by Greg Iles
He sets off down the concourse at a rapid clip and walks right past the down escalator marked “Baggage and Ground Transportation.”
“I have some bags down there,” I call after him. “My cameras. They were on the earlier flight, so they’re probably in storage.”
“We have your camera cases, Ms. Glass. The airline lost your suitcase.”
Great. Agent Sims leads me through a door marked “Airport Personnel Only,” and a blast of cold air hits my face. It’s fall in Washington too, but unlike New York, the humidity here adds a taste of home to the air. Home as in Mississippi. My present residence is in San Francisco, but no place I’ve ever lived has replaced the fecund, subtropical garden of creeks, cotton fields, oak, and pine forests where I grew up.
The concrete is slick with rain, reflecting the bright lights of the terminal and the dimmer blue ones of the runway. Sims helps me onto a baggage truck and signals its jumpsuited driver, who takes off across the airfield. My aluminum camera cases are stacked in luggage well behind us.
“I thought we were going into the city,” I shout over the engine noise. “To the Hoover Building.”
“The chief had to get back to Quantico,” Sims yells back. “That’s where the meeting is now.”
“How are we getting there?”
“On that.”
As he points into the darkness, I see the sleek lines of a Bell 260 helicopter on skids. The baggage truck squeals to a stop. Agent Sims loads my cases into the chopper, then returns for me. He’s a tall man, and the Bell is cramped quarters for him. Still, he doesn’t look unhappy. Most of his fellow agents probably make the twenty-mile drive to Quantico in a Ford Taurus.
In less than a minute we are lifting into the night sky over the capital, the Pentagon receding behind us as we rotor southward over the lights of Alexandria, roughly parallel to I-95. In less than ten we’re descending over the Quantico marine base, arrowing down to the FBI Academy helipad. There’s an agent waiting to handle my baggage, but Sims leads me straight into the maze of the Academy building. After a short elevator ride and a walk along a darkened hall, I’m escorted into an empty room, sterile and white, like some convention hotel meeting space.
“Wait here,” says Sims.
The door shuts, then locks from the outside. Do they think I’m going to prowl the halls, looking for something to steal? If someone doesn’t show in the next two minutes I might just sack out on the table. The last thing I want to do is sit down; my behind feels like a massive hematoma. Despite my exhaustion, I’m still nervy from the fire and the knowledge that Wingate is dead. The investigation will be severely handicapped without him. One thing is sure, though. It’s not going to be like last year. Nobody’s shutting me out this time.
The doorknob clicks. Then the door opens and two men walk in. The first is Daniel Baxter, looking scarcely changed from thirteen months ago when I first met him. He’s dark-haired and compact, about five-ten, and corded with muscle. His eyes are brown and compassionate but steady as gunsights. The man behind him is taller—over six feet—and at least ten years older, with silver hair, an expensive suit, and a bluff Yalie look. But his grayish-blue eyes, hooded by flesh, suggest a sinister George Plimpton. Baxter doesn’t move to shake my hand, and he speaks as he takes his seat.
“Ms. Glass, this is Doctor Arthur Lenz. He’s a forensic psychiatrist who consults for the Bureau.”
Lenz extends his hand, but I only nod in return. Shaking hands with men is always awkward for me, so I don’t do it. There’s no way to equalize the size difference, and I don’t like them to feel they have an edge. The men I know well, I hug. The rest can make do.
“Please sit down,” says Baxter.
“No, thanks.”
“I suppose you have an explanation for missing the plane I booked for you?”
“Well—”
“Before you go any further, let me advise you that Christopher Wingate has been under Bureau surveillance since you called me from the airplane.”
I wasn’t sure whether I was going to admit being at the fire. Now there’s no way to deny it. “You had people outside his gallery?”
Baxter nods, his face coloring with anger. “We’ve got some nice shots of you entering the building about forty minutes before it went up.” He opens a file labeled NOKIDS and slides a photo across the table. There I am, in low-res digital splendor.
“I knew Wingate probably had information about my sister.”
“Did he?”
“Yes and no.”
Baxter’s anger boils over at last. “What the hell did you think you were going to accomplish in there?”
“I did accomplish something in there! And it’s a good thing I did, because he would have been dead by the time you guys decided to question him.”
This sets them back a little.
“And if you had people outside the gallery,” I push on, “why didn’t they bust in there and try to save us?”
“We had one agent at the scene, Ms. Glass, doing surveillance from his car. The fire started on the first floor, and it was explosive in nature. An incendiary device made of gasoline and liquid soap.”
“Homemade napalm.” I know it well from the “little wars” that don’t make the evening news.
“Yes. The sprinkler system was disabled prior to the device being detonated, the fire alarm as well. We’ve since determined that the fire escape ladders were also wired in the up position. All inoperative.”
“You think you’re telling me something? I had to jump to save myself. Your guy couldn’t do anything to help?”
“Our guy did do something. He died there.”
A wave of heat tells me my face is red.
Baxter’s eyes are merciless. “Special Agent Fred Coates, twenty-eight years old, married with three kids. When the bomb went off, he called the fire department. He got out of his car and shot pictures of the building and the first people on the scene, in case the perp stuck around. Then he got back into his car and called the New York field office on his cell phone. He was talking to his Special Agent in Charge when somebody reached through the window and slit his throat. The SAC heard him coughing up blood for twenty seconds. Then nothing. The killer stole his credentials and camera. He missed one flash memory card that had fallen between the console and Agent Coates’s seat. That’s where we got the shot of you. We lost his pictures of the crowd.”
“Jesus. I’m sorry.”
Baxter spears me with an accusing look. “You think that helps anything? I told you to come straight here.”
“Don’t try to put this on me! I didn’t put that guy there, okay? You did. Whoever killed him would have set that fire whether I was there or not. And I do have pictures of the crowd.”
Both men lean forward, their mouths open.
“Where?” asks Dr. Lenz.
“We’ll talk about that in a minute. I want to clarify something right up front. This isn’t going to be a one-way conversation.”
“Do you realize how important every minute is?” Baxter asks. “By withholding that film—”
“My sister’s been missing for over a year, okay? I think she can wait another twenty minutes.”
“You don’t have all the facts.”
“And that’s exactly what I want.”
Baxter shows Lenz his exasperation.
“Could someone have killed Coates for his wallet and camera?” I ask. “Could his murder be unrelated to the fire?”
“Why leave the cell phone behind?” Baxter counters. “And the car? His keys were found in the ignition.”
“What are the odds that a garden-variety arsonist would murder someone watching a fire?”
“Million to one against. Ms. Glass, that firebomb was planted to do exactly what it did. Kill Wingate and destroy his records. You’re lucky you didn’t go up with the rest.”
“It was Wingate who almost killed me. He could have saved himself, but he tried to save the stupid painting, and like a fool I tried to save
him.”
“What painting?” asks Lenz.
“Sleeping Woman Number Twenty. It was the only one of the series he had in the place, and he killed himself trying to save it.”
“I wonder why,” Lenz says softly. “Surely it would have been insured.”
“The insurance wouldn’t have been enough.”
“Why not?”
“When I told Wingate I was going to the FBI, that the women in the pictures were almost certainly the victims from New Orleans, he was ecstatic. He said the new canvas would probably sell for double the standing bid on it, and that was one point five million pounds sterling.”
“Did he mention the bidder’s name?”
“Takagi.”
“What did the painting look like?” Lenz asks. “Like the ones you saw in Hong Kong?”
“Yes and no. I don’t know anything about art, but this one was more realistic than the ones I saw. Almost photographically realistic.”
“The woman appeared to be dead?”
“Absolutely.”
Baxter reaches into the file, removes a photograph, and pushes it across the table at me. It’s a head shot of a young dark-haired woman, a candid shot, probably taken by a family member. It’s well off horizontal, which makes me think it was taken by a child. But that’s not what sends a shiver through me.
“That’s her. Damn it. Who is she?”
“Last known victim,” Baxter replies.
“How long ago was she taken?”
“Four and a half weeks.”
“What was the interval between her and the one before her?”
“Six weeks.”
“And before that?”
“Fifty-four days. Seven and a half weeks.”
This decreasing time span bears out my reading, as well. One theory says that as serial offenders get a taste for their work, their confidence grows, and they try to fulfill their fantasies more and more frequently. Another speculates that they begin to “decompensate,” that the neuroses driving them begin to fracture their minds, pushing them toward capture or even death, and the path they choose is accelerated murder.
“So you figure he’s due for another soon.”
The two men share a look I cannot interpret. Then the psychiatrist gives a slight nod, and Baxter turns to me.
“Ms. Glass, approximately one hour ago, a young Caucasian woman disappeared from the parking lot of a New Orleans grocery store.”
I close my eyes against the fearful impact of this statement. Jane has another sister in the black hole of her current existence. “You think it was him?”
Lenz answers first. “Almost surely.”
“Where was she taken from?”
“A suburb of New Orleans, actually. Metairie.”
He actually got the pronunciation right: Met-a-ree. He’s picked it up from a year and a half of working the case.
“What store in Metairie?”
“It’s called Dorignac’s. On Veterans Boulevard.” This time he missed it. “Dorn-yaks,” I correct him. “I used to shop there all the time. It’s a family-owned store, like the old Schwegmann chain.”
Baxter makes a note. “The victim left her house a few minutes before the store closed—eight-fifty P.M. central time—to get some andouille sausage. She was making dip for a birthday party at her job tomorrow. She worked in a dental office, as a receptionist. By nine-fifteen, her husband started to worry. He tried her car phone and got no answer. He knew the store was closed, so he got the kids out of bed and drove down to see if his wife had a dead battery.”
“He found her empty car with the door open?”
Baxter gives a somber nod.
This happened to two victims before Jane. “It sounds like him.”
“Yes. But it could be a couple of other things. This woman could have been seeing a guy on the side. She meets him at the store to talk something over, maybe even for a quickie in the car. Suddenly, she decides to split for good.”
“Leaving her kids behind?”
“It happens.” Baxter’s voice is freighted with experience. “But talking to the detective, this doesn’t sound like that type of situation. The other alternative is conventional rape. A guy on the prowl with a van and a rape kit, looking for a target of opportunity. He sees her going to her car alone and snatches her.”
“Has anybody like that been operating in the area over the past few weeks?”
“No.”
“Did any other victims shop at Dorignac’s? Jane must have gone there sometimes.”
“Several shopped there occasionally. The store stocks some regional foods other stores don’t. The Jefferson Parish detectives are grilling the staff right now, and our New Orleans field office is already taking their lives apart. With help from the Quantico computers. It’s a full-court press, but if it’s like the others . . . none of that will come to anything.”
I’m about to speak, when shock steals my breath. “Wait a minute. By what you’ve told me, the man who took the woman from Dorignac’s couldn’t have killed Wingate.”
Baxter nods slowly. “Nine-one-one in New York got the call about the Wingate fire at seven fifty-one p.m. eastern time. The Dorignac’s victim disappeared from Metairie between eight fifty-five p.m. and nine-fifteen central time. That’s a maximum difference of two hours and twenty-four minutes.”
“So there’s no way the same person could have done both. Not even with a Learjet at his disposal.”
“There’s one way,” says Baxter. “The incendiary device used to ignite the gallery had a timer on it. If it was set long enough in advance, the same person could have gotten back to New Orleans in time to take the woman from Dorignac’s.”
“But it wasn’t,” I think aloud. “He wasn’t.”
“How do you know?”
“Because I saw him.”
“What?”
As quickly as I can, I describe the drama of the man from the alley, shooting the blind photo over the crowd, and sending the fireman and cop after him.
“Where’s your film?” asks Baxter, his eyes burning with excitement.
“Not here, if that’s what you’re thinking. Are you positive Wingate’s murder was related to my sister’s case?”
“Virtually certain,” says Lenz.
“So you’re saying there’s more than one person behind the disappearances.”
“I’m not saying it. The evidence is. Two UNSUBs, not one.”
UNSUB is FBI-speak for Unknown Subject. “Two killers operating as a team?”
“It happens,” says Baxter. “But teams usually work side by side. Two ex-cons in a van, snatching and torturing women, that kind of thing. What I’m postulating would be something far more sophisticated.”
“Have you ever seen anything like that before? People cooperating over a long distance to facilitate serial murder or kidnapping?”
“Only in child pornography,” says Baxter, “and that’s a different thing.”
“It’s unprecedented in the literature,” says Dr. Lenz.
“Which does nothing to rule out the possibility. Harvesting women’s skins was unknown until Ed Gein was caught doing it in the fifties. Then Tom Harris used it in a book and made it part of the national consciousness. In our business, you proceed from a very simple given: everything imaginable is possible, and may well be happening as we ponder it.”
“How would it work?” I ask. “How do you see it?”
“Division of labor,” says Lenz. “The killer’s in New Orleans, the painter in New York.”
“But Wingate was killed in New York.”
“Different motive. That was self-preservation.”
“I had the same thought up there. So the New Orleans guy kidnaps the women. How does the New York guy do the paintings? He works from photographs? Or he flies to New Orleans to paint corpses?”
“If that scenario is the answer,” says Baxter, “I pray to God he flies. We can take backbearings from airline computers and work out a list of poten
tial suspects.”
“Could it really be that easy?”
“It just might be. It’s been a long eighteen months, Ms. Glass. Nobody knows that better than you. We’re due for a break.”
I nod hopefully, but inside I know better. “If Wingate was killed to silence him, how do you think it happened? The logic of it?”
Baxter leans back and steeples his fingers. “I think Wingate himself told the UNSUB in New York about the Hong Kong incident. Wingate’s phone records show a call from the curator of the Hong Kong exhibit to his gallery within an hour of your making the disturbance in Hong Kong.”
“Wingate knew about Hong Kong while I was talking to him?”
“Undoubtedly. Though I doubt he knew it was you who caused the disturbance.”
“If he did, he was a hell of an actor.”
“Did he try to get information from you?” asks Lenz.
“Not really.” A hot flash brings sweat to my face. “What if he was setting me up for the killer and got caught in his own trap?”
“Quite possible,” says Baxter. “If Wingate somehow knew it was you in Hong Kong, then he knew your sister was in one of the paintings. Maybe he knew everything about the crimes. He calls the UNSUB and tells him you’re coming to the gallery, but he doesn’t want any violence there. He also wants to know who you’ve talked to before you die. Wingate thinks you’re going to be murdered after you leave his place, but the UNSUB has a better idea. He sees his chance to take you both out.”
“That’s it,” I murmur. “Jesus. Wingate ensured his own death.”
“Almost certainly,” says Lenz. “And Wingate could have been the key to this whole case. Goddamn it.”
“I’m not sure he knew that much.”
“You believe what he told you?”
“To a point. I don’t think he knew the killer’s name. He said he wasn’t even sure if it was a man or a woman.”
“What?” both men ask in unison.
“He said he’d never seen the artist’s face. It was all done with blind drops or something.”
“He used that term?” asks Baxter. “Blind drops?”
“He said he got it from spy movies.” I quickly summarize Wingate’s explanation of how he received the first painting, and the subsequent drops of cash in train station lockers.
