the hospital, the attending physician, and, except for Alice, the parents’ names.”
Ruby glanced heavenward for a moment. “What are they, in witness protection?”
“I’ll let you know if I ever get a straight answer one way or another on that one,” Pasco said, chuckling a little, “but I’d bet money that they aren’t.”
“Yeah, me, too.” Ruby sat for a few moments, trying to get her mind around everything he had told her. None of it sounded right. Incomplete birth certificates? Even if she bought the stuff about the IRS, she found that completely implausible. “But I still don’t understand. Everything’s computerized these days which means everything’s recorded. Nobody just
“It’s not against the law to live off the grid,” Pasco said. “Some people do. You’d be surprised at how many.”
“What—you mean living off the land, generating your own electricity, shit like that?” Ruby gave a short, harsh laugh. “Look at that photo. That’s not a picture of a girl whose family has been living off the grid. She’s got an orthodontist, for chrissakes.”
“I’m not so sure,” Pasco said. “We had the Nakamuras on our radar, so to speak, when they entered the state. However they had been covering themselves before they left the Caymans, whatever they’d been doing to stay invisible, they weren’t doing it any more. They left an easy trail to follow. I found them in a northland hotel near the airport. They were there for a week. At the same time, the task force was investigating some fraudulent activity elsewhere in the same area. It seemed that the Nakamura case was going to converge with it.”
“What was it, this other activity?” Ruby asked.
Pasco made a face. “More identity theft. I can run you through the long version later if you want but the short version is, be careful what you do with your utility bills after you pay them, and if you insist on paying them over the phone, don’t use a cordless phone or a mobile.” He paused; when she nodded, he went on. “Anyway, we had enough evidence for a warrant. But when the police got there, the house was abandoned. The only thing they found was the body of Alice Nakamura in one of the bedrooms. Her birth certificate, school photo, library card, and passport were lying next to her on the floor.”
“How did she die?”
“Natural causes. Heart failure. I forget what the condition’s called but the coroner said that a lot of kids on the transplant lists have it. Alice Nakamura wasn’t on any of those. There are no medical records for her anywhere, in fact. And it turned out that her passport was a forgery.”
Ruby blinked. “So much for homeland security.”
“It was an excellent forgery, but a forgery nonetheless, as there was no record of her ever applying for a passport, let alone receiving one. Unlike her parents.”
“If this is some kind of conspiracy, it’s the most random and disorganized one I’ve ever heard of,” Ruby said, frowning. “Not to mention that it doesn’t make any sense. Unless you’ve actually been speaking a language that only sounds like English but all the words mean something entirely different and I haven’t really understood a single thing you’ve said.”
Her words hung in the air between them for a long moment. Pasco’s face was deeply thoughtful (not deeply regretful; she stamped down on the memory again), practically contemplative, as if she had set out a significant issue that had to be addressed with care. Inside her, the Dread pushed sharply into the area just under her breastbone.
“I’m sure that’s how everything probably looks when you see it from the outside,” he said finally. “If you don’t know a system, if you don’t understand how things work or what the rules are, it won’t make any sense. The way a foreign language will sound like gibberish.”
Ruby grimaced at him. “But nothing’s that strange. If you listen to a foreign language for even just a minute, you start picking up some sense of the patterns in it. You recognize it’s a system even if it’s one you’re not familiar with—”
“Oh?” Pasco’s half-smile was back. “Ever listened to Hungarian?”
She waved a hand at him. “No, but I’ve listened to Cantonese and Mandarin, simultaneously at full volume when my grandparents argued. You know what I mean. For a system—or anything—to be completely incomprehensible, it would have to be something totally—” She floundered, groping for a word. “It would have to be something totally alien. Outside human experience altogether.”
Her words replayed themselves in her mind. “Christ,” she said, massaging her forehead. “What the hell are we talking about and why?”
Pasco pressed his lips together briefly. “You were saying that there are a lot of things about my case that don’t make any sense.”
“You got
“Pardon?” Now he looked bewildered.
“People are infinitely screwy,” she said. “Human beings can make a mess out of chaos.”
He surprised her by bursting into loud, hearty laughter. She twisted around in her seat to see that the whole room was staring at them curiously. “Thanks, I’ll be here all week,” she said a bit self-consciously and turned back to Pasco, trying to will him to wind down fast. Her gaze fell on the notebook screen again.
“Hey, what about her retainer?” she asked, talking over his guffaws.
“Her what?” Pasco said, slightly breathless and still chuckling a little.
“On her teeth.” Ruby tapped the screen with her little finger. It felt spongy. “Were you able to trace it to a particular orthodontist?”
“She wasn’t wearing a retainer and they didn’t find one in the house,” Pasco said, sobering.
“And what about her parents?”
“The Nakamuras have dropped out of sight again.”
“
“I thought so at first,” he said, either oblivious to or ignoring her tone of voice. “But then that girl turned up on the roof yesterday, which leads me to believe they were still around. Up to that point, anyway. They might be gone by now, though.”
“Why? You think they had something to do with the girl’s death?”
“Not intentionally.”
Ruby shook her head. “Intentionally, unintentionally—either way, why? Who is she to them—the long-lost twin of the girl who died of heart failure?” Abruptly the Dread gave her stomach a half-twist; she swallowed hard and kept talking. “How long ago was that anyway, when you found Alice Nakamura?”
Pasco hesitated, his face suddenly very serious. “
“But you’re cops, too.”
“Exactly. Anyway—” He swivelled the notebook around and tapped the keyboard a few times. “That was about five and a half weeks ago, almost six.” He looked up again. “Does that suggest anything special to you?”
Ruby shook her head. “You?”
“Just that the Nakamuras have managed to lay pretty low for quite a while. I wonder how. And where.”
Ruby wanted to ask him something about that but couldn’t quite figure out how to word the question. “And you’re absolutely sure that girl—Alice Nakamura, I mean—died of natural causes?”
“None whatsoever. Also, she wasn’t abused or neglected in any way before she died, either. She was well taken care of. She just happened to be very sick.”
“Uh-huh.” Ruby nodded absently. “Then why would they just go off and leave her?”
“If they didn’t want to be found—and judging from their behaviour, they didn’t—then they couldn’t carry her dead body along with them.”
“All right,
“Or because they’re victims of identity theft who have had to steal a new identity themselves.”
Ruby closed her eyes briefly. “OK, now we’re back to not making sense again.”
“No, it’s been known to happen,” Pasco insisted. “For some people, when their identity gets stolen, the thief does so much damage that they find it’s virtually impossible to clear their name. They have to start over.”
