Page 90 of The Dead Come to Stay
“He started it and what? You became his partner? Did you make promises to Dmytro, too, telling him you would save his family?”
Sophie had been working up to a purple rage, but appeared to have stalled, facial expression frozen. “Wh-what?”
“Foley said he could get Dmytro’s family here illegally, in exchange for helping him traffic artifacts.” MacAdams was talking louder, but managed to keep his body language to a minimum. “Is that one more way you’re helping refugees? By trafficking them, too?”
“Stop!”Sophie Wagner was standing. She’d slammed both hands against her desk, and now seemed embarrassed to have done so. Her face suggested something between fear, confusion and anger. “This charity is my life. These people—these kids. They aremy family.And I wouldnevermake promises I could not keep. If Dmytro was promised something—”
“Extralegal passage for his family in exchange for labor,” MacAdams said flatly. “Selling them to slavery, keeping them here illegally, profiting from misery.”
Sophie shuddered and collapsed back into her chair. “That’swhat Foley was doing?” She put her head in her hands, voice coming out muffled. “I swear toGodI didn’t know he was—”
“Selling stolen cultural relics?” MacAdams interrupted.
“LyingtoDmytro!” Sophie half shouted. “It’s evil. It’s justevil—that boy has already seen so many terrible things, then to toy with his emotions like that!”
“You’re angry.”
“OfcourseI am!”
“Angry enough to kill him for it?” MacAdams asked. He was putting Sophie through her paces. She had turned an ashen shade beneath the faux tan.
“No!”
“Then you had better work on proving it. Tell meeverything, in order, in detail. Now.” He half expected her to begin shouting for a lawyer, like Burnhope had.
Instead, she nodded. “I’ll do better. I’ll show you,” she said stiffly.
***
The club already reminded MacAdams of an airport; now he’d followed Wagner into a concourse. Sophie walked him down a corridor with windows to one side and framed photographs tothe other. Smiling children in bright clothes, all of them very apparently immigrants or refugees. It looked like a UNICEF commercial.
“Pathos,” he muttered under his breath.
Sophie turned sharp. “Yes,” she agreed. “Charity isn’t easily motivated by logos.”
It was only now that MacAdams noted the nameplates beneath. Each one had a donor name attached, the way you might name a building in honor of the funders. Donations on display—just another way of showing off wealth, getting a tax break and looking pious at the same time. He was suddenly glad Green didn’t have to see this.
“I know you don’t appreciate the work I do,” Sophie continued. “Or don’t trust it. My own father would be as skeptical. I married into money.”
“You’re going to tell me a rags-to-riches story?” MacAdams asked.
Sophie had turned the corner into a lounge space; it wasn’t as fancy as the others.
“No. Comfortably middle-class. But I’m trying to explain—I have seen both sides of wealth. And when I had it to do with as I pleased, I decided to help people like Dmytro. He came to us early this year, just seventeen. His father and brother were both enlisted in the Ukrainian army and he has three younger sisters, one of whom is disabled.” She had crossed the room and now stood before a bank of lockers. “They sent Dmytro here, seeking asylum. To protect him, you see, as the last male in the family, meaning no one expects his father and brother to make it. He hoped to find work, save money and bring his mother and sisters—but it isn’t that easy.”
“Because?” MacAdams asked. His mood had softened slightly, and he wanted to guard against it. She could be lying. Or, she could be telling the truth—and the truth was motive for murder.
“Visas are hard to get if you don’t have family already here and background checks take ages. We sponsored Dmytro, who applied for asylum instead. But you can’t apply for asylumfromthe Ukraine; you need to be here already.”
“That doesn’t make sense.”
“The system doesn’t make sense,” Sophie explained. “But there is a logic to it. You apply for a visa from your home country; you seek asylum because you already fled, in fear for your life.”
“So either Dmytro’s mother and sisters wait in line, or they have to make it here on their own?”
“Or with sponsors,” Sophie said. “But we can’t take everyone. And it’s even harder because his sister hasspecialneeds.”
MacAdams was aware that this wasn’t the proper terminology for disability anymore—but then, Sophie saw everything in terms of needs, didn’t she? He was starting to lose his patience.
