Here’s what I don’t find: a single word about Edward botching a breast reconstruction, much less killing a patient as a result. Not even on the website for the New York State Department of Health, which lists all legal actions taken against doctors. Did the victim’s mother decide not to sue for malpractice or wrongful death? I can’t be sure, but on our page, it would have been unusual for her not to have at least tried, and Dr. Duval’s record appears spotless.
You share a mindset when you’re part of a group like mine. And that shared mindset makes you feel as though you know everything about people, without even having to ask. For weeks I’ve assumed Dr. Duval was a soulless, lip-injecting prick who took the life of a cancer survivor and lived to drive around in his Porsche without a care in the world. Which brings me to the next thing I figure out in the course of my research: There may be both safety and power in numbers, but safety and power do not equal insight.
I return to the open Kaya chat and scroll back until I find the posts from the breast reconstruction victim’s mother. Her number is 0517, which, when you think about it, is quite close to my own. But she doesn’t live close to me. Nor does she live close to Edward Duval, who spent his entire professional life in New York State. In her earlier posts, which date back to months before I joined the group, there are references to a hospital in Huntington Beach, to a shady lawyer from San Pedro, to her daughter’s ashes scattered just off Catalina Island. 0517, her daughter, that horrible plastic surgeon. All of them are from Southern California.
Maybe Duval did something else, something I haven’t been able to find information about, and his own child’s killing had been a tragic coincidence. Maybe his wife honestly did commit suicide, and it was out of guilt over the bad thing her husband did or she did or they did together. Maybe Edward meant something else when he said, You’re one of them. I have learned at this point not to always trust my instincts.
But then, again, it all seems pretty obvious.
I open a private message thread with 0001, but I don’t know what to say to her. I decide to start with the facts.
0417: Assignment completed.
I stare at the screen for a long time, expecting her to explain, or at least to say something. But she doesn’t. I open another thread.
0417: What did Edward Duval do to deserve that?
0001: What did I tell you when you asked me the same thing about Richard Ashley Shawger?
I shake my head. “This is different,” I say. As though she can hear me.
0001: The collective targets no one who doesn’t deserve to be targeted.
0417: That doesn’t answer my question.
0001 is typing . . .
0001: Have you not learned enough to trust us by now?
I pound my fist against my desk. I don’t know how much more of this I can take. I type very quickly, my fingers slamming into the keys.
0417: Here’s what I think. I think Natalie Duval was in the collective. She told her husband. You killed them both because he was going to go to the police.
0001: No.
0417: Then tell me what he did. Tell me what she did. Whose child did they kill to deserve what you gave them?
0001: What WE gave them.
“Stop it!”
0001 is typing . . .
Her response appears on the screen, and I read it once, twice, three times, my jaw dropped open, my eyes salty from not blinking.
0001: On January 18, you followed Duval from the train station. That wasn’t part of your assignment. And if he saw you and identified you, it could have endangered the collective.
My hands are shaking so much, I can barely get the words out.
0417: How do you know I followed him?