The Poet (1995)

by Michael Connelly

  "You told them?"

  "Yes. There was no point in trying to hide anything from them."

  I nodded.

  "What if I tell them and they ask if we still are . . . if we still have a relationship?"

  "Tell them the jury's still out."

  I nodded again and stood up. Her use of the word jury reminded me of my own thoughts of the night before when in my mind, as the jury of one, I had reached a verdict about her. I thought it was only appropriate now that she should be weighing the evidence against me.

  "Let me know when you reach a verdict."

  I dropped the doughnut into the trash can by the cafeteria door on my way out.

  It was almost noon before I finished with Kelley and Cooper. It was also not until then that I heard about Backus. Walking through the field office I noticed how empty it was. The doors to all the group rooms were open and the desks empty. It was like a detective bureau during a cop's funeral, and in a way it was. I almost walked back to the interrogation room where I had left my inquisitors to ask them what was going on. But I knew they didn't like me and wouldn't tell me anything they didn't want or have to tell me.

  As I passed the communications room, I heard the chatter of two-way radio talk. I looked in and saw Rachel sitting alone in the room. She had a microphone console in front of her on a desk. I walked in.

  "Hey."

  "Hey."

  "I'm done. They told me I could leave. Where is everyone? What's going on?"

  "They're all out looking for him."

  "Backus?"

  She nodded.

  "I thought . . ." I didn't finish. It was obvious now that he hadn't been found at the bottom of the drop-off. I hadn't asked before because I just assumed that his body had been recovered. "Jesus. How could he have . . ."

  "Survived? Who knows? He was gone by the time they got down there with their flashlights and dogs. There was a tall eucalyptus tree. They found blood in the upper branches. The theory is that he fell into the tree. It broke his fall. The dogs lost his scent on the road further down the hill. The helicopter was pretty much useless except for keeping everybody on the hillside up half the night. Everybody but you. They're still out there. We've put everybody out on the street, the hospitals. So far, nothing."

  "Jesus."

  Backus was still out there. Somewhere. I couldn't believe it.

  "I wouldn't worry," she said. "The possibility that he would go after you, or me for that matter, is considered very remote. His goal now is to escape. Survival."

  "That's not what I meant," I said, though I guess it was. "It's just scary. Someone like that out there . . . Have they come up with anything about . . . why?"

  "They're working on it. Brass and Brad are on it. But he's going to be a tough one to crack. There was just no sign at all. The wall between his two lives was as thick as a bank vault's door. On some of them we just never get through. The unexplainable ones. All you know is that it was there inside them. The seed. And then one day it metastasized . . . and he began doing what he was probably only fantasizing about before."

  I didn't say anything. I just wanted her to continue, to talk to me.

  "They'll start with the father," she said. "I heard Brass was going up to New York to see him today. That's one visit I wouldn't want to have to make. Your son follows you into the bureau and turns out to be your worst nightmare. What's that line that Nietzsche said? 'Whoever fights monsters . . .' "

  " 'Should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster.' "

  "Yeah."

  We were both quiet for a few moments, thinking about that.

  "Why aren't you out there?" I finally asked.

  "Because I've been assigned to desk duty until I'm cleared on the shooting . . . and my other actions."

  "Isn't that academic? Especially since he isn't even dead."

  "It should be, but there are other factors."

  "Us? Are we one of those factors?"

  She nodded.

  "You could say my judgment is being questioned. Getting involved with a witness and journalist is not what you'd call standard FBI practice. Then there's this that came in this morning."

  She turned over a sheet of paper and handed it to me. It was a faxed copy of a grainy black-and-white photo. It was a picture of me sitting on a table and Rachel standing between my spread legs, kissing me. It took me a moment to place it and then I realized it was the hospital emergency room suite.

  "Remember that doctor you saw looking in on us?" Rachel asked. "Well, he wasn't a doctor. He was some freelance piece of shit who sold the photo to the National Enquirer. Must've snuck in there in his disguise. It will be on the cashier stand at every supermarket in the country by Tuesday. In keeping with their aboveboard journalistic ethics they faxed this over and asked for an interview or at least a comment. What do you think, Jack? How about 'fuck you' for a comment? Think they'll print that?"

  I put the fax photo down and looked at her.

  "I'm sorry, Rachel."

  "You know, that's all you can say now. 'Sorry, Rachel. Sorry, Rachel.' It doesn't look very good on you, Jack."

  I almost said it again but instead just nodded. I looked at her, brooding for a moment about how I could ever have made the mistake I made. I knew then it had cost me my chance with her. Feeling sorry for myself, my mind ran through all the parts that had made the whole and had convinced me of something my heart should have known was wrong. I was looking for excuses but knew there weren't any.

  "Remember that day we met and you took me down to Quantico?"

  "Yes, I remember."

  "That was Backus's office you put me in, wasn't it? To make my calls. Why'd you do that? I thought it was your office."

  "I don't have an office. I have a desk and work space. I put you in there so you'd have some privacy. Why?"

  "Nothing. It was just one of the parts that seemed . . . to fit so well before. The calendar on the desk, it showed he was on vacation when Orsulak . . . So I thought you lied to me about not having a vacation in so long."

  "We're not going to talk about this now."

  "Then when? If we don't talk about it now we never will. I made a mistake, Rachel. I've got no acceptable excuse. But I want you to know what I knew. I want you to understand what I-"

  "I don't care!"

  "Maybe you never cared."

  "Don't try to put it on me. You're the one who fucked up. I wasn't the one who-"

  "What did you do that night, the first night, after you left my room? I called and you weren't there. I knocked on your door and you weren't there. I went out in the hall and I saw Thorson. He was coming from the drugstore. You sent him didn't you?"

  She looked down at the desk for the longest time.

  "At least answer that, Rachel."

  "I saw him in the hallway, too," she said softly. "Earlier. After I left you. It made me so angry that he was there, that Backus brought him out. It all boiled up. I wanted to hurt him. Humiliate him. I needed . . . something."

  So with a promise that she'd be waiting, she sent him out to the drugstore for a condom. But she was gone when he got back.

  "I was in my room when you called and knocked. I didn't answer because I thought it was him. He must've done the same because twice people knocked. Twice they called. I never answered."

  I nodded.

  "I'm not proud of what I did to him," she said. "Especially now."

  "Everybody has things they're not proud of, Rachel. It doesn't stop them from going on. It shouldn't."

  She didn't say anything.

  "I'm going now, Rachel, I hope things work out for you. And I hope you'll call me sometime. I'll be waiting."

  "Good-bye, Jack."

  As I moved away from her I brought my hand up. With one finger I traced the line of her jaw. Our eyes briefly met and held. Then I walked out.

  51

  He huddled in the dark of the storm-drainage tunnel, resting and concentrating his mind on mastering the pain
. Already he knew there was infection. The wound was minor in terms of damage, a through-and-through shot that tore an upper abdominal muscle but little else before leaving, but it was dirty and he could feel the poisons beginning to move through his body, making him want to lie down and sleep.

  He looked down the length of the dark tunnel. Only stray light leaking from somewhere up above made it this far down. Lost light. He pushed himself up the slippery wall until he was standing and then he began moving again. One day, he thought as he moved. Make it through the first day and you'll make it through the rest. It was the mantra he repeated in his mind.

  In a sense, there was relief. Despite the pain and now the hunger, there was the relief. No more separation. The facade was gone. Backus was gone. Now there was only Eidolon. And Eidolon would triumph. They were nothing before him and could do nothing now to stop him.

  "NOTHING!"

  His voice echoed down the tunnel into the blackness and disappeared. With one hand clamped over his wound he headed that way.

  52

  In late spring a city Department of Water and Power inspector, investigating the source of a foul odor that had drawn complaints from the residents living above, found the remains of the body in the tunnels.

  The remains of a body. It carried his identification and FBI badge and the clothes were his. It was found, what was left of it, laid out on a concrete shelf in an underground intersection of two stormwater drainage culverts. The cause of death was unknown because advanced decomposition-sped along by the damp, fetid surroundings of the drainage culvert-and disturbance of the remains by animals precluded accurate autopsy results. The medical examiner did find what appeared to be a wound channel and a cracked rib in the rotting flesh but no bullet fragments that could conclusively tie the wound to Rachel's gun.

  As far as the identification went, it, too, was inconclusive. There was the badge and the ID and the clothing but nothing else that proved that these were indeed the remains of Special Agent Robert Backus Jr. The animals that had attacked the body-if it had truly been animals-had made off with the complete lower mandible and an upper bridge which precluded a comparison with dental records.

  That seemed too convenient to me. And others. Brad Hazelton called me to fill me in on these facts. He said the bureau was officially closing the case but there would be those who would still look for him. Unofficially. He said that some people viewed the discovery in the drainage tunnel as nothing more than a skin Backus had left behind, probably a homeless man he had encountered in the pipes. He said they believed Backus was still out there and so did I.

  Brad Hazelton told me that while the official search for Backus might be over, the effort to explore the psychological motivations was continuing. But cracking the nut of Backus's pathology was proving difficult. Agents spent three days in his condominium near Quantico but found nothing remotely indicative of his secret life. No souvenirs of his kills, no clipped newspaper stories, nothing.

  There were only little things known, small clues. A perfectionist father who never spared the rod. An obsessive-compulsive fixation on cleanliness-I remembered his desk at Quantico and his straightening of the calendar after I had sat there. An engagement broken off years earlier by a bride-to-be who told Brass Doran that Backus required her to shower immediately before and after they made love. A high school friend who came forward and told Hazelton that once Backus had confided to him that when he wet the bed as a boy, his father would handcuff him to the towel bar in the shower-a story denied by Robert Sr.

  But these were only details, not answers. They were fragments of the much larger fabric of personality that they could only guess at. I remembered what Rachel had told me once. That it was like trying to put together a shattered mirror. Each piece reflects a part of the subject. But if the subject moves, so does the reflection.

  I have stayed in Los Angeles since it all happened. I had my hand repaired by a Beverly Hills surgeon and it only hurts now at the end of a long day at the computer.

  I've rented a small house in the hills and on good days I can see the sun's reflection on the Pacific almost fifteen miles away. On bad days the view is depressing and I keep the blinds closed. Sometimes at night I can hear the coyotes whining and barking at each other in Nichols Canyon. It is warm here and I have not had the desire to return to Colorado. I talk to my mother and father and Riley regularly-more so than when I was there-but I still fear the ghosts back there more than the ones here.

  Officially, I am on leave from the Rocky. Greg Glenn wants me to come back but I have held off on an answer to him. I have the leverage. I'm now a celebrity journalist-I've been on "Nightline" and "Larry King Live"-and Greg wants to keep me on staff. So for now, I am on extended leave without pay while writing my book.

  My agent sold the book and film rights to my story for more money than I could make in ten years working at the Rocky. But most of the money, when I get it all, will go into a trust fund for Riley's unborn baby. Sean's baby. I don't think I could manage with so much in my own bank account and I don't feel deserving of it anyway. It's blood money. I put aside just enough of the first payment from the publisher for living expenses here in L.A. and the possibility that I might make a trip to Italy after I finished the first draft.

  That's where Rachel is. Hazelton told me. When they told her she was being transferred out of the BSS unit, out of Quantico, she took her own leave and went overseas. I've waited to hear from her but there has been no word. I don't think there will be now and I don't think I'll be going to Italy as she once suggested. At night, the ghost that haunts me the most is the thing inside of me that led me to doubt the very thing I wanted most.

  53

  Death is my beat. I have made my living from it and forged a professional reputation on it. I have profited by it. It has always been around me but never as close as those moments with Gladden and Backus, when it breathed right into my face, put its eye to mine and made a grab for me.

  I remember their eyes the most. I can't sleep without first thinking of their eyes. Not for what was in them but for what was missing, what was not there. Behind them was only darkness. An empty despair so intriguing that I find myself fighting sleep to think about it sometimes. And when I think of them I can't help but think of Sean as well. My twin. I wonder if he looked into the eyes of his killer at the end. I wonder if he saw what I saw. An evil as pure and as scarring as a flame. I still mourn for Sean. I always will. And I wonder as I watch and wait for the Eidolon when I'll see that flame again.