The Program (45 page)

His smile was soft, almost shy. "It's different when you take someone else's child into your life. There's no genetic imperative. You either fall in love with them or you don't. With Leah it took me about five minutes."

"When's the last time you told her that?"

Will fidgeted in his overpriced chair. "You get into these patterns with a kid. You give so much to them, so goddamn much. Now this cult leader wins her over so...cheaply." His face darkened -- anger shifting to grief and back again.

"She's still your daughter."

Will pulled open a desk drawer and hefted a sheaf of photocopies onto the desk. He fanned it with a thumb, showing off page after page of handwriting. "I've sent her a letter every week since she's been gone. She hasn't responded to one of them. Not one. Holding out hope takes its toll. It eats at you from the inside. How long am I supposed to keep at it?"

"All I can tell you is, we're meeting again tomorrow, same place, same time."

Will made a muffled, pensive noise and swiveled in his chair, watching the wind work the eucalyptus. He didn't seem to notice when Tim lifted two photos off their hooks.

"I'd like to show these to Leah."

Will responded with a vague flick of his hand that Tim took to be affirmative. As Tim left, Will's back stayed to the door.

Tim tapped the door with a single knuckle, the same knock he'd used on Ginny the night a car-bomb threat had called him away from father-daughter night at Warren Elementary. Jacket folded over his arm to hide the framed photos, he eased open the door to find Leah lying on the mattress, facing the wall. Sluggishly, she propped herself up and sat cross-legged, facing him.

"Listen, I appreciate what you've tried to do for me here, but these are my decisions. And they may not look perfect from the outside -- or even the inside -- but they're all I have. I think I'm ready to go back to the ranch. It may be dangerous for some people, but it's the only place I belong anymore."

"Give it one more shot, Ginny." He caught himself a second too late, his face burning.

"Who's...?" A strangled little noise of recognition terminated Leah's question. When he could finally look her in the eye, she returned his gaze evenly. "Look, I know you're worried about me, but you're trying to save your daughter here. And you can't. Where does that put you? Or me?"

It took him a moment to answer. "You're right. I'll try to stop."

She rubbed at her rash through her sweatshirt.

"I'd like to have another meeting tomorrow," he said. "With Dr. Bederman and Reggie."

"How about Will and my mom?"

"Your mom went to Long Beach --"

"Of course. With the baby."

"I'm sorry."

"And what about Will?"

Tim flared his hands to show he didn't know. Leah looked crestfallen. "What's the point of doing this, then? I certainly don't want to. Who cares?"

"I do."

"Great. After nineteen years of life, that's what I've got left outside The Program." She looked away. "No offense."

He pulled the first photo out from under his jacket -- Will grinning beside her in the limo, the award raised over his head. The etching on the brass plate clearly read PRODUCER OF THE YEAR.

"Will didn't leave you behind at the Beverly Hills Hotel that night."

Her eyes darted over the picture. "That must have been taken on the way there."

"The award's right in his hands, Leah." He drew out the second photo -- buoy-ensconced Leah setting sail for romance. "Will also didn't make you miss your prom."

Her voice took on a hint of desperation. "The pictures must be fakes."

He set the photos down beside her. She stared at them, disbelieving. Her shoulders sagged, and her body seemed to go limp. With shame, Tim realized that some petty part of him shared her disappointment. He'd unwittingly staked himself on the notion of Will as the evil father, on a fantasy bond between himself and Leah, orphans of neglect. He'd done on his own what TD had prompted Leah to do -- indulged his own childhood pains, licked his wounds, carved out a part of his identity around his victimization. The underpinnings to TD's gibberish revealed their precious-metal gleam: The truth is fluid; reality is interpretation; belief drives perception.

Watching Leah collapse onto the mattress, Tim felt world-weary and old; he'd long learned that exhaustion is the price of dispensing with simplistic answers. Relinquishing clarity didn't feel noble; it felt like a surrender to disillusionment.

"It's not possible." Leah averted her gaze from the photos. She was drowning. "I remember...I swear I remember...."

"I'm not denying Will screwed up sometimes," Tim said, "but you can't lay everything at his feet." He paused, and when he continued, his voice was gentler, more humble. "Trust me -- you don't want to spend your adult life harping on the things he did wrong."

She found a foothold in anger. "So you're on his side."

"There are no sides, Leah."

"It's my memory." She dug her hands into her hair, making it stick out between her fingers in brown tufts. "It's what's in my head. It can't be wrong. It can't. Will never cared. He never wanted me around."

"What about all the letters he's sent you?"

A blank stare. "What letters?"

"He's sent you a letter every week for the last three months."

She blinked at him, nonplussed.

"I saw copies."

"I never got any letters," she said quietly.

"Don't you think it's a bit odd?" Tim bolted off the mattress, startling Leah. "You never got any?"

"We don't need distractions from our work in The Program. TD and the Protectors deal with our mail for us." She took in his expression.

" 'Deal' with it? What mail do you get?" He was already walking backward toward the door, pulling on his jacket, digging the cell phone from his pocket.

Three faint lines appeared in her forehead. "None."

Chapter
thirty-eight

For a rail-thin postal inspector, Owen B. Rutherford was surprisingly intimidating. He wore a perpetual half scowl, half squint, as if braced for an imminent fight. The federal-issue Beretta 92D strapped to his hip provided backup for a stubborn jaw and determined eyes. Comb marks had fossilized in his fine, dark brown hair, which he kept in a knife-edge left part. His skin, pasty and speckled with moles, was flushed to an inhuman shade of magenta in twinning ovals on his cheekbones. His irritation at being roused from bed had dissipated immediately when he'd been apprised of the situation.

Tim and Winston Smith sat on either side of him. Tannino looked on from behind his imperious desk, waiting for Rutherford's livid silence to give way to words. Bear had taken up his usual post, leaning against the wall by the door, blending into the wainscoting.

"What we have then" -- Rutherford spoke quietly, restraining his rage -- "is willful, systematic obstruction of the mails. What you're telling me is that at least sixty-eight individuals forward their mail to a P.O. box and this man has it picked up and somehow disposed of, day after day, week after week?"

"Yes. None of it gets through." Tim realized he was employing the mollifying voice he usually reserved for interviewing family members of victims.

Rutherford fanned his flushed face with his open notepad.

Tannino spread his hands, then folded them. "What's that give us?"

"What's that give you?" Rutherford shot a glance at Winston, who nodded him on severely. "Most obviously a Title 18, Section 1708 -- theft or receipt of stolen mail matter, generally. But between theft, obstruction, and destruction, we could have over two hundred federal, criminal, and civil statutes."

Bear chuckled, a low rumble. "There's your probable cause."

"We still have the hostile-witness problem," Winston said.

Rutherford's tone was sharp, annoyed. "What hostile-witness problem?"

"They're cult members. Maybe they don't mind not getting their mail. Maybe they'll say they gave Betters permission to destroy it or whatever he does."

Rutherford regarded Winston like something he'd picked out of his teeth. "This is not a crime committed against the addressees, Mr. Smith. Do you know what a thirty-seven-cent stamp buys you?"

A wrinkled V appeared between Winston's eyebrows. "I, uh..."

Not only was Tim glad to be out of the line of fire, but seeing Winston Smith off his game was not without its own satisfaction.

"Not just delivery service. Oh, no. The thirty-seven cents buys you a fiduciary relationship with the United States Postal Service. We are custodians of private property. Namely: the mail. That private property belongs to the sender until it comes into the hands of the intended recipient. These jelly-spined bliss ninnies can't grant the right for their leader to destroy incoming mail before it comes into their actual possession -- it isn't their mail to relinquish. First-class mail must be delivered, forwarded, returned to sender, or sent to the mail-recovery center." Rutherford ticked off the points on his fingers. "Any other act is a violation of the rights of the sender. A violation further of the sanctity of the mail and -- make no mistake -- it is as such a felony in its own right."

"What does Betters do with the mail?" Tannino asked.

Tim said, "Let's get a warrant and find out."

"We trust this kid?" Winston asked. "Maybe she's teeing us up for Betters."

"I trust her."

"It's a big ranch," Tannino said. "I don't want to play Hans Blix."

"Then send me back in," Tim said. "I'll come back with on-the-ground intel. We have the Arrest Response Team serve the warrant, I'll steer them to evidence like a guided missile" -- a nod to Winston -- "ensure you can make a case even if the Dead Links don't yield."

Tannino frowned thoughtfully but didn't respond. Winston rose and whispered in Tannino's ear like a defense attorney. He returned to his place on the couch and repositioned his hat on his knee.

"Hey," Tannino said in a self-mocking monotone. "I just had a great idea. Maybe we could send out a mailing to various cult members from my office -- phony flyers for a seized-car auction or something -- documented and sent first class."

"I think that's a fine notion," Winston said.

Bear grinned at Tannino. "Feel like being a complainant?"

"He violates that mail, the federal government is the complainant," Winston said. "Then we'll see about indicting him under RICO, getting him more time on the charges."

Rutherford referred to his oversize digital watch. "Tomorrow's Friday. If you get the flyers to me by nine A.M., I can arrange same-day delivery."

"That works out fine," Tim said. "Betters is expecting me back Saturday."

"I don't know about this," Tannino said. "Your cover's getting thin. You go back up, you'll have to sign the financial docs. These guys don't sit on their hands -- they'll want to start digging into the financials first thing Monday. Even with my hooks in place, no way we can stall them out without them realizing Tom Altman's all smoke and mirrors. They'll make you within forty-eight hours."

"Then give me forty-eight hours."

Chapter
thirty-nine

The dusty motel room seemed emptier without the Hennings. Dray sat in with Tim, Reggie, and Bederman. Leah had entered the room sped by anticipation, but the energy seemed to go right out of her when she saw that Will wasn't there. After a while Tim removed the vacant chair, but still she glanced at the door every few minutes. In the absence of her parents, her mood mellowed quickly from defensiveness.

"Go back to the first time you ever heard of The Program," Bederman said. "Did you think you'd dedicate your life to it?"

Leah pressed a sweatshirt-covered hand to her nose, obscuring her eyes. "No."

"What did you think of it?"

"I guess I thought it sounded a little weird. A little..." Leah gave another glance at the door.

"Yes?"

"Controlling, maybe."

"What do you think you would've said if I told you that six months later you'd be living up on a ranch with no telephones?"

"And that I'd lose touch with all my friends and family?" She tugged at a lock of hair. "I probably...wouldn't have believed it."

The soft knocking sent her stiff in her chair. The door creaked open, and Will stepped inside, casual in khakis and an untucked polo, his cheeks dusted with stubble. His eyelids and upper cheeks were heavy from sleeplessness, his hair loosed from its usual neatness. He scratched at the back of his collar, one elbow sticking up in a triangle. "Am I still...uh, welcome?"

Bederman glanced at Leah.

"If you behave yourself," she said.

His shuffle betrayed an uncharacteristic lack of confidence. Pulling over the chair, he eased himself down, leaned forward, and squeezed Leah's forearm once, gently.

"I was just about to ask Leah what convinced her to join," Bederman said.

Leah's neck tensed; Will's presence had put her back on alert. "At the first meeting, I felt this amazing connectedness. I guess that's what I've always secretly wanted -- to feel like I belong. Everything's so cynical these days, yet here were all these people together for a common goal. Growth."