The Definitive Albert J. Sterne (18 page)

“Early, anyway,” Mac offered before cutting the connection.

The phone rang yet again while Albert was cooking dinner. He picked it up and held it to his ear with a hunched up shoulder so he could continue to chop a green pepper. “Sterne.” He listened for a long moment, said, “All right,” then hung up. “Headquarters,” he said.

Fletcher, sitting on the other side of the counter watching Albert work, almost laughed at the thought of the duty officer having to risk calling Albert again despite all her efforts. But he sobered when he saw Albert’s rather pointed expression. This was going to be bad news. “What?”

“Roberts left a message for you. They’ve found a fourth body, another boy.”

CHAPTER TEN

WASHINGTON DC

APRIL 1983

Fletcher was taking the news of this fourth death hard. He looked thoroughly miserable for a moment, and then opened his mouth to ask a question.

“Yes,” Albert said.

A confused frown. “Yes, what?”

“Yes, you may call Roberts. You’ve had the gall to make yourself at home in most other respects, Ash, I  don’t know why you have this problem with using my telephone.”

The young man had a wry twist to his mouth. “Allow me a few scruples. Inconsistent though they are.”

Albert turned back to the cutting board, swept the diced pepper into the pot simmering away on the back burner. Fletcher liked spicy food so Albert was making him a Mexican dish based on beans and rice, with an avocado and lettuce salad. An unwelcome surprise, that all this trivial domesticity should have become satisfying in its own right. Had he really overlooked the entire point during all these years of dismissing such ordinary comforts? Could he possibly have forgotten that his own parents’ quietly joyous contentment had been drawn partly from such moments?

But he was in no way entitled to compare his problematical friendship with Ash to the marriage of Rebecca and Miles.

The phone call was brief, and Albert learned little from Fletcher’s few words. Once he’d hung up, Fletcher sat in silence for a moment. Then he said, “The victim was young, maybe seventeen or eighteen. Looks like a Latino background, but they haven’t identified him yet. Been dead for months.” Ash smiled unhappily. “Alanna is closer to believing me, but she’s not all the way there yet.”

“Same MO as the two other boys in Georgia?”

“Exactly the same, which has to tell us something. Does he go through phases? For a while he likes it in a particular way, but then he gets tired or bored with it. Or he’s experimenting with different methods, maybe, finding the best or most effective for him. Or he’s acting out a whole range of fantasies, one by one. Whatever it is, he’s very neat and tidy about it.”

The man fell silent, and remained subdued over dinner, not paying much attention to the food. Albert studied him, realizing that Fletcher was disturbed at some deep level. Impatient with the tantrums that had greeted the first news from Georgia, Albert had made the mistake of assuming Fletcher’s reactions to this were shallow, easily expended and forgotten. But it seemed all that extravagance had obscured this more weighty concern.

“You’re doing everything you can with what you’ve got, to paraphrase Thornton,” Albert offered. “That’s all you can ask of yourself.”

“It’s not enough.”

Albert said as patiently as he could, “Then nothing will ever be enough.”

“No, nothing ever will.”

If this had been moroseness, Albert could have dismissed it but instead it was a simple, profound sadness of which Albert was almost envious. The purity of it would fade, tainted by self-pity, and Ash would regain his determination. For now, Albert simply watched the man. Was it possible to love Fletcher more, all of a sudden, and only because of witnessing this emotion?

Albert had wondered at himself, in Colorado, doubting the suitability of this man he had chosen to love. Of course, there was all the glory and inconvenience of the physical reaction, which was perhaps inevitable - Albert defied anyone not to find Fletcher Ash attractive. But beyond that, what sense did it make for Albert to love a man who seemed to lack qualities, such as self-control, that Albert particularly valued? Looking back on it, though, Albert could understand Ash’s frustration and guilt, the horror of not stopping this murderer. Fletcher had willingly taken on the responsibility of solving this case when no one else would, which was commendable. Perhaps his manner of expressing his frustration at the lack of results left a lot to be desired, but Ash felt things deeply, and that again was not a bad trait even if he took it too far - he was no doubt ready to have himself arrested for aiding and abetting the man they were after. Albert had to conclude that, despite all these justifications he had to make to himself, Fletcher Ash was worth loving.

As predicted, Fletcher’s fine sadness seemed at last to dwindle into depression. After a while Albert advised, “Snap out of it, Ash.”

Rising from his thoughts, Fletcher was slow to respond. “Let me grieve.”

“What use is grieving? This hopelessness won’t get you anywhere.”

“There’s nothing to be done this evening. And I can’t be working twenty-four hours a day.”

“Instead of wallowing, you could keep a clear mind, and be in a position to let yourself work this through.”

“I would love to work it through, but I can’t right now.”

“Can’t or won’t?”

“To be brutally honest, I’m grieving for Philip and Stacey and Mitch and this other young man - and also for me. I’m not who I thought I was, who I wanted to be, if I can let this happen.” Fletcher looked up, smiled humorlessly. “See, I’m so selfish that I mourn my self-image at a time like this.”

Albert was careful not to react. Fletcher had called himself selfish only that afternoon, presumably in an attempt to warn Albert off providing a friend with the most basic hospitality. But Albert could both admire Ash’s scruples, and dismiss them as unnecessary. He said, “Selfishness is the last attribute I would accuse you of, Ash.”

The man seemed genuinely surprised, and protested, “I’m the most selfish person I know.”

“That’s ridiculous.” Yet another matter Fletcher would not see reason on.

“You won’t allow me my guilt, either, will you? But I hate feeling that there’s nothing I can do, that I’m a step - no, I’m twenty steps behind this man and he’s on a roll. Everything’s proceeding so perfectly for him, life couldn’t be better, and I’m stumbling along and running into walls and I can’t even keep up.”

“You’re taking this out of proportion.”

“How can I possibly take any murder out of proportion, let alone a string of them? It’s horrific, no matter how you look at it.”

“Don’t pretend to misunderstand me. You need a cool head to be of any use, rather than overreacting like this.” Albert added, “Tell me rationally, what’s so important about this case in particular?”

Fletcher took a long breath, but the answer came easily enough. “He’s why I joined the FBI. People like him.”

“Yes?”

“To stop them, of course.” Ash shrugged. “It’s as simple as that.”

Albert frowned at him. “There’s more to it, you’ve said so yourself.”

“Okay. I also joined up in order to use this imagination of mine, this intuition you don’t believe in.”

“I believe you have intuition, that you reconstruct crimes through your imagination,” Albert said. “But I don’t believe the conclusions you reach can always be true.”

Fletcher insisted, “I can imagine what happened between this man and Mitch, I  can feel how it would be to murder the boy.”

“But the flaw in your argument is that you couldn’t actually do it.”

“You think not?” Fletcher bit out.

This still made no sense to Albert. “Of course you couldn’t, you would never seek that situation or go through with it if you did have the opportunity. You don’t have the personality or the background.”

“Is that so?”

“No need to sound so affronted, Ash,” Albert said dryly, “when someone accuses you of being incapable of murder.”

“I’m only affronted that you don’t take me seriously. You should have met my grandfather, the one I look like -
he
was capable of murder. He could be the most cold-blooded, vindictive man. When I was just a kid, he said to me that if a man is cuckolded, it’s all right for him to kill his wife or her lover or both. He honestly thought the law should allow that: ‘A  man can’t be expected to let that sort of thing be.’ And I inherited other things from him, apart from my looks.
He’d
understand my determination to do my job well and bring this killer to justice. And he was supposed to have the second sight, I
 
don’t know if that has anything to do with my intuition. Frankly, I don’t really know what the second sight is meant to be.”

“Perhaps you have inherited some of his traits. Your grandfather gave you more than his genes, however; he was someone you learned from, even as an example of what you didn’t want to become.”

Fletcher shrugged.

Growing impatient, Albert asked, “What exactly would you do with him if you took Mitchell Brown home? Or Stacey Dixon, if she’s more to your taste,” he quickly added, not wanting an answer to the first. “You wouldn’t cuff her and shoot her as this man did. You wouldn’t torture, rape or murder anyone. It’s ridiculous to dwell on such an idea.”

“It’s not ridiculous when understanding the power of it, the rush and surge of it, gives me a feel for what this person is.”

“As long as you don’t treat that - what is it? Instinct or fantasy? As long as you don’t treat it as knowledge.”

“It’s hardly fantasy,” Fletcher said, weary now. One hand cut short an exasperated gesture. “We always run around the same circles when we have this conversation.”

Albert considered this whole thing such a waste of Fletcher’s energy. They were both quiet for a while. Fletcher seemed safely deflated.

But then he asked, “Why did you join the Bureau, Albert? And why forensics?”

“To find the person or persons unknown who killed my parents.”
No trespassing
.

It stopped Ash for a moment. And then, the gears in his mind visibly beginning to turn again, Fletcher protested, “No. It’s not that simple for you, either. You can’t - you definitely do not mean that literally. It was all too long ago. And figuratively, it’s not enough. You’re not seeking revenge, it’s nothing obvious like that.”

Silence. Albert loathed feeling foolish. It hadn’t been such a smart thing to blurt out after all.

Fletcher was continuing, “The forensics, it’s something you’re incredibly good at. People would call you a genius if they liked you better. I  have no idea what makes one person a genius at something like that. I  mean, why forensics and not  … astrophysics, or music? You specialize in everything, anything to do with people inflicting violence on each other: pathology, biochemistry, toxicology, dentistry  -”

“Odontology,” Albert corrected.

“Psychology,” Ash said, “ballistics, hairs and fibers, fingerprints, weapons and poisons, crime scenes; more things than I can even think of right now. Most people specialize in only one or two of those fields. You’re unique, Albert. So why the FBI?”

“You think you have the answer,” Albert said, frowning at this impertinence.

“I suppose an organization with national jurisdiction gives you the chance to use the best facilities, work on the most important cases, do the most good. But you must hate the bureaucracy of it, the politics.”

“Must I.”

“Worse than I do. Though I suppose none of that weighs very heavily against the chance to bring murderers and rapists to justice.”

“To what passes for justice in this society.”

Fletcher stared at him, startled at the sourness.

Albert shrugged. “Forensics is a worthier endeavor than tapping Noam Chomsky’s phone.”

Choking back a laugh, Ash said, “You’re right.”

“Don’t you do sordid, trivial little things like that, Special Agent? All in the name of lies, corruption, and the American way.”

Apparently Fletcher had a hundred replies to that, and none. He kept opening his mouth to say something, then changing his mind.

“You’re comfortable with all the duties the Bureau has required you to perform?”

“Albert  -”

“What?”

“Sometimes you are the most difficult person to talk with.” The younger man gestured helplessly. “So many things I can’t say to you.”