The Tower

Chapter 33

Jade lay draped across his leather couch in a daze, surrounded by the clutter of books and papers. A taped recording of a psychiatric interview played, and Allander's voice resonated through the room. Three of the walls now held black-and-white photographs of Allander and his victims, and the television blinked images of his trial, the bluish glow mapping erratic patterns of light onto the room.

Jade's eyes closed briefly and his hand, still grasping the document he had begun to examine, fell to his chest. His eyelids fluttered as he tried to fight off sleep, but his exhaustion was too great.

He was reclining in the middle of a massive rose garden, a peaceful oasis that seemed to exist out of time and place. Row after row of roses stretched before him, roses of different sizes and colors. A stone wall surrounded the fertile soil of the garden.

Lying propped on his elbows, Jade surveyed the calm surroundings and inhaled the fresh air. Suddenly a roll of thunder broke from behind the clear sky, and Jade searched overhead for any trace of darkness. There was none. The sound of tiny footsteps became slowly distinguishable, a cavalry of small feet pounding a ground unseen, accompanied by the whistle of thin legs pumping vigorously.

Then they were there. Hands grasped the top of the stone wall, hoisting to elbows, then elbows to knees. Bodies poured over the wall, spilling down the ten-foot fall and bouncing effortlessly to their feet.

Boys. Scores of boys flooding the garden from all sides.

A look of panic flashed across Jade's face, an unfamiliar expression that sat awkwardly on his features. He rose quickly and twisted to glance around.

He watched as the boys continued to tumble over the wall. Righting themselves, they attacked the rosebushes, breaking off stems and gripping them tightly, the thorns puncturing the flesh of their hands. Using the stems like sickles, they lopped off the heads of the flowers. The blossoms fell and the petals came apart, littering the ground. The boys laughed as they raced through the rows of bushes toward Jade, who was frozen in place.

The boys bleated in pleasure as they raised their voices to the heavens, breaking into a chant of nursery rhymes. "Eenie meenie minie moe," they sang, repeating the lyrics in a near scream.

Rosebush after rosebush fell before their marching feet, plowed down by the vanguard. Droplets of blood from the boys' hands fell to the ground and dotted the trampled petals. The rose stems snapped through the air like whips. Jade recoiled before the onslaught, lifting his hands to his face, peering out through the prism of his fingers.

He awoke from his dream with the noise of Allander's voice filling his ears and with Allander's eyes gazing at him from the pictures spread about the apartment. He didn't lurch awake as many people do after a nightmare. Instead, his eyes opened and he waited silently for the world to flood back to him.

Jade rose from the couch and walked to his study, crunching papers underfoot as he moved. As he crossed the living room, his pace accelerated until he was running.

Inside the study, which, unlike the living room, was still neat and clean, Jade picked up from the desk a small box that held pencils and pens. He dashed its contents to the desktop, then struggled to keep them from falling to the floor, fencing them in with his forearms.

Slowly, he relaxed. Pulling the black desk chair to him, he sat down. He leaned forward on the desk and began lining up the pens and pencils, separating them by color and type. They were all different shades of black and gray, and there were five of each kind.

As he organized them, his breathing slowed to normal and his fingers stopped shaking. By the time he reached the black pens, he was ordering them with machinelike dexterity.

When he had all the pens and pencils lined up perfectly, he removed a ruler from his top-left drawer and pushed it against the erasers of all the pencils. He let his breath out through clenched teeth as the ruler pushed them into a perfect line, the tips lined up like little soldiers. Picking up the pencils, he slotted them neatly into their division of the box. He did the same with each type of pen until all sat in order-once again the way they had been. He leaned back in his chair and ran his thumb across his bottom lip, pressing tenderly.

The rollers on his chair grated noisily in their plastic sockets as he pushed back from the desk. He got up and centered the swivel chair in the space beneath the desk. Closing the door to his study very gently, he walked into his bedroom. Like the study, this room, too, was neat, orderly, organized. All was as it should be-except for one thing, which Jade noticed immediately. Some of the pictures were missing from his bookshelf.

He felt his heartbeat pounding in his ears. The sound of the chase.

He moved purposefully through the living room and into the kitchen. Pulling the glass sliding door open, he stepped out onto the back patio. A small note sat on the counter that ran underneath the kitchen window, held in place by two of Jade's framed pictures.

"Of course," he said aloud as he slid his hand under the counter to the space where his Glock should have been. He lifted the note-a plain white piece of stationery, folded in half-to his eyes.

The front of the note said simply, "Welcome." Jade flipped it open and saw Allander's familiar scrawl lining the page:

Full fathom five thy father lies;

Of his bones are coral made;

Those are pearls that were his eyes:

Nothing of him that doth fade,

But doth suffer a sea-change

Into something rich and strange.

Sea nymphs hourly ring his knell:

Ding-dong.

Hark! now I hear them-Ding-dong, bell.

He looked at the two pictures on the counter that had been removed from his bedroom. In the photograph of Jade sprinting the hundred for UCLA, two circles to the sides of his head had been cut out. Next to this photo was the small picture of the boy with drooping features. It had not been altered.

Hurwitz, Gregg

The Tower (1999)

A chill ran down Jade's spine and he felt the cold moistness of his sweat under his arms and on his back and shoulders.

He ran through his schedule of the past few days. He had not been outside on the patio since early yesterday, before he'd left for the meeting. He'd gotten in so late last night that he hadn't even turned on the light in his bedroom. He had simply undressed and gone straight to sleep, so he hadn't noticed the missing pictures. That meant he had slept in a room last night that Allander had stood in, had walked around. The note could have been there waiting even while he met with Travers this afternoon.

He cursed himself for not checking the house thoroughly. He just hadn't expected Allander to come so quickly. By arranging the TV news story, he had practically dared him to come to his house. It had paid off. The hoped-for opportunity had come, and he had missed it.

Jade's rage rose suddenly and uncontrollably, and he yelled. He brought the edge of his hand down to strike the counter, breaking it from the wall. The top of the crumpled note protruded from Jade's clenched fist as he walked in tight circles around the patio.