Still Coming
by
Joseph Flynn
Stray Dog Press, Inc.
Springfield, IL
2011
Dedication
This book is for all the students and
parents who’ve ever sweated
a college admission decision.
Also by Joseph Flynn
The Concrete Inquisition
Digger
The Next President
Hot Type
Farewell Performance
Gasoline, Texas
The President’s Henchman
The Hangman’s Companion
Round Robin
Pointy Teeth
Blood Street Punx
One False Step
Coming soon …
the third Jim McGill novel
(Fall, 2011)
Copyright
Still Coming
by
Joseph Flynn
Published by Stray Dog Press, Inc.
Springfield, IL 62704, U.S.A.
Copyright Stray Dog Press, Inc., 2011
All rights reserved
Author website: www.josephflynn.com
Flynn, Joseph
Still Coming / Joseph Flynn
151,288 words eBook
ISBN 978-0-9830312-9-1
Smashwords Edition, License Notes
Thank you for downloading this ebook. If you enjoyed this book, please return to Smashwords.com to discover other works by this author. Or visit the author’s web site: www.josephflynn.com. Thank you for your support.
Publisher’s Note
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously; any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
eBook design by Aha! Designs
Table of Contents
Prologue
“College admission is not a perfect science.”
— Martha C. Merrill
Dean of Admissions & Financial Aid, Connecticut College
Sunday, July 18th
“Hey, pal, what’re you doing?” Patrol Officer Patrick Walsh called out.
He’d pulled his cruiser to a halt on Hudson Street after seeing the white van parked in front of The Mean Bean coffee shop. Next to the vehicle was a tall, thin guy wearing coveralls, goggles and one of those masks used by the guys who spray-painted cars. He was holding a ladder that leaned against a sugar maple and disappeared into its foliage. Hearing Walsh’s question, the guy with the goggles and mask pointed a finger at his chest. Me?
“Yeah, you,” Walsh said. “Get over here.”
The van was the only vehicle parked on the street. Overnight parking wasn’t permitted on Hudson. It was six a.m. and legal parking wouldn’t start for another hour.
Walsh was in the last hour of his shift and the last year of his career. It was also the last day before he went on vacation. All that being the case, he’d rather have somebody else do the walking. He didn’t think anything serious was going on, wasn’t even the season to tap someone else’s maple tree for sap. So he didn’t think he was on to a syrup-boosting gang. But he was still cop enough to want to know what the hell was going on.
The tall guy looked up and said something Walsh didn’t catch, making it clear someone else was up in the tree. That would have been enough to make the cop suspicious if the guy hadn’t approached his unit and pushed up his goggles and pulled down his mask. Walsh could see now he was just a big kid with some kind of goop smeared on his face. Like he’d been eating a bowl of vanilla ice cream without using a spoon.
“Who are you and what’s going on with the tree?” Walsh asked. The cop wrinkled his nose as the kid got close. “And what the hell is that stink?”
The kid said, “You’re smelling N-diethyl-m-toluamide, DEET for short. The stuff that makes insect repellent work. I’m wearing the heavy-duty stuff. What I was doing was steadying the ladder so my friend won’t fall out of the tree. He’s looking for signs of Ips sexdentatus.”
“What the hell is that?” Walsh asked.
“A six-spined engraver beetle.”
“What, they’re bad news?”
“Real bad,” the kid said. “Only fires do more damage to trees than bugs. State department of forestry is doing a screening for exotic bark beetles. We got the work order for your town. Try to do things when we won’t get in people’s way. My friend and I are summer hires.”
“So the two of you are what, in school the rest of the year?”
“Yeah.”
“Here in town?”
“No, we’re at Columbia. He’s a botany major; I’m biology.”
“He goes up one tree, you do the next?”
“Right.”
“What’re your names?”
“Bud and Lou.”
“Just like the old comedy team, huh?”
“Exactly. We’ve got state IDs, if you want me to dig mine out.”
By that time the super-DEET had almost fried Walsh’s brain. He was happy to leave the Ivy League eggheads to deal with the exotic bugs.
“Don’t bother. How can you stand that stink?”
“Be a lot worse if you got a six-spined engraver up your nose or in your ear.”
Walsh shuddered at the thought.
“Go on back to work. Sorry I bothered you.”
“No problem, officer.”
Bud put his mask and goggles back in place. Walsh drove off.
“Cop gone?” Lou called down from the tree.
Bud nodded and went back to steadying the ladder.
The two of them weren’t looking for bugs. They were planting them.
Chapter 1
Monday, July 19th
Bruce Springsteen was singing “Badlands” on Pandora when Jenny Spielman read the note that made the hair on the back of her neck rise. The unnerving message was delivered in just two words: Still coming.
The meaning of this would be vague to most people, but to Jenny it was a clear threat. To emphasize that the writer’s intent was hostile the message was printed in red, not in any recognizable font, but made to look as though the words had been inscribed using blood, the individual letters imprecise, their density uneven, each of them with a spiky little tail.
For a dizzying moment, Jenny thought that actual blood might have been used. Repressing a shudder, she brought the sheet of paper close to her nose. The mother of three roughhousing boys, she knew the smell of blood. Thank God, this wasn’t it. Laying the note on her desk, it registered now that real blood wouldn’t have stayed bright red; it would have turned brownish the way it did on a Band-Aid pad.
She picked up the envelope in which the note had arrived, taking care to hold it with a fingertip at the top right and lower left corners. There was no return address. A first class stamp had been used and canceled. The postmark was clearly legible: St. Paul, MN. Mailed three days earlier.
The addressee was cleanly rendered in Times New Roman: Shepherdton College, Admissions Office, 10 Tacket Hill Drive, Shepherdton, NY 12507-2400. Zip+4, Jenny thought. Some little shit had done his best to guarantee prompt delivery.
Having had a moment to think things through, Jenny started to relax. She had to be dealing with a mean-spirited practical joke here. Some disappointed applicant to the college had been stewing since the admission decisions had gone out at the end of March. That, of course, was hardly unusual.
Shepherdton sent out nineteen denials for every admission. The college was more selective than Williams, Amherst or Swarthmore. Shepherdton’s reputation as the liberal arts college for the brightest young minds in the country grew by the year. Much to the dismay of the established leaders in the national rankings, Shepherdton had cracked the top ten five years ago and had climbed one spot every year since. Its ascendancy seemed inevitable.
That made it all the harder for the high school seniors whose applications were rejected. Shepherdton applicants were almost exclusively the number one students in their classes. Most of them had perfect SAT or ACT scores. Their extracurricular activities displayed passion, imagination and vigor. If they had ever failed at anything, it wasn’t to be found on their college applications — unless they had redeemed themselves in a fashion worthy of notice by the national media.
Such young people had long been given to think they could walk on water. So when 95% of them sank into Shepherdton’s denial pool many grasped for life preservers. More than a few asked for further reviews of their applications. But Shepherdton accepted no appeals. Some turned to powerful figures in business or government for intercession. But Shepherdton gave no preference to the offspring of its own alumni, and certainly extended no advantage to protégés of outside grandees. The truly desperate tried to buy their way in. While Shepherdton was always happy to accept donations to the college, it refused absolutely to connect such gifts with the acceptance of a student who hadn’t been admitted on merit.
Jenny had experience with all these strategies.
But she’d never before had anyone simply refuse to take no for an answer.
Say he was “still coming.”
She would have replied that such bullheadedness would never work, not with her, not with Shepherdton, except she didn’t have a name and an address to which she might respond. Lacking the ability to keep this obviously irrational person at a distance with a letter or a phone call, she began to feel uneasy again.
Suppose the kid just showed up one day.
She felt sure that such a disordered mind would assume his hokey threatening message would have reached the dean of admissions, Teddy Mylonas, or maybe even the college president, Dula Jennings. Fat chance. She, Jenny Spielman, single mother, recipient of infrequent child-support checks, and office manager of the admissions office opened the daily mail.
She disposed of most of it with form letter responses, dispersal to admissions officers or deposit into her circular file. Only occasionally did she intrude on the dean’s more important responsibilities, and in her eleven years at the college she had never forwarded an unsolicited letter to President Jennings. Just the thought of doing so made her queasy.
But what if this crazy kid…
No, it was just a joke, a mean joke. That was all.
She pushed the note and the envelope aside, deciding to deal with the problem later, and reached for the next piece of mail in the bin Jerry the mailman had left on her desk minutes earlier. Her hand stopped short when she saw that the next envelope, like the one she’d just opened, also lacked a return address.
A chill ran up her spine. In all her time on the job, she couldn’t remember a day in which she’d received two pieces of mail lacking a return address. Much less two in a row. People who wrote to Shepherdton identified themselves. They wanted a response and …
Jenny noticed the typeface on the second envelope: Times New Roman. Just like the first one. It was a common font, but come on. Neither envelope had a return address and both used the same typeface. She looked at the second envelope’s postmark: Estes Park, CO. But, oh shit, just like the one from St. Paul, it had been mailed three days ago.
Whenever one of her sons got the willies about something, she always told him the same thing: “Take a deep breath and remember real life isn’t like TV.”
The boys weren’t so sure about that, but as long as she was around they settled down. Her trouble was, she was the first one in the office, as usual. The dean and half the staff were away on summer holidays; she’d be the only one there for at least another hour. There was nobody to reassure her that she was letting her imagination get the better of her.
She had to do it on her own. She reminded herself that she lived in the safest town in the State of New York. In the heart of the beautiful Hudson Valley. The sun was shining through windows that were kept sparkling clean year ‘round. She was earning a good salary and her pension plan, managed by the college’s money gurus, had lost barely 5%, despite the recession. So what could possibly be scaring —
Jenny’s heart caught in her throat the moment she plucked the second envelope out of the mail bin. There was a third envelope, just like the first two, this one from Myrtle Beach, SC. Looking at the mail bin more closely now, she didn’t see the usual hodgepodge of business mailers, commercial post cards and manila envelopes, but a long, orderly, almost military file of number ten envelopes.
Never a person given to talking to herself, Jenny nonetheless said, “Oh, my God.”
“Everything all right?” a voice responded.
Jenny drew a deep breath and might have shrieked, had she not looked up and seen a young woman standing before her desk.
“I’m sorry if I startled you,” the young woman said. “I thought you must have heard the bell.”
The front door of the admissions office had an old-fashioned brass bell attached to it. It wasn’t loud, but Jenny had the music on low enough that she should have heard it. She hadn’t, though, not with her imagin —
No, her imagination wasn’t running away with her. She wasn’t some skittish old woman. She was barely forty with a good head on her shoulders. There was something strange going on. If she was scared, she had reason to be. If each of the envelopes in the mail bin contained the same message she’d found in the first one —
“My name’s Fay Vara,” the young woman said. Seeing she’d succeeded in attracting Jenny’s attention, she added, “I’m this year’s presidential scholar.”
The number one matriculating freshman.
Jenny snapped to, quickly grabbed the sheet of paper, mercifully folded over on itself so its blood red “Still coming” message was largely hidden, and tossed it, and its envelope, in the waste basket under her desk. She lay the envelope from Estes Park face down on her desk. It wouldn’t do for this budding VIP to see that her less fortunate peers might be up to causing mischief.
Getting to her feet and extending her hand, Jenny said, “Welcome to Shepherdton, Ms. Vara. I’m —”
Jenny lost her voice when she saw Jerry the mailman reappear, carrying another bin filled with number ten envelopes.
The president of Shepherdton College, Dula Jennings, sat behind her modest desk in the study of The President’s House, which sat at the crest of Tacket Hill and overlooked both the campus and the town. Without the aid of reading glasses, Dula studied the file brought to her by Seth Hickey, the untitled head of campus security.
At sixty-five, Dula Jennings wore her glistening silver hair in a neat bob. In sharp contrast, her well-defined brows and deep-set eyes were dark brown. Her skin was unlined and firm; her jawline was clearly defined, her neck slender without any hint of sagging flesh. Her posture was erect, her physique dancer lean. By design, she gave an impression of both mature wisdom and youthful vigor.
She closed the file, tapped its cover twice.
“Leonard Waites,” she mused aloud.
Hickey bided his time silently. A former narcotics cop in Houston, a former private investigator in Los Angeles, he’d been taught as a rookie that your ears worked better when your mouth was shut. His services had been a gift to Dula from her late father, Roger.
Hickey was barbered and attired in the fashion of a senior New York executive, had been for years, but the predatory gleam in his eyes and the smirk that came easily to his mouth revealed that his earlier, rougher days in Texas and Los Angeles lurked just under the surface.
“You remember Leonard?” Dula asked.
Hickey nodded.
“His hijinks here never rose to the level of requiring disciplinary action,” Dula said.
Remembering Waites wasn’t hard. The number of students who dropped out of Shepherdton without urging was minuscule. The figure for those who had to be given a nudge was only slightly greater.
“Would have if he hadn’t decided to go,” Hickey said.
“Most likely, yes. Your report indicates that as a student he had contact with a small-time marijuana dealer in town, but he never actually purchased any cannabis.”
“He was looking for an excuse to get kicked out of school.” Shepherdton allowed its students to imbibe alcohol within reason. All other drug use was cause for immediate expulsion. “But he was smart enough to just leave on his own and let his parents stew about it if they wanted.”
Frederick and Pamela Waites were Shepherdton alumni. Having an offspring who’d also earned a place at the school was not as common as might be expected. Having one who had made the grade and then bolted was quite the slap in the face.
“Your report also shows Leonard having no trouble with the police after leaving school.”
With anyone else, Hickey would have shrugged. With the boss, he spread his hands for the same effect.
“There was only a short time when he would have been within reach of the cops. He got rich quick, and kept getting richer.”
Neither of them would pretend great wealth didn’t make a difference about most things.
“Even so,” Dula said, “you were unable to find any off-putting rumors about Leonard’s behavior.”
Hickey leaned forward, fighting off another shrug. “As far as I can tell, he doesn’t drink to excess, do drugs or gamble. There’s no sign that he’s into anything sexually kinky. He has a new girlfriend about every eighteen months, but none of them has ever initiated any civil or criminal action against him. So the partings, I have to guess, must be amicable. Likely with lovely parting gifts for each young lady. I haven’t checked their financial records; I will if you want.”
Dula shook her head.
“He probably just lost interest in them,” she said.
“My guess, too,” Hickey said, sitting back. “Our boy, Leonard, made his billions cranking out best-selling video games, one right after another. I matched the new sweethearts to the introduction of new games, the ratio is about two to one, games to girls.”
Dula smiled. “Nice to know people are still marginally more interesting than computer generated animation.”
Hickey thought of several responses, stifled them all.
“So, in your estimation, Seth, why is Leonard Waites about to make a large donation to the school he couldn’t wait to leave?”
That was the reason for Hickey’s investigation and for their meeting that morning. Dula was ever ready to increase Shepherdton’s endowment, but she had to be as careful about the money she accepted these days as the school was about the students it accepted. There were so many shady characters making piles of money in so many disreputable ways that taking a check from just anyone could be a very foolish mistake. Tainted money couldn’t be kept, but the pain of giving it back, with the accompanying public embarrassment, was not to be borne lightly.
Far better to investigate would-be donors in advance.
Hickey said, “It might be he’s trying to make peace with mom and dad.”
Dula smiled again, wider than before.
Neither of them really believed that.
“You’re sure Leonard doesn’t have an unpublicized child by one of his lady friends? An offspring he’d, ironically, like to purchase a place for at Shepherdton.”
“No kids,” Hickey said. “Not even an abortion.”
The president of Shepherdton College sighed.
“So you can’t specify a reason why we should decline Leonard’s offer of a donation.”
Hickey finally gave in and shrugged.
“What I’d say, let’s see how much he wants to give and decide if it’s worth the risk.”
Chief of Police Thomas “Taj” McCall reviewed the ranks of patrol officers mustered for the day’s first duty shift. The Shepherdton Police Department numbered forty-five sworn officers on its payroll. They protected a populace of just over 20,000 residents, as counted by the recent census. Fifteen cops, not including the chief, were on duty for the first shift. Twelve of them would be on patrol that day: eight in two-officer patrol units, two on bicycles detailed to Shepherdton Green, the riverfront park that ran the length of the town, and two on foot walking the business district beat downtown.
Taj was only thirty-eight years old, not close to being the eldest member of the force, but appropriate to a college town, he had the most impressive curriculum vitae.
He’d served five years in the army as a criminal investigator with 787th Military Police Battalion. While stationed in Stuttgart, Germany, shortly before his discharge, he was assigned to be the military liaison to the German polizei for a homicide case in which the initial suspect was an enlisted man who’d been found passed out next to the body of a German prostitute. Despite pressure from the army, the Germans and his own girlfriend to just let things be, Taj cleared Specialist Bobby Dufray of the crime and revealed the killer to be Colonel Richard Hall, who managed to elude both civilian and military justice by dying of the sudden onset of an aggressive case of squamous cell carcinoma of the flat cells lining the penis.
Divine retribution if ever there was.
Returning home to Boston with the Porsche 911 he’d bought in Stuttgart, Taj had enrolled at Northeastern University and majored in criminal justice, figuring he’d have a jump on the coursework and not too many professors would second-guess a guy who’d closed a murder case. Four years and one serious girlfriend won and lost, he’d graduated magna cum laude.
The speaker at commencement was Boston’s mayor. He urged the graduates to consider careers in public service. The mayor already had a dossier on Thomas McCall and made a serious pitch to him while the other grads were still busy hugging and kissing their families and their classmates. The mayor offered Taj a starting position in any city department he cared to name.
But Taj’s uncle, Frank Cavany, was a senior detective with the BPD, and Taj didn’t want anyone saying that either family connections or political favoritism had cleared the way for him. Because, really, what job was he qualified for other than being a cop?
Instead he took a job offered by the second recruiter he met that day, a guy with the United States Secret Service.
Taj was lucky to find a mentor in Special Agent Grayson Gaines. Over the next ten years the two of them became the best field men the service had in the area of spotting supernotes, the better-than-mint quality counterfeit fifty and hundred dollar bills produced in North Korea. Taj just had a “feel” for spotting funny money; Grayson said his young partner could smell the kimchee on the bills. Their work took them across the country, around the world, and into two shootouts in which both men were wounded, but not permanently disabled.
Their wounds, though, were still serious enough to bring Taj’s temper to a boil.
As a matter of law, one country counterfeiting another’s currency was considered an act of war. In his capacity as an American citizen, Taj began to buttonhole senators and congresspeople whenever he was in Washington, tell them what the North Koreans were up to, in case they didn’t know, and ask why the hell Congress hadn’t declared war on the damn commies.
Taj’s superiors heard from the pols and told him to knock his war-mongering the hell off. Then out of the blue Grayson decided he’d had enough and decided to retire. He hated the North Koreans, too, but he was eligible for a full pension and left. Then he started writing to Congress and complaining.
Not wanting to break in a new partner, not wanting to let his bosses abridge his rights to free speech, Taj decided to do what most smart people did: pursue a higher education and try to get rich. He applied to the Harvard Business School with the idea of getting the educational background — and connections — to start his own security firm. Become a twenty-first century Allan Pinkerton. He outlined his initial thoughts on how his company would be structured and function and sent them off with his application to the B-School.
He wasn’t particularly surprised when he was admitted. There were cop groupies everywhere. Before he could go Ivy League, however, Uncle Frank, now retired, intervened.
In a corner booth at Mulchrone’s Bar, he told his nephew, “The second sweetest cop job in the country just opened up. I think you’d be good for it.”
“What about the sweetest job?” Taj asked.
“That could be yours in three years.”
“I’ve been admitted to the Harvard B-School.”
Uncle Frank waved that off, a trifle.
“Your mother told me. Truth is, if you’d wanted to be a business dick, you’d be one already. And we both know Harvard’s gonna be there forever, if you don’t get this job.”
Uncle Frank’s logic was unassailable.
“So what’s the job?” Taj asked.
“Deputy chief of the Shepherdton, New York PD. Hudson Valley college town. Solid to privileged citizenry. Little to no crime. Think Mayberry only with a three-digit IQ and no corn pone accent. Starting pay is 100K. A subsidized mortgage of 3% so you can buy a home in town. Play your cards right, you move up in three years when the present chief retires and you double your income.”
Taj got the job, got promoted, found a great girl and got married. The only time he thought of the North Koreans these days was when a new C-note crossed his hands. Now, he looked at the seven men and five women standing before him in clean, pressed uniforms and got down to that day’s business.
“We’re looking for two Shepherdton residents, Edward Dinwiddie and Karl Enberg, who’ve crossed the magic line with more than $500 worth of parking citations to their names. Both men work for O’Neal House Painting. They’re due back from a trip to Atlantic City today. We’re not hopeful that they hit it big at the gaming tables.”
The assembled cops chuckled.
“Officers Lee and Spanitz will take the men into custody when they show up for work. If they don’t have the money to pay the citations, take them to the town attorney to work out a payment schedule.”
“Couldn’t we lock them up a couple nights, Chief?” Officer Spanitz asked. “Maybe pick up a little house painting cash working for O’Neal when we’re off duty.”
The cops laughed again.
“You need money, sell blood,” Taj said with a grin. “Okay, a couple more things, there’s a bulletin an individual using the name Jamal Jones is visiting banks in towns along the river trying to cash checks that look like they were printed in his basement. He’s actually succeeded in cashing a few … in less sophisticated places than Shepherdton, of course. The handout you’ll receive on your way out will have a security camera photo of Mr. Jones. The banks in town have all received the same bulletin and photo. If you get a call Mr. Jones is visiting one of our banks, respond with all reasonable speed, but no lights or howlers. We’d like to catch this guy.
“One last thing, the most important thing, third shift caught a call last night from a resident on Porter Street. The lady of the house was making use of her upstairs bathroom. She left a window open a crack for ventilation. She said as she sat down to take care of business she saw someone in the tree outside looking back at her. Couldn’t see a whole face, but it was her considered opinion that the eyes belonged to a man.
“We all know about peepers. They can escalate from looking to doing quickly. Chances are this creep will only be active at night, but be alert for anyone who looks like he might enjoy climbing trees and snooping ladies on their toilets.”
“How’re we supposed to know what that looks like?” Officer Candace Mullen asked.
Taj smiled at her and his other troops. “If you and your fellow officers are good cops, you’ll know it when you see it.”
The last thing Holly Bliss McCall did before leaving for work that morning was check the result of her home pregnancy test. She approached the task with the same attitude most people brought to checking the numbers on their lottery tickets: hopeful but with no real expectation of success.
Holly’s dad, Jasper Bliss, a retired NYPD detective who dressed as fancy as his name, had helped fix up his daughter with Taj McCall. His co-conspirator had been Taj’s uncle, Frank Cavany. The two men had met years earlier as local liaisons to a federal task force pursuing a gang of bank robbers working the Northeast and leaving a lot of blood in their wake.
Neither local cop did much beyond smoke too many cigarettes and drink too much coffee. The feds had them on hand strictly as a show of cooperation, and Bliss and Cavany were experienced enough not to get ruffled about it. There would be plenty of work waiting for them when they returned to their regular duties. In the meantime, they became good friends. Talked about their families and the plans they had for the future.
Jasper Bliss was the one who told Frank Cavany about the job opening in Shepherdton, after Frank had told him his nephew was going to leave the Secret Service. Then things took a personal turn.
“Your nephew married?” Jasper asked Frank.
“Unh-uh.”
“Ever been?”
“No. Had a couple of serious relationships. One was with a girl in Germany when he was in the army. But she was a hotshot sculptor, didn’t have a lot of time when she wasn’t bending metal. Then he met a woman here in Boston, a drama teacher at Northeastern. Somebody in showbiz noticed she was a good actress and she moved out to California.”
“Bad luck. Your nephew’s a nice guy?”
“Salt of the earth. Who you got in mind for him?”
“My little girl, Holly. I told you she’s a graduate from RISD, didn’t I?”
“Rhode Island School of Design, right.”
“Yeah, well, now she works as a graphic designer at Shepherdton College.”
“And what?” Frank asked. “She’s had some bad luck of her own?”
“Yeah. She’s divorced. Married this handsome creep whose name I’ll never say aloud again. When they were going together, he said, sure, he wanted to have kids. Five years after getting married, Holly raises the subject and he tells her he’s changed his mind. Doesn’t want kids. If Holly does, she better look for someone else while she still has time.”
“A guy like that can give a cop bad ideas,” Frank said.
“It was a test of self-restraint,” Jasper agreed. “Anyway, being a good dad, I like to keep my eyes open for Holly.”
The father of three daughters, Frank understood perfectly.
He said, “Taj is a good guy. Smart, honest, caring. And I heard with my own ears he’d like to have kids someday. Now that he’s getting on a bit, it should be someday soon.”
“I’ve been thinking the same thing about Holly, and with women it’s more urgent.”
“You think we should fix them up?” Frank asked.
“Get them together for a cup of coffee, anyway.”
Neither Holly nor Taj drank coffee, but they both liked Sam Adams, Francis Coppola’s pinot noir, and jumping on airplanes at the drop of a three-day weekend. What began as a way to get the family gumshoes to stop twisting their arms soon became a debt of profound gratitude. They married within six months of their first date.
Both agreed there was no time like the present to start trying to have kids … and they’d been at it for over five years now, the past year under the scrutiny of a fertility specialist. As far as the doc and a half-dozen of his colleagues could tell there was no physical reason either of them shouldn’t be able to reproduce. Nonetheless, Holly was put on a Clomid regimen, and under doctor’s orders Taj had switched from briefs to boxers.
In the continuing absence of a positive result, it was getting hard for them to contain their disappointment.
But that morning disappointment gave way to disbelief. Holly looked at the test result and wasn’t sure she could believe her eyes, not even after she rinsed them with water. She got her digital camera and took a photo, figuring pixels didn’t lie — unless PhotoShopped — and self-delusion must surely stop at the border of the digital world.
There it was. After a failed marriage and years of trying with Taj, she was pregnant.
But not immune from paranoia. If the damn pregnancy test company had screwed up the kit she’d used that morning and had given her a false positive, she’d fucking sue the bastards.
Shoving aside irrational fear, she picked up the phone.
She had to tell Taj the news.
Erasmus “Razz” Cole, one of Shepherdton College’s worthy scholars, took the key ring from his pocket and opened The Mean Bean. Being a worthy scholar meant Razz was smart as hell, had proved it in school his whole life, didn’t have so much as a jaywalking citation to his name, and no way in hell could he and his parents afford to pay the freight at Shepherdton, which in the past year had earned the distinction of becoming the first four-year college in the country to charge eighty thousand dollars for two semesters of attendance.
The school’s justification for such an astronomical pricetag was two-fold. The quality of the education a student received at the college was worth the money, and Shepherdton students typically laughed at what a bargain they’d received within ten years of graduation. Far from being put off by the astronomical tuition figure, more students than ever had applied for a seat at Shepherdton the prior year.
To give a worthy scholar a stakeholder’s interest in the school, each student and his or her family were expected to make a contribution of some measure, even if it was only a token amount. Razz’s mom and dad were required to pay five thousand dollars per year; Razz had to chip in another twenty-five hundred dollars per year.
Seven thousand five hundred dollars was not an insubstantial amount to the Cole family. There were two other children at home, a younger brother and sister, and they’d both be incurring college costs within the next three years.
Like a lot of other worthy scholars, Razz covered his twenty-five hundred dollar tab with a work-study job during the school year, and earned further income by working at one of the cooperating businesses, CBs, in town during the summer. Minimum wage in New York was seven dollars and twenty-five cents per hour. A cooperating business could pay any worthy scholar it hired minimum wage, and the school would match that amount and round the total up to fifteen dollars per hour. The unspoken expectation of the plan was that the student would use part of the summer earnings to help his or her family defray school costs.
Everybody won: the employer, the student and the school.
An unspoken perk for the cooperating businesses was they were getting the smartest help on the market and someday they would be able to boast they gave a start to some of the most accomplished professionals in the country.
All that good stuff aside, Razz Cole, assistant manager at The Mean Bean, loved the smell of gourmet coffee and fresh pastries in the morning. He had to run three miles every night after work just to keep his waistline in check.
Looking good was mostly a matter of personal pride, because worthy scholars made up only five percent of the student body and among his own kind — kids who weren’t rich — he hadn’t spotted any girlfriend possibilities during his first two semesters at the school. As for the girls with money, he wasn’t ready to take the risk of approaching one of them yet. Maybe he’d never be.
But if he had to, he’d take a four-year vow of celibacy to graduate with a Shepherdton degree. He was an economics major and he’d pulled down straight A’s his first year, made the dean’s list and could still see the smiles Mom and Dad gave him on Skype when he told them how he was doing. Razz was going to get into a great grad school, make big bucks, and then he’d find some wonderful woman, have some beautiful kids and appear on somebody’s magazine cover.
Maybe Shepherdton’s glossy alumni mag.
If they still used print media by then.
Didn’t matter. He’d get positive notice somewhere.
Razz had just set out the day’s delivery of freshly baked pastries and completed the preparations for caffeinating the town when Barry Hendrix, the owner, came in and smiled at him. Barry had a stack of newspapers under his arm.
“You’re doing it again, Razz,” he said.
“What’s that, Barry?”
“Humming.”
“Anything special?”
“Sounded like Curtis Mayfield.”
“Always liked Curtis. He left us too soon. You want me to stop?”
“Are you kidding? I’ve seen people leave the store humming because of you. I take that as a good sign.”
“Okay, then,” Razz said.
Man was getting his seven dollars and twenty-five cents’ worth, the future Shepherdton superstar thought.
The door opened and the first customer of the day entered. Razz and Barry both said good morning. The guy looked like a hippie with a gloss, Razz thought. Long hair, denim shirt, jeans and sneakers. But clean and groomed, all the threads first class.
“What can I get you, sir?” Razz asked.
“How about a black coffee with nothing fancy in it and a cinnamon roll?”
“Coming right up.” Razz stepped behind the counter.
Barry extended his stack of newspapers. “Something to read? The Times or the Journal?”
“You got an Onion?” the guy asked.
Barry grinned and took a copy off the bottom of the stack.
“My personal read, but what the heck.”
The customer took the paper and nodded in appreciation.
“You guys have a nice place here,” he said.
Barry said thanks and headed for his office.
Razz called out, “Order’s up.”
The well-clad hippie walked over to Razz.
You don’t mind my asking,” the younger man said, “are you a Shepherdton alum?”
The customer smiled. “Not quite. I’m a Shepherdton dropout. My name’s Len Waites.”
Dula Jennings and Seth Hickey had just ticked off the last item on their list of concerns for the coming fall semester — young people, even those at Shepherdton, were always finding new ways to place themselves in jeopardy, both academically and existentially — when the intercom buzzed and the arrival of that year’s presidential scholar, Fay Vara, was announced.
“Please send Ms. Vara in,” Dula said.
“There’s also a young man here from JetExpress with a package for you,” Dula’s secretary said. “He says you need to sign for it.”
“Take care of that for me, please, Delma.”
A youthful male voice was overheard. “I was told the addressee had to sign. If she’s busy, I can take it back and see if it’s okay for someone else to sign tomorrow.”
Dula sighed. “Who sent the package, Delma? I wasn’t expecting anything.”
“It’s from Yale,” the male voice said.
A moment later Delma added, “Robert Niven.”
Dula frowned. Rob Niven was Yale’s president. He and Dula frequently sparred on discussion panels sponsored by the American Association of Colleges and Universities. They sniped at each other, and not always obliquely, in opinion pieces in the Chronicle of Higher Education. The true point of contention, though, centered on the fact that in three of the previous six years Niven and Yale had picked off Dula’s top choices of students for Shepherdton.
Only this past year she had plucked Fay Vara away from both Yale and Harvard. A win for her and a loss for two of the most prestigious Ivies. So what in the world could Rob Niven possibly be sending—
“I don’t mean to be rude or anything, but I got a schedule to keep,” the young courier’s voice was heard.
“Send him in,” Dula snapped. “Please give Ms. Vara my apology and ask her to come in as soon as this annoyance is disposed of.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Delma replied.
The door to Dula’s office opened and a tall young man in a JetExpress uniform and cap clomped in, stopping abruptly in front of her desk and all but shoving a large rectangular package at her. Hickey almost said something about the discourtesy of his delivery, but Dula stayed him with a gesture. She accepted the package and glanced at the return address: Yale University, Office of the President. She laid the item on her desk and looked at the courier. He was young enough to be one of the thousands of applicants to Shepherdton, had he the intellect to do so. As it was, he possessed the awareness to take offense at being called an annoyance.
“You have something for me to sign, young man?” she asked.
He handed over an electronic tablet and a stylus.
“Right there. In that box.”
Dula cut him a sharp look. Saw he wasn’t mocking her, not overtly. With a dash of her hand, she inscribed her strong, clear signature.
The courier took the tablet and stylus back, clicked the save button, muttered, “Thanks,” and stomped out. Dula almost thought to send Hickey after the young ruffian, but just then, crossing paths with the courier, Fay Vara entered the office.
The delight at seeing the presidential scholar, quite the presentable young woman, tall and lean, her auburn hair cut in a bob not unlike Dula’s own fashion, pushed all other thoughts from the college president’s mind. She rose and stepped around her desk to greet Fay.
“I am so pleased to meet you, Ms. Vara, so glad to welcome you to Shepherdton.” She was impressed by the vibrant strength in the girl’s handshake. “You are quite the accomplished young woman.”
Hickey had to repress a smile when he saw Fay shrug. Good for you kid, he thought.
“Mostly, I just give all I’ve got to whatever I do,” Fay said.
Dula smiled. “A winning formula for a successful life. Allow me to introduce Seth Hickey, who keeps the campus safe for all of us.”
Hickey made do with a nod; he never felt right shaking a woman’s hand.
“Ms. Vara,” he said.
“Mr. Hickey.”
“Seth is just about to leave to attend to his various duties, but if you ever have any question or suggestion that might fall within his purview, please feel free to let him know.”
Students were always the first to know when their peers had mischief or, God help them all, self-destruction in mind.
Hickey gave her his card and added, “You can call anytime, day or night. No concern is too small.”
“Thank you, Mr. Hickey. I’ll remember that.”
Then as if fate were responding to Hickey’s offer, a loud female voice was heard from the outer office. “I’m sorry if she’s busy, I’ve got to see President Jennings right now.”
A heartbeat later, a red-faced Jenny Spielman charged in, taking in Dula, Hickey and Fay. She stopped abruptly upon seeing the incoming freshman. “I’m sorry, my dear,” she told Fay, “but I have to talk with President Jennings and Mr. Hickey right away. It’s a … private matter.”
Dula was astonished that a clerical staffer would act so brashly; Hickey was on guard, his eyes narrowing. Fay caught all that before she took her implicit cue.
“If you don’t mind,” she told Dula, “I’d like to take a look at my dorm room, if someone could point me in the right direction.”
Dula escorted her to the door, saying in warm voice. “Delma will help you. We’ll make a date to have lunch together soon.”
Easing Fay out, she turned to fix Jenny Spielman with a cold stare.
“This had better be important.”
Ambrose Byrne, founder, CEO, and one-third of the workforce at the social forecasting firm Trend Forward answered his own phone. He had the kind of mind that could brook interruptions and return to task without missing a beat. His two protégés were likewise gifted and thus the firm wasn’t burdened by the need for a clerical staff.
All three Trend Forward workers were also adept at cutting off unwanted calls without bothering to say goodbye. In fact, Byrne predicted the very word goodbye would drop out of the business lexicon within a year and would fade from general use within a decade. Being busy would mean never having to say goodbye.
Byrne did suggest that dead-enders might cling to adios for some time to come.
The female person who called Byrne at work must have known that front-loaded concision was a must when reaching him by phone.
She said, “I know what you’re doing.”
Byrne was doing any number of things all hours of the day, and when he wasn’t doing them, he was blogging, Facebooking and tweeting about them. His blog was syndicated in traditional print media; he waxed prophetic on cable TV shows of both the right and the left; his Facebook page had summoned as many fans as some movie stars and legions followed his tweets.
So when a woman called and said she knew what he was doing, she was beyond being vague and should have been cut off before she took another breath. But…
Something in her voice gave Byrne the sinking feeling she knew the very last thing he wanted anyone to know he was doing.
He looked out his corner office windows at downtown Shepherdton, to the Green beyond, and to the Hudson River beyond that. Everything looked as sunlit and perfect as if Steven Spielberg had ordered the whole place built, and Tom Hanks was about to appear in yet another memorable role. So how, without the slightest warning, could his world suddenly be on the verge of collapse?
He might have asked except the dial tone sounded in his ear and told him the caller had disconnected without saying goodbye. She knew she’d hooked him, and he would listen as long as she wished when she called back.
He had no doubt she would.
He also realized she hadn’t said hello.
Maybe that was on the way out, too.
When Taj was promoted from deputy chief to chief, he kept his old office. With a large desk, two visitors chairs and a conference table that could seat six, it was plenty big for him. The old chief’s office was twice the size. Ed Goodwin hadn’t been afflicted by a sense of grandiosity; he’d started his police career walking a beat in Buffalo. He said he thought better when he was pacing, his heart stayed healthy, and not spending hours motionless on his backside kept him from developing hemorrhoids.
As a consequence of Ed’s management style, he wore out three carpets but his office furniture remained unblemished.
Taj converted the space to a comfortably furnished multi-purpose room. The troops could crash there if they needed to unwind before going home. Bottled water and soft drinks were available free from a mini-fridge. A plasma TV was tuned and locked to ESPN. Snack food could be brought in but crumbs and other droppings had to be cleaned up.
On the infrequent occasions when citizens had to be given unfortunate news from police officials — some kids managed to drown in the river every year — they were taken to the multi-purpose room to hear the grim tidings. There was a private bathroom off it, in case someone broke down and needed a moment’s privacy.
So it was with a sense of trepidation that Taj followed Holly into the room after she’d shown up at police headquarters, her eyes filled with emotion, and said she had something to tell him. She hadn’t said what, didn’t say why she couldn’t tell him in his own office, just strode off to the multi-purpose room.
All he could do was hurry behind her and silently pray, please not his mom or dad, his sister or Uncle Frank … not anyone in Holly’s family either. Holly turned to face him with tears in her eyes and Taj closed the door behind him.
“Who?” he asked, dreading the answer.
“Who?” Holly repeated.
“Who died?”
“Oh, Taj,” she said, falling into his arms, alarming him all the more.
Then she pulled her head back and he saw she was smiling ear to ear.
“Nobody died?” he asked with fragile hope.
“Nobody died. Honey, I’m pregnant.”
Gobsmacked. Nothing else could describe the way he felt. Until astonishment gave way to joy. “Really?” he asked.
Holly nodded, thinking of litigators she might call if she were wrong.
Taj whooped, grabbed his wife, kissed her, and swung her in a circle.
Putting her down, he asked, “Why’d you bring me in here to tell me? You know what we use this room for; you scared the hell out of me.”
She took his hands and explained in a gentle voice, “I do know. That’s why I thought it would be nice to share some good news here. Start a new vibe. I’m sorry about scaring you.”
She kissed Taj and he embraced her.
A sharp knock sounded at the door. “Everything all right in there?”
“I’m subduing a suspect, Sarge,” Taj said.
“You need a hand?”
“In your dreams, Shaughnessy,” Holly told him.
A chuckle was followed by the sound of retreating footsteps.
“Cops,” Holly said.
“Yeah, what’re you gonna do?” Taj kissed his wife again. “So, Mrs. McCall, what’s your preference, a boy or a girl?”
“Twins. One of each. But if greed is unseemly, just a healthy child.”
“A wise choice, that last one.”
“You know what this means, don’t you?” Holly asked.
“We’re going to lose a lot of sleep?”
“Not that.”
“We’re going to lose the opportunity for casual nookie?”
“Not that either.”
“I’m still stunned by the news, tell me.”
“As an employee of Shepherdton College, any child of ours will be eligible for a tuition-free education. Which eighteen years from now might otherwise cost a million dollars.”
Taj was nearly back to being gobsmacked. Their child was just barely in utero, and Holly was already thinking of his, her or their college plans. Had narrowed the field to Shepherdton.
“Only if the little darling makes the grade academically,” he reminded her.
Holly dismissed the idea of scholastic deficiency with a wave of her hand.
After all, she’d been admitted to one of the country’s great art schools. Taj had been accepted by Harvard’s B-School. Any child of theirs was bound to be smarter than either of them. So no problem. Baby McCall was going to one of the country’s top schools, free.
With one last, long kiss, Holly left for work. Leaving Taj to do his best to navigate his new world. He wondered if the flood of pregnancy hormones was already affecting Holly’s mind. He hoped she wouldn’t start knitting little Shepherdton sweaters anytime soon.
The kid, whomever he or she turned out to be, might have other ideas.
“How many of these warnings have we received?” Dula asked Jenny Spielman.
Her anger at the office manager of the admissions office was dispelled as soon as Jenny explained the reason for her intrusion. Dula and Hickey gave the shaken woman their full attention. Unfortunately, having their eyes so intently upon her only made Jenny more anxious. Nonetheless, she did her best to hold herself together.
“I opened twenty. Then I thought I’d better leave the rest sealed, so the police could examine them without my having fussed over them.”
Dula and Hickey exchanged a look. Whether the police would be informed at all was an open question, they agreed silently.
“But you counted all the envelopes without return addresses,” Hickey said.
“Yes, very carefully, touching only the top edge. I don’t think I smeared any fingerprints or anything.”
“How many of these envelopes are there?” Dula asked.
“Four hundred and thirty-seven.”
“From how many cities and states?”
Jenny was someone who paid attention to detail. In her job, she had to be.
“One hundred and twenty-three cities or towns, twenty-eight states.”
Hickey started, “Did you verify—”
“I did,” Jenny said, anticipating where he was going. “All of the cities and towns are places from which we received applications from high school students who were denied admission here. In the bigger cities, of course, there were several students who received denials. In the smallest towns, there was only one applicant apiece.”
Dula looked at Hickey and spoke. “Is this all an elaborate hoax? If it’s not, might it be a trap if we were to initiate legal actions against the disaffected students in the small towns?”
Hickey took a moment to think about things.
“Let me ask Ms. Spielman something before we talk privately, Madam President.” Turning to the office manager with a look that told her not to interrupt him again, Hickey asked, “These two-word messages, ‘Still coming,’ in red ink, looking like dripping blood: The ones you saw, were they all exactly the same? Did they all look like they’d been copied from a master exemplar? Or did they have distinctive differences?”
Jenny hadn’t thought of that, but reviewing her memory, she found the answer.
“There were differences. Not dramatic differences in size or color. More in … well, I guess you’d call it skill in calligraphy. They were all pretty similar, but not identical.”
Dula said, “You’ve put these messages and envelopes somewhere safe?”
“I’ve locked them in my office closet.”
Hickey asked, “And nobody knows about all this but the three of us.”
Jenny’s face clouded. “The young lady who was just here may have seen the first message I found. I tried to cover it up, but she was standing in front of my desk a moment before I realized she was there.”
Dula grimaced. “You mean Fay Vara may have seen this?”
Hickey asked, “What was she doing in the admissions office?”
“She said she stopped by to see Teddy … Dean Mylonas. She wanted to thank him for admitting her to Shepherdton.”
Dula, never particularly religious, said a silent prayer that she hadn’t lost her presidential scholar. Not after all the years of losing her top choices to Rob Niven.
“Thank you for your professionalism, Ms. Spielman,” Dula said. “You’ve handled the situation as well as anyone could have. Please say nothing of this to anyone. Mr. Hickey will stop by shortly to collect all the pertinent materials and—”
The intercom buzzed.
Delma said, “I’m sorry to bother you, Madam President, but Mr. Leonard Waites has arrived for his appointment.
Bud and Lou sat on a park bench near the southern end of Shepherdton Green. Lunch hour was over and except for an occasional dog walker or jogger passing by they had a good quarter-mile of public space to themselves. A bike cop had given them a once over thirty minutes ago, but he hadn’t come back.
Each of them had a laptop computer of their own design and manufacture on his lap. The machines’ OS and apps were also their exclusive intellectual property. They’d discussed the possibility of hiring a graphic artist to create a logo out of their initials and an ampersand, but they hadn’t gotten around to it yet.
Bud and Lou were identical twins. Not really, by their own reckoning. Bud’s hair had a slightly greater — natural — bouffant quality, raising his height to a towering six-three and three-eighths compared to Lou’s squat six-three and a quarter; Lou’s metabolism burned a calorie or two fewer per day allowing him to carry a strapping one hundred and sixty-four pounds on his frame compared to his brother’s skeletal one sixty-three.
The world at large, curiously to them, was unable to discern such obvious distinctions. To the masses, their resemblance was so complete it often disconcerted people. Not wanting to be randomly cruel, Bud and Lou often wore baseball caps showing allegiance to their favorite baseball teams: the Toledo Mud Hens for Bud and the Nippon-Ham Fighters of Hokkaido for Lou. They also favored dissimilar styles of sunglasses, Bud preferring aviators, Lou ovals.
There was but one person who could tell the brothers apart at a glance by looking at them: their old babysitter.
The video feed on Bud’s computer was displayed in a grid. Each frame showed a different view of the town of Shepherdton and the college campus on the hill above it. The brothers had planted tiny webcams and pruned discreet fields of view in trees throughout the community, working in their guise of temporary state forestry employees. The webcams were waterproof and their batteries would be good for two weeks. The cameras were supplemented by small but powerful audio speakers.
If someone found the electronic gear after the leaves fell in the fall, and Bud and Lou had blown town, it might start a new urban legend but the trail would never lead back to them.
As part of his duties, Lou was checking the doings of the local transportation infrastructure. There was commercial bus service to Shepherdton. An Amtrak station was located in nearby Rhinebeck. And thanks to the efforts of Dula Jennings, formerly tiny Shepherdton Air Field had been gifted with federal and state funds for a runway extension to accommodate executive jets.
It was while scanning the landings and departures at the airfield that Lou straightened up as if an electrical current had passed through him. Bud knew immediately that something big had happened even though he never took his eyes off his computer.
“What?” Bud asked.
“You’re never going to guess who dropped into town today.”
Bud immediately assumed the worst. “Oh, shit. Not Dad.”
“No, not Dad. If he catches on to us, it won’t be for days.”
“You hope.”
“I know. Besides, he’d be proud of us. Mom would be, too.”
Bud glanced at his brother before going back to playing Big Brother.
Their mother had died giving birth to them. Lou didn’t believe in a conventional notion of God, but he was sure there existed a Comprehensive Mind. Bodies came and went, but consciousness was eternal. The best part of Mom would be waiting for them when their time in the here and now was up.