Conspiracy Theory(91)
“That’s not true,” Gregor said. By now, he was beginning to feel desperate. “There’s an organization called the Center for Missing and Exploited Children. There’s a special agent of the FBI attached to it. They collect all the figures every year, how many children are missing, how many children are found, what happened to them—you can get that information on-line any time you want to. They publish it.”
Kathi Mittendorf seemed to hesitated for a moment. Then she smiled. “Don’t be ridiculous,” she said. “They probably make it all up. They don’t dare collect the real figures. Then they’d know that there is no such thing as False Memory Syndrome. The memories are all real. The children really did see infants sacrificed and small animals mutilated. It happens all the time. It happens in day-care centers. It happens in schools. They have to get to as many people as possible to make sure that they’re brainwashed. They can’t afford to leave any serious opposition. That’s why they’re trying to kill us.”
“What?” Gregor said.
This time, Kathi Mittendorf’s smile was wide and glittering. “That’s why they’re trying to kill us,” she repeated. “That’s what you’re here for, isn’t it? To see if you can get the information out of me. And if you don’t you’ll go back and tell them, your reptilian masters, and they’ll send somebody out to kidnap me. They’ll bring me in and torture me. And when they’re finished with me, they’ll kill me, because they know that as long as I’m alive, I’m a danger to them. I’m as much of a danger to them as somebody like Michael, because I’m just an ordinary person. I’m not some kind of nut. People will see me and realize that you don’t have to be a lunatic to see the conspiracy. And they’ll start to think. I know who you are, Mr. Demarkian. I pretended not to know when you got here, but I know. You’re one of them. You live with a reptilian master, with that Bennis Hannaford woman, whose bloodline goes all the way back to the Merovingians through the British monarchy. You know I’m telling the truth. And you can’t let me get away with it. But watch out. This whole house is wired. Cameras have been taking down this entire conversation and sending it to people I trust. They won’t let you get away with it. They won’t let you win. It doesn’t matter if you stand there right now and shoot me dead.”
FOUR
1
By early afternoon, Ryall Wyndham was as wound up as he ever thought he could be—too wound up to function, really, but he wasn’t as worried about functioning as he used to be. It was a big day. Murder or no murder, the Philadelphia social season was in full gear. In the next few weeks, there were enough hunt balls to make you think foxes were about to become an endangered species, and that in spite of the fact that this wasn’t the big season for hunting. Then there were the private debutante balls, the really important parties that marked a girl’s “honest” coming out, in contrast to the mass presentation balls, which were tacky, but everyone “did” them. Ryall would never have admitted it in public, but the truth was, he liked new-money debutantes more than he liked old-money ones. Old-money debutantes had no sense of fun. Half of them got their ball gowns at Sears, and he knew at least one, only two years ago, who had arrived at the Philadelphia Assemblies with a pair of sneakers on under her dress. New-money debutantes liked to make a splash. Ryall was all for splashes. He liked to make splashes himself. This year, the big status symbol for new-money debutantes was to have two dresses for every ball. They danced until midnight, then repaired to the powder room or a convenient bedroom and changed clothes: dress, shoes, gloves, jewelry. It was not only extravagant, but utterly mindless. That was the way it was supposed to be. Cary Grant and Katharine Hepburn would never have made a go of The Philadelphia Story if the general public had ever known what really went on in those big old-money houses on the Main Line.
Today, the important thing was to look solemn, and to make sure not to say anything stupid while on the air. He was due to tape at four-thirty. He was going to be expected to say something about the murder of Charlotte Deacon Ross, and the trouble was that he had a lot to say. Which was that the old cow deserved to be dead, for one thing—God, how he hated those patronizing people, the ones who treated him as if he were their personal publicity agents, but too damned dumb and uncultivated to know the difference between Shakespeare and Dohnanyi. But it wasn’t just that. It was the attitude, that half-distracted look that told you you weren’t really on the same planet with this great, good, and important Goddess. She listened to you like she listened to the stereo when she’d put it on as background music. She’d notice if you were annoying, and she’d do something about you too, but otherwise you might as well have been in the next state. It was too bad he still needed to be careful about what he had to say about these people. He could tell the world a lot about Charlotte Deacon Ross: her rages, smashing crystal and dinnerware on hardwood floors when she wasn’t getting exactly what she wanted exactly as she wanted it; the way she fired help without cause or warning, sometimes in batches of twos and threes; her relationship with her oldest daughter, which resembled the relationship Medea might have had with her children if she’d allowed them to grow up. The only thing Charlotte didn’t do was screw. That made her infinitely different from most of her friends, who engaged in adultery the way they kept up their tennis, but it was mostly a matter of intelligence. Ryall Wyndham might have been a bug on the wall as far as Tony Ross was concerned, but he’d known that man well enough to know that if Charlotte ever gave him cause, he’d be out of that marriage in a shot. There was something for the tabloids and the infotainment programs. Men like Tony Ross do not get divorced, not ever. Men just a rung below them on the ladder sometimes did, but men like Tony did not. It was too damned dangerous, and too expensive. Still, Tony was looking for a reasonable excuse to get a divorce from Charlotte, and even Charlotte knew about it.