But it was confusing.
Sometimes she felt like a little girl who wanted to hold his hand, to call him Daddy; sometimes she felt like a young woman getting ready to move out and live on her own.
Caught between two worlds. Drifting. Falling.
Tessa turned off the water and stood still in the warm steam, letting the water drip off her body, her memories, her scars. After a moment she stepped out of the shower stall and wrapped a thick towel around herself.
And then there was that whole bizarre thing last night. That crazy homeless guy had actually killed himself right there, just like that, and if she hadn’t covered her eyes, she would have seen him die.
Falling headlong.
Falling and dying.
Tessa caught sight of her outline in the mirror, a faint reflection, distant and blurred, surrounded by steam and dreams. For a moment it hardly looked real. Just the vague shape of a girl with dripping black hair, faceless, emotionless, obscure around the edges. In a fog.
Her reflection reminded her of looking at a phantom.
An Eidolon, she thought, remembering the phrase from Edgar Allan Poe’s poem “Dream-Land”: Where an Eidolon, named Night, On a black throne sits upright…
Poe really seemed to understand the landscape of pain, and she’d walked through it with him since her mom died, reading his poems and stories over and over, letting their stark images soak into her-the raven and the pit and the cask and the thumping heart. Usually after reading something once or twice, she could remember it pretty well, but she remembered some stanzas of “Dream-Land,” word for word.
There the traveller meets, aghast,
Sheeted Memories of the Past-
Shrouded forms that start and sigh
As they pass the wanderer by-
White-robed forms of friends long given, In agony, to the Earth-and Heaven.
Her reflection.
A ghost in the slim shape of her mother.
Sheeted memories of the past.
A phantom lurking in the land of dreams.
Tessa spread her fingers against the mirror. It felt warm against her fingertips, but cool too. She slid her hand across the glass, and her eyes and forehead became visible. But just that much. The rest of her still remained a ghost, wrapped in white, lost somewhere in the misty curls of thick, warm steam.
Caught between two worlds. Drifting. Falling.
A raven unable to fly.
And then Tessa snapped the rubber band against her wrist and did it again and again until the skin was red and raw.
But it didn’t help her feel better at all.
And the drops of water began to trickle down the mirror, as if her reflection were weeping to see her standing so sad and alone on the other side of the glass.
25
As I sat in the hotel lobby and waited for Tessa, I thought about the man’s death the night before. I’d told Detective Dunn I was going to untangle the circumstances surrounding John Doe’s death.
I intended to keep my promise.
Using my cell phone’s Internet browser, I logged onto the city’s digital video archives and reviewed the videos of the trolley’s departure, but found no images of men with black duffel bags boarding the trolley. So, the two men who climbed into the Ford Mustang were already at the scene when John Doe committed suicide.
I put a call in to the Bureau to run the plates on the Mustang. I also left a text message for the San Diego County medical examiner’s office to see if he’d been able to identify our John Doe from last night, and then I set up a meeting with Lieutenant Graysmith, the head of the SDPD homicide division. I wanted to find out more about Detective Dunn and his interest in John Doe’s death.
I looked around the hotel lobby again.
Still no Tessa.
I grabbed an apple from the bowl at the hotel’s registration counter.
She likes to sleep late, but since we only had a couple of days here in San Diego, she’d agreed to get up by nine, and that was over an hour ago.
After I finished the apple, I checked the time and realized I’d been awake for over five hours. No wonder I was so hungry. I pushed myself out of the leather lounge chair and was halfway to the elevator when I heard heavy footsteps behind me and a harsh, growling voice that I recognized right away. “Morning, Pat.”
“Ralph?” I turned. Special Agent Ralph Hawkins came lumbering toward me. I greeted him with a slap on the shoulder, and it felt like I was hitting a bag of concrete. Ralph had started lifting weights again, and I could tell. “What are you doing here? I didn’t expect to see you until next week. I thought you’d still be testifying at Basque’s retrial in Chicago.”
“It’s a mess up there.” Ralph’s voice sounds just like what you’d expect from a man who can twist a frying pan around a burrito with his bare hands. “A real circus.” Ralph worked his shoulders back and forth, probably trying to make them comfortable in the shirt that he’d obviously bought before he started pumping iron again last year. He’s not quite in the shape he was as an Army Ranger twenty years ago, before he joined the FBI, but he’s close. “Defense found out one of the state’s DNA experts, guy named Hoyt, lied on his resume. Never attended Ohio State at all. Messed up our case even worse. Pushed things back at least a month.”
I felt an echo of the chill I’d known in the slaughterhouse. Even without this kind of delay, trials as complicated as Basque’s typically last several months. This would drag things out even longer, and all the while Richard Basque would be out of maximum-security prison. Not something I wanted to think about.
Ralph tried to hold back a yawn. Failed.
“Long night?”
“Got in late, plus they lost my bags. Can you believe those-”
Then Ralph filled the air between us with a string of inventive and somewhat profound curses, and I was glad Tessa hadn’t arrived yet after all.
“Well, anyway, it’s good to see you. Brineesha doing OK?”
“I’m a happily married man, she’s a very patient woman. We’re good, Tony too-just turned eleven. Tessa?”
“Witty. Sarcastic. Endearing.” “Good to hear.”
My stomach grumbled, reminding me once again how hungry I was. I looked past Ralph to the bank of elevators. Then it struck me. “Wait a minute. You never answered my question. Why are you in San Diego, anyhow?”
“Margaret has a couple meetings out here on the Coast. She’s-”
“Margaret Wellington is coming to San Diego?” At least for the moment, I’d lost my appetite. Margaret and I get along about as well as two piranhas in the same tank.
“Probably in L.A. right now,” Ralph said, “but she’ll be flying here sometime this afternoon. She’s on some kind of defense committee or something. Guess it goes with the territory of being an executive assistant director, and since I’m heading up the NCAVC for now, she wants to brief me on some policy changes.”
Ralph, Lien-hua, and I all work for the FBI’s National Center for the Analysis of Violent Crime, and Ralph was currently serving as the division’s interim director while human resources looked for a replacement for Louis Chenault, who’d retired on the first of the year.
“You know how Margaret is,” he continued. “She didn’t want to wait until next week, and since my testimony’s been put off in-definitely, she decided to fly me in.” He picked at his travel-weary, crumpled shirt. “Last night Delta told me my bags were in Minneapolis. Do I look like I’m standing in Minneapolis, Minnesota?”
I sensed that he was winding up for a fresh round of curses, so I said, “I still can’t believe they gave Margaret the position.”
He finished brushing off his shirt. The elevator behind him dinged. “Most power-hungry woman I ever met. But don’t worry; she’s not here to see you. I doubt your paths will even cross.” As the elevator doors began to open, he let a sly smile play across his face.