by Greg Iles
He says nothing at first. Then: “The post was inconclusive as to rape.”
“You must have asked the husband when he last had sex with her.”
He sighs with resignation. “Okay, it was probably rape. I didn’t want that weighing on you. Especially before the interviews. I didn’t want you suffering needlessly, and nobody wanted you so mad at the suspects that you couldn’t be professional.”
“I understand all that, okay? But don’t ever hold anything back again.”
He nods. “Okay.”
“Nothing, John.”
“I got it.”
The horses are upon us. Two cops—one black, one white—stare down with drawn guns.
“Get your hands up! Both of you!”
John holds up his credentials so that the cops can see them.
“Special Agent John Kaiser, FBI. This crime scene is to be secured for the joint task force. I’ve been shot and I can’t walk, so you men get to it.”
21
THE WAKE OF Wendy’s death is a blur to me now, as I ride the elevator up to the fourth floor of the FBI fortress on Lake Pontchartrain. While John spent ninety minutes in the accident room at Charity Hospital downtown, I sat in a waiting room with enough armed special agents to make me feel like the First Lady. Daniel Baxter and SAC Bowles rushed out from the field office, but only to make their presence felt with John and the doctors. They sped off to manage the hunt for the UNSUB’s body and a hundred other details, leaving me with images of Wendy fighting and dying to save me, her lifeblood spattered over my chest, and the UNSUB’s voice hot in my ear: If I shoot you in the spine, it’ll still be nice and warm between your legs. . . . I was lucky that one of my new protectors was a female agent. She brought me a new blouse from her car and bagged the blood-stained one I wore in case it was needed as evidence. But removing the blouse did nothing to erase my waking nightmare.
John came through surgery fine, but his doctor didn’t want to release him for twenty-four hours. John thanked the man, picked up the cane a physical therapist had deposited in his room, and limped out of the hospital. Assuming I was his spouse—or at least a significant other—the surgeon gave me dire warnings about caring for the wounded leg. I promised to do all I could, then followed John out to a waiting FBI car.
“Where to, sir?” asked the young field agent driving the car. He and John were technically of equal rank, but in times of crisis, a natural hierarchy asserts itself.
“The field office,” John replied. “Move it.”
Baxter, Lenz, and SAC Bowles are waiting for us in Bowles’s office. They’ve spent their last hours in the Emergency Operations Center, but Bowles’s office has a leather chair with an ottoman on which John can prop his swollen leg.
“How is it, John?” Baxter asks as I help him sit down.
“Stiff, but fine.”
Baxter nods in the way I’ve seen officers do when a needed noncom lies about a wound. Nobody’s going to tell John Kaiser to take a medical leave.
“How are you doing, Jordan?”
“Holding it together.”
“I know that wasn’t easy, seeing what happened to Wendy.”
I start to stay silent, but I feel I should say something. “You should know this. She did everything right. The first guy coming toward us looked much more suspicious, and he diverted her. When the well-dressed guy brought up his gun, she threw herself in front of me and was pulling out her gun as she jumped. Nobody could have done better. Nobody.”
Baxter’s jaw muscles clench as pain and pride fight for dominance in his eyes. “This is the first case where I’ve lost an agent to a serial offender,” he says softly. “Now we’ve lost two. It doesn’t need saying, but I’m going to anyway. We will not rest until every son of a bitch involved is rotting in maximum-security lockdown or dead.”
“Amen,” says SAC Bowles. “I’ve got a hundred agents downstairs ready to work twenty-fours a day. Wendy had a lot of friends.”
“We still don’t have his body?” John asks Baxter.
“No. The Coast Guard and contract divers are searching, but the Mississippi is unforgiving. Workers go off barges all the time without being found. We have to accept the possibility that we may never find his body.”
“What about the cell phone?” John asks.
“No prints.”
“No fingerprints on a cell phone? How is that possible?”
“It was wiped clean. He was carrying it wiped. This UNSUB was taking extreme precautions. He must have figured that if he dropped the phone during the abduction, prints would quickly lead to an ID. That’s the good news. I think if we find the body, we’ll get a name in no time.”
“What about the memory chips inside it?”
“The Engineering Research Facility at Quantico just got the phone. They say if the short didn’t fry the chips, we could get lucky. We should get a report anytime.”
Baxter taps his fingertips together like a benched athlete waiting to get back into the game.
“What about my pictures?” I ask.
“That’s the one bright spot. They were blurry but usable. The University of Arizona produced a decent enhancement of the best one, and it’s been running on the local TV stations for two hours. Three calls so far, but they didn’t pan out. The Times-Picayune will run the photo in the morning.”
“Well,” John half-groans. “We got what we wanted. We rattled the hell out of somebody. We just got a delayed reaction, and it was a lot tougher than we expected.”
“Yep,” Baxter agrees.
“What about the UNSUB’s gun?”
Baxter shakes his head. “The river’s high now, and the current fast. Also, the Mississippi has a sandy bottom in some places, and the water flows through it to some depth. Heavy objects sink into it in a matter of seconds. We’re making extraordinary efforts, but again, no great hopes. We have to find that body. Then we can start checking for connections to Wheaton, Gaines, or Smith.”
“Where were the three musketeers while this went down?” John asks.
“All present and accounted for. Wheaton was painting at the art center. Had been since you talked to him this morning. After Jordan left Smith’s house, he lunched at Bayona, shopped at the Hurwitz-Mintz furniture store, then went back home. He’s presently in the company of a handsome young gentleman we’ve yet to identify.”
“And Gaines?”
“Gaines and his girlfriend woke up at ten A.M., started drinking, then arguing. They stopped long enough to have sex, then passed out. They’ve been sleeping ever since.”
“Any of them make suspicious calls?” John asks in a frustrated voice. “Contacts?”
“Nothing.”
“Screw this,” mutters Bowles. “I say we have NOPD pull in all three and sweat them till somebody cracks.”
“I’m worried they may do just that,” says Baxter. “At this point, we have no more leverage to make them talk than we did yesterday. We have to ID the UNSUB and find a connection to one of the three.”
The ISU chief expels air from his cheeks and looks from John to Lenz. “I want to hear thoughts. Anything. Gut feelings, twitches, psychic waves, whatever you’ve got. Now’s the time. What are we dealing with here?”
Neither John nor Lenz seems inclined to speak first, so Baxter points to Lenz. “Arthur? Go out on a limb.”
Silent until now, the psychiatrist leans forward on the sofa. “I see a paradox. One of the UNSUB’s remarks to Jordan could indicate that the previous victims have been raped by the UNSUB, then passed on to the artist to be painted. Yet our art experts say the Sleeping Women weren’t painted by Wheaton, Smith, or Gaines. If you look at what the UNSUB said, it doesn’t exclude the possibility that he himself was the painter.”
I feel compelled to jump in. “I don’t think a man capable of painting the Sleeping Women would refer to them as ‘pretty pictures.’ And when he told me, ‘you’ll still make a pretty picture for the man,’ he could have been talking about a buyer rathe
r than the painter.”
“Marcel de Becque,” says John. “The guy is deep into this thing. I’m not sure how. Maybe three or four guys share a similar paraphilia. I don’t know.”
Baxter’s impatience crackles off him like static electricity. “I can’t believe this is all we have!”
“What about Jordan’s split-personality idea?” John asks. “We didn’t get anything out of Wheaton or Smith on childhood abuse, but that concept has stuck with me. Is it possible that an artist with a split personality could paint in two completely different styles? Undetectably? I mean, how different can the personalities be?”
Lenz steeples his fingers and leans back. “They can be so different as to have different physical manifestations. There are cases of MPD on record where one personality required heart medication to survive, and another did not. One may require corrective lenses and the others not, or need different prescriptions. And there are many lesser manifestations.”
“Come on,” says Bowles.
“Documented fact.” Lenz’s voice has taken on a patronizing tone. “So—two completely different painters occupying the same body? It’s technically possible. But given the scale of this case, the number of victims, the extraordinary lengths to which the dominant personality would have to go to conceal his acts from the others—”
“Wait,” says John. “Not all the personalities know what the others are doing?”
“Correct. Generally one is dominant and knows everything, while the others remain partially in the dark.”
“Jesus,” says Baxter.
“It’s a fascinating premise,” says Lenz, “but it verges on pure fantasy. The image laypeople have of so-called ‘split personality’ comes from The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. That construct appeals to our sense of evil masked behind a benign public face. But clinically that’s not the way MPD manifests itself. You don’t get a benign public person with a diabolical intelligence concealed behind it. You get pathetic fragments of personality, most of them manifesting as damaged children arrested in development at the age sexual abuse was visited upon them. The dominant personality is the one best able to adapt and cope under extreme stress. That’s all.”
John is nodding. “A lot of the serial offenders we’ve caught or interviewed have endured sexual abuse as children.”
“But how many had multiple-personality disorder?” asks Lenz.
“None.”
Lenz smiles like a chess master who has led an opponent into a trap. “Before we seriously consider this theory, we should fire our art experts and bring in a new group.”
“Let’s do that,” John snaps. “We’re not getting anywhere with the ones we’ve got. Goddamn it, everyone in this mess knows more than he’s saying. The suspects, de Becque, even us.”
“Wingate knew a lot too,” I tell them. “I could feel it.”
Baxter looks hard at me. “Have you changed your mind about telling us Frank Smith’s explanation for his visits with Wheaton, or for their arguments?”
An image of Smith confiding Wheaton’s desire for assisted suicide flashes through my mind. “No. You’ve just got to trust me on that.”
“Does the reason reflect on their psychology?” asks Lenz. “That could be just as important.”
“There’s nothing unique about it. It’s something normal people would argue about.”
The phone on Bowles’s desk rings. The SAC answers, then holds out the phone to Baxter. “ERF at Quantico.”
The ISU chief gets up and takes the phone, his jaw braced for bad news. As he listens, his face gives away nothing.
“Got it,” he says. “I understand.”
“What?” asks John as he hangs up.
Baxter lays his hands flat on Bowles’s desk. “It was a stolen cell phone, reprogrammed. No way to trace the UNSUB from that. But ERF salvaged the chips. They got the speed-dial numbers programmed into the phone. One belonged to Marcel de Becque.”
As John pumps his fist in a victory sign, a memory of the old French expatriate standing before his great window comes into my mind, his cultured voice telling me about my father and the glory days in Vietnam.
Baxter presses a button on the phone. “EOC? This is Baxter. Tell me where Marcel de Becque is right now.” We sit in silence as Baxter waits. Then his face goes ashen. “When? . . . Call the FAA and the foreign legats. Then call me back.”
He hangs up and rubs his hand hard across his chin. “Six hours ago, de Becque’s jet left Grand Cayman. The pilot filed a flight plan for Rio de Janeiro, but he never arrived. De Becque could be anywhere.”
“Goddamn it,” says John.
Before anyone else can comment, Bowles’s phone rings again. Baxter activates the speakerphone.
“Baxter here.”
“We’ve got Chief Farrell on the phone for you.”
“I’m ready.”
“Daniel?” says a rich African-American voice.
“Afternoon, Henry. What’s up?”
“We just got a call about the photo running on TV. A widow lady out in Kenner says she rents a room to the guy. She’s dead sure. Says he goes by the name of Johnson, and he’s hardly ever in town. Says he’s a salesman. The address is Two-twenty-one Wisteria Drive. That’s the south side of I-10, right by the airport. Jefferson Parish.”
Even Baxter’s poker face betrays excitement as he scrawls on a file folder. “Has the sheriff sent anyone out there yet?”
“He doesn’t know about it yet. I thought I’d call you boys first.”
Baxter looks heavenward with grateful eyes. “We’ve got the forensic unit ready to roll. We’ll take care of the interdepartmental relations.”
“Good luck, Daniel. The lady’s name is Pitre.”
“We owe you, Henry.”
“I’ll get plenty of chances to collect. Good luck.”
Baxter hangs up and looks at SAC Bowles. “Five years ago, would we have got that call?”
“Not a chance in hell. Farrell’s tough. He’s fired or jailed hundreds of cops in the past five years.”
Baxter punches a number into the speakerphone.
“Forensics,” says a female voice.
“Two-twenty-one Wisteria Drive, Kenner. Take the whole unit.”
“Sirens? Everything?”
“No, but step on it. We’ll meet you there.”
“We’re gone.”
MRS. PITRE LIVES in a warren of streets just north of the runways of New Orleans’ Moisant International Airport. As Baxter, Lenz, John, and I roll past cookie-cutter houses, an inbound jet floats down like a massive bird and passes over our Crown Victoria with a ground-shaking roar.
“Lovely neighborhood,” remarks Baxter, who’s driving. “You could shoot somebody in the head while one of those planes flew over and nobody would hear it.”
“Something to think about,” says Lenz, who’s up front beside him.
Baxter looks over the seat at me. “Sorry, Jordan.”
“Don’t apologize for the truth.”
John slides his hand across the backseat and covers mine.
“There it is,” says Lenz, pointing. “Two-twenty-one.”
It’s a typical suburban tract house. When we pull into the driveway, I see the roof of a two-story garage behind it. The clapboard garage looks like it was added as an afterthought, and not by a master carpenter. The walls are out of plumb, and the roof overhung with branches from an elm that should have been cut before construction.
As Baxter kills the engine, a woman with a cigarette in her mouth walks out of the carport door, waving a set of keys in her hand. Though in her late fifties, she’s wearing a pink spandex tube top and blue shorts that reveal legs shot with varicose veins.
John reaches for the door handle. “Here we go.”
“Take your cane,” advises Baxter. “There’ll be stairs.”
“Screw the cane,” John replies, confirming my theory that male vanity is every bit as powerful as the female variety.
“You
got here quick, I’ll say that,” Mrs. Pitre says in a smoke-parched voice pitched like a man’s. “I’ve been worried he’d come back before you got here.” She sticks out her right hand. “Carol Pitre, widowed four years since my husband got killed offshore.”
“Special Agent John Kaiser.” He shakes her hand. “Mr. Johnson won’t be coming back, ma’am.”
“How do you know? He gone on another business trip?”
“No.”
She cocks her head at John. “What’s he done, anyhow? Why you looking for him? The police said he was a federal fugitive, but that doesn’t tell me anything.”
“That’s all we can say at this point, ma’am.”
Mrs. Pitre bites her lip and takes John’s measure again. She decides not to push it. “What happened to your leg there?”
“Skiing accident.”
“Waterskiing?”
The forensic unit’s Suburban pulls into the driveway with a roar and a squeal of brakes.
“Who’s that?” asks Mrs. Pitre, craning her neck. “They part of your bunch?”
“They’re evidence technicians, Mrs. Pitre.”
“Like the O.J. trial?”
“That’s right.”
“I hope they’re a damn sight better than the ones in Los Angeles.”
“They are. Mrs. Pitre, we—”
“I guess you want to go up now.”
As the doors of the Suburban slam, a second one pulls in behind it. The vehicles aren’t marked with FBI decals, but if you look closely at the grilles, you can see blue lights and a siren.
“Mrs. Pitre, did Mr. Johnson show you any identification when he moved in?”
“Hell, yes. I asked for it, didn’t I? Since Ray got killed in the mud tank, I can’t be too careful. World’s full of crazy people. Black or white don’t matter these days.”
John seems nonplussed by Mrs. Pitre’s hyperactive style. “What did he show you?”
“Voter registration card, for one thing.”
“A Louisiana card?”
“Nope. New York City. He had a New York driving license, too.”
“He showed you that?”
“How else would I know he had it?”