All Cry Chaos

by Leonard Rosen

  In fact, the memo before him could not have been clearer. According to Fenster's attorney in Boston, a fully executed will dated thirteen months earlier stipulated that Madeleine Rainier would serve as executor of Fenster's estate. If the memo was authentic, which Poincaré saw no reason to doubt, Rainier would have been within her rights to run Fenster's remains up a flagpole in Dam Square.

  "They were engaged to be married when he agreed to this," he said.

  "Lovely. What's that to me?"

  "When did she order the cremation?"

  "Last night, sitting where you are now. My assistant reached the provost's office at Harvard, which was able to locate the attorney, who contacted Miss Rainier. She arrived rather quickly, I must say."

  "She was already in Amsterdam."

  Günter retrieved her tin of peppermints. "Well, then. There's a coincidence."

  He closed the file and returned it, aware that Günter was now watching him with the same detached interest she showed her cadavers. His bile rose at how thoroughly he had misread Rainier. Three days earlier, the woman was barely capable of breathing unassisted. And now a move to destroy evidence? "Annette," he said, "you didn't find it odd that a thirty-year-old man with no dependents, in perfectly good health, would write a will?"

  "Apparently I lack your talent for doubting every possible fact." She straightened her desk blotter and squared a felt-lined box that held an elaborate fountain pen. Günter's office suite suddenly oppressed him with its smell of disinfectant and gurneys awaiting fresh customers.

  "Would you mind?" he said, pointing to the tin. "You wouldn't happen to know who the beneficiary was?"

  "Why would I? Look. The man's parents were dead. He had no relations. Do you think he wanted some paralegal at a law office in Boston choosing his casket? Under the circumstances, thirty is a reasonable age to write a will. I wrote mine at twenty-two."

  "You're a coroner, for God's sake."

  Over her shoulder, a cut-through to the autopsy room gave Poincaré a clear view of an assistant lifting the organ set from a recent arrival. He slopped the whole mess into a steel pan. And this is what makes a life? Poincaré thought. He needed air.

  "You want me to apologize," Günter said. "For the cremation."

  "It's done. Forget it."

  "Well, I won't. The attorney's instructions were clear, as were Rainier's. Now if you'll excuse me, I've got a pot roast to make." She retrieved her coat and turned to him with a consoling smile. "Cheer up, friend. You would have lost the remains to burial in a few days, anyway. Did I tell you she asked to see the body? I've been at this nearly forty years, and I've yet to see anything so affecting. These were gruesome remains, even by my standards, and I advised Miss Rainier against looking. When I pulled the drape, she smiled so sadly, then ran a hand over the bones as if she were bathing a child. I welled up at that, I'm not ashamed to say. She put her forehead to what remained of Dr. Fenster's and whispered something. She loved that man, what was left of him. How does one forget this?"

  POINCARÉ STEPPED into the street, a cell phone pressed to his ear. "Gisele, for pity's sake tell me you have the lab results." Not only had the residue screenings not been conducted the night of the bombing; Amsterdam's police lab, busy analyzing its own long list of physical evidence from other cases, could not be cajoled, bribed, or threatened into faster service. Poincaré had waited thirty-six hours, until he could wait no longer, and dispatched De Vries to The Hague, to a different lab. Without a positive test, he could not detain Rainier. In fact, understaffed and preoccupied with the WTO meeting, he could not even monitor her movements properly. He had approached the Dutch police for surveillance help, but they ignored him. The detective who had so happily washed his hands of the affair, the one who promised full cooperation, waited twelve hours to return his call and said: Why would we undertake the expense?

  Poincaré resorted to the one option left him, calling Rainier at her hotel at regular intervals on the pretext of posing follow-up questions. If he could hear her voice at least, if he knew she hadn't fled Amsterdam, he could detain her at a moment's notice. They had last spoken that morning, and he was beginning to relax his guard. Still, he needed those results and, at last, Gisele had them: "Positive for ammonium perchlorate," she reported. "Inside her suitcase and on the front of a pair of jeans and a blouse. I called the moment I heard, thirty minutes ago—and then every five minutes. I'm on the train from Den Hague right now. Shall we meet at the hotel?"

  He hailed a cab. "No—get an arrest warrant, and we'll hold her until you come." Poincaré made a second call and, twenty minutes later, arrived at the Ravensplein just as Ludovici and Laurent stepped clear of a car. They converged on the lobby to find the same clerk, her hair now jade green, working the reception desk. This time as Poincaré jerked open the door, the young woman stepped around the desk.

  "I called," she said, pleading her case. "I did. Both numbers you left me. The lady checked out ninety minutes ago. I called. I couldn't get through. I'm not in trouble, am I?"

  "Did she take a cab? Did someone pick her up?"

  "Just walked away, I think."

  "She paid in cash, I suppose."

  "It was a large bill. How did you know?"

  Two levels below street grade, the medical examiner's suite turned out to be a graveyard for cellular signals. Poincaré had told no one of his appointment, assuming he could be reached by mobile phone and resolved, after the botched interview with Rainier, to work alone. Interpol had not yet assigned him the Fenster case, and so he had made no "errors" as such; still, he knew he had blundered monumentally. Outside the Ravensplein he faced Ludovici to take his medicine full-on, Laurent present as witness.

  "Excellent work, Henri. She lied in the interview, she destroyed evidence—cremated it, then fled the scene of a crime. But at least you went by the book. Well done!"

  Guilty as charged. The one course left him was a protocol so automatic, so pointless, that he despaired of ever catching Rainier. He alerted rail-station and airport security on the chance she would be foolish enough to leave the country in plain view of the authorities. De Vries posted an alert to the Dutch border crossings. He also had Interpol issue a Red Notice—an international arrest warrant, which would permit local authorities to arrest her on sight in 188 member nations. But Rainier would remain in Holland for weeks, he figured—perhaps make a holiday of it in the Dutch countryside, then slip away unnoticed.

  Later that afternoon he reached Fenster's attorney in Boston, a friendly man who had no interest in sharing information. "I suggest you get a subpoena and then we can talk," said the man. "She's not exactly my client. But I still may invoke attorney-client privilege since I know her only through Dr. Fenster." So Poincaré arranged for the subpoena, aware that any information he pried loose would be dated: for Rainier had already discarded the phone numbers and addresses the attorney had used to locate her. With her usual efficiency, De Vries learned that Rainier had recently shuttered her antiques business, sold her condominium, canceled her credit cards, and closed her savings and checking accounts after wiring all funds to a bank in the Bahamas—an account she subsequently closed within days. With each inquiry De Vries asked if Rainier had left a forwarding address. The answer surprised no one.

  Both a priest and a legal scholar would have praised Poincaré for not arresting the woman on Thursday: the priest for his willingness to risk compassion and give Rainier every benefit of the doubt; the jurist for his guarding the outcome of a later trial by respecting due process. Better to let one criminal go free than to abuse the law and jeopardize the rights of many. A fine theory, though now Poincaré would live with the consequences. He would find her eventually; but the world in which he would search seemed, at present, very large.

  CHAPTER 8

  Rainier's escape stuck in his throat like a bone he could neither swallow nor cough up. By temperament, Poincaré trained a careful, brutal eye on his failures because failure woke him up to himself. When his son
was old enough to understand how papa earned a living, the child asked: "Do you know Sherlock Holmes?" Poincaré could only smile and say yes—the great detective was a close, personal friend. But the penetrating, unpleasant truth was that, unlike Conan Doyle's savant, Poincaré—more successful than most—could nonetheless point to real, live failures in his case files, and these failures offended him mightily, personally.

  He stretched, tipping back in a chair he had glued twice to keep from collapsing. The Dutch security services had done Interpol the supposed favor of engaging a short-term lease for the grand ballroom of an eighteenth-century palace near Dam Square. Without a hint of irony, Poincaré's hosts called the disintegrating cavern prime office space in the heart of Old Amsterdam. Old, at least, was accurate: every plastered surface was cracked and flaking. What cornice moldings remained suggested a drunk with blasted teeth. The parquet split and creaked underfoot, and the faded curtains elicited from Poincaré an actual groan when he first saw them. For no color moved him like the rich velvet crimson of an opera house, with Claire or Etienne at his side; and no color depressed him more than a beautiful red left to fade. He once knew a man much like this room, a sixthgeneration baron who was cash poor but ego rich, a poseur who waxed the ends of his mustache.

  The door squealed open and Laurent, back from one of their final tasks in Amsterdam, called to Poincaré: "Four more photos . . . The administrator who booked speakers for the conference didn't know where to send these after Fenster canceled." He held a folder aloft. "Her actual word, the harpy. He'd sent them ahead so they could make copies for distribution at his talk. No doubt now—the image we found at the crime scene was part of the presentation."

  Poincaré reached the conference table just as Laurent set his briefcase down and frisked himself for a cigarette. A match flared.

  "Serge, please."

  Laurent had already lost a lobe of one lung to cancer and had since tried quitting, twice. He sucked hard and aimed a blue-white plume over the table. "It's confirmed," he said, pointing to the folder. "We've got a certified enigma in James Fenster. Let's trade assignments, Henri."

  Interpol had just that morning assigned Poincaré the Fenster case. After identifying the body, Dutch authorities contacted the American Embassy, which reserved its right to call in the FBI but asked that Interpol take the lead, with two provisos: that the Americans be kept informed at all stages of the investigation and that special attention be paid to sourcing the ammonium perchlorate. They wanted no more rocket fuel bombings. Fenster, apparently, was an afterthought.

  "So your new posting came through, Serge?"

  "By e-mail. Lyon gave me the Soldiers of Rapture, a miserable goddamned business." Laurent cleared his throat and spit into a handkerchief. "Also known as Rapturians—a fundamentalist, evangelical cult preaching an End-Time theology. They form themselves into autonomous cells, like al-Qaeda, with no central authority other than the New Testament, no church per se, each cell led by a selfanointed prophet who derives instruction through his own interpretation of the Word. They're Bible-thumping terrorists. They've committed at least two dozen murders, each time leaving a passage of Scripture as justification. They're also setting off bombs for Jesus—the Milan event was one of theirs. Henri, they want to make the world more miserable in order to hasten the Second Coming. Apparently, Christ will only reappear at a time of absolute chaos, so a devoted Christian should not only not repair the world but should work actively to tear it down. Hence bullets, bombs, and murder for Christ. Just when you thought people had exhausted the possibilities for stupidity . . ."

  Poincaré would not have believed it but for the Barcelona killing. He located Matthew 24:24 on his computer:

  For false Christs and false prophets will appear and will perform great signs and miracles to deceive even the elect.

  "It's got to be the same people," he said. He logged onto an Interpol database and read enough to confirm a connection. "The police report says the shooter clipped the note to the victim's hair, above the entry wound, so blood wouldn't obscure any words."

  Laurent dropped his cigarette into an open can of soda. "Detail oriented," he said. "Don't you just love that in a killer? It makes them so . . . human." He lit another Gauloise and expelled a lungful of smoke. "Only the religiously inspired could be so twisted. As for the Milan bombing, I don't even have the words. The guy exploded himself next to an ice cream parlor. Five of the six victims were children." Laurent coughed, his chest rattling ominously. "We've worked together a long time, Henri. You know I've never run from a case. But I actively detest these people, and it's no good beginning a job this way. Let me take the Fenster bombing. I'll make it right with Lyon."

  Poincaré considered the offer. True, investigating the Soldiers of Rapture would be an unpleasant business, but then so was every assignment. Neither of them had signed on to repair hiking trails or deliver warm meals to shut-ins. Tomorrow, Poincaré knew, Laurent would have in place the beginnings of a plan. "I can't," said Poincaré. "But I'll help if I can. How do I know a Rapturian when I see one?"

  Laurent spit into a handkerchief. "Look for people straight out of a Hollywood Bible epic, wearing robes and quoting Scripture. All ages, some as old as seventy. Twenty countries have reported active cells, and they want Interpol to coordinate a response. And, no, it won't do to arrest everyone wearing a robe. Not all of them are maniacs, and you can't tell for the looking. I'll likely go to the States for this one—I'm thinking Las Vegas." He coughed again and opened a file. "Thank God for the merely puzzling," he said, pointing to four photographs.

  SERIES 2: A

  SERIES 2: B

  SERIES 2:C

  SERIES 2: D

  "I'm supposed to guess?" said Poincaré.

  Laurent nodded.

  "Alright, then. The first one is a snowflake—though it's a strange color for a snowflake. But image A also looks like image B, which is clearly an island or a peninsula. Image A could be an x-ray of B—the boney structure of mountains. Put some flesh on the skeleton and you've got a land mass. C is possibly another snowflake or could be a slice of pine tree viewed from above. D, obviously, is a branch with leaves. You play with the scale a bit and you could place it in any of the other photos. I couldn't tell you what any of it has to do with globalization."

  Laurent flipped each photograph in turn and read the captions: "Two out of four, Henri. You fail. Image A—I can barely pronounce this, is an example of something called 'epitaxial islanding.' It says here that 'these are individual atoms of gold attaching themselves to a layer of silicon with characteristic dendritic branches.' " Laurent looked up. "It's gold, not snow." He flipped image B and read: " 'Christchurch, New Zealand, as seen from space. Note the dendritic extension of mountain ridges—central ridgelines fanning out to finger-like sub-ridges and sub-sub-ridges down to the water's edge.' Image C: 'Bacterial growth, Petri dish . . . dendritic branching.' And image D," Laurent concluded, realigning the images, "is a fern leaf."

  "Let me guess, Serge. Showing dendrites."

  Poincaré studied the images, registering two examples of the biological world, two of the geological. One was so small as to be invisible to the naked eye; another, so massive that its structure could be appreciated only from earth orbit. One was a plant on a forest floor; the other, a colony of living organisms gorging on laboratory agar—a pinwheel galaxy in a Petri dish. Poincaré sat quietly.

  "Look at the leading edge of each image," said Laurent. "They're cousins. Each is at some level a version of the other." He twirled a massive ring as he spoke, a present from his third wife prior to his final, failed effort to quit smoking. It was less a ring than a nugget of raw silver with a hole bored through the middle. During his six months of fighting insomnia and night sweats, the hope was he would reach for the ring instead of a cigarette. "Better than prayer beads," he said at the time. "Ella wanted those, but I decided to leave God out of the equation."

  The silver worked no magic, unfortunately, and all Laure
nt could show for the effort was a new habit to accompany the old: he now smoked three packs of filterless cigarettes each day and twirled the ring. "I made copies for you," he said of the photos. "I'd give my left testicle to know how Fenster was going to work these into a talk on globalization."

  The ballroom door squealed open, and in walked Ludovici and De Vries on either side of the last protester to be interviewed in connection with the bombing. Poincaré resisted settling on single suspects early in a case. He had set a worldwide net for Rainier through electronic postings, but he was also looking to others—in this case the anti-globalists. One of them, he reasoned—possibly in league with Rainier—may have targeted Fenster, whose promised talk on a one-world economy might have made him a target. Yet no one Poincaré interviewed thus far had any plausible link to the mathematician. None even admitted to having heard of him, let alone knowing his work well enough to plan and execute a murder. Last on the list, Eduardo Quito, was a former academic and their likeliest prospect. Poincaré looked forward to this meeting both because Quito was famous in his own right and because the interview was all that stood between another night in Amsterdam and a flight home to Lyon. Claire had left to prepare the farmhouse and welcome the children, but still it would be good to drink familiar wine and sleep in his own bed. The photos, he figured, could wait.