by Jeff Miller
“It did.”
“How did he screen?”
“Totally normal.”
“Jesus, you don’t think he really . . .”
Lucy shook her head. “Of course not. It’s like you said.”
“Because if he really did, then we should call the police.”
“I think it’s just a hoax.”
“Yeah.” Hank paused a minute. “If he were killing people, we’d be reading about it, right? Jesus. What’s wrong with people?”
She shrugged again.
“You get his number?”
“Blocked it.”
“Good.”
CHAPTER 8
“Focus on that.”
“On what?”
“Losing him.”
“I can’t talk about that.”
“That’s why you’re here. To talk about the things you can’t talk about.”
“No. I’m here because my boss said I had to attend therapy.”
“Well, I don’t have a boss. And I’m here to get you to talk about things that matter. For forty minutes, though, we’ve been talking about nothing.”
“You haven’t asked me about anything I want to talk about.”
“What do you want to talk about?”
“I don’t want to talk about anything.”
“Have you always been like this?”
“I don’t know.”
“Have you confided in people in the past?”
“Yes.”
“Who?”
“My father.” Dagny paused. “Before he was killed.”
“When was he killed?”
“I was twelve.”
“Can we talk about that?”
“No.”
“Who else have you confided in?”
“My friend Julia.”
“Tell me about her.”
“We went to law school together.”
“Are you still friends?”
“Yes. She’s my best friend.” She paused. “She’s my only friend.”
“Do you still confide in her?”
“She has a husband and kids. She doesn’t need to hear about my petty problems. She’s got enough going on.”
“Has she told you that?”
“What?”
“Not to confide in her? That she’s got too much going on?”
“No. But it’s obvious. I barely see her anymore.”
“How do you feel about that?”
“There’s nothing to feel. It’s just the way it is.”
“Just because you can’t change something doesn’t mean you don’t feel something about it.”
“What do you want me to say? That it bothers me?”
“Does it?”
“I’m happy for her. She’s got a great husband and great kids. It’s what people want.”
“Is it what you want?”
“I don’t know what I want.”
“Are you a happy person?”
“That’s a ridiculous question.”
“It’s probably the most important question someone can ask herself.”
“It’s not the most important thing to me.”
“What’s more important than happiness?”
“Competence. Morality. Ethics. Knowledge.”
“You’d rather be knowledgeable than happy?”
“I would turn down the soma in Brave New World.”
“That’s not what I’m asking.”
Dagny sighed. “I like my job.”
“It makes you happy?”
“It leaves me content.”
“Or does it take your mind off other things?”
“Those aren’t mutually exclusive.”
“Your job is a roller coaster.”
“Every job has ups and downs.”
“No. I mean, when you get on a roller coaster, it’s hard to think about anything besides the ride. Try it sometime. Try thinking about taxes or your relationships or your mother issues—”
“I didn’t say I have mother issues.”
“Or anything. You can’t do it. Not while you’re on the ride. Because the ride is all distraction.”
“My job is a distraction?”
“Absolutely.”
“It’s my life. It’s who I am.”
“Exactly.”
Dagny paused. “There’s nothing wrong with that.”
“A stranger comes up to you and asks what you are. You’d say an FBI agent.”
“Yes.”
“Not a daughter or a lover, or a woman or—”
“I’m an FBI agent.”
“What were you before that?”
“I was a lawyer.”
“And that was your life, too, right?”
“I thought therapy was supposed to make me feel better about life, not worse.”
“You thought therapy is supposed to make you happy?”
“Yes.”
“And that’s why you’re here?”
“Yes.”
“Okay, then.” Dr. Childs leaned back in her chair and smiled. “We’ve established that you’d like to be happy. That’s progress.” She jotted her first notes on the pad.
Dagny was sad to lose the point. “How did you know I have mother issues?”
“You said you confided in your father. If you didn’t confide in your mother, it means you have mother issues. Plus . . .”
“Plus what?”
“Every woman has mother issues.” Childs wrote another note. Dagny tried to read it, but the doctor tilted the pad so she couldn’t. “Can we go back to the Bubble Gum Thief?”
“It’s ridiculous to call him the Bubble Gum Thief, considering what he did. And there’s nothing to say. Everyone knows everything. You’ve read the papers, right?”
“Yes.”
“You have a TV?”
“Yes.”
“Then you know everything there is to know.”
“I’m not interested in the prurient details, Dagny. I’m interested in how you feel about it.”
“How would you have felt? If it had been you?”
The question hung in the air for a moment. “I would be burdened by sadness, until I let someone help me.”
That statement hung a moment, too.
“Do you know what I hate more than talking about myself?” Dagny asked.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“Why? What’s wrong with talking about yourself?”
“People talk about themselves because they’re weak.”
“That’s preposterous.”
“When I’m questioning a suspect and he’s talking about himself, I know that he’ll break. When a colleague goes on and on about his personal life, I know he’ll flame out. When—”
“Did you hear about the engineers who were building a bridge?”
“What?”
“They refused to talk about it because they worried it would make it weak.”
“That makes no sense.”
“Exactly.”
Dagny shook her head. “I’m not talking about causation. Talking about oneself doesn’t make one weak; it’s a sign of an underlying weakness.” She paused. “You know what they talked a lot about when they built it? The Titanic.”
“You want to talk about the Titanic? When a ship hits an iceberg and you salvage the ship, you don’t just send it back out to sea. You fix the ship. Don’t you want to fix the ship before you head out to sea?” Childs looked up at the clock. “Ding, ding, ding. Saved by the bell, Dagny Gray.”
“I’m not the Titanic.”
“You aim at icebergs.”
CHAPTER 9
Hattie’s Diner was the kind of place that had to be a front for something else. Waitresses outnumbered customers every time Diego had been there. Fresh cakes and pies revolved in a glass box next to the register, and there never was a piece missing. Maybe it had been popular before New Bilford and the chain restaurants came to town, but no one went there now. Diego had picked it be
cause it was a good place to meet someone and not be seen. But Hattie’s was crowded today.
“Can I help you?” the hostess asked.
Diego scanned the crowd. “I’m supposed to meet a police officer.”
“Around the corner,” she said.
Officer John Beamer was sitting in the far booth, nursing a cup of coffee. He stood when he saw Diego. “Father, I must apologize for my behavior the other day. I said all sorts of words I shouldn’t say in front of a priest.”
“Please, I’ve heard worse in the rectory. I’m just happy you’re meeting with me.” A waitress asked him for an order. “Coffee, please. Black.”
“I’m a Catholic boy, and it wasn’t right. Sometimes I get agitated.”
“That’s why I wanted to meet you.”
Beamer laughed. “Because of my temper?”
“Because you’re not afraid of Don Marigold.”
“Yeah, well . . .” He shrugged. “My great-great-great-grandparents moved here from Ireland in the 1860s. Marigold can’t send me back.”
“I wouldn’t put it past him to try.” The waitress set Diego’s coffee before him. He took a sip. It was terrible. Typical Hattie’s. “I’m trying to solve a mystery, and I need some help.”
“Okay.”
“There are at least a dozen men or more who disappeared in the last week and a half. Vanished, without a word to their families. Without a trace.”
“Then we should go to the station and make a report. Open an investigation.”
“These men are undocumented. And so are their families.”
Beamer set down his coffee. “That’s a problem.”
“I don’t want to expose any of them to deportation.” Diego grabbed a packet of crackers from a basket at the end of the table. “You strike me as a man who might care more about fighting crime than immigration politics?”
“Yes, but . . .” Beamer hesitated. “If you are asking me to protect folks from deportation—”
“It’s not a fair choice for the families. To be forced to leave this country to get justice.”
“It’s not that simple, Father. First, I may not be a fire-breather like Marigold, but that doesn’t mean these people didn’t break the law. Like it or not, they did.”
“If they did, it’s minor compared to what might have happened here.”
“We don’t know what happened here. They could have gone home. They could have moved to another town looking for work. With the way things are going around here, you couldn’t blame them if they did.”
“Maybe a man or two might leave without saying anything. But a dozen men, with close friends and families, and none of them says a word? No. Something terrible has happened here.”
Beamer sighed. “Would the families talk to us?”
“I don’t know. They’d be scared, I’m sure. If they had assurances, credible assurances . . .” Diego noticed Beamer’s furrowed brow. “No. Please. Don’t do that. You’re going to say no.”
Beamer grabbed his own cracker packet and tore the cellophane. “If it were up to me, I’d open an investigation. I’d provide every assurance I could. I’d put five men on the job if they had the time. But from a practical perspective, Marigold would find out about it, and he’d start harassing these families. And the reality is, it’s not up to me. Any investigation like this would have to be approved by the chief, and in this climate, that’s not going to happen.” He popped a cracker in his mouth.
“Then he’s as bad as Sheriff Don,” Diego said.
“No, he’s not. He’s a man with a wife and four kids, and a job that could disappear if the mayor gets too many calls about him coddling criminals. He doesn’t hassle the immigrant population in Bilford, but he’s not going to abet them, either.”
“They are human beings.”
“I’m not telling you how it should be. I’m telling you how it is.”
“Isn’t the force required to investigate murder, even of a noncitizen?”
“If there were bodies, then we’d have a murder to investigate. You’ve got, at best, the disappearance of people who were undocumented to begin with.”
“These people are real.”
“These people don’t exist without a body.”
“They do.”
“In the eyes of God. I’m talking about the eyes of the law.”
“Then tell me what to do. I have a dozen families in anguish.”
“I’m not used to a man of the cloth looking to me for guidance.”
“I’m out of my element. Is there anywhere I could go for help? Somewhere that isn’t political. The FBI, maybe?”
“The FBI is as political as anyone else. And, as a matter of policy, they can’t promise immunity from deportation. There are cases where they worked with informants for years, folks who put their lives in danger for the Bureau, and when the investigation was over, ICE started removal proceedings, and the Bureau didn’t lift a finger.”
“Then it’s hopeless. You can’t help me, and you can’t point me to anyone who can.” Diego was still holding his packet of crackers; he’d squeezed them to a fine powder.
“You could try a private investigator. I could get you the name of a guy I trust.”
“How much would that cost?”
“Eighty bucks an hour, plus expenses. Since you’re a priest, maybe less.”
“And you think that he might be effective?”
“No. Not really.” Beamer ate the second cracker from his packet. “Hmmm . . .”
Diego saw a spark of an idea in the officer’s eyes. “What? What, hmmm?”
“I don’t know. It’s probably a dead end.”
“I’ll take any end I can get.”
“My uncle’s with Cincinnati PD, and he worked on a case with an FBI agent. He thought the world of her, and I think she’s got a special deal where she works off the grid. Not a rule follower, not a politician. You ought to contact her.”
“What’s her name?”
“Dagny Gray.”
CHAPTER 10
Dagny didn’t know her neighbors. She didn’t know their jobs or even their names. She didn’t know their hobbies unless they did them in their front yards. But she knew their cars and the cars of their friends.
The red Corvette in front of her house did not belong to her neighbors or their friends.
Silencing Aimee Mann, she tugged the earbuds from her ears and coiled them around her iPhone. Using her forearm, she wiped the sweat from her forehead. Even though it was an autumn morning, it was hotter than it had been in weeks. She was dressed in running shorts and a running bra. The man sitting on her steps was covered in black, save for the white tab peeking out of the front of his collar.
He stood. “You run?”
“Every day.” She walked toward him.
“How far?”
“Eighteen today. Sometimes less. Sometimes more.” He had a small, earnest smile, and she was trying to diagnose it. “Can I help you?”
“My name is Diego Vega.”
“And you’re a priest?”
“I am.”
She’d never spoken to one. “So I call you, what? Father Vega?”
He laughed. “You’re not Catholic.”
“Jewish. Ish.”
“Call me Diego.” He extended his hand.
“I’m sweaty.”
“I don’t mind.”
She grabbed his hand and shook it. “I’m Dagny Gray, which I assume you know, since you’re sitting on my steps.”
“Does it hurt to run with that?”
“With what?” She realized he was looking at the Glock 27 in her jogging holster. “It’s like a wedding ring. After a while, you don’t notice it. That’s what they say, anyway.”
“I wouldn’t know, obviously.”
She wasn’t sure if he was talking about marriage or the gun. “I don’t know a lot about the Catholic Church, but I’ve never heard of priests proselytizing door-to-door.” There was a lot of handsome being wasted on
this priest.
“I’m not here to save your soul. I’m here to ask for help.”
Dagny nodded. “Come inside.” She unlocked the front door and led him into the house. There was a forged rendition of Jan van Eyck’s Portrait of Giovanni Arnolfini and His Wife hanging in the entry. He paused in front of it.
“I know this one,” he said. “I like it.”
She didn’t feel like talking about the painting—it only led to sadness. “Can I get you something to drink?”
He followed her into the kitchen. “Water?”
She grabbed a glass from the cupboard, filled it, and handed it to him.
“Thank you.”
She uncoiled the wires from her iPhone, loaded the web browser, tapped the search bar, and pressed the microphone button. “Who is Father Diego Vega?” she said.
The first link returned a page from the website of the Archdiocese of Cincinnati. A picture showed Diego playing basketball with Dayton teens. The next link gave his church bio. A third went to his Facebook page.
“Okay, you check out.”
“So, that’s what passes for an FBI background check these days?”
“Google’s got a better database than we do,” Dagny said. “How can I help you?”
The situation he described over the next half hour was bleak. Immigrants missing in a county that didn’t want them. Indifferent law enforcement. Families afraid of deportation. He told her about his conversations with Ty Harborman and Marcia Bell, which only reinforced the conclusion that this world would be hard to crack. His encounter with the sheriff sounded like a half-dozen civil rights violations.
It seemed all kinds of awful and too good to be true. They were desperate to find a case, and this one somehow found her. “Why did you come to me?” she asked.
“I spoke to a city police officer, and he was inclined to help, but without actual bodies, he didn’t think he could get an investigation approved. When I asked him about the FBI, he suggested that the Bureau couldn’t undertake an investigation without putting the families at risk for deportation. Then he mentioned his uncle was an officer in Cincinnati, and that he’d worked with you on a case.”
“Beamer?” She smiled.
“He said you were outside the traditional hierarchy of the Bureau. That your team had a degree of independence, and that this might permit you to make assurances to people.”
