Chapter 6
We stopped just across the border for breakfast at a McDonald‘s in a neighborhood that wasn‘t the best. Over a few blocks, I could see tall grim apartments and Murphy told me they were Projects built in the 60‘s so lower income could have places of their own. Now, they were filled with drug dealers and gang members and people too poor or afraid to leave.
I sat in the dining area, held my cup of hot cocoa between two palms, and did something I rarely liked to try. I searched for Murphy‘s string and gently tugged it, untangled it from the billions of others out there and ran it between my teeth. Something about its flavor told me things, made pictures came into my head and let me see where it stretched. Its flavor was dark and bloody, the images sadistic. I spit it out to find Murphy smacking me on the back and alarmed people standing around us.
"Jesus, Jade," he snarled. "You turned red, white and blue! You were choking to death!
Are you okay?" He held my cup in one hand; the other was holding the back of my jacket. I wheezed and took a deep breath, gagged at cloying chocolate in my mouth and spat.
"Swallowed wrong," I managed and the crowd sat back down staring at me. I looked for the rest rooms.
"What happened?" Murphy asked. "Too hot?"
"Need to go to the bathroom." I stood up, wobbled and he held me steady until I managed a credible walk. I went into the family restroom where I could lock the door and be the only one inside. I stared into the mirror and saw my face, white, green eyes huge with unshed tears, and my mouth trembling. I wiped at the wetness, took several deep breaths and put the images of Murphy‘s tortured broken body in the corner of my brain where I locked up all the bad memories or I would pick at them constantly like a scabbed sore.
I opened the door slowly, saw him at the table nursing his second cup and waited until Murphy‘s attention was diverted by the manager. She bent over him in an animated conversation and I was able to slip out the rear door into the streets. Five minutes saw me deep into a neighborhood of concrete buildings; businesses boarded up and abandoned houses. I kept to the dark side of the sidewalks out of sight with my hand on Dad‘s strings.
Walking for hours put me on service roads towards DC. I had no need o f a map, merely followed the insistent tug in my hand. It became automatic to put one foot in front of the other. I used my knowledge of the strings to pick out places and people who would help me. Hitch hiking is safe when you know the lifeline of the person in your hands.
I reached DC at early morn, just as twilight faded. The sunrise over the Capitol building was impressive and bathed the dome in gold as the sun burned through the clouds. I could feel the humidity building, it was going to be a lot warmer here than in Boston.
Tourists were already gathering in crowds at the gates, the Washington monument stretched out green and peaceful with only a few bodies parked on the close cut velvet lawns.
I stared at Lincoln‘s calm face and wished I could have read his string while he was alive.
I could almost find and truck the lost trace of it; I found some residue of him still out there in his lines of descendants.
I stood across the street from the J. Edgar Hoover Federal Building and gripped my Dad‘s string tightly. He was inside and almost close enough to touch. If I could get inside.
I watched as agents arrived and entered the building using cards and a key punch. There was an entrance for visitors and I saw only a few people go that way through a set of meta l detectors and a human guard who checked IDs and issued visitor passes.
Then, a tour bus with a group of high school kids pulled up and unloaded. I slipped into the back of their group, bumping a couple who gave me a curious glance but didn‘t say anything.
The teachers were both women, one was a blonde with blue eyes in a neat pantsuit and looked like an agent, the other was an older woman who grumbled and carped at the kids constantly. Her hair was an improbable red and she wore fake lashes that looked like bugs crawling over her face. She held a clipboard with wrinkled papers and a cup of McDonald‘s coffee.
"Alright, class," she hollered. "One at a time through the metal detector."
Of course, they set off the alarms with watches, belt buckles, backpacks, lunch boxes, pocketknives, flashlights and keys until they simply waved us all through.
"How many are you?" the guard asked handing out passes.
"Fifty-three," she said looking at her list. He handed over the badges and she passed them out. I stood in line with my palm up and she gave me one without even looking at my face.
We marched en mass through the building escorted by Special Agents from their Public Information Department. They showed us the forensic labs, the VICAP in Behavioral Sciences Department amid jokes about Hannibal Lector and Clarisse Starling, the X-Files and Fox Mulder. The agents answered all the questions genially and teased back about the shows. I stayed with the group until we were taken to the cafeteria and treated to lunch.
I slipped out and took the fire stairs up to the fifth floor and rows of offices. The corridors were narrow; white walls with doors every few feet. I knew it was an inner hallway and none of these rooms would have windows.
I opened the ninth door on the left, no different looking than any of the others save that my dad‘s string ended in there. I stuck my foot into the jamb and shoved the wad of napkin I‘d kept from the lunchroom into the bolthole so it could not lock behind me.
AJ looked up from the table and his jaw dropped. He was alone but handcuffed to a bar on the wall. He wore a jumpsuit in orange and slim sneakers. He had a black eye.
I pulled out the cuff key I‘d kept from Murphy and unlocked him, told him to strip and handed him the backpack with spare clothes.
"These are Murphy‘s," he said pulling on the chinos.
"Hurry, Dad. We have 21/2 minutes before this falls apart."
"Where‘s Murph? The guys with you?"
"Murph‘s in Abbotsville, looking for me. I ditched him at the MickeyD‘s." I held the door open, stuffed the orange jumpsuit in the pack and walked out first. I gave him the visitor pass I‘d swiped from another student.
We headed for the end of the corridor, turned left and I found the elevators. I ignored the cameras that I knew were tracking us, I could do nothing about them, just hoped that the watchers had gone out for a pee break or turned their head away to sneeze.
The elevator dinged open on the lobby and we walked quickly across the Great Seal, handed over our passes and were out the doors before the guard‘s yells reached us. Somebody had finally noticed our passes had said Otter Valley High School Students and were both female names. I‘d gambled that no one really looked at badge photos and been right. Dad grabbed me and ran across the street for the nearest underground station.