The Unyielding Future Page 7

  I looked through our peephole and found two well-dressed men. They must have heard my approach, because they both immediately raised ID wallets to the tiny window. The letters FBI were emblazoned across the top of each badge. It hadn’t dawned on me until that very minute that kidnapping was a federal crime, yet as far as I knew only the local cops had been involved to this point. As it turns out, kidnapping is only a federal crime under some circumstances: for instance, if it goes on for more than twenty-four hours (in which interstate flight is assumed), interstate flight is confirmed, or in especially egregious situations, like when babies are kidnapped. I opened the door with a sigh of relief. Certainly, FBI agents were more experienced and professional than the local law enforcement, and I was for the moment confident that they would see reason and put things right. All I had to do was to explain to these reasonable men that I had nothing to do with Maggie Dale’s kidnapping—that all of this was a simple misunderstanding—and life would return to normal.

  Only, I had forgotten that the FBI was a part of our wonderfully efficient federal government.

  I invited the two agents (or maybe they were special agents, I don’t remember) into our kitchen, where they were eyed with a mixture of suspicion and awe by our children. My wife was all out of awe and running strong on suspicion. She asked rather pointedly to examine their IDs and then wrote down each agent’s name and badge number.

  Kirby Valle and Gordon Anderson were both experienced agents. Kirby was the younger of the two and was in his mid-forties, with Anderson at least a decade older. Both had an aura of competence and charm that immediately put me at ease. I showed them to our kitchen table and the three of us sat. After a moment Leah quietly joined us, and a single glance told me that she was far from being at ease. Her forehead was furrowed and her eyebrows were nearly touching. I’d seen this look many times before.

  “We just have a few questions for you,” Agent Valle said.

  “I have a question for you.” My lovely, demure wife interrupted the armed federal agent. Reflexively, I leaned back to get clear of the blast zone. “Where have you people been? Isn’t the FBI supposed to investigate the kidnapping of children?”

  “We have been on the scene since the beginning.” Agent Anderson answered my wife’s accusation with politeness.

  “I see. So you have allowed the local police, who couldn’t find their butts with two hands and a flashlight, to focus on my husband and a forgotten bottle of PowerAde instead of looking for whoever really took the child?” Small patches of red began to appear across her face and throat.

  “That’s not entirely true, but yes your husband is a part of the investigation.” Anderson was still polite, but all I heard was that I was still a part of the investigation. I suddenly felt betrayed and realized that that despite their fancy suits and practiced charm they were no more competent than the local cops.

  “For God’s sake, you work for the FBI! You’re trained to think critically and should be able to see right through my coincidental involvement, instead of mindlessly following bread-crumbs.” I wanted to add in a few expletives, but turned away instead. I had two thoughts at that moment. The first was that if this was the caliber of police work Maggie Dale and her parents could expect, there was no chance she would ever be found. The second, which to my shame caused more fear and concern, was much more personal. I was being railroaded. With all the resources available to the combined forces of the FBI and Austin police department, they had managed to uncover only two potential clues: a power failure (that was the logical conclusion for the gaps in the video surveillance—portions of Circle C and the nearby gas station were on the same electrical grid, which took me less than ten minutes on the computer to figure out), and a forgotten bottle of sports drink, and they were determined to make the most out of what they thought they had.

  “I can’t tell if you people are just stupid or malicious.” Leah’s face was mostly red now. All three of our children, who were pretending not to listen in the next room, suddenly hushed at their parents’ open disrespect of an authority figure. I thought I could just hear our son whisper Yes! and I imagined him pumping his arm.

  “I assure you we are neither,” Anderson answered, without any visible evidence of having taken offense. He managed to maintain a completely impassive expression, but survived only a moment of Leah’s withering stare. Abruptly, he turned back to me in an attempt to cut off any further comments from her. I smiled. In my mind I said Yes! and pumped my arm, as Leah’s comment had indeed hit home. “I have read the statement you gave detectives Sharpe and Willis. I know that you say you didn’t see anyone or anything . . .” His voice suddenly irritated me. It sounded like the character Lumbergh in the movie Office Space. Each time he paused, he drew out the last syllable of the last word. “Do you remember if you looked into the woods?” Gary Cole is the actor who played Bill Lumbergh, and my mind had superimposed his picture on Anderson’s face.

  “Righhhht. Did I go see anything in the wooooddds?” I looked up at the ceiling and stroked my chin in a dramatic display of thought. I know it was puerile and an inappropriate thing to do, considering the gravity of the situation, which is exactly why I did it. When humans become stressed, a portion of the brain called the thalamus becomes activated. To be more specific, a portion of the thalamus, the reticular nucleus, becomes activated. The reticular nucleus is the thalamus’ amplifier, and when stimulated every sensation, thought, and emotion is sharpened. For most people, it’s why time seems to slow down. For some, it’s why they think faster; for others, it means that they cry more readily; for me, it means that I laugh at inappropriate times. Okay, I’m odd. “Nooo. I can’t say that I diiiid.” My wife knew exactly what I was doing and threw me a wicked look.

  “Is there any reason that you would have gone into the woods that morning?” Anderson ignored my Lumbergh impression and continued with his own.

  My unusual affect did not impair my cognitive ability. I immediately made the connection between the Austin police asking if I had gone into the woods, then taking my shoes, and now the FBI asking me the same question. I actually did pause a moment and tried to remember that morning. On very rare occasions I will make a pit stop in the woods, to visit a tree, shall we say. But not so close to the fence line, and never so close to the gas station’s bathroom (I like peeing outside as much as the next guy, but I do actually prefer indoor plumbing). “No, I did not go in the woods that morning.” I tried to sound definitive, but, truth be told, I couldn’t remember. “Let me guess. You found foot prints in the woods that match mine.” I dropped my Lumbergh and shook my head.

  “We did find a number of footprints, but we have not yet been able to make a definitive match.” Anderson said. Kirby Valle silently sat at the table studying me. We made eye contact briefly, and I almost told him that compared to Adis his intimidation technique was laughable. “We were hoping you could help clear some of this up.”

  “How? I already told you that I didn’t see anything and I didn’t go into the woods.” The way things had been going, it came as a shock that they hadn’t found footprints with my name and address on them. I looked at Leah, and her expression was one of barely contained anger. It’s a fact that after years of marriage you begin to adopt some of your spouse’s habits and temperaments. Leah returned my gaze, and I felt her pull me towards the dark emotional side. For as long as I have known her she has always worn her emotions on her sleeve (I would insert a comment here about it being a consequence of her gender, but that would sound way to sexist), and over the years I have consciously tried to resist the tendency to react more with my heart than with my brain. Some days I’m more successful than others, but this wasn’t one of those days. “Look, you clearly have a reason to be here, and it isn’t about me going into the woods. Sharpe and the other guy . . .” At the moment I couldn’t remember Lewis Willis’s name. “They went through this already. I told them and now I’m telling you: I did not go into the woods! ” My voice was raised,
but not loud enough to obscure my inner voice that said I think. “Now, tell me that the two of you didn’t drive down here just to ask me the same questions I’ve already answered.”

  Anderson remained impassive. “No, we didn’t just drive down here to ask you the same questions. We were hoping that perhaps you remembered something that you didn’t share with the detectives.”

  “I remember exactly what happened.” Okay so in truth I didn’t remember exactly what happened, but this was not the time to hedge. “I shared everything that happened with the detectives, nothing more and nothing less.” I looked at my wife, whose expression had softened just a bit now that I was carrying some of the emotional load. “You can’t possibly believe that just because I ran by that little girl’s house I’m a suspect in her kidnapping?”

  Anderson stared at me the same way I stare at an MRI of the brain. Leah and I waited for him to respond, but he kept right on staring. Finally, he shifted in his chair. “Noooo.” his Lumbergh accent was more noticeable. “No, I don’t think you are a suspect. But I also think that somehow you are involved.”

  Leah and I exchanged a look of What the hell does that mean? It was her turn to take the lead. “What the hell does that mean?” I heard another hush from our children and then some not so concealed giggling.

  “It means I do not believe in coincidences, and I can’t help but notice that in the last two weeks you, Doctor—” he was addressing me and trying to avoid my wife’s glare “—have been involved, however peripherally, with both the incident at the high school and now the disappearance of Maggie Dale.”

  In a moment of clarity, I saw things from Anderson’s point of view, and it did look suspicious, odd, and unexplained. Of course, those three adjectives perfectly describe Adis, who began to float through my mind and I’m sure Leah’s as well. Possibly also Kirby Valle’s; maybe that’s why he just sat there staring at me. “That’s true, but I still don’t understand what you mean when you say you think that somehow I am involved.”

  “I haven’t sorted that out yet. Call it an educated guess, or a hunch, if you like.” He continued to study me, but not with so much intensity. I stared back. I understood hunches, or educated guesses. It may come as a surprise to many that more than a few important medical and even surgical decisions are made at a gut level. We try to project to the world that we physicians are driven only by data—that the practice of medicine is a science—but it’s more of an art. I, too, will look at a situation and form a purely subjective opinion, and often that opinion will conflict with our objective science. Like Anderson, I had learned to trust my gut.

  Leah’s scowl, which until recently had been reserved only for me or our children, twisted into incredulity. “So, the Federal Bureau of Investigation has connected the wackos who tried to blow up a school to a kidnapper of a four-year-old girl because my husband is peripherally involved with both cases? I never realized he was that important.” She patted my hand, and I smiled, relieved that she finally accepted what I had been telling her for years. “If this is the kind of thinking that my tax dollars are paying for, I want them back.”

  Anderson now smiled. “I will pass your request on to the IRS.” He turned to Valle as if to communicate that he had seen enough, and it dawned on me that that was the real purpose of this evening’s visit. Anderson and Valle needed to lay eyes on me, to size me up at a gut level.

  Valle finally spoke. “Well, I think we’ve taken up enough of your evening.” All four of us stood, which made Nitrox, who had been watching us from the laundry room, huff loudly.

  “Did you get what you came for?” Leah’s voice was hard. “Is my husband the most inept kidnapper in history or an evil mastermind?”

  “I doubt he’s either.” Anderson answered. “And no, I did not get what I came for. To be honest, I had hoped for one or the other.”

  “So no more person of interest,” I followed up.

  “I wouldn’t go that far.” We locked eyes for a moment. “At some level, you are involved, whether you know it or not, but right now that’s not important. Our only priority is bringing a little girl home, and I don’t think you can help make that happen.”

  The memory of Anderson staring back at me has stuck with me for almost a year now. It wasn’t what he said—he was merely stating the obvious; in fact, it probably had nothing at all do with the FBI agent at all—but as soon as he finished I felt something outside of my normal five senses shift. Remember that I routinely assess my psychic abilities and routinely find them nonexistent, but for the first time in my life a part of me had connected with something beyond my limited concept of reality. Something enormous. I could almost feel the giant gears of an impossibly large mechanism begin to spin because some imaginary trip wire had been triggered.

  My adrenergic nervous system (the fight-or-flight system) must have been clicked into overdrive, because just after we closed the door on the FBI agents Leah turned to me and asked if I was OK. I had broken out into a light sweat, and goose-pimples ran down my back and both arms. I hesitated in our foyer as she rubbed my arms (for the record we are not foyer people; I always thought a foyer was an entrance way until a real estate agent corrected me; now I know that a foyer is the little space in front of the front door that doesn’t have any carpet).

  “Somebody just walked over my grave,” I said, and Leah immediately understood. I had first heard that expression from her father when we were dating, but Leah had grown up with it. “One of the last things Anderson said, that I couldn’t help bring the little girl home . . . Did that strike you in any way?”

  “Like you weren’t involved? I don’t know what you mean.” She looked up at me, and I was glad to see that her expression was one of concern and not the scowl she had worn for the last thirty-six hours.

  “Something I can’t easily put into words. If I were a character in a Star Wars movie I would have said that there was a disturbance in the force.”

  “Somebody did walk over your grave. I thought you didn’t like Star Wars? ” She kissed me on the cheek and turned back to the kitchen calling to the children to set the table. The moment was over.

  Chapter Eight