by Steven James
“So, how’s your speech coming along for graduation?”
“Good,” she lied.
“Good.”
“It’s not, I mean, you know, it’s not that big of a deal.”
“From what I hear you’d be valedictorian, if you’d come at the beginning of the year.”
He was so, so different from most of the guys who showed any interest in her. He seemed to actually value intelligence, rather than just, well, wanting to get into a girl’s pants.
“I don’t know. Maybe.”
She found herself lowering her gaze as if her shoes were suddenly the most interesting thing in the universe.
“If you need to practice it, the speech, I mean maybe, um . . . Well, I could listen to it.”
What?!
“Um . . .”
Do not do this! You’re on your way to tell Thacker that you’re not gonna write the stupid thing anyway!
Her hesitancy to agree seemed to cause Aiden to backpedal. “Not that you need someone to—”
“No, I mean, that’d be great.”
“Yeah?”
Tessa, shut up!
“Yeah.” She saw the school’s public safety officer walking her way.
“So you have my number?”
Seeing the cop distracted her. “What?”
“My number. So you can text me, you know. To get together.”
“Oh, right. Yeah. Um, no, I don’t.”
The officer was just down the hall and had obviously singled her out, because he made eye contact and then angled through the crowd directly toward her. The kids between them started to filter back into their classrooms.
Aiden pulled out his phone. “What’s your number? I’ll text you, then you’ll have mine.”
She told him, barely getting out the words. He tapped at the buttons of his phone and then she saw his number come up on hers.
He wants to see you, at least. That’s something. That’s a start.
Over the years she’d had a few run-ins with the police and she definitely did not want to have the public safety officer start talking to her with Aiden here. “Hey, I gotta go. Thanks. So, I’ll text you.”
He looked a little confused by her sudden urgency to leave. “Sure.”
Then another thought: Patrick wanted you to go to the office. Something’s going on. Something’s up.
She hurried down the hallway, figuring she’d double back again after Aiden had left for class.
She made it around the corner and, when she glanced back, saw the school cop rounding it right behind her.
“Miss Ellis.”
“Is it Agent Jiang? Did something happen?”
“No.” He looked confused. “Are you alright?”
“Sure. Of course. What’s going on?”
“Your father wanted me to check on you.”
“Why?”
“Don’t worry, it’s just as a precaution.”
She knew what that phrase meant. It was Patrick’s way of saying he was worried about someone.
“Is it Basque?”
“All I know is that I was asked to stay close until he could meet up with you after school.”
“Oh.”
Fortunately, the halls were almost completely empty of students now. “I’ll only remain near your room,” he said. “Don’t worry, I’ll keep my distance. I won’t embarrass you or anything.”
“Wonderful.” Just what she needed, a cop tagging along behind her for the rest of the day. “How thoughtful.”
The tardy bell rang and she shook her head. “Listen, okay, whatever.”
And instead of aiming for the assistant principal’s office to bail on the speech, she went to her study-hour classroom.
Thinking about Aiden. About having his number.
And about the speech that she was now going to have to give.
And about the fact that Patrick was concerned enough about her to send a cop to watch her while she was still at school.
She wasn’t stupid. Basque must have done something or Patrick wouldn’t have taken a step like this.
Maybe her dad was closing in on him.
Or maybe Basque was branching out.
34
I got a call from the office at Tessa’s school telling me she was fine.
Good.
As I was pocketing my phone, the receptionist motioned toward Director Wellington’s office. “She’s ready.”
“Thanks.”
I tossed my coffee cup in the trash can in the corner. I’d finished it outside but had to carry it in here, since there were no garbage cans on the block encircling the Hoover Building. It would just be too easy to drop an explosive device in one and walk away. So, after 9/11 they were all removed. A little piece of trivia not too many people know.
I gave the office door a small knock and received a prompt reply from Margaret: “Come in.”
Entering, I found everything just as I remembered it. The books on the bookshelf were arranged according to the Dewey decimal system. Her desk contained two photos: one of her dog, a purebred golden retriever named Lewis, another of a family with two children standing next to a merry-go-round. The clothing suggested it was taken maybe thirty or thirty-five years ago.
Beside the pictures lay her laptop computer, an in-box with one sheet of paper in it, a matching pencil holder that held four pens, one highlighter, one black Sharpie, and five pencils, tip up so that she could evaluate how sharp each one was before using it.
Her Italian leather briefcase leaned against the side of the desk.
She was standing beside the window when I entered. Mid-forties, tightly clipped dun-colored hair, a professional pantsuit, narrow but intelligent and attentive eyes.
“Agent Bowers.”
“Director Wellington.”
I prepared myself for her to berate me, write me up, or suspend me for entering the treatment plant before SWAT was able to go in, but she didn’t bring any of that up yet. She didn’t ask about the Basque case either, but inquired about Lien-hua’s condition. I told her she was recovering. “She really appreciated the flowers you sent.”
“The prognosis?”
“It looks like they’re taking her out of ICU today and they’re hoping to cast her leg tomorrow. She’s already planning on going home Wednesday morning.”
A dubious look. “Even after a stab wound to the chest?”
“She’s a rather resilient woman. As she put it, she’s ‘a good recoverer.’”
A small nod, then she gestured toward the chair facing her desk. I took a seat. She positioned herself in the office chair behind her desk and after having me give her a quick update on the team’s search for Basque, she got right to the point. “This concerns my brother.”
In all the time I’d known Margaret, she’d never mentioned that she had a brother. In fact, now that I thought about it, I couldn’t think of a time when she’d ever mentioned anyone from her family.
“What is it?”
“Corey took his own life.” Before I could respond, she went on, trying to keep her voice even. “Decomposition tells us it happened sometime late last week. He didn’t show up for work on Thursday. His body was only found this morning.”
The words stunned me. “Margaret, I’m so sorry.”
She gave me a small, perfunctory nod of acknowledgment. “Thank you.” I could tell she was doing her best to remain detached, objective, professional, but it wasn’t working. Honestly, that made it even harder to hear her news. “He stabbed himself, so it seems, in the abdomen. Bled out on the floor of his living room.”
“I don’t know what to say.” I almost asked her how she was doing, but I could already tell by the look on her face.
“There’s very little to say.”
It surprised me that she was bringing
any of this up to me, but I realized almost immediately that there must be a professional reason rather than just a personal one. “You said ‘so it seems.’ Were there any unusual circumstances surrounding his death?”
It took her a moment to reply, and when she did, she didn’t address my question. “My brother is eight years younger than I am. When I was a freshman in high school our mother overdosed and died. We’re not sure if it was intentional or not. She was an alcoholic. You see, depression runs in our family. So, my brother—Corey—he takes medication for it; has been since he was in college. We aren’t as close as . . . well, as we could be, but . . . Well, frankly, we aren’t very close at all.”
“So you think it was the depression, perhaps? That’s what led him to do it?”
“I’m looking into the possibility that his medication might influence people who take it to have suicidal thoughts. You’ve seen ads on television warning about that sort of thing? Yes?”
“Where they list all the potential side effects of the drugs.”
“That’s right.”
“Did he ever attempt suicide before?”
“Not that I know of.” She rose and walked toward the window where I’d found her when I first came in. “As I’m sure you’re aware, stabbing yourself in the abdomen is a more common way of committing suicide in certain Asian countries than it is in North America. It’s possible, of course, that Corey took his own life, but the method he chose is so culturally atypical that I would like to have someone with more experience in homicide investigations than the local authorities take a look at the police reports. That’s why I called you in.”
“What do we know about the scene?”
“The knife he used was from a matching set in his kitchen. I asked the Atlanta Police Department to look for prints there, as well as on the doorknobs, the light switches, the usual.”
“Anything?”
She shook her head. “Nothing so far, and there was no sign of forced entry. He’s a large man and would have been difficult to overpower. There was no sign of a struggle.”
I processed that. “What did Corey do for a living? As far as you’re aware, was he involved in anything illegal? Anyone out there who might want to harm him?”
“He works for a small law firm, lives alone, no children, no spouse, no criminal record.” She kept referring to him in the present tense, something so many family members do subconsciously in the days after they lose someone close. It was hard hearing it coming from Margaret. Not surprisingly, it didn’t appear that she was aware she was doing it.
“But,” she said, “as I mentioned earlier, we aren’t very close. I have no idea if he’s involved in anything illegal or if he’s made any enemies.”
“What exactly would you like me to look for?”
“Review the autopsy reports, the police report, find out . . . well, whatever you can.”
I didn’t want this to come out wrong, but the answer might help me if I was really going to do this. “Of course, I’ll do whatever I can, but—”
“But you’re wondering why I’m asking you to do this. Why you.” She left off saying anything about our working relationship in the past.
“Yes.”
“Especially with Lien-hua in the hospital and with the Basque case landing in your lap.”
“Yes.”
“Quite simply, because I don’t know anyone who’s better at noticing when things don’t fit together than you are. I can have the New Agents Unit Chief assign another instructor to take over your classes for the rest of the week. But I’ll leave this up to you.”
Everything about this conversation was starkly different from our normal, somewhat forced exchanges, and that told me how important all of this was for her.
“Yes. I’d like to help. I’ll do it.”
A nod. “I’ll have the Atlanta PD send you their files.”
In this line of work you never really have the luxury of working only one case at a time. It’s almost like having three or four pots on the stove. You have the burners turned on higher in the front and the water in those pots is at a high boil, but there are always other pots there, simmering in the background.
As you wrap up one case and get moving on others, it’s as if you’re shifting the pots around, sliding off the ones in front and bringing up others from the back to take their place.
And right now it looked like the two cases that were on the front burners were the investigation into locating Basque and unraveling what had happened to Corey Wellington.
I took Margaret up on her offer to have someone else teach my classes for the next couple days. She gave me her private cell number, thanked me, then abruptly told me she needed to go. She shook my hand and insisted that I have Lien-hua contact her personally if she needed anything.
This was a different Margaret from the one I knew, and I hoped the change hadn’t come just as a result of Corey’s death. To me, that seemed too tragic and sad.
It was close to three o’clock, and, still wanting to keep a close eye on Tessa, I headed to the school to meet up with her. The whole way I tried to wrap my mind around what Margaret had told me.
Was it really possible that the brother of the FBI’s Director had been murdered in a way made to look like a suicide? Or was it just the medication or depression?
She’d said that she had entrusted me with this because I was better than anyone else she knew at noticing when things didn’t fit together.
Well, let’s see if I could live up to her expectations.
35
“It’s because of Basque, right?” Tessa asked me as we walked toward her car. “That’s what all this is about—the school cop showing up? That’s why you want to drive me home?”
It seemed like the time to be candid and straightforward. “Basque sent me a message.”
“A threat against me?”
“An apparent threat against the people I know. Those under my care. Until we catch him I’m going to do whatever’s necessary to protect you.”
A look that I wasn’t able to read crossed her face. “You know what? That annoys me and also makes me feel safe at the same time.”
“I appreciate that.” We crossed the street. “So did you tell Thacker you aren’t going to do that graduation speech?”
She was quiet. “Actually, let’s not go there right now.”
She gestured toward her car, the black VW Beetle she’d bought—or at least, I’d helped her buy—when we moved to DC in January. “I’ve got something I want to do for Lien-hua. I guess we could take two cars, but it’ll save gas if we left one here, picked it up later.”
“What is it you want to do?”
“Something to tide us over until supper. I’ll explain on the way.”
We took my car. For some reason I’m just not into being seen in a Beetle.
++
All afternoon Richard had been thinking about the fable he’d sent to Patrick. In the story, the snake continues to attack the farmer’s sheep.
And in just over twenty-four hours, he was planning to do precisely that.
As he considered everything, he came up with a number of ways to gain a child’s trust, but he had definitely ruled one out.
Dressing up as a clown.
No, he couldn’t figure out why anyone hoping to work with children would do that.
When he was doing research on John Gacy, the question had really intrigued him.
John Wayne Gacy was the serial killer from Chicago back in the 1970s who would dress up like a clown and volunteer at hospitals and perform at children’s birthday parties.
In fact, when Basque was reading about Gacy, he stumbled across an article in a 2008 Nursing Standard magazine in which Dr. Penny Curtis, a researcher at the University of Sheffield, had found that children were universally frightened of clowns.
; Not some, not most, but all of the children in her study were scared of clowns. Stephen King capitalized on the fear people have of clowns in his book It.
So, if you wanted to gain the trust of a child, becoming a clown was not exactly the ideal way to go about it.
And although clowns were frightening to children, one of the things they do actually did serve to engender trust.
And in this case, that’s what Richard was interested in.
• • •
He parked, dropped a few coins in the meter, and crossed the sidewalk toward one of the last locally owned magic shops anywhere along the East Coast.
For a number of years he’d been quite close to a federal agent who, unfortunately, was no longer among the breathing, and Richard was well aware of how sophisticated the Bureau’s online tracking capabilities are.
He’d often thought that if people knew how much information the government collects on their online activity, they would probably never surf the Web again. Certainly never to child porn sites.
So Richard made no Internet orders.
Used no credit cards or checks.
Only cash transactions at small businesses that didn’t use video surveillance.
He entered Ryan’s Magic Emporium.
“Can I help you?” The stringy-haired twenty-something kid behind the counter looked bored, but was expertly vanishing and reappearing a coin in his hand even as he stared at Richard.
“Yes, I’m looking to learn a few tricks.” He swept his arm around the store. “I used to do this—sleight of hand, that sort of thing—when I was young. I always wanted to be a magician.”
“Didn’t we all.” The young man sighed lightly, held the quarter out, closed his fist, blew on it, and when he opened his hand the quarter was gone.
“Nice,” Richard said.
The guy closed his fist again, turned his hand over, and, with a flourish, flattened his palm against the counter. When he lifted his hand, five nickels were lying there.
“Very nice.”
“Thanks.” The kid yawned. “So, what? You want to do walk-around gigs? Birthday parties? Not too many people do the big effects anymore, the escapes, you know. Except for that guy.” He gestured toward a poster of a magician stepping through a wall with four words stamped across the bottom of the poster: THE JEVIN BANKS EXPERIENCE.
