“I’m sorry,” Jessie said, trying not to laugh. “What?”
Karen smiled patiently.
“It’s okay. I deserve it,” she said, leaning in closer even though there was no way either cop in the courtyard could hear her. “About midway through the second semester, some of my school friends came to me and said they were really worried about me, that I might flunk out. To their credit, they never said they thought the Realm was a bad influence. I think they knew that would only push me away. They asked me to go to Palm Springs with them for Spring Break, just to get a little distance and some perspective. They framed it as a chance to reboot, to refresh. And they said that a week away from me would make Derek want me even more.”
“I’m guessing the folks at the Eleventh Realm weren’t enthused?” Jessie speculated.
“Not at all,” Karen corroborated. “Derek didn’t understand why I wanted to be apart from him. Inara, the bony marathon girl, told me that my school friends wanted to immerse me in a ‘fetid pool of commercialism.’ I still remember that phrase. I felt bad about it but I went anyway. I was just so exhausted and beaten down that the idea of getting away from everything and lying by a pool reading a book or taking a nap in my hotel room sounded like heaven.”
“How was it?”
“Great and terrible at the same time,” she said. “I constantly felt guilty. Shepherd had preached that sleeping more than six hours in a night was wasting precious time that could be used to unlock our potential. That first night I slept almost twelve hours and probably could have gone longer. I berated myself for that.”
“Oh, Karen,” Jessie whispered.
“It gets worse. Every time I went to the buffet at our hotel, I was ashamed if my plate was full. One of my friends was appalled when she saw that all I had for breakfast one morning was two slices of cantaloupe, two slices of honeydew and two slices of watermelon. She marched me back to our hotel room and pulled out a pair of shorts that she’d lent me one time, soon after we got to school in the fall. Back then we were the same size. She had me try them on in the room. I buttoned them up and they immediately fell down around my ankles. It was a real eye opener. I’m not a big person but I checked and found that I’d gone from 127 pounds to 98 pounds in six months. I was as skeletal as Inara. That was when the light started to come on.”
Karen went silent as the officer who had been leaning against the tree in the middle of the courtyard stood up straight and stretched his arms up to the sky. He turned and started in their direction. For a second it looked like he might headed directly for them. But he merely picked up a candy wrapper on the ground a few feet from them, tossed it in the trash can, and returned inside.
“Now you’ve got me paranoid,” Jessie said.
“Good,” Karen told her.
“So give me the happy ending, Detective Bray. How did you go from bony cult acolyte to pride of the LAPD?”
“Here’s the short version. After Spring Break I went back and told Derek I wasn’t comfortable with some of the ways the Realm operated. I was moving back into the dorms. I was going to eat normal meals and sleep normal hours. I wasn’t paying for any seminars that didn’t interest me and I wasn’t doing any more Truth Sessions. You can imagine his reaction.”
“He brought in the higher ups?” Jessie guessed.
“He did. They started with Inara, who they thought I was tight with. She tried to guilt me into staying more active. Even Shepherd made a push. He already knew what I would eventually figure out: that once an Adherent pulled away, it was hard to get them back. They needed to be kept in constant thrall. At the time I didn’t understand why he spent so much time on little old me. But in retrospect, it made sense. I was their only Adherent at Occidental College. I was the gateway to a pool of 2,000 impressionable young people. If I bailed, it would be hard to rev that up again organically.”
“But their pressure campaign didn’t work?”
“Nope,” Karen said. “So that’s when they brought out the big guns. Remember how I said that Shepherd was the TC at my first TS back at the retreat and that they unknowingly overplayed their hand?”
“Yeah.”
“This was when that came back to bite them. They started to threaten me. Inara told me that if I left, they’d have to tell my parents about how I stole my brother’s paper route money. I remember being stunned for a second before laughing in her face. Of course, the threat held no weight. My parents would only be confused by the allegation. But more significantly, it was all so petty. They were trying to intimidate me with the best piece of intel they had, no matter how lame. In that moment, I realized that they probably had a lot better stuff on people—stuff that might actually work. I remembered Derek’s admission about robbing that liquor store. What had other people confessed to on tape? I walked out of the Heartbeat Hub—that’s what they call their Hollywood headquarters—that day and never went back.”
“And that was the end of it?” Jessie asked, sure that it wasn’t.
“Not even close,” Karen assured her. “I was an early victim of Rightful Targeting. No one picketed me but they did other stuff—called constantly, had me followed everywhere, even tried to manufacture a traffic accident so that they could sue me. And I got off comparatively easy.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“That’s what I want to impress upon you with this whole story, Jessie,” Karen said, leaning in close and staring at her unblinkingly. “These people are dangerous.”
“You mean, you think they might have killed Addison Rutherford if she tried to leave?”
Karen’s eyes clouded over.
“Possibly,” she said. “I wouldn’t put it past them. But to be honest, based on her outgoing voice message and that dog-eared copy of Shepherd’s book, I’m inclined to think she died a true believer. And if she wasn’t trying to leave, it doesn’t give them much motive. Still, even though I have my doubts, we have to follow that lead, which is why I’m more worried for us.”
“Why?”
“Think about it. I was nobody back in college and they harassed me relentlessly. Imagine what they’d do now if they found out we were investigating them in relation to a murder. They have a whole unit, kind of their own Homicide Special Section devoted to Rightful Targeting of DVs. It’s called the Department of Restricted Activities, or DRA, and there have been rumors for years that they do a lot more than just picket people.”
“Like what?” Jessie asked, slightly embarrassed that she didn’t already know all about this.
“There are countless documented cases—some of which I handled—of disappearances of Adherents who were rumored to be leaving. DVs who have spoken out against the Realm have met with suspicious suicides or strange, deadly accidents. I’ve never been able to close a single case involving allegations about the Eleventh Realm and I’m pretty damn good at my job. That alone should give you pause. We could be in real danger here.”
Jessie slouched against the courtyard wall. The magnitude of their task was starting to sink in.
“So if nobody will talk to us for fear of being Rightfully Targeted,” she said, “how are we ever going to learn about Addison—her routines, her contacts, and why she was in that hotel?”