Agents of the Glass (25 page)

“What's going to happen to her?” Andy asked. “I don't get it. What did she do wrong? The cops ought to arrest her
parents.
Well, I guess she's not in danger, anyway, as long as she's with the police.”

“Those weren't cops.”

“Wh-what do you mean? They had uniforms. And badges.”

“I'm sure they did.”

Andy scrunched his lips to one side as he thought back to their
lumens
and connected the dots. “They're…Syngians? So…Jensen's not…out of danger?”

“Not even close. I'm sure if I check the security cameras at her building, we'll see two NTRP employees dressed up like cops.” He pulled up Jensen's last blog post on his phone. “This made
somebody
nervous. She spent a lot of time the past couple of days talking to Ilene Porter. According to this, she was going to spill the whole story sometime tomorrow. But I'm afraid that even if she already wrote it and set up a timed release of the story on her website, there's no way NTRP is going to let that happen. Every trace of her website will be gone within the hour. And Ilene Porter…”

“What?”

Silas hesitated. He had to tell Andy the truth—he owed him that much—but he was afraid of how the poor kid might react. “Ilene Porter is dead. I went to her hotel to warn her, but somebody else got there first.”

His face turning white, Andy stammered, “I—I was supposed to go with Jensen to see her. I
should
have gone, except I was doing what you told me I had to do—babysitting Winter, who still hasn't actually
done
anything wrong, as far as I can see. And now she's…Are they going to kill Jensen, too?” He started to back away from Silas, shaking his head in disbelief. “What am I doing? I should be…doing homework or playing video games like a normal kid. I don't even know you. You tell me a story about Syngians and pieces of old glass, but you don't even give me your real name. Well, I'm done. I quit. But I'm keeping Penny.”

He turned and ran down the sidewalk, with Penny at his side. Silas didn't try to stop him.

Fifty-eight minutes later, when Silas was in the Loom, scanning the previous twenty-four hours of security video from the lobby of the Newgate Hotel, his phone vibrated loudly against the wood tabletop: Andy.

“Hey.”

“Hey.”

“You okay?”

“Yeah. Forget what I said. I was just mad about…Look, I found something. Something important. A flash drive. You know, I thought it was weird when Jensen kneeled down to pet Penny. She'd never even seen her before, but she was acting like they were best friends. She must have clipped it onto her collar.”

Feeling a surge of relief—for too many reasons to count—Silas sat up straight in his chair. “Have you looked at it?”

“Uh-huh. It's the notes from her meeting with Ilene Porter. There are audio files, too. She must have recorded everything, because they take up a bunch of space on the drive.”

Silas whistled. “Okay. Listen carefully. Sooner or later, someone's going to remember that the kid with the dog is the same kid who was with Jensen in the NTRP building and…You need to send me the files ASAP and then get rid of the flash drive, okay? Get it out of your apartment—tonight. Okay?”

When the contents of the drive landed in Silas's in-box, he clicked through them to make sure the documents were readable and the audio files worked.

“Perfect,” he said. “That's everything, right? Good. Clear your email, and then take care of the flash drive.”

“Can I do it in the morning?”

“No, do it now. Destroy it. Take your frustration with me out on it. Tomorrow's Saturday, right? Meet me at the bodega at seven-thirty. No, make it seven-forty-five. You did some good work today. And don't worry—we'll find Jensen.”

Excerpt from Transcript of Interview with Ilene Porter by Jensen Huntley

Newgate Hotel, NY

JH: Thanks again, Ms. Porter. Like I told you, Zhariah Davis gave me your name.

IP: She left me several messages when I was in Greece. I called her when I got back in the country—I always return calls—but she never answered or returned mine.

JH: Yeah, um, her editor took her off the story. He said it wasn't interesting enough—

IP: But you disagree. How old are you? I was expecting someone—

JH: I'm old enough to know an important story when I see one. Something strange happened at that conference. You're my only chance to learn the truth so I can tell the rest of the world. I know I'm young, but you can trust me completely. I just want to know why all these important people suddenly stopped giving money away.

IP: That makes two of us. It can't be a coincidence, so many drastic about-faces. One or two, perhaps, but eleven? I keep asking myself,
What made them change…but not me?

JH: Let's go back to the beginning. How did you first find out about the conference? Were you invited, or…

IP: One of the sponsors contacted me—a nonprofit that distributes water filters in areas where the drinking water is unsafe. When she told me the names of the others who would be attending the conference, I agreed immediately. Those eleven, as individuals and as heads of companies and organizations, were responsible for hundreds of millions of dollars in charity. Billions, even.

JH: What about the companies pitching ideas—how many of them were there?

IP: Oh, lots. Dozens. Pitching everything from computer programs and mosquito nets to shoes made from recycled tires. I brought you a tote filled with a few of the goodies. You're welcome to it all.

JH: This was all…free? Wait, there's a tablet in here. I can't take that—it's worth—

IP: Take it. You'll see, it's not a tablet—it's one of those e-reader devices for people who don't read real books. The paper kind, I mean. This company, 233dotcom, is planning to hand them out the way companies used to hand out key chains. They have a solar panel, so they never need batteries. Clever.

JH: Let's skip to the part you mentioned over the phone—something strange happened during the conference?

IP: Ah, yes. The NTRP presentation. Quite a show. Presented by a woman…Sorry, I don't remember her name. Dianna, maybe?

JH: Deanna Decameron, most likely.

IP: Yes, that's the name. In any case, I don't know how practical it is, especially in poor communities, but from a purely technological standpoint, it was very impressive—like something from a science fiction movie. I have no idea how to explain what I saw except that suddenly the room was filled with people from history floating here and there. Shakespeare, Napoleon, George Washington, Michelangelo, Beethoven, Rembrandt—there were hundreds of them. As real-looking as you are to me right now.

JH: I don't understand. They were just…floating? Like, pictures of them?

IP: Yes, but three-dimensional. They looked alive. And not like in a 3-D movie, but like you could reach out and touch them. And that was just the warm-up. Those people all disappeared, and then, a second later, there was this scene from the signing of the Declaration of Independence on the stage. All these men standing around and talking about King George….It was absolutely astonishing. I've seen a lot of new things in my sixty-three years, but nothing prepared me for that.

JH: Where were the images coming from? Was there a projector of some kind?

IP: I have no idea. They were just…there.

JH: Then what?

IP: It must have been a malfunction. The images just started flashing, hundreds of them, going by too fast to really see them. Like an old black-and-white movie but brighter, jerkier, and all in this incredible three-dimensional world. Made me a bit dizzy. I had to look away, and that's when I noticed…

JH: What?

IP: Well, I could barely stand to keep my eyes open while the pictures were flashing, but when I looked around the room, everyone else was…captivated, as if they couldn't bear to take their eyes off any of it for so much as a second.

JH: Did anyone say anything?

IP: Not at the time. Later, when I asked the others about it, they spoke of it as if it had lasted only a second or two. But it was much longer than that—more than a minute.

JH: You're sure?

IP: Positive. It was uncomfortable.

JH: What was Deanna doing all this time? Did she say anything?

IP: Only that it was merely a programming bug, and that they were working on it.

JH: And then what?

IP: And then…nothing. Everything went back to normal. The signers of the Declaration were back in their places.

JH: How did you feel? Did you notice anything different?

IP: Nothing. The rest of the conference went on without any further problems. Before we checked out, the twelve of us met privately to talk about the future, and everyone seemed perfectly normal. No one seemed disillusioned or angry or fed up. Quite the contrary; we were all energized by what we'd seen and heard. We were ready to get back to work.

JH: How long was it until you knew something was wrong?

IP: Three weeks, give or take a day. I got word that Roscoe Mertyn had shut down his charity. My first thought was that he was in some kind of financial trouble. With all the ups and downs of the economy, he wouldn't have been the first. Then, two days later, Sylvia Langhorne joined him. Within a week, the other nine had done the same thing. No big announcements, no political agendas—they simply stopped writing checks. What went wrong? And why them and not me?

Faster than Silas would have believed possible for someone so small, Andy polished off two bacon-and-egg sandwiches, a large order of home fries, and a pint of fresh-squeezed orange juice in the back room of YouNeedItWeGotIt! on Saturday morning.

“Flash drive taken care of?”

Andy nodded, still chewing.

“Hard drive wiped?”

More nodding, more chewing.

“Good. I have a plan. We need to get the police interested in Jensen. The real police. There are over thirty thousand cops in New York—they'll find her. I'm going to do a little snooping into Ilene Porter's background. The notes from that interview have given me some ideas that I need to check out. Meanwhile, you're going to pay a visit to your old friend at the Nineteenth Precinct—where you turned in that big bag of money.”

“Detective Cunningham?”

“You liked him, right?”

“Yeah, he was okay. He's kind of…loud. When he laughs, I mean.”

“Well, you certainly impressed him, so he won't think you're a nut or a stalker. He'll take some action. If Jensen's parents really are overseas and not in regular communication with her, no one may report her missing until she doesn't show up for school on Monday.”

“Should I tell him about the guys who dragged her away?”

“I think you have to. Doormen gossip. There's no telling how many people know about it by now. You tell Cunningham that you showed up there last night as the police were taking her away, and you just want to make sure she's okay—you know, act like you're worried about her.”

“I
am
worried about her.”

“I know. Sorry. I didn't mean…I'm worried, too. Really.”

“Can I say something?”

“Of course.”

Andy pulled the disk of Lucian Glass from beneath his shirt and swung it back and forth in front of Silas's face. “For somebody who's supposed to be…to have all these qualities—compassion and courage and discipline and all the others—you're not always exactly, you know,
nice.
”

Rubbing his eyes, Silas acknowledged Andy's criticism with a single nod. “You're absolutely right. It's no excuse, but my own childhood wasn't like yours. I was…” His voice and his focus drifted off to a faraway place, and for a few uncomfortable seconds, there was silence.

“Sorry, I didn't mean to…,” said Andy, trying hard to decipher even one layer of the secrecy and complexity that made up Silas. For all the time they had spent together, he realized that he knew nothing personal about him. Admitting that to himself made him ashamed. His parents, especially his mother, had taught him better.

“Being a good friend is like being a good reporter,” she had told him. “You have to ask the right questions.”

He would start asking questions, Andy promised himself.

Silas snapped out of his reverie. “What? No, don't be sorry. Let's get back to work.”

The questions can wait till tomorrow,
Andy decided.

Detective Greg Cunningham listened to the story of Jensen's “arrest” and then asked Andy to wait in one of the chairs outside his office while he made a few calls to various precincts around the city. Ten minutes passed. Fifteen. Andy drank a root beer from the vending machine. After twenty minutes, the door finally opened.

“You'd better tell me again. From the beginning,” said the detective, his brow deeply furrowed. “Every little detail—it might be important.”

For a second time, Andy told him what had happened, leaving out only the details of the flash drive and that he knew the two guys in uniform weren't really cops.

Cunningham, scratching his goatee, announced, “We've got a little problem. I asked around, checked with all the precincts in the area, looked in the computer. No Jensen Huntley in the system. Since she's a minor, there ought to be red flags waving all over town. There ain't even a red handkerchief out there.” He took a blazer from the hook on the back of his door and stuck a long arm into a sleeve. “We'd better check it out. You have some time?”

“Y-yeah!” said Andy. “Really? You want me to come?”

“Why not? You know where she lives. I want you to show me exactly where everything went down last night.”

For a teenager living alone for months at a time, Jensen kept the apartment remarkably clean and neat. So neat, in fact, that Detective Cunningham had a difficult time believing that her parents had been away for nearly six months—a fact that two doormen and the building handyman confirmed.

“Don't touch anything,” the detective cautioned, slipping on a pair of latex gloves. “Just in case…”

“That's her laptop, there on the kitchen counter,” said Andy.

Cunningham pressed the power button and waited a few seconds. When nothing happened, he pressed it a second time. Still nothing. He checked the cord; it was plugged into the wall outlet. “Doesn't look damaged.”

“Turn it over,” Andy suggested. “Maybe there's…Ohhh. Whoa. The hard drive is
gone.
”

“I've got to call this in,” said Cunningham, putting his phone to his ear.

Andy, meanwhile, peeked around a corner, pushing Jensen's bedroom door open. Her backpack was unzipped and turned inside out, its contents scattered around the room: an organic chemistry textbook, several notebooks, a calculator, a paperback of
The Motorcycle Diaries,
and the aluminum water bottle that she carried everywhere.

“Somebody was looking for something,” said Detective Cunningham, peering over his shoulder. “What's she like? Is she…involved in anything illegal? How well do you know her?”

Andy shrugged. “I don't know—I just met her at the beginning of the year, when I started at Wellbourne.”

“You're in, what, seventh grade? And she's in eleventh? Are you two…How do you know her? Sorry, it's just kind of odd, the age-difference thing. Is she your—”

“No. No! It's not like that. We're both in the Broadcast Club. We were working on a story together. I think…this could have something to do with that. We were supposed to interview some lady, but I got assigned to a different story. Jensen was
really
mad at me. Said she would do it herself. That was the last time I talked to her. She was right. I should have gone with her. It's an important story.”

“What lady? Where?”

“Her name is Ilene Porter. She's a phila…a philth…uh, she's involved in a bunch of charities. She's staying at the…the…uh…New…gate Hotel. The thing is, I know Jensen talked to her. She put something up on her website. I checked today, though, and her site is gone. Like it was never there.”

Detective Cunningham shook his head. “Maybe I'd better have a talk with this Ilene Porter. The Newgate, you say?”

“Uh-huh. Room 2801.”