by John Philpin
Alan Chadwick had landed on the pavement twenty feet away from Boston City Hospital. He had not fallen or jumped, nor had Wolf simply pushed him off the roof. He had thrown Chadwick like a rag doll.
Sarah Humphrey had sustained thirty-one wounds. All but three—two in the chest, and one in the throat— were postmortem.
Wolf was close to tipping over. There seemed to be little of his former finesse. In the past, he had been meticulous in his planning, meticulous in his execution, and consistent about signing his work—a feather, a piece of music, a volume of poetry. In one young woman’s apartment he had arranged a Scrabble board to appear as if a game were in progress. There were two interlocking words: danse macabre.
You’ve gone beyond the dance, haven’t you? You are no longer interested in the flowing choreography the beauty of murder. You’re driven by rage. Get the players where you want them, and think only of their destruction.
On our way to the hotel after seeing Willoughby, I had warned Lane about the psychological condition I expected Wolf to be in. “Hell be as far out there as any of these killers has ever been. Lucid and organized for a period time, then he crumbles. He feels it happening, like he’s coming apart. It’s a repeating cycle, generally with increasing extremes in the swings, and longer periods of disintegration. A similar thing happened with Wylie, Bundy, Ramirez.”
I told her a little-known story about Danny Rolling, the killer of five students in Gainesville, Florida. After his seventy-two-hour killing spree, he fled the city in a stolen car, only to see that shot to pieces during a holdup in Tampa. He was coming apart, close to the end, when he met a woman in a park. She sensed something about him. She didn’t know who he was. Nobody did at that point. To her, he was just another lost soul who, for whatever reason, was brittle, ready to crack.
“She took him home,” I told Lane. “Fed him. Fixed a place on her couch for him. He spent the night there, thanked her in the morning, and left. She was still alive, but not because he had discovered God, or a new sense of morality. What had always been a comfortable identity for him—the outlaw—was disintegrating. He had to heal, to repair that persona. All of us were fortunate that the Ocala police caught him when they did.”
I SAT IN THE DARK, LISTENING TO THE SOUNDS of the Willard and the muted noise of the city from beyond the hotels walls. Lane had wanted to know why I did what I did that day in Vermont. Had I murdered John Wolf? My intent is what mattered. By any definition, my actions had been premeditated.
For my entire life, I had wandered close to the edge—of the law, and of madness—occasionally drifting across the line on both counts. No one had taken me to the extremes that John Wolf had. Now he was going to do it again.
Lane had asked me to promise that it would be different this time. It already was different. I was not hunting him. He was hunting me. And he was here.
The sonofabitch had written his own script, and we were dutifully moving onstage on cue, preparing to read our lines. That was my fault. If I had taken care of him when I had the chance, none of this would be happening.
As I sat in the darkness of my room in Washington, part of me was ready to jump up, pack, and go home. The rest of me was inert. No matter where I went, Wolf would eventually follow—unless I crawled inside my mind, to that familiar place with its own darkness, its own eyes looking back at me. I had to confront the beast who lives there. Whenever fear has shaken my soul into pieces, he has made me whole.
“So, come on then, lad,” I muttered. “Let’s have a go at it.”
WHEN I WAS A CHILD, MY MOTHER OFTEN TOLD me, “You don’t wait well.”
It was true. I did not wait well at all, but only when someone told me that I had to wait.
Like you, I had saxophone in the sixth grade. I was coerced, so it was a waste of time and money. To me, what the grown-ups called “patience” always meant enduring something distasteful.
My mother asked, “Why don’t you stick with any one thing?”
“I don’t wait well,” I reminded her.
The truth was that if I chose to wait, if Í elected to be patient, I was eminently capable of allowing years to pass between thought and deed.
Time became irrelevant.
Whether moments stretch out behind in an amorphous mass called the past, or extend ahead in an even more vague and formless future, time has meaning only when I shape its passage. My mark is frequently bloody, always indelible.
Consider this. What if there was a Web site on the Internet where all you had to do was enter your name and date of birth, or just your social security number. Then, in confidence and complete detail—a narrated documentary pouring from the speakers fixed to the sides of your monitor—you could discover the particulars of your ending.
Date of death; cause of death; manner of death.
Will you travel through cyberspace to that location? Or will you tease yourself with the knowledge that it is there, somewhere in the ether?
Perhaps there are other names with your same date of death—clusters of names suggesting an airline disaster, a small war, or an act of genocide.
Or maybe you are alone on your particular journey, in your particular war. Perhaps you are driving northbound on a snow-covered Interstate 91 when you leave the highway, go airborne, and collide with your granite wall.
Death is entertainment. That’s all it has ever been.
Other drivers inch by, craning their necks to peer in at you—a pudding of blood, cartilage, brain.
Life and death.
Maybe you slip on a wet floor and die in your kitchen. So many of us greet the tunnel of night in our own homes, struggling up out of the tub only to splash backward in a concussive blast against the porcelain.
What if a killer chooses your back door? You become an episode of Unsolved Mysteries, a segment on Inside Edition. From your box beneath the earth, you claim your fifteen minutes of fame.
Planes fall out of the sky; rivers roar over their banks; the earth’s tectonic plates slip a bit to one side and the world cracks open; and don’t forget the men who carry knives in the night—all receive their media forums because you are so fascinated by violence, fear, and death.
You choose not to contemplate your own ending. You don’t rush to that Web site on the Internet. You tune your TV to someone else’s tragic demise because you are frightened, and can tolerate only a vicarious brush with death.
I am no voyeur.
If I had the power to break the earth, crack the skies, bring the tides of a different moon crashing onto your streets—I would not hesitate. I would kill you all.
Unfortunately, I must make do with the limited power I have—the guns, the knives, and the mettle to approach your back door.
IN LAKE ALBERT, MICHIGAN, I CARRIED MY BRIEFCASE and my McDonald’s bag to Janet Orr’s house. She was working in her yard, fussing with some flower beds.
“Bark mulch works wonders,” I said.
She looked up, tucking some fallen hair under a black headband. “I’ve always preferred hay Bark makes the beds look like every other yard near any body of water.”
“True. Maybe that’s why I thought of it.”
“Are you walking?”
“I parked at a pull-out. I wasn’t sure which of the two houses was yours, Mrs. Orr.”
“Who are you?”
“My name is Charles Weathers,” I said, handing her a business card. “I’m a field interviewer for the Kurmont Foundation. Perhaps you’ve heard of us.”
“Of course. Kurmont awards grants. To individuals, right? People who are making some sort of social contribution with their work.”
I nodded. “A neighbor of yours, Dr. Lucas Frank, has been nominated for an award.”
“He’s retired.”
I laughed. “I’ve been up here for two days, and that’s the first thing that people tell me. Dr. Frank has continued to write since his retirement, and …”
“Lucas? He chases fish.”
“I have copies of t
wo of his papers in my briefcase.”
“I’m sorry. It’s not that I don’t believe you. He’s never said anything about writing. I’ve always been under the impression that when he left his practice, he just quit. Well, why don’t you bring your fast-food sack and come in, Mr. Weathers. I don’t know how much help I’ll be, though.”
We deferred the formal interview while I ate my lunch. I chatted about my problems finding a dependable security system for my suburban home. She recommended the company that Dr. Frank had used for his perimeter system.
Janet Orr was most helpful.
Then I killed her.
I HAVE BEEN IN WASHINGTON FOR TWO DAYS, waiting for my players, collecting my props. There is a drama to unfold here, one that will eliminate superfluous actors and bring the most powerful law enforcement agency in the world to its knees.
Four days, a mere ninety-six hours, remain.
I was eager for those hours to pass, but I was not pissing away time when I entered Yazgur Park in northwest D.C. Fall Fest, the neighborhood’s celebration of music, food, and crafts, surrounded me. The fair and its sponsors were listed in a newsletter that I found on the sidewalk. Serendipity always provides.
Cops on horseback confiscated beer from underage drinkers. When the cops had gone, other kids supplied their bereft friends. It worked better than the welfare system, and no one was obliged to chase after nonexistent jobs.
I stopped at a Volkswagen bus, its back and side doors open. A crude, Day-Glo sign on the vehicle’s roof proclaimed, “Oliver’s Brass Works: Beads, Earrings, and Comestibles.” The owner was a large, bearded man with greasy red hair to his shoulders. He was selling teriyaki beef on a stick, assorted strands of colored beads, wood carvings, and brass figures. His woman stood a short distance away, swaying to music, tapping out a crude approximation of rhythm with finger cymbals.
I watched the woman—her eyes closed, her silver hair spilling over her black dress to her waist, her face turned up to the darkening skies—wondering if it was possible to kill someone in front of two thousand potential witnesses, and have no one notice.
But I rejected the notion. The bead-seller’s woman was spinning in the space of a music only she could hear. I doubted that she was grounded enough to appreciate that death might be happening to her, and I insist on that much from all my victims. I wanted a victim, but not a middle-aged woman still tripping on a sixties high.
I made my purchase, a nondescript shore bird carved from driftwood, and moved slowly away I still heard the chimes, still saw the woman in my mind as she swung her hips from side to side. And I still wanted some amusement.
The crowd surged toward a narrow gateway, and an even narrower foot bridge leading to a small amphitheater. I was forced through a funnel of obstreperous humanity, shoved from one side of the bridge to the other, and always forward. I felt trapped.
I remembered reading about the young man in Texas who climbed to the top of a tall building on a college campus and began shooting. He had the same name as the poet, Whitman. Walt embraced mainstream America. Charles Whitman mowed them down. Which is precisely what I felt like doing at that moment. But I restrained myself. The satisfaction would have been short-lived, and my plans would have been disrupted.
I decided then that I did not want Oliver’s softwood sanderling. I wanted something else, something perfect, and I was certain that I would find it here.
I stood to one side and watched the mob spill into an amphitheater where a popular, local rock band stood on a makeshift stage and created deafening noise. The audience cheered. I avoided the music venue, turned, and stepped back onto the bridge.
Suddenly I was disoriented, adrift in time, as I watched a young woman leaning against the bridge’s concrete parapet. I stopped and stared at her profile. For only seconds—although it seemed like much longer— the years dropped away, a dead woman returned to life, and I stared at my past. This girl was a youthful version of a woman I had met at a fire in Cambridge when we were both students there. I smiled, walked onto the bridge, and almost called her “Annie” before I snapped away from the hypnotic beckoning of a false reality.
“I will give you a wooden figure,” I said. “I want something back.”
She shook her head and turned away
I felt a sharp pain behind my eyes, a familiar stab of rage. This woman had disoriented me, then turned her back. I grabbed her by her black hair, swung her around, and placed a knife against her throat. “I want an object,” I said.
“What?” she gasped as she struggled ineffectively. “I want to make a trade. Give me something of yours, and I, in return, will give something to you.”
“The bird.”
“What bird?”
“In my pocket. Please don’t hurt me.”
I searched through her pockets and found a brass bird—one that married past with present, and foretold the future. It was the phoenix, rising from its flames— its wings partially unfurled, its eyes filled with fire glaring at an open sky.
“Where did you get this?”
“In the parking lot. I got it from Oliver at the red VW bus. His wife was making music with her fingers.”
I flipped her over the wall into the brook below. By the time she found a way up, I would be long gone.
I could have killed her—slit her throat and then dumped her over the wall. Stoned hordes would have stumbled across the bridge after the concert and never looked down. But it didn’t seem just She and I had made a fair trade. I had committed an act of justice—she was alive, after all. It was my gift to her.
I laughed to myself as I strode into the parking lot. The cops on horses had gone, although there were cruisers parked in the distance near the exit. The VW was there, its canopy still up, Oliver sat on a blanket next to his van, smoking a bong. I didn’t want his woman. I wanted him.
I sat cross-legged, opposite the burly man.
“What do you want?” Oliver asked.
“Balance. Order. A kind of justice, perhaps.”
“You a cop?”
I shook my head. “I guess you could say that I’m the opposite of a doctor.”
Oliver’s face clouded with confusion. He stopped sucking on his pipe, placed his hands flat on the blanket, and leaned toward me. “Get the fuck out of here.”
I liked his attitude. That was exactly what I required.
“When you aren’t feeling well,” I said as I gripped the bone handle of my knife, “you go to see the doctor and he makes you feel better. I look for people who are feeling good, even ethereal, and I bring them down.”
I plunged the knife through the back of Oliver’s right hand, through the blanket and down into the dirt. His hand was pinned to the earth. I was sure that his roar of pain could be heard by the cops out near the road, and equally certain that they would pay no attention. Tears creased the big man’s twisted face as he leaned agonizingly to one side. His howl faded to a whimper.
“Balance,” I repeated, breathing against his tear-stained face. “Order. A kind of justice. I’ve just given you a gift, Oliver. Your life. This is my final charitable act. Make sure you tell the police that. Tell them that Wolf said there will be no more kindness.”
I grabbed a handful of his trinkets, pushed myself up, and walked away.
I stroked the brass bird, knowing that the piece of metal was why I had been drawn to the Fall Fest, and aware of the place that it would have in my future.
I had a gift for Lucas Frank, but I would not be as generous with him as I had been with Oliver.
I WATCHED THE DOCTOR AND HIS DAUGHTER enter and leave the J. Edgar Hoover Building, the theoretical repository of justice and the home of the FBI. Then I followed them to the Willard. Both of them entered; a short time later, he left. I suspected that he was not satisfied with whatever scraps Dexter Willoughby had thrown to him.
I did not follow the retired psychiatrist. When I wanted to find him, I knew where to look.
If I had wanted Dr. Frank dead
in Michigan, he would be dead. I control his world. He continues to exist only because my design dictates that he stumble around the capital for a few days.
I have an absolute wealth of patience. My mother would be proud.
I wonder if the Franks have made my hypothetical cybertrip—if they know the precise moments that they will die.
I do.
JUST AFTER DAWN, I SIPPED COFFEE AND SCANNED the two files that Willoughby had dropped beside me on the sidewalk the previous afternoon. Lane tapped on my door carrying her own coffee.
“You’re up early,” I said.
She nodded. “What’s that?”
“Copies of the case files on Sarah Humphrey and Alan Chadwick.”
“Chadwick?”
“He’s dead. Two months ago. Willoughby said it was a fall from a roof.”
Lane sat across from me on the sofa and made room for her cup on the table where I had the reports spread out. “Where did you get that stuff?”
“I was out for a while yesterday afternoon.”
“You didn’t take a nap.”
“I visited Willoughby at his home.”
Lane’s eyes widened. “Let me get this straight. Wolf killed Chadwick and his sister.”
Three dead and one almost dead in two months, and all connected because of a single man who had been presumed dead. For me, that was coincidence overload.
“I think he killed both of them,” I said. “I think Willoughby is still holding back. I have no idea what he isn’t telling me, but I don’t think we’re through counting the dead.”
“Do the files tell you anything?”
For all the years that I had made a living developing personality profiles, tracking killers, interviewing them, each new case had brought a rush. This one gave me a headache.
“Alan Chadwick was in his office doing what we’re doing now,” I said. “Drinking coffee. He fell, jumped, or was thrown from the roof of the hospital. When the police got there, the coffee cup was still warm. I figure that if you enjoy strolling the roof among piles of pigeon shit, you take your coffee with you. If you’re planning a swan dive, you’re too distracted to care about coffee in the first place. The autopsy report indicates some bruising on Chadwick’s body that wasn’t consistent with the fall. The way I see it, Wolf struggled briefly with him and threw him off.”