by David Zeman
She made much the same impression in Meriden, Connecticut, where she spent two years at the Cheshire Stress Care facility. Her patients thought the world of her. Her colleagues found her hard to know, but obviously expert at her work and highly committed to it. If she had not been so demonstrably unhappy, she would have been a logical candidate for the directorship of a clinic. She had an instinctive understanding of the mechanics and even the finances of mental health care.
She gave her name as Susan Lawrence.
Karen had by now seen several examples of Justine’s signature on patient forms. It was a remarkable signature, the words going steeply downhill while the individual letters leaned back as though resisting the descent. Though the name was fake, the signature was full of truth. It could easily be verified from form to form.
Karen saw the significance of Justine’s choice of the pseudonym Susan. Even in those years she had a secret quest.
No one at any of the clinics where she worked got to know her as a friend outside work. No one ever saw her on a date with a man. A couple of her coworkers speculated that she might be homosexual. Others were convinced she was simply celibate.
“Any chance she might have had for happiness in a relationship was burned out of her long ago,” one of them told Karen. “I just don’t think she had a sex life. She was too unhappy for that. Yet, in a strange way, her unhappiness equipped her to deal with the patients better than the rest of us. The patients adored her.”
The director of the Meriden clinic had a photograph of Justine, a Polaroid that had been used to make her name badge. In the photo Justine looked like a woman of forty or so, with stringy brown hair and prematurely wrinkled skin. Her eyes were deep, complex, tortured as those of any mental patient. Karen shook her head as she reflected that Justine had been no more than twenty-five when the snapshot was taken.
After two years in Meriden Justine quit her job and dropped out of sight. That was five years ago. Karen could find no trace of her after that.
For a couple of days Karen was stumped. The trail she was following had been hot as a pistol. Then it had vanished. The likelihood was that Justine Lawrence had abandoned the mental health field. Why? Where had she gone?
Had she tired of the mental health bureaucracy and the insurance companies with their perennial allergy to mental patients? Had she simply decided that the profession of counselor was not for her? Or had something else happened to change the course of her life?
Karen floundered, feeling empty of ideas. She sat in her apartment, watched the news, made phone calls to this and that source, without much hope.
Then she remembered that her arsenal of facts was not as empty as it seemed.
If she did not know all the intervening steps in Justine Lawrence’s journey, she did know the end point. Justine had telephoned Susan Campbell in Washington, perhaps many times. Then Justine—or people with whom she was associated—had abducted Susan. That meant that the last stop on Justine’s itinerary was Washington.
Unfortunately, the efforts of Karen and her canvassing service turned up no trace of Justine, or anyone of her description, in the mental health field in the Baltimore–Washington area.
Karen had one more thought. The whole history of Justine Lawrence and her odyssey began with Michael Campbell. But not only with Michael Campbell. The starting point of the journey, if Patricia Broderick was to be believed, included Colin Goss.
Connect the dots.
The national headquarters of The Goss Organization was in Atlanta. If Justine had interrupted her career in counseling, she had perhaps done so in order to move to Atlanta. No doubt there were ideas in her mind about Colin Goss, ideas she wanted to clarify. Facts she wanted to check. Proofs she wanted to have in her hand before the next stage in her life—the stage that led to Susan Campbell.
Karen began by doing the obvious. Styling herself as a prospective employer, she sent The Goss Organization a routine employment query about Justine Lawrence, a.k.a. Susan Lawrence. She included a copy of the photo from Meriden. She called the Atlanta headquarters to try to hurry up the process. A helpful personnel director told her no person of that name or description had worked for the Organization.
Karen was back to square one.
Or was she?
There was the possibility that Justine had not actually worked for The Goss Organization, but had penetrated it in another way. Perhaps by becoming friends with someone who worked there. Perhaps by seducing someone who worked there, or someone close to Goss. Perhaps by contacting one of Goss’s many corporate enemies and making some sort of deal.
The possibilities were multiple. What Karen needed was a contact close enough to Goss to be in the know about such things. Or close enough to know who to ask.
Sitting in her bathtub with a Newport smoldering in the ashtray, Karen realized she already knew such a person.
Crushing out the cigarette, she got out of the bath and went in search of Patricia Broderick’s phone number.
67
—————
Atlanta
2A .M.
DR. RICHARD Easter, late of Harvard and Johns Hopkins, Diplomate of the American Board of Internal Medicine, Ph.D. summa cum laude in pharmacology from Berkeley, glided through what appeared to be an underwater tunnel toward a closed door.
He knew the door would not be locked. Security in the headquarters was so tight that it was unthinkable an intruder could penetrate to this penthouse. He himself had the run of the place because of his Level Four security clearance. The guards manning the monitors would not even give him a second look, he passed this way so often at all hours.
He let himself in and stood measuring the darkness. Waves of weakness and confusion throbbed under his skin. He had to keep telling himself,I am here. This is happening now. This is me. The role of medication in his life had become so great that accurate perception was no longer a given. This might all be a dream. A nightmare, certainly. After all, had he not given up his soul long ago? And the world must look different to eyes that see without a soul.
But now he was going to end it. Tonight was the first phase.
He kept the lights off, though it wasn’t really necessary. There was no surveillance camera in this room, because it was here that Goss played his little games with girls and women.
Dr. Easter put on the specially designed mask and the latex gloves. His movements were slow, exaggeratedly careful, like the movements of a drunk who is trying to appear sober. He breathed out in little gusts through his nose, a habit he had picked up recently.
He made his way through the darkness to the lowboy against the wall. He took out his penlight.
He opened the lowboy carefully. The hinges were silent. Inside, the bottles stood in neat rows, their little caps bearing the smiling face of a country girl in Tuscany. The picture was crude, but there was in fact something fresh and young in her countenance, something of innocence and renewal.
He picked a bottle in the third row. He removed it carefully and set it on top of the lowboy. Then he realized he could not balance himself well enough in this position. He sat down on the floor, his back against the wall, and propped the bottle between his legs.
He took a last deep breath and held it.
He took the cap off the syringe and, quickly, remembering his days as an intern giving hurried injections to frightened children, pushed the needle through the top of the bottle. The metal was soft; the syringe went in easily.
He plunged it in, watching the swirl of clear liquid disappear into the water. He removed the needle, replaced the cap, but the bottle back where he had found it, and breathed out. A long rattling exhalation, the wheeze of an old man.
He closed the door of the lowboy and stood up, straightening himself with an absurd show of dignity, as though he were about to lead the residents on grand rounds. He walked to the door with measured steps and let himself out.
In the corridor he took more deep breaths to steady himself. He was weak, almo
st too weak to get back to his own office, but relief flooded through him intoxicatingly.
“The last shall be the first,”he said aloud.
68
—————
Seattle, Washington
April 16
PAT BRODERICK was holding an open house in the fashionable Seattle suburb of Bellevue when a well-dressed woman in her thirties came in.
“This is a beautiful home,” the woman said, “but I know my husband won’t like the price. He’s a sales executive at Boeing.”
“Oh, that’s nice,” Pat said, always eager to flatter a customer who seemed to have good financial prospects.
“Well, not to hear him tell it,” the woman said. “He’s worried about money. One of his friends lost his job in the layoffs last year. We need a new house, because I’m pregnant again.”
“Congratulations!” Pat threw in. “How many kids do you have?”
“We have a boy and a girl, eight and ten,” the woman said. “This third will be the last. As you can imagine, we have to have four bedrooms.” She looked around her. “This wouldn’t be too much house for us, but the price tag is too high.”
“It’s the address that’s driving up the house,” Pat said. “I’m sure I can fix you up. I have several listings in this neck of the woods that are hardly more than half the price. I can think of one that would be ideal. It’s in a great school district, with lots of kids in the neighborhood.”
“Where is it?” the woman asked.
Pat showed her the location on the map she always carried. The house was a modest four bedroom with a nice-sized lawn. It would suit a growing family perfectly.
“How much is it?”
“They had to relocate, so the price is negotiable,” Pat said. “They’re asking four twenty-five, but they have a new mortgage back east, so I strongly suspect they’ll come down quite a bit.” She didn’t volunteer the fact that the house had belonged to a Boeing executive who had been a casualty of the layoffs.
“Hmm,” the woman said. “It looks promising.”
“I could show it to you this afternoon,” Pat said. “Another realtor is going to spell me at three o’clock. What is your name, by the way?”
“Debbie. Deborah. Deborah Harding,” the woman said, extending a hand.
“Pat Broderick. Delighted to meet you.”
Pat had her lunch at her desk and listened to her phone messages. One of them was from Karen Embry, the reporter who had been here last week. Pat ignored the message, moving on to messages from real-estate clients. She would need to be pushed before agreeing to see the reporter again. Her sleep was still disturbed by the memories Karen had made her confront.
Pat left on schedule at three-thirty, then drove over to the empty house and let herself in. The couple was late, arriving at a quarter after four. The man was handsome, about forty to judge by the gray at his temples. He wore an expensive business suit.
“Pat, this is Tom,” Mrs. Harding said.
“I hear you’re going to get me this house for three twenty-five,” the man joked.
“That would be quite a steal,” Pat smiled, impressed by his acumen. “I don’t know that we can come down quite that low, but I’ll try.”
“I like to proceed from the basement up,” the man said. “Why don’t you and Deborah look at the kitchen and the bedrooms, and I’ll catch up with you.”
He wants to check the furnace,Pat thought. “Sure thing,” she said. “Just call out if you have any questions.”
Deborah Harding seemed to love the house. She spent only a moment in the kitchen before heading up the stairs.
“You say there are lots of kids around?” she asked.
“Oh, tons of kids,” Pat assured her, climbing the stairs behind her.
“Because my youngest, Robbie, is kind of shy,” Deborah said. “He spends too much time on those computer games. He needs other kids to draw him out.”
“That shouldn’t be a problem,” Pat said. “Look there,” she pointed out the window. On one of the nearby lawns several children were playing a game, apparently Keepaway, with a ball. Their shouts echoed over the drizzly air.
“That’s good,” Deborah said. “I don’t suppose there are problems with barking dogs. Tom is a light sleeper.”
“They have an excellent neighborhood association here,” Pat said, looking out the window. “They handle problems like that very well. People respect each other’s privacy. I haven’t heard a single—”
She heard the bedroom door closing. She turned to see Deborah Harding holding the knob. She was looking at Pat through hard eyes.
“What’s the matter?” Pat asked, a chill going down her spine.
“What did you tell her?” the other woman asked.
“Tell who? I don’t understand.”
“The reporter.”
The chill spread through Pat’s stomach and down her legs. Her fingers trembled around the file folder she had brought with her.
“Reporter? What reporter?” she asked.
“This is a sensitive time,” the woman said. “I’m sure you understand. Mr. Goss needs to be extra careful.”
“Mr. who?” Pat Broderick drew on her instincts as a realtor and as a call girl to lie as convincingly as possible. But the fear in her eyes could not be concealed.
The bedroom door opened silently. The man came in. The woman gave him a brief nod. He moved toward Pat, who retreated toward the window.
“I really don’t understand,” she said.
“Away from the window,” the man said, taking her arm.
He drew her toward the inner corner of the room while the woman stood guard at the door.
“What did you tell her?” he asked.
“All right,” Pat said. “All right. She was here. I told her nothing. Do you think I’m crazy? Mr. Goss knows he can count on me. He’s always known that.”
The man’s eyes searched hers. He said to the woman, “Go downstairs. Watch the front door.”
The woman slipped out soundlessly.
“Please,” Pat said.
The man smiled.
“They said to make it look like rape,” he said.
“No!” Pat cried. “I didn’t tell her a thing. I don’t know where she got my name. I just told her to leave me alone—”
The man’s arm curled around her neck, choking off her words. He pulled her toward the floor.
“Don’t worry about it,” he said. “You’ll never feel a thing.”
He squeezed harder. As he pulled up Patricia Broderick’s skirt, she heard children shouting to each other in the suburban yards outside. Their cries drowned in the red wave rising behind her eyes.
69
—————
Washington
ON APRIL 17, four days after Michael’s refusal to withdraw from consideration for vice president, a package addressed to Michael in care of the director of the FBI was received at FBI headquarters.
There was no return address. The parcel was postmarked Washington. It was opened by FBI bomb disposal experts. Inside it was the overnight bag Susan had taken with her the day she left Washington for Green Lake. The bag contained all the clothing Susan had worn that day, from the tight jeans and shirt to the tiny leather jacket to the shoes.
Also included was the wig Susan had worn, as well as her undergarments, including the bikini panties and the bra, which was made specially for her by a designer in New York.
In the pocket of the folded jeans the agents found Susan’s wedding ring, as well as the ivory pendant Michael had given her for their tenth anniversary, a token she always wore for luck. The contents of Susan’s purse, including all her identification cards and credit cards, were inside a Ziploc bag at the bottom of the package.
The arrival of the parcel sent a wave of despair through all those who were hoping to get Susan back alive. It signified that Susan would no longer be needing any of these items. She was either dead already, or would never be coming back to her
old life.
Of those who saw the package’s contents, no one was more moved or more alarmed than Joseph Kraig. Though he could only look at the items without touching them (the forensic techs would work all night on them after the initial viewing), he could feel Susan’s complicated, eccentric charm in all of them. He had seen that wedding ring the first day she ever wore it, fifteen years ago. He knew the pendant well. It was an intricately carved peacock in a circular shape that made Kraig think of a sunrise.
The small bra and panties wrung Kraig’s heart. He did not want to imagine what had been done to the innocent female flesh that had filled these garments.
An atmosphere of anger and vengeance now reigned among the agents. Most believed Susan was dead. All were hell bent to find those responsible and destroy them. Susan, it turned out, was as popular among federal agents as she was with the general public.
Kraig was troubled by this outpouring of rage. He needed to feel that Susan was still alive and that he still had a chance to save her. That hope now seemed more fanciful than ever.
Kraig was puzzled by Michael’s refusal to withdraw from consideration for vice president. If there was one thing Kraig knew about Michael, it was that Michael was fiercely protective of Susan. Michael adored Susan, venerated her. It would destroy him to lose her.
Why had Michael decided not to withdraw? Had the president or his party colleagues influenced him in some way Kraig was not privy to? Had someone else convinced Michael that his own instincts in the situation could not be followed?
There was something in all this that Kraig did not understand. Events were moving according to a pattern or schedule that defied ordinary logic. Ever since Dan Everhardt fell ill Kraig had tried to tell himself that the key to the enigma would present itself sooner or later, but it had not happened.