Anatomy of Fear

44

I fell into bed, body aching, mind in overdrive. If only I hadn’t gone down to complain about the heat I would never have found the body.

If only…if only…if only…

I played it over and over like a song stuck on repeat. I tossed and turned, fluffed the pillow up, punched it down. I kept hearing Collins’s questions and my answers, which now sounded lame. But they were the only answers I had. I took a deep breath, closed my eyes, tried to picture clouds, sky, seascapes, but kept seeing my tattoo drawn into the sketch.

He had been following me. And he’d been in my apartment. I’d felt it. But that wasn’t enough. I needed proof. And there was none.

I thought Terri believed me, but if it came down to protecting her job or protecting me, which would she do?

I kicked off the blankets, went to the window, and stared down at Thirty-ninth Street. Could he be out there now? Watching? Waiting?

I flopped back into bed, but my eyes wouldn’t close. It was the middle of the day and I’d never been good at naps no matter how tired I was. I stared at the ceiling and asked myself why I had not called the station the instant I’d seen Cordero lying in a pool of blood.

Because I wanted to see the drawing.

But why had I needed to see it close up? And why had I been stupid enough to slog through Cordero’s blood to get at it? I knew better. I was a trained cop. What was it about the drawing that made me lose my reason? What was it I had said to Terri when I described it?

Softer pencil. Less crosshatching.

And what about that little drawing on the side of the paper? That little detail.

That was it.

Jesus Christ! It looked like one of my drawings!

I sat up in bed and thought it through. He’d stalked me, broken into my apartment, seen my drawings, made his sketch of Cordero, added the detail from one of my drawings, then my tattoo as a sort of signature. After that, he killed Cordero, left the drawing on the scene, and led me to it.

A setup. Brilliant. Perverse. And no way I could verify it. I hardly believed it myself, and yet…I knew it.

I got out of bed. I had to do something. Collins was already suspicious and she didn’t yet know about the tattoo or the similarity to my drawing. But she would. Soon.

My brain was spinning. I pictured FBI lab techs laying the Cordero crime scene drawing next to one of mine. Would they see the similarity? Maybe they wouldn’t even know I drew fragmentary faces to keep my hand and eye in shape.

Who was I kidding?

I went over to my work table, glanced down at my sketches, so many of them like the one he’d chosen to replicate.

For a moment I considered destroying them all.

But this was nuts. No one was going to start comparing my drawing style to the unsub’s, and even if they did, any artist who could draw could imitate another’s style, right? And he hadn’t really done that.

Except for that detail of the mouth.

I closed my eyes, pictured myself on the subway, could see the young black man, mouth open, talking to his friend, the look he gave me when he caught me staring; how I’d turned the pad around, pointed to the little drawing I’d made of his mouth, and how he’d smiled.

I started pushing my sketches around. There were dozens of half-finished faces, but not the one I was looking for. I was making a mess, scattering drawings across the table, knocking them to the floor, frantically searching, all the time knowing I would not find it.

But I never threw a sketch away. Never. Not even the bad ones. It was a habit I couldn’t kick.

He’d taken it. It was the only thing that made sense. To me.

I pictured Cordero dead in his apartment, the TV behind him, Jay Leno doing his monologue, the pool of blood, and the drawing that looked like mine on the floor.

I locked my hands together to stop them from shaking. I had to calm down. I’d explain it to them and they’d see it, that I was being set up. What was I worried about? Collins was right: I was a paranoid guy.

I went to the bathroom and splashed cold water on my face, caught a glimpse of that damn tattoo on my arm, and broke into a sweat.

I went back and opened the pad with my sketches of the unsub’s incomplete face. I had to see more of it. That was the answer. The only thing I could do.

I sharpened a pencil, dropped it, my hands trembling. I took some deep breaths and told myself to relax, got a grip on the pencil and waited for something to guide my hand, but nothing happened. I closed the pad, but couldn’t sit still. I needed to get out. I needed to do something. But what?

There is a man in that room with you, Nato.

I called my grandmother and told her I was coming over.

I put on jeans and a clean white shirt so I wouldn’t worry her. I went into the bathroom and ran my hands through my hair. My eyes were red-rimmed. I looked awful. I thought about shaving because it would make my grandmother happy, but didn’t think it was the best time to hold a razor to my throat. I splashed on some lime-scented aftershave and decided that would have to do.

I tucked my drawing pad under my arm and left.

¿Qué pasa, Nato?” My grandmother’s first words when I walked in the door.

“Nada, uela.”

“You don’t look good.” She got a hold of my face with both hands.

“Estoy cansado. That’s all. I was in Boston, working, and I didn’t sleep well.”

She narrowed her eyes.

I tried to think of something to say. “I met an old movie director.”

“You going to be in the movies?”

“Oh, sure, uela.” I had to smile. “I’m going to be a star.”

“Te estás burlando de mi?” She pointed a finger at me.

“Nunca, uela. I swear.” I looked down and saw the bowl with shells and beads and stones beside the front door, an Eleggua, used to protect the home. “Since when do you need protection?”

She waved off my question. “It is like, what do they call them, what your mother’s people have at the doors, with the prayers inside?”

“You mean a mezuzah?”

“Sí, like that.”

In the living room, the bóveda was all set up with glasses of water and shells. “What’s going on?”

“You want a cerveza?” she asked, avoiding my question.

I didn’t press. I was too tired. And I knew my abuela. When she was ready to tell me what was worrying her, she would. And then I might tell her what was worrying me too. We were both stalling. She asked if I was hungry and I realized I hadn’t eaten since the night before.

I followed her into the kitchen and she started ladling food onto my plate: arroz, habichuelas, tostones y chuletas fritas. I didn’t think I could eat, but I did, everything, all of it great, which I told her and she smiled. She didn’t take much for herself, just picked at arroz for a while. Something was definitely bothering her.

“¿Qué pasa, uela?”

“Come,” she said. Eat. She forced a smile.

My abuela took eating very seriously and did not want to disturb the process. She changed the subject, mentioned that she’d spoken to my mother, and I felt guilty because I hadn’t. We usually spoke once a week, but I hadn’t called her since I’d started the case. I knew it would worry her.

“Llama tu mami.” She aimed a slightly crooked finger at me.

I promised I’d call.

When I finished, my grandmother stood up and beckoned me to follow. I knew it had to be serious if she was ignoring the dishes. She never let them sit around, afraid of roaches or mice.

She led me down the hallway. We passed the living room, the TV on, a Spanish soap opera she was addicted to. She ignored it and continued down the hall toward the last room in the apartment, at one time the master bedroom. She’d given it up years ago, moving her bed into the tiny room off the living room.

“We will speak in the Ile,” she said.

It was the first time I’d heard her refer to the room where she saw her clients as a house church.

“Why Ile and not cuarto de los santos?”

“My friends encouraged me. Y así paso. I do not mean to say that it takes the place of church.”

I knew what she meant: that she was still a churchgoing Christian. She prayed to Olofi-who served as humanity’s personal God on earth-but she prayed to God’s son Jesus as well. For her, there was no conflict.

“When someone comes to me to consult the orishas, I tell them, ask your church and your congregation to pray for you too.”

“So you have become a godmother, a madrina?”

“I am…just me. There are others with much greater knowledge.” She told me about some kid named Carlos, twelve years old, a child of Obatala, she said, with great powers, but I’d stopped listening. We had stepped into the cuarto de los santos, which I hadn’t been in since she had given it up as her bedroom, and I was stunned.

There were makeshift shrines everywhere. One with a dish and rock like the one by the door, this one much more elaborate, adorned with red and white beads, a jewel-encrusted crucifix, a dollhouse draped with a wilting vine. A few feet away another with pictures of saints wrapped in colored cellophane and a small cheap-looking plastic skeleton covered with rosary beads. And there were more: dolls with peacock feathers and fake flowers, stacks of fruit, toys, candles, pictures of saints and orishas, even a Buddha. I didn’t see a Star of David, but there probably was one.

My grandmother had always had a few modest shrines made from candles and pictures of saints, but nothing had prepared me for this.

“It looks like you’ve spent way too much money at the local botánica, uela.”

She told me not to make fun, that it was a pecado, a sin, that almost everything had been created by people who came to her for consultations.

In the center of the room were three benches like pews, plain wood, pockmarked and weathered as if they had been left outside during some church demolition, which was entirely possible. I asked her where she’d gotten them and she said that a local padrino had found them for her.

She told me to sit down in one of the pews, and I did. She touched the sleeve of my white shirt. “This was a good one to wear, una señal.”

“It was my only clean shirt,” I said.

“And you think that is not a sign?”

Then she told me she had seen another room, but not to draw, just to listen. She had felt something in this room, a presence of something evil. Then she described what sounded a lot like my apartment, an apartment she had never seen.

I was about to show her my sketches of the man I was trying to draw, but she had more to say, and another vision she wanted me to draw.