“When he was alive Peter always liked what I made for him. The boy things, of course. Medieval weapons, tables and thrones for castles. Catapults and war towers. Cannon and caissons. He would have liked that boat, the Warren skiff. On his tombstone. Where is it?”
“In an evidence bag.” She felt compelled to add, “It will be well taken care of.”
“You police, you were watching the grave?”
“That’s right.”
Sachs had noted that his brother was only twenty when he passed. She commented on this. Then asked, “What happened to him?”
“Shoppers.”
“You’ve said that. What does that mean?”
Griffith looked at his backpack. “There’s a diary in there? My brother’s diary. He dictated it to an MP3 player. I’ve been transcribing it, thinking I was going to publish it someday. There’s some remarkable things Peter’s said. About life, about relationships, about people.”
Sachs found the leather book. It contained easily five hundred pages.
Griffith continued, “In high school, Manhasset, some of the cool kids made friends with him. He thought they really meant it. But, uh-uh, they just were using him to get even with a girl who wouldn’t have sex with them. They drugged her, convinced Peter it was somebody else, and they got pictures of him with her in bed. You know, you can imagine.”
“They posted them online?”
“No, this was before phone cameras. They took Polaroids and passed them around school.” He nodded toward the battered leather-bound volume. “The last page. The last entry.”
Sachs found it.
Some things don’t really go away. Never ever. I thought it would. Really believed it would. Tell myself I don’t need friends like Sam and Frank. They’re slugs, they’re useless. They’re garbage. As bad as Dano or Butler. Worse really ’cause they say one thing and do something else. Tell yourself they’re not worth thinking about. But it doesn’t work.
And nobody believed me that I didn’t know it was Cindy. Everybody in school, the police, everybody, thought I planned it.
No charges, but didn’t matter. Reinforced I was a freak.
Vern went crazy, wanted to kill them. My brother always had that temper, always wanted to get even with anybody who crossed him or me. Mom and Dad always had to keep an eye on him. His Shoppers, wanted to kill the Shoppers.
What happened with Frank and Sam and Cindy and everything—I’m not mad, like Vern. I’m just tired. So tired of the looks, so tired of the notes in my locker. Cindy’s friends spit on me. She’s gone. She and her family moved.
So tired.
I need to sleep. That’s what I need, to sleep.
“He killed himself?”
“Not technically. Couldn’t be buried here if he had. It’s Catholic. But he drank himself into a stupor and went for a drive on Route Twenty-Five. Hit a hundred. Was twenty years old.”
“And ‘Shoppers’? What does that mean?”
“Peter and me? We’re built different, we look different. It’s Marfan syndrome.”
Sachs wasn’t familiar with it. She assumed the condition was the cause of his height and disproportionately low weight, long hands and feet. To her, the condition wasn’t particularly odd, simply another body type. But bullies in school? Well, they rarely needed much ammunition.
Griffith continued, “We got made fun of a lot. Both of us. Kids’re cruel. You’re pretty. You wouldn’t know that.”
Yes, she would. In her teens Sachs, more boyish than most of the boys, more competitive than any of them, had certainly been bullied. Then bullied too in the fashion industry because she was a woman. And same when she joined the force . . . and for the same reason.
He said, “Most boys’re bullied in gym class. But for me, it was mechanical arts—shop. It started because I had a crush on this girl, eighth grade. I heard she had this neat dollhouse. So for assignment, while all the other boys were making bookshelves and boot scrapers, I made her a Chippendale desk. Six inches high. Perfect.” His light-colored eyes shone. “It was perfect. The boys gave me crap for that. ‘Skinny Bean’s got a dollhouse. Slim Jim’s a girl.’ ” He shook his head. “I still finished it. Gave it to Sarah and she looked all funny, you know. Like when you do something real nice for somebody and it’s more than they want. Or they don’t want anything at all. Makes ’em feel uncomfortable. She said, ‘Thanks,’ like thanking a waitress. I never talked to her again.”
So, that was it. Not “shoppers” as in those who buy products. As in students in shop class.
“And the people who were responsible for the defective car Alicia and her family were in, you thought of them as Shoppers.”
“They were. Bullies, arrogant. Thinking only about themselves. Selling defective cars and knowing they were dangerous. Making money. That’s all that mattered to them.”
“You must have loved your brother a lot.”
“I kept my old phone with his voice mail messages on it. I listen to them all the time. It’s some comfort.” He turned to her. “Any comfort in this life is good, don’t you think?”
Sachs believed she knew the answer to her next question. “Those boys who posted pictures of your brother and that girl. What happened to them?”
“Oh, that’s why I moved into the apartment in Chelsea. Easier for me to do what I’d decided to—find them and kill them; they worked in the city. One I slashed to death. Sam. The other, Frank? Beat him to death. The bodies’re in a pond near Newark. I can tell you more about those, if you want. She was going to kill me, wasn’t she? Alicia.”
Sachs hesitated.
The story would come out, sooner or later. “Yes, Vernon. I’m sorry.”
Resignation on his face. “I really knew. I mean, deep down, I knew she was using me. Anybody who wants you to kill people, just comes out and asks you, after you’ve slept together.” A shrug. “What did I expect? But sometimes you let yourself be used because . . . well, just because. You’re lonely or whatever. We all pay for love one way or another.” Another searching gaze of her face. “You’re nice to me. Even after I tried to kill your mother. I don’t think you’re a Shopper after all. I thought you were. But you’re not.” After a moment he continued, “Can I give you something?”
“What?”
“In the backpack. There’s another book.”
She looked inside. Found a slim volume. “This?”
“That’s right.”
The Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death.
She flipped through it, examining the pictures of crime scene miniatures. Sachs had never seen anything like it. Frances Glessner Lee was the creator of the dioramas. Sachs gave a soft laugh, looking at the tiny doll, a corpse, lying in a kitchen.
“You can have it. I’d like you to.”
“We’re not allowed. You understand.”
“Oh. Why not?”
She smiled. “I don’t know. A police rule. But we’re not.”
“Sure. Maybe you could buy one, now that you know about it.”
“I’ll do that, Vernon.”
Two uniformed officers approached. “Detective.”
“Tom,” she responded to the taller of the two.
“Bus’s here.”
She said to Griffith, “We’ll take you to booking. You’re not going to be a problem, are you?”
“No.”
Sachs believed him.
CHAPTER 58
He in there.”
Ron Pulaski looked from the boy, no more than fifteen, to the building the kid was pointing at. The place was bad, worse than most in East New York. Ron and his children had seen The Hobbit not long ago and at one point the dwarves and Bilbo were heading for a cave. That’s what this place reminded him of. One of those old stone structures, dried blood, brown, and with windows black and sunken as corpse eye sockets. Some broken. Some dotted with bullet holes.
Seemed appropriate, this dim, forbidding place, for Oden to be dealing from. Or where he fabricated his infamous Catch. The drug of drugs.
Or maybe he did that elsewhere and it was here that he tortured rivals and suspected informants.
“He alone?” Ron asked.
“Dunno.” The boy’s wide brown eyes twitched around the street. Ron had dressed down again—as always on the Save-Lincoln-Rhyme operation—but he still looked just like who he was: a white cop in a black ’hood, dressing sorta-kinda undercover. He was forcing himself not to look behind him, into the alley where Tony was waiting with his Glock drawn.
He asked the kid, “Oden? Is he armed?”
“Look, man, just my green. K?”
“I’m paying you one large. Does Oden usually carry?”
“This ain’t my ’hood. I don’t know this Oden, don’t know his crew. All’s I know: Word come from Alpho, at Richie’s, vouching for you, saying you lay down some green, I find this Oden bitch for you. I heard he in there, that building. All I know. I’m saying. You sure you ain’t a cop?”
“Not a cop.”
“Okay. I done what I’m s’posed to. Now: green.”
Pulaski dug into his pocket, wrapped his fingers around a week’s take-home—in fives to make the roll sing.
“Wait.” The kid was speaking urgently.
“Whatta you mean wait?”
“Don’t gimme no cash now.” As if the cop had belched during mass.
Ron sighed. “You just said—”
“Hold on, hold on . . .”
Looking around.
Ron was too. The hell was this?
Then he spotted three young men, two Latino, one black, walking down the opposite side of the street, smoking, laughing. Their age would make them early college in some places, but here they might still be in high school, if not dropouts.
“Wait, wait . . . No, no, don’t look at ’em, lookit me.”
Sighing again. “What are you—?
“K. Now. Gimme. The green.”
Ron handed the money over. The boy dug into his pocket and handed him a crumpled pack of cigarettes.
Ron frowned. “What’s in there? I don’t want to score anything. I just want to talk to Oden.”
“What’s in there is cigarettes, man. Just take it. Put it away like there’s three G of rock. Careful. Hide it. Now!”
Ah. Ron understood. The kid wanted to make it seem like he was dealing. Build his street cred. Ron glanced across the street and saw that the three young men had noticed. They gave no reaction and continued on their way.
Ron looked over the building. “Okay. Oden. What unit’s he in?”
“Dunno. Just he in there. I was you, I’d start One A and work yo way up.”
Ron started across the street.
“Yo.”
“What?”
“My ciggies.”
“I just bought ’em.” He crushed the pack and tossed it into the street. “Give it up, they’re not good for you.”
“Fuck that, man.”
After the kid vanished Tony joined him. He was wearing his own brand of undercover garb—black jeans and a T-shirt, a gray leather jacket, Yankees cap swiveled backward. Together they headed toward the mouth of the alley next to the Orc Cave building.
“What goes on in there?”
“No idea. The kid swears Oden’s in there now. Well, he didn’t swear. He thinks he’s in there. And it’s the only lead we’ve got. So here’s hoping.”
“Feels like a meth house.”
Ron hoped it wasn’t. Both meth- and crackheads would get wound up like superheroes. The junk gave them crazy strength and unmeshed their thinking. If Ron and Tony were lucky Oden wasn’t retail; he sold in bulk. Maybe even to Charles Baxter directly, the perp Rhyme had put in Rikers. After all, brokers and Wall Street lawyers had to get smack and C someplace.
Tony said, “If he’s dealing he’s not going to be alone and they’re all gonna have weapons. Did you ask the kid?”
“Yeah, I did. Not helpful.”
Dunno . . .
“We’ve been here forty minutes. Nobody in or out. I think it’s cool.”
“Oh?” Tony asked. “You don’t maybe think Oden and his three minders, and their AK-Four-Sevens, might’ve got here forty-five minutes ago?”
“Tone.”
“I’m just saying. K. We go.”
Unzipping the jacket to better access his now-holstered Glock, Tony looked over his brother. “Where’s your piece?”
“Ankle.”
“No. In your waistband.”
Pulaski hesitated then tugged up his jean cuff. He lifted the Bodyguard out of the holster and slipped it into the pocket where he kept the rest of the buy money. His brother nodded, a concession that, okay, the tiny .380 would probably fall out of the waistband or slip down to Ron’s crotch.
Tony touched his arm. “Just, one last time. You sure this’s worth it?”
Ron smiled.
And together, they eased up to the front door of Oden’s building. It was unlocked. To be exact, it was no-locked. A gaping hole where a dead bolt had been.
“Which apartment?”
Dunno . . .
Ron shook his head.
But they didn’t have to look very far. On the second floor, the apartment in the back, 2F, had a handwritten card beneath the buzzer button, in the center of the door, which was red and scuffed.
O’Denne.
Under other circumstances Ron might’ve laughed. An Irish, not a Norse, drug dealer.
Tony stood to the side of the door.
Ron didn’t. When one looks out a peephole and sees nobody in the hall that means the visitors are cops. He put a stony look on his face and hit the bell. He was sweating. But he didn’t wipe the rivulets off. Too late.
Silence for a moment then footsteps from inside.
“Who is it?” came the gruff voice.
“Name is Ron. I was a friend of Baxter’s. Charles Baxter.”
Ron could see shadows moving under the door. Was O’Denne pulling a gun from his pocket and debating just shooting the visitor through the door? It didn’t seem smart to do that in your residence. But Ron realized O’Denne might not be particularly stable and might therefore be unconcerned about wasting an intruder close to home. And as for anyone else nearby, he guessed gunshots were more or less common here and therefore largely ignored.
“What do you want?”
“You know Charles’s dead.”
“What do you want?”
“He told me about you. I want to pick up with you where he left off.”
A click from the other side of the door.
A gun cocking? Or de-cocking?
But the sound turned out to be one of several locks snapping open.
Ron tensed, his hand slipping toward his pistol. Tony had already drawn his Glock.
The door opened and Ron looked inside, scanning the man who stood before him, backlit in light from a cheap lamp with a torn shade.
Ron’s shoulders slumped. All he could think: Oh, man . . . What do I do now?
CHAPTER 59
Lincoln Rhyme heard the front door of his town house open and close. Footsteps approached.
“It’s Amelia,” Juliette Archer said. They were in the parlor.
“You can tell from the sound. Good. Yes, your hearing, vision, smell will improve. Some doctors dispute it but I’ve run experiments and I’m convinced it’s true. Taste too, if you don’t kill off your sapictive cells with excessive whisky.”
“The what? Sapictive?”
“Taste receptor cells.”
“Oh. Well, life’s a balance, isn’t it?”
Amelia Sachs walked inside, nodding greetings.
“A confession from Griffith?” he asked.
“More or less.” She sat down and told him a story of two brothers bullied—the younger one to death—and his sibling’s growing instability and desire for revenge. Griffith’s account aligned perfectly with what Alicia Morgan had told them.
“ ‘Shoppers,’ ” Archer mused after hearing the story. “Well, didn’t see that one coming.”
