Anatomy of Fear (26 page)
“It’s still not enough for an identification,” said Terri,
“but there’s something familiar about it. When did you add to it?”
“The other night. I just had a feeling about it.”
She gave me a look, like she was trying to see inside my head.
“Don’t look at me like that.
It makes me feel like a crackpot, the way Denton was looking at me.”
“Oh, Denton just likes to have someone around to torture, and he thinks I’m sleeping with you, so you’ve been elected.”
“How would he know that?”
“He doesn’t. He’s just guessing,” she said, still gazing at the drawing. “What if we got one of the computer nerds to play with this, see what they could come up with?”
“You mean
another
sketch artist?”
“Oh, don’t look so wounded, Rodriguez, it was just a thought.”
“Well, it’s a sore spot with me. Most of the sketch artists who work on computers have no art training at all. They take a course in moving noses around on a computer screen and they think—”
“Okay, relax. It was just a thought. But do you think you’re going to get more of this face?”
“Maybe,” I said, but had a feeling I would. I thought I might show it to my grandmother too. It didn’t seem so far-fetched these days, particularly with her weird connection to the case.
“And you’ll show it to me if you do.” It was not a question.
It brought up my suspicion or paranoia or whatever you want to call it, that Terri just wanted me around to do my drawings. I don’t know why that annoyed me. I wanted to complete the drawing too.
“What?” Terri asked, looking up at me.
“Nothing.”
“Bullshit. I’m no face-reading expert, Rodriguez, but I can recognize annoyance when I see it.”
“I’m not annoyed.”
“Suit yourself,” she said.
I walked her out and we didn’t say anything until Terri slid into a cab.
“You know, Rodriguez, if something’s bothering you, it’s okay to say it.”
I tried to think of what I wanted to say, but I’d been tamping down my feelings since I was a kid and all I could come up with was “I’m going to Boston tomorrow.”
Terri sighed, pulled the door closed, and I watched the taxi drive away.
F
inally.
He has watched them come out of the building, the woman get into a cab, the man stand in the street until the cab turned the corner. The whole time his lids opening and closing like a camera’s shutter, one fragmented picture after another sent to his brain, again…and again…and again.
I
pulled myself out of bed around eight. I was feeling edgy and sad but didn’t want to analyze it. I got my art supplies together and headed down Seventh Avenue, the morning sky over Manhattan silver, the tops of skyscrapers dissolving, a talc-like snow turning everything into sculpture.
Penn Station was crowded, people rushing for trains balancing briefcases and Starbucks. I bought a ticket for the ten-twenty Acela Express, which shaved the trip down to just under four hours. I got a seat to myself, and opened the latest issue of
Rolling Stone
but couldn’t concentrate on the music reviews or a story about Al Gore and his fight to save the environment, my mind going from Terri to the case to the sketch I was trying to make.
I closed my eyes and tried to picture something else: Terri, nude, the first thing that came to me, distracting but hardly relaxing. I exchanged it for a memory: sandy beach, blue sky, my first and only trip to Puerto Rico when I was nine years old, my father beside me, the enormous sand castle that had taken us half the day to build and five minutes for a wave to wash away. I could still picture the soft mounds of the castle’s remains and hear my father’s soothing voice:
We can always build another.
But I don’t think we ever did.
H
e watches the man leave, art supplies tucked under his arm, follows him on foot to Penn Station, where he stands on a ticket line, cap tugged low over his features, only three people between them, once again thrilled to be so close yet anonymous. When he hears the man ask for a ticket to Boston, he cuts out of the line, walks back to his building, slips inside behind a couple of workers who are not paying attention, takes the elevator and waits until the hallway is empty, then sets to work on the apartment’s shitty hardware-store lock, which is easy to pop.
The place reminds him of a big cage, no America the Beautiful accoutrements that make life worth living: no Ethan Allen sofa, matching chair, and ottoman; no acrylic nonstain rug. Nothing about the place makes any sense to him—no actual rooms, a beat-up sofa in the center of the space, lamp on a wooden crate that’s been painted blue, bed behind a half-wall, unmade, blankets tossed about, enough to set him itching. He can’t imagine that anyone would want to live like this. Clearly the man doesn’t know any better, more proof that some human beings have evolved and others have not.
He moves away from the bed, afraid it will contaminate him, and crosses the space to a long table covered with dozens and dozens of sketches, pencils, erasers, drawing stumps, sharpeners, graphite and wood shavings, a mess, even worse than the bed.
He switches on the high-intensity lamp and begins to sort through the sketches, studies the man’s style, the way he must hold his pencil to make such marks. It’s not difficult, the line and tone uncomplicated. He hates to admit it, but the man has some talent.
He taps the iPod resting in the docking station, and salsa music blasts into the room, shrill and ugly. He tries to stop it and knocks it to the floor. When he goes to retrieve it, he sees the drawing pad propped under the table, opens it, and freezes.
It’s true, what that reporter wrote!
He can hardly believe it.
How is it possible?
A mud man with such a gift. Of course this is why he has been following him; he just didn’t expect to find it.
He grips the pad, gloved hands shaking as he stares at the incomplete portrait. He is about to rip it from the pad, tear it to pieces, but no, he can’t. The man must never know he was here. He has to think this through, figure out what to do. He closes his eyes and waits. He knows God will tell him.
T
he train was delayed in New Haven and again in Hartford and I arrived in Boston almost two hours late. I caught a cab, which dropped me in front of the impressive granite-and-glass building that housed the PD and their state-of-the-art DNA and Ballistics labs, as well as a couple of in-house forensic artists I’d met the last time I was here, computer variety, who had obviously failed to deliver, which gave me a slight jolt of schadenfreude.
A uniform led me to Detective Nevins’s office, which was bigger and better than the cubicle she’d had three years ago. The lettering on the door indicated she was now heading up Robbery.
She glanced up and pushed the blond hair out of her eyes. She looked good.
“Congrats on the promotion,” I said.
“You’re late,” she said. “The witness has already left.”
“Hey, not my fault. The train was delayed. Can you get him back?”
“Not till morning. Any chance you can stay overnight?”
I didn’t see any reason why not. “Sure,” I said, giving Detective Nevins a smile.
She didn’t return it. She raised her left hand and wiggled her ring finger to show off the gold band.
“Wow,” I said. “Congrats again. When did that happen?”
“Year ago. You didn’t think I was going to wait around for you, did you?”
The last time I’d come to Boston she’d been so happy with my sketch she’d taken me out for a drink and one thing led to another.
“When you didn’t call, I wrote you off as just another jerk.”
“That’s me,” I said.
“There’s a hotel in Crosstown Center, walking distance. We’ll reimburse you,” she said.
I
t has not taken long for God to provide an answer. Though He is busy, He is always there for him. God reminded him that nothing is more important than the mission, the role he is playing pivotal, that he will be remembered, written about, his name passed down by generations of men and women as a martyr to the cause.
He closes the pad that contains his half-finished portrait and slides it back under the table. The cracked iPod he arranges to look like an accident: book plucked from a shelf above the table and placed onto the docking station as if it had fallen, iPod on the floor just below it. He feels pleased to have broken the sketch artist’s toy.
He peruses the man’s drawings, page after page of sketches, and stops at one in particular to study the partially drawn faces, details of features—eyes, noses, lips, a slightly open mouth—and
carefully notes again the man’s technique, the way he uses his pencil to create line, tone, and shadow.
He does not think this one will be missed.
He folds the page into his pocket along with a pencil.
At the door he takes his time refitting the lock, getting all the screws back in place.
Outside on the street, he feels calm. Though the man is creating his portrait, it no longer worries him. He will go home, do the work, come back, and finish up.
He peers up at the sky and whispers, “Thank you.”
T
he hotel was better than expected, a modern ten-story businessman’s hotel, sleek and superclean. I checked into my room: double bed, ER-sterile bathroom, TV the size of a mini drive-in theater. I asked the bellhop where I could buy a toothbrush and get a bite to eat and he directed me to a CVS and a local café, where I had a glass of Shiraz and a decent dinner spoiled by a young couple at the next table who were practically making out. I was going to tell them to get a room, but thought it would make me sound bitter, and maybe I was.
Back in the hotel, I watched the end of
CSI,
which did a good job of combining glamour and gore, but couldn’t concentrate. I was feeling antsy and frustrated, wondering why I’d come here when I should have been home chasing a phantom, which, according to the feds, I was no longer supposed to be doing.
I stared out the window, snow coming down, flickering like glitter in a snow globe.
T
he snowflakes turn to icicles, steam hissing as they hit the pavement. Somewhere salsa music is playing—the next room?—men
and women laughing and dancing as the snow changes to water spurting from an open fire hydrant, spraying the night air with a million tiny diamonds. One of the dancers holds the sketch of my grandmother’s vision. It bursts into flames and burns. My eyes burn too, hot and tired. A woman dressed in white, candles all around her, whispers:
Cuidado, cuidado.
The killer’s sketches are suddenly around me, flapping like injured birds. I grab one and it springs to life. But it isn’t one of the victims. It’s a different body, though one I know.
I turn and see a man with a gun aimed at the body. I try to stop him, but it’s too late.
T
he gunshots startled me awake.
I blinked, trying to gauge my whereabouts.
I was in the Boston hotel, steam hissing; voices and music coming from the television. I pulled myself up, shut off the TV, stood in the dark watching flakes of white snow flutter past a black window and looking at my reflection, ghostly and unformed. It gave me a chill, it was so much like the man I’d been trying to draw, there and not there, features blurred or missing.
D
ickie Marwell turned the simple act of entering the small Boston conference room into a three-act play: cape off with Zorro-like panache, Act I; gloves plucked daintily from each finger, Act II; trying out the two identical chairs, sagging into one, jiggling his bottom around in the other, Act III; a deep histrionic sigh as coda.
He smiled, or tried to. Nothing moved, his face a Botoxed mask. There were pale surgical scars around his ears. Still, I took him to be close to eighty.