The Drowned Man (19 page)

She examined the tiny notation next to the white spot: “Eastern Yacht Club.”Most promising was its location right on the water. She might be able to organize the body in some secluded spot and roll it into the river.

The hooker didn't wake up. Alice judged that she was close to dead, or had already expired. Without employing the
GPS
, she found the northern entrance to Anacostia Drive and at once spotted the bridge to the far side of the river. She followed the signs onto the vaulting span. It was under reconstruction, with plastic cones lining the road, and there was no possibility of stopping to heave a body into the river. Temporary signage had been tacked up everywhere. One sign read, “John Philip Sousa Bridge, secondary access ahead.” Another arrow vaguely pointed the way to Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Stadium on the far shore. A chill ran through her: he was the president — but no, Johnny Carpenter had been named after
JFK
, the brother, the actual president.

Yet another sign promised an efficient turnaround over to the Navy Yard, which lay downriver on her map. Alice had no way of knowing that she was on the Potomac Bridge (both branches of the river were called the Potomac in 1865) and that John Wilkes Booth had crossed it in his flight from the killing ground at Ford's Theatre.

Almost onto the far shore, she studied a last-chance sign that gave her two choices: turn around and head back to the Naval Annex, or proceed “Downtown.” Moving straight ahead on the second tack she noticed a narrow construction road off to the right. She lurched onto it, the wheels grinding into the gravel surface.

And there it was. The sign she wanted, nailed to a telephone pole, beckoned her to the Anacostia Yacht Facility, with an arrow pointing ahead.

She was now running parallel to the water. Two
SUV
s sat by the road and she gathered that construction crewmen used this lane for parking. She would have to watch out for traffic, especially security patrols. But for now the farther section of the road remained empty and she soon found the yacht club lot, also vacant at this time of the morning. She pulled in and parked, angling the Ford towards the river.

The girl hadn't moved from her original position. Alice came around to the passenger side and leaned over the body, not certain she was dead. She hefted the iron bar, ready to strike again. When it proved unnecessary she dragged the girl out of the seat and onto the gravel, managing to turn the hooker about so that she sat leaning against the front wheel. Moving to the boot of the Ford, Alice used the key to open it. She thought about replacing the tire iron but she saw that it had blood and hair on it; she was strong enough to hurl it about fifteen feet out into the water and she did so now without hesitation. Returning to the rear of the car, she took out a plastic jug of windshield washer antifreeze. She crouched down by the girl and opened the container, careful not to get fluid on her own slacks. Pushing her left hand inside the black girl's slack mouth, Alice used two fingers to wedge open the throat, at the same time levering the head back in a crude parody of a sun worshipper's pose. The jug was full and Alice spilled half of it on the gravel. Holding the gullet open, she managed to pour several ounces down the hooker's throat. She replaced the jug in the back of the car.

A few yards beyond the parking lot stood a clapboard house, once a harbour master's residence. It remained entirely dark. The Stars and Stripes and a marine flag drooped from a flagpole next to it. She saw no sign of life in the house.

Alice Nahri's plan was all about buying time. If she created enough confusion, the police might believe that the prostitute in the Anacostia was Alice Ida Nahri and stop searching. Her greatest fear was the sunrise. It was now almost 4 a.m. but she had one more bit of misdirection to fabricate. She worked her way between the body and the car's front quarter panel, slipping her arms under the dead woman's armpits. It proved easy to lever up the body this way. She dragged the slumping corpse across the gravel and broken macadam to a section of smooth asphalt only three yards from the river's edge; the final few feet was grass, culminating in a stone retaining wall. She put down the body in a spread-eagle position on its back.

The girl coughed. Alice recoiled backwards and tumbled onto the sharp gravel. Just as swiftly she launched herself forward and fell on top of the stubborn victim. “Bitch!” she hissed.

The fringed scarf had slipped and Alice had to get up from the reanimated hooker to retrieve it, but in seconds she was back straddling the woman and pressing the sash into her throat. She held it there — three, five minutes? — until she was sure.

Dawn was emerging in the eastern sky directly across the channel. The early shift of construction workers might arrive any minute now. Alice stuffed the scarf into her
Titanic
bag in the car. She returned and without ceremony took the hooker's out-flung left arm and turned the hand over, straightening the fingers. She pressed the tips against the pitted asphalt, pushing down on all five together, and drew them across the surface towards herself. She did this several times under the maximum pressure she could generate, scraping until the fingers were grey, bloody sticks. Let the coroner figure that one out, Alice said to herself. She repeated the mutilation on the right hand.

Alice scooped out the contents of the sequined purse: lipstick, condoms, a richly embossed business card from a customer (a reckless one), a roll of American twenties, and the pistol. She couldn't spare the time to count the cash but at least $400 went into Carpenter's billfold. The rest of the junk she left in the purse. She had no use for the gun and decided to throw it into the river with the body from the end of the dock.

In order to drag the corpse the length of the quay without raising a racket, Alice had to remove the girl's spiked heels. She again gripped the corpse under the arms and heaved it backwards along the wooden pier, out to the end. It surprised her that there was no danger light there, no beacon for passing river traffic; it also seemed odd that no boats were moored in either side of the dock. She set the body down and immediately understood her mistake. The river below her was almost a mud flat, not deep enough to drown a rat. She appreciated that the Anacostia was tidal but this was absurd. She came from a dry, barren state in India and knew little about the timing of ebb and flow. How long would it take the eastern arm of the Potomac to refill itself from downriver? She sensed that the tide was rising but at an agonizing rate. And was it possible that the tide would send a body
upstream
in the morning flow?

She had little choice. Eventually the tide would rise and carry the body away, perhaps as far as Chesapeake Bay. She wanted the corpse found but certainly not right away. Five days, even three, in the water would suffice. The emergence of the woman's body in Maryland would halt the search for her in the other forty-nine states and by then Alice would have selected her new, anonymous home. With some gruesome luck, fish and crabs would chew up the corpse and the water would bleach the face and leave its features bloated beyond recognition.

The dead woman hit the muddy soup with more of a splat than a splash and, to Alice's surprise, began to float, face up, in the shallow river. She did not wait for the tide to take it away. She had seen enough burials in the Ganges.

She gathered up the clothes and the girl's purse. She decided not to risk the gun getting stuck in the river mud and put it into her rucksack for the time being. Leaving her British passport under the driver's floor mat, she checked that she had her Indian passport and her European Union papers. For the next stage, she would use her Indian identity. Everything went into the pink bag with $20,000 in Canadian cash. She tossed the car keys into the river. At the last minute she turned back to the Ford and retrieved the portable
GPS
unit and its dashboard stand; it went into the bag. She recapped the
GPS
port in the console between the front seats; perhaps they would forget that the hire car had been leased out with the device.

It was still an hour short of sunrise and she walked down the dirt road and up the ramp at the side of the massive bridge without seeing anyone. She was a student or perhaps a young charlady on her way to work. At the rise, she sighted in both directions along M Street. Instead of turning left or right she began to walk directly north. She wanted to clear the nest of elevated carriageways and bridges as soon as possible. At G Street she paused and tossed the scarf, the shoes, and the purse and its contents into a dumpster. She kept the gun and the
GPS
for now.

She paused to breathe in the freshening pre-dawn air. The fashionable streets were peaceful. She liked this neighbourhood, even though she could never settle in such a high-end community. Off to her right she saw a massive banner that had been strung across the side wall of a school building. In red and blue, it shouted, “Tea Party! Glenn Beck. Restoring Honor to America.” She had no idea who Glenn Beck could be — one of the
TV
evangelists Americans seemed to dote on? — or what the Tea Party was all about, and she did not care.

She did a last check of her picture and name in her new passport. Alice Nahri / Alida Nahvi turned away and began to walk into the heart of Washington, with no fear of anything more the night could offer.

Peter Cammon flew into D.C. in an optimistic mood that approached exhilaration. He had always enjoyed himself in the U.S. capital and had many old friends in the
FBI
. He took the shuttle in from Washington Dulles International and registered at the Willard Hotel (a place where Abraham Lincoln had often stayed) and quickly grabbed a taxi to the J. Edgar Hoover Building on Pennsylvania Avenue.

He still believed that the key to John Carpenter's murder was his mysterious girlfriend, Alice Nahri, and further that it was a good possibility she was alive and hiding somewhere in the maze of the lower forty-eight states. He was eager to track down the medical examiner at Quantico and review the autopsy results on the woman lying on a cold slab in the
FBI
mortuary. Protocol, however, required that he touch base with headquarters first and sort out the jurisdictional niceties.

From the lobby of the Hoover Building he was ushered up to the office of Owen Rizeman, a Bureau lifer well known to both Peter and Sir Stephen Bartleben.

“Peter Cammon! Thought you'd retired. Are you here for a job interview? I'll tell the others to sod off. I'll hire you myself.”

He beckoned Peter to take a chair, while he positioned himself behind a desk that was covered in memorabilia from a lifetime of service.

Rizeman was sixty. His hair had turned white and he risked becoming the cliché Southern gentleman out of an antebellum movie, with the bluster to match. He ran the Office of Law Enforcement Coordination but Peter had first met him during the Oklahoma bombing case in 1995. Rizeman was the eternal optimist, a force of nature. He had sent Peter a friendly note when he retired.

“Thanks for that offer, Owen,” Peter responded, “but driving around the country on the right hand side of the road, well, those days are behind me.”

“So, to what do I owe the honour, Peter?” Rizeman said. He knew the reason for Peter's visit but the basics bore repeating.

“Dead body dragged from the Anacostia a few days ago. Woman. Apparent suicide. We need to confirm
COD
and her identity. Quebec Sûreté have formal jurisdiction over the larger case, which is murder. She's a British national and a fugitive from Canada.”

“I get your point, Peter,” Rizeman said, “but we need to be a bit careful. The girl died on U.S. territory. Either the Bureau or D.C. police have authority over that matter. We'll have to sort it out. I'm willing to coordinate jurisdiction and smooth the way for you. I do agree that the murder of a Scotland Yard officer within the boundaries of Canada is the more compelling issue. Let me introduce you to the special agent in charge at our end of things.”

He pressed a button under his desktop.

While they waited, Peter considered Rizeman's interpretation. Unlike some of his colleagues, Peter had the greatest respect for the Bureau and he had no doubt that Rizeman would extend full cooperation. Sharing wasn't the toughest issue. There could be considerable tension between the
FBI
and Washington Metro, and Peter was relying on Rizeman to sort out any friction inside the Beltway.

A tall young agent entered the office.

“This is Henry Pastern from our Art Crime Team,” Rizeman said. The young man fit the
FBI
profile: neat blue suit, clean-shaven, perfect American teeth.

Peter instantly understood how the Bureau regarded this case. They were assuming that the girl had committed suicide. Any offences committed by Alice Nahri — crossing the U.S. border with intent to commit a crime, for example — had become moot with her death. All that remained was the disappearance of the Booth letters. Hence the delegation to Art Crime.

Rizeman rushed the discussion along. “Don't worry about bailiwicks, Peter. There are enough federal dimensions for us to assert our preeminence, if necessary. Henry will drive you over to Quantico to see the girl's body.”

Pastern had said nothing beyond “Hello,” and appeared nervous. Peter knew that Pastern was wondering why a senior Scotland Yard officer, even a retired one, had been dispatched merely to view a dead body. It was the question Peter had been asking since day one.

“One last thing, Peter,” Rizeman said. “Is Alice Nahri an Indian subject as well as British?”

“Dual, likely. That is, two passports. She was travelling on a British passport and we should work towards repatriating her body to the U.K. Only family is her mother and perhaps a sister, and we're trying to locate them.”

“Then my ruling is that we proceed with suicide, let the Sûreté take the lead on the Montreal killing, and put the mythical letters on whatever hot list seems appropriate. Nice and neat. Putting it indelicately, Peter, will you be taking the girl's body off our hands this week?”

“As necessary,” Peter answered coyly. He now grasped that this was all about containment. The dead girl, it had been ruled, was not an active threat, and most important for Rizeman, never a
terrorist
threat.

Peter accompanied Henry Pastern to the basement of the Hoover complex. Peter liked his earnestness. He stood over six feet and had a distinctive shaved head. At one time, the Bureau wouldn't have allowed a cue ball cut, but anyone would have to admit that Pastern presented the proper buttoned-down image of a purposeful
FBI
special agent.

Yet it was strange that Pastern had chosen to make his mark in Art Crime. These agents spent their time retrieving paintings and
objets d'art
listed on the National Stolen Art File Index — not exactly pounding the pavement. As for a missing document with an unverified signature, such as the Booth note to Sir Fenwick Williams, the Bureau, like other national forces, hired experts with very specific forensics skills. Peter wondered what credentials Henry Pastern possessed, other than, perhaps, a fine arts degree. He concluded that young Henry was simply playing the angles, initially getting in the door through the Art Crime unit, and now seizing his chance to work a murder case. Street cred was everything in the
FBI
.

Washington was a humid city and the art of navigating it in early September depended on adroit leaps from air-conditioned office to air-conditioned transport. Retrieval of a Bureau sedan from the basement entailed signing out a vehicle and moving through several layers of security barriers. But in a few minutes the agent had them out onto 10th Street, steering south across Constitution Avenue towards Quantico. Peter was always happy in the U.S. capital and he rubbernecked like a tourist.

Any jitters Henry had from sharing a car with a Scotland Yard chief inspector did not impede his driving, and so Peter felt comfortable launching into a more detailed briefing on the murder of Carpenter. Without expressing an opinion on Alice Nahri's culpability, he emphasized the equally important goals of pursuing both the girl and the letters. Pastern nodded constantly as he wended his way through traffic. As Henry adjusted his grip on the steering wheel to make a turn, Peter discovered a clue to the young man's background. On his left hand he wore a small ring embossed with “
CTR
.” Choose the Right. Pastern was a Mormon. Two of the most famous document forgery cases in U.S. history involved the Mormons: the case of the putative Mormon Will of Howard Hughes, and the murders committed by Mark William Hofmann, a rare book dealer and counterfeiter of Mormon artifacts. Over the decades, the Bureau had welcomed such straightlaced Mormon recruits as this young man, assured of getting reliability and loyalty. Henry Pastern had opened a logical career door.

“Can I ask you a question, Chief Inspector?” the special agent said, his voice tentative.

Peter was in a benevolent mood. He smiled. “Ask me anything, Special Agent.”

In this context, Peter knew, this was neither a right nor a wrong posture towards what was coming. Pastern regarded him as a Sherlock-Holmes-slash-dinosaur and would be hoping for pithy revelations. He must have heard that Peter had worked on the Unabomber, Oklahoma City, and Yorkshire Ripper cases. Peter wondered if Henry Pastern had ever viewed a body on the slab.

“Did you really find the Unabomber?”

“No, it was a team effort, and as you know, his brother finally turned him in and led us to the cabin in Montana.”

“But you visited every crime site,
every
place he bombed,” Henry said.

“Not exactly. Some of the bombs were on airplanes. Others blew up in places they weren't intended to, or got the wrong target. We tried to figure out, first, who the next target would be and what Kaczynski thought he was likely to achieve. For example, if he sent a bomb through the post, did he care who opened it? Then, when he issued his Manifesto, that told us a huge amount about his preoccupations, his targets. We ran word analysis and text extrapolations on the Manifesto, combined that with a map of both his known targets and the actual locations of the explosions, and then ran regressions to determine his pattern. Then we superimposed it on a map of the country.”

The
FBI
academy taught the Unabomber story to all recruits. The case exemplified the classic manhunt but Peter, enjoying being chauffeured through sunny Washington, decided to add some flavour to the tale — stuff not taught to trainees.

“You know who Brin and Page are?”

“The founders of Google.”

“They helped us out a bit. That was in the first year of Google, back before they became billionaires.”

Peter sensed that the young agent didn't quite believe him. That was okay with Peter; he was starting to like the earnest young man.

“Chief Inspector, I heard that you worked on Oklahoma City, too.”

“That was around the same time. Someone came up with the theory that the Murrah Federal Building bombers and Kaczynski might be connected.”

“Well, were they?”

Peter looked off towards the Jefferson Memorial. “No,” he lied.

For the first two hours the girl floated face up in the muddy swill. Her body hung up in the shallows. But with the incremental flow of the morning tide the current refloated her and she drifted to the centre of the Anacostia, to begin her fitful journey to Chesapeake Bay. A quarter moon gave some light to the river yet there was no one to see the poor girl, even as the sun rose. It was Sunday; the commuters were home asleep. The construction crews were off too, and the single watchman who came out of his hut on the middle of the 11th Street Bridge to spit over the edge might have seen her, had she not by then drifted three hundred yards farther to the south. With the tide building, her body turned over in the main stream and she continued face down through the gap between the posts of the Frederick Douglass Bridge, past the Navy Yard complex, where duels were once fought at dawn.

Her head drooped below the surface and her arms stretched down like strange seaweed. For several hours she bobbed against the shore, her sequined shirt tagging on the weeds. Branches abraded her now bloated face. Sunfish and bass nibbled at her soft tissues and macerated her fingertips, which were already raw and blanched, chewing away the whorls of her prints. Once, her right hand twitched and clutched at the weeds as if she had come alive, but it was only a cadaveric spasm. She drifted in a toxic pool of boat slick and chemicals, and after another two tidal cycles her corpse was coated with oily residue. On the second night, just before sundown, the tide rose and carried her farther on her journey. The warm water attracted live diatoms — algae — to her orifices, but they failed to force an entry to her throat, which had been sealed by strangulation and was further defended by the methyl alcohol in her stomach.

For a while, her clothing increased her buoyancy and carried her smoothly along the flow of the river but on the third day her body sank. Immersed, her flesh began to decay faster. The fish were all over her, eating at the pulpy skin and coring out the punctures left by hypodermic needles in the fat around her waist. The weak brine of the river leached the blood out of these wounds. The different specific gravities of her bodily fluids and the methyl alcohol, still not metabolized, caused her stomach wall to swell.

By the fourth day, the putrefying gas in her corpse raised it again to the surface. The last section of the Anacostia, before it merged with the Potomac at Buzzard Point, was twenty feet deep in the central channel, and she might have made it many miles farther, but for the new creatures. They swarmed her body, lacerating her face, legs, and shoulders. There were so many that two shoreline residents sailed out to take a gander, and they were the ones who found what was left of the prostitute.