Mirrors (7 page)

I went to the shelf where light bulbs were stored. At the very back of it, behind an extension cord, I found the replacement bulb I sought. I retrieved it and started for the exit but was forced to stop short on account of a figure who blocked the way. She was a teacher’s aide, a woman in her forties with a bouffant hairdo who roamed from class-to-class supposedly to help, although none of us thought she was of any use. The only reason she got the job was because her husband was a city council member, a wealthy man who owned one of the largest dairies in Wisconsin. Rumor had it she was infertile, so to get her fix of kids, she worked as a teacher’s aide.

I tried to side-step her, but she mirrored my moves.

“I need your help,” she said. “There’s a box of pencils on a shelf back there I can’t reach. I want you to get it for me.”

“Where?” I asked.

She pointed over my shoulder and motioned for me to walk. As I did so, she followed closely. She stopped me deep inside the room before a shelf with art supplies. Pointing to a waist-high shelf, she said, “Back there. See it?”

I stooped to find the box she spoke of. It was wedged between the back wall and a tray of small paint cans. I leaned forward with my chest resting on a ream of construction paper, but as I stretched for the box, I felt a hand slide into my shorts and caress my buttocks. A thick scent of perfume wafted into the air between the shelves.

For a moment, I froze before calling out, “No!” I tried to back up but couldn’t because she pressed against me. My head struck the shelf above.

“Get off me!” I wailed.

She removed her hand. “Fine, come out.”

I extracted myself and faced her, trembling.

“You needn’t be afraid,” she said. She rubbed her cheek against the side of my face. Parting her lips, she licked my ear. Her breathing became labored, and as she reached to unbutton my shorts, I pushed her aside and ran from the room. From behind, I heard her call: “Wait! My pencils!”

“Get up, Krispix,”
Bird said. “This is a public space.”

As I rose from the floor, I saw the contents of my stomach had coalesced into a fetid pool.

“Clean it,” Bird ordered. “You’ll find paper towels down there.” He pointed to a restroom.

“No,” Flagstaff countered. “We need to talk.” He led us to an empty room where he closed the door. “What was that about?” he asked.

“They’re playing with my mind,” I uttered.

“Who is?”

“The author of those missives.” I sank into a chair. “They were directed at
me.”
I voiced the first one: “…
your father’s cruelty. My
father abandoned me when I was young.”

“That’s true for a lot of kids,” Bird said. “What makes you feel targeted?”

“…
of the lovely cheeks,
…,” I added. Haltingly, I relayed the story about the teacher’s aide.

“God, Krispix,” Flagstaff whispered.

“
But she, surrendering to
…,” I continued. “It refers to my sixth-grade teacher who was fired after telling authorities about what the teacher’s aide had done.”

“But why did two victims receive that missive?” Bird asked, cold calculus in his eyes.

“I don’t know.”

“Who fired your teacher?” Flagstaff asked.

“The school board—by order of the city council. The aide’s husband was a council member.”

Flagstaff tapped my back. “You did the right thing to tell your teacher what happened.”

“Only because Danny Rogers told me to.” I paused, and then added: “As soon as I saw the name
Marinero, CA
on Muñoz’s slide, I became worried Danny was the victim. It’s a tiny place, and I knew Danny lived there. The bit about the shrimp allergy convinced me beyond any doubt it
had
to be Danny. I saw him have an allergic reaction once after he ate shrimp accidentally at a buffet. He stopped breathing. It took adrenaline injected by the paramedics to revive him.”

I looked out a window facing the Capitol. “…
who lives under the earth
,” I sputtered. “That was the final straw: Danny’s cabin lies within a hill.”

For a moment, I recalled how Danny would push his glasses up his nose, lenses as thick as Coke bottles that made his eyes look like harvest moons.

Bird consulted his notes. “What about …
Power and Strength,
” he asked.

I shrugged. “The aide’s husband? He was a powerful man in town.”

“When did Rogers leave Wisconsin for California?”

“After eleventh grade.”

“And you kept in touch?”

“Religiously.”

During college, I flew to California every year to visit him in Santa Cruz. On one trip, he took me up the coast to show me Marinero. It was little more than a cluster of artichoke farms. He told me he wanted to move there after graduating from the University of California, Santa Cruz, which he did, although because so few people lived in Marinero, he opened his surf shop in Half Moon Bay further up the coast. Waves were his temples.

Bird glanced at his watch. “We gotta go.”

I remained seated. “I’m not going to Ecuador,” I said.

“Agreed,” he replied.

I looked up at him.

“You’re going to California instead. You need to find out how Danny Rogers got poisoned.”

Eve sat in
a chaise longue with a hand on her belly and a pillow behind her back. “Jason, I’m glad you’re back!” she said worriedly.

I sat beside her.

“I just got off the phone with Randy Flagstaff,” she said. “He told me about your detail and what’s happening with XK59. All hush-hush, I understand, but he said it was important that I knew.” She squeezed my hand. “It’s terrible!”

“Did he tell you I need to go to California?”

“Yes.”

“And why I need to go?”

“No, just that it was in the line of duty.”

I shook my head. “It’s not good, Eve. Not good at all.”

She ran a hand along my cheek. “What is it?”

“Danny Rogers died from XK59 poisoning. I need to find out how it happened.”

“Danny!” she gasped, covering her mouth.

I had spoken of Danny often with Eve and had even taken her to Half Moon Bay to have lunch with Danny and his parents. Initially, we invited him to be a groomsman at our wedding before we decided to forgo the ceremony for a civil marriage.

“I’m going to talk to his parents in California,” I said.

“
Danny
…” she muttered. She looked about the room as if whatever or whoever had killed Danny could be lurking in our midst. “I don’t like this, Jason.”

“There’s more,” I said, nestling closer. I told her about the missives and how I believed they targeted me somehow.

“Okay, that’s it!” she cried. “We need protection.”

“We’ve got it. Flagstaff assigned a security team to us. You’ll see a black SUV about whenever you leave the house.”

I placed a hand on her belly. “What happened at the obstetrician’s today?”

She seemed reluctant to switch topics. “The baby’s fine.”

“And you?”

She turned toward the window. “I’m frightened.”

I held her tightly. “Remember what we said: One step at a time: baby, then breast mass.” I cleared her hair from her tears. “It’s probably nothing more than a cyst or a blocked gland.”

She lifted her eyes to me. “With my mother’s history?”

Eve’s mother died a decade earlier of breast cancer at the age of forty-one. Eve was seventeen at the time. After giving it wrenching thought, Eve underwent genetic testing in Australia during college to see if she carried breast cancer genes. The results were ominous: She harbored the
BRCA
1 gene, a finding that gave her almost a 60% lifetime risk of developing breast cancer and an elevated risk of experiencing ovarian cancer as well. She shared the news with me after several dates, saying she was torn about whether to have her ovaries and breasts removed to reduce the risks of cancer. I already knew I wanted to marry her; what she told me made me want to have children sooner than later.

“Did they ultrasound the breast today?” I asked.

“Yes, no change from last week, which means we still don’t know what’s going on.”

“What about antibiotics? Do they want you to continue them in case there’s an infection?”

“For now, yes, but a mammogram’s out of the question until I give birth. They’re considering doing a biopsy after the birth as well.”

I stood and leaned against the window. In the distance, thunder rumbled in a blackening sky. I pressed the numbers on my phone.

“Who are you calling?” Eve asked.

“The airlines. I want to get California over before you deliver.”

The temperature in
San Francisco was forty degrees below the swelter of the east coast. Fog swirled about the elevated tram leading from the airport terminal to the rental car center, blurring the lights of taxiing airplanes.

It was just after midnight. Before leaving Dulles Airport, I called Danny Rogers’ parents to ask if I could see them urgently. It was Danny’s mother who answered the phone. My stomach knotted as I informed her that XK59 had killed her son and that I had been recruited by the CDC to determine how the poisoning had occurred. Stoically, she agreed to meet for an interview, but because she felt she would be too emotional to do so at her house, she suggested we meet at a park along the coast south of Half Moon Bay where Danny often surfed.

After picking up a car, I drove to a hotel south of San Francisco. In the sleepless hours that passed, I stared at the ceiling. At 3 a.m., hours before my alarm was set to ring, I checked out and began driving toward the coast knowing I’d reach my interview spot long before Danny’s parents were due to arrive. I drove slowly, allowing GPS to lead me along Highway 101 south, but as I traveled, I flicked on the light and filed through my wallet for a slip of paper. It prompted me to reprogram the GPS with the address to Danny’s house in Marinero. Although Danny had invited me repeatedly to visit him there, I’d never done so because of scheduling issues. The time had come to pay that visit now.

I left the freeway and began climbing the coastal hills. Moonlight pierced the fog in silver daggers only to be stanched by a thick blanket at the summit. My headlights became useless as their beams shattered into a thousand rays. I slowed to a crawl and hugged the middle of the road for fear of careening into a canyon.

The hairpin bends eased to gentler curves that wound through fields of artichoke, garlic and evergreens destined for Christmas stands. At one point, I picked up speed and sailed into a dip that sent my stomach to the floor. After gliding over a knoll and passing more farms, I came to a junction with Highway 1, the famous strip that ribbons the Pacific.

I stopped to ponder my decision to visit Danny’s home. It meant traveling south rather than north which would take me away from the interview spot. Tepidly, I turned south and passed a desolate stretch of bluffs. Five miles beyond the junction, I came to a wind-blown sign reading
Marinero
that led me to a narrow road heading away from the ocean. It scaled a hill before dropping into a valley where I came to a tackle shop, withering church, and convenience store.

After turning onto a gravel lane, a shower of stones pelted the underside of my chassis. I followed the lane up a hill, passing a meadow with cows huddled in a lifeless form that reminded me of peat piled in Irish bogs. An orchard appeared on my right, its trees laden with green persimmons. After a series of bends, the lane ended before a log cabin where a pickup truck sat in front, its tags reading
Surf’sUp
. Beyond it, off to the side across a grassy patch, the blades of a wind turbine turned in the swirling fog.

I parked the car and followed a path between surfboards standing on end among bonsai trees. It brought me to a cabin embedded in a hill such that the roof consisted of grasses and bushes. Only the front was exposed to the world, and I approached it cautiously, peering through a window into the dark interior. Seeing no sign of life, I placed a hand on the door knob but stopped short when a loud whirring startled me. I wheeled about to find the windmill moaning in a stiffening wind.

I turned the knob but the door was locked. Returning to the window, I checked to see if it might open, but it didn’t. Picking a stone from the garden, I smashed the glass and slipped an arm through the gap. With a turn of a lever, I lifted the frame and climbed in. A flick of a switch brought a lonely bulb to life that illuminated a single room partitioned into four zones: a sitting space with lounge chair, desk, and wood stove; a kitchen and small table; a bed and dresser; and a work shop with a surfboard propped on a stand.

It was a mahogany roll-top desk with sliding door that caught my eye. I approached it and lifted a photograph of Danny riding a wave. He was crouched and had his arms perfectly balanced within a curl, a misty mane rising from the breaking water. He looked to be at total peace, reverent even, as if entering a holy place. Amidst tons of crashing sea, he’d found his temple.

I set the photo down to focus on a letter in Danny’s handwriting beside which lay an envelope addressed to me. Inclined to pen more than keyboard, he often sent letters by snail mail, and because I knew he enjoyed receiving letters in turn, I reciprocated the favor. I began reading the letter …

Dear Jason,

I’ve been meaning to write for a while, but things have been busy. Wanted to tell you about something weird that happened about a month ago. Someone broke into my cabin. A strange thing given we have no crime here. Even stranger was they took your letters … nothing else … no cash, no tools … only your letters.

Go figure.

I dropped the sheet and ran to the car. Jumping in, I gunned the engine and sped away, leaving the persimmons, cows, and meadow in a blur. At Highway 1, I turned north and glanced into my mirror with terror, sure someone was after me. Why else would they have taken my letters from Danny’s cabin? Not only that, but shortly after moving to Bethesda, a set of my diaries in which I’d recorded, among other things, my long friendship with Danny had vanished from my home. Now, having read Danny’s final letter, I had no doubt I’d been robbed. As in Danny’s case, the perpetrator had stolen only written materials; everything else was left intact. My diaries, it now occurred to me, had marked Danny as a target.

But two questions haunted me: Who was the perpetrator, and why was he after me?

With just over
two hours remaining before I was due to meet Danny’s parents, I drove to the rendezvous site, a place called Bean Hollow State Park located along the coast north of Marinero. According to the map, Half Moon Bay was another forty-five minutes north of Bean Hollow, which meant Danny drove over an hour each day to tend to his surf shop. In one of his letters, he told me how much he enjoyed the drive because it took him along the coast the entire way. As he drove, he lowered his window to take in the cold air and watch swells roll in from the Pacific.

I opened a window in memory of my friend. The wind slapped me like a cold, wet towel, as if scolding me for not being Danny Rogers who it normally greeted each day. With penitence, I followed the undulating asphalt past deserted bays until a sign appeared for Bean Hollow State Park. I turned into a vacant parking lot and took a space facing the sea. A yard before me was a four- to six-foot drop-off that led to a long arc of sand that stretched in both directions. At one end, a shadowy hill tapered to the ocean while at the other, a promontory jutted into the sea. Enclosed by the arc was a bay, its inner waters calm, but beyond the inlet, massive rollers formed from an abrupt rise of the seabed. Through the receding fog, jets of white water surged into the bay. I shuddered at the thought of Danny riding those waves.

I stepped out of the car. Below, strewn across the sand, were remnants of kelp, their gas bladders resembling rubber balls the sea had rolled ashore. I envisioned Danny jogging across the sand, tossing his surf board into the water, and paddling to the rollers. I felt my body rise and fall with the swells, each growing larger than the previous. Having taken a surfing lesson from Eve in Australia, I imagined catching a wave and riding it with Danny beside me, the two of us laughing with joy. A gust then whipped across the sand and sent me back into the car.

Shivering, I locked the doors and turned on the motor. With a stream of warm air blowing at me, I soon fell asleep. The next thing I knew, a tapping awoke me. I bolted forward and turned the ignition. It made a grinding sound from the idling engine. Looking out the window, I saw two faces peering in at me. I turned the engine off and got out of the car.

Only a year had passed since Eve and I had lunched with Danny’s parents in Half Moon Bay, yet the furrows on their faces now suggested decades had passed. It was such a contrast from how they looked a year earlier, and even more so from the day they left Wisconsin to move to California. After living in Wisconsin all their lives, they were ready for a change—ready to leave a community they felt had never truly accepted a lesbian couple for adopting a son. Half Moon Bay, on the other hand, offered a freer way of life, just as California had done for millions of pilgrims before them. Both Kristine Rogers and her partner, Emma, had found jobs there. They were eager to move on.

Kristine took me in her arms. In Wisconsin, she had treated me like a second son, although I never felt I deserved such. She said I was a saint for treating Danny as kindly as I did, but I would have it no other way for he was a soul mate as much as a friend. While others teased him for being clumsy and for a stutter he struggled with, I found peace in his presence. We spent hours together after school each day, and he was the only one who helped me dissect road kill.

I turned to Emma and embraced her, but it was a hug less engaging than the one with Kristine. If Kristine exuded spring and summer, Emma embodied fall and winter. Years earlier, while visiting their home during an early Wisconsin snowfall, Danny and I went outside to play. Big, wet flakes dropped like soggy corn chips. At the time, Danny had a cold and was dragging. As we put on our coats, Kristine called to Danny to bundle up so that he wouldn’t get sicker whereas Emma followed with a command: “Shovel the walk while you’re out there.” The forecast called for less than an inch to fall.

Presently, Emma asked: “When did you get here?”

“A while ago,” I replied. I said nothing of the visit to Danny’s cabin.

Kristine turned from me. Her shoulders undulated from sobs.

I put my arm around her. “I’m sorry about what happened.”

“You can’t imagine what it means to lose Danny,” Emma said.

I groaned.

Emma again: “Why did they kill him with your protein?”

It wasn’t
my
protein, I wanted to tell her. Discovery didn’t convey ownership, for if it did, oxygen belonged to Carl Wilhelm Scheele and Joseph Priestley, two inquisitive thinkers from the eighteenth century.

“I don’t know,” I replied. I wanted to tell them that I, too, felt targeted but referring to myself would only demean Danny.

“When Dr. Muñoz spoke to us by telephone last week,” Kristine said, “he told us the FBI was involved in the investigation.”

“Yes,” I said, towing the party line.

“What have you learned from them?”

“Only that the investigation is ongoing.”

“So, we
wait
?” Kristine asked.

“Not me!” Emma proclaimed. She went to the beach.

“Where are you going?” Kristine called.

“Where Danny went! Are you coming?”

I followed Kristine to the sand where I removed my shoes and socks. The retreating fog formed a silver bank now across the Pacific, allowing dawn to arrive with dignity. I savored the shifting tide of day as hints of warmth crept into the air.

“Follow me,” Emma said.

As we set out, I found myself sandwiched between the two women, our shoulders bumping every few steps.

“Did we ever tell you how we adopted Danny?” Emma asked.

“No,” I said, grateful for her olive branch.

“We approached a number of agencies,” she began, synchronizing her steps with mine. “Many refused to deal with us because we weren’t a traditional couple. Remember, that was a different time.” Her face brightened. “Then, one day, a colleague at work told me about an orphanage that had just accepted a five-year-old boy whose parents had died in a car crash. He was unusual in that he’d been sheltered at home with practically no social contact—no daycare, no play groups, no classes for tots. His mother and father were farmers who largely shunned the outside world. They avoided doctors, in particular, and refrained from getting their son vaccinated and having his cleft palate repaired. My colleague asked whether Kristine and I would consider adopting the boy.” She beamed. “You know the answer!”

“He was such a fine boy!” Kristine chimed. “Precious smile—even
with
the cleft palate.”

“The truth is, he adopted us,” Emma said. “He swept us into his heart where we blossomed as parents, and he never judged us.” She jumped ahead to face me squarely, stopping in my path. “Do you know what I mean about the non-judgmental part?”

“I do,” I replied. “I suspect it stemmed from your unconditional love for him.”

Emma released me to walk again.

“Danny told us
you’ll
be a father soon,” Kristine said, her first smile since we’d hugged.

I wondered how she could muster joy when she’d just lost her own child.

“Yes,” I replied in hollow affirmation. I looked about, eager to change the subject.

Emma splayed her arms. “This was Danny’s getaway.” She took my hand and led me to a sandstone wall where, over the years, storms had etched designs into its slope.