The Innocent (8 page)

WHEN MATT REACHED Rolanda's desk, she said, "Cingle's waiting in your office."

"Thanks."

"Midlife wants me to buzz him the very second you arrive." Rolanda looked up. "Have you arrived yet?"

"Give me five."

She turned back to the computer terminal and started typing. Matt entered. Cingle Shaker was standing looking at the window. "Nice view," she said.

"You think?"

"Nah. That's just my idea of small talk."

"You're very good at it," he said.

"I thought you were just a paralegal."

"I am."

"So why the fancy digs?"

"It was my brother's."

"So?"

"So Bernie was a big rainmaker here."

"So?" Cingle turned toward him. "I don't want to sound cold, but he's dead."

"I think you were being hard on yourself before. You really are good at this small talk stuff."

"No, I mean, he's been dead for, what, three years now? I can't believe they let an ex-con paralegal keep a space like this."

He smiled. "I knew what you meant."

"So what gives?"

"Maybe they're being respectful to my brother's memory."

"Attorneys?" Cingle made a face. "Please."

"Actually," he said, "I think they like having me around."

"Because you're such a nice guy?"

"Because of the ex-con angle. I'm a fun oddity."

Cingle nodded. "Kinda like having a lesbian couple at your hoity-toity soiree."

"Something like that, but even more exotic. It's funny. In some ways I'm the ultimate curiosity. Whenever they're drunk, they all ask me, on the sly, of course, what it's really like for a guy like them to go to the"- he made quote marks with his fingers-"Big House."

"You're like a local celebrity."

"In a bizarre way, yeah."

"And that's why they don't throw you out of the office?"

He shrugged.

"They might also be afraid of you," Cingle said. "You already killed one man with your bare hands."

He sighed and took his seat. Cingle took hers.

"Sorry," she said.

He waved her off. "What's up?"

Cingle crossed her long legs. It was for effect, he knew that, but he wondered if it had become something of an unconscious move on her part. "So tell me," she said. "Why did you want the license plate traced?"

He spread his hands. "Do we really have to go through the meaning of 'personal' again?"

"Only if you want me to tell you what I know."

"So you're resorting to blackmail now?"

But he could see that she was serious.

"I think he was following me," Matt said.

"Why do you think that?"

"Why do you think? I went a few places, his car was there."

"And you just happened to pick up on that?"

"His license plate was close to my initials."

"Excuse me?"

Matt explained about the license plate, about the three letters being similar to his own initials, about the way the car raced off when he approached. Cingle listened without moving.

When Matt finished, Cingle asked, "So why is Charles Talley following you, Matt?"

"I don't know."

"No idea at all?"

He did not repeat himself. He knew all about men who doth protest too much. Silence was the best response here.

"Talley has a record."

Matt was tempted to say "So do I," but he knew better. Having a record- a record worth Cingle's attention- meant something. The fact that it didn't in Matt's case only proved the rule by the exception. Matt didn't like thinking that way- hadn't Lance Banner used that same prejudice?- but you'd be hard-pressed to argue with the reality.

"Assault," Cingle said. "He used brass knuckles. Didn't kill the poor bastard but scrambled his brains to the point where it would have been more merciful if he had."

Matt thought about that, tried to make it fit. "How long did he get?"

"Eight years."

"Long time."

"Not his first charge. And Talley was far from a model prisoner."

Matt tried to put it together. Why would this guy be following him?

"Do you want to see what he looks like?" Cingle asked.

"You have a picture?"

"His mug shot, yeah."

Cingle wore a blue blazer with jeans. She reached into the inner jacket pocket, plucked out the photographs, and sent Matt's world spinning all over again.

How the…?

He knew that her eyes were on him, gauging his reaction, but he couldn't help it. When he saw the two mug shots- the classic front view and turn-to-the-side profile- he nearly gasped out loud. His hands gripped the desk. It felt as though he were in free fall.

"So you recognize him," Cingle said.

He did. The same smirk. The same blue-black hair.

Charles Talley was the man from the camera phone.

LOREN MUSE WALKED through a time machine.

Revisiting St. Margaret's, her high school alma mater, the clichés applied: The corridors seemed tighter, the ceilings seemed lower, the lockers seemed smaller, the teachers shorter. But others things, the important stuff, did not change too much. Loren fell into a time portal as she entered. She felt the high school tingle in her belly, the constant state of insecurity; the need for both approval and rebellion churned inside of her.

She knocked on Mother Katherine's door.

"Come in."

There was a young girl sitting in the office. She wore the same school uniform that Loren had so many years ago, the white blouse and tartan skirt. God, she'd hated that. The girl had her head down, clearly post-Mother Katherine berate. Her stringy hair hung down in front of her face like a beaded curtain.

Mother Katherine said, "You may go now, Carla."

Shoulders slumped, head still lowered, Carla slinked off. Loren nodded as she passed, as if to say, I feel for ya, sister. Carla did not meet her eye. She closed the door behind her.

Mother Katherine watched all of this with a look both bemused and disheartened, as though she could read Loren's mind. There were stacks of bracelets, all different colors, on her desk. When Loren pointed to them, the bemusement vanished.

"Those bracelets belong to Carla?" Loren asked.

"Yes."

A dress code violation, Loren thought, fighting off the desire to shake her head. Man, this place will never change.

"You haven't heard about this?" Mother Katherine asked.

"Heard about what?"

"The bracelet"- she took a deep breath-"game."

Loren shrugged.

Mother Katherine closed her eyes. "It's a recent… the word would be fad, I believe."

"Uh huh."

"The different bracelets… I don't even know how to say this… the different colors represent certain acts of a sexual nature. The black one, for example, is supposed to be… uh, for one thing. Then the red one…"

Loren held her hand up. "I think I get the picture. So the girls wear them as some kind of, I don't know, level of achievement?"

"Worse."

Loren waited.

"You're not here about this."

"Tell me anyway."

"Girls like Carla wear the bracelets around the boys. If the boy can grab the bracelet off the girl's arm, she must then, well, perform the act that corresponds with the bracelet color."

"Please tell me you're kidding."

Mother Katherine gave her a look as heavy as the ages.

"How old is Carla?" Loren asked.

"Sixteen." Mother Katherine pointed to another set of bracelets as if afraid to touch them. "But I took this set off an eighth grader."

There was nothing to say to that.

Mother Katherine reached behind her. "Here are the phone logs you requested."

The building still had that chalk-dust musk Loren had always associated, until just now, with a certain sort of adolescent naïveté. Mother Katherine handed her a small stack of papers.

"Eighteen of us share three phones," Mother Katherine said.

"Six of you to a phone, then?"

Mother Katherine smiled. "And they say we don't teach math anymore."

Loren looked at Christ on the cross behind the Mother Superior's head. She remembered an old joke, one she heard when she first got here. A boy is getting all Ds and Fs in math so his parents send him to Catholic school. On his first report card, his parents are shocked to see their son getting straight As. When his parents ask him why, he says, "Well, when I went into the chapel and saw that guy nailed to a plus sign, I knew they were serious."

Mother Katherine cleared her throat. "May I ask a question?"

"Shoot."

"Do they know how Sister Mary Rose died?"

"They're still running tests."

Mother Katherine waited.

"That's all I can tell you right now."

"I understand."

Now it was Loren who waited. When Mother Katherine turned away, Loren said, "You know more than you're saying."

"About?"

"About Sister Mary Rose. About what happened to her."

"Have you learned her identity yet?"

"No. But we will. Before the end of the day, I'd bet."

Mother Katherine straightened her back. "That would be a good start."

"And there's nothing else you want to tell me?"

"That's correct, Loren."

Loren waited a beat. The old woman was… lying would be too strong a word. But Loren could smell evasion. "Did you go through these calls, Mother?"

"I did. I had the five sisters who shared the phone with her go through them too. Most were to family members, of course. They called siblings, parents, some friends. There were some to local businesses. They order pizza sometimes. Chinese food."

"I thought nuns had to eat, uh, convent food."

"You thought wrong."

"Fair enough," Loren said. "Any numbers that stuck out?"

"Just one."

Mother Katherine's reading glasses dangled from a chain. She slid them onto the end of her nose and beckoned for the sheets. Loren handed them back to her. She studied the first page, licked her finger, moved to the second. She took out a pen and circled something.

"Here."

She gave the sheet back to Loren. The number had a 973 area code. That would put it in New Jersey, no more than thirty miles from here. The call had been made three weeks ago. It lasted six minutes.

Probably nothing.

Loren spotted the computer on the credenza behind Mother Katherine's desk. It was weird to think about, the Mother Superior surfing the Web, but it truly seemed as though there were very few holdouts anymore.

"May I borrow your computer?" Loren asked.

"Of course."

Loren tried a simple Google search on the phone number. Nothing.

"Are you looking up the number?" Mother Katherine asked.

"I am."

"According to the link on the Verizon Web page, the number is unlisted."

Loren looked back at her. "You tried already?"

"I looked up all the numbers."

"I see," Loren said.

"Just to be certain nothing was overlooked."

"That was very thorough of you."

Mother Katherine nodded, kept her head high. "I assume that you have sources to track down unlisted numbers."

"I do."

"Would you like to see Sister Mary Rose's quarters now?"

"Yes."

The room was pretty much what you'd expect- small, stark, white walls of swirling concrete, one large cross above a single bed, one window. Very dormitory. The room had all the warmth and individuality of a Motel Six. There was almost nothing of a personal nature, nothing that told you anything about the room's inhabitant, almost as if that were Sister Mary Rose's goal.

"The crime-scene technicians will be here in about an hour," Loren said. "They'll need to dust for prints, check for hairs, that kind of thing."

Mother Katherine's hand went slowly to her mouth. "Then you do think Sister Mary Rose was…?"

"Don't read into it, okay?"

Her cell phone trilled. Loren picked it up. It was Eldon Teak.

"Yo, sweetums, you coming by today?" he asked.

"In an hour," she said. "Why, what's up?"

"I found the current owner of our silicone breast manufacturer. SurgiCo is now part of the Lockwood Corporation."

"The huge one in Wilmington?"

"Somewhere in Delaware, yeah."

"Did you give them a call?"

"Yes."

"And?"

"And it did not go well."

"How's that?"

"I told them we had a dead body, a serial number on a breast implant, and that we needed an ID."

"And?"

"They won't release the information."

"Why not?"

"I don't know. They blathered on and on and used the term 'medical privacy' a whole lot."

"That's bullsh-" Mother Katherine's lips pursed. Loren caught herself. "I'll get a court order."

"They're a big company."

"They'll cave on this. They just want legal protection."

"It'll take time."

She thought about that. Eldon had a point. The Lockwood Corporation was out of state. She'd probably need a federal court judge to issue a subpoena.

"Something else," Eldon said.

"What?"

"At first they seemed to have no problem with any of it. I called down, spoke to someone, she was going to look up the serial number for me. I'm not saying it's routine, but it really shouldn't be a big issue."

"But?"

"But then some lawyer with a bigwig-sounding name called back and gave me a very terse no."

Loren thought about it. "Wilmington's only, what, two hours from here?"

"The way you drive, maybe fifteen minutes."

"I'm thinking of testing out that theory. You have the name of Mr. Bigwig Lawyer?"

"I got it here somewhere. Oh, wait, yes, Randal Horne of Horne, Buckman and Pierce."

"Call Mr. Horne. Tell him I'm driving down to serve his ass a subpoena."

"You don't have a subpoena."

"You don't know that."

"Oh, right."

She hung up and placed another call. A woman answered the phone. Loren said, "I need an unlisted number looked up."

"Name and badge number, please."

Loren gave it. Then she read the unlisted phone number Sister Mary Rose had called.

"Please hold," the woman said.

Mother Katherine pretended to be busy. She looked in the air, then across the room. She fiddled with her prayer beads. Through the phone Loren heard fingers clacking a keyboard. Then: "Do you have a pen?"

Loren grabbed a stubby golf pencil from her pocket. She took a gas receipt and flipped it over. "Go ahead."

"The number you requested is listed to a Marsha Hunter at Thirty-eight Darby Terrace, Livingston, New Jersey."