Guilt (29 page)

He closed his eyes. When he opened them again, the sun was slanting in through the window, and a nurse was taking Annie's blood pressure.

Peter stumbled into the bathroom and pissed the three gallons of coffee he'd drunk the night before. He washed his hands. His haggard, unshaved face stared back at him from the mirror. The bags under his eyes had bags, and he looked groggy and startled at the same time. He threw water in his face and toweled off, then squeezed some toothpaste out onto his finger and rubbed it over his teeth. He rinsed out. That felt marginally better.

He took out his cell phone and thought about turning it on. He knew there'd be scores of messages, calls he didn't want to return. The hell with them.

He went back into the room. The nurse was gone. He pulled the chair close to the bed and took Annie's hand, the side that wasn't broken. He held it.

“Hey, you,” he said. “Come back. I know you're in there.” Annie's chest rose and fell gently. “See, here's the thing, you have to come back. It isn't optional. Because I want you here with me.” Still nothing. “I'll even go blading—”

Peter stopped and jerked to attention. He felt gentle pressure from Annie's hand. Her eyelids fluttered. She gazed at him from half-open eyes, and a smile played on her lips, followed by a wince of pain.

She murmured something, but he couldn't make out what. A wave of relief washed over him. “Welcome back.” He pressed his lips to her fingertips.

She gazed at the cast on her arm, a look of confusion on her face. She groped the bandage on her head.

“You remember what happened?” he asked.

She relaxed into the pillow, her eyes unfocused. She said something that sounded like
the most beautiful dress,
but he couldn't be sure. Her eyes closed.

“Annie? Annie?” But it was no use. She was out again.

“Hey,” came a voice from the doorway. Peter looked up. It was MacRae.

Go away,
Peter wanted to tell him.
She doesn't want to see you. And I certainly don't, either.

“How's she doing?” There was genuine concern on MacRae's face.

“Broken wrist. Concussion. Abrasions.”

“She wake up yet?”

Peter admitted that she had.

“That's great news.”

Peter glanced at the clock. It was barely eight. “You're here awfully early. I'm surprised they let you in.” Peter could hear the confrontational edge in his voice.

MacRae crossed his arms over his chest. “I tried you at home. On your cell. I thought you might be here.” Peter rubbed his chin, feeling the thick stubble, as MacRae gave him an appraising look. “You look like hell.”

Peter couldn't help smiling. There was something comforting about still being able to trade insult for insult with this bozo.

MacRae added, “I thought I'd come by, see how Annie's doing—”

“Well, now you've seen her you can—”

“—and to let you know, we've got him in custody,” MacRae said.

Peter stopped. He closed his eyes, and felt the bones in his neck crack as he rolled his head back and around. At least there was that. There wouldn't be any more bombs.

“I only wish we'd found him sooner,” MacRae added as he perched on the edge of the bed and gazed at Annie. “God, I feel awful about this.”

“So who is he?”

“His real name is Richard Blankstein,” MacRae said. He eyed Peter.

“Never heard of him.”

“We identified him from prints on the scooter. He was waiting for us in his apartment. Had a little suitcase packed, like he was going on an overnight to his granny's, if you can believe that. We've got him in a holding cell. Won't talk to us, won't talk to an attorney.” MacRae chewed on his lip. “He wants to talk to you.”

“Sonofabitch.” Peter spat out the word. Talk to him? He wouldn't have trusted himself within thirty feet of the guy. “Yeah, well, you can tell him I'm otherwise occupied.”

MacRae waited a few beats before adding, “Peter, the only thing he's saying is that there's another bomb. It's set to blow tomorrow.”

Why was that his problem? “Sounds like you've got your work cut out for you.”

There was a moan from the bed. “Peter?” Annie was struggling to sit up.

Peter sprang to her side, pushing MacRae over. “Hey, hey. Lie back. I'm right here.”

Annie sank back. Her eyes seemed unfocused. “You sent me roses. So lovely. You never did that before.”

Peter jerked his head for MacRae to leave. “You mind? I'll talk to you in the hall in a couple of minutes.”

MacRae left without an argument.

“See, they're right here,” he said.

He pulled a rose from the vase on the table by the window. Annie's mother had picked up the flowers from Annie's apartment the night before when she went to pack Annie an overnight bag.

He placed the rose on Annie's chest. She fingered it and smiled.

“Do you remember the explosion?” Peter asked.

“Explosion? At the cathedral? The bomb, it didn't go off.”

Peter wasn't surprised that Annie didn't remember. That was pretty normal with a head injury. “There was a bomb at your office. You and Luke…”

The rose fell to the floor. “Luke? Is Luke okay?”

“He's right down the hall. Abby's with him. He's going to be fine.”

“I remember roses. You sent me roses again.” Annie smiled. “Petey.”

“Huh?”

“The card that was in the flowers. You signed it ‘Love, Petey.'”

Now he knew she was delusional, or maybe she was getting a little too much Valium through the IV. He told her that the A-bomber had been arrested and wouldn't talk to anyone but him. That there might be more bombs.

MacRae cleared his throat from the doorway and looked at his watch. “You coming?”

“Not if you don't quit bugging me. Would you just get lost for a couple of minutes?”

MacRae withdrew.

Peter wasn't sure Annie had absorbed what he'd been telling her. “I don't want to leave you.”

“No choice,” Annie murmured.

He knew she was right. “I'll call your mom. She was going to come back in a couple of hours but—”

“Don't.” She put her hand on his arm. “I can wait. I'll be okay.”

“But what if you need something?”

“Nurse call button.” She groped at the side of the bed, found it, and waved it at him.

Nurses didn't always answer their call buttons. Peter found Annie's cell phone in her backpack and turned it on. He programmed it.

“All you have to do is push one to call me. Okay?”

“Mmm.”

“What did I just say?”

She licked her lips. “Just push one.” Her voice was thick with sleepiness.

“Show me.” He set the phone on the mattress beside her, pulled his own phone out of his pocket, and turned it on.

“You're such a pain.” Grimacing, she raised her head and propped herself up on one elbow. She pressed 1, then
SEND
. A moment later, the cell phone in his pocket vibrated.

“I'm putting it under your pillow, okay? That way you won't have to reach.” He slid the phone in place and kissed her on the forehead. She was already nodding off. “So you know how to call me, right?”

“I'll just put my lips together and—” She took a breath, pursed her lips, and blew.

Cracking jokes was a good sign.

Peter followed MacRae out to the hospital parking lot.

“You want to follow me to his apartment?” MacRae asked.

“Apartment?”

“Neddleman thought you'd want to see where this guy lived before you talked to him.”

Neddleman had been smart sending MacRae over to ask Peter if he'd talk to—what was his name?—Blankstein. Could that be his real name? Seemed like an excellent
nom de guerre
for someone who wanted to remain unknowable.

It annoyed the hell out of Peter that Neddleman was right, he did want to see Blankstein's home. Experts could identify the species of bird just by examining the nest. People were the same. What you kept, what you tossed, and how you organized your surroundings, all of that was as revealing as a set of Rorschach responses.

30

W
ALL-TO-WALL BOOKS,
magazines, and CDs—that was what feathered Richard Blankstein's one-room apartment on the top floor of a triple-decker in one of the few Cambridge neighborhoods that was still largely industrial buildings and rundown homes. The building had six apartments but only five doorbells. Apparently Blankstein was a pebbles-on-the-window kind of guy, or else he never had visitors.

Peter stood in the apartment with MacRae, trying to get a sense of the man who'd just tried to annihilate the person he loved most in this world. The room was tidy, but not obsessively so. There was a mattress on the floor, a steamer trunk, a card table, a workbench, and a state-of-the-art stereo system. Dark green blankets were nailed over windows that would have looked out over the back of the building.

“The neighbors rarely saw him,” MacRae told Peter. “He works nights, a cashier at the BP station at the corner of Prospect.” Peter knew the place. It was one of the few local gas stations where you could fill up twenty-four hours a day. The cashier worked in a little Plexiglas booth about the size of a fat man's coffin, just enough room for a TV and a space heater.

Peter snapped on the pair of latex gloves that MacRae handed him, and gingerly lifted the lid of the steamer trunk. If there'd been anything unpleasant in it, he reminded himself, the police would have collected it as evidence. Inside were neatly folded underwear, socks, and sweaters. Reminded him of the trunk his mother had packed him for summer camp. More clothing hung on a metal clothing rack by the front door. There were a dark blue zippered parka, a tweed sport jacket, a half-dozen pairs of pants, shirts, and a suit with wide lapels.

“Computer was there,” MacRae said, indicating the card table with a metal folding chair. “We took that in. And a laminating machine. The kind you use to dummy up fake IDs. We also found the stolen key cards.”

Under the windows was an old workbench with a battered copy of
The Anarchist's Cookbook
lying on it. Underneath were boxes with spools of wire, batteries, covered coffee cans, assorted electronics. Peter shot MacRae a questioning look.

“We got the volatile stuff out of here,” MacRae said. “He had a five-gallon tank of gasoline, black powder, hydrochloric acid. Lucky he didn't burn the place down or asphyxiate himself.”

Peter scanned the floor-to-ceiling bookshelves. There were several biographies of Thomas Jefferson. Looked like Blankstein had the complete works of L. Ron Hubbard, the founder of Scientology, next to
The Archetypes and The Collective Unconscious
and
Synchronicity
by Carl G. Jung. Four shelves were devoted to science fiction, mostly paperbacks, shelved alphabetically, from
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
by Douglas Adams at one end to works by Roger Zelazny at the other. There was one of Peter's favorites, Zelazny's
The Dream Master
. It was about a therapist who cures his patients by entering their dreams. Now there was a world-class be-careful-what-you-wish-for.

There were magazines, neatly stored in plastic upright files.
The New Republic; The Nation; Harvard Law Review
. He pulled out a copy of
Reason
from a few months earlier and flipped through. The glossy news and opinion magazine that looked like it had a libertarian bent was a library copy. Great swaths of text had been highlighted in yellow, and one article, “Coercion vs. Consent: A reasoned debate on how to think about liberty,” had its corner dog-eared. Peter put the magazine back.

Richard Blankstein lived a Spartan lifestyle, Peter thought, mentally scratching his head and taking note of what was not there. No photograph albums, no framed photos, no letters or cards, no knickknacks.

He poked his head into the kitchenette. There were a two-burner stove and microwave. Not a dirty dish in the sink. He opened a cabinet. Two boxes of Cheerios and cans of soup. The small refrigerator held a carton of milk and some American cheese. The freezer was stuffed with frozen burritos. Blankstein wasn't going to be one of those prisoners who complained about the food.

So what else was there to see? He stuck his head in the bathroom. It was pretty bare. Just a bar of soap. Blankstein had probably packed his shampoo and toothbrush.

Peter returned to the living room and did a slow 360. What was he missing? Bookcases, bed, computer work area, workbench, kitchen, bathroom.

“No garbage cans?” he said to MacRae.

“Yeah. We noticed that, too. We went through the garbage outside the building. Nothing.”

Blankstein kept his clothing on a metal rack and in the steamer trunk. So what would he keep in his closet? There didn't seem to be one in the apartment. Not possible. Every apartment had a closet. Peter rolled the clothing rack aside. Sure enough, there was a closet door. He pulled it open.

That was bizarre. Surely there was some force of nature that made miscellaneous objects crawl into empty closets. But the only thing that had crawled into this one was a small, threadbare, oriental prayer rug.

Peter sniffed. What was that familiar yeasty smell? He reached up and pulled the chain of the overhead light. The closet walls were papered in white and blue flowers. The wallpaper had been slapped up by an amateur, on angle, the seams overlapping. He touched the wall. It was moist. Now he recognized the smell. Wheat paste.

“Hey,” he called to MacRae. “Did you notice? These walls were just recently papered.”

He stepped aside so MacRae could take a look. “I'll be damned.” MacRae took hold of the corner of the sheet covering the back wall and pulled. The paper came clean away revealing a plaster wall, dense with writing. MacRae pulled off the paper on the adjacent closet walls. These were covered with writing as well.