I believe the simple yet complex word that I’m searching for is joy.
It was so obvious around the dinner table. I could see it in the bright and lively eyes of Nana and Damon and Jannie. I had already seen it in Christine’s eyes. I watched her at dinner and I had the thought that she could have been somebody famous in Washington, anything she wanted to be. She chose to be a teacher, and I loved that about her.
We repeated stories that had been in the family for years, and are always repeated at such occasions. Nana was lively and funny all through the night. She gave us her best advice on aging: “If you can’t recall it, forget it.”
Later on, I played the piano and sang rhythm-and-blues songs. Jannie showed off and did the cakewalk to a jazzy version of “Blueberry Hill.” Even Nana did a minute of jitterbugging, protesting, “I really can’t dance, I never could dance,” as she did just beautifully.
One moment, one picture, sticks out in my mind, and I’m sure it will be there until the day I die. It was just after we’d finished dinner and were cleaning up the kitchen.
I was washing dishes in the sink, and as I reached to get another plate I stopped in midturn, frozen in the moment.
Jannie was in Christine’s arms, and the two of them looked just beautiful together. I had no idea how she had gotten there, but they were both laughing and it was so natural and real. As I never had before, I knew and understood that Jannie and Damon were missing so much without a mother.
Joy—that’s the word. So easy to say, so hard to find in life sometimes.
In the morning, I had to go back to work.
I was still the dragonslayer.
Chapter 122
I SHUT MYSELF AWAY to think, to quietly obsess about Thomas Pierce and Mr. Smith.
I made suggestions to Kyle Craig about moves that Pierce might make and precautions he should think about taking. Agents were dispatched to watch Pierce’s apartment in Cambridge. Agents camped out at his parents’ house outside Laguna Beach, and even at the gravesite of Isabella Calais.
Pierce had been passionately in love with Isabella Calais! She had been the only one for him! Isabella and Thomas Pierce! That was the key—Pierce’s obsessive love for her.
He’s suffering from unbearable guilt, I wrote in my notepad.
If my hypothesis is right, then what clues are missing?
Back at Quantico, a team of FBI profilers was trying to solve the problem on paper. They had all worked closely with Pierce in the BSU. Absolutely nothing in Pierce’s background was consistent with the psychopathic killers they had dealt with before. Pierce had never been abused, either physically or sexually. There was no violence of any kind in his background. At least not as far as anyone knew. There was no warning, no hint of madness, no sign until he blew sky-high. He was an original. There had never been a monster anything like him. There were no precedents.
I wrote: Thomas Pierce was deeply in love. You are in love, too.
What would it mean to murder the only person in the world whom you loved?
Chapter 123
I COULDN’T MANAGE any sympathy, or even a modicum of clinical empathy, for Pierce. I despised him, and his cruel, cold-blooded murders, more than any of the other killers I had taken down—even Soneji. Kyle Craig and Sampson felt the same, and so did most of the Bureau, especially the good folks in Behavioral Science. We were the ones in a rage state now. We were obsessed with stopping Pierce. Was he using that to beat our brains in?
The following day, I worked at home again. I looked myself away with my computer, several books, and my crime-scene notepads. The only time I took off was to walk Damon and Jannie to school, and then have a quick breakfast with Nana.
My mouth was full of poached egg and toast when she leaned across the kitchen table and launched one of her famous sneak attacks on me.
“Am I correct in saying that you don’t want to discuss your murder case with me?” she asked.
“I’d rather talk about the weather or just about anything else. Your garden looks beautiful. Your hair looks nice.”
“We all like Christine very much, Alex. She’s knocked our socks off. In case you wanted to know but forgot to ask. She’s the best thing that’s happened to you since Maria. So, what are you going to do about it? What are your plans?”
I rolled my eyes back, but I had to smile at Nana’s dawn offensive. “First, I’m going to finish this delicious breakfast you fixed. Then I have some dicey work to do upstairs. How’s that?”
“You mustn’t lose her, Alex. Don’t do that,” Nana advised and warned at the same time. “You won’t listen to a decrepit old woman, though. What do I know about anything? I just cook and clean around here.”
“And talk,” I said with my mouth full. “Don’t forget talk, old woman.”
“Not just talk, sonny boy. Pretty sound psychological analysis, necessary cheerleading at times, and expert guidance counseling.”
“I have a game plan,” I said, and left it at that.
“You better have a winning game plan.” Nana got the last word in. “Alex, if you lose her, you will never get over it.”
The walk with the kids and even talking with Nana revitalized me. I felt clear and alert as I worked at my old rolltop for the rest of the morning.
I had started to cover the bedroom walls with notes and theories, and the beginnings of even more theories about Thomas Pierce. The pushpin parade had taken control. From the looks of the room, it seemed as if I knew what I was doing, but contrary to popular opinion, looks are almost always deceiving. I had hundreds of clues, and yet I didn’t have a clue.
I remembered something Mr. Smith had written in one of his messages to Pierce, which Pierce had then passed on to the FBI. The god within us is the one that gives the laws and can change the laws. And God is within us.
The words had seemed familiar to me, and I finally tracked down the source. The quote was from Joseph Campbell, the American mythologist and folklorist who had taught at Harvard when Pierce was a student there.
I was trying different perspectives to the puzzle. Two entry points in particular interested me.
First, Pierce was curious about language. He had studied linguistics at Harvard. He admired Noam Chomsky. What about language and words, then?
Second, Pierce was extremely organized. He had created the false impression that Mr. Smith was disorganized. He had purposely misled the FBI and Interpol.
Pierce was leaving clues from the start. Some of them were obvious.
He wants to be caught. So why doesn’t he stop himself?
Murder. Punishment. Was Thomas Pierce punishing himself, or was he punishing everybody else? Right now, he was certainly punishing the hell out of me. Maybe I deserved it.
Around three o’clock, I took a stroll and picked up Damon and Jannie at the Sojourner Truth School. Not that they needed someone to walk them home. I just missed the hell out of them. I needed to see them, couldn’t keep myself away.
Besides, my head ached and I wanted to get out of the house, away from all of my thoughts.
I saw Christine in the schoolyard. She was surrounded by little children. I remembered that she wanted to have kids herself. She looked so happy, and I could see that the kids loved to be around her. Who in their right mind wouldn’t. She made it look so natural to be turning jump rope in a navy business suit.
She smiled when she saw me approaching across the schoolyard full of kids. The smile warmed the cockles of my heart, and all my other cockles as well.
“Look who’s taking a break for air,” she said, “three potato, four.”
“When I was in high school,” I told her as she continued to turn her end of a Day-Glo pink jump rope, “I had a girlfriend over at John Carroll. This was in my sophomore and junior years.”
“Mmm, hmmm. Nice Catholic girl? White blouse, plaid skirt, saddle shoes?”
“She was very nice. Actually, she’s a botanist now. See, nice? I used to walk all the way over to South Carolina Ave
nue just on the off chance I might see Jeanne for a couple of minutes after she finished school. I was seriously smitten.”
“Must have been the saddle shoes. Are you trying to tell me that you’re smitten again?” Christine laughed. The kids couldn’t quite hear us, but they were laughing anyway.
“I am way beyond smitten. I am smote.”
“Well that’s good,” she said and continued to turn the pink rope and smile at her kids, “because so am I. And when this case is over, Alex—”
“Anything you want, just say the word.”
Her eyes brightened even more than was usual. “A weekend away from everything. Maybe at a country inn, but anywhere remote will do just fine.”
I wanted to hold Christine so much. I wanted to kiss her right there, but that wasn’t going to happen in the crowded schoolyard.
“It’s a date,” I said. “It’s a promise.”
“I’ll hold you to it. Smote, that’s good. We can try that on our weekend away.”
Chapter 124
BACK HOME, I worked on the Pierce case until supper time. I ate a quick meal of hamburgers and summer squash with Nana and the kids. I took some more heavy heat for being an incurable and unrepentant workaholic. Nana cut me a slice of pie, and I retreated to my room again. Well fed, but deeply unsatisfied.
I couldn’t help it—I was worried. Thomas Pierce might already have grabbed another victim. He could be performing an “autopsy” tonight. He could send us a message at any time.
I reread the notes I had plastered on the bedroom wall. I felt as if the answer were on the tip of my tongue and it was driving me crazy. People’s lives hung in the balance.
He had “pierced” the heart of Isabella Calais.
His apartment in Cambridge was an obsessive shrine to her memory.
He had returned “home” when he went to Point Pleasant Beach. The opportunity to catch him was there—if we were smart enough, if we were as good as he was.
What were we missing, the FBI and me?
I played more word games with the assortment of clues.
He always “pierces” his victims. I wondered if he was impotent or had become impotent, unable to have a sexual relationship with Isabella.
Mr. Smith operates like a doctor—which Pierce nearly was— which his father and his siblings are. He had failed as a doctor.
I went to bed early, around eleven, but I couldn’t sleep. I guess I’d just wanted to try and turn the case off. I finally called Christine and we talked for about an hour. As we talked and I listened to the music of her voice, I couldn’t help thinking about Pierce and Isabella Calais.
Pierce had loved her. Obsessive love. What would happen if I lost Christine now? What happened to Pierce after the murder? Had he gone mad?
After I got off the phone, I went back at the case again. For a while, I thought his pattern might have something to do with Homer’s Odyssey. He was heading home after a series of tragedies and misfortunes? No, that wasn’t it.
What the hell was the key to his code? If he wanted to drive all of us mad, it was working.
I began to play with the names of the victims, starting with Isabella and ending with Inez. I goes full circle to I? Full circle? Circles? I looked at the clock on the desk—it was almost one-thirty in the morning, but I kept at it.
I wrote—I.
I. Was that something? It could be a start. The personal pronoun I? I tried a few combinations with the letters of the names.
I-S-U…R
C-A-D…
I-A-D…
I stopped after the next three letters: IMU. I stared at the page. I remembered pierced, the obviousness of it. The simplest word-play.
Isabella, Michaela, Ursula. Those were names of the first three victims—in order. Jesus Christ!
I looked at the names of all the victims—in order of the murders. I looked at the first, last, and middle names. I began mixing and matching the names. My heart was pounding. There was something here. Pierce had left us another clue, a series of clues, actually.
It was right there in front of us all the time. No one got it, because Smith’s crimes appeared to be without any pattern. But Pierce had started that theory himself.
I continued to write, using either the first or last or middle names of the victims. It started IMU. Then R, for Robert. D for Dwyer. Was there a subpattern for selecting the name? It could be an arithmetic sequence.
There was a pattern to Pierce-Smith, after all. His mission began that very first night in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He was insane, but I had caught on to his pattern. It started with his love of wordplay.
Thomas Pierce wanted to be caught! But then something changed. He had become ambivalent about his capture. Why?
I looked at what I had assembled. “Son of a bitch,” I muttered. “Isn’t this something. He has a ritual.”
I Isabella Calais.
M Stephanie Michaela Apt.
U Ursula Davies.
R Robert Michael Neel.
D Brigid Dwyer.
E Mary Ellen Klauk.
R Robin Anne Schwartz.
E Clark Daniel Ebel.
D David Hale.
I Isadore Morris.
S Theresa Anne Secrest.
A Elizabeth Allison Gragnano.
B Barbara Maddalena.
E Edwin Mueller.
L Laurie Garnier.
L Lewis Lavine.
A Andrew Klauk.
C Inspector Drew Cabot.
A Dr. Abel Sante.
L Simon Lewis Conklin.
A Anthony Bruno.
I Inez Marquez.
S —————?
It read: I MURDERED ISABELLA CALAIS.
He had made it so easy for us. He was taunting us from the very beginning. Pierce wanted to be stopped, wanted to be caught. So why the hell hadn’t he stopped himself? Why had the string of brutal murders gone on and on?
I MURDERED ISABELLA CALAIS.
The murders were a confession, and maybe Pierce was almost finished. Then what would happen? And who was S?
Was it Smith himself? Did S stand for Smith?
Would he symbolically murder Smith? Then Mr. Smith would disappear forever?
I called Kyle Craig and then Sampson, and I told them what I had found. It was past two in the morning, and neither of them was overjoyed to hear my voice or the news. They didn’t know what to do with the word jumble and neither did I.
“I’m not sure what it gives us,” Kyle said, “what it proves, Alex.”
“I don’t either. Not yet. It does tell us he’s going to kill someone with an S in his name.”
“George Steinbrenner,” Kyle mumbled. “Strom Thurmond. Sting.”
“Go back to sleep,” I said.
My head was doing loops. Sleep wasn’t an option for me. I half expected to get another message from Pierce, maybe even that night. He was mocking us. He had been from the beginning.
I wanted to get a message to him. Maybe I ought to communicate with Pierce through the newspapers or TV? We needed to get off the defensive and attack instead.
I lay in the darkness of my bedroom. Could S be Mr. Smith? I wondered. My head was throbbing. I was past being exhausted. I finally drifted off toward sleep. I was falling off the edge—when I grabbed hold.
I bolted up in bed. I was wide-awake now. “S isn’t Smith.”
I knew who S was.
Chapter 125
THOMAS PIERCE was in Concord, Massachusetts.
Mr. Smith was here, too.
I was finally inside his head.
Sampson and I were ready on a cozy, picturesque side street near the house of Dr. Martin Straw, the man who had been Isabella’s lover. Martin Straw was S in the puzzle.
The FBI had a trap set for Pierce at the house. They didn’t bring huge numbers of agents this time. They were afraid of tipping off Pierce. Kyle Craig was gun-shy and he had every reason to be. Or maybe there was something else going on.
We waited for
the better part of the morning and early afternoon. Concord was a self-contained, somewhat constrained town that seemed to be aging gracefully. The Thoreau and Alcott homes were here somewhere nearby. Every other house seemed to have a historical-looking plaque with a date on it.
We waited for Pierce. And then waited some more. The dreaded stakeout in Podunk dragged on and on. Maybe I was wrong about S.
A voice finally came over the radio in our car. It was Kyle. “We’ve spotted Pierce. He’s here. But something’s wrong, Alex. He’s headed back toward Route Two,” Kyle said. “He’s not going to Dr. Straw’s. He saw something he didn’t like.”
Sampson looked over at me. “I told you he was careful. Good instincts. He is a goddamn Martian, Alex.”
“He spotted something,” I said. “He’s as good as Kyle always said. He knows how the Bureau works, and he saw something.”
Kyle and his team had wanted to let Pierce enter the Straw house before they took him down. Dr. Straw, his wife, and children had been moved from the place. We needed solid evidence against Pierce, as much as we could get. We could lose the case if we got Thomas Pierce to court without it. We definitely could lose.
A message crackled over the shortwave. “He’s headed toward Route Two. Something spooked him. He’s on the run!”
“He has a shortwave! He’s intercepting us!” I grabbed the mike and warned Kyle. “No more talk on the radio. Pierce is listening. That’s how he spotted us.”
I started the engine and gunned the sedan away from the curb. I pushed the speed up to sixty on heavily populated Lowell Road. We were actually closer to Route 2 than the others. We still might be able to cut Pierce off.
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