Puppets

by Daniel Hecht

  They were both hungry, and they had pressing things to talk about. The house was out of the question. Now, it was nice to sit in candlelight, with clean tablecloths and muted music.

  He told her about Flannery looking like he was truly trying to get Mo's ass in a trap, about his slip about the knots, about the dump initiative looking like a dead end. None of it good news.

  But Rebecca had progress to report. "I learned a lot about Radcliff. It'll be hard for us to get access to medical files or sealed court records, but the Briarcliff police who dealt with him don't mind talking about him. He was suspended from sixth grade for a violent assault on a girl in his class, for which the court required psychiatric evaluation and therapy. They arrested him twice as a juvenile for starting fires, and then there was an accusation of rape during his first summer home from prep school. That never came to anything, but up in Massachusetts he kept the juvenile justice system fairly busy, and he was required to have therapy at school. Again, I don't have access to these records, but I can see impulse-control disorders and the basics of a sociopathic profile. It's reinforced by his arrest for violent rape as an adult. I'd also guess that he was an abuse victim himself."

  Thinking about it, Mo held his glass up to the candle and admired the red light of the wine. "Sounds like the perfect raw material for Geppetto."

  "Exactly! And his background closely parallels Ronald Parker's.

  Geppetto could not have acquired two such individuals by chance. No way. Geppetto had to have tracked them, chosen them on the basis of their psychological history."

  "So where does that leave us?"

  "To me, Geppetto's using this procurement technique, if he did, suggests that he knew the system, knew how to monitor it for information. Perhaps because he'd had personal experience within it himself."

  "Meaning he could have a record himself as a juvenile offender or victim."

  She nodded. "That—or a job that permitted him access."

  Which brought them back to Flannery. As prosecutor, then DA, he'd know the machinery of the system, the channels, the people—he'd easily finesse access to that kind of information. Of course, probably Ty could, too.

  Which brought up one more thing. "I need to say something," he began. "And I don't want you to hear it the wrong way."

  She got a little wary, but she said, "Okay."

  "I'm worried about this. I'm scared shitless. I keep thinking I want to get away from this case, drop it, let somebody else take this on. But right now I'm still a cop, it's my job. I'm a guy, I'm good with a gun. I'm also solo, no family, I don't have a kid to worry about. If something should happen to me." He could tell by her face she understood. "What I'm trying to say is, is there any way I can persuade you to walk away from this? Keep you and Rachel out of it?"

  "It has crossed my mind," she admitted. "Actually, I've given it a lot of thought."

  A waiter arrived at their table. He set down steaming oval plates, topped off their water glasses, and went away, leaving them staring at the heaps of coiled pasta.

  "And?" he prompted.

  She was looking very troubled. "You're right about Rachel. I do have a responsibility that takes precedence."

  He waited for her to go on.

  She fidgeted awhile. "But then I think, you and I together have exactly the combination of skills and attitudes needed to catch Geppetto. We're making great progress. And if Flannery is Geppetto, from the way he's acting it seems as if we're both already, you know, on his screen?"

  They both thought about that, staring at the plates of food. Mo realized he had completely lost his appetite.

  "Because if we are on his screen, isn't our best bet to stick together and try to—I don't know the right vocabulary for this—get him before he gets us? I'm just trying to think strategically." Rebecca paused, also looking at her food with distaste. "I mean," she said, "doesn't it come down to whether it's already too late?"

  45

  NUMBER THREE WAS LOCKED in the next room, grunting rhythmically as he did sit-ups. In the kitchen, Mr. Smith was getting his equipment ready, clipping the Asp to his belt, checking the charge on the Taser, putting the folding trenching spade into the little backpack.

  Mr. Smith had spent the last couple of days assessing the situation, figuring the moves and countermoves. Finally he'd decided to go for the finale now, not try to delay it. Most of the necessary elements were in place anyway.

  Making a decision had put him in a determined but melancholy mood. Some of that could be chalked up to the long hours he was putting in between the day job and the project, staying up most of the night to work on Three, reviewing the Dynamic Duo's progress, plotting strategic options. But more, it was the recognition, coming over him by degrees, that the years as a guerrilla army of one were wearing on him. That it was time to wrap this up.

  In the last few weeks, he'd alternated between a kind of affection for Rebecca and Mo and a searing hatred. They were actually rather remarkable people: bright, competent. And rebellious, Mo in particular. The very thing that made him dangerous—that he'd always tried to cut the strings that controlled him, resisted stupid procedural limitations and overbearing bosses—also made him admirable. A kindred spirit of sorts. And yet they were also rather innocent, well-meaning, idealistic. So at moments he found their love affair quite touching. But from that sprung immediately a fire of hate, envy, bitterness: They were enjoying the very things he'd been denied. The very thing that had been taken from him. More and more, their happiness seemed inversely connected to his. He'd settled his emotional seesaw by deciding that, all in all, their innocence and sentimentality made them perfect targets for the finale.

  In the end, he'd always known, it must bear upon the innocents.

  Over the weekend he'd rigged his recording apparatus in Manhattan with a relay that allowed him to live-monitor or review surveillance tapes of Rebecca's apartment from any telephone. He had adapted a remote-activated telephone answering machine to the recorder so that he could dial in and monitor the Dynamic Duo from the office or the lab. Important, given the time crunch.

  Not that he'd gotten anything interesting since Saturday. All he'd heard was Rebecca talking with her daughter Sunday night, and then later chatting on the phone to an old friend in Illinois. Morgan Ford figured in her conversations, she was obviously smitten with him. Listening to this stuff infuriated him. She was by nature a sunny person, open as the prairie. Again, the epitome of what life had denied him.

  Yes, in the end, it must bear upon the innocents. It had to be tragic. And real tragedy was not just catastrophe—another misunderstanding of the current generation—but the obstruction of heroic aspiration by calamitous misfortune.

  Mr. Smith had long resigned himself to the protest taking the form of a brutal affront to fundamental values and sentiments. Yeah, it was ironic that he was recapitulating the monstrosities he abhorred. But that's what would receive attention. The program had committed its atrocities in the shadow of secrecy. As a protest, nothing would be more persuasive than to conduct the same horrors in the light, display them in full view. Where people could see them and feel revulsion and do something about them. At the same time, he liked the idea that what he was planning was not a mere atrocity but a tragedy. In that sense, it was appropriate because it mirrored his life. The highest aspiration, destroyed.

  Tragedy had elements of beauty. It would be nice to think his lost, lost life did, too.

  Number Four, with conditioning far from complete, would not be of use for the coming weekend's tasks. The question was, let him go, into the wild, as he was? Or kill him? Killing him would be a shame, in that Four was definitely the pick of the litter. But given his truncated conditioning, Mr. Smith really wasn't sure how Four would handle freedom.

  As he thought about it, Mr. Smith strapped on a forehead light, cinched it tight against his skull, then tucked several pairs of nylon handcuffs into the backpack. Abruptly, he decided to let Four go. Four on the loose might add an unp
redictable chaser, a kicker, a catalyzing postscript to the coming weekend's drama.

  One of the basic elements of strategy was to make use of the opponent's routines. Back in the Vietnam era, the program had routinely exploited targets' predictable behaviors to identify where and when to hit them. In this case, Morgan Ford was the harder to anticipate: his bachelor lifestyle, his odd work hours, his sudden changes of tack on the investigation, the occasional nights spent at his new sweetheart's apartment. But Rebecca Ingalls had locked herself into cutesy domestic routines with her daughter: dinner together every Friday night, Saturday-morning errands together, lazy Sunday mornings with the newspaper and pancakes, bowling on Sunday evenings. The bowling alley was looking increasingly like the best point of interception. Its sheer unlikeliness was an asset, they'd never expect it there. And it had other advantages as the stage for the finale, too, in that it was semipublic, a great location for TV news crews. And there'd be other bowlers or staff on hand, other innocents for the slaughter. A grander pageant.

  Of course, it also meant more logistical problems and complexities.

  That brought on a sudden sense of urgency, yanking him back to the job at hand. He snapped the backpack shut and slipped it over his shoulders, suddenly angry at himself. What was the matter with him? Yes, he must be getting tired. This gush of sentimental affection for Mo and Rebecca. More proof it was time to wrap up the show. Thankfully, tonight's exercises in the dump would be a good antidote for this maudlin crap.

  He went out to the lab, put on a pair of elbow-length leather gauntlets, and let the big German shepherd out of its cage. Aside from one wicked slash of canines that gouged the leather over his forearms, it went without incident. He snapped the livestock leash onto the dog's harness, tested the clip, and went in to round up Number Three.

  They went out through the overgrown yard, down the slope through the heavy forest. Mr. Smith left his forehead light off—that would be for later, for problems and cleanup. Better to adapt the eyes to the dark. And it was a good night for this work, a clear sky pinned with a mostly full moon that chopped the woods into blue light and black shadow. Sounds: in the distance, the highway making a big swooshing noise punctuated by the occasional growl of diesels throttling down an exit ramp. Closer, faint music from some neighbor's invisible house. Closer still, the ticks and whirs of insects. Smells: earth, oak leaves, rotting vegetation, an illicit backyard trash fire.

  The shepherd had never met Three, and the proximity of a big stranger had filled the dog with a volatile mix of fear and killing urges, amplified by surgery and conditioning. Frankie alternately bristled and cringed. In the moonlight, Mr. Smith could see the animal's constant alertness to Three, the sharp ears upraised, the wolf muzzle turning, tracking him. When Frankie made little trial lunges at the dark stranger, Mr. Smith could feel the vibrations of the deep-chested body through the taut leash.

  Three recoiled at the first lunge but immediately reciprocated, charging at the dog in a display worthy of a gorilla. He drew up just short of contact as Frankie recoiled, too. For now they were even. Afterward, Three paid no attention to the dog's hostility, except to stay outside the radius of the leash.

  Got us a couple of realfirecrackershere, Mr. Smith thought.

  They mustered on into the dark. Leaf-covered junk materialized out of the moonlight and shadow, lumps and bizarre shapes in the forest. Then the ground leveled out and the first humped shape of an old car showed that they were nearing the center of the old dump. A little farther down was the stream that drained this valley. The dog was making a rumble in its chest, getting anxious as the smells recalled prior dump exercises and his hormones began to rev. Three was breathing harder than the walk required, a clue his conditioning was amping him up, too. The dog was getting harder to handle, but still Mr. Smith kept his attention primarily on Three. He used his peripheral vision to keep him continuously in view, knowing he couldn't trust him. Young Dennis had had something in mind when he'd come back this way and killed the Rappaport girl, and Mr. Smith was still not clear what he'd intended. He covertly slipped the Asp out of its holster and kept it in one fist. He had no gun, you never put a firearm within reach of a test subject, but there was the Taser for later, and in his pocket he kept his insurance, a long switchblade honed to surgical sharpness.

  They came to the spot Mr. Smith had in mind, a level arena surrounded by kudzu-draped trees. Here the ground was relatively clear of junkyard debris, providing room to move around in. The tree branches parted enough to allow more moonlight to reach the ground, he'd be able to observe.

  He slowed to fall behind and stopped when Three was five or six paces across the little clearing. He yanked the shepherd's lead hard, bringing him close to his side. He could actually hear the dry sound of the big body vibrating in the dark as he released the harness clip and stepped back.

  By the time Three had noticed something amiss and started to turn, the dog was already in the air.

  Three's reflexes were good. He got an arm up in front of his face, and though he went down with the impact, he rolled well. For a moment the frenzied thrashing and gargling growls made it seem like the dog had found its grip on Three's throat. Hard to see in the broken moonlight. But then Three used his greater weight effectively, pivoted, came out of it with his legs around Frankie's chest. The dog kept savaging his midsection, his arms, but between Three's heavy denim jacket and his pain conditioning, he didn't seem to notice.

  Mr. Smith watched with interest as Three began killing Frankie. Without a weapon, Mr. Smith knew from experience, it was actually quite hard to do. The muffled snapping of the limb joints sounded worse than it was, none would be fatal injuries. Three was clearly frustrated and did some biting himself.

  It took a while. Mr. Smith waited, watching critically and feeling better. He had coiled the leash, but as it got close to the end, he let the loops fall again, getting it ready for the next stage of Three's workout.

  46

  WEDNESDAY NIGHT, Mo called Rebecca and asked if she might want a late visitor. She said she wouldn't mind, so he took a long shower and at nine-thirty locked Carla's mom's house and drove into Manhattan. It seemed like forever since they'd been alone with each other. The scene Tuesday when she'd surprised him on the front steps didn't count, they'd both been off-balance. He wanted to be in a nice room with her, in a bed with her.

  Also, Gus had called back. They had things to discuss.

  He had spent the day on the junkyard circuit. In all, he and St. Pierre and the others had now toured twenty-seven of thirty-eight priority sites. Tomorrow they'd finish up and call this a dead end. Probably Parker's "junkyard" was something else entirely. The failure of the initiative made Rebecca's work all the more important, especially with what he'd learned from Gus.

  Midweek Manhattan at ten-thirty at night. Rebecca in her bathrobe, hair still moist from her shower. You come in and you are literally shaking with longing, you try to pretend you've got any self-control but you don't and she sees it. You can't talk right, you stumble against the arm of the couch, the nearness of her is too much. There's bad business to discuss, you're feeling soiled by this job, but there's no point, you both know it. Priorities, she always says, got to keep your priorities. So you come together urgently, desperately, as if good moments like this have to be stolen, fast. Before it's too late.

  It was midnight before they got down to business. Mo wrapped himself in one of the sheets, she put on her robe again and made a pot of chamomile tea. They got out their notebooks and pens.

  "I've learned a few things about Flannery," Mo told her. "First, my . . . source . . . tells me the hospital he worked at in Georgia didn't just deal with wounded and traumatized veterans. It was apparently one of the sites of the MKULTBJV experiments, where they did some of the LSD experiments."

  Her face showed that this kind of thing grieved Rebecca deeply: the abuse of the sciences of healing. "Was Flannery directly involved?"

  "Hard to say. He was there at
the time, it's hard to believe he didn't participate or at least know about it. Flannery told me he'd worked there, it's no secret. But according to my source, he understated the amount of time he spent in Vietnam. In fact, he shuttled back and forth pretty frequently for about five years."

  "Lab work in the States, fieldwork over there?"

  "Could be." Mo looked at his notes, remembering Gus's voice, the acid tinge coming into his monotone as he'd talked about Flannery. Like most former street cops, Gus hated the prosecutors, who too often blew the collars handed them on silver platters by honest cops, losing cases or copping pleas. He hated Flannery's grandstanding, glad-handing style and had been glad to give Mo some dirt.

  "The other important info I got concerns his distant past. Flannery did have personal experience of the social-services system as a juvenile. Turns out that's no secret, either. I've got copies of articles about him in which he talks nobly about his own early misfortunes, how his own victimization as a child moved him to go into first medicine and then law, very high-minded of him. Beaten by an alcoholic father, in and out of foster homes from the time he was eight years old. Apparently he had the bad luck to get into an abusive foster home, too. Again, it was the father, the foster father, who beat him. His case made the newspapers back in 1953, caused a lot of public agonizing about the foster care system."

  Rebecca was staring into the distance, processing the news. This hurt her, too, Mo saw. After a while she said quietly, "It's funny. So easy to have compassion for a child victim. So hard to have sympathy for an adult who's 'strange' or 'remote' or 'an asshole.' And yet they're the same person! The adult survivor of abuse is just as much the victim." She stared through the wall for another moment, then went on: "Okay. The previous abuse, especially at the hands of a 'daddy,' matches our profile. Did you get any specifics about the form of the abuse?"