“It’s been a pretty long time for me,” I tell him.
“For me, too.”
“That’s what Wendy tells me.”
“What?”
“She says all the women at the field office lust after you, but you haven’t given in to one of them.”
“You know what I like about showers in good hotels?” he asks with a teasing smile. “The nozzles are high enough for me to get my head under them.”
“I see. Well. Are you too tall to put your head down here where it can do some good?”
He laughs, then leans down and gently kisses my breast, his tongue cool against my nipple in the steam. I reach down and run a fingernail along him.
“Are you in agony?”
“Mm-hmm,” he moans.
“Good.”
As the hot spray pours over my face and neck, one of his hands flattens in the small of my back, and the other searches lower. Then he is murmuring in his throat, passing the vibration into me. I lean back against one hand and settle upon the other, and in this exquisite embrace feel myself becoming as liquid as the water. His lips slide up my neck to my chin, then my mouth, and then a clamorous ringing shocks us motionless.
“Fire alarm?” he asks, but the sound dies.
“Bathroom phone.”
“Who the hell is that?”
“Fifty bucks says it’s Wendy.”
It rings again, a maddening klaxon in the tiled cubicle.
He sighs. “You’d better answer it.”
I reach around the curtain and dry my hand, then pick up the phone.
“Hello?”
“Jordan, it’s Daniel Baxter.”
I mouth “Baxter” to John, who quickly turns off the water.
“What’s going on?”
“Ah . . . is John up there with you?”
“Just a second, the TV’s too loud.” I press my hand over the transmitter. “He wants to talk to you.”
“My cell phone battery must have died.”
“Or you just didn’t hear it. Which would mean Baxter knew to try my room second.”
John shrugs. “He’s not stupid.”
“You want me to say you’re not here?”
He shakes his head and takes the phone. “What’s up, boss?”
As he listens, his eyes flick back and forth with growing intensity. “When?” he asks. Then he listens some more, and I see in his face that we won’t be spending the night in each other’s arms. Something terrible has happened. “I’ll be right there,” he says. “Right. I’ll leave Wendy in the room with her.” He hangs up, his eyes cloudy with confusion.
“What?” I ask, fighting my rising fears. “They found bodies? They found my sister?”
“No.” He takes my hands in his. “Thalia Laveau has disappeared. Daniel thinks she’s been taken by the UNSUB.”
Nausea rolls through my stomach. “Thalia? But she was under surveillance.”
“She purposefully evaded it.”
“What?”
“He wouldn’t give me the details over an unsecure phone. I won’t know anything more till I get there. Jesus, why her?”
Several answers come to me, but all I can think of is John’s use of the singular pronoun. “Till I get there? What was that about leaving Wendy in the room with me?”
His eyes don’t waver, and if he tells me I’m not going back to the office with him—that in essence I am good enough to sleep with but not to take into a meeting where I may not be wanted by some people—my mouth and breast are the only parts of me he will ever taste.
“Get your clothes on,” he says. “You’re coming.”
I don’t move, and neither does he. Standing naked in the tub with water dripping off us, Baxter’s revelation doesn’t seem quite real. But it is. And I have the strange sensation that once we step out of this tub, it may be a long time before we’re this intimate again.
“You okay?” he asks, touching my cheek.
“I guess. What about you? Can you wait until whenever we get back here?”
He nods, but his heart is not in his answer.
“Do we have thirty seconds to spare?”
He nods again.
“Stay here.”
On the counter by the sink is a sampler pack of soap, shampoo, conditioner, and hand lotion. I uncap the lotion and get back into the tub.
“I’m breaking one of my own rules,” I tell him, “but you can pay me back later.”
He groans as I close my moistened hands around him, but in the few seconds it takes him to lose consciousness, my head fills with images of the empathetic woman I met this afternoon, the semi-lesbian Sabine artist, Thalia Laveau, and my heart balloons with terror for her, a woman who fled her home and family to escape sexual abuse, who is now at the mercy of a man without mercy, a woman I am unlikely ever to see again.
THE EMERGENCY OPERATIONS Center, which has been kept from me until now, is the pounding heart of the NOKIDS investigation. It’s huge—more than three thousand square feet—with long rows of tables marching toward the front of the room, like a high school science lab built to heroic scale. Behind each row of tables sit rows of men and women with banks of phones before them, the unused ones showing bright red decals reading “NOT SECURE!”
John posts Wendy at the door, then leads me into the EOC. Wendy was quiet during the ride over, and even when John tried to draw her into our conversation, her answers were clipped and professional. I felt for her, but there’s more to worry about now than hurt feelings. As John and I reach the first table, at least twenty faces turn to mine, then look at each other with puzzlement. The unspoken question might as well be painted on the air: What the hell is she doing in here? But after a few seconds, they go back to their work.
At the front of the Operations Center, facing the tables, is an array of oversized computer monitors showing views of various buildings. The buildings are the residences of the four main suspects, plus the Woldenberg Art Center at Tulane. As I watch, a car drives past Frank Smith’s cottage on Esplanade. I’m looking at live television surveillance of various parts of New Orleans. Beyond the monitors hangs a massive wall-mounted screen with lines of type scrolling down it a few clicks at a time. There are time notations beside each line. It’s an unfolding timeline of the entire investigation-in-progress, reporting everything from the movements and phone calls of the suspects to the activities of the various law-enforcement agencies investigating Thalia Laveau’s disappearance. I feel like I’m standing in the headquarters of Big Brother in Orwell’s 1984.
“So this is it,” I say softly. “Where are Baxter and Lenz?”
“Baxter’s right here,” says a voice behind me.
“As is Lenz,” says the psychiatrist.
“Joined at the hip,” I say, turning to face them.
The ISU chief looks as though he hasn’t slept for thirty-six hours. The dark circles under his eyes have become black bags, and his skin has a prison pallor. He gives John a reproving glance but voices no displeasure at my presence. Dr. Lenz appears to have changed suits and freshened up since this afternoon; he probably had an agent chauffeur him over to the Windsor Court for tea and scones and a midnight rubdown.
“How did she do it?” asks John.
“I’ll show you,” Baxter replies.
He walks up to a technician near the monitors and says something, then returns. One of the screens goes dark, and then we’re looking at a frontal view of the Victorian house in which Thalia rented rooms. It’s night, and sheets of rain cloud the view. As we watch, a woman wearing a floppy hat and carrying an umbrella runs out of the house and gets into a white Nissan Sentra parked on the puddled street.
“That’s Jo Ann Diggs,” says Baxter, “one of the women who rents a room on Laveau’s floor.”
The Sentra pulls quickly away from the curb, but a few yards down the street it skids to an abrupt stop, then backs up. Diggs gets out, runs back to the house, and disappears inside, looking for all the world like a woman wh
o forgot her purse or the DVD she was supposed to return to Blockbuster. About twenty seconds later, she hurries back out of the house with a book in her hand, trots to her car, and drives away.
“That,” says Baxter, “was Thalia Laveau.”
“The roommate helped her,” says John.
“Laveau was waiting just inside the door. She took the hat and umbrella and ran out to Diggs’s car, while Diggs went back up to Laveau’s apartment and watched television to cover.”
“How did you figure it out?” I ask.
“Earlier today, Laveau called a woman friend from the campus and made an appointment to meet her at eleven tonight. The woman lives on Lake Avenue, on the Orleans-Jefferson Parish line. When Laveau didn’t show by midnight, the friend called the NOPD. NOPD called us.”
“The woman claimed Laveau was coming over for tea and sympathy,” says Lenz, “but obviously it was more than that. She evaded our surveillance to protect her lover’s identity.”
“Maybe it wasn’t sexuality she was hiding,” says John. “Laveau could be involved strictly as the painter. Today’s police interrogation could have scared her enough to make her bolt. By setting up a meeting with this other woman, then missing it, she leads us to conclude that she’s become a victim.”
Baxter starts to speak, but exasperation makes me jump in first. “You guys need a woman on your team around the clock.”
“Why is that?” asks Lenz.
“To keep your heads out of your asses. I’m going back to my hotel. You don’t have a prayer of finding Thalia with this kind of thinking.”
“John,” says Baxter. “Arthur wasn’t guessing. Laveau did evade the surveillance to protect this woman. She’s gay but very private. They had a long-standing relationship. Only her fear for Laveau made her tell us the truth. She can alibi Thalia not only for the Dorignac’s snatch, but also for at least five of the other abductions.”
I shake my head, fighting unexpected tears of helplessness.
“I’m sorry,” John says. “I can’t help thinking that way. It’s a habit, working out the logic.”
“It’s not you,” I tell him.
Neither Baxter nor Lenz speaks, and I’m not sure whether it’s because of my tears or because they sense our new intimacy.
“I think I have to go.”
I walk past them toward the wide door, but Baxter calls after me. “What would you do, Jordan? To find Thalia?”
I stop and turn, but I don’t go back to them. “I’d assume the obvious. One of the male suspects has been lusting after Thalia from the start. Our questioning rattled him. He knows it’s a matter of time before he’s nailed. Faced with that, he decides he has nothing to lose by indulging himself with Thalia.”
“All three were under round-the-clock surveillance,” says Lenz.
“Thalia didn’t have any trouble eluding it.”
Baxter sighs and turns to John. “Frank Smith was in a restaurant at the time Laveau left her house, and afterward. It couldn’t be him.”
“Wheaton and Gaines?”
“Gaines was at his shotgun on Freret. By the way, forensics says his van was clean. No blood, hair, fibers, nothing. Like it was steam-cleaned in the last day or two.”
John nods suspiciously, but his mind has already gone past this information. “What about Wheaton?”
“Wheaton was painting at the Woldenberg Center.”
“What about Jordan’s idea of natural light? Have we got aerial shots of all the courtyards or enclosed gardens in the city?”
“That’s just not practical,” says Baxter. “This city stretches over two hundred square miles, and that’s being conservative. The killing house—or painting house, I guess—could be anywhere in that area, and owned under a name we can’t possibly trace to one of the suspects.”
“The painter wouldn’t want to drive twenty miles every time he wanted to work on a painting. It’s human nature. He wouldn’t want to drive any farther than he absolutely has to.”
“Granted,” says Lenz.
“Wheaton and Gaines live within a mile of the university. Frank Smith lives at the edge of the French Quarter. Let’s get aerial photos of every square block of those areas, and throw in the Garden District. Then we’ll look for sheltered courtyards where the painter would have good natural light.”
“The leaves are still on the goddamn trees,” Baxter argues. “We could miss a hundred courtyards in the French Quarter alone.”
“Then get architectural plans!” John snaps. “We should have agents at the courthouse doing title searches on every building in those two areas. We may find some connection to one of the suspects.”
Baxter looks around the Operations Center, and two dozen shocked faces quickly turn back to their work.
“I guess that’s all we’ve got,” he says. “Other than Wheaton’s nocturnal visits to Frank Smith.”
“And we’re on that in the morning,” John says with a tone of finality.
I do believe the man wants to come back to the hotel with me. I just might forgive him his earlier fuzzy thinking about Thalia Laveau.
But Daniel Baxter has other ideas.
“John, you coordinate with the aerial surveillance unit. If you start making calls now, you can have the assets in the air at first light.”
This is obviously a job someone else could do, but John has no trouble reading Baxter’s intent. He nods wearily, then glances my way with a look of apology.
“What time are we talking to Smith and Wheaton?” I ask.
“Be here by eight A.M.,” Baxter replies. “Agent Travis will drive you over.”
The informality of “Wendy” has disappeared. Baxter obviously foresees potential conflicts developing out of the intimacy between John and me.
“Eight, then.”
I feel a strangely proprietary urge to give John a kiss on the cheek, but he’d probably faint from embarrassment, so I spare him.
“If you want those pictures to be worth the trouble,” I tell Baxter, “you should get your planes up tonight with thermal imaging cameras. Brick and stone will have enough temperature differential with trees and foliage to make plant cover irrelevant. You can shoot the same grids in the morning with infrared film for backup detail. By nine-twenty, you should have sunlight at thirty degrees on both horizons, but not much cloud cover. That’s the best time.”
While the three men stare in amazement, I say, “Good night, boys,” and walk to the door where Wendy awaits.
19
NEW ORLEANS STEAMS in the morning after rain. Even with a nip of fall in the air, the humidity wilts starched collars almost on contact. On this wet morning, Dr. Lenz has decided that he wants me in on the second Wheaton interview after all. I’m not sure why, and I didn’t have time to question him about it. When I arrived at the field office, the building was besieged by camera crews. Sometime before the early news shows ran, the sheriff of Jefferson Parish announced to reporters that his office, working closely with the FBI, had developed strong suspects in the series of kidnappings that had plagued the city for over a year. Thalia Laveau’s disappearance has already started a new wave of panic across the city.
This morning’s interview will not happen at Tulane’s Woldenberg Art Center, where we last met Wheaton. Today we’re parked in front of the artist’s temporary residence on Audubon Place, a private street adjoining the Tulane campus. Audubon Place has a massive iron gate complete with stone guardhouse in the tradition of World War II blockhouses, and the massive homes that line it stand out even compared to those on St. Charles Avenue, which Audubon Place intersects. The one Roger Wheaton occupies is owned by a wealthy Tulane alumnus who’s been living abroad for two years. It’s a palatial house that, combined with the lot and its location, looks like about two million dollars of real estate. But that’s here. In San Francisco the place would cost nine million.
John, Lenz, and I approach the front door together. Before we reach it, Roger Wheaton walks onto his porch in blue pajama pan
ts, a Tulane sweatshirt, his wire-rimmed bifocals, and his trademark white cotton gloves.
“I saw you through the window,” he says as we mount the steps to the front gallery. “I saw a report on television about an hour ago. Has Thalia really disappeared?”
“I’m afraid so,” says John. “May we come in?”
“Of course.”
Wheaton leads us through a foyer into a magnificently appointed drawing room. With his long frame, pajamas, and too-long hair, he looks incongruous in the luxurious chair into which he folds himself. Only his white gloves fit the room, giving him the appearance of a newly wakened reveler sober enough to have removed his tux after a Mardi Gras ball, but too drunk to have remembered to remove his gloves. But the gloves are no accoutrements of style; they are soft armor for hands that cannot function in the slightest cold. John and I sit together on a sofa opposite the artist, and Lenz takes a chair to our right.
“Hello, again,” Wheaton says as I sit, his long face conveying silent grief. “Are you taking more photographs today?”
“I wish I was. You’re a wonderful subject.”
“We just came from working another case,” says Lenz. “Agent Travis was with us, and we didn’t want to leave her in the car.”
Agent Travis? Why am I really here? Is Lenz testing Wheaton’s reaction to me yet again?
“Gentlemen,” says the artist, “do you believe Thalia was taken by the same person who took the others?”
“Yes,” says John. “We do.”
Wheaton sighs and closes his eyes. “I was very angry yesterday, because of the invasion of my privacy. The police caused me considerable inconvenience, and they weren’t even civil. All that seems a small thing now. What do you require of me?”
John looks at Lenz, who decides to lead with his chin.
“Mr. Wheaton, we’re told you’ve made several lengthy visits to the private residence of one of your students, Frank Smith.”