The Glass House (7 page)

“And him?” Ted Knight asked, indicating Garreth Senior in the locked bedroom.

“Hold him for two more days, then drug him and drop him back in Seaside—in his six-hundred-and-fifty-thousand-dollar two-bedroom house.”

The two men made no effort to cover their open looks of amazement.

Yslan didn't care. “Harrison poisoned, catatonic,” “things may be in motion,” “end of days” just kept going round and round in her head.

• • •

Just over three hours later Yslan found herself waiting in the office of the head of Homeland Security. As she glanced at her watch, Hendrick H. Mallory entered the office with his hand out.

“Give me the files.”

She hesitated, then handed over the files on her synaesthetes—no, her Gifted. It surprised her how much real pain she felt doing it.

Mallory sat his considerable bulk in his desk chair and signalled her to sit across from him. He opened the topmost folder.

Yslan looked out the window. In the distance she could see the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, with the name and dates of the father she'd never met incised in it like a scar in the blackness. The father who according to her mother had loved bacon. That's about all that she knew about him outside of his military record. He loved bacon. When she looked back at Mallory she saw that he had already finished reading the first file and was halfway through the second. In less than two minutes he'd finished the third file, and a sound that could have been a laugh slid from his almost closed lips. He put Yslan's files to one side and reached into his desk.

He pulled out a stack of folders. Opening the one on top he flipped an eight-by-ten across the desk. It spun a full 540 then
stopped in front of her—facing her full on. It showed her leaving Emerson Remi's apartment in the middle of the night—doing up her blouse. It was from almost eight years ago.

Another photo. It also spun a turn and a half, then came to rest facing her. Leonard Harrison eyeing her as she leaned over to pick up a briefcase. This one was more recent—about two months before the bomb blasts in upper New York State.

A third, also perfectly tossed—the guy must practice—of her sitting on the box seat in the window of the Lakeshore Ramada in Toronto with Decker Roberts very close to her. As if it were the moment before a kiss—although there had been no kiss.

“Glad to see that Homeland Security is up on my sex life.” She wondered if maybe she'd been wrong when she thought this man was nothing more than a stuffed shirt—a chauffeured, bloated bureaucrat. The kind of moron who tossed around words like “cadre,” as he'd done when she'd seen him last, three days after the terrorist attack at Ancaster College. He'd asked her and Harrison, “Could Professor Frost possibly have a cadre?” After he'd gotten back in his chauffeured car, she'd turned to Harrison and asked, “What the fuck's a cadre?”

Mallory opened another file. For the first time she noticed how soft his hands were—almost pudgy. His cuticles were perfect manicured half-moons, the liver spots on the backs of his hands slightly faded probably by the use of some expensive cream.

“Yslan Hicks—born February 6th, 1975, in Fayetteville, North Carolina; parents Helen Anne and Robert, both deceased. Father in Vietnam at age thirty-two. Mother died shortly thereafter. Raised by maternal grandparents, tobacco farmers, who lost their farm after the locust hordes arrived in 1987. Grandfather committed suicide eighteen months later. Grandmother died of cancer two years later to the day. High school, Sacred Heart Secondary. North Carolina State University, degree in criminology, recruited for Quantico training by one Leonard Harrison in 1999. Achieved
rank of special agent 2004, been on the NSA's synaesthetes' file for five-plus years.”

“Fine. But all that is public record. I've testified before a congressional committee every year since—can we get back to Harrison?”

“Soon. And you're rather testy when you testify, aren't you? No need to answer that.” He put aside the folder from his desk and picked up the synaesthete folder that Yslan had brought. He flipped one open and read aloud in a bored monotone: “Viola Tripping, born 1967, 4 foot 3 inches tall, eighty-two pounds, blond hair usually worn long.” Without looking at her he tossed three six-by-eights across the table. They each completed their revolutions and ended up fanned out facing Yslan: Viola in a slow spin speaking for the dead in a tent in Florida, Viola doing the same in south Texas, Viola doing it in the middle of the night at the blast site at Ancaster College.

In quick succession he tossed the remaining twelve photos of Viola on the desk. The last four were from Ancaster College.

He was speaking again. “Speaker for the dead. Special talent: the ability to, if standing on the spot where a person died, recite his or her last thoughts. Most recent NSA activity at Ancaster College, where she and Decker Roberts combined to identify Professor Neil Frost as one of the people behind the terrorist act.”

Yeah,
she thought,
the one who had no cadre.

“Present exact whereabouts unknown but thought to be somewhere in Kansas or Nebraska. Only contact through NSA specially encrypted phone used by her caregiver. Why?”

“Viola's very private. She insisted and we agreed. We're not even sure it's Kansas or Nebraska. All we know is that it's somewhere in the American Plains States.”

“You couldn't trace her cell?”

“No. We gave her the new model that you folks invented.”

“The untraceable one?”

“Yeah, that one.”

He nodded, then opened another folder and threw six photos on the table—Decker Roberts.

“Mr. Roberts was born in 1964 in the Glencairn district of Toronto but moved to the Junction of West Toronto, Canada, in 2001. His house there burned to the ground April 15, 2009. Currently sharing a house with a high school friend, Eddie Hundert—aka Crazy Eddie. Was working as a researcher for the Canadian Public Broadcasting Company, CPBC, on a documentary now called
At the Junction.
” He looked up. “Have you seen it?”

“His TV show?”

“Yes. Have you seen it?”

“The first three episodes. I have the last three on my PVR. Apparently they got a renewal for another six.”

“From CPBC?”

“Yes, I think that's the broadcaster.”

“And they're all produced by Trish Spence?”

Yslan was tiring of this but answered, “Yes, I think so. And Theo Denman is the other researcher. He owns a used bookshop in the Junction around the corner from where Roberts used to live.”

“Do you know that Mr. Denman is quite ill?”

“He coughed a lot when I met him but—”

“And that Ms. Spence has become a serious hoarder?”

“Really?”

“Why that response, Agent Hicks?”

“I spoke with her briefly when I was up there looking for Roberts. She seemed very, well, together, in charge of herself—and others.”

“In public but not in private. Have you met the others?”

“Roberts' other acquaintances?”

“Who else are we talking about here?”

“Yes. Eddie Hundert is as crazy as his nickname, but he has advanced computer skills.”

“How advanced?”

“Enough that he's ahead of us most of the time. And there's the girl.”

“Marina?”

“Yeah, that's his daughter from a common-law marriage.”

“Which is now over. And the girl's retarded.”

“Mentally challenged, not retarded.”

“Sure. Then there's Leena, Roberts' old girlfriend who had the terrible car accident.”

“It was a long time ago. When she was a teenager.”

“But the scars are still there, aren't they?”

Yslan nodded.

“Don't you think it odd that everyone Decker comes in contact with seems to have been harmed in some way?”

Yslan didn't want to answer that question, then decided to. “Why ask a question that you already know the answer to?”

“Right. Back to Decker Roberts. He runs a successful acting studio, Pro Actors Lab. Present whereabouts—somewhere in southwest Africa. Son of a Presbyterian doctor and an atheist Jew mother. Honours degree from University of Toronto in English literature, MFA in directing from the Yale School of Drama. Artistic director of North Carolina theatre, two Broadway shows, blah, blah, blah. Wife Sarah died of ALS. Special talent: the ability to tell when someone is telling the truth. Made a living sitting in on the final vetting of business executives and reporting back the truthfulness of their responses. Kidnapped from a bar in the Chelsea district of New York City and held for three days in a safe house in New Jersey”—he looked up, then added—“where you are currently interrogating Garreth Laurence Senior.” Then he recited the vital statistics—height, weight, hair colour, blood type. When he came to “left handed,” Yslan thought,
Yeah left-handed, so he couldn't have blood on his right hand from killing that girl in the igloo. Besides, he was only five years old. Right-handed, left-handed, bi—a child doesn't have the strength to do
something like that.
Once again, the word “obsession” rose up in her head when thinking about former-homicide cop Garreth Laurence Senior. She admired due diligence and stick-to-it-iveness, but what Garreth Laurence Senior felt towards Decker Roberts bordered on a mania. Fuck, it
was
a mania. “Special Agent. Special Agent!”

Yslan looked up.

“Yes, sorry.”

“Fine. Let me repeat my question. Care to tell me how he managed to escape from the safe house in New Jersey?”

“No.” Yslan was icy cold.

“Okay, but you picked up his trail and tracked him to Cincinnati, Ohio, where you protected him, as a much-valued asset ought to be protected, in his confrontation in a synagogue—of all places—from the head of a pharmaceutical company who evidently intended him some harm.” He looked up. “You want to add anything to this?”

“No.”

“Then of course there was you fetching him from Africa to help Viola Tripping with your investigations into the terrorist bombings in upper New York State.”

Again he looked up at her. There was something wrong with his skin—too shiny, like a frog's belly. And those soft hands and manicured fingernails.

“Then that unfortunate incident in San Francisco that sent him running back to Africa.” He closed the folder. “Am I missing anything?”

Yslan thought,
Is it possible they don't know about the son? About Seth? If he knows, he hasn't mentioned him. And what about the Rothko Chapel?

She heard the whisking sound of two photographs crossing the table to her—both spun and landed perfectly so that they faced her. The first was of Seth on a surfboard bobbing on the waves, probably off the coast of Vancouver Island. The second was of her sitting alone in the Rothko Chapel in Houston, where she had followed Decker.

When she looked up from the pictures she saw Mallory smiling.
Why was he smiling?
she asked herself, then thought,
Men with tiny teeth really shouldn't smile.

He picked up another photo and examined it. Then he slowly turned it to her. It showed her sitting on the small cot in Decker's psycho single dorm room at Ancaster College. She had just undone his handcuffs and the two of them were so close to each other that they were breathing in each other's expelled breaths.

He tilted down his reading glasses and looked at her. “Could he tell when you were telling the truth to him?”

After a sigh that she wished she hadn't let pass her lips, she said, “Yes.”

“Then he didn't care all that much for you, did he? It's a fact that he's unable to use his special talent on those he cares about. Isn't that true?”

Yslan didn't say anything.

“He's unable to use his special talent on those he cares about. Right?”

“That's correct.”

“Thank you.”

He opened another of the folders. “Then there's Martin Armistaad, born 1952.” He threw three photos of the man onto the table. Perfect spinners again. “Mr. Armistaad's special talent has to do with pattern recognition, which somehow he always associates with the mathematical realities of pi. He predicted to the day the peak of the yen in 1975, the bottom of the Dow in 2002, the rise of the Tea Party in 2010—and about thirty other world occurrences that he had no right to know. Correct?”

“To the best of our understanding, yes.”

“Any idea how he does that?”

“Not a clue.”

“And how the others do what they do?”

“Ditto.”

“Don't you think you should have shared this information with us at Homeland Security?”

“No. I think we have our area of expertise and you—”

“Are just a bloated government bureaucracy that rides around in chauffeured limos. Something along those lines?”

“If you say so.”

He smirked then said, “Well, Martin Armistaad, ex-prisoner number 271403—”

“Hold on.
Ex
-prisoner?”

“Yes, Special Agent Hicks. We believe that thanks to your boss, Leonard Harrison, or someone your boss was working with, Martin Armistaad, ex-prisoner 271403, is in the wind.”

Is that what he meant when he said, “Things may be in motion”?
she wondered.

“Armistaad is dangerous,” Yslan said.

“And you know this from—”

“I've interviewed him.”

“At Leavenworth?”

“Yeah.” It was hard to forget, but she had a video of their conversation. Not something she'd wanted to revisit, but she thought she might have to now.

Mallory stood. Just for a moment something that could have been concern crossed the chubby cheeks of his face. “Russian dolls, Special Agent.”

“You mean—”

“Matryoshka dolls—one inside another inside another . . .” He paused, and Yslan was pretty sure he was going to say something more, then he added, “That's how security works.”