The Schwarzschild Radius (23 page)

“Thanks,” said Sonia. Sartorius just nodded to them and they were out of the car.

Before Rachel could comment on the night, Sonia said, “I have another stop, but this one doesn’t pay any money.”

“You do charity work?”

“Sort of. You may not want to come along. I have to visit a friend of mine. She’s got AIDS. She’s in a hospice and I may not see her again.”

“I’ll go. If you don’t mind.”

Christa House was a twelve-bed hospice for patients in the last stages of AIDS.

“You can wait here if you want,” said Sonia, outside the building. “I won’t be long.”

“I’m okay.”

Outside every room was a box of disposable latex gloves. Rachel considered the tons of literature she had studied about this disease during her research. She knew she couldn’t contract it through casual contact, but she wanted to put on the gloves, mask, and gown, and breathe different air than they breathed.

The room was suffused with the light of a red bulb.

There were three women with advanced AIDS. They were all young, under twenty-five, clinging to life. The air reeked of vaginal infection and diarrhea. Rachel wanted to vomit.

“Maureen, it’s me. It’s Sonia.” The woman extended her arms to embrace the visitor. “This is my friend, Rachel.” The patient nodded at Rachel.

“Would you like to sit down?” asked Maureen, showing that what was killing her had not taken away her manners.

“Sure, I’ll sit down,” said Rachel.

“You can bring that chair over here. And this is Adele and Louise.” They waved from their beds and Rachel waved back from her chair.

“Why is the room red?” asked Rachel.

“Chromatherapy,” answered Louise. “An hour of red, two hours of indigo. I researched that.”

“Louise is our miracle researcher,” said Maureen. “She looks for cases of spontaneous remission.”

“Alexander Solzhenitsyn was terminal with pancreatic cancer―he was even put aside into the death room. Then he recovered,” said Louise. “There are lots of cases like that.”

“How’s things?” asked Sonia. “You look like you’ve gained weight.”

“Thanks for lying. I’ve lost three more pounds.”

“They’re going to close us down,” said Adele.

“What’s this?” asked Sonia.

“They have no funding, so we only have four more months and they close the doors. We’re the last hospice in Long Island.”

“Is that so?” asked Sonia.

“That’s what we heard,” answered Maureen. “We can’t focus on that. We have to focus on ourselves. And you? You look good.”

“I am good.” Maureen glanced at Rachel just long enough for Rachel to realize that Sonia was HIV positive.

“Well, maybe some good guy will step forward and make a donation,” said Sonia. “Look, we brought you guys some strawberries, just picked right here in Melville.”

“Oh, that’s great. Could you wash them over there?”

They all ate some strawberries.

“I look for passages in the Bible and the Upanishads that have power,” said Adele. “For inspiration I find hopeless battles in history that were won by the underdog. Agincourt. Five-thousand English defeated twenty-thousand French. At Thermopylae three-hundred Spartans held off a million Persians for days before they were overcome.”

“Adele, it’s time for the whales,” said Maureen. The other woman slid a tape into a cassette by her bed.

There was the moaning of whales and the surf.

“We’re investigating every avenue to save ourselves,” resumed Maureen.

“I’m sorry, what’s your name?” asked the searcher of battles.

“Rachel.”

“Rachel, could you do something for me? Could you turn my sheet around so the butterflies are flying toward me?”

She was so thin that her outline beneath the covers looked like the bas-relief of a person. Rachel and Sonia spun it around, altering the flight of butterflies, but that would be the only miracle today.

“In the battle of Midway,” said Adele as though that conversation hadn’t ended, “we were against overwhelming odds. Eighty-six Japanese ships to our twenty-seven. Two-hundred-seventy-two planes against our hundred-eighty.

“At 4:30 a.m., a squadron of Japanese bombers hit Midway Island, wiping out two-thirds of the U.S. planes on the ground, and returned to their carriers without losses. By 9:36 nearly all of our torpedo bombers had been shot down. All our fighter escorts ran out of fuel and fell into the sea. Then the Yorktown sent up torpedo bombers and seven out of ten were shot down by Jap zeros––”

“Adele,” said Maureen.

“This is the moment of hopelessness. This was the darkest hour. When our entire fleet was at the brink of destruction. Then―”

“Adele.”

“Then one of the Enterprise’s dive bomber groups, which was lost, finally found their way and got to the Japanese fleet. Then a miracle happened. Within five minutes, this small squad of planes sunk four Japanese carriers. The enemy fleet was destroyed in the most decisive battle in naval history.”

The room was silent for a moment. Rachel thought of another battle she hoped Adele would never know about―Masada.

“Can I have the nurse bring you anything, anyone?” said Rachel.

There was silence, but for the droning of the whales.

“Sorry for making you feel sorry for us. We just like to talk,” said Maureen.

“No, please don’t apologize to me. Is there―”

“There’s nothing. Nothing at all. But thanks for staying longer than you had to.”

“We’re gonna be going,” said Sonia. “You guys get some rest.”

“Good to see you again, kid. It really is.” Sonia kissed her good bye.

“I’ll be on the other side soon. Rachel, is there a message you’d like me to give a friend?”

Rachel looked into the eyes of the doomed woman.

“I have a message,” said Sonia. “Tell Kirsten Schrodinger that I loved her.”

cKenna had turned over the photo of Belinda Knights to the Cyber Crimes Unit to check if she had appeared in any child porn seized over the last twelve months.

Steve Stultz of CCU reported back that the photo had been passed to the NCVIP. Using facial recognition utilities, they located a ten minute video of Belinda dancing nude. The National Child Victim Identification Program had the largest database of child porn in the world, confiscated from suspects on and off the Web.

“So where do we go from here?” asked McKenna. “How do I see this video?”

“You don’t. Not even cops are allowed to look at them. I’ve got contact info for an FBI agent who has clearance. He can answer questions.”

McKenna got in touch with the agent, who was very polite, like the CIA guys McKenna had known in Afghanistan.

“What are you looking for, Detective?”

“I’m trying to determine where the video was made and who might have made it.”

“I’m afraid there isn’t much in this video. It consists of the girl dancing naked against a blank wall. There’s a Christmas tree that comes into view a couple of times, but that’s it. No one else appears in the shoot.”

McKenna had no patience for this.

“I’m working the Olivia Wallen case. She disappeared here last week. She and Belinda have a shelter in common―Transcendence House. One was a guest and the other counseled there. I’m dead in the water. Is there any way you can PhotoShop the girl out of the video or something so I can see the rest?”

“We could. That’ll take time. Again, it’s just a nude underage girl against a beige blank wall. No doors or distinctive markings are visible. There’s only a Christmas tree that comes into view on two occasions for about two to three seconds each time. That’s it.”

“Is it one of those small artificial trees or a large one?”

“It’s a large one.”

“Can you cut out the girl?” McKenna could hear the guy swallowing.

“I’ll arrange it.”

McKenna received the email later that night. It could be sent over the Internet since now it contained nothing criminal. It was eerie. The sanitizing process removed graphic material, leaving intact the background and the children’s faces. In this case, Belinda Knights’ head floated in space as she danced from side to side, foreshadowing the disembodied ghost she would soon be.

The FBI guy was right. Just a blank beige wall. The camera didn’t move much to the left or right. That would have shown more of the room. The Christmas tree came into view for about two seconds and again near the end of the video for about four seconds. Another dead end.