Fiction
Saturday, May 12, 2007
Making It Right (Part 2)
Maureen and Amanda sat side by side on the sofa, clutching one another's hands. Their faces were as expressionless as two store mannequins.
"Well, ladies?" Conway said. He leaned forward in his chair. "Do you have any...questions?"
Maureen's eyes darted to Chris's. He nodded and tried his best to look reassuring.
I should have expected this. It's like telling them that they have no one to count on, that they have to learn to look after themselves. That might frighten them even worse than the attack.
"Dad," Amanda said faintly, "this wouldn't get us in any new trouble, would it?"
"Not a chance, honey. It's just like going to a judo school, except that we won't have to pay anything for it. Mr. Conway is being very generous." He looked sideways at his new employer. "I need to find a way to thank him properly."
Conway snorted. "Having you on my payroll is thanks enough. But yes, Amanda, your dad put it exactly right. You'll be learning pretty much what you would learn at a commercial dojo, but from my staff trainer. A lady not that much older than yourself, I might add." He grinned. "Do you ever wear makeup?"
"Uh, sometimes."
Chris chuckled. "A lot of times."
"She's pretty good with that, too. You might pick up some fashion tips from her."
"Mom?" Amanda pulled Maureen's hand into her lap.
Maureen Harkness was utterly still for a long moment. Chris couldn't even see her breathe.
"Chris," she said, "this won't change anything about us, will it?"
Chris frowned. "Like what, Mo?"
A hint of pain had crept into Maureen's face, as if she were struggling to expel an unwanted thought.
"We won't be dangerous to anyone?"
A spurt of laughter escaped him with his tension. "Well, actually, you will -- but only when you want to be. If you were thinking that you might spontaneously burst into action in the supermarket, you can relax."
The creases had not left Maureen's face. "Please, Chris, don't laugh at me. I've no acquaintance with...this part of your world."
My world.
The phrase rocked him like a slap of challenge.
I brought her here telling her she'd be safe. That Onteora was a tranquil, untroubled place where she and Mandy would feel at home. She came on my assurances. Now I'm encouraging her to become a weapon for her own protection. Like me.
Welcome to my world.
"Mo," he said, "I won't lie to you. This place is not what it was. Maybe it's no better than London, now. But it's our home, and Mandy's home. I don't want us to have to run from it. I can't think where we'd be any better off, anyway."
"I think I'll add an ingredient to the casserole," Conway said. "I can get you both pistol permits, and teach you how to shoot. I'm as good a firearms instructor as Christine is a martial-arts trainer. Between the two of us, we can make each of you a match for anything on two legs. "Of course," he said, grinning, "if you're attacked by a tank, it would still be advisable to run and hide."
Chris felt the temperature in the little living room drop perceptibly.
"Mr. Conway," she said without looking at him, "I come from a place where private firearms are all but unknown, except among criminals. Before we arrived here, I'd not have expected that Chris would be allowed to have one after he separated from the Navy. What you've suggested frightens me in ways I can't express." She rose and pulled Amanda upright beside her. "It will take some time to pass. May we give you our answer on Monday?"
Conway's grin vanished. He rose and nodded.
"Of course, Miss Harkness. I look forward to hearing your decision. And really," he said as an apparent afterthought, "you needn't worry about harming anyone accidentally. Combat skills like the ones Christine will teach you are entirely under your control."
"It wasn't accidental harm I was thinking of," Maureen said.
Conway opened his mouth, closed it without speaking, and departed.
Chris's introduction to service at Integral Security was little like what he'd expected. He was issued a desk, uniforms, and a revolver, but Conway had no policy manual for him, nor was there any great amount of indoctrination or orientation required. Most of his morning and all of his afternoon were spent making the acquaintance of other Integral personnel and chatting with them about their jobs.
He was particularly fascinated by the monitoring room, where the remote security functions were monitored and coordinated. The large room centered on an octagonal bank of ceiling-mounted monitors, which glowed down at workstations manned by Integral uniforms wearing headsets. The place was hushed and dark; extraneous lighting would have made the banks of monitor screens more difficult to watch. Each monitor was surmounted by a legend in large block letters.
FORSLUND 1
LAKESHORE EAST
CODEVILLA NORTH
The Integral personnel that sat before them spoke rarely, always in low tones, and always into their headset microphones, never to one another. Their concentration rivaled that of a chess grandmaster deciding upon a move. Now and then, an electronic dispatch board on the far wall would indicate that patrolman X was moving from his current position to post Y in sector Z. The focus of the operators directing their movement seemed never to waver.
"Daunting, isn't it?"
Chris started at hearing Conway's voice. "Yeah, a bit. How long are their shifts?"
"Two hours." Conway nodded toward the octagon of screens and operators. "I'm thinking of shortening it."
"I can see why. How often do they...?"
Conway grinned. "Since our first couple of years on the job? Not very. But they're my insurance. I have four major customers, and to lose any one of them would put this place into the red. So I make sure they're continuously watched, from here, and from...a bit closer in. If the patrols on the ground miss a developing threat, these guys are odds-on to catch it."
"You're balanced that finely?" Chris asked.
A nod. "This is a service business. A new customer means new hires and fresh trainees. I never let a trained man go. The capital expense would ruin me."
That was meant to reassure me.
"I see. So you concentrate on potential large clients?"
"I have to. I do take smaller businesses, if their situations are suitable, but mostly they're a break-even or lose-a-little proposition. Integral's profits come almost exclusively from the four big apartment complexes those operators are standing watch over." A shadow passed over Conway's eyes. "Twenty-four hundred units, nearly ten thousand people, concentrated into just over a hundred acres. Mostly middle class or better. They make a pretty juicy target."
Chris nodded and said nothing more. Presently Conway said, "You know, it might be a good thing for you to spend a few shifts on-site at those customers, as local supervisor. It would give you a better idea of the work, at least."
Chris smirked. "You hired me as a watch commander after two hours of casual conversation, but you think I need to learn about security work?"
Conway looked him levelly in the eyes. "Every security situation is unique, Chris. No two of mine are at all alike, anyway." He reached into a pocket and pulled out a PDA. "You're going to Amherst Estates tomorrow. You'll be standing in for Sylvia Wang, who can use the rest anyway. I'll notify the watch commander. Your shift will begin at eight AM. Be here at seven. In uniform."
Chris didn't expect his stint as a shift supervisor to be exciting. It wasn't. A day went by, then another and another, without any development more stirring than a dropped bag of groceries registering on the monitors in the Amherst Estates gatehouse. Training and long habit kept him alert; the openness of the Amherst residents and the surprisingly easy camaraderie of his new coworkers made it pleasant.
Late in the afternoon of his third day at the Amherst post, a Mercedes stopped at the gate and a tall, gaunt man in a navy-blue suit emerged from behind the wheel. The man went directly to the window from which Chris peered and offered a hand. Chris shook it.
"New man?"
Chris nodded. "Yes, sir. Temporary shift supervisor. My name's Chris Chase. I expect Sylvia will be back Monday after next."
The man smiled. "Welcome to Amherst, Chris. I'm Jack Schilling. Seen anything untoward lately?"
The owner! "Nothing but a small mess in the lobby of Thirty-Five Kettle Knoll, sir." He glanced over at the monitors. "Looks like your maintenance staff have dealt with it already."
Schilling nodded. "They're good. But nothing else? No scuffles along the perimeter, say?"
Chris shook his head. "Why do you ask?"
Schilling looked away, toward Fifteen Forslund Avenue. The lines around his mouth writhed as if he'd tasted something unpleasant.
"Two of my tenants have reported missing kids. Teenaged sons they haven't seen in two days. It's a police matter now, but I had to ask if you've seen them in the area, in trouble or otherwise."
Chris swiftly reviewed the three days past. He shook his head. "The only traffic in or out of Amherst has been vehicular, sir. Of course, they could have been on a school bus, but I wouldn't have known about it. Do you have pictures of them?"
Schilling dipped a hand into a jacket pocket, brought out two photos, and passed them to Chris. Each one depicted a scowling, swarthy teenager in a T-shirt and the baggy jeans that were the current adolescent affectation.
"The one holding the soccer ball is Heshayem Mohamed. The other one is Riyadh ibn Sharif."
"Mandy?"
Chris had caught Amanda with a mouthful of dinner. She held up a hand while she chewed and swallowed.
"What, Dad?"
Chris forked up a bite of beef. "Have you been enjoying the training sessions with Christine?"
She nodded vigorously. "She's great. It's a lot of fun." Her eyes darted to Maureen. "You really should try it, Mom."
Maureen smiled wistfully. "It's a sort of fun better suited to a young woman than an old one, dear. Enjoy it. You have the talent for it. Your old Mum will stick to her crocheting and cooking classes."
"Oh, come on, you're not that old!"
The edges of Maureen's eyes crinkled. "Old enough to know better than to let my daughter toss me around like a rag doll. How would I ever get you to clean your room after that?"
Amanda giggled and looked down at her plate. Chris forebore to comment. For a few moments, the family ate in silence.
Presently Amanda said, "How's the new job going, Dad?"
Chris shrugged. "Nothing much to tell, so far. I'm on station at one of Integral's customers, learning about what we're supposed to do."
"It's weird seeing you in that uniform, though."
He laughed and reached across the table to tweak his stepdaughter's nose. She squealed and bounced in her chair.
She looks so perfect. Beautiful and happy and secure. As if the rape never happened.
"Don't get used to it, honey. Mr. Conway will have me back inside at the end of next week. Speaking of next week..." He halted at the edge of his question.
Amanda's face turned serious in an instant. "What, Dad?"
"Do you...think you might be ready to go back to school on Monday?"
Chris had expected Amanda to react in some fashion, but her furtive, almost shameful expression came as a surprise.
Maureen said, "Chris."
"Hm? What, love?"
"Perhaps another week for Amanda to...heal would be a good idea."
The gravity of Maureen's eyes forbade him to differ. Amanda said nothing.
Chris exhaled and nodded. "All right. I'll tell the school. If they have a problem with it, they can take it up with me."
"Thank you, Dad," Amanda murmured. Her gaze flicked over to her mother.
Maureen nodded.
By the end of Chris's second week with Integral, the entire county was abuzz with speculation and fear. Not only had neither Heshayem Mohamed nor Riyadh ibn Sharif returned from wherever, but Tariq al-Malim, Farooq ibn Azzam, and Maroun Mazaram had vanished as well. Deputy Chief Khaldoun had promised their families, and the general public, that "the vile kidnapper who's targeted the innocent children of five of Onteora's leading families" would be pursued with all the resources of the department. Chief of Police Raymond Lawrence did not trouble to qualify Khaldoun's statement.
Chris had been trained not to believe in coincidences. He'd already suspected private action when Jack Schilling told him of the disappearance of the first two teens. What he couldn't work out were the agency and the motivation.
Unless the rapists had bragged about their exploit, which struck Chris as unlikely, only three persons knew with certainty who had participated in the assault: Amanda, Kevin Conway, and Chris himself. Hassan Khaldoun might know; Chris suspected that he did. But it was next to inconceivable that the deputy chief would have taken any action against the other five, when they could so easily have implicated his own, as yet unvanished son.
Any action, that is, short of killing them.
He suppressed the urge to raise the subject with Conway. If the security chief was acting against Amanda's rapists for him, no doubt he'd be told in due course. Anyway. he wasn't sure he wanted to know.
Sunday dawned bright and clear, a perfect, sunny and gently breezy spring morning. Chris and his family rose early, showered, dressed, and headed for the seven o'clock Mass at Our Lady of the Pines, the better to clear the day for whatever recreations Maureen and Amanda might have in mind.
Amanda seemed unusually jumpy, far more agitated than usual even for a teenaged girl. She could hardly sit still in church, fidgeting, shuffling, and frequently glancing over at her stepfather as if she were awaiting some kind of signal. Chris did his best to ignore it and concentrate on the service, but made a mental note to speak to the girl afterward about proper behavior in church.
At the end of Mass, they found Kevin Conway awaiting them at the door. Chris's eyebrows rose at the sight of his boss.
"Are you a parishioner?"
Conway shook his head. "No, I'm here for you. We're needed over at the First Precinct." His expression gave no clue as to the need. He turned to Maureen. "I'll need Mrs. Chase and Amanda as well."
Only one possible reason. I hope I can account for my whereabouts for every minute of the past two weeks.
The group was silent on the drive to the precinct headquarters. Chris concentrated on reviewing his own movements. There were several periods for which he couldn't name a witness to his location or conduct. He tried not to worry over them.
Hell of it is, whoever's been at work has done a damned thorough job. Unless he's been caught and we're going to meet him, he's done it without leaving any hint of his existence. I couldn't have done as well myself.
The desk sergeant sent them deep into the precinct's inner sanctum, in the company of two uniforms Chris had never met. Conway led the way in silence.
Presently they stood before a large, tinted glass partition. On the other side of the partition were four impassive-looking uniforms and six swarthy young men, writhing and clutching their groins as if in agony. When Chris laid eyes on them, he came to full alert. He glanced at his stepdaughter, but she showed no reaction.
"Recognize them?" Hassan Khaldoun's deep bass voice caused Chris to whirl in surprise. The deputy chief was looking at Amanda, who had not turned.
"Heshayam Mohamed," she said calmly, still looking through the glass. "Tariq al-Malim. Farooq ibn Azzam. Maroun Mazaram. Riyadh ibn Sharif. And Khalid Khaldoun. The six boys who raped me two weeks ago yesterday."
"You knew their names all this time," Khaldoun said. "You hid evidence from a felony investigation. You played the innocent victim --"
Amanda turned, eyes flashing. "I was the innocent victim, Mr. Khaldoun. Yes, I knew their names. They were my schoolmates, after all. But I also knew that one of them was your son. What did you know?"
Her poise was shocking. Chris had never before seen her face down an adult of any stature, for any reason. Yet, toe to toe with the second highest cop in the county, she seemed entirely without fear.
Khaldoun fell silent and turned away.
"Chief," Chris said, "why are we here?"
"To corroborate their confessions," Khaldoun said, still looking away.
"They confessed to the rape?"
"Not just to Amanda's rape," Conway said. "These six have been very busy boys. They have seven gang rapes to their credit in Onteora alone. And Hamilton County wants to have a few words with them as well."
"But why? I mean," Chris faltered, momentarily silenced by incredulity, "why did they confess?"
"To end their pain."
Todd Iverson stepped out of the hallway behind them as naturally as if he were entering his own home. He waved casually at Conway, who grinned in response.
"You can see that they're not exactly happy little soldiers just now, Chris," Iverson said. "That's because their most recent escapades in hunting kuffar sluts to degrade didn't go quite as well as the earlier ones. They've been dosed with a compound that causes massive inflammation of the vas deferens. The pain is continuous and quite severe. They were told that they'd get the antidote only when they'd confessed to every crime they'd ever committed, in full view of police witnesses and representatives of the D.A." He held up a bottle of pills. "Would you care to do the honors, Chief Khaldoun?"
The big cop's face had gone from bone-white to mottled fury in a flash.
"You tortured them," he whispered. "You seized them and held them and tortured my firstborn son!" With a scream he launched himself at the much smaller Iverson.
Before Khaldoun could close on him, Iverson flicked the pill bottle to Conway, surged forward and delivered a knife-hand strike to the cop's solar plexus. It was a punch of at least as much force as Chris could have put behind it, placed with exquisite precision. Khaldoun went down on the instant, curled around his agony in a perfect replication of his son, struggling to draw the tiniest breaths. Iverson dropped to a squat beside him.
"I didn't have anything to do with it, Chief. Well, except for developing the drug they were given. Your boy and his buddies followed a lure. It took three tries before we got them all. We made sure Khalid was the last, just in case you knew about his involvement."
"What lure?" Chris whispered.
"Me," Amanda said.
"And me," Maureen said.
"And me."
From the shadows in the hallway stepped Christine D'Alessandro.
"Todd explained it very succinctly," Maureen said, her hand warm atop his. "One must match the bait to the prey. To catch a lion, stake out a goat. To catch a rapist, tempt him with a likely looking victim."
"But did it have to be you and Amanda?" Chris said. "What if something had gone wrong?"
"Christine was always there," Maureen said. "She's quite...capable, you know."
"Yes," he said. "I do know."
What I didn't know is that I married into a family more ruthless than I am myself.
"So Kevin and Todd don't really despise one another?"
Maureen produced an uncharacteristic smirk. "Not a bit of it. How could you ever have thought so? They're two of the three best men in the county."
"Mo, I'm not certain how I feel about all this." He shook his head, went to the stove and poured himself more coffee. "I'm supposed to be the violent one." He resumed his seat beside his wife. "If you and Mandy are capable of this, what on Earth do you need me for?"
Maureen's eyes lit with affection. "My wild colonial boy has his uses. Many of them, at that. Surely you're not offended that we managed to rope and tie those savages without you?"
Chris started to answer, bit it back.
Maybe I am, a little.
"No, I suppose I shouldn't be. And I'm not...much. Anyway, this isn't a union shop. You can do whatever you can do. But," he said, "I'd have liked to be in on it, too."
Maureen shook her head. "That was the one thing we were all against. Your methods are too drastic, Chris. You'd have turned the game into something that could never come to light. Amanda and I don't want to lose you, the way we lost Ernest."
"I killed the man who killed Ernest," he croaked. "I --"
"Yes, you did," Maureen said. "And that was the exact moment I fell in love with you, and decided that I would follow you no matter where you might go, and never, ever allow you to come to any harm. How many men -- how many blooded warriors would have charged into the scene you found that day and done justice as you did, while hundreds of my bloodless countrymen stood aside and watched?" She clutched his hand. "You are the most precious thing in my world. In Amanda's, too. We had to protect you from yourself."
Chris gaped.
"Christine wants you to start coming to our training sessions. She said your footwork wasn't everything it should be. Starting tomorrow night, all right?"
"What about my baseball games?"
"We have a DVR, don't we?"
"It's not the same!"
Maureen's eyes flashed with sudden command. "Get used to it, sailor."
"Uh, yes, ma'am!"
| <<- Making It Right (Part 1) | Conspiracies ->> |
