Chapter 77
I FOUND SAMPSON AND BILLIE just as he was opening a beer in the kitchen, and I took it out of his hands. There was something I wanted to get out of the way with the big man before the festivities really got rolling.
“Follow me. I need to talk to you—before either of us has a drink,” I told him.
“Ooh, mysterious,” Billie said, and laughed at the two of us, the way she usually does. Billie is an ER nurse, and she’s seen it all.
“Come on upstairs,” I said to John.
“I already had a drink,” John said. “This is number two.”
“Come anyway. We’ll just be a minute, Billie.”
From my office in the attic, I could still hear the music muted through the floor. I recognized Dr. Kayla’s laugh amid the indistinct thrum of party voices.
Sampson leaned against the wall. “You wanted to see me, sir? In your office?”
He had on a funny T-shirt from his basketball team in the older men’s league at St. Anthony’s. It said, “Nobody moves, nobody gets hurt.”
“I didn’t want to mix work with the party,” I said.
“But you can’t help yourself.” Sampson grinned. “Can you?”
“I’m not home for too long. I have to go back to L.A., and I don’t want to wait on this anymore.”
“Well, that’s a good hook,” he said. “What’s the pitch? Let’s hear it.”
“Basically? Director Burns and I want you to think seriously about coming to work at the Bureau. We want you to make the move, John. Were you expecting it?” I asked.
He laughed. “More or less, of course. You’ve been hinting around enough. Burns looking to blackify the Bureau, sugar?”
“No. Not that I’d mind.”
What Burns wanted at the Bureau was more agents who knew the value of fieldwork, and people he could trust, his team. If I could recruit only one person, I’d told him, John Sampson would be my first choice. That was good enough for Burns.
“I’ve already got the go-ahead from the director’s office,” I said. “Ron Burns wants the same things I do. Or maybe it’s the other way around.”
“You mean he wants me?” Sampson asked.
“Well, we couldn’t get Jerome or Rakeem, or the crossing guard at the Sojourner Truth school. So yeah, he’ll settle for you.”
Sampson laughed loudly, one of my favorite sounds. “I miss you, too,” he said. “And believe it or not, I have an answer. I want you to come back to the Washington PD. How’s that for turnaround? You’re right about one thing—we do have to get back together. One way or the other. I guess I vote for the other.”
I couldn’t help laughing out loud, too; then John and I banged closed fists, agreeing that we needed to work together again, one way or the other.
I told Sampson that I’d think about his surprising proposal, and he said he’d think about mine, too. Then Sampson swung open the office door and let in the music from downstairs.
Chapter 78
“ARE WE ALLOWED to have a drink now?” said Sampson. “It’s a party, sugar. You do remember parties?”
“Vaguely,” I said.
Two minutes later, I had a beer in one hand and a rib dripping homemade barbecue sauce in the other. I found Jannie and Damon in the dining room playing Thirteen with a cousin of theirs, Michelle, and Kayla Coles. To be honest, though, it was Kayla who drew me over.
“Are you ignoring our guests?” I asked the kids.
“Not these two,” Jannie deadpanned, with a nod to Kayla and Michelle.
“No, they’re whipping my butt too much to be ignoring me,” Kayla said, sending Jannie and Damon into conspiratorial laughs. There it was again. A woman and my kids, getting along. What was it about that? What was I missing?
I gave Dr. Kayla a long look as she shuffled and dealt the cards. She was incredibly grounded, and good-looking without trying to be. The thing of it was, I liked her. I’d liked Kayla for a long, long time, ever since we were kids growing up in Southeast. And so?
“You looking at my cards?” she asked, breaking through my reverie, or whatever it was supposed to be.
“Not at your cards,” Jannie broke in. “At you, Dr. Kayla. He’s sneaky like that.”
“All right, that’s enough kidding around. I’m out of here. I have to go help Nana,” I said. I rolled my eyes for Kayla’s benefit, and then I walked away. Quickly.
“Don’t go,” Kayla said. But I was already through the doorway.
As I headed to the kitchen, there was only one thing on my mind, though. How could I get Kayla alone at the party? And where was I going to take her on our first date?
Chapter 79
I TOOK KAYLA to Kinkead’s on purpose. It had been my and Christine’s favorite spot, but before that, it had been my favorite spot, and I was reclaiming it. Kayla arrived less than five minutes after I did, and I liked that. She was on time, no game-playing. She had on a black wrap cashmere sweater, black slacks, and kitten-heel sling-backs, and she was kind of dazzling again. In her own way.
“I’m sorry, Alex,” she said as she walked up to me at the bar. “I’m punctual. I know it’s a big bore and takes all the mystery out of things, but I just can’t help myself. Next time, and there will be a next time, I’ll force myself to be fashionably late. At least ten minutes, maybe fifteen.”
“You’re forgiven,” I said, and suddenly I felt incredibly relaxed. “You just broke the ice, huh?”
Kayla winked. “I did, didn’t I? Just like that. God, I’m good, aren’t I? Sneaky, just like you are.”
“You know the axiom that men don’t like women who threaten them because they’re too smart?” I said. “You’re scary smart.”
“But you’re the exception that proves the rule, right? You like smart women just fine. Anyway, I’m not that smart. Tell you why—my theory anyway.”
“Tell away. I’ll have a beer, Pilsner on tap,” I said to the bartender.
Kayla continued, “I see all these supposedly supersmart people at the hospital, doctors and researchers who are complete disasters in their personal lives. So how smart can they really be? What, they’re smart because they can memorize facts and other people’s ideas? Because they know every rock-and-roll song ever recorded? Or the storyline for every episode of Bewitched?”
I rolled my eyes. “You know the storylines of Bewitched? You know people who know the storylines of Bewitched?”
“My God, no. Maybe ER. And Scrubs.”
“I know a lot of R & B songs,” I told her. “Haven’t figured out life too good, though.”
Kayla laughed. “I disagree. I’ve met your kids, Alex.”
“Have you met Christine Johnson?”
“Stop it. Anyway, I have met her. She’s an impressive woman. Completely. A little messed-up right now.”
“All right, I’m not going to argue. I could make a good case against myself, though.”
We talked like that, laughed a lot, drank some, ate good food. Interestingly, we stayed away from talk about Nana and the kids, maybe because that would have been too easy. As always, I enjoyed Kayla’s sense of humor, but most of all, her confidence. She was comfortable in her own skin, not defensive. I liked being out on a date with her.
We were finishing an after-dinner drink when she declared, “This has been nice, Alex. Very nice and easy.”
“Surprised?” I asked her.
“No, not really. Well, maybe a little bit,” she admitted. “Maybe a lot.”
“Want to tell me why?”
“Hmm. I guess because I knew you had no idea who I was, even though you probably thought that you did.”
“When I see you, you’re usually working,” I said. “You’re being Dr. Kayla of Neighborhood Health Services.”
“Take two aspirin, don’t you dare call me at home,” she said, and laughed. “I guess what’s hard is that lots of people confide in me, but most of the time, I don’t get to confide back.”
I smiled. “You have anything you
’d like to tell me?”
Kayla shook her head. “I think that I said it already. This has been good. I enjoyed tonight even more than I thought I would.”
“Right. And there will be a next time. That’s what you said.”
She gave me the most delightful wink. “Wasn’t I right about that?”
“You were right. If you’ll see me again.”
“Oh, I’ll see you, Alex. Of course I will. I want to see how this turns out.”
Chapter 80
THE NEXT AFTERNOON, when I got back to the West Coast, the L.A. Bureau field office was buzzing about the latest in the Mary Smith case, but also about me, which wasn’t good news, to put it mildly.
Apparently, word had gotten around that Maddux Fielding and I hadn’t exactly hit it off after he replaced Jeanne Galletta. The Bureau-LAPD relationship had always been tenuous, more functional on some cases than others, and this was a definite downturn.
The general gossip/debate, from what I gathered, was about whether or not Agent Cross from D.C. had waltzed in with nothing to lose, and then cavalierly screwed things up for the LAPD.
I let it bother me for about five minutes; then I moved on.
Mary Smith, aka the Hollywood Stalker, aka Dirty Mary, was turning out to be one of the busiest, fastest-moving—and fastest-changing—murder cases anyone could remember. Even the old hands were talking about it. Especially now that there was a little controversy mixed in with the moments of dizzying mayhem.
Another e-mail had arrived the morning I got to town. I hadn’t seen it yet, but the word was that this one was different, and LAPD was already scrambling to respond. Mary Smith had sent a warning this time, and her message had been taken very seriously.
We gathered in the fourteenth-floor conference room, designated weeks ago as the Bureau’s Mary Smith nerve center. Photos, newspaper clippings, and lab reports lined the walls. A temporary phone bank sat along one side of a huge cherry table that dominated the room with both its length and width.
The meeting was to be run by Fred Van Allsburg, and he breezed in ten minutes after the rest of us got there. For some reason his late arrival made me think of Kayla Coles and how she liked to be punctual at all times. Kayla believes that people who are habitually late don’t have respect for others—or at least, for clocks.
Fred Van Allsburg had a dusty old nickname—the Stop Sign. It dated back to a United States-Central American heroin corridor he’d shut down in the late eighties. From what I knew, he had done little of note since then except climb the bureaucratic ladder. Having worked with him now, I had no more respect for him than the job required, per his rank and seniority.
I think he knew that, so it caught me off guard when he started the meeting the way he did.
“I just want to say a few things before we get going,” he began. “As you all know by now, we’re quasi on our own where LAPD is concerned. Maddux Fielding seems intent on going it alone if he can, and he’s outdoing himself at being a huge pain in the ass. Isn’t that right, Alex?”
A knowing chuckle went around the room. Heads turned my way. “Uh, no comment,” I said, to more laughter.
Van Allsburg raised his voice to quiet everyone. “As far as I’m concerned, we keep our lines of communication open, and that means full and timely disclosure to LAPD on anything we know. If I hear about anyone doing any petty withholding, they’ll find themselves back in fingerprints on their next case. Fielding can run his end of things how he likes. I’m not going to let that compromise our own professionalism. Is that clear to everybody?”
I was pleasantly surprised by Van Allsburg’s response to the situation. Apparently, he had allegiances of his own, even if it meant sticking by me.
We then moved on to Mary Smith’s new e-mail. He used the conference room’s projection system to put the message up on the big screen where we could all see it.
As I read it through, I was struck not by what she had written, but by what she seemed to be saying to us. It was the same thing I’d noticed before, in her earlier messages, but much plainer now, like a steady drumbeat that had gotten louder over time.
Come and get me, she was telling us.
Here I am. Just come and get me. What’s taking you so long?
And she’d sent the e-mail to the late Arnold Griner, the dead letter office, so to speak.
Chapter 81
To:
[email protected] From: Mary Smith
To: The one who will be next:
We’ve already met, you and I, so how about that?
Do you remember? I do.
You gave me an autograph the other day, and you were so full of your perky, charming mannerisms. You seemed so approachable, so down-to-earth. I don’t want to say where we met, but you wouldn’t remember anyway. I told you how much I liked your movies, and you smiled as though I hadn’t said anything at all. It reminded me of how invisible I can be to you people.
It wasn’t the first time you looked right through me, either. You didn’t see me at the day care yesterday, or at the gym today. Not that I’d really expect you to.
It’s like I’m the opposite of you in every way. Is that a clue I smell burning?
Everyone knows who you are, and no one knows who I am. I’m not famous or movie-star beautiful or any of the things you are. I don’t have flawless skin or a trademark grin. By all reports, you are a better mother than Patsy Bennett was, a better actress than Antonia Schifman, a better wife than Marti Lowenstein-Bell, and surely more famous than that up-and-comer Suzie Cartoulis.
You are exactly who they mean when they say “she has everything.” You do—and I’ll bet that you know it, even if you forget from time to time.
There’s only one thing I have that you don’t. I know something. I know that by noon two days from now, you’ll be dead. You’ll have a bullet in your brain and a face that no one could recognize, not even your own beautiful children, not even the adoring public that flocks to your films.
But I didn’t tell you any of that when we met.
I just smiled, almost curtsied, and thanked you for being you. I walked away knowing that the next time you look at me, it will be in a different way.
Next time, I won’t be invisible, I promise you that much.
And I keep my promises—just ask Arnold Griner.
Chapter 82
“WHAT DO WE THINK about this?” Van Allsburg asked the room, and then he stared directly at me. “You have more cases like this one than anyone else here. What’s going on? What is she up to now?”
I just went ahead and said it. “She wants to be caught.”
I felt I needed to stand to address the group. “Most likely, this is a person who feels completely isolated. The reaction to eliminate the people she fixates on is paradoxical. She, he, or it destroys what she can’t have. Over time, it’s making her feel worse. Some part of Mary may know that, and doesn’t want to do this anymore, but she lacks the self-control to stop on her own.”
“And the latest e-mail?” Fred asked.
“Another sign that the killer is conflicted. Maybe the conscious mind believes it’s taunting the authorities while the subconscious is drawing a map for us to follow. That’s the only thing I can come up with that makes sense of what’s happened, and I’m not even sure if it makes sense.”
“What about the counterpossibility?” asked David Fujishiro. “That she’s trying to deliberately mislead us, throw us off with fiction.”
“You’re right. That is a real possibility,” I said. “And what it leaves us with is every conceivable outcome except what’s in the e-mail. I think we have an obligation to take the message at face value first, and consider the alternatives second. But David has just stated the other logical possibility. Of course, we don’t know if she’s logical.”
Several agents, including my buddy Page, scribbled notes while I spoke. I was aware of my stature here, if not exactly comfortable with it.
“Do we know what LAPD’s doing with
this? I’m talking about the latest threat,” asked an agent in the back, one of several faces I had never seen before. I looked over to Van Allsburg for a response.
“They’ve got a very large internal task force up and running. That much we know for sure. They’re working on a database of potential targets. But you take every name-above-the-title actress in this town, even just sticking to the ones with families, and you’ve got a long list on your hands.
“Plus, LAPD’s going to be a little trigger shy about the panic factor. Outside of increased patrols and some awareness-raising, there’s not a hell of a lot they can do for all of these women and their families—except keep after Mary Smith. Someone has to catch her. And you know what? I want it to be us, not LAPD.”
Chapter 83
DISNEYLAND WAS CHOCK-FULL of ironies for any good mother. “The Happiest Place on Earth,” the brochures called it, and maybe it could be, but with the large, electric crowds, it also had to be one of the easiest places to lose a child.
Mary tried not to give in to her worry. Worrying just makes bad things happen. Worrywarts are the saddest people in the world. I should know.
Besides, this day was supposed to be about fun and family. Brendan and Ashley had been looking forward to it—for like forever and a day. Even little Adam was bucking up and down in his stroller, squealing with a wordless excitement.
Mary kept close watch on her older two as they led the way along Main Street USA, with its candy-colored shops and other attractions. Each of them held one side of a park map. This was adorable, since neither of them knew what they were looking at. Ever since Adam was born, they liked to play at being older.
“What do you want to do first, my three little pumpkins?” she asked them. “We’re here. We’re finally at Disney, just like I promised.”