A Murder of Crows (11 page)

But nothing moved.

Upper New York State is cut off from much of the nation. It is a backwater, and those left there are sometimes an angry lot. The place had always been a breeding ground for alternative religions. Joseph Smith found the sacred Book of Mormon just up the road at what the locals call the East Jesus exit of the thruway. The area was also populated by hundreds of radical nuts, dissident nuts and nuts and berries of every variety. And each and every one of these mouth breathers seemed to hold some grudge against the military, the country's foreign policy, Washington or “the lack of godliness in the nation.” No doubt someone up here celebrated Sugar Plum Tuesday with the sacrifice of a goat.

Put beside these guys, the mosque folks seemed downright rational—although it was clear they were also terrified and not fully cooperating.

After four days the NSA had unearthed nothing but a few kooks
and the reality that as many as twenty labs on the campus had the ingredients necessary to make the two bombs and none of these potentially dangerous substances were kept under any serious lock and key.

Yslan was summing up all this for Harrison when she noticed that he had moved a cot into the provost's office—and that he clearly hadn't slept for days. She wondered how many.

“So you're telling me that we're nowhere. No suspects, no real leads, and frankly few stones left unturned.”

“I'm afraid that's what I'm telling you, sir.”

Harrison looked away from her.

“We need help, sir.”

He turned back to her but before he could object she said, “I've sent our people to find Viola Tripping.”

“You've got to be out of your mind. If the press ever finds—”

“They won't unless we tell them.”

“They better not.” He took a deep breath then said, “So did they find her?”

“Of course.”

After another deep breath he asked, “When's she—”

“Tonight.” Then she quickly added, “She'll only travel in the dark.”

* * *

Back in her room Yslan watched her monitor as the tiny figure of Viola Tripping held tightly to the huge arm of Mr. T. She had drawn a black shawl over her head, and when she moved she looked like ET under its blanket. Ted Knight followed them, taping their every move with a tiny camera attached to his lapel. Yslan looked away from the image, and despite herself a smile creased her face.
I think of them as Mr. T and Ted Knight—like Decker does. When did that start? Shit, if someone asked me their names, I'd say Mr. T and Ted Knight!
Then, without any seeming reason, Viola Tripping pulled back the shawl and stared into the camera and screamed at the lens.

The scream seemed to pierce Yslan's heart, and she grabbed her chest in pain. For a moment she thought that she was having a heart attack.

She got the call from Mr. T a few moments later that Viola Tripping was safely in the windowless room that she'd requested. The room was down a long corridor in the basement of the old physics building. There had been rumours as to the original use of the room—World War I poisoned gas test site was the most popular, and the most likely. This university had been in bed with the military hierarchy of America for a very, very long time.

“Is she here?”

Yslan hadn't heard Harrison come into her room.

“Yes,” she said.

“And she has to be in the actual place of the death?” Harrison demanded.

“Yeah,” Yslan replied.

“Why?”

Yslan shot Harrison a withering look.

She didn't know why. And she knew he knew that she didn't know why. Finally she said, “We've tracked her for almost five years. We have miles of tape of her speaking for the dead. All I know is that Viola Tripping can do this, speak for the dead, as long as we obey her rules.”

“Stand in the exact spot the person died?”

“Right.”

“And keep her locked in a room without windows.”

“Right—and one more thing.”

“What?”

“Every time she stands in the place of the dead person, she can find less and less of the deceased's final thoughts.”

“Are you telling me that we may have only one shot at this?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, we'll record her first . . . pass, or whatever you call it.”

Yslan looked away.

“What?”

“The lights may distract her. Lately she's needed to be in almost perfect darkness.”

“Infrared then.”

“No. She senses it.”

“Well then, we'll mic her.”

“Sure,” but she thought,
It won't help because Decker needs to see to be able to tell if a person is lying. Recordings are unreliable for him
.

Somehow Harrison was ahead of her.

“And this Viola person can't tell if a person is lying, can she?”

“No. She just repeats the thoughts that were in the person's head just before he dies.”

The reality that they'd need Decker sat there between the two of them, but Harrison shoved it aside.

“And how does she do that?”

“Senses, hears, intuits—I don't fucking know how she does it.”

Harrison lit a cigarette and let out the smoke in a long straight line. Yslan could have killed for a smoke, but before she could speak, Harrison hung his head and said, “We really don't know sweet fuck all, do we?”

Yslan took a step away.

“Do we, Special Agent Hicks?” he asked more forcefully.

“We know things, sir—but not enough.” She failed to add that she seemed to understand her gifted synaesthetes better as time went on—especially after the days she'd spent interrogating Decker Roberts. But she had the oddest sensation that it wasn't Roberts' answers to her many questions that clarified things—it was actually just his presence so close to her.

Mr. T stuck his head in the room. “Got the enhanced photos ready, boss.”

“Good, leave them on my desk,” he said.

“Will do,” Mr. T said and left.

Harrison turned to Yslan. “And you're sure you want to go through with this?”

She turned to look at him full-on. “Have we got another choice? Is there something new from forensics?”

Harrison momentarily recoiled: he wasn't used to being interrogated. “Just that the bombs could well have been built in one of the school's labs.”

“Right. Any idea which one?”

“No.”

“Right. And how's about the two hundred twenty-seven interviews you've done? Any leads there?”

“No.”

“Right, so we move to plan B.”

“Viola Tripping?”

“Viola Tripping.”

* * *

Yslan took a deep breath and tried to calm herself. She had been tracking Viola Tripping for the NSA even longer than she had been tracking Decker Roberts, but Yslan had never met her before. She'd just seen video—lots of video—and it scared the bejeezus out of her.

Viola Tripping was in her early forties but was many inches shorter than five feet tall and had the vacant open face of a medieval cherub. Her blond hair fell in childish cascades across the peaches and cream complexion of her face, and her milky cataract-obstructed eyes were always wide open—even when she slept.

She reminded Yslan of the two spooky Englishwomen in the film
Don't Look Now,
which cured her of any desire to see Venice—although any place that Julie Christie went . . .

Yslan punched up the last video they had of Viola Tripping. It was from a month and a half ago. The girl/woman was wearing a summer dress with no bra—with her early pubescent breasts she hardly needed one—no stockings or shoes as she entered what looked like a revival tent. It was somewhere in Florida. But she wasn't there to preach. She was not a eulogist. No. Viola Tripping's gift had nothing to do with preaching. She was a speaker for the dead. The tent had been erected over a specific patch of ground where the deceased had taken his last breath.

Viola Tripping stepped forward carefully, took several moments to adjust her feet, to find the exact spot, then she opened her arms and began to spin slowly. As she did she recounted, word for word, the last thoughts of the deceased person.

Yslan knew that sometimes Viola Tripping went back just a few
moments before death. Other times she went back several minutes—in one case, almost two hours.

Yslan watched the eleven minutes of recitation then turned off the video and did her best to collect herself.

Twenty minutes later she ordered the marine to unlock the heavy metal door that kept Viola Tripping in the windowless room.

When the door opened Yslan was assaulted by the smell of human urine and feces. Viola Tripping had soiled herself, but she was not ashamed. She stared with her milky eyes straight at Yslan.

“Good evening, Special Agent Hicks.”

Viola's voice was so soft and breathy that at first Yslan wasn't sure that the girl/woman had actually spoken.

Then the girl/woman spoke a little louder: “I've made a poopoo.”

WALTER NURSED HIS '84 COROLLA CAREFULLY UP THE HILL THEN
under the expressway that separated Ancaster College from his basement apartment in Stoney River.

His car radio was tuned to a call-in show that only periodically broke the stream of anti-Muslim rants with news updates from the “scene of the attack.” Each update seemed sillier to Walter than the last. Sunnis, Shiites, Persians—what the hell were Persians?—then experts talking about each group and their gripes against America.

As Walter parked his car on the street outside his dingy apartment he wondered if he even lived in the America that the “terrorists had targeted.” He doubted it.

Then he remembered his brief interrogation by the woman with the strange eyes and said aloud, “America ain't safe if that's as good as they can do—interrogation-wise.”

He opened the door and stepped into his two-room apartment and said, “Bomb this—please!”

* * *

Back in her room, Yslan found herself surrounded by the sweet smells of Viola Tripping and somehow swimming in the very fact of her. She climbed into the shower and turned on the water—hot, hard—but the smell of the girl/woman, like a baby's sweet odour, refused to leave her.

When she finally left the shower she found it, on her bed—a plane ticket and two words in Harrison's strangely prissy scrawl: GET DECKER.

AFRICA REQUIRES PATIENCE—AND DECKER WAS LEARNING TO BE
patient. Learning slowly.

He and Inshakha travelled from place to place, moving whenever they sensed they were being watched. Some of the places still attracted the heavyset old Dutch who used to rule this world. They'd strut into elegant dining rooms in their short pants, huge bellies straining belts and buttons and shouting the word “nigger” whenever possible. But Inshakha took no notice. “They are the dispossessed now. Soon they will not be able to afford to even eat in a place like this, let alone order around its staff.” And it was true. Already this part of the world was getting too expensive for those who used to rule it with a cruel fist.

He and Inshakha travelled as husband and wife, but at night they disrobed facing away from each other before crawling beneath the covers. But even in the cold of the desert nights they never touched. Decker knew better than to think he could sleep with his muse—for that was what he thought Inshakha was.

One night in his sleep he put an arm across her; she stiffened and moved it away.

Both knew—neither mentioned it.

And on they drove, ignoring the passing of the days.

One brilliantly sunny morning they drove around one of the few wide-sweeping curves of highway in Namibia and Decker was
surprised to see several scarecrow-like human forms lined up along the side of the road.

“Stop here,” Inshakha told him.

He pulled the car over and watched as Inshakha slowly, reverentially approached the four figures. Decker saw that the figures—three women and a child—were made from bits of wood and tatters of cloth. One of the women had a piece of leather cleverly folded over her stick arm to make a kind of handbag.

The figures were positioned so that they were looking away from the road up toward the corrugated iron shack in which, no doubt, their maker and her family lived.

Three faceless women and a faceless child.

Inshakha took some money from her pocket and put it in the faux purse, then turned back to Decker. It took him a moment to understand that it was his turn. He approached the figures and found that in spite of himself he was walking slowly, as if up the aisle of a great cathedral. When he reached the figures he had an overwhelming desire to kneel.

Inshakha saw it and said, “No. You must not. Just put a coin in the woman's purse.”

Decker fumbled in his wallet and pulled out a few bills, which he held out to her.

Inshakha shook her head. “You must do it.”

Decker reached forward and touched the arm of the nearest woman. It immediately moved and he leapt back. The thing turned—it was on a pivot of some sort. He looked to Inshakha, who said nothing but continued to stare at him. He approached a second time and put the money into the purse, which to his surprise felt cool and damp—two things you never felt in Namibia.

* * *

Many kilometres later he turned to Inshakha and said, “Tell me about those figures.”

Inshakha looked straight ahead and said simply, “This is a place that believes, Mr. Roberts. It is what you would call a spiritual place. It has been that way for thousands of years. Well before your man in
the mosque or your man on the cross or that other old religion. All of those beliefs are in their infancy compared to the depth of belief in this place.”