level of panic skyrocketed. He quickly hid himself, cowering in a nearby stairwell, heart pounding, sure that in the next second Harriman would come running, would pull that gun from his shoulder holster and force him to surrender and confess, force him to fail to achieve his most important goals just as they were within his reach. The secrets would come out then. Everything would fall apart. Judge Lewis Kerr would undoubtedly preside over his case — and make an example of him.
Caught up in the horror of these visions, he had nearly missed seeing Arden drive off with a woman. The woman was a surprise. Was she his wife? Perhaps Arden had married. He disliked not knowing who Arden might have spoken to about Lefebvre.
Harriman was no longer in sight then. He was up in the condominium, perhaps reading some papers Arden had left with him or even talking to Lefebvre himself. Perhaps Lefebvre had built secret rooms in his condominium. He had not seen them when he went to Lefebvre’s home during the investigation into Seth Randolph’s murder. But he had been able to do only so much with half the department on hand at the same time. He disliked such crowds.
He had always approved of Lefebvre, and for many reasons. They had so much in common. They were intelligent and logical. They loved to fly. They both did their best work alone. That was why, for a time, he had done certain favors for Lefebvre — Lefebvre himself had never known the source of these favors. The Looking Glass Man would not be surprised to discover now that they had more than intelligence and a love of solitude in common. He could easily believe that Lefebvre had also created hidden places in his home. After Arden left the condominium, this possibility disturbed him greatly, until his skin itched from his nervousness. It would be best, he decided, to hurry up and destroy Harriman and any evidence he might be studying.
And so he had started the fires. Once he was sure they were going, he had hurriedly left, not so stupid as to stay and watch, as a true arsonist would have done. No, it was best to be far away in such situations. He had the means of learning the results of his work.
He had listened to the scanner and heard the call. But then had come the announcement that three persons had been in the condominium, including a female and a child. He had risked turning back then, unable to resist the temptation — as weak as any arsonist after all — and had caught a glimpse of Elena Rosario holding a child while Harriman spoke to firefighters.
He had driven away again, chastising himself for returning at all, while reeling from the implications. Elena Rosario, living in Lefebvre’s home.
He scrubbed himself until his skin was raw.
The water turned cold, and though he briefly considered punishing himself by remaining in the shower, he shut it off. The room seemed unusually quiet, which made him feel afraid, until he realized that he had forgotten to turn the fan on and the quiet was the absence of its noise. He dried himself and wiped down the shower stall and all the chrome before stepping out, carefully placing his feet on the perfectly aligned bathroom rug.
He looked up into the mirror and saw only the blur of steam and condensation.
As if he weren’t really there.
An omen, he decided, shivering where he stood.
But ultimately his faith in himself reasserted itself. Perhaps it was a sign of a different sort — a sign that he remained invisible to those who sought him.
He would need to be more careful, true, but the more he considered it, the fire was not such a foolish idea — after all, he had smoked Elena Rosario from her lair.
28
Wednesday, July 12, 4:43 P.M.
Las Piernas Police Department
In the end, Pete had helped him. He tried to keep that in mind now as he faced renewed sullenness in the office.
Frank had stopped Pete in the hallway before he came into the homicide room. Pete had assured him that none of the others knew the details of Frank’s afternoon. They knew that Pete had been sent on an arson call, but when he returned long before Frank, he pretended that there had been nothing to it — a questionable case of arson with no one hurt. He gave out no exact addresses and no names. A waste of time, he told them.
“No one asked why I hadn’t come back?”
“I told them I talked to you on the phone, that you’d be in later. Reed asked if you had had a chance to see if the face was as good as the figure for the babe in the black veil. I told him she was one of the cop-hating Nereaults.”
“Thanks, Pete.”
But Pete just shook his head and walked away without another word.
Even before he went to his desk, Frank knew he was in for more of the chill. The men in that room were expert observers. None of them would have missed the change in Pete’s mood regarding his partner. It would quickly become contagious.
When he arrived at the scene of the fire, Pete had been concerned for his partner’s safety, but that had quickly given way to anger over the fact that Frank had not told him where he was going that afternoon. He dismissed outright Frank’s theory that someone from the department had been the arsonist, and was infuriated that Frank could imagine such a thing to be true.
“It’s Whitey Dane’s bunch — you can bet on it,” Pete said.
Elena, who had been using Frank’s cell phone to call her insurance agent, said, “What about Dane?”
Pete remembered her, and Frank watched his manner change in the way it often did with women. Pete was short and balding, yet seldom failed to charm a woman. He was crazy about his wife — a gorgeous Amazon of a woman — and as far as Frank knew, Pete hadn’t ever strayed after marrying Rachel. But Baird enjoyed flirting with good-looking women, and he was all solicitude to Elena. Still, it wasn’t until Pete became aware of Seth, and became protective of him, that Frank was sure of Pete. By the time Elena and Seth moved off to beg the firefighters to allow them to retrieve a few essential items from the condo, Pete was saying, “You know, that kid is as sharp as his old man.”
Frank raised a brow.
“Oh, he’s Phil’s kid, all right. At the funeral, I thought maybe he was a nephew, speaking French with Lefebvre’s sister and all. Now I see him with Elena, I see a little of her, a little of him. Has Phil’s eyes. And no matter how I
