A Study in Crimson

by Chris Orcutt

  “—you will graciously waive for my old friend,” the Director said with a grin. “However, Harold will cover any reasonable expenses, of which you are to keep a strict record.”

  “Fair enough,” I said.

  The Director stood. “Do a good job on this, Stevens. It’s smart business to be on the Bureau’s good side. By the way, I want you in Cambridge A-sap. That means tonight.”

  “Understood, sir,” I said. “There’s just one last little thing.”

  “What?”

  “The train,” I said. “The New York agents gave me a one-way ticket.”

  “Because I told them to,” he said. “Buy your own and expense it.” Reeves looked at Standish. “Anything you’d like to add, Harold?”

  “Just get Sally out of whatever she’s into and bring her back safe, Mr. Stevens,” he said. “Please.”

  “I’ll do my best, Mr. Standish.”

  A door opened on the side of the room, and two agents came in. Craning my head to see out the door, I glimpsed an oasis—a posh waiting room with a covey of leggy secretaries that looked like they moonlighted as Vegas showgirls. The agents closed the door behind them and crossed the room. The agent in the lead took a briefcase from the Director. Reeves stood and shook hands with Standish.

  “Ah, before I forget,” the Director said, staring at me.

  “Yes, sir?” I said.

  “I expect daily reports on your progress, Stevens.”

  “Can’t, sir,” I said with a sheepish grin. “No laptop.”

  “Then get one,” he said. “Anything else?”

  “Hmm…Red Sox tickets?” I said. “They are in the playoffs, sir.”

  “We’re done, Stevens.”

  While he walked into Mrs. Greer’s outer office, I drifted toward the door with the beauties behind it.

  “This way, Stevens,” the Director said.

  Following the agents and Mr. Standish out, I paused in the doorway for one last look at the Director’s office. I imagined what the place must have looked like when J. Edgar Hoover occupied it—mahogany paneling, heavy velvet drapes, and a minimum of light—and vowed this was the last time I’d ever be here.

  2

  New York, New York

  Generally it’s not my nature to brood, to dwell on the negative things in my life. Like an action movie hero, I pride myself on taking defeats in stride and always looking forward. That afternoon, however—alone in my window seat on the New York return train, gazing out at the late September countryside—I have to admit, I brooded a little.

  Part of me wondered if I’d made a mistake leaving the Bureau. I’d been in private practice for close to a year and had a few cases, but I spent most of my time navigating the bureaucracy of licensing, and hustling for new clients. The cases I’d been forced out of financial necessity to take were nearly all divorce work, which, after having helped to solve high-profile murders, kidnappings, bank robberies and the like, made me feel slimy at the end of each day.

  Ironically, returning to FBI headquarters today reminded me that I missed the very thing that had caused me to resign from the Bureau in the first place—the routine. I missed my partners, our morning coffees in the bullpen, and the swapping of stories about funny interviews and arrests. I missed the modest but regular paychecks, and the comprehensive health insurance.

  Out the window, we passed a roadside farm stand where a smiling elderly woman handed a bag to a young mother. A breeze rustled the ash tree above the farm stand, and all of its gold leaves sparkled in the bright sunshine. It was a gorgeous day, but I wished it were raining. At least then I could justify feeling sorry for myself.

  What I needed more than anything, and what I’d been trying for months to get, was a competent assistant. My strengths were questioning suspects, detecting, forensic science, legwork, and, when necessary, throwing the occasional devastating punch. What I needed was somebody who could handle the business stuff: running an office, getting clients, getting paid.

  We passed through a railroad crossing: lights flashing, bells clanging, drivers sulking. I took out a pen and pocket notebook, and started a list. My ideal assistant would be more than just an assistant. I needed somebody who could help me to solve cases, somebody who possessed skills and qualities I didn’t have. My dream list went like this:

  Extremely organized, yet adaptable

  Enjoys research

  Computer skills

  Knowledge of accounting

  Good with money

  Can deal with red tape

  Heck, while I was shooting for the moon…

  Speaks Spanish

  Patient, can perform surveillance

  Willing to travel

  Contacts—brings me business

  Doesn’t mind making coffee

  Doesn’t need a big salary or health insurance

  Elegant dresser with great legs

  I tore the sheet off the pad and jammed it in my pocket. Who was I kidding? I’d never find somebody like that. I had put postage stamp-sized classifieds in the Sunday Times, but so far only three people had been qualified enough to merit an interview. Adding insult to injury, since I didn’t have an office yet, I’d had to interview the applicants at a Starbucks on Broadway, a few blocks from my apartment. I would buy a black coffee, sit at a table by the window and wait for each applicant to arrive.

  My first applicant had been a young man, barely 25, who’d already failed the Bar exam twice. He was working as a paralegal until he could take the exam again. He’d been “dealing in theory far too long,” he said, and was “eager to participate in real-world applications of the law.” He spent so much time asking me about my experiences at the Bureau that I barely got to ask him any questions. After costing me an hour and two cappuccinos, I was glad to see his peach-fuzz face disappear back onto Broadway.

  The second applicant, a woman who, now that I thought about it, bore a resemblance to homely Mrs. Greer, had ten years’ experience as the executive assistant to the head of corporate security for Citibank. In many respects, she was perfect. She understood investigations and was organized and skilled in accounting and administration. She even had some useful contacts in the NYPD and the Securities and Exchange Commission. Sharp and well spoken, she would have been ideal for handling my back office work, but…she kept interrupting me. During our half-hour interview she probably interrupted me twenty times.

  With the third and last applicant, I never learned whether she’d be a good fit, because the moment she strutted into Starbucks in a tight blouse and scanned the café with a pair of shimmering sapphire eyes, I knew I had to leave. On paper, she was great—a recent NYU Accounting graduate who’d interned in the New York Attorney General’s office—but she had a quality common to all devastatingly sexy women: even standing still, she drew attention to herself. She simply couldn’t help it. If I hired this young woman, her mere presence would constantly blow my cover. Spotting me at my table, she flashed a beaming smile that radiated total confidence and began her approach.

  “Mr. Stevens,” she said with a voice that sounded like warm apple pie, “it’s an honor to—”

  Sighing through my teeth (Dear God, what a beauty; if only I were unscrupulous), I snatched my messenger bag off the floor and shook her hand. “I’m sorry, miss. The position has just been filled.”

  Although it pained me to be rude to her, for my own good I nodded goodbye and dashed across Broadway.

  This was probably how Goldilocks felt. I doubted I’d ever find the right person.

  * * *

  When the train reached Penn Station, I walked dejectedly upstairs to Seventh Avenue, where I hailed a cab back to 201 West 77th Street. As I entered the apartment, the woody sounds of drawers being wrenched open and slammed shut echoed down the hallway. A black Rollaboard leaned next to the credenza. I walked into the bedroom. Ashley was th
ere, jamming clothes into a Zabar’s bag. Unfortunately, this scene was all-too-familiar to me. I decided to play it cool.

  “Hey, beautiful,” I said. “Making a trip to Goodwill?”

  Ashley and I had been together only four months, but I could tell when she was angry with me. Her ears and hairline would turn red, like now, and her nostrils would flare. Under other conditions these would also indicate she was having an orgasm, but I was pretty confident that wasn’t happening at this moment.

  “I am so over this.” She slammed another drawer shut, brushed past me with the bag, and stormed into the bathroom. She grabbed her personal items and makeup and jammed everything in the bag. “I woke up this morning and you were gone. Gone!” She batted the shower curtain aside, glowered at the bottles standing around the tub. “No clue when you were coming back. Who do you think you are—Batman?”

  A few tiles around the tub needed to be re-caulked. I leaned against the sink.

  “Didn’t you see my note?” I asked.

  “Yeah, I saw it,” Ashley said. “And what a love note it was”—she mimicked my voice—“ ‘Hey, Ash…had to go to D.C. on business. Back this afternoon. Sorry. Dakota.’ Ugh. We were supposed to spend the day together.”

  “Well, considering how little warning I had,” I said, “I think it was pretty decent of me to leave the note.”

  “Yes, you’re a saint,” she said.

  “Let me explain, Ashley.”

  I told her the Director of the FBI had summoned me, and if I wanted any kind of career in law enforcement, private or otherwise, I had to stay on his good side. Ashley considered what I’d said, and, after cleaning out the medicine cabinet, shook her head.

  “You could have invited me to come with you,” she said. “We could have spent the day in D.C. together. You know how hard it is for me to get a day off during the week.”

  With a final look around the bathroom, she went out to the living room.

  “I can’t do this anymore, Dakota,” she said. “This is the third time you’ve disappeared or broke off our plans. In case you haven’t figured it out yet, I’m the last woman who needs to put up with this crap.” She gave me a contemptuous look. “You could have at least called me. Oh, but I forgot…you’re the stubborn square who refuses to get a cell phone.”

  She started down the hallway. Her long bronze hair—thick, heavy hair I would miss burying my face in—gleamed in the overhead light. Soon, every cell phone tower in the Tri-State Area would be white-hot as word of her renewed availability circulated through the singles scene. In the Wall Street pub where I’d first met her, men had been fluttering around her like moths around a bug zapper, and I knew that, despite a few months off the market, her allure would be as strong as ever.

  I’d been questioning a stockbroker regarding a divorce case when I noticed Ashley staring at me. When I finished with the stockbroker, I bought her a drink and told her a joke, which made her laugh but irked a Queens Cro-Magnon who’d already set his sights on her. The Cro-Magnon made the mistake of grabbing my arm, so I torqued his thumb and wrist, and he ended up on the floor begging me not to break his thumb. Excited by seeing me display my dominance (right then, I should have realized this girl was trouble), Ashley sprang off her barstool and followed me out of the bar. She started kissing me in the cab with the lights of Eighth Avenue flickering over our faces. Her tongue was in my mouth during the elevator ride to the 12th floor, and it stayed in my mouth while I unlocked my apartment door and we groped into the living room together. There, she stopped kissing me long enough to hastily shed her clothes and reveal, with an impish grin, a pink and black lingerie ensemble so torridly sexy, it sent a chill down my spine.

  Now as Ashley put on her coat, I reached over her collar, pulled out her silken hair, and let it sluice over my hands one last time. Then I gently turned her around and kissed her on the cheek.

  “You bastard,” she said. “Don’t you care about me? Won’t you miss me?”

  “I do, and I will,” I said, “but you’ve clearly made up your mind.”

  “And you’re not willing to change?”

  I shrugged. “This is my life, Ash. Being a detective is who I am.”

  “Your job isn’t keeping you from letting someone into your life,” she said. “You don’t let anyone in. It’s like you were abandoned by your parents or something.”

  “I was…in a way,” I said. “But that’s not relevant.”

  “That is exactly what I’m talking about.” Clenching her jaw, she slapped her apartment key on the hallway credenza and towed the Rollaboard and Zabar’s bag to the door. “Goodbye, Dakota.”

  She slammed the door behind her. I watched her through the peephole while she waited for the elevator, and was grateful she didn’t start crying. If she had, I probably would have thrown the door open and apologized. But when the elevator arrived, she stepped inside and left without further incident.

  At the sight of her leaving, I felt a terrible emptiness. Like all uniquely beautiful women, Ashley haunted a space long after she’d left it. I wandered back into the apartment and stared at the living room. The place looked like the break room in the FBI forensics lab. The desktop in the built-in bookcase, the dining table, the club chair and hassock, the bar counter and all four TV tray tables—everything was covered with books, file folders, paperwork, a microscope, and several containers of half-eaten Chinese takeout.

  I spent an hour straightening up and vacuuming, packed a suitcase for Boston, then changed into running clothes. I stretched in the lobby, then jogged slowly down 77th Street, past the Museum of Natural History, and turned onto Central Park West heading downtown.

  This was my usual route—Central Park West to the Dakota building at 72nd Street (where John Lennon had lived), then across the street into Central Park and through the memorial for him: Strawberry Fields. Even though it was a workday, and a hot day at that, dozens of Lennon pilgrims surrounded the “IMAGINE” mosaic, placing flowers and lighting candles. I skirted around a man strumming on a guitar, and, turning onto the path that headed uptown through the Park, I thumped down the hill. The guitar sounds faded into the stirring trees behind me.

  Yes, Ashley was a loss, but I’d get over her. She thought my work was a mere job; the woman never would have understood me. Being a detective was my passion, my life’s purpose, and people without a life’s purpose can never understand those of us who have one. To them, our choices seem rash and unbalanced. Ashley could never fathom the idea that following a trail of clues was more interesting to me than, say, meeting her parents. I wanted to become a master private investigator, one sought after by the wealthy and powerful, and becoming a master at anything required total commitment and focus.

  As I ran, I couldn’t help replaying the conversation with Ashley. One thing she’d said—“You don’t let anyone in”—really grated on me. She was wrong about that. It wasn’t a case of my not letting people in; I was ready to let people in, but I wanted them to be the right people, people who understood my desire to master a discipline few others cared about—whether those people turned out to be romantic partners or business partners.

  From Strawberry Fields, I took a circuitous route northeast across the park, jogging around the lake, past the Great Lawn, behind the Met, and on the running track alongside the reservoir, to the very top of the park at 110th Street, where I ran a few blocks north to the parking garage on 113th.

  This remote garage is where I kept my car: my grandfather’s 1970 Mercedes 280SE. It was a venerable dark maroon sedan with stylish rounded fenders and headlights, walnut grain dashboard, and leather upholstery. If it ran better, I would have referred to it as “vintage.” When my grandfather was alive, he’d kept it in the garage across the street from the apartment, but when I inherited the car, the only garage I could afford was this one in Harlem. I drove back, and the second I turned onto 77th Street, I lucked out:
another car vacated a spot directly in front of my building.

  Upstairs, I showered and dressed. Slipping on my grandfather’s Omega wristwatch, I gazed at Ashley’s photo on my bureau one last time before placing it in the bottom drawer with those of other past girlfriends. I went into the living room and behind the bar, and poured myself a highball of Macallan 18-year on the rocks. Strolling over to the ’60s Zenith hi-fi console that looked like a sideboard, I put on a favorite Sinatra LP and stared down at Amsterdam Avenue while sipping my scotch.

  As Sinatra belted out “New York, New York,” I caught myself singing along. And then I realized something: Despite what had happened with Ashley, despite being coerced into taking a non-case by the FBI Director, I, Dakota Stevens, had the world by the balls. I was an American male in the prime of his life, setting out on a new adventure. As the song played on, my confidence soared and I became filled with an inner knowing that, someday, somehow, my struggling PI business would take off, and that my leaving the Bureau would prove the best decision I’d ever made.

  When the song ended, I finished my drink, shut off the hi-fi, grabbed my packed suitcase and left. I hadn’t visited my estate in Millbrook for several weeks, and as I waited at the stoplight to cross Columbus Avenue, I considered swinging by there first, on my way up to Boston. But Director Reeves had been adamant: I was to get out to Cambridge ASAP.

  When the light turned green, I took a deep breath—a breath that felt a lot less free than ones I had taken just yesterday—and grudgingly made my way to I-95 north.

  3

  Psychopaths and Psychopathy

  The next morning, I rose early in my room at the Charles Hotel and went running in the cool, late September air. As I crossed the Harvard Bridge, the river below was as still as a millpond. A crew team in a racing scull whisked under the bridge.

  I ran around the football stadium and the Harvard Business School, noting with a smile the hidden tennis courts where I had once made out with a beautiful redhead on the hot court surface in a cold rain—and ran back to the hotel. After a short workout in the hotel fitness center and a fast twenty laps in the pool, I returned to my room and had breakfast sent up.