Senator Ackerman wasn’t making eye contact with his constituents this morning. In his one-of-the-guys uniform of khakis, blue work shirt, and highly polished Weejuns, standing at the picture window that looked down on the marina and the bay, he sipped thoughtfully from his FBI coffee mug as Frank Sheffield summarized his last few hours of work.
“Amazing as it sounds, there were no reported thefts of red dirt bikes in the last two days in either Dade or Broward County. So I ran a list of all transfer of titles of for the same time period, and found twelve. I cross-referenced those twelve new motorcycle owners against arriving airline passengers in the last forty-eight hours. And there were no hits. So either he’s using multiple IDs or he came to town by bus. Or else that’s not him on the red dirt bike. I’m leaning toward the multiple-ID theory. All of which, of course, get us nowhere.”
“If you’re trying to impress me with your industry, Frank, I think it’s a little late.”
Ackerman’s frown was pinched around the edges. His complexion seemed to have soured overnight, a yellow haze in his eyes.
When he spoke again, it was with the measured cadence of a professional orator forced for the moment to address an unworthy audience of one.
“I’m deeply disappointed in you, Frank. The childish way you’ve behaved. I think your father would be ashamed of you as well. I think he would be deeply saddened by your insubordination.”
Sheffield tried to muster a smile but it wouldn’t take hold.
“Hey, I’m sorry, Senator. Apparently the charisma gene skipped a generation. What can I say? I wish it were otherwise.”
He could hear Helen Shane talking on the phone in the back bedroom. A tense question now and then, but mainly listening. Andy Barth was nowhere to be seen, and in the adjoining room his computer had been shut down.
“I’m meeting Hannah at noon at the Orange Bowl. There’s still a possibility Hal will show. We’ve got almost sixteen hours left.”
“Not anymore,” Ackerman said. “The mission is dead. We’re finished. We’re folding up our tents, pulling out.”
“Why? What happened?”
Ackerman turned back to the window. In the harsh morning light his face appeared bloated and his eyes had the defeated, empty glaze of a sleepless man.
“You want to know what happened, Frank? What happened was that you chose to personalize this. You decided at some juncture to let your own trivial needs preempt the goals of the mission. Willfully and for your own self-gratification, you drove a stake through the heart of Operation Joanie.”
“I didn’t want to see Ms. Keller get hurt.”
Ackerman swung back around.
“Frank, do I have to remind you who we were dealing with? A man who has killed dozens of human beings, a man whose method of murder is so ghastly, so obscene as to challenge the very definition of evil. And for some reason, Frank, you let your own petty personal interests supersede our goal of catching this monster.”
“Your daughter’s gone, Senator. Sacrificing Hannah Keller won’t bring her back.”
The mist in Ackerman’s eyes cleared instantly as if burned away by a sudden flare of the sun.
“You stupid, stupid boy,” Ackerman said, taking a half step in his direction, his hands balling. “You have the unrestrained impulses of a spoiled adolescent. As soon as I get back to Washington I’m going to see to it that your career in law enforcement is terminated. I won’t have you enjoying the respect and benefits of a profession you so clearly disdain. You’re finished, Frank.”
He heard Helen Shane slap the phone down. A second later she hustled into the room, slinging the strap of her bag over her shoulder.
“Hal Bonner is in Nashville, Tennessee,” she said. “Field office there has two eyewitnesses and the body of one Hector Ramirez, heroin distributor. His chest has been punctured, heart stopped manually. It’s Hal’s signature, no doubt about it.”
“Wait a minute,” Frank said. “Nashville?”
“That’s right, Frank.”
Ackerman gulped down the last of his coffee and set the mug on an end table.
“The rental car Hal was seen driving away from the scene was found parked outside a Holiday Inn near the airport SWAT teams have already set up a perimeter and they’ve agreed to wait till we arrive. But if Hal moves out before we get there, they’ll take him down themselves. Your plane is waiting at Opa Locka, Senator. We’ve got to move.”
Frank headed them off at the doorway. Helen halted, bringing the voltage to her eyes.
“Look,” Frank said. “Something happened last night out on the bay. A guy stole our kayak, paddled away. Out at Stiltsville.”
“Stand aside, Agent Sheffield.” The senator raised his right hand as if he meant to stiff-arm Frank backward through the wall.
“Do you hear me? This guy tried to drown me. He had a burr haircut like the guy Hannah spotted earlier, the one on the motorcycle. It was dark, so I didn’t get the greatest look, but from what I could tell, he fit the description.”
Helen gave him a small smile.
“You’re pathetic, Frank. Truly sad.”
“You think I’m making this up?”
“Whatever you’re doing, Frank, it hardly matters anymore.”
“Get the hell out of the way, Sheffield.”
The veins in Ackerman’s temple had squirmed to the surface and looked like they might be about to rupture in unison.
Sheffield stepped back and followed them out the door and down the hall to the twin elevators. An elderly Japanese couple was waiting by the stainless-steel doors, smiling up at the numbers.
“Maybe this guy in Nashville, he’s a copycat of some kind.”
“Bullshit,” Ackerman said.
The Japanese couple smiled more brightly at the numbers.
“I’m sorry to disappoint you, Frank,” Helen said. “But we’ve got a positive ID. Hal Bonner is in Nashville. If he was ever in Miami, he’s not here anymore, and I think we all know the reason why. Because a certain FBI agent decided he’d rather shack up with a certain second-rate hack writer than follow his assignment in a professional manner.”
“Shack up?”
“You heard me.”
“What’re you talking about? She was in my room last night, yeah, she took a shower, ten minutes later she left. I don’t call that shacking up.”
“You two deserve each other, Frank. A cop who lost her desire and a federal agent who never had any.”
Both sets of elevator doors parted at once. Ackerman and Helen stepped aboard one car. The Japanese couple smiled at them and chose the other.
Hannah nailed the brakes, lurched to a stop, put the shifter in reverse, and backed up three car lengths. She’d driven right past it. A brick house, rare for Miami, wedged between two shabby apartment buildings.
She was in North Miami Beach, a part of town that had been a fashionable suburb when Hannah was growing up, but like much of this part of town, it had begun a long slide into third-world fragmentation, a melting pot where nothing melted anymore. Up and down these desolate avenues, there were dozens of ethnic markets representing every exotic corner of the planet, but the main economic staple of the neighborhood was bought and sold on the street corners, hot zones controlled by dead-eyed boys in baggy clothes.
Hannah drew up to the address Stevie pulled from the DMV computer. Maude Marie Fielding, age sixty-six, five foot three, one hundred and thirty pounds, a safe driver. Hannah parked behind a yard-service truck that years ago had been stripped of its tires and left hunkered on its rims at the curb.
In the front yard a small oak tree sprouted from the barren soil, its branches bearded with strands of smoky gray moss. Two empty bird feeders swayed from its branches and an overturned tricycle rusted in a knee-high stand of weeds.
Hannah got out of the car and stood by the door for a moment. The sky had turned to pewter and the humidity and trapped fumes of the city were mingling in an airless brew. She looked across the roof of the car and gave the two teenage boys across the street a warning look. They were eyeing the Porsche as if calculating its resale value.
Hannah walked down the broken cement sidewalk to the front porch. With her eyes on the boys across the street, she knocked on the front door. She waited for a moment, hearing no noise inside the house. She was raising her hand for another try when the square peephole behind a rusty grill snapped open.
The eyes that peered from the opening flinched against the gloomy light like some half-blind cave dweller.
“What do you want?”
“Maude Fielding?”
“Who are you?”
“I’m Hannah Keller. I don’t know if you remember me, but I spoke with you a number of years ago about your husband, J. J. Fielding. My father was Ed Keller, Assistant U.S. Attorney.”
“Well, well. Don’t you have some nerve?”
“I need to ask you a couple of questions. It won’t take long.”
“I don’t believe I have anything to say to you.”
“Please, Ms. Fielding. Your husband is dying. He’s crying out for you.”
The woman craned forward until her nose mashed against the grillwork.
“Can I come in, please?”
The old woman studied Hannah for another moment, then slapped the peephole shut. A second later, the door swung inward and Maude Fielding stood with one hand on its edge as if she was still debating slamming it shut. Frail and humpbacked, Maude wore a blue smock with oversized red hibiscus blooms printed on it. Her hair hung limply to her shoulders and was dyed jet black except for the two-inch silver roots. In her other hand she held a half-eaten sandwich on white bread.
“He’s crying out for me, is he? Well, now that would be a trick.”
“Can I come in?”
Without reply Maude turned and headed back into the gloom.
Hannah stepped quickly across the threshold.
Underfoot she felt the crunch of sand, as if the white terrazzo had not been swept in years. Lying heavy on the air was the smell of old tuna fish and sour towels. Dark damask drapes blocked the windows, and as Hannah shut the front door, the murky room became even murkier.
The woman stood silently a few feet away, then Hannah saw her turn and disappear into the shadows of the room. There was only the chafe of the old woman’s sandals against the gritty floor as she shuffled deeper into her house.
Hannah followed the trail of noise.
A few feet away she heard Maude Fielding come to a stop and in the next second the room was suddenly blazing with light. Hannah squinted into the harsh fluorescence and when her eyes finally cleared, she sucked in a quick breath. Maude Fielding was standing behind a breakfast counter, the sandwich in her left hand, a .45 automatic in the other.
“Now,” she said. “Just what kind of game is this?”
“There’s no reason for the pistol, Ms. Fielding. I mean you no harm.”
“No, ma’am, I’m not going to be one of those pitiful old ladies gets dragged off to a nursing home ’cause she can’t protect herself anymore. No, ma’am, I’m not.”
She took another bite from her sandwich and waggled the pistol at Hannah.
“Ms. Fielding, please. Put the gun down.”
Maude blinked twice, and the tension began to drain from her face as if her paranoia had suddenly quit whispering in her ear. With a bewildered smile, she peered down at her right hand as if the pistol had just sprouted there. She slapped the weapon down on the countertop and stepped away from it.
“I hate guns,” she said quietly. “I hate them.”
Hannah eased forward and nudged the pistol farther out of reach.
Maude glanced over at the kitchen where an array of open jelly jars and stacks of dirty plates covered the counter-tops. Her mood seemed to dip and surge every few seconds, an uncertain light fluttering in her eyes. Synapses starting to misfire, the short circuits of a faltering nervous system.
Her gaze lit on Hannah and a quiet smile flickered to her lips.
“Care for a sandwich? I have peanut butter, crunchy or regular. I have strawberry preserves or blackberry jam and there’s some cherry left too, if you prefer that. I just love a good peanut butter-and-jelly sandwich on Wonder Bread, don’t you? Bread with absolutely no redeeming nutritional virtues. Oh, but it’s soft and chewy and wonderful. Sure I can’t interest you in one? I was just having a little snack when you knocked.”
Hannah said no, she wasn’t hungry. Maude Fielding took another bite of hers and without another word she turned and padded down the hallway toward the back of the house.
Hannah followed.
Crowding the walls of the narrow corridor were dozens of family photos in color and black-and-white. J. J. Fielding had been a dashing young man and Maude was once a silky, dark-haired beauty. Sleek and handsome, the couple stood smiling together on the prows of sailing yachts and in formal dress at ballroom dances. In one they held up strings of fish, kneeling side by side in rustic camps. In another they gazed up insouciantly from the bucket seats of a low-slung British sports cars, Maude in a scarf, J. J. in a sporty hat.
Three quarters of the way down the hall, a baby appeared. A girl with mousy brown hair and sad, distant eyes. Maude and J. J. were late-in-life parents. Maude in her early forties, J. J. apparently approaching fifty. The daughter aged quickly as Hannah came to the end of the corridor. In the last few photographs, the girl was in high school looking sulky, and garbed in the angry black uniform of the rebellious teen of half a decade before. Spiky hair, grotesquely shadowed eyes.
At the end of the hallway was a final portrait of the girl frowning into the camera. Hannah halted abruptly and stared at the photo. Beneath the bad makeup and the butchered hair, Hannah recognized the girl. Maude Fielding’s daughter was the same young woman whose coquettish smile she’d seen the night before on Randall’s computer. Barbie-girl. One of Randall’s E-mail pals.
“Your daughter,” Hannah said. “What’s her name?”
Maude stood in the doorway of the back bedroom, munching her sandwich.
“Misty Ann,” she said. “Why?”
“Where is she? Where does she live?”
“Here in Miami.”
“M. A. Fielding,” Hannah said. “Does she live on Flagler Street?”
“Last I heard, yes. Why do you ask?”
“I believe I spoke to her on the phone yesterday. I was trying to locate you and I got her. No wonder she nearly dropped the receiver when I told her my name.”
“Be careful with Misty,” Maude said. “She’s a very unhappy young lady. She’s never recovered from her father leaving.”
“She’s been sending my eleven-year-old son E-mail.”
“Misty has?”
That’s right. She calls herself Barbie-girl.”
“Well, I don’t want to tell you what to do, dear,” Maude said. “But if my Misty is sending notes to your son, I would find a way to put a stop to it I don’t like to say it about my own flesh and blood, but that girl is just brimming over with maliciousness.”
Maude turned and shuffled into the bedroom, Hannah two steps behind.
The small room was jammed with furniture. She was barely able to move among the crush of chairs and tables and couches. In one corner was a tall, ornately carved secretary with a glass case filled with Hummel figurines and silver-framed photos. A red satin-covered couch was wedged against one wall and a cherry coffee table and matching end tables and entertainment unit lined the other. Large, dark oil paintings of mostly pastoral scenes in heavy gold frames hung on the walls. It was as if Maude had rescued these few tokens from the lavish life she’d known, and carted them off to this dreary prison cell so she might sit among these sumptuous pieces and dream herself back to the glory days.
Maude took a seat across from the TV set where a morning game show played soundlessly. Hannah pried her way through the tangle of furniture and found a perch on the arm of a green leather wingback chair.
“And do you have more than one child?” Maude asked.
“No, just the son.”
“Well, I wish you better luck with yours than I had with mine. Misty was born angry. Nothing I ever did seemed to satisfy her. Her life has been one long tantrum. I always thought she must have felt like an outsider, coming into our life so late. We were close, J. J. and I, at least I thought we were. And Misty must have felt it was two against one. That J. J. and I loved each other more than we loved her. And maybe we did. Maybe I simply didn’t have enough love in me to spread around to one more person.”
“Children aren’t easy,” said Hannah. “Even under the best of circumstances.”
“You probably think I’m very sad,” Maude said. “Living like this, in such squalor. And I suppose I am. Sad and sick at heart. Maybe some other woman my age and circumstances would have bounced back after her husband abandoned her. Maybe I should try harder than I do. I don’t know. I just don’t seem to have the will to do much beyond the basics of surviving.”
“It’s okay,” Hannah said. “You don’t need to explain.”
She frowned and shook her head. This was a speech she’d been harboring too long. It needed saying.
“Your father was simply doing his job,” Maude said. “I don’t blame him for what happened. For this.” She waved a hand at the cheerless room. “You should feel no guilt whatsoever. He was doing his job and J. J. was undeniably in the wrong, using the bank to launder money. I didn’t realize what he was doing. I had no idea. He had a secret life, a second personality he never showed me or Misty. With us he was simply J. J. Fun-loving and full of mischief. A good husband, a father who tried the best he could to give guidance to a wayward, difficult daughter. But he was living another life none of us knew about. He consorted with those people. Took trips down to South America to visit his friends, the drug lords. I think he must have been so impressed with their wealth and power that he lost his way. That was J. J.’s weakness. He was easily dazzled. Money impressed him so.”
Maude was quiet for a moment, holding the remains of her peanut butter sandwich in her lap.
“Now what was it you wanted, young lady?”
Hannah began to explain about the Internet broadcast. She told Maude everything, about the copy of First light with the scribbled notes, the house on Bayshore, the house at Stiltsville, her appointment at noon at the Orange Bowl. She told her about Stevie and about dithering pixels and Operation Joanie and Helen Shane.
Maude sat quietly through the recitation with her eyes on a painting across the room. A richly colored oil of an elegant southern belle in a gold satin dress seated with aristocratic calm on an outdoor garden bench. Looking at the painting seemed to relax her, bring some brightness to her eyes.
When Hannah was finished with her story, Maude continued to stare at the painting with a dreamy concentration.
“Ms. Fielding?”
The woman smiled. She blinked her eyes and drifted back.
“Did you hear what I said, Ms. Fielding?”
“I heard you,” Maude said. She gave Hannah a quiet smile.
“I could show you the Internet broadcast. Your husband is very ill. He’s in a hospital somewhere. Maybe you’d be willing to look at it and tell me if you recognize the place.”
“That won’t be necessary,” she said.
Hannah stood up. She angled through the furniture and sat down beside Maude Fielding on the couch. Maude reached over and patted Hannah’s leg.
“I’ve already seen the film you’re talking about,” Maude said.
“You have?”
She nodded.
“But this isn’t a film,” Hannah said. “It’s a broadcast over the Internet.”
“It’s a videotape,” Maude said. “J. J. sent it to me just before he died.”
“Before he died?”
“Back in August,” Maude said. “He sent it because he wanted me to forgive him, to soothe his guilt. To make his dying easier.”
“August? Are you sure?”
“Oh, yes, I’m sure. I’m not so far gone I’ve lost all track of time. J. J. made the tape over his last three days. For his final seventy-two hours, he recorded everything he said or did, every medical procedure done to him. He claimed he wanted to reconnect. He wanted me to exonerate him. But I couldn’t. I sat and watched him die. Then I rewound the tapes and sat and watched him die again. I’ve watched him die a dozen times and not once have I been able to cry.
“Because there are simply some things you can’t forgive. I’m not a saint. I wish it was in me to pardon the man, to say it was all right that he simply disappeared and left his wife and child without a dime and with no idea where he went or what was in his mind. For a long time I believed he committed suicide. That when his money-laundering scheme was discovered, he couldn’t bear the public shame and he went off somewhere and ended his life. That’s the story I told myself. That’s the way I learned to cope. And then this tape came in the mail. This terrible tape.”
Maude picked up a remote and aimed it at the TV set and punched a button. The VCR began to roll and the morning game show disappeared, replaced by the dreary image of J. J. Fielding in his hospital bed. It was a scene Hannah had already viewed. J. J. and his white-haired doctor in a blue surgical scrub.
“Your husband sent you this tape in August?”
“That’s right. Five tapes in all, wrapped in Christmas paper.”
“And did you show the tapes to anyone?”
Maude drew her gaze from the screen. Her eyes were muddy. Maybe she hadn’t forgiven her husband, but she hadn’t hardened herself to him either. She looked at Hannah.
“They told me if I ever heard from J. J., I was to get in contact with them immediately. So I did. I’m a good citizen. I’m responsible and public-spirited. That’s the way I’ve always been. I sent them a note and they came and got the tapes.”
“Who?”
Maude looked down at the last of her peanut butter sandwich. She brought it to her lips and popped it into her mouth.
”Why the FBI, of course. They sent a man by and he took the tapes away and then after I called and called, they brought the tapes back.”
“Those bastards.”
Maude set her sandwich on her lap.
“You haven’t asked about the money.”
Hannah was looking at the tape of Fielding in his hospital bed.
“The money he stole, you mean?”
“Yes, yes. J. J. transferred the money to an account in my name. I got a letter in the mail after he died from a bank in the Bahamas. Four hundred million dollars, just sitting there waiting for me to collect. But I don’t want it It’s evil money. He only sent it to me as a payoff, so I would think kindly of him. That poor sad fool. He thought money mattered. He thought if he had enough, he would be immortal. But look at him. It didn’t help. It didn’t help one bit.”
Hannah sat for a while longer with Maude Fielding and together they watched her dying husband plead one more time for forgiveness.