A Simple Act of Violence by R.J. Ellory
The strings come in behind the piano, and then Piaf’s voice: C’est l’amour qui fait qu’on aime
C’est l’amour qui fait rêver
C’est l’amour qui veut qu’on s’aime
C’est l’amour qui fait pleurer . . .
A two-foot turn, a toe loop, a half loop, a salchow, and then she executes a Biellman into a broken leg spin.
Each time she sweeps towards the edge of the rink my heart almost stops.
The second verse, a staccato rhythm, gentle yet insistent, the strings almost pizzicato: Mais tous ceux qui croient qu’ils s’aiment
Ceux qui font semblant d ’aimer
Oui, tous ceux qui croient qu’ils s’aiment
Ne pourront jamais pleurer . . .
A flying entry into a death drop, and then the ballet jump as Sarah faces the outside of the circle while gliding backwards, picking with the left toe and leaping off the right leg . . .
The third verse, the horn section emphasizing Piaf’s crescendo of emotion:Et ceux qui n’ont pas de larmes
Ne pourront jamais aimer . . .
And I watch Sarah, and I wonder whether there will ever be a chance that she could understand what happened, and why, and how such a decision had to be made. Because that is why we did it. That is why we did all of this.
Later, an hour perhaps, I sit in a diner on the corner of Franklin NW. I sip my coffee. I crave a cigarette for the first time in years. I feel a sense of impending closure, and I try once again to convince myself that everything I have done was done for the right reasons. I know this is a lie, but it is a lie I must try to believe. If not for me, then for Margaret Mosley, Ann Rayner and Barbara Lee. I have to believe it for Catherine as well, and ultimately for Sarah.
I think of the years Catherine and I spent out there. I think of the lessons we learned, and those we did not. I remember the heat, the madness, the sense of alienation, the knowledge that we were so obviously the outsiders, the unwanted, the despised. What we did out there would never be reported in the press. What we saw would never be discussed in meeting halls and congressional committees, never be broached as the next topic for debate at some United Nations resolution and ratification assembly. What we did was perpetrate crimes against humanity in the name of—In the name of what? Perhaps I have forgotten why. Perhaps the why was never really explained. We were trained, and we did what we were trained to do, and the things I learned at Langley kept me alive.
Another time I will think of these things. Not now. Now I will sit and drink my coffee. I will close my eyes and recall the images of Sarah as she turns and steps, as she graces the ice with something altogether too close to perfection. I will hear Piaf’s voice as it swells with emotion, and I will say a prayer for Catherine Sheridan and hope once again that we were right.
Tomorrow is Wednesday - Wednesday the 15th. Catherine will have been dead four days. Seems like a lifetime since we last spoke. Seems like an eternity. We possessed a life of sorts, but given the time again I would do everything differently, all the way back to my mother, my father - what he did, and how it has haunted me like a ghost for all these years since.
And something else happened. Two days before Catherine’s death.
Markus Wolf, one of the Cold War’s most legendary figures, died in his sleep. He was eighty-three. The Russians named him Mischa, the ‘Paul Newman of espionage’. He orchestrated one of the most successful spy networks that ever existed. He ran more than four thousand agents across the Iron Curtain during his Stasi tenure. The Stasi did what the KGB did. They did what their Nazi forefathers had perfected. They used the gifts of IG Farben and Eli Lilly to assist them in their experiments, and when the Cold War was over, when the wall finally came down, the very best of them came here. Right into the heart of the United States intelligence community. I’ve seen some of them. Dark-minded, evil-looking bastards. They work for us now. They tell us how to win the hearts and minds of the peoples we invade. And if we can’t win their hearts and minds they tell us how to beat them into subjugation.
I know these things because I have been a part of it all: I became what I worked so hard to escape.
A sacred monster.
NINETEEN
Somewhere after eight. Miller stood in front of his desk. Roth sat to the right, Lassiter to the left, his back against the wall. Lassiter had come from his meeting as soon as Miller had called him. He asked them so many questions. What had they seen? Was there anything - anything at all - that had given them the impression that they were being followed or watched? Had Natasha Joyce said anything that could be construed as a fear for her own life?
Miller answered what he could.
‘I don’t have the people for this,’ Lassiter said. ‘Who the hell am I supposed to put on this one? Tell me that much at least for God’s sake.’
They went over it again, Lassiter concerned that the newspapers would catch the tail of this thing. Detectives visit potential witness. Witness murdered by the very man the detectives were investigating. Perhaps. The newspapers would spell it out the way they wanted the world to read it. Like with Miller and Hemmings. In-house corruption, everyone covering everyone else’s backs.
The photographs from the Sheridan house were spread out across the desk. The face of an unknown man, a man suspected of terrible crimes, but also a man who could be guilty of nothing at all.
‘So we’re placing these pictures around when?’ Lassiter asked.
‘Five to ten years before he went out to see Darryl King with the Sheridan woman,’ Roth said. ‘Say 1990, something like that.’
Lassiter rose from the chair to look at each photograph in turn. He scanned them closely once again. ‘There’s just nothing,’ he said. ‘Nothing that indicates where they were taken . . . almost as if they were intentionally framed to give no clue as to time or whereabouts.’
‘That was my thought,’ Miller said.
Lassiter returned to his chair. ‘How long before the photo guy gets here?’
Roth glanced at his watch. ‘Should be any moment now.’
Lassiter leaned forward, elbows on his knees, hands ahead of him, fingers steepled together as if in prayer. ‘You have no idea how much noise is going to follow on the heels of this,’ he said quietly. ‘Five dead women. Mayoral elections in February—’ He turned suddenly at the sound of someone outside the door. ‘Come!’ he barked.
The door opened and a man stepped into the room. Mid-forties, greying hair, bespectacled. He immediately identified Lassiter as the one in charge, stepped forward with his hand outstretched, and introduced himself as Paul Irving. Lassiter indicated the pictures on the desk.
‘You can make up some images of this guy and age him ten, fifteen, twenty years?’
Irving nodded. ‘Sure I can.’
‘You don’t need to look at them?’ Lassiter asked.
Irving smiled. ‘Can do anything you want with a picture,’ he said. He reached out and picked up the image of Catherine Sheridan and the unidentified man. He held it up. ‘This guy here,’ Irving said. ‘I can take his face out and put your face in there so good you’d never be able to tell.’
‘I just need him aged,’ Lassiter said. ‘This one here is apparently from Christmas of ’82. Use that as a guideline. I need him aged, his hair grey, also with a mustache, with a full beard, and then one of those that are just on the chin. I need eight or ten different variations of how this guy could look right now, and I need them within an hour or two. You can do this?’
Irving nodded, started to gather up the pictures. ‘Sure I can do it. The city’s gonna pay my invoice, right?’
‘The city’s gonna pay,’ Lassiter said.
‘This is the Ribbon Killer thing?’ Irving asked.
Lassiter shook his head. ‘What makes you think that?’
‘Second Precinct, phone call out of hours, no questions about how much I’m gonna charge you for doing this . . . I might not be a detective but I’m not stupid.’
‘I n
Irving smiled genuinely. ‘I am as good as they told you, and as far as confidentiality is concerned, you needn’t have any doubts about how seriously I take this.’
Lassiter nodded. ‘Okay. You go do whatever you have to. You can be back here by ten?’
‘Sure. Earlier if I can,’ Irving said.
‘Would be appreciated.’
Irving left. Took all but one of the pictures with him.
‘Since when did this stuff go out of the precinct?’ Miller asked. ‘I thought we had internal people on this kind of thing.’
‘Funding,’ Lassiter said. ‘You ever heard of that?’
Miller waved his hand dismissively. ‘As long as we get what we need.’
Lassiter backed up, dragged his chair to the desk. The three of them were silent for a moment, and then Miller asked if there could be additional detectives assigned to the task of locating the suspect.
‘I can assign who I have, and who I have is Oliver, Metz, Riehl, Feshbach . . . maybe Littman, I don’t know yet. They have their own caseloads you understand, but once we have those pictures out with the patrol guys I can have those four assigned to phone duty, follow up some leads perhaps. Whichever way it goes, I don’t have enough.’
‘Any chance we can get Killarney back here to help?’ Miller asked.
‘I’ll call some people, see what’s available, but I’ll tell you this - the expectation from the chief and the mayor’s office is that we handle this ourselves. I’ll make some calls to the Fourth and the Seventh, but don’t hold your breath, okay? You’re the front line as far as anyone is concerned.’
Al Roth smiled sardonically. ‘That’s reassuring.’
Lassiter stood up, put the chair back against the wall. ‘You have this guy,’ he said. ‘He evidently knew Catherine Sheridan. He met with the Joyce woman on at least two occasions. Go with what you have. Push hard and something else will show up.’ Lassiter glanced at his watch. ‘It’s ten after eight. Picture guy should be back before ten. Make sure they’re good. If not, send him back to do them again. I’ve got one of the computer people coming in to scan them and start printing however many hundred we need. See that through and then call it a night. Nine tomorrow morning I want you to brief the patrols before they go out, get the pictures into their hands and make sure they understand how important this is, alright?’ Lassiter hesitated for a moment, almost as if there was something else on his mind, and then he shook his head and started towards the door. ‘You have my cell,’ he said. ‘Call me whenever, okay?’
Miller and Roth sat in silence for a moment.
‘You wanna call Amanda for me?’ Roth asked.
Miller shook his head. ‘Do your own dirty work.’
They reported her death on the TV. Natasha Joyce.
They reported it as I sat there in the diner, and had I left moments before I would not have seen it.
But I saw it, and then I walked away from the corner of Franklin NW with the cold and quiet certainty that soon they would find me.
I believe, in some small way, that the relief will be immense.
TWENTY
Irving came back at quarter of ten. He knocked on the door, waited a moment, entered, dropped a heavy envelope on the desk.
Miller opened the envelope, up-ended it, spread the pictures out across the table.
‘Okay?’ Irving asked.
‘Very good,’ Miller said. ‘Very good indeed.’ He signed Irving’s receipt, and once Irving had left he and Roth stood side by side, looking down at Catherine Sheridan’s unknown companion.
Unmistakably the same man, regardless of the alterations in appearance. One thing was constant however. The man’s eyes. Eyes always stayed the same.
Roth gathered up the images, left the room, was gone the better part of twenty minutes. Miller wondered if the APB would come to anything, if anyone in Washington would recognize the man they were looking for. And even if they did, he could be no-one. Simply a friend accompanying Catherine Sheridan on some journey into the projects to speak with Darryl King. Natasha Joyce had not known the reason for the meetings. Darryl King could have told them but he was dead. The only other person aside from the man himself was retired Sergeant Michael McCullough, and that was another job entirely.
Miller needed to sleep. He felt as if his mind had been punished by the intensity of events since the 11th. The frustration was almost physical, a tangible sense of pushing against something that seemed determined not to yield. Roth would work late. He would do the same hours, but always there was something to go home for. His wife, his kids. The house on E Street and Fifth. There was a life beyond the walls of Washington’s Second Precinct. A life in which Robert Miller was ever more aware he did not participate.
Miller rose and walked to the window. He looked out across the city, his eyes gritty and dry, the taste in the back of his throat coppery and bitter.
He smiled to himself, his emotions tinged with a sense of philosophical resignation, and then he became aware of where he was standing, the fact that he was nothing more than a silhouette against the light behind him.
A sudden rush of electricity ran through his body. He stepped back instinctively, moved quickly away from the window. His heart skipped a beat and ran on ahead of him. With his left hand he reached up and tugged the cord for the blind, pulled it down rapidly and closed the slats.
He glanced toward the door as he heard footsteps in the corridor.
Roth appeared. ‘Under control,’ he said. ‘We’ll have a hundred of each—’ He stopped, frowned. ‘Jesus, Robert, you look like—’
‘I’m okay,’ he said abruptly. ‘I’m fine. Just tired . . .’
‘Okay, so we’ll have a hundred of each picture for nine in the morning. Meeting with the patrol guys will be downstairs in the meeting room. Anything else tonight?’
Miller shook his head just as the telephone rang on the desk ahead of him. He picked it up. He listened for a moment, said, ‘Sure . . . come on up.’
‘Metz,’ he told Roth as he set the receiver back in its cradle. ‘He has info on the first three for us.’
They waited a few minutes, neither of them speaking, Miller aware of the sweat on his palms and the sense of panic, now diminishing, in his lower gut. Then Metz was in the doorway, looking awkward.
‘What you got?’ Miller asked.
Metz sat down. ‘Not what you want to hear,’ he said. ‘First two properties, Mosley’s and Rayner’s, both rentals, now leased to new tenants. Major redecoration jobs. Third place, Barbara Lee, repainted throughout, still empty, but new tenants likely in the next week or so. Cannot find records of any living children, grandchildren, aunts, uncles, cousins, brothers, sisters, parents. Nothing.’
Miller leaned forward. ‘You what?’
Metz nodded his head. ‘You know what I think? I think they were on a witness program . . .’
‘I figured that,’ Roth interjected.
‘No fucking way,’ Miller said. ‘You can’t be serious . . . absolutely no relatives whatsoever? None of them?’
‘Nothing,’ Metz replied. ‘And their possessions have been handed over to the county probate court. Packed up and shipped off to some storage facility outside of Annapolis. I’ve applied for inventories but was told that it could be a month before they get to it—’
‘Get a warrant,’ Miller snapped.
‘I’ve applied already . . . should get word back tomorrow.’
‘This is unreal,’ Miller said. ‘This is just un-fucking-real . . . I can’t actually believe that I’m hearing this.’
‘It’s got to be witness protection,’ Metz said. ‘It’s got to be. Only time I’ve ever come across anything like this is with people on the program.’
Miller didn’t reply.
‘Any
Metz shook his head. ‘Just follow up on the warrant application in the morning. Take it from there.’
‘Good,’ Roth said. ‘So go home . . . need you in for a briefing at nine.’
Metz wished them luck and departed.
Miller still didn’t speak.
‘So?’ Roth asked.
Miller shook his head. ‘I’m stunned,’ he said quietly. ‘I’m actually fucking stunned by this entire thing . . .’
‘Go home,’ Roth said. ‘Go get something halfway decent to eat, get some sleep, for God’s sake. You can’t do anything more about this tonight.’
‘I will, I will . . . you go ahead, okay?’
Roth rose to his feet. ‘Little one won’t go to bed until she’s seen me.’
Miller didn’t reply.
‘I’ll be here before nine,’ Roth said as he walked to the door. ‘Get things set up before everyone arrives.’
‘See you then,’ Miller replied, and turned back toward the window as he heard the sound of rain against the glass.
Close to midnight, there in the kitchen of his apartment on Church, Robert Miller stood quietly with his back to the edge of the sink. It was still raining. He could hear it against the window behind him. He tried to comprehend the things that were consuming his life. He tried not to think about what might happen. Tried also not to think about what he might become if he failed with this case. It was important. Everything had been important in its own quiet way, but this was perhaps the most important thing of all. He felt as if the eyes of Washington were upon him. Five women were dead, and no-one knew why. No-one even possessed an inkling, could see no rhyme nor reason . . . There were so many things that would have made his task easier to confront. A witness, for example. Just one. One single eyewitness to look at the pictures, to answer questions, to maybe give some kind of idea of whether they were even on the right track. But no, they had nothing at all. Nothing but hope and luck. They were the most valuable commodities an investigator could wish for. Continuing hope, a willingness to persist methodically in the face of all accumulated dead-ends, and a piece of luck. Something that would open this thing up and make it whisper the truth.