Next History: The Girl Who Hacked Tomorrow (7 page)

“Please gentlemen,
” Solberg says forcefully, “don’t let us take that attitude. We will continue to develop information and as soon as…”

General Solberg’s words trail off. He stares fixedly at the center of the expansive conference table. There, in full view of the entire room, the polished wooden sheen ripples, takes on the wind-ruffled look of a lake surface. A waft of cool air and the scent of fragrant wood
land fills the room, steady lap of wavelets against a sandy shore. Reeds and water grasses project through the surface. Above the water, a zoom of bugs. Abruptly a fish jumps, twists in the air, shakes glistening droplets from its scales. The fish’s entry splash clearly audible in the packed conference room. Sparkling ripples expand toward the edge of the table.

Strand slaps the back of his hand. The scene abruptly fades, the table again solid wood.

In the room a tumbled roar of sound as chairs, laptops, suits and uniforms leap away from the table. Every person in the room is crouched or standing, backed against the walls or fallen to the floor. Several Pentagon police have weapons drawn, barrels up. There is nothing to aim at.

Solberg is first to shake it off. “Anybody get video? A photo? Sound?”
He notices several people reaching for phones and laptops.

“Freeze that! Stop yourselves right there. Do not call out. Place your phones on the table now. This is absolute black. Do not dis
cuss with anyone outside. Face to face only. Absolute.”

A voice from one of the Telepresence monitors. “Ah, General, we got static there. Can you summarize the last couple minutes for us?”

“General,” comes a female voice from another screen, a distant meeting room. “Why is everyone standing against the wall?”

“Ah, we had a technical glitch here too, we weren’t really discussing anything.” It’s a feeble stall, passable until people start to think. “We’re going to close the session now,” Solberg continues. “All of us have work to do. We will reconvene at 1800 hours. Thank you for your valuable input.” Solberg
ends the remote video session.

Strand guesses at one thing, known only to Solberg. Th
e whale migration is about to land in his lap. It will be a very hot potato.

Chester Porterfield cruises his black SUV three times past the winding dirt driveway, working up his nerve. There’s a house by the road, but that’s not it. Porterfield gets a glimpse of the old two-story bunkhouse well back in the redwood grove. Carved redwood sign,
slow kids
. Cars in the clearing, a faded-blue El Camino and a gold Lexus coupe, a small yellow Mazda with a surfboard rack. Behind the bunkhouse, wooded slopes and redwoods. Porterfield is edgy. The document on the seat is supposed to fix his problem. He is used to getting his way.

Months ago, Porterfield’s small pretty wife had cautiously used the words
psychiatrist
and
megalomania
to him in the same sentence. After which he’d struck her hard. He regretted it. When he’d returned home from his sulk to say he was sorry, she was gone. The bags-packed closets-empty kind of gone. Both daughters away at college had phoned him, with angry words like possessed, idiot, always the same alpha-male shit.

A lanky football star in high school, his team’s quarterback, he had the looks and physique, enough arrogant one-liners to get the nice girls, captain the football team, deal with situations. The coaches had called him
Demon
, the way he could rip through an opposing backfield. Little aptitude for academics, he’d gone into his dad’s machine shop as an apprentice after grad, did alright, now runs the business. But Porterfield hasn’t his father’s touch, is coarse with customers and suppliers, and times have changed. Now you need marketing, ads, Facebook, Yelp, search engine savvy. He does fine at Chamber of Commerce meetings, but that’s the old-boy club, not his customer base. He’s come to realize that some of the classes he skipped, his bypassed vocational opportunities at local colleges, could have made a diff.

But his one lucky break, hearing
a year ago the fate of an old girlfriend, one of his many, had mobilized him. He’s ready to score big. Confident he’s prepared, Chet Porterfield turns the big car toward the secluded house.

Clay hears the crunch of tires, ignores it. Whoever it is will find his shop, a newly-constructed metal shell on a smooth concrete pad across from the house. The Grant kids had told Clay yah, you can build it, after he signed a five-year lease on the property. Their eyebrows didn’t
lift too much when they learned of his plans. Rumor about Clay was he’d received a false-imprisonment settlement from the County. Grant kids didn’t ask questions, happy to take his money while the old place settles year by year into the landscape.

At
the workbench near his old monoplane, Clay looks out the wide doors toward the house. He doesn’t recognize the black SUV parked there. He’s more focused at poking keys on his beater laptop. He’s annoyed. All he wants to do is set the calendar to the correct day, but the pointer will not respond.
Let the damn thing believe it’s three days in the past
. He doesn’t have time for this. Turning to the airplane, he picks up a tool.

Movement outside. A tall man exits the SUV, sheaf of papers at his paunch, strides up the steps, knocks on the door. Clay manipulates a wrench, intent on the tension of a control cable in the wing. Tharcia is inside, no idea if she’s up yet, although it’s past noon. Man knocks again. Clay steps into sunlight.

“Help you?”

Porterfield turns, sees across the dirt clearing a
blond man in the wide doorway of a metal building, knows who it is. Not his first choice, although he admitted the possibility. He’d hoped to speak to the girl.

“Here to see Tharcia Harrison,” he calls out, walking across the space. He’s sure he knows who it is, that wimp from the grades his mates called ‘Sissy.’
Cicero Sissy Clay.
This will be easy. Steps closer, stops a couple feet from the shorter man who looks fit, stands relaxed, dark-stained hands, blue work shirt, sleeves rolled to the elbow.

“Hey, Sissy, long time,” Porterfield says with a smirk.

The voice. Now Clay remembers. Hasn’t seen this cocksure dude in 20 years. Guy had been the bane of his existence senior year. Football captain, always trailing a posse of sycophant jocks with jaws like toilet bowls. They had jumped him once. Now the guy has a beer gut, not in shape, light color hair in that comb-over style many men go with before they admit the inevitable, climbing forty. Same arrogant grin.

Sissy.
Red mist swallows reason. Clay drives his knuckles hard into the man’s solar plexus, where sternum meets beer belly. Smug grin vanishes in contortion of pain as the dude goes down. Clay stands over the man curled tight around his agony. Having a hard time getting air.

Thing Clay had learned in three years of prison, you react to the slightest provocation with total aggression. Escalate right away, whatever the cost. Only way to keep the next guy from trying you. Dude watches him warily from the ground, anticipating the kick he’s sure will come. What Porterfield himself
had always done.

Clay sighs, knowing he’s overdone it. Low-impulse alert. But he knows who this is. Porterfield. And knows the guy is still an idiot, dissing him with that nickname after so long. Cicero, his dad’s gift, curse on his life.

“It’s Clay. Don’t forget that.”

Porterfield on his knees holding his middle, nods. Wheezes a scrap of breath, “Clay.”

Clay doesn’t help him up, no chance of a handshake.
Once a jerk, always a jerk.

“What you here for,
Chester?”

On his feet, Porterfield winces at the name, damn near as bad in his view as Cicero, regrets his
lame opening.
The Devil made me do it
.

“Sorry,” Porterfield has better luck breathing now. “Forgot my manners.” Reaches down for papers in the dust. “
Looking for Tharcia. She around?”

“No idea. First you tell me why you’re here, acting all full of yourself, then you leave.
You are trespassing.”

“I have official business with her. And if you wanna get legal, Clay, that was assault.”

“I’m all scared, dude. What do you want with her?”

Porterfield looks around the clearing, turns his gaze back to Clay. Thinking to
keep his eyes on the prize. He has a lawyer, has already discussed the possibility of adoption. While the lawyer has drafted an adult adoption pleading, the man was skeptical, reminded Porterfield in an avuncular aside that everything depends on the rapport he can develop. With the girl. The girl who cashed out mommy’s house, picked up her County award.

“Well, Clay. Um, excuse me for being rude. Fact is, some evidence came to my attention. You know I hung with Montana back in the day, and…”

Clay knows well enough. Tharcia’s mom, Montana to her friends, had been the opposite of celibate in her teens. Porterfield was only one of the bad boys she’d taken home. Or out behind the stadium. An old wound but a wound just the same, Clay wishes he’d thought of that before punching the guy, would have kicked him instead.

“So yah,” Clay sneers. “Wasn’t exactly your steady, was she?”
Montana had spent most of senior year with Clay, on the back of his rebuilt Indian twin, and in other situations more guy-girl.

Porterfield grins, remembering. Color has returned to his face. “Great gal. Was sad to hear what happened.” Almost sounds sincere, but Clay hears a shoe about to drop.

“K. So. What?”

“I have proof that… Me and Montana… Well, I’m Tharcia’s dad. Her real dad.”

Clay looks hard at Porterfield. What’s left of the dude’s hair is blond, a symmetrical face, good nose, blue eyes. The two men could pass as brothers. No resemblance to Tharcia that Clay can see right off. But.

“Proof.”

Porterfield waves the papers at Clay. “DNA test.”

“
Let’s have it.” Pulse thumps in Clay’s ears.

Porterfield holds up page one, the Conclusion page. “Says here that Chester Alan Porterfield is not excluded as the biological father of Tharcia Anne Harrison. CPI is 98.666 percent.” He looks at Clay levelly. “I’m her dad.”

“You ever meet her?”

“Briefly. The memorial at Montana’s place.”

Clay recalls the scene all too well. Cold November day a year ago, cars crowded along her block. Bare winter trees and cloudy sun. The people, strangers to him mostly, talking on the porch, front door standing open. Voices, music from inside, tunes they danced to in school. The small tight smiles. Tharcia's school friends, Montana’s sister, her cop friends. And Tharcia, face so drawn, people milling through every room of the house, touching things, taking a last look at the life they’d known. Anybody could have been there. Clay doesn’t recall Porterfield.

“So what is it you want,
Chester
?”

“What I want concerns Tharcia, Clay. Not you.”

“I’ll let her know you dropped by.”

“I want to see her now.”

“Leave your number. She’ll get in touch if she feels like it.”

“Oh she’ll definitely feel like it.”

Tension pops when the front door swings wide, Tharcia steps out onto the porch. Both men look across the clearing. She doesn’t notice them, holding a half piece of toast and bending down to scratch the ears of Clay’s cat Bomber, his Maine Coon. Clay doesn’t much care for how she’s dressed, the white tank top reaches her thighs. Just. Possibly undies, possibly not. What she sleeps in. Bare legs, wheat straw hair a wild thicket around her smooth face.

Porterfield doesn’t wait, calls out. “Hi Tharcia, remember me? Chet?”

She stands quickly, takes a step backward toward the door, into the shade of the porch. Says nothing, waits.

“Can we talk a minute? About your mom.”

Not a word from the girl in the doorway. Porterfield looks at Clay. “May I?” Tips his head at the house.

Clay sighs.
Get it over with.
Starts walking toward the house, Porterfield falls in, strides across. As the men approach, Tharcia stands close to a log pillar, hides her body. The white tank top is thin.

Porterfield stops below the porch, looking up at her. Sees the girl’s resemblance to Montana, certain that her eye line, nose, lips are feminine versions of his own. Clay, looking from one to the other, wishes she’d dressed before coming outside.

Bomber, at Tharcia’s feet, picks that moment to widen its eyes, staring at Porterfield. The cat hisses and scampers off the porch, around the house and noisily into the woods. She watches it go.

“Hi Tharcia,” Porterfield says. “We spoke at your mom’s memorial. I knew her well in school. I’m Chet Porterfield.”

Tharcia looks at him but says nothing, chewing her last bite of toast. Glances at Clay.

“I know how difficult things must have been. I lost my own mom a few years back. Harsh. I’m sorry.”

Her eyes soften at mention of the familiar loss. “Yeh, it bites.”

“Thing is, Tharcia. Your mom and me were more than friends back then, before she moved to L.A.”