Haskell landed hard against the breakwater and gasped for breath, holding his neck.
Thirty feet away, the Tac officers huddled around Grove, who raised himself up on one knee. He struggled to catch his own breath.
A clicking sound drew Grove’s attention over his right shoulder.
A photographer stood against the yellow ribbon, madly snapping pictures.
News of the outburst at Bard’s houseboat began wending its way through the system that afternoon, beginning with a clacking-whirring sound in a second-floor office at Quantico, alerting Molly Ryan, the administrative assistant in Dispatch, that a redline fax was coming in. A heavyset woman in stretch pants, she spun on her swivel chair, the wheel bearings squeaking noisily. She pushed herself across the office to the doorway of the communications alcove and peered in at the metal filing cabinets and computer terminals. The fax machine near the window was spitting out transmittal sheets lined with scarlet edges, and Molly immediately went over to the phone.
“This is Ryan in Dispatch,” she said after the party on the other end of the line answered. “Is the section chief in today?”
The lady on the other end told her to hold on.
“Kopsinky here,” said a voice after a few clicks. “Whattya got, Molly?”
“Just came in, redline out of Maryland, something about Agent Grove having some kind of a breakdown.”
A brief, tense pause. “Molly, I’m going to need you to walk that over.”
“Be there in five.”
She hung up, dropped the ten pages of facsimile paper into a manila folder, hugged it to her breast, and walked out of the office.
The fluorescent corridor bustled. Voices on phones, keyboards clicking busily. Molly Ryan walked briskly, nodding at coworkers and chewing gum as she made her way out of Dispatch, across a light-drenched breezeway, and into the adjacent building.
Here in the executive tower the bustle was more subdued, the noise more muffled, the carpet thicker, the accoutrements more lush—like the halls of a mid-line hotel. Molly strode to the end of the main corridor, then paused at the armed guard manning the reception desk.
Molly flashed her laminate and folder. “Dispatch for Chief Kopsinsky.”
The guard waved her in.
Molly navigated the maze of office suites until she reached the corner office and stood in front of the closed walnut door with the brand-new name plaque where Tom Geisel’s used to be. The plaque was marked in gold inlay with KOPSINSKY, RAYMOND R., S.C., BEHAVIORAL SCIENCE UNIT. Molly knocked, and a muffled voice told her to come in.
She entered the spacious office.
“Thanks, Molly,” the man behind Geisel’s desk said with a nod. He was a compact little man with horn-rimmed glasses and thinning hair. He had his coat off, his sleeves rolled up. Most of Geisel’s personal items had already been swept away or boxed up—family photos, awards, mementos—but his plaster medical skeleton still hung in all its macabre glory by the corner window.
A second man sitting in an armchair in front of the desk was instantly recognizable to Molly. Dressed in a tailored black suit, the man looked like an aging football coach with his thick neck and hard gaze. “The Unsinkable Miss Molly Ryan,” Louis Corboy said with a distracted smile. “How’s Howard doing? Heard he had a hip replacement.”
“He’s as grouchy as ever,” she said with a genial grin, handing the folder to Kopsinsky. “Thanks for asking, though. Can I get you gentlemen anything else?”
“We’re all set, Molly, thanks.” Ray Kopsinsky gave her a terse smile and a nod.
She turned and whisked out of the office, closing the door behind her.
Kopsinky stared at the document. “Speak of the devil,” he murmured.
Corboy levered his portly self out of the chair and came over to the desk. “Don’t tell me.”
Kopsinky looked up at him. “Read it.”
Corboy did so. His lips pressed together so tightly they looked purple. At last he looked up at Kopsinsky. “Grove is finished in this unit.”
“Can I suggest—”
Corboy shook his head. “There isn’t enough Tylenol on the eastern seaboard.”
“Boss, we need Grove on this thing; you know it as well as I do.”
“Grove’s finished.” Corboy glared. “He flipped his wig on a goddamn media guy. You have any idea how much shit I’m going to have to eat because of this?”
“But maybe there’s a—”
“I told you, I’m washing Grove out!”
Kopsinksy looked down at his desk for a brief and awkward moment of deference. “Got it, sorry. Just thinking of the press here.”
Corboy took a deep breath. “Tell them…tell them we’re reassigning Grove to a top-secret vigilante force, tell them we’re submitting him for sainthood, tell them anything you want. But Grove is gone.”
TWENTY-TWO
The front door burst open with the force of Grove’s kick, and he stumbled into the deserted Pelican Bay house with heavy Pendaflex expandable folders under each arm. He had been alone in the home many times, but not like this, not this woozy with nervous tension and paranoia, and the conspicuous absence of his wife and son only added to his disorientation.
He turned in a fidgety circle trying to decide what to do first. In the stillness, the midday sun glowed behind the front drapes, creating an oven effect. A musty odor filled the house, an odor that always pervaded the place when it was left empty for long stretches. Seaside homes are never completely free of mold. The scent of moisture is always there, in the wallpaper, under the floorboards, along the baseboards. But now the ghostly mildew merely tightened the uneasy knot in Grove’s gut, playing a sour counterpoint to the constant refrain in his head.
JQP?
He headed for the stairs to the second floor, stumbling across the entry hall like some incorrigible derelict, drunk with exhaustion. He tripped on a braided rug, and his feet tangled, and he fell over. He dropped both files as he went down; one flopped open on impact and spilled its contents across the foyer. Forensic photographs of corpses in Minnesota, North Carolina, and Texas, coroners’ reports, maps, Xeroxes of Sumerian symbols, notes—all of it fanned across the hardwood.
Grove struggled to get his breath, and tried stop that skipping record in his brain.
JQPJQPJQP?
He rose to his knees, head spinning. He could hardly see through his one good eye. He felt nauseated. He needed sleep badly, he needed to eat, he needed to think. Over the last few hours he had been acting purely on instinct, racing back to his office at Quantico before word got out about the chaotic scene at Bard’s houseboat, retrieving all his Archetype files, consolidating his profiles into the two heavy Pendaflexes, then rushing back to his empty house in Pelican Bay to do God-knew-what with the letters JQPJQPJQPJQPJQPJQPJQP JQPJQPJQPJQPJQPJQPJQP—
The sound of the phone ringing in the kitchen shook Grove out of his trance. It was the unlisted phone. Grove had three lines, including his work cell, which was also unlisted. The private line was used only by Maura, a few superiors at the Bureau, and emergency dispatch.
He rose on shaky legs, took a deep breath, and made his way into the kitchen, leaving all the forensic documents on the floor where they had fallen. He snatched the cordless off the wall with a sweaty hand. “Grove.”
“Ulysses, it’s Ray Kopsinsky.”
Grove knew immediately by the edgy tone of the man’s normally rock-steady voice that there was major trouble. “Ray, I’m glad you called.”
“Yeah, well.”
“You got the news from Dispatch? I’m gonna need VICAP on these initials. Right away.”
The man on the other end of the line sighed. “Look, I got all the details on Bard and the scene—I also got an earful from Corboy about the reporter you tried to surgically remove from the planet.”
“He’s not a reporter, he’s a hack.”
“Be that as it may—”
“Ray, this guy Haskell, his articles were on Splet’s walls—
he got Maura kidnapped! Remember Ackerman?”
“Grove, listen to me. There’s a line you vaulted over here. You tried to wax the guy in front of a live audience and a photographer—we’re gonna be doing mea culpa for a year. Now, I realize you’re in a bad place, with Tom passing and this freak out there who’s hooked into your work—”
“We got the guy’s initials, Ray. If we don’t act, he’s gonna kill again. He’s going to torture a woman, and then kill her.”
“Ulysses—”
“I’m going to find this guy very soon. That’s the best PR you can get!”
“Let me finish.” The voice on the other end of the line was strained with thinly repressed anger. “Corboy has ordered you on paid leave.”
“What?” Grove’s sweaty palm was welded to the receiver. “What?!”
“It’s unavoidable, Ulysses. Pending an investigation—”
“I’m the only one, Ray.”
“Grove, I’m trying to—”
“Goddamn it, I’m the only one who can catch this guy!” Pain stabbed the bridge of Grove’s nose at the sudden volume of his own voice.
On the other end of the line, Kopsinky’s voice changed slightly. “You know, Tom always said you were difficult, but you were worth it because the plain truth is you get these guys off the streets. Fine. I get that. But I don’t know the playbook, Grove. I’m not Geisel, I don’t know the blocking routes. I don’t have the juice.”
After a long beat, Grove swallowed. “What are you telling me, Ray?”
“There’s nothing I can do.”
“Listen to me. You think Haskell is bad press? This perp is the grim reaper, Ray. He’s the Antichrist, he’s—”
“I tried. I’m sorry. I really am.”
The phone clicked in Grove’s ear.
United Flight 287—nonstop from Charleston International to Chicago’s O’Hare—landed on time that day in a flurry of vapor and noise. The aircraft rattled and roared to a stop on the northernmost runway, then taxied in a light mist to the jetway to the south.
Inside the stale, refrigerated fuselage, passengers stirred and unbuckled and rearranged their belongings in preparation to disembark long before permission to move was given by the flight attendants.
One passenger in particular was exceedingly antsy to exit the plane—a zaftig black woman with cornrows seated in 34A, Business Class. By the time the aircraft shuddered to a stop, she was already standing.
“Ma’am, I’m going to need you to stay seated until the seat-belt sign is off,” one of the attendants called out from the galley seats in back.
“Sorry, sorry,” Edith Drinkwater said with a wave, plopping back down in her seat. Others were stirring around her, flipping open cell phones, thumbing Palm Pilots like junkies cooking their next fix. Drinkwater gripped her carry-on bag as though it contained a human organ bound for transplant.
Back in Beaufort she had made a last-minute decision to change her plans.
As a rule, Edith Drinkwater was not big on changing her mind. Doubt was not a familiar state of mind for her. But something happened back in South Carolina that had started a mysterious clockwork mechanism of gears turning in the back of her brain. Maybe it was the unmistakable glint of fear in David Okuba’s eyes when he spoke of displaced spirits and dark doppelgängers. Or maybe it was just the strange vibe Drinkwater had always sensed radiating off Grove.
Whatever the reason, Drinkwater was beginning to think of Ulysses Grove in a different way.
After leaving the Cherry Pit, she had rifled through her notes and had reviewed all the background she had amassed online and in the FBI archives on Grove. She had found the name she was looking for—as well as the address and phone number—in the Bureau personnel folders. The Kenyan woman had been listed on an insurance information form that Grove had filled out way back in the dark ages when he was a trainee. A couple of phone calls later, Drinkwater was on her way to the Windy City.
A sudden DING pierced her thoughts, and again she rose to her feet.
A lighted sign announced the all clear to de-board, and Drinkwater hurried off the plane.
O’Hare Terminal One is notorious for chaos—the worst record for delays on the continent—and always seems under some kind of inconvenient construction. Laid out like the ribs of a vast fossilized behemoth, the underground route to baggage claim is lined with decorative neon capillaries that have seen better days. People don’t look at one another much. Echoes of distant jackhammers and jet engines ebb and flow.
Drinkwater hurried through the underground, then up an escalator to the main terminal, her brain swimming with possible scenarios, images of what the old lady might look like, speculations on what she had to say. The woman had not been very forthcoming over the phone—suspicious even—but had suddenly perked up when Drinkwater had mentioned Okuba and his story of demigods and dark destinies.
The appointed rendezvous spot was at the end of the main concourse—a cavernous mall teeming with travelers coming and going amid the Water-stones and Starbucks, the mélange of merchants masking the stale air with burnt sugar and coffee smells. Drinkwater found the meeting place and looked at her watch. It was a quarter to four. The old woman was due in fifteen.
Drinkwater went over to a contour bench against the corner windows and sat down to wait.
At length, a hunched figure loomed at the top of a nearby staircase. Approaching slowly, methodically, hobbling along with a cane, the woman caught Drinkwater’s attention before any words were spoken. The afternoon sun haloed the old lady’s face in a nimbus of washed-out daylight from the skylights, and the closer she came, the more her frizzy, white-streaked mane of hair glowed like a corona of angelic light. To Drinkwater she looked like a tarot priestess, like a black saint on a catechism card.
“Mrs. Grove?” Drinkwater stood up, brushing a stray hair from her eye.
“Vida, please call me Vida,” the old woman croaked in a husky, accented voice as she paused on her shellacked baobab cane, a trace of colonial Brit underneath the Kenyan lilt. She wore an ankle-length sarong-dress dyed in traditional African flora. And everything about her bearing—her long neck, her deeply lined regal face—spoke of hard-won wisdom. She had a leather pouch around her neck stuffed with unfiltered cigarettes like bullets in an ammo clip. “You must be…Miss Edith, is it?”
“Edith Drinkwater, that’s right.” The two women shook hands. Drinkwater thought the old woman’s hand felt like sandpaper. “You didn’t have to come all the way out here to the airport, I would have met you anywhere.”
“I like to get out of the house,” the old woman said with a wink. “Doctor says it’s good for me. Besides, the bus stop is a half a block from my two-flat.”
“Well, I really appreciate it.”
Vida smiled and patted Drinkwater’s shoulder. “My son’s fate is now your fate.”
“Excuse me?” Drinkwater wasn’t sure she heard the old woman correctly.
Vida gave her arm a squeeze. “You’re a strong girl, that’s good.”
“I don’t know about that.”
“You’ll need all your strength for what is to come.”
Drinkwater looked at her. “May I ask what you’re referring to?”
The old woman pursed her lips, then looked around the terminal. “Is there a place an old woman can rest her bones and smoke a cigarette?”
TWENTY-THREE
In the nightmare Grove is standing at the foot of Geisel’s gurney, gazing upon the pale remains of his mentor and boss, when Geisel sits up like he’s on a spring, like he’s a puppet, and smiles. His teeth are as black as onyx, and a reverse-sound pours out of him like a yowling cat; Grove tries to run away, tries to escape that horrible room, and realizes he cannot move. He looks down. He is ankle-deep in dirty white sand, beach sand, as damp and heavy as wet cement. The sand is riddled with hash marks, symbols, coded messages, phone numbers, bar codes, puzzles, clock faces, lengths, widths, distances, and more; a seemingly endless array of cr
yptic data. A slimy gray wave licks across the sand, washing away the symbols, enveloping Grove’s ankles in greasy salt water. Grove sinks deeper. He struggles and struggles. He sinks into the mire up to his knees; he cries out, but no sound comes out of him as he continues sinking to his waist. The waves curl around him. He looks at the bed and sees Geisel sitting there like a porcelain doll—on his face a weird mixture of utter desolation and horror and something urgent to communicate—and now he’s convulsing as though electricity is bolting through him. Grove sinks deeper and deeper until he’s up to his chin and can’t move his arms or legs anymore. He arches his neck so he can breathe, but soon the soupy sand covers his face like a sticky blanket. He gasps. But somehow—this is a dream, after all—he can still breathe under the sand. He notices light above him and cranes his neck to look up at the hole through which he just sank, and then something very strange and unexpected occurs. The hole is freezing, icing over. Grove shivers. He can see a thin rind of frost forming across the opening, which is barely a foot in diameter, as though an invisible arctic wind is rushing over the hole. Soon the membrane of ice is nearly an inch thick, transparent, milky white. It looks like a window. Grove stares at it for some time, until finally a face appears behind the ice, and Grove screams. He screams and screams. The sound that registers in the dream is more like a delicate tinkling-glass noise, like a chandelier in the wind. The face is very familiar—it is Maura’s face—but horrible wounds scourge her flesh, gouges and lacerations, blood speckles dried as black as India ink, the precise wounds discussed in Grove’s textbook, in his class, in the MO of the Archetype. She’s writing something with her bloody index finger, scratching it into the frost. It makes no sense—in the dream, that is—but Grove stares and stares and stares at the nonsensical words:
CILBUP Q NHOJ
Grove came awake with a start. It took a few moments for him to catch his breath and realize where he was: alone, on the living-room sofa in his Pelican Bay home, most of the lights still on. It took him another few moments to realize it was the middle of the afternoon, and he had apparently passed out from exhaustion on the littered couch hours ago. His skin glistened with sweat, his T-shirt and slacks soaked through. His heart still palpitated with alarming irregularity, as prominent in his ears as a shoe banging around the inside of a clothes dryer. His bladder was about to burst, but there was something he had to do before dealing with that.
Perfect Victim Page 13
