Black Sheep

“Your girl is brilliant. She also hates me,” Fletcher says as she enters my office and drops into one of the two chairs on the other side of the desk. I log out of the secure files on Caron Berger and Legio Agni, then shift my focus to my best friend and the biggest pain in my ass. Fletcher picks up a bobblehead of soccer player Harry Kane. Her nose wrinkles as she taps Harry on the forehead and his head wobbles. “What is this?”

“A bobblehead.”

“I see that, dick-for-brains. But why?”

“It’s a conversation starter.”

“Is it though? It’s ugly as fuck.”

“Well, we’re talking about it, aren’t we?”

“Actually, no. We’re talking about your girl hating me.”

“First of all, Fletcher, she is not my girl,” I say. Fletcher gives a derisive snort and I yank Harry Kane from her fingers. “Secondly, she hates my guts too. Probably more than she hates yours.”

“Debatable.” Fletcher sits back and looks at me through narrowed eyes, a determined gleam shining through shades of sky blue. She rests her elbows on the arms of her chair and taps her fingers against one another.

“Why are you giving me laser eyes?”

Fletcher shrugs, a grin igniting across her vibrant red lips. “Oh, you know. Just thinking about you owing me. I’ve already got plans to cash in.”

I huff a laugh and close my laptop. “With your non-existent segue, I’m assuming this has something to do with a certain doctoral student.”

“Indeed,” Fletcher says, her smile brightening with delight. “You seem to have forgotten that you owe me not only one, but two favors, Kap.”

I pack my laptop into my satchel and slide on my jacket as Fletcher stands, that grin of hers still firmly in place. “What the hell are you talking about? I don’t recall a second favor.”

“Tsk-tsk, oh-Kap-i-tan. You’re conveniently forgetting about that time I accompanied you to your parents’ anniversary party so they wouldn’t set you up with that stuck-up bitch Mackenzie.”

My hand drags down my face. That party.

“Oh, that’s right, Kap. I had been crushing on Dierdre for two years. Two fucking years. And she thought I was with you thanks to that stupid party. You ruined my chances. You got me vagected by the hottest lesbian at UCLA. Who’s the cockblocker now, hmm? Spoiler alert: it’s you. You’re a clam jammer, that’s what you are.”

I bellow a laugh. “A clam jammer?”

“Jesus fuck, Kaplan. You’re thirty-one, not eighty-one. Take off the tweed and get with the times. A taco blocko. A fanny fencer. A muff rebuffer. You are all those things. And hence, you owe me.”

“Wasn’t it literally a week later that you met Blake?”

“That is completely beside the point.”

We walk down the hallway, passing a few students as we make our way to the stairs. A brief, unwelcome thought scurries around my skull: I wonder if Bria is in her office. If I went upstairs, would I feel her gravitational pull from down the hall? Something about her is as inescapable as an imploding star. The more I try to avoid thinking of her, the more she’s there in my head, and the more I’m convinced she’ll destroy me if I get any closer. And maybe that makes the lure of her even stronger. Maybe I want to be shredded down to the last atom.

No. I don’t need any of that. Now that I’ve made things right, or at least closer to it, I need to stay the hell away.

Though I’m pretty sure Fletcher has other ideas.

I glance at Fletcher as she smirks. She’s enjoying every second of claiming a payback, and I am confident I’ll hate everything that’s about to come out of her mouth. “So what exactly do you have in mind, dare I ask?”

“Well, Bria’s research in memory and eyewitness interviews could really benefit from, you know, doing some interviews.”

“No—”

“And I just happen to know someone who is gearing up to do some interviews.”

“No, Fletcher.”

“And that person happens to owe me two nonnegotiable favors or he will enter the organ trade.”

“All I ask is that you take my kidneys first. Where do I sign?”

Fletcher sighs, her amusement dissolving. It’s only so long before our joking around turns into a cutting argument. With Fletcher, one thing is a given. She will play the long game and make me pay for every minute of it. “I’m not taking your organs. I already told you, they’re too saturated with bourbon. Stop trying to weasel out of this. Bria is an exceptional student. This department needs students of this calibre. The field needs it. You have no idea how much work she’s already done, Kaplan.”

“If taking Bria to interview with me is cashing in a favor, what do you need the other one for?” I ask, my tone both wary and resigned.Property belongs to Nôvel(D)r/ama.Org.

“Take her to dinner. Smooth things over.”

“What the fuck, Fletcher. Absolutely not. She is a student.”

We arrive at the landing on the ground floor and Fletcher pushes the handle of the door with more force than is really necessary. Crisp mountain air floods my face, cooling the burn from the irritation bubbling beneath my skin. The door bangs shut behind us like the hammer that’s hitting the final nail in my coffin.

Fletcher turns on me, leaning into my face. She’s nearly as tall as I am, and the difference of a few inches between us is negligible compared to her ferocity. But I’m pretty pissed too. I don’t like being pushed on my rules, and this feels more like a body check than just a gentle shove.

“She is a flight risk, Elijah. She could go anywhere, to any university in the world, and they would snap her up. And if she leaves it is your fault,” Fletcher says, punctuating her last two words by poking her finger into my chest. “One apology and setting her up with an alternative advisor, even if that person is clearly a superior option, ain’t gonna cut it.” Fletcher gives me a wink, but her face is still stern. If she believes Bria is a flight risk, then it’s true. Fletch is the kind of advisor who goes to bat for her students. She cares deeply for them. She knows when something is off.

“These aren’t just run-of-the-mill interviews, Fletch. They are witnesses to criminal behavior of powerful people. The risk is low, but there’s still an inherent risk to Bria,” I argue, and the thought twists my intestines. Even if we have every safety measure in place, the thought of her being in danger is suddenly unbearable. “I can’t put her in that position.”

“Well guess what, Kap. This is what our field demands if we want to step away from academia. That is Bria’s decision if she wants this life. Not yours.”

A deep sigh courses through my lungs. I know she’s right. Of course she’s right, even though the thought of anything endangering Bria still coats my veins in flame. But Fletch is satisfied. She backs down with a glint of triumph in her eyes. “I need permission to take her to any interviews. There’s no guarantee it will be given,” I say with weary resignation.

“I understand.”

“And not a word to Ms. Brooks until I have confirmation.”

“Got it.”

“And dinner might be Sonic or Chick-fil-A.”

“Fuck off, Kaplan,” Fletcher says. She pivots on her heel and strides toward her car, leaving me on the walkway. “Someplace nice that she would like.”

“Fine. Panera,” I call after her, and Fletch throws her middle finger at me over her shoulder without looking back. She gets into her car and pulls away with a wave. I watch until she’s disappeared around the corner and then run both hands through my hair, gripping the back of my neck, looking to the sidewalk as though it might swallow me into a more favorable location.

When I accept defeat that I will not, in fact, wind up in an alternate dimension, I walk to the Palladium building next to the Engineering section of the campus where I have a meeting room reserved. The modern building is both sleek and imposing, the steel and silver stone meeting in sweeping, curved lines against hard, jagged angles. The Palladium houses two grand halls for academic symposia, but also smaller meeting and conference rooms like the one I’ve reserved for myself and Marta Espinoza, who waits outside the entrance looking every inch the FBI agent with her aviator shades and her suit and her black hair tied back in a low bun.

“Dr. Kaplan. Good to see you again,” she says, her hand outstretched as I approach. Her handshake is just like the rest of her. Strong. Direct. Assertive.

“And you. I hope the flight was okay.”

“Smooth sailing,” she says as we turn into the building and start across the foyer, heading to a hallway where the meeting rooms line the left of the structure. “I wish I could say the same about other matters related to my visit.”

My heart jumps as a thousand questions scatter through my skull. The one that’s loudest is the one I fear the most. Did we lose Caron Berger?

“Don’t worry, professor,” Agent Espinoza says, and I think for a moment that I voiced my concern out loud. “We’re still forging ahead. We might just need to rethink a few things.”

We walk the rest of the way to the meeting room in silence. We don’t speak again until the door to the soundproof room is closed and Espinoza has set her files open on the glossy oval table. She doesn’t bother with one of the swiveling executive chairs, preferring instead to lean over the papers with her hands splayed across the wood.

“What’s going on?” I ask, taking a seat at the end of the table.

“An individual intimately connected with Caron has disappeared. Tristan McCoy,” Espinoza says, passing me a file. There are photographs of a tanned, wealthy-looking man. He’s handsome enough in a carbon copy Ken doll kind of way. He looks professional. Pristine. One photo is a headshot from an accounting firm or a law office. “Investments,” I check as I skim his details. “Lamb Health.” “Mr. McCoy handled the investments for Lamb Health for just over five years. He didn’t show up to work a few days ago. His boss alerted local authorities and they performed a wellness check at his home, but nothing was amiss. His car was still in the driveway.”

“Phone? Credit cards?”

“His phone did turn up yesterday. It was behind the counter at The Consulate Bar. When we asked around, one of the bartenders remembered seeing him with a blonde woman, but they couldn’t give a description or even say what time he left or if he left alone. When we searched the security cameras and local CCTV, there was nothing. It’s as though he just vanished.”

I continue looking through Tristan’s details. Something interesting jumps out on the third page. “He was defrauding Lamb Health?”

“It seems so,” Agent Espinoza says. “In the last six months, he started siphoning money into a secret, off-shore account. We believe Caron might have become aware of the theft. And we believe Tristan’s disappearance might be connected with another missing person. Nicholas Hutchinson,” she says, sliding the next folder to me. “He was the creative director at an advertising agency called Bowery, based in New York.”

“Let me guess, he was connected with Lamb Health?”

“Yes, though not for about a year prior to his disappearance. There was some furor about one of his campaigns on social media two years ago.”

“I remember,” I say absently, flipping through the pages of Nicholas’s file. “The thing about the cancer treatment claim.”

“That’s right. When we followed up around Bowery, the staff were adamant that the wrong files had somehow been placed in the ads, and that true files contained no efficacy claims about Lamb Health’s supplements. But Lamb fired Bowery regardless, and moved to a competitor agency in Boston.” Espinoza points to a paragraph in the middle of the page I’ve just started skimming. “The circumstances of the disappearances are very similar. No signs of forced entry at Hutchinson’s home. Left his office on a Wednesday evening and just…ceased to exist. Our profilers think Caron is finding the trash and taking it out. Maybe we got him wrong. He might be more dangerous than we thought.”

I stare down at the papers in my hands. Nothing that we worked through about Caron Berger and his motivations or the nature of his criminality with his cult add up to murder. Caron Berger believes his role is to save people. Save them from ill-health with his snake oil potions and crystal-infused herbal remedies for sale to a mass market, all the while funding his extravagant yet secretive, godlike existence. He offers a remedy from loneliness with his support groups and members-only communities. And most of all, he believes he saves a very particular kind of woman, offering a sanctuary to those who are most in need of a place in the world.

What they don’t know, of course, is that he takes everything from them in the process, isolating them from society and thriving on their servitude and devotion.

But one thing that’s never fit with Caron Berger is murder. In his mind, he is the shepherd, not the wolf.

“We’re going to accelerate the project as much as possible once we have those interviews done next month,” Agent Espinoza says.

My cheeks heat as Bria’s face swirls to the surface of my thoughts. I take a deep breath. “About those… I have a doctoral student who is specializing in memory recall, and she’s building a database of physiological responses of eyewitnesses during interviews. I would like permission to bring her along.”

Espinoza eyes me but her expression remains unreadable. “I’ll make the request to Robert and let you know. She will need to sign an NDA and submit to a background check.”

“Yes, of course. Thank you.”

“I know I don’t need to say this, Dr. Kaplan, but there are lives on the line now. I’m not opposed to bringing in additional experts to assist, but we need to be sure we can trust them. Cynthia Nordstrom is endangering her life to help us, and this could also expose your student to risk.”

A sense of dread catches in my throat. It’s Bria’s decision if she wants this life.

“I understand.”