“We sure do,” I say. When he turns his back to me, I slip the magnet into my pocket. Weak spots.
Chapter Sixteen
Monday morning, Joe and I strategize. We’ve got one chance in a thousand that a circuit court will take our slipshod suspicions for evidence, but all we need to do is file the suit—and hope Optimal is frightened into giving us actual evidence.
We can’t get a court appointment until Wednesday afternoon, which gives me a few days to put together a cohesive picture and try to find a prosecutor’s office willing to work the criminal side of the investigation.
Flora and Portland head down to greet the ETL lab techs; they’ve arrived to draw samples from the reservoir and from the filtration plant it feeds to, and I want to be sure no one bothers them while they work. Maybe I’m being paranoid, but given Optimal’s long tentacles, and its grip on Barrens, I can just see some local townies trying to chase them off with pitchforks—or, more likely, .22s.
I put in a message to the county prosecutor’s office where Aaron Pulaski worked until recently, and kill a few hours researching the bioaccumulation of a variety of types of heavy metals, detailing the evidence found in plants and seedlings—at least we know the foliage can’t be paid to keep quiet.
Just before lunch my phone blows up, and a woman with the kind of chirpy voice that immediately suggests a pantsuit introduces herself as Dani Briggs, junior prosecutor. “I got your message,” she says. “But I’m afraid we can’t help out. There was a personnel sweep after Mr. Pulaski left.”
One skill I’ve learned as a lawyer: to make a no into an opportunity. “Why so much turnover?”
She hesitates for just a fraction of a second. “When Mr. Agerwal”—the new county prosecuting attorney, and a board member of the Indiana Prosecuting Attorneys Council—“took the job, he promised to take all the politics out of the justice system.”
“Like what? Bribery? Corruption? That is politics.”
Her laugh is surprising—deep and rich and swallowed just as quickly as it comes. “Maybe. But not our kind of politics.”
“So he purged the old guard.”
“I wouldn’t call it a purge,” she says. “Given all the scrutiny around police departments and prosecuting offices throughout the country, he felt the MCPO needed a clean start.”
This is how lawyers confess: by edging just close enough to the issue that you can take a hop-skip-jump to the truth yourself. “Here’s the thing: I’m looking into a donation to Pulaski’s state congressional campaign by a company he had threatened to go after for labor violations. Does that sound like his kind of politics?”
Another momentary hesitation. Now I understand her silence is code for yes. “I really can’t speak to that,” she says. “What our predecessors do is, unfortunately, kind of a black box.” Maybe she can sense my hesitation over the phone, because she adds, “Let me take your contact info. I’ll talk to Mr. Agerwal when he comes back.”
I put my head down on my desk, against the cool wood, willing the pulse of so many strains of information to finally hit a rhythm that I can latch on to. Will any of this get me closer to understanding what happened to Kaycee? Will any of it get me closer to answering the question that drove me out of Barrens and to Chicago in the first place? I thought if I could prove that Optimal was making people sick, I could cure Barrens of what had poisoned it—and then Barrens would finally let me go.
But now, I’m not so sure.
“Ms. Williams?”
I nearly punch out of my skin: Portland has returned, soundlessly.
“For fuck’s sake. We need to install a bell on you or something.” Then, I notice he has the strangest look on his face.
“You said she was faking it,” he says.
He slides a photo across the desk, and I’m shocked to recognize Kaycee, painted up in school colors. Graduation day.
Her arms are what strike me first. They’re skinny—as skinny as a child’s. It could be an effect of the paint or maybe the angle, but her cheekbones are blunt, like two axes that meet in the center of her face. Her clavicle emerges prominently from her neckline. She looks…sick. Really sick.
It may be the first time I’ve ever felt truly sorry for Kaycee Mitchell. I nearly reach out to touch her face, then remember Portland is watching me.
“Where did you get this?” I ask him.
“I went to the high school,” he says—so casually I nearly wince. I don’t know why, but it disturbs me to think of Portland walking those too-familiar halls—it is further proof that two sections of my life are collapsing. “I figured small town, the nurse would probably be the same a decade later. I was right.”
It was a brilliant move. Nurses at public schools aren’t bound by laws of confidentiality.
“Good thinking,” I say. “Why the hell didn’t I think of that?”
“Kaycee wasn’t lying,” he says simply.
“The girls admitted it,” I say, but even I hear it as a question.
“The other girls admitted it,” he says, in the same soft cadence, as if he knows he’s breaking news I don’t want to hear. “But she was sick. You can see it. The nurse saw it.”
Just hearing the words like that is like the hard stun of a wave you’ve been watching get closer. It takes my breath away momentarily. Right away I know that this, this photograph right here, is the whole reason I came back. It’s why I could never entirely leave it all behind.
Another Kaycee surfaces in my mind: the creamy, seamless skin, the curve of her mouth rearranging itself into a wolfish smile—or sneer. Perfect. Suddenly, I realize after all I don’t want it to be true. If it’s true, it means Kaycee is just another one I got all wrong. Not a predator—a victim.
—
Frank Mitchell gave up the trailer Kaycee grew up in and now lives only half a mile from his shop. God knows why I felt compelled to bring Portland—it’s highly doubtful that Mitchell will find the sight of a guy who looks like he could be the singer of an indie-rock band reassuring. Maybe I’m the one who needed reassuring.
The garage door of number 217 is half open. I’m betting that Frank’s one of those guys who drinks five to midnight. It’s only noon, which means he might be sober enough to be reasonable, or hungover enough to be irritable.
We find him bent over a motorcycle, his back bony beneath a stained white shirt.
“Mr. Mitchell?” When he turns around, I see he’s aged considerably. Yellow-stained wrinkles falling into his salt-and-pepper mustache. His T-shirt’s emblazoned with a hunting rifle and the slogan Guns don’t kill people, I do. “Hope we aren’t catching you at a bad time. Abby Williams. You and I spoke briefly on the phone…?”
“I remember. I remember you from back when, too.” He sizes me up, sweeps his eyes over Portland, and turns back to his motorcycle. “I thought I told you I didn’t have anything to say.”
The years haven’t softened his personality. But he hasn’t ordered us to get out yet. That’s a start.
“I’m still having trouble tracking Kaycee down,” I say. “I really think it would be helpful to speak to her.” The Internet is proving to be no help. So far, all I know is she might have settled in New York or San Francisco or anywhere in between.