Dead Sleep

17

In the shower in my hotel room, my composure finally blows apart, spinning images through my head without coherence: Wingate trying to save his painting, flames licking at his feet; soldiers tying my hands and pressing my face into the jungle floor; my brother-in-law kissing my neck, trying to bed the ghost of his wife; de Becque watching me with a glint in his eye as he doles out bits of information about my father…

I turn the water as hot as I can stand it, my eyes closed against the spray even as I see the four strange souls I encountered today: a dying man, a violent man, a feminine man, and a wounded woman. Yesterday I had some hope of resolution. I was fooled by the confidence of men in their systems and their evidence, by the illusion of progress, by the belief that time must inevitably yield some answer. But deep down I know that time, like fate, operates under no imperative. What are those men saying now, after the failure of their grand plan? Baxter. Lenz. Kaiser. They paraded me past their suspects and saw not one flicker of panic. Not even a flinch at my face -

A telephone is ringing. At first I think it’s in my head, because it’s impossibly loud. Then I pull back the shower curtain and see a phone mounted on the wall, low by the commode. I press my right palm into the white towel on the rack, then pick up the receiver.

“Yes?”

“It’s John.”

“John?”

“Kaiser.” He sounds uncomfortable.

“Oh. What is it?”

“I’m still downstairs.”

“Why?”

“We’re about to have a meeting. Before the official task force meeting. Baxter, Lenz, Bowles, and me. I know you’re upset, but I thought you might be more angry if you missed it.”

“I’m in the shower. It’s basically going to be a wake, right?”

“I don’t think so. I just spoke to Baxter on my cell. He says he has a couple of new things.”

“What things?”

“I won’t know till I get to the office.”

As badly as I want to crack open the minibar and flop onto my bed wrapped in towels, I know he’s right. I’ll feel worse if I don’t go.

“Give me five minutes.”

Kaiser hangs up, undoubtedly thinking that no woman he ever knew could go from naked in the shower to ready in five minutes.

He’s about to get a lesson.

This time we meet where we did the first time: SAC Bowles’s office. Kaiser leads the way with a perfunctory knock, and though I hear voices, the office appears empty. Through the long window to my right, Lake Pontchartrain looks gray against the afternoon sky, dotted with a few lonely sails.

Walking farther in, I see Baxter, Lenz, and SAC Bowles waiting in the private seating area in the deep leg of the L. Bill Granger, the violent-crimes supervisor, shakes Kaiser’s hand on his way out and gives me an embarrassed nod. Clearly, he was in the loop that heard the transmission from Thalia Laveau’s apartment. Wonderful.

Kaiser and I sit side by side on a sofa, facing Baxter and Lenz. SAC Bowles has a chair to himself on my right. No one looks happy, but neither do they look as dejected as I would have expected. They do look surprised to see me.

“You did a first-rate job today, Jordan,” Baxter says in a chamber-of-commerce voice.

“Too bad I didn’t shake anybody up.”

He looks at Kaiser. “We’ve got forty minutes before the joint task force meets, and I want to go in there solid. As of now, we have two agents on separate planes escorting all the evidence the NOPD gathered today to the lab in Washington. Everything from paintings to DNA samples. The Director himself put an expedite on it, which means a twelve-hour turnaround on some tests, twenty-four to forty-eight on others. Three days on the DNA if we’re insanely lucky.”

“Three days?” says Kaiser. “I’d have been shocked at three weeks.”

“Couple of the victims’ families have a lot of stroke. And thank God for it.” Baxter glances at me as though wondering whether to reassure me that the FBI works every case with equal fervor, but he doesn’t. Everyone in this room knows that if the eleven missing women were crack whores, the evidence on those planes could languish in the lab for weeks.

“Before we decide where we’re going,” he says, “let’s take stock of where we are. Today’s interviews didn’t produce the result we’d hoped for. Why not?”

“Two possibilities,” says Lenz. “One, none of the four suspects is the UNSUB/painter. This theory is unanimously supported by our art experts, who say the Sleeping Women weren’t painted by any of the suspects. Two, one of the suspects did recognize Jordan, but fooled us by keeping his cool when she came in.”

“Or her cool,” Baxter reminds him.

“Nobody fooled us,” says Kaiser. “Except maybe Frank Smith. He was startled by Jordan’s face, but he explained it by saying he’d seen her at a party some time ago, a virtually uncheckable explanation.”

Baxter looks at Lenz. “What did you think about Smith?”

“Brilliant, gifted, sure of himself. Of the four, he’s the most capable of putting this thing together.”

“What about the first possibility? None of the four is our UNSUB?”

“The brush hairs brought us to these four,” says Kaiser. “I trust physical evidence more than I trust art experts.”

“The evidence brought us to those four and the fifty undergraduates who could get access to the special brushes,” Lenz points out. “How are we coming with them?”

“No student has been questioned directly,” Baxter replies. “Because of their age, and because so few could be talented enough to have painted the Sleeping Women, they’re a low-percentage shot. Also, the minute we start interrogating Tulane undergrads, the media’s going to blow this case wide open. We’ve been lucky so far.”

“Very lucky,” I say quietly. “I wonder why.”

“The New Orleans media’s not that aggressive,” says Bowles. “I don’t know why. They could push a lot harder than they do.”

“But once they get hold of it,” says Kaiser, “it’ll be a feeding frenzy. And with Roger Wheaton involved – not to mention rich, pissed-off parents and their lawyers – you’ll get national press.”

“Don’t forget Jordan,” says Bowles, with a nod in my direction. “She adds a little marquee value.”

“Forget the media for now,” says Baxter. “NOPD says none of the suspects seemed anxious about providing a DNA sample. If one of them had snatched the Dorignac’s woman, he wouldn’t have been cool about doing that.”

“If the painter just paints,” says Lenz, “and someone else does the snatches, the painter would have nothing to fear from a DNA test.”

“Even if the UNSUB only does the painting,” says Kaiser, “he should have been stunned by Jordan’s face.”

“True.”

Kaiser looks at Baxter. “What’s the new development you mentioned on the phone?”

I would have led with this question, but I guess these guys have their own rhythm.

“Even though the timing of Wingate’s murder and the Dorignac’s snatch were only two hours apart,” says Baxter, “I’ve had a half-dozen agents working around the clock, checking flight manifests and interviewing passengers who traveled between New York and New Orleans in surrounding hours. It finally paid off.”

“What do you have?”

“One hour after Wingate died, a lone man paid cash for a flight from JFK to Atlanta, then cash again for a flight to Baton Rouge on a different airline.”

“Who was he?” I ask.

Dr. Lenz crosses his legs and answers in a pedantic voice. “A false name, of course. It could be that the UNSUB who killed Wingate was already in New York when you upset the applecart in Hong Kong. He silenced Wingate, then flew straight – or almost straight – to New Orleans to warn his partner. If you study the timing, it could be that he arrived only six hours after the Dorignac’s woman was taken. The plan may have been to paint her, but the New York UNSUB made the prudent decision. Do her and dump her.”

Baxter gives the psychiatrist a sharp look. “That’s possible. But no matter who the New York UNSUB is, or what he did after the Dorignac’s victim was kidnapped, someone already in New Orleans had to kidnap her. Probably the painter.”

A few moments of silence pass as this sinks in.

“You have a description of the New York UNSUB?” asks Kaiser.

“Very general. Mid-thirties to mid-forties, muscular, hard-looking face. Casual dress clothes. He’s probably the guy who flipped Jordan the bird after the fire.”

“Sock cap?” I ask, half jokingly.

“There’s something else,” says Baxter. “Linda Knapp -Gaines’s girlfriend, the one who trashed his painting and left with you guys – turned back up at Gaines’s place thirty minutes ago. NOPD wouldn’t let her near Gaines, but she told them that whatever nights they needed alibis for, he was home with her, getting drunk or screwing her silly.”

I recall how angry and desperate to get away from Gaines the woman had looked. Now she’s back with him, protecting him from the police. This is a common mystery I’ve never understood and am not sure I want to.

“Has Knapp been with Gaines for the past eighteen months?”

“No,” says Baxter. “Gaines named another girlfriend as his alibi for the murders that predate his relationship with Knapp. We’re trying to locate her now. As far as the others’ alibis, here’s where we are. Based on credit-card activity, Roger Wheaton and Frank Smith were both in town for every murder. Leon Gaines and Thalia Laveau don’t even have credit cards. Initial questioning by NOPD hasn’t turned up any rock-solid alibis. It’s not surprising, really. Almost all the kidnappings happened during the week, between ten p.m. and six a.m.”

“What about Smith?” asks Lenz. “Surely he has some sleep-over lovers who could alibi him for at least one murder?”

“None he named today,” Baxter replies. “Maybe he’s protecting somebody.”

“Someone in the closet,” says SAC Bowles.

“What about Juan?” I ask. “The butler or whatever he was?”

“We didn’t know about him till today,” says Baxter. “NOPD’s talking to him now. He tried to slip out, but they got him. Looks like an illegal. Salvadoran.”

Now I realize why he looked familiar. I spent a good bit of time in El Salvador, seeing faces much like his.

“What else do we have?” asks Kaiser. “What about soldiers Wheaton served with? Convicts Gaines shared cells with?”

“I’ve got two lists,” says Baxter. “I thought you might want to talk to the Vietnam vets.”

As the men work out these details, a strange epiphany occurs at the dark center of my mind. The paradox of expert opinion versus physical evidence has been slowly working itself out there. “I’ve thought of a third possibility,” I say quietly.

Kaiser waves his hand to silence the others, and they turn to me.

“What is it?” he asks.

“What if one of the four suspects we saw today is doing the murders, but doesn’t know he’s doing them?”

No one responds. Baxter and Kaiser look stunned by the suggestion, but Dr. Lenz is sanguine.

“How did you come up with that?” asks the psychiatrist.

“The old Sherlock Holmes theory. After you exclude all impossibilities, whatever you have left is the solution, however improbable it may seem.”

“We haven’t excluded the other possibilities,” says Baxter. “Not by any means.”

“We’re not getting anywhere with them, either.” Kaiser looks thoughtfully at Lenz. “What about that?”

The psychiatrist makes a noncommittal gesture with his hands, as though considering the idea for the first time. “You’re talking about MPD. Multiple-personality disorder. It’s extremely rare. Much rarer than films or novels would have the public believe.”

“In all my time at Quantico, I never saw a proved case,” Kaiser says.

“When it does happen,” says Bowles, “what causes it?”

“Severe sexual or physical abuse during childhood,” says Lenz. “Exclusively.”

“What do we know about the childhoods of the three men?” I ask, recalling Thalia’s confession of sexual abuse. “We know Laveau had that kind of problem.”

“Not much,” says Baxter. “Wheaton’s childhood is pretty obscure. All we really have is the standard bio that appears in articles. Certainly nothing about abuse. We do know his mother left the home when he was thirteen or fourteen, which could be a sign of some kind of abuse, but we don’t have details. And if the children were being abused, why not take the children with her?”

“We should ask Wheaton that,” says Kaiser.

“What about Leon Gaines?” I ask. “I’ll bet there was some abuse there.”

“Undoubtedly,” says Lenz. “He spent time in a juvenile reformatory, which is a high-percentage indicator for abuse. But the kind of radical psychological break I’m talking about has its roots much earlier in a child’s life.”

I look at Baxter. “Didn’t you say his father did time for carnal knowledge of a minor? A fourteen-year-old girl?”

Baxter nods. “That’s right. We’d better dig deeper on the father.”

“Frank Smith,” says Kaiser. “What do we know about his childhood?”

“Wealthy family,” says Lenz. “Not the kind where abuse would be reported. I’ll try to contact the family doctor.”

As we ponder this angle in silence, the SAC’s phone rings. Bowles goes to his desk, then motions Baxter to the phone. Baxter identifies himself, asks some questions I can’t quite hear, then hangs up and returns to us, a tight smile on his lips.

“What is it?” asks Kaiser.

“Frank Smith’s Salvadoran butler just told NOPD detectives that Roger Wheaton has visited Frank several times for extended periods at night. He’s stayed over twice.”

Kaiser whistles. “No kidding.”

Baxter nods. “And get this. On those nights, he’s heard them screaming at each other. Heard it through the walls.”

This image is hard for me to reconcile with what I’ve seen of both men, but Dr. Lenz looks more excited than I’ve seen him to date.

“We’ve got to see both of them again,” he says.

“No doubt,” agrees Baxter. “How should we approach them?”

Lenz purses his lips but says nothing.

“I think I should talk to Frank Smith,” I say firmly.

They all look at me. “Alone?” asks Baxter.

“He invited me back, didn’t he? That’s your best shot of finding out about those visits.”

“She got Laveau to trust her,” Kaiser reminds them. “I say let her do it.”

Baxter looks uncomfortable, and turns to Lenz for an opinion.

The psychiatrist shrugs. “I know you’d prefer some other way, but Smith really responded to her. We have to go with the best odds.”

Baxter sighs. “Okay. Jordan will talk to Smith.”

“Arthur and I can see Wheaton,” Kaiser says. “We should have the phone company fault their lines. We don’t want any more warnings passing between them.”

“Sounds like a plan,” Baxter concludes. “How much of this do we give the task force?”

“All of it,” says Kaiser. “They’ve proved trustworthy so far. If we hold out without reason, we’re only screwing ourselves.”

“The multiple-personality theory as well?” asks Lenz.

“No,” says Baxter. “That’s the kind of exotic speculation they rib us about, so let’s play it down unless we have some reason to think it’s the right track.” He glances at me. “Something other than the Sherlock Holmes theory, at least.”

A belated smile tells me he said this in fun.

“Any last questions?”

Kaiser flicks up his hand like a schoolkid. “This morning you said you had that Argus computer program chewing on digital photos of the abstract Sleeping Women. Has it turned up any recognizable faces?”

“They’re looking more human,” says Baxter. “But none matches any murder victim or missing person in the New Orleans area over the past three years.”

“Who’s making those comparisons?”

“Couple of agents I borrowed from Counter-intelligence,” answers the SAC. “Good men. Twenty years in, between them.”

“I’d like to see whatever Argus spits out,” says Kaiser. “I’ve studied a lot of victims’ faces in the past few months.”

“Will you see to that, Patrick?” says Baxter.

Bowles nods. “We’ll get you copies of every image e-mailed from Washington, as we decrypt them. I hope you’ve got a lot of time on your hands.”

Baxter looks at his watch. “We need to go.” Turning to me, he says, “Jordan, more than ever, we need you to stay isolated from any friends from your former life here.”

“No problem. I’m beat. I’m going back to my hotel, ordering room service, and racking out.”

“Do you trust your brother-in-law to keep quiet?”

“No problems there.”

His eyes linger on mine. “I’ve already gotten Wendy a room next door to yours. Just yell out if you need help.”

I nod, preferring Wendy Travis to a stranger, though I sense potential complications from her presence.

Baxter slaps his thighs and stands, and the other men follow suit like football players rising from a huddle.

“Let’s go talk to the boys in blue,” says Baxter.

“Black and blue,” says Kaiser. “The NOPD wears black and blue.”

Baxter leads the way to the door, headed for the Emergency Operations Center, which I have yet to see. Bowles follows, and Lenz falls into line behind him. Only Kaiser hangs back, contriving to walk beside me as I move toward the door.

“So, you’re going to bed early?” he says softly.

“Yes.” I pause at the door and watch the others move down the hall. “But maybe not to sleep. Call me from the lobby.”

Looking up the hallway, he touches my hand and squeezes slightly, then without a word follows Dr. Lenz. I give him a few seconds, then go around the corner to the elevators, where I find Wendy waiting for me.