by Triss Stein
It would be the story of a young man, strictly raised and religious, coming up against a world he did not understand. It included—it especially included—women who were tempting and kind and everything he had been warned against. He was attracted and fearful, and no one in his world understood that he was slowly slipping into illness from which he would not recover.
The Bible verses rattled around in his brain. The ones that said to destroy what did not adhere to the moral code he had been taught. There were other, different teachings, but he had lost the ability to hear them. And so he panicked and did what seemed right as he was commanded. He never recovered from the destruction he wrought, the grief and the guilt.
And a long time later, someone understood who he was and what he had done. She was damaged by his acts but did not blame him. She understood about demons. She did blame the people around him who had not seen the warning signs. Had not responded. Had not helped him.
I honestly did not know, yet, if this was the solution to Towns’s murder, but I thought it was a story that made a kind of sense, for the time and place, even though in another way, it made no sense to me.
I began to write it. I had one hour to pull together what I was seeing in my mind and write it down.
Chapter Twenty-One
I was right, though. Eventually, the ballistics report came back to Torres, and she told me. It was the gun that killed Daniel Towns. In her own off-center way, Willow Lief had made a confession.
They still had not solved the poison-pen letters. Of course the ones to Towns had stopped with his death, and that handwriting did match some of the more lucid scribblings Willow had saved. Jonathan Doe had written out his bitterness and there would be no more letters from him to anyone. Neither Louisa nor I received any more of the copycat letters, either. The NYPD no longer cared. I had to accept it. Reluctantly.
Fitz liked the chapter I finally wrote. In fact, he loved it. “Write me two more this good, pronto, and an outline, and I can get you a contract.” He actually said that. On the phone. He even mentioned a range for an amount. It was not a lot of money, but it still felt like I’d been struck by lightning. In a good way.
Until then, part of me had thought of every conversation with Fitz as a joke. Even as I tried to do the job assigned, I never really believed it. Now I had to. I managed to say all that to Joe, and my dad, who was there, with so many starts and stops that Dad finally said, “Honey, spit it out or I am going back to raiding your refrigerator.”
And then he said, “So when are you going to quit your job and write this book?”
That shocked me all the way into speechlessness, something that doesn’t happen very often in my life. And he was not laughing at me for it. Joe was not laughing, either. They looked at each other in a way that made me think they’d already discussed it.
Joe finally said, “You’ve spent a year in a real grown-up job and I haven’t once seen you as excited as the times you were working on this project. How much does that say?”
“No. I need the paycheck. It’s security for the first time in my life, ever. Ever! Insurance and retirement. Don’t you get it?” My voice was getting louder with each word. “And with Chris going to college? Are you both crazy?”
Before I could stalk out of the room, my dad said, “Aren’t you a little old for a hissy fit?”
That made me want to stalk out even more, but something stopped me. Maybe I really was too old.
“So would it help to know that Mom and I started an account for Chris the day after she was born?” He looked tentative and insecure, as if he thought I would be upset with him. I’d never seen that look, and it was not a good one on him. I didn’t like it.
“So there’s some money for Chris’s college. Maybe not the whole shot, but a start.”
My eyes began to sting.
By then Joe was next to me on the sofa. “You can go on my health plan as a domestic partner.” He grinned. “Let’s make it official. “He took my hand. “You’ve got a chance here, handed to you. Won’t you hate yourself if you don’t take the leap?”
“But what if I fall?”
“I don’t know. No one can ever know that. But you do know you’re not alone.”
It was all too much. I walked out but not in a huff, explaining that I needed to think, and think hard. I went with Joe’s usual advice, exercise, and took a long, chilly walk, all on my own. I might have talked out loud to myself.
And that is how I ended up spending the next month frenziedly winding up my work at the museum while scrambling to rough out another chapter or two. Three days after my last one in the nine-to-five world, I signed a contract with Fitz and began a life in the all-day, all-the-time self-employed world. It was scary. It was exciting. Dad and Joe applauded. Chris claimed she could cope with having me always home, but her expression was apprehensive. It made me laugh a little.
I had stashed that Brooklyn Heights story in a file, to be polished one more time when I sent the others in. Then Joe sent me on one last quest.
He didn’t mean to. He asked me, casually, whatever happened with the search for the missing Whitman plaque. He was doing some work in the complex where the original building used to be and ran across some very old plans that mentioned the printing shop.
My only possible answer was “Not a thing.” I thought I’d take a breather one afternoon and drop in on Dr. Kingston.
I picked the worst possible day. It was late November, and Brooklyn Heights loses a lot of charm when the biting winter breezes start blowing off the harbor. I could feel the temperature drop with each block I walked toward the water.
I blew into Kingston’s lobby and ran right into Mike Prinzig. Not literally this time. He was leaving the elevator while as I was waiting for it. Sharply tailored topcoat, shined shoes, extremely annoyed expression. In my casual puffer jacket and everyday jeans, he never gave me a second glance. Or even a first one. I thought as I rode the elevator that I was not pretty enough today and not impressive enough ever.
Kingston, on the other hand, greeted me warmly, took my jacket, and offered very welcome hot coffee.
“How have you been? It’s been a while. And how is Louisa? I have been so busy, I haven’t even had a chance to call her.”
“Ornery as ever. She’s still battling the property issue, so I believe it will go to civil court eventually. Silly contentious woman.”
“It seems to me that’s what keeps her going.”
He laughed a little. “Absolutely right. A good conflict works better than a whole shelf of vitamins. But not all battles are worth the cost. And you? Busy with what?”
I filled him in on my crazy life at the moment—I had not yet left the museum—and explained a little about loose ends.
“And that’s what brings me here.” I showed him the document Joe had copied for me. “Someone found this, and it reminded me. Did you ever get any further with that missing plaque search?”
“Sadly no. We don’t like loose ends, do we? But…”
His phone rang. He glanced at it and made a face. “I have to take this. Please excuse me for a moment. “
I went out to the cramped waiting room to give him some privacy. He closed the door behind me with a sharp crack, but his voice did come through the door. It sounded very intense.
I made an effort to focus on the quite interesting photos on the wall I remembered from the first time I was here.
Now that I knew Dr. Kingston, I was especially interested in the little section of his own work. They were the painstaking depictions of Brooklyn landmarks, with tiny colored blocks of text creating the picture instead of lines. I had to stand with my nose practically against the glass to see it all.
There was a name for it, I was sure, but I did not know it. I knew the words though. Whitman poems, arranged to make a picture of the bridge. A Marianne Moore poem about the Dodgers, showin
g long-vanished Ebbets Field. A poem by Langston Hughes about a day at the beach, depicting Coney Island.
Art that was charming to say the least, and quite a puzzle to grab and hold the viewer’s attention. How steady and skillful his hands must be to create this. Was it colored ink? Or some kind of watercolor? What did I know about art? Nothing. But for two more weeks I still worked at an art museum. I surreptitiously took photos of them with my phone. I would ask someone to tell me more.
And then I looked again and wondered if I could blow up the photos, because I also wanted to bring them over to Sergeant Torres. It was a crazy idea, what I almost thought I was seeing, but maybe not.
Kingston’s voice shouted, “No. No! It isn’t working. It didn’t move her at all, and I am done. It’s too risky.” There was a pause and then a shouted obscenity about someone’s money. I heard a small crash, like a receiver on an old phone being slammed down. He had an old-fashioned phone on the desk.
I hastily went back to looking at the historical photos. I didn’t want him to find me peering at his work when he returned.
He didn’t open the door for a few minutes. When he did, he smiled at me, apologized for the wait in his normal voice, had normal color in his face, dismissed anything I might have heard with a clipped, “Family matter.” But the back of his neck was a fading red, and he kept dropping the papers in his hands. He was more upset than he was admitting.
I wanted to say something nice. Really, I did. But at that moment I wondered how much I knew him. If I knew him at all. Or was I being spooked by my own imagination?
So I babbled polite things about no stress like family stress and apologized for showing up on a bad day.
He protested, said he was always happy to see me, but there was—alas!—no progress on the missing Whitman plaque. We needed to accept that it was gone for good.
He looked far too shaken about something that was only a missing artifact, only an oddity, after all. Did he even have a family to trouble him today? He’d never mentioned any at all.
Not knowing what to say, I boldly changed the subject and told him how much I admired his puzzle drawings. He smiled but not really. It didn’t move beyond the muscles around his mouth.
“Oh, yes, micrography. Or typographic illustration is another name. It’s a pleasant distraction. Very challenging. It’s too hard on my aging eyes now, sadly. It’s like a puzzle. I learned to do it after taking a class in medieval manuscripts. Somewhere here I have a copy of a six-hundred-year-old picture of a dachshund all in Hebrew script.”
A flood of trivial knowledge. A distraction? And he was not looking at me. He could not meet my eyes.
“That plaque. Some mysteries can’t be solved.” I was babbling, myself. “Speaking of clichés, did you know they never solved the question of Louisa’s poison-pen letters? And mine? And I believe they will stop trying to now. The letters have stopped coming.”
He nodded a few times. “I suppose that’s a relief for Louisa. Though it didn’t seem to change her mind, did it? Or even scare her.” Honestly, he sounded like he didn’t care at all, but the words were so close to what I had heard him shouting.
The outer door slammed open, and Mike Prinzig stormed in. He didn’t even see me in the corner behind the door, so I had a front-row seat to the scene. I made myself as silent and invisible as I could.
“You little academic worm. People don’t say no to me. They don’t quit on me without finishing the job!”
He grabbed Kingston by his shoulders and shook him as he spoke. Kingston, a heavy man but not as tall as Prinzig, turned white. He muttered, “Get out of my office,” but he couldn’t muster up any authority for it.
As quietly as I could, I dug around in my bag for my phone.
Prinzig stepped back, breathing hard, his face red. “You owe me. If the letters didn’t work, come up with another plan. Now. Today. I’m fed up with this.”
Kingston gripped the doorframe for support, took a huge, gasping breath, and muttered, “No. I said we’re done. I never should have…”
“Yeah, but you did. You have a nice sum of money from me, you underpaid peasant, and promised you could do it, scare her into leaving. Dumb idea from the start!”
Kingston looked right at him for the first time. “You came to me. It was your idea.”
“Like hell it was. I have ideas that work. Except that I counted on you. That was my only dumb move.”
My fingers connected with my phone, and in the process I managed to loudly spill the contents of my purse. Prinzig turned and shouted, “Who the hell are you? Who the hell is she, Jer? Why is she here, listening?”
“She doesn’t matter.” He shot me a pleading look. Was he saying be quiet? “She was here for a meeting. She doesn’t know anything about this. She should go, right now.”
Prinzig looked at me with intense, narrowed eyes. “Do I know you? “
“No. No way you’d ever have run across her. Let’s boot her out of here while we finish our business.”
“Wait one minute. I have seen you before. We didn’t have a wild night. You’re not my type. And not in business.” He stared at my baggy mom jeans and Gap sweater. “You don’t look like any businesswoman I’d be dealing with.” He seemed to be ticking categories off in his head. “Definitely not one of my wife’s friends. They have style and class.”
I was keeping quiet, trying to shrink into the wall, willing myself to be as anonymous as my casual clothes.
“Hey, Kingston, isn’t she the girl who asks questions?” He didn’t wait for an answer. He knew. He stared at Kingston, then back at me. “Oh, yes. You’ve been around me, listening and watching. Little spy, right?” He really had me pinned with his fierce expression, and he stood close, too close for me to make a break. Or even breathe. Without moving his gaze from me, he barked to Kingston, “In cahoots? You and her? Did you have blackmail in mind?”
“No! Don’t even think it. She dropped in to…”
Suddenly Prinzig stepped back, straightened the lapels of his elegant coat, shot his cuffs, smoothed his hair. He smiled with a lot of teeth. “It doesn’t matter, after all, does it? She didn’t learn anything today, and nothing we discussed could make trouble for me. And who’d believe a little nobody like you, anyway? You heard we tried to negotiate with old lady Louisa. It didn’t work. End of story.”
The smile vanished as he looked from me to Kingston and back. “Recommend you not try to make something of it. Really. I do recommend that. Trust me.”
And he was gone, slamming the door behind him. I could breathe. Kingston’s normal color returned.
“But we aren’t done,” I said. He still couldn’t look at me. “It was you, wasn’t it? The letters.” I was sure, but it was hard to get the words out. “Why would you do that? Scare an old woman who was your friend?”
“Friend? Only when it suited her. And they were only letters. Harmless paper.”
“Oh, give me a break! You meant her harm. You teamed up with people who meant her harm. What were you thinking, working for him? I can hardly even imagine the two of you in the same room, let alone in the same conversation.”
He finally looked up at me with a faint trace of an expression. “Believe me, it wasn’t easy.”
“Then why? Why did you do it? Something so malicious and so childish, even? Did you enjoy it?” Were you the same as any bully I had met over the years? I thought but did not say. Not yet.
He collapsed onto a chair and was breathing hard before he answered. “Enjoy it? No, no, no, not even a little! It was—it started as a joke. His joke. He knew about Towns getting letters, and he was talking to me about how to convince Louisa to give up and give in. And he said if only she could be scared off like that, and did I know a way? And I did. Make it look like the same threats. And he said, can we find someone who could imitate the other writing? Honest to God, he was laughing! It st
arted as a joke. A prank.”
“A prank? By grown men? You must be kidding.” But I knew he wasn’t. “And then you told him you could do it? You have the skills. You could do the writing? Was that when he stopped laughing?”
He couldn’t look up, but he nodded.
I dropped into the other chair so I would be face to face with him. “Come on, Dr. Kingston! This isn’t you, is it? How did you come to be talking to him in the first place?”
“At a party.” I could barely hear him. “He cornered me. Insisted I talk to Louisa, warn her to be reasonable.”
“‘Reasonable’ meaning to do what he wants?”
“What else? To sell him her whole property, that’s what he really aimed for.”
“Fat chance.”
“Yes. I tried to tell him, but he doesn’t hear ‘no.’ Just not in his vocabulary. And he’s—for a dumb guy, he’s smart. Sees right into your mind and knows how to use what he finds. Everyone has something. He tried to find hers, her weak point.” His voice sank so low I had to move my face in close to his to hear him at all.
I almost reached out to hold his hand. Almost. But I remembered how I felt with his nasty letter in my hand.
“What could possibly be your own weak link? Money?”
“More important. My home. My home. My landlady died. Her family was selling the building. Beautiful Victorian building.” His voice shook. “I’ve lived there for decades. Rent stabilized. It was my home, whoever owned it. In my neighborhood. How do I move myself and my things, my treasures, at my age? Start all over? And for cheap.” He finally looked up at me with a face full of fear. “I’m a retired college professor making a pittance working part-time for the council. Where do I find a place I can afford anywhere in Brooklyn? Anywhere I could live? Bushwick with the baby hipsters? Dear lord.” He looked ill. “At my age? And how do I start all over? But Mike Prinzig? He could fix it. Find me a place.” He looked down again. “He figured out that’s what would get me. And it did.”
“And did he? Fix it?”