The Program

Chapter three

Tim worked the phone on the drive up the coast, networking through contacts and eventually placing calls to the Leo J. Ryan Foundation, the Cult Information Service, and the American Family Foundation. When he informed the phone counselors that he needed to bring his teenager in for postcult therapy in Los Angeles, the same name topped all three referral lists: Dr. Glen Bederman, a UCLA psychology professor, one of the country's foremost cult authorities.

Tim dialed the number, keeping an eye on the winding road.

"You've reached the office of Glen Bederman. If this is a harassing phone call, please leave all slurs and deprecations after the beep. If you're suing me, please phone my lawyer, Jake C. Caruthers, directly at 471-9009. Process servers looking to locate me, here is my calendar for the week…" Listening to Bederman's lecture schedule and office hours, Tim couldn't help but smile. "I'd like to close with Articles Five and Eighteen of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights: No one shall be subjected to torture or cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment, and everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience, and religion. Good day."

After the prolonged beep that indicated a surfeit of messages, Tim introduced himself briefly and mentioned he'd try to catch up with the professor later that day.

Next he reached the postal inspector in charge of San Fernando -a nasally voiced fellow who introduced himself as Owen B. Rutherford.

"Yes," Rutherford said with thinly disguised irritation, "I recall fielding questions about this particular already."

"I was just wondering if you'd consider -"

"You should know better, Deputy. Bring me a warrant and I'll arrange a time to see to your concerns."

"Look, work with me here a little. I don't have enough for a warrant -"

"Not enough evidence for a warrant, yet you want me to root through privileged billing and registration information?"

Rutherford's prissy tone was surprising, but his vehemence was not – postal inspectors were 1811s, investigators who toted guns and tracked leads hard. They had a near-fanatical regard for the mails, which Tim respected though found difficult when it inconvenienced him. Realizing he lacked good reason for his frustration, he held his tongue.

"The mails are sacrosanct, Deputy. I'd like you to consider something for a minute…" Rutherford's voice, high and thin, took on the tone of a rant. "People only complain about the mail. When it's late, when it arrives damaged, when some unwashed misanthrope uses it to deliver anthrax. Think about the fact that for thirty-seven cents – thirty-seven cents – less than the price of a pack of gum, you can send a letter from Miami to Anchorage. Thirty-seven cents can buy one ounce a four-thousand-mile trip. This country has the finest mail system in history," Owen B. Rutherford continued, seeming pleased to have secured a scapegoat for what Tim could only imagine was an elephantine bad day. "We move forty percent of the world's mail, seven hundred million pieces a day, and – unlike you big-budget DOJ agencies – we're entirely self-supporting. This country runs on its postal service. Taxes are paid, votes are tallied, medicines delivered in our mail system. And that system has got to be an asymptote approaching the line of perfection. Imagine if your paycheck arrived only two times out of three. Imagine spending your last minutes on your deathbed hand-penning a draft of your will that had only a fifty-percent chance of making it to your attorney. Imagine, for that matter, a confidential P.O. box that you establish for the receipt of documents or personal items, only to find that some knuckle-scraping federal employee with an inadequate grasp of civil liberties called in favors from a corrupt postal inspector so that your political petitions, or inflatable sheep, or letter from your dying! Kung aunt" – this complete with tongue click – "in the Kalahari is suddenly a matter of illegal government inquiry!"

"I, uh…"

"Good day, Deputy Rackley."

Tim sat for a minute, a dazed grin touching his face. He couldn't recall being so effectively and summarily told off since Ms. Alessandri benched him in fifth grade for supergluing the donkey tail to Tina Mindachi during end-of-year festivities. He tossed the phone in the passenger seat, deciding to enjoy the rest of the ride.

The Pacific Coast Highway hugged the coast to Malibu, affording a continuous panoramic view of the gray-blue ocean. The best lawn in Los Angeles stretched back from the intersection of PCH and Malibu Canyon, steeply inclined acres of grass above which the campus rose like a fortified city. After contending with a militant parking attendant, Tim wound his inferior Integra through the main drag lined with Beemers and Saabs. He asked a gardener – the sole person of color he'd glimpsed on campus – for the Sigma dorm.

A remarkably attractive blonde answered the door. Her face was structured like a model's – high cheekbones, generous jaw, abbreviated ski jump of a nose. The orange-and-blue scrunchie holding her hair back in a ponytail matched her Pepperdine sweatshirt; the pullover itself featured King Neptune looming with trident and flowing beard, the school's umpteenth stab at personifying its banal mascot -waves. She tilted her head slightly so she could look up at him through her lashes, a well-practiced move. "Who are you?"

"I'd like to speak with Katie Kelner."

The girl rolled her eyes and leaned back, letting the door swing open. Inside, three surfers were sprawled shirtless on a futon with another girl, an equally attractive redhead. Tim felt as if he'd stepped into a Gap ad. One of the guys tossed a beach towel over a bong smoldering on the coffee table.

"That's me," the blonde said. "What do you want?"

"I need to ask you some questions about Leah Henning."

"Again? It's been, like, three months. Aren't you people over it?"

"Your concern is touching. Weren't you friends?"

Two of the surfer boys snickered, and the redhead cracked up, a lungful of held smoke bursting out of her.

"Yeah," Katie said. "We were real close."

More laughter from the stoned peanut gallery. "Man," the most tousled surfer said, tugging at the protruding band of his boxers, "that chick was a serious buzzkill."

"Hey, Gidget." Tim flashed his badge at the kid, and the smile dropped from his face as if someone had pissed on his wetsuit. "Your towel's burning. Why don't you take it and your controlled substance and go hang ten."

The three surfers hurriedly cleared out. The redhead leaned back on the futon and indulged a long, sleepy blink.

"I'm sorry, Officer," Katie said with a pert smile. "I didn't realize you were here, you know, officially." She raised her foot, bare to the toes, and swung her knee out, slowly, then back. She wore an anklet with tiny letters on cubes: WWJD.

"Can I speak with you in private, please?"

"Absolutely." A game smile.

They went to her bedroom, and she closed the door behind them and sat on her bed, legs pulled up to her chest. Her shorts were riding up, giving Tim a pretty good eyeful of inner thigh. He rose and opened the door. The redhead had passed out on the couch, potato chips across her chest. From the TV an inane cartoon discharged piano-tinkling and boinging sounds. Thirty-five thousand dollars' tuition put to good use.

"I thought you wanted to speak in private."

"This will be fine." Tim sat on the bed opposite her, a sheetless mattress. "Was this Leah's bed?"

Katie nodded. "When you get dropouts or suicides, they let you have your own room for the whole year. It kind of rules."

Makeup bottles blanketed one bureau; the other was blank. Katie's bed was covered with flowery pillows and teddy bears. A single window overlooked the well-kept track with its rubber runway and lush grass oval. Beyond it the hill dropped away steeply. A line of palm trees reared up in the distance, the bursts of fronds silhouetted against the backdrop of the Pacific like fireworks.

"Tell me about Leah."

"We sort of got stuck with Leah. Assigned roommate. She was pretty sweet when we first got here, but she wouldn't rush the sororities, and we sort of left her behind, you know? Socially." She cupped a hand by her mouth and stage-whispered, "She was, like, the big V."

"The big V?"

"A virgin. Which is cool, but we tried to bring her around guys, and she was just so…I don't know, geeky. Playing on her computer all day and stuff – total code monkey. And her clothes – her clothes were bad. And then she started acting weird."

"Weird how?"

"She sort of turned her back on her friends – what friends she had. These dorky kids from her classes, they stopped calling. And she got really anal. Like, on time to the minute. And really neat -lining up the edges of her notepaper and stuff. When we first started as roommates, she was way more casual. I never would have lived with her if she was like how she ended up."

"When did you notice this change?"

"Like, maybe a month to six weeks before she split."

"How did you know she got in with a cult?"

"She kept asking us to come to meetings with her. Stuff like that."

"Where were the meetings?"

"I don't know. Off campus, I'm pretty sure. We didn't listen, really."

"What did you do?"

"Laughed at her mostly." A flicker of remorse in Katie's sea-green eyes. "Hey, I'm being honest."

"Did you meet anyone in the cult?"

"No."

"Notice her with anyone new?"

"No."

"Do you know the names of her friends? Here on campus?"

"Like I said: What friends?"

"Did she mention the names of anyone in the cult with her? Or refer to someone as the Teacher?"

"No."

"Have you heard from her? Or has anyone seen her?"

"No." Katie smiled. "No. No, no, no. I don't know anything about where she is. I just know she's gone." She checked the tag on her inner wrist with a shrug of her hand.

Tim jotted down his cell-phone number on the back of a generic Marshals Service card with the Spring Street address and main phone line.

"If you think of anything else, give me a call."

Katie relinquished her hug hold on a big white bear and took the card.

Tim stood, giving a last glance at Leah's half of the room. Bare mattress, empty shelves, empty nightstand.

The thought of growing up in the house of Will and Emma Henning left Tim cold. So did the thought of living here with these veiled bullies, painting their lashes and nails and talking in code like cackling hens. Girls too pretty and rich and white to require empathy. Girls hell-bent on maintaining a status that required riding the top of a social hierarchy.

His first case since Ginny – he wasn't exactly keeping the misplaced protectiveness in check. He decided, staring at the left-behind Scotch tape on the blank wall, that if the empty rooms of girls hastily departed now struck a nerve, he would allow himself that.

He flipped his notepad closed. "Thanks for your help."

Katie scurried after him to the door. "What? I called. Her parents wouldn't even know she was missing if it wasn't for me. I did my part." The hard, pretty shell of her face shifted for a moment, and he saw the softer features of a girl who hadn't yet been trained in cruelty. "It's not my fault she went off and joined some cult." She reached down and scratched the skin beneath her anklet, the letter cubes bouncing on the leather cord.

"What does WWJD stand for?" Tim asked.

She lowered her eyes uncomfortably. "What Would Jesus Do."

Bear was correct in his assessment – the landlady was a cranky old broad. Tim might even have proposed a more canine term. Her apartment, from what he could see through the barely open door, housed a virtual conservatory of hanging plants. It smelled of stale coffee and cat piss, as did Ms. Adair Peters, sovereign of the Fleur-de-Lis of Van Nuys, a cracked stucco rise with smoked mirrors in the entry and ornate crown molding in the halls.

She emerged from her apartment, nightshirt trailing from the hem of a corduroy blazer she'd thrown on, breathing hard and clasping the lapels in a fist as if she'd been evicted in a blizzard. She ushered Tim into the elevator and slid the collapsible gate closed. The smell, in close quarters, was nearly blinding.

An interminable ride to the second floor.

At Leah's former door, Adair fussed in her pockets, withdrawing a ring of keys. She tried them each, muttering and overcome with the exertion. One finally turned, and she threw the door open, trudging inside. Tim followed.

A single room with a sidebar kitchen and a bathroom so small the open door rested against the toilet. The rusting coils of the radiator lurked under a sole window facing a Ravi Shankar billboard on which some mental giant had spray-painted OSSAMMA BEN LADEN IS A DUM SAND