They fell silent, each preoccupied with her own thoughts as they entered the hotel, bellhops, security guards, and other guests staring at them, one asking, “Oh, my, do I need an umbrella? When did it start raining?”
They rushed to the elevator and rode up to the twenty-ninth floor, making the cab a puddle and laughing at their foolishness. Jessica still felt a pleasant buzz from her drinking, and the release of all her pent-up feelings tonight had made her feel much better.
The elevator door opened on Jessica's floor.
“You haven't told him?” asked Kim. “All this time has gone by and you haven't told Richard?”
“I've been too… too busy.”
Kim held the door. “Bullshit. You must be a fool. He hears about it through any other source, and what's he going to think?”
“I'll call him tonight, tomorrow.” Jessica wiped at her eyes as water flowed from her still-wet head.
“You do that! Don't put it off another moment. By the way, you look like a drowned rat.”
“And you look like a drowned Chihuahua!” The elevator doors closed on Kim, who rode up the two floors to her room. Jessica turned to walk down the corridor, thinking she ought to have made the call to Richard Sharpe days before. Fatigue and booze clouding her thoughts, she fumbled at her door with the electronic key card. Finally, she found herself alone in her room when someone knocked. Through the peephole, she saw that it was Kim. For a moment, she feared her friend had had too much to drink and had somehow come to the conclusion that they were roommates.
“How did you get back here so fast?” she asked as she opened the door.
'Took the stairs. Listen, Jessica, whatever you do, tell Richard and tell him soon, and believe me, it will be a defining moment in your relationship, so watch closely- or rather listen closely-for his reaction. If you get an immediate reaction that is favorable, you know he's worth your time and effort; if you get the opposite, you know he's not. That's all I will say on the subject, so again, g'night.”
Kim marched off for the stairwell, leaving Jessica to ponder her words.
Jessica had gotten back to her room after one in the morning, and fairly fell into bed. She set her clock to awake at 3 a.m., and until then she slept soundly; in fact, for the first time in days, she had no thought of the case, either consciously or subconsciously. When the alarm clock roused her, she stared at it, estimated the time in London, dialed, and caught Richard Sharpe before he had left for work at Scotland Yard.
“Jess! It's you!”
He sounded so exuberantly happy to hear from her. “I just wanted to hear your voice, Richard.”
“It's so wonderful of you to call. It will make my day go by so pleasantly.”
“How soon before you come to me, Richard?”
“Soon, I promise.”
“I… I can hardly wait.”
He laughed. “That's my line, love.”
“Richard, tell me…”
“Yes? What is it, dear?” He immediately heard the sadness in her voice, had somehow honed in on it.
“You don't think… Do you think that I like it this way?”
“Like it? This way? What way, Jess-what do you mean?”
“Our relationship. Long-distance.”
“Oh, I see… Well, honestly, Jessica, I could swear the last time we were together, you very much preferred the real thing to telephoning it in.”
She nodded. “Yeah, I did, didn't I?”
“I certainly thought so. I wasn't kidding myself, now, was I?” he teased.
“You know you're constantly on my mind, Richard.”
“Good show.”
“Yes, it is.” She managed a laugh.
“What's this all about, sweetness? What's brought on this… melancholy?”
She steeled herself to tell him what she'd been going through, that she was here in Philadelphia, working a case in close proximity to her former lover, James Parry; at the same time, she thought how wonderfully perceptive Richard was to intuit her distress from such a distance. James would never have been so sensitive.
“You haven't been having second thoughts about us, have you?” he asked.
“No, no!” she assured him. “Just that… well, I had it brought to my attention recently that I seem to… seem to enjoy a good distance between myself and anyone who… anyone who gets too close.”
“Ah, I see, and that would be me. Talking to that shrink of yours again?”
She wanted to tell him the truth, but she worried he would not understand. “I don't know. Maybe I do only allow myself to get involved with men who, in one way or another, remain inaccessible. I have a long history of doing exactly that.” She could hear Kim's voice in her ear, shouting, 'Tell him. Out with it.”
“Sounds like you're just second-guessing yourself, darling. We all do that. Don't let the nebbishes of the world, or those inside your head, sweetness, get you down.”
“There's something I have to tell you, something… important.”
“Go right ahead, love.”
Jessica had called him earlier, but missing him, she'd left a message saying she was presently working a case in Philadelphia. She hadn't wanted to tell him about Parry's involvement in the case via an answering machine, so she had given no more details. She outlined the case and left it at that. She repeated herself somewhat now but ended with the news that she'd been teamed with James Parry.
The night before, Kim had pretty much said, “How your Richard handles the news will be a defining moment in your relationship.” Jessica believed her friend's words and she held her breath while she waited for Richard's reaction.
“I see…”
He didn't see, she told herself.
“But I thought this fellow Parry was Bureau Chief in Honolulu?”
She explained the situation and circumstances leading to the teaming.
“I see…”
He didn't see, not a thing did he see, she silently muttered to herself.
Richard then added, “Are you saying you had no say-so in whether or not you two were to work together? I'm not quite clear on that.”
Two questions, level and calm. His reaction was to pose a question, perhaps to give him time to mull over his feelings. It had to come as a shock to him, but he characteristically absorbed the shock.
“I was given the choice. I did not decline.”
“I see.”
“You see?” She was beginning to hate those two words. What did I see mean to him?
“Really, Jessica. You don't have to be… so tentative with me. Remember, we, you and me together, we made a formidable team against the Crucifier, and I should think we can overcome this.”
“I've been afraid to tell you.”
“Afraid? Never be afraid to speak to me about anything, dear.”
He was handling the news, and the fact that she'd withheld it from him this long, “swimmingly”-as he might say-well.
“I trust you implicitly, Jessie, I do. I know you, perhaps better than you realize. I really must run, however. Are you all right?”
“Much more than before I spoke to you, yes.”
“I know the pain of closing out an old relationship; it's not something done overnight. All my love, dear.”
“And mine to you,” she replied before hearing the connection go dead.
Richard was right, she now told herself. Silly of her to be so filled with self-recriminations. Still, she had failed to completely inform him of the situation, that Parry still had strong feelings for her. However, she had informed him of the overall picture. She felt a sense of relief come over her, followed by a flood of happiness. Kim had been right. It was a defining moment in their relationship, and he had handled it so well.
Jessica returned to sleep, trying to ease her concerns, replaying Richard's strong, melodious voice in her head. As slumber came, she heard his voice change into that of a stranger without face or body. A stranger who kept repeating the refrain of the poems left by the killer in the m
elodic voice of a Richard Burton or a Sir Laurence Olivier. She played his deadly words over in her mind again just before consciousness waned.
Chance… whose desire
Is to have a meeting
With stunned innocence…
Subconsciously, she asked, What does it mean? What does the killer poet intend? So peculiar, she felt that someone capable of combining words so beautifully… someone so creative, could destroy lives. We need a cryptologist to decode this so-called poetry, she decided. How can he be both artist and destroyer? What kind of man am I dealing with? her unconscious asked, and again played over the killer's words:
Chance… whose desire Is to have a meeting With stunned innocence…
Is he Chance? Seeking meetings with victims who may, in the end, be stunned by their own innocent acceptance of him and what he plans for them?
Stunned innocence… stunned because they suddenly discover they are his victims? Or stunned to discover something else, something about themselves, something he teaches them? Something to do with flickering life?
These questions played in her head, over and over again, as she slept.
The Poet Lord sleeps the sleep of the innocent, in a spartanly furnished apartment; some say the poet lives the life of a recluse, like a monk, a person with little interest in material possessions or things of this earth. But such as these know him only from this apartment; it's hardly the whole person. The Poet Lord's interests are always in the spiritual possessions of the next life, and the condition of the spirit in this life, but at times material possessions have surrounded him. Perhaps in another life he'd been a priest, but not so in this one. He maintains three separate but equal habitats; this is but one of them. It overlooks the teeming life of Second Street.
In dreams, power is turned over to him in the form of a torch. Dreams are like overflowing cups, and lately the poet's dreams run rampant with reward. Few will ever understand-this he knows-and fewer still will have glimpsed the other side, but he knows that he will be embraced by the light, the love, and the ultimate compassion and wisdom of the angels and their Maker. He has had a recent reading of the tarot cards of his choice, the Enochian tarot cards created by the gnostic and occultist Aleister Crowley, a man who saw the images of the cards in a series of visions brought him by the angels who spoke to Enoch, the only man known to have walked in conversation with God.
As always, his reading was done by Madame Lesia Tahach, the Hungarian woman who knows how to read the cards, the stars, the tea leaves-whatever a client wants- and Tahach had told him that he'd soon be on the journey of his life. He trusts this journey will in fact be the journey toward final reward, final closure, and the new life of the Four Quarters-the angelic forces of Air, Water, Earth, and Fire.
The original message of the angels had concerned knowledge of the known universe in order to overthrow existing governments, to usher in the Apocalypse, but now, like their Creator, the angels had no more use for humankind or Earth the planet; instead, they simply wished to recall their kindred spirits. These spirits, at one time numbering ninety-one, now roamed the land, a mere nineteen remaining.
“Can the wings of the winds understand the voices of wonder?” he had once asked Madame Tahach. She only gave him a grim look, as if he were co-opting one of her lines.
While the Poet has a vague sense that his identity might one day be revealed, at present this concerns him little. He has been assured a seat in the ranks of the angels in another place, another time, far more important than this reality, this era.
His last Chosen One, Maurice, despite the outward happiness he displayed to the world, despite his constant smile and immature wittiness, lived in constant pain and sadness. Maurice had opened himself up, revealed the raw edges, the seething melancholy of his existence, the worm at the center of his being. Maurice had been born a woman in a man's body; his entire being screamed this fact to the world he had inhabited before his departure to a place that embraced his soul, not his body. Because he'd been born a man, he had spent a lifetime-several lifetimes, in a sense-fending off this world. How awful the invisible scars that poor Maurice suffered. In a world where many influential religious leaders called Maurice's lifestyle a growing malignancy, the poor boy had few authority figures to turn to.
Maurice was in fact an angel-in-waiting. A Christ-like child of innocence, who knew enough to believe he was special after all.
It was the same as asking Christ to live in a world filled with ugliness and an ingrained ignorance that only bred falsities, contempt, hatred, and prejudice.
The Lord Poet's answer came in his actions. He convinced Maurice to allow him to write a poem in his honor, to pen it across his back, to be displayed in the clubs and pubs and wherever he wished, to declare himself a living, breathing piece of art, a truly special being created by the touch of angels-inspired, as it were, to combat hate crimes and hate thinking.
“I'll create of your living, breathing, moving skin the most beautiful, enigmatic poem the world has ever seen,” he had promised Maurice.
“Sounds fantastic!” Maurice had been excited, his hands waving, his eyes suddenly the size of saucers. He had not shown such exuberance all evening long. He loved the idea, and he loved his new friend for suggesting it to him. “When? When do we get started? How long will it take? When can I show it off?”
“Now, immediately.”
“You can do that? Don't you need to, you know, do a rough draft, process it for days and nights, talk to ravens and shit, invoke the muse, all that?”
“I already have. I've been giving thought to your poem for years, long before we ever met-on this plane. I know what to write, word for word. It's all in here.” He pointed to his heart.
As the Poet Lord had written across Maurice's back, the troubled youth talked about his childhood, his upbringing, school, the sister he loved, and how much pain and harassment he'd endured over being different.
Well, no more… No more pain and anguish, no more tauntings, no more regrets, no more harassment. Never again a thought of pain, never again to feel a moment's remorse for what God had wrought of flesh and bone and soul. Maurice was meant to be here, both to learn and to teach, but it had been revealed that he had suffered long enough and deeply enough, and that it was time for his eternal release. When and if the authorities came for the Poet Lord, this is what he would tell them. This is his mission. Daily, it comes clear that part of his purpose has always been to enlighten and inform. He thinks of all the Chosen Ones he has sent over. They constitute his spirit family now; he is never alone. He can never be alone as he has been in his own biological family, in this life.
He knows next with whom he must converse; he has found his next Chosen One. She does not live too far from his apartment. She will come to him, as the others have done; she will make the first overtures. Subconsciously, she wants to be among his pantheon of devotees. One never knows. He recalls how surprised he had been when young Maurice approached him at the Capuchin Coffeehouse the night he'd sent Maurice over. It had taken special eyes to see that Maurice was angelic, that a wand had been waved over him at birth. The Poet had seen it clearly enough.
Now his eye is set on another angel, barely Maurice's age but just as lovely and genuine in her own way. Her name plays over in his mind like the sound of marbles pleasantly knocking together: Selena Sonjata. Lovely name, lovely creature in need of setting free.
He has exactly the words for her. He has them memorized and with a blink summons them to his ear. Words like angels have a life of their own for him, and the words speak to him now.
Chance… whose desire is to have a meeting with stunned innocence… is eminent like wind, earth, fire, water, or the cool fall breath when it comes even, unrushed, surrendered like an ink mark to a page; one dot is all that is said.
Flickering light haunts a chamber formed of delirium left to feel out the evening, while an operaof soft words etch across a mile of skin
TWELVE
On a
dark theme I trace verses full of light, touching all the muses'charm.
— Lucretius (99–55 B.C.)
Two days later
Eriq Santiva forwarded a detailed analysis of the killer's handwriting to Jessica, along with a note to see a Professor Stuart Wahlbore at the University of Philadelphia's linguistics department. Apparently, a search of experts in the FBI files had settled on Wahlbore because he had a computer program that analyzed handwriting.
Jessica reread the most important portions of Santiva's report even as she and Kim made their way to the university to meet with Wahlbore. For Kim's benefit, Jessica read aloud the document, which Santiva had written out in longhand.
… killer is obsessive-compulsive; he will be neat to a fault. If he works at a desk, everything on it will be organized and aligned; if he works on a construction site, there will be no trash outside the Dumpster. In short, he's a neat freak. Upright anal-retentive are your watchwords. He plans ahead and he colors rigorously within the lines, never varying. This is evident in the control he wields with the poison pen-he writes on skin as if he were writing on ruled paper. No letter leans forward, none back. He's methodical and supremely organized. He premeditates his every step. In his handwriting, the lack of high points above the median line, and of low points and loops below said line, make it safe to assume this fellow has the sex life of a eunuch.
“So we're in search of a tight-assed eunuch possibly suffering a big identity crisis,” Kim said as they pulled onto the university campus's tree-lined, weaving paths. In a moment, they pulled to within inches of a sign that proclaimed a little house as the linguistics department. Professor Wahlbore stood on the steps, awaiting their arrival, an ear-to-ear grin making him look like Ichabod Crane in thick glasses, complete with bobbing Adam's apple.
“Welcome, welcome you are.” He spoke like the Star Wars character Yoda, Jessica thought, or was it merely because he was Hungarian and his English was imperfect? She took his outstretched hand in hers, and they shook, introductions all around. Seeing that Jessica was staring at him, he informed her, “Each summer takes me to archaeological dig, a wonderful site in Arizona on a Navajo reservation.” He wore a typical western-style shirt, a string tie fastened by a Navajo turquoise brooch. He also wore western-style boots and vest, all at odds with his scholarly appearance and Middle European accent.
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