by Lis Wiehl
Of course Allison had made enemies, most recently Archer. She was a third-generation prosecutor, so she knew it came with the territory.
The so-called blue-collar criminals—bank robbers and drug dealers—weren’t so bad to deal with. For them, getting caught and doing time was an accepted risk, a cost of doing business. They were professionals, like she was. In a weird way, they understood that Allison was just doing her job.
It was the other ones, the ones who had been fairly upstanding citizens until they snapped at dinner and stabbed their spouse or decided that bank robbery was a perfect way to balance the family budget. Those were the ones you needed to watch out for. Their feelings for Allison were personal. Personal—and dangerous. For now, she would be extra careful, and Rod had alerted the Portland police to make additional patrols past her house.
Her watch said 6:21. She told herself that she wouldn’t pick up the white stick again until 6:30. The test only took three minutes, but she wanted to be sure. How many times had she watched one of these stupid tests, willing two crossed lines to show up in the results window but seeing only one?
“I’ll be back in about forty minutes, honey,” Marshall called from the living room. She heard the sound of the front door closing.
Allison hadn’t told him she was going to take the test today. She was four days late, but she had been four days late before. After so many failed tests, so many months in which being even a day late had filled her with feverish speculation, Marshall no longer inquired too closely into the details.
When they started this journey two years ago, she had been sure that she and Marshall would conceive easily. Any teenager could have a baby. How hard could it be? She and Marshall had always been scrupulous about birth control. Now it seemed like a bitter joke. She had wasted hundreds of dollars preventing something that would never have happened anyway.
They had started trying a month after her thirty-first birthday, giddy to be “playing without a net.” At the end of the first month, Allison was sure she was pregnant: her breasts felt different, the taste of food changed, and she often felt dizzy when she stood up. But then her period arrived on schedule.
As the months passed she got more serious, tracked her temperature, made charts. Even though she had read all the statistics about how fertility declined with every passing year, it hadn’t seemed like they applied to her.
How many crime victims had she met who had never believed that anything bad could happen to them? Because they were special?
“It’s in your hands, Lord,” she murmured. The idea was one she struggled with every day, at home and at work. How much was she responsible for? How much was out of her control? She had never been good at letting go.
To distract herself, Allison turned on the small TV they kept in the bedroom on top of an oak highboy. After a Subaru commercial, the Channel Four news anchor said, “And now we have a special bulletin from our crime reporter, Cassidy Shaw. Cassidy?”
Allison’s old friend stood in front of a beautiful white Victorian house. She wore a coral suit that set off her blonde shoulder-length hair. Her blue eyes looked startlingly topaz—either she was wearing colored contacts or the TV set needed to be adjusted.
“A family is asking for your help in finding a teenager who has been missing from Northwest Portland since yesterday afternoon,” Cassidy said, wearing the expression reporters reserved for serious events. “Seventeen-year- old Katie Converse left her parents a note saying she was taking the family dog for a walk—and she has not been seen since. Here’s a recent photo of Katie, who is on winter break from the United States Senate’s page program.”
The camera cut to a photograph of a pretty blonde girl with a snub nose and a dusting of freckles. Allison caught her breath. Even though Katie was blonde and Lindsay had dark hair, it was almost like looking at her sister when she was Katie’s age. The nose was the same, the shape of her eyes, even the same shy half smile. Lindsay, back when she was young and innocent and full of life.
Cassidy continued, “Katie is five feet, two inches tall and weighs 105 pounds. She has blue eyes, blonde hair, and freckles. She was last seen wearing a black sweater, blue jeans, a navy blue Columbia parka, and Nike tennis shoes. The dog, named Jalapeño, is a black Lab mix.
“Authorities are investigating. The family asks that if you have seen Katie, to please call the number on your screen. This is Cassidy Shaw, reporting from Northwest Portland.”
Allison said a quick prayer that the girl would be safe. But a young woman like that would have no reason to run away, not if she was already living away from home. Nor was she likely to be out partying. Allison knew a little bit about the page program. It was fiercely competitive, attracting smart, serious, college-bound students whose idea of fun was the mock state legislature. The kind of kid Allison had been, back when she and Cassidy were in high school.
She looked at her watch and was surprised to see it was already 6:29. She made herself wait until the clock clicked over to 6:30, then reached for the pregnancy test. The first time she had bought only one, sure that was all she would need. Now, two years later, she bought them in multi-packs at Costco.
In the control window was a pink horizontal line. And in the other window, the results window, were pink crosshairs.
Not single pink lines in both windows.
She was pregnant.
PORTLAND FBI HEADQUARTERS
December 15
The words popped up on FBI special agent Nicole Hedges’s screen.
PDXer: WHATS UR FAVORITE SUBJECT?
Nic—using the screen name BubbleBeth—and some guy going by the name PDXer were in a private area of a chat room called Younger Girls/Older Men.
BubbleBeth: LUNCH
It was what Nic always answered. She could disconnect from her fingers, from the reality behind her keyboard and the words that appeared on her screen. Which was good. Because if she thought about it too much, she would go crazy.
At first, working for Innocent Images, the FBI’s cyber-crime squad’s effort to take down online predators, had seemed like a perfect fit. Regular hours, which were kind of a must when you were a single parent. The downside was that she spent all day exposed to vile men eager to have sex with a girl who barely qualified as a teen.
Most people were surprised that it wasn’t the creepy guy in the rain-coat who went online trolling for young girls. If only. In real life it was the teacher, the doctor, the grandpa, the restaurant manager. The average offender was a professional white male aged twenty-five to forty-five.
PDXer: HOW OLD R U?
BubbleBeth: 13
In Oregon, eighteen was the age of consent. But prosecutors preferred to keep it clear-cut to make it easier for the jury to convict. So Nic told the guys she met online that she was thirteen or fourteen, never older. Some typed L8R—later—as soon as Nic told them her imaginary age. For the rest, it was like throwing a piece of raw meat into a dog kennel.
PDXer: KEWL
Surveys had shown that one in seven kids had received an online sexual solicitation in the past year. It was Nic’s job to find the places where the chances weren’t one in seven, but 100 percent, which meant going to chat rooms.
Sure, that kind of thing happened on MySpace, but the FBI didn’t have the time to put together pages that would fool anyone. They never looked as good as the real thing. Real kids spent hours on their MySpaces, tweaking them with photos and music and blogs. Real predators went there, too, but it was hard to catch them without some kind of tip.
But there were plenty of chat rooms. Nic’s being there was predicated on the chat room name (Not Too Young to Have Fun, for example) or a kid’s report of having been solicited.
Sometimes she took over from a true victim, but usually she just started out fresh—went into a chat room and announced her presence. The first thing you noticed upon entering a chat room was the absence of any actual chat. The point of being there was to start up a private conversation. It never too
k longer than five or ten minutes before someone approached her.
PDXer: R UR PARENTS TOGETHER?
BubbleBeth: NO. I LIVE W/MY MOM. ONLY C DAD SOMETIMES.
It was what she always said. Guys like PDXer loved kids with one parent and unfettered access to the Internet. It was like that line in Casablanca. “This could be the beginning of a beautiful friendship.”
PDXer: DO YOU HAVE ANY BROTHERS OR SISTERS?
BubbleBeth: 1. SHES 3.
Young enough that Nicole’s imaginary mom would have her hands full.
Nic let Makayla play Neopets online. But only when she was in the room with her. And her daughter knew that at any time her mom could come to her and ask to see what she was typing, and Makayla would have to show her right away.
PDXer: R U A COP?
Nic smiled. Got ya.
BubbleBeth: NO!
Nic went on answering PDXer’s questions, not even paying that much attention. It was better if she didn’t. Didn’t think about this sick jerk sinking his hooks into a girl. Grooming her. Better if she didn’t wonder how many there had been before her. Girls who really were thirteen or fourteen.
PDXer: CAN U SEND ME A PIC?
Since they never used pictures of real kids, Nic would send him a picture of herself, morphed back to look like she was thirteen. The morphing wasn’t accurate because it didn’t take into account three years of braces and four pulled teeth. When she had really been BubbleBeth’s age, everyone had made fun of her buckteeth.
PDXer: WANT 2 GO 2 A MOVIE SOMETIME?
BubbleBeth: SURE, THAT WOULD BE COOL.
Nic had to backspace and retype the last words, changing them to B KEWL.
PDXer: ANYTHING U REALLY WANT TO C?
BubbleBeth: MEAT MARKET.
It was rated R, which meant technically she couldn’t get in. Well, BubbleBeth couldn’t. Sometimes Nic forgot to distance herself. She wasn’t thirteen, she wasn’t going to school, she didn’t fight with her mom.
PDXer: GR8. R U WEARING ANY UNDIES RIGHT NOW?
Bingo.
CHANNEL FOUR
December 15
With varying degrees of dread, TV crime reporter Cassidy Shaw and five other people seated in swivel chairs in Channel Four’s dressing room watched Jessica Lear. Jessica was a high-definition makeup consultant the station had flown up from LA to teach them how to prepare for the high definition-era.
HD was five times sharper than regular TV. That meant every line, spot, and lopsided lip would be in sharp focus. You could even see nose hairs, which made Cassidy shudder just thinking about it.
HD also allowed TV sets to show more colors. For years, government standards had limited the range of colors available to broadcasters. But HD allowed the use of some formerly forbidden shades of red. That meant that every blotch, pimple, and tiny broken vein showed up on-screen with the brutal clarity of a surgery textbook.
When she first started out on TV, Cassidy had been taught that she needed to define her face with eyeliner, eyebrow pencil, lip liner, blush, etc. It was almost like paint-by-number. Because studio lights made everyone look pale and washed out, the end result still looked natural on-screen. But that era had come to an end. It had started with the national programs, but as more and more viewers made the switch to HD, it had begun filtering down to all the regional markets—including Portland.
Now all of the on-camera talent had gathered in the dressing room for a makeup application lesson. After the consultant left, they would be on their own. The guys were used to a quick swipe of pancake to hide five o’clock shadow. The men who worked in the field weren’t even asked to do that. But now everyone—anchors, reporters, even the weather and sports guys—needed to learn how to look good on the new HD sets.
Jessica, who could have been any age from thirty to fifty, said, “Traditional makeup looks too theatrical in HD. It looks cakey and fake. But wearing no makeup at all would look”—she paused while she found a diplomatic term—“distracting.”
Old, Cassidy translated. Old and ugly. And Cassidy was determined never to be old and ugly.
Her parents had raised her to believe that being beautiful was a woman’s top priority. Good grades had meant little to them, but let Cassidy gain five pounds or go without makeup, and she heard about it. Her bone-deep determination to stay beautiful was what kept her a size 2—well, maybe a 4, if she was being honest, but she was a size 2 on her good days.
The drive not to be old and ugly got her butt into a spinning class six days a week. It made her go to the dermatologist for another round of Botox and laser treatments. It led to regular trips to the nail salon, hair salon, and spray-on tan place. It maxed out her credit card. But it was better than the alternative.
“This is an arms race,” Jessica said. “We’d all like to go back to the old days. But we need new weapons. We can’t slap on powder when every grain looks like a boulder.”
“What about plastic surgery?” asked anchor Brad Buffet (Boo-fay, as he insisted on pronouncing it). He turned sideways to regard his sagging jowls.
Jessica shook her head. “That’s iffy too. In HD, when you’ve had work done, you can actually see the seams. You could end up looking like Frankenstein.”
“So basically, this is like being naked,” Anne Forster, another reporter, complained.
“It’s only like being naked if you don’t learn how to cover everything up,” Jessica said, and then named a big star in movie comedies. “On regular TV, she still looks great, as sexy as ever. But in HD, she’s nothing but a mass of wrinkles and unfortunate pockmarks.”
Cassidy leaned closer to the mirror. In HD, the faint wrinkles at the corners of her eyes would probably look like folds of origami and her pores like giant shell-blasted craters.
“So,” Jessica said, holding up a metal gizmo about six inches long with an open bowl on the top to hold liquid, “we airbrush.” The applicator looked like something a house painter might use to paint the home of an elf. “Can I have a volunteer?”
Cassidy was the first to wave a hand in the air. After pinning back her hair, Jessica told her to close her eyes and hold her breath. The air compressor fired up, making a weird bubbling sound as it aerated the liquid.
Two minutes later Cassidy was so close to the mirror she could kiss it, the way she used to do when she was twelve and desperately wanted a boyfriend. Her skin looked perfect, a flawless sunny beige. No wrinkles, no bumps, no broken veins, no blemishes. It was all still there, of course, but it was now covered with a very thin layer of paint.
If Richard Nixon had had this, Cassidy thought, Kennedy would never have been elected.
MYSPACE.COM/THEDCPAGE
Stupid Stepmom Tricks
September 6
This morning, V took me to the place where I’ll be living for the next five months: the Daniel Webster Senate Page Residence.
There’s one floor for girls & one for guys. On each floor there’s a community day room, which sounds like something in a mental hospital. Down in the basement is where we’ll go to school, plus do laundry & eat.
I’m sharing one tiny room with three other girls: one from North Carolina, one from Texas & one from Idaho. They are all nice. And pretty. And talented. (Just in case they ever read this.) We get to share two sets of bunk beds, two totally crammed closets, one bathroom with two sinks & one phone. Thank goodness V & Daddy let me bring my cell phone & bought me this laptop. They think I’m just going to use it for homework. They’re kind of clueless, so they’ll never figure out about this blog. (Once V even called the Internet the “world wide interweb.”)
I couldn’t wait for V to leave. None of the other girls still had their parents with them. When she finally left, she asked the Capitol policeman how close an eye they keep on the pages or, as she put it, “these kids.”
The cop told her that she didn’t need to worry about her “sister” being safe. There’s a security alarm system & pass cards & a twenty-four hour post here. And everyone has to g
o through metal detectors to get into Webster Hall or the Capitol.
(V didn’t correct him about the sister thing, which was typical, but annoying. She’s only fifteen years older than me. She likes it when people think we’re sisters, but really, we don’t look anything alike. I look like my real mom. I’m blonde & five foot two, she’s brunette & five foot eight.)
As soon as I got back into our room, the girl from Texas started talking about how this place used to be a funeral home & how down in the basement is where they embalmed the bodies & about how they still keep some of the old equipment in a locked closet. It gave me the creeps.
And I tried not to, but it made me think of my mother. I mean, they must have done that stuff to her after she was dead. Flushed out her blood, pumped her full of chemicals.
The thing is, our room does have a weird smell.
JAKE’S GRILL
December 15
Normally she would have walked the five blocks to Jake’s Grill, but tonight Allison decided to drive. As she pulled into a parking lot behind a Subaru with a “Keep Portland Weird” bumper sticker, she told herself it was because she was too tired. But part of it was that she also felt vulnerable, even if the streets were crowded with Christmas shoppers. As she hurried inside the restaurant, she urged herself not to be so paranoid. She had received death threats before.
But never one hand-delivered to her car.
Under a high, white plaster ceiling, the large room was all dark wood and white tablecloths; unchanged for decades, the kind of place where you could still smoke at the bar. Jake’s was just loud enough that you wouldn’t be overheard, but not so loud you had to shout. Allison had chosen it because she thought it was the perfect place to talk shop.
Trying not to breathe in the odor of beer and stale cigarettes, she made her way past the bar and to the back of the dining room. Since she had found out she was pregnant, her sense of smell had gone into overdrive. In court this morning she had been aware of the witnesses’ shampoo and cologne, even the court reporter’s mouthwash. She’d had to throw away her lemon poppyseed muffin uneaten because it smelled too lemony.
