Guilty Minds

32

The next day passed in a blur of meetings, congratulatory messages, debriefs at Shays Abbott. Dorothy went to visit her brother again. I sent my nephew, Gabe, a text and met him after school for a late lunch at a vegan café he liked, not far from St. Gregory’s, the private all-boys school in DC he attended and loathed. The café was a tiny place, mostly for take-out, with a few tables. I knew at a glance that I wouldn’t be eating. They featured faux meat sandwiches made out of tempeh, and soups and salads. Gabe had a veggie burger. I had coffee. I took one sip and put it down. It tasted like something brewed by someone who disapproved of coffee.

Gabe was dressed all in black, his usual fashion. He wore skinny black jeans, a studded leather belt, black Chuck Taylors, and a Bullet for My Valentine T-shirt that showed a skull adorned with red roses. The only thing different was his hair. He used to dye it jet black, but he’d let his natural dark-brown hair grow out. I guess you’d call him “emo,” though he never did the whole emo thing, the lip rings and the eye makeup and so on. His only piercing was a gold stud earring in his left ear.

He was an interesting kid. He was my brother, Roger’s, stepson, but Roger was in prison, and Gabe didn’t get along with his mother, Lauren. He was brilliant and insanely talented. He wrote and illustrated graphic novels — not comics; he was always correcting me — that were as good as anything I’d ever seen in a bookstore. He liked me a lot and I liked him. He was the closest I’d probably ever come to having a kid of my own.

He wolfed down two-thirds of his “burger” before stopping to talk. “How long have you been in town?” he asked.

“A couple of days.”

“Thanks for the heads-up,” he said, heavy on the sarcasm.

“It was a last-minute trip. Plus the case got really busy all of a sudden.”

“What’s the case?”

“You ever hear of Slander Sheet?”

He smirked. “Yeah. Piece of shit gossip website.”

“Pretty much. It was about trying to get them to take down a fraudulent piece about a Supreme Court justice.”

“I heard about that. That was you?”

“Yup. Heller Associates.”

He took another bite of his veggie burger. “Very cool.”

“How’s senior year?”

He paused. “What do you think?”

“I imagine you hate it as much as you hated junior year.”

He looked away. “More.”

“Because of the college application stuff?”

He drew a pattern on his napkin with a fingernail. After a few seconds he said, “College is for losers and suck-ups. I’m not going to college.”

“Did you apply and not get in?”

“Please. I didn’t even apply.”

“What do you mean?” I hadn’t heard anything about this from his mother. She must have been desperate.

“College is bullshit. It’s all about the admissions process. The guy who founded PayPal says college is just the final stage of a competitive tournament. The kids who get into the top colleges defeated all their, like, opponents. It’s like The Hunger Games. That’s all it is.”

I shrugged.

“It’s just a conveyor belt for upward mobility. Mark Zuckerberg dropped out of college, and so did Bill Gates and Steve Jobs. And hey, didn’t you drop out of Yale?”

“Don’t use me as an example. I dropped out to join the army. Are you planning to enlist?”

“Me? No way!”

“So maybe you’re an entrepreneur now, like Steve Jobs or Mark Zuckerberg?”

“What? No. I just refuse to be a drone. I’m not gonna join the herd.”

“Because you’re special and the rules don’t apply to you.”

He shrugged.

“There are people in the world who think the rules don’t apply to them,” I said, “and my job is to take them down.” I paused a moment. That sounded like sanctimonious crap. Surprisingly, Gabe didn’t call me on it.

Sanctimonious, maybe, but it made me think. There are people in the world who think the rules don’t apply...

Why were we looking for an organization, a group, behind the scam to take down a Supreme Court justice? Couldn’t it just as easily have been an individual with an individually tailored agenda, a highly personal reason to want to bring Claflin down? If so, that would mean looking for a different pattern of evidence.

I found myself mentally withdrawing from the conversation with Gabe, not being fully present.

An hour later I was back at the hotel making calls.

I was in the shower around six when my cell phone started ringing. I let it ring to voice mail. There was no call I was waiting for, no one I needed to talk to.

It rang again immediately, but I had a headful of shampoo, and I let it go to voice mail again.

When I was drying myself with one of the hotel’s big, very thick bath towels, the phone rang a third time.

This time I picked it up.

The caller ID showed a number with a 571 area code. It looked familiar. I decided to answer it.

“Mr. Heller?” a voice whispered.

“Yes?”

“Nicholas Heller?” Still a whisper.

“Yes?” I said again, annoyed. It sounded like a prank call.

“Mr. Heller... I’m sorry... I need your help. Please.”

“Who is this?”

“It’s Kayla.”

For a moment I wasn’t sure I’d heard correctly. “Who?”

“Kayla Pitts.”

The call girl whose lies had launched this whole thing. Of all people to hear from. How had she got my cell number? Then I remembered handing her my business card.

Her voice remained a whisper, but it sounded frantic.

“Please, help me. I think they’re going to kill me. Please. Oh, God. Please help me. No, I—”