From Potter`s Field

18

Before we went inside his house, Mr. Gault warned me that his wife did not have good coping skills. He explained as delicately as he could that Rachael Gault had never faced the reality of her offsprings' blighted destinies.

'It's not that she's going to pitch a fit,' he explained in a soft voice as we climbed the porch steps. 'She just won't accept it, if you know what I mean.'

'You may want to look at the pictures out here,' I said.

'Of Jayne.' He got very tired again.

'Of her and of footprints.'

'Footprints?' He ran callused fingers through his hair.

'Do you remember her owning a pair of army jungle boots?' I then asked.

'No.' He slowly shook his head. 'But Luther had all kinds of things like that.'

'Do you know what size shoe he wore?'

'His foot was smaller than mine. I guess he wore a seven and a half or an eight.'

'Did he ever give a pair of his boots to Temple?'

'Huh,' he said shortly. 'The only way Luther would have given that boy boots would be if Luther still had 'em on and was kicking Temple's butt.'

'The boots could have belonged to Jayne.'

'Oh sure. She and Luther probably wore close to the same size. She was a big girl. In fact, she was about the size of Temple. And I always suspected that was part of his problem.'

Mr. Gault would have stood out in prevailing winds and talked all day. He did not want me opening my briefcase because he knew what was inside.

'We don't have to do this. You don't have to look at anything,' I said. 'We can use DNA.'

'If it's all the same to you,' he said, eyes bright as he reached for the door. 'I guess I'd better tell Rachael.'

The entrance of the Gault house was whitewashed and bordered in a pale shade of gray- An old brass chandelier hung from the high ceiling, and a graceful spiral stairway led to the second floor. In the living room were English antiques, oriental rugs and formidable oil portraits of people from lives past. Rachael Gault sat on a prim sofa, needlepoint in her lap. I could see through a spacious archway that needlepoint covered the dining room chairs.

'Rachael?' Mr. Gault stood before her like a bashful bachelor with hat in hand. 'We have company.'

She dipped her needle in and out. 'Oh, how nice.' She smiled and put down her work.

Rachael Gault once had been a fair beauty with light skin, eyes and hair. I was fascinated that Temple and Jayne had gotten their looks from their mother and their uncle, and I chose not to speculate but to attribute this to Mendel's law of dominance or his statistics of genetic chance.

Mr. Gault sat on the sofa and offered me the high-back chair.

'What's the weather doing out there?' Mrs. Gault asked with her son's thin smile and the hypnotic cadences of a Deep South drawl. 'I wonder if there are any shrimp left.' She looked directly at me. 'You know, I don't know your name. Now, Peyton, let's not be rude. Introduce me to this new friend you've made.'

'Rachael,' Mr. Gault tried again. Hands on his knees, he hung his head. 'She's a doctor from Virginia.'

'Oh?' Her delicate hands plucked at the canvas in her lap.

'I guess you'd call her a coroner.' He looked over at his wife. 'Honey, Jayne's dead.'

Mrs. Gault resumed her needlework with nimble fingers. 'You know, we had a magnolia out there that lasted nearly a hundred years before lightning struck it in the spring. Can you imagine?' She sewed on. 'We do get storms here. What's it like where you're from?'

'I live in Richmond,' I replied.

'Oh yes,' she said, the needle dipping faster. 'Now see, we were lucky we didn't get all burned up in the war. I bet you had a great-granddaddy who fought in it?'

'I'm Italian,' I said. 'I'm from Miami, originally.'

'Well, it certainly gets hot down there.'

Mr. Gault sat helpless on the couch. He gave up looking at anyone.

'Mrs. Gault,' I said, 'I saw Jayne in New York.'

'You did?' She seemed genuinely pleased. 'Why, tell me all about it.' Her hands were like hummingbirds.

'When I saw her she was awfully thin and she'd cut her hair.'

'She never is satisfied with her hair. When she wore it short she looked like Temple. They're twins and people used to confuse them and think she was a boy. So she's always worn it long, which is why I'm surprised you would say she's cut it short.'

'Do you talk to your son?' I asked.

'He doesn't call as often as he should, that bad boy. But he knows he can.'

'Jayne called here a couple weeks before Christmas,' I said.

She said nothing as she sewed.

'Did she say anything to you about seeing her brother?'

She was silent.

'I'm wondering because he was in New York, too.'

'Certainly, I told him he ought to look up his sister and wish her a Merry Christmas,' Mrs. Gault said as her husband winced.

'You sent her money?' I went on.

She looked up at me. 'Now I believe you're getting a bit personal.'

'Yes, ma'am. I'm afraid I have to get personal.'

She threaded a needle with bright blue yarn.

'Doctors get personal.' I tried a different tack. 'That's part of our job.'

She laughed a little. 'Well now, they do. I suppose that's why I hate going to them. They think they can cure everything with milk of magnesia. It's like drinking white paint. Peyton? Would you mind getting me a glass of water with a little ice? And see what our guest would like.'

'Nothing,' I told him quietly as he reluctantly got up and left the room.

'That was very thoughtful of you to send your daughter money,' I said. 'Please tell me how you did it in a city as big and busy as New York.'

'I had Western Union wire it, same as I always do.'

'Where exactly did you wire it?'

'New York, where Jayne is.'

'Where in New York, Mrs. Gault? And have you done this more than once?'

'A drugstore up there. Because she has to get her medicine.'

'For her seizures. Her diphenylhydantoin.'

'Jayne said it wasn't a very good part of town.' She sewed some more. 'It was called Houston. Only it's not pronounced like the city in Texas.'

'Houston and what?' I asked.

'Why, I don't know what you mean.' She was getting agitated.

'A cross street. I need an address.'

'Why in the world?'

'Because that may be where your daughter went right before she died.'

She sewed faster, her lips a thin line.

'Please help me, Mrs. Gault.'

'She rides the bus a lot. She says she can see America flow by like a movie when she's on the bus.'

'I know you don't want anyone else to die.'

She squeezed her eyes shut.

'Please.'

'Now I lay me.'

'What?' I said.

'Rachael.' Mr. Gault returned to the room. 'There isn't any ice. I don't know what happened.'

'Down to sleep,' she said.

Dumbfounded, I looked at her husband.

'Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep,' he said, looking at her. 'We prayed that with the kids every night when they were small. Is that what you're thinking of, honey?'

'Test question for Western Union,' she said.

'Because Jayne had no identification,' I said. 'Of course. So they made her answer a test question to pick up the money and her prescription.'

'Oh yes. It was what we always used. For years now.'

'And what about Temple?'

'For him, too.'

Mr. Gault rubbed his face. 'Rachael, you haven't been giving him money, too. Please don't tell me…'

'It's my money. I have my own from my family just like you do.' She resumed sewing, turning the canvas this way and that.

'Mrs. Gault,' I said, 'did Temple know Jayne was due money from you at Western Union?'

'Of course he knew. He is her brother. He said he'd pick it up for her because she hasn't been well. When that horse threw her off. She's never been as clearheaded as Temple is. And I was sending him a little, too.'

'How often have you been sending money?' I asked again.

She tied a knot and cast about as if she had lost something.

'Mrs. Gault, I will not leave your house until you answer my question or throw me out.'

'After Luther died there wasn't anyone to care about Jayne, and she didn't want to come here,' she said. 'Jayne didn't want to be in one of those homes. So wherever she went she let me know, and I helped when I could.'

'You never told me.' Her husband was crushed.

'How long had she been in New York?' I asked.

'Since the first of December. I've been sending money regularly, just a little at a time. Fifty dollars here, a hundred dollars there. I wired some last Saturday, as usual. That's why I know she's fine. She passed the test. So she was standing right there in line.'

I wondered how long Gault had been intercepting his poor sister's money. I despised him with a zeal that was scary.

'She didn't like Philadelphia,' Mrs. Gault went on, talking faster. 'That's where she was before New York. Some city of brotherly love that is. Someone stole her flute there. Stole it right out of her hand.'

'Her tin whistle?' I asked.

'Her saxophone. You know, my father played the violin.'

Mr. Gault and I stared at her.

'Maybe it was her saxophone that got taken. Lawww, I don't know where all she's been. Honey? Remember when she came here for her birthday and went out in the pecan trees with the dog?' Her hands went still.

'That was Albany. That's not where we are now.'

She shut her eyes. 'Why, she was twenty-five and had never been kissed.' She laughed. 'I remember her at the piano playing up a storm, singing "Happy Birthday" to beat the band. Then Temple took her to the barn. She'd go anywhere with him. I never understood why. But Temple can be charming.'

A tear slipped between her lashes.

'She went out to ride that darn horse Priss and never came back.' More tears spilled. 'Oh Peyton, I never saw my little girl again.'

He said in a voice that shook, 'Temple killed her, Rachael. This can't go on.'

I drove back to Hilton Head and got an early evening flight to Charlotte. From there I flew to Richmond and retrieved my car. I did not go home. I felt a sense of urgency that set me on fire. I could not reach Wesley at Quantico, and Lucy had returned none of my calls.

It was almost nine o'clock when I drove past pitch-black artillery ranges and barracks, trees hulking shadows on either side of the narrow road. I was rattled and exhausted as I watched for signs and deer crossing, then blue lights flashed in my rearview mirror. I tried to see what was behind me. I could not tell, but I knew it was not a patrol car because those had light bars in addition to lights in the grille.

I drove on. I thought of cases I had worked in which a woman alone stopped for what she thought was a cop. Many times over the years I had warned Lucy never to stop for an unmarked car, not for any reason, especially not at night. The car was dogged, but I did not pull over until I reached the Academy guard booth.

The unmarked car halted at my rear, and instantly an MP in uniform was at my driver's door with pistol drawn. My heart seemed to stop.

'Get out and put your hands up in the air!' he ordered.

I sat perfectly still.

He stepped back and I realized the guard was saying something to him. Then the guard emerged from his booth and the MP tapped on my glass. I rolled down my window while the MP lowered his gun, his eyes not leaving me. He did not look a day over nineteen.

'You're going to have to get out, ma'am.' The MP was hateful because he was embarrassed.

'I will if you'll holster your weapon and move out of my way,' I said as the Academy guard stepped back. 'And I have a pistol on the console between the front seats. I'm just telling you so you aren't startled.'

'Are you DBA?' he demanded as he surveyed my Mercedes.

He had what looked like gray adhesive residue for a mustache. My blood was roaring. I knew he was going to put on a manly show because the Academy guard was watching.

I was out of my car now, blue lights throbbing on our faces.

'Am I DBA?' I glared at him.

'Yes.'

'No.'

'Are you FBI?'

'No.'

He was getting more disconcerted. 'Then what are you, ma'am?'

'I am a forensic pathologist,' I said.

'Who is your supervisor?'

'I don't have a supervisor,'

'Ma'am, you have to have a supervisor.'

'The governor of Virginia is my supervisor.'

'I'll have to see your driver's license,' he said.

'Not until you tell me what I am being charged with.'

'You were going forty-five in a thirty-five-mile-an-hour zone. And you attempted to elude.'

'Do all people who attempt to elude military police drive straight to a guard booth?'

'I must have your driver's license.'

'And let me ask you, Private,' I said, 'just why do you imagine I didn't pull over on this godforsaken road after dark?'

'I really don't know, ma'am.'

'Unmarked cars rarely make traffic stops, but psychopaths often do.'

Bright blue pulsed on his pathetically young face. He probably did not know what a psychopath was.

'I will never stop for your unmarked Chevrolet if you and I repeat this misadventure for the rest of our lives. Do you understand?' I said.

A car sped from the direction of the Academy and halted on the other side of the guard booth.

'You drew down on me,' I said, outraged, as a car door shut. 'You pulled a goddam nine-millimeter pistol and pointed it at me. Has no one in the Marine Corps taught you the meaning of unnecessary force?'

'Kay?' Benton Wesley appeared in the pulsing dark.

I realized the guard must have called him, but I did not understand why Wesley would be here at this hour. He could not have come from home. He lived almost in Fredericksburg.

'Good evening,' he sternly said to the MP.

They stepped aside and I could not hear what they said. But the MP walked back to his small, bland car. Blue lights quit and he drove away.

'Thanks,' Wesley said to the guard. 'Come on,' he said to me. 'Follow me.'

He did not drive into the parking lot I usually used but to reserved spaces behind Jefferson. There was no other car in the lot but a big pickup truck I recognized as Marino's. I got out.

'What is going on?' I asked, my breath smoky in the cold.

'Marino's down in the unit.' Wesley was dressed in a dark sweater and dark slacks, and I sensed something had happened.

'Where's Lucy?' I quickly said.

He did not answer as he inserted his security card into a slot, opening a back door.

'You and I need to talk,' he said.

'No.' I knew what he meant. 'I am too worried.'

'Kay, I am not your enemy.'

'You have seemed like it at times.'

We walked quickly and did not bother with the elevator.

'I'm sorry,' he said. 'I love you and don't know what to do.'

'I know.' I was shaken. 'I don't know what to do, either. I keep wanting someone to tell me. But I don't want this, Benton. I want what we've had and I don't want it ever.'

For a while he did not speak.

'Lucy got a hit on CAIN,' he eventually said. 'We've deployed HRT.'

'Then she's here,' I said, relieved.

'She's in New York. We're on our way there.' He looked at his watch.

'I don't understand,' I said as our feet sounded on stairs.

We moved swiftly down a long corridor where hostage negotiators spent their days when they weren't abroad talking terrorists out of buildings and hijackers out of planes.

'I don't understand why she's in New York,' I said, unnerved. 'Why does she need to be there?'

We walked into his office, where Marino was squatting by a tote bag. It was unzipped, and next to it on the carpet were a shaving kit and three loaded magazines for his Sig Sauer. He was looking for something else and glanced up at me.

He said to Wesley, 'Can you believe it? I forgot my razor.'

'They have them in New York,' Wesley said, his mouth grim.

'I've been in South Carolina,' I said. 'I talked to the Gaults.'

Marino stopped digging and stared up at me. Wesley sat behind his desk.

'I hope they don't know where their son is staying,' he said oddly.

'I have no indication that they do.' I looked curiously at him.

'Well, maybe it doesn't matter.' He rubbed his eyes. 'I just don't want anyone tipping him off.'

'Lucy kept him on CAIN long enough for the call to be traced,' I assumed.

Marino got up and sat in a chair. He said, 'The squirrel's got a crib right on Central Park.'

'Where?' I asked.

'The Dakota.'

I thought of Christmas Eve when we were at the fountain in Cherry Hill. Gault could have been watching. He could have seen our lights from his room.

'He can't afford the Dakota,' I said.

'You remember his fake ID?' Marino asked. 'The Italian guy named Benelli?'

'It's his apartment?'

'Yes,' Wesley answered. 'Mr. Benelli apparently is a flamboyant heir to a considerable family fortune.

Management has assumed the current occupant -Gault - is an Italian relative. At any rate, they don't ask many questions there, and he's been speaking with an accent. It also is very convenient because Mr. Benelli does not pay his rent. His father in Verona does.'

'Why can't you go into the Dakota and get Gault?' I asked. 'Why can't HRT do that?'

'We could, but I'd rather not. It's too risky,' Wesley said. 'This isn't war, Kay. We don't want any casualties, and we are bound by law. There are people inside the Dakota who could get hurt. We don't know where Benelli is. He could be in the room.'

'Yeah, in a plastic bag in a steamer trunk,' Marino said.

'We know where Gault is and we have the building under surveillance. But Manhattan is not where I would have chosen to catch this guy. It's too damn crowded. You get in an exchange of firepower - I don't care how good you are - and someone's going to get hit. Someone else is going to die. A woman, a man, a child who just happens to walk out at the wrong time.'

'I understand,' I said. 'I'm not disagreeing with you. Is Gault in the apartment now? And what about Carrie?'

Wesley said, 'Neither has been sighted, and we have no reason to suspect Carrie travels with him.'

'He hasn't used my charge card to buy her plane tickets,' I considered. 'That much I can tell.'

'We do know Gault was in the apartment as recently as eight o'clock this evening,' Wesley said.

'That's when he got on the line and Lucy trapped him.'

'She trapped him?' I looked at both men, 'She trapped him from here and now she's gone? Did she get deployed with HRT?'

I had a bizarre image of Lucy in black boots and fatigues being loaded on a plane at Andrews Air Force Base. I imagined her with a group of supremely fit helicopter pilots, snipers and experts in explosives, and my incredulity grew.

Wesley met my eyes. 'She's been in New York for the past couple of days. She's working on the Transit Police computer. She got the hit in New York.'

'Why not work here where CAIN is located?' I wanted to know, because I did not want Lucy in New York. I did not want her in the same state where Temple Gault was.

'Transit's got an extremely sophisticated system,' he said.

Marino spoke. 'It's got things we don't have, Doc.'

'Like what?'

'Like a computerized map of the entire subway system.' Marino leaned closer to me, forearms resting on his knees. He understood what I was feeling. I could see it in his eyes. 'We think that's how Gault's been getting around.'

Wesley explained, 'We think Carrie Grethen somehow got Gault into the Transit Police computer, through CAIN. He was able to map out for himself a way to move around the city through the tunnels, so he could get his drugs and commit his crimes.

He has had access to detailed diagrams that include stations, catwalks, tunnels and escape hatches.'

'What escape hatches?' I asked.

'The subway system has emergency exits that lead out of the tunnels, in the event a train should have to stop for some reason down there. Passengers can be routed through an emergency exit that will bring them back above ground. Central Park has a number of them.'

Wesley got up and went to his suitcase. He opened it and pulled out a thick roll of white paper. Removing the rubber band, he spread open very long drawings of New York's subway system that included all tracks and structures, every manhole, trash can, car marker, platform edge. The diagrams covered most of his office floor, some more than six feet long. I studied them, fascinated.

'This is from Commander Penn,' I said.

'Right,' Wesley replied. 'And what's on her computer is even more detailed. For example' - he squatted, pointing and moving his tie out of the way - 'in March of 1979, turnstiles at CB number 300 were removed. That's right here.' He showed me on a drawing of the 110th Street station at Lenox Avenue and 112th Street.

'And a change like that now,' he went on, 'goes directly into the Transit Police computer system.'

'Meaning that any changes are instantly reflected on the computerized maps,' I said.

'Right.' He pulled another drawing closer, this one of the Eighty-first Street Museum of Natural History station. 'Now the reason we think Gault is using these maps is right here.' He tapped an area on the field survey that indicated an emergency exit very near Cherry Hill.

'If Gault was looking at this drawing,' Wesley went on, 'he most likely would choose this emergency exit as the one to come in and out of when he committed the murder in Central Park. That way he and his victim could travel unseen through the tunnels after leaving the museum, and when they surfaced in the park they would be very close to the fountain where he planned to display the body.

'But what you don't know from looking at this three-month-old printout is the day before the murder, the Maintenance of Way Department bolted that escape door shut for repairs. We think that might be why Gault and his victim started out closer to the Ramble,' he said. 'Some footwear impressions recovered in that area, as it turns out, are consistent with theirs. And the tracks were found near an emergency exit.'

'So you have to ask how he knew that exit in Cherry Hill was bolted shut,' Marino said.

'I suppose he could have checked it first,' I said.

'You can't do that above ground because the doors don't open except from inside the tunnels,' Marino said.

'Maybe he was down in the tunnel and saw from the inside that the door was bolted,' I argued, because I sensed where this was leading and did not like it.

'Of course that's possible,' Wesley reasonably said. 'But Transit cops go down into the tunnels a lot. They're all over the platforms and the stations, and none of them remembers seeing Gault. I believe he travels down there by computer until it suits his purposes to make an appearance,'

'What is Lucy's role?' I asked.

To manipulate,' Marino said.

'I'm not a computer person,' Wesley added. 'But as best I can understand, she has worked it so when he logs on to this computerized map, he's really seeing one she is altering.'

'Altering for what purpose?'

'We're hoping to come up with a way of trapping him like a rat in a maze.'

'I thought HRT had been deployed.'

'We are going to try whatever it takes.'

'Well then, let me suggest you consider one other plan,' I said. 'Gault goes to Houston Professional Pharmacy when he wants money.'

They looked at me as if I were crazy.

'That's where his mother has been wiring money to Temple's sister, Jayne-'

'Wait a minute,' Marino interrupted.

But I went on, 'I tried to call earlier to tell you. I know that Temple has been intercepting the money because Mrs. Gault wired money after Jayne was already dead. And someone signed for it. This person knew the test question.'

'Hold on,' Marino said. 'Hold on one damn minute. Are you telling me that son of a bitch murdered his own sister?'

'Yes,' I answered. 'She was his twin,'

'Jesus. No one told me.' He looked accusingly at Wesley.

'You just got here two minutes before Kay got arrested,' Wesley said to him.

'I didn't get arrested,' I said. 'Her middle name actually is Jayne, with a y,' I added, and then I filled them in.

'This changes everything,' Wesley said, and he called New York.

It was almost eleven when he got off the phone. He stood and picked up his briefcase and his bag and a portable radio that was on his desk. Marino rose from his chair, too.

'Unit three to unit seventeen,' Wesley spoke into the radio.

'Seventeen.'

'We're heading your way.'

'Yes, sir.'

'I'm coming with you,' I said to Wesley.

He looked at me. I was not on the original passenger list.

'All right,' he said. 'Let's go.'