Wallflower

8

The Trophies

Janek repositioned himself against the soft white beach towel Monika had arranged upon the cushions of the chaise. It was not a tan he was after but heat. He wanted the sun to strike the center of his chest, wanted its dry hotness to enter his bared body and to spread.

Anything to drive away the chill within that made him tremble even now in the middle of this hot, windless December afternoon on the Isla de Cozumel.

The terrace where he lay exposed, naked except for a pair of green jungle-motif trunks Monika had bought for him at the airport, was just a few rock steps down from their came, perched sixty feet above the beach.

From where Janek lay he could see nothing except a line of palms clinging to the curving shore and a vast expanse of blue divided cleanly by the horizon. Below the line was placid cyan sea, above it serene azure sky, and not a whitecap or a cloud marred these seamless surfaces.

He turned to look at Monika. She lay topless on a matching chaise a few feet away, her oversize sunglasses on her nose, a German-language paperback open and face down on her belly. At first Janek thought she'd fallen off to sleep, but then he saw a smile spread slowly across her face.

"How're you doing?" he asked.

"Feeling dreamy," she said. "I love it here. How about you?"

"I'm definitely feeling warmer."

"Well, you should. You need more sunscreen." She rose, spread lotion onto her hands, came to him, and, standing behind, began to apply it slowly and evenly to his chest.

He gazed up at her. "That's sexy."

"It's meant to be." She brushed her fingers lightly across his nipples. "You're a very sexy man."

"Thanks for saying that," Janek said, "but I don't feel very appetizing.

Pale, middle-aged, scarred…"

She spread the lotion very carefully over the wounds on his shoulder and his throat.

"You look good, Frank. A few days down here and you'll start feeling good, too. It may take time, but sooner or later your mind will catch up with your body."

He glanced up at her again, then turned away, feeling tears rising involuntarily to his eyes. This had been happening regularly since the stabbing, and he hated himself for not being able to control it. He was glad he was wearing sunglasses; he didn't like to expose his vulnerability. But when he remembered that Monika had been with him in Venice when Kit had called and told him Jess was dead, he knew it was absurd to feel embarrassed with her. He pulled his glasses off.

"Either I feel cold and start to shake or else I tear up," he said, turning so she could see his eyes. "It's not because of pain or sadness, and certainly not remorse. I don't know why the hell it happens, Monika; but I don't like it, and I want it to stop.,, The police psychiatrist had told him the tears and shakes were delayed manifestations of stress. But there was a feeling that came with them, which he couldn't quite define. Monika wanted him,to let her help him explore it, but he felt he wasn't ready yet, that he had no words with which to express it. It was something dark that he had glimpsed which had entered his mind and gotten lost in the canyons of his brain and which now he feared because it made him feel cold or caused the tears to rise.

She made herself a place to sit beside him, then gently kissed his eyelids dry. Then she took his glasses and set them back on his face, carefully arranging the temples behind his ears.

"I never killed a woman before. Never even shot at one.

"You know gender isn't the issue, Frank."

"A woman. It feels strange."

"You're chivalrous."

He smiled. "I've only rarely been accused of that."

"Oh, Frank…" She took his face between her palms.

"to kill a person even in self-defense-I understand how difficult it must be to live with that. And I know that no matter what Kit and Aaron say-that you had no choice, that surely she would have killed you if you hadn't killed her, that she was a sociopath, a murderer-I know none of that means anything so long as you're haunted. That's why we're here, to rest, talk, perhaps reorder all those terrible events. In the meantime, remember you're not tainted by your deed, not soiled by it in any way. But you are changed on account of it. So now your task is to come to terms with this new Frank that you are, to understand him and come to love him again."

He took her hand. "Thanks for saying that."' "I like being your lover-shrink. You know I do. Still, when the demons are within, only you can chase them out." She paused. "I love you. Please remember that." He brought her hand to his lips.

"I won't forget." they had come into his room during the week he was in the hospital, first Aaron, then Kit, then Aaron again, then Aaron and Kit together. On each visit they told him the story, rotating the puzzle so he could examine it from every side. But no matter how many different ways they told it, it always came out the same. The basic story, well constructed because they were excellent detectives, seemed to him wrong and incomplete. He listene to them, nodded, asked questions, and took in their answers, but in the end he told them that good as their story was, he was not going to buy it.

The facts were simple enough. The woman he had killed was named Diana Proctor. She was a librarian who paid a nominal rent to inhabit the basement apartment in Beverly Archer's house. Six years before, in Danbury, Connecticut, she had murdered three members of her family with an ax. Having been declared mentally incompetent, she'd been committed to Carlisle Hospital for the Criminally Insane, where, after five years of intensive treatment under Beverly's supervision, the entire hospital staff, led by its director, Dr. Carl Drucker, determined that she had made a full recovery and lobbied vigorously for her release.

On this matter of the release there was an important point. Hospital records showed, and Dr. Drucker verified, that Beverly Archer had not been in favor of setting Diana Proctor free. Diana wasn't ready yet, she had written; perhaps a few more years of therapy were indicated. But the rest of the staff was convinced of her recovery, so in the end Beverly reluctantly went along.

The girl seemed to function well in the city. She obtained a part-time job at the New York Society Library on East Seventy-ninth Street, where coworkers described her as congenial and her work as exemplary. She lived quietly in Dr. Archer's basement, undergoing sessions four times a week. She also joined the West Side Academy of Karate at Broadway and I 10th Street, where she became an accomplished martial artist. It was there that she met Jess Foy.

Other students at the academy described them as friends. And it was Diana who referred Jess to Archer when Jess asked her to recommend a therapist. In addition, it turned out that Diana was the so-called English girl in the fencing photograph Janek had found taped to the wall of Jess's closet. She was the owner, too, of the bow and arrows Janek had tracked down through the Salvation Army.

Mr. Yukio Katsakura, the sensei at the academy, described a violent match the two girls had fought in a private upstairs room the week that Jess was stabbed. The reason he hadn't mentioned this to Aaron, When he was interviewed early in the investigation, was that when he inquired about it, both women had smiled gaily and shrugged it off.

Katsakura had assumed they'd just gotten carried away, a not infrequent occurrence among young, well-motivated fighters.

One could only speculate as to why Diana had killed Jess. Possibly she became jealous of her friend, who was a superior athlete and martial artist and who she may have believed was favored by their therapist. Beverly herself theorized that Diana had made erotic overtures to Jess and, upon being rebuffed, had acted out her fury. But whatever Diana's rationale, the murderous act was part of the same insanity that had led her to slaughter her relatives one horrible Sunday morning six years before.

It was the Archer connection to three of the other victim clusters (Bertha Parce; Cynthia Morse the MacDonald brothers) that struck Janek as the story's most peculiar feature. As best the detectives were able to reconstruct, Diana became so obsessed with her therapist that when Beverly was asleep, Diana rummaged through her papers and came up with these victims' names. Then, out of some strange, twisted, perhaps jealousy-driven madness, she methodically located them, flew to where they lived, executed them, and glued their genitals, always leaving her wallflower signature behind.

There was no question that Diana thought of herself as a wallflower. She had described herself that way several times to friends at Carlisle.

Carl Drucker turned over a note from Diana signed "Wallflower" which police handwriting analysts verified was in the girl's hand. Moreover, a huge trove of evidence was found in Diana's room: airline ticket receipts, motel receipts, car rental receipts, caulking guns, glue, ice picks, and, most important, a hit list bearing the names of all the Wallflower victims. Kit said the evidence was so convincing that had i Diana survived her encounter with Janek, she would i easily have been convicted of murder. Which still left several other killings to be explained: the homeless man, the two non-Archer-connected Happy i Families, Leo Titus, and the attack against Janek on the final night.

The homeless man, according to Kit and Aaron's theory, was a practice shot in preparation for the later homicides. Diana, it seemed, was quite rigorous in her preparation. In addition to karate training, she worked out regularly at a local health club and two summers before had taken a ten-day course in commando tactics at a shadowy survivalist school in Colorado, where she learned the ice pick technique. (Aaron found the receipt in Diana's desk. Beverly had no knowledge of the foray; Diana had simply told her she was going white water rafung on her vacation.) In any event, it seemed consistent with such rigor that Diana would first try out her newly acquired skills on a relatively defenseless target in New York before venturing to distant cities in search of whole families to execute.

As for what exactly had attracted Diana to the two non-Archer-connected victim clusters (the Robert Wexler family in Fort Worth and the Anthony Scotto family in Providence)-that, said Aaron and Kit, would probably never be known. Beverly Archer had her own theory-namely, that the very image of a family stirred up tremendous murderous aggression inside Diana, similar to the aggression that had exploded on the morning she killed her own core family with the ax.

The stabbing of the cat burglar Leo Titus was easier to explain. By intruding into Beverly's house, he posed a threat of invasion to which Diana's hair-trigger mentality could only respond with an attack. Janek, of course, was another invader and thus had to be killed like the first.

In her interview Beverly stated her belief that had Janek not succeeded in stopping Diana, she herself would have become a victim the moment she reentered her house. An extra irony of the affair was that the Archer-connected Wallflower victims (Parce, Morse, and the MacDonalds) were minor figures in Beverly's past, people with whom she'd been out of touch for years. She hadn't even known any of them were dead until Aaron showed her the FBI's victim list.

The shrink seemed to have suffered something close to a nervous breakdown as a result of the discovery that her "best patient" had in fact not been cured at all but had, even while in intensive therapy, committed a series of horrible murders against these past players in her life. Beverly's suffering over her therapeutic catastrophe was demonstrated to Janek on the videotape of her interview with Aaron.

While still in the hospital, Janek viewed this tape several times. In it the psychologist seemed truly shattered. The tight, withdrawn quality she'd displayed in her interviews with him were replaced in Aaron's interview by tearful eruptions of agony and remorse. Her cool half-smile was supplanted by haggard, tormented eyes, making for a portrait of a woman in despair. But after rerunning and studying the tape, Janek decided her performance was feigned. No matter her broken appearance and the apparent sincerity of her grief, he did not believe a word of it.

The result was that no matter how many times Aaron and Kit told him their story and no matter how much evidence they carted into his hospital room to prove it, Janek insisted it was not complete. If, as all the evidence showed, Diana Proctor had physically committed the murders, then, Janek maintained, by some method he could not describe, Beverly Archer had put Diana up to it.

"You're usually right about these things," Kit said. "But how can you be so sure?"

"I feel it," Janek replied. "I don't care how many times Diana described herself as a wallflower or signed her name that way. For me Beverly Archer is the only wallflower in the case. The flowers left beside the walls at the murder scenes were her signatures, not Diana's."

On their first day in Yucatdn, Janek and Monika settled into their rented caseta, then lay out on their terrace in the sun. When it grew dark, they drove into Cozumel, looking for a place to eat. they explored for a while, finally settling on a quiet thatch-roofed restaurant on the beach where the wine was good and the fish was fresh and well prepared.

Afterward they took another walk through the town, passing various bars and clubs, pausing occasionally to listen to laughter or music playing within. Then Monika drove them back to their little blue and white house, where the garden was filled with orchids and hibiscus and the terrace overlooked the sea. Here they sat out as they had in the afternoon, staring across the water at a magnificent tropical moon, which reminded them of the moon that had lit their way not two months before in Venice.

"It happens every night around this time," Janek said. "I start feeling chilled and then afraid."

"Of the dream?" He nodded. "I can give you a pill," Monika said. "It will help you sleep and probably stop you from dreaming.

But I don't recommend it." "Why not?"

"I think it's good for you to dream, Frank. Even if the dream is bad. If you can dream it through, the power of the dream will weaken, and then you'll be released."

Janek thought about that awhile. When he spoke again, his voice was hushed and steady.

"I can't see all the details. I see the redness over everything.

The glow like a kind of rust. And I see the picture, so big, looming there: the handsome face; the glossy red curls; the sparkling eyes; the cruel, sensual mouth. And then I see this slim, little, bald woman charging at me like a fiend. She sticks me. I feel the pain. The room begins to spin. And then I see other things, objects, but I'm whirling so fast I can't tell you what they are. I want to see them clearly, Monika. I think that's why I dream about them. to see them again, hoping this time they'll register. Because they're important. I know they are. " He sat back, shrugged. "

I have no idea why That night, when the nightmare came and he began to shake, he felt her arms wrap his chest. The nightmare passed. He got up, shuffled to the bathroom, poured himself a glass of water, and drank it off. Back in bed, in her arms again, her breasts warm points against his back, he felt better, less haunted, not so cold.

"I've got an idea," he whispered to her in the morning.

"What?"

"It's nice here. I like it. But I want us to go back to New York."

"We just arrived, Frank."

"I know. But there's something I want to do. The photos Aaron showed me weren't enough. I should have insisted on seeing the room again for myself. What do you say we fly up there this morning, spend twenty-four hours, then fly back? I know it'll be expensive, but I'll pay for the tickets. I think seeing the room in daylight will help."

She shook her head. "I don't think so, Frank. I don't think that will help you at all."

"Look, I'm not a child. Whate'ver's there-I can take it. "

She smiled. "Of course, you can. But there isn't anything there. You'll be wasting your time."

"But-"

"Please, listen to me. Right now you're recovering from two major physical wounds and a great deal of psychic stress. In a few brief seconds, perhaps the most intense of your life, many things converged on yousound, sights, revelations. You saw things. You were attacked. You defended yourself, hit back at your attacker. Your mind suffered overload. Time and space were foreshortened and condensed. Some memories were etched, and others, perhaps the most important, were lost in the trauma of shooting that woman and being stabbed. No wonder you keep reliving those moments. The key to your nightmare, to your chills and tears, lies someplace within. Not in the actual room, as you might see it in daylight if we flew back to New York today, but in the room as you experienced it that night, the room as it seemed to you then. I told you that if you can re-create the vision that haunts you, it won't disturb you anymore. I believe that's true. It will become just another memory. The bad dream will… disappear."

He rolled onto his back. "Fine," he said. "Now how am I going to do all that?" "After breakfast I'll drive down to the village. I'm going to buy you paper and a set of crayons." "Oh, Monika, please… m serious, Frank. I want you to draw." "Draw what?"

"The sea. The house. The garden. Whatever you like. Draw me if you want, or I'll bring a mirror out to the terrace and you can try to draw yourself And if other images happen to come to you, then you'll draw them, too. You see, to draw a thing is to master it. I believe soon you'll be able to see those objects you cannot remember now. When you see them, you must try to are only partial. Draw them draw them even if the images and you'll control them. And then the dream will lose its power."

Aaron had brought photographs of Beverly's bedroom to the hospital. they had pored over them together. Everything was as he remembered it… almost. Leo Titus lay dead on the floor at the foot of the bed.

Diana Proctor lay dead where she'd fallen after Janek's bullets had blasted her back. The light in the room was dim and red, and the painting was in the niche. But the portrait seemed smaller in the photos, less intense, the manner of its display less compelling to the eye. Everything looked the same, yet the cumulative effect was different. It was as if Janek's mind had played a trick on him, distorting the actual scene, which in the police photos appeared relatively normal, into something threatening and gro tesque.

And still, there were things missing from the photos, those strange and inappropriate objects which haunted his dreams. Where were they?

The room had been searched, and nothing out of the ordinary had been found. When Aaron asked,Janek to describe the objects, he shook his head, for he could not.

"I just know they were there," he said.

The dream was always the same: a cavernous bedroom; reddish light; a huge oil 'painting of a woman; strange, not clearly seen objects arranged symmetrically before the portrait. He looked to his left:

A body was curled on the floor. He looked to his fight: A blackclothed virago with shaven skull rushed at him out of the gloom. At the very instant in his dream when he felt the ice pick slice into his flesh and hit his bone, he was possessed by the feeling that he had entered into something more than a stranger's bedroom, that he had entered into a secret chamber inside a madwoman's mind.

When he awoke from the dream, his thought was always the same: It was Beverly Archer's madness, not Diana Proctor's, that had been displayed.

He had other visitors over his two weeks in the hospital and his week of recuperation in his apartment. Laura and Stanton, attentive and concerned, arrived with two magnificent bouquets. Later Stanton came alone to tell him in a bitter whisper that he was glad Janek had killed the girl.

"A trial would have been awful, Frank. All that stuff about Jess-we don't even like to think about it." Stanton paused. "You gave us closure. We'll always be grateful for that. If you ever need anything, any kind of help, I want you to think of us and call."

After Stanton left, Janek had a feeling that he probably wouldn't be seeing much of the Dorances anymore. The three of them had shared Jess, but now that she was gone, there was nothing to bring them together again except the all-too-painful memory of her promise.

Sullivan also paid him a visit. He brought no flowers but was respectful and solicitous. If he was envious of Janek's resolution of his case, he succeeded in conceal ing it.

When Janek asked if anyone on his team harbored doubts that Diana Proctor had been the HF killer, Sullivan gazed at him mystified.

"Gee, Frank, why do you ask that?"

"No particular reason," Janek said.

"You think we're the kind of people who'd resist a case solution because an outsider got to it first? I'm offended. Whatever you may think of us, I promise you we're not that small."

Janek let it go. Sullivan, like any good FBI man, was interested in forensic evidence, not psychological speculation. But then Janek became aware that Sullivan was not visiting him merely to wish him well.

He had his own agenda, which, after the pleasantries, he wasted no time bringing up.

"I was talking last night to Grey Scopetta, my film director friend."

"Yeah, I remember you mentioning him," Janek said. "We both feel there could be a terrific miniseries here. What we're hoping is you'll give us a release so we can pitch the idea to a network."

Janek smiled graciously. "You don't need a release from me, Harry.

Just don't use my name, okay?" "But we have to use your name, Frank.

You'll be the star." Sullivan stood and began to pace the little room., 'Think of it. Two miniseries! You'll be the most famous detective in the country!"

"I've tasted fame, Harry, and as they say, it's vastly overrated.

"You're not serious." Sullivan paused. "Are you, Frank?"

Janek nodded. "I don't want to be portrayed in any more movies. But that shouldn't stop you guys. The case is in the public record. We all know police work isn't about stars; it's about teamwork. As team leader you can rightfully think of yourself as the leading man,"

As Sullivan shook his head, Janek noticed something desperate in his eyes. "What's the matter?"

The inspector sat, then twisted in his seat. "Tell you the truth, now that it's wrapped up, HF, or Wallflower I uess we should call it now, isn't all that dramatic from a story point of view. As Grey says, who cares about some nutty, bald girl who killed people because she was hung up on her shrink? But he feels there could be a very strong story if we structured the whole thing around you. Put you right in the center of it. Your character arc could make it work."

"Character arc?"

"You know what I mean."

"No," said Janek, "I don't think I do."

"The way you change as the case develops. You go in one sort of guy and come out another."

Janek was quiet. He didn't like the sound of that. It was too close to the truth. The notion of having his soul exposed to millions of people filled him with a special kind of dread.

Sullivan was still pitching. "Try this. Cynical worldweary NYPD detective gets personally involved when his goddaughter's murdered.

Grief-stricken, he goes after the killer with a vengeance, cuts through all the bureaucratic horseshit, finds the murderess, and shoots her dead. I mean, that's a real story, one a network will buy."

Janek looked at Sullivan sharply. "For me it wasn't a story, Harry.

It was a murder case just like all the others. "

"Yeah, sure, I know you say that. But-"

"Forget it."

Sullivan lowered his head. When he spoke again, his tone was meek.

"I hope you'll reconsider, Frank. Maybe later, when you're feeling your old self again Janek waited until Sullivan raised his head and then met his eyes straight on. "Don't hope for that, Harry. It's not going to happen."

At first when he looked at the crayons Monika bought him, thirty pristine pastel crayons neatly organized by color in an elegant compartmentalized wooden box, he felt loath to touch them lest he violate their perfect order. But after he sat down on the chaise, propped the large spiral-bound pad of paper against his knees, and ran his fingers across the surface of a sheet, it seemed to cry out for color. His first sketches were tentative and sloppy. But still there was a satisfaction in using his hands to try to reproduce the purity of the terrace view. And the longer he drew, the more he enjoyed it. It was a technique worthy of being mastered. He thought of the combination of intensity and patience exhibited by his father when he sat at his bench working on broken accordions in the little repair shop he'd operated on Carrnine Street. Perhaps, he thought, if I imitate the way Dad used to squint at the exposed insides of old accordions, I'll manage to get the swing of it.

Monika, careful not to disturb him, busied herself inside the house, preparing food she'd bought in town. Then she went out to swim and jog along the beach. When she returned two hours later, he showed her his latest sketch of the view. The sea and sky, divided horizontally by the horizon, were a simple study in blues. She liked it, and so did he.

"I'm pleased," she said. "You're enjoying yourself."

"Yeah, I am," he admitted.

She kissed his shoulder and went back inside the house. At midday she brought out a tray of tortillas, guacamole, and beer. they ate and laughed, then retired to their bedroom to make love and then to nap.

At three, well oiled with sunscreen, he returned to the terrace for another round of drawing. But this time, instead of portraying the view, he tried to sketch his dream.

He tore off several sheets before he was satisfied with the general design. When he finally felt he'd gotten it right, he began to fill it in.

"It really does look like a nightmare," Monika said when she came out onto the terrace with her book.

Janek stopped drawing. "I don't have the hand for this."

"No one expects you to draw like an artist, Frank. Just try to make it schematic."

"This is pretty much it," he said. He pointed to a small table set before the portrait. "I think the objects were here." "Well, that's something, isn't it?" "What do you mean?"

"You never mentioned a table before."

Janek nodded. She was right; he hadn't mentioned it because be hadn't remembered it.

"Well, they had to be set out on something, didn't they?"

Monika smiled. "Keep drawing, Frank. Sooner or later you'll work it out."

By the end of the afternoon he had not resolved the objects in terms of their shapes, but he had positioned them, indicated by X's, in a straight line on the table.

He showed the sketch to Monika. She studied it. "The arrangement's strange," she said. "Maybe that's important."

"What do you mean?"

She shook her head. "The way everything is lined UP, the table, the painting, the niche. It's hieratic, almost like the aspe of a church. The table could be the altar. And the objects-" He leaned toward her. "Yes?"

"They're equally spaced, symmetrically set out. Almost like relics.

Or offerings

"Offerings to the portrait?"

She thought about that. "Perhaps. But I think it goes deeper.

Suppose, instead of the portrait, there was something else in that niche, a sculpture or a painting of Christ on the cross. You wouldn't say the gold chalices on the altar were offerings to the painting. You'd say they were offerings to Jesus or God."

Janek sat up. "That's it!" he said. "What I saw were offerings to the woman in the picture."

"Who is she?"

"Beverly told Aaron it was a portrait of her mother, who died a few years ago," He paused, then pointed to the table in the sketch. "I don't think there was a table here. I think I saw something else. Something like a table, but with a different shape beneath. I'll try and draw it."

He turned over a page of his pad, then started feverishly to draw. She stood behind him as he tried out a shape, crossed it out, tried another and still another.

"In the police photos there wasn't anything beneath the picture. Aaron thinks it took him about two minutes to reach me after he heard my shot.

Beverly got to the bedroom just after I fell. If there was something there, she'd have had time to move it."

He drew an oval, then drew a rectangle over it.

"if she moved it, it couldn't have been very big," Monika said.

"I think it was big. But maybe it was lighter than it looked.

"Where could she have hidden it?"

He shrugged, drew a bookcase, then redrew it so its bottom half stuck out. "It could have been portable, on wheels, or something like a card table that folds up." He drew an angry slash across the page.

"Shit, I don't know! "

Monika, behind him, massaged his shoulders. "Let it go for now, Frank. You've done enough today."

"It's so maddening. I can almost see it. But not quite."

"Of course, it's maddening. Like forgetting someone's name even when you can see his face." "Exactly!" "What do you do when that happens?" "Rack my brains till I come up with his name." "if that doesn't work?"

"I forget about it awhile." "Then?"

"It usually comes to me later when I'm thinking about something else or doing something strange like eating peas.

"When you're consciously thinking about something else. Meantime, the subconscious part of your brain is processing the problem. You can let the same thing happen here, let your subconscious take over and do the work. Eventually the solution will come, probably sometime tonight."

"Then what?"

"Then on to the next problem. You see, the wonderful thing about drawing an encrypted dream is that it gives you a chance to break down a big fiddle into smaller and more manageable parts. What you want to do is get the table right, then go on to the objects."

He gazed at her. "Anyone ever tell you you're terrific?"

"Oh, all the time," she said. "My patients are always telling me that."

"You're kidding!"

She smiled. "Shrinks are used to hearing endearments. But when I hear them from you, Frank, I know they're real."

That night they ate dinner in the house, then drove down to the village to walk. A Mexican boy with gleaming teeth approached them on the street. He showed them a tray of handmade silver jewelry. When Monika showed interest in a pair of earrings, Janek bought them for her.

The boy held out a cracked piece of mirror so she could look at herself as she put them on.

Later they stopped outside a modest bar that fronted on the beach. There was a light breeze that made the palms sway and churned up the, smooth surface of the Gulf. Someone was playing a piano inside. "Looks like a decent saloon," Janek said.

The place was half filled. The high season wouldn't begin until Christmas. Janek and Monika took a table between the bar and the pianist, a young black woman with a red scarf tied around her head. She was playing the kind of restful dinner music that doesn't require much attention.

Janek grinned. "I'm glad we could have this week together." He paused. "Do you really have to fly home on Christmas?"

"I wish I didn't," she said. "But I have patients wai ting and an early class the following day."

He looked at her. "I usually spend my holidays alone."

She leaned across the table and kissed him. "Not this year."

When the waiter brought their margaritas, Monika asked him in Spanish about the pianist. The waiter said she was a gringo. "But a nice one," he added. Janek turned to look at the piano.

"I wonder

"What?"

"That table I drew, the table that wasn't a table-I wonder if it could have been a piano." He took a sip from his drink. "I don't see how it could have been. A piano's much too big. Hard to hide a piano even if it's on wheels." He took another sip. "Still, it had that piano shape, like a little upright, you know, with the objects arranged on the top just below the bottom edge of the painting."

He summoned the waiter, borrowed a ballpoint, made a quick sketch on his cocktail napkin. He turned it so Monika could see. "Something like that," he said.

She stared at the sketch. "Didn't you tell me the portrait seemed bigger in the dream than in Aaron's photographs?" Janek nodded. "We know the portrait didn't change. It's the same one you saw. But suppose there was a piece of furniture just under it, something that because of its scale made the picture seem bigger than it was."

Janek nodded. "Take that piece of furniture away, and the portrait would appear smaller. it's still life-size, but in the dream it looms over everything." He thought a moment. "Suppose it wasn't a real piano. Suppose it was a miniature or a model. That would be enou h to confuse the scale, at least at a quick glance. And if it was a miniature piano, she could have hidden it."

"Hidden the relics, too, dispersed them around the room." "Yes..

. the relics." Janek finished off his drink. "I like that word. Relics offered up to the image of her mother in the little chapel she constructed in her bedroom niche. Consecrated relics, you could say, or sanctified ones. Perhaps more than relies.

Perhaps trophies, trophies of acts committed in her mother's honor.

Mementos of sacrifices. Tributes offered in thanks or to appease."

He looked at Monika, nodded. "You were right this afternoon when you used the word 'hieratic.' That bedroom was a fucking shrine."

That night he didn't dream about the whole room, only about the portrait. In his dream the woman's face came alive, her eyes blinked open, and her mouth opened and shut mechanically like a doll's.

He woke up drenched in sweat.

In the morning he gulped his coffee, then hurried out to the terrace to draw. He sketched the painting and an underscale piano beneath it and then made X's on the piano's top. How many trophies had there been? He drew various quantities. When that didn't work, he took another approach. There had been seventeen Wallflower killings in all. He drew seventeen X's on top of the piano. Too crowded. But there had been only seven victim clusters. When he drew seven X's, the design looked right.

He turned the page, started to draw on another sheet. He drew basic geometric shapes: cubes; boxes; cylinders; spheres. Then he started to put them together. The work possessed him. Soon he forgot where he was. He tried various combinations of shapes, filling a dozen Sheets by noon. Then, exhausted, he pushed back the pad and tried to look at his sketches objectively.

He believed he had successfully rendered three of the relics, or trophies as he thought of them now. One was a sm all book, another a large book, and the third a piece of Paper with printing on it.

Assigning them to the first, third, and fourth positions, he drew them into his master drawing, replacing the first, third, and fourth X's on top of the piano. Examining his master drawing again, he was pleased. The three trophies looked right, in their correct positions, too. He put down his pad and sat back exhausted. He had worked five hours straight.

That afternoon, after making love, he and Monika followed steps, cut from stone outcroppings, straight down from their little house to the beach. It was only when he was in the water and tasted its saltiness that he realized his eyes hadn't teared up in the twenty-four hours since he'd started working with the crayons At the end of the afternoon, back on their terrace, relaxing with margaritas in their hands, he showed Monika what he'd accomplished in the morning.

"Two books and a piece of paper. All rectangular and more or less flat," she commented. "You're doing fine, Frank, going about it methodically, working from abstract shapes. So far so good. But if you get stuck, you might want to give up control of your crayon, let it loose on the paper. It's a method I sometimes use to get patients to free-associate. You'd be amazed at the powerful material that spews out. Of course, if you do let yourself go, doodle or draw at random, it won't be the crayon that's guiding your hand; it'll be your subconscious." they drove down to Cozumel for dinner, choosing the same quiet fish joint they'd enjoyed their first night on the island. As they ate, Monika asked him what bothered him most about Kit and Aaron's explanation of the Wallflower crimes.

"Too neat," he said. "Real life isn't like that. Real life, as you know, is very complicated, with all sorts of twists and turns, trails that split off and dead-end or tail back. But this Diana Proctor story comes out slick, almost like a novel. Whenever I see a structure like that, I ask myself, 'Who's the writer here?"' "Why do you call it slick?"

"First, the way it was revealed. Right after the shoot-out, Aaron goes down to the basement. There he finds this incredibly complete paper trail in almost perfect secretarial order that accounts for each and every ice pick and Wallflower homicide. Diana flies into Seattle; the ticket stubs are there. She rents a car at the airport, returns it the following- morning; the receipt is neatly stapled to the ticket stubs. Aaron asks the Seattle cops to check the mileage between the airport and Cynthia Morse's condominium; the answer that comes back is exactly half the distance that shows up on Diana's car rental slip. That's the kind of perfection you don't usually find in real life." "She was a librarian. Librarians are organized."

"Sure, but this is better than organized. Every time she went out she knew exactly where to go, never got lost, never made a slip. A killer working on her own, even a highly organized one, can't be that precise. But if she was working with someone else, war-gaming her missions, then such superb execution might be possible."

"So it's the perfection that bothers you?"

"And all the papers that back it up."

"But Beverly couldn't know you'd go into her house and fight it out with Diana."

"Of course not. And she also couldn't know how it would end up if we did. I could have injured Diana, in which case she'd have been available for questioning, and then Beverly's role, if she played one, would probably have come out."

"What are you saying, Frank?"

"That Beverly might have been planning to get rid of Diana, leaving the whole neat paper trail so we'd pin everything on the girl. By a fluke I got to Diana first. But that's speculation. There're other things that bother me, tm."

"What?"

"Why did Diana shave her head and body and go around in a wig? We're supposed to believe she was some sort of austere self-styled Ninja. It's possible. But maybe there's another explanation. Maybe the shaving was part of a system of control."

"Beverly's control?"

He nodded. "Then there're the victims. I've got a whole lot of problems with them. We can account for the homeless man, and we know Diana had some sort of relationship with Jess. But what about the three victim clusters connected to Beverly Archer? If Diana was operating on her own, how did she come up with those particular people?

Did she choose them at random from the hundreds of names she found in Beverly's papers, or was there a reason she chose those particular three? Then you have to ask yourself how Beverly could have been so blind to what Diana was doing. Sullivan's people came up with a couple of cases where a serial killer committed murders while in treatment with a shrink. But this is different. Beverly was an experienced therapist who knew her patient very well. She'd been treating the girl for six years straight, had her living in her basement, was seeing her four times a week. You're a psychiatrist, Monika. Can you imagine being that familiar with a patient without sensing something bad was going on?"

Monika thought about it. "Patients can be very deceptive. But you're right-it's extremely difficult to imagine that. I also wonder how someone as young as Diana could become so expert at subterfuge."

"That's why I think Beverly was a collaborator, even the brains behind the whole series. The problem, of course, is to prove it. to do that, I have to know why, what she was up to, what her game was all about.

"What do you think it was about?"

"You read Beverly's paper on shaming incidents. She seemed to specialize in patients traumatized by shaming events in their pasts.

Doesn't an obsession like that usually come from within?"

"It can, certainly. Shrinks who concentrate on homosexuals often are homosexual. Shrinks who specialize in sadomasochism tend to be haunted by that @ of fantasy.,,

"Well, suppose Beverly was as traumatized by shaming incidents as any of her patients? Suppose, to rid herself of her obsession, she decided that the people who had humiliated her should be killed? Suppose she recruited Diana in Carlisle, created a dependency, then arranged for the girl's release so she could send her out on missions of revenge? The targets would be her old tormentors, even as far back as her childhood."

"I thought Aaron said Beverly hadn't been in favor of Diana's release."

Janek nodded. "There's another thing that's slick. It's like it was all a setup from the start. Beverly carefully laid down a paper trai I at the hospital that would throw police suspicions off, then laid down a second paper trail in Diana's room in the basement that would cinch the story the girl was acting on her own."

"You're talking about something extremely fiendish, a conspiracy that goes back years."

"Yeah." He grinned, "And now there's another character. The mother in the portrait, the one behind the piano altar, who gets trophies offered up to her of the people Beverly had Diana kill."

Early the next morning, a Sunday, Janek hurried out to the terrace to draw. When his abstract geometric shapes didn't join into anything recognizable, he changed his approach and, employing Monika's method, freed his crayon from conscious control and let it loose upon the paper.

At first he scribbled numerous spirals. When Monika looked in on him, she muttered something about double helixes and human chromosomes.

He played with vertical spirals, then horizontal ones, then cylinders with spiral decorations. One of the last set looked fight, but when he couldn't make it coherent, he turned to Monika for help.

"Which position is this one for?" she asked.

"Number two." "The second killing?" He nodded. "That was the old schoolteacher in Flofida."

"Bertha Parce."

"Did you see pictures of her?"

"About twenty slides."

"Anything strike you?"

"Just that she was a withered old lady living in a crowded single room in some horrible old folks' hotel on South Beach, Miami."

"was she stabbed in her room?"

He nodded. "She was asleep."

"Anything else strike you?"

"Just the wallflower. I remember the FBI briefing officer pointing it out. It was sort of leaning in the corner of the room."

"Anything else?"

Janek closed his eyes, trying to recall the photographs he'd pinned to his office walls in New York. "There was a lot of junk around, old lady's stuff." He hesitated. "Come to think of it He began to draw again, this time imposing his will upon the crayon. "I'm on to something… ." He continued to draw and in three minutes rendered an object that'fitted perfectly in position two. "That's it. Yeah, I'm sure it is." He turned his master sketch so she could see it."

"What is it?" she asked.

"A hair curler. Old Bertha Parce had a whole mess of them on the table beside her bed." He picked up a blue crayon, began to fill the curler in. "The one I saw in Beverly's apartment was made of light blue plastic," he explained.

It took him until the end of the day to render the sixth trophy. The problem, which he only discovered late in the afternoon, was that it consisted of two objects rather than one. And that made sense when he remembered that the fifth victim cluster had consisted of two men, brothers named MacDonald, who shared a weekend house in northwestern Connecticut. In the end he drew two sticks side by side. But they weren't just ordinary sticks. There was something unique about them, portions that stuck out. Remembering Monika's questions from the morning, he began to ask similar questions of himself What was in the crime scene pictures? was there anything he'd seen in them that might resemble sticks?

One of the brothers, he remembered, had been stabbed in his bed. The other, whose palms had home defensive wounds, had put up a struggle in the bathroom.

Janek left the terrace, went inside the house, phoned Aaron at his home in Brooklyn.

"Hi," he said when Aaron answered. "Good thing I caught you."

Janek asked Aaron if he'd be willing to go into the office, even though it was a Sunday, and take a look at some of the pictures pinned up on their walls.

"Jesus, Frank," Aaron said. "I thought you went down there to rest."

"I am resting," Janek said. "I've been lying out on the terrace with a view of the sea, taking in the rays."

"But you're still thinking about it?"

"Doing more than that. Monika's got me working with crayons."

"Jesus!"

"I want you to look at the Bertha Parce pictures and see if you can tell if any of the hair curlers beside her bed are missing. Then check out the pictures at the MacDonald house. See if you notice anything missing there.

Aaron agreed to drive into Manhattan, check the photographs, and call him back. The call came an hour and a half later.

"Yeah, Frank, there's a box of old lady's hair curlers just like you remembered. But it's partially closed, so I can't tell if the set's complete."

"What about the brothers?"

"I'm standing in front of the shots right now. I don't see anything in the bedroom. It's minimal, neat and clean, not like the old lady's place. But it looks like they shared the bath. I see two of everythinghairbrushes, razors-you know, the kind of stuff guys use."

Something in Aaron's voice told Janek he was holding back.

"You do see something, don't you?"

"Jesus, Frank! Even from Mexico you can read my mind." "What is it?"

"No toothbrushes. Could they be the odd-shaped sticks you're talking about?"

Janek turned to Monika. "Toothbrushes. A pair of toothbrushes, lined up side by side."

"Sounds like you're getting excited," Aaron said. "I'll be a lot more excited when I get this whole thing figured out."

"Still think Beverly was behind it?"

"I know she was. We're going to prove it, too."

He asked Aaron to spend the next few days working on the two non-Archer-connected victim clusters, the Wexler family in Texas and the Scottos in Providence. Aaron was to check by phone with people who knew them-survivors, friends, colleagues at work. And he was to be sure to inquire about both husbands and wives since they didn't know which family members were the intended targets.

"What am I inquiring about?" Aaron asked.

"What do you think?"

"A Beverly Archer connection."

"Of course, because if you find one, we'll know she lied to you. If she did know those people, just one member in each family, that's enough to go to Kit for authorization to reopen the case."

"What authorization do I have to do this?"

"You're wrapping up loose ends."

"Maybe I should check out Diana, too, see if there's a connection to her."

"Sure, go ahead," Janek said casually. "But you won't find anything. Beverty's the one."

The next morning he drew and drew but couldn't get anywhere with trophy number five. One thing he knew: It wasn't a simple shape like a toothbrush, a hair curler, or a book. It was an elaborate object, larger than the others, something with parts that stuck out all over.

"Some of the parts are like the hair curler," he told Monika as they climbed down to the beach. "It's got wheels and a handle. It's mostly metal, but I think the handle's made of wood. I even think there're gears on it." He paused. "What the hell could it be?" they made an encampment at the bottom of the rocks. She spread her beach towel on the sand, then lay down on her back. "If it's got moving parts, it must be some kind of machine," she said.

"Yeah…" He looked at her. She was wearing a brilliant white bikini that contrasted with her lightly tanned skin.

"Pretend for a moment you're Diana Proctor. You've been sent up to Providence to kill a person and bring back a trophy of your kill. What kind of trophy are you going to take?"

Monika raised her head. "I won't know what I'm going to take until I see it. It'll be a spontaneous decision."

Janek lay back and stared up at the sky. "Whatever it is, you're bringing it back to Beverly to put up on the piano altar for Mama. Won't you make a point of bringing back something you know will please your shrink? It can't be valuable. It can't be something that will be missed. And it certainly can't be an object that can be traced back to the people you've just killed. It's always something humble, like a hair curler, or a couple of toothbrushes, a piece of paper, a book. Something the victims have touched. Something almost… intimate, don't you think?" He turned to look at Monika. She was gazing past him. "Forgive me," he said, "I'm thinking out loud. I know it's tiresome. I'm sorry to go on and on."

She stood. "It's okay, Frank. You told me you were a worrier."

She looked out at the water. "I'm going to swim. Want to come?"

He shook his head. "I'll just lie here and worry."

She smiled, then started for the water. He watched as she ran across the beach, then high-stepped into the waves. When she was out far enough, she turned, threw him a kiss, and plunged. He watched her swim for a while, then lay back, closed his eyes, and tried to free his mind of the fifth trophy for a while.

Think about something else, he told himself. Or better yet, don't think about anything at all. Just lie here and feel the sun.

Breathe in the mellow aroma of the sea. Let the sweet winds of this tropical paradise caress your tough old urban hide.

He must have drifted off. The next thing he knew droplets of water were dancing on his chest. He opened his eyes. Monika was leaning over him, vigorously drying her hair.

"Good swim?"

"Terrific." She spread out her towel. "I was bobbing around out there, trying to think what's made of metal, has wheels and gears and a wooden handle, and has parts that look like hair curlers. I came up with something." She lay down. "It's what you call a real long shot."

He leaned toward her eagerly. "What've you got?"

She grinned. "How does an old-fashioned eggbeater grab you?"

A piece of paper with printing for the homeless man. A hair curler for Bertha Parce. A small book, probably a much-read paperback for the Wexler family. An oversize book for Cynthia Morse. A pair of neatly arranged toothbrushes for the MacDonalds. An eggbeater for the Scottos. That left only position seven, the last trophy position, the Jessica Foy position, marked with an X.

He couldn't bring himself to try to draw that trophy. He couldn't even bear to think about it. Or did he resist, as Monika suggested, because to render it would make the scene in the bedroom clear and then he would no longer be haunted by his dream?

When he asked her to explain that, she said people often resist giving up a source of pain.

"Imagine how you'd feel without it, Frank? What would it be like not to be tormented?"

"I'd love it."

"You think so? I'm not so sure."

"Why wouldn't I love that? I don't understand."

She sat down on his chaise, placed her hand upon his knee. "Physically you're fine. Your body's mended. But your mind is wounded still. Like anybody who's spent years living dangerously, you've become addicted to stress. If you saw the seventh trophy, the puzzle would be solved and the stress would be relieved." She spoke kindly. "Maybe you're not yet ready for that. I think maybe you need to suffer awhile longer. Don't you?"

He stared down at the water, then slowly turned back to her. His eyes, she saw, were filled with tears. they had leased the house for five days, intending to spend their last two on the mainland in Yucatdn, where Monika wanted to visit some of the great Mayan ruins. So on the fifth day they flew from the Isla de Cozumel to M6rida, where they checked, into a low all-white Moorish-style hotel set amidst a tranquil park of pools, flowering jacarandas, and palms.. The next morning they rented a car and went exploring. they had prepared for this visit by reading about the Mayans, enough so that they would know the purposes of the structures and the basic meaning of the art that they would see.

But they were far less interested in archaeology than in viscerally experiencing the sites.

On the weed-choked field before the great pyramid at Chich6n Itzd, Monika admitted to being deeply intrigued by the ancient Mayan cult of cruelty. Janek was attentive as she spoke. She made a stunning figure, he thought, dressed in white cotton slacks and a white polo shirt, her old Leica hanging casually from her shoulder, her face framed by the silver earrings he had bought for her in Cozumel.

"Human sacfifices," she said, "pfiests in bejeweled robes excising hearts from naked living persons on a high altar before multitudes of witnesses-it was an atavistic culture, Frank, obsessed by astrology, magical beasts, worship of the sun, sacrifices to gods who demanded blood." She paused. "In my profession we speak of the subconscious as if it were a kind of jungle like the one around us here.

Dark, dank, overgrown, filled with snakes, reptiles, and other threatening creatures, a place where the most elemental drives, to dominate, rape, avenge, and kill, thrive without constraint. Well, here we have a place cut out of such a jungle where ancient men created a great civilization. And what did they do? they didn't suppress their animal drives. Rather, they organized them, turned them into a religion of cosmic symbols and dramatic ceremonies." She paused again.

"Perhaps they were a little like the Venetians in that regard. Remember their carnival costumes and winged horses and the churches everywhere we turned?"

He loved listening to her. She was the most brilliant woman he'd ever been involved with. And the things she said found a responsive chord. He believed she was right, that there was as much cruelty in the masterpiece that was Venice as in the ancient capital of Mayan culture. A different kind of cruelty perhaps, more refined, less direct, but in the end nearly as ruthless and as bloody.

He borrowed her camera, took a picture of her. Looking through the lens, he saw a beautiful woman poised against sunstruck stone ruins with dense green jungle foliage behind. Perhaps, he kidded her, she might want to use his picture to represent herself on the back of her next book.

"You know," he said, "the gorgeous and brainy German shrink visiting the cradle of high barbarism in Central America."

Later, as they explored the site, strode along its walls, among its steles, gazing at the sculptures incised into the stones-grotesque human figures in elaborate headdresses, mouths grimacing, eyes bulging, frozen in postures that suggested the commission of violent actsJanek asked Monika if these images were not expressions of the evil that had always fascinated him and that, he so often claimed, he struggled in his work to comprehend.

The answer she gave surprised him a little bit: "Perhaps it isn't merely the mystery of evil that intrigues you, Frank. Perhaps it's something bigger, the mystery of the human mind."

"I think you know what the seventh trophy is," she told him that evening. they were back in M6rida, sipping tequila by the hotel pool beside an open thatch-roofed garden bar. Janek looked around. There were two other couples and a black-haired Mexican bartender with Indian features gazing at the setting sun. On the tables were tiny hurricane lamps. The candles flickered in the dying light.

"If I know what it is, I sure can't see it now," he said. "What makes you think I know?"

"The trophy take n from Jess should be the easiest one for you to figure out. "

"Because she was jogging?" Monika nodded. "She had a watch and the keys to her room on a leather thong around her neck. She was wearing a Walkman. All those things were found." He heard his voice break. It still disturbed him to talk about Jess this way, as a homicide victim instead of a person he had loved. "What else could she have been carrying?"

Monika shook her head. Her expression was compassionate. "I think you know," she said quietly.

Later in their room, as they lay naked together on their bed while the ceiling fan revolved slowly overhead, he broached the subject again.

"You think you know what it is, don't you?" She looked at him. "I could venture a guess." "But you won't tell me?" She shook her head. "Why not?"

"It's better for you to tell me, Frank," she said in a whisper.

In the morning he was angry. He spoke harshly while they dressed.

"I'm not in therapy. This isn't about me. It's a fucking murder case. Why won't you help?" She turned to him. She spoke calmly. She was buckling her belt. "Why must I tell you what you already know?"

"Damn it, Monika! Don't speak to me in riddles!"

She stood still and faced him. Her eyes were sad. "Of course this is about you, Frank," she said gently. "It's your dream, your vision. Why don't you just close your eyes and look inside yourself? It's there. All you have to do is look."

After breakfast they went out to the hotel pool for an early swim. He watched her as she breaststroked back and forth. Who am I kidding? he asked himself I loved Jess. I ought to know what Diana took from her. But what was missing? He couldn't think of anything. What would Jess carry when she went out jogging? Maybe there was no seventh trophy, he thought.

It came to him on the plane that afternoon, shortly after they had taken off for New York. they were crossing the Gulf of Mexico, still and green below. He peered out the window, and then he saw it in the pattern of the reefs.

He turned to Monika beside him. "It was a knife." She nodded. "I think so, too."

"That switchblade she bought at the knife show, the one Fran Dunning said had an ivory handle. I'm sure that's what I saw." She squeezed his hand. "Feel better now?"

He leaned toward her, kissed her. "Thanks. You were right, I must have known what it was. Why did I fight it?"

"I think it hurt you to see her knife sitting there. Your hurt blinded you, and then you couldn't see the other trophies either." :,But why did it hurt so much?" 'Because it was hers. And possibly because of something else. If she was carrying a knife, she could have put up a fight. But she didn't get a chance. She was attacked from behind. The thought of that still makes you furious. Your fury may have blinded you as well."

It was a dazzling New York that greeted them, cold but brilliant, a city of sparkling granite and shimmering glass. As they taxied into Manhattan, Janek was struck by the difference between this arrival and his arrival from Venice eight weeks before. That day he and Aaron had driven though a damp and noxious fog that matched the sorrow and confusion in his soul. today, with Monika, the air was clear. And now, too, he knew what he was up against. they settled into Janek's apartment, then at dusk went out to walk.

Upper Broadway was filled with Christmas shoppers. On Fifth Avenue all the stores were jammed. Santas with scraggly beards stood on comers rattling pails. At Rockfeller Center skaters glided across the ice, while above the golden statue of Prometheus, Christmas lights blazed upon an enormous spruce. they ate in a little Czech restaurant on West Twelfth Street. The owner, who had known Janek's father, embraced him when they walked in. After dinner they strolled through Greenwich Village. There were crowds of young people out on the streets, many walking briskly on their way to parties while others, grasping bags choked with gifts, attempted to flag down cabs. Foursomes stood on comers making jokes, waiting for traffic lights to change. A drunken old man, in a tweed suit and bow tie, stumbled past them mouthing the lyrics to "Hark! The Herald Angels Sing."

"I love this energy," Monika said. "New York's a fascinating town."

"It's no Venice, but it takes a bum rap," Janek said. "It's a cruel place, but it can be wonderful, too."

She nodded. "I've often wondered what it would be like to live here. I've been offered a visiting professorship of psychiatry.

Last month the Albert Einstein College of Medicine approached me again.

Perhaps I should accept, move here for a year," She looked at him. "A year of living dangerously."

"We could get to know each other pretty well over a year," he said.

She smiled, took his arm. "I wish I didn't have to go back so soon.

But sadly I do."

Later that night, at his apartment, he asked if she'd be willing to take a look at Beverly Archer.

"Just to observe her," he said. "She'll never know."

Monika thought about it, then agreed. "I'm not a forensic psychiatrist. I doubt I'll see anything. But I confess-I'm very curious."

Janek phoned Aaron, asked if he could set it up. Aaron thought he could. Beverly's schedule was so rigid, he said, there shouldn't be any difficulty arranging a covert surveillance. They'd park on Second Avenue down the block from her house and wait for her to come out after her last appointment. When she started on her round of errands, Monika could follow her and observe.

The plan worked. At exactly six fifty-five the following evening Beverly appeared. When she went into a dry cleaning shop, Monika got out of the car and followed. Sitting with Aaron, waiting for her to return, Janek started feeling nervous.

"This reminds me of one very bad night."

Aaron reassured him. "I know it's spooky, Frank, but your girl's terrific. Don't worry. Beverly's met her match."

When Monika returned, she was shivering. Janek took her hands, rubbed them to restore warmth. She seemed disturbed. "Let's go get something to drink," she said.

Aaron drove down Second to a cop hangout near East Seventy-first. The place was filled, cops full of holiday bluster toasting one another with mugs of beer. Janek and Aaron nodded to acquaintances; then the three of them squeezed into a booth.

"A strange woman," Monika reported after the waiter had brought her tea.

"A lot of people in my field are. The profession's always attracted troubled individuals. they often make gifted therapists."

"So she's just another weirdo shrink, is that what you're saying?" Aaron asked. Monika shook her head. "More than that. She functions, of course, very well from what you've told me. But I felt I was observing an extremely high-strung person, very tense, very tightly controlled. The way she moves, dresses, smiles at the sales clerks, tilts her head, tightens up her lips-it's as if there's a NO CONTACT! DON'T TOUCH ME! sign hanging on her back. Still, for all her smiles I could feel the rage coming off her. Sexual rage, too. She truly hates males.

It shows every time she deals with one. "

Aaron glanced at Janek. "Could she have done what Frank says?"

"Sent the girl out to kill her old enemies? I can't tell that from looking at her. But in theory, yes, it's possible."

"But by using a surrogate killer," Janek asked, "didn't she give up the pleasures of killing the old enemies herself?"

"Not necessarily. The pleasures might have been even greater for her. She'd have the satisfaction of knowing she had done them in fiendishly, and I think it would have been very exciting for her to hear Diana describe the glue mutilations, too. That would have been the best part of it, perhaps the only erotic excitement she's capable of having."

Monika went on to analyze the paradox in a person such as Beverly, who, though ostensibly asexual, could still take an intense sexual interest in her victims.

"The brain is more flexible than people think," she explained. "It can do a kind of somersault. What seems disgusting can suddenly become appetizing; what's repulsive can suddenly become erotic. In a flash a person can become addicted to the very thing he or she previously hated. It's a way to survive in the world, to turn pain into pleasure, to take the worst, most painful scenarios of one's childhood and, by controlling them, rewrite the script so that in the new final act there is victory rather than defeat."

"Beverly's victories are the exec I utions, right? Executions of the people who humiliated her in the past?"

"Again, we're talking theory, Frank. After only fifteen minutes of observation I can't tell you this woman did what you think. But yes, she could have done it, and if she did, I don't think her victories would have been just the executions. to me the neuterings are far more important. Killing an old enemy is one thing. Doing something to his body is quite another. Attacking the genitals, the seat of your enemy's sexuality, is the ultimate revenge. to have another person do it for you and then describe it is a way of distancing yourself while still enjoying your old tormentor's degradation. It's like hearing about something bad that has befallen a rival. You didn't do it, you didn't dirty your hands, but you have the satisfaction of knowing that the person has been dealt a devastating blow. We have a special word for that in German. Schadenfreude. It means taking joy in another's pain. If you're right, I think Schadenfreude may be what Beverly Archer is all about."

"Okay," said Aaron. "That makes sense. But could she have gotten Diana to kill and glue all those people? We know the girl killed her mother, grandmother, and sister. But except for Jess, the others all seem to have been perfect strangers."

"It's not that difficult for one person to gain control over another's mind," Monika said. "Behavioral methods, hypnosis, rote training, rewards and punishments, plain old-fashioned domination-there are many ways. The basic method is simple: get someone dependent and susceptible in your power; then circumscribe her world so that your commands have the power of laws. You see it all the time in cults, prisons, terrorist groups, pathological personal relationships. In Nazi Germany you saw it on the extraordinary scale of an entire nation.

There's a part in all of us that responds to force and craves to be controlled. We want to be led, commanded, told what to do. If it weren't for that particular trait, human society probably wouldn't work. But what is extremely difficult is to force someone to perform an act completely contrary to his moral nature. Here, however, you have a girl, still young and malleable, who had not only killed people before but afterwards attacked their sexual organs. The distance from ax to ice pick, from chopping at genitals to imprisoning them with glue, is not all that great. So, to answer your question, yes, everything Frank has theorized is absolutely possible. But whether it happened or not… I'm not the one to say."

Late in the afternoon on Christmas Eve, Janek went down to Police Plaza to see Kit Kopta. This time the crusty red-haired sergeant who ran her office greeted him with warmth.

"How's the shoulder, Detective? The throat?" And before Janek could answer: "That was one close call. Too bad you had to wax the girl.

Luck of the draw, I guess. Anyway, Merry Christmas!"

Kit rose when he came in. "You look grand, Frank. I don't think I've ever seen you with a tan."

"Well, it was a great trip."

She smiled. "I can just imagine the two of you snuggling on some Mexican beach. What I'd give for a little vacation.

"Why don't you take one? God knows you deserve it."

She laughed. "Sure. Check into a Club Med. Have a three-day affair with a gorgeous Nordic ice god, the kind with a stomach so hard you can use it for a washboard. Make an ass out of myself trying to stuff my body into a bikini. Hang out at the bar, pay for drinks with little doodads off my necklace, and wish to hell I was back here in good old tit-freezing New York, where at least I don't have to act jolly or pretend I'm having a good time. "

Janek shook his head. "Are you always like this on Christmas Eve?"

"It's not as if I had a nice husband to go home to." She smiled. "I'll probably end the evening curling up with a bottle. But I'm not bitter. Maybe a little ironic, that's all." She sat down behind her desk, turned serious. "Now what's all this about you wanting to reopen the case?"

It took Janek twenty minutes to lay out his theory of the Wallflower crimes. Kit didn't interrupt him or nod encouragement; she just gazed steadily into his eyes. When he finally finished, she asked him what exactly he wanted her to authorize.

"An investigation."

")"at sort of investigation?" He squinted at her. Her tone seemed hard. "What's the matter? My theory too farfetched?"

She stood, walked over to the window, stared down at Police Plaza.

"Sure, it's farfetched. You know it is. But so is the theory you were too smart to swallow, the one Sullivan and his people seem to have bought whole hog.

"So what's the problem?"

She turned to face him. Her thick black hair framed her little face. "The problem is if you hadn't nearly gotten killed that night, I'd have put IA on your ass."

"What're you talking about?"

She glared at him. "You and Aaron and your phony story that you just happened to be watching when this burglar let himself into Archer's house@o you really think I bought that crap? Don't insult me, please!"

Janek stared at the rug. He'd made a point of forgetting that extralegal maneuver. Now, reminded of it, he felt ashamed.

"It was a look-and-see operation, wasn't it?" she continued. "Not the most subtle one I ever heard about either. I figure the black kid was Aaron's snitch from the time he worked Safes and Lofts."

Janek spread his arms. "It was my idea. It was wrong. I'm sorry I did it." "Still, it worked for you. Got you inside, got you a quick look at some stuff, and now you've built a pretty theory around it. Fine. Maybe you're right. Maybe this Beverly Archer is the evil, manipulative murderess you say. Anything's possible, Frank. But you'll never get her for it, not if you're going to carry on like that."

"I'm not going to carry on like that. I won't do anything like that again."

She looked at him, rolled her eyes, and returned to her desk. they spent the next ten minutes bargaining. He wanted to go to Providence and send Aaron out to Texas to look for Archer connections among the two I unconnected" families. Then he wanted another three weeks of travel for them both to try to discover what incidents may have occurred between Beverly and Bertha Parce, Cynthia Morse, and the MacDonalds. Then he wanted at least ten days in Cleveland, digging out everything there was to be found on the woman. Plus whatever additional travel and per diems might be necessary depending on the information all these interviews produced.

Kit stared at him, her large brown eyes sparkling beneath her Grecian brows.

"Basically you're asking for unlimited backing on a theory neither of us has the nerve to broach to the FBI."

"You always said my instincts were good, Kit. Here's a chance to back me up."

"Sure, back you up. Then you get impatient and pull another Leo Titus because your goddaughter was a victim. No thanks, Frank.

Forget it."

"I gave you my word. Want me to give it to you in writing?"

She laughed. "Then I'd really have to fire you, wouldn't I? Your written promise would be a confession you broke your oath." "Shit!" He stood up, angry. "She did it. I know she did. I'm going to nail her, Kit, no matter how long it takes."

Kit studied him. When she spoke again, he could tell by her tone that she'd made a decision.

"Even if you're right, and you just might be, it's the toughest kind of -case to make. Suppose you prove Archer was totally fucked over by every single person Diana Proctor killed? So what? You're talking mind murders, Frank. You've got no witnesses, no one you can turn. Diana, your coconspirator, is already dead. It's a dead-end case. You know it is."

Janek tried to interrupt, but Kit motioned him to keep quiet until she was finished.

"I'm telling you the facts of life. No D.A. will take on a case like that unless you bring him a full confession. How the hell are you going get one? I talked to the woman myself. She's a stone-cold hard-ass. She knows she's out of it; she knows there's no evidence. If you're right and she was behind it, then one of the main reasons she operated the way she did was to insulate herself from a criminal prosecution. So now, tell me, why should she confess?"

He shook his head. "I don't know yet. But she will."

"Going to inake her, Frank? Going to beat it out of her?"

"Of course not."

"Then how?"

"Underneath the smile she's totally crazed. A crazy person can be broken." "And you're the man to break her, right?"

"I'll sure give it my best shot," he snapped.

Kit grinned. "Fine. That's fine. I'll go along with that.

But unlimited backing…" She shook her head. "Between you and Aaron I'll give you three weeks' worth of travel. Split it up any way you like. Plus you can keep your office till the end of January. After that bring me what you've got and we'll reevaluate the case together. But you better bring me something good. Otherwise both of you are going to be reassigned."

It wasn't what he wanted, but he knew it was all he was going to get.

After he accepted her offer, she escorted him to the door. Just before she opened it, she lightly touched the scar tissue on his throat.

"I would have been very sorry if something had happened to you, my friend."

He turned to her, kissed her cheek. "You talk tough, Kit, but you're still a pussycat."

She smiled. "I'm glad you found someone, Frank. I liked what I saw of her, especially the way she shot over here when we called to tell her you'd been cut." She stood before him, took hold of both his hands, stared up into his face. "Listen to me. Don't poison the fruit," she warn ed quietly. "If Archer did it, I want you to nail her. But with a straight nail. Hear me, Frank? Make damn sure that nail goes in her straight…

When he left Police Plaza, the sky was dark, but the city seemed strangely void of rancor. It's the holidays, he thought. But then he remembered: Christmas was the season when New Yorkers turned their rage against themselves. It was the season of suicides.

He found a liquor store open on Nassau Street, went in, bought a chilled bottle of champagne, carried it home on the subway in a paper bag.

Monika was waiting for him. they drank it out of the goblet she'd given him in Venice. The wine tasted very good, they agreed. If anything the ancient glass enhanced it.

He told her about his interview with Kit, the deal they'd made, the pressure he was under now to develop sufficient proof to keep his investigation alive.

"I'm not going to be able to do the kind of deep background work I like," he said. "That'll take months, and we don't have months. No support team either. Just Aaron and me."

"Then you'll have to focus your search," she said. He nodded. "Any ideas?"

She thought about it. "The lady in the picture, the mother up there on the wall-I'd look to her first. Look to the past, Frank. Try to reconstruct the family history. The secret is always there…

Later, after they had made love, they clung to each other in the dark.

He was filled with passionate adoration for his stylish, brilliant, nurturing German psychoanalyst.

"I love you," he told her in the middle of the night. "I love you more than anyone I've ever known. Has anyone ever said that to you before, Monika? Has anyone ever loved you so much?"