by Jamie Metzl
It’s mid-afternoon, and I’m itching to meet Henderson but know I need to wait.
All I can think to do is drop by the flower show.
I walk through the massive doors of the American Royal arena. The place smells pleasantly of flowers, greens, and manure. It’s a natural, instinctive smell. At some other time I would want to tell the story of what I imagine is really happening here, how the competition feels, what makes the judges tick, the gestalt of the overall event.
Then I think of MaryLee cut up in a box awaiting her burial. Fuck it. I ask the usher to point me to the press room.
The basic principle of public relations is that journalists are lazy. It’s only part true. The fact of the matter is that there’s a lot we don’t give a shit about, and given the choice between learning things in this category from scratch or getting spoon fed by someone we know is using us, we generally prefer the latter.
I identify myself, ask for my packet, and instantly recognize the work of a professional. The press release is basically written so I can practically use the whole thing as my story. I’m not that obvious but see the story in an instant. I tell the flower show press officer, a freckled roly-poly woman probably in her late twenties, that I have a few questions for the organizer and for the best flower arrangement competition winner from last year. She brings them both over in minutes. I tap the record button on my u.D, ask them each a few questions, and am on my way. Bad journalism is frighteningly easy.
I dictate the story into my u.D sitting in my car in the parking lot. Eight hundred words of predictable crap.
I grab a quick bite at Gates Bar-B-Q on my way to Swope Park, lock my doors, and head in. One of the largest urban parks in the country and once the center of a very fashionable part of town, the park itself is actually a beautiful place. Now the city’s energy has moved south and west, and Swope Park at night is dark and scary.
I follow the signs to the picnic area, then the arrows to subsection C. It’s pitch dark and eerily quiet but for the occasional chirps of insects. I turn off the car and wait.
A few minutes past eight, the Ford Energi-F gently rolls up beside me. Maurice cuts the ignition then walks over to my car, opens my door, and lowers himself into my passenger seat. The interior light catches his pinched face.
“Tell me again why you thought MaryLee Stock was pregnant?” he says, slowly and deliberately.
I again lay out the case.
He silently broods as I finish talking.
“Heart arrhythmia?” I say, breaking the silence.
Maurice looks almost startled by my question. “Don’t you think I know that, Rich? What the hell do you think I’m doing here? But let me be clear with you. I’m here to ask you questions. I have no intention of answering any.”
“Yes, sir,” I say, with only a dash of smart-ass mixed in.
“So just based on the price of something she bought at Corner Drug, a twinkle in Becker’s eye, and her lab partner saying she was sick you came to the conclusion she was pregnant?” he asks.
“Let’s call it a hypothesis,” I say. “Add vitamins, the matching paintings of the virgin, the thirty-thousand-dollar box with frankincense and myrrh. Was I right?”
He stares at me with an are-you-fucking-kidding-me-didn’t-you-hear-what-I-just-said expression on his face. His tapping on the dashboard with his curved fingers gives me the strong impression I was. “And you don’t believe the autopsy report, either?”
“It didn’t even mention the needle mark. You saw that.” I press on. “I also interviewed the medical examiner.”
“Papadakis?”
“Yeah. He didn’t tell me anything, but that seemed to tell me something.”
“What do you mean?”
“What reason does a medical examiner have to be coy, let alone rude?”
“How about protecting himself from jackass journalists?”
“There’s more. It turns out that MaryLee’s u.Mail account was hacked in a very sophisticated way, using high-level encryption and malware.”
Maurice nods.
“And then,” I say, finally throwing out the headline, “federal marshals came to the Star this morning and ordered us to drop this story.”
“Ordered?”
“Under Article 39(c) of the News Protection Act.”
Maurice looks confused.
“The bill that bailed out the newspapers with federal money two years ago. Article 39, Section C allows the government to kill stories for national security reasons. No questions asked or askable.”
“And you think someone is covering up?” he asks pensively.
“Someone wipes out her u.Mail account and inserts sophisticated malware, then federal marshals order the Kansas City Star to drop the story. If that doesn’t sounds like a cover-up, I don’t know what does.”
“If you’re right, who do you think is driving this?”
“I don’t know,” I say, “but if my theory is correct about Cobalt Becker, I could at least come up with a pretty convincing hypothesis.”
Maurice stares at me. “So you think if Becker is involved somehow, King’s people are doing damage control?”
“They’d at least have a motive,” I say. “It’d be hard for King to fight God’s battle on earth with his spiritual advisor caught up in a scandal.”
Maurice stares intensely out the front windshield into the darkness for a few moments before turning toward me. “That may be a plausible theory, Rich, but that’s not enough.”
A thick silence weaves itself through the car. Maurice breaks it. “Senator King is hosting a day-long prayer service in the Hammons Arena in Springfield Saturday as part of his national bus tour. He’s invited superpastors from around the state, including Becker.”
“Maybe we should—”
Maurice cuts me off. “We’re not doing anything unless we have a lot more evidence.” Maurice pauses. “Until we have any evidence at all.”
I move my mouth, starting to talk, then pull myself back. The car returns to silence.
Then Maurice reaches into his shirt pocket and hands me a small Huawei hand phone, the disposable kind that sells for twenty dollars at 7-Eleven. “Use this phone to talk with me. Don’t give anyone else the number or use it for anything else. Got it?”
“Aren’t these things traceable?” I ask, nervous that talking on the phone might make us even more vulnerable.
“It’s from special police stock,” Maurice says. “It ought to be okay.”
I have so many questions about what’s happening at KCPD, the autopsy, what we’re doing sneaking around like this. “Maurice,” I say, “I need to ask you—”
“Don’t.”
I roll on nonetheless. “I want to ask you if the track marks I saw on MaryLee’s arm meant anything.”
Maurice stares at me, deep in thought, not revealing anything.
“I want to ask—” I add.
“Didn’t I just say . . . ?”
I hold my ground facing Maurice. He stops mid-sentence. His head moves only a fraction of a centimeter in an almost unrecognizable nod. “We’ll be in touch,” he then says before getting out of the car. “Call me if you learn anything.”
My head feels like a lead weight as I drive the few blocks home. I dictate my message to Joseph into my u.D. Come over tomorrow morning at eight.
10-4. The text reply comes back almost instantaneously.
I pull into my driveway, the image of my sofa now fully replaced with a passionate image of my bed. If I can get to sleep, maybe the Borges librarian of my subconscious will configure all of this data in a way my conscious mind is failing to do.
But as the penumbra of light catches a shadow on my front porch, it becomes clear my dream of sleep will be an illusion.
My mind searches for what this can possibly mean. I hadn’t at all expected her.
Neary Savang sprints frantically toward my car.
21
“One of my lab partners didn’t show up for class
today,” she says breathlessly through my opening window. Her face seems a mixture of panic, fear, and confusion.
“And?” I say, stepping quickly out of the car.
“At first I thought it was no big deal because we were all so sad about what happened to MaryLee. But then I called her and didn’t get an answer.”
“Called who?”
“Min, Min. I think I was just extra worried after what happened to MaryLee and what you told me, so I decided to go by her dorm room to check on her.”
“And?”
“I got there and she was gone.”
“What do you mean?”
“She wasn’t there, a bunch of her stuff wasn’t there.”
“How do you know?”
“I picked the lock,” she says a little awkwardly.
“You picked the lock?” I am impressed.
“Her clothes were gone. First MaryLee dies, and now Min disappears in the middle of the semester. She doesn’t say anything, just disappears?” Neary is shaking.
“Do you have any idea what could have happened?” I ask.
“I really don’t. I thought of reporting it to the police but wasn’t sure what to say. Maybe she just went somewhere and didn’t tell us. I wanted to talk with you about it.”
My mind buzzes with a nervous energy. Every moment seems to produce a new strange coincidence, a new shard that lays with the others in the mud, identifiable as individual pieces but wholly resistant to being reconstituted as a whole. Min Zhao had hardly been part of my narrative, and now I don’t know if she is a shy Chinese girl who found love, is dead somewhere, or is part of a story in some other way.
“I think you need to report this,” I say.
“Can you do it?” she asks cautiously.
My mind jumps to Marshal Dickhead. “I really wish I could, Neary, but I can’t.”
She looks surprised. “What do you mean?”
“It’s complicated.”
She seems to accept my words at face value.
“What can you tell me about Min?”
“Not so much. She was a quiet girl, conscientious.”
“From China, right?” I ask.
“Yeah. She did her college in China and came to UMKC for her Master’s. She had credits from China, so they let her transfer in to our class at the beginning of this year. She’s really smart.”
I tap through my notes from Joseph. Min Zhao, 26, Chinese national, graduate of Lanxiang University, UMKC Lab Group 4.
“Neary,” I say, trying to calm her, “I’m going to find out what happened, but for now I think all you can do is report what you know. You should probably go the UMKC police and let them handle it.”
A disappointed look crosses Neary’s face.
“I wish I could do more, Neary. I promise I’ll look. Do you need me to drive you back to school?”
Neary walks around to the passenger side of my car and gets in.
The drive back to UMKC is mostly silent.
“I promise you, I’ll figure this out, Neary,” I say again, feeling wholly inadequate I can’t do more. “Please just keep me in the loop.”
Neary gets out of the car without a word, a forlorn look on her face. I lower the passenger side window and call after her.
“Neary.”
“Yes, Mr. Azadian.”
“Please be careful.”
She turns and walks toward the station.
22
Joseph, of course, is sitting on my porch when I open the door at 7:30 a.m. after yet another restless night.
Sleep quality: poor, my u.D tells me as if I didn’t already know.
It somehow soothes me having Joseph here. I invite him in, peeking nervously out the door in both directions.
“How’s the library?” I ask.
“Too crowded. The computers are prehistoric and connected to the wall. They close at eight,” he says, handing me my new u.D.
“What do you have?”
“I’m down to five OB doctors and three fertility clinics. The remaining ones are pretty tight with their information and wouldn’t tell me anything.”
Joseph passes me a handwritten list of items under the three price categories from Corner Drug. Nothing jumps out except for the pregnancy test. I’m glad to see jock itch spray doesn’t cost $10.95.
“Joseph, do you remember Min Zhao?”
“One of the UMKC students?”
“Her classmate Neary Savang was here last night. It looks like Min has disappeared.”
“Disappeared? What do you want me to do?”
“For starters, find out everything you can about her. After what happened to MaryLee, I fear the worst.”
Joseph just mumbles, his rapt attention now focused on my coffee table screen as I head to the kitchen to grab us coffee.
“Hey boss, have a look at this,” I hear Joseph yell from the living room.
I rush in.
“Min Zhao, graduate of Lianxing University, undergraduate degree in nursing.”
“Yeah,” I say, not seeing the significance.
“Look at the wiki selection for Lianxing University. Connected to the Chinese military, a central hub for the infamous Chinese hacker community.”
“And you think that could be connected to MaryLee’s u.Mail hack?”
“I don’t know,” Joseph says. “With all of the hacking and computer attacks coming out of China these days, it’s at least worth exploring.”
“Interesting,” I say. “Keep looking.” I pick up the bat phone and call Maurice.
“Maurice, it’s Rich.”
“Hi, baby,” Maurice says in a sugary voice I’ve never before heard.
“Maurice?”
“Sure, baby. I’ll meet you for coffee but just for a second.”
“Maurice? This is Rich.”
I’m starting to wonder if the phone is not working, and then it hits me.
“Just long enough for a coffee and a kiss,” he says.
I’m silent.
“Same place at eight thirty? For you, anything. Bye, baby.”
The line drops and my world is suddenly even more complicated.
23
Maurice is already parked at picnic area C when I arrive. “What more have you learned?” he barks.
I describe the disappearance of Min and Lianxing University. I feel him stewing as I speak.
“I need to get one thing straight with you, Rich,” he says. “I need to trust you, but I need to know you won’t screw me.”
“I’m in a pretty tough situation myself,” I say earnestly. “I could go to jail for staying on this story, and you could probably put me there.”
Maurice hesitates before he speaks. “You know this, but the autopsy report that came out yesterday is a sham. I saw the needle mark on her arm just like you did. There wasn’t even a reference to it in the full report.” Maurice pauses. “This morning, the chief told me to drop the case.”
“Did he say why?”
“That federal authorities were taking over and I needed to drop it.”
“Are you going to?”
Maurice pauses reflectively. “Given everything we’ve learned so far, I want to know more about why the chief is asking me to do this. Not every case gets resolved, but I’ll be damned if I’ll walk away from something like this without knowing why. That’s not what I’m about.”
“So,” I say, assessing the situation, “I’m not covering the story, and you’re not investigating the case.”
“I’d call it not completely investigating this case,” Maurice says.
Maurice and I are suddenly in the same boat, and it’s a leaky one. “How does that happen?”
“I don’t know, but fish start to stink from the head down,” Maurice says.
“And Becker?”
“I started asking around. That’s when the storm kicked in.”
“And the girl, Min?” I ask.
“UMKC police called us last night. You know that.”
“
I dropped the girl off who reported it.”
“What do you make of it?”
“I don’t know,” I say. “Could be a lot of things.”
“Rich,” Maurice says, “The Chinese girl left the country yesterday. Flew from Chicago to Beijing. We tracked her when we got the report from the UMKC police.”
“Wow.”
“And we did look at the feeds from the UMKC coffee shop. You were right. MaryLee Stock was there, and guess who she was with?”
24
“Mrs. Stock, this is Rich Azadian,” I say into my earpiece as I drive toward the flower show. “We met yesterday at the park?”
She doesn’t respond.
“I’m so sorry to bother you again, but I was hoping we might talk.”
Silence.
“I have some concerns about the autopsy report I was hoping I might be able to discuss with you.”
“The autopsy report?” she says quietly. Her voice feels disconnected from the ebb and flow of normal life.
“I don’t know quite how to say this, but I have questions about the accuracy of the report, whether it was, correct.”
“Correct?” she repeats weakly.
“Whether the report was what actually happened. Is it okay if I ask you a question.”
“Yes?” The creaky vowel drags.
“Mrs. Stock, I don’t believe the police are telling the full story about Lee. I think there may be more to what happened. Might you be willing to help me find out?”
“But the police . . .”
“I know, Mrs. Stock, but I have reason to believe they’re not telling the full truth.”
I hear her breath.
“I don’t believe Lee died from a heart arrhythmia,” I add, feeling badly for pressing on.
“I don’t know, Mr. Azadian. This is all happening so fast.”
“I know. I’m so sorry,” I say pathetically.
Silence.
“I need to know if you’d be willing to help me find out what really happened.”
“I don’t know,” she stutters, “maybe I should ask Reverend Becker.”
“Mrs. Stock, Reverend Becker is a fine man, but maybe it will be best if we take this one step at a time. I just have one small request.”
