Kaiser, it seems, is the resident hunk of the office. All the assistants and secretaries flirt shamelessly with him, but he has never asked one for a date, patted a rump, or even squeezed a shoulder, which impresses Agent Wendy to no end. Kaiser’s biography is interesting, too. He was sheriff in Idaho when Daniel Baxter was called in by a neighboring sheriff to consult on a string of murders that overlapped Kaiser’s county. With Baxter’s help, Kaiser ultimately caught the killer, proving exceptionally adept at interrogating suspects and extracting a confession. Duly impressed, Baxter encouraged the young sheriff to apply to the FBI Academy. Against the odds, the country boy from Idaho won admission, and after serving in the Spokane, Detroit, and Baltimore field offices, Kaiser was tapped by Baxter for the Investigative Support Unit. His record there was stellar until he snapped under the pressure. When I told Wendy I knew that part of the story, she couldn’t hide her suspicion. How, she wondered, had I learned something in one day that it had taken her weeks to discover?
“His wife left him,” she said. “Did he tell you that?”
“No.”
A satisfied smile. “She couldn’t take the hours he put in. That’s pretty common. We’re getting more and more intra-Bureau marriages now. But he didn’t even stop working then, to sort it out. He just let her go.”
“Kids?” I asked.
She shook her head.
“He told me he served in Vietnam. Do you know anything about that?”
“He doesn’t talk about it. But Bowles told my SWAT commander that he’d seen John’s service record, and that he has a bagful of medals. Bowles thought we ought to try to get John on the SWAT team. My commander approached him, but he wasn’t interested. What do you think about that?”
“It doesn’t surprise me. Men who’ve seen a lot of combat don’t have many illusions about solving problems with weapons.”
Wendy bit her lip and wondered if that was an insult. “You’ve seen it?” she asked. “Combat, I mean? You’ve taken pictures of it and all?”
“Yes.”
“You ever get shot?”
“Yes.”
I instantly went up two notches in her estimation. “Did it hurt?”
“I don’t recommend it. I took a piece of shrapnel in the rear end once, too. That hurt a lot worse than the bullet did. Talk about hot.”
Wendy laughed, I laughed with her, and by the time we finished talking, I knew she was more than half in love with John Kaiser and that, though she liked me, she viewed me as an interloper of the first order.
Now the gin is wearing off, and if I don’t get out of the Mustang immediately, I never will.
I sense Wendy’s relief as I climb out with my gift-wrapped packages and walk up the block to my brother-in-law’s house. House is actually a misnomer. Jane and her husband settled in one of those massive St. Charles Avenue homes that would be called a mansion anywhere else. On this part of St. Charles, the wrought-iron fences cost more than houses in the rest of the city. I mount the porch and swing the brass knocker against the knurled oak door. The resounding bang announces the acres of space that lie behind the door. I expect the knock to be answered by Annabelle, the Lacour family maid, now inherited by the scion, but it’s Marc himself who opens the door.
You’d think people would be blessed with money or looks, not both, but Marc Lacour shatters that assumption. He has sandy blond hair, blue eyes, a chiseled face, and a muscular frame that looks ten years younger than its forty-one years. After the kids were born, he put on twenty pounds, but Jane’s disappearance knocked them back off, as he manically exercised to combat depression. Tonight he’s wearing blue wool trousers, cordovan wing tips, and a Brooks Brothers shirt. He smiles when he sees me, then pulls me to him for a hug, which I return. He smells faintly of cologne.
“Jordan,” he says as I draw back. “I’m glad you’re here.”
He pulls me into the huge central hall, then closes the door and leads me to a formal living room that looks like a layout from Architectural Digest. There’s not a cast-aside toy or empty pizza box in sight. I feel almost guilty setting my presents on the floor, as though I’m disturbing some hidden plan. Jane kept things looser. I suppose the life of the house has begun to revert to the patterns Marc knew in childhood. He has no other map, of course, but the sterility of the environment makes my heart hurt for the kids.
“Are Henry and Lyn upstairs?” I ask, perching on a wing chair that looks like it should have a braided museum rope tied across its arms.
“They’re at my parents’ house.” Marc sits opposite me on a sofa.
“Oh. When will they be back?”
“My folks bought a place down the street. They’ll bring the kids as soon as I call.”
Okay. “What’s going on, Marc?”
“I wanted to talk to you before you see them.”
“Is something wrong?”
“No. But there’s something you need to know.”
“What?”
He takes a lawyerly pause, then speaks in the deepest voice he can muster. “The kids know Jane is dead, Jordan.”
“What?”
“I had to tell them. I had no choice.”
It’s amazing, really, the degree to which we deceive ourselves. For months I’ve been telling myself that I’ve mourned and buried my sister in my heart. But now, confronted with a concrete act based on that assumption, I want to scream denial. The voice that emerges from my mouth sounds like a stunned four-year-old’s. “But… you don’t know she’s dead.”
Marc shakes his head. “How long are you going to wait before you accept it? Your father’s been dead almost thirty years, and you’re still looking for him. I have to raise these kids, and they can’t wait that long.”
“It’s not right, Marc.”
“What is, then? They thought Jane was out there suffering somewhere, at the mercy of some ‘bad person.’ That she couldn’t get away or find her way back home. It was driving them crazy. They couldn’t do their schoolwork, couldn’t sleep, couldn’t eat. All they did was sit at the window, waiting for Jane to come home. I finally told them that God had taken Mama to heaven to be with Him. She wasn’t with any bad person, she was with God and his angels.”
“How did you say she died? They must have asked.”
“I told them she went to sleep and didn’t wake up.”
Jesus. “What did they say?”
“Did it hurt?”
I can’t even respond to this.
Marc’s face is resolute. “It’s for the best, Jordan. And I don’t want you saying anything to them about what’s going on now. The paintings, the investigation, none of it. Nothing to give them some crazy hope that she might come back. Because you know she won’t. Those women are dead. Every one of them.”
Maybe it’s that I have no kids of my own. Maybe the daily demands of raising children simply can’t be handled with a giant question mark hanging over everything.
“I want you to be part of their lives,” Marc says. “But you have to understand the ground rules. In this family, Jane has passed away. We had a memorial service for her.”
“What? You never called me.”
“You were in Asia, no one knew where.”
“My agency could have found me.”
“I thought it would be less confusing if their mother’s mirror image didn’t suddenly fly in from parts unknown to be at her funeral.”
“I can’t believe this.” Suddenly a decision I made months ago seems like a bad one. “There’s something I never told you, Marc. I got a phone call eight months ago, from Thailand. There was a lot of static, and I could have been mistaken, but I thought it might be Jane.”
“What?”
“She said she needed help, but that Daddy couldn’t help her. Then a man came on the phone and said something in French. Then in English he said, ‘It’s just a dream,’ and hung up the phone.”
“And you thought that was Jane? Calling from Thailand?”
“I wasn’t sure. Not at the time. But now that I’ve found these paintings in Hong Kong… I mean, don’t you think that puts it in a new light?”