From Potter`s Field

Spread out in front of him were scene photographs from a recent consultation that had nothing to do with Gault. This victim was a man who had been stabbed and slashed 122 times. He had been strangled with a ligature, his body found facedown on a bed in a motel room in Florida.

'It's a signature crime. Well, the blatant overkill and the unusual configuration of the bindings,' Wesley was saying. 'Right. A loop around each wrist, handcuff style.'

I sat down. Wesley had reading glasses on and I could tell he had been running his fingers through his hair. He looked tired. My eyes rested on fine oil paintings on his walls and autographed books behind glass. He was often contacted by people writing novels and scripts, but he did not flaunt celebrity connections. I think he found them embarrassing and in poor taste. I did not believe he would talk to anyone if the decision were left completely up to him.

'Yes, it was a very bloody method of attack, to say the least. The others were, too. We're talking about a theme of domination, a ritual driven by rage.'

I noticed he had several pale blue FBI manuals on his desk that were from ERF. One of them was an instruction manual for CAIN that Lucy had helped write, and pages were marked in numerous places with paper clips. I wondered if she had marked them or if he had, and my intuition answered the question as my chest got tight. My heart hurt the way it always did when Lucy was in trouble.

'That threatened his sense of domination.' Wesley met my eyes. 'Yes, the reaction's going to be anger. Always, with someone like this.'

His tie was black with pale gold stripes, and typically his shirt was white and starched. He wore Department of Justice cuff links, his wedding band and an understated gold watch with a black leather band that Connie had given him for their twenty-fifth wedding anniversary. He and his wife came from money, and the Wesleys lived quietly well.

He hung up the phone and took off his glasses.

'What's the problem?' I asked, and I hated the way he made my pulse pick up.

He gathered photographs and dropped them inside a manilla envelope. 'Another victim in Florida.'

'The Orlando area again?'

'Yes. I'll get you reports as soon as we get them.'

I nodded and changed the subject to Gault. 'I'm assuming you know what happened in New York,' I said.

'The pager.'

I nodded again.

'I'm afraid I know.' He winced. 'He's taunting us, showing his contempt. He's playing his games, only it's getting worse.'

'It's getting much worse. But we shouldn't focus only on him,' I said.

He listened, eyes locked on mine, hands folded on the case file of the murdered man he had just been discussing on the phone.

'It would be all too easy to become so obsessed with Gault that we don't really work the cases. For example, it is very important to identify this woman we think he murdered in Central Park.'

'I would assume everyone thinks that's important, Kay.'

'Everyone will say they think it is important,' I replied, and anger began quietly stirring. 'But in fact, the cops, the Bureau want to catch Gault, and identifying this homeless lady isn't a priority. She's just another poor, nameless person prisoners will bury in Potter's Field.'

'Obviously, she is a priority to you.'

'Absolutely.'

'Why?'

'I think she has something yet to say to us.'

'About Gault?'

'Yes.'

'On what are you basing this?'

'Instinct,' I said. 'And she's a priority because we are bound morally and professionally to do everything we can for her. She has a right to be buried with her name.'

'Of course she does. NYPD, the Transit Police, the Bureau - we all want her identified.'

But I did not believe him. 'We really don't care,' I flatly said. 'Not the cops, not the medical examiners, and not this unit. We already know who killed her, so who she is no longer matters. That's the black and white of it when you're talking about a jurisdiction as overwhelmed by violence as New York is.'

Wesley stared off, running his tapered fingers over a Mont Blanc pen. 'I'm afraid there's some truth in what you're saying.' He looked back at me. 'We don't care because we can't. It isn't because we don't want to. I want Gault caught before he kills again. That's my bottom line.'

'As it should be. And we don't know that this dead woman can't help with that. Maybe she will.'

I saw depression and felt it in the weariness of his voice. 'It would seem her only link to Gault is that they met in the museum,' he said. 'We've been through her personal effects, and nothing among them might lead us to him. So my question is, what else might you learn from her that would help us catch him?'

'I don't know,'1 said. 'But when I have unidentified cases in Virginia, I don't rest until I've done all I can to solve them. This case is in New York, but I'm involved because I work with your unit and you have been invited into the investigation.'

I talked with conviction, as if the case of Jane's vicious murder were being tried in this room. 'If I am not allowed to uphold my own standards,' I went on, 'then I cannot serve as a consultant for the Bureau any longer.'

Wesley listened to all this with troubled patience. I knew he felt much of the same frustration that I did, but there was a difference. He had not grown up poor, and when we had our worst fights, I held that against him.

'If she were an important person,' I said, 'everyone would care.'

He remained silent.

'There is no justice if you're poor,' I said, 'unless the issue is forced.'

He stared at me.

'Benton, I'm forcing the issue.'

'Explain to me what you want to do,' he said.

'I want to do whatever it takes to find out who she is. I want you to support me.'

He studied me for a moment. He was analyzing. 'Why this victim?' he asked.

'I thought I'd just explained that.'

'Be careful,' he said. 'Be careful that your motivation isn't subjective.'

'What are you suggesting?'

'Lucy.'

I felt a rush of irritation.

'Lucy could have been as badly head injured as this woman was,' he said. 'Lucy's always been an orphan, of sorts, and not so long ago she was missing, wandering around in New England, and you had to go find her.'

'You're accusing me of projecting.'

'I'm not accusing you. I'm exploring the possibility with you.'

'I'm simply attempting to do my job,' I said. 'And I have no desire to be psychoanalyzed.'

'I understand.' He paused. 'Do whatever you need to do. I'll help in any way I can. And I'm sure Pete will, too.'

Then we switched to the more treacherous subject of Lucy and CAIN, and this Wesley did not want to talk about. He got up for coffee as the phone in the outer office rang, and his secretary took another message. The phone had not stopped ringing since my arrival, and I knew it was always like this. His office was like mine. The world was full of desperate people who had our numbers and no one else to call.

'Just tell me what you think she did,' I said when he got back.

He set my coffee before me. 'You're speaking like her aunt,' he said.

'No. Now I'm speaking like her mother.'

'I would rather you and I talk about this like two professionals,' he said.

'Fine. You can start by filling me in.'

'The espionage that began last October when ERF was broken into is still going on,' he said. 'Someone is inside CAIN.'

'That much I know.'

'We don't know who is doing it,' he said.

'We assume it's Gault, I suppose,' I said.

Wesley reached for his coffee. He met my eyes. 'I'm certainly no expert in computers. But there's something you need to see.'

He opened a thin file folder and withdrew a sheet of paper. As he handed it to me I recognized it as a printout from a computer screen.

'That's a page of CAIN's audit log for the exact time that the most recent message was sent to the VICAP terminal in the Transit Police Department's Communications Unit,' he said. 'Do you notice anything unusual?'