18

I’ve been asleep for a while when the phone rings beside my bed. The TV is still on, set to HBO, but the sound is muted. I shut my eyes against its harsh light and pick up the phone.

“Hello?”

“It’s me. I’m downstairs.”

John Kaiser’s face appears in my mind. “What time is it?”

“Well after midnight.”

“God. The meeting went on that long?”

“The police questioned each suspect for hours, and we had to hear it all.”

I rub my cheeks to get the blood moving. “Is it still raining?”

“It finally stopped. You were sleeping, weren’t you?”

“Half sleeping.”

“If you’re too tired, that’s all right.”

Part of me wants to tell him I’m too tired, but a little tingle between my neck‘ and my knees stops me. “No, come on up. You know the room number?”

“Yes.”

“Will you get me a Coke or something on the way up? I need some caffeine.”

“Regular Coke or Diet?”

“What would you guess?”

“Regular.”

“Good guess.”

“On the way.”

I hang up and stumble into the bathroom, the fuzzy heaviness of fatigue telling me the last few days have been more stressful than I thought. Leaving the bathroom light off, I brush my teeth and wash my face. For a moment I wonder if I should put on some makeup, but it’s not worth the trouble. If he doesn’t like me as is, it wasn’t meant to happen.

I am going to have to do something about the baby-doll nightgown, though. The short pink horror looks like something a 1950s sorority girl would have worn. When I first saw it, I wondered if the FBI agent who bought it for me was playing a joke on me, but she probably has one just like it in her closet at home. I slip off the gown and replace it with a white cotton T-shirt and the jeans I wore yesterday.

Kaiser knocks softly to keep from alerting Wendy next door. I check the peephole to make sure it’s him, then quickly open the door. He steps inside, then smiles and sets two sweating Coke cans on the desk. He opens one and hands it to me.

“Thanks.” I take a long sip that stings the back of my throat. “You tired?”

“Pretty tired.”

“How do you feel about the case?”

He shrugs. “Not great.”

“Do you think Wheaton and Frank Smith are lovers?”

“I don’t know what else those visits would be.”

“They could be anything. Discussions about art.”

“That’s not what my gut tells me.”

“Mine either. What’s the deal with Lenz? He doesn’t want to say much in front of you, does he?”

“Since leaving the Bureau, he’s found out how quickly you can be forgotten. He’d like to show that what Quantico has now is the second string.”

“He wasn’t surprised when I asked if one of the suspects could be killing people without knowing it.”

“He didn’t seem to be.” Kaiser gives me a knowing look.

“Do you like that theory?”

“No. It’s hard for me to picture someone that messed up pulling off eleven abductions and possibly painting like Rembrandt as well. But I’m going to research it anyway. Try to find out if any of the three males suffered sexual abuse.” He opens his Coke and takes a sip. “Are we going to talk business all night?”

“I hope not.”

I go to the far wall and open the sleep curtains, exposing a huge window that overlooks Lake Pontchartrain from fourteen floors up, a slightly different version of the view from the FBI field office to the east. The lake is a black sea now, but for the line of fluorescent lights marking the causeway as it recedes northward into the mist. I walk back and sit on the foot of the bed. Kaiser takes off his jacket and drapes it on the chair back, then sits opposite me, about two feet away, his gun still on his belt.

“What should we talk about?” he asks.

“Why don’t you tell me what’s on your mind?”

A hint of a smile. “You are.”

“Why do you think that is?”

He shakes his head. “I wish I knew. You know how sometimes when you lose something, it’s only when you’re not looking for it anymore that you find it?”

“Yes. But sometimes by then you don’t need whatever it was.”

“This is something everybody needs.”

“I think you’re right.” I feel warm inside, but a deeper hesitation keeps me from giving in completely to the moment. I take another sip of Coke. “I told you about some of my problems with men. With dating. Guys thinking they want me but finding they don’t want the reality of my life.”

“I remember.”

“I want to know about you. You’re no quitter. What really drove you and your wife apart?”

He sighs and sets down his drink can as though it has grown too heavy to hold up. “It wasn’t that I let my work take over my life – though I certainly did that. If I’d been a doctor or an engineer, she wouldn’t have minded. It was that the things I saw every day simply couldn’t be communicated to someone normal. ‘Conventional’ is probably a better word. It got to where we had no common frame of reference. I’d come home after eighteen hours of looking at murdered children and she’d be upset that the new drapes for the living room didn’t quite match the carpet. I tried more than once to explain it to her, but when I told the unvarnished truth, she didn’t want to know. Who would, if they didn’t have to? She had to shut all that out, and I got shut out with it.”

“Do you blame her for that?”

“No. It showed she had good survival instincts. It’s a lot healthier not to let those things into your head, because once they’re in, you can’t ever get them out. You know. You’ve probably seen more hell than I have.”

“I don’t think you can quantify hell. But I know what you mean about communicating it. I’ve spent my whole career trying to do it, and I sometimes wonder if I’ve succeeded even once. The pictures I’ve put on film don’t convey a fraction of the horror of the pictures in my head.”

Kaiser’s eyes hold an empathy I haven’t seen in a very long time. “So here we sit,” he says. “Damaged goods.”

What I feel for this man is not infatuation, or some neuro-chemical attraction that compels me to sleep with him. It’s a simple intimacy that I’ve felt from the hour we first rode together in the rented Mustang. He has an easiness – and also a wariness – that draws me to him. John Kaiser has looked into the deep dark and is still basically all right, which is a rare thing. I don’t look to men for protection, but I know I would feel as safe with this man as it is possible to feel.

“So, you want kids,” he says, picking up last night’s conversation from the Camellia Grill. I think of my niece and nephew, and curse their father for screwing up my time with them.

“Yes, I do.”

“You’re what, forty now?”

“Yep. Have to start pretty soon.”

“You thinking about the Jodie Foster solution? Finding a donor you like?”

“Not my style. Do you want kids?”

He looks back at me, his eyes twinkling. He’s clearly enjoying himself. “Yes.”

“How many?”

“One a year for five or six years.”

My stomach flips over. “I guess that lets me out of the race.”

“I’m kidding. Two would be nice, though.”

“I might be able to handle two.”

After a few silent moments, he says, “What the hell are we talking about?”

“The stress, maybe. We’re both under a lot of pressure. I’ve seen that start relationships before. They don’t usually end well. You think that’s what’s happening here?”

“No. I’ve been under worse pressure than this without reaching for the nearest woman.”

“That’s good to know.” I look him in the eye, hoping to read his instinctive response to what I’m about to say. “Maybe we should spend the night in this bed together. If we’re still happy in the morning, you can pop the question.”

He barks a laugh. “Jesus! Were you always like this?”

“No, but I’m getting too old to waste time.” An absurd image of Agent Wendy Travis comes into my mind: she’s crouching on her bed next door, her ear pressed to a drinking glass that she’s pressed against my bedroom wall. “If you’re just up here to get laid, I think you’ll have better luck next door.”