30

Ben, how the hell are you?” Marta said. We stood in front of the blue plastic seats in the reception area of the police station on Broadway. My lawyer carried an enormous purse as big as a briefcase.

“Just dandy,” Hempel said, his voice like gravel. He wasn’t at all perturbed that I’d brought Marta along. Today his white shirt tugged at the buttons, as if he’d borrowed it from a younger, less broad-chested version of himself.

Marta reached over to touch his striped tie. “I’ve missed you, Ben.”

He grinned. “We keep hoping you’ll reject the devil and come back.”

“To be a prosecutor again? How is that rejecting the devil?”

They chuckled as if I weren’t there.

We strolled past the gate at the reception desk. On the other side, Marta said, “How goes the battle?”

“Twenty days,” Hempel said.

“Damn. We’re rooting for you.”

I had no idea what they were talking about. Was Hempel in AA?

We reached the elevator in the back. On the fourth floor, Hempel led us into Homicide and to the same interview room they’d stuck me in before. Just looking at those ancient wood panels and the sickly Girl Scout green walls made my stomach tighten. I sat at the same place at the table, the box of Kleenex in front of me and the whiteboard on the wall above. But this time Marta was beside me. Hempel sat next to her and gnawed on the inside of his cheek.

There was a knock. Lund leaned against the doorjamb in a tailored gray pinstripe. “Look who’s here.” His bass voice rolled out like an announcer at a charity gala.

“Why, if it isn’t the best-dressed detective in San Diego,” Marta said.

Lund grinned and flashed his gold cuff links. “Only the top of my game for you, Marta.”

The Old Home Week banter was as grating as Hempel’s voice. “Can we talk about the letter?” I asked.

Lund shut the door behind him. Today he wasn’t trying to convince me I could leave at any time. He handed me a folder and sat on the side of the table opposite Hempel. We were so tightly packed together, the cedar and rosemary scent of Lund’s cologne seemed to suck up all the air.

Lund said, “The Union-Tribune got it in the mail this morning.”

Inside the folder was a photocopy of a typed note with no signature. Marta and I read it at the same time.

My Dear Public:

Does anyone who wears yellow sneakers deserve to live? That sin was almost as bad as her wrenching a child’s arm. At least Elizabeth Morton loved The Giving Tree. She loved it so much that I made her a part of the story.

Now you know the punishment for an evil woman who assaults children. Justice is a tornado that slips across the empty cornfields and hurls itself upon the icy lake.

By the way, publish this letter and I will delay punishing another child abuser. Some would consider that a Hobson’s choice, but I’d classify it more as a dilemma.

Your friend,
The Defender of Children

My father could have written the first paragraph before he was arrested. Even the second paragraph’s poetic twists sounded like his. But the third paragraph showed off the writer’s education. As if he were saying that he was the next, more enlightened Preying Hands.

“Well?” Lund said.

I told him what I thought. He nodded as if I’d revealed something he didn’t know. I doubted that. Maybe he believed I’d explained the note so well because I’d written it.

Something else was hidden in that text, something familiar I couldn’t quite pull in.

“Are you sure this isn’t some nutcase?” Marta said.

Lund frowned. “There were pictures. ‘Before’ and ‘After.’”

I tried to block out those images, but I still saw Elizabeth’s eviscerated body. The killer had cut her up the same way the Preying Hands would. With one significant difference. “Harvey Dean Kogan never cut off breasts,” I said.

Lund raked his hand through his hair. The layers of gray sprang back into place. “How do you know that happened with Elizabeth?”

“Because you showed him the goddamn picture when you arrested him,” Marta said. “The World’s Greatest Attorney even mentioned it in court. Cut the bullshit. Now why the hell hasn’t the DA dropped the charges?”

“Based on one letter to a newspaper?” Lund said.

“The pictures,” Marta said. “Whoever sent them murdered Elizabeth Morton.”

Hempel drew back, his broad face squinting and frowning. He looked as if he still believed I was the killer.

Lund said, “You used to be on this side of the table. Let him help us.”

Marta shook her head. “I like you guys, but that doesn’t mean I’m gonna go all stupid. Just give him back his clothes so we can go.”

Neither Hempel nor Lund moved in their chairs. Hempel unwrapped a piece of gum and shoved it in his mouth. They had a bigger agenda than gauging my reaction to the letter.

Hempel scratched the nape of his neck and met my eyes. “The killer’s gone through all kinds of hoops to pin the evidence on you. Why the hell would he send this?”

To punish me for abandoning my father. But I couldn’t say that. Besides, I knew what Hempel was really driving at. “What’s the postmark date?” I asked.

Hempel said, “Day before yesterday.”

“It would be pretty hard for me to mail it from jail,” I said.

Hempel and Lund both slowly nodded, as if they hadn’t thought of that.

“Unless someone mailed it for you,” Hempel said.

Marta reached below the chair. She heaved up her purse with both hands as if she were getting ready to walk out. “Ben, you know why the killer sent the letter. It isn’t enough for him to do the deed and frame William. He has to make sure the whole world knows how clever he is. He has to tell everyone he’s the second coming of the Preying Hands.”

Lund stared at the half-paneling encircling the room. He pushed back his chair and hiked one pinstriped leg over the other. “Well, there is something that could help us all get on the same team.”

“Team,” the word people pulled out when they intended to use you.

“I can barely stand the suspense,” Marta said.

“A polygraph,” Lund said. “Then we’d be able to tell the chief how much you’re cooperating.”

“And maybe he’ll make an exception and approve some protection for your family,” Hempel said.

I was innocent. What did I have to worry about from a lie detector test?

Marta was chortling.

“I’d fly through it,” I said.

“Let me tell you something,” Marta said. “Christ himself would fail a polygraph if you gave it to him on the wrong day.” She was talking to me but looking at Hempel and Lund. “Which these fine detectives know perfectly well.”

Lund grinned.

“I’d be disappointed if you didn’t try,” Marta said to them.

It hit me like one of Mama’s angel thoughts. I remembered where the first sentences of the letter came from.

“‘Justice is a tornado that slips across the empty cornfields and hurls itself upon the icy lake,’” I said.

Marta and the two detectives slowly turned to me.

I went on. “Harvey Dean Kogan used exactly the same phrasing to describe what he did to Bev Holland.”

“Bev Holland?” Hempel said.

Marta grabbed my arm and shook her head. I was displaying too much familiarity with my father’s murders. To the detectives, she said, “Look it up.”

“You sure know a lot about his victims,” Lund said.

“Just give us his damn clothes,” Marta said.

Hempel reached below his chair and handed me a paper bag. Inside were my cell phone and the suit and shirt I was arrested in. “We all know you’re innocent. We just have to prove it.” Hempel almost looked as though he meant it.

I took the bag, wondering if a listening device and GPS tracker were sewn into my suit.

Once in my car, Bev Holland came back to me. Twenty-six years old and a single mom, she’d made the tragic mistake of letting her child wander into a swimming pool. To punish her, Harvey Dean Kogan stole her bike and advertised the sale of another on the bulletin board of her apartment building. She met him in a Sears parking lot to take a look at the “almost new Schwinn.”

I was eight months old. Probably asleep in an infant seat next to jars of baby food. Why else would Holland step inside that van? She’d come by bus and Harvey Dean Kogan offered to drive her and the bike home to her Schaumburg neighborhood. When she climbed inside, he chloroformed her.

In the photo, the Preying Hands set her head on top of my car seat, her hands wired in prayer in front of her face. Her shoes sat on either side of the hands, the feet and ankles still in them. When Harvey Dean Kogan sent that picture to the Chicago Sun-Times, he glued a shot of a swimming pool below it. That was the only time he used a diptych method. Newspaper type spelled out the message across the blue of the pool: “Buckle up when swimming.”

I’d always wondered if I had sat inside his shed while he composed that picture with her body. Maybe what he’d done to Bev Holland festered in parts of me I didn’t even know existed.