Black Mirror (20 page)

I was anxious about seeing Saskia. I both did and didn’t want to hear whatever it was that she had to say to me. I both did and didn’t want to say and ask the things that were burning in my throat, my chest. And it went without saying that I had very mixed feelings about being confined in a car for hours, going and coming, with Sorensen and Diefenbacher.

But I also knew I couldn’t have stayed at Pettengill today, hanging out with Andy, going over our growing plans for looking for his friend Debbie. Today I had to do this.

Daniel’s voice came suddenly into my head, sounding just as sarcastic as ever.
If there is no wound on one’s hand, one can handle poison.
I closed my eyes tightly for a moment and thought about that. What did it mean? Had Daniel thought he could safely handle poison? Was that why he’d made the choices he had? But he had turned out to be wounded … unsafe …

I felt myself shudder. My brother. My brother …

All the things I’d learned about Daniel—and the remaining, terrible question: How
exactly
had he died?—seemed to float in my mind where they could be seen but not touched. I wasn’t sure if I had the strength to reach out toward them. To know them. And yet that was what I was going to do. Today. Now.

Could I handle poison? I hoped so. I felt … surrounded by it. And yet I was out of places to hide. I was past, really, wanting to hide. I was resigned.

The car was warm. I wriggled out of my coat and absently
stroked the sleeve of my new cashmere cardigan. It made me feel just a little bit comforted.

The sweater had arrived yesterday in a box from Nordstrom; a mysterious catalog order from my father. I doubted he could afford it and I had almost sent it back. But staring at it, touching it, I had been filled with unexpected longing. It was pure white, and somehow I’d known it would look good on that mirrored girl. On—on me.

I’d told myself that wearing the new sweater would help me face Saskia. But I knew, as I lifted it gently, tentatively, to my cheek—it was so soft!—that that was not why I was keeping it.

I was keeping it because it was so pretty. I was keeping it because I wanted to feel it against my skin. I was keeping it because, as I held it, and stroked it, I
wanted
it—so much, I could have cried. Or screamed.

I couldn’t bear to analyze it. I just—kept the sweater.

No one in the car said anything. Sorensen was driving. She had tuned the radio to a classic rock station on which Eric Clapton was half declaring, half praying: “No more bad love.” Diefenbacher crooned along. His voice was so nearly inaudible that I wondered if he even realized I could hear him.

I looked away from the back of his head and sat quietly with that other pain that never went completely away.

He had offered me the front seat for this trip, but I’d refused. Sitting in the back emphasized that Sorensen and Diefenbacher were the adults. Diefenbacher was, I now
knew, eleven years older than me. He was even wearing a suit and tie. To him I was just too young to think of romantically. Sexually. And to him my recent personal revelation, deep in the dark of another sleepless night, was irrelevant.

Whatever else I might or might not be, I was not a child. I had had the body of a woman for seven years now.
Seven
years.

A confirming cramp bit into my abdomen. It was almost like an old friend. I pressed my forearm against my stomach and looked out the window at the trees beside Interstate 93.

I closed my eyes and concentrated on remembering the facts about this whole mess, as I had learned them over the last days, not only from the media, but from talking to Diefenbacher and Sorensen, over coffee, yesterday.

They had been good to me yesterday, Diefenbacher and Sorensen. Well, they had tried. In the abandoned cafeteria at Pettengill they had answered all of my questions. Or, at least they had answered the ones I was able to ask. We all knew, I think, that some things—some personal things—could never be asked, or answered, or even acknowledged.

I didn’t want to know if Diefenbacher had realized how I felt about James Droussian. I didn’t want to know if Sorensen had told him her thoughts about that.

I had actually been fascinated by the coverage of the scandal in the media. Somehow the reporters and TV people had largely been kept away from Pettengill itself, so I felt safely distanced as I—along with everyone else on campus—kept
up with the latest public information. CNN and the
Boston Globe
and
Dateline
seemed to be following along in my mental footsteps. It was satisfying in a twisted kind of way, to watch the story unfold.

FBI AND SEC HOLD JOINT PRESS CONFERENCE

COGNITIVE REACH STOCK CRASHES IN REVELATIONS ABOUT INITIAL VENTURE CAPITAL FINANCING

PRESIDENT OF INTERNET FIRM ARRESTED

PREP SCHOOL LEADERS JOIN TOGETHER TO REASSURE PARENTS, STUDENTS

IS YOUR TEEN DEALING DRUGS? TEN WARNING SIGNS FOR PARENTS

The stories had dominated the business and education news for days, but were beginning to fade now—“At least,” Sorensen had said yesterday in the cafeteria, “until the legal stuff gets fully under way.”

“Uh-huh,” I’d replied, marveling again that this unfamiliar woman was—had been—my Ms. Wiles. I did not look directly at James—at Diefenbacher—but I could see him anyway, in the periphery of my vision.

“Did you read this yet, Frances?” Sorensen asked, pushing a current newsmagazine across the table and pointing to a headline. HOW IT BEGAN: LEYDEN AND FRIENDS FORM UNHOLY ALLIANCE. “It’s the best synopsis of the business end that I’ve seen so far.”

I had in fact read the article that morning, but I bent over it anyway, scanning it again. For all I’d wanted this meeting
with both of them, wanted my questions answered, now I was not quite ready.

I could feel both Diefenbacher and Sorensen watching me while I read the article. I took my time. Finally I looked up.

“You figured out a lot of this stuff yourself,” said Diefenbacher.

I shrugged, even though inwardly I was warmed by the approval I saw in his face. “Well,” I said. I fidgeted, smoothing one hand over the magazine. I took a deep breath then,
and began my questions. “What part of the FBI do you two work for?”

“RICO,” said Diefenbacher. “That’s, uh—racketeering. Organized crime.”

“I’m in finance,” said Sorensen. When I stared at her, surprised again, she added—did I imagine a bit defensively?—”Well, it’s
interesting.
And art history was my minor at college, not my major.”

I didn’t know her, I reminded myself. I didn’t know who she was at all. I asked, “When did you—the FBI—begin focusing on Unity and Pettengill?”

“Almost right away after the SEC contacted us,” Diefenbacher said. “It wasn’t difficult to figure out that Pettengill was the common link between the initial Cognitive Reach investors and Leyden. Leyden’s involvement with Unity was public knowledge. And then a detailed audit of Unity’s books turned up some other financial peculiarities.” He seemed to understand that I just wanted him to keep talking. “We, uh, took a look around the buildings—the Unity food pantry, and that of similar pantries at some other prep schools—and soon we knew what was going on. We could have stopped the whole thing a year ago.”

I sat up straighter. A year ago my brother was still alive. “Why
didn’t
you stop it a year ago?”

“Because we had to have Leyden!” Sorensen said, leaning forward. “Leyden himself, not the students. We needed direct evidence of Leyden’s involvement, and the only way to get it was an undercover investigation. And imagine—we
had to stand idly by last year and watch Leyden get that Presidential Freedom Award. Orders. It was unbelievable.”

Sorensen had gone undercover at Pettengill first, using her undergraduate minor in art history and some falsified teaching credentials to get the art teacher job.

“Yvette worked hard to try to get inside Unity herself,” Diefenbacher said. “But all they let her do was attend charitable meetings and pack clothing once a month. And her attempts to get close to the students and faculty members who seemed to be on the inside were just as futile. So I enrolled as a post-grad student at the beginning of last September and tried to establish myself as a shady character of the kind that Unity might like to recruit. And no one paid any attention at all.”

I wondered about the ethics of an FBI agent actually dealing drugs, even as an undercover agent. I remembered James saying to me once that he wouldn’t sell smack. Was that the line? It seemed arbitrary.

It made me feel queasy.

Diefenbacher had gone on. “That was another miscalculation on our part. We hadn’t yet figured out that by now Leyden’s student recruits were all on scholarship. That was another brilliant idea of Leyden’s. The scholarships were created with the thought that the recipients would be good recruits for the real work. More easily seduced; more easily controlled.”

Like Daniel, I thought. I said, “Was any of Unity’s charity work legitimate?”

“Some, we think. The cash grants to families in need. The scholarships were real, as you know. And they did donate overflow clothing and shoes and so on to the Salvation Army. But they never did any real distribution of charitable goods themselves. Goods went round and round, as Andy Jankowski figured out. And
we
went round and round, trying to find an angle on Leyden.”

“And then Daniel died,” I said quite calmly.

“And then Daniel died,” Diefenbacher confirmed. “And we noticed you. We realized that you could potentially get inside Unity. We thought they might need someone new, with Daniel gone.”

I thought about being at that Unity meeting, with James declaring that I shouldn’t do what Leyden wanted, while Ms. Wiles said that I should. For a second I thought that under no circumstances did I want to hear Yvette Sorensen justify to me why Ms. Wiles—my supposed friend!—had tried to influence me into joining Unity and, perhaps, becoming their informant. Why she’d been able to risk my emotional—and physical—welfare in that way. But I took a quick breath anyway and said, “So you two decided to play good cop-bad cop to try to manipulate me into joining.”

There was a moment of silence. Then Diefenbacher said, “Not exactly.” He was looking directly back at me. His eyes still said
You
, but I was ice. “Yvette and I disagreed about this. To me it felt too desperate, and I didn’t think they’d
trust you. But—” He cleared his throat. “But we were in agreement about
you.
We knew that if you did get in, if you discovered what was going on, you’d help us get Leyden. You’d do whatever you could.”

Listening to his voice, I remembered sitting across a cafeteria table from him when he was James Droussian, on a day that had felt, to me, like spring.

“We knew you had integrity, Frances. We knew you were honest.”

“Yes,” said Sorensen. “There was never the slightest doubt about that.” I wouldn’t look at her. “It’s in your work, Frances. It’s in everything you do.”

How strange to hear something good about yourself, and to believe it.

I put it aside.

“Anyway, it didn’t work out the way you two planned,” I said to my hands. “I talked to Andy and figured out a few things, and panicked. And I see now that if Saskia hadn’t done what she did, I would have messed up everything. Or maybe even gotten killed, like my brother. And Leyden would have gotten away.”

“Well, perhaps,” said Sorensen dryly. “But don’t worry about that. You didn’t do any worse than we did. As you know.”

More long, awkward silence had filled the cafeteria then. And into it, finally, I asked, “So. How did my brother die, exactly? How did he come to be killed?”

In my mind I could see Daniel in the lotus position, shaking his head.
No, no, no.

Around me, that same silence. And then Sorensen said, “Saskia Sweeney has asked that she be the one to tell you about Daniel’s death. If you agree, we can drive you up to Boston tomorrow to see her.”