There’s probably fifty kids running along the foam-padded flooring, climbing the jungle gym or gliding down the slide with Porky Pig or riding on the river raft with Sylvester and Tweety Bird. Most of them don’t seem to know one another, but they’re interacting regardless, in that clumsy way that kids will do, sometimes being nice, sometimes being impolite or even rough, sometimes requiring a referee and sometimes being gentle. Some of them form groups and travel from one play station to another, and some go solo and join up with whoever’s at the spot they’ve descended upon.
But not this boy. He is sitting on the floor at one end, not playing with anyone but watching the other kids as they speed past him, ignoring him. A minute ago, a foam ball rolled toward him and he handed it back to a girl, who took it without acknowledging him.
He wants to be a part of what they’re doing. I can tell. I can see the longing in his eyes as he watches these breathless children run and shout and laugh. He wants to run and shout and laugh, too. But something is holding him back, keeping him planted in the corner. He feels like he doesn’t belong.
But he wants to belong. He really does. If only they’d give him a chance, they’d see that he’s just like them, a kid who just wants to feel secure, to understand his place, to be part of a community. He wants the same things they want. He’s afraid of the same things they fear.
Get up, little boy. Don’t be afraid. They’ll like you, they really will.
Someone, please, give him a chance. Extend a hand or call out to him. It won’t take much. Just one small act of kindness and he’ll happily join in. He doesn’t need much, I promise you—he doesn’t need much. He just needs one person, just one single person, to show him the slightest bit of kindness before it’s too—
[Editor’s note: pause of seventeen seconds.]
Get up, little boy. Get up and go play.
[END]
37
BOOKS HOLDS the door open for me, gentleman that he is, so that I am the first to see the smug expression of the man sitting in the leather chair, none other than Assistant Director Julius A. Dickinson.
(The A is for Asshole. Even his parents knew he was going to be a prick.)
“Well, well.” The Dick always manages to be doing something else when you walk into the room, all for the purpose of highlighting your lack of importance and elevating his own. Today, he is reading something, some kind of pamphlet or brochure.
“There’s no need for you two to sit,” he says, stopping Books and me in our tracks, just short of his desk. “This won’t take long.”
After making us wait while leafing through the brochure in front of him, he looks over his glasses at us both. “It sounds like you had an eventful week in Chicago,” he says. “Let me see if I have all of this straight. Emmy here assured us that a killer was in the midst of a cross-country crime spree and was brilliantly evading detection through a clever arson scheme. And apparently, this scheme includes rearranging the positioning of the bed in the bedroom to maximize the inflow of oxygen in the room and, thus, the strength of the fire.”
He’s taking that almost verbatim from the report we issued yesterday, a report that the Dick demanded from us. So at least he read it.
“And during your eventful week,” he goes on, “you’ve been able to determine that, of the fifty-five fires that make up this so-called crime spree, about half can be confirmed as having crime scenes where the bed was positioned across from an open door.” He flips a page of whatever he’s reading. “But you don’t know if the beds were in that position all along, or whether our phantom serial killer moved them there.”
Except for Marta, I want to say. Marta’s bed was definitely moved.
“As for the other half of the fires, you have no idea where the bed was positioned. The information has gone too cold. Is all of this true?”
“That’s correct,” Books says.
“Well, then,” Dickinson continues. “About half of these bedrooms had beds directly across from an open door? I would consider that to be a very significant fact—”
He looks at me, the trace of a smile.
“—if I were the editor of Better Homes and Gardens,” he adds. “But I’m not. I’m an assistant director with the FBI, and I find that piece of information to be staggeringly minor and insignificant. But do you know what I find very significant?”
I bite my lower lip, fuming.
“What I find exceedingly significant are the findings of two independent forensic pathologists, studying two different victims in your subset, who have concluded that these victims’ deaths were accidental. Not homicides.”
He picks up his phone and raises the brochure in front of him. It’s only then that I realize it’s a menu. This jerk is picking out his lunch. “Lydia,” he says into the phone, “I’ll have the roast pork sandwich and some potato salad. And I want two pickles on the side. Not one. Two.”
The Dick places the phone against his chest and looks at us. “This investigation is now officially closed. Books, your temporary appointment is rescinded as of right now.”
Books remains quiet, his arms behind his back.
“And Emmy,” Dickinson adds, his expression changing, “come back at six o’clock tonight, so we can discuss the status of your suspension.”
I stand my ground, but Books takes my arm and leads me out, while the Dick completes his lunch order.
38
“YOU COULD have at least fought for us,” I say in the elevator to Books. “You have a lot more sway than I do.”
“Not with Julius.” Books shakes his head. “And probably not with the director, either. Not anymore.”
“You still could have fought for what’s right,” I say.
“Yeah?” He turns on me. “And what is right? Please tell me, Emmy.”
It’s only then that it hits me, Books’s relative silence over the last thirty-six hours, since we got the autopsy reports. I made an assumption that we were on the same page, that my anger and frustration and stubborn certainty spoke for us both.
“You don’t believe me anymore,” I say. “You don’t think these are murders.”
“Well”—he coughs, raising his hands—“Emmy, there are certain facts we have to face here.”
I step back from him. “I don’t believe this.”
“Hey,” he says, reaching for me.
“Don’t hey me, Books. Just say what you’re going to say.”
He takes a breath. “Emmy, it’s not a question of whether I believe you. You don’t know these are murders any more than I do. It’s a question of believing the data. And the data says there are no crimes here.”
“No,” I counter, “the data says our subject is brilliant at covering them up.”
“Oh, I’m sorry!” Books throws up his hands. “That’s right. First, the complete lack of any proof of arson means he’s a brilliant arsonist. And now, the complete lack of any evidence of murder proves that he’s a brilliant murderer, too. What’s next? The complete lack of evidence that he’s an assassin from the planet Mars proves that he’s a brilliant Martian assassin. The lack of proof that he’s the Easter Bunny proves that the Easter Bunny is the most brilliant homicidal arsonist the world has ever seen!”
“Fine!” I yell. “You’re just like Dickinson, you know that? I’m really sorry I wasted your time, Books.”
Books swats his hand against the elevator panel, smacking the emergency stop button and halting the elevator so abruptly that I almost lose my balance. His neck is a dark crimson, his eyebrows twitching wildly.
“Don’t you put me in the same category with Julius,” he says, pointing a finger at me. “I gave you every benefit of the doubt. I wanted you to be right. I know how important this is to you. But you’re not right, Emmy. And it’s time you let this go. Remember Marta for the great person she was and do what everyone else does when they lose someone they love—mourn. And then slowly get over it. This crusade of yours is threatening your sanity and it’s going to be the end
of your career here, if you’re not careful. Speaking of which.”
He hits the button, resetting the elevator in motion. He pushes a button for the next floor, though it isn’t ours.
“You better be very nice to Dickinson at six o’clock,” he says, “or you’ll never work here again.”
39
I WALK without purpose, killing time until my fateful six o’clock meeting with the Dick. On Pennsylvania Avenue Northwest, I pass the National Archives buildings. I remember coming here as a kid, a summer vacation. My father was most excited about the tour of the FBI building, cops-and-robbers stuff from his own childhood, relics from famous cases involving “Machine Gun” Kelly and “Pretty Boy” Floyd and “Baby Face” Nelson, machine-gun umbrellas, John Dillinger’s Colt, the numerous ransom notes from the Lindbergh kidnapping. Marta and my mother enjoyed the Smithsonian’s many offerings; the Air and Space Museum was their favorite.
Me, I liked it here best, the archives, the records dating back centuries, the idea of re-creating the past to better understand and even predict the future, the sense of an intertwined history, a community between present and past. When I was a kid, my father predicted I’d be an archaeologist, but I didn’t want to dig back that far. I was never interested in hieroglyphics or pyramids or dinosaur bones. It was numbers I craved, numbers and facts easily categorized. Run the numbers, divine a formula, and predict an outcome. Mathematics was my first love. I used to play with numbers in my head. A teacher once told me that if you add any number’s digits and get a sum that is divisible by three, then that original number is divisible by three, too. Never again did I look at a number without running that equation in my head. The address 1535 Linscott became 1 + 5 + 3 + 5 = 14, which is not divisible by three, thus 1535 is not, either. License plate KLT 438 became 4 + 3 + 8 = 15, which is divisible by three, and thus so was 438.
Life’s not just numbers and formulas, Marta used to say to me, her bookish twin sister. You have to live, Emmy. You have to meet people, let them inside.
Right. Well, I did that with Books. I let him inside. But that’s over now, and that fire won’t be rekindled, not for lack of spark but because I’m not capable of sustaining that fire forever. I knew I’d disappoint him sooner or later. It was inevitable. He’d settle into a life with me and then he’d realize that I wasn’t the person he’d thought, wasn’t the person he wanted. He’d be too noble to say so; he wouldn’t leave me, but he’d be banished to a lifetime of mediocrity, imprisoned by a wife who was more a friend, a companion, than a lover. He’ll probably never realize what I saved him from, the bullet he dodged. He’ll never understand that I did him a favor when I ended things between us.
Was he right, what he said in that elevator? Is this just some crusade of mine, divorced from reality? Is this how I’ve chosen to cope with Marta’s death? A girl who grew up adoring statistics and relying on them, suddenly turning her back on all the facts and believing in scary monsters in the closet?
Maybe it’s time I grew up.
Maybe it’s time I tried to salvage my career with the FBI.
I check my watch. It’s five o’clock. I better head back. Don’t want to be late for my meeting.
Time to swallow my pride and see if I can keep my job.
Before I reach the Hoover Building, my cell phone rings. Caller ID says it’s Sophie Talamas.
“You were right, Emmy,” she says to me, breathless. “You were totally right!”
40
I STOP in the shade of some trees along Pennsylvania Avenue Northwest, the breeze tickling my hair, tourists lazily strolling the sidewalks while workers knife through them on their way home. I stick a knuckle against my right ear to better listen with my left to the words of Sophie Talamas as she races through her discovery.
“It happened on Friday,” she says. “The victim’s name is Charles Daley. He was a shoe salesman who lived in a suburb of Denver called Lakewood. He was found dead in his bedroom, which was the origin of the fire. I know you’re going to ask me where the bed was located in the room, but I don’t have that yet.”
I nod along with her, though she can’t see me. “That sounds like our subject,” I agree. “But…”
“But what?”
“But usually he kills two people in each place he travels,” I say. “You just have the one in Lakewood?”
“Well…here’s the thing,” she says. “The short answer is yes, just the one. But I was expecting to find a second fire, too, as you said, in the surrounding area. So I expanded my search a little. And I think I found a second one. It’s a little different, though.”
“Different how?”
“There were two victims in the fire, not one,” says Sophie. “Everything else is the same. Fire in the bedroom, accidental cause—but two victims. Luther Feagley and Tammy Duffy. They lived together in a house in Grand Island, Nebraska.”
“Nebraska? How far away is that from Lakewood, Colorado?”
“About four hundred miles. A six-hour car ride. But it makes sense, Emmy. Luther and Tammy were found dead in Nebraska two days before the Denver murder—Wednesday, September fifth. If your hypothesis is correct that our subject lives in the Midwest, well, then he could have taken Interstate Eighty west to Denver. Grand Island, Nebraska, is right on the way, off I-Eighty.”
I work it through. “So he drove from, say, Illinois or wherever he lives, along I-Eighty. On Wednesday, he stops at Grand Island, Nebraska, and kills those two people, Luther and Tammy. That gives him plenty of time to hit Denver by Friday and kill the shoe salesman.”
“Exactly. You were right, Emmy. He’s taken his show on the road after Labor Day. You were totally right.”
Maybe so, but nobody in a position of authority believes me. I’ve just been told by two independent forensic pathologists and an assistant director of the FBI that I’m dead wrong. My entire search has just been kiboshed, my authority revoked.
“How did it go with Dickinson today?” she asks.
I try to think of the right words. “It’s still a work in progress.”
“Well, we can’t stop now, Emmy. We have to catch this guy.”
From her lips to God’s ears. Or Dickinson’s ears. She’s right, of course. I can’t stop now. Because he isn’t stopping. But how do I do it?
How am I going to keep this investigation alive?
41
I STOP at my work cubicle before I go up for my meeting with Dickinson. I see Books in the office down the hall, the one they gave him when he came on board for his temporary assignment. That’s the Bureau’s strict hierarchy for you. A man who isn’t even a full-time employee gets an office just because he used to have the title of “special agent.”
The few items that Books brought with him to make himself feel at home—a photo of his parents, a football signed by the 1995 Kansas City Chiefs, his Bureau certificate—are in a box now, ready to be transported back to Alexandria. Books looks washed out. His eyes are tired and heavy. His tie is pulled down. Maybe he’s glad to be done with this brief stint; maybe he’s excited to return to his bookshop.
I walk down to his office. “I was a little rough on you before,” I tell him. “I know you did a lot to even get me this far.”
He gives a half smile and waves off the issue.
“There have been two more murders,” I say. “One in Nebraska, one in Colorado, within a two-day period. He’s on the road now. Same profile, same m.o.”
Books shakes his head. “Same autopsy findings, too, I’ll bet, if it ever got that far. Death from smoke inhalation, caused by accidental fire.”
He’s probably right about that. You can’t solve a crime if nobody is willing to say it’s a crime in the first place.
He nods at me. “Y’know, they say you haven’t really earned your scars around here until you have one of those.”
“One of what?”
“One that gets away. An unsolved case.”
Right. Books has one of those. He used to talk about it all
the time.
“The Cowgirl Killer,” I say.
He tucks his lips inside his mouth and nods. Seven murders over a six-year period in the Southwest—Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona. Each of the victims was an attractive woman that hailed from a ranching family. The killer cut off their arms and legs before raping them. The lurid details were all over the press down there.
But this detail wasn’t: he cut off their toes and stuffed them in their mouths.
Books came into the investigation late, but as he’s related it to me, the case consumed him. He worked it for years with no result. Informally among the FBI—which likes to give names to its operations—they called the subject the “Cowgirl Killer.” The last murder was, like, five years ago or something. Books has been holding his breath ever since.
“You hope he got picked up on some other crime, or maybe died,” says Books. “Every day, you ask yourself, is he still alive and well, free to continue his spree? Will today be the day he kills someone else, another person dead because you couldn’t do your job well enough?”
And that, in a nutshell, is exactly what I don’t want. I don’t want our subject to be my cautionary tale. I don’t want him to become my “Cowgirl Killer.”
Books pushes himself out of his chair and walks over to me. “Whatever happens in there with Dickinson, keep your job, Emmy. He’s going to insult you and demean you and have himself a grand time. Just eat it, okay? Just take his shit, if that’s what it takes to stay with the Bureau. Because you can be more effective from the inside.”
“More effective…”
He puts his hand on my shoulder. “More effective finding your arsonist-murderer, kiddo. If you really think this guy exists, and these things are happening, then don’t listen to what anyone else says. Not me, not Dickinson, and not some county coroner. Even if you have to do it all by yourself, don’t give up.”