Puppets (11 page)

16

P
ROBABLY HE WOULDN'T HAVE called Gus Grisbach if he hadn't been in such a bad mood. It wasn't that he was refusing Rebecca's advice—don't get involved any more than you have to—so much as trying to find out just what he was supposed to avoid getting involved in.

When Mo had first moved up to investigator, he'd been lucky to be paired for a time with Larry Mackenzie, a good mentor who had initiated Mo not only to investigative technique but to some of the nonstandard procedures that were standard. Before he'd died of prostate cancer, Mac had bequeathed to Mo a monster of a nonstandard resource, Gus Grisbach's phone number. Gus had been an NYPD investigator for many years before taking a bullet in his brain and opting for early retirement. Gus's logical faculties were as sharp as ever, but the bullet had burrowed a messy hole through his socializing instincts, which had never been great to begin with. But retirement hadn't stopped his fanatical fight against crime. If anything, the injury had inflamed Gus's hatred of criminals to a white heat. Given that he was confined to a wheelchair and couldn't beat the streets anymore, he'd set himself up in his apartment with, supposedly, a couple hundred thousand dollars' worth of computer equipment. Gus got information for cops. Since what he did wasn't legal, no one formally acknowledged his existence. His number and a word of introduction were guardedly handed down from generation to generation of investigators like priceless heirlooms.

Mocalled from a pay phone, got a curt answering-machine message, and left his home phone number for a call back. He was thinking it would be nice to know more about Biedermann, about his career history, his move from San Diego, the murders there. Maybe a clue to Zelek and the"other dimensions" Rebecca had mentioned.

Back at Major Crimes, he worked the phones and fax machines, combed the databases. St. Pierre had done great work on Tuesday and Wednesday, and at one o'clock Mo fielded a call that had promise. An unidentified corpse could take weeks or months to put a name to, or it might never be ID'd, but here was a jeweler who thought the ring looked familiar. Mo sent him back to his billing records, and after another half hour he called back with the name of the person who had commissioned him to clean and reset the stone, one Irene Drysdale. The name wasn't on the list of possibles they'd put together from missing persons lists, but there was an Irene Bushnell, a resident of Ossining who had disappeared about six weeks ago. Mo spent another hour calling back dentists and asking them to look in their client lists for either name. By two o'clock, he had a positive match on the teeth. For once everything had fallen together like clockwork.

"Her name was Irene Bushnell,"Mo explained to Marsden a little later. "Born Drysdale, married last year. Her mother reported her missing April third, we're presuming that's the date of death." He had gone to Marsden's office with the news, and now he sat in front of his desk, both of them pissed off at what it meant.

"Mother? What about the husband?" Marsden didn't look good, the gray-green skin of his cheeks contrasting sharply with the rash next to his nose.

"A truck driver, long-distance hauler. He was verifiably in Nebraska at the time."

Marsden didn't say anything for a moment, just flipped through the faxed X-rays of teeth, frowning."Yeah. And Ronald Parker was in jail and brain-damaged at the time."

Meaning that there was a serial killer on the loose in southern Westchester County, and a particularly screwball fuck at that, someone driven to imitate Howdy Doody's elaborate kills. And somehow possessing the knowledge needed to imitate them to perfection.

"Well," Mo said, "at least this explains some details of the O'Connor murder."

"Like what?" Marsden snapped.

"The air-conditioning. Whoever killed Irene Bushnell was disappointed that she wasn't discovered for six weeks. He wanted to make sure if O'Connor sat for a while he'd be in good shape. Also the positioning, right in front of the big windows. Suggests it was important to the killer to have the murder noticed, and he wasn't going to take any chances."

Marsden glared at him, slit eyes."One visit to that profiler, and you're talking psychobabble already. Okay, so what did you establish with Biedermann yesterday? Did he specify which part of his anatomy we're supposed to suck?"

Mo wasn't sure how much he should tell Marsden. "The parallels between Ronald Parker and this new guy are very close," he said. "Given how close, we'll need to reestablish the Howdy Doody task force, only now we'rein on it, and so is White Plains. Biedermann will take complete control, and we're supposed to bring him coffee and stuff."

Marsden bobbed his head as if he'd expected it. "So what's next?"

"St. Pierre's off today, but tomorrow we'll go talk to the mother and the husband. We'll want Irene Bushnell's work history, her social habits, see who she might have gotten mad at her. It's about control, so we'll keep an eye out for who might have felt controlled by her."

"Okay. You guys be sure to look for sources for fingerprints for her—civil service work, other employers, maybe arrests."

On one level, you'd think,
Why bother, we know who she is, and we
can't match 'em to the corpse anyway.
But Marsden had already taken a step ahead. Mo looked at him for a moment with admiration. "You're pretty good," Mo said.

Marsden thought so, too. A little self-satisfied grin. "The power-station scene is an oddball. If this guy's trying to be an exact copy, he's already blown it, he didn't kill her in her own home. Which means we might learn something new from the scene. Starting with, whose prints are on the arranged objects?"

Mo nodded: Marsden, too, had suspected that the puppeteer made the victims do the arrangements. Irene Bushnell had spent her last hours in that cave like hellhole, obeying every command of a controlling monster.

"You want to talk about Biedermann?" Marsden asked. The way he said the name suggested he didn't have a lot nice to say, especially after learning that the SAC had looked into his personnel files.

"You said you knew him. What's going on? I heard that he was transferred to the New York field office just to handle the Howdy Doody case."

Marsden shrugged. "I don't 'know' him. Talked to him on the phone, heard things. I know he was a war hero in Vietnam, he's thought of as having a political future—directorships, Justice Department, stuff like that. Takes his job very seriously."

Mo grinned at the understatement."Some of this is over my head. I mean, what happens if there
is
an inside element here? Somebody with access to information about Howdy Doody, doing the new murders? Who's responsible for internal review when there are so many agencies and jurisdictions involved?"

"What happens is nobody knows how to handle it and there's a lot of distrust and internal bloodshed. A circle fuck ensues. If Biedermann was transferred here specifically to handle the Howdy Doody case, I'd guess it's because the insider possibility was something they were already considering. That's why they chose somebody with an Internal Affairs background. It would also explain why he doesn't tell anybody anything."

Mo thought about that. If that was true, it suggested that Rebecca was right, there had been prior murders back in California, with MO's similar enough to the Howdy Doody MO to trigger the insider concern. In which case—

"So there's two ways you can play this, Ford,"Marsden said. He had been watching Mo shrewdly and obviously didn't like what he saw. "One, you can pull your usual bullshit, try to go around Biedermann, run with your hunches, play Mo Ford messiah cop cowboy, and get us all in trouble. Two, you can play this extra right, SOP all the way, every piece of paper in place so that we can account for our every move and it was all by the book and nobody in our department takes the heat when something fucks up. Do I have to spell out which option I'd prefer?"

When Marsden spoke like that, the exaggerated precision, the chill coming into his gravelly voice, it was time to make serious agreeing noises and get out of his office. "No. I hear you," Mo said.

"I'll tell you something else," Marsden went on. "Look at me. I'm feeling like shit. We're moving my goddamned angiogram up, my cardiologist has already scheduled bypass surgery for right after because he's pretty sure what the angio is going to show. My point is, I don't need any more stress."

Mo felt a pang of dismay at that. Marsden was more than smart, he was tough and fair and straight up, and he took care of his own people. If he left, the complexion of this job would change, and it could only change for the worse.

"I hear you," Mo said again. "By the book. Don't worry," he added, meaning
about me fucking up
and
about the surgery.
Marsden squinted at him skeptically and shifted his gaze to some papers. Mo left the office sincerely hoping he wouldn't have to renege on his promise.

17

M
O HAD DINNER AT A restaurant, burger and fries and house salad, and got back to the house well after dark. He pulled up in front and sat looking at the tree-shadowed facade for a moment, summoning the energy to go inside. What the hell was he doing here? It was the kind of older burb he'd envied as a kid but now mostly resented for its complacent affluence and aloofness. The street was dark with heavy foliage that cut the streetlight glow into puzzle patterns, the houses were separated by wide lawns and thick hedges. The windows in all the others were warm and yellow-, while Carla's mom's house had the black, curtain less windows of abandonment. The air was humid and too hot for May, the oven breath of global warming coming over the Northeast and making it feel like the Deep South. That Gothic, muggy, overgrown feel. Kudzu was already well established here, he thought, how long before the Spanish moss came along?

Bitch, bitch,
he chided himself. He took his briefcase off the seat and left the car.

Inside, he went through the empty living room and into the back of the house, where he put on some lights that revealed the holes where Carla's stuff had been. The gap once occupied by her nice antique rocking chair. The place where the stereo cabinet had stood, where a fifty-buck boom box now lay on the floor amid dust bunnies and pen tops and lost coins revealed when they'd taken the sound system to her car. The bookshelf was still there, but now his own books lay jumbled on half-empty shelves, and the pretty things were gone from its top, leaving only faint impressions in the dust. All that remained were a couple of his shooting trophies, chrome and blue plastic, which without Carla's curios had lost the look of ironic kitsch and now appeared just garish and distinctly declasse. Especially in the unflattering light of the ceiling lights—she had taken all the floor lamps.

He hit the fridge for some beer but there wasn't any left. Instead he found a carton of lemonade and sat for a moment, swigging it from the box. Tonight he'd intended to spend some time looking over the rental classifieds, but he'd forgotten to bring home a newspaper, and now he was too tired to go out to buy one.

For a while he thought about Dr. Rebecca Ingalls, the way she looked and talked as they strolled toward Battery Park. But immediately he railed at himself.
She's way beyond your reach, get real, take
a look
around
—
what're you going to do, invite her over?

The other pisser was that while he was mad at Carla for taking it so lightly, for moving out so easily, and while he agreed it was probably necessary, he still missed her. A night like tonight, back when, he'd court her. He'd put his hands on her waist, holding her hip bones, and kiss her forehead, her nose, her lips. She'd smell like a night-blossoming flower, stoning him instantly. Still standing, he'd bring one leg just a little between her legs, and he'd feel her begin to respond, and after a while they'd be making love and all this deep Dixie heat would become intriguingly sensual, a complement to the primal sweat and scent of lovemaking—

He caught himself slipping and pulled away from the thoughts, emptying his head again with an effort.

In the bedroom, he took off his shoes and then his gun and holster, which he hung on the chair next to the bed. Then he unbuttoned his shirt and threw it onto the floor with the other dirty laundry. Probably he should put on some music, chase the emptiness away, but he just needed a minute to charge up his energy. He felt the dark, empty house around him, cottony silent back here except for the faintdrone of the refrigerator through the kitchen wall.

It was the shits.

A hard week. He wasn't really constitutionally well configured for homicide work. What had Rebecca said?
Too uncomfortable with death
and pain.
That was part of it. Tonight he knew the week's images would come back, the bad pictures, the bad thoughts. O'Connor strung up in his agonies. Big Willie's broad, convulsing back and later his cold flesh and dead weight as the body tipped onto the gurney. Irene Bushnell's head and spinal cord hanging upside down against the bricks as the rat came down the wall—

He startled when he heard a noise from the front of the house. A thump and a series of clicks and then nothing. His ears strained against the silence. Then he slid the Glock out of its holster. Barefoot, he crept out of the bedroom, through the kitchen, and into the dining-cum-living-room. Beyond was the dark, streetlight-mottled front room, and the hall where the stairs came down. Another clunk, a shifting sound, and his pulse began to shake him.

"Mo?" Carla's voice.

He blew out a breath of relief and quickly stuck the gun into the waistband of his pants. "Yeah."

She came into the dark room tentatively."You still awake?"

"Yeah," he said again.

They went back into the lighted rooms. Carla wore a short, summery dress of some filmy fabric, and she looked shapely and very female. Yes, she still got to him. She came into the living room and looked around at the unresolved mess with an expression of concern. Mo sat on the couch, leaving her the option of standing or sitting next to him.

She sat, eyeing the Glock when he pulled it out of his belt and set it on the floor."Jesus. Who were you expecting?"

"I don't know."

"How are you?Your bruises are getting better, that's nice."

Mo made an indeterminate gesture.

"I remembered some other things I needed to get. And I wanted to talk to you. Wanted to check in."She looked at him warily. Part of the rhetoric of parting had been that they'd stay close, they'd keep in touch, maybe do things together now and then.

"How're things in Mount Vernon?" he mustered. "Heavenly?"

"Come on, Mo. Please?"

He made another ambiguous gesture,
okay
or maybe
whatever.
Actually, she didn't look that good. She held herself tensely. Her eyes were a bit too bright, and she looked slimmer, almost too thin. "So what've you been up to?" he asked, trying a different tack.

"I've been doing some great work on the book. It really is very handy to be a little closer to the city, I can go back and forth if I need to. I finally got an in to that voodoo group in Brooklyn, got to observe some prediction rituals with this old Jamaican woman. Pretty amazing. Oh, and I also scheduled an interview with Hope Christian son, she's very big right now. The Christian prophet?"

"Great."He got the sense that she was beating around the bush, avoiding something.

She chuckled insincerely. "All these people I interview? They take it so
seriously.
I mean, they read the future, they talk to the dead, some of them channel guiding spirits. They make me feel like I've been, almost like, I don't know . . . a hypocrite. I've always been so . . .
rational
about it."

"You came here to talk about that?At ten o'clock at night you drove up here from Mount Vernon?" He felt like hurting her, just a little.

Carla put her hand on Mo's thigh. Deliberate or just habitual he couldn't tell, but instantly his body ached for more. He didn't move.

"This is stupid," she went on, "but I had a scary premonition. It seemed very real. About you. I thought I should tell you."

"Hey,terrific," he said blackly.

"Mo, please? Do you want me to tellyou or not?"

"Sounds likethese people you're researching are getting to you. Ididn't take you for the gullible type. I thought your book wasgoing to be an objective look at—"

"That's completely not true!I've always taken my intuition seriously, I've just neverclaimed it was infallible. If you think it's stupid, fine, butlet me tell you and you can decide yourself. And then I've gotto get a few things together and go."

"Okay. Go ahead. Shoot." Shereally did seem to need to tell him. He slouched down against thecouch back, looking disinterested.

"You'retaking an attitude,
sure, I'll humor you,
toget back at me. I can understand that. Look, I'm sorry wedidn't work out, okay? But we
didn'tl
Wehad to face it, didn't we?" Her bright eyes rimmed withtears that she quickly wiped away, and suddenly her sincerity got tohim. So he sat there on the couch with her and listened, facing thedoorway to the shadow-mottled living room, the bare front windowsoverhung with heavy oak branches.

It was after thevisit to the mudda-woman in Brooklyn. Carla had tried a visioningtechnique the voodoo priestess had recommended, she said, andunexpectedly she had seemed to break through into some other place. Telling him now, Carla leaned forward intently, staring with her darkeyes into the middle of the room as if still seeing it, as ifwatching some invisible movie. Mo felt a little chill.

In this other placewere moving shapes. There was a big, dark place, but with aperturesof light, not really windows, that gave it just enough light to seeby. The moving forms were hurting each other, and there had beenhurting in that place before.

Carla's voice had gotten a little shaky. "It was like the time, remember, when we went up to Adirondack State Park?"

She didn't go into details, knowing he'd remember it all too well. Summer before last, they'd driven upstate to get away, out where things were clean and pretty. They'd planned on staying at a motel, but on the first day they'd taken picnic stuff out to the woods, just driving until a spot took their fancy and they pulled over and walked away from the road. Bright sunny day, wading through some tall-grass fields and then into the forest with the idea of eating and lazing around on the blanket and then making love outdoors. They went in a couple hundred yards, sat down in a nice grove of trees. Carla leaned back and then sat forward suddenly, looking at the palm of her hand.
Ow,
she said. Something had poked her. Mo looked and there was apiece of an animal jawbone half-buried in the soil, and she'd put her hand on a tooth. Okay, bad coincidence, but they just moved down the little ridge a bit, set up again. This time Mo saw bones in the soil, not just one but several, ribs and long bones, and then a cloven black hoof sticking up. A dead deer. That was okay, the woods were full of deer, they had to die somewhere, coons and dogs had probably spread the body around. So they moved the blanket and the tote bags over the ridge another thirty yards and spread out again on the edge of a little clearing. But then the breeze shifted and brought a smell that was too familiar to Mo, and he scanned the woods with sudden unease. Suddenly the landscape became
full
of bones, as if they were springing out of the soil, and not clean ones either, many with rotting flesh and hair. Skulls, legs and hooves, rows of ribs with tattered hide attached, knuckled sections of backbone. Whole sheets of empty, maggoty hide emerging from the dirt, or half-submerged in puddles of green-scummed water. It was a charnel place, the earth full of dead things. It was all wrong, it was hideous, why would so many animals die in one place? They practically ran back to the car, and after they'd driven fifteen miles and found a park-office, the ranger had laughed and told them they'd had the bad luck to picnic in a regional roadkill disposal site. The state highway crews and park personnel picked up dead deer and other animals and threw them into scrapes they'd bulldoze each spring and cover over in the fill.

So Carla's vision or premonition or whatever had happened in a place like that. Mo got the picture.

"You were one of the people there, Mo," she whispered quaveringly. "When I saw it was you, I tried to see the details, I thought I should know so I could tell you?" She looked to him for understanding.

"What details?" he asked. He realized he was whispering, too.

"I could sort of see auras around the people, the moving shapes. And there were lines of, like, energy or . . . power . . . between people."

"Lines."

Carla nodded. "I tried to see the details. Lines from your hands, lines from your feet, from your head?They moved with you, or maybe they . . . they moved you? I know it doesn't make sense." She looked disappointed with herself.

Mo was thinking that this cut a little too close to home. To Howdy Doody and the copycat. He'd never told Carla one word about the new cases.

"I tried to see the other forms, people, in there with you. They had the lines on them, too. The people were, this is hard to explain, they were
telescoped,
or superimposed . . . or one behind the other behind the other, farther and farther away. I wanted to see them more clearly, and all I could get was the image of like, a
doctor.
Not in a white suit and stethoscope, not a physical resemblance, but someone who knew things about the human body? A bad doctor. The closest association I got was like a Nazi medical experimenter, I don't know, like Dr. Mengele or somebody."

Carla had gotten shakier and less sure of herself as she went on, groping for the right words, trying to crystallize her impressions, and Mo looked at her with alarm. She'd seemed so confident and in charge of herself when she'd moved out, only five days ago. He almost wanted to ask about the voodoo mudda-woman she'd visited, whether drugs had played a role in whatever ceremony they'd done. Then he thought better of mentioning it. It would make her furious.

"Maybe this isn't good for you," he said. "The book, the people you're seeing—" He almost said,
Moving out of here. Ending it with me.