Silver Cross

by B. Kent Anderson

  She found herself lost. Andrew and Nick Journey’s lives, on paper, were an abstraction. Andrew was a statistic—part of the 1 in 110 kids with some form of autism. But here, he was a person—and she had absolutely no idea how to relate to him, if it was even possible to relate to him.

  He didn’t move, looking around the room as if something weren’t right.

  Me, Tolman thought. I’m the thing that’s not right. I’m in his world, and he doesn’t know why I’m here.

  “I’m sure your dad will be up in a minute,” she said.

  Andrew whistled three notes.

  Tolman looked at him.

  He whistled the notes again. He still wasn’t looking at her, but the whistling seemed intentional.

  She whistled the notes back at him.

  His eyes opened wider. He whistled three more, lowering the last note by half a step. Tolman listened with her musician’s ear and repeated the pattern.

  Andrew jabbed a flat hand in her direction, then whistled the original three notes.

  “I like the second one better,” Tolman said, then whistled it.

  Andrew whistled the second, lower pattern, then broke into a huge smile.

  Tolman returned the smile as Journey came around the corner, scratching his head. “I heard you whistling,” he said, then looked at Tolman. “And I guess I heard you whistling, too, Meg.”

  “It was nothing,” Tolman said. For some reason the moment had seemed private, and she didn’t want to talk about it.

  “He loves music, always has,” Journey said. “Come on, Andrew, let’s get you dressed. There’s coffee in the kitchen, Meg. Thought you weren’t an early riser.”

  “I’m not, but I can’t sleep. I have to get back to D.C. Hopefully Poe sent Dana’s belongings and they’ll be at the office by the time I get there.”

  “You think there’s something there?”

  “I don’t know, but I’m going to find out.”

  * * *

  Tolman landed in D.C. shortly after three o’clock. She met her father outside and tossed her bags into the trunk of his black Crown Vic.

  “Meg, there’s a bullet hole in your suitcase,” Ray Tolman said, as if it were a normal topic of father-daughter conversation. “Where did you say you’ve been the last few days?”

  Meg Tolman settled in to the car, feeling the blast of air conditioning. “North Carolina, Missouri, and Oklahoma,” she said.

  “Oh, good,” her father said, sliding behind the wheel. “Glad it wasn’t anyplace dangerous, like Afghanistan or North Korea, where you might get shot.”

  “It is one hell of a long story, Dad,” she said. “Do you remember my friend from Curtis, Dana Cable?”

  “The cello player? Long brown hair?”

  “The word is ‘cellist,’ Dad. Not ‘cello player.’ Cellist.”

  “She plays the cello, she’s a cello player. What about her?”

  “She’s dead. Someone killed her, and she asked for me right before she died.”

  Ray Tolman’s shoulders deflated. “Ah shit, Meg.”

  “Yeah. That’s kind of how I feel.”

  “Ah shit,” Ray Tolman said again, softer.

  Meg glanced at him. She knew what he was thinking, and it was both unrealistic and understandable. Her father thought Meg should never have to deal with death again, after the way her mother had died. He, apparently, was planning to live forever.

  “I can deal with it, Dad,” she said. “That’s what I’m doing right now, trying to figure it out. There’s a lot going on that I don’t understand.”

  “Yeah?”

  So she told him. It was a more comfortable way for them to communicate. It was easy for them to talk about cases, one investigator to another—even though Meg knew that her father thought RIO wasn’t “real” law enforcement. He was career Secret Service and had served on protective details for three presidents before moving inside six years ago. His daughter had inherited his ice blue eyes and cop’s attitude, but little else.

  When she was finished, Ray said, “Sounds crazy. Napoleon III? Civil War spies?” The Crown Vic crossed the Potomac into the District. “You said you went to Oklahoma. I guess you talked to that history guy, Journey.”

  “I was in the neighborhood,” Meg said, “so I thought I’d go see him. I have him working the historic side of this.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “Take me to the office.”

  “Don’t you want to go home first? That cat has really been pissing me off.”

  “Oh, come on. Rocky’s a good cat. You’re just pissed because you yell at him and he doesn’t do anything.”

  “Yeah, it’s a lot like having a teenage daughter again. What the hell possessed you to get a deaf cat?”

  Meg Tolman waited a moment. Her tone softened. “I guess we sort of needed each other.” She closed her eyes. “Speaking of people who need each other, how’s Granddad? I need to call him.”

  “He’s all right. They’ve decided that last round of chest pains was another mild heart attack after all. He’s up to five heart attacks now.”

  Meg Tolman smiled. “And he probably gave the nurses all kinds of hell.”

  “You know it. Between cursing at them and telling stories about working for J. Edgar Hoover, he’s everyone’s favorite. But he’s back at the assisted living place now. Go see him when you can. He’d rather talk to you than me, for some reason.”

  “I hope I’m that sharp when I’m eighty-nine. I’ll call him soon. Right now, I have work to do.”

  * * *

  He dropped her at the anonymous office building on Connecticut Avenue near Farragut Square, and she went to the fourth floor. Pulling her travel case behind her, she took a deep breath before opening the door of suite 427.

  Tina, the raven-haired receptionist, said, “I thought you were going to be gone a few more days.”

  “Well, you never know,” Tolman said. “Good to see the office is still standing.”

  Tina smiled. “I have a stack of papers for you.”

  Tolman grimaced. “Give them to Erin.” After being appointed deputy director, Tolman had hired an assistant deputy director, someone who could navigate all the paperwork and let her still work individual cases.

  “Some of them are ‘eyes only’ for you,” Tina said.

  “Later,” Tolman said.

  “What’s that hole in your bag?”

  “I was shot at in a cemetery in the Ozarks,” Tolman said.

  “I thought you went to North Carolina.”

  “I did.”

  “I’m a D.C. girl, but I don’t think the Ozarks are in North Carolina.”

  “They aren’t.”

  “Okay,” Tina said, not pressing the matter. “And speaking of North Carolina, an overnight package came for you from Wilmington this morning. It’s on your desk.”

  “Ah,” Tolman said. “I need that. No calls. I’m officially unavailable the rest of the day.”

  At the end of the hall, Tolman went into her office, closed the door, and took off her shoes. The large FedEx package was centered neatly on her desk, in front of her keyboard. She sat down and rubbed her temples. That damned Chopin Funeral polonaise continued to run through her head. At some point, she would have to actually play it—that would be the only way to rid herself of it.

  The package was from Poe. Good old Inspector Poe. His drawling, laid-back persona was deceptive. The man was sharp and easygoing at the same time, with a dry wit she liked. She hadn’t seen a wedding ring on his hand, either. Under different circumstances …

  “Oh, stop that crap,” Tolman said aloud. There were no different circumstances. She hadn’t been on a date in a year and a half, and Larry Poe was in North Carolina.

  She tore into the package. There were clothes, all casual, neatly folded, a wallet, a purse, a yellow legal pad—and a little Netbook computer. Tolman paged quickly through the legal pad and found it completely blank. She poked around in the purse, but she fo
und herself drawn to the computer.

  If Dana held true to the way most people handled their personal laptops, it wouldn’t be password protected. People seemed to think that since they were the only ones using the computer—it wasn’t public, after all—they didn’t need passwords. They stayed logged in to whatever programs they were using.

  The desktop came up immediately, proving the point. Dana had used one of the popular web-based e-mail services, and sure enough, the computer was still logged in. “Thank you, Dana,” Tolman said without thinking. She settled in.

  There were nineteen unread messages in Dana’s inbox. Tolman sighed heavily—she’d done this many times in the course of investigations over the six years she’d been with RIO. She had just never read the mail of a personal friend. Four of Dana’s unread e-mails were listserv messages, all music related. Seven were work related, from colleagues at the George School, the Quaker prep school outside of Philadelphia where Dana taught. One was from Oberlin Conservatory, a follow-up on a student Dana had recommended. A confirmation for a book she’d ordered on Amazon, a dinner reservation … the normal things that made up a life.

  Before she started to go down into the older e-mails that had already been read, Tolman caught sight of the drafts folder. There was one message in it, unsent. She clicked on the folder. The subject line was blank. The date was one week before Dana’s walk on the seawall.

  The addressee was mtolman@rio.gov.

  “Oh God,” Tolman said, and opened the message.

  Hello Meg, read the salutation.

  Tolman gripped the sides of the computer. She felt the tension in her hands, all the way up her arms to her shoulders, her neck. Her head throbbed.

  Sorry I’ve been out of touch. Lots going on in my life. Well, not my life exactly, but you know what I mean.

  Don’t know exactly what it is you do down there with your research and investigations thing, but I may need your help. A woman called me and said she had information about my brothers and that if I would meet her at Fort Fisher near Wilmington, North Carolina (why there???), she would explain. I don’t know who she is, but she knew things.…

  Oh God, Meg, I better back up. I’ve been so out of touch, I guess you probably don’t know. Both my brothers have died this year. Barry was killed in that terrorist shooting in Washington last April—remember he worked for the GAO? Jimmy committed suicide in June. I know you never met them and I never told you much about them, but now they’re both gone. I am all that’s left.

  Something is happening.

  I don’t know what this woman

  And that was all.

  Tolman read it again: I may need your help.… I am all that’s left.… And most ominous of all, Something is happening.

  Tolman began scrolling through Dana’s older e-mails, reading each one. Dana was pretty good about cleaning out her inbox, and she had no other folders. Apparently any e-mail she wanted to save stayed in the inbox and she deleted the rest. There were more concerning students of hers, a few additional work-related things. Then she opened a message with the subject line “Thanks,” dated July 7 of this year. Not quite a month ago.

  Hey, Dana,

  It was good to see you, and Alex really liked seeing his aunt Dana. He still doesn’t sleep very well and he gets so irritable, and I feel like I don’t know what to do for him. Starting him on grief classes next Thursday. It’s good that he’s out of school.…

  I’m glad Jim left you the house. I couldn’t have stood to go in it. Glad you were able to come down and do some work on it, and your offer to put the money from the estate sale into a trust for Alex is really great. You know, Jim was a good man—I never said he wasn’t a good man. I just said I couldn’t live with him anymore. We gave it 12 years, and we were never right together. We put up a good front, and people were so shocked when I filed. But it was all a front. There was nothing underneath all the hand-holding and smarmy talk. We weren’t really a husband and wife. But he was a good, good man. He never talked, so he never reached out, even when he was depressed. I guess that’s what I’ve been telling myself.

  Just a note to say thanks for settling the house. We can still be sisters-in-law, can’t we? It’s all about Alex now, and you’ll always be his aunt.

  Love, Melissa

  Melissa Cable.

  Tolman had learned from her preliminary research on the Cables that she’d filed for divorce from Jim on March 15, citing irreconcilable differences. She moved out of the couple’s home in Norman, Oklahoma, where Jim Cable was a professor of mechanical engineering at the University of Oklahoma. Melissa Cable was an elementary school teacher. Their son, Alex, was eleven years old. Barry Cable was killed in April. Jim’s divorce was final on June 15, ninety days after filing, according to Oklahoma law. He killed himself on June 27.

  He had willed his house to his sister, but all life insurance policies and cash assets were split between his ex-wife and a trust fund for his son. So sometime before July 7, Dana had gone to Oklahoma to take care of the details of her brother’s house. Tolman wrote “Melissa Cable visit” on an RIO notepad. She checked Google Maps: Norman was south of Oklahoma City and two hours or so north of Nick Journey’s home in Carpenter Center. She remembered having driven past exits for Norman when she was in Oklahoma last year. She wrote “Norman, OK” on the pad.

  I should have gone there yesterday, she thought. Then again, she hadn’t known what she was looking for yesterday. The picture was starting to form, a blurry outline that she could begin to follow.

  The Chopin was still bothering her, so Tolman dug out her iPod and shuffled until she found something that might drown it out. She finally settled on Carrie Newcomer, a songwriter she’d discovered a few months ago. The jangling acoustic guitars and Newcomer’s earthy alto on a song called “Before and After” soothed her, and the Chopin eventually faded. She turned up the volume and started to dig further into Dana’s e-mails.

  She scrolled through more of the typical messages that made up a typical e-mail account, then stopped on one with the subject line “Barry.” The sender was Jim Cable. The date was June 22, five days before Jim hanged himself on his back porch.

  D,

  Now that things have settled a bit from Melissa and Alex leaving and I’m starting to feel like myself again, I’ve been thinking … I believe there was more to Barry’s death than just some random terrorist nutcases. He sent me something.

  There’s something happening here, and I don’t know what. Going to check into it.

  J

  Tolman read it again.

  “There’s something happening here.”

  Tolman remembered the words something is happening in the unsent e-mail Dana had written her.

  I do not believe in coincidence, Tolman thought.

  She kept digging in the inbox. The last four messages were a series of exchanges between Dana and Jim in the days after Barry Cable had been murdered in the GAO shooting outside of Washington. Those messages were all about funeral arrangements, the family plot, contacting Reverend Davison, meeting in Cassville.…

  Tolman clicked over from the inbox to Dana’s “sent” file and she found Dana’s reply to Jim, sent the same day as his message, about two hours later.

  Into conspiracy theories these days?

  Let it go. Those guys pled guilty to shooting up Barry’s office. None of them will ever get out of jail. Don’t look for things that aren’t there. Let it go.

  D

  Tolman remembered the cemetery in Cassville, the three Cable siblings lying there together. She pictured the tall, nondescript woman pressing the envelope into her hand—“You may find some enlightenment there.”

  But she hadn’t found enlightenment. She found only questions.

  Tolman thumped her foot on the floor. Carrie Newcomer had given way to Miles Davis’s “Straight, No Chaser.” The Chopin was finally silent in her mind.

  The three Cables: a spectacular, headline-grabbing shooting in a government office, the
credit claimed by an obscure antigovernment group; a quiet suicide on a porch in Oklahoma; a bizarre “accident” on a midnight seawall in North Carolina.

  Barry Cable, April. Jim Cable, June. Dana Cable, August, a few days ago.

  She started to organize what she knew into chronological order. Not Rose Greenhow and Napoleon III and the Silver Cross—they were Nick Journey’s department—but the here and now.

  The point where the Cables entered the picture—culminating with Dana’s death on the seawall—was in April, when Barry was killed.

  Whatever Jim Cable had sent to his brother, it hadn’t been sent to Dana. Or if it had, she didn’t write about it in any electronic communications.

  Tolman pulled herself close to the computer screen and logged into RACER—the custom search engine whose acronym meant Retrieval, Assessment, Correlation, Expression, Review. She was going to learn everything there was to know about Edwin Barry Cable and the people who had killed him, the shadowy extremist group April 19.

  “Something is happening.”

  “It sure as hell is,” Tolman said.

  CHAPTER

  13

  When the ship docked, Gray gave her statement to the police—other than a trip to the restroom and a stroll around the top deck at the very beginning of the cruise, she’d spent the entire crossing in her favorite spot at the ship’s stern, alternately dozing and reading. Her bags were searched, her ID scrutinized. She gave the local police and ship’s authorities her contact information and moved on. Apparently a couple of people in staterooms heard some indistinct noises, but no one saw anything. The police were visibly frustrated.

  Other action had to be taken, and immediately. She rarely brought Ann Gray home to Fremont, Michigan, where she lived with her husband and son under another name. But this time she had no choice. It was a little over an hour’s drive from Ludington to Fremont, and she came into town on Michigan 82, then turned north on Darling Street, passing the Fremont Library and police department. My small middle-American town, Gray thought fondly.