“Just you and me, Jack,” Rachel said when Thompson was out of earshot. “What do you feel like eating?”
“I’m not sure. What about you?”
“Haven’t thought about it. I know what I want to do first though. . . That’s take a hot bath.”
We agreed to meet in an hour for dinner. We rode the elevator up to our floor in a silence couched in sexual tension.
In my room, I tried to take my mind off Rachel by connecting my computer to the phone line and checking my messages in Denver. There was only one, from Greg Glenn asking where I was. I answered it but doubted that he would see it until he came back into work on Monday. I then sent a message to Laurie Prine asking her to search for any stories on Horace the Hypnotist that might have run in the Florida newspapers in the last seven years. I asked her to ship any notes she got to my computer basket but said it was no hurry.
After that I showered and changed into my new clothes for my dinner with Rachel. I was ready twenty minutes early and I thought about going down and seeing if there was a drugstore nearby. But then I thought about the impression it would give Rachel if things worked out and I came to her bed, a condom already in my pocket. I decided against the drugstore. I decided to play things as they came.
“Did you see CNN?”
“No,” I said. I was standing in the doorway of her room. She went back to the bed and sat down to put her shoes on. She looked refreshed and was wearing a cream-colored shirt with black jeans. The TV was still on but it was a story about the clinic shootings in Colorado. I didn’t think that was what she was talking about.
“What did it say?”
“We were on. You, me and Bob coming out of the funeral home. Somehow they got Bob’s name and put it on the screen.”
“Did it say he was BSS?”
“No, just FBI. But it doesn’t matter. CNN must’ve taken the feed off the local channel. Wherever he is, if our guy saw it, we could have a problem.”
“How come? It’s not that unusual for the FBI to take a look at cases like this. The bureau’s always sticking its nose in.”
“The problem is it plays to the Poet. We see it in almost all of the cases. One concept of the gratification these kinds of killers seek is seeing their work on TV and in the papers. In a way it allows them to relive the fantasy of the incident. Part of that infatuation with the media extends to the pursuers. I get the feeling that this guy, the Poet, knows more about us than we do about him. If I’m right, then he’s probably read books on serial killers. The commercial dreck and even some of the more serious work. He may know names. Bob’s father is in many of them. Bob himself is in some. So am I. Our names, photos, our words. If he saw that on CNN and recognized us, then he’ll assume we are right behind him. We may lose him now. He might go under.”
Ambivalence won the night. Unable to decide what or where we wanted to eat, we settled for the hotel’s restaurant. The food was okay but we shared a bottle of Buehler cabernet that was perfect. I told her not to worry about the government per diem because the newspaper was paying. She ordered cherries jubilee for dessert after I told her that.
“I get the feeling that you’d be happy if there were no free media in the world,” I told her when we were slowing down on the dessert. The implications of the CNN report had dominated the conversation during dinner.
“Not at all. I respect the media as a necessity in a free society. I don’t respect the irresponsibility that you see more often than you don’t.”
“What was irresponsible about that report?”
“That one was marginal but it bothers me that they used our images without bothering to ask what the ramifications could be. I just wish that sometimes the media would concentrate on the larger picture or story, rather than go for the immediate gratification every time.”
“Not every time. I didn’t blow you people off and say I’m writing my story. I went long-term. I went for the larger story.”
“Oh, very noble, coming from somebody who extorted his way into the investigation.”
She was smiling and so was I.
“Hey,” I protested.
“Can we talk about something else? I’m tired of all of this. God, I’d love to just be able to lie back and forget about it for a while.”
There it was again. Her choice of words, the way she looked at me as she said them. Was I reading it correctly or only reading what I wanted to read?
“Okay, forget about the Poet,” I said. “Let’s talk about you.”
“Me? What about me?”
“This stuff going on with Thorson is like a TV sitcom.”
“That’s private.”
“Not when you guys are staring daggers across the room all the time and you’re trying to get Backus to take him off the case.”
“I don’t want him off the case. I just want him off my back and I don’t want him out here. He always finds a way to sneak in and try to take over. You watch.”
“How long were you married?”
“Fifteen glorious months.”
“When did it end?”
“Long time ago, three years.”
“That’s a long time for hostilities to linger.”
“I don’t want to talk about this.”
But I sensed she did. I let a little time go by. The waiter came and refilled our coffee cups.
“What happened?” I asked softly. “You don’t deserve to be unhappy like that.”
She reached up and tugged gently on my beard, the first time she had touched me since ramming my face into the bed back in Washington.
“You’re sweet.” She shook her head. “It was just the wrong thing for both of us. Sometimes, I don’t even know what we saw in each other. It just didn’t work.”
“How come?”
“Just because. It was a just-because type of thing. Like I said, we both had a lot of baggage. His was heavier. He’d worn a mask and I didn’t see all the rage behind it until it was too late. I got out as soon as I could.”
“What was he angry about?”
“A lot of things. He carries a lot of anger. From other women, relationships. I was his second failed marriage. The job. Sometimes it came out like a blowtorch.”
“Did he ever hurt you?”
“No. I didn’t stay long enough for him to try. Of course, all men deny the woman’s intuition, but I think if I stayed it would have come to that. It was the natural course of things. I still try to stay away from him.”
“And he still has something for you.”
“You’re crazy if you think that.”
“There’s something there.”
“The only thing he has for me is a desire to see me unhappy. He wants to get back at me for being the cause of his bad marriage, his bad life, everything.”
“How’s a guy like that keep his job?”
“Like I said, he’s got a mask. He’s good at hiding it. You saw him at the meeting. He was contained. You also have to understand something about the FBI. They don’t go looking to bust their agents. As long as he did the work, it didn’t matter what I felt or said.”
“You complained about him?”