“And talk,” I said with my mouth full. “Don’t forget talk, old woman.”
“Not just talk, sonny boy. Pretty sound psychological analysis, necessary cheerleading at times, and expert guidance counseling.”
“I have a game plan,” I said, and left it at that.
“You better have a winning game plan.” Nana got the last word in. “Alex, if you lose her, you will never get over it.”
The walk with the kids and even talking with Nana revitalized me. I felt clear and alert as I worked at my old rolltop for the rest of the morning.
I had started to cover the bedroom walls with notes and theories, and the beginnings of even more theories about Thomas Pierce. The pushpin parade had taken control. From the looks of the room, it seemed as if I knew what I was doing, but contrary to popular opinion, looks are almost always deceiving. I had hundreds of clues, and yet I didn’t have a clue.
I remembered something Mr. Smith had written in one of his messages to Pierce, which Pierce had then passed on to the FBI. The god within us is the one that gives the laws and can change the laws. And God is within us.
The words had seemed familiar to me, and I finally tracked down the source. The quote was from Joseph Campbell, the American mythologist and folklorist who had taught at Harvard when Pierce was a student there.
I was trying different perspectives to the puzzle. Two entry points in particular interested me.
First, Pierce was curious about language. He had studied linguistics at Harvard. He admired Noam Chomsky. What about language and words, then?
Second, Pierce was extremely organized. He had created the false impression that Mr. Smith was disorganized. He had purposely misled the FBI and Interpol.
Pierce was leaving clues from the start. Some of them were obvious.
He wants to be caught. So why doesn’t he stop himself?
Murder. Punishment. Was Thomas Pierce punishing himself, or was he punishing everybody else? Right now, he was certainly punishing the hell out of me. Maybe I deserved it.
Around three o’clock, I took a stroll and picked up Damon and Jannie at the Sojourner Truth School. Not that they needed someone to walk them home. I just missed the hell out of them. I needed to see them, couldn’t keep myself away.
Besides, my head ached and I wanted to get out of the house, away from all of my thoughts.
I saw Christine in the schoolyard. She was surrounded by little children. I remembered that she wanted to have kids herself. She looked so happy, and I could see that the kids loved to be around her. Who in their right mind wouldn’t. She made it look so natural to be turning jump rope in a navy business suit.
She smiled when she saw me approaching across the schoolyard full of kids. The smile warmed the cockles of my heart, and all my other cockles as well.
“Look who’s taking a break for air,” she said, “three potato, four.”
“When I was in high school,” I told her as she continued to turn her end of a Day-Glo pink jump rope, “I had a girlfriend over at John Carroll. This was in my sophomore and junior years.”
“Mmm, hmmm. Nice Catholic girl? White blouse, plaid skirt, saddle shoes?”
“She was very nice. Actually, she’s a botanist now. See, nice? I used to walk all the way over to South Carolina Avenue just on the off chance I might see Jeanne for a couple of minutes after she finished school. I was seriously smitten.”
“Must have been the saddle shoes. Are you trying to tell me that you’re smitten again?” Christine laughed. The kids couldn’t quite hear us, but they were laughing anyway.
“I am way beyond smitten. I am smote.”
“Well that’s good,” she said and continued to turn the pink rope and smile at her kids, “because so am I. And when this case is over, Alex-”
“Anything you want, just say the word.”
Her eyes brightened even more than was usual. “A weekend away from everything. Maybe at a country inn, but anywhere remote will do just fine.”
I wanted to hold Christine so much. I wanted to kiss her right there, but that wasn’t going to happen in the crowded schoolyard.
“It’s a date,” I said. “It’s a promise.”
“I’ll hold you to it. Smote, that’s good. We can try that on our weekend away.”
Chapter 124
BACK HOME, I worked on the Pierce case until supper time. I ate a quick meal of hamburgers and summer squash with Nana and the kids. I took some more heavy heat for being an incurable and unrepentant workaholic. Nana cut me a slice of pie, and I retreated to my room again. Well fed, but deeply unsatisfied.
I couldn’t help it-I was worried. Thomas Pierce might already have grabbed another victim. He could be performing an “autopsy” tonight. He could send us a message at any time.
I reread the notes I had plastered on the bedroom wall. I felt as if the answer were on the tip of my tongue and it was driving me crazy. People’s lives hung in the balance.
He had “pierced” the heart of Isabella Calais.
His apartment in Cambridge was an obsessive shrine to her memory.
He had returned “home” when he went to Point Pleasant Beach. The opportunity to catch him was there-if we were smart enough, if we were as good as he was.
What were we missing, the FBI and me?
I played more word games with the assortment of clues.
He always “pierces” his victims. I wondered if he was impotent or had become impotent, unable to have a sexual relationship with Isabella.
Mr. Smith operates like a doctor-which Pierce nearly was-which his father and his siblings are. He had failed as a doctor.
I went to bed early, around eleven, but I couldn’t sleep. I guess I’d just wanted to try and turn the case off. I finally called Christine and we talked for about an hour. As we talked and I listened to the music of her voice, I couldn’t help thinking about Pierce and Isabella Calais.
Pierce had loved her. Obsessive love. What would happen if I lost Christine now? What happened to Pierce after the murder? Had he gone mad?
After I got off the phone, I went back at the case again. For a while, I thought his pattern might have something to do with Homer’s Odyssey. He was heading home after a series of tragedies and misfortunes? No, that wasn’t it.
What the hell was the key to his code? If he wanted to drive all of us mad, it was working.
I began to play with the names of the victims, starting with Isabella and ending with Inez. I goes full circle to I? Full circle? Circles? I looked at the clock on the desk-it was almost one-thirty in the morning, but I kept at it.
I wrote-I.
I. Was that something? It could be a start. The personal pronoun I? I tried a few combinations with the letters of the names.
I-S-U…R
C-A-D…
I-A-D…
I stopped after the next three letters: IMU. I stared at the page. I remembered pierced, the obviousness of it. The simplest wordplay.
Isabella, Michaela, Ursula. Those were names of the first three victims-in order. Jesus Christ!
I looked at the names of all the victims-in order of the murders. I looked at the first, last, and middle names. I
