Nine Lives(48)

“What? Dead or alive?”

“Alive. He’s down in Decatur, Georgia. He got the letter but threw it out. That’s all I know about it.”

“How old is he?”

“Like I said, that’s all I know about it. He’s a tech guy or something, so he’s probably not that old. Not retired, anyway.”

“Okay. So that’s everyone now except for Alison Horne.”

“That sounds right to me.”

“Are they going to question Jay Coates about his parents?” Aaron said, looking out of Ruth’s window at the car park below.

“I’m sure they are, Aaron. I’m sure they’re going to question him about everything.”

“That was one of the things that Jessica said to me, the last time we talked face-to-face. She said that if she were in charge, she’d build up a profile of the parents, and look for similarities there, that the answer was there.”

“I think she was right about that,” Ruth said, and moved fractionally, tipping her chair forward.

“Did you hear something?”

“I’m not going to tell you everything I hear because, right now, Aaron, I’m a little concerned about you.”

“Oh, there is a connection between the parents?”

Ruth moved her chair another inch and settled her feet solidly on the floor. “I don’t know that there is. I do know that, geographically, if you look at the parents, they are clustered generally in the New England area.”

“That’s interesting.”

“So now that I’ve given you the one piece of information that I have to give, I need to send you on your way. I’m putting you on the Brundy case to pick up where Jessica had left off.”

“I thought Ellen was going to be doing that.”

“She was and now she’s not, and now you are, which means that you need to be prepared to testify, even though the chances of this going to trial are less than zero.”

Back at his desk, Aaron looked at the Brundy files but he couldn’t concentrate. At the back of his file drawer was a pint of Dewar’s and two short glasses. He’d always imagined that some late night working at the office he’d pull out the bottle and the glasses and have a drink with a colleague. He’d seen it done enough in stupid cop shows. But somehow it had never happened. He slid the bottle into the inside pocket of his suit jacket and went upstairs to the quiet bathroom on the fifth floor. There he locked himself in a cubicle, sat on the lid of the toilet seat, and drank some whiskey. Then he put his face in both of his hands and cried as quietly as he could for about two minutes.





3





WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 28, 5:45 P.M.


Jay Coates, a forty-one-year-old cloud security specialist living in Decatur, Georgia, had finally decided that he’d made a huge mistake when he’d told the pretty-sounding police officer on the phone that, yes, he had received a mysterious list in the mail about a month ago. He should have owned up to his lie as soon as the two federal agents showed up at his apartment building and asked if he’d come back with them to their office to answer questions. But the two men, both in gray suits, both with gray hair, although one of the officers was white and the other was Black, were so serious-looking, and had such deep voices, that Jay couldn’t bring himself to admit he’d never received a list.

“Will I be questioned by the woman who called me? She said her name was Officer Chen.” Jay said, and the men looked briefly confused.

The older of the two, the Black man, shook his head slowly, and said, “We’ll be questioning you.”

He was brought to an interrogation room with recording equipment, and soundproofing on the walls, and then he knew that he couldn’t tell the truth. Fortunately, it wasn’t too hard to lie. When he’d spoken to the nice police officer on the phone, she had given him enough details about the list so that he could plausibly talk about it.

“I did get a list like that. I think I did, anyways,” he’d said to her.

“Can you describe it?”

“Uh, it was a while ago. Like you said, about a month maybe.”

“Was it nine names listed on a blank piece of paper, including your own?”

“Yeah, that sounds familiar.”

“Did you recognize any of the other names?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Do you remember any of the names now?”

“No. I just remember that my name was on the list. Sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry. That’s totally fine. I mean, why you would think it would mean anything at all …”

“Right. I know, right.”

So he simply told the agents what he’d told Officer Chen on the phone. He didn’t remember the exact date, or any of the other names, but his was on it. Jay Coates. After the termination of the interview, he’d decided that it was going to be okay, that no one would ever find out he’d lied, just as no one had ever found out about that time in high school when he’d told his two best friends that he’d lost his virginity at fencing camp.

But now it was almost a week later, and when he left his forty-four-unit apartment building he was always aware of the nondescript Chevrolet that tailed him to the office park where he worked. And when he returned at night and walked in the early dusk from the parking lot to his building’s entrance, he felt eyes on him. He’d been told to live his life as normally as possible, but to always alert the agent in charge—another man in a gray suit, but without any hair to turn gray—if he planned on doing anything, going anywhere, outside of his normal schedule. But he didn’t. He just went back and forth to work, and he ordered takeout every night. Tonight, he was ordering pizza again, even though he knew he shouldn’t, and he even found himself adding extra cheese to his large pepperoni, and then ordering the two-liter bottle of Dr Pepper. He played Dark Souls II while waiting for his pizza, and then watched a documentary about sharks while he ate.