Mortal Fear (14 page)

 “Try to get him to rest,” I say uselessly.

 “Yeah, okay. I will. And, uh . . . try to keep me out of this, okay?”

 He hangs up.

 I switch on my halogen desk lamp and dig through my wallet for Daniel Baxter’s card. I dial the number before I have time to second-guess myself.

 “Investigative Support Unit, Quantico,” says a crisp female voice.

 “I need to speak to Daniel Baxter immediately.”

 “Your name?”

 “Harper Cole. It’s about the EROS case.”

 “Hold, please.”

 A Muzak confection of old Carpenters tunes assaults my ears for nearly two minutes before Baxter comes on the line. An out-of-tune violin is still ringing in my head when he says, “Cole? What you got?”

 “It’s five a.m.,” I say, looking at my desk clock. “You work all night?”

 “It’s six a.m. here. What you got? I’m pretty busy.”

 “You’re about to be a lot busier.”

 Baxter catches his breath. “Spit it out, son.”

 “I just learned that another blind-draft account went to zero. It was terminated today. It belonged to a woman.”

 “Jesus Christ. Not this soon. You got a name?”

 “Rosalind May. Mill Creek, Michigan.”

 “Rosalind like in Shakespeare, or Rosalynn like Rosalynn Carter?”

 “I don’t know.”

 “How’d you find out about it?”

 I remember David Charles’s plea for protection. “Worry about that later. Can’t you just check the name?”

 “I’ll do it right now. Anything else I should know?”

 “No. As soon as you find out anything, please give me a call. I mean immediately. You owe me that much.”

 “I’ll buzz you. I’m going to call the Mill Creek PD right now.”

 I get up from the halogen glow and walk down the hall to check on Drewe. She left the bedroom door open when she went to bed, a good sign. As she snores softly, I discern her face in the moonlight trickling through the window. Her mouth is slightly open, her skin luminous in the shadows. I don’t know how long I stand there, but the muted chirping of my office phone snaps me out of my trance and I slip quickly back up the hall to get it.

 “This is Harper.”

 “It’s bad, Cole.”

 My blood pressure drops so rapidly I grab the desk to steady myself. “She’s dead?”

 “Worse.”

 “What? What’s worse than dead?”

 “Rosalind May has been missing for fifty to sixty hours. That’s Rosalind with a D. Two nights ago she was dropped off at her home by a date at eleven p.m. Sometime during the night, she apparently let someone into her house or else voluntarily left to meet them. She hasn’t been seen since. In my experience that’s worse than dead. It means very painful things.”

 “Oh, God. You think it was our guy? Strobekker?”

 Baxter hesitates. “I don’t know. I’d say yes, but there’s one thing that doesn’t fit. One very big thing.”

 “What?”

 “Rosalind May is fifty years old. She has two grown sons. All the other victims were twenty-six or under.”

 “Except Karin Wheat,” I remind him. “She was forty-seven.”

 “Yeah. And one other thing.”

 “What?”

 “This UNSUB left a note. The police didn’t find it until last night. One of their detectives decided to poke through her computer—”

 “There was EROS software on the drive?” I cut in.

 “No. Just like the other cases. Anyway, this Michigan detective was poking through her computer, and he found a WordPerfect file he couldn’t read.”

 “It was encrypted?”

 “Not digitally. It was in French.”

 “French? You’re sure the UNSUB left it?”

 “You tell me. The translation’s about a paragraph long, but the end of it reads: ‘The dawn is breaking on a new world, a jungle world in which the lean spirits roam with sharp claws. If I am a hyena I am a lean and hungry one: I go forth to fatten myself.’ Mean anything to you?”

 The skin on the back of my neck is tingling. “Yes. I mean, I recognize the passage. It’s Henry Miller.”

 “The porn author?”

 “Miller wasn’t really a porn author. Not as you think of it. But that’s not important. The passage is from
Tropic of Cancer
.”

 “How do you know that? Nobody here did.”

 “Dr. Lenz must not be there. He would have known it.”

 “You’re right. He’s out of pocket just now.”

 “
Tropic of Cancer
is a classic of erotic literature. I’m sure it’s still in print.”

 “Which means anybody could walk into a bookstore and buy one?”

 “Probably not any bookstore. Not the chains. You’d probably find it in stores that cater to a literary crowd, or else in erotic bookstores.”

 “Thanks. That helps.”

 “What kind of killer leaves notes in French, Mr. Baxter? You ever see that before?”

 “Never. The translator in Michigan said it was probably written by a highly educated French native. Very elegant, he said. I’ve sent it to a psycholinguistics specialist at Syracuse. He won’t be able to look at it before morning, though. The Mill Creek police aren’t telling the press about the note, by the way. They’re using it to screen false confessions.”

 “Hey, I’m not talking to a soul.”

 “I’ve got a really bad feeling about this one,” he says, almost to himself.

 “Why?” I ask, not admitting that I have the same feeling.

 “The UNSUB has killed all the other victims at the scenes. Now he takes one away, no signs of violence. If this is our guy—and my gut tells me it is—he’s varying his behavior more than any killer I’ve ever seen. He could be starting to come apart, to lose control of what’s driving him. But I don’t think so. He seems able to choose whatever crime signature he wants, which means he’s
not
driven beyond the point of control. If you hadn’t called with Rosalind May’s name, we never would have connected this crime to the others. You understand?”

 “Too well.”

 “I appreciate the help, Cole. It’s nice to know someone at EROS realizes we’re the good guys.”

 I say nothing.

 “Talked to your friend Turner lately?”

 “No. I mean, not directly. He sent me some e-mail. Nothing important.”

 Baxter waits. “Right.”

 “What will you do now?”

 “Pray he makes a mistake.”

 CHAPTER 13

 Dear Father,

 The procedure failed.

 That is not wholly accurate. I was prevented from finishing by an unrelated accident. As Kali brought out the patient, she showed signs of hysteria. Unlike the Navy girl, Jenny, who adapted quickly, this one seemed not to have settled her nerves since we took her. Kali told me privately that Jenny had attempted to calm and reassure May during the night (quite ironic, considering the respective fates that awaited them) but the older woman would not be comforted. I’d had to sedate her at gunpoint the first night to get her to sleep at all.

 I took the precaution of using curare prior to Jenny’s euthanization, to prevent her screaming or making any other sounds that might alarm May. But it was no use. As Bhagat and Kali struggled to get May onto the table, she spied a few drops of blood that had resulted from Jenny’s procedure. She began to shriek and flail, using her bound hands like a club. Even Kali could not frighten her into submission.

 It was then that I made my mistake. I imagined that if I explained the simplicity of the procedure, and the remarkable benefits that would likely accrue to her because of it, May would calm down. But my speech had the opposite effect. When she heard me explain the necessity of opening the sternum, her face went white and she gripped her left arm. Needless to say, I attempted to save her, but it was useless. In four minutes she was dead.

 She died of a massive myocardial infarction, and no one could have been more surprised than I. There were no relevant risk factors in her history. As unscientific as it may sound, I believe the woman died of pure terror. When she flatlined, doubt assailed me like a shadow. Should I stop? Should I go on?

 Then I thought of Ponce de Leon, thrashing through the bug-infested jungles of Florida, fighting the mosquitoes and the mud and the alligators and the natives and disease, searching, ever searching for the mystical mythical Fountain of Youth. How the image of it must have burned inside his brain, gushing with pure shining water, liquid with restorative power, holding out its promise to mankind, the possibility of revoking God’s harshest decree. And all the time that poor Spaniard was carrying the true fountain with him, inside his head, millimeters from the very space where his seductive vision burned.

 We know that now.

 Soon I shall stand alone at the pinnacle of the species, the only man with the courage to reach into the fountain.

 Soon I shall spit in the face of God.

 CHAPTER 14

 It’s ten-thirty a.m. and I am tired of talking to cops. Houston cops. L.A. cops. Oregon cops. San Francisco cops. Mill Creek, Michigan, cops. I’ve repeated the same story I told the New Orleans police and the FBI so many times that I know it like the Lord’s Prayer, and to detectives who seemed to be writing each word with the slowness of fourth graders practicing penmanship.

 “Stupid sons of bitches!” I shout to my empty office. “You never heard of tape recorders?”

 I feel a little better. Some of the cops I talked to want to arrest me, I could tell. Me, Miles, and the other seven people who have access to the master client list. All of them asked why we haven’t shut down EROS, and some yelled while they asked me. The Michigan cops were the worst, probably because they’re dealing with a kidnapping rather than a murder. I referred them all to Daniel Baxter of the FBI. Let them take their complaints to the Great Stone Face.

 When the phone rings again, I grab it as if to smash it against my desk, but I restrain myself and put it to my ear.

 “Harper, it’s me.” Drewe’s voice is tight with pent-up emotion.

 “What is it? What happened?”

 “A lot of things.”

 A wave of heat rolls up my back and neck as an image of Erin flashes in my mind. “Where are you?”

 “Woman’s Hospital.”

 “Can you talk? What is it?”

 “The FBI,” she says quietly.

 “What? They called you?”

 “No. They called my bosses. They called my friends.”

 “What?”

 “And not just the FBI. A detective from New Orleans called the hospital administrator and asked permission to question colleagues about me.”

 Mayeux.
“What kind of questions are they asking?”

 “Embarrassing ones. Do I drink heavily. Do I ever bring you around the hospital, or even to Jackson. How you and I get along. Why don’t we have any kids.” Her voice cracks slightly at that. “Harper, this is not acceptable.”

 “I know, babe. Goddamn it. I’ll try to see if I can do something about it.”

 “You’ve
got
to do something about it. My world isn’t isolated like yours. The good opinion of these people is a prerequisite for keeping my privileges.”

 “I get the message, Drewe. Let me make some phone calls.”

 “Please do that. I’m being paged.”

 And she is gone.

 Let me make some phone calls.
I said it with such confidence. Who the hell was I kidding? Am I going to call a New Orleans homicide detective and say, “Listen, shrimphead, leave my wife alone or take the fucking consequences!”

 No.

 Am I going to call Bob Anderson and say, “Dr. Anderson, it turns out I actually can’t take care of your little girl so could you please call the governor and ask him to get the FBI off our backs?”

 Hell no.

 Am I going to call the FBI and say, “Could you please stop questioning my wife about this murder case? She doesn’t like it.”

 Maybe.

 I take Baxter’s card from my wallet, punch in the number of Quantico, and ask for Agent Baxter.

 “Special Agent Baxter is in the field at this time,” says a robotic female voice. “Would you like to leave voice mail?”

 I decide to wake her up. “My name is Harper Cole,” I say too loudly. “I met with Baxter and Dr. Lenz about the Karin Wheat murder, and they told me to call immediately if I remembered anything vital to the case. Well, I have.”

 “Where are you, Mr. Cole?” says a slightly less controlled voice.

 “Home. And I don’t have much time.”

 The voice finally becomes human. “Could you give me your number please? Mr. Cole?”

 “Baxter has it,” I snap, and hang up the phone. That ought to light a fire under somebody.

 I sit down at the EROS computer, log in as SYSOP, and begin scanning the Level Two messages as they are posted. EROS traffic is basically unmoderated, which means we sysops do not screen or censor the communications of clients. This freedom is what allows Miles and me to run the busy service without much help. Certain types of communication are prohibited on EROS, and they are filtered by a simple but efficient program designed by Miles: he calls it “Ward Cleaver.” As messages are posted to the various areas of our servers, “Ward” automatically searches out all binary graphic files and references to children and deposits them in a special file called the Dumpster. (Actually, “Ward” lost his graphic filter three weeks ago.) At his leisure, Miles then attempts—usually with success—to track down the originators of these forbidden files. He doesn’t turn them over to the cops or anything. He just likes letting them know he can find them.

 Theoretically, I’m supposed to be monitoring the various areas of EROS on a round-robin basis, doing what I can to assist new clients and helping to foster a sense of on-line community. But in the past few weeks I have become rather casual about that duty. More than a few of this morning’s messages are about Karin Wheat’s death. The themes are consistent: shock, denial, anger. Of course, none of the authors of these messages has any idea that Karin was an EROS client. They knew her only through her novels, which would interest most EROS clients, as they dealt with the darker side of the human psyche.

 When my phone rings, I pick it up prepared to give Daniel Baxter a piece of my mind, but instead I find myself listening to the flat vowels of Dr. Arthur Lenz.