Berrien dropped heavily into her chair.
“I feel like I’ve unburdened myself for nothing,” she said.
“Unburdening is an end in itself.”
“This gets worse.It’s like being trapped in a room with the Buddha.”She rubbed her face before cupping her hands in front of her mouth, her elbows resting on her desk.She might have been at prayer.“You know, I hate to admit it,” she resumed, “but it does feel better to have put it in front of an independent listener.My only regret is that it sounded so thin, even to me.”
“It’s not thin,” I said.“I didn’t come here looking for legally-binding proof of anything, because that’s not how it works for me.I spend my days asking questions and being unhappy with the answers, even the honest ones.Generally, I leave a room no wiser than when I entered, and frequently more confused.Occasionally, someone tries to hit me.Sometimes”—I pointed to my damaged nose—“they succeed.But today I learned a lot.Frankly, I’d have been disappointed if I hadn’t, this being the Department of Education and all.”
Behind Berrien, the skies looked dark and heavy.The weather services were hedging their bets, warning of the possibilityof heavy rain, even thunderstorms.In my bones, I felt they wereright.
“So what now?”Berrien asked.
“I’d like you to make an introduction,” I said.“It’s time to close the circle.”
Chapter 59
Berrien walked me through the building, which was already half-empty as the working day drew to its close.
“You’re sure he’ll still be here?”I asked.
“He never leaves before six.As far as appearances go, he’s a model employee.Also, I think he prefers the office to home.The scuttlebutt is that his wife hates him, which puts her in good company, even if the rest of us had the common sense not to marry him.”
I told Berrien I’d reconsidered, and she didn’t have to come with me if she’d prefer not to, in case it caused problems for her later.
“I’m happy to come,” she said.“I want to see his face when I tell him who you are and what you do.All set?”
I felt a little bad for her.She wanted me to ruin a man I’d never met on the basis of suspicion and personal antagonism, and I’d probably have to disappoint her.She knocked on a closed door and was already opening it before a voice inside had finished saying “Come in.”
“Sorry for disturbing you,” said Berrien, with what might have passed for sincerity if someone had never encountered actual sincerity.“Let me introduce you to someone.This is Mr Parker.He’s a private investigator.He’d like to talk to you about the Spero School.”
She turned to me and grinned.
“Mr Parker, this is Roger Teal.”
Chapter 60
Edward Kenney stayed in his office as his employees headed home.He wished a pleasant evening to those who said goodbye, and thanked them, as always, for their efforts.None of them, not even his secretary, would have guessed anything was amiss, because disguising his feelings came easily to Kenney after so many years of hiding an entire self.Over the course of the weekend, he had eaten a fancy dinner at the Tarrantine with his family, presented his wife with a pair of diamond earrings, collected book donations as part of his efforts for the Friends of the Bangor Public Library, and visited his elderly but still mentally alert father at the senior living facility, all without giving any indication of inner turmoil.
Kenney finished reading the latest about the missing DEA agent on theDetroit Free Presswebsite but continued browsing unconnected material, dropping down rabbit-hole links that did not interest him.Kenney used Brave as his default browser to minimize tracking, combined with a VPN, but he knew enough about forensic computing to accept that no browser was ever completely secure and every interaction left a trail.The best an amateur could do was limit the risks and clean as they went; in that sense, Kenney supposed, it was not dissimilar to the acts of abduction and murder.Always at the back of his mind, like the reality of death, was the prospect of the police arriving at his door with questions to be answered.
Now he had a reason why the disappearance of Nola Maddick—no, Gai Cotter—initially garnered no attention: It wasn’t that nobody cared, more that certain people cared too much.The reports didn’t specify the nature of the investigation in which Cotter was involved, but operating deep undercovermight have required her to be out of contact with her handlers for days, even longer.When she dropped off the radar, those handlers couldn’t be sure it wasn’t for reasons pertinent to the investigation, but safety procedures must have been built into the system.Cotter might have missed a meetup or failed to make a call, or surveillance could have picked up a worrying conversation in which her name was mentioned.Whatever the cause, alarm bells had gone off, and now the DEA would be retracing her steps to establish when and where she was last seen, which might ultimately bring them to Fishkorn, and Joy Road.
While Kenney was anxious, he did not panic.His focus narrowed and his concentration grew, as when he was faced with a particularly thorny crossword clue in the Sunday edition ofThe New York Times.The Game had progressed to another level and the challenge was to adapt accordingly.Kenney had confidence in his adaptive abilities, but was less convinced of Roger Teal’s.Kenney would have to talk to him, calm him.No purpose would be served by Teal getting spooked at this stage.Their victims had made the front pages of newspapers before, and police—good, smart police—had investigated the disappearances.On four occasions bodies were recovered.In one of those instances, the car used by Teal and the Saint was traced to a junkyard in Illinois, and footage was obtained of the vehicle being driven from Lincolnwood into Skokie, with the body of one Melba Roehr in the trunk.Nothing had come of any of it, and so the Game continued.Gai Cotter was another variation on the same theme, Kenney would assure Teal, one that always faded into irresolution.He sounded so persuasive, he was almost tempted to believe himself.
Chapter 61
Roger Teal looked up from his desk to see a man in his late fifties of slightly-above-medium height, his dark hair graying at the temples, his face set in what only a fool would have regarded as an unthreatening expression.Without the benefit of a name and occupation, Teal would still have been on his guard; with both, he began actively shoring up his defenses, even as he did his best to hide his disquiet.
That it was the Bitch Berrien, as Teal called her (rarely aloud, and only when he was alone), who had brought this man to his door made him doubly wary.It wasn’t so much that Berrien wouldn’t have pissed on Teal if he was on fire, but that she would happily have pissed on him, and not to put out the flames.For years, she’d been nipping at his heels, asking for clarification on this and paperwork on that, which Teal had come to regard as an attack on his integrity.This was even before she moved to Public Affairs, which gave her wider latitude to apply pressure, and more excuses to spread rumors about him.The fact that Teal was dishonest, and his moral principles would hardly stand up to the most modest of scrutiny, was beside the point.What annoyed him was that Berrien had assumed the worst of him from the start, and then set about trying to find evidence to support her convictions, which was tantamount to persecution.Teal didn’t mind people taking a dislike to him, but he preferred that they make an effort to get to know him first.
Now, on top of everything else, Berrien was bringing a private investigator into his office, an investigator with questions about Spero.Teal had hoped this particular bugbear of Berrien’s was laid to rest, since his formal involvement with Spero came to an end when the school ceased to draw on state funds.But whywould a PI be interested in the quondam funding of a private school?The answer was that the investigation wasn’t about money—unless, of course, the department had employed a specialist financial investigator to look into certain matters, but then a) Teal would have heard about it long before anyone arrived at his door, because a mayfly had a longer life than a secret in the department, and b) from what he could recall of Parker from the newspapers, his specialty wasn’t forensic accounting but thuggery.So, definitely not a money matter.
Which came as a relief to Teal, who had managed to siphon a five-figure sum—okay, shading into six figures—during his time as the departmental inspector for the school, his cut of the deal he’d made with Santopietro.But if the investigator wasn’t here to ask about misappropriated funds, why was he here?It couldn’t be about the Game—
Could it?
All this went through Teal’s mind in seconds, after which he spread his arms, palms raised upward like the Merciful Christ, and said: “Uh, why is the department employing a private investigator?,” even if he was ninety-nine percent sure that it wasn’t.
