Weavers (10 page)

Darryl winced as they hit the line for the checkpoint. He must have left something with the woman at the ticket counter. She’d just died, and his brain felt like it had been snapped with a rubber band the size of a fan belt.

“Are you OK?” Terry asked as they shuffled through the line, and Darryl turned at him and smiled for the benefit of the people around them.

“I’m just ready to get on this plane and get back to the US,” said Darryl, turning back around and ignoring the confused look Terry gave him.
Jesus, it’s bad enough I had to bend that woman in the fucking airport, but I’m going to have to euthanize Terry, too, if he can’t start thinking straight.
Remembering that Terry had started this adventure drunk, Darryl took a deep breath and tried to calm down. The serious part of the checkpoint was coming up, and it was safe to assume that the guards were looking for a gringo who resembled Terry a great deal.

Darryl gave his passport and ticket to the man standing at a little podium in front of the X-ray machines. He was ready to fry him—to not even attempt to use the man, just send a blast into his brain and shut him off like a light switch—but there was no need. The man took his passport and ticket, grunted, and then handed them back, before doing the same for Terry. The two of them took their papers back, passed through the metal detector, and walked to their gate.

It was an hour later before they could board the packed plane and sit down. It would be hours until they could talk about what had happened, but Darryl was just fine with that. He had no idea if he was going to let Terry ever leave Des Moines, or if he even wanted to keep the charade going. Everything since Vincent had been a nightmare, and the setup in Mexico was going to cost them a significant sum of money. Darryl grabbed a magazine from the seat back and then opened it to read. He fell asleep moments later as the plane took off, and his dreams were awful.

CHAPTER 18

Cynthia took a sip of milk as Mrs. Martin returned to the table with a plate of delicious-looking chocolate-chip cookies.
Mrs. Martin set the cookies down between them, then sat in the chair opposite Cynthia and took a drink of her own milk. Cynthia smiled at her, and Mrs. Martin smiled back, while the dogs ran around Cynthia’s ankles, begging to be picked up again.

Mrs. Martin looked down at them and shook her head. “I can lock them up in the bedroom if you want, dear.”

“No, I like them just fine where they are. They’re so friendly.”

“They are indeed, at least to the right person,” said Mrs. Martin with a curt nod. “Do you know why they like you so much, Cynthia?”

“I guess because I’m not much bigger than they are, and because they like to be petted, and I like to pet them.”

“Those are certainly very good reasons,” said Mrs. Martin. “But I was looking for another answer, and it’s kind of a scary one. I don’t want you to be afraid, though. I want you to trust me, even though you have a hard time trusting any adult right now. I know that adults—”

“Lie,” Cynthia finished for her. “They lie and they get divorce, and then you have to move. They get in really mean fights where no one says what they’re thinking but everyone hates each other. They lie.” Cynthia could feel the tears welling up in her eyes, and she leaned down to rub Libby between the ears and to dry her eyes in secrecy.

“They do lie,” said Mrs. Martin. “That’s one of the worst things about childhood, the discovery that adults make mistakes and are far more apt to lie, cheat, or steal than even the worst little child. Adults are cruel, and often with a purpose. At least when a child is cruel it is typically for reasons they don’t understand.” Mrs. Martin took a cookie from the plate, dunked it in her milk, and nibbled at the edge of it. She smiled and said, “But we both know that’s not what I was asking you, not really. You’ve been seeing the threads of the Moirai.”

“The what?”

“The strings, my dear,” said Mrs. Martin. “You have been seeing them, haven’t you?”

“It just started,” said Cynthia. “I was at my Nan and Pop’s house taking a nap, and when I woke up I knew my parents were going to get divorce because of affair. When my parents came home, I could see red lines coming from their heads and from Nan and Pop’s heads. My dad’s were a little purple, but the rest were bright red—so bright that I can’t understand how no one else could see it.”

“Are you sure they were purple?” Mrs. Martin asked in a small voice, and Cynthia nodded.

“Yes.”

Mrs. Martin pursed her lips, set the cookie she was eating down, and took a pack of the funny-smelling cigarettes from her pocket and stood. She walked back into the kitchen and grabbed a glass ashtray from a drawer, then walked back to the table and set it down. Cynthia realized as the older woman went through the motions of removing and lighting a cigarette that she had been watching her head, as if she were expecting to see something there, but there were no threads betraying Mrs. Martin’s emotions.

“Purple is never good,” said Mrs. Martin between drags of her cigarette, and Cynthia looked at her with a terrified mask on her face. “Calm down, dear,” said Mrs. Martin. “You haven’t even touched a cookie. Let the dogs alone, and let’s discuss this. I regret that I won’t be able to answer every question that you have, but I should be able to help with a great many of them.”

“You looked scared when I said that Daddy’s strings were purple,” whispered Cynthia. “They were purple yesterday, and they were purple again today when I went to the store and they were all fighting.”

“You have crayons, don’t you, Cynthia?”

“Yes, but they’re still at the old yellow house, not here in the apartment.”

“Well, you’re going to need to get your mother to buy you a set,” said Mrs. Martin as she tapped her cigarette on the glass ashtray. “I suppose I can if she won’t, but it will make a lot more sense to her if they don’t just happen to show up. Your mom trusts me, but only just so much, and I don’t think a gift from me now, even a small one, would help build her trust in me.”

“What will I do with the crayons?” Cynthia had no doubt that she could get her mother to buy her a set. Her mother knew she loved coloring and couldn’t imagine not being able to draw.

“You’re going to make a color chart,” said Mrs. Martin as she stood again, leaving her cigarette in the ashtray and walking into the living room to get her purse. She took her wallet from it, walked back to the table, and sat before opening it, and then removed a sheet of worn and yellowed paper. “When my great-grandmother told me about the Moirai, she was close to dying, and she made me promise that I would remember every word she said. More specifically, she made me promise that if I could ever see, I would get a set of paints and make a chart so that I could remember them all.”

“You were blind?”

“I was indeed, though my great-grandmother said I could see in other ways, and she was right,” said Mrs. Martin. “I didn’t know it at the time, but my second sight was the only thing keeping me alive.”

Mrs. Martin rolled up her sleeve and pointed to a row of blue numbers, and Cynthia leaned over to get a better look.

“Is that a tattoo?”

“It is indeed,” said Mrs. Martin. “I got that when I was just a little bigger than you, believe it or not, after I was put in a camp with my mother and great-grandmother.”

“Like a summer camp?”

“No, honey, not like a summer camp at all,” said Mrs. Martin with a sad look on her face. “Quite the opposite, in fact. It was a place where bad people were putting people like me. They made us work, but sometimes they killed us, too. Everyone there had their number tattooed on their arm because that was all that we were to them—just numbers.”

“Where was the camp?”

“In Germany. It was called Dachau,” said Mrs. Martin. “Someday you’ll learn all of this in school, and if you remember this conversation it might strike you as a little odd that you knew someone who was there, but you do: your old friend Mrs. Martin almost died there. Of course, back then I was no Mrs. Martin, I was just little Ora Rabban, and I never should have survived the inspections on the first day. They were getting rid of handicapped people, you see.”

“You mean, like, killing them?” Cynthia whispered.

“I do, regrettably,” said Mrs. Martin. “I know that all of this probably sounds like some awful fairy tale, but it’s all true, unfortunately. A bad man made a whole country angry, and they wanted a scapegoat, so that’s what they found in me and others like me. Giving up your rights is like marrying a man, Cynthia. You need to make darn sure it’s for the right reasons, or you’re apt to carry a heavy load. Germany was like that back then. It was a heavy load for all, but especially for the Jews.”

“Why were they killing people?” Cynthia asked. She believed Mrs. Martin, but killing someone was a serious thing. It was something that always made the news and always made Mom sad and Dad angry.
Why would a whole country just start killing people?

“Because they needed someone to blame so that everyone else could stand strong,” said Mrs. Martin. “That, however, is a lesson for another day. You should know this about me, young lady: I am a notorious rambler when the mood strikes me, and I am definitely struck. It’s been a long time since I talked to a weaver.”

“A weaver?”

“Yes, just like yourself and a great many other people as well,” said Mrs. Martin. “Not many are as strong as me, and certainly not many are even close to you, but they are out there.” Mrs. Martin dunked a cookie in milk, took a bite, and smiled. “A weaver is a person who can see those little threads you’re getting accustomed to seeing, and weaving is the act of manipulating them.” She smiled. “I’m getting ahead of myself again. Back to my story in Dachau: I had no idea I had this power, mostly because I was blind and I could not see the threads in the air around me. What I could do, however, was manipulate those threads to make people look at me not as someone to take pity on but as someone to love. The guards there had orders to find people like me and get rid of them, but they left me alone. Everyone loved little Ora back then, but I had no idea it was because I was altering the way they saw me. I was a prisoner, but they still loved me, even as they—I’m sorry, Cynthia. I get worked up talking about my mother and great-grandmother. I need to remember how young your ears are.”

“It’s OK,” said Cynthia, not entirely sure if she really thought that it was. “Were they killed?”

“They were indeed. If I would have known how I was surviving the selections, I might have been able to help them, too, but I had no idea what I was doing. I was just a little girl, and at the end I was a little girl with nothing. What God gives he can take away, and though God saw it fit to take my family—all of my blood except for an aunt and her husband—I did find my sight just a few weeks after our camp was freed. It was a bitter prize.”

“Why were you able to see?”

“I was never entirely blind,” explained Mrs. Martin. “I couldn’t see, not like I can now, but a couple of eye surgeries fixed me right up. You should have heard me screaming in the hospital. Not only could I see, but I could also see—”

“The threads, right?” Cynthia asked. “You went from seeing nothing to seeing everything, but also the threads. I didn’t scream, but I thought about it, and I’ve always been able to see. It had to have been horrible.”

“It was awful,” said Mrs. Martin. “Awful and wonderful, all in one big lump. I was happy to see, but I would have happily traded it all to have my family back. I have had many happy times in my life—right now being one of them—and that should have been one of the happiest, but instead it was one of the saddest. I saw all different colors of thread, but you need to remember that I was in a hospital near the end of a war. I saw a great many of the bad colors, and there was nothing happy about that.”

“You looked scared earlier when I said that my dad’s were purple,” said Cynthia. “Is that a bad color?”

“Any of them can be bad, Cynthia. That’s just the nature of the situation. Humans are an odd lot, even the ones we care for a great deal, but yes, in my experience there is nothing good about purple, not when you see it like that.”

“What does it mean?”

“Everything, my dear. Everything and nothing,” said Mrs. Martin. “Do you have any other questions, or should I explain the colors?”

“Just one. What are the Mooreea?”

“The Moirai, sweetie. The sisters,” said Mrs. Martin with a frown. “Let’s talk about colors first, and if you still want to know, later we can talk about the Moirai.”

CHAPTER 19

Jessica could have had as many as she wanted, but she only wanted four.
They were the four best computer geeks she could find, all culled from the Hartford area, given security clearance—a necessity, as much as it tested Howard’s patience—and then told some small parts of some very big secrets. The TRC had researchers who worked with computers, even some who could easily have been considered experts, but these new nerds knew the ins and outs of the real final frontier, the gallery of lost souls and hidden identities that made up current Internet users. Jessica barely understood or used the web herself, but she knew that for those who could navigate its landscape, it was a tool whose power was beyond measure. The goal of Jessica’s elite geek corps was simple: use this tool—and anything else they could think to ask for—to flush out TKs.

To that end, Jessica’s analysts were combing both the black hole of the web and all available records of modern events for anything that might signal TK interference, either through a computer or from across a room. There were a few incidentals found in the first couple of days—occurrences that might possibly fit the profile, based on some of this often less than legal probing—but so far nothing had panned out. Still, Jessica’s geeks—Geoff Miley, Rick Cambridge, Pat Evans, and Brinn Bobrovsky, all pulled off of Y2K prep squads and with impressive pedigrees that Jessica barely understood—were working hard, and that was all she felt she could ask of them. Rabid for results as Jessica was, putting too much weight on a person doing an impossible job seemed counterproductive.

About four days in, her approach began to bear fruit. Thanks to unlimited access to federal and local law-enforcement data, along with the fledgling Internet media, her four were getting leads.

Brinn was enamored of the case of two men suspected of a trio of murders in Mexico. The last time they’d been seen was boarding a plane to come stateside. They’d been spotted in the airport and actively pursued by security. Sure, the authorities south of the border could have done a better job—grounding all of the damn planes until they’d hunted down the pair, for starters—but after watching the videos, Jessica came to doubt any airport in the States would’ve had better luck holding them. Everything seemed to fall magically into place to allow the two Americans to escape—and Jessica didn’t believe in magic.

There had been no news of the duo since they’d landed in Des Moines, and Jessica figured things were going to stay that way. If one of the two men really was a TK with homicidal tendencies helping his buddy jump country to country on some sort of murder tour, they’d pop back up with even more crimes under their belts. If they disappeared or got busted in the next week or two, they were just a couple of run-of-the-mill scumbags—still dangerous, but not worth the TRC’s time, especially during the current manhunt.

There was another case in Wisconsin—some idiot who won a few million bucks in table games at a pair of Indian casinos over by Lake Michigan. The twist that made it interesting was that he’d left a dead wife at home before heading off on his spree. Geoff and Rick followed that one like a couple of ghouls, poring over FBI docs well above their security clearance but far below Jessica’s, but the trail ended in a bloody puddle after a week when Mr. Lucky, the cops on his trail like a pack of Glock-toting bloodhounds, finally ate a bullet to put an end to the game.

The man was dead and so there was no way to be sure of his possible abilities, but Geoff still came away certain he had been the real deal, his double casino run too spectacularly lucky not to have been orchestrated by some TK puppet master tugging at the dealers’ strings. Jessica wasn’t having any of it, though. The guy may have been crazy as a homicidal bedbug, but his winning streak had been just that—or at least it hadn’t been driven by a TK. A real TK with an ego big enough to kill would never be cornered like that for so long, she explained, and if he was, he’d go down fighting.

Pat found what he felt looked like his own bent-work as he pursued what started as a smattering of details surrounding the death of a young man named Vincent Taggio, a recent teen suicide from a well-respected St. Louis family. The more Pat worked the idea, the more tantalizing tidbits came out—and then, a couple of weeks after Vincent’s death, his dad, Paulie, turned up dead, too.

And then all the shit came out.

Paulie wasn’t just the well-regarded patriarch of his family but also a dues-paying member of
the
family—the Chicago Outfit, Our Thing, or whatever they were calling it these days. In what could hardly be a coincidence, it also came out that just before Paulie’s death, someone had emptied La Cosa Nostra’s coffers to the tune of half a million bucks. Judging by his untimely demise, Paulie himself—undone by grief in the days following his son’s shocking death—was judged the prime suspect. But the reality proved to be that all of the money taken from the mob’s very discreet Cayman accounts was removed
before
Vincent sent himself swinging. The simple fact of the matter, as Pat told Jessica, was that young Vincent had transferred the money from one account to another and then killed himself.

Why in the world would someone do that? Who would steal half a mill, dump it somewhere untraceable, and then do the one-footed dance?

No one had a good answer for that, but the two players involved were dead, and as Jessica had insisted from the start, TKs were survivors. They wouldn’t accomplish a goal and then run from the victory, nor would they die a normal death. If Paulie were a TK, he’d have bent the men sent to kill him and then walked out singing “My Way.” If Vincent were a TK, there might have been a rope, but it wouldn’t have been around his neck.

Another dead end then, but Pat kept the file. He was no bender, but he knew a twist when he saw one, and despite Jessica’s assurances, there was something broken there.