Puppets

  He looked at Biedermann to see his reaction. Having observed how the SAC ran things, how close to his chest he played his cards, the answer couldn't be flattering. Mo was willing to bet that very few players had all the information needed to duplicate the crime so closely. Someone in Biedermann's office. Maybe somebody in the New York DA's office. Maybe somebody in the New Jersey or New York PDs, but judging from Ty's resentment over the way the investigation was controlled, probably not even there. Who else? Zelek, the alien, or someone else at his level? Then there was the issue of using Rebecca as bait, suggesting they had reason to suspect the insider possibility early on. Mo thought to confront Biedermann with that, then decided he'd pushed his luck enough for one day.

  "Even that scenario has its problems," Dr. Ingalls said.

  "Suchas—?"

  "Motive. Why would a law enforcement employee kill these people, who are apparently randomly selected? And even if it's driven entirely by a psychopathology, if you've got the forensic knowledge to avoid leaving evidence, why bother to imitate someone else's modus operandi when inventing your own would be so much more . . . satisfying? When imitating would suggest to police that the perpetrator has inside information?"

  "And I have to say," Biedermann put in, "I resent the implication that anyone in this office is in any way involved." Mo realized it was the first time he'd spoken in a long time.

  "So what's the alternative?" Mo asked.

  Nobody answered. After another minute, the phone behind Biedermann buzzed and he picked it up."Biedermann. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Two minutes," he said. When he had hung up, he stood and went to the door, shrugging his big shoulders, getting his air of authority cranked up again."I've got other things to attend to. Detective Ford, I propose we table this discussion until we have more data on the power-station murder. We'll convene a full task force meeting when we have that material." He gave them each a nod, his eyes lingering on Dr. Ingalls, before leaving the room.

  Dr. Ingalls busied herself with putting her materials into her briefcase, and Mo did likewise. Being alone in the room with her felt suddenly awkward. Throughout their meeting, Mo realized, he'd been acutely conscious of her interaction with Biedermann, seeking clues to the current state of their relationship. They called each other by their first names, but that didn't mean anything, given that they'd worked together for the better part of a year. Then there was that moment when she defused the confrontation, laughing and demonstrating some kind of emotional authority over Biedermann—

  He was startled when something hit him in the chest. A little wad of tinfoil skittered across the table, and he looked up, astonished to see Dr. Ingalls watching him, just putting a piece of gum into her mouth.

  She chewed a couple of times, then grinned at his surprise. "You're thinking Erik's a pain, huh? Hey, it's three-thirty—you want to get a cup of coffee?" The words were potentially flirtatious, but her smile was heavily wry, almost regretful. Still, his heart did a sudden flip and deftly landed on its feet.

  "Sure," he said.

  14

  BUT SHE CHANGED HER mind as soon as they got outside. "Would you be up for a walk instead? If what everybody tells me is true, days like this are rare in Manhattan. Carpe diem, and all that."

  Mo agreed readily. The rain had blown over, and an expanse of blue was pushing the wet weather away, a ridge of clouds sliding away above the city like an opening eyelid. After half a day of rain, the streets were wet and everything had a fresh, scrubbed look, and yet a nice breeze took the humidity away. She was right, it was not something to be squandered. They turned south on Broadway and headed toward Battery Park.

  Rebecca walked with big, easy strides, swinging her briefcase in a wide arc. She looked like an outlander, big and blond and gazing around with the enthusiasm of a tourist."You have to understand," she said, "my one regret about my profession is that it involves sitting inside a lot, talking a lot. I love it here, but I still get a little claustrophobic."

  "I can imagine. I'm kind of a city boy, but I still like to walk every chance I get."

  She gave him a quick, approving glance."I liked the way you handled Erik when he wanted to yank your chain. You had done some preparation for that eventuality?"

  "Some amount of that is typical in inter jurisdictional projects."

  "Well,that's what I thought we could talk about." The regretful look was back. "I think you need to be aware that Erik is tough, but he's sincerely trying to make a good job of a complex situation."

  "You don't think you're letting your personal relationship with him bias your judgment?"

  She glanced over at him to see if he'd meant it the way it sounded, a little taken aback. "You do do your homework, don't you?"

  "I'm just trying to keep my own professional objectivity. Critical thinking, question the biases of your sources. A good habit, don't you think?"

  "Very wise. You sure it's purely a professional interest? No biases on your part?"

  She was getting back at him, turning it back around. But in a nice way, probing but not judging. She must be a knockout shrink, he decided, a hard person to hide anything from.

  "Let's speak in declarative sentences," he proposed. "We're both accustomed to interrogating people—admittedly different schools and styles, but I'll bet between us we could answer each other with questions forever."

  "Declarative statements only." She nodded with a wide smile, liking the challenge. "Okay. So let's get something out of the way. I think you like me. I think I like you. That's okay with me. Yes, the relationship between Erik and me probably did get in the way somewhat during our Howdy Doody work, but not to any crucial extent. No, I don't think it's biasing me now."

  Mo walked along beside her. Jesus, she could spike it right back over the net at you. Jesus, it felt good. Looking at her now, he saw something besides a handsome female: rather, a self-inspected person, unafraid of her own nature, accepting of her own style. Committed to dealing with life on the terms she'd set for it. He wanted to ask, to verify, whether her relationship with Biedermann was a thing of the past, but that was an interrogatory and the declaratory, stripped of camouflage, would be something like / want you to be available for arelationship. Which was way too fast, under the circumstances.

  They had come up behind a family of Japanese tourists, a mother and father and four kids who walked in a line across the whole sidewalk, arranged by size like six organ pipes, largest to smallest. They wore shorts and white socks and gaudy running shoes and bright sweatshirts with brand logos on them. The littlest girl jumped over cracks in the pavement while the father wrestled with a large foldout map of Manhattan, turning it upside down and back again. Probably looking for the Trade Center towers, two blocks over. Rebecca slowed, watching them with pleasure, and Mo held back with her. The kids were cute. It was good to let the previous statements settle in. They didn't say anything for a full two minutes.

  "I am usually called Mo," he stated finally. "I would like to call you Rebecca."

  She looked at him, pleased. "This is fun!" she said. "Who'd a thunk? Oops! Does that count as a question? Oops!" And she laughed at herself.

  Four o'clock and Battery Park was nicely spacious, lawns and trees and iron fences ending at stone breakwaters, the water of the Upper Bay beyond. The very toe of the stockinged foot of Manhattan Island, the bow of the big ship. Pigeons patrolling the sidewalks, pecking at cigarette butts and flipping them away peevishly. The usual scattering of lovers, thoughtful solitaries, joggers. A few tourists gazing over the gunmetal blue water at Ellis Island and Miss Liberty, the dirty-orange Staten Island ferry forging along. A park crew was emptying trash containers, two guys working the metal baskets and a woman driving a golf cart heaped with garbage bags. A breeze puffed in from the southeast, bringing in a sea smell.

  They stood for a moment at the water, leaning against the railing. Rebecca had gotten serious again."My point about SAC Biedermann was going to culminate in awarning."

  "Warning?"

&nb
sp; She nodded."You have to understand, I'm relatively new at working with the FBI. The closest I've ever come to the level of intrigue there was consulting on a federal program dealing with early childhood education, that had a lot of political complexity and pressure. But I know that there are dimensions here that simply can't be . . . shared . . . with every police agency that might be interested. I'm not party to them all myself, and I don't want to be. I don't know you that well, but I can guess you're the kind of person, the kind of investigator, who wants to know everything. And who doesn't quit and doesn't. . . take orders well." She gave him a tiny smile to show that she didn't mean it as criticism.

  "What was the warning?"

  "Just that maybe the compartmentalization Erik wants is the best thing. That you probably don't really want to know everything or get involved asdeeply as you'd usually insist on."

  Mo thought about that for a moment, trying to figure out where this was going."Does that guy Zelek have anything to do with these 'other dimensions'?"

  "I assume so."

  "Can you give me any idea of what these other dimensions are?"

  She tossed her head, yes and no. "I have my own speculations, but they're just that—speculative. But I think Erik was transferred here from San Diego specifically to handle the Howdy Doody case."

  "Do you know why?"

  "Not entirely. But just from comments he's dropped, I believe he had been dealing with a similar case out there."

  "What!"

  The regretful look. "Not a big string of murders. Maybe two."

  "Do you know if they caught the guy?"

  "I'm assuming not. Hopefully, they'll establish that it was Ronald Parker. We still don't know where he was during the twenty-month period when he vanished, and maybe he was out in California, beginning to develop his ritual."

  "Yeah. Except that now this copycat, or whatever, has come along."

  "So you can understand Erik's concern. I think he's deeply upset by the copycat."

  "You want to tell me your speculations?"

  She pondered that, frowned, shook her head. "I'm thinking I'd like to play the declarative game again. You've asked me about five questions in a row." She was trying to be light about it, but he could see that something was disturbing her.

  "I would like to keep walking,"he said.

  She moved away from the fence and chose to head back toward the park entrance and the looming cliffs of Manhattan buildings. "I consent with the understanding that I'm getting hungry and would like to eat soon."

  "I would like to have dinner with you," he said.

  She stopped walking and turned toward him. "Mo, there are scary aspects to the study of human psychology and neurology. My work sometimes involves pain and lives that can't seem to get straightened out, but in general it's not so bad, it's about healing. But not everybody comes into psychology with altruistic motives. People also come into it with the intention to use the science as a tool, a weapon, to create suffering and pain."

  "Like Ronald Parker, his obsession with control? Manipulating people. Hurting them."

  A beat, a hesitation, as if she were about to say something important. Then she appeared to think better of it. "Yes," she said. "Like that."

  They turned and walked on, scattering a clutch of pigeons that had crowded around a hot dog someone had dropped. One of the pigeons had to run away, dragging an injured or deformed wing. For a moment Mo felt an intense kinship with the bird. The fellow loser.

  When they got to the street, Rebecca put her hand on Mo's shoulder. "I heard your suggestion about dinner. But not now. Maybe another time. I want to get a cab and go home now." No smile at all.

  "I'm disappointed. But I'll hail a cab," he said. The declarative sentences were making them sound like automatons now. Using statements of fact to obscure, not reveal, their feelings. He realized there were a lot more questions he would have liked to have asked and a lot more declarations he'd have liked to have made.

  A yellow Honda taxi pulled over and Rebecca got in, folding her legs elegantly before swiveling inside. The instant the door shut, he badly missed her presence at his side, the movement and light that went with her. A little wave, a weak smile, and gone.

  15

  THURSDAY MORNING.

  Mo had spent the night twisting in tangled sheets, hating Carla's mother's empty house, thinking about Rebecca Ingalls and trying to figure whether the way he'd felt around her was just the product of his vulnerable, reboundy state of mind or was something better. Later, exhausted, he'd had a hard time disentangling the spooky complexities of the case from his attraction to her, and finally he'd slipped into shallow nightmares about sexual rejection and manipulation by sinister forces. And then when he'd gotten up and staggered as far as the bathroom mirror, the sight of his face was a shock that reinforced all the negative conclusions he'd come to. On his forehead and left cheek, the bruises from his fight with Big Willie had turned into irregular rings of green, yellow, purple, and he had insomnia bags under his bloodshot eyes. So he retreated from the bathroom to the kitchen, where he washed down a handful of vitamins and Saint-John's-wort capsules with two cups of black coffee, instant because Carla had taken the coffeemaker when she left. A hot shower and squirts of eyedrops helped only a little. The house was a mess and so was he, might as well go to work.

  But first he had a different kind of errand. If there was one perk he enjoyed about being an investigator, it was the relative degree of autonomy. You weren't at the desk all the time, you were on your own, you could set your own priorities. St. Pierre had called to let everybody know Lilly had delivered her baby after an easy labor, the baby was great, and they were back home now. Mike was taking his one day off for the big event. Mo decided to take an hour off himself, bring some flowers over to Lilly.

  The flower shop he remembered six blocks from the St. Pierres' had gone out of business, so he had to stop at the A & P, picking the least-dried-up-looking bouquet of carnations and what not. Looking at the thing on the car seat, it struck him as inadequate: bunch of clear plastic, universal-product-code sticker, little pouch of freshness chemicals stuck in. He wasn't in shape on these gestures. His social reflexes were rusty.

  But it had been this way the other two times he'd dropped by the St. Pierres' house. After one of his visits, he'd decided that this self-savaging came from being around a real family, which made him conscious of his own lack of one. Mike and Lilly had two kids before this new one, one in first grade and the other still toddling around in falling-down Pampers, both with red-blond hair and ruddy cheeks like their father. Lilly had stayed pleasantly chubby between pregnancies and was now a full-time mom. The house was a chaos of plastic toys and half-finished projects, and it always smelled like baking, diapers, coffee, and a clean-clothes smell emanating from a dryer that seemed to run continuously. Whenever Mo came by, the kids would be hanging on their parents, taking all kinds of physical liberties with their clothes and anatomies. Bunch of happy mammals in their den.

  Mo pulled up at the house, feeling like shit. You couldn't help think of the contrast with your own situation, living in your ex's mom's mostly empty house. Your life without any kids or sibs, just a mother and father who had moved from Scarsdale to Kissimmee, Florida, an elderly Jewish lady with a million interests from animal rights to Zen, an elderly Catholic guy with none.

  It wasn't envy, who could envy the noise and mess? It was just—what? Finally he decided screw it, stick to the agenda. Give Lilly the bouquet, kiss the baby, shake Mike's hand, get back to work. He got out and went up the walk, beating the plastic bouquet against his leg.

  It was a stolid, middle-class neighborhood, and the house looked a lot like Daniel O'Connor's. That same hue of aluminum siding, the same little trees. Which might explain what Mike had been feeling that day at the death house, only a week ago, poor son of a bitch.

  Mike let him in, smiling shyly and giving him an awkward hug with his big, lanky frame. Apparently you got emotional at times l
ike this. They went back through the kid mess into the bedroom, where Lilly was up and folding some clothes at the bureau as the two older kids sat on the bed, looking at the new arrival.

  The baby was asleep but looked uncomfortable, her red face wrinkled around some internal discomfort.

  "She's beautiful," Mosaid. He handed the bouquet to Lilly. "You're looking great, too, Lil. Congratulations."

  Lilly was wearing baggy sweatpants and a huge shirt, and she looked tired. But she was also flush with some kind of energy, some kind of authority and self-acceptance. The proverbial glow. She accepted the bouquet and kissed Mo on the cheek."You're so sweet. Thank you."

  "Her name is Andrea," St.Pierre's older kid, the girl, told him. "She weighs seven pounds ten ounces."

  Mo looked down at the little head lost in swaddling. Babies had a smell around them, he realized, a mix of laundry whites and milk, talcum powder and piss. The toddler, a boy named Peter, looked suspiciously up at him and then started playing with a knitted baby bootee.

  Brittany expounded further: "She cries at night. I helped change her diapers. Mom was in labor for only two hours. Do you have a gun like my dad?"

  "I guess I'm getting better with practice," Lilly said. "Move over, Brit, let me sit for a minute." Brittany scooted over, and Lilly took the baby on her lap. She leaned back against the head of the bed and just looked over her brood for a moment. The sun was hitting the half-open Venetian blinds behind her, putting a barred halo around her, and Mo thought, Madonna and child, White Plains, USA.

  "How're you doing, Mike?"Mo asked. "Did you get Paderewski's cigars?"

  St. Pierre chuckled wearily. "I got pretty wired up yesterday. Didn't sleep a tall last night. It's a good thing I took the day off."

  "My handsome stranger," Lilly said fondly, taking his hand. "It's so nice to see my husband during daylight hours. I'm going to have to have babies more often."