Dead Sleep

18

I’ve been asleep for a while when the phone rings beside my bed. The TV is still on, set to HBO, but the sound is muted. I shut my eyes against its harsh light and pick up the phone.

“Hello?”

“It’s me. I’m downstairs.”

John Kaiser’s face appears in my mind. “What time is it?”

“Well after midnight.”

“God. The meeting went on that long?”

“The police questioned each suspect for hours, and we had to hear it all.”

I rub my cheeks to get the blood moving. “Is it still raining?”

“It finally stopped. You were sleeping, weren’t you?”

“Half sleeping.”

“If you’re too tired, that’s all right.”

Part of me wants to tell him I’m too tired, but a little tingle between my neck‘ and my knees stops me. “No, come on up. You know the room number?”

“Yes.”

“Will you get me a Coke or something on the way up? I need some caffeine.”

“Regular Coke or Diet?”

“What would you guess?”

“Regular.”

“Good guess.”

“On the way.”

I hang up and stumble into the bathroom, the fuzzy heaviness of fatigue telling me the last few days have been more stressful than I thought. Leaving the bathroom light off, I brush my teeth and wash my face. For a moment I wonder if I should put on some makeup, but it’s not worth the trouble. If he doesn’t like me as is, it wasn’t meant to happen.

I am going to have to do something about the baby-doll nightgown, though. The short pink horror looks like something a 1950s sorority girl would have worn. When I first saw it, I wondered if the FBI agent who bought it for me was playing a joke on me, but she probably has one just like it in her closet at home. I slip off the gown and replace it with a white cotton T-shirt and the jeans I wore yesterday.

Kaiser knocks softly to keep from alerting Wendy next door. I check the peephole to make sure it’s him, then quickly open the door. He steps inside, then smiles and sets two sweating Coke cans on the desk. He opens one and hands it to me.

“Thanks.” I take a long sip that stings the back of my throat. “You tired?”

“Pretty tired.”

“How do you feel about the case?”

He shrugs. “Not great.”

“Do you think Wheaton and Frank Smith are lovers?”

“I don’t know what else those visits would be.”

“They could be anything. Discussions about art.”

“That’s not what my gut tells me.”

“Mine either. What’s the deal with Lenz? He doesn’t want to say much in front of you, does he?”

“Since leaving the Bureau, he’s found out how quickly you can be forgotten. He’d like to show that what Quantico has now is the second string.”

“He wasn’t surprised when I asked if one of the suspects could be killing people without knowing it.”

“He didn’t seem to be.” Kaiser gives me a knowing look.

“Do you like that theory?”

“No. It’s hard for me to picture someone that messed up pulling off eleven abductions and possibly painting like Rembrandt as well. But I’m going to research it anyway. Try to find out if any of the three males suffered sexual abuse.” He opens his Coke and takes a sip. “Are we going to talk business all night?”

“I hope not.”

I go to the far wall and open the sleep curtains, exposing a huge window that overlooks Lake Pontchartrain from fourteen floors up, a slightly different version of the view from the FBI field office to the east. The lake is a black sea now, but for the line of fluorescent lights marking the causeway as it recedes northward into the mist. I walk back and sit on the foot of the bed. Kaiser takes off his jacket and drapes it on the chair back, then sits opposite me, about two feet away, his gun still on his belt.

“What should we talk about?” he asks.

“Why don’t you tell me what’s on your mind?”

A hint of a smile. “You are.”

“Why do you think that is?”

He shakes his head. “I wish I knew. You know how sometimes when you lose something, it’s only when you’re not looking for it anymore that you find it?”

“Yes. But sometimes by then you don’t need whatever it was.”

“This is something everybody needs.”

“I think you’re right.” I feel warm inside, but a deeper hesitation keeps me from giving in completely to the moment. I take another sip of Coke. “I told you about some of my problems with men. With dating. Guys thinking they want me but finding they don’t want the reality of my life.”

“I remember.”

“I want to know about you. You’re no quitter. What really drove you and your wife apart?”

He sighs and sets down his drink can as though it has grown too heavy to hold up. “It wasn’t that I let my work take over my life – though I certainly did that. If I’d been a doctor or an engineer, she wouldn’t have minded. It was that the things I saw every day simply couldn’t be communicated to someone normal. ‘Conventional’ is probably a better word. It got to where we had no common frame of reference. I’d come home after eighteen hours of looking at murdered children and she’d be upset that the new drapes for the living room didn’t quite match the carpet. I tried more than once to explain it to her, but when I told the unvarnished truth, she didn’t want to know. Who would, if they didn’t have to? She had to shut all that out, and I got shut out with it.”

“Do you blame her for that?”

“No. It showed she had good survival instincts. It’s a lot healthier not to let those things into your head, because once they’re in, you can’t ever get them out. You know. You’ve probably seen more hell than I have.”

“I don’t think you can quantify hell. But I know what you mean about communicating it. I’ve spent my whole career trying to do it, and I sometimes wonder if I’ve succeeded even once. The pictures I’ve put on film don’t convey a fraction of the horror of the pictures in my head.”

Kaiser’s eyes hold an empathy I haven’t seen in a very long time. “So here we sit,” he says. “Damaged goods.”

What I feel for this man is not infatuation, or some neuro-chemical attraction that compels me to sleep with him. It’s a simple intimacy that I’ve felt from the hour we first rode together in the rented Mustang. He has an easiness – and also a wariness – that draws me to him. John Kaiser has looked into the deep dark and is still basically all right, which is a rare thing. I don’t look to men for protection, but I know I would feel as safe with this man as it is possible to feel.

“So, you want kids,” he says, picking up last night’s conversation from the Camellia Grill. I think of my niece and nephew, and curse their father for screwing up my time with them.

“Yes, I do.”

“You’re what, forty now?”

“Yep. Have to start pretty soon.”

“You thinking about the Jodie Foster solution? Finding a donor you like?”

“Not my style. Do you want kids?”

He looks back at me, his eyes twinkling. He’s clearly enjoying himself. “Yes.”

“How many?”

“One a year for five or six years.”

My stomach flips over. “I guess that lets me out of the race.”

“I’m kidding. Two would be nice, though.”

“I might be able to handle two.”

After a few silent moments, he says, “What the hell are we talking about?”

“The stress, maybe. We’re both under a lot of pressure. I’ve seen that start relationships before. They don’t usually end well. You think that’s what’s happening here?”

“No. I’ve been under worse pressure than this without reaching for the nearest woman.”

“That’s good to know.” I look him in the eye, hoping to read his instinctive response to what I’m about to say. “Maybe we should spend the night in this bed together. If we’re still happy in the morning, you can pop the question.”

He barks a laugh. “Jesus! Were you always like this?”

“No, but I’m getting too old to waste time.” An absurd image of Agent Wendy Travis comes into my mind: she’s crouching on her bed next door, her ear pressed to a drinking glass that she’s pressed against my bedroom wall. “If you’re just up here to get laid, I think you’ll have better luck next door.”

His smile vanishes. “I like this room just fine.”

I prop my elbows on my knees and set my chin in my hands, which puts my eyes inches from his. “Are we nuts?”

“No. Sometimes you just know.”

“I think so too.” I let my right hand fall forward and touch his lower lip. “So, what are you thinking about?”

“What your hair smells like.” He reaches out and touches my hair at the shoulder, and I suddenly wish it were longer for him. “What your mouth tastes like.”

“I suspect you’re wondering more than that.”

“Yes. But it’s hard to think about the conversation we just had as foreplay.”

“We’re both in strange businesses. You know what they say.”

“What’s that?” he asks.

“Embrace the weirdness.”

“Who says that?”

“I don’t know. Hunter Thompson, maybe. Just lean over here and kiss me.”

Instead, he takes hold of my wrists and pulls me to my feet, which brings my face to the level of his chest. Then he slips his arms around my waist and looks down at me but does not kiss me. He peers into my eyes and pulls my waist to his, which leaves me in no doubt about his need for me. My skin feels hot and tight, itches for the flow of cool air or the touch of his skin. I’m thinking of taking his hand and placing it over my breast when it finds its way there on its own, as though moved by the impulse in my mind. He gives me a gentle squeeze, as if to say, Here we are. We are real in this space, and aren’t we lucky to be here? Then he lowers his face and touches his lips to mine. My heart thumps against my sternum, as I knew it would, but it’s nice to have my instinct confirmed.

“How long do we have?” I ask.

“All night.”

“That’s the right answer.” I kiss him again, opening my mouth to his. Then I pull back. “Maybe I should start using your first name now.”

His eyes shine with delight. “Whatever you want.”

“We’ll make the first occasion momentous. Ready?”

“Ready.”

“Make love to me, John.”

He smiles, then lifts me into his arms the way they do in old cowboy movies, and I sense the strength in his body. I expect to be lowered onto the bed, but instead he carries me into the bathroom.

“It’s been a long day. You’d like me better after a shower.”

“Or maybe during one,” I reply, laughing.

He laughs and sets me on the counter, then turns the shower taps. Steam begins to fill the room as he takes off his shoes.

“Jesus, I forgot this.”

There’s a rip of Velcro, and then he’s holding a small revolver in a ballistic nylon holster. The sight of the gun makes something inside me go cold.

“This is for you,” he says. “It’s a Smith and Wesson thirty-eight-caliber featherweight. You know how to use it?”

“Yes.”

“Good. I’ll put it out on the desk.”

When he returns, I try to shake off the weight of dark memories. “You know what I like about American hotels?” I ask.

“What?” he asks, putting his hands on my knees.

“The unlimited supply of hot water. You can take a two-hour shower if you want to.”

“Ever done it?”

“You better believe it. When I land in the U.S. after coming in from the Middle East or Africa, I open a cool bottle of white wine and just sit on the floor of the shower until I wrinkle into a prune.”

“Well, then. I’d better take a quick look before you hit the prune stage.” He takes the hem of my T-shirt in his hands and waits for me to lift my arms. I smile and oblige, and he slips off the shirt, then unbuttons his own and pulls my chest to his. This time I initiate the kiss, and he breaks it only to say, “I think the water’s ready.”

I wriggle out of my jeans, pleased by the fact that I feel no shyness in front of him, and step toward the curtain. As he slips off his trousers, his eyes take me in from head to toe.

“You’re beautiful, Jordan.”

The truth of his belief is plain in his face. “I feel beautiful right now.”

He takes my hand, then pulls back the curtain and helps me into the tub. Even though I showered only hours ago, the shock of the hot water is wonderful, and having him under it with me even better. He soaps my back, and I soap his. Then we soap fronts, which is much more interesting. I put my arms around his waist and pull him against me, which requires some adjustment on his part.

“It’s been a pretty long time for me,” I tell him.

“For me, too.”

“That’s what Wendy tells me.”

‘What?“

“She says all the women at the field office lust after you, but you haven’t given in to one of them.”

“You know what I like about showers in good hotels?” he asks with a teasing smile. “The nozzles are high enough for me to get my head under them.”

“I see. Well. Are you too tall to put your head down here where it can do some good?”

He laughs, then leans down and gently kisses my breast, his tongue cool against my nipple in the steam. I reach down and run a fingernail along him.

“Are you in agony?”

“Mm-hmm,” he moans.

“Good.”

As the hot spray pours over my face and neck, one of his hands flattens in the small of my back, and the other searches lower. Then he is murmuring in his throat, passing the vibration into me. I lean back against one hand and settle upon the other, and in this exquisite embrace feel myself becoming as liquid as the water. His lips slide up my neck to my chin, then my mouth, and then a clamorous ringing shocks us motionless.

“Fire alarm?” he asks, but the sound dies.

“Bathroom phone.”

“Who the hell is that?”

“Fifty bucks says it’s Wendy.”

It rings again, a maddening klaxon in the tiled cubicle.

He sighs. “You’d better answer it.”

I reach around the curtain and dry my hand, then pick up the phone.

“Hello?”

“Jordan, it’s Daniel Baxter.”

I mouth “Baxter” to John, who quickly turns off the water.

“What’s going on?”

“Ah… is John up there with you?”

“Just a second, the TV’s too loud.” I press my hand over the transmitter. “He wants to talk to you.”

“My cell phone battery must have died.”

“Or you just didn’t hear it. Which would mean Baxter knew to try my room second.”

John shrugs. “He’s not stupid.”

“You want me to say you’re not here?”

He shakes his head and takes the phone. “What’s up, boss?”

As he listens, his eyes flick back and forth with growing intensity. “When?” he asks. Then he listens some more, and I see in his face that we won’t be spending the night in each other’s arms. Something terrible has happened. “I’ll be right there,” he says. “Right. I’ll leave Wendy in the room with her.” He hangs up, his eyes cloudy with confusion.

“What?” I ask, fighting my rising fears. “They found bodies? They found my sister?”

“No.” He takes my hands in his. “Thalia Laveau has disappeared. Daniel thinks she’s been taken by the UNSUB.”

Nausea rolls through my stomach. “ Thalia? But she was under surveillance.”

“She purposefully evaded it.”

“What?”

“He wouldn’t give me the details over an unsecure phone. I won’t know anything more till I get there. Jesus, why her?”

Several answers come to me, but all I can think of is John’s use of the singular pronoun. “Till I get there? What was that about leaving Wendy in the room with me?”

His eyes don’t waver, and if he tells me I’m not going back to the office with him – that in essence I am good enough to sleep with but not to take into a meeting where I may not be wanted by some people – my mouth and breast are the only parts of me he will ever taste.

“Get your clothes on,” he says. “You’re coming.”

I don’t move, and neither does he. Standing naked in the tub with water dripping off us, Baxter’s revelation doesn’t seem quite real. But it is. And I have the strange sensation that once we step out of this tub, it may be a long time before we’re this intimate again.

“You okay?” he asks, touching my cheek.

“I guess. What about you? Can you wait until whenever we get back here?”

He nods, but his heart is not in his answer.

“Do we have thirty seconds to spare?”

He nods again.

“Stay here.”

On the counter by the sink is a sampler pack of soap, shampoo, conditioner, and hand lotion. I uncap the lotion and get back into the tub.

“I’m breaking one of my own rules,” I tell him, “but you can pay me back later.”

He groans as I close my moistened hands around him, but in the few seconds it takes him to lose consciousness, my head fills with images of the empathetic woman I met this afternoon, the semi-lesbian Sabine artist, Thalia Laveau, and my heart balloons with terror for her, a woman who fled her home and family to escape sexual abuse, who is now at the mercy of a man without mercy, a woman I am unlikely ever to see again.

The Emergency Operations Center, which has been kept from me until now, is the pounding heart of the NOKIDS investigation. It’s huge – more than three thousand square feet – with long rows of tables marching toward the front of the room, like a high school science lab built to heroic scale. Behind each row of tables sit rows of men and women with banks of phones before them, the unused ones showing bright red decals reading “NOT SECURE!”

John posts Wendy at the door, then leads me into the EOC. Wendy was quiet during the ride over, and even when John tried to draw her into our conversation, her answers were clipped and professional. I felt for her, but there’s more to worry about now than hurt feelings. As John and I reach the first table, at least twenty faces turn to mine, then look at each other with puzzlement. The unspoken question might as well be painted on the air: What the hell is she doing in here? But after a few seconds, they go back to their work.

At the front of the Operations Center, facing the tables, is an array of oversized computer monitors showing views of various buildings. The buildings are the residences of the four main suspects, plus the Woldenberg Art Center at Tulane. As I watch, a car drives past Frank Smith’s cottage on Esplanade. I’m looking at live television surveillance of various parts of New Orleans. Beyond the monitors hangs a massive wall-mounted screen with lines of type scrolling down it a few clicks at a time. There are time notations beside each line. It’s an unfolding timeline of the entire investigation-in-progress, reporting everything from the movements and phone calls of the suspects to the activities of the various law-enforcement agencies investigating Thalia Laveau’s disappearance. I feel like I’m standing in the headquarters of Big Brother in Orwell’s 1984.

“So this is it,” I say softly. “Where are Baxter and Lenz?”

“Baxter’s right here,” says a voice behind me.

“As is Lenz,” says the psychiatrist.

“Joined at the hip,” I say, turning to face them.

The ISU chief looks as though he hasn’t slept for thirty-six hours. The dark circles under his eyes have become black bags, and his skin has a prison pallor. He gives John a reproving glance but voices no displeasure at my presence. Dr. Lenz appears to have changed suits and freshened up since this afternoon; he probably had an agent chauffeur him over to the Windsor Court for tea and scones and a midnight rubdown.

“How did she do it?” asks John.

“I’ll show you,” Baxter replies.

He walks up to a technician near the monitors and says something, then returns. One of the screens goes dark, and then we’re looking at a frontal view of the Victorian house in which Thalia rented rooms. It’s night, and sheets of rain cloud the view. As we watch, a woman wearing a floppy hat and carrying an umbrella runs out of the house and gets into a white Nissan Sentra parked on the puddled street.

“That’s Jo Ann Diggs,” says Baxter, “one of the women who rents a room on Laveau’s floor.”

The Sentra pulls quickly away from the curb, but a few yards down the street it skids to an abrupt stop, then backs up. Diggs gets out, runs back to the house, and disappears inside, looking for all the world like a woman who forgot her purse or the DVD she was supposed to return to Blockbuster. About twenty seconds later, she hurries back out of the house with a book in her hand, trots to her car, and drives away.

“That,” says Baxter, “was Thalia Laveau.”

“The roommate helped her,” says John.

“Laveau was waiting just inside the door. She took the hat and umbrella and ran out to Diggs’s car, while Diggs went back up to Laveau’s apartment and watched television to cover.”

“How did you figure it out?” I ask.

“Earlier today, Laveau called a woman friend from the campus and made an appointment to meet her at eleven tonight. The woman lives on Lake Avenue, on the Orleans-Jefferson Parish line. When Laveau didn’t show by midnight, the friend called the NOPD. NOPD called us.”

“The woman claimed Laveau was coming over for tea and sympathy,” says Lenz, “but obviously it was more than that. She evaded our surveillance to protect her lover’s identity.”

“Maybe it wasn’t sexuality she was hiding,” says John. “Laveau could be involved strictly as the painter. Today’s police interrogation could have scared her enough to make her bolt. By setting up a meeting with this other woman, then missing it, she leads us to conclude that she’s become a victim.”

Baxter starts to speak, but exasperation makes me jump in first. “You guys need a woman on your team around the clock.”

“Why is that?” asks Lenz.

“To keep your heads out of your asses. I’m going back to my hotel. You don’t have a prayer of finding Thalia with this kind of thinking.”

“John,” says Baxter. “Arthur wasn’t guessing. Laveau did evade the surveillance to protect this woman. She’s gay but very private. They had a long-standing relationship. Only her fear for Laveau made her tell us the truth. She can alibi Thalia not only for the Dorignac’s snatch, but also for at least five of the other abductions.”

I shake my head, fighting unexpected tears of helplessness.

“I’m sorry,” John says. “I can’t help thinking that way. It’s a habit, working out the logic.”

“It’s not you,” I tell him.

Neither Baxter nor Lenz speaks, and I’m not sure whether it’s because of my tears or because they sense our new intimacy.

“I think I have to go.”

I walk past them toward the wide door, but Baxter calls after me. “What would you do, Jordan? To find Thalia?”

I stop and turn, but I don’t go back to them. “I’d assume the obvious. One of the male suspects has been lusting after Thalia from the start. Our questioning rattled him. He knows it’s a matter of time before he’s nailed. Faced with that, he decides he has nothing to lose by indulging himself with Thalia.”

“All three were under round-the-clock surveillance,” says Lenz.

“Thalia didn’t have any trouble eluding it.”

Baxter sighs and turns to John. “Frank Smith was in a restaurant at the time Laveau left her house, and afterward. It couldn’t be him.”

“Wheaton and Gaines?”

“Gaines was at his shotgun on Freret. By the way, forensics says his van was clean. No blood, hair, fibers, nothing. Like it was steam-cleaned in the last day or two.”

John nods suspiciously, but his mind has already gone past this information. “What about Wheaton?”

“Wheaton was painting at the Woldenberg Center.”

“What about Jordan’s idea of natural light? Have we got aerial shots of all the courtyards or enclosed gardens in the city?”

“That’s just not practical,” says Baxter. “This city stretches over two hundred square miles, and that’s being conservative. The killing house – or painting house, I guess – could be anywhere in that area, and owned under a name we can’t possibly trace to one of the suspects.”

“The painter wouldn’t want to drive twenty miles every time he wanted to work on a painting. It’s human nature. He wouldn’t want to drive any farther than he absolutely has to.”

“Granted,” says Lenz.

“Wheaton and Gaines live within a mile of the university. Frank Smith lives at the edge of the French Quarter. Let’s get aerial photos of every square block of those areas, and throw in the Garden District. Then we’ll look for sheltered courtyards where the painter would have good natural light.”

“The leaves are still on the goddamn trees,” Baxter argues. “We could miss a hundred courtyards in the French Quarter alone.”

“Then get architectural plans!” John snaps. “We should have agents at the courthouse doing title searches on every building in those two areas. We may find some connection to one of the suspects.”

Baxter looks around the Operations Center, and two dozen shocked faces quickly turn back to their work.

“I guess that’s all we’ve got,” he says. “Other than Wheaton’s nocturnal visits to Frank Smith.”

“And we’re on that in the morning,” John says with a tone of finality.

I do believe the man wants to come back to the hotel with me. I just might forgive him his earlier fuzzy thinking about Thalia Laveau.

But Daniel Baxter has other ideas.

“John, you coordinate with the aerial surveillance unit. If you start making calls now, you can have the assets in the air at first light.”

This is obviously a job someone else could do, but John has no trouble reading Baxter’s intent. He nods wearily, then glances my way with a look of apology.

“What time are we talking to Smith and Wheaton?” I ask.

“Be here by eight a.m.,” Baxter replies. “Agent Travis will drive you over.”

The informality of “Wendy” has disappeared. Baxter obviously foresees potential conflicts developing out of the intimacy between John and me.

“Eight, then.”

I feel a strangely proprietary urge to give John a kiss on the cheek, but he’d probably faint from embarrassment, so I spare him.

“If you want those pictures to be worth the trouble,” I tell Baxter, “you should get your planes up tonight with thermal imaging cameras. Brick and stone will have enough temperature differential with trees and foliage to make plant cover irrelevant. You can shoot the same grids in the morning with infrared film for backup detail. By nine-twenty, you should have sunlight at thirty degrees on both horizons, but not much cloud cover. That’s the best time.”

While the three men stare in amazement, I say, “Good night, boys,” and walk to the door where Wendy awaits.