The naturalness and familiarity of those few words seemed to break through the shell Jordan had always placed around himself. He was a man who had spent all his life alone and, whenever he had heard a voice inside him asking why, he had preferred to ignore it. There had been people whose lives had crossed his, men with whom he’d exchanged words and gestures of affection and trust, women who had come to him with the promise of something he had taken for love. Ultimately, he had not let any of them linger for long.
Lysa opened her eyes again and looked at Jordan as if seeing him for the first time. She sat up on the couch.
‘What time is it?’
‘Six-thirty.’
‘What happened last night?’
‘Someone else died.’
Lysa did not ask for any further details, and Jordan was grateful to her for that.
‘I was watching television to see if they talked about it and I fell asleep.’
‘We actually managed to keep the media off the scent this time. For now, at least.’
Lysa got up and went into the kitchen. He heard the refrigerator door opening. ‘Would you like a coffee?’ she called out.
‘No thanks, I already had breakfast in the diner opposite. All I need now is a shower to make me feel like a human being again.’
Jordan went to the guest room and undressed, throwing his clothes haphazardly on the bed. He stepped into the bathroom and looked at his image in the mirror. He looked the same as ever, and yet he knew he wasn’t the same person who, only recently, had walked through this apartment with a helmet in his hand, ready to embark on a journey to an unknown destination.
Things had changed.
The desire to escape was still there, but now he was scared to think about what he was escaping from.
He turned on the faucet and stepped into the shower. He washed himself all over, trying to get the sickly smell of glue out of his nostrils and the sense of clamminess from his skin: the clamminess he always felt after being at a crime scene.
He started his usual game with the watermixer.
Hot. Cold.
Gerald. Chandelle.
Hot. Cold.
Linus. Lucy.
Hot. Cold.
The blanket. The piano.
And Lysa . . .
Hot. Cold.
With an irritable gesure he pressed the lever and stopped the jet of water. He came out, dripping on the rug, dried himself and quickly shaved. He put a few drops in his eyes, which were red from lack of sleep, and again checked his image in the mirror. For a second, he caught himself trying to see it through Lysa’s eyes.
The ringing of the cellphone jolted him out of these thoughts. He went and picked it up from the bed, starting to get dressed as he answered.
‘Hello?’
‘Hello, Marsalis, Medical Examiner Stealer here.’
‘That’s quick.’
‘I was right, I got that call I was expecting. Maybe I should have been a clairvoyant instead of a pathologist. Anyway, the post mortem isn’t finished yet, but there are a couple of things you may like to know.’
‘I’m listening.’
‘Apart from the confirmation that death was the result of strangulation, the first is that the victim had had sexual relations. And it looks like she had them after she was killed.’
‘You mean the killer strangled her first and then raped her?’
‘Precisely. We found traces of lubricant from a condom.’ Stealer paused. ‘The kind of condom that has a retardant effect on the man and a stimulant effect on the woman.’
‘Holy Christ, what kind of sick bastard are we dealing with?’
‘With a very unfortunate sick bastard. The condom he used was faulty.’
‘And?’
‘A small amount of his semen remained in Chandelle Stuart’s vagina. Small, but enough to carry out a DNA test on. I’ve already requested it.’
Jordan wedged the phone between his face and his shoulder and sat down on the bed to put on his socks. ‘That’s a piece of luck.’
‘Yes. Murderers don’t always leave calling cards.’
‘Right. A pity we can’t read his name and address on it.’
‘That, I’m afraid, is your problem.’
‘Unfortunately, yes. Marks on the body?’
‘Traces of glue on the wrists. Plus traces of adhesive tape.’
Just as Jordan had thought.
‘Anything else?’
‘Apart from the bruises on the neck, nothing. Despite appearances, there’s no sign of struggle. The only curious detail is that we found tiny fragments of fibre under the nails. The Crime Scene team has ascertained that it’s identical to the torn dress found on the floor.’
‘Almost as if she’d torn the garment off herself.’
‘Precisely. For the rest there are some scattered bruises, but they pre-date last night.’
From what Randall Haze had told them, Jordan did not have much difficulty in imagining how Chandelle Stuart had got them.
‘One last thing, though I don’t know how much help it might be.’
‘At this point, anything can help. Go ahead.’
‘On the groin, there’s a scar from a small plastic surgery operation. The removal of a tattoo, I’d guess. For the moment that’s all I can tell you.’
‘You’ve told me more than enough. Thanks, Stealer.’
‘Have a good day.’
‘If it turns out to be one, it’ll be thanks to you.’
Jordan hung up and threw the cellphone on the bed. Then he opened the closet and chose a clean shirt. As he finished dressing, he felt a sense of optimism growing inside him. He put on his watch and looked at the time. It was almost seven, and in spite of his sleepless night he felt quite bright. The rush of adrenaline from his excitement over these new clues had effectively replaced the hours he would otherwise have spent tossing and turning in bed, searching desperately for a flash of intuition.
He grabbed his helmet and leather jacket. This would be a perfect day for a ride on the bike, he had decided. A ride to Poughkeepsie, for example. It was more or less halfway between New York and Albany, and with the Ducati he would be there in no time at all. He went back in the living room. By now, Lysa had also changed and was standing by the window. Beyond the roofs, the late-spring sky was wonderfully blue.
When she heard his steps on the wooden floor she turned. What she said when she saw him enter the room seemed more like a thought spoken out loud than an actual observation.
‘Your eyes are the same colour.’
‘As what?’
‘The sky.’
They were both silent for a moment. Then Lysa noticed the helmet and jacket. ‘Going out?’
‘Yes. There’s something I have to do.’
Jordan was pleased the subject had been changed: he always felt embarrassed by compliments on his physical appearance.
Lysa continued staring at the full-face helmet. ‘What’s it like, riding a bike?’
‘There’s danger. And speed, if you want it. But most of all, there’s freedom, if you’re capable of it.’
Lysa kept looking at him in silence. Jordan had learned to know those moments of hers, when she smiled ironically out of one side of her mouth and her eyes had the sly expression of a bored cat.
When she spoke, the innocence of her voice masked the provocation of her words. ‘Do you think I am?’
‘There’s only one way to find out,’ Jordan replied without thinking. ‘The place I’m going isn’t too far from here. Would you like to come with me?’
She let the meaning of this sink in, then said, ‘I don’t have a helmet.’
‘No problem. Across the street, on Sixth, there’s an accessories store where I usually buy things for my bike. When we go down, we can get one for you.’
‘It won’t be open yet.’
‘The owner’s a friend of mine and sleeps on the premises. He won’t be happy but he’ll wake up.’
‘OK. Give me a sec
ond.’
Lysa disappeared into the corridor. She soon reappeared wearing a pair of jeans, a padded leather jacket and vaguely country-style boots. She had tied her hair in a pony tail, and to Jordan she appeared more luminous than the daylight they would find outside.
‘Ready.’
Jordan was not at all sure he could say the same. But as he was only a man, at that moment he did the only thing he could: he lied.
‘So am I.’
As they went downstairs, however, Jordan felt better than he had done for a long, long time. Like most people, he expended more imagination on finding excuses than on actually living. So he preferred to attribute this new feeling to the excitement of the investigation rather than admit it was due to the prospect of spending a day with Lysa.
CHAPTER 22
A motorbike meant riding without the need for words.
Jordan remembered that at a certain point in his life it had been neither easy nor hard to reject the comfort of a car roof over his head or the hypnotic dance of the windshield wipers. It had simply been natural. A motorbike meant waiting under a bridge for the rain to ease off. A motorbike meant that cyclops eye cutting through the darkness. A motorbike meant speed when necessary but, above all, as he had said to Lysa, it meant freedom – and you could never have enough of that.
At Amazing Race, the store opposite his apartment, he had bought a full-face helmet for Lysa. Jordan had watched as her eyes disappeared behind the dark plastic of the lowered visor and had immediately missed them.
Now he could feel her behind him, moving in perfect time to the demands of the road, which require us not to escape our fears, but rather to throw ourselves into them and conquer them if we want to feel safe. Lysa seemed to have grasped that on a motorbike the right thing to do was what came least naturally.
She was the perfect travelling companion.
Jordan felt the thrust of the engine and the sense of compressed gravity as he accelerated. He had the road in front of him, under him and behind him, and despite everything Lysa was still there, docile and yielding at the bends, present and absent, still clinging to him to remind him that she existed – even though now the scent of vanilla was lost on the wind.
Leaving New York, they had taken the West Side Highway leading north, and then Jordan had chosen Route 9, which for some stretches ran alongside the banks of the Hudson River. They passed West Point, hanging sheer over the river, as rigid as its rules. They passed Sing Sing, cut in two by the railroad, where the prisoners could hear the freedom of the train whistle beyond the walls. They were greeted with open arms by the iridescent green of the late-spring vegetation.
They passed houses, little harbours with boats riding at anchor in the sun, ready to ply the river during the summer. Jordan was at peace, not thinking of anything. He would have liked this journey to last forever.
But eventually they reached Poughkeepsie. They passed the station, a redbrick building where at that moment a single taxi slumbered, and entered the town, which seemed to Jordan an archetypal little provincial place. They rode down one of the many Raymond Avenues in America, past churches and veterans’ associations and an untold number of traffic-lights and restaurants. After an intersection, they came to a low perimeter wall. An imposing-looking building could be glimpsed in the distance, surrounded by tall trees and wide lawns.
Jordan did not need any further indication that they had reached Vassar.
He turned right, following the signs, and as they rode for a long stretch down a street that ran alongside the campus, he realized that the area over which it extended must be vast.
The wall was higher now, in a vagely medieval style that Jordan couldn’t quite place. They finally came to three arches, the widest of which was the main entrance to the college. Jordan stopped and removed his helmet. A security guard with very short hair and a ruddy face approached.
‘Good morning. I’m Jordan Marsalis. I have an appointment with President Hoogan.’
Christopher knew Travis Hoogan, the President of Vassar College, personally. The guard’s reaction confirmed to him that the call he had requested of his brother had been made and had had the required effect.
‘Good morning, Mr Marsalis. I was told you were coming. I think the President is on the golf course. You could wait in the cafeteria while I beep him.’ He pointed up the path ahead of them. ‘Go along the avenue to the end then turn right. There are signposts with all the directions. The golf course is on the right. The cafeteria is just facing it. You can park your bike nearby.’
Jordan rode the Ducati at a moderate speed along the broad wooded avenue lined with flowerbeds and an impressive English lawn.
Up ahead of them was the main block of Vassar College, a severe-looking building in dark brick, with big white windows, consisting of a central part and two wings to right and left that seemed to have been added slightly later. At the highest point of the roof, fixed to a white pole, an American flag fluttered.
Following the guard’s directions, they turned right. They passed other buildings: a theatre, a swimming pool, a gym, a tennis court. The fact that there was even a golf course forced Jordan to admit that the hundred-thousand-dollar-a-year fee might be worth it, after all.
They reached the parking lot and Jordan turned off the engine.
As soon as they got off, Lysa removed her helmet and leaned forward to let her dark hair free, mussed it with her hand until it had found its shape again, then lifted her head sharply so that the hair cascaded back onto her shoulders, glossy in the light. For a moment, Jordan had the absurd idea that when she turned to him, he would have to look at her face in a mirror in order not to be turned to stone. But when she did, her smile and her eyes were so bright, they would have turned even Medusa to stone.
Lysa looked around happily. ‘It’s beautiful.’
‘What is?’
‘Everything. The day, the sun, the journey, the bike. This incredible place. And to think it’s a school! I know people who would be happy just to spend a week’s vacation here.’
‘Well, we have to be content with one day. Apart from anything else, it’s free.’
They walked in silence towards the cafeteria, a low building a few dozen yards away, hidden from them by a tall hedge of mixed vegetation, tended in such a way as to give the impression of being untamed.
A girl passed them, walking fast. She had coloured leggings and a green T-shirt, with a pair of jogging shoes tied together and thrown over her shoulder. On her feet, she wore a pair of Japanese-style thongs. Her red-dyed hair seemed strewn over her head at random. Taken out of that context, she would have looked like a young homeless woman trying to figure out how and where to get through the day. Here, she was only an oddball from a good family attending a college that charged exorbitant fees. Jordan found himself thinking of his nephew here, just as much of an oddball, a few years earlier.
Maybe, in her way, that girl really was homeless.
They followed her up a small flight of steps and through a glass door into the cafeteria, a large hall with yellow-painted walls. Some young people were working in the service area, others were sitting at tables, talking among themselves.
There was an understated air about the place, although an ATM cash machine was in full view on the wall to the left. The red-headed girl went straight to it and slipped her card into the slot. Jordan smiled to himself. Some of these kids might adopt a casual, bohemian style, but they were happy to use the credit cards provided by their parents.
On their entrance, all male heads had turned in perfect unison to look at Lysa, and the hum of conversation had died down. If Jordan hadn’t been so busy noticing this, he would have noticed that many of the girls were looking at him in the same way.
At that moment, a man came through the glass door beside them, carrying a golf bag over his shoulder. He was about sixty, as tall as Jordan, with somewhat sparse hair of an indefinable colour, worn slightly longer than average. His eyes were hidden behind a pair of
unrimmed spectacles. He gave the impression of being a calm person, someone who had had everything he wanted out of life.
He approached them with a smile. ‘Jordan Marsalis, I assume. I’m Travis Hoogan, the President of this godforsaken place.’
Jordan shook the hand held out to him. ‘Pleased to meet you. This is Lysa Guerrero.’
Hoogan’s eyes lit up with contained mischief as he held Lysa’s hand a moment longer than necessary. ‘Miss Guerrero, what a delight to meet you. Your presence on this earth tells us common mortals that miracles do happen. Which is why I shan’t lose hope that I can yet improve on my golf handicap.’
Lysa threw her head back and laughed. ‘If you’re as good on the golf course as you are at making compliments, I think we’ll soon be seeing you at the Masters.’
The President gave a little shrug. ‘Oscar Wilde said that the problem isn’t that we grow old on the outside, but that we stay young inside. Believe me, knowing that doesn’t help. Thanks, anyway.’
Jordan had not told Lysa why they had come to Vassar. After these pleasantries, Lysa showed her usual tact by saying, ‘I think you two have something to talk about. While you do, I hope you don’t mind if I take a look around.’
Hoogan made a gesture, as if granting her a hypothetical key to the college. ‘If I did mind, I fear the male members of the board would ask for my resignation.’
Lysa headed for the door and went out. Two young men on their way in stood aside to let her through, stood for a moment in the doorway, looked at each other, then turned back to follow her.
Hoogan smiled as he watched her go. ‘She may not be a pure miracle, but she’s something very close to one. You’re a lucky man, Mr Marsalis.’ Then his tone changed abruptly. ‘When Christopher rang to tell me you were coming, he told me you’ve both been in a bad state since Gerald’s death. I was really sorry to hear about the boy, and I hope you find something while you’re here that may help you discover who killed him.’
‘I hope so, too.’
‘Shall we go to my office? I think we can talk there without being disturbed.’
As he followed Hoogan out of the cafeteria, Jordan looked through the windows and saw Lysa standing under a tree, helmet in one hand, gesturing with the other to a squirrel that was looking at her curiously from the top of a branch.