The Architect (18 page)

She sat back in her seat.

“They let Billy out again,” Clevenger said.

“They
what?”

“The judge didn’t believe constructive possession was a slam dunk for the government. So she wouldn’t violate him on his probation. They have to prove their case at trial”

“So where is he now?”

Clevenger shrugged.

“You don’t know?”

“He wanted to crash at the loft. I told him he had to head to detox and a rehab program first. He hung up on me. I haven’t heard from him since.”

“Did you call him?”

He nodded.

“Well, it’s about time, anyhow.”

“About time?”

“That you drew a line in the sand. Either he gets free of that crap or he doesn’t. It’s his decision.”

“Yeah,” Clevenger said. “That’s what worries me.”

Demo version limitation

FORTY-SIX

AUGUST l8, 2005, l1:20A.M.

Clevenger had checked into
the Mayflower, down the hall from Crosse. He had just finished another round of calls to victims” families urging them to reveal who had designed their homes. He’d had no luck. His cell phone rang. It was Anderson. He picked up.

“Crosse just walked into the White House,” Anderson said.

“The White House ... I thought you had him at St. John’s Episcopal.”

“He was there just under two hours. He drove straight to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. White-glove service at the visitor’s entrance. Took his car, the whole nine yards.”

“I’m getting Whitney on the phone—now.” He hung up, dialed her cell.

“Frank?” she answered.

He started to pace. “Crosse is at the White House.”

“I know,” she said. “He went to church first. I promised you we’d watch him.”

“And?”

“And we’ll handle it, like I said. It’s extremely unlikely he’s the killer. He has no criminal record. He’s well known to the president and the first lady. He’s certainly not at their home under false pretenses. He’s designing an addition to the East Wing.”

“You’re talking about the competition for that Museum of Freedom or Liberty, or whatever? I thought the winner’s name was Ethni... something, out of Philly. They had a front-page piece on her in
USA To-day
. She’s black.”

“You already know he likes to use pseudonyms. I guess he also has at least one stand-in. He shuns publicity.”

“The killer wrote to the White House,” Clevenger said. “Now we’ve got West Crosse inside.”

“Which doesn’t have me panicked. Why send a note to the president when you can chat with him over coffee? We’re talking that kind of relationship. He’s got Cabinet-level clearance. If you really want to know what worries me, it’s that somebody else out there is about to leave another anatomy lesson lying around. How about we focus on that?”

“Why not bring him in for questioning? What’s the harm?”

“What’s the harm in dragging one of the nation’s top two or three architects, who happens to be a personal friend of the president, in for an interrogation by the FBI Behavioral Sciences Unit? Oh, I don’t know. Can you think of anything?”

“I sat with this guy. I looked him in the eyes. He’s dead inside. He has it in him to kill.”

“Like a lot of people,” McCormick said. “That
doesn’t mean he ever has.” She paused. “Look, here’s the bottom line: It’s out of your hands. It’s out of mine. I know for a fact the Secret Service is going to check and double-check whether he’s any threat. I’m told that comes directly from the president’s chief of staff.”

“You’re told.”

“Right. I know you think I’m part of a vast conspiracy to rule the world, Frank, but I really just have a job down here. I don’t run the place. I report to the director. And he doesn’t take me into his confidence on every matter.” She let out a long breath. “You need to develop other leads. Crosse doesn’t look like our man.”

Clevenger sat on the edge of the bed. Maybe she was right, he thought. Maybe he really was being myopic. But then why did it seem like everything pointed to Crosse? How could his instincts be failing him so badly? Could he have mistaken the mysteries inherent in a secret society for the real mystery he was trying to solve? Had he misread their code of silence as evidence of a conspiracy when it was nothing more than tradition? “If you say the Secret Service is on this, I’ll take a step back. I’m not trying to tell you how to do your job.”

“Of course you are,” she said. “You can’t help yourself.”

“I guess not.”

“And I’m not asking you to take a step back. It’s the opposite. I just don’t want to get distracted.”

Maybe it was time, Clevenger thought, to visit David Groupmann again or Laine and Lauren Jones. But neither of those two paths felt like the one that would lead to the killer. And if he stopped working off
what felt right to him, off his gut, he knew he would be lost. He decided to call North Anderson and suggest he head back to the office in Chelsea, use the resources there to take a more serious look at Jeffrey Group-mann’s skyscraper project in San Francisco. That building had connected at least two of the families of murder victims.

“Have dinner with me tonight,” McCormick said, her tone suddenly much warmer. “We’ll figure out where we go from here.”

“With the investigation?”

She hesitated. “With everything.” Another pause. “Come by my place at, say, eight?”

He didn’t know where the investigation was going. He didn’t know where Billy was headed. And those things might not have caused the empty feeling in his stomach if it hadn’t been for the fact that he didn’t have booze. The booze had filled him up when nothing else could. “Sounds good,” he said.

FORTY-SEVEN

4:40 P.M.

Finally back at the
hotel, West Crosse called the bell desk and asked whether his steamer trunk had arrived via Federal Express. He had shipped it from Thunder Bay, just before flying to D.C. It was waiting for him.

The bellman delivered it to his room ten minutes later.

Crosse rolled the trunk to the bedside, opened it, and knelt beside it. He carefully arranged his scalpels, clamps, and sterling silver nails on the sliding stainless steel tray he had built into the upper compartment. He filled a hypodermic syringe with succinylcholine. He checked to make sure his vial of chloroform was intact, with the white cloth that would cover Blaire Buckley’s nose and mouth floating safely inside.

He stood up and pulled off the bedclothes. He unfolded a new plastic sheet and placed it atop the mattress. Then he made the bed again.

He removed Nicholi’s
Obstetric and Gynecologic
Surgery
from a drawer in the steamer trunk, walked to
the study, and opened it on the gracious, claw-foot mahogany desk there.

His plans were more ambitious than ever. He would expose the glorious architecture of one body, while removing every trace of another. He would leave Blaire Buckley’s remains to inspire public sympathy for her father, while minimizing any chance an autopsy would reveal she had been pregnant when she died. There were layers to be thinned, minute structures to be excised. No trace would remain of the ill-conceived child Buckley had had the gall to name Eden.

When his work was complete, Buckley would, in a real way, be more normal than ever—relieved of her pathologic brain function, relieved of the moral responsibility for passing on her damaged genes, relieved of her unwitting role in the undoing of her great father.

He thrilled at the backdrop for his effort. The Mayflower Hotel was an architectural triumph, designed in the early 1920s by Warren and Westmore, New York architects who also worked on Grand Central Terminal. Magnificent gilt rams—proud, beautiful, fearless—stood guard on the frieze in the hotel lobby.

Often called the “second best address in Washington, D.C.,” the Mayflower had hosted President Calvin Coolidge’s inaugural ball and Charles Lindbergh’s celebration after crossing the Atlantic.

And Coolidge had worked closely with master Bonesman Henry Lewis Stimson, the personification of the Skull and Bones order.

Crosse sat down at the desk and began to study. He had less than five hours before his moment of truth, the greatest contribution to liberty he would make in his life, the one he hoped to be remembered for, for all time.

FORTY-EIGHT

Clevenger tried calling Billy
before heading over to Whitney McCormick’s apartment at the Watergate. He got no answer. He tried again. No answer again. He decided to leave a message. “Hey, Billy,” he said, “I don’t know where you are right now, but I wanted you to know I’m thinking about you.” He paused. “I’m just hoping you decide to try Mass General again. Try it for one day. See how it feels. Not the locked unit, the open one. And... call me, already, will you? Alright... I love you.” He hung up. He looked at the phone. And he realized he had been talking to no one but himself, trying to soothe himself. Billy hadn’t called him and might never call.

He took a taxi to the Watergate, walked into the elegant lobby.

The doorman called up to McCormick’s apartment for him, then pointed the way to the elevators.

He found apartment 1812, knocked on the door.

“One minute,” Whitney called out.

She opened the door ten seconds later. She was
barefoot, in jeans and a tight, black Juicy Couture T-shirt stenciled with the word LIBERATOR. She looked as radiant as the day he had first met her. “Thanks for having me,” he said.

“Did I?” she asked coyly. “I can hardly remember.”

He laughed.

“Cmon in.”

He walked in, saw she had the table set, candles burning. “Very impressive,” he said.

She disappeared into the kitchen. “You know I never cook. I’m counting on the table to distract you.”

He looked out the window at the majestic Potomac River, always moving, always constant. “I’m just glad to be here,” he said. He turned and saw her smile to herself as she stirred something on the stove.

Maybe life could be as simple and beautiful as that smile, he thought. Maybe it was, for some people. He turned and looked back out at the river.

FORTY-NINE

9:00 P.M.

A knock. West Crosse
opened the door to his hotel room a few inches. Blaire Buckley stood in the hallway, beaming in a Britney Spears Onyx Hotel Tour baseball cap and T-shirt, her belly spilling over tight, hip hugger jeans, obscuring the buckle of her polished, metal and rhinestone belt. She wore three long, silver necklaces, a large cross dangling from each. “Is she here?” she asked, trying to peek into the room.

“Did anyone follow you?” Crosse asked.

“No way. I left with the caterers, in their van. They always help me get out.”

“They dropped you off at the hotel?”

She rolled her eyes. “Down the street. I’m not stupid.”

Crosse smiled. “Britney should be here in ten minutes.” He opened the door and stepped aside.

She walked in.

He closed and double locked the door behind her.

The suite was magical. White rose petals and myrtle covered every inch of the floor. A hundred white votive
candles burned. Handel’s
Messiah
played just above a whisper.

“Way cool,” Blaire said. “You did all this, for Britney?”

“No,” Crosse said, coming up behind her. “For you.”

FIFTY

1:35 A.M.

Clevenger’s cell phone rang
. He reached over Mc-Cormick, picked it up off the nightstand and checked the caller ID.
555-726-2000
. Mass General Hospital. “Thank God,” he whispered. He answered it. “Billy?”

“Dr. Clevenger?” a woman asked.

“Yes.”

“This is Jane Monroe at the General.”

Monroe was the emergency room physician Clevenger had met on Billy’s last trip there. He cleared his throat. “It’s great to hear your voice,” he said. “You have Billy there?”

“Yes,” she said.

He felt the weight he had been shouldering begin to lift. “I was hoping he would come in. I promised him he could detox on the open unit this time.”

Silence, then, “He isn’t here for detox.”

Her voice was soft and kind and cut Clevenger to the core. “I’m sorry. What do you mean?”

“He..
r

She paused not more than two seconds, but that was long enough for Clevenger’s eyes to fill.

“He overdosed,” she said.

“Oh, God, no.” He stood up, started pacing.

McCormick raised herself onto one elbow, squinted at him. “What’s wrong?”

“He isn’t responsive right now, but he is stable,” Monroe said.

“Is it about Billy?” Whitney asked. “Is he alright?”

“Heroin? Coke? I mean, did he have a stroke, or...
T
Clevenger asked.

“OxyContin,” she said. “He doesn’t seem to have had a stroke.” She let the other shoe drop. “But he is on a respirator.”

Clevenger felt something hard against his knees and realized he was kneeling. “Is he going to die?”

“I don’t know,” Monroe said.

“Is he going to die?”

“He’s in the ICU,” she said. “His heart is holding out. His blood gases are steady. And they’ve seen this before. Way too many times. They know exactly what to do. He’s getting the best care at the best hospital in the world.”

Snake oil. He’d tried the same balm on parents and husbands and wives dozens of times. Right now, Monroe was a salesman with absolutely nothing to sell. “I’m not in Boston,” was all he could think to say. His voice cracked.

McCormick put her arms around him.

He leaned back against her.

“How long will it take you to get here?”

That question literally doubled him over. Because it
obviously mattered whether it was an hour or two or three, or half a day. “The first shuttle is ...”

‘Til get the helicopter,” McCormick said. “There’s a helipad on the roof.” She stood up, started over to her phone.

“I can be there in two, three hours,” he said.

“Great. I’ll be here.”

“Thank you. And, please, call me if...”