The Architect (3 page)

A minute later they lay together, spent, her head on his chest. “How did you get your scar?” she asked.

“I cut myself shaving,” he said.

“Try again.”

“Let’s just say there was a straight razor involved and leave it at that.”

She kissed his chest, rested her head on it again. “I don’t want to lie to you,” she said.

He listened to her breathing.

“Ken can’t know about us,” she said.

Ken, not Mr. Rawlings. “Why is that?” he asked
.

“He’s a jealous person.”

He let a few seconds pass.

She took a deep breath, slowly let it out. “We haven’t always been... professional with one another.”

“I appreciate your telling me,” he said. He paused. “Do you love him?”

“I’m not sure what love is.”

She loved him. “Is he a good person?”

She shrugged.

“You’re worrying about my feelings,” he said. “You don’t need to.”

“Yes,” she said, reluctantly. “He’s a good person.”

“And he’s generous?”

“Mmm. Hmm.”

“Strong?”

She nodded.

“Then why are you here?”

“I don’t know,” she said quietly.

That was an honest answer. “Because he’s with his wife?”

“Maybe.”

A very honest answer. “You’ve met him at this hotel”

“Don’t...”

He touched her bracelet with the pavé diamond peace sign. “He gave you this,” he said.

“I won’t wear it if it bothers you.”

“It doesn’t.”

She looked up, worried.

“It’s a spectacular gift.”

“Shhh.” She laid her head back down on his chest.

He took her hand in his. “It’s the truth. His, and yours. You’ve needed one another. That has nothing to do with you and me. The bracelet says something wonderful.”

“That he shops at Barneys?”

They laughed together. “Not only that,” he said. “It says that his wife’s fortune—her diamonds—can’t do what you do for him. You give him inner peace”

She pressed her finger to his lips. “I don’t want to talk about him anymore,” she said. “I’m with you now.”

He knew that was a lie and that she would have to do something to hide it

As if on cue, she slid under the sheet, kissing his chest, his abdomen, moving lower.

SIX

AUGUST 11, 2005, 2:05 P.M., PACIFIC STANDARD TIME

Clevenger had had Whitney
McCormick’s office arrange a meeting for him with Groupmann’s widow, Shauna, at the family estate in Pacific Heights. He landed at San Francisco International and grabbed a cab.

En route, he tried Billy’s cell phone. No answer. No surprise. Billy hadn’t come home the night before, which meant he’d either crashed at a friend’s place, hooked up with a girl, or slept on one of the tugs docked at the Fitzgerald Shipyard. Unless he’d taken a girl with him to the shipyard. It was a lot easier for him to pull off that kind of rendezvous than get himself on a train to Newburyport to see his son.

Clevenger had woken three times during the night, walked to Billy’s room, and found it empty. He had thought about heading down to the shipyard himself. But he didn’t think anything good could come of that. Billy usually needed a few days to cool off when things between them heated up. And this time, Clevenger had to admit he needed a day or two himself—to put down the booze and put away any hopes he had for
a quick fix for his trouble with Whitney McCormick. Because his hopes weren’t lining up with reality, and his mood kept falling into the gap.

He knew he should have taken a later flight and kept his appointment with his psychiatrist Ted Pearson, knew when he left him a message at 4:10 A.M., canceling their 7:00 A.M., that he was avoiding him, which amounted to avoiding himself. But thinking about that had just made him feel worse, so he had swallowed another couple of ounces of vodka to make the feeling go away.

That’s how it works—until it doesn’t anymore.

He dialed Billy’s cell phone again. Voice mail, again. He hung up and dialed his partner, North Anderson.

“Smooth sailing?” Anderson asked.

“Right on time.” It felt good to hear Anderson’s voice. They had been partners seven years, long enough to visit hundreds of crime scenes and morgues together, interview dozens upon dozens of murderers, rapists, bereaved parents, sisters, brothers, children, then watch each other try to live seminormal lives, in spite of it all.

Anderson had always seemed to manage that better. He’d kept his marriage together twenty-one years, kept his two kids out of trouble. And those were no small things for a man who still limped from the bullet he had taken during a bank robbery in Baltimore, who still couldn’t sleep half the time, replaying the single shot he had fired back, through the heart of the masked robber, who turned out to be a fifteen-year-old boy.

On his way to the airport, Clevenger had stopped at
the office and left Anderson his notes on the FBI meeting, together with a packet of printouts on Groupmann and the killer’s four other victims. “Did you find the folder I left on your desk?” Clevenger asked him.

“Already read through it,” Anderson said.

“There’s something else. I’ll tell you in person. But what do you think so far?”

“I think there’s a connection between the victims that the Feds haven’t dug up yet. This guy’s going out of his way to target the high and mighty. Why? Their internal organs look exactly like anyone else’s. He’s got to have another reason.”

“You’re reading my mind.”

“There’s a frightening thought.”

“Horror show,” Clevenger said. It was an offhand remark, but it carried some of Clevenger’s pain with it.

A pregnant pause, then: “You didn’t sound so good on your message about heading to San Francisco.”

“I’m fine,” Clevenger said. He knew Anderson could hear that he wasn’t. He squinted out the window of the cab. “Billy and I got into it.”

“About?”

“Jake.”

“Ah.”

“And some other stuff.”

“How bad?”

“He slept out last night.” He pictured himself pinning Billy against the door, remembered the rage he had felt surging inside him. “Bad.”

“Want me to check on him?”

“If you could.”

“Done. When are you back?”

“Unless something comes up, Fm on a flight home tonight and in the office first thing tomorrow morning.”

“I’ll call you later.”

“Thanks for—?*

“No need. Got to do what it takes to keep my brother sober, right?”

He knew, Clevenger thought. He always knew. “One day at a time,” he said.

“One day at a time.”

They hung up.

The driver was taking the turn onto Broadway, the Fifth Avenue of Pacific Heights, one of the most prestigious neighborhoods in the world. Between palatial homes, Clevenger caught glimpses of the breathtaking expanse of the Golden Gate Bridge over San Francisco Bay, its waters dotted with sailboats gliding past Alca-traz Island, Angel Island, the hills of Marin.

The taxi slowed, turned between a set of fieldstone columns marked 2910, then headed up a twenty-foot-wide, oak-lined driveway shaded by a canopy of branches. It ran at least a hundred yards, ending in a figure eight in front of one of the most beautiful homes Clevenger had ever seen.

He paid the fare, stepped out, and stood there looking at the place. It was a shingled Victorian with woven corners and deep green trim and window sashes that seemed to drift into the hills around it. Its roof was a series of gables and dormers, with a brick chimney at either end. It had to be ten or twelve thousand square feet, yet it looked warm and inviting, with tenfootdeep
wraparound porches and a covered entry way with a porch swing on either side.

Clevenger took the wide steps to the front door and looked through its panes of beveled glass. He could see through a central great room to the back of the house, where giant, boxed-out windows let his eyes keep going, past an acre of green lawn that seemed to roll into the sky, a blue-gray canvas for the glistening Golden Gate Bridge.

He rang the doorbell.

“One moment,” a woman’s voice called out.

A few seconds later a slender, very pretty woman, about thirty-five, with straight, dirty-blond hair tied back in a ponytail, wearing Levi’s and a white, little boy’s V-neck T-shirt, opened the door. “You must be Dr. Clevenger.”

She spoke in a formal way that made him take her for the Groupmanns” personal assistant. “I’m a little early,” he said.

“Not to worry.” She held out her hand. No jewelry. Neat, unpolished fingernails. “I’m Shauna Groupmann.”

He shook her hand. “I’m very sorry about your loss.”

“I appreciate your saying so. We can’t quite believe this is happening.”

Maybe not, but he heard calm, not disbelief in her voice. And he saw no sadness in her emerald eyes.

“Please, come in,” she said.

He followed her through the great room with its fir wainscoting, maple floors with inlaid walnut borders, exposed beams and rafters and those magical windows
on the bridge. It was pristine, timeless space that could have been built six months before or a hundred years before.

He heard voices, then laughter, and looked through an elliptical archway into the dining room. A man with his back to the doorway, a teenage girl, and a ten- or eleven-year-old boy were eating lunch. The boy looked at the man and broke into laughter again. The girl smirked, shook her head.

“My son and daughter,” Groupmann said, looking back at him. “You’re welcome to talk with them later.”

“Thank you,” Clevenger said. “I’d like that.” He already had a few reasons. First, Groupmann’s children seemed to be grieving the loss of their father about as much as their mother was. Second, they looked very comfortable with the man in the room—and Groupmann hadn’t mentioned him.

Still, Clevenger had seen every kind of grief reaction: A mother who insisted her child had been abducted by aliens rather than face the fact he had been strangled for his New England Patriots jacket. A new-lywed who lost all memory of his young bride rather than recall the final hour they spent together, with him tied up and her at the mercy of three men who had no mercy. When grasping reality feels like holding hot coals, the human mind will sometimes grasp for straws.

Groupmann took him into a library as big as his loft, with three walls of floor-to-ceiling walnut bookcases accessed by three moving staircases on rails. You could climb one of the staircases, take a volume off the top shelf, sit down and read a few pages. The fourth wall
held another fireplace, this one bracketed by soaring Gothic-style windows that looked out on a bluestone patio surrounded by gardens.

She motioned him toward a pair of roomy leather club chairs in front of the fireplace and took a seat on a green suede couch across from them.

Clevenger sat down. Looking at her, he realized she was more than pretty. Her features were nearly perfect—large eyes, a small nose, high cheekbones, full lips, a strong jaw. Bright white Chiclets for teeth. She looked like a model on a day off, even more beautiful because she wasn’t trying. “I understand this may be difficult,” he said. “But I need to know as much as possible about your husband.”

“I think I’ve told the FBI everything. There really wasn’t anything out of the ordinary that night. He said he was staying late at the office in Ironwood, which wasn’t unusual. I tried him around midnight and didn’t get a call back, so I went to bed. When I woke up just after eight, I still couldn’t get him. I called the superintendent at the construction site, who said Jeffrey had missed a seven A.M. meeting with him. That’s when I called the police.”

Clevenger leaned forward. “I’m less interested in those details than in learning about your husband as a person.” He paused. “What was he like?”

“As a person?” A hint of a smile. “He was amazing.”

“Amazing, in what way?”

“He was... charming. Beyond charming. He could sell anything to anyone.”

Not exactly tombstone material, Clevenger thought. “A born salesman,” he said.

“Definitely.”

“Rather than, say, a great artist.” Or a great husband, or a great father.

“An artist...” She pondered that. “In the commercial sense, I suppose. Maybe that’s the better way to put it. He was an absolute genius at getting people to sign on with his creative vision, to
join
him in it—a little like one of those Sirens from Greek mythology.”

The Sirens were beautiful creatures—part woman, part bird—who lived on an island and lured sailors to their doom with their irresistible singing. “You’re saying people were charmed into joining him when they shouldn’t have.”

“I’m sure you’ve done your homework,” Group-mann said. “Jeffrey took us to the brink financially more than once. We always came out fine, even on the David Johnson project.”

“The skyscraper.”

She nodded. “Some people weren’t so lucky.” She grew more serious. “That was the problem with my husband: He was easy to follow; it was harder to know where you would end up.”

For the first time, Groupmann sounded bitter, as though she had been one of her husband’s bankrupt investors. Maybe she was—emotionally. “Was he as persuasive with you?” Clevenger asked.

She smiled a wider smile that lasted longer. “None of the police or FBI agents asked these kinds of questions.”

“They’re not psychiatrists.”

“I could have used you a long time ago.” She chuckled to herself, then grew serious again. “Let’s just say I bought a set of plans from Jeffrey.”

“Plans...”

“You don’t quit.”

Never. “Should I?”

She took a deep breath, let it out. “Plans for a life together, a family. He had an incredibly poetic and powerful way of describing how it would be to travel, to raise children.”

“You couldn’t resist him.”

“Him, his plans... whatever.” She folded her hands on her lap, looked down.

“The two of you didn’t get to build what he had in mind.”

She looked up. “Not even close.”

“Why?”

Her eyes filled up. “Christ. What does this have to do with his murder?”

“Maybe nothing,” Clevenger said. “But we are talking about it. So maybe it does.”