Goldsmith saw the door handle to the examination room turn and knew exactly what was coming next. A detail officer held open the door. Camilla stepped inside. She was wearing a navy blue Stansbury cloak over her shoulders cinched around her neck by a golden clasp in the shape of the school’s emblem. It billowed around her long legs, coming to an end just above her knee socks. Her hair was pulled back as usual, but she was not wearing her glasses. For the first time, Goldsmith realized that they made her eyes softer. She walked up to Harvey and stopped about one foot away. At five feet and eleven inches, she easily towered over him. Camilla 2.0 looked at Harvey with her hard, icy eyes, affixing him with her gaze. It occurred to Goldsmith that Homer would have described it as “the terrible gaze of gray-eyed Athena.”
“I … I still have to use the bathroom,” Harvey said. “I asked out loud but nobody was here to—”
“That is not an option,” said Camilla. Goldsmith noticed that her stage voice was a shade lower than normal. Her strategy was to reduce Harvey to a primal state, the kind where all of his worldly needs were reduced to basic impulses: he was either too hot or too cold, he needed to move his bowels but was not allowed, he could not sit down and make himself comfortable, he could not doze off, he could not eat, no one answered the questions he asked, even though he must have known he was under careful observation. The situation had been orchestrated so that there was only one person in his world, the valedictorian, and the only thing he could do to alleviate the discomfort of that world was to answer the questions she posed. She had done a splendid job of setting Harvey up, Goldsmith concluded. How long had she dreamed about this moment? How long had she waited to assume the responsibilities of being number one? Twelve years? Her whole life?
“As an employee of this institution,” she began. “You were entrusted with the well-being of the specimens.”
“I … I know.”
“So why did you allow Mr. Cooley to leave campus?”
“He was … he was gonna pick up clean piss for me and him and a bunch of other specimens.” Harvey paused, looking at her in unabashed fear. “Can I go now?” A large cloud of his frantic breath rose to the ceiling.
“Why did you need clean urine samples?”
“Cooley gave me meds and I had to pass the test, too.”
“Jesus Christ,” muttered Gibson in the observation room. “Med-addicted registration and reception guard allows dopazone-addicted specimen to travel off campus grounds…”
“And for the record,” continued Camilla, “this was not the first time you allowed him to leave. There were also incidents on November 15 and December 9, 2035, and January 21 and February 17, 2036, leading up to the final transgression yesterday, on March 29, 2036.”
“I was … just trying to help the kid out. What does it matter to you if—”
“Those dates correspond exactly with the unsolved deaths of five Stansbury graduates. The security detail and San Angeles Police Department have found samples of Mr. Cooley’s hair, fingerprints, skin fragments, or DNA at each of the crime scenes.”
Harvey’s lips started to tremble. His eyes and his face began to twitch: the tears streamed down and tickled his skin, but he was too scared to use his hands to brush them away. “I don’t know anything about that!” he sobbed.
“You know enough to testify in a court of law.”
“No! I said I don’t know anything about that! I’m not going to…” Harvey was teetering on the brink of hysteria. His body was already close to shock from the freezing water and air. His mind was about to fall apart. Careful, Camilla, thought Goldsmith. Soften up or you’re going to lose him. The valedictorian’s manual stated that the subject must always remain lucid and hence, useful.
“Yes, you are,” said Camilla, stone-faced. “William Alvarez. Monica Miller. Alberto Munoz Santana. Daniel Ford Smith. And last night, Jonathan Clark Riley…”
Theory confirmed, thought Goldsmith. The red X’s on the yearbook pages signified dead alumni and Stella Saltzman’s unmarked photo indicated that she was still alive. But where? Through the one-way, he saw Harvey breaking down. His knees were buckling. You’re losing him, Camilla, you’re …
She unleashed a wicked backhand slap that struck Harvey square in the mouth. The smacking blow of skin against skin echoed like a firecracker around the examination room and through the one-way glass.
Harvey wobbled slightly and then righted himself. He immediately stopped blubbering and stared at her like a hurt child. Goldsmith didn’t move. He just kept his eyes on the two of them, this chubby guy in his forties cowering in front of a calm, collected eighteen-year-old girl. The observation room had gone pin-drop silent. Not even the headmaster dared to take a breath. Goldsmith glanced around Camilla’s examination room. There was no electroshock machine around. He understood: she was avoiding the use of real physical pain, because any valedictorian worth his or her salt knew it was a shortcut that produced answers of questionable reliability. Subjects would say what they thought the valedictorian wanted to hear just to make the pain stop. And the top specimen in Stansbury should be able to use his or her mind to pry the information loose.
This was Camilla’s debut. She didn’t want anyone to think she was lazy. She knew the threat of pain was worse than pain itself. And the signal she sent Harvey was that the blow he just received was not pain. It was a message that she was willing to do worse, that she had no problem crossing that line. She snapped him back into reality, derailed that train to a nervous breakdown. Now, like Goldsmith and the rest of the observation room, Harvey was riveted on her and only her.
“Blood on your hands, Harvey. You are going to testify.”
“I don’t—”
“Listen to me.” She began to circle him slowly and methodically. Her heels clicked against the concrete floor. She stopped behind him and leaned in, practically whispering in his ear. “The word torture is derived from the Latin verb torquere, meaning ‘to twist.’ The dictionary defines it as ’the inflicting of severe pain to force information, confession, consent, et cetera.’
“I don’t administer severe pain,” she continued. “It’s not civilized. I believe in moderation. Do you know how I define moderate physical pressure?” She walked around to Harvey’s front side, standing face to face with him. He shook his head. “Severe pain that doesn’t leave scars,” she said.
“I’ll … I’ll do it.”
In the observation room, Captain Gibson and Officers Jamison and Jackson whooped and cheered, exchanging backslaps. Someone turned down the volume on the speaker broadcasting from the examination room. Goldsmith watched Camilla pull up a chair in front of Harvey. She sat down and crossed her legs, for a moment looking like the innocent schoolgirl she was. Or used to be.
Goldsmith considered the new twists. The SAPD’s imminent involvement, the impending Senate committee vote, and the discovery of Cooley’s bodily traces at five different crime scenes made everything tidy. But perhaps too tidy: it still didn’t explain Cooley’s motives, the connection—if any—between the five dead former specimens, or Miss Stella Saltzman’s involvement. Goldsmith had a hard time believing that an eighteen-year-old resourceful and determined enough to murder one person per month for five months straight would put himself at risk by running around San Angeles trying to get clean urine samples for twelve other specimens and one guard, and then, for no apparent reason, kill the man who was providing him with those very samples before he procured them in the first place.
Go back to the yearbook photos. Given Goldsmith’s cursory analysis of the evidence, it seemed that the initial assumption ought to be that the killer had a deadly grudge against Stansbury School, in particular against this group of former specimens. No, strike the group grudge theory: Stella Saltzman’s inclusion ruled out association with the other five. Goldsmith had studied her career closely while she was valedictorian and he remembered the specimens with whom she was friendly. They were overachievers like her, all far cries from unbalanced drug
addicts like Jonathan Clark Riley. So assume the killer—or killers—harbored a deep resentment toward the institution of Stansbury itself. The culprit could be another former specimen, one deeply disgruntled. But this, Goldsmith realized, was practically impossible, because the med cycle didn’t allow for violent psychological impulses of the sort required for the premeditation and murder of other human beings.
Impossible, that was, unless the murderer was a textbook unbalanced specimen who shunned the med cycle almost entirely during his time in the tower. A murderer with a propensity for savage fits of violence, but was savvy and gutsy enough to do something like … convince a weak-willed registration and reception guard to let him out of the tower. Goldsmith looked around at the others in the room. Camilla walked in. The headmaster shook her hand. Everyone rushed around, conferring with each other, flipping through files, typing at computers, but nonetheless sharing the same thought. Mr. William Winston Cooley, serial killer.
Headmaster Latimer looked from Camilla to Goldsmith, a grave, ashen look passing over his face as if his eyes were moving from a beautiful work of art to the still-smoldering ruins of a tragic train wreck. They held each other’s gaze for a moment. “I assume there is a better explanation for your actions in San Angeles than the one with which you provided Captain Gibson,” he said. Goldsmith looked down, suddenly ashamed, feeling Camilla’s eyes on him, too. “That was not a rhetorical statement, Mr. Goldsmith. I know that you would not so egregiously abuse the power this school has given you without good reason. My office doors are open to you. I am expecting a visit before the end of the day, young man.”
“Yes, sir.”
President Lang caught Goldsmith’s eyes and smiled. “Mr. Goldsmith? Let’s take a walk, shall we?” He stood up and followed her to the door, making eye contact with Camilla on the way out. She looked right through him.
“Masterful performance,” someone said to the valedictorian. Goldsmith stopped and whirled around for a moment before remembering that it was not him they were talking to anymore.
* * *
Lang and Goldsmith walked down the long disciplinary level corridor together. Even the harsh lights in these halls flattered her. The way her skin and hair glowed made her seem more like a perfect hologram in the atrium than a real, live human being.
“Don’t worry, I’m not going to upbraid you for your actions this morning,” she said. “Headmaster Latimer is much better than I am at that sort of thing.”
“I deserve it, ma’am.”
“You and I are not so different, Mr. Goldsmith. I’ve seen your work over this past year, both in your progressions and as valedictorian. You place a strong emphasis on getting the job done. As do I. In fact, neither of us would be standing in the favorable positions we are in right now if defying odds and expectations did not come as second nature to us.”
“Thank you, ma’am.”
“I presume you understand what is at stake here,” she said. “The reputations of every single person associated with this school hang in the balance. Mr. Cooley is a tragic story. We’ll never know what inner demons drove him to … murder. No institution is perfect, Stansbury included. But we’re not going to let the mistakes of one specimen taint everything.”
“Can I speak frankly?”
“Certainly.”
“I don’t know about Mr. Cooley. This whole situation might be about something … bigger.”
“That will be sorted out in a court of law on a later date. Right now, time is not on our side. The SAPD will take over the case in the very near future, and soon the Senate Select Committee on Education will be casting its vote on our grant proposal. There is a senator who wants the debate to continue, but he doesn’t have enough support from his party, not to mention the president. Things must and will be neutralized as fast as humanly possible. Having said that,” she stopped and turned to face him. He returned her look. “I know you’ve got no more stomach for the valedictorian’s duties, but—”
“With all due—”
“Right now we need both Miss Moore and yourself on our side. Help us wrap up the Cooley matter today and I’ll turn over your file.”
Goldsmith’s heart began to pound. “My file?” he asked, failing to quell the tremor in his voice.
“The confidential file that contains information sealed by the orphanage when you enrolled here twelve years ago. Information regarding the whereabouts of your mother.”
“She’s … alive?”
President Lang smiled. “Remember what we said last night? Good versus evil? Right versus wrong?” Something inside her blazer beeped. She pulled out her Tabula. “Please excuse me, Mr. Goldsmith. I have a one-thirty lunch appointment.” And with that, she headed for the elevator bank. Goldsmith watched her step into a pod. The doors slid shut, whisking her away.
Goldsmith stood there in the corridor, thinking of what that confidential file might reveal, while trying to suppress those nagging, dangling loose ends of the Cooley-Riley situation. And yet, despite his best efforts, he could not.
18
Murdered alumni, killer specimens, getting chased down city streets, scary Camilla 2.0 smacking around grown men, links to long-lost mothers … it was all speeding past into a blur, a bit too fast even for a young man with a mind as sharp as Goldsmith’s. Feeling two steps behind everyone else was not something to which he was accustomed. He checked his Tabula as the elevator pod whisked him up the tower—12:39 P.M.—and e-mailed the assignments that were due today to the appropriate professors, along with a quick note apologizing for his absence. “On official Stansbury business,” he told them. Yeah, right. But he couldn’t exactly write “Chasing ghosts for clues.” The only way to gain some leverage was to start solving mysteries before everyone else. Fast. The mystery of the hour: what was the connection between the five dead ex-specimens and Miss Stella Saltzman?
The pod reached Level 41 and dinged. The doors slid open. Goldsmith headed for the yearbook office. It was time to chat with good old Mr. Hurley and get an impromptu history lesson.
He knocked on the door. “Come in,” Hurley called out.
Goldsmith entered and smiled. The walls were covered with years and years of black-and-white photos: candid specimen shots, sports teams, Latin clubs, the headmaster addressing the Class of 2028 on their commencement day. He stopped in front of the page proofs for this year’s edition and saw a collage of photos of his own class taken over their twelve years in the tower. There was a shot of Cooley and Bunson snapped sometime back in the third grade, both of them grinning, Cooley reaching around Bunson’s head to give him rabbit ears. There was one of Goldsmith himself, taken when he first arrived at the age of six. His hair was even blonder than it was today and his eyes were wide, eager to get on with this business of taking over the world sooner rather than later. For the first time in his life, he felt old.
“Mr. Goldsmith!” said Hurley as he walked out from his small office. “To what do I owe the honor of a visit from the valedictorian?”
Goldsmith shut the door to the hallway and pulled out a chair for him, nodding for Hurley to take a seat. Goldsmith grabbed another chair for himself and got comfortable. “You’re here on official valedictorian business?” Hurley asked.
“I just have a few questions. About Stansbury history.” Goldsmith jammed his blood-caked hands into his pockets, trying to be discreet.
“Shoot,” he said. “You know that’s my specialty.”
“Names. William Alvarez, Monica Miller, Alberto Munoz Santana, Daniel Ford Smith, and Jonathan Clark Riley.” Goldsmith watched Hurley’s face closely for a reaction. Hurley twitched. The skin below his receding hairline started to glisten with sweat. Hurley whistled and shook his head.
“Déjà vu,” he said.
“What?”
“What’s the matter with that guy? I told him everything I knew, and he—”
“What guy?”
“That newspaper reporter from the outside. Pete? Is that his name?”
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Goldsmith leaned in, getting in Hurley’s face. “He was here? To see you?” Hurley edged away, getting nervous.
“Yeah … He gave me the same exact list of names and I…” Hurley looked down, ashamed. “Things get lonely in here, you know? Just pictures of you specimens to keep me company. Pete’s a nice guy. Didn’t mind chatting … Didn’t think I’d be getting myself into trouble—”
“You’re not in trouble. Just tell me everything you told him.”
“None of the kids you mentioned were friendly with each other except for Smith and Riley. The only thing they had in common was that they were Stansbury’s most-wanted, Class of 2033. Losers and unbalanced specimens, every one of them. Even double med doses couldn’t get them to shape up. You’d be hard-pressed to find a better lineup of kids this school couldn’t help.”
“And?”
“And…” Hurley lowered his voice to a whisper. “And between you and me, I think the Stansbury life just made ’em worse.” Goldsmith nodded. Hurley looked at him, confused. “But didn’t you already know all of that?” he asked.
“No. Why?”
“Because Pete told me you were the one who sent him here in the first place. I wouldn’t have told him anything if—”
Goldsmith’s stomach tightened. “What about Stella Saltzman?” he asked, watching Hurley’s face. The man blinked a few times too many and started to squirm in his seat.
“Pete asked me about her, too. She was 2033’s valedictorian. That’s it.” Hurley’s hands went from his legs to the sides of his chair, gripping the steel hard enough for his knuckles to go white.
“But that’s not it, is it?”
“Aw, hell … I didn’t tell him the rest because he’s not one of us, you know? I guess I’ll tell you, though…”
“Spit it out.”
“Okay, okay. I’ve worked here since Stansbury opened back in 2009, and in that time—twenty-seven years—Miss Stella Saltzman was the only valedictorian who asked to give up her title.”
Prodigy Page 21
