The Architect (12 page)

“You’re wondering if I took it hard enough to start killing Bonesmen, including my own brother. Maybe I’m just like they are. Getting into the club is everything.”

“Are you?”

Groupmann smiled. “You don’t get it,” he said.

“Help me out.”

“You don’t kill your better half.”

“Jeffrey.”

“I never stopped thinking of him as part of me, and vice versa. His business, his wife, his children—every one of his achievements made
me
feel less like a failure, especially during the years I couldn’t sell a painting to save my life.” He paused. “Believe me, I thought more than once about killing myself. But I never, ever thought of killing him. Not for an instant. Not even the night he broke my arm. I felt more alive when he was alive. In the long run, I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to make a go of it on my own.”

“Why not? You have what was his.”

“I do and I don’t,” Groupmann said.

“Shauna, the children, this house,” Clevenger said.

“She fell in love with him, they were born to him, he built it. I may own the canvas; he painted it. There’s a big difference. Jeffrey will always be my big brother.”

Clevenger looked up into the web of beams above him, then back at Groupmann. “Where were you the night Jeffrey was killed?”

“In my studio, down the street from here.”

Not much of an alibi. “Have you traveled much in the last few years?”

“All over the country. I paint landscapes.”

Clevenger glanced at Groupmann’s hand, saw he was wearing a Yale ring, just like the Van Myers” lawyer.

“Let me help you out,” Groupmann said, with a wink. “Get my medical school transcript from Yale.”

“Medical school?”

“I would have been class of eighty-four. I left in the middle of the second semester.”

“Why?”

“I failed anatomy—twice. I was hopeless. It’s the same trouble I had with sculpture. I just can’t do it. No depth perception, whatsoever. I was born that way. Jeffrey and I had that in common, too.”

TWENTY-EIGHT

AUGUST 15, 2005

Clevenger had just boarded
the red-eye back to Boston when Whitney McCormick called his cell and told him to get off the plane. He grabbed his things, headed back toward the door. “What’s up?” he asked.

“David Groupmann has the perfect alibi,” she said.

“What? What’s going on?” Clevenger asked, walking back up the ramp to the gate.

“We’ve got another body, in Michigan. A woman. According to the medical examiner, she was killed hours ago, not days.”

“Where in Michigan?”

“Lake Superior.”

“The body washed up?”

“Would that be our man’s style? She was floating close to shore, strapped to a wooden cross, naked. She had silver nails through her palms, feet, the whole nine yards. And he left us another message.”

“What?”

“The cross was carved with an old Emerson quote:

‘ ‘Tis man’s perdition to be safe, when for the truth he ought to die.” Guess where it was first published.”

“National Enquirer!
I’d make a lousy
Jeopardy
contestant.”

“Close. The
Yale Book of American Verse?

Where else? “Who found her?” Clevenger asked.

“A young couple walking along the lake.”

“Obviously, no ID.”

“Wrong. He still wants to make that part easy. Her driver’s license was nailed to the cross, too. Heather Rawlings, from Miami. Her husband runs a diamond mining company. He supposedly didn’t even know she was out of state.”

“Another anatomy lesson?”

“Her neck, from the front all the way back to the spinal column.”

Clevenger hung his head. “Are you in Michigan now? You want me to head there?”

“I’ve got things covered here. I was hoping you might have the steam to head to Miami, visit with the husband.”

“Of course.”

“Good. You’re in luck. There’s a delayed flight supposedly getting off the ground in forty minutes. You’re booked on it.”

“In case I have the steam.”

She laughed. “Just in case.”

Clevenger finally boarded the flight at 1:37 A.M. By the time it took off, it was four hours and seven minutes late, and the airline had decided to make it up to the passengers by offering free beer, wine, or mixed drinks. Clevenger watched the cart as it slowly headed
down the aisle toward his row. Starts and stops. He’d taken one Antabuse tablet about twenty-four hours before, and the effects were supposed to last three days, but he didn’t like the fact that he was wondering whether that was really true, that he was actually trying to figure his odds of surviving a gin and tonic. Or two. He reached into pocket, pulled out another Antabuse tablet, and swallowed it.

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THIRTY

As soon as he
left Ken Rawlings and his attorneys, Clevenger reached North Anderson on his cell phone, in his car. He shared his gut feeling that one architect might have designed properties for three of the victims” families—the Groupmanns, Van Myers, and Rawlingses. But linking together their three properties immediately made him think of the other estate he had visited: the Hadleys” on Meadow Lane in Southampton. He remembered the remarkable palette of gray stone, shingles, slate, and lead-coated copper that seemed to turn the house into a charcoal drawing of itself. But he also remembered walking through the house, noting the transom glass at the top of every wall—the six-by-six-inch rows of windows, like transparent crown molding—that allowed sunlight to flow through the entire dwelling. The interplay of glass and light, the timeless and endless nature of each design element, was unmistakable. An etched-glass ceiling that was no ceiling, an etched-glass panel above a two-story maze of beams that never seemed to end, a glass kaleidoscope
designed to invite sun or moon inside majestic stables, walls allowing light to flow over them, into and out of every room, infinitely. “It could be all of them,” Clevenger said. “If not an architect or a decorator, maybe a builder.”

“There aren’t many construction firms building homes coast to coast. Architect sounds more likely.”

“Rawlings said his wife hired whoever designed the stables. He wasn’t in the loop. He thought it might have been a firm called Graves, Dickinson, in Manhattan.”

“I’ll check them out,” Anderson said.

“I don’t know if he’s leveling with me. He wouldn’t tell me whether he was Skull and Bones, and he didn’t seem to want to tell me who did that drawing.”

“You’re the shrink, but maybe that means the two are linked.”

“Huh?”

“Maybe both questions are really one question. Maybe the architect
is
a Bonesman, and that’s how he networks. By referral, from brother to brother.”

“Good thought. I’ll call the Groupmanns and the others and try to find out who designed their places.”

“I’m back in the office in five minutes. I’ll check Sutton’s list to see if Rawlings is on it. And I’ll find out what I can about that firm.”

“Great.”

“When are you back?”

“I land about two-thirty.”

“Any word on Billy?” Anderson asked.

“I haven’t heard a thing. I assume he’s detoxing okay. I’ll go by Mass General later.”

“Fair enough. See you in the office.”

“Done.”

They hung up.

Clevenger dialed Whitney McCormick. Her secretary put him through. He told her what he knew.

“I’ll check whether we have any person of concern at Graves, Dickinson,” she said. “What else can I do?”

“I suppose you could let the president in on what we know. I’m sure he has a way to get the word out to anyone who belongs to Skull and Bones.”

“Interesting,” she said. She grew especially serious. “Again, I want to be clear that
we
shouldn’t be getting the word out publicly.”

“About Bonesmen being targeted?”

“If they are being targeted. Don’t forget: Six people at that level of wealth and influence may have more things in common than being in a club together. They could be in one hedge fund together. They could have fractional ownerships in the same jet. We still have a long way to go.”

McCormick sounded like she was holding a press conference herself. “What’s the political reality here?” Clevenger asked her. “Is the president uncomfortable being identified with the order?”

“He’s never formally admitted being part of it. He said, ‘No comment,” when he was asked about it on network television. I think the exact quote was something like: ‘If it’s supposed to be a secret, then I guess I have no comment.” People took whatever they took from that, but I don’t know to this day whether he was tapped or not.”

“And you’d rather not have anyone focus on it.”

“I just don’t see what good it does. It feeds the conspiracy
theorists who run around claiming these guys run the world, which is obviously complete paranoia. But more ridiculous things have hurt politicians.”

Maybe Clevenger was suffering from paranoia, too, but he wasn’t absolutely certain there was no reality to the theory. “I’m not talking to any reporter about anything,” he said, and left it at that.

“So, how’s Billy?” she asked.

Anderson had asked, and now McCormick. It was probably time to check in on him. “I haven’t talked with him today,” Clevenger said. “I will.”

“I hope he’s doing alright.”

“Thanks.”

“Let’s touch base later.”

“You got it.”

She hung up.

Clevenger slipped his phone into his pocket, but took it out again. He dialed Anderson.

“Long time, no talk,” Anderson answered.

“One more name to check on Sutton’s list,” Clevenger said.

“Who?”

“A former U.S. congressman and Republican fundraiser named Dennis McCormick.”

“Whitney’s dad?”

“Right.”

“Was he Yale?”

“I never asked,” Clevenger said.

“But she doesn’t like talking Skull and Bones with you.”

“Not one bit.”

“Wouldn’t be the first time we ended up going it alone on a case,” Anderson said. “No, it wouldn’t.” “I’ll let you know.”

THIRTY-ONE

West Crosse sat in
First Lady Elizabeth Buckley’s office in the East Wing. He had been given Falcon status at the visitor’s entrance, the same clearance given members of the Cabinet, allowing him to come and go as he pleased, with no prior notice and without being searched.

Liz Buckley, not yet fifty, Princeton educated, elegant and self-assured, sat on a brightly upholstered love seat opposite Crosse, who had taken a wing chair catty-corner to it. The walls of her office were covered with photographs of her and the president with heads of state, religious leaders, and groups of children around the world. “What I loved about your initial concept for the Museum of Freedom,” she said, “is that it speaks directly to the possibilities for creative expression, for limitless imagination, when people are liberated from tyranny.” She smiled a smile that was equally warm and self-assured. “I know you understand everything my husband has been working for.”

“Yes, I do,” Crosse said. He glanced at his drawing
on the coffee table between them. It called for walls of glass, with reflecting pools extending beyond them. The works of art would hang on bronze panels or be placed on bronze shelves cut into the walls. The roof would be a crystal and bronze dome, with the constellations etched into it. All a visitor would see on entering the museum would be the art itself, almost suspended in air, with nothing to stop the eye or the mind from traveling wherever it might. An endless horizon. At night, panels of the dome were built to slide away, creating an observatory. And at the touch of a button, a powerful telescope would rise into the exact center of the museum, pointing to the heavens. “You want people to live out their full potential,” he said. “You want them to be truly free, no matter the cost.”

“And no one knows better than these artists what the cost can be.” She leaned forward slightly, energized by the vision. “A quarter of them lost family members when their countries were liberated by us.”

Crosse’s skin turned to gooseflesh. “I only hope my final design does your idea justice.”

“I know it will,” she said. “God willing.” She sat back, fingered the strand of pearls at her neck.

She suddenly looked tired and vulnerable to Crosse, perhaps because he knew her burden: a retarded, unmarried, seventeen-year-old daughter pregnant with a retarded man’s child—an affront to nature and an evergrowing threat to the president’s standing in the country and in the world. “How is Blaire doing?” he asked, in the gentle, yet strong voice of a healer, a shaman.

The question was enough to spark a struggle between Buckley’s inner self and her public persona. It
played out on her face—a brave smile she couldn’t quite hold, a sheen to her eyes as she fought back tears, then the resolute tightening of her jaw she was known for. “Warren told me you were very helpful to him when he shared what we’re facing,” she said. “I want to thank you for that.”

“No need,” he said. He waited a few seconds. “How is Blaire?” he asked, even more quietly.

Her eyes filled up. She swallowed hard. “She’s happy,” she said. “That’s the saddest part.” She wiped away a tear. “She has no understanding of what this really means to her, or the father of her child. And she certainly can’t conceive of how it will impact everything Warren has worked so hard to achieve during the past three-and-a-half years.”

“You don’t anticipate a sympathetic reaction,” Crosse said.

“In this town? They’ll crucify him.” She took a deep breath and let it out, steadied herself. “Don’t forget, my husband has taken courageous stands against distributing condoms, against inappropriate sexual education, against abortion. It won’t be what people say publicly that erodes his power to do good around the world. It’s what will be said in private, the snickering in all the offices at the Capitol filled with ‘pubic servants” who think nothing of two men marrying, but think religion is a dirty word.”

“How are your sons handling it?” Crosse asked.