‘On both occasions, we find a clue to the next victim, but a different kind of clue each time. The body of the first victim is arranged to look like Linus, with his security blanket stuck to his ear and his thumb in his mouth. A man in a tracksuit with a slight limp in his right leg is seen near the scene of the crime. The second victim is arranged to look like Linus’s sister, Lucy, who has a crush on Schroeder, the musical prodigy. The same man with the limp is seen here, too. We discover that both victims studied in the same place and probably both knew their killer. What we don’t know is if the third and future victim, who we already know is going to be made to look like Snoopy, was also a student at Vassar, or if he or she knows a man with a slight limp in his right leg. And let’s not forget one important thing. We have a DNA sample.’
Jordan looked at Burroni and Christopher, as if only just realizing that they were in the room.
‘And let’s also not forget that we now have a further very small advantage over the killer.’
‘What advantage?’ Christopher asked.
‘We have a name. Pig Pen. Another character from Peanuts. And the person we’re looking for doesn’t know we have it.’
Silence fell for a few moments, while Christopher and Burroni absorbed what Jordan had been saying.
Burroni was the first to react. ‘Mr Mayor,’ he said, standing up, ‘in the light of what we’ve been saying, I’d like to go back to Headquarters to check my men’s reports from Vassar and see if there’s anything new.’
Christopher held out his hand. ‘Thank you, Detective. I know you’re doing a good job and I won’t forget you when the time comes.’
As Burroni shook the Mayor’s hand, Jordan turned his head to the window to hide his expression. He, of all people, knew how short lived his brother’s memory could be.
Burroni left the room and gently closed the door behind him. Jordan and Christopher were alone. However, they did not have time to say a word before the door opened again and Ruben Dawson, the Mayor’s right-hand man, appeared.
‘What is it, Ruben?’
Jordan was surprised to detect a touch of indecisiveness in Dawson’s demeanour.
‘The guard at the gate has just called me,’ he said. ‘He says there’s a woman asking to speak with you. She claims to be an officer in the Italian police.’
‘What does she want?’
‘She says she may have some information about the murder of your son.’
CHAPTER 29
Maureen was waiting by the gate.
Through the bars, she could see a few dark sedan cars parked in the small forecourt, and next to the cars a bright red motorcycle propped on its kickstand. An Italian bike, she thought.
Thing had happened the way she had imagined. When she had approached the gate, the guard on duty, a square-jawed man with a gait that seemed appropriate to some hot Southern climate, had left the sentry box and come towards her.
‘Hello, miss. How can I help you?’
‘Hello, Officer. My name’s Maureen Martini and I’m a Chief Inspector in the Italian police. I’m also an American citizen. I need to speak to the Mayor urgently.’
She had handed the guard her passport and badge. Out of politeness, he had taken the documents but had not even looked at them.
‘I’m afraid this isn’t the best time to talk with the Mayor.’
Maureen had expected this reaction. She had taken off her sunglasses and looked the man straight in the eyes. ‘Why don’t we let him decide that? Just tell him I have information about his son’s murder.’
The guard’s glacial expression changed. ‘Wait here a moment.’
He went back to the sentry box, and through the glass Maureen saw him simultaneously pick up the telephone and check the passport and badge, then nod as he listened to the answer.
Soon afterwards, he came back and handed over the documents. ‘You can go in, Inspector Martini. Someone will come out to meet you.’
Maureen went through the gate and crossed the little forecourt. As she climbed the steps to the main entrance, the door opened and a very Anglo-Saxon butler appeared.
‘Follow me, madam, the Mayor is expecting you.’
Maureen was so tense, she paid scarcely any attention to her surroundings, thus she almost missed a man in a suede jacket and a round black hat throwing her a curious glance as he walked past her. At the end of a corridor, the butler stopped outside a door. He knocked lightly and, without waiting for a signal from inside, opened the door and stood aside.
‘Please go in, madam.’
Maureen took a couple of steps into the room, which looked like a small study. The door closed noiselessly behind her.
There were two people in the room.
Standing between her and the window was a tall man with salt and pepper hair. He had the most incredible blue eyes she had ever seen and the kind of face and attitude that instantly made you think he was a man you’d like to have beside you in a crisis. The other man, who was quite a bit older, was sitting at the desk. He had the confident body language that power carries with it, as well as the visible signs of the stress that power also brings. His were the same blue eyes as the other man – but they were weary eyes, and his heavy body told a tale of too many official dinners and too little exercise.
He stood up as she came in, and held out a thin hand. ‘Hello. I’m Christopher Marsalis. And this is my brother Jordan.’
The tall man did not move or say anything, simply nodded.
‘Hello, Mr Mayor. I’m sorry to burst in on you like this. I’m a Chief Inspector with the Italian police.’
‘You speak English very well – and your face looks familiar. Have we ever met before?’
Maureen smiled politely. ‘You may know my mother. She’s a criminal lawyer, here in New York. Her name is Mary Ann Levallier. Everyone says we look very much alike. My name is Maureen Martini.’
When she said her name, the man who had been introduced to her as Jordan Marsalis took a step towards her.
‘I’m sorry if this is an unpleasant question,’ he said. ‘Are you the late Connor Slave’s girlfriend?’
Maureen was grateful to him for using the present tense. ‘Yes, I am.’
The Mayor clearly also knew her story, because he now said, ‘I’m sorry for your loss.’
Silence fell for a moment. The two men were both looking at her. She realized that the moment had come.
‘I’ll get straight to the point. I see you both know what happened to Connor and myself. As a result of that experience, I suffered lesions to my eyes that necessitated a cornea transplant. Because of a problem of genetic incompatibility, there were very few donors available. Despite that, one was found.’ Maureen looked into Christopher Marsalis’s blue eyes. ‘I have reason to believe that donor was your son Gerald Marsalis.’
‘It’s possible,’ Christopher told her. ‘I myself authorized his organs to be used when I found out he had a donor card. If that’s the case, I’m pleased it helped you regain your sight. But what does any of that have to do with the investigation into his death?’
Maureen took off her sunglasses. The light from the window was like a blade in her eyes.
‘I know what I’m about to tell you will seem impossible to you. In fact, I feel the same way. It’s crazy, but . . . I keep having recurring visions of your son’s life.’
The moment she had finished speaking, Maureen felt the silence of pity fall over the room. The mayor looked at his brother, then back at her, and when he spoke, it was in a deliberately calm voice, as he tried his best to look her in the eyes without flinching.
‘Miss Martini, what you have just been through was traumatic. I know how difficult it is to accept certain things, and I say that from personal experience. Your mother is a good woman and a good friend. I think you should allow me to go home to her and rest until you have healed.’
Maureen had come into the room knowing that, when she told them what was happening to her, this would be the only poss
ible response. She couldn’t blame them. She herself would have done the same in these circumstances.
‘Mr Mayor, with all due respect, I would never have come here if I didn’t have a reasonable certainty that what I’m saying is true. I accept that the word “reasonable” may seem a bit incongruous in this case. I’m a police officer and I was trained to go by the facts, not far-fetched speculation. Believe me when I say I thought long and hard before coming here, but now that I am here I wouldn’t change my story even if challenged by a whole panel of psychiatrists.’
She stood up, feeling naked and defenceless in front of these two men, put her dark glasses back on and said the rest of what she had to say without looking at either of them in particular.
‘I’ll be staying with my mother a while longer. If you think I’m crazy, call her. If you want to give me the benefit of the doubt, call me. I’m sorry to have disturbed you.’
She turned and headed for the door, leaving behind her a silence she knew was a mixture of surprise, embarrassment and compassion.
As she was about to touch the handle, her eyes fell on a photograph in a wooden frame next to the door. In it, two men were shaking hands and smiling at the camera. One she knew very well: President Ronald Reagan. The other was Christopher Marsalis, looking much younger than he was now, with dark hair and a moustache. She had not recognized him immediately because he had changed so much, but his blue eyes were unmistakable. Maureen realized in a flash that she had seen him before – not as he looked now, but as he looked in the photograph.
It was the same man who had entered the child’s room in her dream and torn up the drawing.
She spoke without turning around, afraid of the reaction on the faces of the two men.
‘A long time ago, your son was making a drawing. It was a childish but quite accurate sketch of a man and a woman making love against a table. You came into his room and he showed it to you. You got very, very angry. You tore up the paper and as a punishment shut your son in a closet.’
Only then did Maureen turn. She saw Christopher Marsalis stand up without speaking, go to the window and look out. To Maureen, his silence was more eloquent than words could ever be. When at last he spoke, his voice seemed frayed by time and memory.
‘It’s true. It happened many years ago. Gerald was a child. At that time my wife was still alive, although she’d already started going in and out of hospital. I was much younger then, of course, and because of her illness she and I had not had sexual relations for more than a year. There was this very pretty maid working in the house and I . . .’
He paused, as Maureen had expected: the usual pause before a confession.
‘It happened in the kitchen. It was an instinctive thing, and it was only that once. Gerald must have seen us without our noticing. When he showed me the drawing, he was very proud. Obviously, he hadn’t understood what we were doing. He was just delighted with his little artwork. I was afraid he might show the drawing to someone else, so I tore it up. Then I made him swear he wouldn’t tell anyone – and to make it clear to him that he’d done something wrong, I shut him in that closet. He was only a child, but I have the feeling he never forgave me.’
Maureen saw again the door closing on his anger-reddened face, and imagined the child plunged into darkness.
Jordan Marsalis came to help his brother in his moment of weakness. ‘Miss Martini, as you said before, you’re a police officer, with all that entails. I used to be a police officer too, so we both know what we’re talking about. You must admit there are unusual elements in this situation. If anything like this was used by either of us in court, we’d be forced to go for pyschiatric counselling twice a week. But I guess I have to take what you’ve told us seriously. You said there were other . . .’
Maureen realized he was struggling to give a name to something she herself could barely express in words.
‘Are you asking me if I saw anything else?’
‘Yes.’
Maureen felt a sense of liberation, as if she was at last emerging from the solitude into which all these experiences had plunged her. She started telling them about all the images that had come to her: the woman with the blue face beneath her, Gerald’s red face in the mirror, the threatening figure on the landing . . .
She was so absorbed in her story that she was barely aware of the effect of her words on the two men. When she had finished, it was the Mayor who spoke first.
‘This is crazy.’
Jordan seemed less shaken.
‘I think we ought to decide on a line of action,’ he said. ‘We have two victims. The MOs make us think the murders are linked by a number of elements we can’t yet define. The one link we’ve so far found between Gerald Marsalis and Chandelle Stuart is that both of them studied at the same college.’
He took some coloured photographs that were lying on the desk and pushed them towards Maureen.
‘Vassar.’
Maureen came over, sat down, picked up one of the photographs and . . .
. . . I’m walking along an avenue that cuts across a large lawn. As I walk, I pass young men and women who look at me without greeting me: I don’t greet them either. In front of me there’s a big austere building, full of windows, and I raise my arm to look at my watch. Suddenly I start walking faster and then begin to run towards the entrance and . . .
. . . I’m in a room and my field of vision is restricted, as if the images are coming to me through holes, and apart from me there are two other people in the room, a man and a woman dressed in dark clothes and wearing plastic masks with the faces of characters from Peanuts. The woman is Lucy and the man is Snoopy. My heart is pounding and I turn my head to see what the other two are looking at . . .
. . . and there’s a man with his back to me leaning over a table where a body is lying, apparently a child, and suddenly the man lifts his arms and in his right hand he’s holding a knife that’s all red with blood and there’s more blood dripping from his hands and staining the sleeves of his jacket, and even though I can’t hear him I know the man is screaming and I . . .
. . . I’m still with the man and woman in dark clothes and Lucy and Snoopy masks but we’re somewhere else and the man is leaning against the wall and he takes off his mask and his face is young and tanned and streaked with tears and then he hides it in his hands and he slides down the wall until he’s sitting on the ground and the woman . . .
Maureen was kneeling on the ground, looking at a knot in the wooden floor between two sports shoes. The shoes and the strong arms helping her up and into a chair belonged to Jordan Marsalis.
The voice was Jordan’s too, but it seemed to come from a million miles away.
‘What’s the matter, Miss Martini?’
Maureen heard another voice, from equally far away. Somehow, she realized it was her own.
‘A murder. There was a murder.’
‘What do you mean? What murder?’
She did not hear the last question. Her body gave way and she fainted. The darkness was like a lifebelt thrown by a merciful hand, before another hand – the icy hand of terror – could grab her.
CHAPTER 30
When Maureen regained consciousness, she was lying on the floor, a hand supporting her head. The light hit her immediately, once more like sand in her eyes. She quickly closed them again.
‘I need my glasses.’
She reached out a hand and felt the shiny surface of the wooden floor beneath her palm, groping for her glasses, assuming they had fallen beside her when she had pitched forward. She heard a movement behind her, felt the arms of the glasses being slid delicately over her ears, and then the blessed coolness of the dark lenses. She opened her eyes and was glad the others could not see her as she did so because they were glistening with tears. She tried to recover her normal breathing and heartbeat.
‘Are you all right?’ The voice was Jordan’s.
‘Yes,’ she said.
No, she thought. I’m not all right at all. If
this is the price I have to pay in order to see, I’d prefer to go back to the old darkness and the images of my own nightmares – and not witness someone else’s nightmares as a powerless spectator.
‘Do you want a drink?’
Maureen shook her head. The images of what she had seen were fading. Only the fear remained, like a knife in her stomach. She tried to sit up and saw Jordan’s face in front of her and smelled his breath. It smelled good and healthy, with only a slight hint of tobacco. Obviously it had been he who had supported her and laid her on the floor before she could fall headlong.
‘Help me up, please.’
Jordan put his hands under her armpits and gently lifted her back into the chair where she had been sitting when . . .
‘Are you OK?’
‘Yes, I’m fine now. It’s gone.’
‘What happened?’
Maureen passed a hand over her forehead. Despite what she had told the two men earlier, she could not help feeling a sense of shame for this new . . .
this new . . . what?
Maureen decided to call it an ‘episode’. She certainly didn’t want to use the word ‘attack’, not even to herself.
‘I saw something,’ she said.
Christopher Marsalis sat down behind the desk, facing her. ‘What?’
Maureen pointed to the photographs strewn on the table. ‘I saw Vassar. Not as it is now, but as it was some time ago.’
‘How do you know that?’
Maureen indicated the trees lining the avenue leading to the big building in the background of one of the photographs. ‘These trees were smaller when I saw them.’
‘Go on.’
‘I was there, running along that avenue in the photograph. Then suddenly I was in another place entirely. With Lucy and Snoopy.’
Still absorbed in what she had seen, Maureen did not notice the start that Christopher Marsalis gave or the glance he threw his brother.