The Inner Circle

“Trust.”

“Exactly. Trust,” Dallas says. “Two hundred years of trusting the right people. Now let me ask you a question: Did you tell Clementine everything I said about the Culper Ring?”

“You told me not to.”

“I did. But the point is, you listened. And y’know why you listened? Because even though, when it comes to Clementine, there’s a little voice in your pants that’s been telling you what to do-when you thought about telling her about the Culper Ring, there was a second voice-the voice in your head-that told you not to. For whatever reason, something in your brain told you that Clementine shouldn’t know this one. And that’s the voice you need to listen to, Beecher. It’ll lead you far better than the voice in your pants,” he says as he steps out onto the concrete path and plants his own snow footprint right over Clementine’s.

“I appreciate the talking-penis analogy, but let’s be honest, Dallas-if I didn’t have Clementine with me this morning, I never would’ve even gotten in to see Nico.”

“And that’s so bad?”

“If Nico didn’t see that sheet, we wouldn’t’ve gotten here,” I point out, catching up to him and holding out the empty rock.

“What’re you talking about?”

“The coordinates. North 38 degrees, west 77 degrees-”

“Go back,” Dallas says, stopping on the path. “You showed him the actual invisible ink sheet?”

“No, I-” I pat my jacket pockets, then my jeans. Don’t tell me I-

“What, Beecher? You gave Nico the sheet?”

“Of course not. In the rush… we were so excited… I think I left it.”

“You didn’t leave it, Beecher. He took it. Didn’t you see Silence of the Lambs? He absolutely took it-which means in your quest to figure out who’s messing with the President, you gave the full story to the mental patient who once tried to assassinate one!”

I try to tell myself that Nico doesn’t know that the note was for Wallace, but it’s drowned out by the fact that there are only two types of people who ever come to see Nico: fellow crazies and desperate reporters.

“You better pray he doesn’t have access to copiers or scanners,” Dallas says, reminding me exactly what’ll happen if Nico puts that sheet of paper in the hands of either of those two groups.

I look downhill, checking for Clementine. She’s gone. In her place, all I see is Nico and the calm, measured way he said thank you when I left. He definitely took it.

“Don’t tell me you’re going back to St. Elizabeths,” Dallas calls out, though he already knows the answer.

“I have to,” I tell him as I pick up speed. “I need to get back what Nico took from us.”

84

It was something that the one with the ungroomed beard-Dallas-it was something Dallas had said.

Squinting through the front windshield as the morning sun pinged off the piles of soot-capped snow, the barber couldn’t help but notice the sudden increase in the number of the neighborhood’s liquor stores and laundromats. Of course, there was a barbershop. There was always a barbershop, he knew, spying the hand- painted sign with the words Fades To Braids in big red letters.

Kicking the brakes as he approached a red light, he didn’t regret holding back at the cemetery. He was ready. He’d made his peace. But when he heard those words leave Dallas’s lips, he knew there was still one box that needed to be checked.

Twenty-six years ago, he’d acted in haste. Looking back at it, though, he didn’t regret that either. He did the best he could in the moment.

Just as he was doing now.

As the light winked green, he twisted the wheel into a sharp left turn, fishtailing for a split second in a mass of gray slush. As the car found traction, Laurent knew he was close.

This was it.

He knew it from the moment he saw the building in the distance.

He knew it as he felt the straight-edge razor that still called to him from his pocket.

He knew it as he saw-parked at the top of the hill-the silver car that Beecher had been driving.

And he knew it when he spotted, just next to the main gate, the thin black letters that spelled out those same two words that had left Dallas’s lips back in the cemetery.

St. Elizabeths.

The greater good would finally be served.

85

It takes me nineteen minutes to drop Dallas at the Archives, eleven minutes to drive his silver Toyota back to St. Elizabeths, and a full forty seconds for me to stand outside, working on my story, before I push open the front door of Nico’s building.

“I… hi… sorry… I think I left my notebook upstairs,” I say to the guard, feigning idiocy and holding up the temporary ID sticker that she gave me a little over an hour ago.

The guard with the bad Dutch-boy hair rolls her eyes.

“Just make it quick,” she says as a loud tunk opens the steel door, and I take my second trip of the day through the metal detector.

“Don’t worry,” I tell her. “I’ll be lightning.”

Trying hard to stand still, I fight my body as it follows the rhythmic sway of the rising elevator.

An hour ago, when I was standing here, I was holding Clementine’s hand. Right now, I lean hard on that thought, though it does nothing to calm me.

As the doors rumble open and I step out, the same black woman with the same big key ring is waiting for me.

“Forgot your notebook, huh?” she asks with a laugh. “Hope there’s no phone numbers in there. You don’t want Nico calling your relatives.”

I pretend to laugh along as she again opens the metal door and leads me down the hallway, back to the day room.

“Christopher, can you help him out?” the woman asks, passing me to a heavy male nurse in a freshly starched white shirt. “We got some more visitors coming up right now.”

As she leaves me behind, I take a quick scan of the fluorescent-lit day room: patients watching various TVs, nurses flipping through various clipboards, there’s even someone feeding coins into the soda machine. But as I check the Plexiglas round table in the corner…

No Nico.

“Who you here for again?” the heavy male nurse asks as he fluffs pillows and straightens one of the many saggy sofas.

“Nico,” I say, holding up my ID sticker like it’s a badge. “I was here seeing Nico, but I think I left my notebook.”

He does his own scan of the area, starting with the round table. He knows Nico’s routine.

“I bet he’s in his room-711,” he says, pointing me to the swinging doors on the far left. “Don’t worry, you can go yourself. Nico’s got room visitor privileges.”

“Yeah… no… I’ll be quick,” I say, taking off for the swinging doors and reminding myself what they first told me: This is a hospital, not a prison. But as I push the doors open and the bright day room narrows into the far