Greg Iles - Dead Sleep

The expressions on the faces are all the same: primitive fascination bordering on glee. A couple of female faces show empathy, a sense that this destruction is a tragedy, but with no shrieking mothers with infants leaping from windows, no teenagers trying to climb down burning bedsheets, the mood is more like a party.

If the guy in the alley didn’t set this fire, the person who did is probably in this crowd. Arsonists love to watch their fires burn, they almost have to do it. But what are the odds that this blaze was set by a firebug? Twenty-four hours after I discover a link between the Sleeping Women and the New Orleans victims, the only human connection to the artist is burned alive? The timing is too perfect. This fire was set to silence Christopher Wingate. And the man who did it could be standing within yards of me right now. I may already have his face on film.

From the reading I did after Jane was taken, I learned that serial killers often return to the scenes of their crimes, to revel in their success, to relive their dreadful acts, even to masturbate where they listened to their victims’ pleas. Killing Wingate would be nothing like killing the women in the paintings; it would be a utilitarian crime, an act of survival. But the murderer might well wait to be sure he accomplished his goal. And who knows what twisted history the two men might have shared? What did Wingate say to me? You wouldn’t believe some of the things I’ve seen.

As I turn back from the burning building, a furtive movement registers in my peripheral vision. Wide eyes dropping below the back edge of the crowd, off to my right. People are standing five deep at the tape now, and I can’t see the eyes anymore. But as I watch, a sock cap begins to move along the back of the crowd, coming in my direction. Throwing up my camera arm, I pop off a shot over the heads of the crowd. The head disappears, then reappears still closer. I squeeze the shutter release again, but it won’t depress, and then I feel the vibration of the rewind motor in my hand; the crowd noise prevented my hearing it. I’m out of film.

The sock cap moves forward now, pushing slowly toward me through the crowd. I’m tempted to wait for a good look at his face, but what if he’s carrying a gun? Close enough to see is close enough to shoot, and I don’t want to die here. “Jordan Glass, Noted War Photographer, Shot Dead on Fifteenth Street in Chelsea.” That headline has the ironic ring of truth, and I’m not waiting for it to be borne out by events. Glancing around, I rush up to the fire captain, who’s standing by the one of the engines, talking to a cop. “Captain!”

He gives me an annoyed look.

“Jane Adams, from the Post. I was shooting the crowd back there, and I passed a guy who smelled like gasoline. When I said something about it, he started following me through the crowd. He was wearing a sock cap.” The fireman’s eyes go wide. “Where?” I turn and point back to the spot I left moments ago. There, for an instant, I see a pale bearded face and blazing eyes beneath the sock cap. It vanishes so quickly, I wonder if it was there at all.

“There! Did you see him?”

The fire captain races toward the tape, followed by the cop who was standing beside him.

“What was that?” asks another cop who suddenly appears at my side.

“I smelled gas on a guy over there. They went to check it out.”

“No shit? Good work. You with the Times?”

“The Post. I just hope they get him.” And what do I tell them if they do?

“Yeah. This is one fucked-up crime scene. He could be the guy, though.”

The cop is young and Italian, with a five-o’clock shadow that looks more like midnight. “What do you mean?”

“They just found a guy in a car across the street. Dead as a hammer.”

“What?” I whirl and try to see, but the crowd obscures my view. “How did he die?”

“Somebody cut his throat. You believe that? Wearing a suit and tie. Looks like he hasn’t been dead an hour. Something strange going on here.”

“Who was he?”

“No wallet. Like a slaughterhouse in that car.”

The fire captain is already pushing back toward us, the cop in tow.

“See anything?” the Italian cop calls to them.

The other cop shakes his head. “Crowd’s too big. Guy could be two feet away, we wouldn’t know except by the smell.”

“I’ll make a pass,” says the Italian, tipping his cap to me as he walks toward the tape.

The guy could be two feet away. And there isn’t any gasoline smell. He could kill me before I know he’s there. It’s time to go. But how? My cab is long gone, and walking isn’t an option. Neither is the subway.

As I ponder my options, a yellow taxi pulls to the end of the block and disgorges a kid with two cameras hanging from his neck. The official press. Knowing he’ll ask for a receipt, I start running, and I’m at full sprint before he has it in his hand.

“Taxi!” I yell. “Don’t let him go!”

For some reason – maybe because he’s seen my camera – the photographer holds the cab.

“Thanks!” I tell him, jumping into the backseat.

“Hey, are you with a paper?”

“No.” I thump the plastic partition. “JFK! Move it!”

“Wait. Don’t I know you?”

“Go!” I shout at the back of the cabbie’s head.

“Hey, aren’t you-”

With a screech of rubber, the cab is rolling toward the Queens-Midtown Tunnel.

My flight lands at Reagan National at 10:15 p.m., and when I deplane, there’s a man in a suit waiting for me at the gate. He’s holding a white cardboard sign that says “J. GLASS,” but he doesn’t look like a limo driver. He looks like a buffed-up accountant.

“I’m Jordan Glass.”

“Special Agent Sims,” he says with a frown. “You’re late. Follow me.”

He sets off down the concourse at a rapid clip and walks right past the down escalator marked “Baggage and Ground Transportation.”

“I have some bags down there,” I call after him. “My cameras. They were on the earlier flight, so they’re probably in storage.”

“We have your camera cases, Ms. Glass. The airline lost your suitcase.”

Great. Agent Sims leads me through a door marked “Airport Personnel Only,” and a blast of cold air hits my face. It’s fall in Washington too, but unlike New York, the humidity here adds a taste of home to the air. Home as in Mississippi. My present residence is in San Francisco, but no place I’ve ever lived has replaced the fecund, subtropical garden of creeks, cotton fields, oak, and pine forests where I grew up.

The concrete is slick with rain, reflecting the bright lights of the terminal and the dimmer blue ones of the runway. Sims helps me onto a baggage truck and signals its jump-suited driver, who takes off across the airfield. My aluminum camera cases are stacked in a luggage that is well behind us.

“I thought we were going into the city,” I shout over the engine noise. “To the Hoover Building.”

“The chief had to get back to Quantico,” Sims yells back. “That’s where the meeting is now.”

“How are we getting there?”

“On that.”

As he points into the darkness, I see the sleek lines of a Bell 260 helicopter on skids. The baggage truck squeals to a stop. Agent Sims loads my cases into the chopper, then returns for me. He’s a tall man, and the Bell is cramped quarters for him. Still, he doesn’t look unhappy. Most of his fellow agents probably make the twenty-mile drive to Quantico in a Ford Taurus.

In less than a minute we are lifting into the night sky over the capital, the Pentagon receding behind us as we rotor southward over the lights of Alexandria, roughly parallel to I- 95. In less than ten we’re descending over the Quantico marine base, arrowing down to the FBI Academy helipad. There’s an agent waiting to handle my baggage, but Sims leads me straight into the maze of the Academy building. After a short elevator ride and a walk along a darkened hall, I’m escorted into an empty room, sterile and white, like some convention hotel meeting space.