The Chosen One Read online

  ‘Quite true. I did say it. And I do.’

  ‘Could I test you?’

  ‘Go ahead.’

  ‘Pamela.’

  Did she imagine it, or was there an intake of breath at the other end of the phone?

  ‘You’ll need to give me more than that, Ms Muir. I wouldn’t ask the boys to shoot at the hoop with one arm tied behind their back.’

  ‘I’m afraid I don’t have a last name. Best I can give you is that she was a contemporary of Robert Jackson and Stephen Baker.’

  ‘Same class as them, you say?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘No, I don’t think so. Let me try to picture the class. That’s how I do it, I visualize the class as I taught them.’ He began muttering names, as if taking a register.

  Maggie, standing in the doorway of Swanson’s grocery store, closed her eyes in silent prayer.

  Schilling murmured for a moment or two longer, then said, ‘No. As I thought, no Pamela in that class.’

  Maggie sighed. ‘What about the year below them, a year younger?’

  ‘So that would have been the class of, when was it? Oh yes, I remember that class. No stars in that one, I’m afraid. Very weak debate team.’

  ‘And a Pamela? I’m sorry, Mr Schilling: this is very important.’

  ‘Let me think.’ More muttering and then he said, ‘Do you mean Pamela Everett?’

  ‘I’m not sure. Who was she?’

  ‘Well, she did stand out. Not the way Baker and Jackson stood out. But she was extremely pretty. The students called her Miss America.’ He paused. ‘Terribly sad.’

  ‘Why sad?’ Maggie’s pulse began to race.

  ‘She died just a couple of years after graduation. Just tragic.’

  ‘And how did she die?’

  ‘An illness. I forget the details. Very quick apparently.’

  Maggie could feel the pain in her skull return as her brow involuntarily furrowed. ‘An illness? Are you absolutely sure about that?’

  ‘Yes of course.’

  ‘Did you see her?’

  ‘No,’ Mr Schilling said, slightly taken aback by the question. ‘She had left the school by then. Besides, it all happened very suddenly. But the parents asked me to read a lesson at her funeral. St Paul’s epistle to the Corinthians.’

  Maggie was thinking fast. ‘Do you think I might speak with them?’

  ‘They left Aberdeen very soon after Pamela died. They wanted to get as far away from here as possible.’

  ‘Do you have any idea where they went?’

  ‘I’m afraid I don’t.’

  She was about to ring off, but there was something about the way Ray Schilling was breathing into the phone that suggested he was hesitating. Maggie kept silent, not wanting to scare him off. Eventually, and warily, he spoke.

  ‘Ms Muir, I have not been completely frank with you. I do know where the Everetts are and it will not be difficult for me to find their address: I can access the school computer system from home. But I need you to be very clear about my terms.’

  ‘Of course.’ Terms? Was he going to ask for money?

  ‘We have kept the Everetts’ address on file all these years on the strict understanding that we share it with no one. The school has never broken that undertaking. Not once.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘Now you’ll have noticed that I have asked you no questions about your work. I have not wanted to pry. And I won’t now. But when you came to me on Friday, you told me that a large sum of money is involved here. I am working on the assumption that you would not be asking me questions about Pamela Everett if the late Robert Jackson had not – for whatever reason – remembered her in his will.’

  Maggie said nothing, hoping he would take her silence as confirmation.

  ‘I could not in conscience stand in the way of some financial comfort coming the way of the Everetts. Lord knows they have had their share of misfortune.’

  ‘You are a good man, Mr Schilling.’

  ‘I trust you, Ms Muir. Now I hope you have your snowshoes with you. If you think Aberdeen is the middle of nowhere, wait till you hear where the Everetts live.’

  49

  Undisclosed location, Sunday March 26, 16.00 GMT

  ‘My thanks to all of you for making time for this conference call: I know that the weekends are precious.’

  A murmur of agreement, conveyed through the desktop speaker. These were men like him, with no time or talent for small talk.

  ‘I wanted to brief you on the latest developments in the case we discussed last time. I am glad to tell you that we have sent in some very experienced…’ he hesitated, unsure of the appropriately delicate term for such work, ‘personnel and I am assured that there will be results very soon.’

  ‘How soon?’ Germany again. Of course.

  ‘Well, put it this way. If you read your newspapers thoroughly over the next twenty-four hours, I don’t think you’ll be disappointed.’

  ‘That’s good to hear.’ Manhattan. Perhaps he had broken up that particular US-German alliance: he hoped so.

  ‘Can we say we are back on track?’ A new voice: the accent, Middle Eastern, was initially difficult to make out. ‘I read something in the press this weekend that suggested we still had cause for concern.’

  ‘We are not out of the woods yet, that’s true. As we all know, politics is an unpredictable business.’ He smiled his silkiest smile, though he knew it was wasted on a phone call.

  ‘Except that’s what we’re all here for, isn’t it?’ said Germany, his tone edgy once more. ‘To make politics as predictable as possible. Am I right?’

  50

  Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, Sunday March 26, 20.55 PST

  In normal circumstances, Coeur d’Alene, Idaho would have been a perfectly lovely place to visit. Not that Maggie could remember what normal circumstances were. But a weekend here, in this snow-covered ski resort of a town, with its alpine chalets and cosy, crackling fires, would have been a treat. With the right person.

  It had taken two tiny planes to get here, first the short hop from Aberdeen to Seattle then a connection for the longer flight to Coeur d’Alene – Maggie willingly dipping into the Sanchez slush fund to pay cash for a whisky miniature on each leg, the better to suppress the fact that her battered, aching body was now folded into a glorified baked beans can bobbing through icy skies powered by no more than a propeller.

  She thought about the upcoming encounter with the Everetts. Should she stick with the story Mr Schilling had imagined for her? That she was an insurance agent needing to check out a claim that might lead to a windfall? Too cruel. So she came up with something else. Not brilliant, but it would have to do.

  The cab now turned off the main thoroughfare through the town, with its cafés and charming bookshop, past several residential roads, and finally onto a lane that wound its way up a mountainside. So far up the mountain that she felt compelled to ask the driver to check his satnav was working properly. He gave her a look that told her she was not in New York any more.

  She checked her watch. Nearly 9pm. It was crazy to do this in the evening – who wanted to open the door of their remote home to a stranger emerging out of the darkness? – but urgency drove her on.

  The headlights were set on full-beam now; the street lighting had long gone and the last car they had seen had passed nearly ten minutes ago. Maggie looked over her shoulder: some distant lights still twinkled.

  ‘You a journalist?’ the driver said suddenly, breaking the silence.

  That took her by surprise. ‘What makes you say that?’

  ‘Only, we don’t get much call to come up round here. ‘Cept to see the compound. And that’s usually media.’

  ‘The compound?’

  ‘That’s right. The Aryan Nations compound. They’re not far from here.’

  Maggie dimly recalled reading about the sect of white supremacists who had tried to set up a racially pure colony in the Idaho snow. ‘I’d forgotten that. How near?’<
br />
  The driver pointed towards the top right of his windscreen. ‘Couple of hills that way.’

  ‘But round here, it’s not…’

  ‘Oh no. I’m not saying anything negative about the folks who live up here. They’re not all like that, no way.’

  Maggie could hear a ‘but’ in his voice.

  ‘Except?’

  He twisted his head over his shoulder. ‘All I’m saying is, people who come all the way up here – it ain’t for the nightlife. They’re trying to get away from something. Or someone.’

  Maggie nodded.

  ‘With the Aryan Nations, it’s black people. With some of the others, in these little shacks-’ they had passed one or two barely-discernible outlines of buildings a long way off the road, surrounded by acres of nothing, ‘-it’s the Feds. You know, the guys who think the federal government is coming to take their guns away? And some folks just need to run away.’

  Like Anne and Randall Everett, thought Maggie.

  They drove for another ten minutes, climbing ever steeper, until the satnav told them their destination was approaching on the right.

  Maggie asked the driver to pull up twenty yards away and to stay: she would pay him once they were back among what now seemed like the bright urban lights of Coeur d’Alene.

  ‘How long you gonna be?’

  ‘That’s the trouble. It might be thirty seconds, it might be an hour or more. But keep the meter running.’

  He grumbled, but finally agreed and she stepped out into the bracing air. It was not just cold but fresh enough to make the skin tingle, the way it does after a plunge into iced water. Standing there listening, she became aware of a sound she had probably not heard in years: complete, impeccable silence.

  The darkness was total, too. There was no fraying at the edges, no dull, electric orange of city lights hovering above the horizon. The only light to break this darkness came from the stars and the lamp above the entrance of what she dearly hoped was the Everett residence.

  This house was much closer to the road than the others. There was a modest fence, but no hint of the quasi-military compounds she had seen on the way up. Indeed, as she got nearer, she could see that the house itself would not have looked out of place in most American suburbs. It was timber-fronted, with a two-step walk-up, a porch with two neatly arranged outdoor chairs covered in tarps, waiting for the winter to end, and a wind-chime, jangling in the chill air.

  The porch light was encouraging, but it was hard to tell if there was any light within. Heavy curtains were drawn across both the upstairs windows. It was late, no doubt about it. Folks out here – in Idaho, for heaven’s sake – were bound to be early to bed. And the Everetts would be in their sixties by now…

  Maggie did what she always did when faced by a moment of fear: closed her eyes for a moment, then took a step forward. She knocked on the door.

  There was a creak and then the sound of an interior door opening, followed by a brief cone of light, visible in the pane of glass above the door, pushing forward into the hallway. And now another light came on. Maggie waited for a voice to call out asking her to identify herself. But it did not come. Instead, without fear or hesitation, the door opened.

  That the woman was the mother of Pamela Everett, Maggie could tell instantly. All Principal Schilling had told her was that Pamela was strikingly pretty, nicknamed Miss America. This woman had the fine features, the clean lines, of a long-ago beauty queen.

  ‘Hello,’ Maggie smiled, hating herself for what she was about to do. ‘My name is Ashley Muir and I’m so sorry to disturb you so late at night. But I’ve come a long way to fulfil the wish of a dying man. A dead man, now. My late husband. This is something I promised him I would do. I know it’s crazy, but can I ask if you are Mrs Anne Everett?’

  The woman looked aghast, as if even the uttering of her name out loud violated a sacred taboo. But, Maggie noticed, she did not slam the door. Nor did she call for her husband.

  Maggie pressed on. ‘My husband died a few months ago. In one of our last conversations he told me about his first love. Your daughter, Pamela.’

  Now the woman’s face turned white, and it was as if she had aged by twenty years. ‘How did you find me?’

  ‘My husband did that. Worked that computer for months, I don’t know how he did it. But he was determined, Mrs Everett.’

  The woman remained frozen to the spot, still holding the door, unable to speak.

  ‘Do you think, Mrs Everett, we could speak inside? I promise this won’t take long.’

  Still unspeaking, staring at her as if at an apparition, Anne Everett widened the door to let her in. Maggie stepped inside hesitantly, wanting her body to convey what she felt: that she was treading carefully here, not wanting to bring more pain to this house of loss.

  There were reminders everywhere: a large photograph of Pamela Everett in the costume of high school graduation, several smaller photos of a girl at the seaside, on a rocking horse, blowing out birthday candles on the hallway table. For the second time in a week, Maggie looked at a woman she had never met and thought of her mother.

  ‘Could we sit down?’

  Still in silence, Mrs Everett ushered Maggie into a sitting room organized around a single chair facing a TV set; next to it, a side table bearing a tray with a half-eaten supper of cold meat and boiled potatoes.

  Maggie sat on a couch whose smooth lines suggested it was rarely used. Anne Everett perched on the edge of her chair.

  ‘My late husband was in the class below your daughter. He told me she’d have never even noticed him. But he had a crush on her. His first.’ Maggie smiled, the rueful smile of a widow. ‘He said he had hardly thought about her for years, until he got his own diagnosis. And then he remembered what he heard about Pamela Everett. The “beautiful Pamela”, he called her. And how she had died from a sudden illness. And it hurt him, Mrs Everett. It hurt him to think that maybe people would think your daughter had been forgotten. Because she hadn’t been forgotten. He had remembered her. And it was so important to him that you knew that. Because, and this is what he said, if people remember us, then it means a little part of us lives on.’

  Maggie had told herself it was a white lie, but that did not reduce the shame she felt for what she had done. When she saw the tear falling slowly down the cheek of Anne Everett it made her loathe herself all the more. She had crossed the line, she realized. Nothing – not Stuart, not Baker’s presidency, not Forbes, not her own safety – could justify this. She began to stand up, mumbling the beginnings of an apology.

  ‘Please don’t go!’ The woman spoke with such urgency that her voice pushed Maggie back onto the cold, stiff couch.

  Anne Everett wiped the tear from her eye and, to Maggie’s great surprise, revealed the beginnings of a smile. ‘Young lady, I have waited twenty-six years for this day.’

  Involuntarily, Maggie’s face turned into a mask of surprise.

  ‘Oh yes. Twenty-six years and nine days, I have waited for someone to come and say what you just said. That my daughter lived. That her life meant something.’

  ‘Why did you doubt it?’

  ‘Doubt it? I was never allowed to believe it.’

  ‘I don’t follow.’

  ‘Of course you don’t. How could you? How could anyone? No one ever knew. Except me. And Randall.’ She was animated now, leaping up from the chair. ‘Are you a whisky drinker, Mrs Muir? I am,’ she said, without waiting for Maggie’s answer. From under the side table, she produced a bottle, now down to its last third, and a used glass. She poured herself a healthy measure and downed half of it.

  ‘My daughter’s only “illness” was to have a beautiful face. That was her illness. She wasn’t sick. Pamela never had a day’s sickness in her life. She was healthy as an ox, like her mother. Same bones, same genes.’

  She looked to the wall, to the picture of Pamela in a ball gown, at the James Madison High prom.

  ‘We said that she had gotten sick. That was the dea
l.’

  ‘The deal?’

  ‘That’s what he made us say. After the fire.’

  Maggie felt herself shudder. ‘What fire?’ But she knew the answer already.

  ‘Twenty-six years ago, on March 15, there was a fire at the Meredith Hotel in Aberdeen, Washington. Huge blaze. They said that everyone survived. That they got all the guests out of the rooms, standing outside in the street in their pyjamas and all.’ She paused, a shadow falling over her face again. ‘But it wasn’t true.’

  ‘Pamela was in that hotel?’

  Slowly, as if her head weighed heavily on her neck, Mrs Everett nodded. ‘We don’t know who with. Some boy, on spring break. Using her for sex. She was cursed with a body that men hungered for.’ She looked down at her hands, clasped together. ‘We didn’t know she had been in the hotel. We thought she was having a sleepover with her girlfriends.’

  She smiled a bitter smile at her own naïveté.

  ‘It was early the next morning. We weren’t even aware she was missing. We hadn’t called the police. We were just waiting for her to come home, like she always did on a Sunday after a Saturday night. And then there he was, at the door.’

  ‘Who was there?’

  ‘The man. From the hotel, I thought – at first, anyway. He explained there had been an accident, a fire. Pamela had been killed.’ The last word came out in a croak. ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘You take your time.’

  Anne Everett poured the rest of the bottle into a glass and swallowed it whole. ‘You see,’ she said, looking up at Maggie, ‘I’ve carried this for so long. Randall never would let me tell. But it’s eaten me alive, this secret. He took it to his grave, but it killed him too.’

  Maggie nodded, knowing she needed to say nothing.

  ‘The man said Pamela was dead. And there would never be anything we could do to bring her back. All that would be left was her reputation. She could either be remembered as a “goodtime girl” – those were the words that man used – who had died in someone’s bed, or as prom queen Pamela Everett of James Madison High. It was up to us.