Shadow of the Lions

by Christopher Swann

  Wat chuckled and tucked the bottle into a cupboard. “Obviously it was a warm reunion,” he said. “All right, I won’t torture you about it, although I confess I am sad that you and Abby didn’t work out.” He gestured to the living room. “Shall we?”

  We ensconced ourselves in a pair of armchairs by the fire. “So,” Wat said with the air of a man who has had a good meal and a good drink and is prepared to grant favors. “What can I do for you? Your call sounded urgent.”

  Now that I was here, I hesitated. I had called him that afternoon because I needed to talk to somebody involved with NorthPoint, somebody who, I hoped, would be willing to talk to me and confirm what Trip and Diamond had told me. But now I felt like this was not the wisest course of action. I was about to invoke the Davenport family ghost, not to mention inquire about NorthPoint. Was this a patently stupid idea?

  As if reading my mind, Wat smiled. “You can trust me, Matthias,” he said. “You were a good friend to my nephew, and no matter what my brother might think, you are my friend as well.”

  “What your brother might think?” I couldn’t help it—the comment bothered me.

  Wat glanced down at his glass, took a sip. “Frank is a difficult man,” he said. “Of course, Fritz’s disappearance took its toll on him. He sees enemies that don’t exist, plots that aren’t there.”

  I saw Frank Davenport looming in front of me in my dorm room at Blackburne, screaming in my face. This from the man who had gotten the FBI to drop its investigation into his own son’s disappearance. I found I was clutching the stem of my wineglass so hard, I thought it might snap, so I set it down on the coffee table in front of me. Fuck him, I thought. “Actually, I need to talk to you about Fritz,” I said. “About his disappearance.”

  Wat’s eyebrows rose, but only a millimeter or so, and he sat patiently as I told him the condensed version of Fritz’s disappearance and what I had recently learned: Fritz’s leaving his medal under my pillow, his father’s screaming at me in our dorm room, my interview with Pelham Greer and subsequent realization that Fritz had left campus much later than anybody had thought, Deputy Briggs’s story of the FBI. I left out Trip’s and Diamond’s contributions. Wat said nothing as I talked, just kept his gaze leveled at me and paid attention. When I finished, he got up, went into the kitchen, and came back with the wine and the whiskey and filled our glasses. Then he sat down. When he spoke, his voice sounded worn. “My nephew has been missing for nearly ten years,” he said. “An entire decade. And now you suspect that my brother may have kept him from being found.”

  “I’m not saying it was intentional —” I started, but Wat cut me off with a sharp sweep of his arm.

  “You want to know if I know anything,” he said. “If I can shed any light.” He took a good swallow of his drink and then looked at me. For the first time all evening, he seemed to be really seeing me. “I loved Fritz. I don’t have any children of my own, but he and Abby always filled that role. The day he disappeared . . .” He paused, blinking. The pain in his eyes was hard to bear, and I dropped my gaze before it.

  After a moment, Wat continued, his voice under control. “You know that I no longer work for NorthPoint,” he said. He must have seen the surprise on my face. “I consult from time to time, but I’m not involved with day-to-day operations. I haven’t been for years. Not since—since Fritz disappeared.” He paused, seeming to gather himself like a diver at the top of a tower. “In 2000,” he continued, “I was chief operating officer at NorthPoint. That December, we found evidence that someone was trying to steal some of our research. Encryption software, mostly, although we also learned some work we’d done on miniaturization was at risk. My brother and I hired a private detective firm, as we weren’t sure we could trust our own security. Long story short, they found one of our technicians and a security officer were on a Chinese payroll. We fired them before they did any serious damage. But Frank was livid. We were negotiating contracts with the Pentagon right then, and if word had gotten out about these two NorthPoint employees passing secrets to China . . . well, in all likelihood I would be living in a split-level outside of Richmond right now instead of here in Georgetown. Those were our first real contracts, Matthias. They made NorthPoint.” He smiled wanly. “This all came to a head a month before Fritz vanished. You can imagine how that shook Frank and Mary, and Abby. And then when the FBI wanted to poke around . . .” He shrugged and finished his drink.

  “You didn’t want them finding out about the private detectives and the Chinese spies,” I said.

  Wat laughed, a short, bitter sound. “It sounds like a bad movie, doesn’t it? Chinese spies!” He sighed. “In my brother’s defense, he thought Fritz would turn up in a matter of days. The FBI didn’t seem necessary. Of course, he was wrong. I argued that we should let the authorities investigate, tell them everything. But Frank was scared. NorthPoint had gone public three years earlier, and we’d spent a lot of investor money to get to where we were in 2000. If we had lost those Pentagon contracts, NorthPoint wouldn’t even be a memory today. So Frank got the FBI to drop it.” He looked at me, and something in his stare—a cold certitude—made me catch my breath. “And because of that, I resigned. I left within the month, long enough for Frank to assure the Pentagon that he could cover for me.” Wat smiled acidly. “Mustn’t let anything happen to NorthPoint. Frank’s golden goose. Which he didn’t want cooked.”

  I sat back in my chair, deflated. Wat’s story explained what Trip and Diamond had found, and it did so in a way that didn’t make Frank Davenport into some sort of a monster who would kill his own child. But I was still no closer to finding Fritz. Disillusionment washed over me. I realized I was actually disappointed that Frank Davenport probably had nothing to do with his son’s disappearance.

  Wat leaned forward. “I’m sorry I don’t have anything more for you. Something that could help you find Fritz. That’s what you’re doing, isn’t it? Looking for him?”

  I gave a resentful snort of laughter. “I’m beginning to think that’s all I’ve been doing since he disappeared,” I said. “Even when I didn’t know I was doing it, when I was actively trying not to do that. I’ve been waiting for him all these years like he’ll walk back in through the door. And he hasn’t.” I looked at Wat. “What do you think happened to him?”

  Wat blinked in surprise. “I don’t know,” he said simply. “I’ve thought about it ever since. He must have had his reasons for leaving. I know . . . I know that my brother can be a hard man, and that he and Fritz did not always see eye to eye, but I don’t see Frank as capable of murdering his own son.” I stared at him, and he laughed weakly. “That’s what you were wondering, isn’t it?” he asked. “It’s all right. I’ve wondered it myself, lying awake at night. But . . . no. I can see him driving his child away. Not killing him.”

  “Could the two guys you fired, the ones passing secrets to the Chinese—could they have had anything to do with Fritz’s disappearance?”

  Wat shook his head. “Frank hired another firm to investigate them. They didn’t find anything. Frank made them look again, and they did. Still nothing. Just a couple of employees who got greedy. They weren’t kidnappers or anything like that.” He sighed. “Frank really wanted it to have been them,” he said softly.

  Wat fell silent after that, but he sat with me while I stared into the burning logs, as if I’d find some augury there.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  I spent the night in Wat’s guest room at his insistence—he wouldn’t hear of my going to a hotel. So much had happened that day that I thought I might be up all night, my brain spinning away as it tried to process everything. But after retrieving my duffel from the car and walking upstairs to my room, I felt exhausted, limbs heavy as marble, and when I fell into bed, I slept a gray, dreamless sleep. The next morning, I woke and sat up bleary-eyed in a strange room, struggling for several seconds to understand where I was. I took a quick shower, trying to slough off the night’s sleep and largely succeeding. Once dressed
, I padded downstairs in my socks to find, in the kitchen, a smiling Korean woman who was evidently the housekeeper. She directed me toward a pot of hot coffee, a plate of muffins, and an elegantly handwritten note from Wat:

  Matthias,

  My apologies for not being at home when you wake up, but I have an early meeting.

  I’d cancel, but it’s with someone from the vice president’s office. Far duller than it sounds, trust me.

  Thank you for calling on me. I appreciate it far more than you know. Keep in touch and let me know if I can ever be of service—my cell phone number is on the card I left with this note.

  Sun Hi will take care of you if you need anything. Safe journey back to Blackburne.

  Wat

  I looked at Wat’s business card—bold serif script on cream-colored paper heavy and stiff as a credit card—and put it in my wallet.

  After breakfast I wrote Wat a short thank-you note and left. The storm was completely gone, leaving a clear blue sky behind. It took more than three hours to get back to Blackburne, a long time to ponder what I had learned from Trip and Diamond and Wat, which was both a lot and not much. Mrs. Davenport had called the FBI to help find her son. Mr. Davenport had called them off for fear of uncovering some unflattering truths about NorthPoint. Wat Davenport had resigned in protest. None of this helped me find Fritz.

  I should have taken my time getting back, because when I finally turned into Blackburne’s drive and drove past the lions and up the Hill, and then circled around behind Lawson-Parker, I found a sheriff’s patrol car parked by the rear entrance. Something cold and hard formed in my gut. Had there been another accident? Another student death? I went inside the dorm and ducked into the commons room, but no one was there, so I hurried down the hall to my apartment, opened the door, and stepped inside.

  The first person I saw was Sam Hodges, sitting on my futon. He looked startled, as if I had woken him up. Behind him, putting a magazine down on a side table, was Deputy Smalls.

  “Sam?” I said.

  Sam stood up, slowly. “Matthias,” he said.

  Ren Middleton walked around the corner from my kitchen. “Mr. Glass,” he said.

  “What’s going on?” I said.

  Deputy Smalls stepped around the futon toward me. “Mr. Glass, I have to inform you that you are under arrest.”

  I blinked—it was as if he had slapped me across the face. “What?”

  “How could you,” Ren said.

  “How could I what?” I said, growing angry. “Sam, what’s going on?”

  “Mr. Glass, you are under arrest for possession and intent to distribute illegal narcotics,” Deputy Smalls said. He took a pair of handcuffs from his belt. “Please turn around, sir.”

  Whatever anger had risen in me vanished in the face of Smalls and his handcuffs, and, numbly, I complied. Smalls snapped one of the cuffs over my right wrist, brought it up to the small of my back, and then brought my left hand up, snapping the second bracelet over my left wrist. As he was cuffing me, Smalls went through the Miranda litany: “You have the right to an attorney, anything you say can and will be used against you.” The entire time, incredulous, I watched Sam’s face. I had to look over my shoulder to do this. His expression ran the gamut from uncertainty to disbelief to sadness. It was this last image of Sam’s sad face that lingered long after Smalls turned me around and swiftly and professionally escorted me out of my apartment to the parking lot and into his cruiser, placing his hand on my head to steer me into the backseat. Stunned as I was, I did manage to feel thankful that no students appeared to have seen me led in handcuffs to a police car. Just then, I saw Stephen Watterson, standing, mouth open, in the glassed-in second-floor walkway. He stared at me as I was placed in the backseat of the cruiser.

  THE MIDDLE RIVER REGIONAL Jail had two large holding cells. One was empty and dark. They put me in the second one. A dozen people eyed me lazily when another deputy escorted me in and closed the cell door behind me with a hollow clang. I found a spot on a bench and sat down, rubbing my hands over my head. This would be funny, I thought, if I weren’t sitting in a jail cell with an open toilet in the corner. As if he could hear my thoughts, one of the other prisoners stood, ambled over to the toilet, dropped trou, and squatted on it.

  For hours, it seemed, I just sat there, staring at the mottled concrete floor and the drain in its center. I tried to get a hold on what was happening. Deputy Smalls had told me that a student had found a plastic bag with three buds and a handful of Oxycontin pills in my classroom desk and told Ren Middleton, who had called Sheriff Townsend. Smalls had been dispatched to my apartment, where he had found traces of marijuana. My stating emphatically that the marijuana in the classroom desk wasn’t mine didn’t seem to make an impression on Smalls, or perhaps his carefully neutral expression was simply a professional necessity. Or maybe he was used to people protesting their innocence when they were hauled to jail. Staring at the cross-hatching of the metal drain in the floor, I wondered about my students, about who would teach them now. Would someone pass them back their papers, which I had graded and were in my workbag next to the futon in what had been my apartment? Would my students want to read my comments, or would they just talk about how I’d been arrested? What would happen to the boys who lived on my dorm? The look on Stephen Watterson’s face as he stared at me in handcuffs floated in my head like a hangover.

  Sitting in that cell, I considered my prospects, which weren’t cheerful. My job was gone, for one thing—that was certain. One didn’t remain a teacher for long if one was handcuffed and marched out of school in front of students. I was apparently going to need a lawyer, but while a female deputy had said something about public defenders and arraignment hearings, I’d been unable to process what she said. I did know that if I wanted to get out of jail, I would need bail money, but as that would likely involve calling my parents, I balked and refrained from asking the guard for my phone call. I felt I would rather have my teeth pulled out of my mouth without the benefit of anesthesia than call my mother and father and ask them to bail me out of jail. Whom else could I call? Sam Hodges’s face had been like a closing door. Gray Smith, who for the past several months had covered for me on dorm duty after I had gently harassed him, would probably hang up, and I was pretty sure he didn’t have much in the way of available cash. I briefly considered calling Wat Davenport but buried that thought out of a mixture of shame and pride. That morning I had been eating blueberry muffins in Wat’s Georgetown home; it seemed indecent, somehow, to call him that afternoon from jail. Trip was a possibility, but I held back for the same reasons I wouldn’t call Wat. Abby? Right. It was like some sort of Kafkaesque test of friendship: Whom could you call if you were incarcerated? Maybe I could call Diamond and have the Marines bust me out. Or I could pull a Jason Bourne, disarm the one overweight deputy, who appeared to be endlessly reading the same magazine at his station across the hall, climb up the wall to the window at the top, and wriggle out.

  The dinner they served us was on a heavy cardboard tray with corn, carrots, applesauce, and some sort of mystery meat. Two deputies passed out the trays in the cell, along with grade-school-sized cartons of milk. I ate mechanically, not because I was hungry but because it was something to do.

  After dinner, I was thinking about calling Wat Davenport, and my pride be damned, when the fat deputy got a call on his cell phone, grunted into it, and folded it shut. “Glass!” he called out. I raised my hand, like a kid answering roll call in class. “Step up,” he said. “You’ve got a visitor.”

  THE JAIL’S VISITING ROOM followed Hollywood conventions to the letter—the camera mounted in a corner of the ceiling, the uniformed deputy scanning the room, even down to the rows of booths and the glass barriers between prisoners and visitors.

  Out of eighteen booths, only one, at the far left, was occupied—a thin, bearded prisoner was talking to a tired-looking woman with graying hair. Someone could have taken a photograph of the two and titled it Despair and sold it i
n a gallery. The fat deputy steered me to the middle booth, where I saw Lester Briggs waiting for me. He was wearing the same plaid shirt he’d worn when we’d met in the Fir Tree.

  I pulled out my chair and sat down across from Briggs, who leaned forward to talk at me through the glass. “You okay?” he asked.

  “I’m incarcerated, Lloyd,” I said. Briggs blinked. “It’s from a movie,” I said. “Forget it.” I wanted to giggle. No—I wanted to laugh out loud, guffaw in the face of the deputy in the corner at the absurdity of all of it: this is just too fucking funny!

  Briggs moved his jaw a bit as if mulling over his words. “Your arraignment won’t be until tomorrow at the earliest,” he said. “You’ll want to make bail then.”

  I chose to continue ignoring reality and smiled. “And how much would bail be?” I asked lightly.

  Briggs thought for a moment. “First-time offender with possession of drugs on school grounds, you’re looking at twenty thousand, give or take.”

  My attempt at lighthearted indifference evaporated. “Twenty thousand dollars?”

  “Maybe more with the charge of intent to distribute.”

  All the air in my lungs seemed to have been sucked away, leaving behind an empty void. This isn’t happening, I thought. Twenty thousand dollars? My stomach curled into a fist. “I’m a high school English teacher,” I managed to say. Was, I realized, but tamped down the thought and kept going. “I don’t have that kind of money.”

  Briggs raised his eyebrows slightly. “Aren’t you going to protest your innocence?”

  “You know I didn’t sell any fucking drugs,” I said, my voice rising. To my left, the bearded prisoner leaned back out of his booth to look at me.

  Briggs looked at me for a good ten seconds, long enough for me to shift in my chair, but I didn’t break eye contact with him. “No,” he said slowly. “I don’t think you did.”