A Murder of Crows (15 page)

The door opened and Yslan entered. He handed her his notes.

Another taped interview came on the screen. He tapped his pen against the pad and waited. Finally he said, “I don't need to see these opening questions. I don't need a baseline like some kinesics person. Just cut to the chase. Ask them if they had any knowledge of or participated in any way in the bombing at Ancaster College.”

“Yeah, well.” Yslan paused. “We didn't know that, so you're going to have to sit through the entire thing.”

“How many have I done?”

“Twenty-one so far.”

“How many are there?”

“So far they've completed two hundred and seventy.”

“And how many are they going to do?”

“As many as they need to, Mr. Roberts.”

“Give me a ballpark figure.”

“Say six hundred, give or take three hundred.”

Decker let out a low whistle then said, “Next.”

Yslan said, “Enough for now. Get your coat.”

“Why?”

“We're going on a field trip.”

* * *

The low-hanging sun's light glinted off the windshield as Yslan sped the government-issued Buick through the upper New York State countryside.

“I thought I was here to help with Viola Tripping.”

Yslan tipped down her sunglasses so her translucent blue eyes were staring right into Decker's. “You're here to do whatever the fuck we want you to do.” She flipped back up her sunglasses and turned left without bothering to signal.

“Well, that's fair.”

“Try to get it through your head that you work for us.”

“I don't work for anyone.”

Mr. T, who was sitting behind him in the backseat of the car, grunted some sort of response, then moved a heavy duffel bag on the seat beside him. Then he grunted again.

Decker turned to look at him. “I knew I shouldn't have given you that dictionary.”

“What?” Mr. T said.

“Lenny Bruce.”

“Who?”

“Never mind.”

“Enough, Mr. Roberts. Think of it as you're on our team.”

“I'm not on your team—or any team.”

“Not even Seth's team?”

“That's subtle.”

“More than two hundred people are dead; I've had it with subtle. Get it?”

“Yeah. I got it.”

“I hope they'll have made the site safe for you and Ms. Tripping soon.”

“Okay. So where are we going now?”

“To a junkyard.”

“Sounds like fun.”

“Shut up.”

“More subtlety.”

“You're just here to tell us whether this guy's lying.”

“I only know when someone's telling the truth. Got it?”

“Yeah, I get that. But as I said, from here on in you shut up.”

The rest of the drive was done in silence. The rolling countryside was recovering from yet another harsh winter. Beneath some of the trees and in the depths of some of the ditches there were still patches of snow and ice locked in the brown leaves.

As they drove away from the college, things changed—rural, impoverished America reasserted itself on the landscape. Those who had been left out of the economic miracle, who watched on their TVs the lives of others. Decker felt for them and was appalled by them: their overarching religiosity, their clannishness, and their deep distrust of “city folks”—read liberals.

The junkyard was right on the side of the road. Nothing but a cheap chain-link fence separated it from the blacktop—and, oh yes, there were two snarling German shepherd guard dogs. B film here we come. Then right out of central casting, a grizzled overalled man in his late twenties or early fifties—it was hard for Decker to tell—shooed away the dogs and opened the gate for them. He turned his back and walked through the piles of junk to the north side of his lot. He stopped in front of what used to be the front seat of a Subaru.

“So, on the phone you said you wanted to show me something.”

Mr. T unzipped the heavy duffel bag he'd been carrying and dumped the contents on the ground. Maybe two hundred pounds of metal scrap.

“Could this have come from your yard, Mr. Johnston?” Yslan asked.

“Johnson, not Johnston.”

“Sorry,” Yslan said. “Could this have come from your yard, Mr. Johnson?”

“Is this from that—”

“Just answer my question, Mr. Johnson.”

“Sure. It could have. It also could have come from somewhere or anywhere else, too.”

“Do you sell—” Yslan didn't complete her question because Johnson pointed behind her to a pile of metal scrap perhaps nine feet tall and twenty feet in diameter.

Yslan blinked back her surprise then asked, “Have you sold any of it—”

“Lately? Nah. Business is bad.”

Yslan looked at Decker. He opened his eyes and asked, “May I speak?”

“Sure.”

“He's telling the truth but—”

“Thank you, Mr. Johnson.”

“Sure,” he said and spat out something viscous and brown that had been in his cheek.

As Mr. T packed up the metal scraps Yslan turned to go. Decker caught up to her. “Can I speak again?”

“That guy was telling the truth. Right?”

“Yeah, but only to that question.”

“What?”

“Ask him if he's
ever
sold some of that scrap.” Yslan stopped and looked at him. “Then ask him if he remembers the last person who bought scrap metal from him. Then ask if he knows that person's name. Your questions have to be precise for me to help you. This works best if there's a simple progression.” Before Yslan could question that, he added, “Don't ask me why.”

She turned and headed back toward the trailer where they'd first seen Johnson. As they approached the dogs began to growl.

Johnson stepped out of the trailer. “Now what?”

“People come here sometimes to buy scrap metal?”

“Yeah—that's why I keep it. I don't use it to decorate.”

“Do you remember the last person who bought some?”

“Yeah, I guess.”

Yslan looked at Decker.

“Do you remember, Mr. Johnson?” Decker demanded.

“Yeah.”

“Do you know the person's name?”

“No. This is a junkyard, not an antique shop.”

Yslan looked at Decker. Squiggly lines on his retinal screen. He shook his head.

“Mr. Johnson, I'm a federal agent. We are investigating the killing of hundreds of people.”

“At the fancy college, right?”

“Right.”

“Maybe they got what they deserved.”

“That's not the point, Mr. Johnson.”

“Really?”

“What did the guy look like who bought the scrap from you?”

He spat on the ground again, this time much closer to Yslan's foot than was necessary. “He looked like a girl is what he looked like. Tits and everything.”

VALERY PALMER ADJUSTED HER BRA FOR THE HUNDREDTH TIME
that day. Since she'd found that lump—even though they claimed it was benign—she'd been unable for some reason to wear a bra that didn't pull or itch or just damned well hurt.

After another effort she gave up, turned on the acetylene and lit her welding torch. The flame was instantly reflected in the hundreds of metal surfaces of the huge sculpture she was working on.

Yslan approached with Mr. T behind her and Decker at her side. “Ms. Palmer?” she asked.

Valery Palmer turned her whole body in the direction of the voice, which momentarily pointed the lit torch right at Yslan's chest.

Then she snapped it off and flipped up her welding mask, allowing her blond hair to fall to her strong shoulders. “Yes, I'm Valery Palmer—to my student, Professor Palmer.”

Decker noted the use of the singular “student.”

Yslan introduced herself then said, “You're not all that easy to find.”

“Well, I'm the only fine-arts faculty member of the only fine-arts department on this science campus, so they kinda hide me away.”

“That must be—”

“Nah. But I'm only here because they can't legally get rid of me. Twenty years ago two graduates from the school set up a trust fund that had to be spent on a fine-arts faculty member. They wanted there to be at least some contact with the arts for these science nerds. Seems that they missed contact with what they called the ‘other world.' So here I am—in the far-off corner.”

Yslan nodded.

“So, what can I do for you folks?”

“Mr. Johnson from the junkyard said that you bought scrap metal from him.”

Valery pointed at the sculpture and said, “Yep. By the carload.”

“Did you use all the scrap you bought?”

“Well, not all.”

“Why not all?”

Valery leaned down and picked up a few pieces of scrap from around the statue. “Cause I make mistakes sometimes. Or I change my mind. Or I make mistakes and I change my mind.”

“You mentioned a student.”

“My one and only student. Poor kid takes a razzing from his buds. The college doesn't even credit it as an elective.”

“Can we have his name?”

“Sure.”

AS YSLAN INTERROGATED THE YOUNG MAN, DECKER LOOKED AT
the two large Dylan posters on either side of the kid's closet. One before his Evangelical transformation, one after. Both had “Highway 61” marked in thick red felt pen across them. Decker opened the kid's closet and was surprised to see a fine reproduction of an early Mark Rothko painting. In the back of the closet he found a large portfolio of the young man's etchings, each one an effort to reach toward Rothko—just as Richard Dreyfuss's sculptures in
Close Encounters of the Third Kind
reached toward what he had seen in his dream.

Over his shoulder he heard Yslan demanding an answer to a question.

“Am I a suspect or something? Do I need a lawyer?”

Decker turned back to look at the art student. He wasn't cowering, but he was clearly frightened.

“Just answer this,” Decker said. “Did you ever take scrap metal from Valery Palmer's studio?”

“You mean Professor Palmer?”

Decker looked at him oddly—there was something here.

“Yes, Professor Palmer.”

“I never took anything from her.”

Decker closed his eyes. He felt a solid shot of cold then something metal in his hand and blood between his fingers. Random lines crossed his retinal screen. “That's not a truth,” he said as he looked at his empty right hand.

“What is this? Just because I took a class with her, I'm guilty of something
?
”

Of something
, Decker thought, then he signalled to Yslan that he wanted to ask another question and she nodded. “Are you having an affair with Professor Palmer?”

“No. I mean, why's that important? But no. No, I'm not.”

Decker didn't need to close his eyes to know that the young man was lying.

Throwing her arms up in the air with a “what-the-fuck” gesture clear for all to see, Yslan turned and left the room.

When Yslan was gone, Decker reopened the closet and pointed at the Rothko print. “Have you been to his chapel in Houston?”

“No. Am I in trouble? I just—”

“Yeah. No. I don't think you're in trouble. I think you're looking for something.” He pointed to the Rothko a second time and said, “Houston—you might find it in Houston.”

* * *

Outside the dorm, Decker met up with Yslan, who was clearly upset.

“What?” Decker prompted.

“This whole thing! Rich, entitled students. Destitute townies serving them. Older women having affairs with students! Jeez! You taught in a university for a while, didn't you?”

“Yeah. At the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill for a bit and then up in Toronto at York.”

“And did shit like this go on there?”

Decker took a breath. “I didn't fit in well at universities, so my opinion of them is jaundiced. Look, did you go to college, Special Agent Hicks?” Decker asked.

“State school.”

“Well, this isn't a state school. This is an elite institution for the elite in this country. This country is wealthy because of the brain power that schools like this produce.”

“You went to an elite institution like this, didn't you, Mr. Roberts?”

“For grad school, yes. You know I did.”

“So you know more about how they work than we do.”

“By the end of his or her first semester any freshman knows more about how these places work than you and the NSA do. There's bound to be an old codger in the town who can fill in some details for you. These places usually have an amateur historian—often he was the local newspaper's editor, and since he doesn't teach he wouldn't have been at the graduation.”

Yslan nodded and checked her BlackBerry. After a bit of scrolling she said, “Yvgeny Smukler.”

YVGENY SMUKLER SAT BEHIND HIS PAPER-LITTERED DESK IN AN
old office in a converted industrial building. There was no computer in evidence and not a single empty space on his floor-to-ceiling bookshelves.

“I am the living history of this place, Special Agent. A fossil that refuses to sink into the mud.”

As Yslan made nice-nice, Decker took in the man. He was not an old academic, although he emulated one. He didn't have a pipe, corduroy slacks and leather patches on a well-worn tweed jacket, but he might as well have. Decker had always found such people either the very best that Calvinist America could produce or the very worst. In this case he withheld judgement, although he was surprised that the man was not as distraught as one would expect him to be over the killing of so many of his fellow residents of this small town.