The Tower (1999) (23 page)

Darby Atlasia sat quietly in the study, nursing a glass of red wine. The detective had stirred old memories, and now they swirled about, refusing to be laid to rest.

She thought about the days when her seven-year-old son was missing. They had feared the very worst, but even their grossest speculations couldn't match the reality. Death would have been preferable. She slid the glass back into the indentation it had made on her Pottery Barn catalog.

There are so many things you wish for as a parent, so many dreams and aspirations, she thought. You want your child to grow up to be a doctor, or a senator, or a judge. You hope, you plan. And then a sick man steps in and tinkers with your son's mind. Damages it irreparably.

True, Allander's behavior had indicated some problems even before the incident. He had not been right, had not been normal. And then his natural predisposition had been encouraged and further corrupted by "environmental factors." That was what his first psychologist had called it. "Environmental factors." Like being raped by a thirty-three-year-old man at the age of seven, Doctor? she'd wanted to yell. Is that an "environmental factor?"

The guilt at that memory still gnawed at her from time to time. What could I have done differently? she would ask herself defensively. Did I do all I could to protect my boy, to treat him normally afterward? Did my feelings of disgust filter through the mask I wore at home? Did Allander feel my anger, my irrational fury that he had brought all of this to our lives?

After the boy had . . . after the incident between her and Allander, Darby had known that Thomas considered his son dead to him. In fact, he had felt that Allander was no longer his son. After that, Thomas had told her, he felt that Allander drew his inspiration from some source beyond Thomas's comprehension.

"Hon, are you all right?" Thomas's soft voice at the door startled her, and she knocked over her glass of wine. She watched as the liquid darkened the papers on the desk--the bank statements, the mortgage papers, the letters and magazines. She made no effort to stop the flow, but watched it as the keen smell of alcohol rose to her nostrils and permeated the room.

Thomas walked over and leaned on the desk beside her. He cradled her head to his chest as the tears came, and they cried together softly. Finally, Darby leaned back and looked at him, then wiped the tears from his cheeks with her thumb. She spread her hands and used her fingers to erase the tears beneath her own eyes.

"Well, hon," she said. "I guess we're just one big dysfunctional family, aren't we?" They laughed together for a while. Gradually, their laughter fell back into tears.

Chapter
33

J A D E lay draped across his leather couch in a daze, surrounded by the clutter of books and papers. A taped recording of a psychiatric interview played, and Allander's voice resonated through the room. Three of the walls now held black-and-white photographs of Allander and his victims, and the television blinked images of his trial, the bluish glow mapping erratic patterns of light onto the room.

Jade's eyes closed briefly and his hand, still grasping the document he had begun to examine, fell to his chest. His eyelids fluttered as he tried to fight off sleep, but his exhaustion was too great.

He was reclining in the middle of a massive rose garden, a peaceful oasis that seemed to exist out of time and place. Row after row of roses stretched before him, roses of different sizes and colors. A stone wall surrounded the fertile soil of the garden.

Lying propped on his elbows, Jade surveyed the calm surroundings and inhaled the fresh air. Suddenly a roll of thunder broke from behind the clear sky, and Jade searched overhead for any trace of darkness. There was none. The sound of tiny footsteps became slowly distinguishable, a cavalry of small feet pounding a ground unseen, accompanied by the whistle of thin legs pumping vigorously.

Then they were there. Hands grasped the top of the stone wall, hoisting to elbows, then elbows to knees. Bodies poured over the wall, spilling down the ten-foot fall and bouncing effortlessly to their feet.

Boys. Scores of boys flooding the garden from all sides.

A look of panic flashed across Jade's face, an unfamiliar expression that sat awkwardly on his features. He rose quickly and twisted to glance around.

He watched as the boys continued to tumble over the wall. Righting themselves, they attacked the rosebushes, breaking off stems and gripping them tightly, the thorns puncturing the flesh of their hands. Using the stems like sickles, they lopped off the heads of the flowers. The blossoms fell and the petals came apart, littering the ground. The boys laughed as they raced through the rows of bushes toward Jade, who was frozen in place.

The boys bleated in pleasure as they raised their voices to the heavens, breaking into a chant of nursery rhymes. "Eenie meenie minie moe," they sang, repeating the lyrics in a near scream.

Rosebush after rosebush fell before their marching feet, plowed down by the vanguard. Droplets of blood from the boys' hands fell to the ground and dotted the trampled petals. The rose stems snapped through the air like whips. Jade recoiled before the onslaught, lifting his hands to his face, peering out through the prism of his fingers.

He awoke from his dream with the noise of Allander's voice filling his ears and with Allander's eyes gazing at him from the pictures spread about the apartment. He didn't lurch awake as many people do after a nightmare. Instead, his eyes opened and he waited silently for the world to flood back to him.

Jade rose from the couch and walked to his study, crunching papers underfoot as he moved. As he crossed the living room, his pace accelerated until he was running.

Inside the study, which, unlike the living room, was still neat and clean, Jade picked up from the desk a small box that held pencils and pens. He dashed its contents to the desktop, then struggled to keep them from falling to the floor, fencing them in with his forearms.

Slowly, he relaxed. Pulling the black desk chair to him, he sat down. He leaned forward on the desk and began lining up the pens and pencils, separating them by color and type. They were all different shades of black and gray, and there were five of each kind.

As he organized them, his breathing slowed to normal and his fingers stopped shaking. By the time he reached the black pens, he was ordering them with machinelike dexterity.

When he had all the pens and pencils lined up perfectly, he removed a ruler from his top-left drawer and pushed it against the erasers of all the pencils. He let his breath out through clenched teeth as the ruler pushed them into a perfect line, the tips lined up like little soldiers. Picking up the pencils, he slotted them neatly into their division of the box. He did the same with each type of pen until all sat in order--once again the way they had been. He leaned back in his chair and ran his thumb across his bottom lip, pressing tenderly.

The rollers on his chair grated noisily in their plastic sockets as he pushed back from the desk. He got up and centered the swivel chair in the space beneath the desk. Closing the door to his study very gently, he walked into his bedroom. Like the study, this room, too, was neat, orderly, organized. All was as it should be--except for one thing, which Jade noticed immediately. Some of the pictures were missing from his bookshelf.

He felt his heartbeat pounding in his ears. The sound of the chase.

He moved purposefully through the living room and into the kitchen. Pulling the glass sliding door open, he stepped out onto the back patio. A small note sat on the counter that ran underneath the kitchen window, held in place by two of Jade's framed pictures.

"Of course," he said aloud as he slid his hand under the counter to the space where his Glock should have been. He lifted the note--a plain white piece of stationery, folded in half--to his eyes.

The front of the note said simply, "Welcome." Jade flipped it open and saw Allander's familiar scrawl lining the page:

Full fathom five thy father lies;

Of his bones are coral made;

Those are pearls that were his eyes:

Nothing of him that doth fade,

But doth suffer a sea-change

Into something rich and strange.

Sea nymphs hourly ring his knell:

Ding-dong.

Hark! now I hear them--Ding-dong, bell.

He looked at the two pictures on the counter that had been removed from his bedroom. In the photograph of Jade sprinting the hundred for UCLA, two circles to the sides of his head had been cut out. Next to this photo was the small picture of the boy with drooping features. It had not been altered.

A chill ran down Jade's spine and he felt the cold moistness of his sweat under his arms and on his back and shoulders.

He ran through his schedule of the past few days. He had not been outside on the patio since early yesterday, before he'd left for the meeting. He'd gotten in so late last night that he hadn't even turned on the light in his bedroom. He had simply undressed and gone straight to sleep, so he hadn't noticed the missing pictures. That meant he had slept in a room last night that Allander had stood in, had walked around. The note could have been there waiting even while he met with Travers this afternoon.

He cursed himself for not checking the house thoroughly. He just hadn't expected Allander to come so quickly. By arranging the TV news story, he had practically dared him to come to his house. It had paid off. The hoped-for opportunity had come, and he had missed it.

Jade's rage rose suddenly and uncontrollably, and he yelled. He brought the edge of his hand down to strike the counter, breaking it from the wall. The top of the crumpled note protruded from Jade's clenched fist as he walked in tight circles around the patio.

Chapter
34

J A D E checked his watch as he stepped briskly across the campus of the University of the Gate at San Francisco, heading toward the building that housed the English department. Eight-thirty A.M. Bright and early, and he had already completed his run.

He hadn't been able to sleep last night, and he had lifted weights in the garage between one and three-thirty in the morning. When he was tracking, he was usually fine on three to four hours of sleep, but two was a little light, even for him.

After the workout, he'd touched up the paint on the bookshelves in the study. Painting always soothed him, like ironing wrinkles out of a shirt.

He had examined Allander's note under a loupe just to double-check the handwriting. He hardly needed to cast his mind back to the few scattered handwriting lectures he'd sat in on at Quantico to conclude that it wasn't a fake. The handwriting was very neat, spread in clean lines across the sheet. Allander was obviously very organized now that he'd had a little time to settle down.

A stone building loomed at the head of the campus quad, the large lettering carved above the door announcing the department of English and American literature. A few college students readjusted their backpacks over their shoulders as they left the building, and Jade's eyes followed two brunettes making their way across the lawn. Distracted for the moment, he almost walked into a tree, but was given a heads-up by a branch that knocked his sunglasses crooked. After putting them back in place, he glanced around to see if anyone had noticed.

Jade couldn't stand coffee, but knowing he needed caffeine this morning, he had drunk three Dr. Peppers in the car on the way over. Already, he could feel them widening his eyes and quickening his step.

He had been excited last night, too excited to sleep. This note was important. Often, killers make a subconscious cry for help. Or they send out a dare. Allander's note seemed to qualify as both. At the very least, it was an attempt to broadcast intent. "Welcome," the note had said. Welcome to my mind. Here's what I'm thinking, catch me if you can.

I can, Jade thought. I will.

By the time he reached the building, he felt energy running through him like a current. He ran his fingers compulsively through his hair. A female student exited through the door as he entered, and turned to admire him as he passed.

The signs on the corridor doors indicated the professors and their fields of study: "Sacks--Romantic"; "Vendleman--Restoration"; "Caston--Medieval"; "Lithemeir--Elizabethan." The lines from Allander's poem sounded older, but they were still modern English, so Jade headed for Lithemeir's office.

The secretary almost dropped her cup of coffee as Jade entered, flinging the door open.

"FBI. I need to see him. Now," he said, flashing his badge quickly.

The secretary was not an attractive woman, nor did she do much with what she had. She also looked nervous; her eyes darted about the room as though she were looking for a means of escape. Jade almost smiled as she struggled to respond to this unusual situation.

"Dr. Lithemeir is an exceptionally busy man. You'll know from his latest book that he--"

"Lady," Jade cut in, "I didn't read his book and I don't care about his book. I just need a few minutes of Dr. Lithenhaur's time."

Her hand darted up to push a strand of hair off her forehead. "It's . . . Lithemeir," she said cautiously.

"Right. And as I said, I'm with the FBI and I need to talk to him about a murder case--right now. So please don't give me a hard time about it. Now, I'm sure he's a pretty impressive guy or he wouldn't have a secretary, but--"