The Euthanist (30 page)

“Why would you give this to Helena Mumm?”

“Because while I experienced this drug, I would have told anyone anything. I would have been too terrified to keep anything secret. This drug can show you your past lifetimes from the dawn of history. I followed myself back to Africa. Given that perspective, any secrets you’ve got bottled up seem trivial.” He tossed the bag on his desktop papers. “The plan was to have you go, administer the injection as if it were her diabetes medication.” He rubbed exercise calluses on his palm. “I planned to go visit her thirty minutes later after the chemicals kicked in.”

“You were going to interrogate her?”

Leland nodded. “I need to find those kids.” He gestured to the map, at all the green pushpins. “I want a location.”

“Why did you need me?”

“We can’t just go and ask her. We tried asking her for over a decade. We needed someone Helena didn’t know, and, frankly, we needed someone who didn’t know Helena. Someone who could be in the same room with her without losing their cool. I wouldn’t have been able to get anywhere near her.”

“You couldn’t overpower her and give her an injection?”

“You know what happened when I went back to the house? She’d woken up by then. She heard me prowling around the door and threatened to shoot me.”

“She could barely get out of her chair.”

“Don’t be fooled. Helena Mumm is extremely dangerous. When we took her into custody, she stabbed one of the agents in the thigh. But even if I could overpower her, I wouldn’t trust that it would work. We can’t go back to Helena, because she already knows we tried to pull something. If she gets that we’re doing something to her, she could clam up just to spite us.”

“Even with this drug in her?”

“Helena Mumm would kill herself rather than talk to me about anything. She’s extremely defiant. The closest we ever came to a confession was when she was sedated. This was when we first had her in custody. There was a moment when she caught a whiff of the enormity of what she’d done and might have felt some remorse. You saw the video.”

I remembered the video Leland had shown me back when Helena Mumm was supposed to be his sister. Rocking in her folding chair, she’d wept into the camera, claiming, “I want to die.”

“If we got her in that state again, I thought we had a better shot of drawing out the truth. Now, we’ve missed that element of surprise with Helena. That makes Walter our best option.”

I recalled that afternoon’s visit to San Sebastián. “Haven’t you already hatched some kind of trade with him? Why can’t you just get the information that way?”

“I once traded Walter Internet privileges, more time in the yard, and even a boat ride in the San Francisco Bay. He gave us information in return that had us digging up by Point Reyes for three days. I can’t trust he’ll give us good information, even in a trade. You understand, I’ve thought about this quite a bit.” He jostled his bag of synthetic shaman dope. “I wouldn’t have come up with a complicated solution without exhausting the simple ones first.”

I hated that I was coming to this understanding so late, and furious at Leland for not having explained this to me earlier. “Helena was never going to die.”

“That was never part of the plan. So long as she’s alive, she could have things to tell us. Even if she never does, there’s always the possibility.”

“You couldn’t have explained this to me when we first met?”

“If I’d told you anything, Helena would have seen you trying to act out the lie. It was easier if you were just Kali.” After a break, he followed with, “Keep in mind that whatever I did to coerce you, I didn’t do anything monstrous.”

“Think so?”

“Sure, you peed your pants in front of me, but look at my son. I see that every few weeks. When we met, all I knew about you was that you’d probably killed several people. I didn’t want to confide in you. I didn’t trust you. All this,” he gestured to the walls, “is unofficial. I didn’t want you to know about this. I didn’t want you to know about my family. Believe it or not, it’s been as hard for me to trust you as it has been for you to trust me. Consider that.”

Leland saw how uncomfortable I was. I crossed and uncrossed my legs, shifting in that beanbag. He said, “Listen, you could go home right now and that would be the end of it. I’ve already deleted your profile off the registry.”

“The sex offender registry? So, I’m no longer a sex offender? Happy day.”

“You’ve kept your end of the trade, and you can go if you want. I won’t come after you. But if you help us, you’d be helping more than me. You’d be doing something for all these families.” He paused, unsure whether to articulate his next thought. “And you wouldn’t have to kill anyone.”

He’d offered a desperate plea, his voice weighed down by fatiguing years of struggle. Maybe the sangria had opened me up to suggestion.

“For the sake of argument, if I helped, how would it work? We go into San Sebastián prison and I narc up Walter Gretsch for you?” I laughed at the thought of breaking into a prison. I tipped to the side on my beanbag chair and laughed in a quake I couldn’t rein.

Leland stayed serious. “I think you know that’s a bad idea. Why’s that?”

“It belittles us both for me to explain why that’s a bad idea.” I mean, where would I begin?

He said, “There are two issues at play. First, whether this is feasible. Second, whether you have the will to do it. Now, pretend for a moment we could. Would you be willing?” He sensed my churning thoughts. “This isn’t a snap decision, but it should be. Will you think about it?”

I wasn’t sure how much there was to think about. Aside from busting into a state prison, I didn’t know what the plan was or what my role in it would be, other than to stick a needle into Walter Gretsch. The last of my cheesy grin disappeared. I thought about the families downstairs, and the original premise that led me to my work—to ease suffering. Out of respect for all the suffering they’d endured, I forced myself not to dismiss this as absurd. “I need more information.”

Chapter 13

Leland left me alone after changing the sheets, and I got comfortable. Emmanuel stayed up here, and the puppy sniffed at my bare toes.

The low-watt clip lamp hung under the eaves. Right above me, an ambitious nest of cobwebs stretched across that corner, its builder long vacant. I propped myself up on pillows and gnawed on a pen as I leafed through a few folders Leland had put together for me. Occasionally I looked out the window at the lit houses tiered on the hills. I wondered if I made a mistake staying there.

Many of the reports were formatted like tax forms, so hard to glean information. Some of the documents were copies of handwritten notes and Xerox copies of photographs. Leland had gathered an image catalog of the missing children. Some of them were school portraits. Some were cropped with a cutoff shoulder, hinting that a full family had been in the original frame. The girls were at the age where they were losing baby teeth and some had gap-toothed smiles, proud of their dental voids because they hadn’t matured to the age where they would be aware of their looks. Cindy Coates was in there. Her inert delight infectious even at that age, she seemed like a pinball of energy, photographed during the one moment she managed to sit still. I found Veda too. He’d been a gerbil-cheeked kid who grinned like he was trying to get away with something. He’d leaned out like his father after this photo was taken.

Veda and the girls stayed in a shed during the day, with no lights and a dirt floor. They were let out to have dinner at the house. Walter threatened that he would kill their families if any of them tried to run away. Helena preceded each meal by saying grace, always a prayer of gratitude for their new family.

Weeks passed. Instead of threatening to kill their families, Walter now told them all that their families had given up looking for them. Over the next several months, Walter and Helena used a number of methods to ensure compliance. The neighbors had loud dogs, and Walter told the children that the dogs were trained to tear them apart in case they ran. The shed got hot during the day, and the dehydration kept them tired and meek. During meals, Walter and Helena sometimes slipped alcohol into their drinks to makes them woozy. Even with all that wearing down their resistance, they sometimes behaved in a way that displeased the adults. When that happened, Helena bent them over their chairs and jabbed them with a dinner fork. Veda acted out more than the other two.

Eventually, Julie tried to escape and Cindy went with her. Veda was too scared to go. Hours later, Walter dragged Julie’s body into the shed, along with something else wrapped in a bloody pillowcase. Walter forced Veda to help dig a hole in the dirt floor. Horrified and numb, Veda dug and covered Julie and the pillowcase with dirt. Cindy was returned to the shed days later, bandaged with part of her leg missing. She remained catatonic for days, and she didn’t say much after she did talk.

Veda didn’t act out after that, although it didn’t stop the bad things from happening. He stayed monastically silent and obedient to a fault. As a reward, they brought Veda into the house and gave him a bedroom. Cindy remained in the shed, coming out for meals, or plucked out at Walter’s whim. Veda began calling them “Mom” and “Dad.” More rewards were gifted, usually more food or an extra shower. Walter experimented with a few trips to the grocery store, holding his hand tightly so he wouldn’t run. Those went well, and then Veda accompanied Walter without needing his hand held.

They visited a post office as part of their normal errands. For the first time in public, Walter took his attention off him while arguing with the postal clerk over the price of postage. Veda took advantage of that moment and wrote his name on a piece of copy paper, and then slipped it under the glass before Walter could stop him. He erupted, screaming at the boy and hitting him with a closed fist. Postal employees and fellow customers tackled and restrained Walter Gretsch until the police arrived.

• • •

I drove back to Bernal Heights past midnight and parked a half block from home. Learning more about Veda’s case deadened me, and I staggered across the street to my door before I heard the car.

A silver rental sedan slowly cruised by me. I didn’t recognize it as the one from that afternoon until I saw the two men, the same nondescript guys with facial hair, just without sunglasses. I froze on my doorstep and held my breath. I didn’t want to fight or run—I was too tired for both—but I didn’t know what else I could do. Scream I suppose, and hope the neighbors would come to their windows.

They passed me and only slowed down when they reached my cobalt hatchback. With the silver sedan idling, the man in the passenger seat got out of the vehicle, dressed in a black tracksuit. He glanced at me over his shoulder with a look that told me not to move, and then unlocked the hatchback with his own keys. The two cars drove off seconds later. My loaner vehicle had been repossessed.

When I got to my door, a small plainly wrapped brown package sat on my doorstep.

It was the same size as Leland’s spider package, wrapped in the same butcher paper. The small brick waited to be unwrapped.

I sat down in the hallway against the wall opposite my door. I stared at the package for some time. I had to assume the two men who’d just taken back the loaner car had left it there. If so, they would be working with Jeffrey Holt. If Jeffrey had left this for me, it couldn’t be a bomb. Outside of euthanasia, Jeffrey was the least violent person I knew. On the off chance he wanted to kill me, he wouldn’t drop off an IED that could take out my neighbors too. Still, I didn’t like it.

I had to take it inside. I gently lifted it off the doormat. The box was light, like the last one. I rattled it. Something loosely rolled around in there.

In my kitchen, I used a boning knife to slice the tape at the folded seams. Stripping back the paper, I found a pastry box. In fact, it was the same pastry box we’d opened in Shallot, Oregon.

I braced myself as I unfolded the side flap and tilted the box so that whatever was inside would spill out on my cutting board.

A cell phone slid out.

A text on the phone instructed me to call a number. Someone picked up on the second ring.

“What are you doing?” Jeffrey Holt was speaking. I was struck dumb by the sound of my mentor’s voice. “Kali?”

“I’m here.”

He was stirred up. “The man you’re working with is FBI. Do you know that?”

“Were you following me?”

“We put a tracer on the car.” That meant he’d known where I was the whole time and just reached out now.

I asked, “Why didn’t you call me on my cell?”

“Because I don’t know who’s listening.”

I tried to answer his initial question. “It’s not what you think.”

“He’s the same person who sent a bomb to my home.”

“It wasn’t a bomb.”

“It could have been.”

“Where are you?”

“You think I’m going to tell you?” I could only imagine the narrative he’d whipped up in the past few weeks with the nuggets of information he’d found.

“I’ve solved the problem—it’s fixed. I stuck my neck out, and it’s paid off. Everyone is safe.” And since I knew he would ask, I added, “I’m sure about this.” Although I wasn’t completely sure.

“Are you safe?”

I couldn’t answer that.