Deadly Grace

He said it defensively, Cruz noted, like he thought this D.C. hotshot might be getting ready to ream out the locals for their ineptitude. “Makes sense,” he agreed.

A cold wind blew up off the lake and Cruz felt the damp cut through him. He turned up the collar of his overcoat, wishing once again that he’d worn something warmer. Back in D.C., they were just weeks away from cherry blossom time, when the air would turn humid and ripe, but that kind of weather was a long way off here. There was no point in looking for warmth in these ice-crusted coals, either.

Suddenly, he recoiled, picking up a trace scent through the pervasive stink of charred wood, a smell that was both familiar and unforgettable—the terrifying odor of roasted human flesh. It was just his imagination messing with his head, he tried to tell himself. Grace Meade’s charred body had long since been removed.

Logic carried no weight, however, because what he was seeing in his mind’s eye was not this scene, but another fire long ago—another murder victim’s body torched in a deliberate bid to destroy evidence, only this victim hadn’t been a stranger, and Cruz hadn’t been some impartial investigator arriving after the fact.

“You want to take a closer look?” Berglund asked, stepping up to the ribbon of yellow plastic crime scene tape that circumnavigated the lot. He reached out and lifted it, holding it up for Cruz to pass under. All the professional courtesies.

God almighty, no, he didn’t want to get any closer, Cruz thought, revulsion springing from the deepest recesses of his brain, that primitive part that deals in instinctive fear and the impulse to flee. He managed to hold his ground—just.

“I can see all I need to from here,” he said. “I’ll just wait till those guys get done. I don’t want to be trampling over evidence.”

He turned his back to the site, looking up and down the road as if recreating in his mind the scenario as it had played out two nights earlier. All along the curving lakefront road, well-tended houses with two-car garages nestled into wooded lots that flowed, unfenced and unbroken, from one into the other. They were a custom-built mix of ranch-style bunga lows, Cape Cod salt boxes and sprawling split-levels with sand-colored prairie limestone facades. The lots were large, none smaller than a half acre, Cruz estimated, space beyond the reach of all but the wealthiest of urban dwellers. Even in a small town, this had to be prime real estate. Cruz saw snowmobiles parked in several of the driveways, and a couple of tarp-covered powerboats jacked up on trailers for the winter.

When his heartbeat had finally slowed to a normal pace, he allowed himself to turn back toward the destroyed house, where the two jumpsuited investigators seemed to be finishing their work. They picked their way across the rubble, stopping to lay down a few evidence bags in the tool case. One of the men was carrying a long-handled spade, and he jammed it upright in a pile of ash. Clapping the dust off their hands, they ducked under the tape and walked over to where Cruz and Berglund were standing. One was gray-haired, balding, but fit-looking under his orange jumpsuit. The other was younger, heavyset and perspiring, despite the cold, so that his black-framed glasses kept slipping down the slick incline of his nose, which was black from the repetition of his sooty hand pushing them back.

“This is Agent Cruz from the FBI,” Berglund told them.

They nodded, and the older of the two men held out a dirty hand. He then thought better of it and transformed the shake to a quick wave. “I don’t think you want to touch this hand,” he said. “I’m Don Beadle from the State Bureau of Investigation. This is Bill Oppenhalt from the Arson Investigation Unit. I guess it was you who originated the request for us to come out here and take a look, Agent Cruz?”

Cruz nodded. “That’s right. Appreciate the cooperation.”

“No problem. That’s why we’re here.”

“So, how does it look? Do you think this was deliberately set?”

Beadle deferred to Oppenhalt, who pushed his heavy glasses up his nose once more and nodded. “Oh, yeah, not much question of that, I’d say. Things were a little stirred around before we got here, mind you, but we were able to spot a fair number of physical indicators just the same.”

“Like what?” Berglund asked.

“Well, you got your multiple high burn points and several localized heavy burn patterns indicating that there was more than one point of origin. Some spalling in the concrete foundation, too, which some would say indicates an accelerant, although it’s not a real reliable indicator, in my experience. We took some carpet and underpad samples, though, and those were a little more conclusive. I’ll want to run them through a gas chromatograph back at the lab just to be sure, but in the end,” he said, tapping the side of his blackened nose before pushing his glasses up yet again, “the nose knows.”

“What do you mean?”

Oppenhalt grunted as he bent to scoop a sample of dirt, which he rubbed between his fingers, then held under his nostrils. “Gasoline,” he said. “On a cold day like this, it’s real easy to pick it up. You guys don’t smell it? It’s all over the place here.”

Berglund shook his head. “I can’t smell anything except charcoal, and that’s been stuck in my nostrils since the night of the fire. And anyway,” he added, nodding to the gravel driveway beneath their feet, “what you’re smelling here is probably several years worth of dripping oil from all the cars that have been parked in this drive.”

“Well, sure, but it’s not just in the drive, Deputy,” Beadle said, cocking his thumb back over his shoulder. “It’s all over the scene. Really strong in the carpet samples we found, like Bill here said. Even I picked it up, and my nose isn’t nearly as well trained as his is.”

The broad shoulders of Berglund’s green parka hefted, sending a shower of what looked at first glance to be dandruff flying to the ground, until Cruz realized it was actually a fine layer of ash that was still settling almost forty-eight hours after the blaze.

“You guys happen to come across any spent cartridges or slugs while you were sifting through the ash?” Cruz asked. “Deputy Berglund says the autopsy on the lady who died here indicates she may have taken a shot to the chest from a fairly large-caliber weapon, like maybe a forty-five or a nine millimeter.”

Beadle shook his head. “No, we were on the lookout for it, but nothing showed up. If your killer was the careful sort, he might have picked up his spent cartridges before he left the scene.”

“That would make him one very careful drug-crazed hippie drifter looking for a quick score,” Cruz said dryly, glancing at Berglund.

“I never said that was the only explanation for what went down here,” the deputy said irritably. “That was the chief’s thought, and it’s as good as any other at the moment. On the other hand, somebody that calculating…” His voice drifted off.

Berglund’s face was drawn and showing signs of weariness and strain. It was obvious he was also ticked off at being second-guessed by meddling strangers. Fair enough, Cruz thought. If it was him in the deputy’s place and some stranger had dropped into the middle of one if his cases, pulling rank and calling in outside investigators, he’d probably be just as pissed. But that didn’t change the fact that, frankly, the guy needed the help.

“You seen all you need to here?” Berglund asked.

Cruz glanced back at the rubble and nodded. “I guess I have. You guys?”

Beadle also nodded. “We’ll get our preliminary report out to you both within a couple of days. Final has to wait for the chemical tests on the samples we took, but like Bill said, our view is that you’ve definitely got an arson case on your hands here, guys, so you’ll want to bear that in mind as your investigation proceeds. Anything else you need from us?”

“Not for now. I’ll let you know if I do,” Berglund said glumly.

CHAPTER 7

That doctor stopped by to see me again—a couple of hours ago, I think. I wasn’t quite as doped up as I’ve been the last few times she was in. (And how many times is that, I wonder? I have no idea.) But it’s quiet now. No one has been in for quite a while. They seem to have decided to leave me with nothing but this notebook for company. That’s fine with me. I just want to be left alone.

I hear the murmur of voices out in the hall, sounding low and disapproving as they pause occasionally at the window of this room. They consider me stark raving mad, I suppose, and dangerous to boot.

The doctor never actually came out and said so, but I suspect she’s a psychiatrist. It makes sense, after what I tried to do in the ER—after everything else, too. Maybe she really does want to help. But it’s more likely, I think, that this is part of the process they’re going through now—determining my competency before they decide what to do with me. I’m beyond help, in any case. Though I’m sure I will be judged, it won’t be in this lifetime.

I never even looked at the doctor, although she did her best to engage me in conversation. She’s good, too. Pulled out all the tricks—open-ended questions. Empathy. Those long, pregnant silences that normal people feel obliged to fill with nervous chatter. She seemed disappointed when I didn’t respond.

“Perhaps you’ll feel like talking tomorrow, Jillian,” she said just before she left.

Well, no, I could have told her, I won’t. It may be her business, if she is a shrink, to get people to talk about their deepest feelings, but I can’t do that. She’s a stranger to me. I’m not the kind of person who confides, even to people I’ve known for many years. I never was. I know there are those who see it as evidence that I feel somehow superior, but the truth is just the opposite. I’ve always been embarrassed to talk about myself. I can’t imagine a duller subject, or why anyone would be interested. I’m a good listener, though. I suppose it’s why I chose to do the work I do, gathering oral histories, recording the reminiscences of mostly older people about the great events they’ve lived through. Their lives are so much more exciting than mine.

This doctor is stubborn, though. I can tell. I know she’ll be back. To be honest, she seems like a very nice person. I feel guilty about ignoring her, but I simply don’t want what she has to offer. How can I convince her I’m a waste of her time and skills? That she’d be better served expending her energies elsewhere, on someone who wants—deserves—to be saved? That I am beyond redemption?

She was careful before she went out to catch the door before it slammed, easing it gently shut. Still, there was no mistaking the sound of the dead bolt ramming home. Obviously, they’re taking no more chances with me. Maybe they think I’ll try to run, but what would be the point, when my thoughts would only come along for the ride?

No, there’s only one escape for me.

In any event, even if I did want to walk out of here, they’ve taken my clothes—destroyed them, I suppose, since they’d have been ruined, what with all the blood, and then blackened from the fire….

Oh, Jillian! What are you thinking? Of course they wouldn’t destroy them. Far from it. Every item would have been painstakingly preserved. Some criminal investigator is no doubt examining them at this very moment, lifting hairs, microscopic bits of lint and drops of my mother’s blood, accumulating the mountain of evidence they’ll be building against me. But that, too, is a waste of time and resources.

In place of my ruined things, they’ve given me a short blue hospital gown and white cotton socks. There’s also a terry robe lying at the end of the bed—beltless. I’ve already checked. Nor is there anything else in here remotely long enough to be used as a rope, not even a sheet on the mattress. There’s just a quilted pad and a thick down duvet to keep me warm. It hardly matters. Even if there were something to make into a noose, there’s no place to hang it. The half-globe light fixture seems firmly anchored to the ceiling, and there are no convenient bars on those high windows. That mesh-reinforced glass looks unbreakable, too, and the room is devoid of any other sharp objects. Even the food trays they bring in and carry out, untouched, hold only round, stainless steel spoons and melamine plates and cups. No breakable plastic or lovely glass shards with which to slash those wrists today, dearie!

Amazing how they think of everything.

The doctor left another parting gift along with this notebook—a box of fine-tipped colored markers. I almost smiled. She’s no fool, this woman. There’s no chance she’d leave me sharp lead pencils or ball point steel suitable for ramming into eager arteries. It’s pretty hard to kill yourself with fuzzy felt Crayolas.

She wants me to write down my thoughts. How cruel is that? My mind wanders between stupor, rage and grief, and sometimes, for a few minutes, I forget. Then suddenly it comes back, slamming into the center of my chest like a sledgehammer—these awful, monstrous memories clawing at my brain—and I remember where I am and why I’m here.

I can hardly bring myself to believe it—my mother is dead….

My mother is dead and I have no business being alive. That’s the fundamental truth here. But maybe it’s not too late. Maybe I have inherited just a tiny measure of her indomitable willpower, after all.

It occurs to me, though, that perhaps I owe society an explanation. If I do that, will I find the courage then to do what I have to do?

I know there are those who will resent justice being cheated in this way. All I can say to them is that I don’t want or expect forgiveness. It’s not even that I’m afraid to face the consequences of what I might have done. I just can’t live with the knowledge of what I am.

They say confession is good for the soul, but I don’t believe it for a minute. Nothing will take away this burden of guilt and shame. And the idea that people will look on me as an object of curiosity, disgust or (God forbid) pity is so insufferable that it gives me pause even now. It’s horrible enough to have the truth here inside me, eating at my soul like a malignancy, but to bring it out into the open for all the world to see? Why would I do that, when it would be so easy to let this all die with my mother—with us both?

Except, what have I learned in my life, and my work, if not that we human beings are doomed to repeat those atrocities we don’t take the time to understand? But before there can be understanding, someone has to bear witness. The innocent deserve that.

Oh, yes, there are innocents in this tale. Maybe I owe it to them to tell this story. For their sake, then, I should set the record down now while I can—while these people are leaving me in peace. I can’t imagine it will last for long. The authorities are bound to show up with their questions sooner or later, and I’ll probably be arrested as soon as I’m deemed fit to walk out of here. But if I can lull this doctor into believing I’m making some sort of therapeutic progress with this notebook, maybe she’ll hold them at bay long enough for me to get it all down.

These gifts of hers—this notebook, this quiet time, and these markers in their ridiculously cheerful hues of wild cherry, magenta and indigo—maybe they’re Fate’s way of offering me a chance to atone for my sins. Mine and my mother’s. We owe a vast debt, she and I, and while nothing can ever repay it, a full confession is the very least we can offer.

Then, once I’ve finished, I’ll look for my chance. Because it’s a sure bet that, sooner or later, the attention of these caretakers will flag, however briefly. And when it does, I’ll seize the opportunity to end a life that never should have been and submit to whatever judgment lies waiting for me in the next.

CHAPTER 8

Montrose, Minnesota

Thursday, January 11, 1979

Cruz and Berglund pulled into the parking lot of the Montrose Regional Hospital, sixteen miles northwest of Havenwood. In an area reserved for official vehicles, Berglund nestled the black-and-white cruiser into a parking spot just opposite the emergency entrance ramp.

The three-story hospital looked new, with fresh, brightly painted signs in orange and blue, and sidewalks and roadways still untouched by the frost heave of unrelenting winters that turned every paved surface into a spiderweb of cracks, fissures and potholes. But, Cruz thought, the hospital could have been in Tallahassee, Florida or Missoula, Montana, for all the uniqueness of its institutional tan and stucco exterior.

“Do you really think Jillian Meade intended to kill herself?” he asked, as he and Berglund climbed out of the cruiser and headed up the walkway.

“No question. They said she had that needle in her arm, and that she fought like hell with the orderly who tackled her, just like she fought me when I wouldn’t let her stay in that burning house. They doubled up on her tranquilizers after that. Even then, the doc on call said he thought she was serious enough about doing herself in that he had her put in full restraints before they transferred her over here to the psych ward.”

Cruz said nothing, but the cynic in him had his doubts. Just because the woman was in the loony bin didn’t mean she wasn’t crazy like a fox.

He drew a deep breath of piney air just before they passed through the sliding glass front doors, girding himself. He’d visited more than his share of psychiatric units. In the course of eleven years as a U.S. Army criminal investigator, he’d run into every conceivable mental quirk, malady and trauma that could erupt in violence. He’d personally witnessed his first murder on June 11, 1965, a day that had changed the course of his life forever. Since then, he’d investigated more than three hundred others. Most of them had sprung from stupid rage and momentary loss of self-control, senseless acts committed in a blur of drugs or booze. A few had been meticulously planned, the murder itself secondary to an insatiable desire for something else—money, a woman, revenge.

And then, there were the tragedies, pure and simple. Even normally decent, sane people had their triggers, and under the right amount of pressure, anyone could buckle. Cruz had seen that fourteen years earlier, on a June day out in a swampy delta north of Da Nang. His faith in humanity had been on shaky ground ever since.

Berglund looked grim, as if he was dreading this as much as Cruz was. “Ready?”

Cruz nodded.

So what was Jillian Meade’s story? How coincidental was it that three women linked to her had now died under suspicious circumstances within the span of a month? Was she some kind of uncontrolled psychopath, or a smart faker with some obscure and twisted motive? If the latter, they weren’t going to do anything for her in here. Drugs and therapy might unkink a mildly bent psyche, but there was no curing a killer who was genuinely psychotic or very clever—and they were often one and the same. He’d seen thieves, rapists and serial killers who could mimic an entire catalogue of clinical symptoms in a bid to dodge criminal responsibility for their acts, trying to cop a “not guilty by reason of insanity” plea. Was that Jillian Meade’s game?

Inside, the hospital had the cookie-cutter look of medical institutes all over the country, with scrubbable white walls, industrial carpeted floors, and utilitarian, charm-free furnishings. A few garish splashes had been added in the form of wide racing stripes in the hallways, but even these were resolutely functional, color-coded by department. Cruz and Berglund followed a blue stripe to the main reception, where the deputy approached the desk to ask for directions. The stripes leading back to the ER were red, Cruz noted. Green was apparently for obstetrics, orange for pediatrics. And the psych ward?

Berglund turned to him and nodded at the bank of elevators on the opposite wall. “She says go to three, then follow the purple stripe.”

At the elevator doors, as they stood in silence watching the lights overhead dance down to one, Cruz thought about possible links between Grace Meade and the other victims. Mrs. Meade had been English by birth, so maybe the two female victims in Britain had been friends of hers, which might explain Jillian Meade’s calling on them. One of the women had been a semi-retired civil servant of some sort, his Scotland Yard contact had said. The other, a retired hospital “tea cart lady.” Both of them elderly, both of them living alone when they died, brutally attacked and killed in their homes, which had subsequently been torched. Why?

Both of them visited by Jillian Meade only a short time earlier. Why?

At the third floor, Cruz followed Berglund to a thick glass window under a plaque that read: “Reception—Please Sign In.” On the other side of the glass, a guy in green scrubs sat in a swivel chair with his back to the window, his white sneakers propped on a credenza behind. Coffee cup in one hand, he was reading a newspaper that he held awkwardly folded in his free hand, shaking it back open from time to time when it occasionally collapsed on itself. The comics page, Cruz noted, peering over his shoulder.

Berglund tapped on the window and he started, splashing coffee on his pants, the paper and his arm. A muffled curse sounded through the double-plate glass as his feet dropped to the floor. The chair pivoted and he looked up, peeved, but at the sight of the burly man in uniform bearing down on him, he prudently swallowed his protest.

“Help you?” he asked, shaking splattered coffee from his hands. His voice came out of a round, slatted steel disc in the glass sounding tinny and crackled, like every drive-in movie speaker Cruz had ever encountered in his misspent youth.

Berglund planted his hands on the counter. “I’m Deputy Chief of Police Berglund with the Havenwood Police Department. This is Federal Agent Cruz. We’re here to speak to Jillian Meade.”

“I’m just an orderly. I’m filling in while the head nurse is on her coffee break, but lemme see…” He slid a clipboard in front of him and ran a finger down the page. “Meade, Meade…nope. Can’t help you right now.”

“What do you mean? I just spoke to the front office by phone a couple of hours ago. I know she’s here.”

“Oh, yeah, she’s here all right, but she’s still being evaluated. No visitors.”

“This is official business.”

The orderly shrugged. “Her doctor would have to clear it.”

“Fine,” Berglund said, “we’d like to speak to him.”

The reply was a one-syllable pop.

“Pardon?” Berglund asked.

“Her,” the orderly replied. “The psychiatrist is a woman, Dr. Kandinsky.”

“Her, then. Could you get her, please?”

The speaker crackled once more. “I think she was on the ward a while back, but I’m not sure if she’s still there. Take a seat. I’ll page her.”

Cruz had already moved over to a window that overlooked the parking lot and the broad, frozen prairie beyond. The hospital stood at the very edge of the town of Montrose. Beyond was a flat expanse of open farmland broken only by a grid of shelterbelts, poplar and spruce mostly. The fields were dark and dead-looking, blackened by stubble burned off after the harvest, only occasional patches of snow here and there. What snow there was had piled up in drifts that littered the shade of the shelterbelts, like beach debris left behind after a receding tide. Cruz had seen places like this at the height of the growing season, though, when they were transformed into a vast, swaying sea of golden wheat. During those restless months after his first tour of duty in Vietnam, before he’d decided to re-up and go back, he’d ridden his old Harley down back roads from one end of the country to the other, drifting aimlessly, keeping mostly to himself. Trying to come to terms with what he’d seen and done over there. Trying to come to terms with himself.

Berglund’s massive frame moved beside him. The deputy gave the view out the window a glance, but it was probably as familiar to him as his own face in the bathroom mirror. He turned back to the waiting room, hooking his thumbs in his belt as he leaned against the window ledge, the typical stance of a brawny man unconsciously compensating for the unfortunate tendency of his arms to swing, gorilla-like, away from his overbuilt body.