By Blood Written (27 page)

“May I help you?” the young woman asked between phone calls.

Hank stepped forward. “Yes, I’m here to see Taylor Robinson.”

The receptionist eyed him, if not quite suspiciously, at least with a question on her face. “Do you have an appointment?”

“No,” Hank said, reaching into the inside pocket of his suit coat for his credentials, “but I think—”

“I’m sorry,” the woman snapped. “But you have to have an appointment. Ms. Robinson is far too busy—”

It was Hank’s turn to interrupt as he flashed open his ID

case, revealing his FBI identity card and badge. “I won’t take up much of her time.”

The receptionist cleared her throat and looked at the badge and ID. Her eyes got larger for a second. “Wow,” she muttered. “I’ve never seen one of those before.”

Hank gave her his most charming smile. “Wanta see my pistol?”

“You’ve got a gun?” the girl asked, incredulous.

“And handcuffs,” Hank answered. “They make me.”

“Bitchin’,” she said.

“Ms. Robinson?” Hank asked after a moment.

“Oh, yeah,” the girl stammered, as if suddenly coming out of a trance. Hank wondered where her mind had gone, what fantasy had played itself out in that second and a half of silence.

She picked up the phone, punched a few numbers, and spoke low. Then she nodded, hung up the phone, and pointed toward the staircase. “Ms. Robinson’s office is upstairs, far corner. Her assistant will be waiting for you.”

Hank nodded, smiled. “Thanks.”

Hank climbed the curving, polished mahogany staircase that he imagined some Victorian, gilded-aged, robber bar-on’s wife making a grand entrance on a century ago. On the second floor of the house, the rooms had been turned into offices, the once large rooms subdivided by renovation walls, partitions, and a narrow hallway that ran down the middle of the floor. Another young, hip, but this time somewhat bookish woman met him at the head of the stairs.

“Mr. Powell?” she asked.

“Agent Powell,” he corrected, knowing from years of experience how much more weight Agent Powell carried than Mr. Powell, even though they were the same person.

“Yes, Agent Powell, this way.” The woman turned and led him down the hallway, speaking in a cool, detached, professional manner as she walked. “Ms. Robinson was on a conference call a few minutes ago, but I believe she’s off now.”

They got to the end of the hallway, which let out into a common area with a sofa and a couple of leather wing chairs. Surrounding the common area were the doors to four offices, each with a desk close by for the requisite assistant.

The young woman led Hank over to the far right office and stopped at a closed door.

“I’ll see if Ms. Robinson’s available,” she explained, knocking lightly on the door. Then she opened it and stepped inside, closing it firmly behind her. Hank was alone. He took off his overcoat and folded it over his arm and stood there a few moments, looking around at another collection of framed book covers, these obviously from the agency’s less-stellar writers.

As he stood there, a rush of fatigue came over him. He hadn’t slept well the night before, had been up since four A.M. in order to make the train to New York. He tried to sleep on the Metroliner, but couldn’t turn his brain off.

Maybe it was the anticipation of meeting Taylor Robinson; maybe it was dread.

Taylor Robinson’s assistant stepped back through the door and held it open. “Ms. Robinson can see you now. May I take your coat for you?”

“Thanks,” Hank said, handing her the coat.

“Would you like some coffee? A soda?”

Hank shook his head. “No, I’m fine.”

His stomach tightening, Hank stepped through the doorway of Taylor Robinson’s office and looked around. The office was much smaller than he expected, not what one would think would be the inner sanctum of a high-powered New York agent. The room was full of clutter as well: manuscripts piled high on the floors in haphazard stacks, books stacked against the walls over a worn carpet, cheap bookcases overflowing with books and more manuscripts.

Taylor’s desk was piled high with magazines, correspondence, stacks of paper laid on top of one another in layered pyramids. A window badly in need of cleaning looked out onto East Fifty-third.

Taylor Robinson stood up from her desk and motioned to the cheap visitor’s chair on the other side. “Please,” she said.

“Sit down.”

Her picture didn’t do her justice. She was elegant, he thought, wearing a sheer silk tan blouse over a camisole, a pair of dark designer pants with a thin, narrow belt, and a simple string of small pearls around her neck. She looked educated, well-bred, and well-tended, with almost a Ken-nedyesque air about her.

Hank sat down, crossed his legs at the knee. “I appreciate you seeing me without an appointment. I know you’re busy.”

“I’m confused, Agent Powell. It is ‘agent,’ right? Not ‘officer’ or something else?”

Hank smiled. “Technically, it’s Special Agent Powell. But we don’t have to stand on ceremony.”

She leaned back in her office chair and watched him for a moment. She was cool, he thought, completely professional.

“So I’m confused, Special Agent Powell. Why would you want to see me? What can I do for you?”

Hank tried to choose his words carefully. “Ms. Robinson, I’m going to ask you for some help in an investigation that we have under way. For some time now, the FBI and a number of other local law enforcement agencies of different types all over the country have been looking into the background of one of your clients. We’ve hit a wall and we need your help.”

If Taylor Robinson’s face gave away anything, it wasn’t much. She shuffled slightly in her chair, but never took her gaze off him.

“Is one of my clients in trouble?” she asked.

“That’s what we’re trying to determine. Several weeks ago, the
New York Times
published a series of articles—two or three, I think—on a serial killer who has killed at least thirteen women we know of. All across the country and one in Canada. He’s been dubbed the ‘Alphabet Man.’”

She shook her head. “No, I didn’t read them. I often don’t have time for newspapers.”

“I’m with a division of the FBI called VICAP, the Violent Criminal Apprehension Program, and I work out of an office at the FBI Academy in Quantico. I’ve been coordinating our investigation into this person’s activities and I’ve been working with police departments in places like Seattle, Milwaukee, Scottsdale, Vancouver, and two places in Tennessee, Nashville and Chattanooga. That’s among other places, you know. Is any of this resonating with you?”

Taylor Robinson’s brow seemed to tighten just a bit, but again, Hank thought, she kept a good game face.
She’s probably a shark sitting across a negotiation table.

“No, none of this means anything to me. Why should it?”

Hank leaned forward almost imperceptibly in his chair and looked her directly in the eye. “Ms. Robinson, virtually every serial killer does something to set his murders apart from everyone else’s. A common weapon, a motif, a sign, something … You look at a David Berkowitz killing and compare it to, say, a Ted Bundy scene or a Henry Lee Lu-cas scene; there’s no mistaking the differences. And while every murder scene is different, there seem to be common threads.”

Taylor Robinson’s face darkened and she seemed almost weighted down. “What has this got to do with me? I still don’t understand—”

“The guy we’re after has a very distinct signature that he’s left behind at every murder scene. In the victim’s blood, he paints a neat, almost artistic block letter somewhere in the scene. The first one was A, back in 1995 in Cincinnati. The latest two were L and M, and they occurred in Nashville just this past February. That’s how we know there’ve been thirteen.”

This time, Taylor Robinson’s face almost certainly gave away more than she intended. Hank sensed that she was beginning to get the message. Her eyes almost went into a squint.

“But wait, what’re you saying is that—”

“Letters, Ms. Robinson. The Alphabet Man. Get it?”

Her mouth opened slightly, her jaw muscles quivering.

“Just what in the hell are you trying to say?”

Hank let her hang there a moment, the silence between them growing heavier with each breath. Taylor Robinson stared at him, her jaw and chest tight, her hands on the desk, knotted into tight fists.

“What I’m trying to say, Ms. Robinson,” Hank said softly, breaking the terrible silence, “is that we think the Alphabet Man is your client, Michael Schiftmann.”

Hank Powell knew the next words out of her mouth would tell him what she knew.

The explosion came a moment later. “You’re crazy!”

she yelled, slapping the desk hard. Hank wondered what the young honors graduate English major assistant outside thought of that. “That’s ridiculous! You’re out of your mind!

And I’m here to tell you,
Special Agent
Powell, that if anything of this gets out to the media and you either libel or slander my client in any way whatsoever, I’m going to sue you from one end of the Earth to another!”

“Ms. Robinson, if I could just acquaint you—”

“You can’t acquaint me with anything, mister, unless the U.S. Constitution has been finally done away with in the past twenty-four hours and I missed it on the TV news.

We’re still presumed innocent until proven guilty, right?”

“Yes, of course, Ms. Robinson.” Hank felt himself slipping into a defensive mode. This was not what he expected. Protest was one thing, but this woman was ready to go straight to war. “But if you’d just let me explain.”

Taylor Robinson jerked herself up out of her chair and glared down at him. “You have wasted enough of my time.

I don’t have to sit here and listen to this insanity and I’m not going to.”

Hank scooted forward in the chair. “Ms. Robinson, if you’d just let me lay out some of the facts for you.”

“The last time I checked, the FBI manual didn’t have a swastika on it. You’re not the Gestapo and this is still sort of a free country and you are in my private space. I’ll thank you to leave now.”

Hank stood up. “Ms. Robinson, you’re making a mistake here.”

“Now,” she commanded, her voice lowering and stone cold. “If you don’t leave my office immediately, I’m going to call my attorney, and if he approves, I’m going to call the New York City police and have you arrested for trespass-ing.”

Hank stood there a second, helpless. He held out his hands, palms toward her in supplication, and pushed the chair backward with the backs of his knees.

“Good day, Ms. Robinson,” he said as he turned for the door. “Thanks for your time.”

Once outside, Hank Powell walked down Fifty-third Street toward Third Avenue. He couldn’t make any sense of this.

He was stunned, confused. Here was this obviously well-educated, intelligent, sophisticated, high-powered woman who turned on him like a cornered badger. It was almost as if Taylor Robinson hated cops.

What Hank Powell did not know, and could not possibly have known, was that Taylor Robinson did hate police.

Hated them to the core of her soul …

Thursday morning, Manhattan

Taylor Robinson stood in the silence of her office, staring at the closed door. From the outside, she appeared calm, almost serenely so. But in her chest, she felt a pounding that, for a moment, genuinely frightened her. She fought to control her breathing, to loosen her neck and jaw muscles.

To stay in control.

She turned and walked to the window. Through the film of dust and grime, she watched as, to her right, the FBI agent exited the building and walked down the stoop onto the sidewalk. He paused, standing still, then shook his head and walked off in the direction of Third Avenue.

She stayed like that for what felt like a long time. Her mind went blank, as if the encounter with the FBI agent—

what was his name?—had caused something inside her to empty.

How long had he been here? She had, for the moment, lost perception of time. She gazed out the window to the traffic below on East Fifty-third. Behind her, she heard a door open.

“Taylor?”

Taylor turned. Her assistant, Anne, was in the doorway, a concerned look on her face.

“Yes?” she answered blankly.

“Are you okay?”

Taylor turned and looked back out the window. The sun was breaking through a layer of gray overcast, throwing random beams of bright yellow light on the street below. She turned back and faced the young woman.

“I’m going out for a while,” she said.

She had spent her entire life since that day trying to forget.

It had been her fault, her fault, and she had carried that
weight around inside her over half her life.

Over half her life. Twenty years. Twenty years that Jack
never got. And many more in front of her that he would
never have.

It was supposed to have been the best summer ever.

Her brother, three years her senior, was home from VMI.

John Prentice Robinson was his full name, but no one ever
seemed able to call him that with a straight face. He was too
playful, too spontaneous, too reckless, to be a John Prentice
Robinson. He was the family prankster, the practical joke
master, the puncturer of pretense, the outrageous smart ass
that everyone loved. He would always, in everyone’s perception, be a Jack. And she adored him.

Handsome, rugged, a born athlete … He had captained
the soccer team and track team in private school, then gone
onto the Virginia Military Institute, where he was soon captain of the varsity shooting team. He came home that summer as a prime candidate for the Olympics.

Her brother, Jack, on the U.S. Olympic Shooting Team.

He was home for just a week, only a week, before heading out to Colorado Springs to spend the rest of the summer
training. The days had been buoyant, happy. Her father—

one of Greenwich, Connecticut’s most prominent cardiolo-gists—had even taken time off from his rounds. They played
tennis at the country club, hosted a grand summer party,
danced and swam and sang and drank.