And now Riker learned that the deceased Timothy Kidd had possessed a heightened ability to ferret out nuances of guilt, to translate volumes of words from nothing said, finding patterns in chaos and in other people's unspoken thoughts. In the weeks before his death, the exquisite brain of this acute paranoid was electrified and wired up to everything that moved and everything that did not.
"Ah, Timmy," said Agent Argus. "Crazy bastard. He could read warning signs written on thin air. And he was one smart son of a bitch, smart enough to mask his symptoms for a long time. He got past the Bureau's psych test with no sweat. But down the road a bit, his reports started leaning toward fantasyland. The chief of his field office didn't report it – didn't want to lose a good man to the shrinks. Well, we fired his chief for incompetence, and then we tried to help Timmy with his – problem. If we'd only gotten to him sooner, he'd probably be alive today."
Riker understood that this confession of Bureau screwups was supposed to bring them closer together, cop to cop, but he was very fussy about his male bonding, and Marvin Argus did not make the cut.
Dad seemed at the verge of spitting on the FBI man, finding Argus's diatribe distasteful. Cops did not behave this way. Their messes were kept in the family.
"Well," said the agent, "we found Tim a psychiatrist with an IQ higher than his. That was so he couldn't put anything past her. Dr. Johanna Apollo was the highest-paid shrink in Chicago, and now she's a crime-scene janitor." The man staged a smug pause. "Yeah, I thought you'd find that interesting. She called Tim a gifted paranoid. Of course, that was after he was murdered. We think she's withholding information."
"So you want me to spy on her," said Riker. And now he waited for the pitch. A job offer was predictable, a carrot for the Judas goat.
Argus waved off this suggestion. "I need your help. Tim was brilliant, but you weren't such a bad cop yourself. I know your record in Special Crimes Unit. You did good work. Damn shame to retire that kind of talent.
The Bureau needs a guy like you on this case." He flashed a smarmy grin, man to man. "It's not like I'm asking you to get in bed with a hunchback."
Riker's hands balled into fists.
Marvin Argus dropped the smile and shut his mouth, probably noting a sudden change in the atmosphere, a three-second warning that he had crossed a line that could get him decked. The agent's tone was more serious when he said, "I want to be very clear about this. A maniac played a game that scared the hell out of Timmy, and this freak might want to play with you, too. You could wind up dead."
Riker nodded his complete understanding. The agent was setting him up to look like a coward in his father's eyes if he dared to turn down the job. Argus clearly had no talent for sizing up other men. Dad's hands were tensing, fingers curling and uncurling. Riker and his father were in accord this time; they both wanted to slap this man senseless.
"Now, about that dead vagrant," said Argus. "The one the cops found this morning. I understand Johanna had confrontations with him all the time. She only had to walk a block out of her way to avoid him, but she never did. Yeah, that made you curious, didn't it? That's why you dug up her history – and found an identical murder, Timothy Kidd's."
Was this more guesswork or would that background check track back to Kathy Mallory?
Agent Argus, the mind reader, said, "We had two standout hits on our data bank this morning – from two different precincts. One search was done by Flynn, the catching detective on the bum's homicide, and he got zilch. But Johanna's alias raised a red flag at the Bureau. Now the second search didn't use her alias. And there was no password either. The hacker bypassed the lockout and raided the store. Nice work, Riker. I'm impressed. I guess you were visiting your old station house in SoHo. It was easy enough to sit down at an empty desk with a computer."
And now it was certain that Marvin Argus could trace nothing back to Mallory, who rarely left tracks. She had not used a police computer for her early morning hacking. And apparently Argus had no idea how many times she raided federal databases in an average week.
Riker, a renowned computer illiterate, shrugged. "Yeah, I was the hacker.
Good catch, Argus." He turned to his father, checking for signs of trouble in the old man's face, and discovered that Dad actually sanctioned this illegal act, this promising sign that his son was still thinking like a cop.
Drumming the wood surface with two fingers, Argus called his attention back across the table. "Figure it out yet, Riker? Three days a week, Johanna Apollo goes round and round with this crazy bum. She's dodging blows, getting used to the idea of being attacked. And why? Because she'll never know the moment when our agent's killer comes for her. Tim didn't. And Johanna screwed up last night. That vagrant tripped her, and she took a bad fall."
If Jo's fall had been mentioned in any of the witness statements, Detective Flynn would have pressed that point during the brief playground interview. Riker knew the man's style: rattle the suspect up front and never let up on the pressure. So how would Argus have this detail? Had he been shadowing Jo, using a living woman for bait to catch a serial killer? And Argus had yet to mention the Reaper. That was curious, too.
"So your suspect is one of the doctor's patients," said Riker. "And you figure he wants to kill her before she can give up his name?" That was one obvious scenario for the FBI surveillance.
Marvin Argus's smile said, Now you're catching on. And by that smile, Riker knew that he was being misled.
The FBI man lightly slapped the table with his palm. "So this is the deal. We need a guy on the inside, someone who has Johanna's confidence. If you're really tight with her, she might let something slip – something useful."
A snitch is the lowest form of life on earth, said the mere lift of Dad's head. And now the old man's eyes were asking if his son could sink that low; could he travel from the rank of detective first grade to a bottom feeder in the space of a day.
"It's for Dr. Apollo's own good," said Argus. "She left the witness protection program."
"Here's where you're messing up," said Riker. "This killer watches you watching her. He's probably laughing his tail off every day. All those hours of FBI manpower, all for nothing. You'll never catch him that way."
"There was no surveillance on Johanna. We didn't know where she was before that raid on our computer."
"Oh, can it, Argus. You as good as told me the feds were watching her the night before Bunny's body was found." Riker hoped it would drive the agent crazy trying to figure out where the stumble had been made. Rising from the table, he nodded farewell to his father rather than say good-bye, for that would have been more familial affection than Dad could stand. Next, he turned to the FBI man, saying, "Keep the job. I'm not your boy."
On his way out of the bar, Riker glanced back to see the trace of a smile on the old man's lips – finally.
When the door had swung shut behind him, and he stood on the sidewalk again, an old sedan rolled by with the loud fart of a backfire. Though Riker knew the difference between the bang of a car and the bang of a gun, anxiety paralyzed him. His feet would not carry him away, and all his muscles constricted at once. He felt a great pressure on his chest – no air – and he could not fight down the panic of suffocation. People passed him by on the sidewalk, and he could not call out to them, nor even wave at them; his arms were leaden and fallen to his sides. The pedestrians saw nothing amiss – just a man frozen in place, sweating on a cool day. Only his eyes were in motion, silently begging each passerby, Help me! No one paused to see that his chest was not moving, lungs not breathing in and out – that he was dying.