Fear itself: a novel (2 page)

“Already? Jesus H. Christ, the body isn’t even cold yet.” The voice was a little too hearty for nine o’clock in the morning, which fit the stories Linda had heard about her predecessor’s drinking, part of his legend by now, along with his size, his eccentric wardrobe, his mastery of the Affective Interview, his heroism in the Maxwell case, and his open contempt for the Bureau-cracy. “Come on in.”

Linda let go of the file cabinet, found to her relief that her legs had regained their strength, picked her way across the crowded anteroom, and opened the door to see an enormous bald man in a plaid sport coat on his knees in front of yet another file cabinet.

“One question,” said Special Agent E. L. Pender, FBI, soon to be Ret., marking his place in the roll-out bottom file drawer with his left hand, reaching up to shake Linda’s hand with his right. “How bad did you have to fuck up to get sent here?”

“I take it you haven’t read my personnel file,” she replied. Even kneeling, he was so tall that Linda didn’t have to stoop to shake his hand, which was roughly the size of a waffle iron.

Pender glanced pointedly around the windowless office—if anything, it was even more cluttered with printouts, file folders, record boxes, and file cabinets than the anteroom—and shrugged. “It’s around here someplace. But I don’t pay much attention to personnel records—and if you’d ever seen mine, you’d understand why.”

“I heard you had your own coffee cup hanging on the rack over at OPR,” joked Linda. The Office of Professional Responsibility was the Justice Department’s equivalent of an internal affairs division.

“Only a rumor. But they do know I take it black. Have a seat, take a load off.”

Linda hesitated—the only chair in the room was behind the desk, which was buried under yet another slag heap of computer printouts and file folders.

“Yes, ma’am,” said Pender, reading her mind. “That’s your chair, that’s your desk, this is your office now.” He took the file folder he’d been looking at and turned it sideways in the drawer before standing up.

“What about you?” Linda tested the stability of the desk chair, then lowered herself into it carefully, using both hands on the arms for balance the way the physical therapist in San Antone had taught her.

“I’m gone, I’m history. The eagle flies until the end of the month, but I had some vacation saved up, and it was use it or lose it. I only came in today to finish going through these old files, refresh what’s left of my memory—some idiot publisher’s paying me a shitload for my memoirs. They’re also paying somebody else a shitload to write them, thank God.”

“But aren’t you supposed to be training me or something?”

“For what? They’re shutting down Liaison Support at the end of the year, when Steve McDougal retires. It’s outlived its function—everybody’s on-line with everybody nowadays. That’s why I asked how bad you fucked up—no offense intended.”

“None taken. I was afraid it was something like that.”

“Now that I’ve seen you motorvatin’, though, I’m guessing it has more to do with that.” Pender cleared off a space and perched one enormous cheek on the edge of the desk—his thigh was nearly as wide around as Linda’s waist. “What’s the story?”

Linda took a long, deep breath, let it out slowly. Might as well get this over. “MS,” she said. “MS is the story—I was diagnosed with primary progressive multiple sclerosis a few months ago.”

Pender didn’t miss a beat. “Dang,” he said. “I hate it when that happens.”

Not quite the reaction she’d been expecting—Linda let out a startled laugh. “Yeah, me too,” she said after a moment, then quickly changed the subject. “So what’s my job exactly? What is it I’m supposed to do around here?”

“Do?” Pender snorted derisively. “Frankly, my dear, nobody gives a toasted fart.”

“You okay in there, sweetheart?” Simon Childs tapped gently on the bathroom door. Sometimes Missy only wanted to be sure the pager would actually summon him; other times she did it out of pure mischief.

“Mo hah, mo hah.”

More hot.
Simon had never had any trouble understanding what his kid sister was saying. He opened the door to see Missy stretched out in the deep clawfoot tub, waving her pink plastic pager over her head, and grinning from ear to ear—oh, how that girl loved her bath. You had to keep an eye on her, though. She’d stay in the tub until she was one big wrinkle if you let her, but when the water got cold, she’d start fiddling with the taps, no matter how many times she’d been warned not to, and more often than not, she’d end up either flooding the bathroom or scalding herself.

And for a strange, out-of-time moment, as he approached the tub, Simon saw his baby sister not as she was now, but as he still held her in his mind’s eye: a darling, round-faced, whitey-blond five-year-old Kewpie doll with a loving heart and an unquenchable sense of wonder. Then she broke the spell by bleating “Mo hah!” again in her deep-toned, uninflected voice. Simon blinked and found himself looking down at a naked, waterlogged, sparsely haired, morbidly obese, forty-nine-year-old idiot with a protruding tongue and slit eyes lost in folds of fat, whose pale skin was tinged blue as a result of the cardiac condition her doctors had predicted would prove fatal before another year had passed.

Best not to think about that, though. Simon and Missy had been abandoned by their mother after their father’s death and were raised by a paternal grandfather as tyrannical as he was wealthy. After his death, it was just the two of them, their trust funds, and the hired help. Simon was fifty-one now; for forty-nine years Missy had been the only constant in his life, and no matter how often Simon told himself it was better this way, more merciful for her to predecease him than for him to leave her behind, he knew in his heart that he was going to be lost without her.

And so despite the doctors’ warnings, Simon spoiled Missy outrageously—why make her stick to a diet if she was going to die anyway? It was like the way the trustees had wanted to send her to retard school after their grandfather’s death. They said she’d never reach her full potential otherwise. What did
they
know about Missy’s potential—or her happiness? If what made Missy happy was baths and food and Audrey Hepburn videos and staying home with Simon, then that’s what she’d get. He’d had a huge water heater installed so she could bathe all day if she wanted to, and she had free rein in the kitchen, which he kept well stocked—not an easy task: oh, how the old girl could pack it away, and oh, how she could pack on the pounds.

But then, Missy had always been chubby. In fact, when he and Missy were kids, Simon used to think of her corpulence as just another symptom of her Down syndrome, along with her moon face, her sloping forehead, her slanty eyes with their yellow-spotted irises, her flat-ridged nose, her protruding tongue, and her low-set, folded ears.

He knew better now, of course. “Okay, okay, I’ll run some more hot. Get your piggies out of the way.”

Missy drew her legs up. Simon reached down and pulled the old-fashioned, rusty-chained, cork-shaped rubber plug.

“Hey, hey, you braa’,” she barked tonelessly.

“Take it easy, I’m just letting some of the cold water out, make room for the hot.” He replaced the plug, opened the left tap, swirled the water with his hand to mix the hot in gradually, the way their old nanny, Granny Wilson—Ganny, they called her—would have. Then, splashing his sister playfully: “And watch who you’re calling a brat, you brat.”

Missy giggled and splashed him back, paddling the water with her chubby hands, which had only a single crease across the palm.

“Is that better?” Simon asked her, turning off the water and wiping his hands on the bath mat. As he stood up and crossed to the sink to get Missy a washcloth, he caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror and smoothed back his wavy silver hair, which was receding decorously into a handsome widow’s peak.

“Peedee keem.”
Peachy keen.

“Okay, then.” He tossed the washcloth into the tub. “I have to go back down to the basement. Page me when you’re ready to get out. And don’t forget to wash your whoop-te-do.” That had been Ganny’s collective term for private parts, male or female.

“Wah
yah
whoodedo, you braa’!” Missy shouted angrily—after all, she wasn’t a
baby
—and the washcloth hit the back of the door with a wet thud as Simon closed it behind him.

Last day on the job. For a secret sentimentalist like E. L. Pender, the whole morning had been fraught with significance. Alarm clock: won’t need you no more, you little bastard. Shaving: why not start a beard now, after all these years? Hide those extra chins, at any rate. Clothes: one last chance to nail down his reputation as the worst-dressed agent in the history of the FBI. Universally loathed plaid sport coat, Sansabelt slacks that had spent the night on the floor, and his most comfortable wash-and-wear short-sleeved white shirt—comfortable because it had been washed and worn to a point just short of decomposition. No tie, of course: odd to think that this was the last time that
not
wearing a tie would carry any meaning.

Perhaps the strangest part of Pender’s morning came when he realized that he was strapping on his calfskin shoulder holster for the last time. He’d already decided he wouldn’t be applying for a concealed weapons permit. Not much use for the Glock .40 on the golf course. Anyway, he’d never really bonded with it after the Bureau had taken away his SIG Sauer P226 for display at the FBI museum. It was the shoulder holster that really should have been behind glass, though: Pender was one of the last federal agents to wear one; everybody else had switched to the officially approved over-the-kidney holsters years earlier.

Like most secret sentimentalists, Pender suspected other people of being sentimental, too. Though he knew that save for Pool, the rest of the old Liaison Support gang were either retired or scattered by the Bureau to the four winds, he’d practiced acting surprised on the drive to work, just in case they had decided to throw a party for him.

The only surprise, however, had been the discovery that his replacement was a handicapped female who was no longer even a special agent—and even that felt more like the last piece of the puzzle finally falling into place. Obviously the Liaison Support Unit,
the
assignment for ambitious young agents back in the late seventies, had in its final days become a dumping ground for employees the Bureau didn’t know what else to do with.

So when Pender told Linda that nobody would give a toasted fart how she spent her time, it was only the unvarnished truth. But when he saw the hurt in her eyes, he quickly added: “That’s the bad news
and
the good news.”

“Good how?”

“You have two and a half months to make whatever you want out of this assignment without Steve Too crawling up your ass.”

“Steve who?”

“Steve Maheu, Steve McDougal’s number two. Picture in the dictionary next to
holier-than-thou.
But with McDougal retiring, Maheu’s too busy scouting a soft place to land to pay any attention to you, so you should be pretty much on your own.”

“But for what? To do what?”

“To look for serial killers nobody else is looking for.”

“Are there any?”

“It’s a growth market, kiddo.” Pender chuckled. “Now more than ever, it’s a growth market.”

Then he caught himself, and the laugh faded. “I’m sorry, that was bullshit of me.”

“Why do you say that?”

“When we started Liaison Support over twenty years ago, I promised myself I’d never forget about the victims. Even if I was only going fishing in the MMRs, I told myself I’d never forget what the job was really about. And I just did.”

Linda looked away, moved by Pender’s passion and commitment; maybe this might not turn out to be such a dead-end assignment after all.

“So what do we got?” she asked brusquely, when she was sure of her voice again. All Bronx, all business.

“I want you to take a look at a letter that came in last Friday. It gave me a chill.” He began shuffling through the papers stacked on the desk. “And if there’s one thing I’ve learned on this job…” Now he was back down on the floor again, rummaging through a stack of buff file folders with one hand, trying to keep it from toppling over with the other. “…it’s to trust the chill.” Then, distractedly, still rummaging: “What scares you, Linda—what are you afraid of?”

“You mean, other than progressive paralysis, ending in death?” Linda tried to soften the bitter words with a laugh. When she’d first decided to fight for the right to keep her job, she had promised herself that if she won, the office would be a no-whining zone.

And it had been one hell of a battle: FBI regs stated clearly that special agents were required to be in “excellent physical condition with no defects that would interfere in firearm use, raids, or defensive tactics.” In the end, however, the brass agreed to a compromise: reassignment with the bogus job title of
investigative specialist,
rather than
special agent.
Badge, no gun, same pay level, desk job, monthly physicals, and, most worrying of all, monthly psych evaluations: first sign of cognitive impairment, a common enough MS symptom, and they would wash her out entirely.

“I mean before the MS. When you were a kid, say, what was the thing you feared most?”

“Like a phobia?”

“Exactly.”

“That’s easy, then—snakes.”

“How severe?”

“What do you mean?”

“Did snakes just give you the creeps, for instance, or were you afraid to walk in the woods, or—”

“We didn’t have much in the way of woods where I grew up. But I definitely stayed the hell away from the reptile house in the Bronx Zoo. I passed out in front of it on a field trip when I was in college.”

“Well, if you…Here we go.” Pender had found the envelope he was looking for, and winged it up onto the desk. “If you multiply your fear of snakes by about a thousand, you’ll have some idea what life might be like for Dorie Bell.”