A moment later, his mother arrived and she ran over to him and gave him a hug, and he said, "They said Grandpa and Grandma…"
"It's true," she said. She held on to him but looked toward the house: "They won't let us in. I'll call Roy Hopper direct, to see what's going on, but I think we should go back home."
"They're taking pictures of us," he said. He nodded, and she turned toward the TV cameras.
"I think we should go back…"
The phone was ringing when they got back home. TV, she thought-but it was a friend named Lucy Parks, who worked at a rug-and-tile store down the street, and who had been one grade ahead of Janet in school. "I heard what happened. Is there anything I can do?"
"No, I don't know what to do myself-this is crazy."
"Everybody's talking about the spy business. Do you think Burt was really a spy? And Roger?"
"Burt. I don't know about Burt. But Roger-you've met Roger. That wasn't a disguise. You think he was a mastermind?"
Parks laughed. "If it was a disguise, he was a mastermind. Well, tell you what, honey, it's gonna be interesting. You need anything, give me a call."
Three more old friends called, and all of them offered support. She was a little amazed, because if this had been a TV story, the whole town would have turned on her; the yard would have been full of people with ropes and pitchforks.
Then the TV people arrived, trucks parking in the street, and people began banging on her door and taking pictures of her when she answered, so she stopped answering and called Maisler.
"I'll be right there," he said. He arrived ten minutes later, talked to all the media people, then knocked, and Jan let him in. "I've told them to stay off the lawn, and I called Roy Hopper direct and asked him to send a car over here. He said he would."
"Thanks." She was grateful, but wondered if his clock was running; he seemed to be enjoying himself too much to charge for it.
"If you want, I can make a statement to these people, unless you want to. They won't go away until they have something."
"If you could do it…"
He was happy to.
She was trying so hard to stay on top of the problem that she didn't notice how quiet Carl had been. When she did notice, she went back to his bedroom and knocked. No answer. "Carl?" She turned the knob and peeked in. He was sprawled on his bed, faceup, forearm over his eyes. "Are you okay? Honey?"
"Go away."
"Are you okay? You've got to come out and talk."
"Later. I just want to lie here for a while."
"You've been lying there for an hour. You should come out and eat something. I'll make some soup and sandwiches…"
"I'll be out in a while," he snapped.
"I'll call you when the soup's ready."
Her horror of the moment, and her astonishment, were real, for the most part. But there was a part of her, a small kernel at the edge of her mind, that had known that Burt was a spy, that there were other spies connected to him, and that Roger had, when he was young, done some spy things. Had been involved.
She hadn't known when she married him-hadn't known for a few years, after Carl was born, but small parts and pieces of it started to come out when Roger began drinking. He would talk to relieve stress-and then say he couldn't talk about why he was stressed. He began hinting of bigger forces, of untellable but important issues.
She thought of it simply as self-aggrandizement in the face of a life that had started sloping downhill after his junior year in college, when it became obvious that he wouldn't be the big hockey star at UMD.
But more pieces kept coming out, and then one night, thoroughly in the bag, he simply told her: we're a family of spies. She hadn't really believed him, and had gone to Burt, and Burt had simply sat in his chair, smiling at her, and Melodie had twinkled, and they'd said, "That was all a long time ago. Best not to think about it anymore."
She'd bought that-even when it turned out that it probably hadn't been so long ago…
Roger had continued to drink, the divorce had followed, and Burt and Melodie had come to her rescue. The previous owner of the frame shop was about to give it up and suggested that Jan, who was working the counter and enjoyed it, might want to buy the place. "It makes just about enough to support a family of two," he said. "If you work your butt off."
Burt helped with a down payment, and for the next ten years, all through elementary and junior high school, Burt and Melodie provided Carl's day care. She'd get him off in the morning, and they'd pick him up in the afternoon, be ready with snacks and dinners on nights when she had to work late. They'd take him to after-school activities, keep him busy.
They were, she thought, as much Carl's parents as she was; and that was why, she realized, Carl was lying on his bed like a log. The boy was in serious shock, the kind of shock you experience when a parent dies…
She hurried with the soup and sandwich.
The next few hours were a jumble.
The television never left. Maisler was all over the place, and not just local television, but on Fox, CNN, the major networks. She was afraid to leave the house, and instead, parked in front of the TV, nervously eating anything she could find. Other families were being interviewed, the talking heads said: the Spivaks, the Svobodas, the Witolds.
The FBI called, and made arrangements for an interview, tomorrow, first thing.
Grandma's and Grandpa's bodies were taken away from the house-she saw it all on TV, the bodies coming out on gurneys, in black bags-and the police didn't know when they would be released for burial.
The house was sealed, Roy Hopper told her. Nobody in, nobody out.
She took so many calls, talked to so many people, that she lost track of time. When she noticed that it was eleven o'clock, she realized that she hadn't talked to Carl for an hour or more. She went back to Carl's bedroom. "You've almost worn that bed out," she said.
"Yeah."
"I don't think you should go to school tomorrow," she said. "I think we can forget that."
"I'm going. If I don't go, it's like we're guilty of something."
"The TV people, Carl, I think it'd be-"
"I'm going," he said, stubbornly. "I can take it."
"We'll talk about it in the morning," she said.
He pushed himself up on his elbows. "Are you going to reopen the store?"
"I don't know. We've got to eat, so… we'll see."
"If you can open the store, I can go back to school."
She kissed him on the forehead. "You've been a good boy, Carl."
Chapter 30
They were on the outskirts of Duluth when the call came in. Lucas took the car to the side of the street and stopped as he answered the phone: "Lucas Davenport."
"This is the person who called you at your hotel in Duluth. I have some more information."
"You're a little late. We broke things out this afternoon. We haven't got him yet, but we know who he is-"
"No, no. You mean this Roger person? You're chasing the wrong man. The man who killed the Russian-he's a boy, really-I saw him on television tonight. He was outside the house, the spies' house, where they committed suicide."
"The house?"
"Yes. Outside the house. If you get the video they had on Channel Three tonight, he's the blond boy who is hugging the blond woman. He conies into the camera scene and she gives him a hug. He's wearing a dark jacket, but it's open, he had a T-shirt underneath. He's handsome."
Nadya whispered, "What?"
Lucas shook his head at her, then said, "Look, I'm sorry, but you're going to have to come in. You can't just tell me…"