Wallflower (6 page)

After Boyce left, Janek stared at the notebook, then cautiously reached for it. The sight of Jess's handwriting brought back memo
ries of the sharp, funny postcards she'd send him whenever she traveled. He handed the notebook over to Aaron.

"Sure, I'll read it, Frank," Aaron said.

J
anek found Boyce hunched over a chipped Formica table in the back section of a dingy coffee shop around the corner from the precinct house. During the day the place was frequented by detectives. Now Boyce was the only cop there. Boyce didn't look up as Janek approached, which gave Janek a chance to observe him. Boyce looked older and more tired than he had in his office. Janek felt a tinge of pity.
He has to wake up, every morning and know he's Boyce,
he thought.

"Okay, Ray," he said, sitting down uninvited, "I know you resent me. You saw the miniseries and you thought it sucked. Maybe it did. Who the hell cares? Right now I'm hurting. I've lost someone I loved. So tell me what's on your mind. Who did this to her? Tell me what you think."

When Boyce finally looked up, Janek wasn't sure he'd cut into him very deep. But he knew he'd broken skin; Boyce was ready to show a human face.

"She was an honors student." Boyce waited for Janek to nod. "And a member of the women's fencing team." Janek nodded again. "She was tops, okay? Beautiful girl, full of life, popular, ace student, competitive athlete—what more could you ask? But there was a side that was unexpected. A strange unstable personal life. Boyfriends, but they weren't quite her style, she being so fastidious and all. Okay, last spring she takes up with a rich kid name of Greg Gale. And he introduces her into his crowd, where they dabble in highs—a little dope here, a mind game or two there, weird sex all the time. To get in with these kids, you have to be initiated. The initiation is you have sex blindfolded with one of them while the rest of the group watches the ceremony. Reading her diary, you get the impression she got off on it, like she wanted to roll a little in the dirt."

Janek nodded, but every word stung. Jess, blindfolded, having sex with a stranger before an audience—the image pierced his heart.

". . . but then, see, over the summer, she decides to straighten out. So early this fall, she starts going to a shrink. Then, about the same time, she breaks up with Gale. Pretty bitterly, too, it sounds like. No, I haven't talked to him. You're thinking:
Why the hell not? That the first thing I'd do.
I got no answer for you, Janek, except that's not my way. Call me methodical. I like to lay the groundwork. I don't like going in asking questions till I have a pretty fair idea what the answers are going to be. A guy like Gale whose parents have bucks—I may get one crack at him before the family lawyer butts in. Understand what I'm saying?"

Janek nodded again. He understood very well.

"Thing is, Janek, people dabble in weird sex, maybe they dabble in murder, too. So this group she was going with is going to get looked at. They're going to get a very close look from me."

Janek sat back, shook his head. "I don't get it. I thought this was a random park murder."

"So did I at first. Now it turns out there're oddities."

"Like what?"

Boyce hesitated. "Something was done to her. Afterwards."

"What was done to her?"

Boyce looked uncomfortable. "Let's go back to my office. I'll show you the medical examiner's report and the photographs."

Janek declined. "Just tell me about it, Ray."

Again Boyce seemed hesitant. "She was glued."

"
Glued!
How?"

"Guy who killed her—maybe he had a little caulking gun. After she was dead, he pumped glue into her, into an intimate area, know what I mean? It's like he was trying to, you know—close off that part of her. . . ."

Close off!
Janek felt sick to his stomach.

W
hen they returned to Boyce's office, Aaron was waiting and Jess's notebook was back on the desk.

Janek gestured toward the notebook. "Do me a favor, Ray. I want the family protected. Make sure nothing in there gets leaked."

"Yeah," Boyce said, "but you know how it is. Stuff like that has a way of getting around."

"I'm asking you, don't
let
it get around."

"Sure, I'll do my best."

Aaron stared at Boyce fiercely, but Janek whispered, "Thanks." He'd used the same weak I'll-do-my-best-but-you-know-how-it-is just hours before with Stanton.

W
hen they got back to Aaron's car, it had stopped raining. They compared notes as they drove downtown. Aaron confirmed that everything Boyce had said at the coffee shop was actually in the diary. There was one additional thing, probably not too significant: Lately Jess had been having bad dreams.

"This thing with the glue," Janek asked, "you didn't hear anything about it?"

Aaron shook his head. "Hard to keep something like that quiet, too. There isn't a reporter wouldn't kill to get hold of it."

"So maybe Boyce runs a tight ship."

"Isn't he a marvel! Thing is—can you trust him?"

"Hard to say. Like everyone else, he's out mostly for himself."

"Well, I'll tell you what I think, Frank. I think the guy's a schmuck," Aaron said.

A
aron stopped in front of Janek's building, a gray stone apartment house, formerly a tenement, with exterior fire escapes on West Eighty-seventh. Then he went around to the trunk, retrieved Janek's suitcase, and offered to carry it upstairs. Janek refused.

"Thanks, but you've done enough."

Aaron stood by the car awkwardly, as if he didn't want to leave Janek there alone. "I've been meaning to ask you, Frank. How was your trip?"

"It was going great till I got the call. I met someone. Someone terrific."

Aaron grinned. "That's grand, Frank. Congratulations. When do I get to meet her?"

"It's going to be complicated. She lives in Germany."

"Oh. . . ." There was nothing Aaron could say to that. "We'll talk tomorrow, okay?" Aaron put out his hand. Janek ignored it and embraced him.

"Thanks for sticking with me, Aaron. Thanks for everything."

"Don't worry, Frank. Whoever did this, we'll get him for sure."

Aaron spoke with such conviction that for a full minute Janek sustained belief. But then, as he stumbled into the gloom of his apartment, the notion faded fast.

It was a simply furnished place, mostly with pieces inherited from his parents, including the workbench from his father's accordion repair shop strewn with a half dozen accordions in various states of disrepair.

When Janek entered, he turned on a couple of lights, opened a window, placed his bag on his bed, then went into the bathroom to splash cold water on his face. Unfortunately he splashed too fast; the water, unused for two and a half weeks, ran a nasty rusty brown.

After he unpacked, he placed Monika's wineglass on a table near his living-room window so it would catch the morning light. Then he rewound his answering machine, sat down in his easy chair, and listened to his messages.

There were the usual utilitarian calls amidst the hang-ups. Shoes he'd left for repair were ready for pickup. A friend had Jets tickets if he was interested. His ex, Sarah, complained he hadn't bothered to inform her he was traveling. Then, as a familiar voice came on, Janek felt a chill.

"Hi. It's Jess. Please call me soon as you get back. There's something I want you to—can't explain it now. But it's important. Call me. Please. Okay?"

It was the last message on the tape. He rewound it and played it again. She sounded worried but still in control, as if she had something on her mind and was turning now, as she had all her life when something bothered her, to her godfather, whom she trusted above all other men.

He played her message a third time, striving to decipher each inflection. Then he played it a fourth, at high volume, listening acutely to the background noise. After that rendition he felt fairly confident that she hadn't called him hastily from a public phone. And that meant she probably hadn't called him in a panic. When he played it a fifth time, checking for subtext, he heard the same basic message he'd been hearing all along:
This is Jess; I need your help
.

He removed the cassette from the machine and stored it safely in a drawer.

I
t was only eight-thirty, but he was too exhausted to go out and eat. And it was too late now to call Monika—past two in the morning in Europe. He'd read an article that said the best cure for jet lag was to go to bed the moment you got home. But now, with Jess's message running through his brain, he knew sleep would be impossible.

He dialed Kit's home number. There was only half a ring before she picked up.

"I've been waiting for your call, Frank. Feeling lousy?"

"Of course."

"Understandable." She paused. "I spoke to Boyce this morning. Did you see him?"

"About half an hour ago. Maybe he's okay, I don't know yet." He hesitated. "Hate to ask for favors, Kit. You know I've been careful about that. I wasn't that keen about going to Europe. And I'm not all that anxious to be your special assistant or whatever you have in mind."

"Hey! Hold it right there!"

"Uh-uh, Kit—let me finish. People know we have a past. Or whatever they want to call it. Who cares, right? So we bend over backwards, and I'd probably bend further than you just so people wouldn't be tempted to say anything. You know how much I hate office politics and all that kind of crap. Well, this time I'm asking because I think what we got here is a set of special circumstances. I was the one headed the investigation on Tim Foy. So here you have someone just as close, in the same family, and it only seems right—know what I mean? Who'd complain? Nobody, except maybe Boyce, and you've got fifty cases you could assign him. And—"

"Stop it, Frank!" Her voice was sharp.

Janek shook his head. "What's the matter? Can't I even ask?"

"It's not going to happen, so you might as well forget it. No one's going on a case where they're personally involved."

"Oh, Kit, please, I don't need a lecture on department policy."

"Not department policy, Frank.
My
policy—it's the way I'm running the division."

"Jesus! You sound so fucking rigid."

"Is that what you think?"

"Maybe I'm out of line. I just feel—"

"Get some rest, Frank. You're not in condition to have a rational discussion. Cool down, and in a couple days come see me and we'll talk. Meantime, stay away from the case. I mean it. Stay away." Her voice softened. "You know I care about you. So trust me. Please. Now try and get some sleep."

B
ut he couldn't sleep. Not after that. He took a shower, changed clothes, called Stanton, told him he was coming over. Then, downstairs, he hailed a cab and asked the driver to drop him at Park and Seventy-second.

The Dorances lived farther uptown, but Janek wanted to walk a few blocks before he saw them. The rain had stopped, but it was chilly, a raw, cold October night.

The entrance to Laura and Stanton's building was guarded by a doorman with an outsize regimental-style mustache. He wore a parody of a military greatcoat embellished with silver epaulets.

The small lobby, lined in mahogany, contained four plush leather club chairs with a rare Persian rug in the center. In the elevator Janek could smell a recently extinguished cigarette. The elevator man had been smoking contrary to regulations and now had hidden the butt, probably in a cigarette pack concealed beneath his uniform.

Janek got off at the sixteenth floor. The landing was decorated in a Japanese motif. Even after Janek rang the bell, the elevator man waited until Stanton opened up.

It was a magnificent apartment, a duplex with a huge sunken living room, a full dining room, and four bedroom suites on the upper floor. Stanton, who was wearing a maroon smoking jacket with silk sash and satin lapels, ushered him into a small paneled library and offered him a drink.

"Where's Laura?" Janek asked.

"She's pretty tired, Frank. I thought—"

"I want to talk to her, too, Stanton. Please ask her to come down?"

Stanton nodded and disappeared. While Janek waited, he fixed himself a scotch. Then he looked around. One bookcase was devoted to family photographs, each mounted in a different style of frame, which collectively suggested what it meant to live a life of privilege.

His eyes were drawn to the pictures of Jess. There she was in pigtails at the summer camp she'd gone to in the Adirondacks,
grinning at the camera. Another photo showed her older, mountain climbing in Switzerland, and a third showed her smiling broadly the day she graduated from her expensive private school. She was a handsome girl, tall and leggy, with high cheekbones, short honey-colored hair, and the confident eyes of an athlete. There were several photos of her fencing. One showed her holding up a trophy like an Olympic champion.