“‘I’m telling you that there’s an organization that can protect you, get you the hell out of South Carolina, and maybe put to use the skills you’ve displayed over the past few weeks.’”

  “‘Skills?’ I asked her, genuinely confused. As far as I knew, except for being a whore, I didn’t have any skills. The years of abuse pretty much had made school a hit and miss thing at best. Conrad had no qualms about keeping me home on a school day if there was money to be made, and by the time I was in middle school, he pulled me out altogether, telling the administrators he’d be home-schooling me.”

  “No curriculum I’d be interested in,” said J.J. Her tone caught Dan’s attention and he turned from Nicole to look at her. She was wearing a firmly set expression frighteningly similar to her mother’s.

  “No. No you wouldn’t,” Nicole said. “So I had no idea what skills this crazy woman was talking about, but I’ll admit the idea of getting help out of the state sounded good. Especially if she was right about shit and fans. ‘Look, you seem to know a lot about me, or at least you think you do, but I really don’t know…’

  “She interrupted me. ‘Listen, I’d love to give you the time to continue to deny everything. We could play the game where you tell me to fuck off, and I convince you it’s in your best interest to listen to me, and eventually you understand and we leave together. But there’s really only time for that last part.’ As she said this, I heard a siren and realized that it was about the fifth cop car I’d seen since ordering my Quarter Pounder. Up until now, they’d just been speeding by in the general direction of Lake Hartwell, and this one did the same, but I looked up and saw two patrol cars and what was obviously an unmarked car moving slowly down Old Buncombe Rd, past the Mickey D’s parking lot. The woman saw them too.

  “‘That’s likely Detective Jake Frawley,” she said. “He’s slick as pig shit and he’s been asking a lot of questions. From what I hear, once or twice he’s gotten the answer ‘June Barker.’ So do you want to keep playing dumb or do you think you might like to get out of here?’”

  “It was Darlene,” Dan said, almost to himself.

  “It was Darlene. She was still Darlene Deeds back then. Anyway, as I continued to watch, the cops had almost rolled by, but all of a sudden, the unmarked car pulled into the parking lot and pulled right behind my mother’s car. That didn’t necessarily mean he was looking for me, I thought, but I decided not to hang around and find out. ‘Okay. Let’s go,’ I said quickly.

  “She started the truck without drawing any notice and drove me right past the cops, the patrol cars having doubled back to join the plainclothes man who was shining a flashlight into the interior, and she didn’t stop driving until she had to gas up, and by then, we had made it through Georgia and were almost to the Alabama border. In that time, she’d told me about Cleanup Crew, explaining that the work they did was just the same as what I’d been doing. By the time we reached Colorado, the national news had picked up the story of the Lake Hartwell Mangler.”

  “You,” J.J. said. It was not a question.

  “No,” Nicole answered. “Not me. The Mangler was June Barker. Within a day or so of getting to the farm, which was Darlene’s, by the way, Danny, not Wally’s…” Dan pursed his lips and nodded to indicate that he was a little surprised by the news. “…I was Nicole Jacks. June Barker was long gone.”

  As she said that, she paused. The silence became extended, and eventually, Dan and J.J. realized the story was over.

  Dan tried to bravely step up. “Oh, Coley. I’m… I’m so sorry…”

  J.J. cut him off. “Yeah, me too, Dad. But this really isn’t the time for therapy.” Even Nicole was surprised by the steel in her voice.

  “What I need to know now is what does Conrad Barker have to do with me. Why did they take me?”

  “You were bait. Nothing more. I haven’t figured out exactly how, but somehow or another, when they caught Darlene hacking Greenville PD’s computer network, they connected her to me, and believe me, everything that’s happened since has convinced me that Conrad’s fingerprints are all over this train wreck.”

  “So what now?” J.J. asked.

  “Um, yeah,” said Nicole, her voice heavy with hesitancy. “This is where the real conversation starts.”

  13

  We Leave the Best Eggs to Hatch on Their Own

  “I don’t suppose I have to tell you how nervous it makes me when you say things like that, right?” Dan asked his wife.

  “Like what?” Nicole, adopting the Socratic method, answered a question with a question.

  “Like you just spent an hour telling us about your super-twisted father, and the fact that he pimped you out for almost seven years, and you conclude that absolutely heart-pureeing story by saying, ‘Now to the real conversation.’ What the hell was all of that? Fake conversation?”

  “I think in Hollywood, they call it ‘the backstory.’”

  J.J., quiet during the exchange, now cut in. “Daddy, from what Mom told me earlier, I get that you’re good in the clutch. But you really, really seem to suck at the mental parts of this gig.”

  “‘This gig?’ Now you’re going to start talking like a beatnik?”

  “What’s a beatnik?” J.J. asked, forgetting for a moment that she was chastising her father.

  “Never mind,” Nicole said. “J.J., it’s you I need to talk to now anyway.”

  “I do not like the direction this conversation is going,” Dan grumbled.

  Nicole and J.J. both turned to face him and simultaneously shouted, “Please!” The mirror imagery stunned him into silence.

  “After my last briefing with Gail, I started to piece things together a little bit, and the conclusions I reached were pretty disturbing.” Nicole hesitated as she recalled the streams of consciousness that had commenced when she realized that she didn’t feel comfortable completing the mission based on the evidence she had to this point. She had felt that the diverse vignettes, which, taken on face value, didn’t really make sense, began to come into focus when viewed as related snippets of a bigger picture.

  “Let me try to lay it out for you in some sort of order. First, Darlene sniffs out some very unsubstantiated reports of misdeeds by a doctor serving as a school athletic trainer. She dug deep enough to find a couple of suppressed police reports and felt like it was worth looking into. Based on the same information that I have now, she decided to call for a cleaning on him. But while she’s actively assaulting the official government networks of the Greater Greenville area, somebody notices. Now all of this I’m relatively sure of. This next section moves us into the realm of speculation.

  “Somehow, the anti-hackers made a connection to CUC. And from there, they somehow made a connection to me.”

  “Why, though, Mom? I don’t understand the mental gymnastics there.”

  “Believe it or not, J.J., I think it might have come down to a roll of the great cosmic dice. Because somehow the man I came here to clean is connected with Conrad Barker, who after of long enough period of still waking up alive had passed had to figure getting rid of me before I could get him was the best plan. Whatever that missing link is between the person or persons who caught Darlene poking around and the realization by Conrad that I might possibly come back to Greensville, giving him his long-awaited opportunity to do a little cleaning of his own, mopping up the mess he created the day we buried my mama… what that link is I don’t know, but I can tell you that Conrad wasn’t going to leave it to chance that I came back. Sure, I might be dispatched to clean the sleaze-doctor, but then again, I might not. And now that he found me, 50-50 odds were not to his liking. That’s where you came in, kid. Your sweet old grand pappy had you kidnaped to ensure that I’d came back to South Carolina. That’s how you got involved. But it may not be the end of your involvement.”

  “Okay. Now I’m not sure I like the way this conversation is going either,” J.J. said. “I was kind of hoping my involvement at this point would consist of catching a plane back to Indiana.”

  “Listen to me carefully,” Nicole said, placing a hand gently but firmly on each of J.J.’s cheeks. “I know that there were times when I was telling you all of that horrible shit that I seemed like I was losing it. That’s because I was. But even when I’m losing it, I pay attention to what’s going on around me.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Meaning I’ve been watching your reaction to the things your heard. I’ve heard you rein your father in a couple of times so that his antics didn’t break your concentration.”

  “Antics?” Dan objected.

  “PLEASE,” came the chorus from the Porter all-girl choir. Dan threw his hands up.

  “J.J., you listened to every detail, every nuance of my story. A couple of times, I saw your eyes focus on something distant, as though you were processing data in your head. I’m not saying you’re some kind of unfeeling robot, because I could also see that what I was saying was disturbing to you as well, but I saw you put that aside, at least for now. You didn’t freak. You assessed.”

  “Yeah, maybe, I guess. But so what?”

  “I think you can help me.”

  “Nicole Porter!” Dan’s sudden outburst shattered the thin veneer of confidence between the women. “Don’t you even think about it!”

  “What’s wrong with him?” J.J. asked.

  Nicole looked at her husband, and a sad, knowing smile crept across her perfect lips. “What’s wrong is he’s much better at the mental part of this gig than you give him credit for. He’s guessed what I’m about to propose.”

  “You’re goddamn right I have,” Dan said angrily.

  “Um, okay. So you two have a handle on what my involvement could be. Might somebody clue me in?”

  It was her father who answered. “Remember how your mother said that you were used by this Clyde Davis/Uncle Al hybrid? Well now she wants to use you in exactly the same way… somehow. I haven’t quite worked it all through, but the bottom line is she has apparently lost the last shred of her sanity because she thinks I’ll allow you into another dangerous situation.”

  “That part I sort of figured out,” J.J. said, again letting a little disdain leak into her tone. “Mom, just tell me what you want me to do.”

  “Well, it’s like this. While the official word of him sexually assaulting student athletes in Greenville has been almost completely suppressed, the word about the remarkable success he’s had in preventing and treating injuries has been widely publicized. The bad news there is that means people from outside Greenville, even from other states, have begun to seek him out to work with their youth. So, if he is doing what the whispers seem to imply, he’s getting a fresh supply of victims on a regular basis.”

  “That’s just sick,” J.J. said.

  “It is. But it also means he might be inclined to consult with a college athlete who was having trouble coming back from an injury. The sport wouldn’t matter. A softball player, we’ll say, for the sake of argument.”

  That was when it all became clear to Jenifer June Porter. Nicole had stopped talking as she watched what she said work its way into her daughter’s head. Now that it had, J.J. could only say one thing.

  “Whoa.”

  Dan was unable to speak, and Nicole almost became concerned at the shade of red his face had turned. But she’d seen that face before and he’d avoided stroking out. So instead, she focused on J.J.

  “I know I’ve had a bit of time to mull this over, but I’m still basically spit-balling now. This might not even be doable,” Cole said.

  “Whoa.”

  “Cole, I think the freak-out you didn’t see during the… what was it... backstory? Yeah. You’re seeing it now,” Dan said, regaining the capacity for speech.

  J.J. turned to her father and held her palm about two inches from his face. “Whoa!” she said for the third time.

  “Not a horse,” Dan muttered, getting a little tired of being shut down by his daughter.

  “What, honey? Why are you saying that?” Nicole asked, her voicing taking on the full mantle of boo-boo-kissing, fevered-brow-cooling mommy. Dan shot her a confused glance, but J.J. began speaking before he could process the personality change.

  “It would never work!” J.J. said at last. “If Conrad is somehow involved with this creepy doctor, won’t they recognize me the minute I walk through the door?”

  “Would they?” Nicole countered. “If he is involved, Conrad will have learned, after the trouble I caused him, to stay in the shadows to a much greater degree. While I think he’s got something to do with this pig, I don’t necessarily think they deal with each other directly. So there’s at least a chance that the doctor doesn’t even know there’s anything amiss.”

  “Circles of hell.”

  Both parents turned at looked at their daughter. “What, honey?” Nicole asked, adopting the voice again.

  “In the Inferno by Dante Alighieri, he describes hell as a massive pit comprised of circles which decrease in size but increase in suffering the closer one goes to the central circle, which is the home of Satan.”

  Dan and Nicole continued to stare at J.J. Nicole’s mouth was actually hanging open slightly.

  “Well first,” Dan said, “I’d like to say that I feel the money your mother and I invested in your education was well spent.”

  “Here-here!” interjected Nicole.

  “Secondly, could you perhaps explain what any of that has to do with the current situation.”

  “Conrad is the devil,” J.J. said.

  “Here-here!” Nicole exclaimed once more.

  Unhindered by her mother’s interjections, she continued. “By that I mean he’s in the inner-most circle. He’s insulated, unassailable. Do you see, Mom?”

  “Wait. I’m still picturing him with devil horns,” Nicole said, her eyes closed. “But yes. I get you. You’re thinking that Dr. Lewis, while certainly evil, is not quite evil enough to be interacting with Conrad directly.”

  J.J. burst out laughing.

  “What’s funny?” Nicole asked, a little put off by her daughter’s outburst, but, as is the case with any decent parent, began smiling at the sound of it.

  “Not quite evil enough. He’s the Diet Coke of evil. Just one calorie, not evil enough.”

  There was a beat and then Dan said, “Is that Austin Powers?”

  “Give the man a cigar!” J.J. said, laughing.

  “Alright, listen. It was a good movie reference and I salute you. But we need to be serious!” he said, the stern-father-face worn expertly, but ultimately to no avail.

  “Danny, sometimes you have to let the situations spill-off a little, or you end up with a messy flood.”

  “Yeah. Levity in the face of certain death. You’ve known it all along, I’m learning it these days.” His stern expression had been replaced by one of resignation. But only to a point.

  There was a second beat, if possible more humid than the previous. “Is that Bob Dylan?” J.J. asked.

  “You see,” Dan said, smiling in spite of his call for more sobriety in the situation, “she was listening to our music all those years after all. Now stop. You’ve got me doing it. This is not the time for the famous Porter Reference-Making Game! What I’m trying to point out is that we were in the middle of discussing unthinkable things that I will not allow and suddenly we moved onto discussing Renaissance poetry. Shouldn’t we get back to the unthinkable and maybe pick up the literary discourse at a later, more appropriate time?”

  “He’s right,” Nicole said. “So you agree that there’s a possibility that Dr. Lewis would have no reason to know you by sight.”

  “It’s possible that they’ve worked out that level of sophisticated isolation,” J.J. said, again sounding to Dan so much like Nicole, not only in the structure and tone of her voice but in the ability to reason on the run.

  “And it would make sense that Conrad would choose to remain completely out of the picture. I don’t think he wanted to attract your attention until he was prepared.”

  “Where are you coming up with this, Jayj?” Dan asked, his head beginning to spin a little.

  “Shh!” Nicole said.

  “So let’s say Lewis has no idea I exist. How do we get him to see me?”

  “I have no idea what the procedure would be. I’m probably going to have to fight with Darlene in order for that to happen.”

  “Fight?”

  “Yeah. She’s not going to be any more enthusiastic about this than your father is.”

  “And I am not enthusiastic at all, in case you didn’t understand that’s what Mom meant. Zero enthusiasm. None at all.”

  “Dad, you’re bordering on blithering right now.” J.J. let out a loud puff of air. “So. You convince Darlene to arrange a meeting. Won’t this lot be on the lookout for anything that has the scent of the hacker they already encountered?”

  “Jayj, listen. Darlene did somehow screw up while trying to develop the details of this case, and believe me, I’m still more than a little pissed about it. But there is no one in the world I would trust moving forward more than her. She would use a different server, or network, or… Dan, help me; I’m floundering with the geek-speak.”

  “Oh, ‘geek-speak,’ so now I get to talk?”

  Overlooking the sarcasm, Cole nodded. With a sigh, Dan said, “Yeah. I paid people to handle all D-Soft’s security precisely so that I never had to learn the terminology. But I’m guessing she’ll have set up a new server, establish a new network, all new IPs…”

  “Uh huh. That shit,” Nicole said, again cutting him off. “So there’ll be no chance of them connecting this communication with anything they’ve encountered before.”

  “Okay. I’ll check that problem off the list. So we’ve convinced her, and she’s managed it brilliantly, getting me an appointment with the doctor in a day or so. Now what?”

  “With your father and me in a position which will allow for instant intervention, you’d have the doctor assess your injury.”

 

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