43

I opened the door and tried to smile, but my whole body was locking up. As usual, Lund wore an impeccable suit and every strand of his hair was sculpted in place. The second man might as well have searched for the plainest brown suit, tie, and shoes he could find in a catalogue. He toted a thin brown-leather satchel.

“Thought we’d drop by for a chat,” Lund said. “We figured you’d rather do that here than at the bank.”

There was that syrupy voice again. I wondered where his scruffy younger partner was. “I’m calling Marta.” I started to close the door.

“How did you like Stateville?” Lund asked.

The door stopped, my hand on the knob.

“We could cuff you right now,” Lund said.

There had to be a reason they weren’t immediately arresting me. As for the quiet, second man, below his cropped gray hair, something was wrong with his ears. The right one had no upward curve. The left was even more shriveled. He hadn’t gotten those injuries working at an office.

“Now you’re really giving me a reason to call Marta,” I said. But I didn’t shut the door.

“Bankers love facts, don’t they?” Lund said. “So, let’s just review the facts. Contrary to an order from the court and a specific instruction from the judge, you left the county. That makes you subject to arrest. You also used a fake ID at the airport, which is not only a violation of an act of Congress but a felony. Then you pretended you were an attorney inside a penitentiary. Just state law for that one.”

The more he talked in that smarmy voice, the better I felt. His words sounded less like a threat than a sales job. These two had shown up unannounced so Marta couldn’t parry their tricks. I could see an advantage in letting them underestimate me. And where there was a stick there had to be a carrot.

I turned to the second man with the grizzled ears. He was short and stocky, at least ten years younger than Lund. His gray eyes seemed both curious and wary. “Who are you?” I said.

“Let us come inside and I’ll tell you.” When I didn’t open the door, he said, “I promise this will have nothing to do with Elizabeth Morton’s murder.”

“We actually need your help this time,” Lund said.

My curiosity overcame caution. I pulled open the door.

Lund raised a white paper sack. “We brought coffee. From this really good Italian place.”

We trooped through the living room into the kitchen. Three men around our table made it seem small. Even the air was stuffy. I strode to the sink and opened the window to let in a breeze from the backyard. Their heavy eyes were like hands on my back. But I was prepared for their ploys.

Lund took out three Styrofoam cups of coffee and set them around the table. My cup and my empty chair faced the new guy. It seemed that he wanted to study me, with Lund at his side to confirm his diagnosis.

“Black, am I right?” Lund said, lowering himself into his chair. “By the way, I meant to tell you before, this is a really nice house.”

He not only looked like a private banker but bullshitted like one. Now he pointed his chin at the floor by the counter. “Who broke the coffee cup?”

I ignored the question to focus on the new man. The melted flesh around his left ear shone in the morning light. Wrestlers had ears like that. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a card, not getting up. I had to walk over to him to take it.

I absorbed the information. Special Agent Blake worked in the Chicago office of the FBI. The FBI wouldn’t fly someone all the way to San Diego if this meeting was only about breaking bail.

“What happened to your shirt?” Blake said.

I looked down. My white shirt was stained with a collage of brown spots. “Coffee spill.”

“I guess something made the cup fly out of your hand,” Blake said. He slid out an iPad from his satchel and set it up so the screen faced the chair meant for me. I saw a wedding band on his finger. What kind of woman could get past those ears?

“Have a seat so you can see this,” Blake said.

Lund raised his coffee with his sun-mottled hand. “Really good java. You should try it.”

I sat. My own kitchen seemed to shrink into that miniature Homicide room.

“Don’t say anything until you see it all,” Blake said. He pressed the screen and I saw myself walking through Lindbergh Airport, then through Chicago’s O’Hare. I squirmed in the chair. No lawyer could argue against that evidence. The judge would throw me back in jail, and then what would the madman do?

“The warden told us that Kogan put a new visitor on his list,” Blake said. “The guards turned on the video and the microphones when Pete Jones showed up. It took about five seconds to make you.”

I hid my face by sipping from the Styrofoam cup. There had to be a deal or I’d already be in the back of a police cruiser.

“The folks at Stateville—they pretended you were his lawyer,” Lund said. “And, of course, seeing as you weren’t really an attorney, they could still turn on all the electronics. The sound was a lot better in a private room.”

They’d wanted me to break bail to visit Kogan.

“Looks like you’re going inside for some serious time,” Lund said. “I’m afraid your days in the financial industry are over. You won’t even be able to clean the offices.”

He was goading me into begging for a way out. He’d probably contacted the FBI before I went to Stateville and never told me. Then the FBI listened in at the prison to see if I would admit to Elizabeth’s murder. Maybe they thought I’d confess to impress my father. But the way Kogan played with me had to convince them I was innocent.

I pulled out my cell. “Stop blowing smoke. Unless you tell me why you’re here I’m calling my attorney.”

Blake said, “I told you, putting the screws to him is pointless.”

Lund smiled thinly. “I guess I should listen more carefully. Especially to an expert from the FBI.”

Those few words told me what had happened. “You were ordered to bring in the FBI, weren’t you?”

Lund gave me a Mona Lisa smile. Blake stared at me, tight mouthed, his eyes bright.

“So why did the FBI send you all the way from Chicago, Agent Blake? I’m pretty sure there’s an office in San Diego.”

Lund started to say something and Blake put up his hand. “Let me fill in the blanks. Just to illustrate how it pays to work with us.”

He smiled at Lund. Lund eyed him like roadkill.

Blake continued. “We ran Elizabeth Morton’s murder through the bureau’s computers. There were twenty-two related killings.”

My body jerked. The killer’s photo of Frieda flashed into my mind. Frieda as small and delicate as a figurine.

“The murders go back nineteen years. Heads, hands, feet, and sometimes breasts were sawed off. No hands clasped in prayer and no photos sent to newspapers. Except for Elizabeth Morton, no victim was suspected of abusing kids. Still, we probably would have seen a pattern, but our friends in San Diego didn’t contact us about you. Or report it to the national database.” He smiled at Lund.

I said, “I guess the detectives thought they’d already caught the murderer.”

Lund shrugged. He didn’t look at Blake.

I could imagine how it played out. After the killer sent his letter to the Union-Tribune, Lund and Hempel’s boss ordered them to contact the FBI.

“Fifteen murders were spread out in Illinois and Indiana,” Blake said. “Then a lull of eight years. The killer started again in California, Arizona, and Nevada. We calculate seven more killings. The only one in San Diego was Elizabeth Morton. Your father was spot-on when he said that the killer was from the Midwest.”

I said, “If the killer admired the Preying Hands, wouldn’t he have contacted Kogan?”

Blake rubbed one of those ears. Then the other. “You were the first person to visit him in ten years.”

Ten years without a single visitor. Ten years alone in a cell. It was unimaginable. “Who did he see ten years ago?”

Blake raised his palms. “It’s a long way back for prison records.” He gave me a smile so friendly it made my stomach clench. “We’d like you to help us. Now that you aren’t a suspect.”

I’d always be a suspect. And if I refused to play … The videos on the laptop informed me of what would happen. That was another reason they’d let me break bail.

I took a sip from the Styrofoam cup. “You know something, Agent Blake? You’re desperate. I’m the only one who can get Kogan to cooperate. You know it, Lund knows it, and I know it.” I locked onto both men’s eyes as if I believed it.

They didn’t leave. And they didn’t pull out handcuffs.

“I want protection for my family.”

“The chief turned us down,” Lund said. “But if we could give him something else …”

With Blake there, I was sure it wasn’t just a come-on. I had some power. Maybe Blake needed an appetizer.

I got up, retrieved my briefcase, and took out the watercolor and the typed letter from the killer. “Don’t say anything until you’ve read it all,” I said, handing them to Blake.

He smiled thinly and slipped on gloves. He studied the letter so long he must have memorized the words. “It fits,” he said. “The man wants to torment you. Our profilers think he may be jealous.”

“Because I’m Harvey Dean Kogan’s real son?”

Blake let the question hang, his thumb rubbing the Styrofoam cup. “He’d like to be his son instead of you.”

The more I considered that statement, the more frightening its implications became. “He called me his brother. He wouldn’t want to murder his brother, would he?”

“Not if he were a normal person,” Blake said.

That’s why they needed my father. Only an aberration like Harvey Dean Kogan could understand the subtexts in that letter.

“What about Fullerton, California?” I said. “And the picture of Polly

and me with that other victim’s head?”

Blake released a long, beleaguered breath. “We’re running that through our computers.”

They were throwing stones into a lake and hoping their computers would interpret the ripples. Blake didn’t seem to care if I knew that they were floundering. That was refreshing. There was a certain nobility about not hiding those ears.

“We’ve been thinking about Magnolia Thrush,” Blake said.

So they did have a plan. That was another reason they’d let me skulk off to Chicago. I shook my head.

Lund peered at me, forcing me not to ignore him. “Kogan was playing with you. He knows a lot more than he’s saying.”

The FBI profilers must have concurred. But exposing Magnolia to her brother and these men would tear her life apart. “She hasn’t seen him for fifty years,” I said.

Lund crossed his arms. His whole body seemed to frown inside that blue suit.

“A man is totally different with someone he knew as a child,” Blake said. “Particularly someone in his close family. Our psychologists think it could shock him into opening up.”

“No.”

Lund sipped his coffee. Blake changed his cup to his other hand and rubbed it with his index finger. Maybe he didn’t drink caffeine. Maybe he was the kind of wrestler who only drank herbal tea.

“The killer likes to do things in threes,” Lund said. “That means another murder. Soon. If his sister saw him, Kogan might give up something, something that could save a life.”

That was how desperate they’d become.

Blake said, “This man never completely followed your father’s pattern. He didn’t just attack women with kids. He didn’t always dismember his victims in the same way as Kogan did. Our profilers think he might be changing. Aiming at something higher. Like taking the Preying Hands’ mantle. And that would mean eliminating all the other pretenders to the throne.”

That sounded prepared. It still made my arm shake. I set it in my lap.

Blake picked up his coffee cup and turned it in his hand. He aimed his eyes at mine so his words would reach inside me. “In the note you got this morning, there was a reference to an Algerian village. What was that all about?”

“I’m sure you’ve seen my famous photos,” I said. “Evidently the killer has too. He wants to show me that he knows all about me.”

Blake nodded. “But there’s something more. Weren’t there women and children killed?”

I couldn’t tell whether he really believed that my family was in danger or if he was just trying to manipulate me. He must have known it was my greatest fear. I put my other arm in my lap.

“Think about asking Magnolia to help us,” Blake said. “The FBI has a bit of influence in San Diego. We could make a call. Maybe persuade the chief to assign a squad car to watch your family.”

The letter wasn’t enough. I had to persuade Magnolia to face her brother at Stateville. I had no choice. That was the only way my family would get protection. “I don’t call her until there’s a police car in front of my in-laws’ house,” I said.

Blake nodded. He set his leather satchel as gently as a baby on his lap. Slid out an X-ray. The light from the window over the kitchen sink illuminated the image. I saw something round and white.

“That’s a pancreas.” Blake pointed to a spot on the image. “And that shadow is cancer. It’s advanced, very serious.”

“What does this have to do with anything?” I said.

“This particular pancreas belongs to Harvey Dean Kogan,” Blake said. “We need to get his help soon.”