C.A.R.P. Ch. 06

It also kept me busy, as I sort of doubled doing artist relations and putting together the playlists for the school radio station. Looking back on it now, I realize that this was also a level of media training for me, building my skills on reading people on the fly and learning how to adapt the messages I was putting forth to different people at different times. It also meant that I spent a bit of time up at Amoeba Music, always looking to find new things to expose my fellow students to.

On one of those trips, something rather strange happened to me. All three of us had gone up to Amoeba, and Julia was trying to talk Chelsea out of buying the new Morrissey record when a woman in her fifties approached me very cautiously. She had sunken eyes, large bags beneath them, as if she hadn't slept well in a long time. Her voice cracked when she spoke, and when she reached out to grab my arm to get my attention, I remember tensing, like I was afraid I wasn't going to get it back. "You... you're a CARP student, aren't you?" the woman said to me, her eyes haunted and angry.

"I am, ma'am," I said. "I'm Josh Turner, a second year there." We'd been told not to talk about the university, but we couldn't exactly deny we were students there.

"I'm looking for my son. He was a student there. His name was William. William Bierko. Did you know him?"

Of course, I'd spent a week with Will's failed beta about a year ago, Paige. I wasn't sure what to say, knowing I wasn't supposed to say just about anything about the school. But the woman's desperation made me wonder how hard I was meant to cling to that. "He left last year, ma'am. We were told he went back home to live with you, after the fall semester. He decided the school wasn't a good match for him, so he decided to go back home."

"No!" the woman said, frantically. "That's not true! Will never came home! He sent us a letter saying he'd learned everything he could possibly learn from CARP, but that he had a new mission in life and he was going to set out, to go forth and start changing the world, that he couldn't wait, that he needed to get to work as soon as possible, and that he'd let us know when it was safe to talk again! But that was over a year ago, and we haven't gotten any word from him about where he is or what he's doing! He hasn't accessed his bank accounts, and I'm terrified something's happened to him! That he's in prison or dead in a ditch somewhere! I need to know!"

Her fingers were clenching harder and harder on my arm, shaking as she grew louder and louder, turning from a timid whisper into an angry yell.

"I'm sorry, Mrs. Bierko, but I didn't know your son all that well, and I haven't spoken to him since he left the university last year. You really should talk to the police abou—"

"They say he's an adult now and they can't do anything without proof that he's missing!"

"I'm sorry, ma'am, but I really don't know anything that can help you," I said as Chelsea and Julia were moving over to me, each of them starting to look concerned. "You really should go talk to the police or the FBI or someone in a position of authority, because I'm afraid I just don't know anything useful."

"You have to find something!" she shouted as we started to walk away from her, while she collapsed onto her knees in the middle of the store. "You have to! My boy is lost!"

It wouldn't be the last time I heard the name Will Bierko.

When we got back to the campus, I went to talk to Dr. Igarashi, although I wasn't entirely sure that was the right thing to do. I told her about the encounter with Mrs. Bierko up at Amoeba, and she seemed seriously concerned, although I couldn't tell if it was concern about me or Will. She told me not to get too worked up about it, how Will had said he'd learned so much from his first semester at CARP that he'd wanted to get to work right away on implementing changes in the world, despite Dr. Igarashi's recommendation that he remain on campus for the full four years. Some people, the doctor told me, just couldn't wait to leave their mark on the world, and Will was one of those.

I could definitely tell there was something Dr. Igarashi wasn't telling me, but I also knew that if I kept pushing or digging, she would grow cross with me, so I decided to let it rest, although I'd tell both Chelsea and Julia how nervous the whole thing made me. They both tried to reassure me, and it almost worked.

Almost.

It was late April when I met with Agent Costello for the second time. For that particular meeting, she'd chosen a dingy little cheesesteak shop in downtown Oakland called I.B.'s that was relatively new. It was doing well, but it also wasn't so busy that the Agent worried about us being recognized.

"Sit down, Turner," she said to me in her gruff tone of voice. "What have you got?" We'd met briefly in the fall, a few weeks before Halloween, and I'd told her about Chelsea and how, as predicted, I was now fucking two beautiful women regularly. She's done her homework about Julia and hadn't found anything especially suspicious, and when I told her about Chelsea, Costello had taken down as much information as she could about my new partner, and I'd expected her to lay into me with whatever she'd learned about her when this particular meeting started, so her pivot into grilling me for information told me that she'd found as little suspicious about Chelsea as she had Julia, which is to say nothing overly suspicious.

"I think they're making additional income on our theories, Agent Costello, but I don't know that there's anything illegal about any of that, and if there is, you'd better tell me quick because it's what I'm doing to pick up a few bucks here and there," I said with a laugh. "We're just speculators, but with our collective knowledge, we're getting pretty good at predicting stocks, bonds, securities, the whole lot."

"Gonna give me a stock tip?"

"Sure," I laughed. "If you're patient? Buy stock in Apple. About 20 years from now, it'll be worth exponentially more than what you paid for it."

"What if I need a quick turn around?"

"We're theorists, Costello, not bookies. I can't tell you who's going to win the Super Bowl, no matter how much you want me to."

"There's a lot more going on there, Turner," Costello said to me. "You know some kid named Bierko? William Bierko?"

I scowled, looking at her in concern. "I was just about to tell you that his mother came looking for him earlier this year, saying he never came home after leaving CARP. She seemed to think he's dead, but when I told Dr. Igarashi about—"

"You told the Doctor his mother was looking for him?"

"His mom seemed frightened, Costello! Like she thought her son is dead! That seemed like the thing I should tell the school's founder about."

"And what did the good Doctor say?" Costello asked me.

"She told me that Will apparently wanted to start applying what he'd learned already, and didn't want to wait, and that was why he dropped out. I don't know who to believe - the guy's mom or the school's founder."

"I'll tell you who to believe," she said, reaching into her bag. She slapped down a photograph of Will somewhere out in the desert, dressed in military-style gear, surrounded by middle eastern soldiers holding machine guns, Libyans I thought although I was just guessing. "Will's still alive, and he's out teaching paramilitary troops. Were they teaching you automatic weapons in between philosophy and literature classes?"

"No," I said to Agent Costello. "When I wanted to learn about firearms, I had to go off campus and learn for myself."

"Why'd you want to learn about firearms?" she asked me, narrowing her eyes.

"I know what the future looks like, at least what I think the future looks like, and I feel like it may come to a point where I need to defend myself," I said. "But that was my choice. Who the hell is he with?"

"That's not important now. Were there more dropouts between the fall and the spring semester?"

"About the same number in the freshman class as there were last year, and only one person in the sophomore class who dropped out."

"Someone you knew well?"

"At this point, I think we all know each other pretty well, but Julio had been struggling since there had been some family complications back home for him over the summer, so I wasn't entirely surprised that he decided he had to go back home instead of carrying on here."

"Do you remember Julio's last name?" Costello asked me, making notes in her little notebook.

"Gutiérrez, why?"

"Let's just say I want to look into where this one's gone, so I'm going to do a little homework and we'll connect again in the fall," she said before scooping up her trash, and heading out the door.

Agent Costello did not, in fact, make that meeting in the fall...