I was restless. Unnerved. I slept poorly and set my alarm so I could catch my wife and daughter in the morning before work. After my encounter the night before, I needed something familiar. Safe. Known. They were having breakfast when I called and laughing about something that had happened in my absence, which made it awkward at first, like I was interrupting my own family. We talked a little. Conversations with a three-year-old never last very long. I was just glad to see her and hear her voice. It wasn’t until she set the phone down suddenly and ran off that it hit me. My appointment at the DoH would be up at the end of the month and Marlene and I hadn’t made any plans. We only ever got as far as my departure. Neither of us ever said it, but I think the idea was to let three months apart bring some clarity. But now there were only a few weeks left, and things didn’t seem any clearer. If anything, they were even more opaque.
“What are we gonna do?” I asked when my wife picked up the phone from the counter.
“I don’t know.” She said it in a way that made it clear she both genuinely didn’t know and genuinely didn’t want to discuss it right then. She jumped in again before I could object. “Please don’t. It took you almost three days to call your mom. I shouldn’t have to come up with a whole plan on the spot.”
“On the spot? We’ve had almost three months.”
“I can’t talk now.”
“Seriously? You don’t have five minutes?”
“We have to go,” she said.
I was confused. “Go? Go where?”
She sighed. “I have to drop Mari at daycare. Before work.”
Work. That was a punch in the gut. It wasn’t that she was working. It was that I had no idea.
“Work? What are you talking about?”
“It’s nothing,” she said. “One of Brenda’s employees quit last month and she asked if I could help out at the shop. It’s just a few hours a week. We could use the money. We talked about me working.”
Brenda was my sister-in-law. She was the manager of a corporate bakery-cafe franchise.
Marlene could see the look on my face. “I didn’t mention it,” she said, “because I knew how it would look. With you gone and everything. Like I was . . . I didn’t want you to think . . .” She sighed again. She looked at her watch. “Look. I really have to go.” She waited a second for me to say goodbye. When I didn’t, she frowned politely and ended the call.
I showered in a daze. I stood there, spikes of too-hot water pricking my skin. I thought about the fire the night before and how it seemed like weeks ago and how I’d never really engaged with the thought of not being a daily fixture in my daughter’s life. How would it work? How did other guys do it?
Once out of the shower, I was overcome by the tidy emptiness of my room, which seemed to reflect my life. I dressed angry, got coffee in the lobby, and showed up early at the DoH. I was certain I was in deep and that that was why everyone had been trying to get a hold of me the day before. It wasn’t until Dr. Chalmers stopped by my desk on another unexpected visit to The Pit that I realized things had gotten way more complicated. She was cooler with me than she’d been before. I was definitely no longer the golden boy—if I ever was. Before, I had the sense that I at least could’ve been, that she and Ollie had thought I was capable of great things, whether I achieved them or not, and that they’d been waiting to see if I’d step up. That was apparently no longer the case. I’d been right about Tucker, it seemed. He and I had been in an unspoken race. I was the underdog. I lost.
Dr. Chalmers blamed the repeated phone calls on simple concern. And it seemed like the truth—just not all of it. She said Ollie had explained to her how I had let myself get attached to the little boy and that his death had hit me way too hard.
“It’s normal for people early in their career.” She handed me a piece of paper. “There’s a funeral tomorrow.”
I took it. I read the name of the cemetery. Simple graveside service. His family couldn’t afford a funeral home.
“The first is always the hardest,” she said. “You learn after that. I’m sure it doesn’t seem like it now, but it’s a good lesson. It will help you wherever you go with your career.”
Wherever you go. That suggested, without specifying, that it wasn’t going to be at the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene.
I looked at the piece of paper in my hand. What the hell was I going to say to the kid’s mother?
Dr. Chalmers said I could take some time if I needed.
“Absolutely,” I said. “Thank you.”
I didn’t hear from Amber. Knowing her a little, I expected a text the morning after our dinner. That I didn’t get one was a sure sign she wasn’t happy with me either.
I reached out to her as soon as I got to my desk.
THANKS FOR GETTING ME
OUT LAST NIGHT.
I FEEL A LOT BETTER TODAY
It was half true. Whatever else had happened, I at least had a path forward. Now I knew I was right, which meant it didn’t matter what Tucker or anyone else thought. And since I no longer had to be in the office, my time was better served visiting a few more townships across the river and building my database into a rock, something not even Ollie could ignore. I had been working backward from victim to source and had gotten almost nowhere. I figured it was time to switch tactics. I picked up the phone and called Dr. Pratt.
First salvage my career. Then salvage my marriage. I could do it. I hadn’t struck out yet. I had one more swing.
I spent the morning catching up on whatever needed urgent attention and stepped out just before lunch. I walked lightly through the open foyer of the Department of Health building, feeling strangely good about myself, determined to solve all of my problems, personal and professional, by the time I made it home in a few weeks. I took the subway to the campus of Columbia University, where I met Dr. Pratt’s colleague, the mycologist who had been in the room with him when we spoke on the phone. Pratt had been kind enough to give us an introduction.
“Dr. Milhoun,” I said, raising my hand as he approached me on the sidewalk. “I’m Dr. Alexander. Thanks for agreeing to meet me on such short notice.”
“Hard to turn down a free lunch,” he said, taking my hand. “Is this about the stories on television?”
As much as Pratt was an insecure bully who had found a good place to hide at the ME’s office, Dr. Milhoun struck me as the kind of man who had to have everything his way. He had sent me two requests for confirmation within an hour of our meeting, like his time was the most valuable in the world and he was doing me a favor by parting with any of it.
“You’re an epidemiologist, correct?” he asked.
“That’s correct.” I led him across the quad toward the lunch spot I had scoped out on my ride over, something well within my personal budget. From here on out, the department wouldn’t cover anything.
“Maybe you know Dr. O’Shea,” he suggested, “head of the public health program here.”
“I’m afraid not.”
“Really? I know he’s active in the Association. The one for you guys. What’s it called?”
“Then he’s ahead of me. I’m afraid I was never very good at networking.”
“Well, maybe I could introduce you. Where did you do your degree work?”
“Down south.” I pointed. “I thought we could try that little diner there across the street. Do you know it?”
“Yes, um. Sure, that’s fine. We can go there. But I don’t know that I can tell you people more than I already have. There really isn’t much published on lucifera.”
“Well, Dr. Pratt and I are in totally different areas. I’m afraid we haven’t consulted. Maybe you could start by telling me what you—”
“I wasn’t referring to Dr. Pratt. I had a chat with one of your colleagues this morning. I was surprised to hear from you as well, actually. I thought you sent the woman to ‘get in the door,’ so to speak. I was quite annoyed, to tell you the truth. I felt that I was being manipulated. Such a woman as that was obviously not an academician.”
“Woman? What woman?”
“Yes. She showed up after you called. Short hair. Quite attractive. You must know of her. There can’t be that many women with her looks.”
“Ah, I see who you mean now. There must have been a misunderstanding. I apologize for taking up so much of your time today. What did you tell her, if you don’t mind me asking?”
“Yes, well, as I said, you should really coordinate better—”
“Dr. Milhoun.” I stopped him at the street corner. “People’s lives are at stake and we’re in a bit of a hurry. Sometimes that means the left hand doesn’t always know what the right is doing, if you understand my meaning. If you have news—”
“No, no, nothing like that. And yes, I know it’s important. As I said, I saw it online. The message boards are all abuzz. That’s why I’m talking to you now. I want to help, of course.”
“I need to know everything you told my colleague.”
“Well, as I said, there wasn’t much. She was mostly concerned about where she could get samples. For testing. It seemed—”
“What did you tell her?”
“Well, I’m getting to that. She wanted to know if I knew of anyone who could grow it, and I said no. It was only found twice in the field, once in Venezuela and once in Peru, but only one sample was collected—by Dr. Wilcox-Carver at Tufts. Wonderful mycologist. And she couldn’t get approval to bring it into the country, so her graduate students—”
“What about commercial suppliers?”
“That’s exactly what your friend asked. I told her there weren’t any.” He raised a hand. “And before you object, yes, I’m sure. But you’re both asking the right questions, even if you’re not going about it in a very—”
“The right questions?”
“Most infectious agents are species-specific. As I’m sure you’re aware,” he added quickly. “Lucifera sort of ‘gets around’ that with a rather ingenious kind of mucus coat. It feeds off its victim’s blood supply. It’s not an opportunist, like anthrax, whose spores are hardy when they go dormant, waiting for the opportunity to bloom. Lucifera is carnivorous. It’s a hunter,” he said with some relish. “It’s adapted to the most densely-populated biome on the planet—birds, mammals, fish, amphibians, reptiles, insects. More life per square meter than anywhere on the planet. In its natural environment, it’s spoiled for choice. The spores infect living tissue. They need blood, Doctor, and a warm, wet environment to grow. They’re not viable in cold, dry air, like what we have here.” He raised an open palm.
I scowled. “So, in your opinion, there’s no way exposure was accidental.”
He shook his head. “There’s no question. Those people were deliberately infected, although I can’t for the life of me imagine why.”
“Why wasn’t that made explicit in the ME’s report?”
“I thought it had been. I explained all of this to Dr. Pratt.”
I clenched my jaw.
“The good news,” he said, “is that it’s not easy to culture the spores—at least, not safely. Not without getting everyone around them sick. And not just growing them but transporting them . . . I can tell you, whoever did this was an expert at handling biotoxins. They knew exactly what they were doing.”
“So, if they don’t stay viable for long in our climate, that suggests they were cultured locally. Who in the area has the facilities for that?”
“I wouldn’t know. But I do know that since the anthrax scare in the early 2000s, any lab with the infrastructure to weaponize biological agents is required to register with the CDC.”
I shut my eyes.
Of course.
“Thank you, Doctor.” I backed away, half in thought. “You’ve been very—”
“Wait, what about lunch?”
I walked back and slapped a twenty into his hand. “On me.”
Most labs, even private ones, are fairly open—not to the public necessarily, but if at a university, for example, there are students, faculty from other departments, and members of the administration coming and going. Growing this organism without at least potentially infecting any of those people would’ve required the kind of serious safety protocols that, if they sprung up in a dorm room or somewhere, would’ve certainly been noticed, which suggested the mushrooms had been grown somewhere private. It didn’t take me long to find what I was looking for.
The laboratories of InSite Biomedical Supply occupied a cubelike building covered in charcoal-gray windows. The address wasn’t listed publicly, only the small corporate office downtown. There was no signage, other than the street number in silver letters over the double doors, and as I stepped from the taxi, I wasn’t certain I was even in the right place.
Five concrete stairs led to a small courtyard and two sets of double doors, which were impossible to see through, just like the rest of the place. The doors were locked. I caught a pair of cameras staring down at me from either side, like guardian statues. I lifted my ID toward one, then the other. There was the click of an intercom.
“Please wait inside,” a man’s voice told me.
At the buzz of the electric lock, I pulled the handle, but the door was heavy, and I had to shift my weight to get it open.
The interior was much as you might expect. The carpet was gray, a shade or two lighter than the windows. There was an empty reception desk near a windowless door, some potted plants, and three drab chairs facing a dark glass coffee table with nothing on it. Not even a magazine or brochure. Sitting in one of the chairs was a face I recognized. She looked at her watch the moment she saw me, like we’d had an appointment and I was late.
Milan. She wore little makeup but was just as beautiful as ever in dark slacks and a large silk scarf with a colorful, vaguely floral print wrapped around a white top. The oddly cut jewel still dangled from the long chain around her neck. She had a kind of poise that was instantly attractive. Call it a presence. It was effortless.
“You know,” I said, “impersonating a federal employee is a felony.”
“Is it?”
“Think so. Pretty sure.”
“I best not get caught then.”
She had a leather purse with her and lifted it from the seat. A fake ID badge was clipped to it.
“Where’s your boss?” I asked.
“He’s not my boss.”
I nodded to the badge. It said she was Dr. Rachel Simon. “What happened?” I looked at the single unmarked door near the unmanned reception desk. “They go call it in?”
She nodded.
I pulled out my federal ID. “What was it he said? There are places you can go that I cannot.”
“I believe that was the idea, yes.”
We walked to the door. We stood by it, but nothing happened.
“Are you sure they’ll let you in?” she asked. “This is private property.”
“They have to, actually. After Ebola showed up in Dallas all those years ago, public health officials like me got a serious security upgrade courtesy of Mr. Obama.”
“I see.”
“’Wartime powers’ we call it. Drove the conspiracy theorists crazy.”
We waited a few moments more. I examined the tips of my shoes for no reason. I looked up and she smiled patiently. We looked at the door. We looked at the handle. I think we realized then that neither of us tried it. We both reached at the same time.
“After you,” she said before I could offer the same.
I tried the door, but it wouldn’t budge. I tried again. I knocked. I tried a third time and then walked around to the reception desk. There was a corded desk phone hiding on a lower shelf, but when I lifted it, all I got was a strange tone.
“Hello?” I clicked the receiver and punched several buttons. “Hello, hello?”
“I believe this is what’s called the brush-off,” she said.
“Then why let us in the front?”
I pulled out my phone and called the department. I barely had reception in the building and had to step near the front doors just to get a single bar. It took me several minutes to track down Ollie.
“Where the hell have you been?” he said first thing.
“Hello to you, too.”
“Don’t give me that. I’ve been trying to get ahold of you for two days.”
I told him to forget about that for the time being, that I’d be back in the office in the morning, but that right then I needed his help.
“Fat chance,” he said.
“Ollie—”
“No. And I’m not protecting myself, I’m protecting you. You’re already in enough trouble as it is. I’m not going to help you dig your grave any deeper.”
“Ollie, just listen to me. I spoke with a mycologist at Columbia. The mushrooms have to—”
“Jesus, Alex.” He sighed loudly.
“Pratt didn’t want to stick his neck out. He—”
“You can’t let it go, can you?”
“I’m at this place, InSite Biomedical. You know it? I just need you to get us inside. That’s all. Call it an inspection.”
“No. We don’t get to use the wartime powers whenever we like. That’s not how it works and you know it. Goodbye.”
“Ollie—”
“Goodbye, Alex.”
Call ended.
I looked at the screen. I looked at Milan. We both turned to the door. She lifted the cut jewel around her neck and peered through it like a spyglass.
“What’s that for?” I asked.
“Just checking.” She let the jewel drop.
“See something?”
She shook her head. “Nothing.”
“What does that mean?”
She scowled as she studied the barrier. “I’m not sure.”
She glanced back to the reception desk. She walked over and removed the plastic battery cover from the bottom of the phone. Then she walked to the electric card reader by the door.
“What are you doing?”
“Getting us inside,” she said softly as she used the corner of the plastic plate as a screwdriver.
I looked around for cameras.
She removed the top screws without too much difficulty, but the effort warped the plastic, and she had to keep switching to a new corner of the plate to remove the pair on the bottom. When it finally came free, the metal cover fell to the carpet. The interior of the cavity looked similar to an electric outlet. I could see a couple taut wires, but I didn’t know what to do with them. Milan reached in with two fingers.
“Where did you learn how to hotwire one of those things?”
The door buzzed and opened. I thought it was due to her efforts at first, but it wasn’t. She stood straight quickly and I did the same. A petite woman with glasses and unkempt hair looked at us from the doorway. I think we surprised her. She had a clipboard in her hand.
“Hello,” Milan said, smiling.
“Um.” The woman saw the exposed card reader and the metal cover on the floor. “Dr. Alexander?” she asked me.
“Yes.” I handed her my identification.
She studied it, glancing once more at the damage we’d done. Then she marked something down on the papers attached to the clipboard. It seemed like whatever document she was completing was new to her because she made a couple mistakes, cursing softly under her breath while she crossed out what she had written and wrote it elsewhere on the page.
“I’m sorry for the wait,” she said as she returned my ID. “I’m afraid we don’t get many visitors. There’s only a small staff on site. The facility is mostly automated.”
“That’s understandable. Nothing to worry about. Just a routine inspection. We do them from time to time. And you are?” I held out my hand.
“Oh, right. Of course.” She shifted the clipboard and extended a hand, but it was the wrong one. She was lefthanded. “Oh, shoot.”
“It’s okay.” I switched.
“Dr. Brierly,” she said as we finally connected.
“This is my colleague, Dr.—” I paused slightly, having already forgotten the name on the false ID card.
Milan jumped in so smoothly with so little hesitation that one could believe nothing was amiss.
“Dr. Simon,” she said.
“I see. He’s an epidemiologist.” She pointed to me. “What’s your specialty?”
“Psychopathology,” Milan said.
“We’ve been waiting quite some time,” I interrupted. “We have three more places to visit today, so if you don’t mind . . .”
“Yes. Of course.”
I held the door for the ladies. “Dr. Brierly, if you don’t mind me asking, why all the secrecy here?”
“Well, that would be because of what we do,” she said as the door closed behind us.
We walked down a nondescript linoleum-floored hall, like something you’d find in a university or hospital. Signs jutted out above the doors, but there were only numbers, no names, and long numbers at that: 11235, 11239, and so on.
“Worried about theft?” Milan asked.
“Well, yes. I suppose there’s plenty here that people would like to steal, if they could.”
“Drugs?”
“Some.” She nodded. “Some of what we stock is very expensive, both medication and equipment.” Dr. Brierly touched her glasses as she talked, as if she was afraid they’d fall at any moment, and she clutched her clip-board to her chest like she didn’t want anyone to see what it held. “I suppose if we made it easy, someone might try to steal it. But mostly I think it’s to avoid the attention. That’s what I was told, anyway. I’ve only been here a couple of years.”
“Attention?” Milan asked.
“Yes.” She stopped. She looked between us nervously, like she didn’t know how much she could say. “It’s easier if I just show you.”
We turned left at a T-junction and walked to a stairwell. It took me a moment to realize the halls were completely empty. It seemed like the three of us were the only ones in the building. I stopped and listened. Milan glanced at me. She had noticed it as well, probably before I did.
“Everything okay?” Dr. Brierly held open the door.
“Where is everyone?” I asked as we followed her up the stairs.
“Downtown, for the most part. That’s part of the reason you had to wait so long, I’m sorry. I had to verify your credentials and I’m afraid I’ve never done that before.” She blushed.
We exited onto a floor much like the one we had left.
“This facility used to be elsewhere,” she said. “I’m told it got very bad there for a while. Groups of people, young people mostly, used to camp out in the parking lot, chant slogans, wave signs, try to prevent employees from getting into the building. I heard a story that someone got drenched in fake blood, but I’m not sure I believe it.”
“What were they protesting?” Milan asked.
She ran a key card through a reader on a door. “This.” She pulled it open.
Beyond was a sort of viewing room. There was a row of chairs on one side and heavy, floor-to-ceiling glass on the other which looked out over a large production floor, like a warehouse. From the size of it, it occupied the bulk of the building. Everything was white: the walls, the floor, the racks, the cages—hundreds, it looked like, if not thousands, stacked three or four high. Each cage held an animal—rabbits, birds, cats, dogs, several species of monkeys, each in a single cage. The guinea pigs were held in triplets. The mice, in batches of ten, separated by sex. Black arrows and QR codes painted on the floor directed robotic minions through the maze, which seemed to go on forever. I couldn’t see what was kept near the back wall, but the cages there looked considerably bigger.
Milan stepped forward slowly, her mouth open. Her eyes didn’t blink. “What are they for?”
But we all knew the answer.
Experiments. Testing.
“We’re one of the major suppliers on the eastern seaboard,” Dr. Brierly explained as the door shut behind us with a click.
As much as the floor below us was white, the interior of the observation room was black, which gave everything a kind of cinematic quality, like what we were watching wasn’t real, like we were in a theater. There were so many animals. But they were hardly moving, but not from boredom. It wasn’t a zoo. They looked defeated. Some looked terrified. I saw a capuchin monkey lying with his head against the bars of his cage. One of his arms dangled out. When a wheeled robot passed, he reached, as if asking for alms. But of course the machine did nothing but continue on its programmed task. Not a single human being walked the floor. Dr. Brierly was right. Everything was automated.
“I’m told,” she said softly, “that after the company relocated here, there was a real effort to keep everything secret.” It was quiet in the room, and her voice was barely above a whisper. “Most of the non-technical staff, anyone who doesn’t need to be on-site, moved into the corporate office downtown, which is in a big building with lots of other companies and lots of security people, which makes it less of an easy target. They can’t protest inside the building and they can’t exactly stop an entire office tower from going to work, so the demonstrations just kind of stopped.”
Most of the animals had given up and lay listless, staring out. A few tried to sleep. One dog was howling, but no sound made it through the heavy glass.
“Why would anyone do this?” Milan breathed. She looked like she was about to cry.
Dr. Brierly cleared her throat before answering and spoke with a false confidence. “People in the world are sick. Dying. New treatments are being developed all the time, but before they can be tested on those who are already not well, we need to know they won’t make things worse.” She clutched her clipboard to her chest with white knuckles. “Testing on tissues can only take us so far. Sometimes, organ systems are required. When you read in the paper about some new anti-tumor drug’s promising effect on mice, well, those mice have to come from somewhere.”
“There’s more than mice down there,” Milan said under her breath.
Our host didn’t answer.
All I could think about was something we’d studied in school, a research statistic called LD50. It’s a great acronym. Sounds so sterile. Innocuous. LD stands for lethal dose. LD50 is the dose at which 50% of test animals die. The rest, of course, are just horribly sick.
We watched a pair of robots move through the row of racks. One of them was transporting a cage. As it deposited it into an open slot, I realized the racks weren’t organized in even rows, as they would be if they were tended by humans. Robots didn’t need a simple layout in order to find anything. The space below was a labyrinth of efficiency.
“You people,” Milan said in a low voice, unable to take her eyes from the glass, which she touched lightly with two fingers. “It’s not even your cruelty. Men have always been cruel. It’s how clinical it is. A vengeful man at least feels his passion. Owns it. You won’t even touch them, poor creatures. Or let them touch each other.”
“Contact could bring contamination.”
Milan spun. “So introduce decontamination procedures.”
“That wouldn’t be foolproof. For medical tests to be—”
“Wouldn’t be cost effective is what you mean,” Milan accused. “What do you feel, Dr. Brierly, when you look in that room?”
“Hope,” she said, entirely too quickly.
It sounded ridiculous, the worst kind of corporate sales pitch, something she was trained to say, and Milan cursed it. Only not in English. I think it was Russian.
Dr. Brierly defended herself as Milan stepped away from the window. “Hope,” she said, “that all of this will do some good. Otherwise, what’s it for? I know the numbers. I looked them up. Twenty-five million animals are used every year—in this country alone. I have to believe some good comes out of that.”
“Yes, I’m sure you’re very good with numbers.”
Dr. Brierly turned to me. “Dr. Uchewe, I’m not sure what you’re looking for, but there’s nothing sinister here. It’s quite a boring job, actually.”
She blushed again, like she was embarrassed to admit that to someone. I understood. It’s a lot of work getting a PhD. For most of us, it eats up eight years of our life. It requires sacrifice. When we’re in it, we build mansions out of our dreams. Dr. Brierly’s hadn’t panned out.
“Perhaps you would like to see the rest of the facility,” she urged gently.
“Yeah.” I looked to Milan, to see if she wanted to join us, but she only stormed out the door. A moment later, I heard her footsteps on the stairs.
It didn’t take long to figure out we were in the wrong place. By the time Dr. Brierly and I met the rest of the on-site staff and walked the U-shaped corridor that surrounded the basement facilities, I was fighting a yawn. I excused myself to the bathroom, and when I came back, suggested politely that we had everything we needed. Dr. Brierly seemed relieved.
“I’m sorry to have bothered you,” I said as we walked to the front.
“You have to do your job, of course.”
I said my goodbyes and signed out on the paper attached to her clipboard. I stopped at the security door.
“If you don’t mind me saying it,” I told her, “you don’t seem very happy here.”
“Yes, well, there aren’t many jobs for people like us.”
“No,” I said. “There aren’t.”
“You seem to be doing okay. Working for the government.”
“Looks can be deceiving. Thanks again.”
The waiting room was silent and empty. The cover plate to the card reader was still on the floor. I walked out and down the concrete steps and found my companion sitting on a curb across the parking lot. Her hand propped up her chin, like the famous statue. She didn’t look at me.
“It’s clean,” I said.
She nodded once.
“You don’t seem surprised.”
“Someone should burn this place to the ground.”
I glanced back to the dark cube of a building. “Sounds like some folks tried.”
She stood and walked toward the back of the lot, away from the street.
“That’s it?” I asked.
I watched her walk toward a grove of trees, like a giant tuft of hair, that rose from a waste of ground between the building complex and whatever was beyond. I looked around. Neither of us had a car.
“You’re just gonna disappear again?” I caught up to her. “How about telling me why you’re here. How did you even find this place?”
“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”
“Try me.”
“No.”
“No?”
“You’d only balk. And anyway, it’s not important.”
I stopped her. “Jesus, what is important?”
She paused. “Has it occurred to you that every time you get a lead like this, it turns out to be a dead end?”
I wasn’t sure I would’ve classified all my leads as dead ends, but the uncomfortable truth of my overall lack of progress, despite weeks of effort, made me shift awkwardly. “What are you suggesting? That it’s not an accident? That it’s orchestrated somehow? Like a cover-up?”
She just looked at me flatly.
“Then what?”
“Is it unusual or not, in your experience?”
I took my time answering. I had the sense that somehow I was walking into a trap. “Yes. It is a little strange.”
“A little strange?” she asked. “Or very strange?”
“Fine. Very strange. Damned frustrating, in fact.”
“And what do you make of that?”
I shrugged and shook my head. “Bad luck? It happens.”
“Of course.” She started walking again. “Always easier to pity yourself.”
“Wait!” I scowled at the insinuation. “If it’s not that, then what is it?”
“You know the answer. You knew the answer at the school. You just don’t want to accept it.”
“So tell me.”
“No,” she said flatly. “Say it.”
I didn’t, and she turned to leave again.
“What do you want me to say?”
“Say it. Say the word on the tip of your tongue right now. Say it.”
“What? You want me to say it’s magic? Is that it?”
“You’re in a labyrinth, Doctor.”
“A labyrinth?”
“I suspect you stumbled into it at some point.”
“How can you tell?”
“Focus on what’s happened. Focus on the facts. The world around is folding away from you, like origami. Focus on the pattern, how every step forward leads you onward but away from the center.”
“Why? I don’t get it. What for?”
“Obviously, someone doesn’t want to be found. Since all this started, have you left the city?”
I had to think.
“Have you crossed the boundary of the circle?”
I made a face that was somewhere between skepticism and disgust.
She made one in response. “You learn to recognize it after a while. Things looks different when they’ve been manipulated. They have a different feel. There’s an abundance of spontaneous conveniences, for one. Usually bad.”
“That still sounds like luck.”
“Tell me, Doctor, how is your career going? While you’ve been chasing this, what’s been happening at the office? In much trouble, are you?”
“Why do you ask?”
“Yes or no?”
I paused. I ran over our conversation in my mind. “You heard me on the phone with Ollie.”
She rolled her eyes. “Fine. Have it your way. Goodbye.”
“Wait.” But she didn’t stop this time. “Wait, please.” I trotted forward and grabbed her arm. I felt bad immediately and let go. It was rude. I thought she might deck me. But she didn’t.
“Sorry,” I said.
“I know.”
“I just want to know what’s going on. Please. I just want the truth.”
She seemed to pity me then, like I was a lost child who’d grabbed her hand at a carnival.
“You can make it complicated or you can make it simple. Either you believe this is all a complex series of accidents, coincidences, bad timing—that it’s pure happenstance that the more you dig, the worse everything gets for you—you either have the wisdom to see through that or you don’t. It’s not my job to change your mind.” She turned to go again.
I watched her for a moment. “I can go places he can’t. That’s what he said.”
“Yes.” She waited again, impatiently.
I strolled toward her. “But you don’t think I should. You’re trying to scare me away. Why? Because it’s dangerous?”
“You have no idea,” she breathed. “You’re still in the phase where it all seems mysterious and enchanting. Like a puzzle. Or a game. But it’s not. It’s so very, very the opposite of that.”
“I see.”
“No. You don’t. That’s always the conundrum. People don’t see, so they don’t understand. But once they do see, they can never unsee. They can never go back. Your life will change, Doctor. Forever. I promise you. Keep on this path, and you will look out on an entirely new world. You will feel like an alien in it. You will never fit in. People will think you’re crazy. You will think you’re crazy. You will always be an outcast, a misfit. Think of your daughter. Think of how she’ll look at you as she gets older. Think about what she’ll tell her friends at school about her crazy old man. Is that really what you want?”
“You seem to be doing okay.”
Her reaction was physical. She almost flinched. “That’s different.”
“Different how?”
She started backing away casually. “Go back to your family, Doctor. Please. Let us handle this. It’s what we do.”
“Sure. Be glad to. Just promise me one thing. Promise me no one else will get sick, okay? Promise me there won’t be any dead kids.”
“You know I can’t.”
“Five people were left to die—in a damned dungeon, for all intents and purposes—and no one cares because they weren’t born on this continent. A young woman died from an unspecified disease and no one bothered to look because she was a prostitute who would’ve contracted something sooner or later anyway. A community leader flat out disappeared, as if he was tossed down that labyrinth of bones everyone pretends isn’t there. And there’s a cluster of corpses in the basement of an old school. The New Jersey fire marshal seems to think they were vagrants. Homeless. Their bones showed evidence of poor nutrition. Wrong place, wrong time, they told me. Squatting on private property. Got drunk. One of them lit a cigarette. Poof. The building burns down with them in it.
“Everyone I talk to says the same thing. They all have nice, rational reasons why there’s nothing to worry about. It’s a different jurisdiction, a different department, an unwarranted risk, an unfortunate tragedy. Nothing more.
“One or two of those things, I could believe. But when something keeps happening over and over, it’s not chance. There’s a reason. When black folks keep dying, there’s a reason. So, what do you expect me to do? Go home and forget? Pretend it’s someone else’s job? What would you do if you were in my position? Walk away? Clearly not, because here you are, out on your own, like me, wrapped up tight in whatever the fuck this is. I dunno, maybe some part of you wishes you could go back. But somehow I doubt you’d be able to live with yourself.” I stopped. I realized I’d almost been shouting at her. I lowered my voice. “Or maybe I’m wrong.”
She studied me a moment with an uncanny gaze. It made me uncomfortable, like when I was a kid and my grandmother would sit in the corner etching the street hustler out of me with her eyes.
I broke the silence. “Can I at least get you a ride or walk you to the bus or something?”
“No need. The Jag can’t have wandered far.”
“Wait. What?”
“It was a nice speech,” she said, turning back to the trees. “We’ll pick you up tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow?” I called after her. “What are you talking about? When tomorrow?”
“At the right time.”
“But how do I get out of the labyrinth?”
“Find the center!” And with that, she was gone.