All Cry Chaos (30 page)

    Swiftly and predictably, in the harshest language, spokesmen for the Roman Catholic and Greek Orthodox churches, the Anglicans, and mainline Protestants condemned all violence in the name of Christ. But their outrage had done nothing to stop previous Christianinspired bombings, so no one listened now. Nor were many consoled by public figures who advised against creating monsters from unlikely threats. According to statisticians, the risk of dying at the hand of a Rapturian bomber was roughly that of dying from a direct asteroid hit. Nonetheless, a new class of Bogeyman was born: the Caucasian Christian fundamentalist male bent on destruction for the greater good. Jihadist suicide bombers in Kabul now had cousins: self-detonating Joneses and Bellinghams in Piccadilly Circus. A teenager who survived the London bombing summed up the mood this way: "If I can't run to the store for a pair of socks without risking my life, what's the bloody point?"

    In the lobby of the Elmer L. Andersen Human Services Building in downtown St. Paul, Poincaré consulted a directory listing and soon found the State of Minnesota Adoption Office, where a courteous clerk told him, in effect, to go away. "Sir, I can't release personal information without a court order." The man held his ground, politely, no matter how many ways Poincaré angled to see Rainier's file. Finally the clerk explained that if Poincaré was determined he could go to the state police, who would establish his
bona fides
and point him to an administrative judge for an order to release the file. "Look," said the man. "I don't know your business, but I've seen all kinds of unhappiness caused by mishandling confidential records. I've seen information released that the adoptees don't know themselves—about birth parents, for instance, and financial records. I'm sure you have your reasons, but we've got ours. If you want to see anything, you'll need a judge's order."

    Poincaré devoted the rest of the morning to meeting with the state police. It was just early enough in St. Paul that the Interpol offices in Lyon were still open and could verify his credentials. The police, who were also able to view and download the Red Notice on Rainier, were helpful—but not helpful enough to spare Poincaré several hours filling out forms. Eventually, an aide walked him to a nearby courthouse and, spotting the judge they were seeking, dashed ahead to make an introduction. Before Poincaré could say a word, he was given to understand that whatever his business, the judge's was more important. In recess from a trial, she looked at her watch and said: "I understand the request, Inspector. What's the compelling interest in releasing information on Marcus and Theodore Rainier when it's the sister you're after? You've got ninety seconds."

    "She might be seeking refuge with either, your Honor."

    The judge arched her eyebrows. "The file indicates they last saw each other twenty-six years ago. You'll have to do better than that. What, I repeat, is the compelling interest? . . . You've now got sixty seconds."

    "They may know her whereabouts."

    "That assumes she's located them. In any event, I'm not moved by
may
. Denied. I'll sign for Madeleine Rainier's file—no one else's." She stepped inside her chambers and closed the door in his face before he could say
thank you
.

    He lost no time returning to the adoption office, where the clerk was waiting with Rainier's file already called up on a microfiche reader. "The state police gave me a heads-up, and I located the file. Here we are." He pulled a second chair to the reader, and the first thing that struck Poincaré was the photograph of Rainier, age two years, four months: straight blonde hair, oval face, dimpled chin, the same gray eyes—unmistakably the person who a quarter century later would appear too fragile to place in custody. He read the file closely, taking notes, and asked the clerk for a hard copy. "How would I find out if she attempted to contact her brothers?" he asked. "Wouldn't you expect a child who learns she's adopted and has siblings to want to find them? You must keep those records."

    "We do," the clerk answered, checking the administrative order. "But you have no access." The man shrugged. "It's frustrating, I know. But imagine you're Marcus or Theodore Rainier—or whatever their names are now. You're twenty-eight and," he checked the file, "thirty years old. And out of the blue an Interpol agent knocks on your door with questions about a sister you never knew about. You have no problem with this?"

    "I'm investigating a murder," said Poincaré.

    "And both of these men have the right to lives that don't get turned upside down. But we could debate this until the cows come home. The judge said
no.
" The clerk reached behind his desk for a phone directory and found the name listed on Rainier's adoption record. He circled it, then turned the directory around for Poincaré to see. "Same address. They're still here, as of a year ago when this directory was printed. Good luck."

T
HE HOUSE sat on the western edge of St. Paul, on a corner lot enclosed by a rusting fence. An aluminum pool, its sides caved in and filled with leaves, occupied most of a large concrete slab set in what passed for a yard. Along the rear edge of the property, the bones of an upended swing set rose from a weedy sand pit. No one answered when Poincaré knocked, and he thought the house abandoned. He circled to the back, knocked on another door. Again, nothing. He knocked at the front door a final time, prepared to leave when, unexpectedly, a hall light flashed on. A man opened the door and shielded his eyes. He wore a stained, sleeveless undershirt and nothing else. Poincaré introduced himself.

    "What is it?"

    "Are you Richard Scott?"

    "I paid my taxes and the utility bills this month."

    Poincaré planted a shoe across the threshold. When Scott slammed the door, it bounced in his face.

    "That hurt!"

    "Madeleine Rainier."

    "You said
what
?"

    "I'm looking for Madeleine Rainier. Or Madeleine Scott."

    "How do you know her? Who are you?" He ran a hand through filthy hair and blinked hard in the afternoon light.

    "Mr. Scott," said Poincaré. "Pull on a pair of pants, and we'll talk."

    "You heard from Maddy?"

    "Get dressed, Mr. Scott."

    "Happy times," said Scott. "What do you want?"

    He had worked as a maintenance man at one of the General Mills plants in town. Like everyone else in the Twin Cities twentyfive years earlier, he and his wife Irma, a schoolteacher, had followed the sad fortunes of the Rainier children. "One couldn't avoid the news," he recalled. "For days the papers ran weepers, and Irma finally broke down. We were in our thirties and didn't have kids. We tried. A year before, we got approved to adopt and we were just waiting for the right situation. Then came the accident, and Irma couldn't get those children off her mind. Maybe you've seen the pictures. We contacted the Department of Human Services right off. They took their sweet time, then called one day and said everything had to be completed right away. They said we could adopt one of the children, not all three.

    "But we wanted all of them. We applied for three. For years we had saved and built this house for a family. You should have seen it back then, everything new and painted. I built it myself. We could have managed," he said. "We weren't rich but we could have managed with public schools and the State U. We begged them. But some case manager in a bow tie and a string of initials after his name said
no
—that it was in the best interests of the children to be separated. Best interests? You don't
do
that to kids—two of them twins, no less. That man had all those degrees, but where was the common sense of it? Better those kids had been dogs in a kennel. At least if they were mutts, I could have brought three home."

    Scott moved Poincaré into a narrow galley kitchen for coffee. Unwashed dishes and half-eaten TV dinners overran the sink and counters. There were bugs, and Poincaré figured he was at risk even breathing the air. But Scott was talking, and Poincaré said he would love a cup.

    "So they made us choose," he continued. "I was boiling mad, but then you can't go yelling at caseworkers because they'd call you unfit to raise children! Irma took my hand and said these people were professionals, that they knew what was best and that she wanted a daughter. She had always wanted a daughter. I told her it wasn't natural separating them and I wanted no part of it—that they would suffer even if they didn't remember each other. Irma just kept saying she wanted a daughter and this was our best chance. It was like they were selling cars: Buy now or the offer's off the table."

    Scott excused himself, and from the next room Poincaré heard a clinking of glass. The wife had died some years ago from the look of things, and Scott himself was on schedule to follow soon. Every horizontal surface not covered by used dishes was piled high with dust-covered magazines. Boxes with broken kitchen appliances and books on duck hunting and cabinetmaking were stacked three deep along every wall.

    "Want a drink?" he asked from the doorway.

    Poincaré declined.

    "What are you doing here?"

    "I'm looking for your daughter."

    "W
e
wanted to find her!"

    Scott chiseled another teaspoon of instant coffee from a jar and offered to freshen his guest's cup. He excused himself again, and this time Poincaré heard a stream of water through an open door.

    "Maddy's leaving killed Irma," he called from the bathroom. "It took nine years, but it killed her." No flush, no running water. He rejoined Poincaré at the table. "She was a difficult child. God, how we tried to make her happy. I built a playground out back. Irma knew all about children on account of her work, and she said, 'Give it time, Richie. She'll come around.' Was sixteen years enough time? I could never get out of my head what the state did to those children. It haunted Maddy. . . .

    "But our Maddy was smart! The child was born for school— exactly the way I wasn't. Good for her, I thought. I saved all those years, and what were we going to do with the money? We gave her the best we could. We gave her our
name
. But she was never happy, and I don't think it was us, either. It was destroying Irma.

    "So I took Maddy to breakfast one morning, in her senior year. She was eighteen and had been accepted to a school out east—full scholarship. She applied only to colleges in other states. It was time she knew her past, I decided. Irma told me not to, that she might never come back to us . . . and she was right. Maddy just sat across the table, very quiet. She knew she was adopted—we'd told her that her parents had been killed in a wreck out in California. We wanted to spare her going back through those newspaper stories. I told her about her brothers, and the next day she was gone. She kissed Irma and me goodbye, like she always did in the morning. We left for work, but then she circled back and collected some things, and that was it. We never saw her again. She never enrolled in that college, either. The last we heard, just a year later, was that she had changed her name back to Rainier. The state sent us a notice. That's when Irma began dying."

    "You haven't heard anything since, Mr. Scott?"

    "Not for ten years. Then two weeks ago, out of the blue, I get a letter. Maddy writing like she left yesterday. No return address. Stamps from Europe, I think. She said she had to leave when she did, the way she did, and that she was sorry for hurting us. She knew about Irma because she checked on us from a distance, and that she still loved us—but that not to know for her entire childhood about her brothers was too terrible. She said she suffered every day as a child from half-remembering people who were important to her. She had dreams of playing with the same two boys but could never see their faces. She knew it wasn't our decision to split them up, but it was just too hard to come back to this house."

    Scott opened a cupboard and produced an envelope.

    Poincaré snapped on a pair of gloves and read the letter. It looked like Rainier's handwriting. To be as certain as he could be outside of a lab, he opened his file from Amsterdam and found a photocopy of her registration at the Hotel Ravensplein.

    "Is she in some sort of trouble?" asked Scott.

    "Possibly. I saw her last in Amsterdam just over three months ago. I need to find her. Could I take a picture of this letter? And the actual envelope would help—I'd like to conduct some tests."

    "I suppose . . . under one condition."

    "What's that?" asked Poincaré.

    Richard Scott turned toward a window. "If you find Maddy, ask her to visit."

    When he said that, the space in the narrow, filthy kitchen grew very small; for the man had driven home a distressing truth: if Claire, Etienne, Lucille, and the boys did not return to Poincaré, this kitchen would one day be his kitchen. Scott stared at him as if from some future mirror: rheumy-eyed, unshaven, bitter coffee in one hand and a half-glass of toxic whiskey in the other. Poincaré said nothing. One could not sit in the presence of such destruction and say a word.

    "What kind of trouble, Inspector. What happened to her?"

    "Someone died. There was a bombing."

    The man set his whiskey aside, then his coffee cup. "You're saying Madeleine was involved?"

    Poincaré nodded.

    "It's not possible," he said. "Even if my daughter disowned us, I know her heart. She was kind. She
is
kind. Once she came home from school without her winter coat. And it gets
cold
in Minnesota. Irma asked what happened, and Maddy said that there was a child at the bus stop in a sweater, and that she gave him her coat because he didn't own one. No," said Scott, "she didn't kill anyone."