The Stones Cry Out (26 page)

Ray Frey swiveled his head toward the boys skipping rope. Their feet looked leaden, barely jumping. Half had their eyes closed, sweat leaking down their faces.

"I don't know nothing," he said.

"You know about his mistress? She had four kids with him.”

"All I know is he took good care of me and these kids. The rest of that, what do I care? So he pays for funerals – what’re you, the death police?"

“You must have your own suspicions.”

The skipping suddenly took on an irregular rhythm. Ray Frey glanced over his penitents.

"Done!" he yelled.

The ropes stopped. The boys sank to the floor. Limp, boneless.

"Why would he want to bury those people?" I asked.

"How many times do I gotta—"

"Mr. Ray, Mr. Ray!"

One of the boys was pointing at the floor. But he stood behind the boxing ring that blocked the view. Ray Frey ran, scuttling like a crab.

One kid lay sprawled on the linoleum. Eyes closed, his parched lips were slack. White vomit leaked out.

"Call 911!" Ray Frey kneeled. Placing one hand behind the boy's neck, he scooped out the vomit. "Ice packs! Now!!"

Several boys ran to the back of the gym. The others helped the old man strip the boy, yanking off his nylon sweatsuit, stripping him down to his underwear. The white cotton was wet, yellow. I turned away, feeling like an intruder.

"Mel!" Ray Frey hollered. "Mel, wake up!"

My back was still turned to them, but I could hear him slapping the boy's skin. On the floor beside me the damp sweatsuit looked deflated. I stared at it, listening to Rey Frey’s cries.

“Mel! Oh, man, Mel, don’t do this!"

The nylon was blue. Heavily worn. Almost threadbare in places. Dark blue. Nylon.

I glanced over my shoulder. Ray Frey was still slapping the boy's cheeks. Mel. That small boxer I saw take a beating in the ring. His bare arms were limp and scratched. A gash sliced across his forehead. His ribcage had scabbed over. Last time I was here Mel wore a long-sleeved T-shirt and headgear. And when he left the ring, he didn't remove the headgear.

Ray Frey rolled him over, scraping more vomit from his mouth. Another wound marked the boy's right shoulder. The dark skin had abraded to raw pink.

Sirens wailed in the distance. An ambulance, coming from the Medical College of Virginia a few blocks away. The boys ran up with the ice packs, handing them to Ray Frey. He pressed them against the back of Mel's neck and began rocking, holding the kid’s head in his lap, muttering under his breath. The boys leaned forward, their hands on knobby knees. They formed a tight circle.

I stepped forward and reached down. Slowly I began folding Mel's jogging suit, placing the clothes on the boxing ring’s mat. A woman cleaning up, that's all. I didn’t turn around but continued to give them their privacy until the medics burst through the door.

And then nobody was watching me as I picked up Mel’s clothing and stuffed it into my purse.

Three hours later I was searching the streets of Washington for a parking spot that wouldn't get the Benz towed. Since Phaup had confiscated my ID, I couldn't access employee parking. I wound up walking all the way from G Street, feeling like flotsam struggling to get upstream. At 5:30 p.m. on a Friday, people wanted out of the city.

I was praying Mike Rodriguez wasn't among them.

At the public entrance, the guard checked my driver's license then phoned Hairs and Fibers. Rodriguez vouched for me, and the guard sent my purse through the X-ray machine. Waiting for Rodriguez, I hid behind a wall of staff photographs that memorialized FBI agents killed in the line of duty. There was one woman; she died by "friendly fire."

When Mike stepped out of the elevator, his white lab coat was unbuttoned. His face was flushed. I lifted my hand; he walked over to the memorial.

"You forget your ID?” he asked.

I shook my head. "Can we talk outside."

He looked at me quizzically.

“Please?”

The sidewalk was teeming with people. In the street, cabs stuck in traffic honked. The city buses groaned along the curb, belching noxious diesel smoke. The concrete radiated heat like a brick oven.

"Raleigh, what's going on?"

I could have lied, and prayed for forgiveness. Pretend I forgot my ID. Because very soon John Breit would close this case, and the truth would never be known; my city would continue to burn. The temptation to lie, to create some elaborate story that served my purposes, was on the tip of my tongue. And maybe somebody would agree the end justified the means.

But the most important person who ever lived said it didn't.

"Mike, why did you take this job?"

He looked even more puzzled. "Why?”

“Yes. Do you remember why you came to work here.”

“Yeah, I had massive student loans to pay off."

That wasn’t the answer I hoped for.

"Okay, but after the loans. Why work here?"

He stuffed his hands in the pockets of his lab coat. “I don't know, I guess because it matters."

"It matters, how?"

"My work makes a difference."

"Right. That was my reason for working here, too."

Carefully, speaking slowly, I told him about my suspension. I said my ID had been confiscated for two weeks and at this moment my supervisor was probably contacting the Office of Professional Responsibility.

"You're kidding, right?" he asked.

I shook my head. “And I need a favor but don’t want to put you in a compromising situation."

"You’re a little late for that."

Behind me a cabbie leaned on his horn and flung curses out the window. I felt like they were meant for me. I started to back away.

"You're right. Never mind. I shouldn't have come here."

Mike walked toward me. "OPR is now going to pay me a visit because I just signed you into headquarters."

I kept moving. "I'm sorry, I'm not thinking clearly."

Mike pointed his finger. I glanced at the men behind him, three agents muscling out the door and adjusting sport coats over holsters. They came down the sidewalk like a federal phalanx. But one of them rubbernecked a pretty brunette walking past. The others elbowed him, laughing. Mike waited until they passed by, finger still pointing at me.

"Raleigh, every lab rat in here was rooting for you. Everyone. We cheered when you made it through Quantico."

"Stop it, I'm sorry, okay? I'm leaving."

But he grabbed my arm.

“That’s what tells me the suspension is wrong.”

I looked into his eyes. Bedrock hard. But clear blue. And something there that was almost pleading.

"If OPR comes to me," he said. "I won't lie. I'll tell them everything. You need to know that. But you never went cowboy on anybody. You were never a glory hog. And it’s obvious something is bothering you. You look terrible."

I reached into my purse. The nylon material was rolled tight, still damp with Mel's sweat. “Comparison. For the fibers I collected from the factory wall. The stuff that was on the First Aid tape."

He stared down at the clothing.

"And I'm in no position to ask you to hurry," I said.

"You're in no position to ask anything."

I nodded.

He grabbed the bundle. "Give me an hour."

"An hour? Wow, Mike, thanks—"

"Don’t thank me. The sooner this is outta here, the better."

===============

The Benz wasn’t past the Pentagon before my cell phone rang. Rodriguez wasn’t kidding about moving fast.

"Match," he said.

"You're sure?"

“After all this, you're questioning me?"

"I apologize."

"The fabric is fairly specific nylon,” he said, speaking quickly. “Rip-stop, water repellent. Manufactured in Southeast Asia. This particular sportswear company discontinued it three years ago in favor of something stronger. I could do more extensive tests if I knew you weren't going to jail.”

“I’m not going to jail.”

“The jacket’s right shoulder was heavily abraded.”

“Yes.” I thought of Mel’s shoulder, the pink wound.

“Cursory microscope evaluation shows an embedded coarse sand, reddish hue. I scraped and put the sample on Eric's desk."

"Oh no --"

"Oh yes, Raleigh. I’m widening the circle of doom. When OPR comes around, I don't want to be the only sucker."

He hung up.

And I swung the Benz onto Route 1, heading for the town of Ashland.

===============

Janine Falcon was watching television with her son. A TV show with the big purple dinosaur named Barney. The dinosaur was singing about washing hands, and the Falcon boy moved his chubby body side to side with the music. He tucked his elbows into his ribs just like the dinosaur.

"You mind waiting?" she asked, as I took a seat in the living room. "I was getting M.J. ready for bed."

She laid a soft blue blanket on the living room carpet directly behind the boy. With one fluid motion she pulled off his shirt, barely interrupting his view of Barney. The boy's skin was the color of moonstone, so new its vulnerability made my heart ache. I looked away, watching the dinosaur thing in his foam costume bounce across the screen. Barney. He was the color of arsenic and probably just as deadly to the nervous system. I set the files she had lent me on the floor.

"Did you find anything in there?" Janine Falcon asked.

I turned to answer. The boy was naked. Naked as Jay Bird. But his mother looked at me, waiting for a reply as if nothing was wrong. I held eye contact and told her that some rather large pieces were missing from the puzzle. She pulled pajamas over the boy's head. Barney's image was on the front. The boy pointed at his shirt and smiled.

"Barr-neee!"

"That's right!" She clapped her hands. "Barney! Very good, MJ!"

But almost immediately her face showed a mix of emotions. Joy and sorrow. The immovable knowledge that she couldn’t share this moment with her husband.

I looked away.

On the television, the fake dinosaur walked across the set. I found his walk disturbing, like an obese man with hemorrhoids. But his advice wasn’t bad. He admonished the children to keep germs off their hands. "Always wash your hands before you eat," he said. "Always wash after you use the restroom."

"Would you look at this?" she said.

I hesitated. My experience with parents was that they found every single thing about their children interesting—including scatological details that most adults didn't want to discuss with their doctor. Tonight the boy’s open nakedness had only confirmed that perception. But I didn’t want to seem rude so I turned, all the while feeling a sense of foreboding.

The boy lay on his back, his neck craned to keep watch on the television. His mother held his tender feet in the air, offering me a full view of his bare behind. An angry diaper rash inflamed both cheeks.

"That’s quite a rash," I acknowledged.

I quickly looked away. Barney was now saying he loved me and I loved him, and we were one big happy family. I wondered if this was why the boy liked the program. It was family.

"It’s not the rash," she said. “It’s these things. Look."

I didn't want to. But I had to.

Still holding his ankles in one hand, she wiped a disposable cloth over his blistered bottom then scooted over to me, brandishing the cloth.

"I mean, what are these things?"

She held the wipe directly under my face. There were hundreds -- no, thousands -- of tiny clear gelatinous beads. Like clear coarse sand. They seemed to roll across the white cloth.

"Every time I take off MJ's diaper these things are all over his bottom. I wipe and wipe, but I can't get them all off. And with that horrible rash of his, it’s just awful. The pediatrician says—"

I stood up and walked over to the blanket. His dirty diaper rested on the edge, looking like a bloated clamshell. I picked it up, feeling the surprising weight. It was holding copious amounts of the boy's water but the outside paper was dry. My palm was dry. I pulled one of the disposable cloths from the plastic dispenser and brushed it across the diaper’s interior. Tens of thousands of the gelatinous beads came with it.