I wouldn’t call — and my burner is already battery-less and destined for landfill, so when she works up the courage to phone me, nothing. She’ll try to recall the name of my employer. Good luck with that. Even I can’t remember the name I made up.
Then she’ll check with the Hawthorne school.
No record of any parent named Ben Nelson. Or daughter Meghan.
She’d begin — by tomorrow night, or so — to be feeling the searing effects of the betrayaclass="underline" the sorrow that the relationship she’d hoped might come to be was now a bonfire.
And poor Taylor would be feeling utter terror too.
Because she would have been thinking if they’d met when Roonie was out of town, she might have asked him in for a drink. And one thing would lead to another...
There’s sexual assault by force. There’s also assault by misrepresentation.
And, my God, Ben had even met her daughter — the petite girl with the odd name and a daunting and elegant routine on the balance beam.
He’d even touched her shoulder, when he lifted off the book bag!
No...
That thought will bring tears.
The victory was as delicious as the thought of Annabelle Talese seeing the cookie plate beside her bed and Carrie Noelle waking up to the stare of a holy-shit Madame Alexander doll.
Delicious...
At the moment, though, all is good. Taylor’s and Roonie’s lives are proceeding on a course of hope.
And what are my ladies up to at the moment?
I know very well. Taylor has tucked petite Roonie into a bed covered with a lavender and white bedspread, just a touch threadbare. The bed rests against the blue wall on which are three racks that were meant to hold dog leads but are now festooned with colorful ribbons at the end of which dangle gymnastics medals.
The girl is wearing fluffy pajamas, in pink. They came with a detachable hood with a glistening satin unicorn horn and horse-like ears, as apparently unicorns and equines share DNA. Roonie’s tablet is charging on the bedside table, which is painted pale green.
Her room is not as cluttered tonight as it has been. The girl can be a bit of a slob.
She’s not ready for sleepy time yet, though, and she’s doing some kind of weird pantomime — like dancing with your hands and arms only, to rock songs.
Taylor herself is having a glass of wine — a sauvignon blanc — and a late-night treat of hers: mint Oreos. She is in sweats.
How do I know this?
Because mother and daughter are telling me. Via their phones.
Roonie is posting thirty-second clips on a platform like TikTok, one right after the other.
And Taylor is doing a livestream on my very own ViewNow. She is talking about books — she’s in a club and volunteers at a library — and fielding the comments that come streaming in, ignoring others.
Which, it’s no surprise, is how I am able to execute my Visits, whether in someone’s bedroom anonymously, or in person on the street like tonight.
Videos are one of the most efficient keys ever invented.
Keys to opening up lives.
With Taylor and Roonie, I learned in the brief span of a few days all the facts I’d ever want about the mother and daughter. I caught some of the girl’s posts about gymnastics and then Taylor made a few appearances. I did some light internet diving and found names and interests and career details. Segueing to other social media told me all about her. Public divorce records too. Pictures of her on social media with five different men in the past year explained she was likely single.
Some bordered on risqué, which told me even more.
Roonie was an avid poster on sites like YouTube and ViewNow. Gymnastics routines, stretching exercises, recipes, makeup tutorials, outfits of the day. I learned so much about mascara and lasagna and how far your money will go at Claire’s, Justice and Forever 21 that I could be her father.
I found out too about the play, in which my fictional Meghan would appear (though sadly not in the lead).
And — from videos posted by the school and the PTO — I learned what the school visitors’ passes look like, not high definition, but sufficient to duplicate into a reasonable facsimile. I discovered the controversy within the parent-teacher organization.
Sitting back and watching the videos for hour after hour after hour, I can see the types of locks and deadbolts and alarms people have. I can see who has dogs and door bars, I can see who keeps a shotgun nearby (rare in New York City but occasionally). I know where the knives are, and the toolboxes. I can see who has carpet — for silent stalking — and I can hear who lives on busy streets to cover up my noise (remembering the 2019 disaster, as always). I know the layout of every apartment before I approach. I know who has young children, who might need a bit of nursing or potty and might destroy my perfectly good evening.
I can even see who delivers the pizza (handbills stuck to the fridge with silly little magnets), who their doctors are, who has diabetes (insulin needle reminders), and who has a little too much love of the bottle.
I knew Carrie Noelle had the lunch date because she wrote it in red marker on a wall calendar.
People share so very much...
In college, I remember, I became fascinated with Darwin’s theory of natural selection.
People think it’s about ape-like creatures becoming humans. Ah, but the broader view about survival of the species is what so gripped me.
The theory is quite simple. It has four components:
One, individual creatures within a population differ.
Two, those differences are passed on from parents to their offspring.
Three, some of those individuals are more successful in surviving than others.
Four, those successful ones have survived because of traits that they have inherited and that they will in turn pass on to their subsequent generations. The unsuccessful die off.
In the wilderness, deer that are the color of the surrounding woods will tend to survive, while albino deer, which stand out to predators, will not.
This is exactly my worldview. People who don’t post anything online are invisible to threats like me. Those who do? Well, think of poor Annabelle Talese, the influencer, online day and night. And Carrie Noelle running her mini-QVC toy-shopping show out of her home and Taylor Soames and Roonie, who post in hopes of meeting mates or friends or because of ego or boredom or loneliness or... who knows why?
The difference is that by posting, they choose to be the albino deer.
So that if the wolf, the coyote, the human hunter, were to take them as trophies, well, their deaths would really be of their own making.
This is simple logic to me.
45
“The cause of death was asphyxia,” Mel Cooper reported to Rhyme.
Cooper, in the sterile portion of the parlor, was staring down at what was left of the corpse. Which was not of the human variety, but rather a Musca domestica, the common housefly discovered by Sachs in one of the Locksmith’s footsteps in the Bechtel Building.
The tech explained that it had perished because its muscles had frozen up in a state of tetany, which is essentially a nonstop contraction. It could neither fly nor breathe. The immediate cause for this was the blocking of acetylcholinesterase, an enzyme that allows the muscles to relax. The reason for the blockage of the multisyllabic enzyme was a particular organophosphate, a fancy name for insecticide.
Cooper continued, “The substances in the toxin are parathion, malathion, diazinon, terbufos.”
Amelia Sachs laughed. “Sounds like the names of the bad guys in a superhero movie.”
Rhyme had never seen a superhero movie but on the basis of that observation alone he thought he might give one a try, though he guessed his respect for logic and science and rational thought might dampen the careless treatment of the natural world that the filmmakers would rely on.