The Fear
Ray Boyce was steaming, his forehead popping sweat. The long, thin wisps he kept carefully combed across his skull were mussed, and the squared-off bottom of his face was trembling like Jell-O.
"I don't get it," he griped.
Janek watched Kit recoil; it was as if the back of her big chief's chair were sucking on her spine. Janek looked around the office, a cavernous space that spoke of the high status of its occupant. The windows were huge. On the other side of the glass large snowflakes fell softly to Police Plaza below.
"I'm sweating out the case, doing a pretty decent job." Boyce mopped his forehead. "Least I thought I was." He spoke with a whine. "Meantime, Janek here does all this unauthorized bullshit.
And for that he gets-rewarded?"
Boyce's question hung in the overheated air. Kit stared at him with faint disgust. Janek, sitting beside him in the other chair facing Kit's desk, felt sorry for him. The poor slob was going to mouth his way straight into trouble.
"I don't know I'd exactly call it a reward, Ray," Janek said gently.
Boyce didn't bother to look at him. He stared straight at Kit, waiting for her to render justice.
"it wasn't a reward," Kit said finally. "Detective Janek is a specialist in this type of crime. His insights will prove helpful in solving it. As for his unauthorized activity, I've put a letter of reprimand in his file. Want me to read it to you?"
Boyce shook his head. "That's Janek's business. All I care about is my role. Am I supervising Janek or the other way around? 'Cause if it is, I can tell you right now, I'm not going-"
"I'm the supervisor here. You and Janek will run parallel investigations. If either of you finds anything, you'll bring it to me."
"What about duplication?"
Oh-oh-don't push it, Ray.
"I'll worry about that," Kit said.
"Sure, you'll worry. But what about the people we're going to interview? Two detectives coming from different directions-that'll get everyone confused." He glanced at Janek. Then his voice turned bitter. "Of course, Janek here's such a famous investigator they'll probably fall all over themselves they'll be so flattered."
"That'll be enough, Detective."
Boyce stared at her, nonplussed. "I may look dumb, Chief. But I can read the writing on the wall."
"What's that supposed to mean?" Kit's hoarse whisper should have cut straight to Boyce's ears. But the slob wasn't listening; he was too wrapped up in his self-pity.
"You don't want me in on this. You want Janek. I know why, too."
"Why?" Kit demanded.
"Because he's your you know."
Oh, you poor hotheaded son of a bitch.
"My what?" Boyce sputtered. "Your special friend's what I hear."
"Want a letter in your file, Boyce?"
"All I want is fair treatment!" But then something must have told Boyce he'd gone too far because suddenly he clamped his mouth. When he opened it again, his tone was different. "I respectfully ask permission to withdraw from the case," he whispered with restrained fury. "Permission granted." Kit rose. "I've got work to do.
Boyce, report to your precinct commander. Janek, stay. I've got a few choice words for you, Detective."
She walked across her office to the window, stared out at the failing snow until Boyce had shut the door. When she turned to Janek, her eyes were glowing.
"You're really a prick."
Janek shrugged. "You're the one who told me to go down to Quantico."
"And you played Sullivan just right, didn't you? I should have known." "I don't see the problem… now that Boyce has so graciously stepped aside."
"The problem, my friend, is he's going to talk. It doesn't do anything for my reputation to have a pissed off detective saying Chief Kopta's not a straight shooter.
"Everyone knows you shoot straight."
"Yeah." She looked resigned. "Well, you did it, Frank. Set things up just the way you wanted them."
"So punish me for it. Put another letter in my file."
She shook her head. "I hope I won't be sorry about this."
"You won't be." Janek walked briskly to the door. "Sullivan's the one'll be sorry."
Aaron had begged them space on the fourth floor of the Police Property Building in Greenwich Village between Fifth and University Place. The office was on the same floor as the narcotics storage room, past the detectives' lounge, down the hall, down three steps, up two, first door on the left. Aaron had borrowed two gray hard-rubber-top desks, two swivel chairs, a beaten-up filing cabinet, and an answering machine.
When Janek appeared in the doorway, he was in the midst of sweeping out an accumulation of used Styrofoam coffee cups, empty potato chip bags, and cigar ash from the last special squad to occupy the space. "I see we're slumming," Janek said.
"It's okay, Frank." Aaron gestured toward a dustpan. Janek handed it to him. "Remember last spring when the President was here?
Secret Service unit used this for a command post. That's why we got so many phones. Connected, too."
Janek looked at the phones, six five-button models, three on each desk.
Then he sniffed the air. The room was overheated and much too dry.
He turned to the ceiling; the fluorescent lights buzzed. He peered around, noticed a disgusting crust on the far wall, most likely pizza sauce, he hoped not blood. A radiator hissed out steam. He looked at Aaron, who nodded back, mutual acknowledgment that though their office was a shithouse, it was at least their own.
He helped Aaron sweep out the remainder of the junk, then returned the brooms and trash can to the cleaning closet. The corridor smelled of stale cigarette smoke.
When he returned to the office, he noticed his rubber boots were leaking. He pulled them off and stared out the window. It had stopped snowing. On the street the buildup of perfect flakes was already turning gray. He knew what he wanted to do: talk to everyone who'd had close contact with Jess, particularly the last few days of her life. He wanted to chart every hour of her final days: where she'd gone; what she'd done; the name of every person she'd spoken to.
He drew up a rough grid chart, showed it to Aaron, instructed him to get a police artist to paint it on their largest wall.
"And while he's in here with a brush," Janek said, pointing, "maybe he can do something about that crust."
He also assigned Aaron to talk to all the members of the Greg Gale group.
"Check them all out; get them alone; squeeze them hard. If you smell anything murderous or that smacks of a cult, let me know. But please keep the details of the fun and games to yourself. I'd just as soon not hear any more about Jess's sex life."
Aaron understood.
Janek had set himself another task. He taxied to La Guardia Airport, found a seat on the noon shuttle to Boston, then sat in the plane for an hour before it left the gate.
There were numerous announcements from the pilot: Air traffic was snarled up and down the eastern seaboard; half a foot of snow had fallen on Logan in Boston. Stewardesses prowled the cabin, offering tiny cellophane bags containing honey-roasted cashews. Then everyone was ordered off the plane. Then, suddenly, mysteriously, they all were ordered back on. And then, with undue haste it seemed to Janek, the plane reved up and took off with a roar.
When he reached Boston, it was nearly three o'clock Janek took one look at the taxi line, found his way to the subway, transferred at Park Street, and fifty minutes later got off at Harvard Square. Some helpful students guided him to the Law School, an immensely long building, where numerous assistant D.A.s of his acquaintance had, in their student days, undergone excruciating torture.
Janek appeared in the doorway of Dr. David Chun's second-floor office just as the psychiatrist, already in his overcoat, was stuffing file folders into a briefcase.
Chun was not pleased to see him. "You should have called, Lieutenant. Unfortunately I can't talk to you now. I'm going home before the snow gets too deep." "The snow stopped falling a couple hours ago, Doctor," Janek replied. "If you wait another hour, everthing'll be shoveled out."
Chun stared at him. "You know better than to show up here without an appointment. Please tell me why didn't you call."
"I didn't think you'd see me. So I came up anyway, took a chance."
Chun sat down. "Why didn't you think I'd see you?"
Janek sat, too. He'd gotten the psychiatrist's attention. Now all he had to do was hold it.
"You were upset down in Quantico. I had the feeling you wished Sullivan had never involved you in the case. Something frightens you about it, something you don't want to discuss. I need to hear you discuss it, Doctor. That's why I came."
Chun studied him. "You're different from Sullivan. You're a listener.
II try to be.
Chun thought a moment before he spoke. "Okay, Lieutenant, take a seat outside. I'll give my wife a call; then we'll talk."
When Chun came out, he was carrying his briefcase and still wearing his overcoat. Uh-oh, Janek thought, he's changed his mind. But Chun was no less anxious to talk; he just didn't want to do it in his office.
He guided Janek across Harvard Yard. Students were walking briskly on the freshly shoveled paths, and some freshmen were putting finishing touches on a snowman that bore a vague resemblance to Fidel Castro.
Janek watched while a rosy-cheeked girl in a white ski parka struck a piece of black wood into the effigy's mouth to simulate a cigar.
At Harvard Square the snow had turned to slush. A newsdealer hawked hometown papers. Chun led Janek through the Coop, past counters displaying Harvard running shorts and T-shirts with amusing slogans, then out a rear door and across a narrow street.
As they entered the dark lounge called Casablanca, Janek was struck by a throaty torch song rendition of "As Time Goes By." The place, dominated by a huge blowup of Humphrey Bogart, was empty except for a few student couples. Janek glanced at the jukebox. It offered esoteric selections, old love songs from the forties and fifties, renditions by Dietrich and Piaf.
"Oh, yes, something is bothering me, Lieutenant," Dr. Chun said after they were seated and the doctor had ordered himself a double martini. "But you see, there's a strange thing about these serial cases. You work with them awhile, you're bound to go a little crazy. It's quite common to become depressed. Dealing with killers, talking to them, interviewing them-that can bring you down a lot sometimes."
He smiled, a crisp, neat little smile, then gulped from his glass.
Waiting for the doctor to continue, Janek sipped some scotch.
"Those of us who do this kind of work are aware of that. Inspector Sullivan, too. He's a bright man, stubborn at times, but like yourself, he's a hunter, so for him there's always the challenge of the chase. Not for me. My job is to profile. And to do that, I have to go inside a killer's mind. I never had any trouble with that before. But this case is different. Please tell me, Lieutenant, if you will, why you think it's different."
"I never said it was different."
"But you believe it is or you wouldn't have come all this way."
The same small, neat smile again. Chun lifted a toothpick from the holder on the table, used it to stab his martini olive.
Janek nodded. "I found your presentation fascinating. A confident, organized, highly competitive killer, sexually dysfunctional and all of that. But I missed something important, an explanation of why the victims were chosen."
Chun popped the olive into his mouth. "You've seen the hole. You're a perceptive man." He cleared his throat. "People who are murdered by a serial killer are not chosen for death by accident. In a sense, for which we must remember never to blame them, the victims select themselves. By the way they look or dress or talk they become attractive to the killer. Sometimes they become stand-ins for a parent or another person who has played a significant role in the killer's life. When we first started to work on Happy Families, we assumed that one person in each family, most likely a female, was the target and the the others were killed out of collateral rage or simply because they were witnesses. Then we found the case of the two brothers. So the gender thing broke down right there. to put it in a nutshell, I have analyzed these victims very carefully, charting every observable trait. And I cannot come up with a single common element of attractiveness. Except, of course, the families."
"But everyone is a member of a family, Doctor. If that's the only common element, why these particular families? For me the idea of families doesn't pattern out."
Chun swallowed the remains of his martini. "You're right, of course, and that, you see, is what frightens me so much about this case.
That's why I wish Sullivan had never brought me into it." He screwed up his features the way he had in Quantico. "What I feel here is… I don't know quite how to express it. It's as if there's nothing here, nothing particular-do you follow what I'm saying? It's as if this killer doesn't care about anything. As if nothing attracts him. As if he only wants to kill. And as monstrous as a serial killer always is, usually there's some little thing, some small fascination with people no matter how twisted or perverse, that can help us to understand him, maybe even to sympathize a little bit. But here there's a void, a nothingness. I've never faced anything quite like it. It scares me, the blankness of it, the nihilism, the zeroness. Look at me, Lieutenant." Chun presented his face to Janek. "Can you see how terrified I am?
Because where there is nothing, Lieutenant, no reason, no incentive, no caring, no human bond, then there is nothing to understand." Dr.
Chun grinned helplessly. "There's just… nothing."
And with that the psychiatrist hung his head and stared disconsolately into his empty glass.
That night, back in New York, the snow was swirling around the streetlamps, almost, it seemed to Janek, like bugs on a summer's night.
He phoned Aaron from the airport, was surprised to learn that Jess's things were still in her dorm room.
"The college wants the room back," Aaron told him. "They've been bugging the Dorances to move her stuff out. But Boyce put a seal on the door, then never got around to inspecting it. Course, we already know what a dumb schmuck he is." they met in midtown, rode up to the Columbia campus together, then separated at I 14th Street, Aaron to continue his interviews with the Greg Gale group, Janek to check out Jess's room. The dorm was a modern high rise. A moody female student with badly bitten nails and stringy, unwashed hair manned the lobby security desk alongside a grizzled campus cop. An oddly mismatched pair, they screened visitors and checked student IDs. When Janek told the girl where he was going, she gave him a curious look.
"Kids've been getting pretty spooked around that room," she muttered.
While he waited for the elevator, Janek perused the dorm bulletin board.
It was layered with notices that collectively demonstrated the richness (or perhaps, he thought, the poverty) of American college life: a lecture on Icelandic poetry; a rally for Palestinian rights; a black lesbian tea dance; a plea for information on faculty student sexual harassment, anonymity promised to informants.
On the twelfth floor he paused before Jess's door. The corridor carried a blend of sounds issuing from adjoining rooms: students talking, laughing; TV shows; heavy metal rock; someone practicing a cello far down the hall. It was the sound of young Americans, and it filled Janek with a bitter pain. A week before, Jess had lived within this sound, had contributed to it. Now her silent room 'spooked" the other kids.
The room he entered was small, a virtual monk's cell, containing a narrow bed covered with an Indian blanket, a pair of matching bookcases crammed with books, and a clean white Formica desk with a laptop computer centered on its top. A small CD player and a pair of earphones she probably used late at night lay on a little table beside her bed.
Janek sat down on the bed. He wanted to feel comfortable, but he couldn't. He glanced at the walls, which spoke so strongly of Jess.
Almost every spare inch was covered with items from her edged weapons collection: fencing foils; rapiers; swords; daggers; knives. It was an odd hobby for a girl, but Jess had clung to it since she was twelve.
She had fallen in love with the romance of swordplay from the day he had taken her to a repertory movie house to see Jos6 Ferrer in Cyrano de Bergerac.
"Thrust home, thrust home…" she had repeated afterward on the street, exuberant as she mimicked Cyrano's elegant lunge. Restless on the bed, Janek moved to the bookcases, then knelt to inspect the titles. There were numerous volumes devoted to fencing and edged weapons and also martial arts, which Jess had taken up when she started college. Janek remembered her words:
"There's so much crime around there, Frank. All sorts of muggings and stuff. A lot of the kids are scared to walk alone, but I want to learn to take care of myself." He remembered the way she'd tossed her hair when she'd added: "I don't like walking around afraid."
He sat for a long time on the bed, waiting for something to happen. The walls, the books, swords and knives-he waited for them to speak, to tell him what had frightened her. When they stayed silent, he knew it was time to take the room apart.
He searched the dresser first. He wept as he touched her clothes: neatly folded pairs of jeans, sweaters, jerseys, shirts, underwear. Her workout clothes moved him most, perhaps, he thought, because they seemed so intimate; within these garments she had moved, run, perspired. He examined everything, turned out every pair of socks, patted down every T-shirt, all to no avail. Aside from a comb, some costume jewelry, a pack of condoms, and miscellaneous coins, he found nothing.
When he was finished with the dresser, he went to work on the closet, checking the dresses, placing them lovingly on the bed, then exploring the interior of every sneaker and shoe. Behind the shoes he found a set of chromed weights and, inexplicably, a bow and a quiver full of arrows. When he had the closet empty, he stepped into it and peered around. Just above the door he saw a piece of cardboard. It was taped to the wall.
He hesitated. Behind that cardboard she had hidden something. Did he have the right to intrude? But his role now was not that of A respectful godfather; he was a detective investigating a murder. He reached up and pulled the cardboard free. Several photographs floated to the floor. He stooped to pick them up. they were Polaroids. A series of four shots, they showed Jess and another girl, wearing fencing pantaloons but also unmasked and, mysteriously, bare to the waist, fighting with sabers like duelists.
At first he couldn't bear to look at them. The exposure of Jess's flesh, the way her pert young breasts were pointed, their tips so eager and erect… he felt obliged to avert his eyes.
What the hell was going on with her? What the hell did she think she was doing?
She was playing some weird sort of game, he decided-perhaps some species of charades. Whatever it was it had shamed her or she wouldn't have hidden the pictures. But it had also meant something important to her or she wouldn't have bothered to keep them.
He wondered who had taken the photographs. Their existence implied an observer. Then he remembered that Polaroid cameras contain self-timers, so the camera could have been mounted on a tripod and set to fire off automatically. What are these pictures about? Do they have anything to do with her call?
As much as he hated the thought, he knew he had to examine them. Sweat broke out on his forehead as he held them closer, searching their backgrounds for clues. they had been taken in an all-white high-ceilinged room.
No windows showed, but something about the slant of light made him think the pictures had been taken very early in the day.
The other girl had pale skin, short jet black hair, and icy blue eyes.
Who was she? What did she mean to Jess? Why on God's earth are they both bare-breasted? Were they posing, clowning around? Or were they really fighting?
From the intensity of their expressions they appeared to be duelists. In one shot, in a corner of the room, he could make out their discarded jackets.
Why were they fighting, risking disfigurement and injury? Were they settling some kind of grudge? Daring each other? Showing bravery? Exciting each other by the ritual of combat? Janek sat at Jess's desk and held his fists to his head. First Greg Gale, now this.
But the longer he thought about it, the more clearly he understood that Jess was no less enigmatic than other homicide victims he had investigated. So perhaps he shouldn't expect to understand her; perhaps, like every other human being, she would turn out to be unfathomable.
He took up his search again, combing through her notebooks. He checked her address book for coded telephone numbers. He pulled every book out of her bookcases and fanned its pages for hidden notes.
He emptied her wastebasket, then searched each scrap for a revealing notation. When, at two in the morning, he finally left the dorm, a new security team was in place at the desk and he had to show his shield to get out.
He didn't sleep well that night. Images of Jess kept ricocheting in his mind. He recalled Dr. Archer's words:
"Perhaps you had unconscious fantasies about her. Perhaps you longed for her in some way you don't fully understand. was that true? He had interviewed Jess's lover, handled her underwear, searched out her secret pictures. When he'd found the pack of condoms in her dresser, he'd tossed them casually aside. But inside, he hadn't reacted casually at all. The condoms spoke of sexuality; if she owned them, she used them. And now, as whenever he thought of her engaging in sex, he felt something he couldn't define: a quick flush of excitement, followed immediately by a hard, harsh throb of despair.
Had he desired her, and, detesting his desire, immediately repressed it?
Perhaps Dr. Archer was right; perhaps he had forced his way into this investigation in order to stay close to Jess. was he after her killer, or was he really chasing something inside himself, some perverse aspect of his character he had hitherto denied?
The question tormented him until, with the dawn, he got out of bed, went to his living room, sat in his easy chair, and stared at Monika's glass.
Then memories flooded back, memories of their carnal afternoons in room 13 with the sea smell drifung to them from the lagoon. Longing for Monika, her body, and her touch, he knew that Dr. Archer was wrong.
It was Monika he wanted, not Jess. Feeling confident this was true, he knew he could go on.
He and Aaron spent the entire first week of November talking to people, then using what they learned to fill in the gfid on their office wall.
As is usually the case with students, Jess's schedule was rigorously defined. She went to classes, worked out with the fencing team, studied, ate, slept. No one took attendance at Columbia, so there was no hard proof which classes she attended and which she cut, but by putting together the recollections of her friends, they were able to reconstruct a large portion of her final days.
There were other less typical things she did, and they charted these activities as well: her midmorning therapy sessions with Dr. Archer; her late-afternoon classes in martial arts at a dojo on upper Broadway; her long, lonely early-evening runs through Riverside Park. But still there were gaps, often hours long. And they had no way of knowing what she did at night; students in her dorm came and went as they pleased.
When Janek met Fran Dunning, he felt a familiar glow. She was the confidante he was looking for.
Jess's fencing coach, Sergei Simionov, pointed her out in the fencing hall at the Columbia gym. Janek recognized her at once; he had seen her at Jess's funeral and at the cemetery, too.
"they were teammates and best friends," Simionov said. He was a stout, mustachioed, barrel-chested Soviet 6migr6, a onetime Olympic medalist in saber. "Fran's the one you want to talk to," he said.
Janek stayed to watch the workout. Women athletes fascinated him.
He liked their poise, the way they moved, their ease and comfort with their bodies. Fran Dunning, a thin, willowy blonde with pert features and puffed cheeks, moved across the exercise floor with the smooth, liquid mobility of a dancer.
He waited until the workout was over, then positioned himself outside the women's locker room. When Fran appeared, he introduced himself, then asked if she had time to talk. She was on her way to a biology lab, but she invited him to escort her as she walked across the campus.
"I know who you are," she said on the steps of the gym. "Jess talked about you a lot. I saw you at the funeral. I wanted to say hi, but you were busy with the Dorances. I didn't want to intrude."
Janek liked her. She had the same direct look-you-inthe-eyes manner as Jess. Taller, thinner, she carried herself the same way, too, back straight, head high in the confident manner of an athlete.
"I miss her a lot, still can't believe she's gone. You read about these things, but you never think they can happen to anyone you know."
"What do you mean by 'these things,' Fran?"
"Getting attacked, suddenly, for no reason. Running in the park, just enjoying yourself, thinking your thoughts. Then suddenly a man appears out of the dark."
"Could Jess have known her attacker?"
"The way I heard it, it was one of those psychos, maybe a mugger gone berserk." Fran stopped walking, looked at him. "Do you think she knew him?" "I don't know yet," Janek said. "Did you see much of her the last few days before it happened?"
Fran nodded. "The Sunday before. We spent the whole day together." she and Jess saw each other daily at fencing practice and also spent time together on weekends. That particular Sunday was the last day of the Custom Knives Show, so they joined up in the morning, took the subway down to Grand Central, then walked over to the Hotel Roosevelt, where the show was being held.
"Jess got me started with knives. She had this great collection, mostly historical pieces, Italian stilettos, a couple of Japanese tantos, an Indonesian kris, a tertffic French rapier. When I saw her stuff, I knew I wanted to collect, too. She was very generous with advice, and she steered me to the good dealers. That's how we became friends. On the fencing team we were rivals. We kidded each other about one of us switching to saber so we wouldn't have to compete. The joke, of course, was that neither of us was willing to switch."
American-made custom knives were Jess's most recent passion. And as with the historical daggers and swords, she was the one who took the lead, learning to differentiate the work of the leading makers, then introducing Fran Dunning to the field.
"The knives some of those men make are remarkable," Fran said. "They're like art objects, but still, you can use them. Hunting knives, bowies, fighting knivesJess thought knifemaking was one of the few crafts at which Americans excel."
The knife show was held on the mezzanine floor of the hotel. The main room was a large hall, filled with long exhibition tables arranged along aisles, occupied by hundreds of knifemakers from all over the country who had brought their wares to sell. At first Jess and Fran explored together; then they split up so each girl could look at the knives that most interested her. When Fran rejoined Jess, she sensed her friend was upset.
"I asked her if something was the matter," Fran told Janek as they crossed in front of Butler Library. "She shook her head, said it wasn't anything. I went along. What else could I do? But I didn't believe her. As I'm sure you know, Jess was not a moody type of girl. But something must have gotten to her because she started out so exuberant, but when we met up at the door, she was downcast, almost sullen." "What did you do after the show?"
"Took the subway uptown, worked out for an hour with foils in the gym, then showered and went out to eat at a Chinese restaurant on Broadway and a Hundred and Nineteenth. "
"Anything unusual happen?"
"Nothing I can think of."
"Did either of you buy a knife?"
Fran nodded. "Jess did. A real beauty, a switchblade with an ivory handle. It wasn't legal. The man who made it was very cautious about showing it to us." She smiled. "Jess told me you'd give her hell if you ever found out she bought it." A switchblade-why on earth?
"I didn't find it when I searched her dorm room," Janek said.
"Maybe she dropped it off at her mother's. If I knew Jess, she probably hid it someplace."
Janck thought about hiding places. "Something I want to ask you."
Fran peered at him. "I'll help you as best I can."
"First, close your eyes." Fran obeyed. "Now think of two women fencing. Imagine them topless, both of them." "Uh-huh…
"Think about it. Does the image remind you of anything?"
Fran shook her head. But Janek felt something tentative in her denial.
"Does it embarrass you?"
Fran blushed. "It is kind of wild."
She's not a very good liar, Janek thought.
"I found photos of Jess and another girl fencing like that. they were hidden in Jess's closet."
He stared at Fran, waiting for her to respond. When she looked away, he stopped walking and gently touched her cheek.
"Please understand," he said. "I need to know everything."
"Yeah…" Fran took a deep breath. When she spoke again, her voice was agitated and her delivery faster than before.
"There's a painting by a French artist, t,mile Bayard. It's called An Affair of Honor. Jess found it in one of her books about dueling. It shows two topless women fighting with rapiers while three other women look on. Jess was intrigued by it-I don't know why. She was equally intrigued by a whole slew of stories she dug up on women duelists. She told me she wanted to write a paper about them for some feminist-oriented European history course she was taking."
"But there's more to it, isn't there, Fran? Did she ask you to fence topless with her?" Fran nodded. "I didn't want to. For one thing it's dangerous. For another… I just didn't like the idea. So I told her: 'I'm a jock, but I'm not that hutch.' I think she understood."
"Did you take her proposal as a sexual overture?"
Fran shook her head. "If Jess was inclined that way, she never showed it. No, I think it was just something she wanted to do.
Fencing, fighting-those were things she loved. In some way, I guess, the image turned her on. And once she got it into her head, she wanted to act it out. Janek showed Fran the Polaroids. Fran could not identify the other girl, nor did she recognize the room where the pictures had been taken.
"I wonder if it's a fencing, salon at the Ruspoli Academy in Italy. Fran was there last summer. It's certainly not any practice room we use around here."
"A final question," Janek said. "Did Jess do or say anything that Sunday, anything at all, that made you think she might be afraid."
Fran shook her head. "I don't think Jess was afraid of anything.
That's why she was such a terrific fencer. I remember something she said to me once: 'I'll take life any way it comes.' I think if she saw someone running toward her with an ice pick, she'd have put up a terrific fight. She knew karate. She could disarm a man twice her weight. So whoever killed her must have come at her from behind, and the only reason she didn't hear him coming was that she had her Walkman turned up at the time."
Aaron's interviews convinced him that none of the members of the Greg Gale crowd had harbored any ill will toward Jess.
"They're not murderous types, Frank. Just your standard spoiled, overeducated, decadent, attractive young people with a hunger for dope and thrills. Actually they don't do that much drugs. Mostly pot, occasionally a little coke. to them the sex group's good clean fun, not a cult they'd kill to protect."
Aaron had looked into former boyfriends, too. Except for Gale they all seemed to be jocks.
"Maybe not the brightest guys, but most of them fairly decent. She didn't like pretentious or overstudious types."
Simionov, the fencing coach, had told Janek pretty much the same thing:
"She talked straight and she fenced straight and she liked straight-talking people. If she'd lived, who knows how far she might have gone? Bronze medal, maybe even silver." The coach had shaken his head with grief. "She had everything: talent, will, strength and speed, and as fierce a fighting spirit as I ever encountered in a woman. Who knows? With a little luck she might have gone all the way."
Fran Dunning phoned Janek two days after their walk.
"You said I should call you if I remembered anything.
Good girl! "What do you remember?"
"Something Jess said at the Chinese restaurant. It's probably not important, but I thought I should tell you anyway. She said she might have to stop seeing her shrink."
Interesting. "Did she say why?"
"No. But I'm sure the reason wasn't financial because she once told me her stepfather was paying the fees. I wouldn't remember her mentioning it except the week before she'd been very positive about her therapist."
"Try and recall her exact words, Fran? Did she say she might have to stop or that she wanted to quit?" "I don't remember exactly. But I had the feeling that she was disgusted about something, that whatever it was, it was gnawing at her, and that if she stopped seeing her therapist, it would be at her initiative." Fran paused. "I could be wrong, Lieutenant, but that's what I thought at the time."
Janek thanked Fran and reminded her to call him again if she remembered anything more. When he put down the phone, he thought about what she'd said. Jess's comment could have been a casual remark, but still he was glad he knew about it. He'd been looking,for an excuse to see Dr. Archer again. This time, he resolved, he would limit the discussion to her former patient.
The therapist had set their appointment for 5:00 P.m. As before, she appeared at the door of her waiting room precisely on the hour.
"Nice to see you again, Lieutenant. You have fifty minutes," she announced with a sympathetic smile.
As Janek followed her into the consulting room, he noticed that her curly red hair was dyed.
"Now, how may I help you?" Dr. Archer began smiling again after they were seated in opposing chairs. "Jess tried to get in touch with me two days before she was killed. Any idea why?"
Archer shook her head. "I have no idea, and I can't imagine why you'd ask me that."
"Her father and I were partners once. Laura Dorance thinks Jess might have wanted to ask me about him. Did she talk about him much in here?"
The psychologist looked pained. "As I told you before, Lieutenant, even though Jessica has passed away, I don't feel I can properly discuss her therapy."
"Look, Dr. Archer, I'm conducting a criminal investigation. Right now I need your help. If you refuse to give it to me, then I'm faced with a problem. I can write you off as an unhelpful witness or I can seek a court order to compel you to respond." The therapist was staring at him. Janek smiled to soften his threat. "I certainly hope that won't be necessary."
Dr. Archer sat very still. The office was silent except for the muted sound of classical music issuing from the waiting-room radio.
After waiting futilely for her to speak, Janek decided to take her silence as acquiescence.
"Laura tells me Jess began asking questions about her dad about the time she started seeing you. Laura assumed his name came up in therapy."
"His name did come up," Dr. Archer affirmed.
"Just his name? Or his character?"
The therapist tightened her lips. "I am truly mystified," she said.
"Why are you asking me about this?"
"Please, Dr. Archer, I'm not your patient. I'm here to ask questions, not answer them."
She turned away, irritated. "And you expect me to respond without the right to ask questions of my own-is that how it goes, Lieutenant?"
Janek turned conciliatory. "Can't we try and work this out?"
Archer turned back to him, then folded her hands neatly on her lap. "I shall try to help you as best I can," she whispered, then clamped her mouth shut.
He found the next half hour trying. Archer kept her word, answered all his questions clearly, sometimes even exhaustively. But she made no effort to be pleasant. Rather, she replied to him in terse sentences while gazing at him as though she regarded him as a torturer.
Tim Foy: Yes, he was discussed; in therapy a patient's parents always are. Jessica had described watching her father get into his car and then seeing it explode. Her father's death had been the traumatic event of her early years, yet her long-term response to it had been surprisingly positive. Seeing him die had hardened her will. She was determined never to become a victim. She developed all aggressive personality that she channeled healthily into sports. All of that was entirely to her credit.
Bad dreams: Yes, Jessica had been having them lately. Nothing unusual about that. A patient often feels a requirement to bring dream material to her analyst, especially in the early stages of therapy. The content of her dreams varied, but they were typical college-age stress fantasies: facing an exam while blacking out all knowledge of the subject; finding herself naked in a room in which everyone else is dressed; letting her tewnmates down by stumbling during a fencing match and thus losing a tournament to a rival school.
Sex: Jessica had the normal longings of a woman her age with no indications of lesbianism beyond normal parameters. Again much to her credit, her initial exhilaration at the anonymous sex to which Greg Gale had introduced her gave way fairly quickly to feelings of inner emptiness and ennui.
The topless fencing episode: That could be viewed in a sexual context, although Dr. Archer saw it somewhat differently. Jessica had brought it up at their first session. It was her "presenting symptom."
She was disturbed about it. She felt that by staging the scene with the other girl, a British fencer she had befriended at the Ruspoli School in Italy, she had done something forbidden, possibly even evil.
"The imagery of the Bayard painting embedded itself in Jessica's mind,"
Archer explained. "She was fascinated by the seminudity of it, the notion of women exposing their bared flesh to a steel sword. She equated it with the stripped-down costuming of male boxers. to fight bare meant to duel seriously, even to the death. We spent several sessions working through her troubled feelings about it, especially her guilt over having talked the English girl into trying it.
In my analysis I tried to focus on the underlying meaning of the scene.
What we came up with (and I emphasize we did this together) was that Jessica's strong attraction to fencing and to martial arts was based on her romantic notion of heroism. I called it the gladiator's syndrome, the idea that the highest, most noble way of life is the way of the warrior who regularly offers his body to injury or death for the delectation of the public. The gladiator's sacrifice is for the benefit of those who watch him. By engaging in dangerous fights, he fulfills the innermost needs of his audience, channeling its bloodlust into sport, stylizing its collective aggression into art. At the same time he, or she, in the case of Jessica, surrounds herself with an aura of glamour. It's close to the Japanese samurai ideal, but with the added component of exhibitionism. It's a hard, short life of intense experience-perilous, painful, and, ultimately, self-sacrificial."
It was a brilliant analysis, and Janek was dazzled by it. He was also impressed at the way Archer seemed to come alive. But the change in her demeanor made him uneasy. The voice she used to explain the fencing episode was different from her voice when answering his other queries. It was more vital, authoritative, indicative of an inner power and confidence that didn't fit with her earlier pettiness. Now he felt he was listening to another person altogether, a strong, dynamic temperament hiding behind a bland, nondescript fagade. But even before, he realized, Archer's eyes had betrayed her. Her relentless gaze should have warned him he was dealing with an extraordinary individual, far more passionate, forceful, and intelligent than her insipid professional manner and constricted body language would suggest.
But then another transformation, which Janek found equally surprising, took place. When he mentioned the Polaroids he'd found in Jess's closet, he saw an immediate pinching up of the eyes, followed by a grimace of anger. The reaction was fleeting, covered up almost instantly by a patient nodding of the head. But Janek was certain about what he'd seen: Jess had not told Archer about the pictures, and for that the therapist now felt betrayed.
"I take it you didn't know about them," he asked.
Archer shrugged the omission off. "A patient will almost always hold something back." Her tone connoted superior wisdom. "A little shield against the therapist, a small corner of privacy to be preserved.":,Do the photographs surprise you?" 'Not the photographs so much as the way Jessica hid them. I have to admit that surprises me a bit."
"Why?" Archer raised an eyebrow. "You found them, didn't ou?" Janek squinted. "You're not suggesting she expected me to search her room?"
"Of course not, Lieutenant. But she didn't hide them all that well.
A good hiding place is an irrevocable hiding place, one that stays secret even after the hider's death."
"So what does that tell you?"
When Archer began to speak, Janek recognized the same authoritative voice she'd used while analyzing the fencing incident.
"It tells me Jessica wasn't all that ashamed about partaking in the scene. I know from what she told me how difficult it was for her to set it up. I know she proposed the idea to a teammate here in New York and, to her embarrassment, was rebuffed. Still, she needed a confederate, in this case the English girl, and so she took a chance. By merely broaching such a bizarre idea, she risked exposing herself to the other girl's ridicule."
But this time the other girl went along." 'She did. And I think that that, ultimately, is what got Jessica so upset. Not that the English girl went along, but the way she went along, as if she took it as a seduction on Jessica's part and regarded it as a forbidden act."
"But there's still something I don't understand, Doctor. You say Jess was troubled by the incident. If she was, why didn't she destroy the photographs?"
Archer paused to reflect. "Difficult to say. Perhaps for the same reason people often hesitate to destroy documentation even when it contains material that's painful for them to see or read. Jessica staged the duel. She had a large emotional investment in it. to destroy the photographs of the scene she'd worked so hard to set up would be to deny herself any chance to contemplate it in the future and perhaps even to revel in what she'd done."
Janek smiled. "You're a fascinating woman, Doctor. It's very interesting to talk to you."
The therapist smiled demurely, then glanced at her watch. "Which brings us," she said, "to the end of the session. Your fifty minutes are nearly up."
A final question." Archer motioned for Janek to ask it. "I have it from one of Jess's closest friends, who spoke to her just days before she died, that she was thinking about quitting therapy."
"And you want to know what I think about that?" Archer looked past him toward the opposite wall. "In this business we're used to sudden changes in a patient's feelings. In the therapeutic relationship the therapist often comes to represent important figures in the patient's life-parent, sibling, lover-toward whom the patient then acts out. So, you see, when a patient contemplates leaving her therapist, it's only a natural by-product of the process."
"So I shouldn't make too much of it?"
"You may make of it whatever you like," the psychologist replied, rising. On their way to the door she turned to him again. "Have you given any thought to what I said last time?" Janek nodded. "I thought about it.'-' "And dismissed it out of hand?"
"Not at all. But after I thought about it awhile, I decided you were wrong."
Archer grinned. "You work in a most dangerous and stressful field, Lieutenant. There's bound to be some distortion in your view of things."
Janek smiled. "Think I could use some therapy, Doctor?"
Her grin widened. "We can all use therapy, Lieutenant. In your case I'd say it certainly wouldn't hurt." they both chuckled over that. Then at the door Janek thanked her for her time. "I hope we can talk again."
The therapist nodded. "Anytime, Lieutenant. Just give me a call. I shall always try to fit you in."
That evening Janek took a long walk. Leaving his apartment at six o'clock, when the rush-hour traffic was just at its crest, he headed up Broadway to merge with the throngs still surging out of the subways. On his route he passed stores offering high- and low-fashion gar ments; markets offering sturgeon and pastrami; Chinese, Turkish, Lebanese, and Ethiopian restaurants; bars catering to gays and transvestites; panhandlers; dope dealers; homeless people living in cardboard boxes; old people sitting on benches; and aggressive young people on the make.
By the time he reached the Columbia University campus, he felt he had confronted a cross section of the human condition.
At 114th Street he turned into Riverside Park. Although it was a chilly November night, the joggers were out in force. He didn't see many lone runners; press and TV coverage about Jess was still in the public mind. But as he walked farther uptown, the number dwindled off, until, north of the Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center, there were none at all.
It was a basic principle of his trade that the first step in any investigation was to go to the crime scene and get a feeling for the place. Since he and Aaron had taken over the case from Boyce, he had been putting such a visit off. Now, approaching the spot where Jess's body had been dragged off the jogging path, he felt his heartheat quicken.
The streetlamps were on, but in the long, narrow strip of parkland the foliage was dense and the shadows were deep. Despite the darkness, it didn't take him long to find the spot. Orange-tipped police stakes caught the ambient light cast by cars racing above on Riverside Drive. And then he was surprised. There were a good dozen bunches of flowers, mostly dfied up but all the more poignant for being so, arranged along the bottom row of stones of an old retaining wall just behind the site. Stubs of candles were set there, too, in little hardened pools of melted wax. People had heard that a fine young woman had died in this place; they had been moved, had come and left tangible evidence of their caring. So now in the underbrush, amidst the jettisoned Coke cans and discarded sandwich wrappers, a small shrine had been erected at the Scene of Suffering. It would last until the first heavy snow.
The glue: Janek was obsessed by it. The ice picks were bad enough; they didn't reflect the caring of a knife, the quick dispatch of a bullet, the hatred of a poison. Leaving the picks embedded was bad, too. You didn't bother to use something fine to take your victim's life; you used a throwaway. Like eating your dinner off a paper plate or drinking your wine from a Styrofoam cup, it was a way of showing your contempt.
But the glue was worse; the glue was truly awful. Janek had investigated many homicides in which victims had been bound. He'd seen handcuffs and rope burns and even barbed wire cutting into flesh. He'd seen his share of mutilations, too: cuts, slices, and, in the Switch Case, actual dismemberment, decapitation. But glue was different. Glue was made of animal wastes, old bones and hooves boiled down to a viscous jelly. Glue was what you used to stick pieces of wood together, not to bind the parts of a human being. Glue said: "I don't desecrate by cutting; I'm not a psychotic acting out my rage." Glue said: "I'm cool, patient. I go about my chosen task the way an undertaker goes about his. I'm neat and careful and whistle a merry tune as I seal up people's body cavities."
Janek thought he hated this killer more than any killer he had ever sought, not only because the man had taken the life of a person he had loved but also because he had done so with such dehumanizing scorn.
He was watching the late-evening news, trying to concentrate on an awful story about a ten-year-old boy set on fire because he refused to buy crack from a school bully, when his telephone rang. It was Monika calling with wonderful news. She would be coming through New York in three weeks' time, en route to a psychiatrists' conference in San Francisco.
"I hope you're planning to stay awhile," Janek said.
"Can I take that as an invitation?"
"You bet you can! How much time can you give me?"
"Two or three days. Maybe a couple more on my way home."
That wasn't very much, but it was better than nothing. "How about a couple of years?" he asked. Monika laughed. "Why don't you come out to San Francisco with me?"
"Sure. And take a little room down the hall so the chambermaids won't get any funny ideas."
As they talked, he picked up the glass she'd given him, angled it so it caught the light.
"Maybe I ought to join you in Frisco," he said. "I've been spending so much time with shrinks lately I'm sure I'd feel right at home."
Monika was intrigued by his account of his meeting with Dr. Chun but was skeptical about something Dr. Archer had said.
"It's true," she told him, "that a patient who wants to leave therapy can be acting out against an analyst who reminds her of a difficult figure in her life. But your goddaughter wasn't in treatment long enough to develop that kind of strong transference relationship."
"How long would it take?" Janek asked.
"Several months at least."
"Can you think of any other reason why Jess may have wanted to quit?"
"There could have been a lot of reasons. Anxiety caused by her therapy or a personal dislike for her therapist. I lost a patient once because he saw me unexpectedly in a nightclub."
"What was so bad about that?"
"Normally nothing. But this man idealized me. When he saw me dancing with my husband in a sexy environment, he was thrown into such turmoil he couldn't relate to me any longer as his analyst."
"You say he saw you. Did you see him, too?"
"Yes, our eyes met," she said.
"How did you react?"
"I smiled at him."
"Ever occur to you he might have followed you to the nightclub?"
She laughed. "I never thought of that."
"It could make all the difference," he said. "to me the question is did he quit therapy because he saw you or because you saw him?"
"And therein," Monika said, laughing, "must lie the difference between a detective and an analyst."
Later he asked her if she thought Archer had deliberately misled him.
"I have no way of knowing," she said, "but her acting-out explanation strikes me as glib." "Well, suppose Jess ran into her unexpectedly at the knife show? Something happened there that changed her mood. But why would seeing Archer shake her up?"
"How did Jess'feel about knives?" "She was passionate about them."
"Well, then, that could have been it," Monika said. "Suddenly there was her analyst infringing on her territory. But it's all conjecture, isn't it?"
"It always is," Janek agreed.
The next morning, over breakfast with Aaron at a Greek coffee shop around the corner from the Police Property Building, Janek described Dr.
Archer.
"Tiny woman, built like a butterball, kindly smile, bland, self-effacing voice, a little fussy, a little too precise about time. But when I stoke her up, she turns difficult. Doesn't want to answer questions, wants to ask them. The end of our first interview she tried to turn things around, make me think I was probing because I had 'unconscious sexual fantasies' about Jess. Second time I put on some stress, and suddenly I started picking up on her anger. She's good at concealing, but the rage shows through, which tells me how strong it must be inside. She gives me a plausible but phony explanation as to why Jess may have wanted to quit on her, a lot of brilliant but tortured analysis about the fencing incident, and some strange stuff about a good hiding place being an irrevocable hiding place-whatever the hell that means. I don't know what the bottom line is on her, Aaron, but something about her isn't right."
Aaron picked up a jelly roll. "She's weird, Frank. Ever meet a shrink who wasn't? You don't think she's the Happy Families killer, do you?"
He shook his head. "How could she be? But still… I don't see Jess relating to a person like that."
Aaron put down his cup. "I know what you're thinking."
"What am I thinking?"
"That maybe the feds didn't conceal their case all that well. Maybe it leaked out. This guy Chun-he's a shrink. So maybe he spilled to another shrink, and Archer heard about it through the grapevine and did a copycat job on Jess."
Janek smiled. "Swear to God, Aaron-I never thought of that. But now that you bring it up Aaron nodded. "Yeah, Frank-I'll check the little lady out."
Laura Dorance couldn't remember who referred Jess to Dr. Archer. "I think it was one of her friends," she said.
But when Janek called around, none of Jess's friends would admit to having made the referral.
That night, as he walked home from the subway, he noticed an unshaven man in a seedy suit lingering near the front door of his building. As he approached, the man stared at him.
"Janek?"
Janek stared back. "Who's asking?"
The man unclenched his hand. He'd been holding an old newspaper clipping. He showed it to Janek. It was a picture taken at the time of the Switch trial. Oh-oh, Janek thought.
"It's you, isn't it?" The man's breath stank of cabbage. There was dandruff on his shoulders.
"So what?" Janek said.
"You guys work long hours. I've been waiting here since five.
As the man put his hand into his pocket, Janek tensed, reached beneath his jacket, gripped the handle of his Colt. But when he saw the paper with the blue legal backing, he relaxed and let go of his gun.
"I am serving you, Lieutenant," the man said, offering Janek the document.
Janek snapped it out of his hand. One look told him what it was. He stared at the man with disgust.
"Great business you're in."
"Hey, don't take it out on me, fella! Just doing my job."
Janek brushed by him and entered his building. Inside his apartment he sat down and read the document. It was notice that a lawsuit had been filed by the firm of Streep amp; Holster on behalf of its client, one Clarence "Rusty" Glickman, wherein Glickman alleged unlawful assault resulting in severe physical and psychological injury, for which he demanded a jury trial and one million dollars' damages.
Janek didn't sleep well that night. Somethingsomething he'd seen that could be important-nagged at him. Unable to recall what it was, he flopped from side to side in torment.
At two in the morning he remembered and sat up: The arrows! Iforgot to look inside the quiver!
The next morning he phoned Laura and asked her if she'd saved it.
"A bow and arrow set-I don't remember anything like that."
"It was in her dorm-room closet."
"I never saw it. I couldn't even bear to go up to her room. When you called and told, us it was all right to move out her stuff, Stanton went up there to collect her swords. He's put them out on consignment with a dealer. We decided to give away the rest of her things. Stanton phoned the Salvation Army. they sent over a truck."
"Do you happen to know if Stanton turned up an ivory-handled switchblade knife?"
Laura asked him to hold while she checked Stanton's list. A minute later she was back.
"Lots of knives but no switchblade. Sorry, Frank."
The Salvation Army sorted its pickups at its general warehouse in Brooklyn. Once inside the building, bulk donations were broken up.
Toys went to one floor, furniture to another, clothing to a third, etc.
Items such as archery equipment, unsuitable for general sale, were relegated to a special area.
By the time Janek found a friendly sergeant willing to help him, the bulk of Jess's stuff had long been sorted and shipped back out of the building, distributed to various sales outlets in and around the city.
"But there's still a chance on the bow and arrows," Sergeant Hunter told him as he led Janek rapidly down a long corridor lit by naked bulbs past cages filled with donations. The whole place smelled like a dry cleaning establishment. The sergeant's dog, an overweight dachshund named Clarence, scampered ahead. Hunter, dragging one foot behind him, strove mightily to keep up.
"We've got rooms here filled with anything you'd ever need," Hunter said. The sergeant had bloodshot eyes, wild hair, and a ragged gray-streaked beard.
"We've got a room of shoes, a room of crutches, a room of old dentist's equipment. We got pots and pans, lawn mower parts, old chemistry and Erector sets." Hunter rattled off other types of items processed at the warehouse: pinball machines; waffle irons; bathroom scales. "Would you believe we've even got a cage here filled with discarded artificial limbs? Strange maybe, but think about it. A guy loses his leg, say, in the war, and the vet hospital fits him out with a spare. Then he dies. So what does his widow do? Bury it with him is one possibility. Another is she calls us up. 'Can't stand looking at it,' she cries. 'Get it out of here.' And we take it, the way we take dam near anything. 'For every pot there's a top'that's what my mother used to say."
The weapons room was not a cage. It had a solid door. "Don't want just anyone nosing around in here," Hunter said, working a key inside the outsize padlock while Clarence, the dachshund, dribbled saliva over Janek's shoes.
There were no actual guns inside the weapons room, though there were plenty of toy models and realistic replicas. The array of other weaponry was fascinating, ranging from the kinds of sticks with nail points used to clean up parks to a huge wooden sword with the word "Excalibur" burned into its blade. In between there was a hoard of tomahawks and African-style spears, assorted clubs, maces, cudgels, blackjacks and shillelaghs, sundry bomb and mine casings, numerous darts, slingshots, catapults, boomerangs, brass knuckles sets, and, in one corner, a homemade guillotine.
The archery equipment was positioned against one wall. Gazing at the crossbows, longbows, competition bows, and myriad quivers filled with arrows all bunched together in a vertical pile, Janek wondered how he'd manage to recognize the equipment that had belonged to Jess. He'd barely glanced at the bow when he'd discovered it in her closet and tossed it with the quiver into the pile of clothing on her bed.
But there was one important thing he did remember about it: The gear had seemed almost new. Scanning the bows before him, he reached for the one that appeared the least scuffed up. He pulled it out and examined it. The name DIANA was scrawled in blue grease pencil on the inside curve just above the handle. The handwriting didn't resemble Jess's, but the bow had an elegant feel to it that made him think it was the right one. He set it aside and knelt to examine the quivers.
He rejected ones made of wood or hide. The one he'd held that night had been aluminum. There were three of these, all relatively unsoiled. He took all three and emptied them out onto the floor, being careful to keep the arrows of each in separate piles. Then, with Hunter standing behind him and the dog, Clarence, sputtering through slobbering chops, he inspected each arrow, many of which were tipped with extremely sharp points, and, when he had done that, the interior of each quiver. Finding nothing, her turned the quivers over. On the bottom of the first he found DIANA written in the same blue cursive script. He stuffed its arrows back inside.
"This is it," he said, looking up at Hunter. The sergeant shook his head, incredulous. "Got to congratulate you. All the years I worked in this dump, you're the first guy came around looking for something he gave away and ended up finding it." He pointed to his dog, vigorously wagging its tail. "See, even Clarence is amazed."
Diana: It was only later on the Brooklyn Bridge, driving back to Manhattan, that Janek thought of Diana, the huntress, twin sister to Apollo, virgin goddess of the moon, usually depicted holding a bow. What difference did the archery stuff make anyway? he asked himself And the moment he asked the answer came to him like a blow. It was not that he'd forgotten to look inside the quiver that had kept him up the night before. It was the word connection between Jess's possessing a bow and arrow and the name of her therapist: Archer.
"Oh, she is a piece of work is Dr. Beverly Archer," Aaron said, shaking his head.
He read to Janek from his notes, compiled after five days of investigation and surveillance, as they sat together in their office, the grid on the wall nearly filled in now with the activities of Jess's final days.
"You've been to her house, Frank. You know the routine. No receptionist. Patients ring and get buzzed in. Two doors to her office, one to the waiting room, the other opening directly to the front hall. That way nobody sees anybody, conventional practice in therapeutic circles. But maybe there's more to it here. Maybe this one doesn't want people to notice something not so conventional, from what I understand. Get this: All her patients are young women.,,
"No guys?" "Just females."
"Interesting," Janek said. "Tell me more."
"She owns the building, lives in the apartment upstairs, rents the basement to a young woman, a librarian.
I'd say the good doctor leads a tight, constricted life. All day long she sees patients. First appointment eight in the morning, last six at night. they all go in looking anxious and come out looking kind of dazed. Know what I mean, Frank? Glassy-eyed, smiling, but ' the smile's the shiteating kind, like they're all wrapped up in themselves, their dear little egos so nicely massaged and all.
Whatever she does to them in there, they all look like they feel better afterwards. Then, when the last one leaves, she waits a few minutes, comes out to do her errands. Usual stuff around the neighborhood-shoemaker, dry cleaner, grocery store, that kind of crap.
And that's it. She's out for maybe half an hour; then she's back inside. Lights go off downstairs. Lights come on upstairs.
Nine-thirty or ten, upstairs lights go off, too. And there she is, locked in, snug as a bug in a rug. No social life, no dates, no friends I can find out about. Her work is her life. It's girls all day long. Except for two other interesting little things she does."
Janek knew how fond Aaron was of turning reports into sagas. He used all the tricks of the tale-teller's trade: asides; digressions; embellishments; authorial opinions. Best of all, he liked to evoke questions. So Janek asked him one: "What two other interesting little things does she do?"
Aaron smiled. "Tuesday nights she teaches a class in 'Problems of the Adolescent and Postadolescent Female' at the Eisenberg Psychoanalytic Institute in Chelsea. I checked the place out; it's a reputable institution, no quack joint. they train laypeople, mostly Ph.D.'s, who want to be professional analytic-oriented therapists." :,And the second thing?" 'That's the goody. Thursday mornings she's picked up by a car service, then driven out to a hospital called Carlisle in Derby, Connecticut. She's a one-day-a-week consultant out there. It's a special kind of hospital, Frank-a hospital for the criminally insane."
Aaron tongued his lips to show how much he relished this juicy bit of information. "So, an austere life devoted to work. That can be a rewarding way to live," Janek observed.
"So I hear, though I haven't tried it myself. But you were right, Frank. There is something about her. Maybe it's the expression on her face when she doesn't think anyone's looking. Lonely, desperate, tense, maybe even-"
"@at?"
He handed Janek her curriculum vitae and a photocopy of a professional paper she'd written for The Review of Psychology.
"I can't make head or tail out of it. Maybe you'll have better luck," he said.
Janek glanced at the CV. The first line in the personal background section sent a clarifying wave crashing across his brain: "Place of birth: Cleveland, Ohio, 5/6/50.
That night Janek read Archer's paper. He found it intelligent, coherent, and unusually compelling. In it she described three female patients: "Alice," "Wilma," and "Ginny." All three were in their early twenties, and each was tormented by an obsessive fixation upon what Archer called a "shaming incident," a traumatizing event in the girl's past that had inspired great shame and humiliation.
The patient Alice, a blond athlete from an affluent suburban family, could not go an hour without remembering in vivid detail the gloating expression on her younger sister's face while she, Alice, then ten years old, had been severely spanked by their mother for an act the younger sister had actually committed.
Alice was so obsessed with that injustice and the shame aroused by the witnessed punishment that she could barely function as a college student, often losing all concentration, once even in the middle of a final exam.
After describing the crippling effect of this memory, Archer went on to describe the treatment she had devised. This consisted of provoking the girl into emo iating aspects, but with the novel difference that in the reenactment the outcome for Alice was triumphant. This time, under Archer's guidance, Alice was able to "reread" the expression on her sister's face. This time it was not gloating that she saw but shame and deep remorse. Thus, by rewriting the script, encouraging Alice to devise a new ending in which she would emerge victorious, Archer had managed to vitiate the destructive power of the memory and even to assist Alice in increasing her sense of personal confidence and selfrespect.
After describing two similar cases, Archer held out hope for patients traumatized by early shame. Though a successful treatment could not be guaranteed, the therapist was encouraged to be as creative as possible in devising ways wherein the patient could work through the insult to her ego.
"Above all else," Archer wrote in the conclusion of "I don't know." Aaron shrugged. "Angry… tionally reliving the shaming experience in all its humil her paper, "we therapists must never underestimate the debilitating effects and the haunting power of early shaming incidents. Often patients will carry the burden of such incidents as baggage through their lives, baggage, moreover, that possesses the surrealistic quality of becoming increasingly heavy as the patient ages. Eventually, unless a cure is effected, the load may become so heavy that the patient will suffer terrifying stress or even break down totally beneath its crushing weight."
Aaron, wearing one of his Hawaiian shirts, stood at the far end of the office, nursing himself from a mug of coffee. It was early the following morning. A cold rain, which had fallen overnight, had frozen on the ground, creating sufficient ice to turn the sidewalks into bobsled tracks.
"Tell me about it, Frank," Aaron urged. "Let's see what you got."
Janek, perched on the corner of his desk, spread his arms. "I've got nothing, absolutely nothing. You know that. "
"So tell me about nothing. Worst I can do is laugh in your face. "
"It involves a number of leaps," Janek said.
Aaron bit off the end of a jelly roll. "Go ahead," he said. "Leap."
Janek nodded. He stood and began to pace. "Two days before she was killed Jess tried to get in touch with me. Something was troubling her. About the same time she told her best friend she wanted to quit seeing her shrink." He turned to Aaron. "Leap number one: It was the shrink she wanted to talk to me about."
"Could be," Aaron said, biting off the center section of his roll. "I'll buy that. Go on." Janek resumed pacing. "Jess wag never involved with archery, but she had an unused archery set in her closet.
Her shrink's name is Archer. Leap number two: The archery set's somehow connected to the shrink."
"Farfetched but…" Aaron made a wave motion with his hand. "Interesting," he conceded. "So far I got nothing to laugh at."
Janek nodded. "Try this. When Sullivan put his high-powered FBI computer to work on the Happy Families crimes, the only victim connection it came up with was that two of the people were from Cleveland. Now it turns out Archer's from Cleveland, too."
"So?"
"It starts to add up. I think Archer's involved. I think she did something or she knows something she's not telling. I think she found out Jess saw or suspected something about her and-"
"You think she's the Happy Families killer?"
Janek shrugged. "Well, I wouldn't go that far. Not yet."
Aaron gulped down the rest of his roll. "Now you've done it, Frank.
That's a real stretch. Wanna know what I think?" Janek nodded.
"It doesn't jell."
"Of course, it doesn't jell."
"So let's talk about it."
"It's impossible. I'm the first to admit that. This tiny fat lady, forty years old-she couldn't possibly break into all those houses, murder all those people. She doesn't have the strength to be a stabbing machine. She may have the hatred, but she doesn't have the guts. The Cleveland connection-that's meaningless, too, because, among other things, only two of the victims are tied together that way.
Then there're other dangles, like why would she want to glue their genitals, and what's the meaning of the weeds, and what could Jess have possibly seen, and how could tubby little Archer get in and out so fast, so clean, never seen by anyone, slick without a trace. And I guess the biggest dangle is how could a trained psychologist with a full practice and a respectable career, who consults a day a week at a hospital for the criminally insane-how could such a person possibly be an insane killer herself.? She's a healer, right? She specializes in helping young women traumatized by 'shaming events,' right?" Janek paused. "So it's impossible-right?"
Aaron grinned. "Sure, it's impossible." He looked into Janek's eyes. "But we know what we gotta do, we gotta satisfy ourselves."
Aaron stretched. "The only way I can think to do that is check out the Clevelandconnected victims, see if either of them ever crossed paths with Archer. Another thing-Jess was Archer's patient, so I'll want to check if any of the other victims ever had her as a therapist. If it turns out even one of them did"-he grinned again-"then we'll really have something. "
Janek nodded. "That's what I hoped you'd say. Why don't you get right on it? And while you're at it, make a low-level request to Sullivan's people for copies, of the victim files. Not just the Cleveland pair, but all of them."
Aaron nodded. "I'll ask for the crime scene photos, too. ,,to throw them off?"
"Partly," Aaron admitted. "And also because I think you ought to focus on the weeds. The weeds are a message. You're good at reading messages." He looked at Janek. "What else have you got to do?"
Janek smiled. "Nothing too important. I thought I'd try and put in a penetration agent, that's all."
Early that afternoon Janek attended women's fencing practice. He found something tangy and enticing about the aroma of female sweat that wafted across the gym. Later he waited for Fran Dunning outside the women's locker room. When she appeared, her hair was still wet from her shower. Again he escorted her across campus to her afternoon biology lab.
"I'd like to take you up on your offer to help," Janek said. "I need some information on Jess's shrink." "I already told you everything I know."
"Of course, you have. But I wonder if you'd consider doing more."
"What?" "Going to Dr. Archer as a patient for a while. All you'd have to do is call her up, tell her you were Jess's friend, that you've been deeply troubled since she was killed and you feel you could use some help. I'm sure she'd give you an appointment. Of course, we'd reimburse you for your fees."
Fran turned to him, her eyes curious. "You think her shrink had something to do with it?"
Janck shook his head. "I'm not going to lie to you, Fran. I don't know the answer to that. What I do know is there's something there I have to explore. I'm not asking you to do anything more than see this woman a couple of times, then fill me in."
He could tell by the flush on her cheeks that the idea attracted her.
But she was also wavering, perhaps not certain she could bring it off.
"No spying, no snooping, no playing detective," he warned sternly. "You go in as Fran Dunning, with real feelings and real distress. If she asks about me, and I doubt she will, you can tell her all about our interview. The only thing you mustn't tell her about is this conversation we're having now."
"What do you want to know exactly?"
"How she acts, her manner with you, her feelings, if she reveals them, toward Jess. I've been in the waiting and consulting rooms, but I haven't seen any other parts of the house. So you might want to ask to use the bathroom, then let me know if you notice anything interesting on the way."
"What would you consider interesting?" He could see excitement in her eyes.
"Whatever strikes you. Believe me, Fran, if I thought there was any danger, I wouldn't ask you to get involved. This is a voluntary mission.
If you don't want to do it, I'll understand."
"Oh, I want to do it," she said. "When do I start?"
Janek smiled, then handed her a piece of paper. "Here's Dr. Archer's number. You might want to give her a call this afternoon."
The next day Sullivan called.
"How you doing, Frank?"
Fine. You?" 'Grand, just grand." Sullivan paused. "Understand you want to see some of our material?"
"Problem with that?"
"No problem. But I'm curious. Haven't heard a peep out of you since you started up there."
"Been busy getting organized, setting up an office, all that. NYPD's a little different from the FBI. We're the poor cousins, remember, Harry?"
Sullivan chuckled in response, a little roll of heh-hehhehs. When the chuckling finally died away, he got to the point. "Actually I called you about something else."
"What was that?"
"Your surreptitious little trip up to Harvard Law School."
"I wouldn't call it surreptitious."
"Call it whatever you like. Chun has withdrawn as consultant on HF."
"So?"
"What the hell did you say to him?"
"What're you talking about?"
Sullivan's voice hardened up. "Don't bullshit me. You go up there, next thing I know he quits." Janek laughed. "Don't be an asshole, Harry. Chun was uncomfortable with the case. Anyone could see he was.
During the ensuing pause Janek imagined Sullivan's mouth tightening to a line. But when Sullivan spoke again, his voice had turned cool and businesslike.
"We're pouching off the stuff you asked for. You'll get it by the end of the day."
"Damn gracious of you."
"Either of us finds out anything, we share it, right?"
"That was the deal."
"Well, good luck, Frank." And before Janek could wish him the same, Sullivan clicked off.
He spent the next three days studying the crime scene photographs.
When they arrived, he and Aaron tacked them up at eye level in neat, even rows on the office walls. Then, while Aaron worked the phones, trying to track down connections between the two Cleveland victims and Beverly Archer, Janek stood before each photograph, staring at it, trying to enter into it before moving on to the next.
He found this work extremely trying. He could not sustain it for more than a quarter hour at a time. When he felt he had sufficient command of his morning or afternoon quota of brutal images, he would leave the office to take long walks through Greenwich Village.
Sometimes he would wander as far as the Hudson River piers across from the strip of gay leather bars on West Street or, in the other direction, beyond Tompkins Square Park into the network of cross streets known as Alphabet City. And always on these walks, amidst these squalid surroundings, he would try to imagine the killings taking place. He did this with all the homicides except for one; he still could not bear to imagine what had happened to Jess.
The trick was to take the still pictures and turn them into movies.
Horror movies, splatter movies-those were what he projected to himself.
But hard as he tried he could not see tiny Beverly Archer performing a starring role. The intensity, the rage were there-of that he was nearly certain-but not the movements or the staging. He simply could not see her rushing into rooms, surprising people, thrusting at them with ice picks, then working on their fallen bodies with glue. Like most people in this world, Janek thought, the little shrink killed people in her dreams. But could she actually draw their blood?
Could little Beverly wield the pick?
"It's getting interesting," Aaron said.
Janek had just returned from one of his walks. The moment he came through the door he could feel a certain cocky confidence in the room.
"Tie-in with Archer?"
"A very nice one." Aaron grinned. "Old Bertha Parce, the retired schoolteacher in Miami-seems she taught forty years at Ashley-Bumett, a snazzy private girls' school in Shaker Heights. And guess who happened to attend Ashley-Bumett during that same period?"
"Little Beverly Archer." "You got it, Frank."
Janek sat down. He needed a few moments to think through the implications.
"So now it's not just Cleveland; it's a small exclusive school in Cleveland," he said. "Jess's shrink, Bertha Parce's student-" He looked up at Aaron. "It's almost too good to be true."
Aaron nodded. "I like it. It's starting to come together. But we're going to need a hell of a lot more. The subtle telephone approach can take me only so far. You know what I want to do, Frank: go out to Cleveland and make a real investigation into the lady's past."
Janek shook his head. "Too early. Expose our theory, and we run the risk of it getting back to her, plus we could screw ourselves permanently with Sullivan. Which wouldn't matter if we turn out to be right. But if we're not "So what do you want me to do?"
"Keep plugging on the Connecticut brothers, the MacDonalds. Match them with Archer and you win a ticket to Cleveland."
"And if I can't match them?" Janek shrugged. "We'll have to take another approach."
There was something about the weeds, a way they were connected, that haunted him on his walks. it was something that he'd seen but that hadn't registered yet, a binding metaphor that remained just beyond his grasp. He found that the harder he struggled to dig it out of himself, the stronger his resistance to giving it up.
Exhausted after three days of endless reruns of his self-made murder movies, he decided to try to freeassociate. He remembered the moment the process began. He was walking in an area of old coffee and cheese warehouses on Desbrosses Street when, strangely, he detected the aroma of dead flowers in the air.
The weeds: No question that Aaron was right; the ugly dour little plants contained a message. But what was it? What did they say? they had been left so they would be easily found; that could account for the fact that Sullivan's people didn't notice them at first. Left in plain sight, they were perhaps too obvious.
When, after four killings, Suilivan's team finally did not ce them, the weeds from the earlier cases had long since been swept away. But research revealed that they'd been there as well, their presence validated by photographs taken by local investigators.
Once focused on the weeds, Sullivan's forensic ex perts were relentless. they carefully collected the scruffy little specimens, then sent them to the FBI lab for analysis. Alas, no secret writings were discovered inside, nor were any poisons or stains found upon their surfaces. So if the weeds did not conceal a message, then they must be the message. But again Janek wondered: What did they say?
Not orchids or roses or carnations, Sullivan had told them in Quantico, meaning, Janek supposed, not the noble flowers left by mystery-story killers, But if the weeds were, in fact, ignoble, could they then be taken as ironic comment on those elegant, glamorous fictional murderers?
That was one possibility.
Another was that the killer saw himself (or herself if it was Archer) as unglamorous, ignoble, homely. And with that thought the binding metaphor sprang suddenly into Janek's brain.
He mulled over his idea for a moment, then stopped on a street corner, stood still, and closed his eyes. Carefully he recalled the various crime scene photos in which the weeds appeared. Slowly at first, then faster and faster, he forced the pictures to flash successively on a screen inside his brain. Yes, the metaphor was pretty, but would it hold? He would have to go back to the office and examine the pictures again.
His heart was racing as he entered the Police Property Building, tore up the stairs, then down the hall. With sweat breaking out on his forehead, he rushed past Aaron to confront the pictures on the walls.
As he looked at each one in turn, the metaphor locked more firmly into place. But still there was ambiguity:
The killings had taken place indoors, inside rooms each of which had four walls.
It was time now, he knew, to look closely at the pictures of Jess. And when he did, the metaphor was validated. Up in Riverside Park the weeds had been left leaning against the same little stone wall where he had seen the remnants of candles and flowers left by moumers.
Exhilarated, he turned to Aaron, who, phone in hand, was gazing at him skeptically from his desk.
"It's the weeds," he said. "They're always placed beside a wall."
"So?" Aaron asked, waiting for the punch line.
"That's it," Janek said.
"What?"
"The meaning."
"Meaning? If you don't mind, Frank, please tell me what you're talking about?"
"It's how she sees herself, Aaron. It's her message, her calling card."
"So how does she see herself?" Aaron asked impatiently.
Janek turned to stare out the window. "As a shy and homely girl without a partner at the dance. As a wallflower," he added moumfully.
Later, when they pulled out the seven pictures and lined them up together, it was so clear Aaron wondered aloud how Sullivan's people could possibly have failed to see it.
"It was their own word 'weeds' that threw them off," Janek said. "they locked themselves in with that. If they'd started out calling them flowers, degraded, ragged flowers, they probably would have figured it out." But still, he knew, it was the,placement near Jess that really was the clincher. And perhaps, too, before one could read the message, one would need to have a certain sort of woman in mind-a woman who could be considered a wallflower at the dance of life.
Janek met Fran Dunning at a coffeehouse around the corner from her dorm.
It was one of those sixties-type places, with little marble tables, uncomfortable European cars chairs, and a lone, slow, and very spacey waitress.
Fran had had three sessions with Beverly Archer. She found her a highly professional and compassionate shrink.
"She's really nice," Fran said, "the way she makes you feel so comfortable and all. It was kind of intimidating to walk in there, not knowing what to expect. But then I started talking about Jess, and I could see she was moved." Fran paused. "There were tears in her eyes, Lieutenant. She cared for Jess; I know she did."
Fine, thought Janek. It works better if Fran likes her.
Fran hadn't seen much of the house. The lavatory was on the first floor, off the therapy room. On her way to it she'd passed through a small office containing a couple of locked filing cabinets and a framed poster for a Botero exhibition. She'd also noticed a burglar alan-n system, keypad and siren, inside the coat closet off the front hall. "Did you mention the knife show?" Janek asked. "Not yet."
Fran paused. "Want me to?" Janek shook his head. "You've done enough, Fran. No need to see her again. Thanks for all your help."
Fran stared at him, concerned. "I wish you'd tell me what this is about, Lieutenant. I just can't believe Dr. Archer had anything to do with, you know Janek nodded. He knew he had to give her a reason. "It's not a question of whether she had anything to do with it. It's more a matter of whether she knows something and is holding back. Whenever I ask her about Jess, she talks about patient-therapist confidentiality and how it applies even after death. I find that strange, don't you?"
"I guess so. I never thought about it actually." Suddenly the robust girl athlete seemed terribly fragile. Her smile was weak; her eyes were confused. Janek patted her reassuringly on the hand.
Aaron wanted to bust into Archer's house.
"Just for a look-see, Frank. Me, alone, on a Tuesday night, when she's teaching her class downtown. I'll slip in and out. She'll never know I was there. You won't either, 'cause I won't tell you about it."
"What good will that do?"
"If I see something, I'll say I'm strongly convinced there's evidence in her house. Then we'll figure out a way to get at it legally. That way at least we'll know."
Janek was familiar with the technique and its rationale: the illegal break-in or wiretap to assure yourself that you weren't wasting your time, that there was a real case to be made. He had never employed it and was contemptuous of detectives who did. It wasn't just the illegality, though that was bad enough. It was the chain of deceit that followed, that led inevitably to perjury in court. It would be one thing to acquiesce if Aaron wanted to go in for a look, another to state later under oath that he hadn't known anything about it.
Aaron understood. "That's what I thought you'd say. But if there was a way, Frank-a way that was, say, a little less direct, what would you think about that?"
Sounds like shading. But he felt he ought to hear Aaron out. Then, as he listened and began to feel seduced, he understood why Kit Kopta didn't like to assign detectives to cases in which they were emotionally involved. they were in Aaron's car driving up Third Avenue. It was past midnight. they had long since passed Ninetysixth Street, the infamous DMZ, and were now deep into the huge Hispanic neighborhood of upper Manhattan, where the store signs were in Spanish, the streets were crowded, bodegas sold live chickens, and pharmacists' wives told fortunes.
"In all my years with Safes and Lofts," Aaron was saying, "Leo Titus was the slickest burglar I ever met. Charming guy. I know you'll like him."
"I thought I wasn't going to meet him."
"Yeah. Sorry. I forgot. Anyway, if you did meet him, you'd like him. How's that?" "Irrelevant," Janek said. they passed a battered-looking storefront gym. It wasn't like a yuppie health club in midtown. Up here a gym was a real, sweaty, sour-smelling place where slick-haired Latino boys with names like Pedro and Paco slugged hard at leather bags and skipped rope with exquisite poise deep into the night.
Aaron was still talking about his favorite burglar: "Leo's got this comy MO, but it always seems to work. First he makes a point of going into the house legally in daylight. Comes on as a telephone or Con Ed repain-nan: 'Hey, lady, gas leak around the corner, gotta get into your basement,' or 'Line trouble, lady-gotta inspect.' He's got nice company credentials, and he's got his girlfriend working as backup. If anyone asks questions, he gives them her number. She's waiting on the other end to verify."
"Yeah, slick," Janek agreed.
"On the first go-around he sees if there's anything worth taking, figures out how he's going to get in, and neutralizes the alarms."
"What's he looking for?" "Not the crap the addicts take. No computers or VCRs. Leo goes for the good stuff: money; gold; jewels; bearer bonds. He likes stamp and coin collections but won't bother much with art. Too cumbersome, he says, hard to sell. He likes stuff he can stick into his pockets."
"I doubt Archer's got anything he'd be interested in."
"You may be surprised, Frank. Anyway, it doesn't matter. Leo'll find something, and we'll take it from there. "
It was a complicated scheme, devious and tempting, which was why Janek had agreed to go uptown and take a look at Leo Titus. But he didn't think he'd end up going for it. I'm much too true blue a cop for this, he thought.
Aaron pulled into a space on the east side of Third, center of the block between I 12th and I 13th streets. He cut the engine and pointed toward a bar. A narrow red neon sign flashed BAD BOY. "We're meeting in there," he said.
"Gay bar, isn't it?" Aaron nodded. "One of the esoteric ones.
Whites cruising Latinos and blacks."
"I thought you said this guy had a girlfriend."
"Yeah, he does. But he's kind of a swish sometimes, too. Goes home occasionally with guys. He's gotten into some nice Park Avenue apartrfients that way."
"Shit!" "Hey, Frank! This isn't about sexual preference." "You know I don't care about that. But you make him sound, I don't know-undependable."
Aaron clamped his jaws. "Leo's highly dependable." He glanced at his watch. "Time I went in. I'll talk with him a few minutes, then bring him out and parade him up and down the block. He'll know someone's looking him over but won't know who. All I want is for you to get a feel for the guy. Watch his moves, see what you think."
Janek nodded. "Yeah."
As he waited, he asked himself what the hell he thought he was doing sitting low in a car in this none-too-elegant neighborhood, implicating himself in this thoroughly illegal maneuver. And the answer, he knew, was that he was at a point where he didn't care about legalities one way or the other. All he cared about was finding Jess's killer.
When Aaron walked out the door of Bad Boy Bar with Leo Titus in tow, Janek strained forward to peer. Aaron slouched in his usual manner, but Leo, a small, suave, coffee-colored man with neatly cropped hair and a debonair mustache, stepped forward with a stylish gait. And then, as they made their promenade down to the corner and back, Janek had to smile. It was impossible to dislike Leo. The lithe cat burglar moved with the bold grace of Fred Astaire. He almost seemed to prance.
"What do you have on the guy?" Janek asked as Aaron drove them back downtown. It was past 2:00 A.M.
The street life of Spanish Harlem gave way to the cold, silent, empty residential cross streets of Manhattan's Upper East Side.
Aaron glanced at him quizzically. "Hub?"
"He's not going to do this for charity, is he?"
"Charity?" Aaron shook his head. "Not Leo."
"So?"
"He owes me a favor, Frank. Let's just leave it at that. "
Janek nodded. He knew better than to pry into the intricacies of a detective's relationship with an informant. Such alliances could be built upon almost anything from real affection and respect to manipulation and fear. This time, Janek suspected, it wasn't Leo who owed Aaron a favor; rather, it was Aaron who was about to incur an enormous debt.
"Here's the plan," Aaron said. "Tuesday night, soon as Archer leaves for her class at Eisenberg, we pull up to her place and wait.
We're running a surveillance. After a while we happen to notice a black man with a briefcase enter the house. We sit tight. For all we know Archer gave him the key."
Janek nodded. "Go on."
"After a while the dude comes out. And now we notice instead of a briefcase he's carrying this overstuffed satchel. We look at each other. 'Hey,' we say,,maybe a robbery was committed in there.' So, having probable cause, we step out of our car and grab the guy. Leo's scared. He's done two tours in Attica, and he doesn't want to go up for a third. He starts to bargain. Is there any way he can get himself out of this mess? We don't take bribes, we're not that kind, but we're very interested in what he may have seen that could tie Doc Archer to the Happy Families crimes. Well, seems with all his snooping around Leo came across some pretty interesting evidence. So he trades what he saw for a walkaway deal on the robbery. And on the basis of that, valid information from an informant, we get a warrant, go in legally, and impound whatever he saw." "Suppose Leo doesn't see anything?"
"Then he exits with an empty satchel. The satchel's the signal: If it's bulging with stuff, he's seen something, we move in on him and make the deal. Otherwise no harm done. He just walks away." Aaron looked at Janek. "What do you think?"
Janek stared ahead. "We never had this conversation."
Aaron shook his head. "That's right, Frank. We never talked about any of this."
Tuesday, December 1. All day Janek asked himself if he wasn't making an enormous mistake. Twenty-five years in law enforcement and he'd never done a deal like this. Suppose Leo doesfind something, he asked himself, and they go in after it, and then Archer gets a smart lawyer who finds Leo's entry just a wee bit coincidental The lawyer goes to the D.A., who opens Leo up with the threat of a perjury charge. Leo quickly gives up Aaron, but Aaron hangs tough.
Could he, Janek, live with himself if Aaron got in trouble for helping him out? No way! He'd turn himself in with the result that the doctrine of "poisoned fruit" would prevail, the evidence against Archer would be tainted and quashed, Archer would get away with murder, and he, Janek, could end up doing a year in the penitentiary.
Would it be worth it? Not if it went down that way, it wouldn't be.
But there was another scenario, far more succulent. With one bold stroke he might solve a case that could otherwise require years of orthodox investigation.
That, he was ashamed to admit, was a possibility he could not resist.
At seven that evening, fifteen minutes after Archer's last patient left her house, Beverly Archer herself emerged, bundled in a shapeless gray goose down coat.
It was teeth-chattering weather. Janek and Aaron watched shivering from their parking spot as Beverly seemed almost to be swept by the wind down to the corner of Eighty-first and Second, then attempted to flag down a cab.
Several passed her by. Perhaps they didn't like the look of the short, dumpy lady thrashing at the air with her arms. But then a large Checker glided to a halt, Archer hopped in, the cab took off downtown, and, a few seconds later, after Janek stepped out of the car, Aaron waved to him and took off after the cab. For thirty minutes Janek waited on the corner, collar up, arms clutched to his chest, trying to avert his face from the wintry wind. "Knives-in-the-cheeks" was what he called the relentless, driven icy air that ripped into the sides of his face. He was shaking when Aaron finally returned. He stumbled back into the car, then immediately began rubbing his hands while Aaron pulled into a fire hydrant zone directly across the street from Archer's house.
"Sorry I took so long. I thought I should follow her all the way just in case she forgot something and came back."
"She could still come back."' "Harder now. Class started at seven-thirty. Which gives us a good hour and a half." He glanced at his watch. "Leo should be turning up. I talked to him this afternoon. Yesterday morning he did his utility man routine. No problems. The alarm system's disarmed." Aaron grinned at Janek. "Don't worry, Frank. No paper trail. I called him from a booth."
But Janek was nervous. Still got time to cancel this madness, he thought. He was about to call the whole deal off when Aaron gestured toward the corner. Leo Titus was crossing Third Avenue.
"Good old Leo," Aaron whispered.
Later Janek would wonder if the reason he didn't cancel then was that he didn't want to cause Aaron to lose face.
Leo didn't even glance at them as he approached the house. And then Janek had to admire the man's cool. Leo walked straight up to Archer's front door, paused briefly, and two seconds later he was in, the door was closed again, and even someone watching would have no reason to suspect that a burglar had just entered the house.
"Guy's got moves," Aaron marveled.
Fifty minutes passed before Janek became uneasy. Then, when he asked Aaron if Leo wasn't due out pretty soon, Aaron responded with patronizing patience as if Janek were a rookie in need of a steadying hand.
"Keep the faith, Frank. This is our one crack at her. It's gotta be a thorough search. Leo's good. He knows how to look for stuff, and he knows how much time he's got left. Don't worry. If there's something in there, he'll find it."
But that wasn't what Janek was worried about.
Twenty minutes later Aaron, too, started showing signs of nervousness.
"Class breaks at nine. Takes her a minimum of fifteen minutes to get home. Point of fact, she usually hangs around a while answering questions, stuff like that. So we're safe for another half hour at least."
"Does Leo think he's got till nine-ten?"
Aaron exploded. "I'm not stupid, Frank! I told him nine max.
He's got fifteen more minutes. He'll make it. Trust me-he'll be out of there in time."
At eight fifty-five they turned to each other. "Should have wired him up," Aaron said.
But Aaron knew there was no way they could have wired Leo, though it would have been nice to listen to him as he worked. If they wired him and something went wrong, their role would be exposed.
At nine Aaron smashed his fist against the steering wheel. "That son of a bitch better not try a double cross."
"Could he?" Janek asked.
"If he found something really valuable-I don't know." Aaron paused.
"I can't imagine it. Anyway, we would have seen him come out." He paused. "Unless there's some way he found to sneak out through the back." He hit the wheel again. "But he wouldn't. He wouldn't dare! He knows I'd come after him. I'd never rest!"
Ten minutes later Aaron announced he was going in no matter the risk to the case. Janek gently put his hand on Aaron's arm.
"Yeah, you're right, someone has to go in. But this is my case. If it's going to get screwed up, I'll do the screwing."
"You can't go in there, Frank. You're a lieutenant, for Christ sakes!"
"I'll say I saw a thief enter and followed him in hot pursuit."
"Jesus!
"They'll believe me."
"Leo's my boy. I feel… awful."
"Could be it's not his fault. Maybe he ran into whatever." Janek picked up a radio. "No talking unless you see Archer. Then just one squawk."
It was only on the doorstep of Archer's house that he wondered how he was going to get inside. He wasn't one of those detectives who excelled at opening locks. But when he took hold of the doorknob, turned it, and pushed, he was not surprised to find the door opening easily. Somehow he expected it to open, as if he had dreamed of the very sound it would make, as if everything that had happened and would happen on this night was familiar to him in some mysterious way.
The door, of course, was taped. Perhaps Aaron had told him Leo always taped his doors while describing the burglar's technique. Janek closed the door softly behind him, then stood very still. The hallway was dark except for a residual glow from the street that filtered in through the narrow leaded windows on either side of the portal.
The coat closet door was open. lanek glanced inside.
A tiny bulb on the burglar alarm keyboard burned red to show that the system was armed up.
But Leo had neutralized it the day before. There was no danger; motion detectors would not set off the siren. Janek listened but heard nothing. Then he thought he felt vibrations, a faint thump on the floor above. He glanced at his watch. Nine-eleven. He had four minutes to find Leo and get out. He headed for the stairs. they were carpeted. He could barely hear his own footsteps as he crept up to the landing. He paused to listen again. This was the mysterious residential portion of the house he had been thinking about for a week. Janek waited until his eyes adjusted to the darkness, then continued to the second floor. Nine-twelve. Three more minutes. He noticed a reddish glow from an open doorway down the hall. He passed a closed door, probably a closet, then a door that was partially open. A glimpse of floor tiles suggested a bathroom. He paused.
"Leo," he whispered. When he heard nothing, he whispered the burglar's name again and again heard no response.
He crept farther up the hall to the open doorway where he'd seen the glow. He stood there and peered into a cavernous high-ceilinged room strangely filled, like a photographer's darkroom, with dim red light.
It was a bedroom, but unlike any bedroom he had ever seen except perhaps in a movie. An enormous fourposter stood free, a foot or so from one of the walls. Opposite the bed there was a wide niche which once may have contained a fireplace. In this niche hung a fulllength life-size oil portrait of a woman. A light extending from the wall above the painting shed red light upon its surface. Janek stared at the picture, his eyes riveted to its dominating imagery. The woman depicted wore a lowcut silk scarlet dress and held a microphone in her hand. Posed before a dark velour curtain held open by a gilded rope, she appeared to be singing in a smoky ambience. But what was most striking about her was the halo of thick, glossy red curls that surrounded her head, her hard-edged alabaster white features, and the equally pale, lustrous exposed flesh of her upper bosoms, which swelled within the clinging silk of her dress. The woman made a striking figure, at once carnal and statuesque, sensual and unobtainable. And although the painter had worked in a standard academic style, he had caught something vibrant and alive in his subject, a moment when she projected herself, bursting with life-force, to the viewer.
But even as Janek was awed by the powerful image before him, his head began to whirl with a kaleidoscopic array of other images in the room.
Below the portrait, arranged upon an odd piece of furniture set within the niche, he saw a number of anomalous objects he could not make out clearly in the red light. Something about them was important. He wanted to decipher them, and was about to move closer to do so, when his eyes, drawn around the room, fastened onto the curled figure of a man lying on the floor at the foot of the bed in a puddle of dark liquid.
Leo!
The moment it registered on him that Leo Titus was lying there, probably dead in a pool of his own blood, the radio strapped to his belt began to squawk. A second later he heard Aaron's voice.
"Shit, Frank! She's coming now, fast!"
Gotta get out of here!
Hearing a sound behind, Janek turned in time to see a short, slim, baldheaded figure, dressed top to bottom in black, ice pick in hand, poised in the doorway to the room. A second later the figure, weapon raised, was rushing at him through the reddish gloom. Janek feinted to the left. At the same time he reached for the Colt strapped to his ankle. Too late. Before he could crouch, his attacker was upon him, plunging down the weapon.
He knew he'd been hit. No pain, but he could feel the steel strike the bone of his shoulder and then his right arm hanging limp. His only chance now, he knew, was to get to his gun with his left hand. He knelt and struggled for it even as he saw his assailant step back two paces, produce a second ice pick, raise it, and thrust at him again.
He ripped the Colt from its holster and, hand trembling, fired at the advancing figure. The pain was coming upon him now, a great wave of pain that filled his head with delirium. He fired a second time, directly into his adversary's body. And in that same split second, when he saw the body blasted back across the room and knew for certain that it was a woman, the pain smashed into him; he felt a wave of nausea and understood that on her second foray she had stabbed him in the throat.
He could feel the blood gushing out of him. And then, as his legs collapsed slowly, he was seized with the certainty that he was going to die.
He came to in an ambulance. He knew it was an ambulance because there was a white-coated medic leaning over him, working on his throat, a siren was blasting directly above, and Aaron was crouching by his head, whispering encouragement.
"Hang in there, Frank. Just a block from Lenox Hill Emergency."
"Aaron…
"Frank?" Aaron's face was above him now, slightly blurry but recognizable.
"It was Archer, wasn't it?" Aaron shook his head. "Wasn't her. But don't worry II Aaron smiled. "You got her. You blew the little bitch away." "Then who?" But before Aaron could reply, Janek felt himself sinking back into a pit of pain. "Tell Monika-"
Oh-oh-I'm passing out.
When he woke again, he was on his back, naked beneath a sheet, being wheeled rapidly down a tiled basement corridor. Kit Kopta was by his side. "Kit "Right here, Frank." "Who?" "Don't worry about that now.
You're going to be all right. The surgeons'll fix you up."
Surgeons… Christ, it huti!
Perhaps he dreamed it, though later he would tell people he woke up terrified during the operation, felt the heat of the lights on his face, saw the surgeons and nurses in their pea green smocks and masks, felt the probe of their instruments as they worked on his shoulder and his throat. And then seeing something in their eyes that told him he had a chance to live, he resigned himself and slipped back into a fuzzy chemical-induced sleep.
Kit was beside him when he came to in the recovery room. He could feel the tight grip of her hand. "You're going to be okay, Frank. I've got some good news for you, too. Aaron got hold of Monika. She's flying in tonight."
"Great…" he murmured.
"Your arm should be all right. A week here, a week at home, and that should do it. As for your throat-well, another quarter inch and she'd have waxed you. She didn't, thank God!"
"Who was she?" His voice sounded strange to him, raw, hoarse, a mere whimper that sent pulses of pain shooting through his brain. He tried to sit. "Who?" he demanded.
"Take it easy, Frank. Lie back. She was the girl downstairs, the one who rented the basement apartment. She'd been Archer's patient in Connecticut."
Connecticut! What the hell was going on?
"But was she… the one? You know. was she-?"
Kit was nodding. "Sure looks that way. I just got off the phone with Aaron. they went through her apartment, found ticket stubs, ice picks, caulking guns, glue. Suilivan's shitting in his pants. Because you solved it, Frank. You did it, you brilliant son of a bitch! You solved Happy Families!"
"Archer, she-"
Kit shook her head. "She didn't know anything. That's what she says. The girl was fixated on her, and…"
He felt his eyes starting to close. He struggled but couldn't keep them open. Kit's voice was distant now, as if in the back of a deep cave. "Rest, Frank. We'll talk later. Aaron'll be here soon. He'll explain…
When he woke nauseated and agitated in a darkened room, there was a moment of clarity. "You solved it." Had Kit actually said that? was it possible? How could he have solved it? How?