"I suppose you'll want your property back." Charles stood before the open door of a closet and pulled the red suitcase down from a high shelf, handling this heavy luggage as if it weighed nothing at all. It would have been normal and natural to ask why Riker had stashed it here instead of in his own apartment downstairs, but Charles had been hanging with Mallory for too long, and he had learned to regret asking questions. Instead, he said, "Mrs. Ortega will be sorry to have missed you. She asks about you all the time."
That was odd and touching news, for Charles's cleaning lady, under normal circumstances, would rather be shot dead than admit concern for Riker. He was her favorite target for caustic remarks. "Tell her I said hello."
"I will," said Charles. "It seems that we see less of you now that you live in the same building. Are you getting enough heat and hot water? Any problems I should be aware of?"
"Naw, everything works great." Riker was rising, reaching for the suitcase, more than ready to take his leave. He had the sense that his friend was checking him for unplugged bullet holes and other signs that he was not quite mended. But then he realized that he did have a use for a man with a Ph.D. in psychology. "You know, there is one thing you could help me with – if you've got a few minutes."
"Of course." Charles inadvertently smiled like a loon, and he was all too aware of this unfortunate characteristic. His skin was deeply flushed with every happy expression, an apology of sorts for his foolish face. "My time is yours."
Riker settled back into the armchair. "It's about paranoia." He noticed the sudden concern in his friend's eyes, then hastily added, "Not me. This is another guy. You test people for oddball gifts. What about paranoia? We're talkin' wigged out, full-blown, to the nth degree. Could you see that as a useful talent?"
Charles, bless him, gave every stupid idea polite consideration. A few moments passed, and then he said, "Well, that's the sort of thing I'd try to fix with a psychiatric referral. Encouraging paranoia would be unethical. And there's really no market for mentally ill employees." He considered his own clients to be merely eccentric.
But Riker had other ideas. The job applicants of Butler and Company had rare talent and high intelligence prized by think tanks and government projects, and they were frequently a hair away from crazy, neatly explaining this man's vast expertise in abnormal psychology.
Head tilted to one side, Charles was having second thoughts, or perhaps he simply disliked disappointing a friend. "Well, I suppose it might have some applications. If your man worked in a dangerous environment, extreme paranoia could give him an edge in staying alive."
Riker had anticipated that much. New Yorkers who were not the least bit neurotic were listed on police blotters as the dead and wounded. A mild case of paranoia was considered a sign of good mental health, for it made people wary of strangers and dangerous streets. But Agent Timothy Kidd had been the king of paranoia, and he had not managed to stay alive in Chicago, a town with a lower homicide rate.
"Okay, suppose my guy is an FBI agent tracking a serial killer? Would paranoia give him an edge in dealing with suspects?"
"Bit of a stretch," said Charles. "But it might – if it shows in his outward behavior, and that's usually the case. His overt suspicion would increase the pressure on the person he was interviewing. The suspect might exhibit more enhanced reactions, involuntary facial expressions and nervousness – all the giveaway signs of a lie. A full-blown paranoid could pick up on all of that, consciously or unconsciously. However, here's another aspect to consider. A paranoid is working with more perceptions than the average person, taking in details and information that you or I would rightly deem irrelevant. That's the downside to your theory. They frequently detect patterns that simply aren't there."
"So flaming paranoia could never help him find a suspect?" "I wouldn't think so. Everyone would seem suspicious to him. I imagine his illness would only clutter up the landscape and make things more difficult."
Then why had Marvin Argus gone to such trouble to spin the lie of a gifted paranoid?
Riker rose from his chair and picked up Jo's red suitcase. At least he had a satisfactory answer to the only question that had really mattered. Unlike Agent Argus, Charles Butler would not, could not, lie to him, and he had the man's assurance that Mallory had not visited this office today, that the contents of the suitcase were unrifled and still intact. And this oversight of hers, this failure to plunder Jo's papers behind his back, had sealed his theory that Mallory was playing him.
Chapter 6
SO MUCH FOR THE WORLD-CLASS SECURITY FEATURES of his new address. When Riker unlocked the door to his apartment, he knew immediately that there had been a break-in. His laundry was no longer scattered about the room, but neatly gathered into a wicker basket. His other clue was the small, wiry woman cleaning his windowpanes.
"What're you doing?"
"As any fool can see," said Mrs. Ortega, "I'm robbin' you blind." She turned around to glare at him with dark Spanish eyes that silently asked if he had any more stupid questions. She also managed to convey that she was a woman on a mission, and he was the intruder here.
"Did Charles let you in? Or was it Mallory?"
"I got the super to open the door," said Mrs. Ortega. "I told him I was your cleaning lady." She looked down at her apron lined with pockets of plastic bottles, rags, brushes and other tools of the trade. "Great disguise, huh?"
She dropped a wet rag on the windowsill and walked over to the wicker basket. "Riker, there's something I just gotta know. I think I've figured out your system, but tell me if I'm wrong. You throw your socks into a different corner every night so you can rotate dirty laundry instead of washing it. Have I got that right?" She eyed the red suitcase he carried. "And now you're running away from home. I understand." The wave of her hand included the entire front room, its litter and streaks of – whatever that was on the walls. "Overwhelming, isn't it, Riker? Easier to pack up and leave." He set the suitcase down by the door. "Okay, no more cleaning. Not today." He wanted to read all of Johanna's papers, and that left him no time to deal with Mrs. Ortega. Well, not much time. "I got cold beer in the fridge. Want one?"
"Don't mind if I do." She followed him into the kitchen, where his unopened mail covered most of the floor tiles. She swept a slew of envelopes from the seat of a chair and sat down at the table. "Maybe I should just ream this place out with a blowtorch and start over from scratch." She accepted a beer from his hand, stared at it with grave suspicion, then wiped the top of the can with a clean rag before opening it. "Well, this room's not so bad," he said.
"Oh, yeah?" With the toe of one shoe, she nudged an open pizza carton on the floor. The remaining slice had grown enough mold to qualify as a houseplant. "You know why you don't have cockroaches, Riker? Those genius bugs, they know it's not safe to eat here."
"So you noticed I'm probably not the type to hire a cleaning lady. Now why are you doing this to me?"
"I got a philosophy," she said. "I'm gonna write a book – Zen and the Art of a Clean House – that's my title. You put a house in order, and you put your life in order. All this stuff is weighing you down, Riker. You might as well drag it around on your back, the dirt, the mess, the busted coffeemaker that probably hasn't worked in twenty years. But that ain't the worst of it."
He followed the point of her finger, looking through the doorway to the room beyond, where dust balls, having acquired tenure, roamed free and fearless across the open floor. One windowpane she had cleaned; all the rest were fogged with a yellow grime of nicotine. And a layer of dust colored everything else in gray.
That's what the inside of your head looks like," she said. "Scary, huh?" This tough little woman had a bad attitude, a penchant for heavy sarcasm, and she had touched him in all the soft places of the heart. He understood that she wanted to fix him, to make him better by cleaning him up. But Mrs. O. was not so talented. She could not scour away the image of a skinny psychotic teenager sitting upon his blood-soaked chest, pressing the muzzle
of a gun to an eyeball, then pulling the trigger only to discover that he had spent all his bullets on Riker's prone body. Even now, with every loud noise he ceased to breathe, and he relived his dying.
"What's all this crap?" Mrs. Ortega leaned down to sort through the pile of mail, passing over advertisements and bills to examine the letters from the city of New York and NYPD. Selecting one, she held it up to the overhead light. "This one's got a check in it. I can tell. It's a blackout envelope. That's so you can't see what's inside."
Riker shook his head. "You're wrong. My paychecks were direct deposit." And then one day, the deposits had ceased, and he had never even picked up a phone to ask why.
She slapped a worn five-dollar bill on the table. "I say it's a check. I'm never wrong."
He laid five singles alongside her money. "Okay, you're on."
Mrs. Ortega slashed open the envelope, then waved a slip of paper in his face. "It's a disability check from the city." Now she looked through the rest of the mail at her feet. "And here's another one – and another one. Jesus, you're rich."
"This is a mistake." Riker shook his head as she emptied the envelopes one by one and lined up the checks on the table. "The city screwed up. These have to go back."
"Why?"
"Because I'm not disabled."
"Oh, yeah? Wanna bet?"
When Mrs. Ortega had pulled her rolling cart of cleaning supplies out onto the sidewalk, she heard the rattle of money in a beggar's ratty paper cup. She had passed by this bum half an hour ago on her way to Riker's apartment. And now she could tell by the sound of coins that his proceeds had been slim, and that alone was enough to arouse her curiosity. Considering the locals, all damn liberal idiots in her opinion, this youngster would have to work at driving off donations.
She might despise panhandling on principle, but she was even less tolerant of incompetence. Since Riker had sent her away before she could make inroads on his mess, Mrs. Ortega guessed she had a little time left over for charity work.
A man from the neighborhood stopped to give the beggar money, then had a change of heart and moved on. And now the cleaning woman knew how to fix the young man in the dark glasses and the red wig.
"Still here?" Her eyes were on the paper cup, and she counted up the paltry sum of two nickels and four pennies. "It ain't goin' so good, is it, kid? Well, I'm not surprised." She walked around him, taking his measure. "I'll tell you what you're doin wrong. When that guy was gonna give you a dollar, you smiled. You looked at that bill and smiled. That's why he got pissed off and stuck it back in his pocket. In the future, try to remember this." Mrs. Ortega tapped the cardboard sign hung round the beggar's neck to label his affliction, his need for alms. She raised her voice, as if he might also be hard of hearing. "You're supposed to be blind, you moronl" He cringed and pressed back against the wall, then raised his white cane, as if to ward off a blow, and that puzzled Mrs. Ortega. This conversation had been conducted on the decibel level of a standard New York street confrontation, and she had not even threatened him. Yet now he was reduced to a shivering geek show.
In a rare moment of weakness – call it mercy – she paid him a compliment. "That white cane is a good prop. Yeah, that's a keeper."
She stepped back to reassess him. He should definitely lose that stupid red wig. It was too long for the boy, even a weird boy. It was a girl's wig, for Christ's sake. Where the hell did this pansy come from? Puffed up with great xenophobic pride, she decided that he could not be a native of her New York. And it was on her mind to tell the boy that he should change the sign on his neck to say that he was crazy as well as stupid. But, having already done her bit for community service, she moved on down the sidewalk with her cart and never looked back. She never saw him raise his eyes to stare at Riker's second-floor window.
Papers covered every stained inch of the carpet, and this created the illusion of an improvement in Riker's front room. His deli sandwich disappeared in absentminded nibbles as he read another page of Dr. Johanna Apollo's neat handwriting.
Among the personal notes was a journal logging every meeting with Bunny, the homeless homicide victim, noting signs of physical and mental deterioration. The last entry was Bunny's message from the late Timothy Kidd, and a note on the use of a hapless vagrant as a living telephone for a serial killer. Riker marked this final entry with a paper clip, then put the journal to one side. One day it might be used as evidence in a trial.
Next he read the transcripts of several interviews with the Chicago police, all the details and conversation that Jo could recall. The case detective had hammered her so hard, accusing her of withholding evidence. Another group of interviews had been conducted by FBI agents and would be better described as debriefings. Curiously, the murder of their own man was never mentioned – only the dead man's theories about a serial killer. Agent Kidd had made contact with the Reaper. In Jo's words, "He saw the Reaper in a liquor store." Following an interruption from her interrogator, she admitted that "Yes, paranoia was at the heart of Timothy's theory."
Riker paused in his reading to digest the fact that the murdered agent was always Timothy to Jo. Only her FBI interrogators called the murder victim Agent Kidd.
He read the rest of her story: "Timothy entered the liquor store as another customer was leaving with a bottle of wine. This was a man he'd never met, yet the customer was obviously surprised to see him – a total stranger. Timothy gave the man a few seconds' head start, then followed him back into the street. But the man was gone. There was no sound of a car starting its engine. He must have run at top speed to get clear of that block so fast."
The FBI agent had returned to the store to interview the clerk. All he learned was that the departed customer had been overjoyed to see one particular wine in stock. In the clerk's words, "He thought he'd already bought the last bottle on the planet." According to Jo's best recall of Kidd's conversation with her, "Timothy said it was an oddball wine you'd never see in a food critic's column, though it was surprisingly good." And then Jo reminded her interrogators that the body of a dead juror had been found in that area on the following day.
Riker looked up from his reading. If Agent Kidd knew the taste of that wine, then he had gone to some trouble to track down another bottle of a scarce vintage. Though Jo's notes provided no such detail, Riker could name the wine and even the year. The bottom drawer in Johanna's armoire was stocked with ten bottles, all the same label, same vintage, but different store stickers and prices. He reached into a pile of bills from distributors and liquor stores in distant states. One reiterated the details of Jo's reward of a hundred dollars over retail cost. She had also been collecting this particular vintage, and the FBI only had her version of a man as the stranger in the liquor store.
He placed the receipts in another pile that he had mentally labeled with the query To burn or not to burn?
At the conclusion of her last interview, the FBI had dismissed her with thanks, then placed her in the Federal Witness Protection Program. By Jo's account, the feds had disregarded Timothy Kidd's Reaper sighting, for who would believe an insane story like that one?
Riker would. No one was more paranoid than a cop with the scars of four bullet wounds. He studied Jo's map of Chicago. Red circles marked the sites of three homicides, and one was four blocks away from the liquor store. He raised his eyes to the ceiling and played out the murdered FBI man's scenario on that blank white screen. Agent Timothy Kidd walked into a liquor store, and his mere presence startled another customer, a man he had never met. Most Chicagoans would be strangers to the Washington-based agent. Why, Kidd wonders, why does this customer appear to know him on sight? According to Jo's interview, the agent had visited only one crime scene in Chicago, and that one had belonged to the Reaper's second victim. Freaks sometimes returned to the sites of their murders to watch the ongoing show of cop cars and meat wagons, lights and cameras. Who but a haunter of crime scenes would have recognized Timothy Kidd as the law? And who but a guilty man would panic and
run?
This was thin support for the identification of a prime suspect, but if it had been the Reaper in the liquor store that night, the most serious mistake he made was that flicker of recognition for an FBI agent who was also a world-class paranoid.
Good job, Timothy. Score one for the neurotics.
Riker had no conceit that the Bureau had not arrived at the same conclusion, so why was a serial killer still at large? Nowhere in Jo's files was there any mention of the suspect's name, nor even a description, and he was not surprised by that. It was the kind of thing that a smart cop, even a fed, would not confide in a civilian. Yet Agent Kidd had told her the name of the wine.
Unaware of time passing, crossing over from day into night, Riker did not recall turning on the lights so that he could continue to read every scrap of text, every news clipping and note. Before his alarm clock sounded, he was well versed on the Reaper murders, and it was time for Ian Zachary's show.
He turned on the radio, the source of the game clues.
You crazy bitch!"
The sound engineer looked up from her computer screen. "Pick your words carefully, jerk-off, or I'll wipe all your calls."
Did she know they were still on the air? Yes, she did. Somewhat impressed, Ian Zachary lowered his voice as he spoke to his radio audience. "Crazy Bitch will take the next call after this word from our sponsor."
Dead Famous aka The Jury Must Die Page 8