"Yes, I know. I realize the danger of-"
"Of compromising your objectivity."
Now it was Lee's turn to be angry.
"This whole notion of objectivity is a fantasy, you know."
Nelson looked startled, but Lee continued.
"There is no such thing! It's a comforting fiction created by people who don't want to get too close to things that go bump in the night."
Nelson took another drag from his cigarette. "If you're suggesting that it's relative, I would agree with you."
"No, what I'm suggesting is that it doesn't exist at all. The whole idea is some outdated Age of Reason notion, some classical model that went out with powdered wigs and knee breeches-only we just haven't realized it yet. It's an impossible ideal."
Nelson grunted and stubbed his cigarette out on the floor. "Impossible or not, as a criminal investigator you owe it to your victims-and to yourself-to be as objective as possible. Otherwise your conclusions become clouded by emotion."
Lee felt his shoulders go rigid as he looked at Nelson. "What are you saying?"
Nelson held his gaze. "I think you know."
Lee didn't reply, and the silence between them lay thick as the layers of books and manuscripts stuffed everywhere in the cluttered office. He glanced at the brass busts of Beethoven and Bach on Nelson's desk. Beethoven's face was tragic: the tightly compressed lips and broad nose, the stormy, tortured eyes under a mane of wild hair; the stubborn chin, jutting out defensively against the world, as if bracing himself for what Fate was to throw at him…the picture of determination, the triumph of human will in adversity. How different from the bourgeois contentment of Bach, with his big nose and face ringed by a wig of riotous Baroque curls. Nelson had a particular fondness for Beethoven. He had read Lee excerpts from the Heiligenstadt Testament, Beethoven's tragic letter to his brother after learning of his impeding deafness.
Lee laid a hand on the bust of Beethoven, the metal cold and hard under his palm. "You think this is about my sister, don't you?"
Nelson raised his left eyebrow. "This victim is about the same age Laura was when she…" he looked away as if embarrassed.
Lee's grip on the bust tightened. "When she died," he said.
Even though Laura's body had never been found, Lee was certain that his sister was dead. He had known it from the very day of her disappearance, so finally and irrevocably that the countless questions and speculations from well-meaning friends, family, and news reporters became intolerable. "She's dead!" he wanted to scream at them. "Isn't it obvious?" But his mother's denial was like a wall of granite between them.
He needed no such pretense around Nelson, who understood the inside of a criminal's mind better than anyone Lee knew. Looking unblinkingly at hard human truths was what the criminal psychologist did, his raison d'etre.
"She is dead, you know," Lee said, his voice as steady as he could manage. "And like it or not, to some degree, for me every case is about Laura."
Nelson sighed. "All right. I just think maybe you're getting in too deep too soon."
Lee paced the small room impatiently. "I know I can see into this killer, if I can only get a chance! I'm already beginning to see his patterns at work-"
"What patterns? There's only been one body."
He stopped pacing and faced Nelson. "Oh, no, that's where you're wrong. There's another one-I'm sure of it."
"I didn't hear any-" Nelson put his hand to his forehead. "Wait a minute-there was a girl out in Queens a few weeks ago, a Jane Doe. Is that the one you mean?"
"Yes," Lee said. "They called her 'Jane Doe Number Five.' I'm certain the two are linked."
"Same signature?"
"Not exactly, but-"
"Wasn't the girl in Queens found outdoors-not far from Greenlawn Cemetery, if I remember?"
"Yes, but she wasn't far from a church, and I'm convinced that he would have left her there if something hadn't stopped him."
Nelson rubbed his chin, thick with reddish-brown beard stubble.
"I'll be damned. I wonder if there are others."
"I don't think so. The Queens killing was hurried, opportunistic. I wouldn't be surprised if it was completely unplanned. The one yesterday was much more organized, very carefully thought out. And he-" Lee paused and looked at Nelson.
"He what?"
"It hasn't been released to the public, but he carved her up."
Nelson sucked in a large quantity of smoke and flicked cigarette ash into a solid green jade ashtray he had brought back from Turkey.
"Go on," he said quietly.
"The words to the Lord's Prayer-or at least the beginning of it. Post mortem, thank God."
"Jesus."
"That took some time to do."
Nelson rubbed a hand over his face. "God, Lee, I'm still afraid you'll be getting in over your head on this one. Are you taking your medication?"
Lee fished a bottle of pills from his jacket and held them in front of Nelson's nose. Nelson studied the bottle.
"Not much of a dosage. When Karen was sick I was on twice that much."
Lee put the bottle back in his pocket. "This stuff is expensive."
Nelson gave a laugh-a short, mirthless puff of air. "Tell me about it."
Lee looked out the window at the cars and pedestrians on Tenth Avenue, everyone hustling up the avenue-jostling, honking, competing for space in the rush hour traffic, all in a big hurry to get somewhere, to be part of the endless, restless motion that is New York City. He remembered being one of those people, before depression came along, lifted him off his feet, and slammed him facedown into the pavement.
The view from down there was different. It was strange to look up and see people still hurrying along with their lives intact, while for him just getting out of bed was an act of enormous willpower. Now, looking down at them on the street below, he had the same feeling of distance, of being an alien in a world where everyone except him seemed to know where they were going. He envied them, but he also felt that he knew something they could never know. He had seen into the very center of things, into hell itself, and come back alive somehow-damaged, perhaps, but alive.
He felt a hand on his shoulder and turned to see Nelson standing behind him. Was it Lee's imagination, or were his blue eyes moist? It was hard to tell with the light coming from behind him.
"I can see that nothing I say is going to stop you. So let me just say this: be careful, Lee."
"I will."
"Good. Now go out and get that son of a bitch."
Lee looked down at the street again. Somewhere, in the throng of people, with a face that could blend into any crowd, a pair of footsteps clicked along the sidewalk next to a hundred others, footsteps belonging to a murderer with only one thing on his mind: his next victim. Lee silently vowed to do whatever he could-at whatever cost-to get between that killer and his goal.
Chapter Seven
"You know," Detective Butts remarked, "all this hocus-pocus stuff doesn't solve crimes. Shoe leather does."
"Right," Lee answered. He had heard it all before, and was tired of defending himself to cops. He wasn't an official member of the police force-he had not attended the academy, and carried only an ID card identifying him as a civilian consultant to the NYPD. He was keenly aware of the separation between him and the gun-toting members of the police force. People like him were not necessarily included in the tight, exclusive circle of the Brotherhood of Blue.
It was the next morning, and they were standing in front of an examination room at the medical examiner's office, waiting for the pathologist who had done Marie Kelleher's autopsy. She entered hurriedly, apologizing for her lateness. Gretchen Rilke was a rather glamorous-looking woman, blue-eyed and pink-cheeked, with thick, dyed blond hair and a suggestive lilt of Alpine hills in her accent.