Bad Girl and Loverboy

by Michele Jaffe

  “Have you given any thought to what you are going to do next?” Irwin asked, trying to sound nonchalant.

  “The Tom Thumb minimart on the corner is hiring,” she said.

  “I’m serious, Imogen.”

  “Me too. I’d get an employee discount on fish food.” She was dodging, but “What next?” was a question she dreaded. Dreaded the feeling that if one of the Pages had to die, it should have been her, not Sam. No one would have wondered what Sam was going to do. Sam attacked every part of life as if it were his favorite pizza. Sam who, with his grades and Harvard diploma, could have been anything and decided to be a sixth-grade teacher in a public school because it was his sixth-grade teacher who had encouraged him to learn to fence. Sam loved everything he did, and everyone loved Sam. Imogen remembered the phone call she’d received the night before from a nervous eleven-year-old boy, asking if it would be all right if he brought Épée, the class hamster, to the funeral, because he had been Sam’s special friend. Hell, even hamsters loved Sam.

  “Our place in Hawaii is always at your disposal,” Irwin went on. “Yours and, ah, Rex’s. But there is also a visiting professorship open at the university for next semester. When I mentioned you might be available Dickinson went nuts. Begged me to do whatever I could to get you to take it. You would not want me to disappoint the chair of my department, would you?”

  The idea of Irwin worrying about the opinion of anyone in the field was comic. Imogen said, “I’ll think about it.”

  “I know I couldn’t teach you much, but I thought I’d at least taught you not to lie.”

  “I will, Irwin,” she said. “I really will think about it. I’ll ask Rex what he thinks.” They were at the end of Sam’s block, nearly at his house. Neatly plowed driveways with trucks and the occasional Big Wheel cut off the street like spines on a fish’s skeleton. The neighbors across the street from Sam still had their Christmas lights up, Imogen noticed, and someone had built a snowman in their yard.

  Irwin pulled to a stop near the curb in front of Sam’s house, and Imogen almost began to cry when she saw that the neighbors had shoveled the front walk for her. Not for her, she reminded herself. For Sam.

  Irwin turned off the motor and reached over to unhook his seat belt, but Imogen stopped him.

  “Thank you for the ride, Irwin. Give Kathleen my love.”

  “She’d never forgive me if I let you go in there alone.”

  “I want to be alone. You know that you and Kathleen are the closest thing to family I have besides Sam, and if I wanted to be with anyone right now it would be you two, but I think I really need some time by myself. Please? I’ll call you tomorrow.”

  Irwin did not like it, she could tell, but he nodded. He sat in the car and watched her step carefully up the path toward the front door. She turned around and waved and stood, hands on her hips, staring at him until he started the motor and drove away.

  Irwin was already halfway down the street when the man came quietly around the corner of the porch behind Imogen and reached to grab her.

  CHAPTER 5

  “Gigi,” the man said, holding his arms out to her. “I am so sorry.”

  Imogen stopped at the sound of his voice and turned slowly toward him. “You know I don’t like it when you call me that, Lex.”

  Lex’s face tightened slightly and his arms dropped. The gesture reminded Imogen of Sam, and she had to squeeze her eyes against the tears.

  “Imogen,” Lex said, not noticing. “Let’s go inside.”

  “No.” She crossed her arms over her chest and glared up at him. “Why are you here, Lex?”

  “Look, it’s freezing. We can talk better inside.”

  “I don’t want you inside. I don’t want you outside. Go home. Go back to D.C. Sorry you wasted a trip.”

  Lex hesitated for a moment, his face growing grave. “He’s back, Imogen.”

  Imogen put her hands over her ears. “I am not listening.” Her mittens muffled the sound of her own voice inside her head. She started humming the theme song to WKRP in Cincinnati, Sam’s favorite show, to block out what he was saying. When he still wouldn’t stop she said, “I quit, remember? I can’t hear a word you say. I don’t know what you are talking about.”

  “He’s done—”

  “NO!” This time it was a yell. Her mittens came off her ears. “No more. I don’t do this anymore.”

  Lex shook his head. “You went on leave because your brother was ill. What are you going to do now that he is gone? Run away back to Hawaii? You are only thirty-two years old. Are you going to spend the rest of your life sitting around and feeling sorry for yourself?”

  “You bastard.” The words drifted by Lex in frozen syllables as she passed him and went up the front steps of Sam’s house. Her house now. No one’s house.

  Lex, uninvited, followed her in. “Look, Imogen, you’re the only one who has ever been able to figure this out.”

  “I don’t work for you anymore,” she told him pointedly.

  Her jaw clenched and she felt her cheeks get hot. The same way they had the night she came home early and found Lex bare-assed, being spanked by his secretary on their two-week-old couch. It was a hell of a way to learn that your fiancé was into S&M, Lex had agreed, but couldn’t she try to see things from his point of view instead of standing there laughing?

  No. She’d left, never giving him the chance to explain. Never even trying to forgive him.

  What Lex would never understand was that it was because she was not forgiving herself. Would not understand it was because she knew she had been lying to herself, pretending that things with him were great, ignoring the red-wine taste of falsehood every time they kissed.

  Imogen considered not forgiving herself one of her primary talents. Which was probably why, despite the subtle warning taste of licorice in her mouth, she did not really throw Lex out. By not throwing him out, she knew she was probably going to go back to work. And going back to work was something she could never forgive herself for.

  As she slammed cabinets and drawers looking for the fish food, she was only dimly aware of the buzz of Lex speaking, only barely letting herself listen to what he was saying, that the man they were calling the Hide-and-Seek Killer had struck again.

  “We got another one of his collages,” Lex said, holding a glossy photo out to Imogen. She would not look. She intently measured out Rex’s food and sprinkled it into his bowl.

  “It’s the sixth one. It’s just like the others.”

  Imogen knew that meant it was a photo of a carefully staged, elaborately detailed crime scene, a crime scene that did not exist. Yet. That yet was the hook, the temptation the killer used to lure her and all of them in. Because buried within the collage would be clues and riddles that, when solved, would tell them the identity of the victim and the location of the body. The crime scenes themselves were not like the collages, they were much more bare, but one thing was constant: the center of the collage was always taken up with the chalk outline of a body. A body in a tortured posture. The body at the actual crime scene would be found that way too.

  On the top of this photo, as on the top of the previous five, there would be a date. It had taken the FBI team assigned to the Hide-and-Seek Killer three victims to realize that the date was the date of death. It was usually sixteen days from the date the FBI received the picture, giving them two and a half weeks to find the crime scene and figure out the clues. Or, as in the past, two and a half weeks to fail.

  Imogen had been brought onto the case a week after the Bureau received the fourth collage. She had made a name for herself and the fledgling Cognitive Science Unit of which she was a member two years earlier with the Connoisseur serial murder case. The case had been passed to the Cognitive Science Unit—or Cosy, as it was called, at that point still deridingly—when Behavioral Sciences failed to turn up any leads.

  Cosy was different from other profiling units because its agents were authorized to act in the field, not simply consult with
local law enforcement, and because they used a broader variety of techniques to identify suspects. It was becoming clear that the media attention lavished on serial killers was changing the way those killers behaved, helping them alter their behavior to fool or thwart the FBI. The Behavioral Sciences model of the white, male serial killer between the ages of twenty-four and thirty-five was increasingly out-of-date, as the Connoisseur case proved. It had been the big test for Cosy, and Imogen knew that many people had expected—even hoped—that she would fail. In retrospect, she almost wished she had.

  She still had the light scar near one eyebrow that the last battle with Professor Martina Kidd, the Connoisseur, had left, and there were more scars inside. The case had cost her—time, sanity, happiness. Sleep. And confidence. She still sometimes woke up to the sound of Martina saying, “I see so much of myself in you, dear. So much to admire.”

  Imogen’s boss, Elgin, landed a promotion, and Imogen herself became a bit of a celebrity, but it was only later, when she alone among all the operatives and computers of the FBI had been able to decipher the meaning of the Hide-and-Seek Killer’s fourth collage, that she really attained star status. In fact, the FBI agents got to the crime scene only two hours after the girl had died, rather than three days, which had been their previous best record.

  Lex unknotted his scarf, making himself at home. “You know Elgin as well as I do. He wouldn’t have wasted a cent of his budget to send me out here if he did not think it was important.”

  Elgin was the head of Cosy, and Lex was his right-hand man. Or rather, his left-hand man. Literally, since Elgin had lost his left arm as a private in World War II. They had joked about that, once.

  “You’re the best Cosy’s got—hell, the best the Bureau’s got—and we need your help,” Lex insisted against her stubborn silence. He had no trouble with social lies. His fingers moved to the buttons on his coat, and Imogen’s eyes followed them, frowning so hard that he let his hand drop.

  “You don’t have me. I don’t work for you. You know, I took up boxing when we broke up.”

  “Needed a way to get rid of all that pent-up sexual energy,” Lex said, thinking he was joking.

  Imogen clenched her hands. “Get out of here.”

  “Look, it doesn’t matter what you think of me. I’m not even sure you know yourself. What matters is that he’s taken another one. A woman.”

  “Stop it.” Imogen’s voice was low and she had her hand up, palm facing him. “Do not make this my responsibility.”

  “Why not? You know you are just being stubborn because Elgin did not listen to your recommendation after you deciphered the fifth collage. Because instead of sending a team to Boston like you told them to, he sent a team to Chicago on Winston’s recommendation.”

  “Stubborn,” Imogen repeated, shaking her head. She looked at Lex. “And?”

  “And I lied to you about it. But once you’d sorted out the collage we wanted you out of it. We wanted you to concentrate on that document for the NSA. And we knew you would react too strongly if you got too close to the vic.”

  “Louisa Greenway.”

  “What?”

  “Don’t call her ‘the vic.’ Call her by her name. Louisa Greenway. Sixteen years old, gymnast, liked to baby-sit, favorite band ‘NSync, favorite color purple. Remember, I even gave you her name?”

  “Right. You are that good. You even gave us the name.” Lex shook his head and gazed at her with his hangdog eyes. She knew that he knew the effect the look had on her.

  She turned away.

  “Look, Gigi, I’m sorry. The Bureau is sorry. We made a mistake. We should have listened to you. An organization like the FBI makes decisions all the time, and some of them—remarkably few—end up as mistakes. That’s just the way it is, and if you would stop to think about it instead of acting like a spoiled toddler who didn’t get her way you’d see it too.”

  Imogen swung back toward him, and her cheeks were blazing now. “Didn’t get my way? Is that what you think this is about? That I am sore because you listened to someone else? How do you sleep at night, Lex? How do you sleep knowing that we could have saved Louisa Greenway if you had just listened to me? I would like to know, because I can’t sleep at all. I keep seeing her body. Seeing her—” She turned her face away and closed her eyes.

  “Gigi—”

  She shook her head once, sharply, to silence Lex’s voice. She could still picture the crime scene. What the Hide-and-Seek Killer did to his victims was unspeakable. It was as though he could not decide whether he loved or hated them. It was unclear whether death, once it came, was a curse or a blessing.

  Imogen had untangled the riddle of the Hide-and-Seek Killer’s last collage with time to spare. But another agent, whose father was something multistarred in the Pentagon, had come up with a different analysis, a different city. Too cheap to send out two teams, Elgin had gone with the better-connected agent’s analysis, raiding a strip club in Chicago and leaving Louisa Greenway to die in Boston. When Imogen learned this, she knew she was finished at the FBI. She could not be a member of an organization that wrote off lost lives on a financial ledger as easily as it wrote off overpriced desk sets.

  At least, that was what her letter of resignation said, and in those terms. It sounded good. It was an easy reason to give, but it wasn’t the real reason and Imogen knew it, even if she didn’t want to admit it.

  Every time Elgin called her into his office to pop the cork on a bottle of cheap champagne as a celebration of her success, she’d been thrilled at the approbation. She basked in his avuncular approval, wallowed in Lex’s protestations of love, grinned at their compliments, lapped up their promotions. Felt like she belonged somewhere.

  Until she realized what it really meant to be good at her job. That thinking like a killer meant viewing all people through a lens that pinpointed their weaknesses, their secrets, their darkest fears. The horrible things they could be capable of. Trusting no one, being suspicious of everything. And worst of all: that despite the new feeling of having to be always on your guard, having to come into your apartment every night with a gun in your hand and check all the closets and behind the bathtub curtain and under the bed before you could relax (whatever that was); despite never using a tablecloth because someone could use it for concealment or to throw over your head or to strangle you with; despite coming to see every item in your kitchen as a potential weapon and every hardware store as a killer’s paradise; despite having to sleep with a night-light again even though you were in your thirties; despite the way it warped you; despite all that, sometimes innocent people like Louisa Greenway would die.

  That was when she realized she’d sold her soul for a case of Asti Spumanti.

  Since then, the price had gone up. Up way beyond what the FBI could afford.

  At first she had only taken a family leave to care for Sam. But she had sent in her resignation the day he died. Sent it and faxed it, to be sure it got through. It was the only thing she did that day.

  “Elgin says you’ll have his unconditional support,” Lex was telling her when she came out of her thoughts.

  Imogen said, “I want you to leave now.”

  Lex went on. “You’ll be the head of the team. On-site. Whatever you say, goes. The collar will be yours too.” He lowered his voice. “Gigi, he’s escalating. You are the only person who can save the next one.”

  Elgin, through Lex, was offering Imogen all the plums she could pick. It was the offer of a lifetime, a career-making offer. Her case. Her team. Her criminal.

  “I quit,” she said again.

  “I’ll just leave the file in the kitchen,” Lex replied. On his way out, he stopped and wrapped his arms around her and kissed the top of her head. She stood ramrod straight in his embrace, willing it to be over.

  “How’s Carol?” she asked when he finally moved to the door.

  Lex turned around. “We broke up,” he said, paused, gave her the hangdog look. “You know, if you wanted, I could stay ton
ight, or for a few days, and we could—”

  Imogen shook her head violently. It was not only herself she was good at not forgiving.

  For the next four hours she did everything she could to avoid going into the kitchen. She put on Sam’s flannel pajamas with the flying toasters on them and ordered the spiciest takeout she could find and ate from the container with the plastic utensils that came in the bag. She drank a bottle of red wine she found in the dining room from the porcelain cup in Sam’s bathroom that had held his toothbrush. She flipped through the Grieving for Not-So-Dummies book Irwin Bright had given her.

  You’re the only person who can save the next one.

  At nine Imogen opened the file. At three A.M. she called Elgin’s home number in Arlington, Virginia. When her flight touched down in Las Vegas it would be 8:15 A.M. local time.

  CHAPTER 6

  One thing he knew for sure, you could never be too careful. He sat on the floor with only the desk light on so he wouldn’t wake Rosalind, and went over his gear again. To the left, the shoes, black, not new, not too old, the soles slightly worn in. Khaki pleated pants with one belt loop ripped, but in the back so you couldn’t really tell. The belt too, rubbed bare in the back, occupational hazard, but looking okay in the front. Short-sleeved button-down shirt, off-white with thin brown stripes, pilling under the arms from years of wear. The jacket to wear over it all, a pencil and a pair of aviator glasses in the inside pocket. The glasses were a little too slick, a little jarring with the rest, which, he felt, gave it all realism.

  He pictured himself wearing the clothes out. Sitting at a dark bar with a sports game playing on TVs behind it, eating peanuts one by one, drinking club soda through one of the little red bar straws and playing video trivia at twenty-five cents a pop. The girls who worked there would call him the Professor, because he always got the answers right, and say privately to one another that probably his wife left him for someone else, sad, he seemed like such a nice man.