by John Lutz
She looked from one to the other with glittering eyes. “I don’t think either of you gentlemen is in a position to give me career advice.”
She was right about that. Within five minutes, they’d been politely but firmly ushered out and were on the street.
“You okay?” Harper asked.
He and Addleman were at Union Station, on the platform beside Addleman’s train. It was loading now and due to leave in a few minutes, but Addleman didn’t want to board. He preferred to walk up and down in the drizzle, smoking. He’d been lighting one cigarette off the end of the last since they’d left the Hoover Building. Harper was damp down to his undershirt. He had a reservation on the Metroliner, leaving in fifteen minutes. He didn’t know now why he’d thought it necessary to pay extra for the express train. He must have thought that after the meeting with Wilson, events would start moving fast and his time would be short.
“Am I okay?” Addleman smiled sourly as he repeated the question. “What you mean is, do I want a drink?”
Harper nodded. No point in avoiding it, he was worried about Addleman.
“Yeah, of course I want one. Hell, I want ten or twelve.” He laughed, barking out a cloud of smoke. “Gimps. We’re a couple of gimps, Harper. You’re a physical gimp and I’m a mental one. Just the kind of people to develop this delusion that there’s a serial killer out there bombing celebrities. Time to snap out of that now and rejoin the real world, don’t you think?”
Harper looked sideways at him.
“Frances weighed the odds, like the bureaucrat she’s become,” Addleman went on. “Sure, she’ll drop a few letters in the file, to cover her ass in case the bomber’s for real. But she’s ninety-nine percent sure we’re delusional. And she’s got a set of FBI creds and a government-issue sidearm. She’s got an office with her name on the door. So she must be right. Right?”
“Wrong,” said Harper. “The bomber’s out there.”
Addleman grinned, showing his yellowish uneven teeth. He threw away the cigarette. But he wasn’t ready to board the train yet. “All right,” he said. “That’s what I think too. So I’ll skip the ten drinks and let’s figure out what the hell we do next.”
“Well,” said Harper slowly. “Some of those case files you sent me on old, unsolved bombings, I haven’t had time to look at yet. When I get home I’ll start going over them. Maybe one of them will turn out to be the work of our guy. . . .”
His voice trailed off and he looked at Addleman.
“Sure,” Addleman said with forced brightness. “And I can start monitoring the NCIC computers, looking for reports of theft of explosives. Anything recent, I’ll—”
Breaking off abruptly, Addleman lowered his head. His hair was wet and the pallid skin of his scalp showed through. “Who are we kidding, Will? We’re two middle-aged guys and we don’t have a set of creds between us. We can’t possibly do on our own the kinds of things we were hoping the Bureau would do. We’d be searching the haystack for the needle, straw by straw.”
Harper nodded. “We’ll have to think of another approach. Somebody’s going to get killed and we know it. We can’t just let it happen.”
“Maybe we should contact Homeland Security?”
“We just did,” Harper said. “The FBI is Homeland Security.”
They continued walking along the platform. The loudspeakers were warning of the imminent departure of the Philadelphia train, but neither man paid any attention.
Addleman stopped short and turned to face Harper. “Only one thing to do,” he said. “We’ll have to steal a march on the bomber. We’ll figure out who the next target is going to be and we’ll warn him. Or her.”
“But how—”
“Yeah,” Addleman went on, carried away by his inspiration, “it’s going to be somebody rich and famous, we know that much. Somebody with clout. We warn ’em that they’re next, and they’ll know how to shake up the media, get some action out of the Bureau.”
“Addleman, how are we going to guess who’s next?”
“We know it’s going to be a bigger celebrity than Rod Buckner.”
“You’re still talking about hundreds of people. How do we narrow it down? You said yourself, the bomber has no connection to his victims. He has nothing personal against them. He just wants to destroy celebrities, along with the people who kiss their asses.”
“Is that what I said?” Addleman grinned. “Man, I sure know how to make it tough on myself, don’t I?”
They were now the only ones on the platform. The intercom was making the final departure announcement and the conductors were picking up their stepping blocks and climbing into the train.
“Jeez, I gotta go. I’ll call you tomorrow.” Addleman started running to get on board.
“Addleman—”
“Don’t worry,” he called without turning. “I do my best thinking on trains.”
On this particular night, the earth probably offered no better vantage point on the stars than this field in the middle of Barber County, Kansas. There was nothing to mar the beauty of the night sky. The nearest town was miles away, so there were no blurs of man-made light on the horizon, and the stars could be seen all the way down to the edge of the earth. The moon was a thin sliver and there were no clouds. The vast blackness glittered with innumerable stars—some bright as jewels, some so tiny and faint they were barely visible.
The man who’d said his name was Anthony—and whose full name was Anthony Edward Markman—was lying on his back in the grass, looking up. His high, deeply lined brow was as clear as it could ever be, and his eyes, their pupils dilated, looked wide and innocent as a child’s. As his rapt gaze moved from star to star, his lips occasionally moved, forming a word, but no sound emerged. The only sound was the wind.
Markman’s wristwatch alarm began to beep. Compunction gripped his features, furrows creased his brow, and he looked like his usual self. Silencing the alarm, he got to his feet.
He strode over to his car and opened the door. It wasn’t the nondescript sedan he’d driven to meet Steve, but a red Toyota Land Cruiser. He would have needed the off-road vehicle to get to the middle of this field.
A flat metal box, like a tackle box, was resting on the passenger seat. He opened it. The top tray was divided into four compartments, which he’d neatly labeled A through D. Each compartment held a small lump of the plastic explosive he’d bought from Steve. They were all shaped differently. Markman was here, in this remote place, to carry out the tests he’d mentioned to Steve. Before he’d killed him.
He took the lump from box A, which was shaped into a ball not quite as large as a golf ball. Then he started walking across the field toward a line of cottonwood trees. From them came the silvery chirruping of tree frogs.
The cottonwoods lined a small stream, and on its bank was a derelict car that had been there so long cattails had grown up through it. Their furry heads drooped out the open windows. Frowning with distaste, Markman knelt in the mud beside the car. Taking a simple timer-detonator from his pocket, he set it and plugged the wire into the ball of C-4. The ticking of the timer could be heard, a sharp, urgent sound, but Markman didn’t hurry. He went down on his stomach and placed the explosive under the car. Then he got up and walked away, plucking his wet, muddy shirt away from his body.
He was counting paces out loud, and when he reached a hundred, he turned. For a few moments there was no sound but the singing of the tree frogs. Then came the roar of the explosion and the blinding flash. Markman stood with his eyes and mouth wide open. The power of the explosion produced by the tiny ball of C-4 astonished him.
When the darkness returned, he stood blinking and grinning for several moments.
Then he went back to the riverbank to inspect the damage. The tree frogs were silent now, and the only sound was the faint rush and gurgle of the stream. He drew a flashlight from his pocket and aimed it at the car. The explosion had almost broken it in half. The roof was gone and the passenger seat had been blown into
the stream. The wheels and parts of the chassis were strewn all over the bank and field. Markman spent several minutes playing his light around, shaking his head and chuckling with disbelief. Evidently he was satisfied with his purchase.
He walked back to the Land Cruiser. Climbing into the passenger seat, he switched on the light and picked up a clipboard. At the top of the page he wrote A. Then he recorded the results of the test in a small, neat hand. When he was finished, he put the clipboard away and reached into the glove compartment.
He’d made a fresh copy of his calendar, which had gotten wet and blurred when Steve examined it. The copy was exact, with all the numbers and markings as before.
Anthony crossed off today’s date, April 10.
There were now twelve days to go to the date he’d marked off in red, April 22, and thirty-five days to go to the last date on the calendar.
May 15.
10
Harper had almost been expecting a message from Addleman to be waiting when he got home from Washington on Friday night. But there wasn’t one, and Saturday passed without a call. He waited and worried, telling himself that Addleman would call when he was ready.
Finally, early Sunday morning, the phone rang.
“Harper?”
The voice was muted and drawn. Harper asked, “Are you okay?”
Addleman roused himself to waspishness. “What, you still worried I’m hitting the booze? Well, I’m not. But I was up all night, trying to think myself into our pal’s head.”
Harper felt a coolness on the nape of his neck. When he’d been working with Addleman years ago, some of their eeriest talks had started this way. He asked, “Did you get there?”
“At least partway, I think. Want to hear about it?”
Harper was standing in the front hall of his house. He picked up the phone from the table and sat down on the steps with it. “Go ahead.”
“What’s the bomber like? Let’s start with what we know for sure.”
“Well, he has to be a pretty methodical guy.”
“Is he ever. His personality type . . . well, I’ll skip the technical terms. Our guy is a control freak. He never goes grocery shopping without a list. He changes the oil in his car every three thousand miles. I mean, he’d rather walk than go over three thousand miles. He has no favorite shirt; he wears ’em in strict rotation. He keeps a running balance in his checkbook, or has a computer program to do it.”
“Uh-huh,” said Harper. He’d listened to speculations like this from Addleman and other profilers before. A lot of the time they turned out to be wrong. But sometimes they were uncannily accurate.
“What day is this, Harper?”
“Sunday.”
“No, what date?”
“Uh, April tenth.”
“No, it’s the eleventh. That’s a mistake the bomber would never make. He always knows the date. And every day he makes up a schedule. Even if he’s not seeing anybody else, he’ll keep to the schedule himself. Noon to one-thirty, work on stamp collection. Three to three-fifteen, take a shit. He wears a wristwatch with an alarm, and when that alarm beeps he hops off the can.”
“You may be right, but where does this get us?”
“Patterns. Our guy has to follow a pattern. He needs a pattern to hold himself together. Otherwise he’ll fly off in a million pieces, because he’s a very sick cookie.”
“I’m not sure what you mean by a pattern.”
“I’m not sure either.” Addleman was silent. Harper could picture him leaning forward in his intensity, gesturing to a blank wall in front of him. “Okay, so the celebrities mean nothing to him as individuals. That doesn’t mean he’s picking them at random. That would be too scary for a guy like this. He’s deeply repressed, scared of his own impulses. He’s got to have a sense of structure to reassure himself.” Addleman paused. “This sound like bullshit to you?”
“No, I wouldn’t say that, but I don’t see—”
“It’s okay. I’m used to dealing with the squareheads at the Bureau. You’re not bad by comparison,”
“Thanks,” said Harper dryly.
“Let’s try another approach. What’s the guy doing? He’s exploding celebrities. Popping them like balloons. And when they go, they take with them some of the people who’ve indulged them, or bought into them in some way, or supported them.”
“Right.”
“He doesn’t just hate celebrities. He’s mad at the rest of us for making them celebrities. He wants to send us a message. So how come he doesn’t go public? Why doesn’t he call the media and claim responsibility for his bombings?”
“Because the cops will start chasing him. His targets will be more wary. Everything will get tougher for him.”
“Exactly!” said Addleman. He was almost breathless with excitement. “He doesn’t want any interference now. He’s building up to the finale, this—this big, terrible bombing of . . . whatever it’s going to be! Then he’ll go public.”
“You think he has it all planned out already,” said Harper.
“He’s had it planned out for a long time. That’s the whole idea, the mainspring of his personality. There’s a pattern, and he’s going to complete it. He’s got to complete it.”
“But what kind of pattern—”
“Jeez, Harper, what do you want from me?” said Addleman impatiently. “I don’t know. If I knew what was important to this guy I’d at least have a starting point, but I don’t. I’m gonna start by feeding some numbers into the computer. Dates of the three bombings. Latitudes and longitudes where they took place. The birthdays of the victims. This isn’t going to be easy. The pattern won’t be something that would readily occur to a sane mind. But if we keep at it, we’re going to find a big red arrow pointing at the next victim. Sane or not, the bomber won’t deviate from his pattern. He likes things neat.”
“Do you want me to come down?”
“Soon as you can, Will.”
Harper didn’t know how much help he could be. He didn’t have as much confidence in this new approach as Addleman did. But he said, “I’ll catch the next train.”
As he put the phone back on the table, he was wondering how Laura would take his abrupt departure. Probably she wouldn’t mind. She’d been supportive of his efforts on the case all along. When he’d returned from Washington the day before yesterday and told her the disappointing news, she’d damned the Bureau up and down for its obtuseness. Her indignation had warmed him, done a lot to banish his own glum mood. She’d be pleased to hear that he and Addleman weren’t going to take the Bureau’s verdict lying down.
He called her name up the stairwell. The muffled “in here,” coming through the pocket doors behind him, was a surprise. He hadn’t thought she’d come down yet this morning. He walked to the doors and opened them.
She was standing with her back to him. Her hair was bound up in a red kerchief and she was wearing one of her oldest sets of surgical scrubs. The thin, worn green cloth clung to her trim figure. He was still appreciating the view when she turned, smiling, and flung out her arms.
“Surprise!”
He looked around the room. The front parlor was the largest room in the house, and it had been in bad shape. Harper had put in several weeks here, sanding woodwork and patching walls. But lately Laura had been at work. The wood floor was covered with canvas, and the mantelpiece and window and door frames had newspaper protecting them. A ladder leaned against the wall, and beside it were brushes, rollers, and cans of paint.
“When did you do all this?” he asked.
“While you were in Washington. An operation canceled and I had the day off.”
“I didn’t realize—I didn’t even look in here yesterday.”
“I don’t blame you. After all the work you’ve put into this room, you must be sick of it. But all it needs now is paint. With the two of us working, we should be able to finish today. How about it?”
Harper said nothing.
“What is it?”
�
��I have to go to Philadelphia. I’m sorry.”
“Philadelphia? You mean Addleman?”
Harper nodded. It was only as he opened his mouth to explain that he realized he hadn’t told her about his last talk with Addleman on the train platform in Washington. Why hadn’t he done so? Maybe it was because Addleman’s idea of identifying the bomber’s next victim had seemed so vague and tentative to him, not worth mentioning yet.
Or maybe he hadn’t told her because he sensed she wouldn’t want to hear it.
He began to explain. As he talked, she knelt next to an open paint can and began to stir it. Characteristically, she was intending to go ahead on the job without him. But as he continued to talk, she left the wooden stirrer standing upright in the paint and sat back on her haunches. She wasn’t looking at him as he spoke, but he noticed the stiffening of her facial muscles. It made him apprehensive and he finished lamely.
“I see,” she said. “And when you figure out who the next victim is going to be, what are you going to do about it?”
“We haven’t really gotten that far. We don’t know if we will be able to figure it out. Of course we’ll warn him. Or her. How strongly we put the warning depends on how sure we are he—or she—is the one.”
“You say we. But you’ll be the one to go see this person. Of course you will. You could barely pry Addleman out of his lair to go to the Bureau.”
“I suppose it’ll be me. I hadn’t really thought that far—”
“You’re going to find someone who’s sitting on a bull’s-eye, and you’re going to sit on it with him.”
“What?”
Laura abruptly stood up. “You’ll be the one who spotted the threat to this celebrity. So he’ll make you his bodyguard. And when the bomber strikes, you’ll get killed along with him—just like Fahey.”
Harper stared at her in astonishment. The abruptness of her switch from being supportive to fearful puzzled him.
She looked straight back at him. Her eyes were dry, but she was trembling slightly. “You have to try to understand this. When your hand was injured, a part of me was glad. It meant I’d never have to worry about you dying on the job again.”