"Anything else strike you?"
"Just the wallflower. I remember the FBI briefing officer pointing it out. It was sort of leaning in the corner of the room."
"Anything else?"
Janek closed his eyes, trying to recall the photographs he'd pinned to his office walls in New York. "There was a lot of junk around, old lady's stuff." He hesitated. "Come to think of it He began to draw again, this time imposing his will upon the crayon. "I'm on to something… ." He continued to draw and in three minutes rendered an object that'fitted perfectly in position two. "That's it. Yeah, I'm sure it is." He turned his master sketch so she could see it."
"What is it?" she asked.
"A hair curler. Old Bertha Parce had a whole mess of them on the table beside her bed." He picked up a blue crayon, began to fill the curler in. "The one I saw in Beverly's apartment was made of light blue plastic," he explained.
It took him until the end of the day to render the sixth trophy. The problem, which he only discovered late in the afternoon, was that it consisted of two objects rather than one. And that made sense when he remembered that the fifth victim cluster had consisted of two men, brothers named MacDonald, who shared a weekend house in northwestern Connecticut. In the end he drew two sticks side by side. But they weren't just ordinary sticks. There was something unique about them, portions that stuck out. Remembering Monika's questions from the morning, he began to ask similar questions of himself What was in the crime scene pictures? was there anything he'd seen in them that might resemble sticks?
One of the brothers, he remembered, had been stabbed in his bed. The other, whose palms had home defensive wounds, had put up a struggle in the bathroom.
Janek left the terrace, went inside the house, phoned Aaron at his home in Brooklyn.
"Hi," he said when Aaron answered. "Good thing I caught you."
Janek asked Aaron if he'd be willing to go into the office, even though it was a Sunday, and take a look at some of the pictures pinned up on their walls.
"Jesus, Frank," Aaron said. "I thought you went down there to rest."
"I am resting," Janek said. "I've been lying out on the terrace with a view of the sea, taking in the rays."
"But you're still thinking about it?"
"Doing more than that. Monika's got me working with crayons."
"Jesus!"
"I want you to look at the Bertha Parce pictures and see if you can tell if any of the hair curlers beside her bed are missing. Then check out the pictures at the MacDonald house. See if you notice anything missing there.
Aaron agreed to drive into Manhattan, check the photographs, and call him back. The call came an hour and a half later.
"Yeah, Frank, there's a box of old lady's hair curlers just like you remembered. But it's partially closed, so I can't tell if the set's complete."
"What about the brothers?"
"I'm standing in front of the shots right now. I don't see anything in the bedroom. It's minimal, neat and clean, not like the old lady's place. But it looks like they shared the bath. I see two of everythinghairbrushes, razors-you know, the kind of stuff guys use."
Something in Aaron's voice told Janek he was holding back.
"You do see something, don't you?"
"Jesus, Frank! Even from Mexico you can read my mind." "What is it?"
"No toothbrushes. Could they be the odd-shaped sticks you're talking about?"
Janek turned to Monika. "Toothbrushes. A pair of toothbrushes, lined up side by side."
"Sounds like you're getting excited," Aaron said. "I'll be a lot more excited when I get this whole thing figured out."
"Still think Beverly was behind it?"
"I know she was. We're going to prove it, too."
He asked Aaron to spend the next few days working on the two non-Archer-connected victim clusters, the Wexler family in Texas and the Scottos in Providence. Aaron was to check by phone with people who knew them-survivors, friends, colleagues at work. And he was to be sure to inquire about both husbands and wives since they didn't know which family members were the intended targets.
"What am I inquiring about?" Aaron asked.
"What do you think?"
"A Beverly Archer connection."
"Of course, because if you find one, we'll know she lied to you. If she did know those people, just one member in each family, that's enough to go to Kit for authorization to reopen the case."
"What authorization do I have to do this?"
"You're wrapping up loose ends."
"Maybe I should check out Diana, too, see if there's a connection to her."
"Sure, go ahead," Janek said casually. "But you won't find anything. Beverty's the one."
The next morning he drew and drew but couldn't get anywhere with trophy number five. One thing he knew: It wasn't a simple shape like a toothbrush, a hair curler, or a book. It was an elaborate object, larger than the others, something with parts that stuck out all over.
"Some of the parts are like the hair curler," he told Monika as they climbed down to the beach. "It's got wheels and a handle. It's mostly metal, but I think the handle's made of wood. I even think there're gears on it." He paused. "What the hell could it be?" they made an encampment at the bottom of the rocks. She spread her beach towel on the sand, then lay down on her back. "If it's got moving parts, it must be some kind of machine," she said.
"Yeah…" He looked at her. She was wearing a brilliant white bikini that contrasted with her lightly tanned skin.
"Pretend for a moment you're Diana Proctor. You've been sent up to Providence to kill a person and bring back a trophy of your kill. What kind of trophy are you going to take?"
Monika raised her head. "I won't know what I'm going to take until I see it. It'll be a spontaneous decision."
Janek lay back and stared up at the sky. "Whatever it is, you're bringing it back to Beverly to put up on the piano altar for Mama. Won't you make a point of bringing back something you know will please your shrink? It can't be valuable. It can't be something that will be missed. And it certainly can't be an object that can be traced back to the people you've just killed. It's always something humble, like a hair curler, or a couple of toothbrushes, a piece of paper, a book. Something the victims have touched. Something almost… intimate, don't you think?" He turned to look at Monika. She was gazing past him. "Forgive me," he said, "I'm thinking out loud. I know it's tiresome. I'm sorry to go on and on."
She stood. "It's okay, Frank. You told me you were a worrier."
She looked out at the water. "I'm going to swim. Want to come?"
He shook his head. "I'll just lie here and worry."
She smiled, then started for the water. He watched as she ran across the beach, then high-stepped into the waves. When she was out far enough, she turned, threw him a kiss, and plunged. He watched her swim for a while, then lay back, closed his eyes, and tried to free his mind of the fifth trophy for a while.
Think about something else, he told himself. Or better yet, don't think about anything at all. Just lie here and feel the sun.
Breathe in the mellow aroma of the sea. Let the sweet winds of this tropical paradise caress your tough old urban hide.
He must have drifted off. The next thing he knew droplets of water were dancing on his chest. He opened his eyes. Monika was leaning over him, vigorously drying her hair.
"Good swim?"
"Terrific." She spread out her towel. "I was bobbing around out there, trying to think what's made of metal, has wheels and gears and a wooden handle, and has parts that look like hair curlers. I came up with something." She lay down. "It's what you call a real long shot."
He leaned toward her eagerly. "What've you got?"
She grinned. "How does an old-fashioned eggbeater grab you?"
A piece of paper with printing for the homeless man. A hair curler for Bertha Parce. A small book, probably a much-read paperback for the Wexler family. An oversize book for Cynthia Morse. A pair of neatly arranged toothbrushes for the MacDonalds. An eggbeater for the Scottos. That left only position seven, the last trophy position, the Jessica Foy position, marked with an X.