The Tower

by Gregg Hurwitz

  Travers had seen Alex at the hospital, her interview mediated, of course, by Ms. Perkins. After leaving Alex’s house, Jade had waited for Travers by her car in the hospital parking lot. She’d filled him in briefly and they had decided to break for the night.

  At the first house, Allander had been able to perform his act from beginning to end. In Allander’s view, it was a finished work. But at Alex’s house, Allander had been interrupted. It was a shame almost, Jade thought. It didn’t leave him as much to go on. How would Allander have fulfilled this crime?

  The wedding business Alex had described reminded Jade of what Dr. Yung had said about a marriage of the different sides of the personality. Allander seemed to be trying to combine his brutal experience with the child’s innocence, a sort of return to a lost past. Maybe that was why he’d told Alex he was going to kill him. Since Allander wanted to absorb him metaphorically, the boy couldn’t exist afterward as his own physical entity. If you find someone threatening, make him your own. It was like psychological cannibalism.

  Jade had to admit that the second “SNE” had thrown him a little bit, since “hear no evil” was supposed to be next in line after “see no evil.” At first, he’d thought that Allander might be saving “HNE” for his parents, but then he realized that Allander was committing his crimes in the order in which he felt he had been betrayed—first by his parents, then by his educators, then by the courts and the police. The self-consciousness inherent in such meticulous planning showed that Allander wasn’t truly a serial killer; it was more as if he were poking fun at the very notion of serial killers.

  Jade pictured Allander’s face on the speed bag as he snapped it back repeatedly to the suspended platform. His shoulders were burning and his wrists were getting sore.

  Allander was unbelievably slippery. Though he hated to admit it, Jade was having a hard time pinning him down, locking him in. One moment he’d feel he was right there inside Allander’s head, but then he’d turn a corner and be lost again. Jade had always believed that killers’ actions were illustrations of their thoughts. But when it came to Allander, it wasn’t that simple.

  Just as Jade was struggling to figure out Allander, Allander was working on him. He knew what Jade looked for and what he wanted, and that made it difficult to interpret the crime scenes he created. Usually, Allander was deadly serious. But sometimes, Jade had learned, he was only playing.

  He had called Allander by his first name again twice today at the crime scene. Publicly. Both times it had drawn funny looks, which he didn’t care about, but it showed he was getting too close.

  Leah had said that Allander raved about parents, teachers, and the law. So far, he had killed four parents, two of whom were teachers. Who would he find next? Who to him represented the law? Lawyers? Too easy a target. Given his overblown ego, Allander would probably go for the biggest challenge and kill a cop or maybe a famous judge. To match the pattern, it would have to be somebody with a family. Unfortunately, that ruled Jade out.

  Jade had already ordered protection for all parties involved with Allander’s criminal trial. The judge had passed away, which was too bad, because he was known widely as a “family man.” He would have been a perfect lure.

  The prosecutor and defense attorney had both wanted protection for their families. Jade had put two cars at the defense attorney’s house, since criminals usually go after their own lawyers rather than their prosecutors. They figure a prosecutor is just doing his job; if their case goes poorly, they often hold their own lawyers responsible.

  Jade also wanted coverage for all policemen and guards involved with Allander over the years, going back as far as the bust on Vincent Grubbs, Allander’s molester. In fielding his request, McGuire had been his usual cantankerous self, pointing out that the FBI had already overextended itself on the case. Initially he had said he couldn’t come up with the manpower, but Jade had pushed him on it. He didn’t want anything left open, no matter how unlikely a target it was.

  Despite the pain in his arms and shoulders, Jade continued to hammer at the bag. Something in the regularity of its sound and motion soothed him. Jab jab jab. Jab jab jab.

  He couldn’t get the images out of his head. Walking past the red skid on the entranceway floor. The woman’s body sprawled out, maroon covering her chin and throat. The sixteen-year-old taped to a chair, his tongue also cut out. Allander had struck the boy on the head first to stun him so he’d be unable to bite.

  The forensic pathologist concluded that his tongue had been removed before he received the terminal slit across the windpipe. Jade wondered what that had felt like. To feel someone’s fingers prying into your mouth, removing some part of yourself and holding the bloody pulp before your eyes.

  Allander’s rage was flowering, bringing with it a new flush of sadism. He had started dismembering the sixteen-year-old before death. Up until now, he had mutilated his victims only after he’d killed them.

  Jade switched to the power cross and hammered as hard as he could. Jab jab cross. The platform shook and he felt sweat streaming down the sides of his face.

  Jade didn’t care about the victims, exactly. He cared about them inexactly. They were grains of sand in an hourglass, scars to be tallied like points against him. Sometimes, he even hated them. They were glaring symbols of his imperfection. And right now, he couldn’t shake them out of his head. He turned them over in his mind obsessively.

  The ache in his shoulders brought Jade back to the speed bag. It was a blur of motion, but he seized it quickly between his hands. He lowered it slowly to a resting position.

  Jade had a plan, but he didn’t want to set it in motion until he was sure the time was right. Once he started that ball rolling, there would be no stopping it. However, with the way things were going, he wasn’t sure how much longer he could wait. Most of all, he couldn’t stand the waiting. And now that he’d made the promise to Darby, he felt restricted, almost muzzled.

  He had taken preemptive measures to try to protect Allander’s next potential victims. As far as the lawmakers were concerned, he had covered all the bases. What he had to do now was come up with a situation so compelling that Allander would not be able to resist it, even if it meant he had to alter his plans. Jade’s options were fairly limited. There was only one thing that could tempt Allander like that. When it came down to it, there had always been only one thing.

  After showering for a half hour, Jade moved into his living room and gazed at the pictures and files that lay scattered on the floor. The TV droned on in the background.

  Not a fucking trace. Not one. Allander had just disappeared into the countryside. There were enough woods and mountains to hide an intelligent convict for weeks, and this time they were dealing with a genius. He also had a whole network of roads and old farms to work with.

  The cops and the feds had gotten there too late; no one had even responded to the ringing school bells for thirty-five minutes, and then it had taken them another twenty to get the experts in. Fifty-five minutes. No way. Maybe if they’d gotten there within twenty minutes, but even that would have been tough given the rough landscape. There were also enough streams and rivers to greatly reduce the effectiveness of the dogs.

  Jade was pacing when a news story on TV caught his interest. He grabbed the remote and turned up the volume.

  A photograph of Royce Tedlow flashed on the screen as the news anchor’s soothing voice reported, “Forty-seven-year-old Royce Tedlow confessed to the murder of his wife, Frieda, early this afternoon. He cited her wearing of short skirts out in public as his reason for killing her. According to inside sources, he confessed in the face of overwhelming evidence.”

  Jade chuckled and shook his head. “Must’ve found the other glove,” he mumbled. He turned back to the crime-scene photos of Allander’s latest killings, only half-listening as the report continued. When he recognized Alissa Anvers’s voice, he looked up again.

  She stood before the front arch of a cemetery, the words “Midlan
d Hills” curved in gold letters on top of the gate.

  “—Henry and Janice Weiter, the first victims of Allander Atlasia’s latest killing spree, were laid to rest today as their children looked on.”

  The camera cut to a shot of Leah and Robbie standing side by side, holding hands. Robbie was wearing an ill-fitting black suit and Leah a dark dress. Jade saw the wetness of the girl’s cheeks beneath the broad-brimmed hat she wore. Some nondescript adults stood behind them, hands on their shoulders.

  Jade’s breathing quickened. The victims kept piling up like a weight pressing on his chest. The first ones hadn’t been his fault, he told himself. He hadn’t even been on the case yet. But now the father, the mother, the boy. He shook off the thought. That’s not what he was here for. It wasn’t in the job description.

  Just points to be tallied, he reminded himself. Points to be tallied.

  42

  “SIR , I’m afraid we may lose him.” Travers drummed her fingers on the top of her briefcase as she addressed Wotan. “Have you looked at the photographs?”

  A hand appeared in the thin light and lifted one photograph from the desk. It was a picture of Jade stooping over Linda Johnson’s battered body, his eyes gazing at nothing in particular, yet seeming completely focused. It was an impossibly intense gaze, like that of a prophet descended from a mountain summit. The last three fingers of Jade’s left hand were steeped in the bloody pool of Linda Johnson’s mouth. The photograph also captured the horrified expression of an FBI agent in the background.

  “Yes,” Wotan replied.

  “Well, sir, can’t you … is there nothing odd to you about the picture?”

  “He works on instinct, Agent Travers.”

  “Does instinct include touching evidence without gloves? And looking like Charlie Manson on crack?”

  “Sometimes. Perhaps. I don’t think one really knows.”

  Travers’s voice didn’t rise, but her tone betrayed her anger. “He’s driving the field agents up the wall. He’s a public relations nightmare—all the subtlety of Mussolini. We’ve had complaints from forensics, the press, even St. Mary’s Hospital.” Travers bit her lip and blinked rapidly several times, gathering her courage. “I’m not recommending dropping him from the case, I just think we need to rein him in a little. He’s a loose cannon, sir.”

  “That’s precisely why we hired him.”

  “Why are you so committed to him?”

  “BECAUSE HE SUCCEEDS,” Wotan boomed, causing Travers to jump back in her chair.

  Wotan lifted the slug out of the marble ashtray and held it to the light. “Do you see this, Agent Travers?”

  Travers was still stunned. She had never heard Wotan raise his voice, let alone yell. She didn’t move a muscle.

  “Do you see this?”

  She nodded.

  Wotan flipped it like a coin and banged it on the desk. “This is the roulette wheel to which we’re all attached, Agent Travers. The divine deck of cards. Heads or tails?” He waited for a moment before asking again. “Heads or tails?”

  “Heads, sir.”

  Wotan shook his head. “You just don’t get it, Agent Travers. It’s not that easy.”

  “Not that easy, sir?”

  Wotan sat for a while with his hand covering the slug on the desk. “Do you think he’s effective?” he finally asked.

  Travers threw up her hands, frustrated. “Yes,” she confessed. “I do.”

  “Do you think he’s getting close?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then with whom exactly are you arguing, Agent Travers?”

  Travers opened her mouth, then thought better of it and closed it again. She looked at Wotan, but the room seemed to fade into darkness around the massive desk.

  She rose to leave.

  Through the living room window, Darby saw the mail truck pause at the end of the walkway before continuing up the street. She pressed her hands firmly to her eyes as she headed to the front door. It felt good, like scratching an itch. When she removed her hands, her vision dotted for a moment, then cleared.

  The amount of pressure she’d felt over the past few days was so great that she sensed it physically, pushing in on her from all angles. She stepped outside, nodding to the agents parked up the street as she headed to the mailbox.

  She flipped through the mail, pausing to examine one envelope in particular. Though there was no return address, she knew immediately who it was from.

  Jade leaned over the kitchen sink and peeled an apple with a hunting knife he kept in the kitchen drawer. The weight in his hand felt better than that of a kitchen knife, more substantial.

  As he raised curls along the knife’s edge, he felt the firmness of the blade through the thin red skin of the apple. His hands moved quickly, like a chef’s. When he’d worked his way around the apple several times, he flipped it over and deftly cored it with a single deep thrust and twist.

  The doorbell rang and he went to answer it, still holding the knife in his hand. Travers stood on the porch looking out at the street, a newspaper in her hand. She wore a pair of jeans and a white shirt, loosely tucked in. He recognized the shirt from the last time she’d come over. Not a woman much interested in clothes, he decided.

  Her hair was still pulled back in a ponytail, but several strands had escaped and curved down the side of one cheek. She turned to face him, and the morning sun shone across her blond hair, catching its golden highlights. She smiled, lips parting back from perfect white teeth.

  Jade bit the apple because he couldn’t think of anything to say. She entered the house, brushing his shoulder with hers. As she passed him, she impaled the newspaper on the hunting knife.

  “Smart move, Marlow.”

  Jade was surprised that there was no sarcasm in her voice.

  He pulled the newspaper off the knife and opened it. The brightly colored headlines betrayed that it was a tabloid—The Globe. Half of the front page was taken up with a color photograph of Jade and Darby standing in the doorway of the Atlasias’ home, Jade’s arm across Darby’s shoulders. “Jade Marlow’s ‘Private Investigation’ of Allander Atlasia’s Mother.” “True Details of the Daring Affair Inside!” the subhead screamed.

  When he entered the living room, Travers was sitting on the couch, flipping through a legal notebook. On it, Jade had profiled all the victims’ personalities from information he had pieced together from the houses, and from friends and neighbors. He needed to know how they had reacted to Allander; that might help him to understand his actions.

  “Excellent move, Marlow,” she said. “The photo. Creates an urgency and an attraction for him.”

  “Urgency is what I’m hoping for,” Jade said. “Right now, he has us just waiting for him to move again. I want to light a fire under him and get him moving.”

  “Moving where?”

  Jade shrugged, averting his eyes.

  “I guess that’s the challenge, huh?” Travers said, continuing to flip through the notebook. “How’d you come up with that? Putting your arm around Darby?”

  “I thought about the emotion that most overwhelms him.”

  “Rage?”

  Jade shook his head. “His rage he can control.”

  “What then?”

  “Jealousy.”

  “Of whom?”

  “Not of whom. Of what. Of his mother’s attentions. Of her time. Of her person. That’s his Achilles’ heel. His jealousy.”

  Travers smiled, and for a moment Jade thought he detected a softness in her eyes. “At times, Marlow, I almost like you. But don’t quote me on that.”

  “I won’t.” Jade grinned and lowered his eyes. When he looked up, he started to say something else, then stopped himself.

  “What?”

  “Nothing.” He shook his head. “Where were you this morning? I tried reaching you.”

  Travers shrugged, glancing at the notebook. “Chores.”

  “Yeah, you strike me as the real housekeeper type.”

  She
pretended to be absorbed in his notes. After a few moments, she didn’t have to pretend. Underneath the personality charts in the notebook, Jade had written the information from forensics. Nothing much to match right now—no traces of dirt or carpet fibers. Since Allander wasn’t settled into a base yet, it wouldn’t help that much anyway. Given the time frame, he had moved almost directly from the first house to the second, with a quick stop at Jade’s. Jade bet he’d move to a safe zone for a while now. To wait. To plan.

  Travers looked at Jade’s extensive notes, flipping over page after page of his comments and thoughts. One of the last pages was filled with scribbles and doodles that he had made while he did phone work.

  Travers stifled a smile. It was just like Jade to confine his doodling to one page.

  Jade crossed his arms, facing Travers’s back as she looked through the notes.

  Hidden in the doodles were the names of the victims: “Henry Weiter.” “Janice Weiter.” “Linda Johnson.” “Theodore Johnson.” “Earl Johnson.” They were written in a scrawling hand, much different from Jade’s usual neat writing.

  “It was tough there yesterday,” she said over her shoulder. “The bodies …”

  Jade shook his head, inhaling deeply. “I missed. Just missed.”

  She turned to him and a look of understanding passed between them. Her eyes lit with a sudden realization. “It’s not your fault, you know,” she said softly. “There was nothing you could do.”

  “I could’ve gotten there earlier. I could’ve figured out where he was heading. I could’ve been here waiting when he stopped by my house. I could’ve—” His voice broke off. He opened his hands and turned them to the ceiling before slapping them against his hips.

  Travers rose and walked slowly over to him. She placed her hand gently on his side. Jade admired how her hair curled around her neck. The edge of her palm was on his stomach, her fingers resting tenderly across his ribs. He lowered his eyes and cleared his throat awkwardly. “I had a … brother who died when I was younger.”