by Barr, Nevada
Three drawers yielded up Hammond’s checkbook, a .357 Colt revolver, four boxes of ammunition, a stale Marlboro, and a pile of mouse droppings. No logbooks. “Damn,” Anna whispered, and pushed her chair back to survey the room for another likely spot. Nothing presented itself. Hammond traveled light.
She wandered into the kitchen but wasn’t inspired to touch anything. What dishes Hammond had were crusted with food and piled in the sink. The counters hadn’t been wiped for a while and two thin black trails of sugar ants had snaked out to feast on the windfall.
Half the cupboard doors hung open. Anna opened the rest: dust, shotgun shells, more mouse droppings, and three cans of chili. The kitchen drawers produced little more. Steeling herself for Hammond’s Good Housekeeping coup de grâce, she opened the refrigerator. It wasn’t bad. There was nothing in it but beer, ten or fifteen rolls of Kodak film, margarine, and a pair of blunt-nosed scissors, the kind people buy for little kids. For a moment Anna pondered the significance of the scissors, but drew a blank. Undoubtedly this was one secret Slattery had taken with him to the grave.
The freezer was better stocked, holding ice, vodka, and twelve packages wrapped in tinfoil. Anna dutifully unwrapped each one, though she could see no reason a pilot would be so paranoid about his logbooks that he would disguise them as food. They contained nothing but chunks of badly butchered meat. Closing the door, she noticed three ziplock bags on the interior shelf. At first glance they appeared to contain one pork chop or one ham bone each. On close examination she was both disgusted and mystified. Each baggie held one obviously used tampon.
“Oh ish!” she said, using Frederick’s favorite expletive.
The bedroom boasted a single bed with a sleeping bag on it, and a beat-up dresser vomiting clothes. Eau de gym socks overlaid the mess. Anna made a cursory search of the dresser, picking through the contents as if they crawled with body lice or crabs, but found nothing of interest.
The closeness in the sealed house, aggravated by the myriad odors of garbage and dirty laundry, was beginning to get to Anna. A feeling of suffocation and tunnel vision built under her sternum and behind her eyes. The bedroom closet was the only place she’d not yet searched. She determined to make short work of it and get out of there.
When she opened the closet door, the room erupted. Hammond’s clothes flew out at her as if they had a life of their own. A heavy plaid shirt flapped winglike at her face and she heard herself yelling. Then something struck a jarring blow above her left ear. Inside her skull she felt her brain shift and her body was jolted as if she’d fallen from a great height. A vortex of darkness opened in front of her and she pitched forward into it.
CHAPTER Thirteen
NEW YORK CITY always exhilarated Frederick. Despite its size and brawling image, Chicago felt small, clean, and easily escaped. Frederick’s vision of Manhattan, locked in by rivers and the sea, was that of an overburdened ship, like photos he’d seen of derelict boats bursting with Haitian refugees. Or maybe a birthday balloon in that anxious limbo between plump and pop, a sense of danger, high stakes.
New York was considered the murder capital of the world. Statistics didn’t bear that out; it was just that the city was so condensed. When everyone is packed onto half a dozen avenues, everything becomes public, corpses and dirty laundry included.
Several weeks earlier a couple from Ely, Nevada, in Manhattan for the first time, had found the naked body of a three-year-old stuffed in a Bloomingdale’s bag on the hood of their rented Hyundai. Even in the Big Apple that wasn’t the norm, but they’d left for home convinced they’d been to, if not Sodom, then Gomorrah.
The night was warm and he had walked up from the Parker Meridien, where he was staying at great personal expense. The Parker Meridien had the key ingredient in the hotel business: location. For that, Frederick shelled out the cash and put up with the insufferable young snob at the registration desk.
Dr. Molly Pigeon had agreed to meet with him at a pub near the corner of Ninth and Fifty-ninth. More, he suspected, out of curiosity to see her little sister’s beau than to discuss the death threats. Dr. Pigeon had described the place: near a corner, glassed-in sidewalk seating, window frames painted green. In New York on Ninth Avenue, that didn’t narrow it down much, and Frederick pulled a slip of paper out of his pocket with the pub’s name written on it. This was the place.
Standing outside in the dark gave him the edge, and feeling slightly foolish for the professional paranoia of a lifetime, he stepped into shadow and searched through the tables. Back from the windows, by a six-by-six post supporting the pseudo greenhouse, he found her. There wasn’t any doubt in his mind that it was Anna’s sister. There was a strong familial resemblance. Molly was older and her features more refined—delicate almost. Her face had a look of control Anna’s lacked and her lips were fuller, more sensuous, but she was unquestionably a Pigeon. A formidable one. Everything about her breathed power, competence, and control. Her deep purple suit was tailored, her high heels without a scuff, her short manicured nails painted with clear polish. Only two chinks showed in the armor: she was smoking and a nervous habit of running her fingers through her hair had turned an expensive cut into a girlish, bedroom tousle.
My turn next, Frederick thought as he walked through the door. Anticipating her inspection, he stood straighter and tugged the cuffs of his linen sport coat, bought for the occasion, down toward his knuckles. Off-the-rack clothes seldom had sleeves long enough, and a government salary didn’t allow for tailor-mades. Not with a kid in college. Brushing aside an adolescent fear of appearing uncool, he headed toward Dr. Pigeon’s table.
She stood when she saw him. In her eyes there was no judgment and her smile was warm and slightly crooked. The illusion of coldness was dispelled. But not the illusion of control. Her handshake, the invitation to sit, the slight nod that brought a waiter running, all gave Frederick the reassuring feeling that he’d been accepted into a well-ordered universe.
“Scotch, no ice,” Frederick said to the waiter.
“The same,” Molly said, then cackled. “You and I are going to get along fine.” Her eyes were hazel, like Anna’s, and deeply crinkled at the corners. Feigned or not, they almost twinkled with interest, as if she eagerly awaited the fascinating story of his life. Frederick could see how she commanded $150 an hour.
“An FBI agent,” Molly stated.
Beyond Dr. Pigeon’s shoulder, Frederick could see the waiter gossiping with the bartender. He wanted his Scotch. Needed it might be closer to the truth. Meeting Molly had him as nervous as a boy on his first date.
“A psychiatrist,” he countered.
Molly laughed again and the sheer ghoulish sound of her odd chortle made him laugh with her.
“Don’t you sometimes wish you had an occupation that didn’t require comment?” she asked.
The drinks were on their way. Unwittingly, Frederick breathed out his relief. “Yes,” he answered honestly. “When I’m tired, I’ve been known to lie just to avoid a discussion of Ruby Ridge.”
“It could be worse.” Molly accepted her Scotch. “You could work for the IRS.”
Within thirty minutes the last of the ice was broken, the preliminaries were over, and two more Scotches were on their way. To his surprise, Frederick found he was relaxed and enjoying himself. Molly was no longer a legend but flesh and blood, a sophisticated, urbanized Anna, with an openness he missed in her sister.
At the thought of Anna, he reluctantly got down to the supposed business of this meeting. “Did you do your homework?” he asked.
“Indeed I did.” Molly pulled a black leather briefcase from beneath the table and plucked a manila folder from an outside pocket.
The folder had a computer-generated label on the top. “DEATH THREATS” was written in block letters. A tiny skull and crossbones adorned one end, a knife dripping red blood the other. “Oh,” Molly said, when she caught his glance. “Clip art. New software. I couldn’t resist.”
Having replaced
the briefcase under the table, she opened the folder. The papers were neatly typed, two copies of each, and Frederick marveled at her organization. Anybody that well prepared—for anything—was impressive. Frederick had to shake off a feeling of being second-string, a day late, a dollar short.
“Don’t be intimidated by all this bull,” Molly said, waving a fine-boned hand over the papers. “Two things: I’m anal-retentive and I like to play around with my computer.”
Frederick was not reassured. That she’d read his insecurities so easily was more alarming than her overdeveloped organizational skills. In less than an hour Molly Pigeon was coming to know him better than most did in a year.
“Let’s take a look at what you’ve come up with,” he said. He reached for the file and was met by a whiff of tantalizing floral scent. Just enough to make him want to lean closer. He coughed to cover his embarrassment.
Molly had a complete client list, first names only to maintain privacy. By each name was a brief description of their disorder. Among the medical terms, Frederick was amused to find a few good old-fashioned diagnoses: “Cheryl M.—terminal boredom,” “Steven P.—pompous ass.”
The second page was given the heading “Seriously Ill.” Under that she had listed the people she cared for who suffered from debilitating illnesses: paranoia, schizophrenia, bipolar disorders, clinical depression, psychosis.
“Brought these because this is where people seem to want to look first. I didn’t know if you’d be the exception. Anyway, I’ve discounted all of them for one reason or another. Some are locked up, some are too dysfunctional. The rest have problems that simply don’t manifest in violence or threats of violence toward others.”
Frederick nodded. Those suffering to the point they were committed to a doctor’s care usually didn’t have the energy or facility to plot complex crimes.
“Here’s my cast list,” Molly said, and pushed the third sheet across the table. “I really don’t think any of these people did it. I’m at a loss, I’m afraid. These are just the people I couldn’t rule out altogether.”
Those she felt might be responsible for the threatening calls and letters had been highlighted in yellow, and a more detailed diagnosis followed.
“James L.” Molly read the first name on the list and Frederick followed along on his printout. “This patient isn’t the usual for me. Mostly I’ve priced myself out of the real world. My clients tend to be wealthy neurotics. This man worked for Packard Electric as a machinist. He’s forty-seven years old, white, Vietnam vet. He wanted full disability for posttraumatic stress syndrome from the war. He’d read an article mentioning my name in Time magazine and thought my word would carry sufficient weight to get him his early retirement. He put on a decent show, but I thought he was a fraud and said so.”
“He didn’t take it well?”
“Not him so much as wife number two. A woman twenty years his junior who had plans of her own: two incomes—both his.”
Frederick dug a pen out of his inside breast pocket. “Better describe her.”
“Early twenties, with the unlikely name of Portia. Small—about Anna’s size.”
Frederick smiled to himself. Molly was no bigger than Anna but apparently suffered from the same John Wayne complex as her sister.
“Red hair—from a bottle—worn big. Country western singer-big. Good voice till she got angry, then shrill. Regular features but ordinary, even with heavy makeup. She entered data for the same company as her husband. She wanted to quit—she’d married so she wouldn’t have to work. When he lost his suit against Packard she got ugly, made some threats.”
“What exactly?”
“The usual. You’ll get yours, one day you’ll be sorry—that sort of thing.”
“Any wording like that used in the notes or on the phone messages?”
“No,” Molly said, then, after a sip of Scotch and a moment’s deliberation, added, “Maybe. I seem to remember her suggesting I wasn’t human. That theme recurred in one of the phone messages.” She laughed. “Maybe I’m not. When Anna and I were kids, we got hold of one of those tabloids—I think it was the Enquirer. The front-page article was about aliens masquerading as humans and mating with the locals to produce hybrid offspring. The attributes of these half-breeds suited our mom right down to her eyeteeth. We’ve often speculated that we are a quarter Trafalmagorian on our mother’s side.”
“That explains a lot,” Frederick said. He glanced over the rim of his Scotch and into her eyes. There was unexpected depth there.
Molly smiled and he felt a warmth that unnerved him. He grabbed up the pen, forgotten by his notebook. “Not human. Portia,” he said aloud as he scribbled the words down. “I’ll need her last name and any other information you’ve got on her.
“What else?” Frederick asked, needing to stick to business and wondering why.
“Sheila T.—Thomas, Sheila Thomas.” Molly read the next name on the list. “She was coming to me for depression and anxiety. According to her, her husband was a jerk. She was having an affair with his brother. I counseled her to take stock of the shortcomings in her marriage and discuss them with her husband. She took this to mean she should tell her husband about her infidelity with his brother. A course of action I think she was leaning toward anyway. Rage, anger, desire to lash out. She told him and he promptly divorced her. Due to the circumstances, she came out on the short end of the stick when it came to the property settlement. Sheila blamed me for the divorce.”
“She made threats?”
“A few. Not life-and-death. More along the lines of getting my license revoked, getting me blackballed, hints at connections in high places. I included her because she was literate, well-spoken, a businesswoman, and the two nasty notes she sent me were beautifully written on expensive stationery. And no,” she said as Frederick looked up, “I didn’t keep them. This all transpired four months ago and I didn’t think much of it at the time.”
“The last one here is a Nancy B.” Frederick read the final name on the short list.
“Bradshaw,” Molly said. “Nancy’s a real reach but I threw her in because she has a demonstrated capacity for physical violence against things if not people. I only saw her once. She came to me because her life was a shambles. She was drinking too much and having affairs, even though she swore she worshiped the ground her sainted husband walked on. I suggested maybe there was at least perceived tarnish on his halo and she was acting out because she was angry with him on some level. She went from zero to sixty in sixty seconds, from sitting in an armchair to stomping around my office throwing books and smashing a lamp. To our mutual benefit, that was our first and last session.”
Frederick jotted down a few words to jog his memory, then gathered up the pages Molly had provided and stowed them neatly in his inside breast pocket. What he would ever use them for, he couldn’t imagine, but she’d gone to so much trouble he didn’t want to seem ungrateful.
For a minute, maybe more, they sat without speaking. The sounds of a city’s summer night leaked in around the windowpanes. Sirens in the distance, human conversation muted to wordlessness, traffic. Having lived in cities all his adult life, Frederick found these sounds comforting. The bleak wilderness vistas Anna so loved didn’t stir an answering echo in his heart. The sound of wind in the pines wasn’t music to him. It struck his ear as the very breath of loneliness.
“How long did Anna live in the city?” he asked.
“Seven years,” Molly replied, as if it were a number she kept always in the forefront of her mind.
“Do you think she could ever move back?”
Molly shot him a long look. “I have my doubts,” she said at last. “After Zach’s death, Anna ran into the wilderness much like an Old Testament prophet seeking her God or a reasonable facsimile thereof. I think she found it. She’s doing okay playing at Smokey Bear. I don’t know how she would fare back in an urban environment.”
Feeling somehow disloyal talking about Anna, Frederick took a last l
ook at his notes.
“Not much, is there?” Molly voiced his thoughts.
“Not much.”
“None of them feels right to me either.”
The check came and Frederick paid it, relieved he didn’t have to go two falls out of three with Dr. Pigeon for the privilege.
“What about media coverage?” Frederick asked as they were leaving the pub. “That brings out the weirdos.”
“A trial. An insanity defense,” Molly said after a moment’s thought. “That got a bit of coverage. I was the expert witness for the defense. But that was years ago and we won, so they’ve no cause for complaint. For a while I had people beating down my door to testify for them or somebody they knew, but I won’t do it anymore. After the Mack trial I quit.”
“Why?”
“There are just too many people who are genuinely insane. No doubt about it, they’re mentally ill and they’re going to stay mentally ill. I came to the decision that though I pity them deeply, I’m not arrogant enough to believe I can fix them, and I cannot, in good conscience, loose them on society.”
“It’s not you loosing them, it’s the jury.”
Molly just laughed. She lifted her hand imperiously, giving Frederick a start. A cab pulled over to the curb. “Can I drop you somewhere?”
Frederick thanked her but wasn’t going far enough to warrant a ride.
As the cab was pulling away Molly rolled down the window. “I like you,” she said.
Approval. Everybody craved it. Frederick laughed aloud at himself, then stopped abruptly. The words had meant more to him than simple approval. They’d made his little heart go pitty-pat. “Not good,” he whispered to himself as he watched the cab drive away, Molly straight and strong in the back seat, the enormity that was New York City wrapped around her like a well-fitting cloak.
