The Next Accident

  “My God,” Rainie murmured. “Elizabeth gave permission to terminate her daughter’s life just weeks ago, and now here comes this man, claiming to have part of Mandy inside of him.”

  “It’s very clever,” Quincy said.

  “It’s the domino theory,” Kimberly declared. “He started with the weakest one—Mandy. Got to her, then used the trauma of her death to get to Mother and now . . . now—” She looked at her father and knew his grim face was a match for her own.

  “Shit!” Rainie abruptly bolted off the sofa, staring at them both wildly. “The frame-up, Quincy. What we were talking about earlier. Even if it’s not perfect, it doesn’t matter—it still gets the job done. Think about it! Bethie’s been murdered. As her ex-husband, you’re already on the cops’ radar screen, give them a few more lab results and you’ll be their number one man. There you go. Mandy’s death to access Bethie, Bethie’s murder to lead to your arrest, and then boom—Kimberly’s all alone. It’s perfect!”

  “But . . . but you can make bail, right?” Kimberly asked desperately.

  Quincy was staring at Rainie. He looked stunned. “It doesn’t matter,” he whispered to his daughter. “Rainie’s right. The minute I become a lead suspect, they’ll notify the Bureau. And following standard protocol, the Bureau will place me on desk duty, ask for my creds and confiscate my weapon. Even if I stay out of jail, what will I be able to do to protect you? My God, he’s done his homework.”

  “Who the fuck is this person?” Kimberly screamed.

  Nobody had an answer.

  18

  Greenwich Village, New York City

  Things got worse. Quincy wanted his daughter shipped to Europe. Kimberly yelled that she wouldn’t go. Quincy told her now was not the time to be arrogant. Kimberly started laughing, accused the pot of calling the kettle black, then her laughter dissolved into tears, which seemed to hurt Quincy more. He stood in the middle of the dingy TV room, looking stiff and uncomfortable while his daughter wept.

  Finally, Rainie sent Quincy to bed. In the past forty-eight hours, he’d had four hours of sleep and he was no longer close to fully functional. Then she brewed a fresh pot of coffee and sat with Kimberly at the kitchen table. The girl was a chip off the old block; she took her caffeine jet black. Rainie found skim milk in the fridge, then a bowl of sugar.

  “Don’t laugh,” she told Kimberly, as she added scoop after heaping scoop to the brew. “I hate for the caffeine to be alone in my bloodstream.”

  “Has my father seen you do that?”

  “Couple of times.”

  “How disparaging were his remarks?”

  “On a scale of one to ten, I’d rate them a twelve.”

  “Oh that’s not bad. My grandfather’s comments would’ve hit fifteen.”

  “Your grandfather’s still alive?” Rainie was surprised. Quincy never spoke of his father. For that matter, he never mentioned his mother, though Rainie had a vague memory of him saying once that she’d died when he was young.

  Kimberly was blowing clouds of steam off the top of her coffee. “He’s still alive. At least technically. Alzheimer’s. He was hospitalized when I was ten or eleven. We used to visit him several times a year, but we haven’t even done that in a while. He doesn’t recognize any of us anymore, not even Dad, and well . . . Let’s just say Grandpa isn’t that fond of strangers.”

  “That’s gotta be hard. What was he like before?”

  “Tough. Quiet. Funny in his own way. We used to drive up to Rhode Island to visit his farm. He had chickens and cows, horses, an apple orchard. Mandy and I loved it. Plenty of space to run around, plenty of things to get into.”

  “And your mother was okay with this?” Rainie asked skeptically.

  Kimberly smiled. “I wouldn’t say that. I remember one day this hot air balloon comes crashing down from the sky. Some tourist outing or something. And this little guy is yelling at the passengers to grab the branches to help brake as the balloon plows through the apple trees then plunks down in the middle of my grandfather’s field. Mom comes rushing out, all excited. ‘Oh my goodness, did you see that? Oh my goodness.’ Then Grandpa comes out of the chicken coop, stands in front of the balloon holding five embarrassed people and gives them the complete up and down, never saying a word. The guide gets nervous. He holds out this bottle, going on and on about how sorry he is and the tracking vehicle will be here any minute and oh yeah, here’s a bottle of wine for his trouble. Grandpa just looks at the guy. Finally, he says, ‘It’s God’s country.’ Then he walks back to the chicken coop. That’s Grandpa.”

  “I like him.” Rainie said it sincerely.

  “He was a wonderful grandfather,” Kimberly said. She added more astutely, “But I wouldn’t have cared for him as a father.”

  They both returned to their coffee.

  “Are you and Dad dating?” Kimberly asked after the silence had stretched on too long.

  “That’s it, start with the easy questions.” Rainie sipped her coffee more earnestly.

  Kimberly, however, had also inherited her father’s probing stare. “You’re pretty young,” she said.

  “I’m aware of that.”

  “How old?”

  “Thirty-two.”

  “Mandy was twenty-four when she died.”

  “All the more reason not to let a silly thing like age hold you back.”

  “So you are dating?”

  Rainie sighed. “In the past, we have dated. What we are now . . . I don’t know. When Quincy wakes up, do me a favor and ask him.”

  “How did you meet?”

  “Last year. The Bakersville case.”

  “Oh,” Kimberly said with feeling. “That was a bad one.”

  “You could say that.”

  “You’re the one who lost her job.”

  “That would be me.”

  Kimberly nodded with a freshly minted psych major’s knowing confidence. “I see the problem.”

  “Great. Want to explain it to me?”

  “Age alone wouldn’t be reason enough, but now you two are at different phases of the life cycle, which makes the gap even more extreme. You have to rebuild, which puts you back at infancy. He’s established, keeping him middle-aged. That’s a tough gulf to bridge. I think figuring out how to have a successful relationship in the face of such complex career issues will be the challenge of the new, dual-income generation.”

  “You’re working on your thesis, aren’t you?”

  “My thesis is on ‘Challenges of Modernity: The Growth of Urbanization and Its Impact on Disrupted Personalities,’ thank you very much.”

  “Oh. Mine was on attachment disorder. You know, why good families can still breed little fucking psychopaths.”

  Kimberly blinked. “Attachment disorder. That’s one of my favorite subjects.” She looked at Rainie more appraisingly. “I didn’t realize you were a psych major.”

  “B.A. I never went back for my master’s.”

  “Still, that’s pretty cool.”

  “Thanks.”

  They both returned to their coffee. After a moment, Kimberly said softly, “Rainie, could you keep talking? In all honesty, it’s easier to dissect your life than to think about my own.”

  “I’m really sorry, Kimberly.”

  “Who’s going to help me plan my wedding? Who will I call when I’m expecting my first child? Who will hold my hand, when I give birth to a baby girl and see Mandy and my mother in every curve of her face?”

  “We’ll find out who’s doing this. We’ll find him, and we’ll make him pay.”

  “And will that make things better? Look at you and what happened last year. You found the guy who did it. You and my father killed him. Are you better off?”

  Rainie didn’t say anything. After a moment, Kimberly said, “I thought as much.”

  Quincy dreamed. In his dream he was back in Philadelphia, walking through Bethie’s beautiful, ravaged town house. He held a pillowcase in one hand. He was trying to capture all the
feathers and stuff them back in. Then he was standing over the bed, his hands now holding Bethie’s intestines, and trying frantically to pile them back in her body.

  Don’t, his subconscious told him in his dream. Don’t let him win by remembering her the way he intended.

  His dream spiraled backwards, his mind seeking happier times. Bethie, mussed hair, sweating face. No makeup, no pearls, but a smile that could light up a city as she lay in the white hospital bed and held out their firstborn child. Himself, touching their baby girl delicately. Marveling at the ten perfect fingers, ten perfect toes. Then touching his wife’s cheek. Telling her how beautiful she looked. And vowing that he would be a better father than his own dad had been. Fresh family. Fresh start. His heart, so big in his chest.

  Bethie sixteen years later, coming into the family room with a dazed look on her face. She’d been cutting up carrots in the kitchen. The knife had slipped. She now carried her finger in her other hand. Himself, fresh from a California crime scene, twenty-five corpses found in a hillside, fifteen of them young women, two of them babies. Telling his wife, “Oh honey, it’s just a scratch.”

  Bethie yelling, “I can’t take it anymore! How did I end up married to a man who is so goddamn cold?”

  Time fast-forwarding. He was in Massachusetts, keeping watch on human bait, Tess Williams returning to her old house in the hopes that it would lure her homicidal ex-husband out of hiding. Everything going wrong. Himself now inside the house as shots erupted down the street. Telling Tess not to go near the door. Promising he would keep her safe. Jim Beckett appearing, and blasting him back with a close-range spray from his double-barrel shotgun.

  Himself thinking, Wow, I feel so hot, for someone who is so cold. Later, out of the hospital, paring back his work hours, trying to find some balance, picking up the girls for a weekend visit.

  “How are you?” he asked Bethie.

  “Better.”

  “I miss you.”

  “No you don’t.”

  “Bethie . . .”

  “Go back to work, Pierce. Who needs to be a mere husband, when you can play at being God?”

  In his daughter’s two-bedroom apartment, Quincy jerked awake. He lay in the darkened room, watching threads of light from the closed blinds dance with dust in the air, listening to the sounds of the huge city below. “I’m sorry, Elizabeth,” he said.

  Then he got up and went to the TV room, where the last living member of his family sat watching M*A*S*H. Rainie was by her side. Her short, reddish-brown hair contrasted with his daughter’s long, dusky blond locks. Her big gray eyes and wide cheekbones rebuffed Kimberly’s own finely patrician face. Yin and yang, he thought, and both so beautiful the sight of them nearly broke his heart. For a moment, he simply stood there, wishing he could stop time, wishing he could take this moment and hold it safe forever in his hand.

  “Ladies,” he said. “I have a plan.”

  19

  Quincy’s House, Virginia

  It was early evening on Thursday, and Special Agent Glenda Rodman had yet to return to bed from the night before when she looked at the security monitor and saw Quincy standing outside his front gate. She had slept two hours before receiving the call to come to Philadelphia last night, but that now seemed a lifetime ago. The two hours of sleep were the aberration. The rest of the time, touring the Philadelphia crime scene, then returning to Quincy’s home to listen to message after message promising sick, perverse death, was the norm.

  They were up to three hundred and fifty-nine callers. Some Quincy had personally put in jail. Others simply hated feds. Still others were merely bored. Either way, word was definitely out that the thinly disguised ad circulating in so many prison newsletters contained an FBI profiler’s home number. Everyone felt compelled to call. Some, she had to admit, were more imaginative than most. One artistic soul had gone so far as to compose a death rap. It wasn’t half bad.

  Glenda hit the button and let Quincy into his own property. The agent wore the same suit from the night before. His features were pale. On the camera, they were also hard to read. Whether he knew it or not, Pierce Quincy was a legend around the Bureau. These days, Glenda felt sorry for the agent. But she felt even more curious about what would happen next.

  He knocked on his front door. She kindly let him in.

  “I need to gather a few things,” he said.

  “Certainly.”

  “I’ll check in with Everett next, then I’m leaving town.”

  “The Philadelphia P.D. aren’t going to like that.”

  “My daughter comes first.” He disappeared into the master bedroom. Moments later, Glenda heard the sound of closet doors opening, as he began to pack a bag.

  She wandered into his home office, not sure what to do with herself. It was interesting, she’d been in this house two days now and there wasn’t much here to give a sense of the man who technically occupied the space. Several of the rooms were completely empty. The majority of the walls were bare; the kitchen couldn’t feed a rat. The only room with any atmosphere was this room, the office, and she found herself coming here again and again, if only to escape the starkness of a vast, overwhelmingly white space.

  Here was an old sound system that offered mediocre comfort in the shape of classical jazz tapes. A state-of-the-art fax dominated the corner of a beautiful, antique cherry desk. Gold-framed diplomas and academic certificates leaned against one wall, still not hung, but at least unearthed, while cardboard boxes were piled in each corner. The desk chair, black leather, was supple and distinctly expensive. Quincy obviously spent time in this room. Sometimes she caught a whiff of his cologne.

  She sat in his chair, feeling like an intruder, as the phone once more began to ring. Following protocol, she let the answering machine pick it up.

  “Hey baby,” a voice crooned. “Heard you were trying a new policy of accessibility. I dig that. God knows there isn’t anyone interesting to talk to in here. Bad break about your luscious daughter. Not so sorry about the frigid ex, though. Word on the street is that somebody’s got your number. The hunter has become the hunted. Don’t worry, Quince baby, I got my money on you in the prison pool. Hundred to one odds is just my style. You go, girl. Life hasn’t been this entertaining in ages.”

  The caller hung up. It was a good call, Glenda thought, probably long enough to trace. Not that wire-tapping had helped them much; it only proved that lots of prisoners read their local newsletters. For that matter, half the callers were only too happy to leave their names and prison facility.

  She left the office and spotted Quincy standing in his kitchen, holding a small black travel bag, and staring at the answering machine.

  “We’re taping them all,” she said by way of explanation.

  “One hundred to one odds.” He gave her a sideways glance. “Considering how many of them I put in prison, I think I deserve better than that.”

  “I have a copy of the ad if you would like to see it,” Glenda said, feeling the need to sound professional. She went to fetch it from the office. When she returned, Quincy had set down the traveling bag. He was standing in front of the empty refrigerator with the look of a man who’d opened it many times before and still kept expecting something different. She understood. Her own fridge held only water and low-fat yogurt and yet she continuously checked it for a fried-chicken dinner.

  She handed Quincy the fax.

  The ad was already typeset, a simple four-by-four square. It read, Reporter from BSU Productions seeks inside information on life at death’s door. Interested inmates should contact head agent, Pierce Quincy, at daytime number printed below. Or, contact his assistant, Amanda Quincy, at the following address.

  “Not very subtle,” Quincy commented with that same unnerving calm. “BSU Productions. Head agent. Life at death’s door.”

  “Codes can be more elaborate. From what I understand, the inmates generally disguise their communications as ads for pen pals. Then they play around with the letters. You know, in
stead of SWM/L for Single White Male/Lifer, they do things like BPO/M, which stands for Black Power Organization/Message. Members of the gang then know to piece through the ad for relevant information.”

  “Ah, the power of grassroots journalism. And people with too much time on their hands.”

  “From what we can tell, this ad ran in four major publications: Prison Legal News, National Prison Project Newsletter, Prison Fellowship, and Freedom Now. Combined circulation reaches over five thousand subscribers. That number isn’t high given total prison population, but the four newsletters basically account for at least one ad reaching every major corrections department. We think word of mouth took over from there.”

  “Quilting bees have nothing on the average prison for sheer amount of gossip,” Quincy murmured. “I take it what we theorized before still stands. My phone number, and thus access to my address, has been spread so far and wide we’ll never be able to pare it down. Who knows where I live? Who doesn’t?”

  “The National Prison Project Newsletter has the original hard copy of the ad,” Glenda said. “We’re having it couriered to the crime lab now. The Document Section should have more information for us in a matter of days. Also, Randy Jackson is still working on how the UNSUB got your unlisted number. I’m sure he’ll have something shortly.”

  “The UNSUB got my phone number from Mandy. He used my daughter.” Quincy set down the fax. For the first time, he turned and fully met her gaze. She was immediately shocked by the hardness in his eyes, the cool expression on his face. Dissociation, the professional part of her deduced. Events of the past eighteen hours had left him in a state of shock, and his mind was coping by keeping him detached. The rest of her felt an unexpected tingle at the back of her neck. She had seen that remote gaze before. Old photos of Ted Bundy. Some people believed there was only a thin line between profilers and their prey. At this moment, in Quincy, that line didn’t exist. The tingle on the back of her neck grew into a shiver.