Dead Sleep

“You can’t keep Lenz out of your office?”

“I’m not sure. But I can definitely keep him off a picnic table on Lakeshore Drive, especially if he doesn’t know I’m going there.”

“I’ll go if we take my car.”

“You read my mind, Ms. Glass.”

Kaiser collects his sacks and follows me through the main doors. He tries to match his stride to mine, but with the height differential it’s a struggle.

“We got your film from the fire scene,” he says.

“What did it show?”

“You got some good crowd shots. New York is busting its collective ass trying to trace every face in them. It’s a big job. The good news is, the video store had a list of members, and the bartender says a lot of his patrons that evening were regulars.”

“I thought maybe I got a shot of the guy who set the fire. It would have been a downward shot, forty-five degrees toward the back of a crowd.”

Kaiser gives me a strange look. “You’re not going to believe this.”

“What?”

“You got the top of some heads, and a Caucasian hand flipping you the bird.”

“Flipping …? You’re kidding me.”

“My sense of humor doesn’t extend to cases like this one.”

“Do you think it was him? Or just some kid?”

“Photo analysts say it’s an adult hand, likely but not positively male. You think the UNSUB saw what you were doing in time to duck down and flip you off?”

“He saw what I was doing, all right. He was moving along the back of the crowd, following me. I think he was trying to get close enough to kill me. That’s why I got the firefighters after him.”

“That was smart.”

“I thought I got that camera up quick enough. Damn.”

“It’s in the past,” he says. “You can’t change it, so forget it.”

“You make it sound easy. Is that what you do when you screw up?”

“Do as I say, not as I do.”

“This is it.”

He stops beside the red Mustang and flashes a broad smile of pleasure. “Pony car.”

I unlock the Mustang with the remote, climb in, and put the top down. Kaiser drops his takeout sacks on the tiny backseat and folds his long frame into the passenger seat beside me. In seconds we’re roaring down Lakeshore Drive, headed for the green expanses beside Lake Pontchartrain. He leans his head back and looks up at the sky.

“Damn, this feels good.”

“What?”

“Riding in a ragtop with a pretty girl. It’s been a long time.”

Despite the strangeness of the situation, I feel a little flush of pleasure. Being noticed by John Kaiser is a lot different from objectively discussing my looks with Dr. Lenz. “A long time since you’ve been in a ragtop? Or close to a pretty girl?”

He laughs. “I plead the fifth.”

Kaiser looks a few years older than I, but he’s aged well. And though I hate to admit it, he reminds me a little of David Gresham, the history teacher I told Lenz about. Something about the way he carries himself, more than physical similarity. There’s a wariness in his motion, as though he’s always aware of exactly where he is, and of his immediate surroundings. I wonder how much Lenz told him about last night’s “interview” on the plane.

Braking to a near stop, I nose the Mustang into a cement semicircle by a wooden bench on the lake side of the road. While I put up the top to keep the gulls from trashing the interior, Kaiser carries the food to the bench, straddles one end, and lays out the cardboard containers and drinks in front of him. As he sits, his pant legs ride up his ankles, revealing a black holster with the butt of an automatic pistol protruding from it.

“I got Peking Chicken and Spicy Beef,” he says. “Also some shrimp fried rice, egg rolls, and two iced teas, unsweetened. Take whatever you want.”

“Peking Chicken.” I straddle the other end of the bench and reach for one of the cups.

“Go for it,” he says.

I spread some white rice onto a tiny plate, top it with the spicy chicken and zucchini, and dig in.

“Do you want to start?” he asks. “Or do you want me to?”

“I will. I want you to know this is a strange situation for me. I didn’t handle Jane’s disappearance well, but in the past year I’ve managed to deal with it. On some level, I accepted that I’d never see her again, and that the case would never be solved. Now all that certitude has been taken away. And I’m glad it has. It’s just … disturbing. I feel vulnerable again.”

“I understand, believe it or not. I’ve seen similar things happen before. Missing-person cases that have lain dormant for years, then suddenly the child or husband turns up. It’s disorienting to people. Homo sapiens survived by adapting rapidly to change, even terrible change. Being forced to reverse an adaptation you’ve made to survive can cause a lot of strange feelings. A lot of resentment.”

“I don’t feel any resentment.”

He watches me, his eyes full of kindness. “I wasn’t saying you did. I’ve just seen it in other cases.”

I take a long sip of tea, and I feel the caffeine in my skin and heart. “I’d like to know where you are on the case. And what you think the odds are of solving it.”

Kaiser has already polished off an egg roll; now he’s exploring the spicy beef. “I don’t like giving odds. I’ve been disappointed too many times.”

“Do you believe the death of Christopher Wingate is part of my sister’s case?”

“Yes.”

“You believe there’s more than one person behind all this.”

Kaiser cocks his head to the side. “Yes and no.”

“What do you mean? You don’t share Lenz’s theory? The kidnapper in New Orleans and the painter in New York?”

“No, I don’t.”

“Why not?”