White Death

Kwasi stared at Inessa, who was giving a coquettish smile as Wallace ended the interview.

‘Bitch,’ he spat.

Thinking that it might prove a welcome distraction, Patrese took Kwasi up on to the roof to watch the parade. Hallowe’en on Sixth Avenue wasn’t a bunch of schoolkids dressed up as zombies and trick-or-treating: it was a three-hour extravaganza like nothing else on earth, apart perhaps from Mardi Gras in New Orleans.

In fact, Patrese remembered, the 2005 parade had been a gathering point for those New Orleans residents living in airport hotels near JFK after Hurricane Katrina, having been displaced from their homes two months before by that iconic catastrophe through which Patrese had hunted another serial killer. The parade organizers that year had put on a mock-up jazz funeral with a second-line band and dancers, and all those folks whose houses had been washed away and who weren’t used to fall temperatures south of the eighties, all those folks knew that George W. Bush might not have cared about them, but New York sure did.

Now the crowds on Sixth Avenue were ten deep, and they cheered the parade as though every passing costume was the winning play in the Super Bowl. The dancing skeletons came first, as they always did, a reminder that tonight death danced only to celebrate life. After them came giant illuminated caterpillars; a Statue of Liberty stabbed in the chest; a group of bulldogs on leashes all dressed as Batman. Giant Scrabble tiles rearranged themselves time and again to spell different words. Decks of playing cards – not tarot ones, Patrese saw – shuffled up the avenue.

‘Look!’ Kwasi shouted suddenly. ‘Look!’

Two armies of chess pieces were coming past, one black and one white: adults as pieces, children as pawns. They threw candy to the crowd and posed happily for photos. Kwasi was rapt.

Patrese thought back to his childhood, when he and his buddies had daubed their faces with chalk, put on some of their moms’ lipstick and rung a few doorbells.

‘You ever go trick-or-treating as a kid, Kwasi?’

Kwasi watched the chess pieces disappear into the distance before answering.

‘No.’

‘Never?’

‘Never.’

‘Why not?’

Kwasi shrugged. ‘Just seemed silly.’

‘What about your friends? They must have asked you to go with them.’

‘You have a happy childhood, officer?’

‘Franco. Please, call me Franco.’

‘You have a happy childhood, Franco?’

Patrese thought for a second. ‘Most of the time.’

‘Good for you. Me? Never had one.’

‘Never had a happy one?’

‘Never had one, period. I’m the youngest world champion in history. I had to fight every day for it. I became a soldier too early. That’s the price. I had no childhood.’

10 (#ulink_156b59af-2060-5660-b70c-7a302911ef1b)

Monday, November 1st

For the second morning in succession, Patrese was woken in a hotel room by a phone call. This time, however, he didn’t have a hangover, and he knew who was calling: KIESERITSKY flashed up on his cellphone’s display screen.

It was half past six. She wouldn’t be calling to ask how he’d slept. He picked up.

‘Hey, Lauren. You found John Doe?’

‘Damn straight. Darrell Showalter. A monk who teaches school in Cambridge.’

‘As in Cambridge, Massachusetts?’

‘As in Cambridge, England.’

‘Really?’

‘No, not really. Yes, Cambridge, Massachusetts.’

‘You sure it’s him?’

‘Pathologist found a small birthmark on the ankle: could have been livor mortis until you knew better.’ After death, with no heart to pump it round the body, blood settles toward the parts of the corpse nearer the ground, causing a purplish-red discoloration of the skin. ‘One of the other teachers came up in the middle of the night to give us an ID. You want to go and talk to the school, they’re waiting for you.’

Monday-morning traffic on the eastern seaboard meant it took Patrese four hours to get to Cambridge, and he knew it could have been worse than that.

He’d finally taken his leave of Kwasi at around ten the previous evening, and had found a hotel off Washington Square that had charged him – which was to say, had charged the Bureau – a couple of hundred bucks for a bed less comfortable than a landmine, a shower smaller than Gary Coleman, and Art Deco furniture less tasteful than Trump Tower. By that stage, however, Patrese had been beyond caring.

He’d spoken to Donner again en route to Cambridge and told him what was going on. Well, Donner had sighed, it’s not like we haven’t got enough to do here. True, Patrese had replied, but we are a federal organization, and these folks want me to help them out. OK, Donner had said at last. There was a Bureau field office in New Haven itself: he’d get them to give Patrese any help he needed.

Darrell Showalter, the corpse formerly known as John Doe, had taught at the Cambridge Abbey School, a few blocks up from Harvard Square. Patrese instantly clocked the school as the kind of place that turned out muscular Christians: young men who half a century ago would have traveled the world bringing gospel and gridiron to the natives. Organ music swelled from inside a chapel; students hurried through cloisters.

The principal introduced himself as Michael Furman and offered Patrese a seat, some coffee, a photograph of Showalter, and thanks for coming.

‘The school’s in shock, as you can imagine,’ Furman said. ‘Terrible business.’

‘What was it that Darrell did here?’

‘The school’s attached to the abbey, which is an institution in its own regard, of course. Most of our staff, like myself, are lay teachers, but some of the monks also teach: religious studies and spiritual guidance, mainly. It’s a tradition we value greatly. Darrell was one of those.’

‘So no family? No wife, no children?’

‘Absolutely not.’

‘Was he popular?’

‘Extremely. Both with the staff and with the boys. One doesn’t necessarily mean the other, as I’m sure you know.’ Furman looked around as though about to divulge an indiscretion, though only he and Patrese were in the room. ‘And the monks aren’t always that popular with the boys, either. Men who give their lives to God … sometimes they don’t understand children too well.’

Or sometimes, Patrese thought bitterly, they understand children all too well.

‘No enemies?’ Patrese asked. ‘No disputes? No one who wanted to do him harm?’

Furman shook his head. ‘Absolutely not. He wouldn’t have hurt a fly.’