All Cry Chaos (29 page)

    This was no metaphor. Cities were not
like
leaves but rather w
ere
leaves in some essential way: a single principle that was deeper than biology, prior to biology, organized both. Poincaré studied the shared structures—the avenues for fuel, waste removal, and communication. No cell existed without a route back to a main line; cells were contiguous until a sharp border was reached; vital operations within cells kept the larger organism functioning. Cities, leaves. What else? Poincaré saw it, what Fenster had seen; but still he resisted Fenster's move from things one could touch—leaves and cracks in asphalt—to entities as abstract as the global economy and the districts of France. He took pen to paper and sketched the flow of letters of credit, trade agreements, and tariffs as if they were components of an organism that grew routes for transport to and from centers of production. He could see it; he could not accept it.

    When the sun rose, Poincaré knew he had walked half a road with James Fenster over a very long night; but there would be no going the full distance just now. He collected his materials, closed the curtain in his hotel room, and slept all day—waking for dinner at five and an evening flight to Minneapolis. He showered and dressed with care, which refreshed him on the inside, at least. On the outside, he did not cut much of a figure. Mirrors do not lie, and neither had Quito or Ludovici. Still, his heart was behaving. He had eaten an actual meal, and he had slept.

O
UTSIDE THE fuselage window, Poincaré watched the Aurora twisting in broad, green sheets. He had seen other such displays. Once he had tracked a child pornographer to the upper reaches of Norway where, in a village lost to the sun several months each year, a desk clerk amassed the most execrable digitized photo library of abuse to minors—some as young as a year—as could be imagined and then distributed it for profit across the Internet. The wonders of technology. As this thin, mousy father of three walked to a police car—the only one in a cluster of a tiny villages that far north, agents carried computers and filing cabinets to a waiting van. Poincaré leaned against a post and stared at a sky much like the one outside the airplane. If at that moment someone had tapped his shoulder and said: "It's dinosaurs fighting—this is what causes the Northern Lights," he might have answered
Why not? W
ith a book knowledge that explained nothing, he watched particles streaming from the sun and exploding high in the atmosphere while down below, with as much astonishment, he watched a pornographer's wife struck dumb as authorities led away a stranger she had called husband. How did one understand either?

    And how he had lived fifty-seven years, altogether missing the beauty of what Fenster saw and what Chloe observed that day in Fonroque: symmetries upon symmetries invisible to him and yet as near as his next heartbeat? In his electrocardiogram lived a patterning common to lightning strikes, trees, and the incremental growth of cities. He did not dare ask where or with what it all ended because to ask was to invite inquiries he was not willing to make. But of this much he was sure: to Fenster, the very world—above
and
below— shimmered like the Aurora, and in that shimmering lay the key to his murder.

    Poincaré turned away from the window.

    He was old enough to remember sorting through vital records in shoe boxes. "I won't take much of your time, Mrs. Reynolds."

    "Good," she said. "Because I don't have much time."

    They reached a solitary, windowless office that had been used for janitorial supplies in an earlier life. Along one wall was a sanitary sink filled with discarded paper. Pamphlets, neatly stacked in boxes, lined shelves; on the door, oddly enough, was her nameplate. She worked in a storage room inside a storage room.

    They sat at a desk, and Poincaré produced his copy of Madeleine Rainier's birth certificate, which he had requested. "November 8,1980. Hennepin County Medical Center. May I see an original—or your digitized copy?"

    She examined Poincaré's version of the certificate. "Two things," she began. "First, the paper originals are kept in a vault somewhere up in the Iron Range. The best we offer here is a digital facsimile. Second, you have a certified copy—do you see this mark here? It's legitimate but may be missing some information. Give me a moment." She entered Rainier's name into a database; when the screen refreshed, she reached for glasses that hung on a chain around her neck.

    "Parents—the same; the addresses match. Same file. You're working with an authentic record," she said, looking up. Reynolds swung the monitor to Poincaré's side of the desk, and he began comparing the paper in his hand against the information on the screen. "What's this mark on the original?" he asked. "It's not on my copy."

    The woman swung the monitor back. "As I said, certified copies omit information that's not pertinent to establishing proof of citizenship or date of birth. This mark indicates that Madeleine Rainier had a twin." She clicked on a link and a second record appeared. "A brother, Marcus . . . three pounds, seven ounces. Born eight minutes after." She checked Madeleine Rainier's record. "And runt of the litter. The sister was six pounds, three ounces."

    Poincaré backed his chair away from her. "Curious."

    "Inspector,
this
is the difference between certified and uncertified. Weren't you listening? Some people don't care if others know they're a twin, which is their right. But we assume most people want their privacy, so all certified birth certificates mailed from this office list a single name only."

    She reminded him of a teacher he had been saddled with for a year in primary school. She fixed him with a stare. "Do you understand?"

    "I understand," he said. He asked for copies of Rainier's full certificate and her brother's, then pointed to the address common to each. "They lived in Minneapolis. Is this street nearby?"

    She turned off the monitor. "You say you're visiting from France?"

    "That's right."

    "Then it's nearby. Forty minutes in traffic."

P
OINCARÉ HAD tracked serial killers from large, extended families at whose trials siblings and parents wrung their hands and said: W
e never
saw it coming
! Banović had brothers. France's own Jack the Ripper, Joseph Vacher, had a sister. Still, Poincaré never quite expected that anyone damaged enough to land on his case list could be other than a lone, unhappy child.

    So Rainier had a brother. Poincaré doubted the news would materially affect the case, and he doubted that after nearly three decades he would find anything useful at her childhood home. Still, he handed his driver an address and sat back, reviewing what information he had on Madeleine Rainier. Forty-four minutes later—he expected no less from Mrs. Reynolds—he approached the neighborhood on a street not much wider than a bike path that followed the shoreline of several connected lakes. The homes were stucco and brick, stately with well-tended lawns and picture windows through which he could see thick curtains and chandeliers. The driver stopped before one of the larger homes, and Poincaré followed a terraced walkway to a portico supported by four large columns. He knocked and admired the view across the lake, to the towers of Minneapolis.

    The man who answered the door was so stooped at the shoulders that he had to strain his neck to receive his visitor. "May I help you?" The strong voice surprised Poincaré. He showed his badge, which the man studied as if it were a relic. He looked from the badge to Poincaré, and back again. "I was a federal judge in a former life," he said. "Is one of my cases coming back to bite me?"

    From down the hallway, someone called: "Who is it, Nate?"

    "One moment, dear . . . What's this about?"

    "Mr. Rainier?"

    The man looked perplexed. "No. Nathan Jorgenson."

    Poincaré showed him the birth certificates, pointing out the address on each. Then the names. "Have I come to the wrong place, Monsieur?"

    The man studied the certificates and, after a moment, craned his neck once more. "I haven't seen this name or thought of these people in a long time. Please come in, Inspector. My wife should hear this."

    Poincaré followed him down a hallway off of which he saw a parlor, a music room, a staircase, a dining room, and a kitchen. At the back of the house he turned right into the smallest of the rooms, with a window that looked over an herb garden. Mrs. Jorgenson, seated in a wheelchair beside a space heater, set aside her needlepoint and smiled as her husband introduced their visitor. Poincaré noted examples of framed lace on the walls and said: "You did these? I never saw finer work in Bruges. Where do you find the patience?"

    Mrs. Jorgenson laughed and patted her legs. "Right here. It's my specialty, sitting. And even if the rest of me is falling apart, my hands and my eyes are still good enough to sew. What can we do for you, Inspector?"

    "He came asking about the Rainier children, Anna."

    Her husband sat beside her.

    Poincaré stated his business and, in the moment it took Anna and Nathan Jorgenson to work through difficult emotions, he wondered if Claire and he would have the chance to grow old together. Did he even want to live long enough to see her in a wheelchair?

    "It's a terribly sad story," Mrs. Jorgenson began. "We never met the children. There were three of them."

    "
Three
? I understood Madeleine had a fraternal twin."

    "She did. And also an older brother. She was two and the older one was four, I believe, at the time of the accident. We bought the house about a year after. . . . From what we learned, the Rainiers were a young, professional family. I believe the father was an attorney and the mother taught at the university. The children were home one Friday evening with a sitter. The parents had gone to the theater, and on their way back a drunk ran a stop sign and killed them. They had no relations. And remarkably, there was no will. I never understood that—except, possibly, I heard the family had moved to the Twin Cities after some failed business venture back east. I believe the twins were born here. The older child was born in Massachusetts, I think. Or Connecticut. That was it. They came from New Haven. The mother taught at Yale."

    "But this house," said Poincaré. "How could they have afforded it?"

    "Apparently the woman was a brilliant chemist, and to lure her the university bought the house and paid the mortgage. The Rainiers didn't own it. They had tied up everything in that business, and they were starting over."

    "They had even cashed out their life insurance policies," said the husband, "to pay off debts. It was an honorable thing to do. They avoided bankruptcy, but it ruined them. A sad affair. The children were left penniless."

    "And with no family to take them in!" said the wife. "They stayed with neighbors until arrangements could be made. There was plenty of talk about what should be done, but in the end, no one in the neighborhood was willing to take on three orphans without a nickel to their name. The state put them up for adoption. I know they were separated, but I don't know what became of them after."

    Anna Jorgenson's white hair was thinner than her husband's. A plaid, wool blanket hid her legs. "Nate," she said. "I know this business was settled before we ever moved into the house. But I wish we had taken them. We came from out of state," she said to Poincaré. "We hadn't heard about the accident. But I wonder sometimes what if the timing had been different. We could have taken them and they would at least have had each other and this house and their neighborhood." She put a handkerchief to her nose. "We had five, Inspector. What's three more? . . . You know, the heart breaks. It does."

Poincaré woke to news of a suicide bombing in Piccadilly Circus, near the Shaftesbury Memorial. The morning broadcasts showed nothing but demolished shops and sobbing witnesses describing how a man shouted J
esus is the Lord!
moments before detonating himself. And then the flash and body parts mingling with sundresses and tank tops. The toll: twelve dead, including a pregnant mother of three.

    This particular bombing for Christ was the first of its kind on British soil. Six other countries in the EU had been hit, as had the United States at Rockefeller Center and Fisherman's Wharf. Previous bombers had worn vests stuffed with explosives, ball bearings, and nails beneath loose-fitting white robes—a signature obvious enough for Soldiers of Rapture everywhere to come under increased scrutiny. The London bomber avoided detection by placing his vest beneath a turquoise Hawaiian shirt accented with palm trees and pineapples. In a video mailed to the T
imes
, he spoke of the Tribulation in a calm, well-schooled British accent that was notable mainly because early suspicion had centered on American evangelicals. "The Troubles are upon us," he declared, standing before his Webcam in robes. "And I am compelled to contribute. I sincerely hope my martyrdom will hurry the Second Coming and bring blessings to all." He stated his sincere belief that, upon killing himself, he would rise to Paradise. He also offered thanks for the privilege of escorting those who died with him to the Master's right hand. Poincaré could only think how ordinary he looked, like any neighbor anywhere setting out for a stroll with his family to a park. If this man could blow himself up, everyone was suspect.