Guilt (15 page)

Mulberry, the proverbial good cop, apologized to Tietz. She was a thickset woman with a pleasant face. Her wavy brown hair had streaks of blond through it.

“Sorry. He can be a bit much,” she said. “We're all pretty frustrated, trying to catch this guy before…” She leaned forward. “Hey, you okay? Can I get you something to drink? Coffee?”

Tietz sank into his chair. He folded one arm across his chest and put the other fist to his mouth and chewed on a knuckle.

“Cigarette?” Mulberry asked.

Tietz shook his head. “I just want to get the hell out of here.”

“I know, I know,” Mulberry said, sympathy in her voice. She looked down at her notes, flipped back to the previous page, then the one before. She underlined something. “So all we need to do is talk to your mother to verify your whereabouts on September fourth?”

“My mother…” Tietz's face contorted. “She's dead.”

“I'm so sorry. Was it sudden?”

“No.” Tietz took a ragged breath. “She lived with me. Had ever since the fire. She had nowhere else to go. Then she got emphysema. She died that day.”

“Mmm,” Mulberry said, and waited for Tietz to collect himself. “And last Tuesday?”

He glared at her. “I was nowhere near that courthouse, and you'd be wasting your time trying to find someone who can place me there. Just like you're doing right now, wasting your time talking to me while this terrorist, or whoever he is, plans his next move. Maybe he'll do me a favor and blow up this police station.”

“You think we might be the next target?” Mulberry said, not missing a beat.

“It sure as hell would be mine.”

*   *   *

“He's hiding something,” MacRae told Peter after the interview.

That much had been obvious. But what? “There are a million reasons for getting back late from lunch that you wouldn't want to share with your boss,” Peter said. “An affair. A two-martini lunch.”

“Appointment with a shrink,” MacRae added. “But we pulled him in for questioning about a bombing. You'd think he'd come clean.”

“He doesn't trust you. And why should he?”

MacRae shrugged agreement. “We'll find out one way or another.”

“You could be wasting your time.” Peter flipped through Tietz's file. “He seems pretty broken up about his mother's death. Said he'd been taking care of her. That's not the kind of person you're looking for. Not in my opinion, anyway.”

MacRae went over to the mug shots of the other suspects, running his finger over each of them in turn. Last, his finger lingered on the empty outline.

There was a knock at the door. Tozzi stuck his head in. He handed MacRae a manila folder. MacRae opened it and showed Peter a stack of motorbike ads. Peter agreed to ask Jackie Klevinski if any of them looked like what she'd seen.

“He wants to be noticed,” Peter said. “I suppose that's a good thing.”

“Well, he's certainly got our attention.” MacRae said, scratching his head.

“You going public with the profile?” Peter asked.

“We're discussing it.” He squinted at Peter. “If we do, you up for it?”

Surely he wasn't serious. The last time Peter had talked to a reporter, it had been a deliberate attempt to smoke out a killer. It had worked all too well.

“Me? That's not what I signed up for.”

“Not an official press conference or anything. Just be available to answer questions about what the crimes tell us about the personality of the perpetrator. Why it's probably one person, not an organized terrorist group—stuff like that.” Hale and hearty, he clapped a hand on Peter's back. “We need your help. Remember, that's how they finally caught the Unabomber. His brother recognized him from the psychological profile.”

“And from his writing,” Peter pointed out.

“We'll publish the flyers, too. What do you say?”

Despite Peter's natural aversion to any kind of publicity—he'd had a bellyful of notoriety after Kate's murder—he couldn't say no.

He glanced outside. Another news van had pulled up. A photographer was taking a picture of the entrance to the police station while a group of reporters watched. They looked bored and restless, a pack of hungry lions.

Peter wasn't looking forward to becoming their next meal.

16

A
NNIE OPENED
her front door and peered out. She held her robe closed as she darted out barefoot and grabbed the newspaper off the bottom step. The streetlights were still on, and the sidewalk was icy. She could hear her mother's voice in her head—
Annie, you can't go outside half-dressed
. She ignored it, but the voice went on hectoring:
You could at least put on clean underwear. What if you slip and fall and the ambulance has to come for you?

A-BOMBER PROFILED
, the headline said. A-bomber? So he'd earned himself a moniker. He'd joined the likes of Son of Sam and the Zodiac Killer, criminals who taunted the police with messages. No doubt he was basking in his newfound celebrity status.

Shivering, Annie came back inside and locked the door behind her. Slowly she climbed the steps, reading as she went.

Columbo, the cat Annie had inherited from her Uncle Jack, was pacing the landing when she got back to the third floor and complaining loudly. Where was breakfast?

Annie brought the newspaper into the kitchen and set it on the counter, shoving aside two nearly empty Chinese take-out containers. Columbo jumped up, stuck his head into one of the containers, and licked the inside. He sat on the newspaper, licked a fastidious paw, and resumed his yowling. All right already.

A few minutes later, Columbo sniffed suspiciously at the cat food Annie put in a bowl on the floor, and Annie sat down at her old but not-quite-vintage Formica-top kitchen table to read. Her stomach rumbled. If only she'd gotten dressed and walked to the corner for a coffee and a muffin.

The front page had a picture of Mac at a press conference, surrounded by reporters. Alongside the photo was the text from flyers that the police had found at the bombing scenes.

Annie read the story.

Saying this man has too much time on his hands and is secretive and organized, authorities Monday released a personality profile of a bomb-maker who, they believe, is responsible for two Cambridge bombings, one at the Harvard Law School and another at the Middlesex County Courthouse, resulting in the deaths of nine people and injuring twenty-three.

Following Monday's press conference, authorities also released text from flyers found at both bombing scenes in hopes of getting tips from the public, said Detective Sergeant Joseph MacRae of the police department in Cambridge.

“Somebody out there lives next door to the suspect,” MacRae said.

While authorities have plenty of leads, MacRae said the case remains “perplexing.”

She scanned down.

The bomber is “probably a white male, over 30 years old,” said psychologist Peter Zak of the Pearce Psychiatric Institute. Zak is a frequent expert witness for defense counsel in criminal cases, and said he based his analysis on the content of the flyers and evidence from the bombing scenes.

Zak said the bomber is probably an intelligent underachiever, and is aloof or does not want to talk about how he spends his time.

“The bomber may have had prior run-ins with law enforcement, and may have suffered abuse,” said Zak.

“He's a self-absorbed loner, believes the world should revolve around him. It's not clear if he has a political agenda. If not, then he's a murderer with a moral masquerade. He's got a pseudopolitical rationale for deep-seated psychological issues, and a sense of impotence that has attained delusional proportions.”

Had Peter seen this? Annie wondered. She knew he'd hate the teaser in the middle of the page:
PROFILER PIECES TOGETHER POSSIBILITIES
. He'd told everyone who'd listen, in no uncertain terms, that he was
not
a profiler. To be fair,
forensic neuropsychologist
would never have fit in the margin.

She dialed his home number and waited. There were two inches of old coffee sitting in the coffeemaker. She took a sniff, and wondered if its statute of limitations had expired.

There was no answer. She tried his office.

“You're in early,” she said when he picked up. “You saw this morning's paper?” She poured the coffee into a cup.

“Seen it? Kwan's got it tacked to the bulletin board in the staff room. Idiots. I
told
them I wasn't a profiler. I get to my office and the phone is ringing. Guess who?”

“A reporter.”

“You got it. From the
Boston Phoenix,
asking me all these questions. It's eight in the morning and I haven't had my coffee even.”

“Most reporters are good guys. I hope you were polite at least.”

“Yeah. Sure I was. I gave him two minutes and then told him to email the rest of his questions—when I had time, I'd get to them. He wouldn't give up, so finally I just hung up. I log into the system, and sure enough I've got his email plus fifty-two others, mostly from strangers. How do these people find me?”

You didn't have to be a detective to figure out Peter's email at the hospital. It was basically his name at PEARCE.ORG. Annie put the cup in the microwave and punched the buttons.

“Listen to this.” Peter cleared his throat. “‘You call yourself a profiler? Give me a break with your tired clichés. People who don't get along with other people are not bombers. They're…' Yadda, yadda. ‘Loners aren't sickos.' It's from a woman who says she belongs to the Social Anxiety and Related Disorders Association. Didn't even know there was such an organization. She ends with ‘Sincerely, which Crackerjacks box did you get your degree off of, Bozo?'” Peter groaned. “It's not even grammatical.”

Sounded like he was stabbing his keyboard, hitting
DELETE DELETE DELETE
. The microwave dinged. Annie got the coffee out and took a cautious sip. Ick. Maybe a whole lot of milk would help. She checked the fridge. Not
that
milk.

“Oh, here's another winner. ‘What is it with you bleeding heart liberals? Underachiever? Victim of abuse? Give me a break. This guy deserves to be blown up, one part at a time. The death penalty is too good for scum like that.'”

“So, maybe you have a new career?” Annie said, sitting at the kitchen table and ladling sugar into the coffee.

“What? Radio shock jock?”

“Well, it does sound as if you've struck a nerve.”

“Move over, Howard Stern.”

Columbo rubbed against Annie's leg. She reached down and scratched him behind the ears. He closed his eyes and purred.

“Oh, here's a good one. ‘You're wrong about the A-bomber.' Jesus Christ. Right, wrong, now everyone's a profiler. ‘You overeducated imbecile. This is not a masquerade. You're like all the rest of them, ignoring our message because you're not ready to…'”

Peter's voice died out. Annie could barely hear what sounded like him reading under his breath.

“Holy shit,” he said. “The rest of this reads like something out of a Ph.D. thesis from Mars. He's got this convoluted explanation of the bomber's mind. The thing goes on for pages.”

Annie set down her coffee. “Do you think it could be him?”

There was a brief silence. “Damn right it could. I better call MacRae,” Peter said, and hung up.

*   *   *

Annie was in her office later that morning with Jackie sitting opposite her across the desk. Jackie had on a pink sweater and a matching shade of lipstick. She was wearing perfume, too, a spicy scent.

“You look nice. New outfit?” Annie asked.

Jackie's hand fluttered to her throat. “Sort of.”

Annie had promised Peter that she'd show Jackie the pictures of scooters and bikes and have her pick the one that looked most like what she'd seen at the law school. Of course, she couldn't just spread the pictures out and have Jackie choose one. Oh no, she had to do it
his
way, the complicated way.

She hoped this would go quickly. She had to be on a conference call in fifteen minutes, and after that she had an appointment with a client.

“I'm supposed to ask you to relax and think back to the moment when you saw the man riding away from the law school, just before the bombing,” Annie said, feeling silly. “Now close your eyes.”

Obediently Jackie closed her eyes and took a long inhale. Annie felt like a crafty Svengali. All she needed now was a turban on her head.

Annie read from her notes. “Good. I want you to try to picture what he was riding on, and when you've got that as clearly as you can in your mind, open your eyes.”

After a few moments, Jackie opened her eyes and sat forward.

Annie set two pictures on the desk. One was a white mountain bike, the other a basic motor scooter that looked as if it were made of white PVC piping. “Okay, here we go. Which of these is the closest to what you remember?”

Jackie tilted her head and examined the pictures. “Neither one of them really.”

“Can you pick the one that's closest?”

Jackie's hand hovered, and then she pointed to the scooter. Annie discarded the picture of the bike and pulled out a new picture. This one was a futuristic motorbike with a back-slanting windshield. Annie laid it alongside the PVC-piping scooter.

“I'll hold,” Jackie said, sticking with the scooter. This was starting to feel like a poker game.

Annie pulled out a new picture. Nothing fancy, just your basic scooter with a molded front panel. A pair of truncated handlebars sprouted from where a light was mounted in the front. The seat was broad, molded to fit two behinds, and there was a flat floorboard.

Jackie fingered her earrings, pink crystal roses. She sat there for a few moments, eyes darting back and forth between the pictures, before pointing to the new picture. “That one's closer.”