White Death

It was like this in many investigations: questions way, way outnumbered answers. There was one thing Patrese knew for sure, however. Regina King had left New York alive and been killed in Connecticut; Darrell Showalter had left Massachusetts alive and been found dead in Connecticut. That meant interstate transportation, which in turn made it federal jurisdiction. The Bureau would take over from the New Haven PD.

It was Patrese’s case now.

11

Since Patrese needed some cash, he pulled up at the nearest bank. The ATM in the wall was out of order, so he went inside, where there were three more machines: all working fine, but all with queues. That wasn’t surprising: it was the start of the lunch hour. Patrese scanned the queues, trying to work out from the kind of customers there which queue would move fastest. Businessmen in suits would be in a hurry; little old ladies would take their time.

A bark of laughter came from the tellers’ counter. Patrese looked over. One of the tellers, a young guy with the kind of hair-and-moustache combo that hadn’t been in fashion since East Germany had ceased to exist, was holding up a piece of paper. A black man in a hooded sweatshirt stood in front of his position.

‘You demand money?’ the teller scoffed. ‘This is a practical joke, right?’

No, Patrese thought. No, never say that. What the fuck was the teller playing at? The police tell every bank, and every bank tells its employees, not to stand up to bank robbers. Just give them the money and get them out of there. Hell, most banks use some kind of dye pack that makes the notes unusable, or they hand over bait money, whose serial numbers are recorded and the police alerted when the notes are back in circulation. But even if they don’t do either of those, it’s still only money. Better that someone gets away with a couple of grand than that someone gets shot because of some fool teller who thinks he’s Dirty Harry.

All this went through Patrese’s head in a split second. In that same split second, Hoodie Man had pulled a gun from his waistband with his right hand and grabbed the nearest customer, a young Asian woman with red eyeglasses and a crimson Harvard top, with his left. He pressed the gun to the woman’s head. Her eyes and mouth made perfect circles of shock and fear.

‘Look like a practical joke to you now, motherfucker?’ yelled Hoodie Man.

Shrieks and screams all around Patrese, people falling to the floor or backing away as far as they could. He had his own gun out now, though he wasn’t aware of having drawn it: that was Bureau training, where in times of danger you armed yourself without conscious thought.

He drew a bead on Hoodie Man. ‘Let her go!’

‘You drop it, man! Drop it, or I smoke the bitch!’

The man’s face was half hidden beneath his hood. He looked to have smooth skin and regular features, but beyond that Patrese couldn’t see enough to tell for sure whether he was serious about this threat or not, let alone whether he was juiced on crack or meth or whatever else junkies out there liked to hit on nowadays.

Could take the shot anyway, Patrese thought, but Hoodie Man was moving around, pulling his hostage with him. Hs gun was pressed hard against her temple: the pressure was turning her skin white around the end of the barrel. Even if Patrese got off a clean shot, head or vital organs down the centerline of the trunk, Hoodie Man might still fire his own gun, as a reflex shot if nothing else.

Patrese remembered Samantha Slinger, a crack addict whom he’d shot dead in some scuzzy Pittsburgh rowhouse because he’d thought she’d been going for a gun. She hadn’t. And her death had helped set in motion a series of murders that had reached five before he’d managed to finish it. That kind of thing stayed with you. It hadn’t stopped him taking shots in difficult situations since then – he’d put a bullet through the head of a wannabe suicide bomber during a Steelers match at Heinz Field, for a start – but it had made him more cautious about weighing up risk and reward.

And right now there was no contest between the two. Hoodie Man wants to steal some cash rather than work for it? Sure. Let him. Guys who hold up banks in broad daylight aren’t criminal masterminds. They get caught sooner rather than later. Give him the money, get him to let the girl go. That’s what Patrese thought. That’s what the teller should have thought too, before he started to get wiseass.

‘OK,’ Patrese said. ‘OK.’ He crouched down and put his gun on the floor.

Hoodie Man swiveled his eyes toward the teller. ‘Money, now. In a bag, twenty seconds, or I smoke her.’

Patrese could hear only two sounds: a quiet, breathless sobbing from somewhere behind him, and the panicky rustle of the teller frantically shoving shrink-wrapped packs of notes into a carrier bag.

Hoodie Man glanced across at the teller again. ‘Enough!’ he said. ‘Give!’

The teller reached out, bag juddering from the tremors in his arm. Hoodie Man tightened his left arm around Harvard Top’s neck and took the bag with the outstretched fingers of the same hand. The gun in his right hand never left her temple.

‘Fool,’ he spat at the teller.

Patrese rather thought he had a point.

Hoodie Man began to walk toward the door, still holding his hostage. She looked round in silent supplication. Do the right thing, Patrese thought. Get out of the door and let her go. You’ve got what you came for. You keep a hold of her, and within minutes it’ll be a situation with armed cops and all that, and those things tend to end the hard way.

And that’s exactly what Hoodie Man did. He got out of the door, pushed Harvard Top away, and took off down the sidewalk like a scalded cat.

Patrese grabbed his gun from the floor and went after him. No good. By the time he was out of the building, Hoodie Man was halfway down the block and moving fast toward the lunchtime crowds. Chasing him would only risk flaring the whole thing up again. He might take another hostage; even worse, he might start shooting. Letting him go wasn’t the macho thing to do, but it was the right thing to do.

It didn’t stop Patrese stamping the ground in frustration, though.

12

When the Cambridge police arrived at the bank a few minutes later, Patrese pulled rank and got himself interviewed first. It wasn’t just that he wanted to get to New Haven and didn’t have time to spare hanging around here: it was also that law enforcement officers are trained in observation and recall, which made his testimony more accurate and useful than that of a random member of the public. Most of the people in that bank, he knew, would hardly have remembered their own names when confronted by a man with a gun.

Witness statement given, Patrese headed for the interstate. In the last day and a half, he realized, he’d driven from Foxborough to New Haven, New Haven to New York, New York to Cambridge, and now Cambridge back to New Haven. Heck; he should have been a trucker, not a Bureau agent. Probably get paid better, too.

He drove straight to the New Haven police headquarters. They’d set up an incident room, done all the right things: two dozen officers manning the phone lines, one wall covered in photos of the cadavers and the crime scene, a buzz of industry and determination that told good things for the department’s standards.

Kieseritsky showed Patrese into her office and told him what they’d got so far. It didn’t take long. She’d had little news for him yesterday, and she didn’t have a whole lot more for him today.

No joy with the fingerprint they’d found on Showalter’s chest. There were millions of fingerprints on the Bureau’s database, most of them belonging to various shades of scumbag, but none of them matched this one.

The Liberzon knife company had sent over a list of their US retailers. These were being checked to see if anyone connected with the victims had purchased the hunting knife in question: though if that person had used cash rather than a card, they’d be none the wiser.

Still waiting on any other possible clues from forensics.

Still no one who’d seen anything strange on the Green at that time of night.

Still no idea how Regina had gotten to New Haven in the first place. They’d checked every hotel within a ten-mile radius of the Green, and she hadn’t stayed at any of them.

Still no joy on the provenance of the tarot cards. They’d managed to establish that the cards were made by US Games Inc., who had copyright over the Rider-Waite design in the United States; but US Games Inc. sold hundreds of thousands of sets a year, all pretty much identical. The set the killer was using could have been bought in any state in the union, not to mention online. Where would they start?

And, as far as could be ascertained, still absolutely no overlap whatsoever between the lives of Regina King and Darrell Showalter. A single mom from the projects and a monk teaching at a private school in one of Massachusetts’ most upscale areas: it wasn’t as though they’d have had much in common to start with.

Showalter seemed to have lived a pretty blameless life; not even a speeding ticket or a parking fine. Regina, on the other hand, had been a bit of a firebrand. Remember how they’d got her fingerprints from the arrest docket at the Iraq War protest in 2003? Well, that hadn’t been the end of it.

She’d sued the NYPD for bodily harm, alleging that the officer who’d arrested her, Howard Lewis, had used excessive force, which had damaged ligaments in her shoulder and neck. The case had dragged on a couple of years before being settled for an undisclosed sum; which was to say that the NYPD had worked out the minimum they’d have to pay her to make the problem go away, and had done precisely that.

Settlement had been reached about six months before Kwasi had won his world title, which had made his fame and earnings go stratospheric. Patrese wondered whether Regina would still have accepted the NYPD’s offer had she known the financial windfall around the corner. Principles were good; eating was better.

When Kieseritsky finished, Patrese told her kindly but firmly that this was now the Bureau’s case, and that the incident room must be transferred lock, stock and barrel to the Bureau field office a half-mile up State Street.

Kieseritsky was disappointed but not surprised. She knew the rules of federal engagement as well as Patrese did; but any detective worth their salt doesn’t like giving up a case that has been theirs from the outset.

‘You know this is no reflection on you personally,’ Patrese said.

Kieseritsky shrugged. ‘You sure? It’s not like we’re about to catch the murderer any minute now, is it?’

‘Some cases just don’t fall that way. As far as I can see, you’ve done everything exactly as you should have done. I appreciate it.’

‘Don’t be kind.’

‘Oh?’

‘It makes it harder for me to hate the Bureau.’

13

If there was a prize for the most striking building in New Haven, Patrese thought, he was standing outside the runaway winner right now.

It was a rectangular box without windows. In their place were panels of white, lightly veined marble framed with pale gray granite. It stood in the middle of a quadrangle on the edges of which glowered edifices in Gothic and Classical styles, as though this box was an alien spaceship that had dared to disturb the old-world tranquility around it. It was Yale’s Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, and a sign by the main door informed Patrese that this was the largest building in the world reserved exclusively for the preservation of rare books and manuscripts.

Anna Levin, the curator, was waiting for him inside. Patrese was expecting some tweedy old dame with reading spectacles dangling from her neck, and so he almost walked straight past her. Only when she put her hand on his arm did he realize who she was. She had the bright eyes and deep tan of someone who spent as much time as possible outdoors – no mean feat if you worked in this place, Patrese thought – and, like an athlete or a dancer, she walked on the balls of her feet. He’d never have put her as a librarian in a million years. She was this side of dotage, for a start.

When they’d introduced themselves, Anna gestured around her, at the inside of the library. ‘Whadd’ya think? Quite something, huh?’

Quite something indeed, Patrese thought. The marble panels, which from out in the quad had appeared solid, were now revealed to be translucent, almost like blank television screens. They let in a small amount of filtered light: presumably to allow rare books to be displayed without risk of damage.

And in the middle of this enormous space, rising six stories like a monolith from Atlantis, was a glass tower full of books: a shrine to volumes bound in leather of olive green, Mikado yellow, burnt umber, carmine and a hundred other colors besides.

‘I think they’re the most beautiful things in the world,’ Anna said. ‘Books.’

Her office was two stories below ground. She couldn’t offer him coffee or tea, she was afraid – no food or drink allowed, because they couldn’t risk damage to the books. That was fine, Patrese said. Too much caffeine gave him a weird St Vitus dance.

‘I’ve got a whole heap of things to do,’ he said, ‘so I can’t spend too long here. Nothing personal. You know why I’m here?’

‘Something about tarot cards being found at those dreadful murders yesterday.’

‘That’s right.’

‘Well, listen …’

‘I need hardly tell you that anything I say to you is confidential. We keep a tight lid on information from crime scenes: helps weed out the tons of crank callers you always get.’

‘Sure. Do you know which cards were found?’

‘There were two victims. Regina King, who’s been all over the news …’

‘I know. My sister …’

‘… and a monk from Cambridge, Massachusetts named Darrell Showalter. The Empress was found by her body, the Hierophant by his. Both in the Rider-Waite design.’

Anna nodded. ‘And you want to know what they might mean?’

‘Exactly.’

She steepled her fingers. ‘OK. A bit of background first, if that’s OK. Help you get a sense of context for all this.’

‘If it’s quick.’

‘The reason I got interested in Tarot was from working here. The first known sets of tarot cards in the world were made around 1442 for the Visconti family of Milan. There were three sets, of which we have the very first, the prototype, right here in this building. There were no printing presses at the time, of course, so all the cards had to be hand-painted. That’s why they’re so rare, and so valuable.

‘Tarot cards nowadays are used for two main purposes. One, games, as with conventional playing cards, though this is confined mainly to Europe, particularly France and Italy. Tarot games are almost unknown in English-speaking countries. Two – and this may be more relevant to your investigation – divination, predictions, mapping mental and spiritual pathways, those kind of things. A tarot reader will predict your future according to which cards she draws for you and in which order.’

‘And this does occur in the States? Tarot divination?’

‘Absolutely.’ Anna pulled a Rider-Waite pack out of her drawer. ‘There are seventy-eight tarot cards in all, divided in two main categories. The first is called the major arcana, which means greater secrets. The major arcana consists of twenty-two cards, all without suit.’ She took a handful of cards from the top of the deck and spread them on the desk in front of her. ‘The first twenty-one are numbered. In order – and you’ll recognize the ones you found yesterday – they’re the Magician, the High Priestess, the Empress, the Emperor, the Hierophant, the Lovers, the Chariot, Strength, the Hermit, Wheel of Fortune, Justice, the Hanged Man, Death, Temperance, the Devil, the Tower, the Star, the Moon, the Sun, Judgement, and the World. Unnumbered, or assigned zero, sometimes twenty-two, is the Fool.’

She arranged the remainder of the deck alongside. ‘Second category: minor arcana, the lesser secrets. These are much more like conventional playing cards. They’re divided into four suits: wands, pentacles, cups, swords. Wands correspond to clubs, pentacles to diamonds, cups to hearts, swords to spades. But each tarot suit has fourteen cards rather than thirteen: there’s a Knight which goes between the Queen and the Jack.’

‘But both the cards we’ve found belong to the major arcana?’

‘That’s right.’

‘Then let’s focus on that for now. What do the Empress and the Hierophant signify?’

‘OK.’ Anna handed the Empress card from her deck to Patrese. ‘The Empress is the third card in the major arcana. A mother figure, she’s fertile, sexual, sensual, natural. She’s the Great Goddess, she’s the Queen of Heaven. The scepter represents her power over life. The twelve stars of her crown represent her dominance over the year. See her throne in a field of grain? That’s her dominion over things that grow: food, plants.’

Anna tapped on the Empress’ gown. ‘Pomegranates. In Greek mythology, Hades, lord of the underworld, kidnapped and raped Persephone. Persephone’s mother Demeter, the harvest goddess, stopped every plant from growing for a year until she and Hades came to a deal about Persephone’s fate. But while she was in the underworld, Persephone ate some pomegranate seeds. Anyone who consumed food and drink in the underworld had to stay there – so, even after the deal her mom had struck with Hades, Persephone had to spend part of each year in the underworld.’

Patrese thought of how close Regina and Kwasi had been. ‘Tell me more about the Empress as a mother. What kind of symbolism is there on that?’

‘Oh, a whole heap. The Empress often represents mothers, good and bad. She’s the blood flowing through all living things, which starts in the womb. She’s also the object of desire, the love children feel for their moms.’ Anna flicked her fingers. ‘Tell me something. When you found the card, which way up was it?’

‘Which way up? Er … face up.’

‘No, no: which way was it pointing? In line with the body, or inverted? Was the Empress’ head towards the victim’s head?’

Patrese thought for a moment, trying to recall exactly what he’d seen on the Green. There’d be crime-scene photos against which he could check if necessary, but he wanted to do this himself. Think. Think.

He’d seen the Hierophant first, by Showalter’s corpse, and then gone over to Regina’s body, looking to see whether she had a card too …

‘Inverted,’ he said suddenly. ‘The Empress’ head was facing towards Regina’s feet.’

‘You’re sure?’

‘Absolutely. The Hierophant was the right way up, but the Empress was inverted.’

‘An inverted card can mean the opposite of whatever the usual symbolism is. With the Empress, it would be something like she was a bad mother, an unhealthy over-attachment somewhere, that kind of thing. Take the qualities and reverse them. In her usual, positive aspect, the Empress gives, nurtures, celebrates life. In her negative aspect, she takes it, either literally or figuratively.’

Patrese didn’t know what kind of mother Regina had been, but ‘over-attachment’ when it had come to her and Kwasi was pretty much spot on. As to whether that had been unhealthy, who knew? Only she and Kwasi for sure, perhaps. Or not even them. As Patrese knew full well, people in dysfunctional relationships find so many ways of justifying these dysfunctions that they end up not being able to see them at all.

‘OK,’ Patrese said. ‘What about the Hierophant?’

Anna handed him the Hierophant card. ‘This is the fifth card. The word “Hierophant” means “the one who teaches the holy things”. See here. His right hand is performing a blessing: two fingers pointing up, two pointing down. This forms a bridge between heaven and earth. The pillars either side of his throne represent law and liberty: the crossed keys at his feet are the keys to Heaven. The Hierophant represents assistance, friendship, good advice, alliances, marriages, and religious interests. When he’s inverted, that means bad advice, lies, and persecution. If he appears in a spread, it’s a warning to the querent to re-examine their understanding of the meaning of things, of the structure of the world, of the powers-that-be.’

‘A spread? A querent? What are those?’

‘When you do a reading. The querent is the subject, the one who wants to know their future. The spread is how the cards are arranged. There are several different ways, depending on the reader’s skill or preference. Would you like me to show you?’

‘What? Give me a reading? I’m the querent?’

‘Sure.’

‘Thank you, no. I haven’t got time, and in any case I don’t believe in all that stuff.’

‘It would purely be for interest.’

‘No.’ He stood. ‘Thank you. You’ve been helpful.’

‘Might give you an idea as to why the cards are being left there. Might even give you an insight into how best you’ll solve the case. In a reading, some people believe the cards chosen are guided by a spiritual force. Others, like Jung, think the cards help us tap into a collective unconscious.’

Patrese was torn. He really didn’t believe in this stuff, and he really didn’t have time to waste: but if someone was going round killing people and leaving tarot cards by their bodies, shouldn’t he be exploring all possible avenues to help catch that person?

He sat back down again. ‘All right. But only a quick one.’

Anna smiled. ‘Sure. I’ll keep it to the major arcana, twenty-two cards rather than seventy-eight, and give you a simple horseshoe spread rather than some of the more complex ones.’

She took the Empress and Hierophant back from Patrese, cleared away the minor arcana cards, and shuffled the major arcana with a speed and dexterity that wouldn’t have disgraced a Vegas croupier. Then she laid out seven cards, all face down, in a horseshoe.

‘This is just for interest,’ Patrese said.

‘Each card in this pattern means something different,’ Anna replied. He wondered if she’d heard him. ‘The first one’ – she tapped the one to her extreme left – ‘is the past: any events that have already happened which affect your current situation. The second is the immediate present. Self-explanatory. Then the immediate future; also self-explanatory.’ She rested her finger on the fourth card, the middle one. ‘This is what’s occupying your mind: what you’re thinking of, whether you know it or not. The next, the fifth, is the attitudes of others around you. Then there’s the obstacle you must overcome. And finally the outcome, the ending: how the situation will finish. Ready?’

If I don’t believe in all this, Patrese thought, then why do I suddenly feel so nervous?

He swallowed hard. ‘Sure.’

She smiled. ‘OK. This first card is the past.’

She turned it over. Card number VII, the Chariot. A prince in armor sitting in a chariot pulled by two sphinxes, one black and one white.

‘The chariot symbolizes conquest: a battle that can be won if you have the willpower. The battle is usually external, with a clear goal and plan of action. The charioteer fights alone. He succeeds by attacking from the side rather than straight on. To win the battle, you need self-reliance, hard work, and the conviction that you’re right and that you’ll achieve victory no matter the odds. But, but … this can easily tip over into a ruthless desire to win at any cost.’

Patrese thought of the cases he’d pursued in the past. Some of them had gone on for months, and in each one he had at times felt frustrated, depressed, ready to jack it all in; but in the end he’d always kept going, and he’d always gotten a result. He was here now because he’d solved those crimes; he’d solved those crimes because he was good at what he did; and he was good at what he did because he kept plugging away and because he’d try anything to get a breakthrough.

Yes, Patrese thought: he could see how the Chariot card applied to him.