Crimson Joy s-15

by Robert B. Parker

"Yeah," Quirk said.

  "Means they figure his story will hold up," Hawk said.

  "He's pretty steady on that," Quirk said.

  "It's the only thing he is steady on," Belson said. "Everything else, he's only got one oar in the water."

  "He'd have to be," I said. I told them Susan's hypothesis.

  "It's the only way he can think about what he did," Hawk said. "He probably won't slide on it."

  Belson looked at Hawk, and shook his head.

  "Whatever his reasons," Quirk said, "I agree he won't waffle on the confession."

  "So," I said. "If the real Red Rose is smart, he'll stop killing people for a while and walk away from this without anybody laying a glove on him."

  Quirk nodded.

  "If he can," Hawk said.

  "If he can," Quirk said, "and he's a cop; he can be working in my department, talking with me every day for all I know."

  "And if he can't, then he'll kill some more women," I said.

  We were auiet. Belson knocked some of the accumu lated ash of his cigar into Susan's bright red saucer that matched the bright red fan on the wall, that picked up one of the colors in her Oriental rug, that reflected in its design the shape of the mirror in the hall, that balanced the architectural detail over the archway to the bedroom. The ash didn't match anything.

  "We need to find out about this guy left the rose for Susan," Quirk said.

  "I been giving that some thought," I said.

  "You have a plan?" Quirk said.

  "Yeah, we got to do this right," I said. "But the thing to do is stake out Susan's office and identify every one of her patients who could have been the guy I chased."

  "Susan won't cooperate?" Belson said.

  "No," I said.

  "Even to save her own ass?" Belson said.

  "Life," I said.

  "Yeah, sorry."

  "No."

  "Doesn't make sense," Belson said.

  "To you," Hawk said. "Make sense to Susan."

  Belson looked at Hawk again, held the look for a moment, then nodded.

  "How long will it take?" Quirk said.

  "Should be a week or so; most patients come once or twice a week," I said. "It's the best I can think of."

  Quirk nodded.

  "Got to be careful," I said. "Some patient leaves psychotherapy and finds a cop following…"

  "I know," Quirk said. "We can't fuck these people up."

  "Susan catch us and we got trouble," Hawk said.

  "I know that too," Quirk said.

  "Okay," I said. "We watch. First patient arrives at nine and the last patient leaves at six. If they drive, we can get the license numbers.

  If they walk, we can follow them."

  "And one of us is always here with Susan," Quirk said.

  "Yeah."

  "Can you see from here?" Quirk said. He walked to the window.

  "Not well enough. We have to be outside."

  Hawk looked out the window. It was dark and the rain was steady.

  "Outside the place to be," he said, "on your vacation." . They thought it was somebody else. A schwartze. Some wife killer who'd faked it and made it look like he'd done them all. Talk about lucky. All he had to do was stop and they'd fry the schwartze and he'd be safe. Could he stop? Jesus, would he miss it. What a loss. What a hole in his life.

  It was what he did. The planning, the stalking, the catching, the escaping, it organized him. Who was he without it? What should he do?

  If he could talk with her about it? But if she knew, she'd tell. He couldn't see her anymore. But he wanted her to know.

  "Come in," she said.

  The rain sheeted down along the window behind the tropical fish tank.

  The fish seemed restless. Water and water. He sat in his usual seat.

  He felt full of his need for her to know. But she'd tell. He knew she'd tell her boyfriend.

  "When I was little, I was very close to my mother," he said. She nodded.

  "I could tell her anything. "It's all right, "she say, "I'm your mother.""

  She made a tiny rolling motion with her forefinger to encourage him on.

  "I told her everything."

  She had on a brown glen plaid suit today, with a white blouse.

  "I remember when I was a little kid, maybe third grade, I, ah, messed my pants."

  She nodded; no reaction, no disgust, no amusement. He could still feel the hot embarrassment of it.

  "They called my mother and she came and got me and she was nice about it and said it could happen to anyone. And I got to go home with her and I asked her not to tell and she promised she wouldn't…

  "One of her friends was there, and when I came downstairs from taking a bath the friend teased me about it."

  "So she had told," she said.

  He nodded. "I…" He stopped and swallowed. He seemed unable to speak.

  "You couldn't trust her," she said.

  Again he could only nod. It was like his voice was paralyzed. He could breathe okay and swallow okay, but he seemed like he couldn't talk. The silence seemed heavy. The rain chattered against the window behind her.

  No fish in this room. Just the waiting room. He breathed through his mouth.

  She waited.

  "I never said anything," he finally said. His voice sounded reedy and nearly detached from him.

  "If you had?"

  "She'd have got mad. She never admitted she was wrong.

  She just got mad at me if I said anything."

  "What happened when she got mad?"

  "She didn't love me."

  She nodded.

  "What kind of love is that?" his voice said. "What kind II is it when you can love me and not love me whenever you feel like it?"

  She shook her head gently, and again it was quiet except for the rain.

  CHAPTER 16

  Hawk took the day shift with Susan. Belson and I went outside with Quirk and sat in his car. Me and Quirk in front, Belson in the back seat. The rain streaked the windows, blurring everything. "No wipers."

  I said. "Three guys sitting in a car with the motor running and the wipers on is like putting a flashing blue light on the roof."

  "Can you see well enough to identify anyone?" Quirk said.

  We were across the street and half a block up from Susan's house.

  "No," I said. "But we're not making fine discriminations here. Any white male who looks like he could outrun me." Quirk nodded. "Frank," he said, "you want to take the first one?"

  "Sure."

  We were quiet. The rain stayed with us. After ten minutes the windows started to fog and Quirk cracked the windows on the side away from Susan's office. At ten of eleven a patient came out of Susan's front door and down the steps.

  "How about him?" Quirk said.

  "He's the right size," I said. The outlines of the man were blurred and soft through the wet window. "He white?"

  "If he's not," Belson said,

  "I'll drop him." He got out of the back seat on the sidewalk side and began walking up Linnaean Street toward Garden, parallel with Susan's patient on the other side of the street.

  After a moment Quirk said to me, "Okay, he's the right color."

  "Now if Belson doesn't lose him," I said.

  "Belson won't lose him," Quirk said. "And the guy won't make him."

  I nodded. "And if he gets in a car, Frank gets the number."

  "And we ID him that way," Quirk said. "When's the next one?"

  "Should arrive any minute, and come out about ten of twelve."

  "The fifty-minute hour," Quirk said.

  We watched the rain slide along the windows. At five of eleven a woman in a tan trench coat with a violet kerchief over her head went up the four steps to Susan's front door, rang the bell, and went iv "Shit."

  Quirk said.

  "Nothing now until ten of one," I said. "Might as well get some coffee."

  We left the car so we wouldn't lose the spot and walked up Linnaean to Mass. Ave. an
d had coffee in a bakery. Also a bagel each. With cream cheese. By twelve-thirty we were back in the car waiting. At six minutes to one a woman in a belted red raincoat came out and opened a black umbrella on Susan's porch. Quirk and I said nothing.

  "If there's many that fit the requirements," Quirk said, "this will take a while. We could use more manpower."

  "Not Hawk," I said. "He stays where he is."

  Quirk nodded. "I can't use any of my people."

  "Unofficially?" I said. "Sort of a favor?"

  Quirk shook his head. "It would cost them. I'm excommunicated, until I agree with the official version."

  "You and Galileo," I said.

  "Didn't he throw his balls off the leaning tower?" Quirk said.

  "That too," I said.

  At two minutes of one a burly man wearing a fingertip length black leather jacket and a Totes crush rain hat went into Susan's office.

  "Charley Mahoney," Quirk said. "Vice."

  "Nope," I said. "Too heavy. I could catch him in half a block."

  "When you do, you better be ready."

  Quirk said.

  We lapsed into silence again. The next two clients were women. At two minutes past four a man with an open golf umbrella turned into Susan's front walk and up the steps.

  "Could be him," I said.

  "Late too," Quirk said. "I'll take him when he comes out."

  At 4:53 the guy came out, opened his umbrella, and headed back down Linnaean Street toward Mass. Ave. with Quirk behind him.

  At 4:56 a middle-sized tallish guy came along wearing a khaki bush jacket and one of those Australian campaign hats with one side of the brim tied up against the crown. I didn't suspect him of being an Aussie soldier. This was Cambridge.

  He came out of Susan's at three minutes to six and started down Linnaean Street toward Mass. Ave. He was on the left side of the street. I got out and headed down the right side, maybe three car lengths back of him.

  It was still raining and it was beginning to get darker. I studied his walk through the rain, trying to catch a familiar movement. But walking and running are different movements. He was the right size and he had an easy athletic walk. The rain was coming down as if it planned on staying forever. I had on jeans, white leather Reeboks, a gray Tshirt, a leather jacket, and a felt hat that Paul Giacomin had bought me, which looked like you would wear it in Kenya if you were Stewart Granger. The Reeboks were wet through quickly, but the rest stood up to the rain pretty well. Tailing him was easy because he hunched into the rain with his head down and, except when he crossed Linnaean in front of me to head down Mass. Ave. toward Harvard Square, I didn't have to do anything very wily.

  If a guy doesn't know he's being tailed, or doesn't care, tailing is not brain surgery. Mostly it takes a little concentration not to get caught staring at your man in the reflection from a store window, or getting too far behind so that if he gets on a subway, or a bus, you're left standing. Ideally you have a backup so that the tail keeps changing, and you have somebody in a car in case the guy has one or grabs a cab.

  I've yet to find a cabbie that responds when you say "Follow that cab."

  The last guy I tried slammed on the brakes and slapped down his meter and told me to take a walk. "I look like fucking James Bond to you?" he said.

  On the right, Cambridge Common was soggy and unattended. The only movement was a kid in a plaid skirt and a yellow hip-length slicker, walking a big black Lab wearing a red kerchief for a collar. The kid had no hat on and her long black hair was plastered to her scalp and neck. The dog sniffed rapidly in a large circle around the base of the war memorial statue and then lay down on his side in a large puddle, his feet straight out before him, his tongue lolling.

  "Othello, you asshole," the kid said.

  At Harvard Square, Mass. Ave. turns off east toward Boston. Brattle Street heads west toward Watertown, and John F. Kennedy Street goes on down to the river. In the distorted triangle formed at this point is the famed out-of town newsstand, and the Harvard Square subway entrances. A couple of small round kiosks that look vaguely Byzantine dispense information and theater tickets. The kids who drifted in tattered clusters in and around the triangle were mostly scrawny and pale and very young. They wore silly clothes and ludicrous haircuts and listened to tiring music on portable radios. Occasionally there was a guitar, a kind of nod toward tradition, which for them was the sixties.

  They were there, perhaps, because they had nowhere else to be, even in the cold spring rain, sheltered beneath the subway entrance, struggling to look aloof from middle-class values.

  My man stopped under the roof of the subway entrance and looked at a group of five punkers across the entrance from him. A thin kid with skinny white arms left the others and came out and spoke with my man.

  The kid wore a short-sleeved leather jacket over his narrow bare chest.

  He had on black tights, probably made from polyester, tucked inside black motorcycle boots. The jacket and the boots were both studded with silver. The kid's hair was pink and cut in a high mohawk and he had maybe nine silver earrings in one ear. Bravado.

  My man nodded and stepped out into the rain, and the kid went with him.

  They continued up Mass. Ave. together in the rain. The kid's Mohawk wilted a little, but didn't run. Even in the rain there was a lot of street activity. People coming home from work, students going to the library, or the barroom, or the movies, a scattering of tourists coming to see the famous Harvard Square and looking vaguely puzzled when they found it. On the north side of Mass. Ave." Harvard did its red brick loom, while on the south side the Holyoke Center, which was also Harvard, seemed grayer than usual in the wet evening.

  At Putnam Street, where Mount Auburn merges with Mass. Ave." we three turned toward the river, past the big furniture store and into a sort of shabby neighborhood where there wasn't much foot traffic. I dropped farther back. It was getting tricky now. Most of the homes here were multiple dwellings, and if he turned into one, I might end up with a choice of six names. I closed up. My man stopped before a green two-story, and gave a quick glance about. Furtive, since he'd joined the kid.

  I walked past them, my head ducked into the rain that seemed to be coming straight up Putnam Street off the river. A few steps beyond, I stopped and looked in the window of an Italian delicatessen and watched them by turning my eyes while I kept my head straight. My man watched me for a moment. The boy shook his arm and said something, and my man nodded and headed in the walk along the side of the building.

  I waited a full minute and walked back up Putnam Street. There was no one in sight. I turned in the same walkway that my man had taken and there was a side entrance. It was closed. As I stopped in front of it a light went on above me on the second floor. I bent close and looked at the nameplate. It was not dark yet, but it had gotten murky and I couldn't read it. There was no one else in sight. I reached inside my leather jacket and took out a pair of twelve-dollar magnifiers and put them on and looked again. The nameplate said PHILIP ISELIN, PH.D. If it had been sunny, I could have read it without glasses.

  CHAPTER 17

  When I got back from following Philip Iselin, Hawk and Susan were standing in her waiting room on the first floor, looking at the fish tank. The tank hood was off, there was something that looked like oil slick on the surface of the water and in the oil slick floated a red rose. In various stages of suspension in the water beneath the surface, the tropical fish floated dead, or in two instances dying.

  "Probably gasoline," Hawk said. "Smells like it."

  I nodded, looking at Susan. The filter apparatus in the fish tank continued to bubble pointlessly, easily overmatched by the gasoline.

  "I don't know when it happened," Susan said. "The front door is unlocked during the day, obviously, and anyone could walk in while I was with a patient."

  "No way to hear him?" I said.

  "No. Patients normally ring the bell and walk into the waiting room.

  There is a double door system
to my office to ensure privacy."

  Hawk looked over at the office doors. There were two of them. One opened out, into the waiting room; the other opened into the office.

  Privileged information.

  "But it would require a patient to know the routine," I said.

  "Most therapists probably have a not dissimilar routine," Susan said.

  "Aw, come on, Susan," Hawk said. "If it not one of your patients we got to imagine somebody walking around with gasoline in his pocket and a red rose, looking for working fish tank."

  "And being lucky enough," I said,

  "to wander in here by accident and find one."

  Susan nodded.

  "Wishful thinking," she said. "But it doesn't mean he or she is the Red Rose killer."

  "She is wishful thinking too," I said. "Unless you want to believe that this is a different person than the one who broke in here the other night and left a rose."

  Susan took in a long, slow breath.

  "That would be asking a lot of coincidence," she said. "So it's probably a he, and it's probably one of my patients. But it doesn't have to be probably the killer."

  "But we can't act as if it weren't," I said. "Can we get a list of your patients today?"

  She shook her head.

  "God, you're stubborn," I said.

  "Yes, but it's more than that," Susan said. "It seems to me that anyone planning to do this would do so on a day he wasn't scheduled. And it seems to me that it is someone trying to say something to me that he can't yet say in therapy. If it is the killer, our best hope may be to keep him in therapy until he tells me he's the one. If it is not the killer, the reasons to keep him anonymous must be obvious."

  I looked at Hawk. He shrugged very slightly. "Smart too," he said.

  "If the Red Rose killer does, in fact, surface in therapy, could you take the time to mention it to one of us," I said.

  "Oh, don't be so pissy," Susan said. "You know I will when I'm sure. I don't want anyone else killed, including me."

  "Pissy?" I said.

  "Pissy," Susan said. "I shouldn't expect you to understand all the technical terms of my profession."

  "You want to clean out the tank?" I said.

  "Yes," Susan said. "And I want to put more fish in."