The Prettiest Feathers

by John Philpin

  TO: Lanie

  FROM: Pop

  Getting fired from a job that I’ve never accepted is a significant insult. But I see that despite my dismissal from the case, Lt. Swartz continues to view me as part of the team. And apparently he sees you the same way, despite your suspension (bad news travels fast). No wonder I like Swartz. The only authority he seems to respect is his own.

  If I were to join this renegade investigative unit that you and Swartz have going, I suppose that you would be my boss. But then it’s always been that way, hasn’t it? We need to talk about your managerial skills. I’ve already done a few hours’ work for you, but you haven’t even mentioned a benefits package. I’ll want 100% insurance, of course (including Rx and dental), and automatic vacation whenever the fishing looks promising. Any problems with that?

  Although Lt. Swartz is continuing to fax information, he has warned me not to communicate with him at the office. He says I’m to run everything through your fax machine at home. He apologized for the inconvenience, but says it’s a necessity—“because Hanson suffers from rectocranial inversion.” I’m going to push for that to be included in the new Diagnostic and Statistical Manual.

  To business. Another photo for you to consider: #119 from the Harris case. It’s not a crime scene shot (she was found in a cemetery); it’s from the search of her apartment. Again, use a glass. Look at the saucer under the jade plant. If I’m not mistaken, that’s an epaulet feather from a red-winged blackbird. Your wolf has many signatures.

  A friend at Cambridge PD checked for me on that strangulation homicide that the real Dr. Chadwick mentioned to your partner. No photos, but they still had the inventory taken at her apartment. There was a feather. It meant nothing, however, because she worked part-time at the Peabody Museum there. Also, re Chadwick’s young friend who fell (or was pushed) to her death: the final entries in her diary do refer to flying like a bird, but they are not the words of someone suicidal or psychotic. Quite simply, she was enchanted by the swallows that fly up among the buildings in Boston’s business district A “strange new friend” had taken her there. She wrote that she wanted to learn more about him, and she pondered what it would be like to fly like the swallows. It was rather charming, really—not the end of the world, more like the beginning of something.

  Wolf’s signatures change. They don’t represent the kind of linkage cops like to see. Because he knows about investigations, he changes.

  Some victims are displayed; some are left where they fall. Some (apparently) are buried north of Hasty Hills. He enjoys manipulating the crime scene (before, during, or after the fact?). He puts things in, takes things out, or just moves things around. It’s not always the same.

  I fear that all of your various pieces of evidence will lead nowhere. You’ll have names, places to check—and you have to do this, of course—but you won’t find him, and he knows that. Your federal friends will be content to focus on their suspect, waiting to see if there are any more killings with a similar MO, but I can’t accept that. They consider all the Wolf/Chadwick material to be a low priority right now because the information they feed into their databases doesn’t include the subtleties—this killer’s hallmark—that can be seen only in a close reading of the individual crime scene reports.

  There is linkage. It may not be a conscious thing with Wolf (although I fear that it is), but it’s there. Rebecca Holbrook was the young woman who disappeared on her way to work at the bottling plant. A year before her disappearance, a man was killed in an industrial accident at the plant. Alan Chadwick, MD, was a member of the inspection team that spent three days evaluating the plant’s safety and medical response procedures. Coincidence?

  A few months before her disappearance, Ms. Holbrook attended her tenth high school reunion in Pawtucket, RI. A secretary at that school, Paulette Carson (who had no connection to the reunion or Ms. Holbrook), was found strangled in her apartment. Unsolved. No feather. But there was an audiotape in her cassette player that close friends insisted she would never have bought: The Teardrop Explodes—another Julian Cope incarnation. Coincidence?

  Ms. Carson was originally from Ansonia, CT—the same town where Susan Cullen disappeared from a convenience store ten months ago. She’s the one who was found floating in the river. No music. No feather. But someone had broken into her apartment, fingered his way through a few drawers, helped himself to a bowl of soup, and walked away with a book—a collection of poetry. Coincidence?

  I’m beginning to get a feel for this gentleman. I don’t like it. Never do. Something nags in one of the far corners of my mind. When it decides to make itself known, I’ll advise.

  With the help of a friend at Social Security, I was able to locate Paul Wolf’s half-sister: Sarah Humphrey, 492 Devil’s Kitchen Road, Casselberry, Florida. Phone: (407) 555-6073. Go see her.

  Pop

  P.S. I would have expected Wolf to blow out the candles at Sarah’s house. Why didn’t he?

  The coffee was ready, but I sent off an answer to Pop before pouring it.

  Pop,

  If you know about the suspension, you know about the polygraph. I walked out before Hanson had a chance to track me down. I don’t have time to deal with him. I’ve got a killer to catch. Rather, we do. So I’ll be camping out at Robert’s for a while. Right now, he’s getting checked out physically, then he’ll be transferred to Tranquil Acres for 28 days of withdrawal and soul-searching.

  You’re supposed to tell me why our boy didn’t blow out the candles. My guess is that he hung around, enjoyed the house for a while. We know that he took a shower. Luminal lit up the bathroom, especially the tub. Remember, by the time he was ready to leave, the candles had burned themselves down to nothing. More evidence that he was comfortable there?

  Yes, I’ll go to Florida. The timing of your request (read “demand”) that I pay Sarah Humphrey a visit is perfect. The less I show my face around this town right now, the better.

  Also, I’ll call Lt. Swartz and let him know that I’ll find a way to get your faxes to him. I know he’ll continue to work with us.

  Keep on loving me. Think you can do that?

  Lanie

  I wanted to tell Pop about Robert, about my need to be close to him—and about Susan Walker. But I’ve never been too sure how much Pop knows about matters of the heart. I don’t think Mom ran off to Africa simply because she was crazy about chimps. I think she got tired of the way Pop kept retreating from her, going somewhere deep inside his head. Sometimes she had a look on her face, like she felt abandoned—even when Pop was right there, in the same room. That’s why, after Mom took off, I didn’t blame her. I blamed him.

  But then, maybe I didn’t know my father as well as I liked to think I did. Maybe he had a romantic side that he kept hidden around others. I have suspected that he has a woman with him in Michigan. One time when he made it out to a post office, he mailed me a picture of him sitting in a boat, fishing. It took two days for it to occur to me that someone else snapped that picture. But who? He has never mentioned anyone else being there, not a single soul, in any of his faxes.

  After sending off my missive to Pop, I downed a glass of orange juice and an oatmeal cookie, then headed for Sarah’s house. My car (a big Buick named Karen Ann) is a relic from my college days—a gift from Pop. Since I’ve always had use of one of the department’s cars for any serious driving I’ve needed to do, I haven’t bothered keeping Karen Ann tuned up. She doesn’t even ask to have her oil changed. But I thought she could use some exercise, so I drove her over to Sarah’s place.

  I hadn’t turned in my key to the lockbox on Sarah’s front door. I wanted to pull a photo of Sarah out of one of those albums on the shelf in her closet. I didn’t intend to linger-just grab a recent photo for ID purposes—but once I started turning pages, I couldn’t stop. I looked at picture after picture of wedded bliss. For a marriage that was, in Robert’s words, pure hell, it certainly looked a lot different on paper. His arm around her in one picture, hers
around him in another. Both of them grinning at their infant child in still another.

  I needed to see Robert. There was so much about this case that I wanted to run by him. I also just wanted to sit there with him, to be in the same space that he occupied. I knew that I was feeling vulnerable, and being around that guy had always been an antidote for that feeling.

  As soon as I arrived at Robert’s room, I sent Lymann on an errand. Then I closed the door and sat down on the edge of the bed.

  “I’ve got news,” I told him.

  “I heard about your suspension.”

  “I’m lying low. If you want to reach me, I’ll be at your apartment.”

  “Tonight?”

  “For as long as I need to be there.”

  Robert was looking at me in a new way—like he was appraising me.

  “What?” I asked.

  “Tell me about the polygraph. Where’d you screw up?”

  “When Fibs asked if I knew who killed Sarah. I know, and you know. It was Wolf.”

  He seemed to relax.

  “Yeah. I’ll probably fail mine, too,” he said.

  There was a tap at the door, then Special Agent Walker stuck her head inside and said, “Hope I’m not interrupting anything.”

  “Hi, Susan.”

  That’s all Robert said, but the words were beside the point. I was staring at his face. I saw his eyes, how his whole expression changed when he looked at her. I’d never seen that look in his eyes before—except maybe in the pictures of him and Sarah and Liza.

  I got up off the bed and mumbled something about having to run.

  “Not on my account, I hope,” Susan said.

  “No. I have to get some sleep. I have a doctor’s appointment in the morning.”

  “You okay?” Robert asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “You sure?”

  “It’s nothing. The flu, maybe mono. I’m just run down.”

  As I was leaving, I could hear Lymann telling Susan that she wasn’t on the list of approved visitors. She followed me all the way to the parking garage, but she was in stilettos; I was in sneakers. She didn’t catch up with me until I was unlocking my car door.

  “We’ve gotten off to a rotten start,” she said, “but I want you to know that I’m still hoping we can work together on this.”

  She offered me her card, but I didn’t take it. The look on her face might have been genuine hurt.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I really am. I know I’m being a bitch. I don’t have any claims on Sinclair. It’s been over for months.”

  “That’s what he told me,” Walker said.

  “Yeah,” I said, feeling even more alone than I had earlier.

  “I’m going to tell you something that I haven’t admitted to anybody else. Maybe not even to myself,” Walker said. “Becoming a federal agent is an experience in brainwashing. Everything we do, we do for the company. Right or wrong has nothing to do with it. We’re told that our job is to gather information, period. But I don’t buy that. I should have been a cop, like you. I need to make arrests, see results. So if there’s ever anything I can do for you that’s, well, off the record, let me know. It’ll be just between us.”

  “I’m on suspension,” I said.

  “I know.”

  “I failed my polygraph.”

  “I know that, too. And I know that isn’t going to keep you out of this case.”

  “Okay,” I told her. “I’ll keep your offer in mind.”

  But when I drove away, I didn’t head straight for Robert’s apartment. I knew she might be tailing me. I drove to Fuzzy’s place instead. When he opened the door, I walked right into his arms. That hug was the best thing I had felt all day.

  I ended up spending the night on Fuzzy’s couch, remaining in the house even after he took off for work at 3:45. About 8:30, I got up, took a shower, put my dirty clothes back on, booked a flight to Florida, then drove over to the Women’s Center.

  Carol’s diagnosis was a post-flu, secondary infection—“walking pneumonia.” She gave me a prescription for an antibiotic, and I had it filled as soon as I left the clinic. She also ordered bed rest, but that I couldn’t do. I just had to hope that the medication did its job fast.

  Robert

  The does had me pumped full of something that felt worse than booze. I couldn’t think—couldn’t get a handle on anything.

  “I didn’t think Lane would care about me and Susan,” I told Fuzzy. “I figured that she and I were all over. She was looking for commitment—all that shit. I couldn’t handle it, and that was that.”

  “She might not have known how she was feeling,” Fuzzy said.

  “We could’ve talked about it at least.”

  “And what would you have said? That you’re ready to rush off to the altar?”

  I rolled over on my side. “Not that,” I mumbled.

  “Bobby, some day you’re gonna get by you and Sarah and Liza. Then maybe you’ll look at what it means to be in a relationship. Monica and I had twenty-eight years of it-some good, some bad. It was work, Bobby. To make it go that long, you have to work at it. And I miss her, too. We were gonna move to Phoenix when I retired.”

  “Sometimes I think that Lane and I could have worked things out,” I said.

  “Why not now?” Fuzzy asked. “Why are ya talkin’ like there’s no chance now? Get by it. Think about her. Think about the two of you, if you want to.”

  “You got anything to drink, Fuzzy?” I asked.

  “I’m off the stuff,” he said, and got up and walked across the room. “Hey, Lymann, wanna play some cards?”

  Lane was jealous. But she was the one that broke things off. I hadn’t known that she still wanted there to be something going on between us.

  “What time they putting me in storage?” I asked.

  “Soon as the doctor checks you out, we go,” Lymann said.

  “Tranquil Acres?”

  Fuzzy laughed. “You know where it is? Up above Hasty Hills.”

  “I can’t stand it,” I said.

  “You see the morning paper?”

  “It’s around here somewhere. I can’t read. It blurs.”

  “Purrington confessed,” Fuzzy said. “Says he did Harris. He’s probably getting arraigned right now—one count here. They’ll have a separate arraignment on the five up north.”

  So I end up in a rubber room, and Lane holes up at my place. She can’t bring Wolf down alone, and Hanson will isolate her. He’s got Purrington. No one can fault him.

  “Hanson’s picture in the paper?”

  “Him and Willoughby,” Fuzzy said.

  “Case closed,” I said.

  After the doc cleared me for takeoff, Lymann strapped me into a wheelchair and rolled me down to meet Fuzzy with the car. My favorite sergeant wasn’t kidding: he headed north on the interstate, toward Hasty Hills.

  “You really quit drinking?” I asked Fuzzy.

  “Yeah.”

  “Just like that.”

  “When you went out on me, Bobby, we were talking about God calling me home. You shoot the shit out of the Sea Breeze, I figure you’re getting a person-to-person, collect. I didn’t want to see you go, and I’m not in much of a hurry either. Sobered me right up.”

  I watched the mile markers go by. The road was familiar. I wondered how many times Wolf had driven up and down here.

  The night Lane kicked in my door, I told her the truth. I was scared. And I was scared going to the drunk farm, too, but in a lot of ways it was a relief. I wanted Wolf dead, but the shape I was in, I wasn’t the man to do it. Lane would do whatever she could. Swartz would help her. And maybe in a month we’d at least know where the bastard is.

  Fuzzy left the interstate, but continued north on a two-lane road through woods and rolling hills. He had to slow down when we passed a state police operation—the dig on Wolf’s, aka Doc Chadwick’s, property.

  “You hear anything about that?”

  “Staties ain’t sayin
g much,” Fuzzy said. “Last I knew they were up to eleven.”

  Eleven more dead.

  “Willoughby and Hanson gonna tie that to Purrington, too? He just happened to choose this land for his mass grave?”

  “You want my opinion,” Fuzzy said, “I think they’re afraid to open this up—afraid of what they’ll find. Another Zodiac or Green River killer. Maybe another Ted Bundy. Thirty victims? Forty? Fifty? And they can’t catch him. Hanson would be back on a beat, and Willoughby would be running for the senate in Virginia. Lucky thing Purrington was in town when the manure hit the fan.”

  “Somebody’s got to stop this guy,” I said.

  The car picked up speed again. I leaned back in the seat and figured it was time to let go. There wasn’t anything I could do.

  Lane had done everything in the world for me—kept me alive. I was so hung up on Sarah, I just never saw it. For me to be with Lane meant I wasn’t with Sarah, and that meant I was at least a little crazy, a little brittle, a lot blind.

  I remember that first night when Lane blocked my way in the parking lot. She was telling me then that she loved me. I figured she just wanted to get laid. So I followed her home.

  Somewhere in all those months of drunken calisthenics there was a lot more than good sex. And I missed it.

  When Fuzzy shook me awake at the entrance to Tranquil Acres, I felt as if I’d had my first real rest in years. I’d fallen asleep somewhere along the way. I was weak, tired, and maybe getting my first hint of what would be, to me, an altered state of consciousness—sobriety.

  “All out for the Ho-Ho Hotel,” Fuzzy said.

  Lymann opened the car door for me.

  “Fuzzy, tell Lane I said I’m sorry. For everything. Tell her that.”

  He nodded. “Good luck, Bobby.”

  We shook hands.

  Lymann helped me out of the car and to a standing position.

  “Walk or ride?” he asked.

  “You keep an arm on me and I think I can walk,” I said. “You going through the program, too?”