“Listen, Lieutenant, uh, I’d like to tell you about Ridgecliff. He’s –”
Folger’s hand, firm and cool, found its way into mine. “Sorry we got off on the wrong foot. You know how protective departments are about turf, right? You can head home and we’ll have Ridgecliff nailed in a day or two. Drop him back in the box. Or even better, lay him in the ground.”
“Bang,” Bullard said. “Problem solved.”
“Uh, listen, Lieutenant …”
But what if … What would change if … I said nothing. What was affected as long as I stayed near the investigation? Vangie could have mentioned Jeremy was my brother. Why didn’t she?
“Yes?” Folger said, a dark eyebrow raised.
“About Jeremy Ridgecliff … I’m part of a special unit that handles the edgy stuff, psychotics, sociopaths. I can help you more than you think.”
“We have homicidal crazies in New York, Ryder. I think the NYPD can handle –”
Waltz interrupted. “You recognized Ridgecliff right off the bat, Detective Ryder. Am I to assume you studied the suspect?”
I kept my face neutral and my voice even. “I have had conversations with Mr Ridgecliff. Quite a few, actually.”
Waltz turned to Folger. “Not only does Detective Ryder know a bit about Ridgecliff, it might speed up communication with Southern law enforcement if we had a liaison. And a local professional to interview the staff at the Institute.” Waltz looked to me. “You can handle the Southern pipeline on both counts, Detective Ryder?”
Though my heart was pounding like a hammer, I kept my voice nonchalant. “I have excellent contacts in the Alabama State Police and can have my partner handle interviews at the Institute. He’s experienced in psychological crimes.”
Folger said, “I don’t think we need –”
Waltz clapped his hands once, not applause, but finality. “That should settle things and sit well with the brass. Detective Ryder will be with us a few days longer. A consultant, if you will.”
Don’t go down this road. Tell them now. It’s your last chance.
I studied my shoes. My mouth stayed closed.
What am I doing?
Folger departed briskly, Bullard and Cluff on her heels. Waltz headed to a meeting with the DA on another case. I stood on unsteady legs and checked my watch: Ten thirty a.m. It was an hour earlier in Mobile. I blotted sweat from my forehead with my sleeve, took a deep breath and dialed my cellphone. Twelve hundred miles away in Mobile, my partner, Harry Nautilus, picked up.
“Cars? Jeez, what the hell’s going on? Are you still in NYC?”
I pictured Harry frowning into the phone, a six-four black man in a forty-eight long jacket, probably yellow or neon green. The pants might be plum, or mauve. Harry loved color and no one dared tell him it sometimes didn’t love him back.
“I’ll be here for a few days, Harry.”
“Why? I mean, one minute you’re here, the next you’re –”
“Jeremy escaped,” I said. “He’s in New York.”
“What?”
“He somehow coerced Vangie Prowse into bringing him here. Vangie’s dead, Harry. Jeremy killed her and another woman. He did terrible things to the bodies. He’s exploding.”
“Lord Jesus,” Harry whispered. “How in the hell did he get out?”
“I don’t know. Some kind of ruse. Maybe he got hold of a weapon, or found some security failing. It should have been impossible, but he did it. Listen, Harry, I know the State Police will be handling it, but could you take a look at the Institute, find out how –”
“Did you tell them, Cars? Did you tell them he’s your brother?”
I couldn’t find my breath. The day seemed to come crashing in and my eyes filled with tears. I gasped, wiped my face on my shoulder. Waited for Harry to tear into me, to tell me I was an idiot. Or worse.
Instead, Harry said, “Tell me what you need me to do, bro.”
We talked for a few minutes. After hanging up, I slunk toward the exit carrying a paper bag bulging with copies of the files faxed to Waltz by the Alabama State Police. On the way out I saw Alice Folger in a shadowy meeting room by herself, watching a television like something major depended on the outcome. I couldn’t see the screen or hear the audio, and wondered if it was a news program with NYPD featured in some way, or perhaps a verdict on a case she’d worked.
I crept by to the other side of the hall, shot a glance at the TV screen. I saw a suited man pointing at colored lines bisecting the nation’s midsection.
Alice Folger was hypnotized by the Weather Channel?
I returned to the hotel and set the files on the table, pushing them to the far side. Guilt at my inability to tell the cops the truth pooled in my guts like cold oil. There was more to feel guilty about: Even though a specialist in psychological crimes, I had never read the details of my brother’s murders. I had always feared that, in reading the cold facts of Jeremy’s cases, I might see a monster, and not the tormented child who killed his father after years of unspeakable misery …
I am just past my tenth birthday. Jeremy is sixteen. One day, playing alone in one of the forts Jeremy and I built in the woods behind our house, I walk from the trees to find the county police at our house. There is a policeman on the dirt drive of our house, another at the wheel of the car. The cop in the drive is looking at my mother, three steps up on the porch. Jeremy is on the porch as well, sitting a dozen feet away in the glider. He looks between the policeman in the car and the one in the drive, his eyes pensive.
The policeman’s hat is off and he is holding it over his privates. He is tremendously old, fifty maybe. He removes his mirrored sunglasses, his face creased with sorrow. I hear his words in soft groupings.
“I’m so sorry, ma’am …
“The coroner’s there now, no need for you to see such a …
“We’ll find this madman, ma’am, this person …”
I look to the police car and see the second policeman through the open car door. Younger. He’s reloading one of those cameras where the film turns into pictures as you watch. He sets the camera aside and his eyes study me. Strangely ashamed, I look at the ground. When I look up again, he is studying Jeremy. Then the moment passes and the cops turn to dust in the hot air. My mother stands in the yard like a statue. Jeremy rocks the glider to and fro, a faraway smile on his face.
I had never asked Jeremy about the day our father died. I had hated the man. When he left for work in the morning, I watched the truck disappear down the road and prayed for his death. A retaining wall cave-in, crushed under a bulldozer, falling from a bridge. I had a dozen hopeful scenarios.
Please God, make him die today in a gasoline explosion …
Instead, it was my big brother who finally exploded. Only later, after interviewing a hundred fiercely dysfunctional minds, did I realize Jeremy’s explosion had saved me from an escalating madness destined to end in a house full of dead bodies with the standard news bites from the neighbors.
“We never knew the Ridgecliffs real good, but they seemed decent enough … Earl didn’t seem the kind of man to do that to his family and hisself … it’s a tragedy, is what it is …”
Jeremy knew how it would end,