Tell No One
It was a rhetorical question, but Crimstein still waited for an answer.
“Yeah,” Carlson said.
“Sure,” Stone added.
“Good. Write them down. When I mention on my show how you two trampled my client’s constitutional rights, I want to make sure I get the names right. Print plainly, please.”
She finally looked at me. “Let’s go.”
“Hold up a second,” Carlson said. “We’d like to ask your client a few questions.”
“No.”
“No? Just like that?”
“Exactly like that. You don’t talk to him. He doesn’t talk to you. Ever. You two understand?”
“Yes,” Carlson said.
She turned her glare to Stone.
“Yes,” Stone said.
“Swell, fellas. Now are you arresting Dr. Beck?”
“No.”
She turned in my direction. “What are you waiting for?” she snapped at me. “We’re out of here.”
Hester Crimstein didn’t say a word until we were safely ensconced in her limousine.
“Where do you want me to drop you off?” she asked.
I gave the driver the clinic’s address.
“Tell me about the interrogation,” Crimstein said. “Leave out nothing.”
I recounted my conversation with Carlson and Stone as best I could. Hester Crimstein didn’t so much as glance in my direction. She took out a day planner thicker than my waist and started leafing through it.
“So these pictures of your wife,” she said when I finished. “You didn’t take them?”
“No.”
“And you told Tweedledee and Tweedledum that?”
I nodded.
She shook her head. “Doctors. They’re always the worst clients.” She pushed back a strand of hair. “Okay, that was dumb of you, but not crippling. You say you’ve never seen those pictures before?”
“Never.”
“But when they asked you that, you finally shut up.”
“Yes.”
“Better,” she said with a nod. “That story about her getting those bruises in a car accident. Is it the truth?”
“Pardon me?”
Crimstein closed her day planner. “Look … Beck, is it? Shauna says everyone calls you Beck, so you mind if I do the same?”
“No.”
“Good. Look, Beck, you’re a doctor, right?”
“Right.”
“You good at bedside manner?”
“I try to be.”
“I don’t. Not even a little. You want coddling, go on a diet and hire Richard Simmons. So let’s skip all the pardon-mes and excuse-mes and all that objectionable crap, okay? Just answer my questions. The car accident story you told them. Is it true?”
“Yes.”
“Because the feds will check all the facts. You know that, right?”
“I know.”
“Okay, fine, just so we’re clear here.” Crimstein took a breath. “So maybe your wife had a friend take these pictures,” she said, trying it on for size. “For insurance reasons or something. In case she ever wanted to sue. That might make sense, if we need to peddle it.”
It didn’t make sense to me, but I kept that to myself.
“So question uno: Where have these pictures been, Beck?”
“I don’t know.”
“Dos and tres: How did the feds get them? Why are they surfacing now?”
I shook my head.
“And most important, what are they trying to nail you on? Your wife’s been dead for eight years. It’s a little late for a spousal battery charge.” She sat back and thought about it a minute or two. Then she looked up and shrugged. “No matter. I’ll make some calls, find out what’s up. In the meantime, don’t be a dimwit. Say nothing to anyone. You understand?”
“Yes.”
She sat back and thought about it some more. “I don’t like this,” she said. “I don’t like this even a little bit.”
11
On May 12, 1970, Jeremiah Renway and three fellow radicals set off an explosion at Eastern State University’s chemistry department. Rumor had it from the Weather Underground that military scientists were using the university labs to make a more powerful form of napalm. The four students, who in a fit of stark originality called themselves Freedom’s Cry, decided to make a dramatic albeit showy stand.
At the time, Jeremiah Renway did not know if the rumor was true. Now, more than thirty years later, he doubted it. No matter. The explosion did not damage any of the labs. Two university security guards, however, stumbled across the suspicious package. When one picked it up, the package exploded, killing both men.
Both had children.
One of Jeremiah’s fellow “freedom fighters” was captured two days later. He was still in jail. The second died of colon cancer in 1989. The third, Evelyn Cosmeer, was captured in 1996. She was currently serving a seven-year prison sentence.
Jeremiah disappeared into the woods that night and never ventured out. He had rarely seen fellow human beings or listened to the radio or watched television. He had used a telephone only once—and that was in an emergency. His only real connection to the outside world came from newspapers, though they had what happened here eight years ago all wrong.
Born and raised in the foothills of northwest Georgia, Jeremiah’s father taught his son all kinds of survival techniques, though his overriding lesson was simply this: You could trust nature but not man. Jeremiah had forgotten that for a little while. Now he lived it.
Fearing they would search near his hometown, Jeremiah took to the woods in Pennsylvania. He hiked around for a while, changing camp every night or two, until he happened upon the relative comfort and security of Lake Charmaine. The lake had old camp bunks that could house a man when the outdoors got a little too nasty. Visitors rarely came to the lake—mostly in the summer, and even then, only on weekends. He could hunt deer here and eat the meat in relative peace. During the few times of the year when the lake was being used, he simply hid or took off for points farther west.
Or he watched.
To the children who used to come here, Jeremiah Renway had been the Boogeyman.
Jeremiah stayed still now and watched the officers move about in their dark windbreakers. FBI wind-breakers. The sight of those three letters in big yellow caps still punctured his heart like an icicle.
No one had bothered to yellow-tape the area, probably because it was so remote. Renway had not been surprised when they found the bodies. Yes, the two men had been buried good and deep, but Renway knew better than most that secrets don’t like to stay underground. His former partner in crime, Evelyn Cosmeer, who’d transformed herself into the perfect Ohio suburban mom before her capture, knew that. The irony did not escape Jeremiah.