The Forgotten (19 page)

“She may have, but I don’t know. I tried to stay clear of her.”

“Have you ever heard of or met a guy named Darrell Holt?”

Jacob thought a moment, and then he shook his head. “No. Who is he?”

“What about Ricky Moke?”

“Nope. Can I ask who he is?”

“A cipher.”

Hannah came into the kitchen, wiping her eyes. “I’m hungry.”

“How would you like some veal chops and fresh salad?” Decker asked.

“Eeeeeuuuuuwwww!”

Decker was resigned to the inevitable. “How about a hot dog?”

“Yum!” The little girl started running in circles. “Yum, yum, yum!”

Just then they all heard a car pull into the driveway. Hannah shouted, “Shmueli’s home!”

Jacob swept the little girl in his arms. “Let’s go see your big brother!”

“Yea, yea, yea!” Hannah shouted.

“Yea, yea, yea!” Jacob answered.

Decker couldn’t tell which one was the more excited.

Rina regarded her
husband as he wiped the last dish, his face a study in concentration. He was thinking about the case. Still, she tried to make small talk.

“It’s good to have Shmueli home, no?”

Decker grinned. “Never thought I’d say it, but I missed his mouth. I missed his pithy observations. I missed his quick wit that bordered on sarcasm, and his strong opinions on everything. It’s great to have him home.”

“Even if it’s for a very short time.” Rina sighed. “At least they’ll be close to each other. We’ll do a weekend in New York, then a weekend in Baltimore. You know…alternate so no one feels left out.”

Decker looked at her. “How often do you plan to visit?”

“What does it matter?” Rina blurted out. “You’re never home anyway.”

Decker was shocked, not by the observation that was true, but by her frankness.

Rina stammered, “That was terrible—”

“No, it’s true, Rina.” He nodded. “You visit whenever you want. It’s fine.”

But the look on his face told her it wasn’t fine. “Peter, don’t shut me out. I’m very sorry. It just…slipped out.”

“I know.” He put down the dishtowel and hugged her. “Maybe I should take a sabbatical.” A pause. “Or…being
as I’m only three years away from twenty-five, maybe I should call it quits.”

“You’d be miserable.”

“Not as miserable as you think,” Decker said. “I know we have a mortgage. There are other things I could do. You know, I could hire myself out as an expert witness—a cop and lawyer. I’m very articulate, and extremely calm under scrutiny. You know what the top guys get? Five hundred an hour portal to portal.”

“You’ve always called them whores.”

“I wouldn’t say anything that I didn’t believe.”

Rina shook her head. “They have ways of making you say things you don’t mean.”

“Yes, I know that.”

She kissed his lips, then pulled away, busying herself with straightening up the kitchen. “I don’t think you should do anything rash just because I made a rude remark.”

“Okay.” Decker thought a moment. “How about this? After I get some resolution with this case, I take a week off. We’ll fly down to Florida, leave Hannah and the boys with my parents for two days. They can go to Disney World or Epcot while we bask in the sands of St. Croix.”

“Now that sounds like a fabulous plan!”

“A lot less impulsive than quitting?”

“Yes, indeed.” She smiled. “You know I have lots to do, Peter. I don’t sit around and wait for you to entertain me. For instance, I’m in charge of the scholar-in-residence lunch at the
shul
. Someone from the Tolerance Center is going to speak about hate groups. We’re going to have a tremendous turnout because I sent out flyers to everyone in the community. I have over a hundred positives. We’re getting twenty people alone from the First Baptist Church.”

“That’s a lot of
chulent
under one roof.”

“Don’t hold me responsible for the gas levels,” Rina said. “Then the next weekend after that, I promised that I’d be on a panel on Sunday.”

“Maybe you should hire yourself a full-time policy wonk on hate crime. Have your people call my people. Think you have time to work your husband into your busy schedule?”

She looked at him with mischief in her eyes. “I have time now.”

“I didn’t mean sex, but hold that thought. I mean literally work for me. I need your help.”

Rina visibly brightened. “You do?”

“Yes, I do,” Decker said. “Since the vandalism, you’ve been buried in hate crimes.”

“Just H.R. 1082. We’re about this close to getting the law passed.” She pinched off an inch of air between her thumb and forefinger. “It’s not only a moral law, it’s a just law. And a broader definition of hate crimes will also make your life easier.”

“I’m sold. While you’ve been lobbying for it, I know you’ve been researching hate groups on the Net. If you could talk to Tom Webster about hate groups, it would be helpful to me.”

“My pleasure!” Rina said. “If he wants the total picture, I’ll introduce him to some people at the Tolerance Center.” A pause. “You’re not just doing this to make me feel good, are you?”

“No, honestly. I spoke with Tom about it today. Why should he struggle when you’ve done all the background work? It would help me tremendously.”

“Great!” Rina felt her spirits lighten. “In the meantime, now that our family’s together, maybe we should do something.”

“Like what?”

“How about a movie…” She hit her head. “You’ve got to get back to work, don’t you?”

“Yes. But don’t let that stop you all from having a good time.”

“Sure.” Rina’s smile lost some of its brilliance.

Decker said, “While you were at the airport, I talked to Jacob.”

“About Ernesto’s death?”

“Yes.”

“And.”

“Naturally, he’s very upset. It’s horrible. I hope I helped him, but I don’t know if I did.”

“You must have said something right. Yonkie actually looked
happy
over dinner.”

“It’s probably Sammy’s presence. He really loves his older brother. I didn’t realize how much until I saw the two together.”

“They’re very close.”

Decker felt his throat clog. “Thank you for providing me with such amazing children.”

Rina threw her arms around her husband’s neck. “Let’s see if you still say that after you get the tuition bills.”

Oliver raked fingers through black, and by now, greasy hair. He felt hot and sticky and really needed a shower. “If what Jacob says is true, that the Baldwins were using pull to get kids into college, I can suddenly see some new reasons for someone wanting them dead.”

It was nine in the evening, and Decker had decided that they should meet in an interview room because there was more space. He sat at the head of the table. The left side held Webster, Martinez, and Wanda Bontemps. The right side had Oliver and Dunn. Arranging themselves by partnership rather than by sexes. They were spent, but Decker gave them a great big A for effort. File folders and papers were spread over the table, intermixed with empty paper plates of pizza and lukewarm Styrofoam cups of coffee.

Waiting for all the initial reports to come in. Ballistics was especially important. All were anxious to see if the bullets that killed Dee Baldwin matched the bullets responsible for the deaths of Ernesto Golding and Mervin Baldwin. Decker had put a rush on it, but a rush only meant something if someone in the lab was willing to speed it up.

“What are you saying, Scott?” Webster put down his cof
fee cup. “Disgruntled parents whacked the Baldwins because their kid couldn’t get into Harvard?”

Oliver said, “Remember that mother who tried to murder a sixteen-year-old classmate of her daughter’s because the other kid made cheerleading squad and her daughter didn’t?”

“That was extreme.”

“Well, so is this,” Oliver said. “Someone paid lots of money to Mervin to get little Jimmy into the big H, and the Baldwins failed to work their magic.”

“So why not return the money?” Wanda asked.

“What if there was no more money to return?” Oliver said.

“Maybe the guy was broke,” Martinez said. “He sure spent a lot. One hundred and twenty grand to live in a beach condo while his house was being remodeled.”

Decker said, “Did the Baldwins owe money?” No one spoke. “So let’s look into it.”

Webster said, “Could be he owed money. Or could be he owed favors. Sometimes money and favors have a definite connection. You do favors in order to avoid paying money.”

Wanda said, “So what did poor Ernesto have to do with any of this?”

“Wrong place at the wrong time?” Oliver suggested.

“I’m not so sure about that,” Decker said. “Ernesto had fallen in with some edgy folk before all this happened. He could have been the target.”

“I agree,” Martinez said. “You should see these PEI weirdos. Besides, Oliver, you don’t kill just because your kid doesn’t get into Harvard—”

“Maybe it was Stanford.”

Martinez turned to Decker. “You agree with me, right?”

Decker shrugged. “You should have heard Jake talk about what kids are doing nowadays to get into the right colleges.”

“You should have heard what Maryam Estes said about it,” Oliver said. “You wouldn’t believe it.”

Marge said, “Prep courses for the entrance exams, prep courses for the prep courses. And this is after they take prep courses to get into the right high schools and middle schools.
And of course you have to go to the right elementary school to even be considered by the right high schools. Which leaves us with pre-school. You know that kids have to apply for these hoity-toity
nursery
schools.”

Wanda made a face. “How do you test kids for nursery school? They can’t read.”

“Shapes,” Marge answered. “Counting to ten. Colors.”

“Well, what if your child is two and still sucks her thumb?”

Marge said, “According to Maryam, if your child gets rejected, it’ll be an uphill battle.”

Wanda said, “Maryam sounds idiotic.”

“I don’t disagree, Wanda, but thems are the facts,” Oliver stated. “Twenty grand a year so you can brag that your kid can tell the difference between a triangle and a square.”

Decker spoke to Martinez. “Apparently the parents are very cutthroat about this kind of thing.”

Martinez said, “So who’d you bribe to get Jacob into Johns Hopkins?”

“Jacob did it on his own. And even he claims that he got help…that his mother got him in by pushing the right buttons.”

Martinez said, “But the fact remains that you didn’t need Baldwin.”

“I might have hired him if I cared about the Ivies,” Decker said. “The fact is I’m basically a blue-collar-type guy, and my wife is Orthodox. She cares more about how many nice religious Jewish girls there are on campus rather than the IQ of the student body.”

“Where’s Sammy going?” Marge asked.

“Yeshiva University,” Decker said. “No shortage of gray matter floating around there. Still, my kids have friends who are pushed by their parents. Which to me is funny because my generation was supposedly the do-your-own-thing generation.”

Martinez laughed. “Yeah, aren’t we a bunch of old hypocrites.”

“I take exception to the word ‘old,’” Oliver replied.

Decker said, “Supposedly, even if you go to the right high school, you need people like the Baldwins to assure you get into the right college.”

“Exactly,” Oliver said. “Now you’re a parent, you invest all this money and time and effort into little Timmy getting into Harvard—”

“I thought it was little Jimmy,” Wanda said.

Oliver glared at her.

Wanda smiled back. “Go on.”

“And then, little Timmy or little Jimmy doesn’t get in,” Oliver said. “I can see some unbalanced person taking his frustrations out on Dee and Mervin Baldwin.”

“What can people like Dee and Mervin Baldwin actually do for a kid who just isn’t all that with it upstairs?” Webster said. “No matter how much you drill the kid, if he doesn’t have the raw matter, it isn’t going to help.”

Decker said, “They can practice test-taking with the kid. I’m sure there’s some holdover from one test to another. If you practice enough, maybe you can raise your score a few points.”

“A
few
points, yes,” Webster said. “But not several hundred points. I know enough about these entrance exams to know that much. As a matter of fact, if you take the SAT, then take it again and improve too much, it looks suspicious.”

Decker said, “But maybe being psychologists, the Baldwins knew
how
to take the tests to maximize results. Also, since psychologists usually design the IQ tests, I’m betting the Baldwins had a pretty good idea about the contents.”

Webster said, “How could they know better than anyone else? The tests are guarded secrets until they’re posted.”

“I’m not saying that the Baldwins did know. Just that if test-taking was their specialty, they may make it a point to know.”

Oliver blurted out, “Or maybe he actually did know.” He grinned. “Inside info, ladies and gentlemen? It’s happened before.”

Webster said, “It would kill the Education Testing Service’s reputation if an errant test was leaked prior to release date.”

“So Baldwin paid someone off,” Oliver said. “The man was minting money, doing course preparation. I can see that college is big business. And that’s what it always boils down to anyway. Business.”

“It would have to be more than just a payoff,” Webster said. “It’s not like the tests are posted on the Internet. The center’s computers have their own nerve center not connected to any service provider. And I’m sure very few people have access to the pass code.”

“C’mon, Tommy!” Oliver barked. “Computers aren’t fail-safe. Look at this ‘I love you’ virus back in 2000. Apparently, it was pretty damn amateurish and it shut down…what was it? Three major net providers?”

“He’s got a point,” Marge said.

Martinez said, “FYI, wasn’t Ricky Moke under FBI investigation for hacking?”

“Interesting,” Decker said. “But what does Moke have to do with the Baldwins?”

“A connection through Hank Tarpin?” Martinez suggested.

Decker sat back in his chair and looked at the ceiling. “We’ve gone from the Baldwins as hapless victims to the Baldwins as white-collar, high-tech criminals with Moke as a fugitive neo-Nazi cohort. I think we need to back it up.”

“I think we need to get a warrant to search the Baldwins’ office,” Oliver said. “So what’s up with that?”

Decker said, “I’m hoping to get it first thing in the morning. It took a while to find someone who was even willing to listen. Rifling through the files of current, ongoing patients violates confidentiality agreements. You can shout Tarasoff as precedence, but since there’s no immediate danger, I had to fudge a bit. I found a judge willing to go out on a limb, but he wants to sleep on it.”

“What should we do now?” Marge asked. “The banks are closed, so we can’t examine finances.”

Oliver said, “We don’t have a warrant, so we can’t investigate the Baldwins’ files.”

Webster said, “By the time I got over to the PEI, Holt was gone.”

“How about Liu and the autopsy?” Decker asked.