Greg Iles - Dead Sleep

“My God.”

“It’s the third order that’s gone there in the past year and a half. Baxter’s meeting with the president of the university right now. By the time we land, he’ll have a list of everyone who’s had access to those brushes in the past eighteen months.”

“Wasn’t one of the victims kidnapped on the Tulane campus?”

“Two. Another from Audubon park, near the zoo. Which is very close to Tulane.”

“Jesus.”

“That’s only three out of eleven. The grid analysis alone didn’t point to Tulane. But this definitely changes things.”

“Where was the next closest order of these brushes to New Orleans?”

“Taos, New Mexico. After that, San Francisco.”

My stomach feels hollow. “This might really be it.”

Kaiser nods. “Lenz told us the paintings would lead us to suspects. I was skeptical, but the son of a bitch was right.”

“You were more right than he was. You told me yesterday you thought the killer or kidnapper was based in New Orleans. That the selections were being made there, and that the killer might be the painter. Lenz had the painter in New York.”

Kaiser sighs like a man whose premonitions are often borne out but bring little pleasure when they are. “You know something?”

“What?”

“De Becque lied to us in there.”

“How?”

“He told us he never saw the painting of Jane. This is a guy who can get on his private jet and fly to Asia anytime he wants. He’s pissed at Wingate for selling the later Sleeping Women out from under him, to Asian collectors. Even if he didn’t see those paintings when they were offered for sale, you think he didn’t fly to Hong Kong the minute they went on exhibition there?”

“It’s hard to imagine him not doing that.”

“And did you notice that he sent Li with us to see the paintings? He didn’t come himself?”

“Yes. You’d think he would have wanted to show off his collection.”

“And to watch your reaction. He’s got a thing about those paintings. And a thing about you. De Becque is a different breed of cat. I’ll bet he’s got a streak of kinkiness that’s off the chart. And he may have watched your reactions. I didn’t see any obvious surveillance cameras, but that doesn’t mean anything these days.”

“So, what are you saying?”

Kaiser looks out the porthole window, his face blue in the thickly filtered sunlight. “This is like digging up a huge statue buried in sand. You uncover a shoulder, then a knee. You think you know what’s down there, but you don’t. Not until it’s all out of the ground.” He cuts his eyes at me. “You know what feeling this gives me? The conspiracy angle, I mean. What it makes me think of?”

“What?”

“White slavery. Women kidnapped from their home-towns, sent far away, and forced into prostitution. It still happens in various ways, even in America. But it’s big business in Asia, especially Thailand. Crime syndicates steal young girls from the mountain villages and take them down to the cities. They lock them in small rooms, advertise them as virgins, and force them to service dozens of clients a day.”

I close my eyes and press down a wave of nausea. The mere mention of this horror forces me to accept that it is one of Jane’s possible fates. But even if it isn’t, the image created by Kaiser’s words makes me shiver with fear and outrage. I can walk through a corpse-littered battlefield and hold in my lunch, but the thought of a terrified young girl locked in some cubicle of hell until she contracts AIDS is too much for me.

“I’m sorry,” Kaiser says, lightly touching my knee. “My head is full of stuff like that, and sometimes I forget.”

“It’s all right. It’s just… of all the bad things, that’s the toughest for me.”

Though he tries to conceal it, the question in his mind shines through his eyes.

“Don’t ask. Okay?”

“Okay. Look, we’re a lot closer to finding him. Closer to stopping him. Focus on that.”

“Okay.”

“Can I get you some water or something?”

“Yes… please.”

He gets up and goes forward, and I snatch up a copy of the jet’s safety card from the seat back across the aisle. Anything to focus on, to keep my mind from following its own dark course. What’s the worst thing that ever happened to you? Lenz asked his patients. What’s the worst thing…

In the main conference room of the New Orleans field office, a strategy meeting is deciding what direction the NOKIDS case will take from here. I am not at that meeting. I’ve been banished to SAC Bowles’s office. Once again, exclusion defines my status as an outsider. The meeting is being chaired by a deputy director of the FBI, and includes the U.S. Attorney for New Orleans, the New Orleans chief of police, the sheriff of Jefferson Parish, and various other big shots. It’s amazing how they come out of the woodwork when there’s a whiff of success in the air.

While I wait, my mind whirls with memories of Marcel de Becque, his paintings, his beautiful Vietnamese servant, and the photo of my father on his wall. But these memories are only static crackling around the electric knowledge that, if Daniel Baxter’s plan is not overruled, I will soon be facing suspects – men who may have killed my sister – in the hope of rattling them into betraying themselves. This prospect does more to settle my soul than anything I’ve tried in the past year.

Agent Wendy, my bodyguard, has walked in twice and tried to make small talk, but I couldn’t concentrate, and she took the hint. This time when Bowles’s door opens, John Kaiser walks in, his face all business. As the door closes behind him, I catch sight of Wendy looking in from the hall.

“You ready?” he asks.

“What’s happened so far?”

“Lots of nothing. The bureaucrats had to weigh in. Beaucoup jurisdictional asses to kiss on this one. The Deputy Director and the U.S. Attorney are gone. They wanted to meet you, but I told them you weren’t a big fan of the Justice Department.”

“There are certain elements I like better than others.”

Kaiser smiles. “The big news is, we have four suspects. And all of them were here in town the day Wingate died in New York. We’ll both hear the details in there. When we get done, I’d like to talk to you alone. We never got dinner. Maybe we can have a late meal, if you’re up for it.”

“Sure. Wendy, too?”

He blows air from his cheeks. “I’ll handle that. Let’s go.”

It’s a quick walk to the conference room, which is stunning in size and decor. I expected a ten-foot table and some doctor’s office chairs. What I find is a forty-foot-long room with a window running the length of it, giving a panoramic view of Lake Pontchartrain, recognizable in the dark by the receding lights of the causeway. The conference table is thirty feet long and surrounded by massive blue plush executive chairs with the FBI crest embroidered in the upholstery, where a tall man’s head would rest. At the near end of the table sit the usual suspects: Daniel Baxter, SAC Bowles, Dr. Lenz, and Bill Granger, the head of the Violent Crimes Squad. Piles of paper and files are spread out between Styrofoam coffee cups, half-empty water bottles, and a triangular speaker phone. Kaiser takes a seat beside Granger, opposite Bowles and Lenz, and I sit beside him.

Baxter looks tired but resolute at the head of the table, like a sea captain who has spent days riding out a hurricane but has now come within sight of his home port. When he speaks, his voice is hoarse.

“Ms. Glass, we’ve made phenomenal progress in the past eight hours. The sable brush hairs led us to the Tulane University art department. With the help of the president of the university, we’ve determined that this particular order was placed by one Roger Wheaton, the artist-in-residence at Newcomb College, which is part of Tulane.”