Dead Sleep

22

The causeway across Lake Pontchartrain is the longest bridge in the world built solely over water. The twenty-three miles of humming concrete and traffic push me inward like a mantra, toward the dark vortex of my fear and guilt. Somewhere on the other side of this shallow lake, amid the exploding construction caused by white flight from New Orleans, stands the house of John Kaiser. The man himself sits beside me in the passenger seat of my rented Mustang, the seat fully reclined so that he can stretch out his wounded leg.

Thirty seconds after he read Christopher Wingate’s number off the back of my photograph, John’s leg gave way and he collapsed in Mrs. Pitre’s driveway. Baxter ordered him back to the hospital, but John argued that he was only tired, that he should have used the walking cane, and that he had to return to the field office to work the new connections between the UNSUB, Wingate, and Marcel de Becque. Baxter gave him two choices: go back to the hospital or go home and rest for the night. John chose the latter, but as we picked up my Mustang from the field office, he called upstairs and had an agent bring down a thick folder filled with the latest Argus-generated enhancements of the abstract Sleeping Women. He’s like I used to be when I got my teeth into a war story – unstoppable.

The picture he pulled from the Ziploc bag floats in my mind like a grayscale emblem of guilt. I’ve placed the photo now. It ran in several major newspapers two years ago, when I won the North American Press Association Award. Wingate must have accessed some database that contained that picture, printed it on photo-quality paper, and sent it to the UNSUB in New Orleans.

“Do you want to talk about it?” John reaches out and touches my knee.

“I don’t know.”

“I know what you’re thinking, Jordan. A little survivor guilt is normal, but this is crazy. You’re forcing everything to fit a predetermined result. And the result you’re reaching for is that Jane died because of you. I don’t know why you want to feel that guilt, but that’s not what happened.”

I squeeze the wheel, trying to control my temper. “I don’t want that guilt.”

“I’m glad. Because that would be really fucked up.”

I grip the wheel still harder to bleed off my exasperation, but it does no good. “Will you call and see if they’ve compared the handwriting? If it’s not Wingate’s, I’ll admit I’m being paranoid. But if it is, we’ll know Wingate mailed or gave the UNSUB my picture.”

John takes out his cell phone, calls the field office, and asks for the forensic unit. “Jenny, John Kaiser. Have you guys heard from New York on that handwriting yet?… What did they say?… I see. One hundred percent sure?… Right. Thanks.” He presses End, then lets his head fall forward and sighs.

“What is it?”

“The phone number on your photo was in Wingate’s handwriting.”

My stomach goes hollow, and I slam the wheel with my open hand. “There it is. Somebody outside New Orleans chose me as victim number five, and it got Jane killed.”

He bites his lower lip and shakes his head. “If I had to pick someone, I’d pick Marcel de Becque.”

“What if he ordered me, John? The way you’d commission any painting? He’s known who I am for years. He tells Wingate he wants me in the next painting, but since I’m traveling all the time, Wingate finds an easy way to supply what de Becque wants. He takes Jane instead.”

“There’s one big hole in that theory.”

“That de Becque didn’t have Jane’s painting? That’s easy. Wingate sold it out from under him. That’s the source of their bad blood.”

“I was talking about coincidence. Every other victim lives in New Orleans. But for some unknown reason, de Becque chooses you – a world traveler based in San Francisco – as victim number five. To fill de Becque’s order, Wingate decides to use your twin sister as a substitute. And that substitute just happens to live in the same city as all the other victims? That’s a statistical impossibility.”

A low pounding has started at the base of my skull. I reach down to the floor and unzip my fanny pack, looking for my pill bottle.

“What’s that?” John asks as I bring it up.

“Xanax.”

“ Tranquilizers?”

“It’s no big deal.”

“Xanax is a chemical cousin of Valium.”

“I know that. Look, I need to calm down.”

He looks out his window at the lake, but I know he’s not going to let it drop. “Do you take them regularly?”

I pop off the lid, shake two pills into my hand, and swallow them dry. “This has been a bad day, okay? I watched Wendy die. I watched you get shot. A guy tried to kidnap me, and I just found out I’m responsible for my sister’s death. You can put me in rehab tomorrow.”

He looks back at me, his hazel eyes filled with concern. “You do what you have to do to get through this. I’m just worried about you. And me. We’ve got another fifteen minutes in the car. You’re not going to fall asleep at the wheel, are you?”

I laugh. “Don’t worry about that. Two of these would put you out, but they’ll barely dent me.”

He studies me for a long moment, then faces the causeway again. “Sooner or later, we’re going to break through the wall, Jordan. We’re going to find those women. All of them.”

Sooner or later. It had better be sooner. Later is like the horizon; it recedes as you approach.

John lives in a suburban ranch house on a street with twenty others exactly like it. Homogenous Americana, enforced by neighborhood covenant. The lawns are well-tended, the houses freshly painted, the vehicles in the driveways clean and new. I park in the driveway, then help him out of the passenger side. With only me present, he uses the cane. It’s slow going, but he grits his teeth and keeps walking.

Under the carport, he punches a security code into a wall box and opens the back door, which leads into a laundry room, then a spotless white kitchen.

“You obviously never cook,” I remark.

“I cook sometimes.”

“You have a maid, then.”

“A woman comes in once a week. But I’m basically a neat guy.”

“I’ve never met a neat guy I’d want to spend the night with.”

He laughs, then winces. “The truth is, I’ve been sleeping on a cot at the office since Baxter called about your discovery in Hong Kong.”

“Ah.”

Beyond the kitchen counter is a dining area with a glass table, and a large arch leads on to a decently furnished den. Everything appears to be in its appointed place, with only a couple of magazines on a coffee table suggesting the presence of an occupant. The house feels like it’s been cleaned up for sale, or is even a demo unit used to sell young marrieds on the neighborhood.

“Where’s all your junk?” I ask, feeling a warm wave of Xanax wash against my headache.

“My junk?”

“You know. Books, videotapes? Old mail? The things you buy on impulse at Wal-Mart?”

He shrugs, then looks oddly wistful. “No wife, no kids, no junk.”

“That rule doesn’t apply to other bachelors I’ve known.”

He starts to reply, but winces again instead.

“Your leg?”

“It’s stiffening up fast. Let me just get on the couch there. I can go through the Argus photos there.”

“I think you’d better rest before you start on those.”

He limps to the sofa with his weight on the cane, but instead of helping him sit, I take his hand and pull him past the sofa toward the hall. “I don’t want to sleep,” he complains, pulling back against my hand.

“We’re not going to sleep.”

“Oh.”

His resistance stops, and I lead him toward a half-open door at the end of the hall, where a cherry footboard shows through. Like the rest of the house, the bedroom is clean; the bed is neatly made. With John’s casual dress habits, I thought this inner sanctum might be the secret wreck of the house. Maybe that’s just projection.

He starts to sit on the bed, but I stop him and pull back the covers first. Once he gets horizontal, the painkillers will kick in, and it will be a while before he feels like getting up again.

“I need to sit down,” he says in a tight voice.

With me holding his upper arms, he eases back and sits on the edge of the bed, then lies back on the pillow with a groan.

“Bad?”

“Not good. I’m okay, though.”

“Let’s see if I can make it better.”

I slip off my shoes, then climb onto the bed and carefully sit astride him. “Does that hurt?”

“No.”

“Liar.” Leaning forward, I brush his lips with mine and pull back, waiting for him to respond. His hands slide up my hips to my waist; then he kisses me back, gently, yet insistently enough to remind me of the passion I felt in the shower last night. A warm wave of desire rolls through me, which combined with the Xanax suppresses the shadowy images bubbling up from my subconscious.

“I want to forget,” I whisper. “Just for an hour.”

He nods and pulls my lips to his, kissing me deeply as his arms slip around my back. After a bit, he nibbles my neck, then my ear, and the warmth escalates into something urgent enough to make me squirm in discomfort. That’s the way I am. I go a day or a week or a month without being aware of my body, and then suddenly it’s there, making me uncomfortably aware of its needs. But my need runs much deeper than flesh. For the past year, I’ve lived with a growing emptiness that has threatened to swallow me whole.

“You have something?” I whisper.

“In the dresser.”

I slide off him and move to the dresser.

“Top drawer.”

When I get back to the bed, I stand looking down at him. He watches me with wide eyes, waiting to see what I’ll do. The base of my skull is still throbbing, but not so badly now. I’d give a lot to have my shoulders rubbed, but he’s in no shape to do that for me. Given what his doctor told us, he’s not in shape to do anything I have in mind. But I suspect he feels differently.

“You okay?” he asks.

I smile at him and begin unbuttoning my blouse. The bra I put on this morning is sealed in an evidence bag in the belly of a plane on its way to Washington, and the agent who lent me a change of clothes didn’t have an extra bra in her trunk. When the blouse slips off my shoulders, John’s breath goes shallow.

I slide off my jeans and panties, then climb back to the spot I was in before. As he looks up at me, I see the pulse beating at the base of his throat. I touch his lips with my finger.

“Five minutes ago I felt as low as I ever have. I thought we were going to come in here and have violent sex that would exorcize our demons just long enough to let us sleep. But that’s not what this is.”

He nods. “I know.”

“You make me happy, John.”

“I’m glad. You make me happy too.”

“God, we’re a bad movie.”

He laughs. “The real thing always sounds like a bad movie.” He reaches up and touches my cheek. “I know you’re torn to pieces inside, especially after seeing that picture. I don’t-”

“Shh. This is how it is. Life happens in the middle of death. I feel lucky to have found you, and this is where we happen to be. You could have died today. So could I. And we’d never have known what this was like.”

“You’re right.”

“Come on. We deserve it.”

He reaches up and rubs my abdomen, and the warmth of his hand makes me shiver. He nods down toward his leg. “I’m not exactly in top form.”

“You’re still talking pretty well.”

“And?”

“One critical part is still in working order.”

He shakes his head and laughs. “You’re not shy, are you?”

“I’m forty, John. I’m not a Girl Scout anymore. And you still owe me from the hotel.”

“I wondered why you hadn’t taken off my clothes.”

I smile down at him. “First things first.”

“How do we do this?”

“I’ll make it easy for you.”

Leaning forward, I take hold of the headboard and slide up his chest, then rise onto my knees. Without hesitation, he lays his hands on my hips and pulls me to him, kissing lightly. A thrill of heat races over my skin, and I settle against him.

“Is this okay?” he asks.

“Don’t talk. Just keep doing that.”

He does, and after less than a minute, I know this is not going to take long. I learned long ago that the trick is not to concentrate on reaching a peak, but to be with someone with whom you feel totally at ease. Then you can close your eyes and let go of the world, and you’ll be carried to the peak without ever taking a step. I’ve felt at ease with John from the first, and now is no different. He knows where I want to go and how to take me there, and I’m content to let him. I dig my fingers into his hair and pull him into me, and he groans with pleasure.

With a sudden tingle, a film of sweat covers my skin from my scalp to my toes. The tension builds steadily within me, and my thighs go taut and quiver with strain. As I hold myself still against his insistent kisses, his hands slide up my ribs and cover my breasts, and I feel him urging me toward completion, one flick no different from the last, the next a trigger that catapults me into another dimension, where every nerve ending sings with heat and every muscle trembles without command. For an instant all goes white; then the whiteness bends into waves that dissipate into soft color and the physical fallout of shivering and panting that let him know he has done well. He lifts his head and lightly kisses my belly, and I slide down his chest and hug him tightly.

“Mmm. I think I could actually sleep now.”

“Hmm.” The sound of consternation.

I reach back and tickle his stomach, then slide my hand farther down. “Feels like somebody needs some special attention before anyone goes to sleep.”

He tries to look nonchalant, but he’s not fooling anybody.

I reach back and undo his belt and trousers, then try to fit the condom on him with one hand. “This is like you learning to unhook a bra when you were a teenager, right?”

He laughs. “You’re doing pretty well.”

“There. Everything okay?”

He pulls my face down and kisses me again, gently despite his need. I playfully bite his bottom lip, waiting to see how desperate he is, but he just keeps kissing me. Before long I realize what he already seems to know: I want him inside me as badly as he wants to be there.

“You win,” I tell him, sliding backward.

“Are you okay?” he asks.

“I will be in a minute. Go slow.”

“I’m counting.” His eyes twinkle. “Not easy to be still now.”

He lays his hands on my thighs and slowly presses up into me, taking my breath away. Then he begins to move, sliding me forward and back with maddening regularity. The mere presence of him there is enough to scramble my thoughts. It’s been almost a year since I made love with a man, and I feel as though I’m recovering from a sort of physical amnesia. To be so full and still need to be filled, to feel utterly vulnerable and yet primally complete, all of it comes back in the grip of his strong hands and the slow ebb and flow of him in my softest place.

I can tell he’s happy, but I also sense that he’s holding back. That at the core he sees me as fragile.

“I’m not a china vase, John.”

“I know that.”

“You’re thinking about what I told Thalia.”

He slows his movement, then stops. “You can’t pretend that’s not part of you. That you’re completely over it.”

“I’m not over it. But I am above it. Is it you that has a problem with it?”

“Absolutely not. I’m just worried about you. I want to take care of you.”

“Then do that.” I start to move against him, but he still looks uncertain. There’s only one way to get past this awkwardness, and that’s to rip him out of his preconceptions. It’s a risk, but one I feel I have to take.

“Did Lenz tell you about my affair with my teacher?” I ask, watching his eyes as I move.

“No. But I saw something in his notes.”

“Lenz showed you his notes?”

“They were on the table in the conference room.” He looks troubled now. “I took a quick look.”

“Only natural, right?”

“I’m an investigator. Nosy by nature.”

“What did you think about what you read?”

“I don’t judge anybody, as long as they don’t hurt someone else.”

“Good. Because I was really in love with him.”

“I’m sorry about what happened.”

I arch my back, and John closes his eyes and groans deep in his throat. “You know one thing I really liked in that relationship?”

“What?”

“When I went to school after being with him the night before, or that morning, nobody knew. But I knew. I could still feel him. I felt marked, you know? I belonged to him.”

“That doesn’t sound like you. Wanting to belong to somebody. Anybody.”

“Shows how much you know. I’m as independent as they come, right?” I settle my weight and begin moving in slow circles. “But you know what?”

“What?” he asks hoarsely.

“After we’ve been together long enough for the CDC or whoever to clear us, you know what I want?”

“What?”

“I want you to fill me up. I want you to mark your territory every day, so I can always feel you.”

“Jesus, Jordan-”

Tightening my muscles, I plant my palms on his chest and push. He moans with ineffable pleasure, and his eyes go wide, searching mine, trying to discover all that I am in a span of seconds. Foolish man. My neuroses alone would take years to plumb. He bites his lip against the pain of his leg and grasps my wrists in his hands.

“Now you see me,” I whisper. “And I see you. I know what you want… how you want it. I’m all grown up, John. You can do what you want. Anything.”

At last he snaps out of himself, out of the man who sees me as someone to be protected and into the one who wants me beyond restraint. His hands fly to my hips, pulling me down as he flails into me, not caring anymore about my feelings or his leg, nothing but getting as deep into me as physical limits will allow, making me his alone. The bed, which only squeaked before, hammers the wall. The lamp on the end table crashes to the floor. None of it matters. I grip the headboard with all my strength and hold him against the mattress until he screams and goes into spasms you’d think would kill a man but which in fact bring him gasping and sweating back to life. When he collapses onto the pillow, I fall beside him.

“Jesus,” he says breathlessly.

“I know.”

“You’re amazing.”

“Hardly.”

“How do you feel?”

“The same way you feel about me. You think all the boys get this treatment?”

“I didn’t know.”

“Well, now you do.”

He smiles with contentment. “I love you, Jordan.”

“Take it easy. You’re in shock.”

“I think you’re right. I haven’t been – I mean, I haven’t felt like that since…”

“When?”

He blinks and looks at the ceiling. “I was going to say Vietnam.”

The mild euphoria I felt before slips away. “You slept with Vietnamese women over there?”

“Everybody did.”

“They were beautiful?”

“Some.”

“Different from other women?”

“How do you mean? In bed?”

“Yes… but not just that. I don’t know. Like de Becque said. Like that Li, that woman we met on Cayman. Did they make you fall in love with them?”

He’s looking in my direction, but his mind is focused thousands of miles away. “I saw it happen a lot. People over here think it’s because Vietnamese women were more submissive than American women, but that’s not it. They just – I’m not talking about the city girls, now, the bar girls, but regular Vietnamese women – they had a naturalness about them. They were very demure, yet open about certain things. It’s seductive without trying to be. I knew a guy who deserted to be with one.”

“And I just made you feel like they made you feel?”

“Not the same. Only the intensity.” He touches my cheek. “You’re thinking about your father, aren’t you?”

“Yes.”

“That he may have left you on purpose?”

I nod, unable to voice my fear.

“I’m not like your father, Jordan.”

“I know. You’re like the men he took pictures of.”

“What do you mean?”

John’s ceiling has a water stain. The house isn’t perfect after all. “They were more real than he was. He seemed to make them real, to bring them into existence with his camera. And in a way he did. The way I do. We make certain things real to the rest of the world. But the rest of the world doesn’t really matter. My father’s photos didn’t make soldiers eternal, the way someone wrote they did. What those soldiers did made them eternal. And whatever they did, I think, is still happening somewhere. All of it. All things, all the time. I probably sound nuts. That’s what comes from living on the West Coast, right?”

“You don’t sound nuts. The things I saw and did in Vietnam have never stopped for me. You know why I don’t have post-traumatic stress disorder? Because there’s nothing post about it. It’s just something I live with. Sometimes nearer, sometimes farther away.”

“Tell me something, John. The truth. Do you think my father is involved in this thing?”

“No.” His eyes are steady and guileless.

“But you did before.”

“I wondered, that’s all. I still don’t know what’s happening. But if your father’s involved, the only way I can see it is if he’s in with de Becque somehow.”

“But you don’t think so.”

“No.”

“What do you base that on?”

“My gut.”

I lay my hand on his flat stomach. “You don’t have much of one.”

“I’m glad you can still laugh.”

“It’s the same old choice. Laugh or cry.” I rub my hand slowly over his abdomen. “Why don’t you sleep for a while?”

He shakes his head. “I can’t. Not with Thalia still out there. I can never sleep when things are breaking.”

“You want me to make coffee or something?”

“Coffee would be good.”

“What about food? You have anything in the fridge?”

“Can you cook?”

I laugh. “Mostly foreign dishes designed for campfires. But I don’t think there’s a Mississippi girl on the planet who can’t do the basics.”

“There are some chicken breasts in the freezer.”

“Rice in the cabinets? Onions?”

“Probably.”

“Jambalaya, then.” I kiss him on the chin and climb out of the bed.

“Would you mind bringing those Argus photos in here?”

“I think they can wait, but I’ll bring them.”

I retrieve the thick manila envelope from the coffee table and toss it onto the bed. “How many of those have you looked at already?”

“I don’t know. Until they adjusted the sensitivity of the program, I was looking at twenty different versions of the same face before it became recognizable as another one.”

“Pace yourself. Jambalaya and biscuits, coming up.”

I walk back to the kitchen and orient myself, but I’ve gotten no further than running water over the chicken breasts when John’s voice echoes up the hallway. Something in the sound makes me freeze with my hand on the sink tap. I run for the bedroom, in my mind seeing him turning blue from a blood clot broken free by our strenuous lovemaking.

“I know this woman,” he says, shaking a piece of paper at me as I come through the door.

“From where?” I ask, taking the picture from him. It’s a facial shot of a young blond woman, maybe eighteen. She’s like a template of an adult; her face has yet to develop the definition of personality. “Is she one of the missing persons you’ve been studying?”

“No. I saw her years ago. In Quantico.”

“You mean you knew her? Personally?”

He shakes his head impatiently. “No. Every year we have city and state cops coming through Quantico. Our National Academy program. Most of them have a case that’s dogged them for years, one they couldn’t solve or get out of their minds. Sometimes it’s a single murder. Usually it’s two or three they think might be connected. A police detective showed me this woman at Quantico.”

“A New Orleans detective?”

“That’s the thing. I think he was from New York. This is a really old case.”

My head is buzzing with a strange excitement. “How old?”

“Ten years? Remember at the Camellia Grill, when I told you I was working on something? I said if it panned out, I’d tell you? Well, maybe it has.”

“How do you mean? What are you talking about?”

“The youngest of our four suspects is Frank Smith, who’s thirty-five. Serial offenders don’t just wake up one day and start killing people in middle age. Baxter’s unit was checking all four suspects’ past residences for similar unsolved crimes. Vermont, where Wheaton’s from. Terrebonne Parish, where Laveau grew up. Those were easy. That left New York, for Smith and Gaines. Not to mention the possible accomplice. In fact, all four suspects have ties to New York. But when you’re talking about missing persons – which is what this case is, because of the lack of corpses – you’re talking about thousands of victims in New York, even if you only go back a few years. The VICAP computer is supposed to make those kinds of connections, but police compliance isn’t always great, and it’s worse the farther back you go. But I thought, What if there were unsolved homicides in New York that had only one or two similarities to this case?”

“Like…?”

“Women taken from grocery stores, jogging paths, et cetera, snatched off the street without a trace, no witnesses, nothing. A professional feel to them, yet no obvious similarities between the victims.”

“Did you check it out?”

“I called some New York cops I knew from the Academy program and asked them to poke around their old files. It was asking a lot, but I had to do it.”

“Did you talk to the cop who showed you this woman?”

“No, that guy’s retired now. And nobody’s gotten back to me yet. But this woman…”

“You still remember her?”

“I told you before, I’ve got a knack for faces. This girl was pretty and young, and she stuck in my mind. That detective’s, too. She was his informant, now that I think about it. Will you bring me the cordless phone?”

I get him the phone, and he rings the field office, asking for Baxter.

“It’s John,” he says. “I think we caught a break… A big one. We need New York to liaise with NYPD in a big hurry…”

I sit on the edge of the bed and look at the Argus-generated portrait again. It’s a strangely nonhuman image, yet lifelike enough to pull a ten-year-old memory from John’s brain. I say a silent thank-you to the photographer who confided the existence of Argus to me.

“Jordan?” says John, hanging up the phone. “Do you know what this means?”

“It means my sister wasn’t victim number five. Whoever is behind this started taking women more than a decade ago. In New York.”

He squeezes my arm. “We’re close now. Really close.”