Puppets (15 page)

Suddenly the injustice of it enraged him, the artery in his neck twisted painfully, the pressure seemed to lift his scalp. He knew he was losing his medical objectivity here, wanting to inflict some pain in return. But fortunately the two goals overlapped.

"Jump," he commanded suddenly.

Number Four, caught by surprise, obeyed with a jerk after a momentary hesitation.

"Good. Now three times, fast. Good. Stick out your tongue.

Good. Now three times, fast. Now jump again. Faster. Again. Again."

Four jumped, the hard plastic of the cords swinging and rustling.

"So what do we have to do when people control us? Keep jumping. You can answer."

"I, uh—"

"You said you hate Daddy. You said the thing you hate most about Daddy was—"

"Control," Four rasped.

"And what do you have to do—
have
to do!—when people control you?"

"Hurt them. Hurt them back."

"Keep jumping. Faster! Yes, hurt, but more important,
control
them back. So why don't you hurt Daddy now? Make him stop?"

"Scared."

The subject was breathless now, red in the face. But it was going well: answering faster now, the tempo picking up. "Why don't you try? You should
try
to make Daddy stop, shouldn't you?"

"It hurts too much when I—"

"It's gonna hurt a whole lot fucking worse if you don't try!"
Come
on,
Mr. Smith was thinking,
do it. Give in to it. It's paradoxical,
developing resistance within a framework of submission, but you can do it. It's
the next important step, and you're very close.
"Come and hurt Daddy. Come now, or
I'll
come and hurt
you.
I'm gonna come hurt you. Here I come, Daddy's gonna come—" He clicked the points of the tongs together,
clack clack.

The subject was crying, gasping, but the badgering was beginning to work. Number Four lunged toward him, arms outstretched, hands clawed, mouth a rictus of hatred. A raging early primate, a fearful primitive reptile striking at its enemy. Mr. Smith stayed just out of reach as the cords drew up short, bit the wrists and ankles hard, brought the leaping naked body to a stop with a wrenching jerk. Four sagged against the tangled lines, the knots drawing blood.

"Again. Hate Daddy. Come hurt Daddy." Mr. Smith leaned temptingly closer.

Wide eyes, a flash of resistance, then the desperate lunge again, the cutting cords, the collapse.

"Again," Mr. Smith ordered. A tempting step closer, maybe just maybe within reach.

And again and again.

Finally a scream of rage, veins and tendons standing clear in the neck, blue eyes bloodshot, muscles cording with the lunge. The wrenching yank of the cords snapping taut, the sound of elbows and knees hitting the floor, the tangling and writhing.

Jeez, that was a doozy,
Mr. Smith thought. Maybe it was time to back off. You had to pace this stuff, or you could damage the subject. He didn't want to end things prematurely tonight.

He put down the tongs and came forward warily, watching the arching, gasping body."There," he said. "That's all for now. That wasn't so bad, was it?" He came closer, bent, reached out one hand, touched a shoulder. Four ignored the contact. He leaned closer, stroked the forehead, wiped away blood and tears. Four calmed a little, already partly conditioned to the routine. Amazing.

Mr. Smith sat cross-legged on the floor, arranged the lines, and drew the panting body to him. He loosened the wrist lines a little, held the weeping face against his shoulder. "There," he said again, comfortingly. "There, there. All better now. Everything's going to be fine. Daddy won't hurt you now. That's all for now." He stroked the blond hair, rocking gently, waiting to feel the quaking sobs subside. He massaged the neck, kneading, soothing. "There. See, Daddy
loves
you, doesn't he? And you love Daddy, too, don't you? Do you love Daddy? You can answer."

The subject stopped breathing for a moment, held perfectly still with face still buried in Mr. Smith's shirt. A heartbeat, two, three. Then, "Yes, Daddy." A muffled voice.

"Say it." Putting just the tiniest edge of threat in his voice.

"I love you, Daddy."

Mr. Smith nodded approvingly. But it wouldn't do to make it too easy. He let his hand tighten hard on the back of the neck and bent to put his lips right against Number Four's ear. "Say it three times,"he whispered, letting the edge show clearly now.

21

M
O HAD DECIDED TO work Saturday, and to his surprise St. Pierre insisted on coming along. Maybe it was the overtime pay, a new baby cost money. Biedermann and any new forensics from the power station would have to wait until Monday, but the interviews with Mrs. Drysdale had opened several doors, and it was important to move fast on these things. You waited too long and memories faded, witnesses or suspects heard you coming and ran for cover. Best to steamroll it right along.

Friday night he had dropped Rebecca at her apartment, a nice building not too far from her office on the Upper West Side. Her good-bye at the curb in front had been shy and maybe a little reluctant. A handshake, but a nice one. On one level, he felt as if they were racing toward something. And yet despite her direct, candid way of talking about their feelings, she was being discreet, pretty balanced—taking things out into the open, but also setting limits, keeping a reasonable degree of professionalism. An admirable combination.

Rebecca was right, he had no real cause to consider Biedermann any kind of suspect. But at the same time, his instincts told him something was wrong with the guy, and it shouldn't be too hard to shoot down or support his suspicions. First, he'd look at whatever information Gus might come up with and maybe talk to Ty again. If either produced anything at all shady, there was an easy second step: determine where Biedermann had been on the day Irene Bushnell had disappeared and that Thursday Daniel O'Connor had not shown up at work. Simple. So he put it out of his mind and concentrated instead on what he could do, which was look into Irene Bushnell's employment contacts. Even with all the high tech in the world, you still couldn't beat traditional investigative techniques like legwork, interviews, and deductive processes.

Saturday morning he and St. Pierre arrived in separate cars at the home of Mrs. Ferrara, the lady who owned The Gleam Team. She ran the cleaning business out of her home in Ossining, a well-cared-for white cape built in the sixties. She had a husband who was mowing the lawn when they arrived and two kids who watched suspiciously as their mother took her police visitors to an office at the front of the house. Mo and St. Pierre and Mrs. Ferrara sat there as Joe Ferrara, who looked as if he could use the exercise of a walk-behind, went back and forth past the big window on his riding mower. The drone of the machine coming and going made conversation difficult about once a minute.

But Mrs. Ferrara was helpful. She was at all, slim woman in her late forties, dark hair pulled up into a single, thick braid. An intelligent face. She was wearing shorts and grass-stained running shoes and a man's work shirt: Saturday was obviously a day for yard work at the Ferraras'. Mo let St. Pierre take the notes.

She told them she had started the business about eight years before and now supervised twelve cleaning people full-time. Her job was to do the advertising, scheduling, payroll, client relations. Right now, The Gleam Team cleaned for fifty-two clients, most of them residential. At the time of her death, Irene Bushnell had been cleaning for seven clients, two of them twice a week, the rest once. However, in her three years with The Gleam Team she had cleaned for others and had occasionally substituted for other employees, so the total number of clients she'd contacted was twenty-one.

"Irene was a good girl," Mrs. Ferrara said. "She was more regular than the average, and she didn't break things often, or steal things. Those're the two most common problems."

"Did she ever talk about personality conflicts with any of the clients?" St. Pierre asked."Disagreements, uh, somebody being bossy? Somebody making passes at her?"

Mrs. Ferrara had a couple of file folders, one with Irene's name on it, and now she looked inside them. "I keep a note of any problems in my client and my personnel files, usually you hear about it from both sides. But Irene—well, here's a complaint she was late . . . here's a complaint she broke a mirror . . . Here's a complaint
she
made about a watchdog that tried to bite her. Um, but that's it. A better than average record."

Mo took the papers, scanned them. "Do you often encounter problems with sexual contacts between clients and employees?"

The question seemed to embarrass Mrs. Ferrara. "I used to do cleaning myself. You get a certain amount of, . . well, of interest from male clients. You're cleaning their bedrooms, sometimes you're in their house alone with them, so . . . But our contracts expressly forbid it. If you're thinking Irene had a, um, contact, all I know is, not that she told me. No."

Joe Ferrara droned past the window while St. Pierre dutifully jotted in his notebook. Mo could imagine his notes:
Interviewee says
victim did not rpt. any sexual contacts, which are contractually forbidden.
Mike seemed to enjoy the stilted language of police reports. Mo wondered if he ever jotted implied subtext like
Not that she told me,
no, but I wouldn't be totally surprised.

They ended up with Mrs. Ferrara giving them a printout of the names and numbers of all the people Irene had ever cleaned for, with checks next to the sevenclients she'd served at the time of her death.

Alot of phone calls and interviews, Mo thought, automatically doing an investigative triage assessment. And it would probably lead nowhere.

He and St. Pierre were out at their cars, discussing their game plan, leaning on the open doors and sweltering in the noonday heat when Mo's pager vibrated. He looked at the number, recognized Marsden's office phone, and with a flash of prescience thought,
Oh,shit, and it's
only been a week since O'Connor.

St. Pierre had to stop for gas, so Mo gotthere ahead of him. When he pulled off the road and parked among arow of police cars, his first thought was,
Oh, yeah, one ofthese places. The secret landscape:
They were on acountry road eight miles north of White Plains, with heavy woods onboth sides except here, where the road bridged a little stream. Lessthan a mile down the road it was a nice residential, semirural burbof upscale estates. Same distance the other way was 684, the six-laneinterstate that fed cars to Manhattan, forty miles south. The streambroadened as it headed away from the road, turning to a marshy flatof mud, grass, and scrubby trees among which State Police and NorthCastle township uniforms now walked cautiously. In the distance, thebanks steepened and trees closed around the waterway again. This wasneither country nor city, but had the worst attributes of both: Likethe city, it had traffic noise and exhaust fumes from the interstate, close overflights from Westchester Airport, a heavy scattering oftrash, sometimes bad people on the loose. Like the country, it had alonesome feel, it was full of bugs and mud, it had lots of cover andno streetlights. It was the kind of no-man's-land where no onereally went, too urban and dirty to picnic or fish or make out, toorural and lonesome to seek any other entertainment in. Parentsdidn't let kids play in places like this: the edge of highwaysor railroad tracks, those areas out behind the mall or just the otherside of the new development or around the back of the landfill. Deadland, soiled land, unpeopled land. No one seemed to notice, but lookaround and it was always right there. This kind of place was greatfor killing or dumping, and Mo had seen a lot of bodies turn up ingarbage bags in similar spots. Probably five thousand people drove byevery day, probably thirty thousand an hour on the interstate. Andnot one of them had any idea of the kind of things that sometimeshappened just the other side of that highway berm. Didn't reallywant to know.

St. Pierre arrived, and they stepped over the guardrail and headeddown the embankment onto the banks of the stream. A North Castle coppointed them further into the marsh, back among crippled-looking, stunted sumac trees. There was a mud and sulfur stink here, a rotten smell that seemed made up equally of decaying vegetation and human pollution. Mo's feet squelched in mud and instantly cold water soaked his socks.

As they picked their way upstream, Mo could see a man-made shape materializing among the scrub, and soon he saw it was a concrete culvert, an old one, something that had either washed out in some past flood and stranded itself here, or that had been replaced twenty years ago and just left to decompose. The near end was a round cement tunnel six feet high and maybe ten long. The far end, where most of the other cops clustered, was bigger, a square, shallow box of cement about eight feet on a side.

Mo nodded as he saw a few faces he recognized. Then he and St. Pierre squelched around the corner and saw the corpse, hung inside the square end of the crumbling culvert.

The victim was a young woman this time. Naked, as they always were, a blonde with a fine figure now discolored by blood and bruising. The cords holding her had been poorly measured, allowing her body to bend backward with her belly out and her head back against the wall. The knee lines had snapped and hung down. From the scrapes on her skin, it was clear she had fought back.

She had been a real beauty, Mo thought. Immediately he felt a rush of anger at himself for the inappropriate thought, but then forgave it: You had to acknowledge what a waste it was, you had to appreciate and mourn what she'd been. The day you stopped doing that, you were in real trouble.

"Who's in charge of the scene?" he asked.

"That'd be me." A portly, uniformed cop pushing retirement age lifted a hand, and Mo read his nameplate: Officer Bradley.

"So who found her?"

Bradley made a gesture as if apologizing for something and consulted a little pocket notebook. "A resident up the road, a Mrs., uh, Mrs. Pilz. She goes jogging with her dog nearby, the dog slips the leash and runs down here, won't come back. So Mrs. Pilz comes to get the dog. Dog must have smelled the body."

Mo bent to inspect the cords and remembered suddenly that contrary to popular misconception, corpses
do
breathe. Not so they'd fog a mirror, but when you leaned this close, you smelled the gases gusting out of their skin, corruption venting through the pores. Still, he caught a whiff of perfume in the rot smell, a lot like that one Carla used, what was it, Sunflower.

After a moment he leaned back, feeling like shit, having seen what he expected. The handcuffs were nylon Flex-Cufs, logo right there. The line was serrated trimmer line, the knots were thrice-wrapped double nooses. The extensive abrasion at ligature sites and on elbows and knees told him she'd been used hard before she died. Yes, and the temple wounds.

He felt a little weak as he stepped back, the proximity of violent death undoing him once more. There was something else that made him shaky, too, a feeling only certain people, certain cops, knew. It was a hatred of whoever did this, a rage that had no outlet and so went around and around in you and made you crazy and sick. It was more than the ugliness of murder, more than the waste of life and youth and beauty, it was the
unfairness
of one person being singled out to receive so much of someone else's pain. And this puppet thing was the worst, the control and persecution that went on and on and outraged every sensibility about self and self-determination.

St. Pierre was just standing there ankle deep in muddy water, trying to look professionally detached and not succeeding.

Mo asked Bradley, "Did Mrs. Pilz recognize her? A neighbor maybe?"

"Says she didn't get close enough. Didn't want to look."

Mo knelt to inspect the lower body. Given the cement wall, the puppeteer hadn't put in eyelets but had tied the cords to stubs of rebar emerging from the crumbling top of the box. The knee cords had tightened hard before they'd broken, probably before death, and were still sunk deep in creased flesh. It wasn't supposed to be part of the MO, but the power-station scene and the smeary stains on the concrete floor here were suggestive, so he looked closely between her legs and at her inner thighs.

Yes, Rebecca,
he thought wearily,
you're right. Something's gone wrong
with the
^(<
plan."
Because it looked as if she'd been raped along with everything else.

He stood up again. Bradley was yammering at St. Pierre, but Mo ignored him as he took a turn around the culvert. He wanted to toss his shield down and walk out of here, this was really getting to him. People dying, love dying, Sunflower perfume, traffic noise, mud. May be you couldn't be an effective cop if you had too many of your own existential concerns. Or maybe it was good you were hit like this every time.

"Mo." A familiar rough voice made him turn back toward the road.

Marsden was squelching toward him, his suit pants rolled a couple of turns to stay out of the muck, exposing pale ankles. He puffed and wheezed as he came up and surveyed the body and the scene. "Aw,fuck," he gasped. "Aw, fuck." He nodded hello to St. Pierre and Bradley, then stepped up onto the culvert box to peer closely at the corpse.

"Guy's beginning to fuck up, isn't he?" he asked over his shoulder. "MO is drifting. Hitting once a week, weird environments, ligatures getting sloppy. We got the arrangements of objects?"

"Not that I've seen yet."

Marsden nodded. "He can't be procuring with the care Howdy Doody used, either, doesn't take the time."

"I think she was raped, Frank," Mo told him quietly."Biedermann is looking at rape in the power-station case, too."

Marsden looked. He was still huffing when he turned back to Mo with eyes that were just black slits, as if he had no eyeballs at all and the cracks beneath his hooded lids revealed just an empty, dead black inside his head. He said,"You know, I'm really beginning to dislike this bastard. You?"