he was there.
His lips curled into a sneer. So, the detective had followed them through the portal. That was fine. If she knew how to get here, she knew how to get back. Getting the information from her would be easy as robbing a corpse.
Exactly as easy.
Sam’s phone rang as she walked up the stairs to the apartment. “Agent Rose, how may I help you?”
“Rose?” asked a woman’s voice on the other end. The single word was filled with confusion and sadness.
The wooden steps creaked under her feet. “Yes, ma’am. Who were you looking for?”
“Eric.”
“Eric?”
“Eric MacKenzie?”
“Oh, Agent MacKenzie isn’t with me right now.” Sam balanced the grocery bag in one hand, clenched the phone between her ear and shoulder, and unlocked the front door. Hoss didn’t run to greet her, which meant Mac had come back at some point to fetch the mutt and take him for a walk.
“I thought this was his phone,” the woman said.
Sam kicked the door shut, dropped her groceries and purse on the couch, and took the phone away from her ear. “Oh, dang it. This is his phone.”
“Oh?” There was a curiously accusatory harmonic to the simple sound.
“We, ah, were at a meeting, and these government phones
all look the same. I must have grabbed Mac’s by mistake. Who did you say you were again?”
“I’m Mrs. Mackenzie . . . Eric’s mother.”
Sam looked at the phone again, at the caller ID and 208 area code. “His mom?” Her voice squeaked only a little. “Well, I, um. I’m so sorry, Mrs. MacKenzie. I don’t know where Mac is right now. I will have him call you back.”
“He never does.” The older woman’s voice cracked on the edge of a sob. “I’ve called every other day for the past five and a half years, and I never get anything. He changed his phone number last year.”
“With the move to Chicago,” Sam said. “I know. How’d you get the number, then?”
“A friend from church knows someone who knows Mac and had his new number. She sent it to me.”
Mac’s mom went to church? Had Mac gone to church? How did someone from their church get access to a restricted government number? What kind of religion did they belong to?
“Is he doing well?” Mrs. MacKenzie asked. “Is he . . . is he all right?”
“He’s great,” Sam said. “Healthy, happy, wonderful. You raised an outstanding son, Mrs. MacKenzie. Everyone loves him.”
“Is he dating?” she asked, as the front door opened, and Hoss bounded in.
“Hey, Sam,” Mac said as he unclipped Hoss’s leash. “Agent Edwin called. I grabbed your phone by mistake.”
“Is that him?” Mrs. MacKenzie asked from the other end of the line.
“You have a phone call,” Sam said, shoving the phone at MacKenzie.
“Hello, who is this?” Mac asked cheerfully.
“Your mother!” Sam said about the same time Mrs. MacKenzie must have announced herself.
Mac’s face went white, and he started shaking his head. He held the phone away from his face. “No, Sam, I can’t.”
“You will say hello,” Sam ordered.
Reluctantly, he lifted the phone to his ear. “Hi, Mom.” His shoulders tightened into a defensive hunch. “I’d love to talk, but I’m really busy.”
“You have some time now,” Sam said loudly enough to be heard all the way in Idaho. She crossed her arms and raised an eyebrow at Mac.
His mouth twisted into a snarl, but he sat on the couch with the phone still on. “Yeah, Agent Rose is a friend from work. Yes. She’s very intelligent.” Mac nodded in agreement and shot Sam another angry look.
Hoss, seeing one of his humans available, strolled over to the couch and lay down for a belly rub.
Mac was sufficiently well trained to drop a hand and pet the dog. “I’m sorry I didn’t call, Mom. No. No, I didn’t go to church last week. Or the week before. I’ve been busy.”
Sam hung behind the couch, listening to Mac’s half of the conversation.
“How is everyone? That’s good. Yeah. Tell them I love them.” Mac’s knuckles were going white. “Look, I know. I’ve got to go. I’m sorry. Yes. I’m sorry. Bye.” He dropped the phone like it had burned him. “Sam. I don’t talk to my mother,” he said in a flat monotone.
“If you don’t want to talk to her, block her number. Or put Do Not Answer on the caller ID. How was I supposed to know it was your mom? The phone rang, I answered. That’s what I do when phones ring.” She sat down in the armchair next to the couch. “She sounded upset. Is everything okay at home?”
Mac closed his eyes and sat up straight, leaving Hoss bereft of affection. “Yeah.”
“Mac?”
He looked over at her, face tight and eyes red. “I haven’t talked to her since before Afghanistan.”
“What?”
“I . . . I couldn’t. I couldn’t call her up when all of my soldiers couldn’t call their parents. I couldn’t go home without them.” He pressed his lips together.
Sam moved to the couch. “Everyone else lost their children, so your parents had to lose you, too? How could you do that to her, Mac? That’s so selfish! No one would want that.” She knew she was bullying him, but what was she supposed to say? You’re right, Mac! You should be dead with everyone else. Go hop in a grave.
Rubbing his back, she rested her head on his shoulder and softened her voice. “If you asked the families who lost soldiers, they wouldn’t tell you to punish your family because you survived.”
He shook his head, tears running down his face. “I couldn’t. I couldn’t.”
“Why didn’t you answer her phone calls? I mean, okay, yeah. I get your not wanting to talk to her when you were drugged and depressed, but why not now? Why not at Christmas?” She slammed herself back into the couch. “Do you know how much I would have loved someone to call on a holiday to say they loved me?”
“That’s why I couldn’t talk to her,” Mac said. He’d pulled his emotions under control, but it left his voice cold, void of everything that made him him. “I couldn’t face her, or any of them. I couldn’t live if I saw how much I’d disappointed them.”
“How did you disappoint them?”
“I went to Afghanistan with six men to rescue fourteen others. I came home alone.”
They sat in near silence for a moment. Hoss rolled over, looking as concerned as was possible for a perpetually cheerful Boerboel.
Sam’s mind raced, trying to catch up with the enormity of the thought. “You hated yourself. So you thought everyone else would hate you, too?”
Mac shrugged his shoulders. “What else was I going to think?”
“Do you still hate yourself?” Sam asked, reaching for his hand.
“Some days.” He wrapped his hand around hers, warm and strong. “Other days aren’t so bad.”
“Your mother loves you, Mac. I heard it in her voice.”
“I know.” He pressed his lips together again, and she could see he was fighting back more tears.
Sam squeezed his hand. “You’re a good person.”
“I try.”
“You’re worth loving. You have to believe that.”
“I’m trying.”
She leaned her head on his shoulder. After a few minutes she said, “Mac?”
“Yes?”
“I’m making you call her next Sunday.”
Sam’s phone rang again—her real phone this time. “This is Agent Rose speaking.”
“Agent Rose, this is Ivy. I think I found a lead on the Nealie Rho case,” Ivy said. “Can you meet me at your office?”
Sam’s eyes widened. “I’ll be there in twenty minutes.”
Ivy paced the carpeted floor outside the bureau office as she waited for Agent Rose to arrive. She’d fallen asleep at her desk at home only to rush to the office at first light to double-check everything. There were certain things that weren’t done, and digging into the history of state-raised juveniles was one of them. Her gut twisted in guilt.
Footfalls echoed in the stairwell. Light, even steps with the distinct click of high-heeled shoes. Ivy turned in anticipation as Agent Rose opened the door.
“Officer Clemens, sorry to keep you waiting.” Rose passed her hand over the scanlock and opened the door. “Let’s use my office.”
“I am so sorry to drag you out on your weekend,” Ivy said preemptively.
Rose’s face was emotionless. “It’s not a problem.” The flat tone said otherwise, but Ivy couldn’t guess what part of this mess made her angriest.
“Last night I was reading through the police nonemergency-line phone logs, trying to find a phone number for Nealie.”
“And you had luck?” Rose asked as she unlocked her office door and sat down behind her desk. The office was spartan, decorated with simple pencil sketches of buildings around the district and a desk that was twin to the one in the front office. There was no hint of Agent Rose’s personality here. Nothing personal. A reminder that even bureau agents were replaceable.
Like shadows . . .
Ivy hastily sat down. �
�I found some anomalies.” She pulled the highlighted papers from her bag and put them on the desk, facing Rose. “At first I didn’t think there was anything, but then I noticed a repeat of the numbers across all columns. Not the same times or the same phone number, but there’s a pattern.”
Rose shuffled the papers, scanning the columns with a small frown. “This looks like a scrambler pattern.”
“I think it is.” Ivy took a deep breath and held it.
“I’ve never seen these outside bureau training.” Rose’s eyebrows went up in surprise. “Good job.”
“Thank you.” Ivy blushed. “Once I realized there was a scrambler in use, I did a little more digging. Once I had a large enough sample set, I was able to find the scrambled phone number.”
Rose looked at her. “That can’t be easy math to do.”
“I’m really good with numbers and patterns.”
“So what did you find?”
She took a thin datpad out of her bag and passed it to Agent Rose. “This is the file for one Jamie Rex Nelson-Gardner. He was raised in the foster-care system after his mother’s death.”
“Gardner?” Agent Rose fixed on the name like a hound dog, just as she had. “Like Sheriff Gardner? Any relation?”
“Jamie was his son,” Ivy said. “I had to log in at the police station this morning to double-check, but he is. The sheriff divorced his wife before she died and refused to take custody of Jamie.”
“Was it an accidental death?”
“The mother’s? Yes, there was a full investigation.”
Agent Rose rocked back in her chair, eyes staring at the wall as her thoughts wandered. To Ivy, she looked like an all-seeing empress on her throne. Rose steepled her fingers. “Do we know why the sheriff refused to take custody of his son?” she asked in a slow, cautious voice as if she were sneaking up on an idea.
“There’s no official reason given . . .”
“But you suspect something. Did Gardner deny paternity?”
“No”—Ivy smiled—“but you’re right. There was an article about the accident, and that made me dig into the divorce files. Those are in the county record and not nearly as secure as Jamie’s—or the sheriff’s—personal files. There’s a transcript of the divorce proceedings, and several times Sheriff Gardner argues with his wife that she should put Jamie into a home. He was diagnosed as neurologically atypical at age three.”
