End of Secrets (12 page)

“Tha
t’s
not easy to do,” Kera said, glancing at Jones.

Jones shrugged. “Privac
y’s
not a crime. I actually kind of admire the purity in that.”

Kera stared at the frozen image on-screen, wishing she had a better view of the ma
n’s
eyes behind his sunglasses. “So this Canyon guy covers his tracks pretty well. And yet you still found him.”

“Well, i
t’s
the twenty-first century. A guy walks into a bar, h
e’s
gonna be on camera.”

Gabby jumped in here. “What are the chances this is a coincidence? That h
e’s
not just a frequent patron of the hotel bar?”

Kera shook her head. She did
n’t
even need to do the math. “No chance at all. Not if we can put him there for every single one of these visits.”

Jones looked up at Kera. “Want to hear the best part? Guess where he was on the night of June 12 of last year?”

“Yo
u’r
e kidding,” Kera said, seeing in his face that he was
n’t
.

“Where?” Gabby said. “What are you talking about?” Using the map, Jones explained how the four missing subjects had been detected in the industrial blocks between the Meatpacking District and the West Side Highway—all on the same night back in June. Jones pulled up the map and pointed to two new yellow dots, representing the points where Charlie Canyon was I
D’d
entering the neighborhood and then exiting it several hours later.

Gabby stood thinking for a moment before she said, “OK, tha
t’s
good enough for me. I want you to start round-the-clock surveillance on this guy. For now, just use the computers. No stakeouts or tails, and not a word gets out to NYPD or the Feds. Understood? Just use HawkEye to track him. We ca
n’t
have this guy disappearing into thin air like the others.”

Jones nodded. Gabby turned to Kera.

“Get into this gu
y’s
life. Find out who he is, where he goes, what he spends money on, what connection he has to our subjects—everything. OK?”

“I can do that, yes. But this guy, Charlie Canyon, h
e’s
an American citizen.”

“So what? What are you saying, Agent Mersal?”

“Just that, well,
I’m
not sure a FISA judge would agree that we have probable cause that justifies this level of surveillance.”

“We have
n’t
asked a judge,” Gabby said, clearly offended more by the insubordination than the basis of Ker
a’s
complaint. “And I have
n’t
asked for your legal opinion. Your job is to analyze data available to you. If you have access to surveillance of Mr. Canyon, I damn well expect you to use it.”

“I understand. But, with respect, w
e’r
e talking about an investigation of missing persons, not counterterrorism. Do we even have reason to think a crime has been committed?”

“You have
n’t
the faintest idea of the full parameters of this investigation. Tha
t’s
why you take orders from me. And
I’v
e just ordered you to carry out full surveillance of this target, indefinitely, until I order you to stop. Is that clear, Agent Mersal?”

“Yes, m
a’a
m.”

“Good. The three of us will meet with Branagh at the end of the week. Find me something worth talking about in that meeting.”

Kera watched Gabby go. She did
n’t
exhale until the Control Room door shut behind her. Gabby wanted them to meet with Director Branagh? About
this
?

“Was I out of line?” she said to Jones.

“
I’m
not a lawyer, remember?”

“Yeah, but you have common sense, do
n’t
you? And decency. Yo
u’r
e not here for this kind of thing, right?” When he did
n’t
answer, she turned to look at him. “Jones? Did you take this job—did you develop HawkEye—to spy on Americans who have
n’t
been charged with any crime?”

Jones did
n’t
look up, but h
e’d
stopped working. For a long moment he was silent, his hands hovering over the keypad. Finally, very calmly, he said, “You have no right to question why
I’m
here.” Then he added, a little more softly, “Do me a favor and do
n’t
get yourself fired, OK?”

Later that afternoon Kera came back to Detective Hoppe
r’s
e-mail message, which had been neglected in the wake of the mura
l’s
appearance and then the discovery of Charlie Canyon. She now thought it worth following up on. She called the detective on his direct line.

“Ms. Mersa
l . . .
Ms. Mersa
l . . .
”

Kera thought it was probably to her advantage that Detective Hopper did
n’t
immediately remember her. “You e-mailed me this morning. About the Rowena Pete case.”

“Yes,” he said, first with minor triumph in his voice at remembering the name and then, using a much lower tone when he realized who she actually was, “Oh, yes.
I’m
sorry this case is turning out to be such a dud. And after starting out with so much potential for sensation. I understand yo
u’r
e frustrated, but I can assure you again that I have nothing new to report.”

“I suspected as much. I was just wondering. You wrote in your e-mail that your investigation has turned up no sign of foul play.” She expected the detective to become defensive or to at least toss in a “so far” or some such qualifier that promised future leads. But he said nothing. “How, then, would you classify the bizarre scene that was discovered in her apartment?”

“A person is free to do whatever she wants in her own home, so long as it does
n’t
break a law or harm anyone else.
I’v
e seen things a lot kinkier than that.”

“So what happens now? You just stop looking for her?”

“If she does
n’t
want to be found, Ms. Mersal,
I’m
not going to spend taxpayer
s’
money dragging out a search. I have real crimes to solve.”

Kera thanked him halfheartedly for his time and turned her attention to the surveillance photos of Charlie Canyon. In most of them, he was seen at a distance, but she could tell he had dark hair and a handsome, boyish face. He usually wore sunglasses and his blank expression gave away less than his body language, which was calm and confident, an upright posture with shoulders back and chest out slightly as he walked. The electronic dossier, which HawkEye had begun to assemble rapidly, said that Canyon had recently turned thirty.

A few moments ago, Charlie Canyon had been an anonymous citizen, one of millions who set foot on the cit
y’s
streets every day. But a computer linked to a handful of cameras had singled him out because he had a habit of having drinks with people who later went missing. Now he was about to get the full HawkEye treatment. In Ker
a’s
experience with surveillance—which had until this week included only foreign targets—when an individua
l’s
identity was investigated at this level, their lives ended up irrevocably changed.

TWELVE

That night, when Parker asked her if sh
e’d
heard about the mural in Tribeca, Kera admitted sh
e’d
been there and had seen it in person. He looked at her in that pleading, heartbreaking way he did sometimes in moments when his understanding of her work—of
her
—was exposed as superficial.

All she said was, “I was in the neighborhood for a work thing.”

If that answer bothered him, he let it go. He was far more curious about the mural. He wanted to know how big it was and if it looked as real in person as it did in all the web photos. She said it did, realizing now that although sh
e’d
been preoccupied at the scene with a search for clues about the artist, the painting had transcended the mob and the cops and the sirens and her bizarre investigation. It had reached her; it was the kind of image that would come flashing across her min
d’s
eye, at times, for the rest of her life.

“You should go see it for yourself,” she said.

“Too late. The cit
y’s
painting over it as we speak.”

This should
n’t
have come as a surprise. Of course they would paint over the mural. From their perspective, it was the work of a vandal who had trespassed and defaced private property, not to mention the disturbance it caused to the intersection below. But something in Kera, something beyond the instinct to preserve evidence, resented the idea that it should be painted over so hastily. “Had you seen any of the previous murals or sculptures?”

“Not in person,” Parker said, disappointed. He had never mentioned It before, though she figured he must have been aware of the artist before sh
e’d
been. She did
n’t
watch TV, or read popular blogs, or listen to the newest music. She was consumed by work.

Parker had reclined on the couch with his laptop, the dregs of a gin and tonic mingling with melting ice in a glass on the coffee table. She was on her own computer, perched on a stool at the bar that divided their kitchen from the living room. Like every other night since h
e’d
returned from Dubai, sh
e’d
come home after nine, they ate dinner together, and then they sat and talked while browsing online. It had become a routine. A rut, maybe, was another word for it.

She typed the URL for Gnos.is into the browse
r’s
address bar, angling the screen self-consciously away from Parker so that he could
n’t
see it. If he caught her reading Gnos.is, h
e’d
never let her hear the end of it. The coverage of the Tribeca mural was thorough. One art critic, treating the mural as serious art, wrote that it illustrated how the basic human functions were simultaneously harmonious and hypocritical. “The artist exposes how tenuous the true relationship is between our compartmentalized, outward lives and our filthy reality, at all times only inches apart.” Other critics dismissed the mural as a depraved stunt and pleaded for the public to stop giving the artist attention.

Like Jone
s’s
unsuccessful search on HawkEye, Gnos.is had nothing to report on the artis
t’s
biography. Their coverage focused on the art itself, as well as the publi
c’s
growing intrigue. With each new installation, people seemed to embrace the mystery of the unknown artist more deeply. It had become a living urban legend. Kera did
n’t
care for mysteries, and she did
n’t
believe in urban legends. She believed every case was solvable. She had to.

Parker was already in bed when she slid between the sheets next to him. A few minutes later, he startled her when he said, “Yo
u’r
e thinking about your story, are
n’t
you?” She could
n’t
tell whether h
e’d
been awake the whole time or if she woke him when she got into bed. She nodded in the darkness, her chin brushing up and down against his shoulder. “Does it make you happy?” he said.

“What do you mean?”

“You seem so serious. Distracted. I worry that yo
u’r
e not happy here, doing this.”

“Of course
I’m
happy,” she said quickly, stroking his hair. “
I’m
sorry. Yo
u’v
e been incredibly patient and sweet, and
I’m
off in another world. But yes, this is what I want to be doing. I love it.”

Parker turned toward her. “Really?”

“OK, most of it. Sometimes i
t’s
frustrating. And sometime
s . . .
”

“What?”

“Nothing. I just hope it matters.”

“Matters how?”

She exhaled. “
I’m
sorry, I really ca
n’t
talk about it.”

He did
n’t
say anything to that. She was just glad he did
n’t
draw away from her.

I hope i
t’s
worth it
, was what she was thinking.
I hope that we at least do more good than harm
.

She thought about Jone
s’s
map and the layers and layers of data that had led them to the surveillance images of Charlie Canyon. At that very moment, computers were searching for and saving information about this man, a man who would wake in a matter of hours in a world that seemed to him the same—only something would have changed. His every move would now be watched.

Some time passed, and Kera fell back into a half-sleep world in which she was pursuing leads that darted for cover into dangerous alleys. She did not know how much time had gone by when a thought punctured her sleepless trance.

“Parker?” she whispered. “Are
you
happy?”

But Parker was asleep.