But he couldn’t turn off the light in the vestibule and stand here for hours until the heebie-jeebies passed. The boy might wake and wonder where he had gone. Cornell was responsible for the boy until his mother came for him, until his mother came, until his mother came. Besides, even if the foyer was entirely dark, the dogs would not be perfectly quiet. And while he was standing instead of lying down, he couldn’t easily pretend that he was floating in a soothing pool of water.
“Cornell,” said Cornell aloud, impatient with himself, “you can do this thing here. You can calm yourself and be responsible about the little boy. You’re responsible about designing good apps that make millions of people happy, and you’re responsible with managing your scary amount of money, keeping it safe and making it grow, so you can be responsible about the boy.”
Of course he never saw the millions who used his apps, and he communicated with his bankers and investment advisers only by phone and email. There was no chance that they would have an opportunity to touch him. But the boy might do that, even though he knew that he shouldn’t, might touch Cornell by accident.
The dogs whined, wondering why they were delayed here.
Cornell thought, The boy is going to be at risk because of me, the boy is going to die because of me.
Horrified, he said, “No, no, no. The boy won’t die. The boy will live and grow old, live and grow old, live and grow very old.”
He gripped the door handle, and the electronic lock disengaged with a soft thunk.
With the memory of airplane sounds crawling every inch of his skin and squirming through his bones, Cornell didn’t return to the library so much as arrive there in a crash landing. Violently shaking his head and flailing his arms to cast off the offending noise, staggering forward on wobbly legs, he dropped to his knees as the jubilant dogs raced past him to greet their young master.
The boy had awakened and gotten up. He stood maybe eight feet away, holding a glass of chocolate milk, regarding Cornell with what looked like fear but might have been concern, because he said, “Are you all right? Can I do something? Are you okay?”
Gasping for breath, Cornell said, “Dogs, the dogs, me and the dogs, we were playing, they peed and pooped and then wanted to play, and we were running around under the airplane, running and running, and they wore me out.”
This was a lie, but it wasn’t a terrible mortal lie, just a little fib so that the boy wouldn’t be afraid for Cornell or for himself.
“Do you want some chocolate milk?” the boy asked.
“Not right now.” Cornell stretched out on his back. “I’m just going to lie here and calm down, calm down, calm down.”
“I already got a muffin and took it to my chair. But I can get it and sit here with you.”
“No, no.” Cornell pretended to be breathing harder than he really needed to, because gasping helped hide the fact he shook with fear. “I just want to lie here on the cool floor, like it’s a fool of water. Pool. Pool of water. Float here on the floor and close my eyes and get my death. My breath. Get my breath.”
“Okay then,” the boy said, and he went to his chair.
The dogs came sniffing around, and Cornell feared they would touch him with their noses, but they didn’t, and then they went away to be with Travis.
The hateful, unwanted, terrifying thought came to Cornell again: The boy is going to die because of me.
3
HAVING TRAVELED NINETY-TWO MILES from Houston, Egon Gottfrey in his Rhino GX, followed by the competent-if-methamphetamine-popping Rupert Baldwin and the impossible Vince Penn in their bespoke Jeep Wrangler, arrives at the bus station in Beaumont, Texas, shortly before 7:00 A.M.
They haven’t been able to view the video of Ancel and Clare in advance of their arrival. According to the Unknown Playwright, who evidently thinks it makes for good drama to keep putting obstacles in their way, the NSA archives the traffic-cam and public-facility video from all major cities, but not yet from every city and town with a population lower than 150,000, though they’re working on it.
The population of Beaumont is approximately 120,000, so if the locals want to be part of the Great Orwellian future, they better get busy having babies.
Waiting for Gottfrey and his men is an FBI agent named Leon Fettwiler, who is as memorable as a dish of vanilla ice cream. To the best of Gottfrey’s knowledge, Fettwiler is not an Arcadian; but he was in the area and dispatched to view the bus-terminal video.
With Fettwiler is the bus-station manager, so nondescript that she makes Fettwiler look flamboyant. Gottfrey doesn’t even bother to listen to her name, for it’s obvious that this woman is a walk-on and will not reappear, less a real character than a thin concept.
The video can be viewed on a monitor in the nameless manager’s office. The terminal’s video recorder is old and oddly configured, so the disc that contains the images preserves them only for seven days, cannot be tapped to transfer its data to another device, and can be viewed only here. Enduring the manager’s convoluted explanation for this inconvenience is as boring as listening to someone read aloud from a health-insurance policy.
When the video finally runs—a four-second snippet from 5:05 P.M. the previous day—it’s the quality of a 1950s porno film shot with an 8 mm camera in a motel room, using only available lamplight. Gottfrey, Rupert, and Vince crowd together to watch a woman of Clare’s height and build step out of a bus. She wears a headscarf. Following her is a Stetson-wearing man of Ancel’s height and build.
“Who are they, anyway?” the station manager asks.
Viewing the brief video again, Gottfrey says, “Criminals.”
“What have they done?”
“Committed crimes.”
“We’re not at liberty to say,” Fettwiler tells the station manager, as if Gottfrey hasn’t made that clear.
Video from a different camera shows the same man and woman meeting an Uber driver in front of the terminal. Since they are leaving the station, the camera catches them mostly from the back.
“Is it them?” Gottfrey asks Rupert Baldwin.
Fingering his bolo tie, shifting his weight back and forth from one of his Hush Puppies to the other, Rupert squints at a third and fourth playing of the first video segment. “Damn if I know.”
Vince speaks up. “Me neither. They might be, they might not. It’s hard to say. The video isn’t good. The lighting isn’t—”
“Oh, it’s them, sure enough,” says Fettwiler, mercifully putting an end to Vince Penn’s analysis. “The Uber driver will confirm without hesitation.”
“Where is he?” Gottfrey asks.
“He wouldn’t come in here. Insists we meet him out in the parking lot.”
The Uber guy is waiting beside his car, a white GMC Terrain SLE. The Unknown Playwright has found the energy to paint this character with somewhat more detail than the station manager and Fettwiler. His name is Tucker Treadmont. He’s maybe thirty, stands about five feet six, weighs maybe 240 pounds. He is wearing pointy-toed boots, baggy jeans, and a pale blue polo shirt that shapes itself to his unfortunately large man breasts. His brown hair is slicked back, his round face appears so smooth as to be beardless, and his greenish gray eyes assess Gottfrey with the calculation of a card mechanic sizing up a mark.
Fettwiler produces 8 × 10 photos of Ancel and Clare from a manila envelope.
Tucker Treadmont says, “Yeah, that’s the dude and his squeeze. They booked the ride an hour earlier, and I got the call.”
“Where did you take them?” Gottfrey asks.
“What works best for me is I drive you there and show you.”
“We have vehicles of our own.”
“I could be workin’ now. I’m not some stinkin’ millionaire.”
“We haven’t booked you through Uber.”
“I also drive my own time. Uber don’t own my ass.”
This back-and-forth continues for a half minute before Gottfrey warns Treadmont that he’s obstructing justice, when what he wants to do instead is use his collapsible baton to reshape the guy’s head.
The charge of obstruction is of no concern to the driver, and after yet a few more exchanges, Gottfrey decides that it doesn’t matter if he breaks the rules and pays. The guy isn’t real, anyway, and neither is the money. Only Gottfrey is real, and this is just the Playwright trying to make him crazy. So get on with it.
“How much if you drive and we follow?”
Treadmont says, “One hundred twenty-one dollars, fifty cents.”