Death Match (6 page)

“You mean, like a suicide gene? I wish it were that easy. There’s research that’s shown some genes may—
may
—code for depressive tendencies. Just as there are genes that code for heavy eating, sexual preferences, eye or hair color. But predicting suicide? If you’re a betting man, stay away from that one. You’ve got two deeply depressed people. Why does one commit suicide and another doesn’t? In the end there’s no way to predict. Why did Miami Beach police report a rash of suicides last month, while Minneapolis had a historic dip? Why did Poland have a dramatically high rate of suicide in the year 2000? Sorry, pal. When you get right down to it, it’s just a roll of the dice.”

Lash ingested this. “A roll of the dice.”

“Take it from an expert, Chris. And you can quote me on that.”

SEVEN

A
fter the dry high-altitude air of Flagstaff, New York City felt damp and miserable. Lash wore a heavy raincoat as he approached the reception desk in Eden’s lobby for the second time in five days.

“Christopher Lash to see Edwin Mauchly,” he told a tall, thin man behind the counter.

The man tapped a few keys. “Do you have an appointment, sir?” he asked with a smile.

“I left him a message. He’ll be expecting me.”

“One moment, please.”

As he waited, Lash turned to gaze around him. There was something different about the lobby today, but he wasn’t quite sure what it was. Then he realized there was no line of prospective applicants this morning. The twin escalators leading to Application Processing were empty. Instead, a smaller flow of traffic was headed for the security checkpoint. They were all couples, many hand in hand. Unlike the anxious, hopeful faces he’d seen his last visit, these people were smiling, laughing, chattering loudly. After showing laminated cards at the checkpoint, the couples moved on to a large set of doors and vanished out of sight.

“Dr. Lash?” the man at the desk said.

Lash turned back. “Yes?”

“Mr. Mauchly is waiting for you.” The man slid a small ivory passcard emblazoned with Eden’s infinity logo across the desk. “Please show this at the elevator station. Have a pleasant day.”

When the elevator doors opened onto the thirty-second floor, Mauchly was waiting. He nodded to Lash, then led the way down the corridor to his office.

Director of Facilitation Services
, Lash recalled as he followed Mauchly.
Whatever the hell is that?
Aloud, he asked: “Why all the happy faces?”

“Sorry?”

“Downstairs, in the lobby. Everybody was grinning as if they’d won the lottery or something.”

“Ah. Today is class reunion.”

“Class reunion?”

“That’s our term for it. Part of our client contract calls for a mandatory six-month revaluation of the couples we’ve brought together. They return for a day of one-on-one sessions, encounter groups, the like. For the most part, quite informal. Our researchers find the back-end data helpful in refining the selection process. And it allows us to watch for any signs of incompatibility, warning signals, between couples.”

“Seen any?”

“None to date.” Mauchly opened the door, ushered Lash inside. If he was curious, it did not show in his dark eyes. “Would you care for any refreshment?”

“No thanks.” Lash slipped his satchel from his arm and took the indicated chair.

Mauchly sat down behind his desk. “We didn’t expect to hear from you so soon.”

“That’s because there’s not much to tell.”

Mauchly raised his eyebrows.

Lash leaned over, unfastened his satchel, and pulled out a document. He straightened its edges, then placed it on the desk.

“What is that, Dr. Lash?” Mauchly asked.

“My report.”

Mauchly made no move to pick it up. “Perhaps you could summarize it for me.”

Lash took a deep breath. “There are no indicators for suicide in either Lewis or Lindsay Thorpe. None at all.”

Mauchly folded one muscular arm over the other, waited.

“I’ve spoken to family, friends, doctors. I’ve examined their credit histories, financial records, employment status. I’ve called in favors from federal and local law enforcement. This was as functional, stable a couple—a
family
—as you’ll ever find. They could have been poster children for that wall of happy faces down in your lobby.”

“I see.” Mauchly’s lips pursed into what might have been a frown. “Perhaps there were prior indicators that—”

“I looked there, too. I checked school records, interviewed teachers, spoke with former classmates. Nothing. And no psychiatric history, either. In fact, the only hospital visit was by Lewis, who broke a leg skiing in Aspen eight years ago.”

“Then what is your professional opinion?”

“People don’t just commit suicide for no reason. Especially double suicide. There’s something missing here.”

“Are you implying—”

“I’m not implying anything. The police report reads suicide. What I mean is, I don’t have enough
information
to form an opinion on why they did what they did.”

Mauchly glanced at the report. “It appears you’ve done a thorough investigation.”

“What I need is in this building. Your evaluations of the Thorpes might give me the psychological data I need.”

“You must know that’s out of the question. Our data is confidential. Trade secrets are involved.”

“I’ve already signed a nondisclosure agreement.”

“Dr. Lash, it’s not my call to make. Besides, it’s unlikely you’d find anything in our test results you have not already found on your own.”

“Perhaps. Perhaps not. That’s why I’ve also prepared this.” Lash withdrew a small envelope and placed it atop the sheaf of papers.

Mauchly cocked his head inquiringly.

“It’s a breakdown of my expenses. Time billed at my usual consultation rate of $300 an hour. I didn’t charge overtime. Airplane tickets, hotel rooms, rental cars, meals, it’s all there. Just a shade over $14,000. If you’ll initial the amount, I’ll write you out a check for the balance.”

“What balance would that be?”

“The rest of the hundred thousand you gave me.”

Mauchly reached for the envelope, withdrew the folded sheet inside. “I’m not sure I understand.”

“It’s quite simple. Without more information from you, there’s nothing I can say except Lewis and Lindsay Thorpe were just as perfect a couple as your computer thought they were. I didn’t earn a hundred thousand to tell you that.”

Mauchly studied the paper for a moment. Then he replaced it in the envelope and put it back on the table. “Dr. Lash, would you excuse me for just a moment?”

“Of course.”

Mauchly stood and, with a polite nod, left the room, closing the door behind him.

It was perhaps ten minutes before Lash heard the door open again. He turned to see Mauchly standing in the corridor.

“This way, if you please,” he said.

Mauchly led Lash to a new elevator. It descended briefly, then opened onto a featureless corridor. The walls, floor, and ceiling were all painted the same shade of pale violet. Mauchly led the way down the corridor, then stopped to open a door the same color as the walls and ceiling. He gestured Lash to enter first.

The space beyond was long and dimly lit. From a narrow floor, the walls angled outward at a forty-five-degree angle to waist level, where they became abruptly vertical. It felt to Lash like staring down a funnel.

“What kind of place is this?” he asked, walking forward.

Mauchly closed the door and pressed a button on a nearby control panel.

There was a low whirring noise, and Lash took an involuntary step toward the center. On both sides, a dark curtain drew back along the angled walls at his feet. And now Lash realized that they were not walls at all, but windows, looking down into two large rooms: one to his left, the other to his right. They were standing on a catwalk, suspended above and between the two identical rooms: conference rooms containing large, oval tables. Perhaps a dozen people were seated around each. There was no sound but Lash could see from their gestures they were talking animatedly.

“What the hell—” he began.

Mauchly gave a dry laugh. Yellow light from the conference rooms lit his face from below, giving his smile a disconcerting cast. “Listen,” he said, pressing another button.

The room was suddenly filled with a babel of voices. Mauchly turned to the panel, adjusted a knob, and the volume decreased.

Lash realized he was hearing the conversations of the people in the room below. Another moment and he realized they were all couples who had been brought together by Eden. They were joking, sharing reminiscences about the experience.

“I’ve told seven, maybe eight friends about it,” a man was saying. He was in his early forties, black, wearing a dark suit. A woman was sitting close beside him, head resting on his shoulder. “Three have already applied. A couple more are saving up. One of them’s even thinking of turning in his Saab for a used Honda to raise the fee. That’s desperation.”

“We haven’t told anybody,” said a young woman across the table. “We like keeping it a secret.”

“It’s a blast,” her husband added. “People are always telling us how great we are for each other. Just last night a couple of the guys cornered me at the gym. They complained their wives were all bitches, wondered how I was lucky enough to find the last nice girl on Long Island.” He laughed. “How could I tell them Eden brought us together? It’s too much fun taking the credit myself.”

This brought a burst of assenting laughter from the group.

Mauchly reached for the dial again, and the laughter faded out. “Dr. Lash, I believe you feel I’m being intentionally coy about all this. That is not the case. It’s not that we don’t trust you. It’s simply that secrecy is the only way to protect our service. There are any number of would-be competitors who will do
whatever
it takes to obtain our testing techniques, our evaluation algorithms, anything. And remember, the secrecy is not just for
us
.” He gestured toward the other room below them, turned another knob.

“. . . if I’d known just what was in store for me, I don’t know if I’d have had the
cojones
to take that eval,” a tall, athletic-looking man in a crewneck sweater was saying. “It was a brutal day. But now that it’s seven months behind me, I know it was the best thing I ever did.”

“I went to a typical online dating service once, a couple of years back,” another added. “Couldn’t have been more unlike Eden. Crude. Low-tech. They only asked a few questions. And guess what the first one was: Are you interested in a casual or a serious relationship? Can you believe it? I was so insulted I walked out the door right then!”

“I’ll be paying off the loan for years,” said a woman. “But I’d have paid twice as much. It’s like they say on that wall in the lobby. What price can you put on happiness?”

“Anybody here ever fight?” somebody else asked.

“We disagree,” a silver-haired woman at the far end responded. “Wouldn’t be human if we didn’t. But it just helps us learn more about each other, respect each other’s needs.”

Mauchly turned off the sound again. “You see? It’s for
them
, as well. Eden provides a service nobody’s ever dreamed of before. We can’t take any chance, no matter how small, of compromising that service.” He paused. “Now listen. I’m bringing in someone you can talk to, ask a few questions. But you must understand, Dr. Lash:
he doesn’t know
. Morale at Eden is exceptionally high. People are very proud of the service they provide. We cannot undermine that, even with an unrelated tragedy. Understood?”

Lash nodded.

As if on cue, a door opened at the far end of the room and a figure in a white lab coat stepped forward.

“Peter, there you are,” Mauchly said. “Come and meet Christopher Lash. He’s doing some random follow-up checks on a few of our clients. For statistical purposes.”

The man came forward with a shy smile. He was little more than a youth, really. There was an abundance of carrot-colored hair above his forehead that bobbed slightly as he shook Lash’s hand.

“This is Peter Hapwood. He’s the evaluation engineer that did the one-on-one with the Thorpes when they came back for their class reunion.” Mauchly turned to Hapwood. “Do you remember Lewis and Lindsay Thorpe?”

Hapwood nodded. “The supercouple.”

“Yes. The supercouple.” Mauchly turned his hand toward Lash, palm extended, as if inviting questions.

“In the one-on-one with the Thorpes,” Lash asked the young engineer, “did anything stand out in particular?”

“No, nothing. Not that I can remember.”

“How did they seem?”

“They seemed happy, like everybody else on their return interview.”

“How many couples have you interviewed? On their six-month return, I mean?”

Hapwood thought a moment. “A thousand. Maybe twelve hundred.”

“And they’ve all been happy?”

“Without exception. After all this time, it still seems uncanny.” Hapwood shot a quick look at Mauchly, as if wondering whether he’d said something inappropriate.

“Did the Thorpes say anything about their lives since meeting each other?”

“Let me think. No. Yes. They’d recently moved to Flagstaff, Arizona. I remember Mr. Thorpe saying he was having a little trouble with the altitude—he was a jogger, as I recall—but they both loved the area.”

“Anything else come up in the questions?”

“Not really. I just went through the standard question set. Nothing got flagged.”

“What standard set is that?”

“Well, we start with the mood-setting items, just to establish a comfort level, by—”

“I don’t think such specifics are necessary,” Mauchly said. “Any other questions?”

Lash felt the opportunity slipping away from him. And yet there were no other questions left. “You don’t recall anything they said, or mentioned, out of the ordinary? Anything at all?”

“No,” Hapwood replied. “Sorry.”

Lash’s shoulders sagged. “Thanks.”

Mauchly nodded at Hapwood, who headed for the far door. Halfway there, he stopped.

“She hated opera,” he said.