by Jamie Metzl
“Yes,” I say, cutting him off. The PGDS revolution had changed everyone’s thinking but not far enough to fathom the implications of this new fact.
“We’re going to need help,” Jerry says.
“Help?” I say.
“You both are smart guys and everything, but if you think IT code is complicated, wait till you get to the code of life.”
“I’m sure you’re right, Jerry,” I say after a pause, “but we’re what we’ve got right now, so I need—”
“There’s a professor in the UMKC biology department who’s also on the faculty at the Sowers Institute. Franklin Chou. Good guy. I think it would be worthwhile talking with him.”
“Maybe, Jerry, but I’m just about to head out of town and—”
Joseph cuts me off. “I can do it, boss.”
In the two years that Joseph has worked for me, I’ve been the front man out in the world, he the back office supporting me with research from the rear.
“If you can’t do it, I can,” Joseph says with surprising assertiveness. “I will.”
It takes a moment for me to reassemble the pieces in my mind. “Can we trust Professor Chou?”
“Yes,” Jerry says, “he’s a friend. We don’t need to tell him everything, just ask him about the science. He’ll help.”
“Can you arrange it, Jerry?”
“Will do.”
“All right then, if computer code is so simple, what are you finding?” I ask.
Jerry scoffs. “It’s simple compared to life, pretty darn complicated compared to everything else. This could be the best encryption program I’ve ever seen.”
“That tells us something,” I say. “At least we know we’re dealing with experts. A state?”
“Could be. Any of the big guys could do this—China, Russia, Brazil, India, the US—they’ve all got major cyber commands.”
“How about an individual?”
“They’d need to be really good. Really, really good. The OpenNet guys are coming at this thing from a lot of different angles. Does look like it’s coming from a server in China, but it’s hard to tell if it started there or someone else just hacked in.”
“So it’s either coming from China or coming from someone who wants people to think it’s coming from China,” I say.
“You could say that.”
“And Bright Horizons?” I ask. “What can we do to find out who owns it?”
“I’m trying,” Jerry says, “Cayman Islands are tough, their records are completely private.”
“Completely?”
“Supposed to be. Sometimes people can be sloppy.”
“What do you mean?”
“To register a company you need legal help, maybe an accountant, maybe you travel there and a hotel records where you’re coming from. There are a thousand different angles. I’m probing. Nothing yet.”
“All right,” I say. “Keep on it.”
As I tap off, five messages from Toni reach me at once on the screen.
Call me.
Call me.
Call me.
Where are you???
Dulce de leche.
Intimacy is a precious thing. Private language extracts words that have one meaning for everyone else and stamps new meanings on them that two people share. I get a warm sensation that I actually know what Toni is saying.
Almost a year ago, we were out shopping for a little dinner party for our friends we were having at her place. I grabbed the dulce de leche, her favorite, from the freezer at Price Chopper.
“I’m the only one who likes that,” Toni said.
“I know,” I told her, “that’s why I’m getting it.”
“But there are five other people. Put that back,” Toni ordered. “Chocolate and vanilla.”
When we’d been splitting up the scene had come back to my mind as a metaphor for our different ways of thinking. I was more about the individual. She was more about the group.
Six months later the memory has morphed into something entirely different, our private GPS.
15 minutes, I text back. I drive down 63rd Street then back left toward Meyer Boulevard. I pull into the Price Chopper parking lot and check the time on my u.D. I come around the corner into the frozen foods section and see her. She’s wearing a long coat and a large beach hat. She looks ridiculously like someone hiding. “Are you okay?” I whisper.
“You’re the one they’re after,” she says nervously.
“What happened?”
“They came to my place looking for you.”
“They?”
“The guy named Gillespie and another guy, Collins. Federal marshals.” She hands me Gillespie’s now familiar business card.
I wish this guy would leave me alone. “And?”
“I told him I didn’t know where you were.”
“And?”
“He said ‘but you’re letting him drive your car.’” She exhales.
The sheepish look returns to my face. Oh shit.
“I’m so sorry,” I say. “Do you think you were followed here?”
“I went to Ward Parkway and walked all through the mall. If they were following me I think I would have seen them.”
“Hope so. And then?”
“I called my mom and told her to leave her car just outside of Trader Joe’s and that I’d leave the keys to mine in the freezer section underneath the curry chicken. Then I texted you and drove here.”
“I don’t think your mom’s car is that safe.”
“Should we trade again?”
“Probably.”
“Excuse me,” I say to a long-haired Asian kid in a skateboard getup. “Hey man,” I say, “can I borrow your phone for a sec?”
“No prob, dude,” he says nonchalantly. I wonder whether American complacency has overcome yet another Asian tiger mom as I hand the phone to Toni who makes the call.
“Thanks, man,” I say handing the phone back.
“Hang loose,” he says.
I make the hand sign with my thumb and pinkie stretched in opposite directions and feel immediately like an idiot.
He looks at me with a funny expression. I am far too old to be cool.
We drive Toni’s mother’s car to Brookside and swap it out for Toni’s friend Michaela’s Honda.
“That was easy,” she says, “now what?”
I look at her then flutter my eyes coquettishly before speaking.
“Texas?”
37
Am I taking her with me to keep her safe or to keep me company, I argue with myself as I speed south on I-35. Texas is the ultimate destination, but there’s a stop I need to make along the way.
According to Joseph’s notes, Megan Fogerty had lived on her own in a one-bedroom in the Ridgeview apartment complex in Olathe. It’s not even three weeks since she died and they’ve already rented the place to someone else. I’m tempted to go there and start sleuthing but guess that the garbage has long since been thrown away and the apartment scrubbed. For now, I want to speak with her parents.
I ask Toni to wait in the car when I go in, but she only gives me a look it’s not hard for me to read. You think you’re better off approaching a stranger in her own home on your own?
All of the houses in the Raven Crest subdivision look exactly the same, but how, I wonder as I knock on the front door of the Fogerty home, did the angel of death choose this one?
The door opens partly, and a woman’s head leans into the space. Her coiffed blond hair and thick makeup accent her round face and pleasant features, but the makeup can’t camouflage the bags under her puffy eyes.
“Christine Fogerty?” I say.
She looks at me blankly.
“My name is Rich Azadian. I’ve come to ask you a few questions about your daughter.”
I feel a heel digging in to my right foot.
“Mrs. Fogerty, my name is Antonia Hewitt,” Toni says, stepping in front of me. “I’m a nurse in Kansas City. Rich is a reporter. I know this must be
a terrible time for you, and I can’t tell you how sorry we are, but we would really appreciate it if we could please come in to ask you a few questions about Megan.”
Christine Fogerty looks at Toni, then me, then slowly pulls the door open.
Toni holds me back with her hand and steps in before me. “Thank you, Mrs. Fogerty. We wouldn’t be here if this weren’t important.”
Christine Fogerty leads us silently to her living room and gestures for us to sit on the couch.
“Rich,” Toni says, giving me the cue it’s okay for me to start talking.
“I’m covering the story of a young woman who died in Kansas City a few days ago. I don’t want to alarm you, but there’s a chance there could be some similarities between how the young woman in Kansas City and your daughter”—I fumble to find the right word—“passed.”
Pain blankets Christine Fogerty’s face. “Like what?”
“They were both about the same age, they both seemed to be healthy, they both died with no real explanation at around the same time.” Each word feels like an additional dagger into Christine Fogerty’s heart.
“I’m not sure what you’re getting at,” she says heavily.
“Mrs. Fogerty, can you please tell me what the doctors told you and your husband about what happened to Megan?”
“They said they thought she died from Sudden Adult Death Syndrome.”
“Had she been sick at all before she died?”
Christine Fogerty fidgets in her chair. “No. They said that’s what SADS looks like.”
“This is a strange question, but can you please tell me if Megan was involved in the church?”
A nonplussed look crosses her face. “I don’t know why you’re asking that, but the answer is no. She probably went once a year at Christmas, if that.” She looks at me nervously. “Maybe this was a bad idea,” she says, standing.
Toni rises slowly to match her.
“Just one more question if I may, Mrs. Fogerty,” I say.
She tilts her head slightly.
“Can you please tell me if there’s any chance your daughter was pregnant when she died?”
Christine Fogerty stares at me as if I am the angel of death, then staggers backwards and collapses into the chair. Toni moves over and crouches next to her, taking her hand.
“How did you know that?” Christine Fogerty whispers through her tears. “Only Megan and I knew. I was going to tell her father when she . . .”
Toni holds on to Christine Fogerty’s hand with both of hers.
“I need to ask you to trust me,” I say. “I’m trying to get to the bottom of this, but there are still a lot of questions we need to answer.”
Christine Fogarty nods gently, struggling to pull herself together.
“I know this is difficult,” I say, “but do you know how she got pregnant?”
Christine shakes her head from side to side. “She wouldn’t tell me.” She seems to shrink with each word I draw from her, as if our very presence is unraveling whatever she’s done to begin pulling herself together over the past three weeks.
Toni looks up at me and twitches her head almost imperceptibly. That’s enough.
We stay for a few more minutes trying to be comforting but aware that our very presence is the primary cause of discomfort.
“We are so sorry, Mrs. Fogerty, so deeply sorry,” Toni says as we slowly backstep toward the door.
38
By eleven, I can’t drive any more.
Five hours of driving, of briefing Maurice on the bat phone about Megan Fogerty’s pregnancy, of pushing Jerry to find a way into the Bright Horizons database, and of reconnecting with Toni in a manner not possible for the past six months has left me drained.
As I swipe the key card on the door of room 431 in the Comfort Inn in Pauls Valley, Oklahoma, I feel a strange mix of fear and excitement. It can be easy to open a door. It’s what comes after that gets complicated.
We act normally. We each shower. We brush our teeth. We strip down to our undergarments and climb into opposite sides of the king-size bed.
“You okay?” Toni asks.
“Yeah.” I kick myself. A 160,000-word PhD dissertation and all I can come up with is that? “Thanks for being here,” I add. The words don’t seem to express what I mean.
“You know you don’t need to thank me,” she says softly.
The words warm me and remind me, as if I need reminding, how grounding an influence Toni had been in my life. Being with her had made me start to wonder whether an astronaut who never lands is simply lost in space. “Should I turn out the light?”
I didn’t mean it that way, but the question is fraught with meaning. I always liked making love with the lights on. Before me, she’d always preferred the lights off.
Toni half laughs.
I can’t quite read her. Is she making fun of my awkwardness or laughing at my question?
“Good night, Richie,” she says, makings things clear.
She rolls onto her stomach, her head facing away from me.
I turn out the light and roll onto my stomach with my head facing the back of hers. We drift into sleep.
I awake, startled, wondering where I am for a moment before feeling the familiar warmth of her body next to mine as if I’d never forgotten.
Semi-conscious, I ease gently into her space. She feels my arm moving around her waist and pulls it in to her.
I can never quite figure out whether life is complicated or simple, whether all our concepts and words only muck up the few basic drives that actually give meaning to our transient existence. I don’t know the answer, but this small gesture seems part of it. I sink back to sleep.
My u.D alarm finds us in the same position when it goes off at six thirty. I reach to tap it off and glimpse the message. Sleep quality: average.
“Hi,” I grumble with a bit of irony.
She rolls over to face me. I can almost read the conflicted look in her eyes.
I want to be with her, here. My body says it loudly.
I rub my index finger down the line of her cheek then kiss her under her chin. Our lips reach toward each other with an inevitable longing, our kiss deepening as our bodies slide together with ever greater power, driving to leave no space between us. Our arms wrap us together.
“Stop, Richie, stop,” she whispers, pulling her head away from mine.
I do.
“Six months ago you didn’t know what you wanted and couldn’t fight for it, and now you’re drawing me into all of this. I’m here because I care for you. You know that. But you can’t just stumble back into my life without asking me what I want, without telling me what you want.”
I know she’s right.
“I’m with you, Richie, I’m here,” she says, “but I’m not sure either of us is ready for this.”
I don’t respond. Silence settles in between us then becomes awkward. Our bodies pull slowly apart.
“What would it take for a woman to agree to be impregnated with a genetically enhanced embryo?” I say after a long pause, consciously changing the subject to match the wanderings of my mind, then feeling stupid for navigating toward such dangerous shoals.
Toni plays along graciously. “How do you know she agreed?”
“It’s a good question. I don’t.”
“I don’t think I’d do it,” she says.
“Why not?”
“For one, I trust nature. Human beings are so complicated, and I don’t think we really know much about how the whole system works. Look at all the strange mutations that show up in the animal research. You know I don’t agree with Senator King and the crazies, but there’s still something frightening about tinkering with systems we don’t understand.”
“Hmm,” I say.
“What does that mean?”
“It means that I can see the pieces, but they just aren’t coming together. Should we get dressed?” I ask, then kick myself again for my awkwardness.
“Sure, Mr. Dolphin,” sh
e says with an ironic wink.
39
The Rite-Aid in downtown Waco spurs the idea.
“What the hell are you doing,” Toni shrieks as I swerve across two lanes of traffic into the parking lot.
I tell her about the women I’d met in Becker’s Church in Springfield.
“Yes, Mr. Azadian,” she says with a slight Southern accent as she gets out of the car.
I wait, tapping the small clock icon on the corner of my u.D.
Twenty minutes later she emerges a picture of Southern charm. Her black hair is sprayed to solid perfection. Her face is pancaked, her eyelids a milky shade of blue, her lashes roll up toward the heavens. Her lips are the red of Eve’s apple.
“How do you do, sir,” she says.
“Ma’am.”
“You know,” she says, pretending to rub the back of her hand against her forehead, “I just cannot stand to be in these clothes for one more minute.”
“Well, ma’am,” I say, “I see that there’s a fine establishment just down the street. May I interest you in their wares?”
“I’d be much obliged,” she says, then the Southern accent stops abruptly. “And you owe me for dressing me up like a hooker.”
“You mean like a daughter of Christ?”
“Fuck yourself.”
The temper. She’d always said it came from the eighth of Cherokee on her father’s side. There were times when I felt she’d have thrown a hatchet if she had one.
Toni emerges from Goodwill in a white silk blouse and a slightly faded blue pinstripe skirt. A string of costume pearls hangs low from her neck, but everything else pushes up from her black high heels.
“On second thought, I will join your church, madam,” I say.
“Drive,” she orders.
We practice lines as we get closer to the Rocket Café. Joseph called every large animal veterinarian in Waco from a rerouted Springfield number, saying he was calling on Reverend Becker’s behalf and wanted to get together. Dr. Martin Barkley was the only one who knew what Joseph was talking about and agreed to a meeting. I have Toni enter the number of my bat phone on her u.D just in case.
The Rocket Café looks nicer than I’d imagined, more an organic granola kind of place than the biscuits and gravy I’d expected. I still feel a bit strange as Toni gets out of the car and walks the block back toward the restaurant.
