“Yes. To pack.”
“Where are we going?”
“We’re moving, Harper. Tomorrow, if not today.”
“Where?”
“We’ll rent a house in Jackson to start. After that, we’ll work it out. Wherever we want. It’s time to go.”
I search her face for signs of doubt, but there are none. I start to get out and to walk her to the door, but she stops me by leaning over the console and kissing me on the cheek.
“Make it an hour,” she says.
Still flying from Drewe’s kiss, I pull into the parking lot of a convenience store and head for the pay phone. The Kings Daughters Hospital operator connects me with an ER nurse who eventually gets special agent Wes Killen to the phone.
I apologize before I tell Killen who I am, and again after. He listens to my explanation with professional detachment, then begins asking questions as I tell him the story of the sunglasses. He promises to have the Bureau check with the airlines for anyone resembling the “New York people” I saw at the funeral.
Unbelievably, Killen has to return to the cemetery and continue his vigil at Erin’s grave. He even criticizes himself for leaving his post long enough to get his nose patched up. After he gives me a cellular phone number I can use to reach him if I need to, I apologize once more and sign off.
Driving back to our farmhouse, I feel I’m traveling a road I’ve never seen before. Because it is no longer the road home. It’s the road away. The road that will lead Drewe and me out of the past and into our future. The events that brought us to this point are too painful even to focus on, yet they have delivered us from ourselves. For the first time, I allow myself to believe that the demented killer who pissed into my guitar for posterity might actually be bumping along the bottom of the Mississippi River, getting nested in by catfish or ripped to pieces by gar.
When I sight a sheriff’s department cruiser parked by our mailbox, it strikes me how paranoid I must seem to Sheriff Buckner. Yet as I park under the weeping willow by our porch, my anxiety returns. Heeding the old fear, I reach under the seat for my.38 and grip it tightly as I open the front door of the house.
The reek of tear gas and Clorox is still strong, and the house feels empty. In fact, it feels more like a place I once lived than the home that nurtured four generations of my family. This feeling embarrasses me, as though I’ve broken faith with my maternal ancestors. Yet if my great-grandfather were alive, he would probably forgive me. He came to Mississippi from Scotland, and despite his love for this land, he understood that most primitive of truths: sometimes people have to move to survive.
I open all the windows in the house, hoping to air out some of the stink for Drewe’s sake. Then I get out my address book and call every bank and brokerage company with which I have an account. Balances in hand, I go to my Gateway 2000, boot up Quicken-which I have neglected for weeks-and update each account. Then I total all the balances.
The result is pretty gratifying.
My watch tells me I’ll be ten minutes late picking up Drewe, given the usual twenty-minute drive to Bob’s house. Picking up the keys and the.38, I trot for the front door. My hand is on the knob when the phone rings. I pause, listening for the answering machine in case it’s Drewe. Instead I hear the voice of Arthur Lenz.
“Hello? Cole? Pick up if you’re there.”
“I’m here!” I yell, sprinting back to the machine. I hit the MEMO button so that Lenz’s words will be recorded, then pick up the cordless. “I’m listening, Doctor.”
“Oh. Good. I’ve spoken to one of the profilers Daniel has working the EROS case. A man I trained. I’m conversant with the new data on Berkmann.”
“And?”
“I’ve put together my own profile.”
“Go.”
“I believe our usual classification system-organized versus disorganized behavior-is inadequate to describe Edward Berkmann. Until recently, he did not kill from uncontrollable impulse. Nor did he develop better technique with each murder, as most killers do. He was like Mozart. From the very first crime he demonstrated genius. He not only staged murder scenes, he seemed to know our specific classification criteria and manipulated evidence accordingly, to prevent computer matches. Effectively, he had no crime signature. ‘Super-organized’ would be my term of choice.”
“Okay.”
“No serial killer has functioned in society to the degree that Berkmann did. The only possible analogy would be the royal physician suspected in the Whitechapel murders-the Jack the Ripper case-but his guilt was never proved. In terms of raw intelligence and education, Berkmann was-or is-probably superior to ninety-nine percent of the people hunting him.”
“That’s painfully obvious.”
“You actually hit on the truth that night in my car, Cole. Until recently, Berkmann was killing for a perfectly rational reason. Transplantation of human pineal tissue is theoretically possible and may have significant therapeutic effects. As a neurosurgeon, Berkmann understood that this procedure would never be developed under current experimental guidelines. He simply decided it was worth sacrificing a few lives to make the attempt. Not so long ago, mainstream American medicine made similar decisions about research using convicts.”
“You sound like you’re defending his actions.”
“I merely make the point that their moral character is a separate question from their scientific defensibility. It’s immaterial so far as analyzing motive, and especially in trying to predict his future behavior.”
“Where’s all this leading?”
“Berkmann saw himself as a sort of modern-day Prometheus. Defying God’s law to steal fire for mankind. Fire symbolizes freedom. Given Berkmann’s background, particularly his disease, he sought the only fire modern man is still denied: freedom from death. He committed the gravest mortal sin-premeditated murder-in pursuit of immortality. He undoubtedly believed that others would eventually see him in a heroic context as well. That’s what he meant in his note, when he told us to be patient. That he would ‘come to us’ when his work was done. He eventually meant to go public.”
“That doesn’t tell me what I want to know.”
“I’m getting to that,” Lenz says, obviously annoyed at being rushed. “Despite all I’ve said, I now believe that Berkmann is in fact decompensating-coming apart-just as other serial killers do. Our murderous Mozart is finally joining the ranks of the Salieris.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Because if he weren’t, he would not have made a single tactical mistake. As it stands, he’s made several. When he learned we were hunting him, he could have gone underground, stopped his pineal work indefinitely. But he didn’t. Like all egomaniacs, he took offense, became indignant, then furious. And eventually he committed a murder simply to chastise us.”
“Your wife.”
A brief pause. “Yes. You see, even though there was a ‘rational’ reason for Berkmann’s early murders, an underlying sexual psychosis was always at work. Like two minds working in parallel. We were both right, Cole. With the stressor of FBI pursuit, Berkmann’s subconscious drive began its ascendancy.”
“And?”
“That’s the key to his future behavior. If he’s still alive, of course.”
“How so? What’s he going to do?”
“It all comes down to the mother.”
“Catherine Berkmann?”
“Yes. From his oral family history, you might think the flamboyant father-Richard-was the dominant force in Edward’s life. But he wasn’t. It was Catherine who seduced her brother in order to prevent the extrafamilial marriage. It was Catherine who gave birth to Edward amid shot and shell, shepherded him through hunger and privation to reach America.
