Naturally, knowing you, the chief said, I’m to put this at the top of my things-to-do list.
You got that right, Molloy said.
He called his secretary into his office and told her to run the National Arts and Humanities Awards guest roster through the computer to tag all names with Texas addresses. The names as of today? she said. It’s down to under a hundred. The original list, Molloy told her.
He sat back in his chair and considered the mind of the person or persons he was dealing with. They had wanted it made public. Why then had the press not been tipped off? Why wasn’t it now a rumor flying all over the Internet? Only a note delivered to a district station and, upon a lack of response, a note mailed, this time almost as a reminder to the district commander? How peculiar to rely on authority when authority is what had been subverted. But there was something else, something else. . a presumption that a line could be drawn between those powers who might be trustworthy, like local police, and those who were thought not to be, like himself. It did not square with the boldness of this bizarre act that the person who committed it had a hopeful regard for the law. Molloy had from the beginning theorized that he was dealing with eco-terrorists. But he had now the scintillating sense of a presiding amateurism in the affair.
IT WAS TIME for a meeting with the White House liaison, Peter Herrick. Molloy found a balding blond young man who wore Turnbull & Asser shirts with french cuffs. Herrick had been a hotshot regional director in the last campaign, a President’s man. Molloy had seen his like over the years. They came and went but, as if it were a genetic thing, always managed a degree of condescension for federal employees putting in their time.
You heard from John Felsheimer, Molloy said.
Who?
D.C. police. You took a piece of evidence from him.
I suppose so.
I’ll have it now, Molloy said.
Just sit down, Agent Molloy. There are things you don’t know.
Withholding evidence is a chargeable offense, even for White House personnel.
Perhaps I was overprotective. I’ll dig it up for you. But you appreciate why we can’t have any leaks. It would be like the other party to jump on this for political advantage. There’s so little else they have going. And this is the kind of weird shit that sticks in the public’s mind.
What things don’t I know?
What?
You said there were things I don’t know.
No, I was speaking generally about the political situation. I wonder why we haven’t heard your working hypothesis. I assume you have one? Wouldn’t you think it figures, from this crowd, something disgusting like this? The desecration of a beloved piece of ground? Not that I ever expect the artists, the writers, to show gratitude to the country they live in. They’re all knee-jerk anti-Americans.
You let a hypothesis limit an investigation and you can get off on the wrong track, Molloy said.
I’m thinking of the cases musical instruments come in. That kid could have fit into a cello case, a tuba.
The program was Stephen Foster and George Gershwin, Molloy said. There are no tubas in Stephen Foster or George Gershwin.
I used that as an example.
The cases are left back at the hotel. The instruments are examined on the bus.
Writers were on hand whose books are adversarial to the Republic. Painters of pictures you wouldn’t want your children to see. Our reward for these socialist giveaway programs.
Molloy rose. I do admire your thinking, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Domestic Policy Herrick. You have any more helpful ideas, pass them on to my office. Meanwhile, I’ll expect that letter.
MOLLOY KNEW THAT as a piece of evidence, the letter was useless. It would be dime-store stationery, just like the one in his possession, and overhandled at that. But he had to make a point. This group trusted only themselves. Molloy was certainly no liberal, but he detested politically driven interference in a case.
He was put in a better mood that same afternoon when one of his agents brought him a missing-persons bulletin taken from the interstate police net: Frank Calabrese, widower, age sixty. The report had been filed by Ann Calabrese-Cole, his daughter. Molloy smiled and told his secretary that when a call came from the Office of Domestic Policy, she was to say he was out.
He now had dossiers — some thirty of the guests had files. He set to work. A while later he looked up and noticed that the windows of his office had grown dark. He turned on his desk light and kept reading, but with a growing sense of dissatisfaction: There were book publishers and art dealers who’d marched against the Vietnam War. A playwright who’d met with a visiting Soviet writers’ delegation in 1980. University teachers who’d refused to sign loyalty oaths. Contributors to the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. A lawyer who’d defended priests in the Sanctuary movement. A professor of Near Eastern studies at George Mason. A folksinger who’d gotten an arts award several years before. . He knew only halfway through the pile that it was useless, as if he could hear the voice that had written You should know that a child was found dead in the Rose Garden. It was not the voice of any of these files. These were the files of people, who, no matter for what cause, were by nature self-assertive. What he heard here was a circumspect voice going quietly about an unpleasant duty. It sounded to him like a woman.
MOLLOY WAS HANDED a FedExed 250 MB Zip disk from Houston when he arrived at work the next morning. He gave it to a young agent nerd whom he suspected somewhere down the line of having considered a career in criminal hacking. Would have done quite well, too: In an hour the nerd produced published notices for every child twelve and under who had died in every city and county in Texas and Louisiana in the month of May, then a refined list by city and county of male child deaths in south Texas and southwest Louisiana, and, under that, a target list of all young male deaths in south Texas and southwest Louisiana that had occurred within seventy-two hours of the ceremonial in the Rose Garden.
Molloy sighed and started in on the target list. He first looked for the age and struck out names of kids over seven. Then he eliminated names that to his mind connoted black children. With the names remaining, he read in detail the simply worded expressions of heartbreak: beloved son of. . alive in our hearts. . classmate of. . taken from us. . in the bosom of Jesus. . It was not with any sense of satisfaction, but with something like a disappointment in himself, that he came upon what he knew he had been looking for. In the Beauregard, Texas, Daily Record a boy named Roberto Guzman, age six, had been remembered in three paid obits — by his parents, by his cub scout troop, and, crucially, by someone unidentified, who had written “Rest in Peace, Roberto Guzman, it was not God who did this to you.”
MOLLOY TOLD HIS secretary to make out the appropriate travel forms and book a next-day flight to Houston with a car rental at the airport. He had a pile of paperwork to go through — the agent interviews were still coming in — but he thought he’d have another look at the cadaver. He seemed to remember there was a small brown mole on the kid’s cheek. The on-site flash photos weren’t any good. He requisitioned a Sony Cyber-shot and went off to the morgue.
The kid was not there.
Molloy, stunned, questioned the attendant, who knew nothing about it. Wasn’t on my shift, the attendant said.
Well, someone took it. You people keep a book, don’t you? Bodies just don’t fly in and out of here.
Be my guest.
Molloy found nothing written to indicate a child’s body had been received or taken away.