“He spent a lot of time with the organizers, connected us with a lot of collectives across the country doing this work, and even arranged with some of his old restaurant contacts to help with refreshments for the protest,” she said.“And then a few days later, he told us he was leaving, that he wanted to do the work full-time.It was sudden, but he was here of his own free will, so we couldn’t stop him.And it was a good cause…”
She trailed off and caught her upper lip between her teeth.
“It was only after he left, when we were clearing out his rooms, that we found his ‘research,’” she said.“He’d tried to destroy it, soaked it in bleach in the toilet, but it was still legible.Notebooks and binders under his bed.Some of it was just research about predatory lending and refinancing practices, especially in Plenty.You know that’s a problem here.But he’d also printed some fairly extreme rhetoric from some of the more anarchist-inclined activists who’d gotten involved in the protest and dozens—dozens—of job applications to various loan companies and brokers in Plenty.He’d scrawled all over them with his theories about why they’d not hired him.”
Javi nodded slowly.“Except for State of Mind.”
“He’d left his acceptance letter behind,” Alice said.“It was the same day he’d told us he was leaving.”
“So you know he was fixated and unstable—”
“He waspassionate,” Alice objected.“The brokers and loan companies in Plenty are practically unregulated and—”
“And how did you think Fowler and his anarchist principles were going to fix that?”Javi asked sharply.“Another protest?Or the same sort of solution that had landed him here in the first place.”
“What was I supposed to do?”Alice demanded.“Brian had a right to care about things.He had a right to get a job and not to tell us about it.He wasn’t a patient here.He wasn’t a criminal—”
“He is now.”
The statement dropped flatly between them.Alice flinched and deflated.She bent her head and looked at her hands, twiddling the heavy opal ring on her wedding finger.
“What was I supposed to do?”she asked again, but this time she just sounded tired.
It was the moment that Cloister would have reached out to her.He’d show understanding, sympathy.She’d grumble.It was the sort of good interview technique that instructors at Quantico spent hours trying to teach, but Cloister just acted on instinct.
Javi didn’t have the instinct; he did have the training.Somehow, he just couldn’t bring himself to soften.
“You could have told someone,” he said harshly.
Alice looked up at him.“Idid,” she said indignantly.“I told his sister.”
“Obviously,”MarionHayes,neeFowler, snapped in answer to Javi’s question about whether she’d been concerned about her brother.“I told Alice that I didn’t think Brian getting involved with the protest was a good idea.Hecares.Hecaresabout things like that, about people, about causes.That’s always what kicks off an episode.”
Javi pulled into the rest area and parked at the far end of the lot, away from the other cars.He flicked the call over to his phone as he turned the engine off.
“She didn’t listen?”he asked.
“Obviously,” Marion repeated, each syllable clipped off and irritated.Then she remembered the situation and almost audibly reined her temper in.When she tried again, her voice was more even.“They thought it was good for him to be able to use his talents, his intelligence.Except that’s never been good for Brian.People always think it will be…that if he can just put being ‘gifted’ to use, it will make him realize he’s wasting his time with mental illness.”
The snap had crawled back into her voice at the end.Javi didn’t pull her on it.The sun through the windscreen was making him squint and sweat.He got out of the car and leaned back against the side of it as he watched a semi swing in off the road and pull in across a handful of spaces.
Habit made him clock the license plate and scan down the side of the trailer for any telltale mods or scraped off lettering.After the last sweep of drugs coming through the desert, the cartels had pivoted to local production with van-life drug labs on the rise.
This one looked clean enough, but Javi still kept half an eye on it as he refocused back on Marion.
“Alice mentioned he’d been in contact with a lot of activists online,” Javi said.“Would he have been vulnerable to—”
Marion didn’t need him to finish the question.
“Yes,” Marion said.“He would have.Is my brother OK, Agent Merlo?”
That was a loaded question.The last time Javi had seen Fowler, the man had been propped up in a chair as Kincaid leveraged a bottle of painkillers for information.
“He’s in a lot of trouble,” Javi answered, honestly if not fully.“But he’s in custody, so we have the chance to stop it getting any worse.”
In the background of the call, Javi heard a car door slam.When he’d called, Marion had said she was in her office.He supposed this wasn’t the sort of call she’d want to have with her co-workers in earshot.
“The chance to stop it getting worse was when I called for a wellness check,” Marion said.Music flicked on, something high-pitched and cheerful for a kid, and off again.“If you had done your job then, this wouldn’t have happened.”
