High Crimes

She looked them over. The first one, the authorization to search their house, seemed to be in order. It not only gave the correct address but described the appearance of the house. It also gave a ridiculously long list of items they were looking for, a laundry list so long, detailed, and comprehensive that it couldn’t possibly leave out a thing. Telephone records, airline tickets, bus or train tickets, any notes concerning times of flights and train departures, out-of-state newspapers, advertisements, any notes pertaining to such that might be found in the trash, in Tom’s files, among his personal possessions... It went on and on.

Claire looked up at Crawford. “Where’s the warrant affidavit?” she asked.

“It’s sealed.”

“Where is it?”

He shrugged. “Probably in the chambers of the federal magistrate. I really don’t know. Anyway, the warrant’s valid.”

He was right, of course. “I want a complete inventory of everything that’s taken,” she said.

“Certainly, ma’am.”

She looked at the second warrant, the arrest warrant, which listed that same strange name, Ronald Kubik. The FBI agent saw what she was examining and said, “It also gives his assumed name, Thomas Chapman, ma’am. Everything’s in order.”

She heard the team spreading throughout the house, heard the scrape of furniture against the wooden floor in Tom’s study immediately above, heard shouts back and forth. The sound of glass breaking. She cringed involuntarily. Everything felt unreal to her, terrifying and quietly menacing and unreal.

“They broke something!” Annie said, looking at her mother aghast.

“I know, honey,” she said.

“Mommy, I want these guys to leave.”

“Me too, baby.”

“Mrs. — uh, Professor Heller,” Agent Crawford said, “if you have any knowledge whatsoever about your husband’s whereabouts and you do not reveal them to us, you can be charged as an accessory after the fact, which in this case would be a felony. And obstructing justice, which is another felony.”

“Try it,” she said. “Go ahead, charge me. Really, I’d welcome that.”

Crawford scowled. “You have a vacation home?”

“We’ve got a house in Truro, on Cape Cod. You’re welcome to send your boys out there — I can’t stop you — but do you seriously think that, if he’s really on the run for some reason, he’d hide out in such an obvious place? Get real.”

“Friends, relatives he might try to approach?”

“What do you think’s going on?” She shook her head.

“You understand, Mrs. Chapman, that we’ll be watching your every move in case he tries to contact you, or you try to contact him.”

“I’m quite aware,” Claire said, “of what sort of shit the government is capable of when they decide to come down on you.”

Crawford nodded, half smiling.

“And you can bet my husband is aware of that, too. Now, if you don’t mind, I’d like to put my daughter to bed.”

4

Claire’s sister, Jackie, arrived half an hour after Annie went to bed. She was taller than Claire, skinnier, but not as pretty, with long streaked blond hair. She was two years younger but looked older. Jackie wore black jeans and a black T-shirt under her scruffy denim jacket. Her fingernails were painted, not black, but a sort of eggplant, a Chanel vamp color.

They sat on the glassed-in sun porch. The stuffy, overheated room was like a greenhouse. Its floor-to-ceiling glass walls were steamy; its outside surface was running with condensation.

“They really tore the house up, didn’t they?” Jackie said in her husky, smoker’s voice. She ate sesame chicken with chopsticks out of a white paper carton.

Claire nodded.

“Can’t you sue for that? Destruction of property, or whatever?”

Claire shook her head slowly. “We got bigger problems, kid.”

“What do you think’s going on?”

“I don’t know,” she admitted, her voice quavering.

Jackie took a swig of her Diet Pepsi, then fished out a cigarette from the pack of Salems. “Mind if I smoke?”

“Yes.”

Jackie flicked the plastic lighter anyway. The tip of the cigarette flared orange. She sucked in and spoke muzzily through a mouthful of smoke. “They want him for murder? That’s got to be bullshit. Pope Tom?”

“Pope?”

“Good Catholic and Mr. Perfect.”

“Very funny, Jackie. You don’t get it, do you? You’re making jokes.”

“Sorry. Did the arrest warrant say what he did?”

Claire shook her head again. “Sealed.”

“Can they do that?”

“You don’t know the government. You wouldn’t believe the shit they can get away with.”

“What’s with the name? Rubik or whatever.”

“Kubik. Ronald Kubik. I have no idea, Jacks.”

“Can that be right?”

“What do I know anymore? They seem so sure of it.”

“They say they’re sure of it. Who knows what the real story is.”

“Good point. I’ll have one of those. I need one.”

“Uh-oh.”

“You’re a bad influence.” She took a cigarette and the lighter from Jackie. She lighted it, inhaled, and coughed. “It’s been a couple of years.”

“Like riding a bicycle,” Jackie said.

“Ooh, menthol,” Claire said. “Yuck. Almost as bad as clove cigarettes. Tastes like Vicks VapoRub.”

Jackie looked through the steamy glass at the perfectly landscaped backyard. “So where is he?”