by D. F. Bailey
“Including Damian’s admission to you that he’d burned Isobel’s house and killed her parents?” Finch asked.
“It would be disqualified as prejudicial hearsay,” Eve said knowing exactly how any defense lawyer would handle the situation.
“So now you understand why I don't put anything on record.” Alicia coughed up a skeptical chuckle. “No tapes, no paper trail.”
“And that’s how it all ended?” Will asked.
“I guess some cop back in Malvern has the arson case stashed somewhere in an unsolved crime folder.” She sighed wearily, as if she’d had enough. “After she buried her foster parents Isobel moved in with one her girlfriends ’til the end of the school year. Then after grad she went to some southern state university. She either got a scholarship or insurance money, I guess. Prob’ly both, knowing her. She was smart enough, I’ll grant her that. One way or the other, she got everything she wanted. Including my brother.”
Alicia took a final drag on her cigarette and flicked the butt into a cluster of pigeons pecking through the gravel surrounding base of the water fountain.
“And then?” Finch asked, thinking there might be more.
She shrugged and brushed away the damp smudge of tears on her left cheek. “I’d heard she’d changed her name. But I never saw her again in person. Like everyone else, I saw her on TV and heard her on the radio. The one difference between then and now? She’s slicker. Yeah, she is. One. Slick. Witch.”
She smiled at that thought, as if after all this talk, all she needed were those last three words to describe Kali Rood.
※ — TWENTY ONE — ※
BY THE TIME Eve and Finch returned to the ferry a light offshore breeze had blown the Atlantic mist back out to sea. The early evening air felt fresh on Will’s skin and provided a sense of renewal. They stood near the bow of the boat and tried to come to terms with what Alicia Vex had told them.
“I can write a profile piece, but that’s about it. Even then, there’s no point,” he said. He’d already dismissed the idea of trying to tie Kali Rood’s past life as Isobel Oehmke to the mounting toll of deaths that began with Martin Fast. “We learned absolutely nothing from Alicia that is evidentiary. The case linking Kali to her parents’ death and Alicia’s brother already failed in court.”
“Hold on. Maybe we did learn something.”
“What?”
“Even if half of what Alicia said is true—and I think most of it probably is—then we know Kali Rood is a very dangerous sociopath.”
“No question about that.” He shrugged as if her point was obvious. “And I understand Alicia’s paranoia, too. Kali abused her friendship and killed her brother. No wonder she’s so cut up.”
“So let’s step back a minute. Normally we’d be looking for means, motive and opportunity. That’s normal, straight-up police work. But when the perp is a psycho, the motives get very fuzzy. Sometimes nothing makes sense. So Kali could be the root cause of everything. We just haven’t got down to her level of crazy. Not yet, anyway.”
Finch scanned the Wall Street skyscrapers just ahead. The financial center of the world. An impressive sight, no doubt. It provided a diversion as he slipped in and out of the tedious introspection that looped back and forth over the same possibilities.
As the ferry neared Whitehall Terminal Finch felt his phone vibrate in his pocket. He waited another moment before tugging it into his hand. It was a text from Simon Waterston: “Meet me at nine o’clock tonight. Same place.” Will checked the time. Seven-thirty.
“Something’s come up. I’ve got a source who wants to see me.” He nodded to suggest it would be important.
“A source?”
The look on her face told him that she wanted to know who the secret source might be. She wanted to be part of it, he understood that. But protected sources were just that. Protected.
“He blew me off this morning. I thought I’d never see him again.” He adjusted his balance as the ferry nudged against the pier. “Sorry, but I can’t tell you anything more. That’s just how it works.”
“Could be something, then.” She set her hand on the railing and prepared to follow the crowd off the ferry.
“Maybe. Let’s take a taxi up to Five Points together. You keep the cab, get back to the hotel and I’ll meet you there after I meet this contact. If I learn anything new, then maybe we can tie the pieces together.”
“We need something,” she said. “It’s one thing to tie loose ends together, but at this point all we seem to have are strands of broken thread.”
※
The atmosphere and mood in Columbus Park had shifted since the afternoon. The old men practicing t'ai chi, the children reciting nursery rhymes with their grandmothers—all of that had been replaced by the shrill banter of young teenagers and a large cluster of women arguing in Chinese over some squabble that Will couldn’t comprehend.
After a few minutes Finch caught sight of Simon Waterston standing next to the statue of Dr. Sen Yat-sen. Simon no longer wore a tie and his hair looked disheveled as though he’d been raking his fingers over his scalp. His eyes appeared weary and as Will approached he could see Simon draw his lower lip between his teeth.
“Walk with me,” Simon said.
He swung his suit jacket over his shoulder and led the way toward a two-story open pavilion with a tile roof.
“All right,” Simon said after they’d established a walking pace. “You win.”
Finch allowed the comment to pass. Simon had asked for the meeting; better to let him disclose what he’d discovered rather than get in his way with misdirected questions. Besides, who could tell how long their detente would last?
“Despite your demands,” Simon continued, “I did not do this for you. I did it for my sister.”
“Okay,” Finch said just to encourage him. He had no idea where Simon might be heading with the conversation. “For Jayne.”
“But first you need to understand something.” He stopped abruptly and pivoted toward Finch. His face was flushed. “If you expose me, I will end up in prison. Do you get that?”
Before he responded, Finch waited until Simon could settle down and maintain eye contact. “You have my word on this, Simon. And for the record, I have never exposed a source. Not once.”
“Just be clear. I will never acknowledge that I am your source. After tonight we will never speak again. Do you understand?”
They stood looking at one another.
“Yes.”
Simon drew a long breath as if he was about to dive from a high board into a shallow pool. “All right. Deacon Salter is not who he appears to be.”
Finch felt a tinge of disappointment. This was the grand revelation? “Okay. So tell me. I have no idea who he is.”
“Let me back up,” Simon said as he continued to steer them toward the open pavilion.
“All right.”
“See, at the Cybercrime and Identity Theft Bureau I can access all the cases pertaining to identity theft, not just in the state, but across the country.” He spread his hands in a broad arc. “I’m sure you understand that identity theft is mostly a digital crime. But hackers don’t just take your VISA card number then dine out on caviar and champagne. They steal your entire world, Finch. You can go to bed one night and wake up to find your bank account empty, your house double-mortgaged, your kid’s college fund vaporized and your wife’s 401K liquidated. I’m serious. And most times, the perp’s not some creep waiting to be locked up. When the job’s done there’re no fingerprints, no DNA, no witnesses. It’s called zero-trace mugging. And that’s what I handle in the DA’s office.”
“Okay.” Now that Simon was on a roll, Finch did his best not to interrupt him. “And the perps can be in Russia or wherever.”
Simon ignored this. “So there are other databases, too. They’re related to the opposite of identity theft—identity acquisition.”
“Identity acquisition.” Finch mulled over the phrase. “You mean for witness prot
ection?”
Simon nodded.
“So the feds take an identity from someone deceased who matches a certain profile and give it to the person going into witness protection.”
“Exactly. But the world inside IA is off limits to me. Until today, that is, when I got into the database. And that’s why we aren’t having this conversation.”
He fixed Finch with a heavy look. Finch nodded to acknowledge that by breaking into the IA database, Simon had crossed a line. It marked his commitment to his sister. The distance he was willing to go to expose the identity of Deacon Salter and turn the information over to Finch so that he could publish the conspiracy in the eXpress.
They stood before the park pavilion and watched an elderly Chinese couple ease down the staircase to the ground. A light breeze washed through the park and then faded. The chorus of women arguing in Cantonese continued. Four boys dashed behind them on skate boards.
“The thing is, IA isn’t just for witness protection. It’s also used for political refugees and military personnel. And special cases.”
Finch turned to Simon. “And Deacon Salter is a special case.”
Simon nodded and then led the way up the stairs to the open air pavilion.
“How special?”
“How’s your history, Finch?”
He shrugged with a look that said, where are you going with this?
Simon waved a hand, an encouragement to play along for another minute or two. “Tell me something. What historic event happened on November 18, 1978?”
His eyebrows rose in expectation. Meanwhile Finch struggled to recall the importance of a day that fell more than a year before his birth.
“…November 18, 1978?…”
“No shame. Hardly anyone one gets it.” Simon’s smirk revealed a hint of smugness. “It’s the date of the Jonestown massacre in Guyana. Nine hundred and nine people slaughtered in mass suicide. A third of them were children. Until nine-eleven it was the biggest civilian massacre of US citizens ever.”
Finch rubbed his thumb and index finger over the stub of his earlobe as he recited the infamous eulogy that marked the disaster: “They drank the Kool-aid.”
“They did. Except it wasn’t Kool-Aid. It was Flavor-Aid.” Simon’s mouth formed a grin of satisfaction, as if he’d successfully led Finch down a long and winding path without missing a step.
Simon continued to walk until they reached an unoccupied part of the pavilion platform. He pressed his thighs against the banister and tested his weight against the railing as they watched the groups of people strolling through the park below them.
“So what does all this have to do with Deacon Salter?”
“Good question. In fact, it’s the only question that really matters.” He turned to Finch with an expression that said, this is where all the threads weave together. “Two days after Jonestown, a twelve-year-old boy named Danny Pass acquired the identity of Jason Wishart. Then fourteen years later, Wishart changed his name to Deacon Salter.”
“Wait.” Finch tugged at Simon’s elbow. “You’re saying that Deacon Salter was at Jonestown? You mean he survived Jonestown?”
“Not officially. Depending on how you define the term, there were only four survivors. One of them, believe it or not, was an old guy too deaf to hear the PA system ordering everyone to line up for their dose of flavored cyanide.” A bleak laugh erupted from his throat. “But unofficially there were two more survivors. Both of them children. Their social workers tried to protect them from the media hysteria by giving them new names. One was Danny Pass who acquired the identity of another boy the same age who’d just died in a car crash in Idaho. Jason Wishart, who is now doing business as Deacon Salter.”
As Simon spoke Finch could see it all coming together now. It was like a shell game where you try to spot the pebble under one of three cups that shifted from place to place before your eyes. “And the second child?”
“Was a seven-year-old girl. She tagged along with Salter as he snuck out of the Jonestown compound and was rescued at the local air strip with him. It was little more than a dirt track in the middle of the jungle.”
They stood in silence at the second floor railing of the open pavilion and took in the twilight atmosphere of the park. The light slowly faded under the gray smudge of the evening smog. A few street lights blinked on in random sequence. Simon let out a breath as if he’d just completed a long climb up a mountain.
“The girl’s birth name was Ruth Watts,” he continued. “After Jonestown, she acquired the identity of Isobel Oehmke. Another car crash victim as it turns out.”
“Isobel Oehmke.” Alicia Vex’s high school nemesis. Finch nodded silently as he stared across the park.
Simon waited a moment, then continued. “But here’s the kicker. It’s not just Jonestown that put these two together. See, the identity databases can be searched three different ways. Alphabetically, chronologically and by location. So I checked Salter’s last name change—when Jason Wishart became Deacon Salter—for the date and location that his application was certified. Austin, Texas, December 12, 1992.”
“Where Isobel Oehmke went to college.”
“Correct.”
Finch studied Simon for a moment. He decided to wait for him to fill in the picture by clicking the final puzzle piece into place. It was his story after all. It also belonged to his twin sister.
“And at the same time and place, Isobel Oehmke became Kali Rood,” he said as if he were completing a legal summation. He briefly studied Finch’s face, as though he was trying to detect some surprise.
“Fourteen years after Jonestown they found one another and now they’re in it together, Will. Kali Rood and Deacon Salter. The two of them together, then and now. They killed Jayne, and God knows who else.”
※ — TWENTY TWO — ※
AS HE WAITED to hail a taxi, Finch felt the blood pulsing through his body. He remembered the crises he’d experienced in Baghdad, the same rush of anticipation, the sense of impending explosion. He tried to decipher his feelings. Was he being paranoid—or was the world conspiring to bring him into a clash with fate? He walked down a block on Worth Street and leaned his back against the red brick wall of the True Light Lutheran Church. Any sign of strangers following? None. Once again he attempted to shrug off his anxieties as he flagged down the first cab that came his way.
The taxi drove up Sixth Avenue and across Thirty-third to the Hotel Penn. The night traffic struggled in a stop-and-go momentum, the air was still and tinged with a gray haze. He knew he was close now, knew that at the very least he could publish the stories about Kali Rood and Deacon Pass. He could weave their lives together and establish the link to Jayne Waterston’s murder. Everything derived from the photograph that she’d taken of the car parked outside her apartment and the license plate that led to Deacon Salter—the child, Danny Pass—and his companion during their Jonestown escape, Ruth Watts, aka Isobel Oehmke and now reborn as Kali Rood. The links that joined them spanned decades, but there they were, he said to himself. Links tight as handcuffs.
As he exited the taxi, he felt a new wave of anxiety. He checked over his shoulders as he entered the hotel. Any one of three or four men and women could be tailing him. Heavy-set men with shaved skulls, their jackets a size too large in order to accommodate the weapons strapped under their armpits. Women whose eyes swept past him, then returned to settle their gaze on his face.
After he stepped into the elevator he saw a hand clasp the door bumper and pull it open just as it began to close. A stranger dressed in a sports jacket, jeans and blue Nike running shoes stepped into the car. A big man with broad shoulders and a wiry alertness. A thin scar cut through his right eyebrow, an old wound that must have damaged the hair follicles.
He glanced at Finch and put on a smile. Finch ignored him.
“Sorry.” Nike examined the buttons on the floor control panel. He pressed SIX despite the fact the amber button was already lit. “Good. I’m heading up to six, too.”<
br />
Finch detected a slight accent, French, just enough of a inflection to make him wonder. Finch stared at the back of his head. His thinning black hair was slicked to the right side in a combover. The car rose to the sixth floor and the bell pinged. The door skimmed open and Nike held the door for Finch.
“After you.”
“You know,” he said, “I realize I forgot something in the lobby.” He reached over and pressed the button marked L.
“Ah.” With a shrug Nike moved into the hall, turned to the left and walked toward Eve’s room, his blue shoes squeaking with every step.
As he rode the elevator down, Finch held the CLOSE button with his thumb. When the door opened on the main floor, he jabbed the button again and rode back up to six on his own. By the time he entered Eve’s room his paranoia had dissipated just enough to steady his breathing and calm his pounding pulse.
“You’re back,” she whispered over the side of her cellphone.
She was on the line with someone and her distraction allowed him to step into the bathroom, shut the door and take a shower. He took a full twenty minutes to clean himself up. It felt good to shave and wash his hair. For the first time since he’d returned from Paris, he felt like he’d finally escaped from a jungle.
When he joined Eve in the bedroom she was just finishing her call. She set her cell on the bedside table with a forced smile that didn’t fool him for a second.
“That was Wally.” The corners of her lips dropped into a frown. “There’s some bad news. Sorry, I completely forgot to tell you.” She glanced away and then continued. “His wife has pancreatic cancer. He’s taken a leave from the eXpress.”
