by John Lutz
“I’m upstairs,” Harper called. With an effort, he held back from checking his watch to see how late she was. He was determined to shake off this rotten mood. Or at least to hide it from her.
He heard her quick light step on the stairs. Living in a New York row house, you did a lot of climbing, but that never seemed to bother Laura, even at the end of a long day. Where did she get all that energy?
She appeared in the doorway, taking off her raincoat. Underneath, she was wearing her white nurse’s uniform. That meant she’d hurried: She preferred to change before leaving the hospital. She was a small, slender woman with dark curly hair. Her bright blue eyes seemed almost too large for her face, her smile too broad. “What a day,” she said. “Dr. Lautenberg was doing a triple bypass. We were in there for eight hours. Thank God the guy pulled through.”
Harper was glad he hadn’t complained that she was a few minutes late. She sat on the edge of the bed and kissed him. “So. How was your day?”
“All right.” He figured if he was going to cheer up, he’d better pick another topic for conversation. “You have a lot of phone messages.”
“Oh, Will, I’ve told you before you don’t have to pick up. Let the machine take them.”
I have nothing else to do. He angrily shoved the self-pitying musing away. He said, “Jan called. She said the Shore-walkers are hiking Sheepshead Bay on Saturday and do you want to come. Then Bernie called to remind you you’ve got soup kitchen duty tomorrow evening. And Toni from the Metropolitan Opera Guild says do you want to do a walk-on in Aida, Saturday matinee.”
Laura’s expressive face responded to each of these messages. At the final one she burst into a grin. “Aida! That’s really fun, I did that last year. They’ve got about a hundred people on stage, so nobody ever notices you, but it’s great. I hope I get to be a Nubian slave. Wear a gold bikini and feathers in my hair. With luck, I may get to wrap myself in a snake.”
By now she was on her feet, indicating the costume to him with gestures. Since she was still in her nurse’s uniform, it was hard to imagine. She stopped and said, “All right. What’s with the look?”
“Nothing. Just that you’re the only person I know who really takes advantage of living in New York. Everybody else is so tired they can hardly get the laundry done.”
She gave him a sly look. “Uh-huh. I’ve heard this before. The truth is, you figured with all these activities of mine, I was just a poor lonely spinster trying to keep busy. You thought as soon as I had a man of my own, I’d drop all that stuff and stay home.”
Harper shook his head. “No. I knew I wasn’t marrying a beer-fetcher. And I was glad. I was away so much, I didn’t want to think of you sitting at home bored.”
The change in her expression told him he’d betrayed himself with those last words. He was the one sitting at home bored. His cheerful act wasn’t going to work. She sat down on the edge of the bed and looked at him sympathetically.
“Do you have to do that?” said Harper irritably. “I feel like a patient.”
Ignoring this, she took his hand. The maimed one. It was the one she always chose to hold. “Oh, Will, I know you can’t help thinking about Jimmy. It’s terrible what happened to him. But at least you got to see him before he died. To set things right between you. Isn’t that some comfort? There’s no reason for you to feel guilty.”
“I don’t feel guilty. The son of a bitch who killed him is the one who’s guilty, and I want them to nail his ass. Only it’s not happening.”
Frowning, she turned to look at the television. “Was there any—”
“No, there’s nothing new. Count on Brand to have the inside dope. The reporters keep digging up more dirt on what a ruthless sleaze Buckner was, and why people would’ve wanted to kill him, but the investigation’s going nowhere. I think they’re going to let this bastard get away.”
She let go of his hand and straightened up. “I’m sorry, Will. I don’t know what to say.”
Harper blew out his breath, hoping some of his useless pent-up anger would go with it. He reached out to touch Laura’s hair. “I’m sorry too.”
She stood up and went to the closet, unzipping her uniform. “Well, I’d better let Toni know I’m interested in Aida. If you don’t mind me being away on Saturday?”
“No, go ahead.”
“What time is it?”
He glanced at his watch. “Eleven-fifteen.”
“Oh, that’s too late. I’ll wake her kid.”
“You could send her e-mail.”
“Good idea.”
She walked across the room to the computer and turned it on. Harper went back to watching the news. This was a dismal scene, he thought, the two of them on opposite sides of the dark bedroom, communing with their LCD screens. He had to do something about Fahey; he couldn’t stand this feeling of helplessness. For the hundredth time, he thought about calling an acquaintance in the ATF and telling him about the C on the bomb fragment. But he was doubtful, not having the photograph in front of him. Probably Brand was right. It was just a scratch.
The computer made a slight whirring noise as it downloaded e-mail.
“Will?”
“What?”
“You’ve got an e-mail.”
That was strange. Harper never received e-mail. He came around and bent over her shoulder. There was the e-mail.
Harper,
Hope you remember me. Sorry about your friend. I have some ideas about that case. Want to come see me? We could talk about it.
Harold Addleman
“Well, well,” Harper murmured.
“Do you know this guy?”
He nodded. His heart was beating faster, but he warned himself not to build too much on this. “FBI. Behavioral Sciences Unit.”
“Behavioral—you mean he’s one of those profiler guys?”
“Yes.”
“The ones you see quoted in the papers, saying things like, ‘the perpetrator is a thirty-two-year-old divorced Presbyterian male who breeds corgis and wears women’s underwear’?”
“That’s right.”
“When I listen to those guys on TV I can’t make up my mind if they’re crazy or brilliant.”
“That’s how I felt working with Addleman,” said Harper. “I decided maybe he’s both. He’s an odd one, lives in his own intense world.” Harper straightened up from the screen and stretched. It was difficult to stay calm. His mind was popping with speculations about what Addleman might have gotten hold of.
“Were you and he close?”
“It’s hard to say. We worked together on a bombing case six or seven years ago. Never caught the guy, but Addleman and I sort of hit it off. He’s an odd combination of mercurial and methodical. I was the plodder, exploring the usual avenues, and Addleman roamed the side streets.”
“You sound like the Odd Couple.”
“We were that way, I guess. But our methods somehow meshed. Together we made a hell of a team. I knew it, and by the time the investigation ended, I think Addleman knew it. Of course, he’d never say so. He’s grudging with his compliments, even to himself. Not that he doesn’t think he’s brilliant.. . .”
Laura smiled. “Oscar gets dinner done in time but burns the roast. Felix uses what’s left and makes stew.”
“Something like that,” Harper said. “Except that we got along better than Oscar and Felix, and we respected each other because we’re both methodical in our own fields.”
“This is great, Will, isn’t it? He wants to talk to you about the case. The FBI wants your help.”
He shook his head. “I don’t know. If it was an official approach, this isn’t the way they’d do it. I wish Addleman had given me a phone number.”
“Obviously he expects you to reply by e-mail.”
Harper didn’t like that. He was too impatient. He wanted to get hold of Addleman and make him answer questions, right away. He crossed the room to his dresser and pulled his address book out of the top drawer. Riffling through it,
he sat down on the bed next to the phone on the night table.
“What are you going to do?” called Laura from the computer.
“Call the Bureau.”
“But it’s eleven-fifteen at night.”
“The Bureau never sleeps.”
They were awake, but they weren’t inclined to be helpful. He called the Behavioral Sciences Unit in Quantico, where Addleman had worked. They told him Addleman was no longer with the Bureau. They had no other information at this time.
“He’s left the FBI,” Harper told Laura. “But that’s not surprising. Profilers are hot right now. A lot of them are getting hired away by private security companies. Addleman’s a unique and brilliant guy. He’d be in demand.”
Harper called Addleman’s home number. It wasn’t in service. He tried directory assistance, and didn’t give up until he’d covered all the area codes around Washington.
“No luck?” Laura said. “Why don’t I just reply that you accept his invitation and ask him when and where?”
Harper nodded. He’d simply have to contain his impatience for a while and do it Addleman’s way. “Go ahead.”
Laura smiled, and her fingers flew over the keys.
Harper watched them. When he was in a low mood it would give him a twinge to watch someone touch-type, or play piano, or perform any of the other little tasks that called for ten fingers. But watching Laura’s hands now didn’t bother him.
It made him realize just how much better he was feeling. He knew he shouldn’t build too much on this e-mail, but he couldn’t help it. He had hope again, and what a difference it made.
He sat back on the bed so that he could watch Laura more comfortably. The computer chair was one of those ergonomic models in which you knelt on one pad and rested your backside against another. She’d told him she liked it because it reminded her of the “lazy-kneeling” posture she used to adopt as a girl at St. Roch’s Church—at least, until the nuns caught her.
The posture might be the same, but she didn’t look like a Catholic schoolgirl now. She was wearing nothing but a bra and panties. Harper moved slightly so that he could get a better view of the white bra strap that crossed her arched back. That lean and muscled back. That white-clad, jutting bottom.
Funny about being married. The two of you could be moving around the bedroom or bathroom and you’d be totally oblivious to your wife’s body, and the next minute the focus would shift and you’d be achingly aware of it.
She moved the mouse, and the e-mail disappeared from the screen. “Bet you hear from him by tomorrow morning.”
She swung around, smiling. The smile grew broader when she saw the look in his eye. Turning off the computer, she got up and came toward him. Her hands moved behind her back to undo the bra strap.
Harper didn’t fall asleep after the lovemaking. He lay still on his back until Laura’s breathing deepened and became even. Then, very quietly, he got out of bed and padded barefoot over to the computer. He turned the screen away so the light wouldn’t wake her, and switched it on.
Addleman’s reply was there when he logged on, brief and to the point. He’d expect Harper anytime in the afternoon. His address was in Philadelphia.
He didn’t mention that he was no longer with the Bureau, no doubt figuring that by this time Harper already knew. He would also know Harper was eager to travel to Philadelphia to see him.
Harper smiled with anticipation. Addleman was always a jump or two ahead.
Or three.
5
When he read the taxi driver outside the Philadelphia train station the address Addleman had given him, the driver glanced at him in some alarm. Twenty minutes later, Harper knew why.
The former FBI profiler lived in a slum that looked tough enough to scare even a veteran New York cop. Some of the old brick apartment buildings were burned-out shells. In others, half the windows were boarded up or covered with steel plates. Three teenage boys with shaved heads and matching black T-shirts stood near the corner and stared at the taxi as it pulled to the curb. Harper stayed inside while he paid the driver. As soon as he got out, the taxi sped away.
Eccentric as Addleman had been when Harper had known him, he’d lived the conventional life of a middle-rung government employee, with a ranch-style house in the Virginia suburbs, a wife, and two teenage sons. Twins, if Harper remembered correctly. What the hell had happened to him?
The hair on the nape of Harper’s neck rose as he walked up onto the cracked concrete stoop of Addleman’s building and entered a grafitti-covered vestibule that held the stench of stale urine. Discarded crack vials crunched beneath his soles as he moved to the bank of blackened brass mailboxes. Yes, Addleman’s name was there. Apartment 3E. He began climbing the narrow and squeaking wooden stairs, glad to be moving away from the odorous vestibule.
The third floor was little better. Only a dim light came through the grimy windows. The window at the end of the hall let in more light than the others because its wooden frame didn’t contain any glass. The floor and the wall beneath the sill were stained from rain and probably snow that had blown in.
Harper found apartment 3E and knocked on its door.
He heard movement inside the apartment, but no one came to the door. Below him in the building, a woman yelled something unintelligible at someone named Rico. Rico yelled something unintelligible back at her.
Harper knocked again, hard, noticing that Addleman’s door wasn’t like the apartment doors across the hall. This one was a solid-core exterior door equipped with a new-looking heavy dead bolt lock.
Hardware snicked inside the lock as Harper stood looking at it. A chain rattled. The door opened about an inch. A cool blue eye with loose flesh under it peered out.
“Hello, Addleman,” Harper said.
The door opened wider to reveal a small, stooped man in pleated brown pinstriped suitpants and a white shirt with the sleeves rolled up above the elbows. Odd Couple Felix was gone. Addleman’s clothes were wrinkled, and he looked much older than he had last time Harper had seen him. He had a deeply lined forehead and narrow, pained features beneath a sharp black widow’s peak. “Good to see you again, Harper. Come on in.”
Harper entered. Addleman locked the door. Then he turned and stood facing Harper, his arms hanging at his sides. Harper put out his right hand. Addleman’s eyebrows rose fractionally as he took it and Harper realized that he’d just taken part in a little experiment. Addleman wanted to know if he’d offer the injured hand, or the left one. Now he was filing the result away in his behavioral scientist’s brain. Harper remembered this was something he’d had to get used to with Addleman; you might be his friend and colleague, but you were also, in a sense, his lab rat.
Glancing about the apartment, Harper was pleasantly surprised. Though cheaply furnished, it was clean and warm. The walls were bare except for one photograph, which showed two young men in caps and gowns grasping their diplomas. The sons. No picture of the wife, Harper noticed
“Want a cigarette? Something to drink?”
“No, thanks.”
Addleman got out a crumpled pack of cigarettes from his pants pocket and held it up. “You mind?”
Harper figured it was Addleman’s apartment. “No, go ahead and smoke.”
Addleman indicated the sofa. “Sit down for a minute. You have some questions you want to ask before we get started.”
He smiled thinly and Harper smiled back. There were questions all right.
“Why did you leave the Bureau?”
“They fired me.”
“I’m sorry,” said Harper. “You were one of the best.”
Addleman shrugged. “The Bureau correctly perceived that I wasn’t any use to them as long as I was drunk off my ass practically all the time.”
Harper nodded. When they’d been on the case together six years before, every long workday had ended in a bar, where Addleman drank hard. Harper wasn’t entirely surprised that the drinking had gotten out of hand. He said, “Didn’t they
offer a rehab program?”
Addleman made a face and a gesture, batting the idea away. “What for? So I could learn about the underlying forces that were compelling me to behave in this self-destructive fashion? Fuck that. I’ve got a Ph.D. in psychology myself, Harper. I could analyze my own case. Problem was, I didn’t give a shit.”
Harper waited while Addleman smoked.
Eventually, he went on. “The people you work with, the agents and supervisors—most of ’em don’t believe in the scientific basis of profiling. So if you don’t come through for them, they treat you like some kind of con artist. I had a couple big cases where I didn’t come through. Started keeping a vodka bottle in my desk. There were problems at home, too. If you don’t mind, I’ll skip that part.”
“Sure. Sorry to make you talk about this.”
He shrugged his rounded shoulders. “I don’t mind. It’s kind of interesting to look back on, now that I’ve survived it.”
“You did survive it,” Harper said. “You turned things around. That took some doing.”
“Nothing original,” said Addleman. “AA. The twelve steps. There are still a lot of times when I want a drink. I just don’t have one.”
“You’re not working for anyone now?”
“I don’t think I’m . . . sturdy enough to go out in the world yet. I’ve got a small pension and a small inheritance I can live on.” Addleman smiled. “My rent’s not too high.”
“But you must miss doing what you’re good at,” said Harper. This was a point on which he felt he could speak with authority.
“Oh, I’m still doing what I’m good at.”
Harper looked at him questioningly.
“I read about cases and I speculate. Can’t help doing that.” Addleman leaned forward and stubbed out his cigarette in the ashtray. “I’ve stumbled onto something now that I think I have to act on. That’s why I asked you to come down. I need your help to get taken seriously.”
“You’ve got a line on the bomber who killed Buckner. And Fahey.”
“Oh, he’d killed other people, before he blew up Buckner’s gatehouse. And he may kill a lot more before he’s through.”