Guilt (16 page)

“Nice earrings,” Annie said.

A red streak flared on Jackie's neck. “Oh, these. They're nothing.” She slipped off the earnings and dropped them in her pocket.

Annie took out the next picture. She knew what was up. New sweater, earrings, and maybe perfume. Add to that flowers and a fancy barrette for Sophie.

“Jackie—” Annie started, but she didn't know what to say that wouldn't get Jackie's back up. Still, she couldn't stand by and watch Jackie race, lemminglike into the flood. “From Joe?”

Jackie waited for the next picture, as if she hadn't heard the question.

“From Joe?” Annie asked again, trying to keep her voice even.

Jackie flinched, like she was afraid she was going to get hit. “He's going to AA meetings. Four weeks and he's still going. That's something, don't you think? Sophie misses him.”

He's a scumbag,
Annie wanted say.
He'll get you back, and then how long do you think it'll be before it starts all over again, only this time it'll be worse because he's got more to be angry about.

They went quickly through the rest of the pictures. Jackie's final choice was a generic-looking white scooter. There were probably a million of them in the Boston area. She got up, looking relieved.

“So, are you seeing him?” Annie asked.

“I…” Jackie held her hands open in a mute plea for understanding. Annie could see that the answer was yes. “I know what you're thinking, Annie. And don't think I don't appreciate all the help you've given me. But give me a little credit at least.”

Annie didn't say anything.

Jackie looked off into space. “You know, he wasn't always like this. When I first met him, he was gentle. Brought me flowers all the time. It's all because of his first wife. She's the one who changed him.”

Joe would probably foist that lame tale of woe off on the next woman in his life, too—Jackie that bitch, she was the one who made him go crazy. Whatever went wrong, it was always someone else's fault.

Jackie gave Annie a wry smile and shook her head. “I know you think that's a crock, but she ran off with her boyfriend and took little Joey with her. It happened when Sophie was little. Joe hasn't heard from either of them, not once since then. What kind of mother takes her son away from his father like that? That's when Joe changed. Started drinking heavy, got into drugs, started hitting me.”

Jackie's willingness to be blinkered left Annie struggling for words. Why did she think Joe's first wife had to disappear in order to get away? Wasn't it obvious that there was no “getting away” from this man otherwise?

17

P
ETER GRUMBLED
as he drove to the police station. Again. He'd called MacRae right away because they'd want to know about the email message. What he didn't know was that MacRae would want him to get down there and go over it with them. Kwan had given a disgusted snort when Peter said he'd have to leave after morning walk rounds. “Well, at least you'll have the bad suits to go with your new job,” he told Peter.

Gloria took him aside as he was leaving. “Pay no attention to Mr. Fussy. We're all behind you. Help them get that lunatic before he destroys any more lives.”

MacRae had the text of the email message blown up and taped to the wall of the conference room alongside the two flyers from the bomb scenes. Agent Neddleman, dressed again in a dark suit and shirt, slid out of his corner and pored silently over the email text. The sender was CANARY911. The subject: FOR WHAT IT'S WORTH. There were two full pages of text beginning:

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 consider the possibilities that lay before Us.

 

The legal system is corrupt, the agent of the Maw. A raptor, tearing holes in the ozone layer. Laying waste to forests. Searing the land with acid rain. Succoring corporate pillagers in the name of consumerism.

Peter glanced at one of the flyers.

The law prevents Us from pursuing Our destiny.

You didn't need to be an expert to see the similarities between the flyers and the email. Both had that idiosyncratic use of capital letters. Both spoke in the “royal we.” Of course, anyone could have copied that style, now that the flyers had been reprinted in the newspapers.

“We'll get a linguistic analysis,” Neddleman said. “See what the experts say.” His voice was a low rumble. It was the first time Peter had heard him speak. Neddleman stroked his chin, his face inches from the words. “Philosopher King. Marshal. The Maw.” He rolled his eyes. “What is this shit, anyway?”

Peter picked up a whiteboard marker and drew three concentric circles. In the outermost ring, he wrote, “MARSHAL.” In the next inside ring he wrote, “PHILOSOPHER KING.” In the bull's-eye he wrote, “THE MAW.”

“It's how this guy sees the three parts of the bomber's mind. Bizarre, but nevertheless logical. This part”—he underlined PHILOSOPHER KING—“is apparently at war with this one”—he underlined THE MAW.

He read aloud the writer's explanation, how the Philosopher King pursued the “highest ideals” of learning and the intellect, while the Maw subverted those high ideals and had to go out and rapaciously consume in order to be satisfied. The Marshal mediated between the two and kept the peace.

Peter had to admire the structure. He mused aloud. “Philosopher King and Maw. That's roughly analogous to what Freud thought of as the superego and the id. The Marshal is like Freud's ego, serving as traffic cop.”

“Yeah, right,” Neddleman muttered. “A government conspiracy to make us all go shopping.”

“Something like that,” Peter said.

“So you think all this anarchist stuff is a smokescreen?” MacRae asked Neddleman.

“Pure and utter bullshit,” Neddleman said. “If you ask me, he's throwing around a lot of big words, trying to make us think he's a crazy.”

Smokescreen? Maybe, but Peter didn't think so. “I can't say for certain that this guy is your bomber. But he sure as hell sounds quote-unquote crazy to me. Could be he's an organized schizophrenic.”

“I thought you said the shrink wasn't a profiler,” Neddleman said, pointedly ignoring Peter. Here was a guy who didn't like to be contradicted. Hell, Peter thought, if they weren't going to listen to him, then why was he here?

“I'm not. And I'm not a shrink, either. And I'm right here, so you can talk to me.”

Neddleman turned his gaze on Peter. He made passivity into an art form.

“Unlike some of us,” Peter went on, “I do know something about pathology. I know what crazy looks like, and it's not as easy to fake as you might think. This could be your bomber. And if he is, then you're not going to be able to negotiate with him. Challenge him and you could reinforce his paranoia.”

Neddleman made a fist and massaged the knuckles with his other hand. “Then how … Who the hell is he? We've got people working on tracking this email, but that's going to take time. Besides, he's probably using public computers. We need more information to go on.”

“He emailed me. Presumably I could reply.”

Peter could almost see the cylinders falling into place as Neddleman weighed the suggestion.

“The more we get him to tell us,” Peter went on, “the more likely he'll let slip some detail about himself, something that reveals who he is. A part of him wants to brag, tell the world how smart he is. Maybe if we let him, he'll spill what he's planning to do next.”

“Or goad him into performing, killing more people,” Neddleman said.

“There's that risk.”

Peter glanced at the timeline scrawled on the whiteboard. There'd been four weeks between the first two bombings. A few more days and it would be two weeks since the last one. Neddleman was probably wondering the same thing—did they have two weeks' grace? Peter knew that a sudden outbreak of violent behavior could be precipitated by something that had been percolating for years, and it could accelerate in frequency.

A few minutes later Peter was on a laptop MacRae had brought in. He accessed his email at the Pearce and checked to be sure CANARY911 hadn't sent him another message. Then he pulled up the message he'd received that morning and clicked
REPLY
.

“Dear Mad Bomber,” Neddleman said as he watched over Peter's shoulder.

Peter ignored the sarcasm. “If he's schizophrenic, the way to engage him is to get into his world, enter his reality, give a kind of pseudovalidity to what he's saying, and more importantly, to what he's feeling. If he feels understood, he'll be more inclined to let down his guard and reveal something we can use.”

Peter began to type, reading off the words as he went. “Your analysis is fascinating. As you know, I have a doctorate in psychology, but what you're suggesting is pretty groundbreaking. I've never looked at the mind that way. I would appreciate learning more, and understanding what led you to your unique conceptual framework.”

Neddleman chuckled. “Laying it on pretty thick, aren't you?”

Peter glanced at the printout on the wall, rereading the email message he'd received. The subject line snagged his attention: “FOR WHAT IT'S WORTH.” Wasn't that a song title?

Peter opened another browser window and Googled the words. Sure enough, “For What It's Worth” was the title of a Steven Stills song done by the Buffalo Springfield around 1967, a couple of years before the shootings at Kent State.

Peter told MacRae and Neddleman about the song title.

“Nineteen sixty-seven?” Neddleman said. “You saying this guy's in his fifties?”

“Not necessarily. The song's become a classic nailing the zeitgeist of a very scary time. It makes sense that someone like him would resonate to it. Maybe it's a hook I can use…” Peter typed a few words from the song as the subject line in his message: LOOK WHAT'S GOING DOWN. He smiled to himself, adding at the bottom: “Were you the guy I talked to at the Crosby Stills and Nash concert, Fleet Center, 2000?”

He typed his name and waited while Neddleman read over his shoulder. “What the hell,” Neddleman said.

Peter clicked
SEND
.

*   *   *

As Peter drove up Mass Ave toward Harvard Square on his way to the Pearce, he could hear Neddleman's sneering voice:
Philosopher King. Marshal. The Maw.
As he'd pointed out, it was intellectual bullshit. Peter wondered if his new pen pal owned a scooter. Had he been in the military and learned about explosives? Would he swallow the flattery and answer Peter, or sniff out the baited hook?

He took his usual detour down Dunster Street and came screeching to a halt, nearly hitting a car pulling out of a parking spot. How many times had he cruised this street, dying for a parking spot and finding none? It wasn't fair. A car and an SUV were backed up behind him, and the car had its blinker flashing. The driver wanted the parking spot.
Finders keepers,
Peter thought, feeling like the proverbial dog in the manger. Besides, he did need a cup of coffee.

He zipped into the spot, nose first. It took a couple of back-and-forths to get close enough to the curb. A scone would be nice, too, Peter thought, pumping a couple of quarters into the meter. As he headed up the street, he passed a meter man writing up a Volvo that had overstayed its welcome. Cambridge could probably meet its yearly municipal payroll on parking violations alone.

Peter walked past John Harvard's Brew House, under the watchful eyes of Jerry Garcia and John F. Kennedy depicted in stained glass. In its dark, woody interior there was cathedral-style stained glass portraying an equally odd assortment of modern luminaries, all in mock-ancient attire, from Wayne Gretzky to Humphrey Bogart to Richard Nixon.

But he was after coffee, not beer. First he'd pick up a paper at Out of Town News. The pit surrounding the entrance to the Harvard Square T station, filled with tourists and buskers on weekends, was quiet on a weekday morning. A burly fellow in a red-and-blue plaid flannel shirt stood alone in front of the tourist kiosk, holding up a copy of
Spare Change,
the newspaper for the homeless. Peter fished out a dollar and bought a copy. A woman in a greasy green parka squatted on the sidewalk near the subway entrance, a Dunkin' Donuts cup on the ground in front of her along with a hand-lettered sign that said
PLEASE HELP
. And below that:
I COULD BE YOU
. As Peter stepped around her, a man dropped a few crumpled dollar bills into the cup. Peter noticed his hand. It was shaking slightly, and the skin was pale, nearly translucent. The man stooped alongside the woman, talking to her, his back to Peter. Something about his silhouette made Peter stop. It was the ears. The man had unusually large ones. Peter pivoted and backtracked. Now he recognized that nose, squashed against his face. The man was holding a stack of flyers, the top one dense with printing.

First a parking spot on Dunster, next the local street preacher whom the police had been looking for. A hospital bracelet on the man's wrist suggested why they hadn't been able to find him. Peter considered calling MacRae but discarded the idea. He didn't want to give Harvard Harry time to evaporate.

“Harry?” Peter said, trying to sound like he knew him.

The man's head jerked up. Under a too-large tweed jacket, Harry's white T-shirt was emblazoned with the slogan
WORDS MEAN NOTHING
. And below that were the words
ACTION IS
, with the final words tucked into pants that were held up by twine threaded through his belt loops. His clothes seemed clean, his shoes worn at the heel but polished. The lower part of his face seemed paler than his weathered cheeks, as if he'd recently shaved off a beard.