I grabbed a pastrami sandwich upon our return from Newark and brought it back to Waltz’s office. I ate as Shelly nursed a can of something fished from his mini-fridge.
“Ms Anderson had a short tenure at Child Welfare,” he said. “Ridgecliff’s family never lived in Jersey, you’re sure about that?”
We never lived any further north than a brief stint in Knoxville when I was five. All I recall is my father ranting about mountains. He hated mountains, he hated plains, he hated whatever was in between.
“It’s in the records sent by the Alabama police, Shelly. The family never resided or even visited above the Mason-Dixon line.”
“Anderson worked with dysfunctional families. The Ridgecliffs were dysfunctional enough to register on the Richter scale. It’s an interesting coincidence. I wish I could dig up the other kid. Charles Ridgecliff. Maybe he could make some sense of this.”
I faked a yawn. “I doubt it, Shelly. He’s long gone.”
Waltz frowned. “You think Anderson was purely an opportunistic kill, right? Nothing in her background to tie her to Ridgecliff?”
“It’s possible she’d been nice to him at some point in the last few days. It’s one of his triggers.”
Shelly shot me the sad eyes. “I forgot there’s a switch in Ridgecliff’s head that only flicks when a woman reminds him of his mother.”
My mother. My pathetic, terrified, mousy mother who scampered off to her goddamn sewing room every time my father’s voice rose …
I said, “It’s key to Ridgecliff’s delusion that his mother allowed the father’s abuse to continue. That she was complicit in the horror.”
“I saw in the records the mother’s deceased.”
I nodded. “Cancer took her.”
Took her with pain so hot it melted her hands into permanent fists. With screams that burned away her voice box until all she could do was rasp. She never took any medication or allowed me to do anything for her. She thought dying in hell might somehow help her gain entrance to heaven.
Waltz said, “Sorry. Off the track. You were talking about his target process?”
“Ms Anderson was medium build and blonde. At thirty-six she was squarely in an age range from early thirties to early forties. That describes every woman Ridgecliff has targeted because it basically describes his mother. He’d never kill a black or Oriental woman. Or an obese or very thin woman. They’re outside his mother image.”
“Dr Prowse didn’t fit the image.”
“He killed her to gain his freedom, Shelly. It also would have been personal.”
Waltz closed his eyes. He made a curious squeak and turned away. Coughed. Pounded his chest so hard I winced.
“You OK, Shelly?”
“Dry throat.” He took a pull from the can, followed it with a deep breath, regained his train of thought. “So Ridgecliff sees Anderson, his mind lights up with the word Mommy, and his juices start flowing. That how you think it went down?”
“Maybe they were on the street. He drops something, she picks it up. The action and her looks flick his switch. He can’t help following her. She walks to the realtor’s office. He manages to find out her name. From there it’s a simple deception to lure her to the property. He was probably laughing while he waited.”
“Folger’s got dicks and uniforms working for five blocks around, plus checking out Ms Anderson’s and her office on 26th, and her neighborhood in Brooklyn. They’re bracing people in the neighborhood, showing Ridgecliff’s pic.”
I thought for a moment. “Folger can pull the team from Brooklyn, Shelly. Ridgecliff’s in Manhattan.”
Waltz stared. “How the hell do you know that?”
“Uh, it’s more a hunch than anything.”
“I doubt Folger’s gonna pull a team on your hunch.” Waltz shook the can and glared like it was a personal irritant. I smelled chocolate and noticed a dark smudge over Waltz’s upper lip, like he’d borrowed Little Richard’s mustache.
“Are you drinking chocolate syrup?” I asked, happy to change the subject.
He held up the can. I saw the words Slim-EEZ Chocolate Fudge.
“It’s a diet drink,” he said, patting his gut. “The endless damn fight.”
“Chocolate fudge is diet?”
He sighed. “It’s one of those meal-in-a-can things. I remember when drinking your lunch meant three scotches. That was a lot more entertaining.”
“How’s the stuff taste?” I asked.
“Like pureed compost.”
He lobbed the can into the wastebasket. The intercom on Waltz’s phone buzzed, the desk sergeant. “Got a walk-in at the desk, Shelly. Guy wants to see the Southerner, Ryder.”
Waltz shot me puzzlement. Maybe two dozen people knew I was here, all officials of some stripe.
“A walk-in for Ryder? Who is it, Moose?”
“Ray Charles died, right? We’re sure about that?” The desk man chuckled and hung up. We hustled down the hall to the entrance. An older black guy sat on one of the benches, lanky as a pole vaulter, with ebony skin, tight pewter hair, wraparound shades. I put him in his mid-seventies, but he could have been a decade older. He wore a bright yellow blazer over a cream polo shirt. His pants were as white as the cane across his knees.
The desk sergeant saw us, grinned. “This is Mr Zebulon Parks. He wants to tell Ryder something.”
“Mr Ryder?” the blind man called out. “Mr Carson Ryder?”
“Right here, sir.”
The dark glasses turned to me. “You got a place we can sit? By ourselves?”
“You can talk here, Mr Parks. It’s fine.”
“I’m s’posed to tell you what I got in private.”
“There’s a room we can use.” I moved to him, held up my arm. “Would you care to hold on to my –”
“Just lead on,” he said. “Walk.”
I headed for a nearby conference room, Mr Parks’s cane tapping at my heels. Waltz shot me a conspiratorial eye and nodded down the hall. I winked assent and he tiptoed ahead and slipped into the room.
I entered with Parks behind me and closed the door. Waltz sat motionless in a far corner. Parks reached forward, finger-tapped the table, set his hat on it. His hand found a chair and angled it toward him, sitting straight as a rail. I watched his nostrils study the air.
“Now, Mr Parks, you said you had something to –”
“We alone?” Parks interrupted.
“That’s what you wanted,” I finessed.
He flicked his head at Waltz. “Then who that fat guy sitting down there?”
I leaned forward, looked into Parks’s obsidian-black lenses. I resisted the cliché of waving my hand before his eyes, but only barely.
“Can you see, Mr Parks?”
He nodded toward Waltz. “I heard his belly grumblin’.”
Waltz looked at his gut, then at me; neither of us had heard a thing. Waltz sighed. “My name is Sheldon Waltz, Mr Parks. I’m a detective. Sitting in was my idea, and I apologize. But in law enforcement another pair of ears is often helpful.”
“One pair works fine for me,” Parks said. “They heard your sneakin’ ass.”
“For which I again apologize. Could you please explain how you knew I am, uh, a bit heavier than preferable.”
“I smelled the air you walked through gettin’ here. Stinks of that fat people’s drink, Slim-Down or whatever. My sister drink a case of that stuff every week and the flo’ boards still squeal when she walk crost ‘em.”
Waltz grimaced. “You have very good senses, Mr Parks.”
“I hear birds light on branches, smell bacon cookin’ a mile away. I remember the ’zact taste of ever’ woman I been with.”
Waltz raised his eyebrows, started to ask a question, thought better of it. I leaned toward Parks. “You mentioned to the desk man that you had something to tell me?”
Parks canted his head toward the door. “That coffee out there smells real fresh. Like it’d be good with two sugars but just a touch of cream.”
“I’ll be right back,” Waltz said, returning seconds later with a Styrofoam cup of coffee. Parks sniffed from a foot away.
“Don’t drink no fake sugar.”
Waltz rolled his eyes, headed down the hall again. A minute later he set the coffee on the table. Parks sniffed the coffee and nodded approval.
“Well?” I asked.
“I was sittin’ in Washington Square an hour back when footsteps come at my bench. A fellow axed me how my sense of humor was. I said funny’s different to different folks. He said he was prankin’ a friend and he’d give me fifty dollars to help. I poked my cane his way and said to git on wit’ his sly bidness somewhere else.”
“He sat down next to me. I grabbed tight to my money pocket. But he said, ‘Do you hear inside the shadows, sir?’ I said, ‘What you talking about?’ He said, ‘Can you hear the music in the corner restaurant?’ The joint was a block down and the jazz-band music was under the sounds of cars, trucks, people yellin’ on the street, but sure, I could hear it. Next, he said, ‘What you hear best?’ I said it was the clar’net, but if I listened real hard I could separate out the bass notes on the piano.”
“Most people wouldn’t have heard anything but street sounds,” I said, my heart beginning to pound.
“Yep, the music was deep under things. Then the man told what he was hearing, and damn if he wasn’t hearing ever’thing I could. It come to me that maybe he was blind, too.”
Cold prickles danced across my spine. “He wasn’t blind, was he, Mr Parks?”
“Nope, though he was sure tuned up scary high for someone ain’t never had to live in the dark.”
“Did he frighten you?”
Mr Parks frowned, like doing a puzzle in his head. “He had a strange feeling pouring off him, like he had to do a job so important the need was pushing from his skin like heat. That’s as close as I can get with words. Did I feel like he wanted to hurt me? No. But something underneath his voice said I wouldn’t ever want him mad at me.”
“What did you do?”
“Once I could feel he didn’t mean no harm, I got interested in how high he was tuned. We started listening and smelling and talking about how much there was to hear and taste and smell, stuff most people never knew was going on, though it’s right there in their ears and noses and mouths. After we talked a bit I decided to come here to pass on his words. I thought maybe they were important in a way I couldn’t know.”
“What exactly did the man say, Mr Parks?” I asked.
The frown again. Trying to get it just right, Parks spoke slowly. “‘Tell Mr Ryder to consider George Bernard Shaw’s thoughts on sanity in the US.’”
I closed my eyes, suspicions confirmed: I heard Jeremy’s precise diction echoed in the old man’s words. Waltz was staring at me. His silent lips formed the question, Ridgecliff?
I could do nothing but nod, Yes. Waltz jumped toward the door. “Shaw, sanity, America. I’ll Google it and see what hits.”
I waved him back to the table. “Don’t bother, Shelly. I know the quote.”
“What is it?”
“An asylum for the sane would be empty in America.”
Mr Parks chuckled and snatched his hat from the table. He set it on his head at a jaunty angle.
“I picked up that the man seemed interested in you, Mr Ryder. You close wit’ him?”
“What made you think that?”
“He called you something nice, said you was –” Parks again paused to emulate my brother’s crystalline diction – “‘ever the hero on water or land’. Seems a nice thing to say, right?”
Waltz walked stiffly but quickly, his hand angling me into his office. Sweat sluiced from my armpits and I hoped it wasn’t soaking through my sport coat. Jeremy had sent the message just to prove he could. At least he hadn’t said anything to suggest our connection.
Waltz closed the door, shut the blinds. “We can send people to Washington Park. Maybe Ridgecliff’s still in the area.”
I waved the idea off. “He’s not close to the park any more, Shelly. Jeremy Ridgecliff doesn’t take those chances. Trust me on that.”
Waltz sat heavily, wiped his face with his hands. “Ridgecliff saw your picture in the Watcher, the only way he’d know you’re in New York. Why would he send you a message?”
“We developed a strange sort of rapport. He sees me as friend and enemy.”
“Friend?”
“Not in the usual sense. During our talks he was able to speak with me without being judged – that’s how you get under the hood: Make no judgments and let them talk.”
“And on the enemy side?”
“Part of him despises me for being able to open him up. He’d talk to me, then feel weak for opening up. These people hate being weak, Shelly. They need to feel strong and in total control.”
It wasn’t the whole truth, but close: My brother sought control in every direction, even over me. Being on the outside gave him more control than he’d had in fourteen years. It terrified me to consider how he would use that power.
Waltz said, “How long ago was it you interviewed him?”
“I talked to him a couple years back.”
I’d also talked to him nine weeks ago, which I neglected to mention. After postponing a visit for several weeks, I’d run out of excuses. Though dreading the lost day, I’d taken a Saturday to make the run to the Institute, hoping to spend two or three mollifying hours with my brother, get back to my real life for another few months.
We’d been together in his room, the guard just outside the door. Jeremy had seemed in a regressive state, remote, bitter, bristling with tension.
“Jeremy, what’s bothering you?”
“You, Carson. You enter this stinking hellhole whenever you want, leave whenever you want. I’m trapped in here.”
I looked around his room: the special harmless furniture, the Mylar mirror that distorted reflections, the walls and floor constructed of the rubbery material used in children’s playgrounds.
“Not the room, Carson!” he snapped. “I’M TRAPPED IN HERE!”
He slapped the side of his head. Then again, harder. He started punching his head and face as if they belonged to a hated rival, blood pouring from his ear and nose as I wrestled him to the floor, Jeremy screaming about needing to be free, me yelling for the guards.
It had taken six of them to put my brother in restraints. As I wiped sweat from my face and retreated from the room, he’d called to me.
“CARSON!”
Jeremy was on the floor, bound tight as a chrysalis. An injected tranquilizer was kicking in as I stepped back inside the room, now reeking of anger and hatred and despair.
“What, Jeremy?”
His eyes began to glaze, his tongue to thicken. “The moment the old dog stopped breathing, someone became safe, right?”
No one but Vangie knew of my relationship to Jeremy. The guards heard only disassociated rambling. Jeremy was speaking of our father’s death and how I had been kept safe, spared.
“Yes,” I whispered.
A fierce grin blazed over Jeremy’s face, the last sharp flare of light before a bulb dies. He shifted his voice to a perfect imitation of our father.
“I gave you life, Carson …” Jeremy hissed, leaving unspoken the words with which my father had always completed the phrase …
“And I can take it away.”
Had Jeremy threatened me that day?
“Are you in there, Detective Ryder?” Waltz’s voice pushed into my thoughts.
“Sorry, what?”
“I said I just called the Lieutenant. Get ready for a grilling.”
Thoughts banging in my head like bumper cars, I slipped off to grab a bottle of water from the machine. Folger thundered in minutes later, Bullard and Cluff and several other dicks in tow. She paced the office, asking Waltz about the encounter, looking to me for the occasional confirming head bob. She was asking incisive questions; focused, like Waltz had said. She turned the focus to me.
“What Ridgecliff told you, Ryder – this Shaw quote – sounds like he was joking. You actually got along well enough with this crazy to joke?”
“Joking’s part of the bonding process. Ridgecliff’s big on quotes, since he spent most of his time reading.”
“What was that bit about you being heroic on land or sea?”
“‘Ever the hero on water or land’ is the exact phrase,” Waltz said, referring to his notes.
“Yeah, that.”
I shrugged. “Land and sea may refer to my living a hundred feet from the Gulf. I may have mentioned one of my cases where I got rammed by a boat while in my kayak, but made it ashore alive and solved the case. I expect the hero reference is sarcastic.”
“Ain’t it cute?” Bullard said. “Ryder tells police stories to his crazy buddies. Part of their beddy-bye reading, maybe.”
Folger said, “You think he’ll make contact again?”
I held up my hands, No idea.
“Then I want you people to start thinking about how to throw a net over this psycho. You got any ideas on how to do that, Ryder? This is your good buddy out there.”
“I’ve been thinking about it.”
“He’s thinking?” Bullard mock-whispered. “We’re fucked like five-buck whores.”
One of the dicks in the rear of the room glanced up from his note-taking. “Instead of throwing a net over Ridgecliff, how about we do the world a favor and put this son of a bitch in the ground instead?”
Three detectives reached over and slapped the guy high fives. I understood how they felt, had thought the same about other killers on the loose. It troubled me. But not as much as my next thought:
If Jeremy dies, I’m the one that’s finally free.