Guilt (8 page)

MacRae opened his top desk drawer and pulled out a piece of paper. He held it facedown on his desk. “I'd like to show you something. We haven't given this to the press, so I don't want to hear about it on the evening news.”

MacRae could be such an arrogant sonofabitch. “You want me to sign something?”

“No. I just wanted to be clear. I'm showing you this in confidence.”

He handed Peter the paper. It was a Xerox of a flyer. Looked as if the original had been weathered and torn.

Freedom from oppression!

The law prevents Us from pursuing Our destiny.

Civil government is in reality instituted for the defense of the rich against the poor. When people fear government, there is Tyranny. When government fears the people, there is liberty.

There was the same symbol at the bottom, a circled A.

“Was this one found near the district court, too?” Peter asked.

MacRae shook his head. “Law school. Must've been up for weeks. Unfortunately, we didn't find it and more like it until this morning, when we knew what we were looking for.”

“How do you think he got past courthouse security?” Peter asked.

MacRae stood there chewing his lower lip. He hated to part with information but he knew the dance—you had to give a little to get a little. “All we know is he did.”

That was unsettling. Meant the bomber could blend in. Might have come dressed like an attorney, had an ID pass to get in. It would be easy to leave behind a briefcase with the bomb in it, then disappear into the neighborhood. Could have been one of the people on the sidewalk, or in the coffee shop. The man calling to say he'd be getting home early and bringing a half gallon of milk. The one who bolted out of the place without paying. Maybe it was the man on the sidewalk Peter had tried to help. Peter couldn't remember if the man had a briefcase, or even what he looked like. A suit, that was about all Peter could bring back. Big help, everyone around there wore suits. It was an odd thing about suits—when you weren't concentrating on noticing, sometimes that was all you saw.

MacRae's next question took Peter aback: “So, is this guy crazy?”

Not exactly a plea for help, and certainly not an apology for being rude and unpleasant, but Peter savored the moment—MacRae was actually asking his opinion and offering the tiniest acknowledgment that maybe he didn't have all the answers.

Unfortunately, neither did Peter. “You think it's the work of one person?” he asked, sidestepping the question.

“Suppose, just for argument's sake, that this is one person. What are we looking for?”

Peter didn't answer right away.

“Hey, it could have been you in that building,” MacRae said, misinterpreting Peter's reticence. He'd hesitated because he wasn't a profiler. When he evaluated a suspect, it was based on an in-depth evaluation. He interpreted the results and extrapolated backward. This was different. He had no interviews, no test data. Still, there was behavior. That was something. The same principles could be applied.

“This is just informal, right? I mean no one's going to subpoena me to testify, right, because I'd just be shooting from the hip.”

MacRae held up two fingers. “Scout's honor.”

What
did
he think, assuming, as MacRae suggested, that it was one person who did both bombings, and assuming the flyers were his?

“Whoever it is, he's not a big fan of the government,” Peter offered.

Duh.
MacRae didn't say it, but his expression did.

“And based on the messages, the targets don't seem random.”

MacRae still didn't seem overly impressed.

Peter went on. “He's planning. Thinking things through. It takes time to compose these messages, print them, and put them up, to gather what he needs to make the explosives. And he's interested in more than making noise and communicating a message. He's picked times and places that guarantee casualties.”

Peter took off his glasses and rubbed the bridge of his nose. What were the options? “Could be schizophrenic, someone like the Unabomber with some convoluted logic behind the point he's trying to make. He could even have a legitimate gripe. Maybe he's someone who should have been protected by the judicial system but wasn't, and he's conflating larger social issues with his own personal issues, maybe to the point of being delusional about them. Could be a sociopath, using anarchist rhetoric as a cover. Or a terrorist, with an organization behind him.”

Now MacRae looked exasperated. He was getting questions, not answers.

“This is pure speculation, right?” Peter said.

“You don't see me taking notes.”

“Okay.” Peter put his glasses back on. “I'd say it's a man. Bright. Well-read. Disenfranchised. Educated. White. Unmarried. Probably not in a committed relationship. Only child.” MacRae reared back as Peter reeled off his ideas. “Possibly a childhood abuse victim. Maybe a history of fanaticism or cult involvement. Probably reads sci-fi or spy novels.”

MacRae's eyebrows went up in surprise. “Sci-fi?”

“I'd say this is someone whose grip on reality is a little bit loose or distorted, who might think he can engineer change all by himself.”

MacRae fished out his pad and cocked his pen. “You mind? No subpoenas, I promise.”

Peter didn't protest as MacRae wrote.

Peter went on. “To set up something like this, knowing people will be randomly killed, suggests an individual who doesn't connect emotionally to other people. No empathy. That's where the abuse comes in. Kids who were physically abused learn a different way of relating because the people who are supposed to take care of them don't.”

“How the hell do you know he's white?”

“I told you, I don't know squat. This is pure blue-sky speculation.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah. But?”

“But you don't get lots of anarchists of color in the U.S. these days.”

MacRae's pen scratched on the paper.

“Local. Urban. Narcissistic,” Peter said, rattling off some more half-baked but educated guesses. “He has to announce what he's doing. To have time to do all this—plan it, make the bombs, set them up to blow on a weekday morning—he's probably not working. Un-or underemployed. May have a criminal record of some kind.”

MacRae gave Peter a look of genuine appreciation. “This gives us some new avenues to explore.”

“Motive. That's the key. He's smart, not impulsive, and he's got an agenda. Figure out why and you'll be a lot closer to knowing who.” Acting as if this were an aside, Peter added, “Chip mentioned the possibility that he or Annie might be the target. Chip was working with Mary Alice Boudreaux, and Chip and Annie were due to be at the courthouse when the bomb went off.”

Peter thought MacRae would dismiss the idea out of hand but he didn't. “I'd thought of that, too,” he said. “Something to rule out.”

10

“S
ORRY,
I was vacuuming,” Annie admitted when it took her five rings to pick up Peter's call that night.

“You were doing what?” Peter sounded stunned. He was right. Annie usually avoided anything that smacked of housekeeping. But when she got home from the zoo she'd straightened, dusted—including the windowsills and ceiling moldings—and sorted her underwear drawer.

Yes, she knew what it was about. Anything to keep from facing how devastated she'd be if Peter and Chip got erased in an instant. As Annie cleaned, she'd found herself thinking about Mary Alice, remembering her voice, the drawl, the salt and vinegar that seasoned her sweetness, the unflinching way she appraised others.

“After that I scarfed down a bag of potato chips and a Sam Adams.”

“That sounds more like it,” Peter said. Then his voice turned serious. “Listen, when this kind of thing happens, the only sane response is to go a little nuts.”

If anyone else had told her that, Annie would have found it patronizing. Instead, she found the observation calming. Peter was solid, grounded, and so perceptive about everyone's inner turmoil except his own.

“Nothing can happen to you out on the river,” he pointed out. “How about meeting at my house after work tomorrow? We'll go for a row.”

In a weak moment she'd agreed. But as she drove over to Peter's house with Jackie the next afternoon, she was having second thoughts. What had she been thinking, anyway?

Peter loved everything about rowing—the rhythm, the way the boat glided across the water, the two of them working in perfect synchrony, the sun glinting off the Hancock Tower.

Not to put too fine a point on it, she hated everything about the sport. It made her cold and wet, she couldn't see where she was going, and the boat got all tippy when she so much as changed her mind. The worst part was Peter telling her to watch the set, raise her starboard oar, and make sure she caught at the same time he did. She couldn't stand taking orders, especially from a man, even Peter. You'll grow to like it—Peter kept telling her.
Trust me, I won't,
she was tempted to shoot back.

Maybe she could talk him into a run along the river instead.

Sophie was with Pearl that afternoon—that's why Annie had Jackie along. She glanced over at her. Jackie still seemed listless, her face tired and drawn as it had been all day.

“You okay?” Annie asked.

“I'm tired. I guess I'm not sleeping very well. I thought I was getting over it, but the new bombing brought it all back.” A tear slid down her cheek. She scrounged a tissue from her purse and blew her nose. “I know this is going to sound weird, but I've been seeing Mary Alice.”

“I keep thinking I see her, too,” Annie said. It had happened day before yesterday. Annie was walking to her car after work. A young blond woman crossed the street, dressed in a suit and carrying a briefcase. Before she could stop herself, Annie called out, “Mary Alice!” Of course, Annie caught herself right away. She felt foolish and very sad.

“Not thinking that I see her. Really
seeing her
seeing her,” Jackie said.

They were stopped at a light. Jackie fingered the crystal she wore around her neck. Annie knew she was into holistic healing and auras—but talking to the dead?

“Don't look at me that way,” Jackie said with a tired laugh. “You don't have to worry. I'm not going crazy or anything.”

The light changed and Annie accelerated down Prospect Street toward Mem Drive. “So you saw her?”

Now Jackie had her hands in her lap. She was kneading one over the other. “It happened this morning. I woke up with this strong feeling that I wasn't alone. It was dark in the room, but I could see something, a shadow at the foot of my bed. I had this really strong sense that someone was there. I got scared. I mean, what if it was Joe?

“Then I heard her. Not a sound, really, more like sparks passing through me, like she was channeling words to me instead of saying them. She was calling my name.”

Annie listened, driving on automatic pilot as traffic crawled along Mem Drive. She almost didn't see the man in running shorts who was trying to cross the street in the crosswalk—a foolhardy thing to do in this town. Jackie braced herself against the dashboard as the car lurched to a halt.

“But here's the thing,” Jackie went on. “I know this is crazy because she's dead, but I wanted to ask her if she was all right. I tried to say something but I couldn't make a sound. I couldn't even raise my head. My chest felt heavy, like someone poured cement all over me.

“Then Sophie came into my bedroom. She asked who I was talking to. Did I have a bad dream? I could tell she couldn't see Mary Alice. She crawled into bed with me. By then, Mary Alice was gone.” Jackie held a trembling fist to her mouth. “Sophie said, ‘Who were you talking to, Mommy?' Annie, do you think she heard Mary Alice, too?”

Annie turned up Peter's street. She didn't know what to say. The rational part of her knew this was nothing more than Jackie's heart playing tricks on her. Still, there was something intoxicating about the possibility that Mary Alice wasn't simply gone, forever gone from existence, that she might be watching over them from another place and trying to communicate.

Annie pulled up in front of the house. Peter's car wasn't there yet. Pearl was sitting on the front steps wearing lavender sweatpants and a matching zippered sweatshirt. Mr. Kuppel, Pearl's long-time “friend,” who was semiretired and worked part-time at a local video store, was raking leaves. Annie was glad they weren't huddled inside watching the news, which was undoubtedly reporting every bomb threat and pundit's theory.

She tooted the horn and got out. Mr. Kuppel paused and waved. He leaned against the rake, took off his cap, and ran his arm across his forehead. His zippered tan jacket stretched across his ample middle and his face was flushed. Jackie got out of the car and shaded her eyes.

With a shrill, kamikaze scream, Sophie came tearing out from the side of the house, took a flying leap, and landed in the leaves. Annie laughed. Jumping into leaf piles used to send her sister, Abby, into sneezing fits, but that never stopped her.

Sophie lay there in a fit of giggles, tossing leaves in the air. Jackie could try all she wanted, but no amount of pink ruffles and hair ribbons was going to get the tomboy out of that little girl.

“She's helping,” Mr. Kuppel said, poker-faced.

“Such a help,” Pearl said, heaving herself to her feet. She unfolded an oversized paper bag and went over to the leaf pile. “Okay, young lady,” she said. She opened the bag and set it on the lawn. “In here.”

Sophie did a somersault. Then she stood and dutifully began gathering armfuls of leaves and loading them into the bag.

“How come I can't get her to do that at home?” Jackie asked.

Jackie went over to Sophie and brushed the leaves out of her hair. When she came back, she was holding a fancy pink barrette, festooned with ribbons and beads, one even Annie would have loved when she was Sophie's age.