The World Gives Way: A Novel Read online

  “Where are we going?” Tobias had asked as he watched his lunch steadily disappear, forkful by forkful, down Simpson’s gullet.

  “Palmer,” Simpson grunted out between bites.

  “Why?”

  “Because they always end up in Palmer.” Another forkful.

  “Why?”

  This second why had especially offended Simpson, who started to wave the fork around for emphasis.

  “Why? I don’t know why—because it’s the opposite of here, probably.”

  That was the extent of the details offered. Now they were on a metro train headed toward the edge of New London, where a canal shuttle waited to take them to Palmer. Simpson looked up from the revolving sequence of pictures on his tablet and stared at Tobias.

  “Will you stop tapping your goddamn foot?” Each word shot out of his mouth like a dart. Tobias looked down at the linoleum floor and willed his shoe to be still. Funny, he thought. A city as advanced as New London, and they still designed it so the metro would have linoleum floors. They felt strangely out of place. Maybe there was just something about public transit that demanded cheap, replaceable materials.

  More as an excuse to move than anything else, Tobias closed the gap between himself and Simpson and sat down next to him. He pulled out his tablet and woke up the screen, tilting it toward Simpson’s face.

  “I wired us into the canal shuttle feed at Palmer. She hasn’t shown up yet.” He brought video up on the screen: hundreds of commuters with backpacks, purses, and rolling suitcases wove through. Facial-recognition software framed each person’s face in turn with a little green box, stalling the video for a millisecond each time as it ran a new facial scan, relegating the motion on camera to unnerving stop-start jerks.

  Simpson moved the tablet away from his face and put his own back in his bag.

  “Look, Bendel, I know you’re super-duper excited to finally be going on a field trip, but I’m missing my kid’s birthday for this. Can you just dial it back a little bit for me?”

  He sighed and took a second look at the feed. “This is helpful, though. Good job.”

  Tobias wasn’t proud of it, but he felt a rush of pleasure at receiving Simpson’s approval.

  “You ever been to Palmer?” Tobias asked, trying to follow Simpson’s request and ease up.

  “A few times,” Simpson said. “Took Ruth there for her birthday last year.”

  Tobias raised his eyes to the status screens on the wall. Four stops to go. Simpson grunted.

  “What about you?”

  “Just once, with Barnes. But all we did was get off the ferry, pick up some evidence, and get right back on the ferry again.” Tobias didn’t mention it, but he knew Palmer quite well, from his life before Barnes. Though Tobias tended to view his criminal parentage as a circumstance out of his control, the agents of the New London Security Bureau looked on it as a genetic deficiency. Instead of constantly explaining himself, he found that omission worked best. If he didn’t mention his mother and father in conversation, there was a certain level of forgetting on the part of his colleagues.

  Before they were incarcerated, his parents had shuttled him around to all the grand locales. Palmer, of course, and New London, but also the Kittimer Mountains for vacations, and Troy’s tropical resorts. Tobias kept fragments of memories of this time that he never talked about. Golden spigots in hotel en suites. Heavy velvet curtains with tassel pulls to block out all manner of light and noise. Dinners that seemed more sculpture than food, though his father still always found error with something on his plate. Deep cushioned mattresses. Tiny ornamental boxes that seemed too small to hold anything at all.

  “Palmer’s nice and all, but I couldn’t understand living there,” Simpson was saying. Once, Tobias and his mother had stayed in an apartment in Palmer for six months, waiting for his father. Tobias remembered his stay feeling pretty normal, but then anything felt normal in repetition, especially when you were a child. Flexible bodies, flexible brains, at that age.

  With the clarity of years, Tobias could now see the faults in his upbringing, like the answer to a puzzle that, once pointed out, is so obvious it makes you smack your palm to your forehead. Ingrid had spent the months pacing a little too quickly back and forth across the rug in front of the apartment’s bay window, had swung a little too hard from bright conversation to sudden gasping sobs. There were pills she popped lightly into her mouth, throwing her son a playful eyebrow waggle and a smile. He’d assumed they were mints. There were nights when she rushed him into the closet, saying, “Hide and seek, hide and seek!” when a hard rapping sound surprised them at the front door, and he would just hear snippets of conversation, muffled and echoey through the door like a distant radio—“He’s not here right now,” “Haven’t heard from him,” “Will give him your message”—all the while tucked up between an unopened box of highball glasses and a never-used vacuum cleaner. After the thud of the front door closing, and the shunting sound of the dead bolt, Ingrid would pop open the closet door with a whoosh, eyes wide and smile severe, shouting, “Found you!”

  Such a strange, put-upon life they led. Tobias’s thoughts strayed back to the portrait of the Carlyles, all tense smiles and tight grips. There was something there too.

  “Why would the Carlyles kill themselves?” Tobias wondered aloud. Simpson looked sideways at him.

  “A family that rich, there’s bound to be some terrible things going on behind closed doors,” he said.

  Tobias agreed with the sentiment, but couldn’t see the specifics. He voiced possibilities aloud, hoping Simpson would catch something he hadn’t. “Techs swept their accounts. They weren’t having money trouble. No history of mental illness in the family…”

  “Husband had a few mistresses, but he didn’t seem the type to get bothered over that,” Simpson added.

  “Were any of the women blackmailing him?” Tobias asked.

  “Maybe. No evidence of it yet, though. And anyway, that might be a reason for Marcus to kill himself, but I don’t think Imogene would be especially sad about it. Their marriage seemed pretty cold already. She’d stay alive for life insurance alone, and the chance to wear the latest designer black dress.”

  That all tracked with how Tobias read their case file. They didn’t seem like people who allowed themselves to get flustered over much.

  “So why?” Tobias asked again. Simpson leaned forward, propping his elbows on his lap, and gave a noncommittal wag of his head.

  “Dunno,” he said. “But the case is Myrra Dal. Let’s stick on her.”

  Tobias must have looked disappointed in his answer, because Simpson added, “Look, if we catch Myrra Dal, she’s probably the best lead to finding out why. She’ll know more about them than anyone else.”

  Tobias’s tablet emitted a pinging sound. Simpson leaned in to look. “You’ve got a message.”

  Tobias looked at his mail folder and jumped to see it was from the station. He read it immediately, eager for more information.

  “We have to head back,” he told Simpson. He stood up and grabbed his bag, readying himself to exit at the next stop. “The techs found some letters under a floorboard when they did a second sweep of the penthouse. A possible accomplice.”

  Simpson’s face shifted from irritation to engagement. He stood up as well.

  “Where?” he asked.

  “She didn’t really tell me where she was headed.” Jake McCann was seated in front of them, looking nervous.

  Tobias looked the witness up and down. He was trying hard not to judge Jake and failing. He kept looking at the ground instead of at their faces. He had a grocer’s apron on, but it was so freshly white that Tobias doubted it had ever come into contact with hard labor. Joseph McCann, the owner of the store, hovered over his son’s shoulder.

  Joseph had set up a few chairs in one of the back stockrooms. Simpson was seated directly in front of Jake, while Tobias stood behind him, leaning against the wall, watching. The whole room smelled like vegetab
les.

  Simpson had taken the lead in questioning Jake. Tobias couldn’t get a read on what Simpson thought of the kid, but he could tell that Simpson was getting increasingly annoyed at Jake’s father, who kept interjecting, “Now, you’re not implying—” or “None of this is Jake’s fault—” every time he thought Simpson took his line of questioning too far.

  The kid. Tobias kept thinking of him that way, even though he knew they were the same age. It was all relative; compared to the guys at the station, he still felt like a boy, but standing next to Jake, he felt a boost of superiority. Between the odd fly-by-night life with his parents and the stern upbringing with Barnes, he’d never felt especially coddled. Something to be thankful for, he thought, if this is the way you turn out.

  “So she didn’t tell you where she was headed—but you guys wrote to each other a lot. Did you get any ideas as to where she might like to go? Places she might like to see? Or even any friends that she had, in other towns?” Tobias noticed that Simpson was keeping his voice unnaturally gentle, as if to not aggravate Jake’s excitable father.

  “Umm… no. Not really. I think I was her only friend.” Tobias detected the slightest hint of wistfulness in Jake’s voice as he said this. Whether or not his observation was true, Jake certainly wanted to be her only friend.

  “It seems like you were a pretty good friend to her,” Simpson observed, and Jake nodded.

  It hadn’t taken much to get Jake to admit that he’d had a friendship with Myrra Dal, and that he’d seen her that morning. But he claimed that Myrra Dal had simply met him to say goodbye and that there hadn’t been any further details exchanged. Jake was a terrible liar, pausing to think in all the wrong places, looking anywhere but in the agents’ eyes, practically sweating in puddles. Tobias could tell that Jake’s story wasn’t true, and he could tell that Simpson could tell. Simpson was amping up his questioning, starting out gentle and leading up to attack Jake’s story from a different side. Despite himself, Tobias was gaining a grudging respect for Simpson’s technique.

  “Meeting with her, tutoring her, buying her presents, that’s a really good friend,” Simpson continued.

  Jake nodded again. “Well, like I said, I felt bad for her, she didn’t have anybody. I’ve donated to the CWRA a few times, I think it’s terrible how workers are treated.”

  A grumble from Joseph behind them, and Jake tensed his shoulders slightly at his dad’s disapproval.

  Simpson nodded sympathetically. “It is, just awful. And I want you to know, she’s not in any trouble, not yet. We just need to find her so we can figure out what happened.”

  While Simpson carried on his line of questioning, Tobias skimmed through the scans of the letters that had been sent to his tablet. There weren’t many; from what Tobias could gather, the two had been communicating electronically, but at some recent point Myrra Dal’s tablet had been confiscated. Dal had stolen antique paper out of Marcus Carlyle’s office, and they’d kept up communications from there. In Jake’s letters—they only had his, with his heavy, blocklike handwriting—he’d expressed that he found writing on paper to be very romantic, but there was nothing more explicit than that regarding their relationship, at least nothing that Tobias could find. But still.

  Simpson was still questioning Jake, taking him through the beginnings of his friendship with Dal. Jake was just explaining how he’d helped her with some particularly large grocery runs when Simpson interjected.

  “And when did you become romantically involved with Myrra Dal?” Simpson kept his face open and innocent. Joseph McCann, however, was staring daggers at his son. Jake blushed so hard his skin practically glowed. He stared up at his father, then back to Simpson.

  “I—I didn’t.” He spoke with a weak voice. “We were just friends.”

  Joseph smacked Jake in the back of the head, his face as red as his son’s. “You complete asshole! Did you even use protection, or do your mother and I have to get you tested for diseases?”

  Joseph was about to go in for another smack, but Tobias stepped in to block him. Jake was cowering in his chair, and Simpson motioned for his attention, held his gaze.

  “Listen, Jake,” Simpson started, “you didn’t do anything wrong here. We’re not after you. We just need to know what she said before she left. The whole story.”

  Jake took a breath. All people wanted was to be told that it wasn’t their fault.

  Tobias had held back the father long enough for him to calm down. Joseph was now fuming in the corner of the stockroom. Tobias turned his attention back to the interrogation. Jake explained how Myrra Dal had come to him for help, Charlotte in her arms. He explained how he’d offered to help her alter the documents, volunteered to go with her. That led to another moment of pulling Joseph off his son.

  “But ultimately, she convinced me that I should stay behind, that she should go forward on her own.” Jake blinked one too many times, and Tobias heard the change in his voice. He cut into the conversation while still holding a warning arm up to Joseph’s chest.

  “How did she convince you of that?” Tobias asked. Jake looked at Tobias but didn’t say anything. Tobias waited, knew to wait, stared him down. Simpson leaned back, allowing Tobias his turn. Tobias shot a barely perceptible glance his way, hoping it was enough for Simpson to glean his appreciation.

  Another bout of silence.

  “You both seem pretty deep in love, why wouldn’t you go with her?” Tobias asked. Jake’s mouth was crumpling into a frown. It wouldn’t take much for him to fold.

  “Didn’t she want you to go with her?”

  Tobias leaned in a little closer to Jake, noticed his eyes welling up. He’d never gotten to question anyone before. He felt bad for the kid, but he had to admit he enjoyed the rush, the tension of the situation.

  “I thought she did.” A small voice. A tear popped out of Jake’s eye. Tobias nodded, invited him to continue.

  “I told her I’d go with her, and she seemed really happy about it, and she kissed me, and we…” Jake trailed off for a second, blushed. Simpson and Tobias exchanged a look. Myrra Dal was much savvier than Jake gave her credit for. Not that that was a surprise. Before Jake’s father could pick up on the direction of the conversation, Tobias jumped in.

  “And what happened—after?” Tobias asked.

  “Well, then she said it would be better if she went alone to get the IDs changed, safer for me—it made sense when she said it.” Jake sighed. “We picked a place to meet up later, but she never showed.”

  “You idiot,” Joseph said, from where he was stewing in the corner.

  “I’m sorry, Dad,” Jake said, staring at his feet. A tear dropped down onto the top of his shoe. Jake sniffed. “But maybe something happened to her—maybe she was detained or something—” Tobias rolled his eyes out of Jake’s line of vision, and Simpson glared at him.

  Simpson stood and put a hand on Jake’s other shoulder and said gently, “Maybe so. In any case, why don’t you give us the name of the ID guy that you recommended? And if you have any of Myrra’s letters stowed, we’ll take those too.”

  Jake looked up at Simpson, unsure. Simpson smiled at him, a rare thing to Tobias’s recollection.

  “Listen—you help us out with this, and we’ll call it square. You had good intentions. You don’t have to get into trouble over all this.” Simpson flashed his eyes over to Tobias again. The look said, Don’t challenge this. The information is more important than a citation.

  “Don’t judge that kid too harshly,” Simpson said on the way out. “Love will kill every last brain cell you have.”

  Tobias was tucking a bundle of Myrra Dal’s letters into the pocket of his bag. Paper. It felt rough and delicate.

  “Still, there’s something to be said for basic human judgment,” Tobias countered. They walked down the sidewalk back the way they had come. The elevator onto the train platform was the next block over.

  “How do you figure that?” Simpson asked.

  “People c
hoose who they pursue. It’s not like he fell in love with her overnight. He let her take advantage.”

  “Sometimes it’s a roll of the dice. When I first met Ruth, I totally let her take advantage—she read off my chemistry tests every week for the entire fall semester. But in the end, I got the date.”

  “Sorry, I didn’t mean it like that,” Tobias said. He’d never met Simpson’s wife. First day, and he was alienating his partner. But Simpson still seemed good-natured, more at ease now than he had been with Tobias’s foot-tapping. He walked lightly over the threshold of the elevator and pressed the door-close button.

  “No offense taken,” he said. The elevator shut behind them, and the two of them sped upward, fast enough for Tobias to feel his insides shift. He stared fixedly at the elevator button and tried his best to ignore the speed. “Joke was on her, anyway. I got a D in chemistry.”

  Tobias laughed, happy to still be in Simpson’s good graces.

  “We gonna go check out Boots?” he asked.

  Simpson shrugged and watched out the glass walls as the streets shrank below them. “We’ll send some guys to follow up on the phone number, but that’ll take a while. I’ve had to track down that guy before. He never stays in the same spot, can sniff out agents a mile away. We’ll stick around the city one more night, sift through the evidence, and if the uniforms haven’t found Boots by then, we move forward.”

  Tobias didn’t follow. “Move forward where? That’s our only lead.”

  “Palmer.”

  Tobias felt a wave of exasperation for Simpson. “Really?”

  The elevator dinged and the doors parted. They were back on the metro platform. Tobias allowed himself to be swallowed up by the sea of people surrounding them, dared to stand close enough to the edge of the platform that he could picture himself falling onto the tracks. A brief image of Imogene Carlyle’s corpse flashed through his mind. There was an odd burning smell coming off the tracks. After scanning for a few minutes he spotted the source: a dead pigeon lay contorted near the electrified rail. Nobody else seemed to notice the smell, but it was making Tobias nauseous. He did not want to go to Palmer.