“When did you arrive in New York City?”
She sits back and looks in the air. “I spent two nights at the Grand Central Hyatt. I arrived by Amtrak on Friday and departed Sunday.”
The room grows silent from the obvious implication. Patricia breaks it.
“Oh please. We’ve recently opened an Abeona Shelter in East Harlem, so I would venture to guess that over the past six months, I’ve been in New York City almost as much as Philadelphia. I can get you my work calendar if that will help.”
“That would be nice,” PT says.
I stick my nose in again. “Is there a point to this?”
“Win,” Patricia says. The edge in her voice is there but blunted. “Let me handle this.”
She is right, of course.
Patricia turns her attention to both PT and Max. “So what is your theory here? A quarter century after my father was murdered and I was kidnapped, I…what…found out that the perpetrator was living as a recluse in New York City, so I killed him?”
“No need to get defensive,” PT says.
“I’m not defensive.”
“You sure sound defensive. Your suitcase connects you to the murder scene. I would be remiss if I didn’t explore every avenue. Which leads me back to the night of your father’s murder and your abduction.”
“What about it?” she asks.
Special Agent Max takes out a binder and hands it to PT.
“I’ve gone over all the statements from that time period, and there are a few things I would like to clarify.”
Patricia offers up a what gives? look. I reply with a small shrug.
“Your mother, Aline Lockwood, found your father’s body when she came home from shopping. She then called the police.”
PT stops. Here again he leaves a little uncomfortable pause to see whether his suspect dives in. Patricia does not.
“Why wasn’t your mother at home with you and your father?” PT asks.
Patricia lets loose an aggravated sigh. “The report says, doesn’t it?”
“It says she was at a supermarket.”
We wait.
“It was almost ten p.m.,” he continues.
“Agent…” Patricia pauses. “Do I call you Agent PT?”
“PT is fine.”
“No, that doesn’t feel right. Agent PT, when my mother returned, I was tied up in the trunk of a car and blindfolded. I really couldn’t speak to what my mother was doing.”
“I’m simply asking whether your mother often went supermarket shopping at that hour.”
“Often? No. Sometimes? Yes. The FBI checked my mother’s alibi, didn’t they?”
“They did.”
“And she had been supermarket shopping, right?”
“Yes.” PT shifts in his seat. “Did you ever find that odd? I mean, she goes supermarket shopping. It takes under an hour. That’s a pretty narrow window—yet that’s when the killers show up. Convenient, don’t you think?”
Patricia shakes her head. “Wow.”
“Wow?”
“You don’t think I read up on my own case over the years?” she says, still keeping her temper in check, but the mercury is rising. “My mother, I mean, with all the crap you guys threw at her, she never complained. Of course, you guys thought it was her. You grilled her. You searched through her financials. You questioned everyone she ever knew. They found nothing.”
“Back then maybe.”
“What does that mean?”
“Were you supposed to be home, Patricia?”
“What do you mean?”
“When the killers arrived. You were a popular and attractive eighteen-year-old girl. It was a Friday night. My guess is, you were supposed to be out. My guess is, your dad was supposed to be home alone. According to the file, you were in your bedroom. You heard noises and then a gunshot. You came out of your room and you saw two masked men and your father dead on the ground.”
“Point being?” Patricia snaps.
“Point being, if it was a hit, how would the killers have known you were home? It was a Friday night. You didn’t have a car, did you?”
“No,” she says.
“So it’s not like they could have seen your car in the driveway. The hitmen come. They see only your father’s car. Your mother’s car is gone. They break in, they kill him right away, and then—bam—you surprise them. That’s all possible, right?”
“Possible,” Patricia allows.
“So then what happened?”
“You know. It’s in the file. I ran into my bedroom.”
“They kicked down the door?”
“Yes.”
“And then?”
“They told me to pack a bag and come with them.”
“Why pack a bag?”
“I don’t know.”
“But they specifically told you to pack a bag?”
“Yes.”
“And you did?”
Patricia nods numbly.
“This is the part we in the FBI”—PT nods toward Special Agent Max—“have never understood. We didn’t understand it back when your father was murdered. We don’t understand now, over twenty years later.”
Patricia waits.
“This whole suitcase thing. I don’t want to cast aspersions or anything, but it has never quite added up. Do you know what my colleagues back then concluded? I mean, once they found out about the suitcase being packed. Oh, and your mom didn’t tell them. Seems she didn’t notice. One of the agents went through your room. Saw clothes missing from a hanger.”
Patricia does not move.
“We don’t understand the suitcase, Patricia, do you?”
Her eyes well up. I debate calling a stop to this, but she gives me a strong side-eye that screams, Don’t you dare.
“Do you?” PT asks again.
“I do, yes.”
“Tell me then. Why would they ask you to pack a suitcase?”
Patricia leans a little forward and keeps her voice soft. “They wanted to give me hope.”
No one replies to that. The grandfather clock chimes. In the distance, a landscaper turns on a lawn mower.
“What do you mean, hope?” PT finally asks.
“The one guy,” Patricia continues, “the leader, he’s in my bedroom. His voice is almost kind. He tells me I’m going to stay in a nice cabin by a lake. That he wanted me to have my own clothes—‘Don’t forget a bathing suit,’ he actually said that—so I would be comfortable, he said. He said I would only be gone a few days, a week at the most. He did that a lot.”
PT leans further forward. “Did what a lot?”
“Gave me hope. I think he got off on it. Sometimes, after he raped me in that hut, he would tell me, ‘Oh, Patricia, you’re going to go home soon.’ He would say that my family was finally ready to pay the ransom. One day, he told me he finally got the money. He tossed a pair of handcuffs and a blindfold into the shed. Said to put them on for the ride. ‘You’re finally going home, Patricia,’ he tells me. He led me to a car. Helped me into the backseat. He put his hand on top of my head. ‘Don’t bump your head, Patricia.’ I remember how gentle he was, putting the seat belt across me. Like suddenly he was too modest a man to touch me. Then he got in next to me. In the back. Someone else—maybe the guy from the first night, I don’t know—he drove us. ‘You’re going home,’ my rapist kept telling me. ‘What are you going to do first when you’re free? What food are you craving?’ Like that. On and on. You can’t imagine. For hours…and then at last, the car stopped. Both of them took me by the elbow. They march me to what I hoped was freedom. I can’t see anything, of course. I’m still blindfolded and handcuffed. ‘Your mom is right up ahead,’ he whispers. ‘I can see her.’ But now I know.”
For a moment, no one moves.
“Know what?” PT asks.
But Patricia doesn’t seem to hear him. “They lead me through a door.”
The room is completely silent, as though even the walls are holding their breath.
&n
bsp; “And I know for sure,” she says.
“Know what?” PT asks again.
“That familiar stench.”
“I don’t understand.”
“You don’t forget that stench.” Patricia raises her head and meets his gaze. “I was back in that same shed. They just drove me around in circles. I can hear them both laughing now. I’m back in the hut and I’m handcuffed and blindfolded, so they both come in…”
She wipes her eyes, shrugs, forces up a smile.
For a while no one says anything. Even the creaks of this old home stay respectfully silent. After some time passes, PT gestures at Max, and Max pulls out a sheet of paper.
“Could this be the man who raped you?” PT asks in his gentlest voice.
He slides a sheet with six different images of Ry Strauss. The first was a closeup of the famed Jane Street Six image. The last was Ry Strauss in death. The four between them had probably been created using age-progression software. One image would theoretically be Ry Strauss at thirty, another at forty, at fifty, at sixty. In some, Strauss had facial hair. In others he did not.
Patricia stares at the photographs. Her eyes are dry now. I am still trying to sort the possibilities in my head. Did Ry Strauss know my uncle Aldrich? I’m assuming so. Did Ry Strauss coerce or blackmail Aldrich or my family into giving him substantial financial assistance? Again I’ll assume that it was an affirmative. So what happened next? Why the art heist? Why kill Aldrich? Why kidnap Patricia?
What am I missing?
“I don’t know,” Patricia says with a shake of her head. “I could have seen this man years ago. The kidnapper always wore a mask, but this could be him.”
PT puts the images away. “After you escaped, you found a way to turn your personal tragedy into some good.”
It is a compliment, of course. The words, that is. The tone, however, tells a different story. We seem to be at this interrogation’s conclusion, but there is still something hanging in the air. I have found that in these circumstances, it is best not to force it.
“To be clear,” PT says, “I’m talking about your creating the Abeona Shelter.”
She wants to move this along, so she says, “Thank you.”
“May I ask how you came up with the name?”
“The name?”
“Abeona.”
I snap, “Why, PT?”
I instantly regret it. PT is no fool. He doesn’t ask dumb or pointless questions. I cannot see how the name of her shelters could possibly matter, but I know that his interrogatory here is not a casual one.
“Abeona is the Roman Goddess of Safe Passage,” Patricia explains. “When a child first leaves from home, Abeona is there to protect and guide them.”
PT nods. “And your logo, the butterfly with what looks like eyes on the wing.”
“A Tisiphone abeona,” Patricia says, as though she has answered this question a thousand times, which she probably has.
“Yes,” PT says. “But how did you come up with it?”
“Come up with what?”
“The idea of using the Roman goddess Abeona and the Tisiphone abeona butterfly logo. Was it your idea?”
“It was.”
“Did you study ancient Roman religions? Were you, I don’t know, a collector of butterflies?” PT leans forward, and suddenly his tone is inviting, kind. “What inspired you?”
I am trying to read Patricia’s expression right now, but the signals are mixed. Her face has lost color. I see confusion. I see fear. I see what might be some sort of dawning realization, but really, who can tell?
“I don’t know,” Patricia says in a distant tone I don’t think I’ve ever heard come from her.
PT nods as though he understands. With his eyes still on Patricia, he stretches his hand toward Max. Max is ready and drops the sheet into his hand. PT slowly and almost tenderly hands it to her. I look over his shoulder. It’s a photograph of a forearm. And on the forearm is a tattoo of that logo—a Tisiphone abeona butterfly.
“This is Ry Strauss’s arm,” PT says. “It’s the only tattoo we found on him.”
CHAPTER 25
It is much later in the evening—one-too-many-cognacs o’clock, to be more precise—when Patricia finally says, “I remember the tattoo.”
We are alone in Granddad’s parlor. I am sprawled on the couch, my head tilted back, staring up at the art deco inlaid-tile ceiling. Patricia sits in Granddad’s chair. I wait for her to say more.
“It’s funny what you forget,” she continues, and I hear the slur of the cognac in her voice. “Or what you make yourself forget. Except, I guess, you never totally forget, do you? You want to forget, and you even do forget, but you don’t. Am I making sense?”
“Not yet,” I say, “but keep going.”
I hear the clink of ice being dropped in her snifter. It is something of a crime to drink this particular lineage on the rocks, but I’m not in the judging business. I stare up at the ceiling and wait. When Patricia is settled back in Granddad’s chair, she says, “You push the memories away. You force them down. You block. It’s like…” The slur seems to be growing. “It’s like there’s a basement in my brain and what I did was, I packed that awful shit into a suitcase, kind of like that damned monogrammed suitcase you gave me, and then I dragged that suitcase down the basement stairs and I jammed it into a dank back corner, and then I rushed back upstairs and locked the door behind me and hoped I’d never see that suitcase again.”
“And now,” I say, “to keep within your colorful analogy, that suitcase is upstairs and open.”
“Yes,” she says. Then she asks, “Wait, was that analogy or a metaphor?”
“An analogy.”
“I’m terrible with that stuff.”
I want to reach out and put a hand on my cousin’s arm or do something innocuously comforting, but I’m very comfortable on the couch, enjoying the buzz, and I’m too far from her perch in Granddad’s chair, so I don’t bother.
“Win?”
“Yes?”
“The shed had a dirt floor.”
I wait.
“So I remember when he was on top of me. In the beginning, he would pin my arms down. I would close my eyes and just try to ride it out. After a while…I mean, you can’t keep your eyes closed forever. You can try, but you can’t. I would look up. He wore the ski mask, so I could only see his eyes. And I didn’t want to. I didn’t want to look at his eyes. So I would turn my head to one side. Just trying to ride it out. And he’d be holding himself, on top of me, and I remember his arm, and there…there was that butterfly.”
She stops now. I try to sit up, but it isn’t happening.
“So I would stare at it. You know? Like focus on its wing. And when he’d thrust and his arm would jiggle, I could imagine the butterfly’s wings were beating and it was going to fly away.”
We stay in the dark. We sip some more cognac. I am drunk so I start thinking about existential nonsense, about the human condition, perhaps, like Patricia, trying to block what I just heard. I don’t really know Patricia, do I? She doesn’t really know me. Do we all ever know one another? Man, am I drunk. I’m enjoying this silence. Too many people don’t get the beauty of silence. It is bonding. I bonded with my father when we would golf in silence. I bonded with Myron when we would watch old movies or television shows in silence.
Still, I feel compelled to break it: “You were in New York City the day Ry Strauss was murdered.”
Patricia says, “I was, yes.”
I wait.
“I told your friend PT the truth, Win. I go to New York City all the time.”
“You don’t call me.”
“Sometimes I do. You are one of the shelters’ biggest supporters. But you wouldn’t want me calling you every time I come to town.”
“That’s true,” I say.
“Do you think I killed Ry Strauss?”
I’ve been mulling that over for the past few hours. “I don’t see how.”
“What a ri
nging endorsement.”
I sit up a little. The liquor hits me, and I feel the head rush. “May I speak bluntly?”
“Do you ever speak any other way?”
“Hypothetically, if you did kill Ry Strauss—”
“I didn’t.”
“Ergo my use of the term ‘hypothetically.’”
“Ah. Go on.”
“If you killed him, hypothetically or otherwise, I would not blame you in the slightest. I might, in fact, want to know, so that we could get in front of it.”
“Get in front of it?”
“Make sure that it would never trace back to you.”
Patricia smiles again and raises her glass. She is fairly wasted too.
“Win?”
“Yes?”
“I didn’t kill him.”
I believe her. I also believe she isn’t telling me everything. Then again, I could be wrong on both counts.
“May I ask a hypothetical now?” Patricia asks.
“But of course.”
“If you were me and you had the chance to kill Ry Strauss, would you?”
“Yes.”
“Not much hesitation there,” she says.
“None.”
“Almost like you’ve been in that situation before.”
I see no reason to reply. Like I said before, I don’t really know Patricia, and she doesn’t really know me.
* * *
Years ago, I was at a private weekend “retreat” with a number of Washington, DC, politico types, including Senator Ted Kennedy. The location of said retreat is confidential, so the most I can tell you is that it was held in the Philadelphia area. On the final night, there was a party where—I kid you not—the United States senators took turns performing a karaoke number. I admired it, truth be told. The senators looked like fools, as we all do when we perform karaoke, and they didn’t care.
But back to Ted Kennedy.
I forget what song Ted—even though we had just met, he insisted I call him that—chose. It was something from the Motown family. It may have been “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough.” Or was that Barbara Boxer? Or did Ted and Barbara do it as a duet like Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell? I can’t remember. Anyway, even though we disagreed on many issues, Ted was ridiculously charming and fun. He drank at the party. A lot. He started to stumble-dance, and if he didn’t put a lampshade on his head, it was only because he was too drunk. By the end of the night, Ted needed to lean on a loved one to get through the door and find his room.
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