Jonah counted the exits before he’d finished sitting down.
Three, from the plastic chair bolted to the precinct floor.
Four if he was willing to put a shoulder into the fire door behind the vending machine.
Five if a window counted, and today it did.
He ran the count in Spanish under his breath uno, dos, tres, cuatro, cinco the way he’d run it since the Walgreens, since before that, since always.
The fifth number was the one that made his hands cold.
Patch appeared in the doorway at 8:58am.
She did not smile.
She held a Manila folder in her left hand and carried it the way a woman carried evidence flat, no crease, nothing that would compromise the chain later.
She nodded once.
Jonah stood.
Followed her down the hall.
The tile was beige and scuffed and institutional in the way every government building was institutional.
A man in a suit passed them without looking up from his phone.
Jonah tracked the exits behind him.
Patch opened the door to Interview Two.
He went in.
She closed the door behind them.
The room was small.
A table.
Two chairs.
A camera bolted to the ceiling in the corner.
A mirror that was not a mirror on the far wall.
Lt.
Ramos would be watching.
Maybe the captain.
Maybe someone from the DA’s office if they thought Carl’s dock-death had legs.
Patch set the folder on the table.
Sat.
Gestured to the other chair.
Jonah sat.
She did not say hello.
She slid the folder across the table.
“You need to see this,” she said.
He looked at the folder.
Plain Manila.
No label.
He looked at her.
Patch’s face was flat cop-flat, the face she wore when she was giving a witness enough rope.
Her hands were folded on the table.
No pen.
No notebook.
“Before we start,” he said.
“Before we start,” Patch said, “you’re going to open the folder.
Then you’re going to tell me what it means.
Then we’ll decide if we start.”
Jonah opened the folder.
One page.
Cream paper.
Heavy stock.
Hargreeves Industries letterhead, 1989.
The logo in the top left corner a stylized umbrella, the kind that belonged on a crest.
Below it, centered, in a typewriter font that had been obsolete by the time Jonah was born:
SUBJECT-CANDIDATE INDEX INTAKE YEAR: 1989 TOTAL CANDIDATES: 44
Below that, a list of numbers.
One through forty-four, each followed by a blank space where a name should have been.
Most of the spaces were empty.
Seven had been filled in by hand in a precise, spidery script:
1.
LUTHER 2.
DIEGO 3.
ALLISON 4.
KLAUS 5.
[blank] 6.
BEN 7.
VANYA
Numbers eight through forty-three were blank.
Number forty-four had been circled in red ink.
Fresh red ink.
The circle was clean, deliberate.
Whoever had drawn it had used a ruler to keep the pen from bleeding.
Jonah looked at the circle.
Looked at Patch.
“Where did you get this,” he said.
His voice was level.
The Walgreens night-shift voice.
“My desk,” Patch said.
“Monday night.
I worked late.
Went home at eleven.
Came back at seven Tuesday morning.
The folder was on my chair.”
“Who has access to your desk.”
“Everyone in the precinct.” She leaned forward.
“You’re not asking the right question, Vega.”
He knew the right question.
He was deciding whether to ask it.
“Okay,” he said.
“What does card 44 mean.”
Patch tapped the circle with one finger.
“You tell me.”
The camera was running.
Lt.
Ramos was watching.
Jonah counted the doors again.
Three.
The fourth was the fire door.
The fifth was the window and the window did not open.
He looked at the page.
The circle.
The spidery handwriting on the seven filled names.
Reginald’s handwriting.
He had seen it once before, on a letter in the mansion’s library, the day Klaus had walked him past the portraits and Ben had waved from the corner where only Klaus could see him.
Until Jonah.
The Handler had access to Commission resources.
Commission resources included temporal insertion.
A woman who could place two agents in 1963 to kill a president could place a folder on a desk in 2010.
She was feeding Patch.
Using Patch as a pressure-line.
Jonah closed the folder.
Looked at Patch.
Her face was still flat.
Cop-flat.
But her eyes were watching.
Not the page.
Him.
“I do not know who put this on your desk,” he said.
True.
“I know what it refers to.”
True.
“I cannot tell you in this room.”
True.
Patch held his gaze.
He did not look away.
The rule was: if you were telling the truth, you could hold the look.
If you were lying, you looked at their hands, their shoulder, the wall behind them.
He held.
Patch nodded once.
Closed the folder.
Stood.
“Wait here,” she said.
She left the room.
The door clicked shut behind her.
Jonah sat at the table and did not touch the folder.
The camera was running.
He folded his hands in his lap.
Looked at the mirror that was not a mirror.
If Ramos was watching, Ramos had just seen Jonah Vega handed a piece of paper and give three sentences that sounded like a confession but confessed nothing.
Two minutes.
Patch came back.
Sat.
Opened a small notebook not the case file, her private notebook.
Wrote one line.
Closed it.
“Lt.
Ramos wants me to charge you with obstruction,” she said.
“Are you going to.”
“No.” She tapped the folder.
“This isn’t evidence.
It’s a message.
I know it.
Ramos doesn’t need to know it yet.”
She picked up the folder.
Stood.
“You’re free to go,” she said.
“Don’t leave town.”
Jonah stood.
“The interview.”
“Is postponed.” Patch opened the door.
Gestured.
“I’ll call you when I have questions you can answer.”
He walked past her into the hall.
She followed.
They walked in silence back to the lobby.
Patch stopped at the desk.
Jonah kept walking.
The glass doors opened onto the street.
October cold.
Wet pavement.
A siren six blocks west.
He walked three blocks before he stopped at a bodega.
Bought coffee.
Sat on the curb outside.
The notebook was in his back pocket.
He did not take it out.
Not here.
Not with the street watching.
The Handler had just spent a piece of leverage.
She had given Patch the SCI cover sheet.
Given her card 44 circled in red.
Given her a question Jonah could not answer in a room with a camera and a lieutenant watching through glass.
The message was not for Patch.
The message was for him.
I can reach her.
I can put anything I want on her desk.
I can feed her pieces of you until she builds the whole picture.
Jonah drank the coffee.
It was bad.
He finished it anyway.
Stood.
Walked back to the short-let.
The stairs were narrow.
The apartment was cold.
He sat at the table.
Took out the notebook.
Opened to a blank page.
Wrote:
Tuesday Oct 12.
Patch given SCI-44 cover sheet.
Anonymous hand.
Red circle.
She let me walk.
He looked at the sentence.
Closed the notebook.
The Handler wanted him recruited.
She had said it at Griddy’s.
She would say it again.
And every time Jonah said no, she would spend another piece of leverage.
Patch had the SCI cover sheet now.
The trail was in her hand too.
Jonah stood.
Walked to the window.
Looked at the street.
Counted the doors.
Five.
The fifth was the window that did not open.
He would have to break it.
Not yet.
But the glass was looking thinner every day.
Silver / $6 / 10 ahead
Gold / $9 / 15 ahead
Platinum / $15 / 20 ahead, no weekly wait
That’s it.