The Face of Death

'Did the perp play with their blood?'

'If you mean, did he enjoy another round of finger painting, then no.'

He gave up the mutilation of the Kingsleys to Sarah. Maybe the blood-painting was a substitute. A kind of consolation prize.

'What about the diary?'

'I'm off to the office, I'll print it out there.'

'Call me when you have.'

I reach James on his cell phone.

'What do you want?' he answers.

This kind of greeting doesn't surprise me anymore. This is James, the fourth and final member of my team. He's oil to everyone else's water, a saw blade against the grain. He's irritating, unlikable, and infuriating. We call him Damien when he's not around, after the character in The Omen, the son of Satan. James is on my team because he's brilliant. His intellect is blinding. A high school graduate at fifteen, perfect SAT scores, he had a PhD in criminology by the time he was twenty, and joined the FBI at twenty-one, the goal he'd been striving toward since he was twelve. James had an older sister, Rosa. Rosa died when James was twelve, at the hands of a serial killer wielding a blowtorch and a smile. James helped his mother bury Rosa, and he decided at her grave what he was going to spend the rest of his life doing.

I don't know what else drives James besides the job. I don't know anything about his personal life, or if he really has one. I have never met his mother. I have never known him to go out to the movies. He's always turned the radio off when I've been a passenger in his car, preferring silence to song. He's beyond careless when it comes to the emotions of others. He can flip between scalding hostility, or a thoughtlessness that embodies the ultimate in 'I don't need to know how you feel, and in the final analysis, I really-- truly--don't care.'

He's brilliant, though. An undeniable brilliance, blinding as an arc light. He has another ability as well, one that he shares with me, that binds us together, however unwillingly. He can peer into the mind of a killer and not blink. He can gaze at evil full in the face and then pick up a magnifying glass to get a closer look.

In those times, he is invaluable, a companion, and we flow together like boats and water, rivers and rain.

'We have a case,' I say.

I brief him on everything.

'What does this have to do with my Sunday?' he asks.

'Callie will have the diary couriered to you today.'

'And?'

'And,' I say, exasperated, 'I want you to read it. I'm going to do the same. Once we're done, I want to compare notes.'

A long pause, followed by a longer sigh, very put-upon. 'Fine.'

He hangs up without saying another word. I stare at the phone for a moment and then I shake my head, wondering why I'm surprised.

16

'HOW'S THINGS, SWEETHEART?' I ASK BONNIE.

I had realized, in the parking lot, that everyone was in motion, everything necessary was being done. Which meant I could go be Mom for a little while. This was a skill you had to learn in law enforcement: how to make the time. The cases you are responsible for are important. Literally matters of life and death. You still have to get home for dinner sometimes.

We're in Alan and Elaina's living room. Alan's off running errands. I'd briefed him on the case in general, but have no duty for him at the moment. Elaina is bustling about in the kitchen, getting us something to drink. Bonnie and I are on the couch, staring at each other for no particular reason.

She smiles and nods. Good, she's saying.

'Glad to hear it.'

She points at me.

'How am I doing?'

She nods.

'I'm fine.'

She frowns at me. Stop lying.

I grin. 'I should be allowed to have some secrets, babe. Parents aren't supposed to tell their kids everything.'

She shrugs. A simple motion with specific meaning: Well, we're different.

Bonnie's body is ten years old, but that's where it ends. I feel more often like I'm living with a teenager than with a young girl. I used to ascribe this to what she's experienced, the things she's gone through. I know better now.

Bonnie is gifted. Her gift doesn't lie in child-genius, but in her ability to focus, to observe, to understand. When she sets her mind to something, she sticks with it to conclusion, examining things in a deep, layered sense.

I had raised concern about her schooling a few months back. She'd made me understand that I shouldn't worry. That she'd go back to school and that she'd catch up. She'd taken my hand and had led me into the family room. Matt and I had created quite a little library in there. We believed in reading, in the power of books. We had planned to pass this love and lesson on to Alexa. We'd paid a contractor to install wall-to-wall built-in bookshelves, and we never got rid of any book we read.

Matt and I would spend an hour or so together each month choosing specific volumes to add. Shakespeare. Mark Twain. Nietzsche. Plato. If we thought it had something of value to communicate, we bought it and put it on a shelf.

It was part collection, part working library. None of it was vanity. That was our rule: Never buy a book to gain the approval of others. Matt and I weren't poor, but we weren't rich, either. We weren't going to leave behind a huge material estate. We had hoped to will Alexa the usual things: a house that was paid off, memories of being loved by her parents, maybe some money in the bank. We also wanted to leave her something that would be uniquely us. Something only her parents would leave her, an inheritance of the heart. This library as a legacy, a small sampling of the collected works of man. The dream of this was something Matt and I shared, something we could do, rich or not.

Alexa was just starting to get interested in this room before she died. I haven't added anything to it since. I've had dreams of waking up to find it aflame, the books screaming as they burn. Bonnie had pulled me into this forgotten (avoided) place. She'd pulled out a book and had handed it to me. How to Sketch, by some unknown but obviously talented author. She'd pointed at herself. It had taken me a moment to understand what she was saying.

'You read this?'

She had smiled and nodded, pleased that I understood. She'd grabbed another, Basics of Watercolor. And another, Art and Landscapes.

'All of these?' I'd asked.

She'd nodded.

Bonnie had pointed at herself, had mimed being thoughtful, then had indicated the library with a sweep of her hand. I had stared at her, considering. It came to me. 'You're saying, when you want to know about something you come in here and read a book about it?'

Head nod, big smile.

I have the ability to read and to learn, and the drive to do both, she had been telling me. Isn't that enough?

I wasn't sure it was enough. There were the three R's, after all. Well, okay, she had 'reading' down, but hey, there were still the other two. And of course, there was the socialization aspect of