North of Boston (19 page)

“You tapped my phone,” I say.

“No, I didn't.”

“You did. You broke into my apartment and tapped my phone because you thought I was working with Ocean Catch. You probably stole my computer files, too.”

“I didn't, I swear.”

“Then how'd you know you could get into Ocean Catch easily tonight, when the cleaners were there? You heard the message on my machine.”

“I did. That's true. But I didn't break into your apartment. You gave me your phone number at the café. . . .”

“So?”

“I got remote access to your answering machine. It's easy to do when you know how.”

“So you heard the message from Mrs. Smith.”

“Is that her name? She sounded old.”

“What else did you hear?”

He looks embarrassed, and I try to recall how many times the Married Guy called and what nonsense he might have talked. It's a stupid thing to worry about right now. But still. A bigger worry: if Parnell didn't break into my apartment, I still don't know who did.

He pours the coffee, and I wrap my fingers around the mug. It's cold in the apartment, and the warmth feels nice. “You're not safe here. You have to move. John Oster won't quit until he gets what he's looking for. Take my word for it. He'll be back.”

He sits across from me, showing no reaction to what I just said. “What about you? Did he see you tonight?”

“I don't think so. The high beams were blinding him, then the air bag was covering me.”

“How much does he know about your involvement?”

“Not that much, actually. I went to him and asked him some questions when the Coast Guard couldn't identify the freighter involved in the collision. I was frustrated with all the bureaucracy. He said he'd done his own private investigation and was satisfied that the collision was a hit-and-run.” I sip my coffee, rack my brain for more details. “Come to think of it, he did ask about you, pointedly—more than once, in fact. Luckily, I couldn't remember the last name you were using. I think he was satisfied that I didn't know you. Since he didn't see me tonight, he has no reason to suspect that you and I have talked. And unless he got access to my answering machine as well, he'd have no way of knowing that I've spoken to Mrs. Smith. We only met privately on two occasions, and I doubt anyone saw us.”

I give Parnell a sly smile, pleased at the idea that I'm flying under Johnny's radar. “As far as John Oster's concerned, I'm just a woman he used to know who happened to be fishing with Ned that day, and the only reason I was asking him questions at all is that I'm easily annoyed with bureaucracy.” I stretch my legs. It feels like a long time since I've moved my body freely. “He must have found you somehow and followed you over there tonight.”

“Yeah, I guess,” Parnell says grudgingly. He's not about to give Johnny credit for anything.

“He knows where you live. Which means that you've got to get out of here.”

He shrugs with apparent indifference, but I can see that he's trying to get his head around the idea of moving out.

“What else do you think he knows about you?” I ask.

“Not sure. The whole time they were assaulting me, they kept asking who I was working for.”

“What did you say?”

“Nothing.”

“Who are you working for?”

“No one.”

“What's your interest in all this?”

“Like I said, I'm a journalist.”

“You're going to a lot of trouble to get a story.”

“It's my job.”

“Right.” It's hard to believe that journalistic ambition alone would motivate someone to break into an office in the middle of the night. But what do I know? Maybe he fancies himself an ecological Woodward or Bernstein. Outside the narrow window, a milky bone of light is lying on the horizon. This night is ending, finally. It's been a long one. I want to go home and vegetate in total undisturbed quiet, but I'm also very hungry, so when Parnell asks if I want something to eat, I say yes.

While he's frying eggs, I look through the whale book, rife with four-color photos and informative captions. I learn that the species' Latin name is
Eubalaena glacialis
. Early New England whalers called them right whales because they were considered the right ones to hunt. They're huge: forty to eighty tons of bone, warm blood, and blubber, with a maw that can swallow entire schools of fish. But toothless, nearly blind, and strikingly unbeautiful as whales go. A caption tells me that the purpose of the unsightly white crusts on their heads is unknown. Apparently, they like to press their crowns into the sea floor, and the scaly patches may actually be scabs. Why do they do it? I wonder. Self-destructive urges? Itchy scalp? Repeated fruitless attempts to bury themselves in a whale's game of hide-and-seek? Their strange behavior makes me like them, the way you like a helplessly eccentric friend.

Parnell is holding a plate of fried eggs and toast in front of me. I close the book and, when I lean down to put it on the floor, its paper jacket slips off. I open the cover to slip it back on and find myself looking at a pasted bookplate on the otherwise blank first page. In the middle of the bookplate are the printed words
From the library of . . .
The name handwritten in blue pen under that is
Jaeger
.

I nearly fall off the chair.

“You all right?” he asks.

“Fine,” I say, sitting upright.

“You like over easy, I hope.” He slides the plate in front of me.

There's a din filling my ears. I mumble something about having to get home.

“Right now?”

“I have to.”

“Can I give you a ride?”

“I'll take the T.”

“Sure?”

“I like the T. And your car doesn't work.” I sound idiotic.

“At least eat first,” he says.

I nod moronically, scarf down the eggs, stuff the toast into my mouth, chew like a crazy woman, smile insanely, and gulp the last of the coffee. As I'm stumbling out the door, he hands me the whale book. “Here. Take it with you. And thanks for saving my life.”

“Oh, it was nothing. Glad I could be there.” Now we both sound idiotic.

My heart is hot and pounding as I run down the flights. I can almost hear Milosa laughing. See where sympathy got you? In bed with the enemy, your brain and everything you know about the situation picked over like a bone.

I get to the marble vestibule that leads to the street. High ceilings, old brass mailboxes, a gilt and crystal chandelier. If a person happened to be cornered in this small space, she wouldn't have anywhere to run. Johnny and his pals hightailed it out of the seaport district, but who's to say they didn't circle back to follow us and are waiting outside now?

A narrow stairway leads to the basement. I hurry down it. A damp smell, washers and dryers, a racing bike padlocked to a heating pipe. A back exit to an alleyway. Two minutes later I'm walking along a cool, quiet street, headed toward Haymarket Station. There are chrysanthemum pots on the stoops. The aromas of coffee and fresh-baked bread come from the open window of a café.

T
he first thing I do when I get home is google Russell Parnell. Six or seven identities pop up. One is a journalist who's published about twenty articles in places like
Vanity Fair
, the
New York Times
, and
Salon.com, as well as smaller newspapers, magazines, and Web sites. Most of his work appears to be travel essays, but he's also covered medical developments—genetics, psychiatry, microbial pathogens, SARS—and there are a few environmental pieces on such things as the clear-cutting of the Amazonian rain forest and the cleanup of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill.

I check Images and get four pretty good photos: a distant image of him with close-cropped hair and a pencil-thin black tie, shaking hands with someone at the podium of a journalists' organization; an author photo from the contributors' section of a hip new magazine; a head-on shot of a guy in a bike race in the desert, his face hidden by a helmet and highly reflective diamond-shaped sunglasses, but the chin the right shape to be his. The fourth photo is unexpected: a staged engagement shot in which he's positioned over the shoulder of a saucer-eyed, full-bodied brunette. They're neither good-looking nor bad-looking, and can't be more than twenty-two. Both are smiling with the openness of psychologically healthy young adults. I find the image touching, and sad. Did she die? Are they divorced? More cybersleuthing leads me to a professional site for networking journalists, where I discover that he went to San Luis Obispo High School and Columbia University, and that his full name is Russell Alejandro Parnell. I google
Parnell
and
Jaeger
simultaneously and get nothing.

I slog through a busy day at work on autopilot. In the evening I go over Parnell's articles one by one. For several I can get full-text versions by subscribing to the publication. I do, which takes a boring hour of filling out required fields and creating passwords. I make coffee while the articles are printing, and finally sit down on the couch to read about the disappearing rain forest, the alarming spread of antibiotic-resistant pathogens, and modern-day treatment of the severely mentally ill.

About three-quarters of the way through the article on mental health, I run across a case history of a young Hispanic woman who married a prominent American businessman. A year into the marriage, the twenty-year-old woman set fire to their house. She spent several months at a privately owned mental hospital on Cape Cod before being transferred to a supervised group home where she lived for two years. Here, her medications were closely monitored, and she received help with the chores of daily living. She was re-admitted to the hospital whenever her symptoms became unmanageable. Her husband assumed the financial support of her immediate family members, who stayed in close contact with her and saw to all her needs.

She had agreed to be interviewed on the condition that she remain anonymous. Then twenty-four, she told Parnell that she was grateful for all the care she had received. She was lucky to have the support of a devoted family and a generous, protective husband. So many people with her terrible disease had much harder roads. Her life was simple but satisfying. She lived with a sister in a small house in Falmouth. Her sister drove her to appointments and made sure she took her meds. She worked at a Falmouth thrift store weekday mornings, and enjoyed reading in her spare time, although the medications she was taking made it hard for her to concentrate for very long. She regretted setting the fire that put her and her husband's lives at risk. The allegations she'd made at that time were completely false, she told Parnell. “Everything I said then was just a symptom of my disease.”

Parnell's article concluded with the good news that her story and other stories like hers offered hope to thousands that one of the world's most frightening diseases could be brought under control.

I toss the pages on the table with some dismay. At least Parnell's other articles were interesting. This one's pretty bland.

My coffee's cold, so I go into the kitchen to refill my cup. It's ten p.m., too late for caffeine, but I didn't sleep at all last night and am so tired that there's not much chance the caffeine will keep me up. I toast a bagel and slice a cantaloupe. You can never have too many breakfasts. When I'm done eating, I take a shower, put on sweatpants and a clean T-shirt, braid my wet hair so that when it dries it will be wavy, and water the African violet on my windowsill. I'm thinking, but I don't know what. My sluggish brain just keeps turning over the same words:
Fairy tale. Princess bride.
Then the neurons connect.

I go back to my computer, and in a few keyboard strokes, I've pulled up the tabloid story I saw before about Bob Jaeger's schizophrenic wife, and linked to a local news video from June 2009.

Now things get more interesting. Apparently, Jaeger's wife, Caridad, had spent the first months of her treatment in a Cape Cod psychiatric hospital insisting she was sane. Her appeals to the hospital administration, the Physician Review Board, and the governor's office went unanswered. Her immigrant parents were unable to marshal effective support. Still, her entreaties continued. She managed to call a local television station from a hospital pay phone. The TV crew that showed up at the hospital was denied admittance, but she was spotted in a third-story window, banging on the panes, and ten seconds of video were recorded before she was led away. The station ended up doing a short news segment that juxtaposed color photos of her lavish society wedding, stark pictures of the fire-damaged mansion, and a dark, grainy image of her contorted face behind the hospital window's safety bars. Her husband refused to comment; her doctor could not be reached.

The tabloids ran with the story, adding paparazzi photos of the husband relaxing on yachts and golf courses. His conglomerate's international holdings were listed in a sidebar, along with estimates of his wealth. Soon after, he issued a public statement: the medical record showed conclusively that his wife had been diagnosed with acute schizophrenia. She was receiving the best, most humane treatment available. It was a tragic and deeply private family affair.

At this point I'm willing to bet that the patient featured in Parnell's recent article and Caridad Jaeger are one and the same. I need to know how and why he chose her, and whether his connection is only to her or also to Bob. Which Jaeger does the whale book belong to? Is Russell Parnell somehow part of Jaeger's team?

My one lead: a thrift store in Falmouth, Massachusetts. I search and discover that there's only one thrift store in Falmouth. Driving time: 1 hour, 27 minutes. I call my office, leave a message explaining that I won't be in tomorrow, and set two alarms for 6 a.m. so I'm sure to wake up.

—

The Heavenly Afterlife is housed in a former barn not far from the town center. Just inside the wide doorway, a mannequin greets visitors, hips canted, hand raised in a Queen Elizabeth parade wave. The mannequin is wearing a mink stole, elbow-length white gloves, and a pillbox hat with a peek-a-boo veil. Nothing else. Clustered around her are a John Deere lawn mower, a vintage snow sled, and a four-foot inflatable Easter bunny with fat buck teeth. Maybe not the best work environment for a person trying to keep a grip on reality. But what do I know?

Inside, four or five aisles stretch from a bright front area into a shadowy back. Used lamps and blenders, tattered books and games, cracked statues, and God knows what are stacked on tables. Rugs, furniture, and kitchen appliances are stockpiled in the rear. It looks as if a good portion of the “ten thousand things” that Lao-tzu wrote about have been gathered here. An obese woman with an incongruously elfin face is sitting behind the cash register, following me steadily with her eyes. Another employee is working about halfway down the wide center aisle, unpacking crockery and arranging it on a table. Midtwenties, small-boned, about thirty pounds heavier now than she was in her wedding pictures. Caridad Jaeger.

I smile at the cashier. “I'm looking for plates.”

She nods toward the middle of the store.

A few feet from Mrs. Jaeger, I stop to pick up a thirties-era creamer. It's so sweet, I actually might buy it. I hold it up. “Do you have the matching sugar bowl?”

She frowns, comes to where I'm standing, surveys the table. “I thought we did. Let's see.” She begins sifting through some old dishes and serving bowls. She's maybe an inch shorter than I am, with hair as black as mine. It's greasy, pulled back, with stray pieces curling behind her ears. Her eyelashes are long and sweeping, and her nose is perfectly formed. Tiny gold hoops in her ears, the kind little girls wear.

“I thought we did,” she repeats. “But I don't see it.”

“I'm looking for a refrigerator, too.”

“I can show them to you.”

“Please.”

She walks to the rear of the store very slowly, as if to underscore the fact that there's no need to rush in the Afterlife. At the end of the aisle, we turn a corner, moving out of visual range of the cashier, and she stops in front of a green Frigidaire.

“Interesting color,” I say.

“It's avocado.”

“I was thinking of white.”

“Oh.” She takes a few steps along the row. “Here's one. A Maytag.”

She's wearing jeans and a gray hooded UMass sweatshirt a few sizes too large. Her thumbs fit through holes in the cuffs of the sleeves, making a kind of half glove. Her fingers are dirty; her shoulders slump.

“They're usually thirty or thirty-six inches wide,” she says. “What size were you looking for?”

“I'm not sure. I'll have to go home and measure.”

“You're supposed to leave an inch on either side. And you have to decide whether you want the door to open on the left or the right.”

Her eyes are acorn brown, listless. She's not really present. Whether it's disease, medication, or defensive numbing, I can't tell. I only know that I'm flooded with a deep, cold sadness. Too many people leave this world before their lives have even begun.

She's uncomfortable with the way I'm looking at her. “Do you want something else?”

“I'm also interested in whales.”

“What?”

“The North Atlantic right whale. Would you happen to know anything about them?”

“What?” Her lip is trembling. I see now that her mouth is full and tender.

“I was looking for a book, actually,” I say. “I have this one, and I'd like to find another like it.” I remove the whale book from my satchel.

Her eyes go wide, as if she's received an electric jolt. She puts a hand on the Maytag door. Doesn't open it, just holds the handle. The other hand reaches for a small gold cross at her neck.

“Where'd you get it?” she asks.

“Russell Parnell.”

“Oh.” She releases the refrigerator door and pushes her hair behind her ear self-consciously. “Did he give it to you?” Her casual voice betrays her disappointment.

“It's just a loan.” I place the book on a table, as if to disown it somewhat.

She puts her hand on the cover, fingers spread, a gesture both tender and resigned. “It was supposed to be just for him. For something we talked about, just us.”

“So the nameplate—” I open the front cover to show it. But I already know the answer.

“I always put my name in my books. Because they're mine.” She sighs. “This one was my gift to Alejandro.”

“Alejandro?” Then I remember Parnell's middle name from the Web site.

“He was so nice to me. He believed everything I told him.”

Something clicks. “Others didn't believe you.”

“Of course not. I'm very sick. My sickness tells me lies, and I tell them to others. I don't even know what's true.”

“But Alejandro believed you.”

“Yes.” Her beautiful mouth relaxes into a smile. “He's one of the angels. I pray for him every day.” She drifts for a few moments, then her chin juts out belligerently. “Who are you?”

“I'm a friend of Alejandro's. We were talking about . . . about these whales. And a company, a fish company that's . . . Well, it's doing some suspicious things.” I'm not sure how much to say. “He showed me the book, and when I saw the nameplate with just the last name, I wasn't sure whether the book had come from you or—”

“No. Don't say his name.” Her eyes dart up the aisle. “He's everywhere, like the devil. He'll make you crazy, give you shocks.” She lowers her voice and raises a dirty, delicate hand. “If you listen, you can hear him buzz.”

I listen quietly and hear humming fluorescent lights.

She rears back, her eyes suddenly wide and frozen at the sight of something behind me.

I whirl around, half expecting to see Bob Jaeger himself. But it's only the dumpy cashier standing at the end of the center aisle. “Caridad, what are you doing?” She pronounces it
Carrie-dead
.