It’s a muggy Midwest morning. Wells is the turquoise necklace type, a curly-haired elf with small, soft hands. Gabe, six foot four, steps in too close for a handshake and squeezes hard. This is his strategy with non-clients. Dominate.
“The three of them left together, we think,” says Wells. “Sometime after midnight, as you can see from the security footage I sent you.”
Gabe reviewed the footage on his drive in. Simon—the target—fled the premises with one female (slight, androgynous) and one male (tall, reedy, bespectacled), both in their teens. Gabe calls them the corrupters. When he asked Mr. Oliver how he wanted them handled, BC1 said quietly, which means Gabe can do just about whatever the fuck he wants to them, as long as it doesn’t come back on the client.
“What about his accomplices?” Gabe asks. “Louise Conklin and Paul Fisher?”
“Well,” frowns the administrator, “I wouldn’t call them accomplices. All our charges are here voluntarily, so they’re free to leave the premises whenever they’d like.”
“Fine,” says Gabe. “His friends. What can you tell me about his friends? Their backgrounds?”
Gabe, of course, has done his own research. His information network is CIA level. He knows that Louise is basically a vagrant from the East Bay and that Paul is an Okie who grew up on a farm. Nobodies, in other words. What he’s looking for is color, a sense of where to start looking.
“Both Paul and Louise came to us to help them address a certain underlying feeling of inadequacy. Both were making tremendous progress before they left, as was Simon.”
“Mr. Oliver.”
“Excuse me?”
“You will refer to my client as Mr. Oliver.”
Wells frowned again. “I’m sorry. I thought you were here on behalf of the father, not, uh, young Mr. Oliver.”
Gabe picks a black fleck off Wells’s desktop, flicks it away.
“For over a decade I’ve been charged with the well-being of the Oliver family. That makes Simon my client, and seeing as how his net worth is that of a small country and how his family is building you three new buildings next year, my feeling is he deserves to be called mister. Last I checked, a fifteen-year-old king is still your majesty.”
Wells forces a smile. “Of course. My apologies. Well, as I said, Mr. Oliver was making great strides toward self-soothing and impulse control management. That’s why it saddens me that he chose to check himself out.”
“You had a string of suicides here in the last month.”
“Yes. That’s—unfortunate—but I suppose you could say we’re no different from the rest of the world. It’s an abomination really. Such a tragedy, this loss of faith in our future.”
Gabe rolled his eyes. What psycho-babble bullshit. Loss of faith in the future. Suicide is weakness killing strength, and good riddance. You show me a kid who had it worse than me and I’ll buy you a fucking pony, Gabe thinks. Kids kicking the shit out of me every day, calling me slant-eyes and ching-chong chink. Mother dies in a factory fire. Dad drops dead of cancer after twenty years breathing dry-cleaning chemicals. Sister raped and murdered at community college. And did I surrender? Fuck no. I fought back. I made the world pay its bill. End of story.
“Did Simon seem suicidal?” he asks.
“Simon? No. Nor did the others. As I said—”
“They were making great progress. I wrote that down. What about a getaway car?”
“I’m sorry?”
“Well, they didn’t just walk out. The security camera shows them going out the back door, but apparently you didn’t think to put cameras on the back entrance, so I can’t tell who picked them up.”
“George—”
“The janitor.”
“Night custodian.”
Jesus, thinks Gabe, how PC can you be? The guy mops up rich girl bulimia while you sleep. But he nods.
“George said it was some kind of van,” says Wells.
“Old? New?”
“He didn’t specify. But he did say there was a painting on the side. Some kind of muscular warrior in battle. Is that helpful?”
Gabe rubs his eyes. The kids fled in a Frazetta van? Like it’s 1981? This whole thing was turning into some kind of sick joke.
“Make? Model?”
Wells shrugs. “I have every faith that when you find him, Simon will be healthy. Perhaps he’s just blowing off steam. It’s not uncommon for adolescents upon whom we put such pressure to succeed.”
Gabe stands. If he has to listen to this guy another minute, he’s gonna put him in a choke hold.
“We’ll be in touch,” he says.
The Goblin King reconnoiters with Aragorn and Legolas in the parking lot. Their wheel man, Gandalf, is parked at the curb in a rented black Suburban, engine running.
“The client took his underwear,” says Legolas, “a few pairs of pants, some shirts. He left his heavy coat behind, so heading south maybe.”
Aragorn flips his iPad so Gabe can see. On it he’s got photos of Louise and the Prophet’s rooms.
“Girl took everything basically, except a few paperbacks from the library. The other kid, the male, not sure he took anything. His closet has everything ironed and hanging. Three button-down shirts. Three pairs of pants. All the same.”
Aragorn produces a small Bible from his pack. “He left this behind, by the bed.”
Aragorn hands the Bible to Gabe, who opens it. The book is like a madman’s brain inside. On every page, written in the margin in tiny red print, are notes, arguments, even pictures. Gabe hands the Bible back to him.
“Get this to the Chicago office. I want a full scan and analysis by sundown.”
Aragorn walks off to call it in. A messenger will be here on motorbike in ten minutes. Gabe climbs into the Suburban. He puts up a hand to stop Legolas from following.