Mortal Fear m-1 Page 3

  “Every one was murdered in the last nine months, Mr. Cole. And I’ve got to tell you, there are a lot of people around the country right now-police officers-who want to talk to you about those women.”

  I do not even try to convert the chemical cyclone in my brain into coherent words.

  “Only two of those murders had been connected before tonight, Mr. Cole. They were both in California.”

  I close my eyes. Juliet Nicholson. Tara Morgan.

  “What we’d like you to do,” Mayeux says in a friendly voice, “if you’re not busy tomorrow, that is-is drive down to the main station here in New Orleans and talk to us. What do you say to that?”

  I look back through the window. Sheriff Buckner’s cruiser is still there, idling low and catlike in the humid darkness.

  “You think I killed them,” I say in a monotone.

  Again Mayeux pauses too long. “To tell you the truth, Mr. Cole, we don’t know what to think. I’ve been telling people that you called me with this information, and that if you’re the one who murdered them, you’d be the last one to do that.”

  “Damn right.”

  “On the other hand, some people tell me that things like that have happened before. A lot more than you’d think. Is this one of those strange cases, Mr. Cole?”

  “I was stupid to call you,” I say, meaning it. “Miles was right.”

  “Miles who?” Mayeux’s tone telegraphs an image of him holding a pen over a notebook.

  “Do I need a lawyer, Detective?”

  “What?” Drewe gets out of bed and hurries to the closet for a housecoat.

  “Take it easy,” Mayeux says. “My gut tells me you’re just Joe Citizen in this thing, trying to do what’s right and getting tangled up in the process. That happens more often than it should, I’ll tell you right now. If you want a lawyer, you bring one along with you.” He pauses a beat. “But if you want my advice, I’d save the money. We just want to know what you know, Mr. Cole. If you’ve got nothing to hide, you don’t need a lawyer.” Mayeux’s voice drops in volume. “Besides, first impressions are important. You’ll look a lot more innocent to certain people if you don’t have a lawyer from the get-go.”

  One thing’s for sure. Detective Michael Mayeux didn’t just float into New Orleans on a shrimp boat. He is very good at getting people to do what he wants them to do. This is a talent that I share, and I note the fact like a fighter noting the strength of a potential opponent.

  “I suppose you expect me to ride down with Sheriff Buckner?”

  “No, sir. Bring your own car, fly a crop duster, whatever you want. Just try to make it before noon. You’ve got a very anxious audience down here.”

  I make a rapid decision. “Listen, Detective, no way am I going to fall back asleep after this call. I’m going to talk to my wife, then get dressed and drive straight down there. The sooner I’m out of all this, the better I’ll feel.”

  “Good answer, Mr. Cole.”

  “See you in about five hours.”

  “I’ll be waiting for you.”

  By the time I finish explaining the situation to Drewe, Sheriff Buckner’s cruiser has quietly disappeared. My wife wants to accompany me to New Orleans, but I talk her out of it. For one thing, she has patients scheduled. For another, I am not sure how deeply the questions of the police will probe. I doubt any man would want his life examined microscopically in the presence of his wife, but lately one of my secrets, like the old shotgun pellet in my calf, has worked its way nearer and nearer the surface. One question with the right edge could slice right through.

  I consider calling Miles in New York to tell him what is afoot, then discard the idea. On this point Drewe and I agree. By revealing the name of an EROS client to the police, I have almost certainly exposed myself to a lawsuit. I reassure myself that my perception of lethal danger to other EROS clients justified this breach, but in 1990s America, who is to say? Jan Krislov, the fifty-six-year-old widow who owns EROS, is a nationally known advocate for the right to privacy. She also has more money than God. Better lawyers, anyway.

  Yet beneath this anxiety flows a deeper sense of reservation. Drewe feels it as well. Early in our lives, Miles Turner and I were almost like brothers. Then for many years we hardly saw each other. Not quite a year ago he came back into my life, brought me into EROS. Expand your horizons, said my own personal Mephistopheles. Aren’t you tired of making money yet? Challenge yourself. It’s more fun than you’ve had since we talked our baby-sitter into taking off her bra.

  I am not having fun now.

  CHAPTER 3

  Dear Father,

  We landed in Michigan in the afternoon. So gray after the decadent green of New Orleans. As gray as our fatigue. My joints ached constantly; we had to fly through the black heart of a storm.

  I varied the transport this time, and the technique. I learned from my mistake with Karin. How disconcerting to recognize naivete in oneself, even after years of cynicism.

  I was drunk with anticipation. Our seduction had been a long and baroque one, a progression from the sacred to the profane. I sat on the patient’s patio with the notebook and the cell phone, knowing she believed she was interacting with a man thousands of miles distant, a faceless lover, and me sitting less than twenty feet away.

  I crept to her window and watched her typing her responses. Kali stroked me as I watched, spilling my seed in the flower bed. Will the FBI look there, I wonder? For footprints, yes. For semen, no. They will find that where they expect to find it, but of course it will not be mine.

  I could not resist telling Rosalind I was there. There was no risk; she could not call the police while linked to EROS, and Kali was already inside. Terror was absolute. Paralyzing. Kali demonstrated exemplary control, reassuring after the blood lust of New Orleans. And this time I left a note, a passage you read me long ago:

  I have reached the limits of endurance. My back is to the wall; I can retreat no further. I have found God but he is insufficient. I am only spiritually dead. Physically I am alive. Morally I am free. The world which I have departed is a menagerie. The dawn is breaking on a new world, a jungle world in which the lean spirits roam with sharp claws. If I am a hyena I am a lean and hungry one: I go forth to fatten myself.

  I know, I know. But I’m tired of leaving biological refuse. Why not mislead with a little flair? You of all people should appreciate that. This is just the kind of rot they salivate over at Quantico. It will be the only file written in French, but nevertheless I signed it “Henri.” Subtlety is wasted on the police. By the time they translate it, the procedure will be complete. The lab work tonight. A day to collect the next patient. Another to rest my joints, to steady my fingers.

  Then I cut my way into Valhalla.

  CHAPTER 4

  Three hours of hard driving put me over the Louisiana state line with dawn breaking over my left shoulder and New Orleans seventy miles ahead. The last two hundred miles were a slow-motion strobe of darkness and glaring truck-stop light. On any other night I would have taken Highway 61. Not many people do these days. They choose speed over scenery, as I was forced to do tonight.

  I-55 runs straight as a pipeline, and most travelers on it never give a thought to the older, more indirect arteries that lie just to the west: Highway 61, a blacktop track of history lined with scorched chimneys like sentinels guarding unquiet land; and beyond the levee, the aorta of the continent, the mile-wide tide of river that ran before man set foot here and will run long after he is gone.

  But in this breaking dawn I can afford only the straightest distance between two points. On the passenger seat beside me sits a briefcase full of laser-printed paper-transcripts of the killer seducing his victims-and my best hope of absolution in the matter of the six dead women.

  Seven, I think, remembering Karin Wheat.

  At La Place I jump down onto I-10 for the final twenty-minute run into New Orleans. The August sun is fully up now, past eight o’clock, and the shallow soupy water of the Bonne
t Carre spillway simmers under its lidless gaze. Cranking down the Explorer’s windows, I catch an airborne wave of decaying water plants and fish from Lake Pontchartrain.

  During the past four hours, I have recalled every step on the mental path that led me to this physical journey. What the police hope to learn from me I am not sure. But the most sensitive question for me is this: why didn’t I report my suspicions sooner? I am not quite sure myself. I can only hope that what I have to say will shock the police sufficiently to divert them from that question, at least for a while.

  Locating the main New Orleans police station is easy. It’s near Drewe’s alma mater, the Tulane Medical School, just behind the Orleans Parish criminal court building. Locating Detective Michael Mayeux is easier still. Homicide is on the third floor. The moment I mention my name to the desk sergeant-who sits behind a window of armored glass-I am whisked through a heavy door, through a squad room, down a corridor, and into a small office. Mayeux is seated at a scarred and cluttered metal desk, speaking urgently into a wire telephone. The office has no windows. It does have a computer, an overcrowded bookshelf, and, enshrined in the single clearing amid the chaos, a coffeemaker. A torn red sack of Community dark roast with chicory sits on top of it.

  “Help you?” Mayeux asks, hanging up the phone and taking a bite from a sugar-dusted beignet I hadn’t noticed.

  “I’m Harper Cole.”

  He freezes in midbite, then sets down the beignet, stands, and begins chewing quickly as he ushers me back into the hall and to another door. He is five eight or so, with good shoulders, noticeable love handles, and a bald spot on the back of his head. At the door he stops and turns back to me, his dark brown eyes reassuring like those of a coach before an important game.

  “Just tell these people what you know, Mr. Cole. Take your time and don’t leave anything out. If you get hungry or you need to take a leak, nod your head at me and we’ll break. It might get pretty intense. All of a sudden there’s a lot riding on what you have to say about these women.”

  “Hold on,” I say, raising my hands. “I thought I was coming down to talk to you. Who’s in there?”

  He gives me a crooked smile. “Don’t worry. I’ll be beside you the whole time. So will my partner, so will the chief.”

  Mayeux meant to reassure me, but he’s accomplished the opposite. “And…?”

  His eyes move off my face. “The other guys will be feds. FBI.”

  “FBI? What for?”

  “These guys are from the Investigative Support Unit. What used to be called Behavioral Science. One special agent and a shrink. Plus two Fibbies from the local office. Remember what I told you. Two of the dead women were killed in California-one in L.A., one in San Francisco. Because their bodies were mutilated in a specific way, and for other reasons, the police out there decided they might be looking at some type of cult murders. They called in the Investigative Support Unit to assist them in coming up with a profile of their UNSUB.”

  “Their what?”

  “UNSUB. Unknown subject. Anyway, soon as I queried the names of those two dead California women, the Unit was on us like you know what. When they heard about you and the other women, they started foaming at the mouth. They think we’re looking at a serial murderer here. Maybe a whole new kind of killer. We got detectives flying in from all over the country right now. This is major-league stuff.”

  “So much for our friendly little chat.”

  Mayeux starts to turn the doorknob, then hesitates. A spark of Cajun mischief twinkles in his eyes. “Don’t take the shitty vibes personally. Chief Tobin officially requested the Unit’s assistance-he knows their chief-but NOPD and the local Bureau office have bad blood from way back. Not your problem. Just tell your story.” Mayeux winks. “Show time, cher.”

  CHAPTER 5

  Detective Mayeux’s warning understated the tension level. The bare police conference room reminds me of nothing so much as a room full of lead vocalists. Egos bumping against each other like tethered balloons as their owners strike practiced poses, unaware of any agenda but their own. Four men in business suits sit in a protective phalanx at the far end of a rectangular table. They might as well be wearing lapel tags that read “FBI.” The New Orleans police chief, an enormous black man, sports a starched white duty shirt that strains under his bulk. Four stars adorn the blue boards on each hamlike shoulder.

  To the right of the chief sits a rail of a guy who has to be Mayeux’s partner. He looks like lukewarm hell. Eyes like quarter slots on a Coke machine, hands quivering with the irregular tremor that signals serious sleep deprivation. I know the symptoms well. There is a busty Hispanic secretary beside him. Her left ear is cocked toward the chief, but her eyes stay on the young FBI agents.

  “Gentlemen,” says Detective Mayeux, “Mr. Harper Cole.”

  Mayeux is telling me names, but they don’t find a permanent memory address. Three of the FBI agents wear blue suits, the fourth charcoal gray. Does this mean he’s in charge? He’s clearly the oldest, yet he wears his graying hair longer than the others. Mayeux speaks his name softly, giving it unintended emphasis.

  Arthur Lenz. Doctor Arthur Lenz.

  Of course. Lenz is the shrink.

  Whenever I meet interesting strangers, I find myself casting them as stand-ins for the stars of my memory. Sometimes I meet an Edmond O’Brien or a George Sanders, maybe a Robert Ryan. I remember those guys from when I was a kid staying up late with my dad, watching Channel 4 out of New Orleans. So it’s a habit, trying to slot strangers into the celluloid templates in my head. Some people are just extras, like Mayeux’s partner and the secretary. But every once in a while I meet the genuine article. Someone who doesn’t just remind me of, say, Fredric March, he couldbe the man.

  Doctor Lenz might be the genuine article. He is physically tall-this is obvious even though he is seated-and yet… he is limited. Like an actor who never made the jump to the big screen. Perpetually middle-aged, WASP or WASP wannabe, expensive suit, heavy on control. His charisma is undeniable, but somehow he finishes out more TV than film.

  In the uncomfortable silence that follows the introductions, one of the blue-suited FBI men-Baxter, I think-gives the police chief an annoyed glance. Then he looks me in the eye and says, “Good morning, Mr. Cole,” giving the “mister” that special and contemptuous stress that military men reserve for civilians. “I’m Special Agent Daniel Baxter.”

  I didn’t notice Baxter at first because sizewise he blends with the other two blue-suits. But I see him now. And I get the feeling he’s hiding. In the Biblical sense, as in hiding his light under a bushel. He’s got weight behind his dark eyes, but he’s not a leading man. He’s a tough-as-nails sergeant from a black-and-white war movie, thrust into command by the death of his lieutenant.

  As if summoned to life by Agent Baxter’s words, the police chief greets me in a startling James Earl Jones basso. “Mr. Cole, I’m Chief Sidney Tobin. I thank you for coming down so early today. Needless to say, we’re all very interested in whatever you might have to say about these murders. You have our undivided attention.”

  Detective Mayeux sits, offering me the chair at the head of the table as he does, but I remain standing. I am six feet and one inch tall, 195 pounds, and I know my size gives me a psychological edge when I choose to use it. Today I figure I need any edge I can get.

  “Before I say anything,” I begin, “there is one very important thing I didn’t tell Detective Mayeux on the phone.”

  “What’s that?” rumbles the chief.

  “I’m pretty sure I know who killed those women.”

  Astonished silence blankets the room. Dr. Lenz breaks the impasse. “You have a name, Mr. Cole?”

  “And an address.”

  “Christ!” cries Mayeux. “Give it to me.”

  I open my briefcase and remove a single sheet of paper. From it I read: “David M. Strobekker. That’s S-T-R-O-B-E-K-K-E-R. Fourteen-oh-two Moorland Avenue, Edina, Minnesota. It’s a suburb of Minneapolis.�
��

  “What else you know about this guy?” barks Mayeux’s partner.

  “He has a checking account at the Norwest Bank in Minneapolis. That’s all I know for sure.”

  “Run it through the computer, Mike,” commands the chief. “Right now.”

  “I can access the Bureau computers by phone,” one of the younger FBI men tells Mayeux, who shoots me a furious glance on his way out.

  “I could be sued for giving you that name,” I tell them.

  “Let us worry about that,” says Baxter.

  “The FBI will provide lawyers to defend me in a civil case?”

  Arthur Lenz’s face shows a trace of bemusement.

  “Let’s stick to these murders,” says the police chief. “Tell us how you came to know those six names and why you suspected the women might be in trouble.”

  The door opens and closes behind me. Mayeux reclaims his chair on the right side of the table. “Kiesha’s checking on Strobekker, Chief.”

  “Stop me if I say something you don’t understand,” I tell them.

  The two younger FBI agents smirk at this, but I’m fairly certain they’ll soon be strafing me with stupid questions.

  “I work for a company called EROS,” I say slowly. “That’s an acronym-E-R-O-S-which stands for Erotic Realtime On-line Stimulation.” Seeing a couple of leers, I ignore the mythological connection and push on. “We’re an on-line service that caters to a wide range of clients interested in human sexuality. EROS is a New York-based corporation legally chartered in the State of Delaware-”

  “Who owns it?” interrupts Baxter.

  “A widow named Jan Krislov.”

  “What?”

  From the sick look on Daniel Baxter’s face, I can see that he’s familiar with Jan Krislov in some capacity. A flash of instinct tells me it’s her fierce championship of electronic privacy rights.