The Poet (1995)

  Backus was standing in the middle of the room staring at the floor.

  "I knew about her father. The official version, I mean."

  "I had a friend find out the details of the unofficial version."

  "What next?"

  "What happens next is she blossoms. The power she had in that one moment makes up for a lot of things. She gets past it. Few do, but she makes it. She's a smart girl and she goes on to the university to study psychology, to learn about herself. And then she even gets drafted by the FBI. She's a prize and she moves fast through the bureau until she's in the unit that actually studies people like her father. And like herself. You see, her whole life has been this struggle to understand. And then when her team leader wants to study police suicides he goes to her because he knows the official story about her father. Not the truth. Just the official story. She takes the job, knowing inside that the reason she had been chosen was a sham."

  I stopped there. The more I told of the story the more power I felt. Knowledge of someone's secrets is an intoxicating power. I reveled in my ability to put the story together.

  "And so," Backus whispered then, "how does it all come apart for her?"

  I cleared my throat.

  "Things were going good," I continued. "She married her partner and things were going good. But then things weren't so good. I don't know if it was pressure from the job, the memories, the breakup of that marriage, maybe all of those things. But she started coming apart. Her husband left her, thinking that she was empty inside. The Painted Desert, he called her, and she hated him for it. And then . . . maybe she remembered the day when she killed her tormentor. Her father. And she remembered the peace that came after . . . the release."

  I looked at him. He had a far-off look in his eyes, maybe envisioning the story as I conjured it from hell.

  "One day," I continued, "one day a request for a profile comes in. A boy has been killed and mutilated in Florida. The case detective wants a profile of the person who did this. Only she recognizes the detective, knows his name. Beltran. A name from the past. A name maybe brought up in an old interview and she knows that he, too, was a tormentor, an abuser like her father, and that the victim he is calling about was also probably his victim . . ."

  "Right," Backus said, taking up the strand. "So she goes down to Florida to this man, Beltran, and does it again. Just like with her father. Makes it look like a suicide. She even knew where Beltran kept his shotgun hidden. Gladden had told her that. It was probably an easy thing to get to him. She flies down, goes to him with her bureau credentials and gets inside the house to do it. It brings her peace again. Fills that void. Only thing is it doesn't last. Soon she is empty again and she has to do it again. And then again and again. She follows the killer, Gladden, and kills those who are after him, using him to cover her tracks before she had even made them."

  Backus was staring blankly at some vision as he spoke.

  "She knew all the touches, all the moves," he said. "Wiping the lubricated condom off inside Orsulak's mouth. The perfect deflection. It was true genius."

  I nodded and took it from there.

  "She had seen Gladden's cell and knew there was a photograph in the files that could be found one day," I said. "She knew the books about Poe were in the photos. It was all a setup. She followed Gladden around the country. She had a sense. She knew from the cases coming in for profiling which were the ones he did. She had an empathy. She'd follow him. She'd go out and kill the cop that was after him. She made each one look like a suicide, but she had Gladden to put it on if someday someone came along and it unraveled."

  Backus looked at me.

  "Someone like you," he said.

  "Yeah. Like me."

  49

  Backus said the story was like a sheet hanging on a clothesline in high wind. Barely held on by a few clothespins, it was ready to fly away.

  "We need more, Jack."

  I nodded. He was the expert. Besides, the real trial had already been held in my heart and the verdict was in.

  "What are you going to do?" I asked.

  "I'm thinking. You had-you were beginning a relationship with her, weren't you?"

  "It was that obvious?"

  "Yes."

  Then he didn't say anything for a full minute. He paced the room, not really looking at anything, all interior dialogue and thought. Finally, he stopped moving and looked at me.

  "Would you wear a wire?"

  "What do you mean?"

  "You know what I mean. I'll bring her back here, put her alone with you and you draw it out. You might be the only one who could."

  I looked down at the floor. I remembered our last phone conversation and how she had seen through my act.

  "I don't know. I don't think I could pull it off."

  "She might be suspicious and check," Backus said, discarding the idea and searching the floor with his eyes for another. "Still, you're the one, Jack. You're not an agent and she knows if need be she can take you."

  "Take me where?"

  "Take you out." He snapped his fingers. "I've got it. You won't have to wear a wire. We'll put you inside the wire."

  "What are you talking about?"

  He raised a finger as if to tell me to hold on. He picked up the phone, wedged the receiver into the crook of his neck and carried it with him while he tapped in a number and waited for an answer. The cord was like a leash, containing his pacing to only a few steps in any direction.

  "Pack your things," he said to me while waiting for the call to be picked up.

  I got up and slowly began to follow his order, putting my few things in the computer bag and the pillowcase while listening as he asked for Agent Carter and then began issuing directions. He told Carter to call Quantico communications and to relay a message to the bureau jet with Rachel on it. Call the plane back, Backus ordered.

  "Just tell them something's come up that cannot be discussed on the air and that I need her back here," he said into the phone. "Nothing more than that. Understand?"

  Satisfied with Carter's reply, he pressed on.

  "Now, before you do that, put me on hold and call the SAC's office. I need the exact address and key combination for the earthquake house. He'll know what I mean. I'll be going there from here. I want you to grab a sound and video tech and two good agents. I'll fill you in there. Call the SAC now."

  I looked at Backus with a curious expression.

  "I'm on hold."

  "Earthquake house?"

  "Clearmountain told me about it. It's in the hills over the Valley. Top to bottom it's wired. Sound and video. It was damaged in the quake and the real owners just left it, didn't have insurance. The bureau leased it from the bank and used it for a sting on local building and safety inspectors, contractors and repairmen. A lot of fraud involving the funds from the Federal Emergency Management Agency. That's where the bureau came in. Indictments are pending. The sting's been closed down but the bureau's lease isn't up. So it's-"

  He held his hand up. Carter had come back on the line. Backus listened for a few moments and nodded his head.

  "Right on Mulholland and then the first left. Easy enough. What's your ETA?"

  He hung up after telling Carter we'd get there ahead of him and adding that he needed the agent's best work on this.

  As Backus drove away from the hotel I made a secret salute to the Marlboro Man. We went east on Sunset to Laurel Canyon Boulevard and then up the winding cut through the mountains.

  "How's this going to work?" I asked him. "How are you going to get Rachel up to this place we're going?"

  "You'll leave a message for Rachel on her voice mail at Quantico. You'll tell her you're at a friend's house-somebody you used to know from the paper who moved out here-and leave the number. Then when I talk to Rachel I'll tell her I called her back from Florida because you've been making calls and strange accusations about her but nobody knows where you are. I'll tell her I think you've popped too many pain pills but that we need to brin
g you in."

  I was feeling increasingly uncomfortable about the prospect of being used as bait and having to face Rachel. I did not know how I'd be able to bring it off.

  "Eventually," Backus continued, "Rachel will get the message. But she won't call you. Instead, she'll trace the number to the house and she'll go to you, Jack. Alone. For one of two things."

  "What?" I asked, though I already had a pretty good idea.

  "To either try to set you straight . . . or to kill you. She'll think you're the only one who knows. She'll need to convince you that you are wrong about these wild-ass ideas. Or she'll need to put you in the ground. My guess is that it will be the ground."

  I nodded. It was my guess, too.

  "But we'll be there. Inside with you, close."

  It wasn't comforting.

  "I don't know . . ."

  "Not to worry, Jack," Backus said, reaching over and giving me a playful punch on the shoulder. "You'll be all right and this time we're going to do it right. What you do have to worry about is getting her to talk. Get her on the tape, Jack. Get her admitting to just one part of the Poet's story and we've got her for the rest. Get her on tape."

  "I'll try."

  "You'll be fine."

  At Mulholland Drive, Backus turned right as Carter had instructed and we followed the road as it snaked along the mountain crest, offering a view through the darkening haze of the Valley below. We serpentined for nearly a mile until we saw Wrightwood Drive and turned left and descended into a neighborhood of small houses built on steel pylons, their weight hanging out over the mountain's edge, precarious testaments to engineering and the desires of developers to leave their mark on every crest in the city.

  "Do you believe people live in these things?" Backus asked.

  "Hate to be in one during an earthquake."

  Backus drove slowly, checking the address numbers painted on the curb. I let him do that while I watched between the houses for glimpses of the Valley below. It was approaching dusk and many of the lights were coming on down there. Backus finally stopped the car in front of a house on a bend in the road.

  "This is it."

  It was a small, wood-frame structure. From the front the pylons that supported it could not be seen and it seemed to be floating above the deep drop-off to the Valley. We both looked at it for a long moment without making a move to get out.

  "What if she knows about the house?"

  "Rachel? She won't, Jack. I only know because of Clearmountain. It came up during a bit of gossip. Some of the guys from the FO use the place on occasion, if you know what I mean. When they're with someone they can't bring home."

  I looked over at him and he winked at me.

  "Let's check it out," he said. "Don't forget your stuff."

  There was a lockbox on the front door. Backus knew the combination and opened it, retrieved the key from the tiny compartment and opened the door.

  He entered the house and flicked on the light in an entrance alcove. I followed him in and closed the door. The house was only modestly furnished but I ignored this because my attention was immediately drawn to the rear wall of the living room. The wall was made entirely of thick glass panels offering a spectacular view of the entire Valley sprawling below the house. I crossed the room and gazed out. At the far rim of the Valley I saw the rise of another mountain chain. I stepped close enough to the glass so that I could see my own breath against it and looked down into the dark arroyo directly below. A sense of unease at being at such a precipice licked at me and I stepped back as Backus turned on a lamp behind me.

  It was then that I saw the cracks. Three of the five glass panels had fractures spidering through them. I turned to the left and saw the disjointed image of myself and Backus in a mirrored wall that had also been fractured by the earthquake.

  "What else happened? Is it safe to be in here?"

  "It's safe, Jack. But safety is a relative thing. The next big one could come along and change everything . . . As far as other damage, there is a floor below us. Was a floor, I should say. Clearmountain said that is where the damage was. Buckled walls, broken water pipes."

  I put my computer bag and pillowcase down on the floor and turned back to the rear window. My eyes were drawn to the view and I bravely stepped to the glass again. I heard a sharp creaking sound from the direction of the alcove where we had come in. I looked at Backus with alarm.

  "Don't worry, they had the pylons checked by an engineer before they even started the sting. The house isn't going anywhere. It just looks like it is and sounds like it is and that's what they wanted for the sting."

  I nodded again but not with a lot of confidence. I looked back at him through the glass.

  "The only thing going somewhere is you, Jack."

  I glanced at him in the mirror, not sure what he meant. And there, quadrupled in the broken reflection, I saw the gun in his hand.

  "What is this?" I asked.

  "This is the end of the line."

  In a rush it came to me. I'd taken a wrong turn and blamed the wrong one. In that moment I also came to the realization that it was the flaw in my own interior that had led me the wrong way. My inability to believe and accept. I had taken Rachel's emotions and looked for the flaw in them instead of the truth.

  "You," I said. "You are the Poet."

  He didn't answer. Instead he gave a small smile and a nod. I knew then that Rachel's plane hadn't been recalled and that Agent Carter was not coming with a tech and two good agents. I could see the true plan perfectly, right down to the finger Backus must have kept on the phone while he faked the call in my hotel room. I was alone now with the Poet.

  "Bob, why? Why you?"

  I was so shocked I was still calling him by his first name like a friend would.

  "It's a story as old as any of them," he replied. "Too old and forgotten to tell you. You don't need to know it now, anyway. Sit down on the chair, Jack."

  He signaled with the gun toward the stuffed chair opposite the couch. Then he aimed the gun back at me. I didn't move.

  "The calls," I said. "You made the calls from Thorson's room?"

  I said it more to be saying something as a stall for time, though in my gut I knew that time was meaningless to me now. No one knew I was there. No one would be coming. Backus laughed in a forced, scoffing manner at my question.

  "The luck of chance," he said. "That night I checked in for all of us-Carter, Thorson, me. Then I apparently mixed the keys up. I made those calls from my own room, but the bill had Thorson's name on it. I didn't know that, of course, until I took the bills from your room Monday night while you were with Rachel."

  I thought about what Rachel had said about making your own luck. I guessed it applied to serial killers as well.

  "How'd you know I had the bills?"

  "I didn't. Not for sure. But you called Michael Warren and told him you had his source by the balls. He then called me because I was his source. Even though he said you accused Gordon of being the source, I had to find out what you knew. That was the reason I let you back into the investigation, Jack. I had to figure out what you knew. It wasn't until I went into your room while you were bedding Rachel that I found out it was the hotel bills."

  "Was that you who followed me later, to the bar?"

  "That night you were the one with the luck. If you had gone to that doorway to see who was there, this would all have been over right then.

  "But then the next day when you didn't come to me and accuse Thorson of breaking into your room, I thought the threat was over. That you were letting it go. Everything proceeded nicely from there-right according to plan-until you called up today and started asking about condoms and phone calls. I knew what you were up to, Jack. I knew I had to move quickly. Now sit down in that chair. I'm not going to ask you again."

  I moved to the chair and sat down. I rubbed my hands down my thighs and felt my hands shaking. My back was now to the rear wall of glass. I had nothing to look at but Backus.

&nbs
p; "How'd you know about Gladden?" I asked. "Gladden and Beltran."

  "I was there. Remember? I was part of the team. While Rachel and Gordon conducted other interviews I had my own little sit-down with William. From what he was willing to say it was not difficult for me to identify Beltran. Then I waited for Gladden to act once he was set free. I knew he'd act out. It was in his nature. I know about that. And so I used him as cover. I knew that if one day my work was discovered, the evidence would lead to him."