In a Strange City Read online

  "All you've been through? You killed two men and left another near death, all for a couple of pieces of jewelry that may or may not have belonged to Edgar Allan Poe."

  Daniel stretched his long arms over his head, lacing his fingers and then cracking his knuckles with a hideous sound.

  "I gave Cecilia a mild sedative before I buried her. She's sleeping now, her breathing slow and regular, her heartbeat slower than usual. But she'll be coming awake soon. Waking up in a small cramped space where she can't see, can't move. Imagine how terrified she'll be. It's a nightmare come true. Her heart will start to race and she'll begin breathing in deep, frightened gasps, wasting so much energy and air."

  "I don't believe you," Tess said. "The ground is too hard to bury anyone this time of year."

  He produced a wallet, flipped it open to show Cecilia's driver's license.

  "It's possible to steal someone's wallet without her even knowing it," Tess said.

  "Yes, but it's much harder to remove all her jewelry." He put two small turquoise studs on the table and the silver ring that Cecilia wore on her ring finger, a sign of her commitment to Charlotte.

  "I can't leave here until I know she's alive and where she is."

  "But I'm not telling," Daniel said. "So go ahead, shoot me. I don't know how you'll justify it to the cops, but I won't be here to worry about it. But if I die, she'll die too. Wouldn't it just be easier to give me what I want?"

  Tess still didn't put her gun down.

  "What do you want, an explanation, a confession? It's not like I'm going to be here to face charges, but— fine, I confess. I stipulate to everything. I beat Shawn Hayes. I killed Bobby because he double-crossed me— claiming to have given the jewelry away when he had it on him all along. I went to the grave that night because I planned to follow the Visitor home and rob him. But when I saw the second figure, and realized how Bobby had deceived me, I couldn't help myself."

  "And Yeager? Did you fall for Yeager ‘s claim that he had Bobby's black book? Because he didn't. It was just a stupid prop."

  "Yeager?" Daniel repeated, as if he couldn't quite recall the man. "Yeager. I killed Yeager—I killed Yeager because I could. Like a special at one of those cheap men's clothing stores—buy one suit, get a second pair of pants for free. Yeager was a freebie, and he helped me frame the Visitor."

  In the silence that fell, Tess became acutely aware of breathing, hers and Daniel's. Breathing is one of those odd things people take for granted—until they lose it. The air comes in, the lungs fill, the air goes out, the lungs deflate. Where was Cecilia? Was she still breathing? He had said four hours, maybe three. She cautioned herself to use the time, not rush from the room in a blind panic to do his bidding.

  "You and Bobby were partners in this. You helped him pull off these burglaries."

  "Not all of them. I didn't start out to do most of what I did, but who does? I ran into Bobby at the Midtown Yacht Club last spring, and he was flashing all this cash. He was dying to tell someone what he was doing. It was gossip to him, nothing more. It was my idea to start stealing things back. Rare items belong to the people who truly appreciate them, who can care for them. That's why I had to liberate all these books from the library. I couldn't stand to see other people touching them, defiling them. Someone had to protect them. I thought the Pratt was close to figuring it out, back when Bobby stole the pillbox. So I ratted on him. He never knew. Bobby was such an innocent in some ways."

  "So you were involved in the burglaries at Ensor's house, and Pitts's?"

  "Of course," he said, laughing at her. "Do you think Bobby Hilliard could carry a thirty-one-inch television by himself? Not likely."

  "What went wrong at Shawn Hayes's house?"

  Daniel's laugh died abruptly. "That was Bobby's idea. The security system was too elaborate; we couldn't break in. It was his idea that we should go to a local bar that Shawn Hayes frequented, strike up a conversation, go home with him. You see, Shawn didn't know me, and Bobby said I was his… type. "He likes Eddie Bauer boys' was how he put it. I was to get Shawn to give me a tour of the house while Bobby walked the dog. He pocketed the items on the way out, and it was his plan to hide them somewhere, a place where we could get them later. It was easy enough. After all, Pitts had bragged about the rare things he and his friends owned, told Bobby where Shawn kept the bug and the locket."

  Daniel fell into an abstracted silence, chewing his bottom lip. Tess assumed he was thinking about that night. It was the night he had crossed over, when his carefully rationalized crimes of "liberation," as he would have it, had entered a violent territory he had found all too pleasing.

  "Shawn Hayes made a pass at you." She tried to make it sound as a statement of fact, as if she knew what happened.

  "Not exactly. He asked me if I was interested, and I said no. He seemed unfazed but a little offended. He called me a tease and said it wasn't the first time. He said… he said he had met other men like me. Like me, as if he knew anything of me! "Fence sitters' was his term. He said, "You'll be happier when you admit what you really are." But I'm not—I would never—and I didn't have to take that from some sick fag. A fag who was a thief, who stole from his friends, who wanted to own everything worth owning. Who was he to have all those wonderful things? That's what made me angry. I could steal the locket and the pin, but he would still have so much, so much more than I could ever have. If I could have owned what he owned—but I couldn't. I don't. It's not fair, when such coarse people can own such fine things."

  His fists were clenching and unclenching at his side, but he didn't seem to be aware of it. Tess worried that she had pushed him too far. She wanted him to feel cornered but not desperate.

  "Daniel, I don't know how much money you need, but Whitney, Crow, and I together couldn't get more than nine hundred dollars. ATM accounts have three-hundred-dollar limits, and the banks are closed."

  "But Whitney is rich," he said.

  "Her family is rich. It's not like they have big boxes of cash sitting around."

  Daniel looked surprised, as if he had assumed wealthy people did have currency scattered around the house—stuffed in the upholstery, brimming out of wastebaskets.

  "I'll settle for the locket and a head start. Bring me the locket and I'll go; then I'll call you within an hour, from the road, to tell you where she is."

  "I can't do that, Daniel. How do I know you'll keep your word? I won't even risk leaving you alone."

  "Then call Crow and tell him to bring the dog here. Once I have the locket, I'll tell you where she is."

  Tess shook her head. "No deal. Look, you killed Bobby on impulse. Even Yeager's death can be manslaughter, if your lawyer's smart enough. It's Cecilia's death that will get you death by lethal injection in this state."

  "Frankly, I don't care if some dyke suffocates."

  "I know," Tess said. "You don't care about anyone. But I know what you do care about."

  She switched her gun to her left hand. She had been foolish to think she could bully Daniel or scare him. His regard for human life was so low he didn't even value his own. She walked over to the shelves, trying to remember where he kept his Poe books.

  "This poetry book, the one you consulted the other night." She found it on the shelf. "It's stamped enoch pratt. Did you steal it?"

  "Not necessarily," Daniel said, licking his lips, his face pale. "Many of my books were obtained legitimately, when they were discarded or put up for sale."

  "Well, I guess there's only one way to know." Tess threw the book in the fireplace flames. Daniel kept his seat, although it appeared to take some effort. He was literally holding on to the chair, keeping himself in place.

  "Hmmm, I guess that wasn't a rare one. I'll have to keep tossing volumes until you tell me what I want to know." She ran her fingers along the spines of the old books, slightly sick to her stomach about what she intended to do. She found a book so dusty and cracked that it either had to be extremely valuable or practically worthless, except for the
words inside. She chucked that one into the fire and it almost smothered the flames, then caught and went up in a blast that was more blue than orange, as if the fire were consuming the old ink. Daniel didn't move. She picked another Poe book, an old copy of The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym. This one burned red. Still Daniel sat, his face so full of hate she was almost scared to look at him, lest he turn her into stone.

  Her fingers closed on a slender book, really more of a pamphlet, with a single story printed inside, "MS in a Bottle." It appeared to be a special printing of that first award-winning story, or perhaps the pages had been taken from the Saturday Visiter and bound in leather on some later occasion. It was small and light, and tossing it into the fire was as easy as throwing a Frisbee.

  "You bitch!" Daniel plunged into the fire headfirst, trying to grab the book before it ignited, and his sweater seemed to explode with flames. Indifferent, he yanked the book out and rolled back and forth on the floor. It wasn't clear to Tess if he had the presence of mind to remember the old rule for how to put out a fire or if he was in some childish tantrum.

  "She's under us, okay?" he said, sobbing. "She's been here all along, under the floorboards. I wish I had killed her. I wish I had killed you."

  "Beneath the floorboards? Where, Daniel? How?"

  He didn't reply, just continued rolling frenziedly It was impossible to know if the low, keening sound he made was for his own pain or for the singed book he held to his chest. Tess looked around wildly, and her glance fell on the Winans pike in the corner. With great deliberation, she drove the pointed end into one of the gaps between the planks and used it as a pry. The pine boards came up easily. After all, they had already come up once that day. She found Cecilia beneath the table where she had pretended to eat. Her eyes were wide, her features stretched with a strange combination of terror and relief. If she had been drugged, the effects had worn off long ago. She must have heard everything. She had probably feared that Tess was going to leave her here or allow the house to burn with her in it.

  Tess ripped the handkerchief from Cecilia's mouth and began to untie her limbs, rubbing her wrists and ankles to stimulate circulation. After a few choked breaths, Cecilia looked over at Daniel, still rolled in a ball, and shook her head.

  "Why?"

  Tess echoed the answer Daniel had given earlier, when asked about Yeager's death.

  "Because he could."

  "So you were right?"

  "And you too, in your way."

  Everyone had been right, Tess realized. Cecilia had been right that Hayes had been attacked by someone who was intensely homophobic. But Yeager had been right when he guessed Hayes's attacker was driven by envy as much as anything else—he had just named the wrong man. Together, they had all the pieces. Even Mi-ata had known something all along.

  Gretchen let herself into the house. "It's been thirty minutes, so I called Rainer as you told me to and they're en route. Jesus, he had a lot of fucking books," she added, looking around the room, doing a double take on Daniel, rolling and babbling, and at the wide-eyed Cecilia, as ethereal as any of Poe's necrophiliac objects of love. "Why would anyone want to have this many books? They're dust catchers. So, what'd you do, torture him with a hot poker? Did he give it up?"

  "In his own fashion," Tess said. "He gave it up because he couldn't give it up, if that makes any sense."

  Now all three women stared at the man, whose skin seemed to blister before their eyes. The room was heavy with horrible smells—burnt hair, burnt wool, burnt paper, burnt flesh. The only sound was Daniel Clary's rough sobs, and those were horrible, too.

  He wept like a wounded animal, like a mother crying for a child. He wept, but not for himself and not for his pain. He cried for the damaged book in his arms.

  Chapter 33

  The last note—and Tess never doubted it would be the last—arrived a month to the day after that night. It was direct and simple, incapable of misinterpretation.

  Please meet me at 1 p.m. today in Green Mount Cemetery, behind the obelisk. You'll know it when you see it.

  She wondered if the March date had any significance. Was it yet another Poe allusion destined to fly over her head, or under her radar, or wherever it was that such things flew? She was only beginning to grasp the geometry lessons that had perplexed her in junior high, the revelation that the world was full of infinite planes that never intersect.

  The day was fair, almost warm. The year's stepchildren—March, November—had shown signs of surprisingly sweet temperaments lately, while the once-reliable months of May and September had become unruly and bratty. She found a groundskeeper sitting on a bench, eating a sub, and he rolled his eyes at her interruption but pointed the way.

  "No dogs allowed," he called after her.

  "She's a Seeing Eye dog," Tess said, of the Doberman by her side.

  "You don't look blind."

  "Visually impaired," she corrected.

  "That either," he said. But he let her go, rather than disturb his lunch.

  The grave behind the obelisk turned out to be where John Wilkes Booth was buried. This gave Tess a moment of trepidation—it was an assassin's grave, after all—and she felt for the comforting shape of the gun in her coat pocket. She had been doing that a lot lately. Her gun was turning into a grown-up version of a child's "blankie," one of those tiny scraps of cloth carried far too long. She wondered if her gun would become similarly worn in spots, from all this talismanic touching.

  The note had specified 1 p.m., but it did not surprise her when ten, fifteen, twenty minutes passed. If he were clever—and whoever he was, he was clearly clever—he would make sure she had come alone, check the cemetery for exits and entrances. Green Mount, one of the city's oldest graveyards, was an expansive ramble of a place, and it would be easy to elude someone here. The trick was staying alive in the depressed neighborhood that surrounded it.

  Finally, a tall figure approached. Not in a cape this time, but in the most ordinary trench coat, a belted London Fog. His head was bare in the sun, his hair that shiny, stiff old-man white that made Tess think of dental floss. The silken scarf at his neck was whiter still. He must not have realized how warm it was.

  Up close, his face was familiar, but perhaps that was a trick of its very ordinariness. Still—

  "We've met, haven't we?" she asked.

  He inclined his head in a formal bow. "Several times."

  She studied him, took in the hollows in his cheeks, the bristling eyebrows, the thin lips. But hair could be dyed, especially when it was that snowy white. Voices could change.

  "The Norwegian radio reporter."

  "Ja," he said with a nod. "Would you tell me your hourly rate? May I see your gun?"

  "And… the gentleman who came to the jewelry store that day, the self-important one with the monocle and the same silk scarf you're wearing now."

  He harrumphed, as the man in Gummere Brothers had, all gruff and pompous, and adjusted the scarf at his neck.

  "Anywhere else?"

  "I sure do like a turkey sammich," he said, his voice a credible alto, as opposed to the silly falsetto most men affect when trying to imitate a woman. Tess was in Cross Street Market, buying a sub for a homeless woman. A beat, and his voice was now that of a streetwise young man, hanging outside KFC on a winter's evening, the one who had answered her desperate call. "I just gotta know, you know?"

  Then, in what appeared to be his own voice: "I also was in the Paper Moon one morning, when you came in with your boyfriend and ended up quarreling with that other girl. But that was a coincidence, the kind peculiar to Baltimore. I eat there all the time. I like the sweet-potato cottage fries, and I—" He stopped, flustered.

  "Yes," Tess said, letting him off the hook, knowing he had been about to say that he lived near there, which was more than he intended to tell. "Tiny Town."

  An awkward silence fell, an awkwardness peculiar to the voyeur and the viewed. Tess could not help wondering what else he had seen and observed while tracking
her. She also felt vaguely foolish. She had not only bought him a sandwich, she had bought the idea that he was a woman. She had given him an interview, watching him struggle comically with his tape recorder, and asking him to repeat his questions because his accent was almost indecipherable. In Gum-mere Brothers, they had looked past each other, intent on their own missions. If he had been self-important— well, so had she, and it hadn't been an act with her.

  "You're a good actor," she said.

  "Not good enough, I'm afraid," he said. "The stage was my ambition, but I ended up teaching indifferent students instead."

  "At a city high school?"

  "I'd rather not say."

  Tess assumed this meant she was right.

  "Why the notes? Why not come forward or just pick up a phone and tell the police what you knew? Why did you have to involve me in this?"

  "I did come forward. I came forward that very first night. Well, the next morning. I showed up at the police station and told the homicide detective I had been watching from Fayette when I heard the shooting and that I tried to follow one of the fleeing men. I described my own flight to them, to make sure they knew I couldn't have done it. But I really didn't see anything, and I wasn't ready to tell them about… the other."

  The other. She waited, knowing he would explain. He pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and unwrapped it. Inside were a simple white-gold chain and the gold bug stickpin. Seen in a store, they would appear interesting, nothing more. But Tess knew their story, knew whose pockets they had lined, as well as the price everyone had paid. How quickly Bobby's joy at owning them must have turned into fear. After all, he knew what Daniel Clary was capable of, when he really wanted something. The bug's sapphire eyes caught the pale March sun, seeming to glow off and on, like the amber eyes of the owls in the Owl Bar.

  The less you spoke, the more you heard.

  Tess picked up the chain and then motioned to Mi-ata to sit. She knelt before her, using a small pair of pliers to remove the locket, then fasten it to the chain where it belonged. The dog had guarded her treasure all this time, but she was ready to give it up. Tess just wasn't sure if she herself was ready. "They" are worth killing for, he had told her on the phone, the night Yea-ger was found dead. She had held the locket back from the police, waiting for the plural to assert itself. Waiting to see if the Visitor would do the right thing, and reunite the locket with its chain.