“I so very truly want to believe that. I know I can give her all the love, all the support that she could possibly want.”
“You’re the only one who can,” I said. “Did Chat see Jeanine between Christmas and this week?”
“No. That’s why Jeanine said she thought the call was so strange. She went up to Boston yesterday, from Nantucket. She got the call today, saying Chat needed to see her. Urgently.”
“What about?”
“Chat didn’t say. Just that she needed help, and she couldn’t rely on anyone but Jeanine to give it to her,” Faith said. “She asked Jeanine to meet with her tonight.”
My head was pounding. “Where? Meet her where?”
“On the Cape. She told Jeanine she could get herself to the Cape. She asked her not to take the boat home to Nantucket, but to wait for Chat to arrive. There was a friend, Chat said to her—a man who needed help too.”
“And Jeanine? …” It sounded as though Zukov was shooting for two victims, using Chat to draw Reverend Portland into the trap.
“Agreed to do it, of course. She told me—” Faith had dissolved into tears. I could hear the voice of a woman in the background trying to comfort her.
“Are you there?” I waited a few seconds before asking her.
“I’m all right. Jeanine told me that Chat sounded like she was in pain. I can’t bear to hear that, Alex. About the pain. You’ve got to find her.”
“We’re going to do that. I promise. Is Jeanine with the police?”
“Yes. The officers have her at a hotel room in Hyannis,” Faith said, sounding as though she had found something lighter to say. “She’s not terribly serene about that, Alex. She understands, but she’s not happy about it. We’re a stubborn lot.”
“That’s how you came to be ordained. I’m counting on stubborn to help us here. I’ll call her now, Faith. Get some rest, if you can.”
“The Reverend Portland?” Mike asked when I hung up.
“Yeah. I’ll call her to get more details. I say you ask the captain for a cruiser and we head to Hyannis right now. Scratch what I said about the perp heading south.”
“I’m on it, even though I gotta think the fishing is better in Florida this time of year.”
“You’re right, Mike.” I thought of the photograph of the four women, the third victim already in the killer’s weakened hands, and the fourth one being drawn into his web. “But tonight there’s live bait in Hyannis.”
FORTY-SEVEN
“YOU don’t need to waste time programming the GPS,” I said. “I know this part of the world like the back of my hand.”
It was close to midnight on Friday when we pulled out of the trooper headquarters.
“The back of your hand has gotten me lost more times than I can count.”
“In Brooklyn, maybe. But not on Cape Cod.”
“How long you figure?”
“No more than an hour and forty-five minutes at this time of night.”
After my brief conversation with Jeanine Portland, she had agreed to let the Hyannis police take her in to their station. She knew she would get no sleep in any event, and we would oversee a plan once we reached the famous resort town.
“Did the rev give you any more information about Chat?”
“Nothing new. She sounded drugged, terrifically frightened, and complaining that she was cold—and now, hurt. And in the company of a man who needed help.”
“That’s our best hope for believing he’ll keep Chat alive throughout this road trip,” Mike said. “What was she talking to Portland about that she wouldn’t confide in her own sister?”
“More of the same. She’s just very needy, is the way Portland described it. I don’t know if that’s the truth or she simply isn’t ready to offend Faith Grant yet with some deeper unburdening,” I said. “Did you bring Peterson up to speed?”
“I did. And he tells me that Yuri Zukov’s phone shows no calls from his brother since yesterday. Same cell zone as Chat.”
“Secaucus?”
“Yeah. So he’s backed off communicating, even with his family, for the time being.”
We had traded our hot caffeine for cold. I flipped open the tops of two soda cans and placed them in the cup holders between us.
“You’re going to take I-95,” I said. “Through Fall River and New Bedford. Then the Sagamore Bridge and on out to the Cape.”
“Keep talking, kid.”
“Sleepy? Want me to drive?”
“I just want you to concentrate on the territory, the geography. You were totally thinking outside the box when you hit on the idea of the circus train this afternoon. Now find me a perp.”
We were in a marked black-and-white car, so the fact that Mike was doing eighty on the highway wouldn’t get us stopped. We batted facts and theories back and forth, none of them particularly inspired.
“Is it twelve yet?” Mike asked.
“Quarter after.”
“Do me a favor, will you? Dial my mother’s number, okay?”
“It’s late for that.”
“Friday-night bingo at the church. One of her favorite forms of worship. She doesn’t leave there till after eleven.”
I found Mrs. Chapman’s number in the address book, pressed it, and passed my cell to Mike.
“Did you get lucky or what, Ma?” Whatever her answer, it made him laugh. “Next week I’m gonna get a Brinks guard to drive you home. You shouldn’t be walking around with fifty-six bucks in your purse at this hour of the night. Do me a favor and pour yourself a double—I’m grounded tonight.”
Mrs. Chapman chatted on with her favorite—and only—son.
“On my way to Cape Cod, Ma. Yep, she’s with me—my lucky charm, like you say.”
She had called me that since the first time we worked a case together. I smiled at the thought of their loving, good-humored relationship.
“Did you TiVo Jeopardy! for me?” Mike asked. “Great. Well, just leave the answer on my cell after you play it back. I’m looking to score on Coop tonight. You sleep tight, Ma. You tell Father Bernard we’re gonna catch this son of a bitch. You tell him that when you see him on Sunday, and no, I swear to you he won’t mind the language at all.”
He handed me back the phone.
“I meant to congratulate you on the great restraint you showed while we were on the train,” I said. “Not turning on the television, I mean.”
“I just lost track of time is all that was. Never meant to miss it. She’ll fill me in.”
“There’s practically no traffic. The only trucks I’ve seen are supermarket semis and gas tankers.”
“Tell me something I don’t already know.”
“When we get out on the Cape, you’re going to have to watch out for deer. They’re everywhere at this hour of the night.”
“So what did Oksana say about Fyodor’s juvenile record?”
“No specifics. Just enough to send him away to a school for troubled adolescents.”
“Peterson hasn’t been able to track anything yet.”
“If it’s juvie, it’s likely to be sealed. Who knows? She was just trying to give me her ‘Officer Krupke’ pitch.”
“I’ve heard way too many of those,” Mike said, speeding past the WELCOME TO THE COMMONWEALTH OF MASSACHUSETTS Signs that bordered the highway. “He’s disturbed, he’s misunderstood, he’s got a social disease. It’s never the bad guy’s own fault. I’m surprised she didn’t throw in growing up in a leotard and tights. Maybe that’s what twisted him.”
“She might have reached that point by now. I think I shut her down,” I said. “Tell you what. I’ll be Alex Trebek. Here’s your substitute question: The Final Jeopardy! category is FAMOUS AERIALISTS.”
“One ride on a circus train and suddenly you’re a freaking expert on the subject?”
“The answer is the daring young man on the flying trapeze, Detective Chapman. I’ll give you twenty seconds.”
“Give me nothing.”
“Who wa
s Jules Léotard?”
“You and your damn ballet lessons. That’s how come you know from leotards. And the guy was French, to boot? Another likely heartthrob for you.”
“A lawyer who left the bar for a career on the high wire. It was Léotard who developed the art of trapeze, and for whom the song was written, in 1867. And he started a trend—wearing the one-piece outfit that dancers use too.”
“Then maybe this case is all his fault, you think?”
“I’m expecting that will be part of the defense—blame the victims, and then throw in a little bit of what was a man in tights supposed to do?”
We made small talk and bantered trivia and tried to reassure ourselves that every cop and agent in the northeast was doing something to find Chastity Grant while we made our way to Hyannis. By the time we reached the Sagamore Bridge, one of the two spans that crosses the Cape Cod Canal, it was one fifteen in the morning and the only thing lower than my hopes for Chat’s safety were my spirits.
The cell phone slid off my lap as it vibrated. “You losing it?” Mike asked.
“Not entirely.” I leaned down and picked it up, recognizing the displayed number. “Hey, Mercer. Thanks for calling back.”
“I wasn’t avoiding you, Alex. I had no reception. I’m just outside the ER at Bellevue.”
“Listen. We’ve got news—”
“And I’ve got news for you. What brought me here tonight is Gina Borracelli.”
“What?” I assumed the teenager and her box of bad things was behind me.
“Hold tight and don’t let this throw you off course,” Mercer said. “She’s doing fine, Alex. But she tried to kill herself tonight.”
“Oh, my God. Is she all right?” I slumped down in the passenger seat, my head against the car window.
“She’s going to be just super. Acting out, is what the docs tell me. Not a serious effort in anyone’s view, except her parents’.”
“What happened?”
“She was out clubbing with her friends. Got liquored up. Every one of them had fake IDs so they got served. She went into the restroom around midnight. Swallowed a handful of pills and passed out on the bathroom floor.”
“Where was she?”
“The Limelight.”
“I should have guessed that. Uncanny, isn’t it?”
“Unholy,” Mercer said.
The Limelight, on Avenue of the Americas at 20th Street, had been a nightclub for longer than I was a prosecutor. Drugs were as readily available there as alcohol, and many of our date-rape cases started as casual encounters in the trendy club.
For more than a hundred years before that, the landmarked building was anything but notorious. It was the glorious Church of the Holy Communion, an Episcopal church whose parishioners once included the millionaires Cornelius Vanderbilt and John Jacob Astor.
“EMTs just shot across town to Bellevue. Pumped her stomach out and Gina will be up and about by morning. They’ll keep her a couple of days for observation and make sure she starts some inpatient psych care.”
“But she’s conscious and alert?” I was sorry to have played any role in the mounting distress that had caused the teen’s well-being to be compromised.
“Nothing to fret about. She’s fine and her ol’ man has a new punching bag.”
“You?”
“Yeah, but I think I scare him a bit more than you do.”
“Good to hear. In the meantime, while you’re there, can you check for Fyodor Zukov’s med records? His sister says—”
“I guess I buried the lede, Alex. They’re going to give me the records, subject to a subpoena that Nan can cut in the morning. It’s not what we thought.”
“You mean it wasn’t an emergency-room admission?” I said, thinking of the problems with the nerves in his hands that cut short his career on the wires. “Or it isn’t psychiatric?”
“Neither one of those,” Mercer said, discounting the two things most commonly associated with the old medical facility.
“What then?”
“Zukov’s been examined here at a new clinic. It’s for Hansen’s disease. Do you know—?”
“I know exactly what it is, Mercer. It’s leprosy,” I said to him. Then to Mike, “Our killer—who targets outcasts and pariahs and black sheep—is a leper.”
FORTY-EIGHT
“STOP the car!”
“Stop the train, stop the car—what is it with you tonight?” Mike asked.
“Zukov’s not on his way to Hyannis. Pull over and let me drive.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I know where he’s going, Mike. I can get us to Woods Hole with a blindfold on, in half the time that you can,” I said. The tiny village on the southwestern tip of the Cape is the home of the terminal from which ferries run back and forth to Martha’s Vineyard. I’d spent countless hours there walking the harbor as I waited to get over to my island on standby, with no reservation.
“Where’s he going? And why do you think you know?”
“Because this country didn’t ever have more than a handful of places that were leper colonies, and only one of those was turned into a ‘last chance’ school for delinquent boys.”
Mike pulled to the side of the road and braked the car.
“Twofers, Coop. I’ll bite. Where are you taking me?”
Mike opened the door to change seats and I answered him as I moved behind the steering wheel. “A desolate little place in Buzzards Bay where they used to banish lepers a century ago,” I said. “It’s called Penikese Island.”
FORTY-NINE
“GET on the phone to the Coast Guard. We’re going to need their help to get to the island,” I said, adjusting the rearview mirror as I made the U-turn to take us south to the tip of the Cape. “And don’t let them send a chopper up yet. We don’t want to let him know we’re coming.”
“Penikese is a smart guess, Coop. A bit of a wild card, but smart. I just don’t want to jump the gun. I’m not ready to pull any cops off Reverend Portland’s detail yet on the theory that our perp knows about this little island.”
“Here’s what you do. Call Peterson and ask him to get the feds moving. They’ll bring in the Coast Guard. Then you call the captain in Providence. I blew Oksana off when she was talking to me about Fyodor and his reform school. Have him ask her where it was. I bet she and Yuri were old enough at the time to remember.”
“How long till we get to Woods Hole?”
“With any luck and no roadkill, I’d say we’re there in less than half an hour. And the local cops—”
“How many are there? Two?”
“Off-season like this, maybe four,” I was only half joking. I had no idea what their resources might be, but Mike and I would need backup. “They’ve got to start scouring the town for an Angus truck.”
“Doesn’t really give me a lot of time to rally the troops. There’s a slew of places to dump a truck, aren’t there?”
“Ferry parking lots, marinas, residential areas, and plenty of woods that surround the little town. Get on it.”
“You like giving me orders, Coop?” Mike asked as he got on the phone.
“I love being in the driver’s seat. Get used to it.”
“I’m allergic to the idea. Brake going into these curves, will you?”
“You don’t know how many times I’ve raced this road to catch the last boat over. Stop whining and tighten your seat belt.”
“Don’t steal my lines, Coop. You’re the whiner,” Mike said as he waited for Lieutenant Peterson to answer. “You know this is going to get worse before it gets better, don’t you?”
Every trace of my smile disappeared. “I’m well aware of that.”
“I’m in charge once we get where we’re going. There’s one gun, and I’ve got it. When we get to town, you’re no longer the dominatrix. Am I understood?”
I swerved to avoid a raccoon—his beady eyes reflecting in our headlights as he lumbered across the road.
“Loo? We got
a change in plans. Coop’s brain is on double-overtime. Don’t ask me to explain, Boss, just go with it and put some pressure on the locals,” Mike said, and then answered the question Peterson asked him, winking at me as I looked up from the road. “Yeah, I do trust her. Just go with it.”
“Thanks for that,” I said.
“Eyes on the road. Tell me first what Mercer said about Zukov’s diagnosis. And then you’ve got about twelve minutes to make me an expert on every inch of this little island.”
“I’ll start with the disease.”
“Shoot.”
“Zukov saw a doc in Atlanta after he dropped the girl during their trapeze act. Admitted to him—but not to his family—that he’d lost sensation in his hands from time to time. That fact, combined with the lesions on his face, caused the physician to send him to New York.”
“In December?”
“Exactly. The diagnosis was made at the Bellevue clinic, one of the few in the country that specializes in the disease. Mercer read me the notes.”
“How was it diagnosed? How advanced is it?”
“To begin with, the germ that causes leprosy attacks the skin and the nerves. The skin lesions developed first, a couple of years ago. They were small initially, then became larger and larger—festered and blistered. But because of the tendency for Fyodor to use makeup for performances, he was able to cover it up.”
“He must have been in complete denial. That—and the fact that nobody thinks about leprosy today, except in third-world countries.”
“Mercer says Bellevue’s got five hundred people in their program, right in New York City.”
“And Fyodor Zukov is one of them?”
“No. They wanted him to be treated, but he was so devastated by the diagnosis that he didn’t come back. Not until the day that Naomi Gersh disappeared.”
“Why then?” Mike asked.
“For pain medication.”
“Shit. And they gave it to him?”
“Yes, he promised to enroll in the program, and they gave him a scrip for pain meds,” I said, thinking of the drugged and drowsy voice of Chat Grant. “Oxycodone. A two-week supply.”
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