Wallflower (17 page)

They both chuckled over that. Then at the door Janek thanked her for her time.
"
I hope we can talk again."

The therapist nodded.
"
Anytime, Lieutenant. Just give me a call. I shall always try to fit you in."

T
hat evening Janek took a long walk. Leaving his apartment at six o'clock, when the rush-hour traffic was just at its crest, he headed up Broadway to merge with the throngs still surging out of the subways. On his route he passed stores offering high- and low-fashion garments; markets offering sturgeon and pastrami; Chinese, Turkish, Lebanese, and Ethiopian restaurants; bars catering to gays and transvestites; panhandlers; dope dealers; homeless people living in cardboard boxes; old people sitting on benches; and aggressive young people on the make. By the time he reached the Columbia University campus, he felt he had confronted a cross section of the human condition.

At 114th Street he turned into Riverside Park. Although it was a chilly November night, the joggers were out in force. He didn't see many lone runners; press and TV coverage about Jess was still in the public mind. But as he walked farther uptown, the number dwindled off, until, north of the Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center, there were none at all.

It was a basic principle of his trade that the first step in any investigation was to go to the crime scene and get a feeling for the place. Since he and Aaron had taken over the case from Boyce, he had been putting such a visit off. Now, approaching the spot where Jess's body had been dragged off the jogging path, he felt his heartbeat quicken.

The streetlamps were on, but in the long, narrow strip of parkland the foliage was dense and the shadows were deep. Despite the darkness, it didn't take him long to find the spot. Orange-tipped police stakes caught the ambient light cast by cars racing above on Riverside Drive. And then he was surprised. There were a good dozen bunches of flowers, mostly dried up but all the more poignant for being so, arranged along the bottom row of stones of an old retaining wall just behind the site. Stubs of candles were set there, too, in little hardened pools of melted wax. People had heard that a fine young woman had died in this place; they had been moved, had come and left tangible evidence of their caring. So now in the underbrush, amidst the jettisoned Coke cans and discarded sandwich wrappers, a small shrine had been erected at the Scene of Suffering. It would last until the first heavy snow.

T
he glue: Janek was obsessed by it. The ice picks were bad enough; they didn't reflect the caring of a knife, the quick dispatch of a bullet, the hatred of a poison. Leaving the picks embedded was bad, too. You didn't bother to use something fine to take your victim's life; you used a throwaway. Like eating your dinner off a paper plate or drinking your wine from a styrofoam cup, it was a way of showing your contempt.

But the glue was worse; the glue was truly awful.

Janek had investigated many homicides in which victims had been bound. He'd seen handcuffs and rope burns and even barbed wire cutting into flesh. He'd seen his share of mutilations, too: cuts, slices, and, in the Switch Case, actual dismemberment, decapitation. But glue was different. Glue was made of animal wastes, old bones and hooves boiled down to a viscous jelly. Glue was what you used to stick pieces of wood together, not to bind the parts of a human being. Glue said: "I don't desecrate by cutting; I'm not a psychotic acting out my rage." Glue said:
"
I'm cool, patient. I go about my chosen task the way an undertaker goes about his. I'm neat and careful and whistle a merry tune as I seal up people's body cavities."

Janek thought he hated this killer more than any killer he had ever sought, not only because the man had taken the life of a person he had loved but also because he had done so with such dehumanizing scorn.

H
e was watching the late-evening news, trying to concentrate on an awful story about a ten-year-old boy set on fire because he refused to buy crack from a school bully, when his telephone rang. It was Monika calling with wonderful news. She would be coming through New York in three weeks' time, en route to a psychiatrists' conference in San Francisco.

"
I hope you're planning to stay awhile," Janek said.

"
Can I take that as an invitation?"

"
You bet you can! How much time can you give me?"

"
Two or three days. Maybe a couple more on my way home."

That wasn't very much, but it was better than nothing.
"
How about a couple of years?" he asked.

Monika laughed.
"
Why don't you come out to San Francisco with me?"

"
Sure. And take a little room down the hall so the chambermaids won't get any funny ideas."

As they talked, he picked up the glass she'd given him, angled it so it caught the light.

"Maybe I ought to join you in Frisco," he said.
"
I've been spending so much time with shrinks lately I'm sure I'd feel right at home."

Monika was intrigued by his account of his meeting with Dr. Chun but was skeptical about something Dr. Archer had said.

"
It's true," she told him,
"
that a patient who wants to leave therapy can be acting out against an analyst who reminds her of
a difficult figure in her life. But your goddaughter wasn't in treat
ment long enough to develop that kind of strong transference relationship."

"
How long would it take?" Janek asked.

"Several months at least."

"Can you think of any other reason why Jess may have wanted
to quit?"

"
There could have been a lot of reasons. Anxiety caused by her therapy or a personal dislike for her therapist. I lost a patient once
because he saw me unexpectedly in a nightclub."

"
What was so bad about that?"

"Normally nothing. But this man idealized me. When he saw me
dancing with my husband in a sexy environment, he was thrown
into such turmoil he couldn't relate to me any longer as his ana
lyst."

"You say he saw you. Did you see him, too?"

"Yes, our eyes met," she said.

"How did you react?"

"I smiled at him."

"Ever occur to you he might have followed you to the nightclub?"

She laughed. "I never thought of that."

"It could make all the difference," he said.
"
To me the question
is did he quit therapy because he saw you or because you saw him?"

"And therein," Monika said, laughing,
"
must lie the difference
between a detective and an analyst."

Later he asked her if she thought Archer had deliberately misled
him.

"I have no way of knowing," she said, "but her acting-out explanation strikes me as glib."

"Well, suppose Jess ran into her unexpectedly at the knife
show? Something happened there that changed her mood. But why
would seeing Archer shake her up?"

"How did Jess feel about knives?"

"She was passionate about them."

"Well, then, that could have been it," Monika said.
"
Suddenly there was her analyst infringing on her territory. But it's all conjecture, isn't it?"

"It always is," Janek agreed.

T
he next morning, over breakfast with Aaron at a Greek coffee shop around the corner from the Police Property Building, Janek described Dr. Archer.

"
T
iny woman, built like a butterball, kindly smile, bland, self-effacing voice, a little fussy, a little too precise about time. But when I stoke her up, she turns difficult. Doesn't want to answer questions, wants to ask them. The end of our first interview she tried to turn things around, make me think I was probing because I had unconscious sexual fantasies about Jess. Second time I put on some stress, and suddenly I started picking up on her anger. She's good at concealing, but the rage shows through, which tells me how strong it must be inside. She gives me a plausible but phony explanation as to why Jess may have wanted to quit on her, a lot of brilliant but tortured analysis about the fencing incident, and some strange stuff about a good hiding place being an irrevocable hiding place—whatever the hell that means. I don't know what the bottom line is on her, Aaron, but something about her isn't right."

Aaron picked up a jelly roll.
"
She's weird, Frank. Ever meet a shrink who wasn't? You don't think she's the Happy Families killer, do you?"

He shook his head.
"
How could she be? But still . . . I don't see Jess relating to a person like that."

Aaron put down his cup.
"
I know what you're thinking."

"What am I thinking?"

"
That maybe the feds didn't conceal their case all that well. Maybe it leaked out. This guy Chun—he's a shrink. So maybe he spilled to another shrink, and Archer heard about it through the grapevine and did a copycat job on Jess."

Janek smiled. "Swear to God, Aaron—I never thought of that. But now that you bring it up . . .
"

Aaron nodded. "Yeah, Frank—I'll check the little lady out."

L
aura Dorance couldn't remember who referred Jess to Dr. Archer. "I think it was one of her friends," she said.

But when Janek called around, none of Jess's friends would admit to having made the referral.

T
hat night, as he walked home from the subway, he noticed an unshaven man in a seedy suit lingering near the front door of his building. As he approached, the man stared at him.

"Janek?"

Janek stared back. "Who's asking?"

The man unclenched his hand. He'd been holding an old newspaper clipping. He showed it to Janek. It was a picture taken at the time of the Switch trial.
Oh-oh,
Janek thought.

"It's you, isn't it?" The man's breath stank of cabbage. There was dandruff on his shoulders.

"So what?" Janek said.

"You guys work long hours. I've been waiting here since five."

As the man put his hand into his pocket, Janek tensed, reached beneath his jacket, gripped the handle of his Colt. But when he saw the paper with the blue legal backing, he relaxed and let go of his gun.

"I am serving you, Lieutenant," the man said, offering Janek the document.

Janek snapped it out of his hand. One look told him what it was. He stared at the man with disgust.

"Great business you're in."

"Hey, don't take it out on me, fella! Just doing my job."

Janek brushed by him and entered his building. Inside his apartment he sat down and read the document. It was a notice that a lawsuit had been filed by the firm of Streep & Holster on behalf of its client, one Clarence
"
Rusty" Glickman, wherein Glickman alleged unlawful assault resulting in severe physical and psychological injury, for which he demanded a jury trial and one million dollars' damages.

J
anek didn't sleep well that night. Something—something he'd seen that could be important—nagged at him. Unable to recall what it was, he flopped from side to side in torment.

At two in the morning he remembered and sat up:
The arrows! I forgot to look inside the quiver!

T
he next morning he phoned Laura and asked her if she'd saved it.

"
A bow and arrow set—I don't remember anything like that."

"It was in her dorm-room closet."

"I never saw it. I couldn't even bear to go up to her room. When you called and told us it was all right to move out her stuff, Stanton went up there to collect her swords. He's put them out on consignment with a dealer. We decided to give away the rest of her things. Stanton phoned the Salvation Army. They sent over a truck."

"Do you happen to know if Stanton turned up an ivory-handled switchblade knife?"

Laura asked him to hold while she checked Stanton's list. A minute later she was back.

"Lots of knives but no switchblade. Sorry, Frank."

T
he Salvation Army sorted its pickups at its general warehouse in Brooklyn. Once inside the building, bulk donations were broken up. Toys went to one floor,
furniture to another, clothing to a third, etc. Items such as archery equipment, unsuitable for general sale, were relegated to a special area.

By the time Janek found a friendly sergeant willing to help him, the bulk of Jess's stuff had long been sorted and shipped back out of the building, distributed to various sales outlets in and around the city.