Puppets (13 page)

Biedermann was coming out of the room with a cell phone to his ear. He looked serious and a little haggard, rubbing his hand across his brush cut with exasperated strokes. When he glanced up and saw Mo, he scowled. Mo gave him a laconic salute.

When Biedermann came up to him, he slapped the phone shut. "Detective Ford," he said.

"Very impressive," Mo said, gesturing at the booms and lights and the army of investigative talent. "Coming up with anything interesting?" "We'll talk about it at the next task force meeting. Right now I've got to get back to Manhattan."

"Dr. Ingalls says you'reconsidering the possibility of sexual assault."

Biedermann moved past him on the stairs, scowling at Rebecca. "The possibility, yes. I will definitely keep you informed." He trotted on up the stairs with the stolid agility of a big, fit man, never looking back. At the top he gave curt orders to one of his people, pointing around the room. Then he was gone, out the front door.

Mo watched his broad back disappear from view, disliking him again. The lack of courtesy, that proprietary frown at Rebecca.

"Good of him to keep us informed," St. Pierre suggested. "Hey, Mo, I was going to tell you—"

Mo said, "Rebecca, one more question about Erik, and then I promise I'll shut up about him. You know in his office he's got that knife on a plaque, right, a gift from the people he supervised at Internal Affairs?"

"The backstabber joke. Erik says every IA supervisor gets one when he moves on."

"Right. And he's also got that dog collar, the fancy redone with the studs and stuff on it? He was going to tell me about that, but we didn't get to it. What's with that?"

She grinned."Another joke, a gift from his team when he left San Diego. Same general idea. It's got an inscription on the dog tag that says something like, 'You can have this back, we've worn it long enough.' Suggesting Erik is a tough boss."

Mo chewed his lips, nodding, still gazing up the stairs. "Right. I'll bet he is."

She looked at him, and after a second her eyes widened. "Wait a minute. Where are you going with this?"

He gave it a second's thought."Nowhere. Don't worry." And that was the truth, he'd been letting himself think out loud, bad idea, and it really was presumptuous of him anyway, way too premature.

19

D
RIVING THE ROADS OF Westchester again, heading back toward White Plains. This time the parade of SUVs was diluted with leftovers from the previous automotive phenom, deluxe minivans.

What St. Pierre had been trying to tell him was some information he'd gotten from Irene Bushnell's mother. In his usual self-effacing way, he said, "I don't know if this is worth anything or not, I mean maybe I'm reading more into it than—" Mo had tried to instruct him in the art of appearing confident, with the goal of inspiring a similar emotion in others, but he wasn't there yet. But what St. Pierre had correctly identified as important from his interview with the mother was that, one, she thought Irene might have been having an affair recently. It was an opening, a window into circumstances of Irene's life that her husband wouldn't know or wouldn't want to admit to anyone.

The second detail was that Mrs. Drysdale said her daughter had been very interested in the Howdy Doody killings, had followed news of the investigation in the papers, talked about it now and again. It was the kind of detail that cried out for attention, either an irony or a coincidence or—Mo hoped—a clue to her connection with whoever killed her.

It was two o'clock and Mo wanted to go interview Mrs. Drysdale immediately. Rebecca volunteered to come along with him to Tarrytown, provided Mo gave her a ride back to New York after ward. From a strictly professional standpoint, he told himself, it made sense to have a female, especially someone well-trained in psychology, present at a second interview with an older, grieving woman.

So now they drove along, not saying anything. Rebecca's face was serious, verging on angry.

"I'm just keeping my mind open," he said at last."I'm, what do they call it, 'thinking out of the box.'"

"You're thinking that Erik is the person inside. The person who knows the Howdy Doody MO well enough to imitate it so closely. And that really disappoints me, because I thought you were a more self-inspected person. He'snot a serial killer, and you are obviously letting"— she stumbled over the next part—"letting other emotions bias your judgment. At the very least, I thought you were a better investigator."

He drove along, feeling cheerful."My other emotions like what?"

"I'm not going to be baited into juvenile banter. I didn't come along to play footsie with you. I thought I should take the opportunity to head off a really,
really
unprofitable and destructive line of thought on your part."

His cheerfulness faded fast. "Why are you so certain nobody should look at Erik? Because you know him so well? Because you couldn't possibly sleep with a killer?"

Her eyes blazed and she craned around to look behind them as if she were debating stepping out of the moving car. "This was a mistake. Take me back to the power station. You are overstepping professional bounds, Detective Ford."

"I'm not saying anything about your professional judgment that you didn't just say about mine."

She started to snap back but then accepted it. "I'm not sleeping with a killer," she said under her breath.

Which could be interpreted two ways,
Mo thought.
Not sleeping with.
Or just not with a killer.

"He's been involved from the beginning," Mo said. "He's very,
very
jealous of who gets information about the killings. He's showing very intense interest in the case, giving it more personal attention than I've ever seen any SAC do, ever."

"He was
assigned
the case, he's keeping information tight because there's the insider possibility, and he's a very
good
agent in charge who gives
every
case his close personal attention."

"And he's a very controlling personality—"

"How many of those are there in the State Police, the FBI, the various district attorney's offices, do you think?"

Mo tossed his head and admitted,"Just about all of em." Yes, he had been premature invoicing suspicions of Biedermann, probably it was the guy's attitude on the stairs that had made him say it out loud. She was right to tell him so. And maybe she was right, maybe bringing her along now had not been such a good idea, given the degree of his own fucked-upedness.

In Tarrytown, he turned off Route 9 and headed east. St. Pierre had told him that Mrs. Drysdale worked a two-to-ten evening shift at Quality Plastics, a big warehouse and plant on the outskirts of the city, and he was trying to remember just where it was. With any luck, they'd get a few details from Mrs. Drysdale, he'd drop Rebecca at her place by five o'clock with curt good-byes, he'd get back to Carla'smother's lovely house by seven.

"Can I make a personal observation?" she asked. She had been leaning against the passenger door, arms folded, watching him drive.

"Yeah. Sure. I guess." He hoped it wasn't too unflattering.

"I'm not very good at beating around the bush, playing word games. You'd think I would be, because I use words to finesse people into constructive perspectives on themselves all day . . . But I hate fencing with people about important things. It goes against my philosophical commitments, it doesn't come naturally for me, and it never leads anywhere good. I don't know you very well, but I think you're the same way. The no-bullshit type."

"True. Thanks."

"I'm saying this because, if you don't get yourself taken off this case by being stupid and impulsive, you and I will probably be working together. So I want to tell you that I am not currently involved in a personal relationship with Erik Biedermann. I don't say it as some kind of an invitation, I say it as something I don't want to have to dance around every time you and I consult. Not one more time."

"Okay. I'm sorry, honestly—"

She held up her hands, stopping him."I don't do invitations that way. Here's how I do them: Mo, so far I think you're pretty great. I think I know where you're at right now, emotionally. Let's get together off duty, maybe for dinner. And then let's be sure our personal interests, if it ends up we have any, stay out of our professional collaboration."

And instantly he felt terrific again. He pulled up at a stoplight and looked over at her. She was watching him, dead-eye serious, straight on. Turned toward him, one thigh curved beautifully on the seat, she looked stunning and formidable. The traffic moved and he accelerated again before he could answer her.

"You are something else," he told her finally. "You know that?"

The Quality Plastics plant consisted of a pair of gigantic rectangular steel buildings with a low brick office wing stuck on the front of one, next to the company sign and three dead saplings in circles of redwood bark.
Industrial"park,"
Mo thought, disgusted.
Another
Orwellian Newspeak oxymoron.
At the front office, he showed his ID and the guy in charge said yes, he already knew about Irene Bushnell's death. He led them back to an office substation in the warehouse section of the plant, paged Mrs. Drysdale, left them there.

The warehouse interior was cavernous. Quality Plastics made all kinds of things, stored here under bright fluorescents in stacks and on girdered shelves that reached to the ceiling, forty feet above. Just down the aisle, a worker was using a forklift with a spindle attachment to load a roll of bubble wrap the size of a minivan onto a high shelf. Farther down, another lift was moving around huge slabs of pale green foam. The air was sharp with the smell of plastic and the propane exhaust from the forklifts.

Mrs. Drysdale emerged from the distance, a little figure lost in a canyon of plastic products. When she got closer, Mo could see that she was a short, dumpy, sad-faced woman wearing jeans and a red sweatshirt emblazoned with the Quality Plastics logo. She was probably only around fifty, but her hair was gray and hung limply halfway to her slumped shoulders. When she walked up to the substation railing, she told them if they wanted to talk to her, they had to come back to where she was working. "I was gonna call in sick today," she said, "but then I didn't want to be alone at the apartment. I gotta kept my mindoff it."

They followed her back through the warehouse between towering stacks of foams and wraps. Other employees looked at them curiously, this guy in a dark suit with
cop
stamped into his forehead, and this big, gorgeous blonde, following the short, sad figure of Mrs. Drysdale. Back in the middle of the building, she stopped at the first of a row of huge foam blocks, each the size of a city bus. The row stretched for half a block.

"These're the buns," she explained. She been carrying a handheld computer inventory device and now switched it on. "They're going to the band saw later, I gotta keep track of the cutting lots." They did look like gigantic to aves of bread, except that they were made of flesh-toned plastic, Caucasian with an uneven tan. Mo prodded the nearest bun and yanked his hand back when he found that the surface was a tough hide that felt just about like human skin. Mrs. Drysdale found a tag stapled to the bun and pecked listlessly at her computer.

"Mrs. Drysdale," Mo began, "Detective St. Pierre mentioned several points that came up when he spoke to you earlier, and I felt we should follow up on them immediately. I'm sorry to have to discuss details that may be difficult for you, but the odd fact you tell us may be the one that allows us to catch Irene's killer. And we very much want to catch him."

Mrs. Drysdale walked on toward the next bun, her frumpy back to Mo and Rebecca as they followed her. She looked alone and lost between the fleshy loaves.

When she stopped again and began pecking at her computer, Mo continued, "You suggested that Irene may have had a, uh, a relationship with someone."

"Her and Byron," Mrs. Drysdale said quietly. "They would never settle down. I told Irene, you get married it's supposed to mean something. Just out of high school, it's okay you shop around, you flirt, you get your guy jealous, maybe guys fight over you, that feels good. But you're twenty-seven, you can't live in a soap opera." She slapped the computer with the flat of her hand. "This darned thing. I hate these things. Never comes out right." She scrabbled her fingers over the keyboard and slapped it again, her face puckering.

"Why did you think Irene was having an affair recently?"Rebecca asked softly. "What did she say that made you think that?"

Mrs. Drysdale began the walk to the next bun, and they followed. On the way, a pair of teenaged employees came buzzing around a corner in a golf cart, hot-rodding at all of eight miles an hour. They saw Mrs. Drysdale and slowed, sobered up, drove away. Word of her grief had traveled fast among the Quality Plastics staff.

Mrs. Drysdale would probably have walked the whole length of the warehouse without saying anything, but Rebecca caught up with her. She took her arm gently, steered her toward a thigh-high slab of foam, sat her on it."This is a very difficult time for you. It's a time when you need to take care of yourself. Why don't you rest here, talk to us if you can? Sometimes it helps to talk about a loved one you've lost." Mrs. Drysdale was quietly crying, and Rebecca began stroking her forehead. Mo was impressed at how easily it came to her: reaching out, comforting, taking care. Rebecca crouched in front of her, one hand on Mrs. Drysdale's thigh. Good body language for a non adversarial interrogation, Mo realized, getting below the subject's height so as not to be imposing, giving her complete attention, a posture that was consoling but that also compelled a response.

Mrs. Drysdale slumped, completely out of gas. "She asked me questions.'Mom, what if I had an affair with a guy?' It was something she wanted to talk about. First time I told her, T don't want to hear about this, you know how I feel.' Then a week later she's asking, 'When Dad was alive, did you ever fool around with another guy?' 'You think if By does something with somebody else, it's okay if I do?' Things like that."

"Did she ever say anything that would suggest who the man was? How she met him, or where?"

" 'Mom, did you ever think what it would be like to have a guy with some money?' " Mrs. Drysdale remembered. " 'Do you think I should have my hair redone?' She was thinking maybe a Princess Di cut, make her look kind of upper class. So I don't think it's one of the irregular friends."

"That's excellent. That's just what we're looking for," Rebecca prompted."You're doing fine."

So whoever Irene Bushnell's secret flame had been, Mo was thinking, she'd been conscious of the marketability factor. Knew she was reaching up.

Mrs. Drysdale was responding well to Rebecca's encouragement. "That made me think maybe it was somebody she worked for. And I thought that would be a bad idea."

"Tell us about that."

"I don't know anything. She cleans. . .
cleaned
houses, you got to have some money to have someone in to clean, maybe it was one of the people she worked for. I don't know."

"Would Byron know? Would they have talked about it if she were in love with someone else?"

Mrs. Drysdale scowled. "Never."Then her eyebrows tilted up in the middle again, hopelessness."Maybe the lady who runs The Gleam Team, but Irene wouldn't've said anything to her, she'd be afraid of losing the job."

They gave her some time, but she didn't say any more. She fidgeted listlessly with her inventory computer. With the foam on all sides, they sat in a quiet that felt like clogged ears.