“Give me a little time to think this one through.”
“Sure… sure. I'll line up JT as an alternate, just in case.”
She nodded and he rushed off, a thousand and one other duties awaiting his attention. Once Eriq had gone, she stood alone again with her thoughts, but now those thoughts came in a confused scramble. “James Parry in trouble with the Hawaiian Nationalist Party and the State Department again. It figures,” she said to the wind. She clearly recalled how he had covered up an illegal search and seizure on an island reservation where the Bureau had no jurisdiction. It had taken some time, but their indiscretion and subsequent cover-up appeared to have come home to roost. She wondered when and if she, like Parry, would face serious reprimands from the Bureau. Or had James been the shining knight and gentleman to the end, taking all the heat for her as well as himself? Not so admirable to be removed from a job as the Hawaii FBI chief to Philly's chief's job, but quite admirable to defend her honor and position… 1/he had… It appeared obvious that no one in either the State Department or the Bureau suspected her yet of any wrongdoing in Hawaii. If so, there would be no teaming of her and Parry in Philadelphia. That much seemed certain. Had Parry kept her from harm's way, and had fallout from their actions cost him his position? Why had it taken the State Department so long to find the truth behind the Lopaka Kowona case and its aftermath? Breaking a State Department treaty was no small matter. Had that day and the subsequent lie that she'd shared with Parry come back to haunt her?
It had been the first and only time she had ever hidden the truth on an autopsy protocol, but it had been the only choice left her and Parry, and under the circumstances, the island politicians having trumped them, it had kept peace between the races. At the time, a race war felt as imminent as the next island storm. She and Parry stood on the front line, on the storm's edge. Now it appeared as if Parry had been engulfed by the persistent political problems in the islands, and perhaps someone who knew his darkest secret had leaked information to the State Department.
Then again, knowing Jim's penchant for rushing in where angels feared to tread, perhaps he had brought down some new shower of complaints over himself. Perhaps his transfer had nothing whatever to do with her. Only one person could tell her the specifics of Jim's problem with the Bureau's high-muck-a-mucks in Hawaii…
Either way, hardly reason to go to Philadelphia to work alongside Jim Parry, a man who found it impossible to play by Bureau rules. She had done her own share of rule breaking over the years, but in bringing down the Trade Winds Killer together, they had broken every rule in the book. The only saving grace? They had gotten results.
Yes, she concluded, she wanted nothing to do with Jim, and by extension, nothing to do with the Philly case. End of story.
Eriq Santiva could just send someone else. John Thorpe would do just fine. Philadelphia would have to survive without Jessica Coran's profiling expertise and skill with a scalpel.
Besides, she didn't like the sound of being a third-string liaison for anyone, much less James Parry. She had gotten every one of her scars the hard way. This was no time to play second banana to the likes of James Parry.
Jessica lay stretched out on her beige leather sofa, listening to Bach on her CD player, toying with the telephone, sipping at a glass of freshly uncorked Merlot, and wondering if she should call Richard Sharpe. The wine had mellowed her out, and she knew she could not dismiss a case simply on the basis of a whim. Still, before deciding to work again with James Parry, she wanted to discuss the awkward circumstances with Richard. But she hadn't told Richard about how she and Parry falsified records to put an end to the unrest in Hawaii. How much of the unsavory affair could she-should she confide in him? What would he think of her falsifying an autopsy protocol, even if it were for the best of reasons? The road to hell is paved with good intentions: she toasted to the old saying, draining her glass, then wondered aloud, “Is a lie a lie if it is told to keep… to keep what? The peace?” She had not even confided this secret to John Thorpe. She stood and paced the room, phone in hand.
If Parry had been professionally “flogged” because these facts had come to light, then she, too, might soon be facing the Bureau's wrath, which would affect not only her but also Richard Sharpe, John Thorpe, Kim Desinor, and other close friends as well.
The sounds of Bach's “Well-Tempered Clavier” wafted through the apartment, and she stepped out onto her balcony, still holding the phone. Perhaps I'm making too much of the whole damned thing, she told herself.
Still, she owed Richard the truth. After all, he had granted her the courtesy of a phone call when he decided to continue with a case in London. Sure, he had already decided before making the call, but at least he had been man enough to lay his cards on the table.
She had to call him, one part of her brain sternly admonished her. “Or I might simply refuse the case,” she said aloud to the night sky. She paced back into the living room, relief washing over her at having decided to remain in Quantico. Someone had to nail Lawrence Hampton's coffin shut for what he had done to Adinatella. Sure, Hampton was the murderer, but his guilt remained to be proven beyond a doubt. Besides, what was so damnably important about Philadelphia's problem? Screw it. She'd tell Santiva-in a nice way-where he could stick it. “That's certainly an option,” she announced to the empty room.
Jessica felt greatly relieved at having come to a decision on her own, without Richard. After all, he certainly did not call her every time he made a decision about a case in London.
She didn't know when she had fallen asleep on her plush couch rather than in bed. Still, her sleep was disturbed by a recurrent dream she'd had since childhood. In the dream, Jessica saw herself lying in a strange, garishly futuristic room; alongside her lay a little boy-or was it a girl? The child was wailing. This place felt cold and damp, and Jessica felt the depth of the child's fear. Together, they found themselves huddling within an impossible maze, a labyrinth from which no escape seemed possible, no matter the direction taken. They found every avenue blocked by a force which, while invisible and outwardly benign, was impossible to. overcome.
Then something new insinuated itself into the familiar dream of frustrated efforts. Jessica's back began to bum, as if she'd been branded. As if her back had been set afire. Part of her psyche chalked it up to the photos Santiva had shared with her. Still, the nightmare had a singular reality and urgency about it as the maze widened to reveal itself as Philadelphia. In her dream, someone was writing out her life in poetic lines across her back. This shadow figure had a gentle touch and an airy presence, as if the child she'd hoped to free from the maze had metamorphosed into a killer. The childlike being gleefully used an ancient pen that dug deep into flesh. Jessica could not make out the poetry etched into her flesh, but remorse and old regrets she thought long ago put to rest became wormlike letters that dug and burrowed into her now.
THREE
The world is a perpetual caricature of itself; at every moment it is the mockery and the contradiction of what it is pretending to be.
Jessica had had such dreams since earliest childhood, and a stint with Dr. Donna Lemonte had helped her to deal with the dreaded feelings of entrapment, near escape, and failure represented in the dreams. While the setting changed from dream to dream, the goal and the outcome always remained the same: escape attempt fails. Once the maze proved to be a concentration camp; another time it was a children's camp by a lake; another it was an opulent mansion yet a prison nonetheless, in which a trapped little boy/girl ran in circles, attempting to escape. Jessica would then appear from out of nowhere, like a guardian angel, assuring the little one that s/he had nothing to fear, that there was a way out, and that the adult knew how to find it. All the child needed was to take her hand and follow her lead; the entire time Jessica told the child repeatedly that she knew the way, that she had just come back that way, and that it was within their combined grasp, just around the next confusing turn.