The Last Blue Plate Special (29 page)

“That’s one of the few things,” she answered. “I’ll just ask them to wait at their campsite for a few more minutes. But then
we’ll have to talk to them, Blue. We have a lot of work to do today.”

“What campsite?” I yelled as she went to the door. There was a businesslike drone of conversation between Rox and two male
voices, and Brontë stopped barking.

“The one fifty yards outside your door,” Rox yelled into the bathroom as I wasted a lot of water in a full-blast shower. “They’ve
been out there since seven, even have a chemical toilet.”

Minutes later I looked out the little bathroom window that faces the back of my property. In a hollow partway up a wash I
saw a tidy campsite outfitted with everything you’d need to scale Everest except the oxygen tanks. Seated on folding camp
chairs were two men in khaki shorts and T-shirts. One was watching the desert through binoculars the size of a good dictionary.
The other was talking on a cell phone. Both wore sidearms in holsters. Across the lap of the one with the binoculars lay a
high-powered rifle equipped with a day scope. It seemed clear they weren’t there to meditate.

“Roxie,” I singsonged, hopping around my bedroom pulling on underwear, “it’s time to tell me now. There are heavily armed
Eagle Scouts in my yard. What did I miss last night?”

She sat on the edge of the bed.

“Remember when I was talking to Wes about Bettina Ashe and all the foods you can’t eat if you’re taking MAOIs?” she asked.

“Yeah.”

I’d grabbed a beige knit skirt from the closet and was trying to pull it over my hips. Already I knew it was going to be a
skirt day. Already I knew I was going to be working. Hard.

“Remember when I told you everybody started yelling around him and he had to hang up?”

“Yeah, Rox, get to the point.”

I found a bra, then a blousy white knit top with a cowl collar. Gold earrings. Professional look, I thought. Or at least it
would be when I put on some shoes.

“Listen,” she said, and I did. “Now, what happened at police headquarters last night was a phone call from the Secret Service
advising the San Diego Police Department that the FBI would now be involved in the Sword of Heaven case. Wes called back right
after you left. Sword is the FBI’s prey now. Our tax dollars at work. He’s briefed the agents already. They know about the
connection between you and Sword, about the plates. They think he’ll visit you again. They’re waiting.”

“But Roxie,” I said, wanting to talk about nothing but last night and how was I supposed to let her go live in Philadelphia
when she was inside my mind now, permanently, “why? The Rainer Clinic is virtually closed. Sword can’t kill again, at least
not immediately. The local police didn’t request FBI backup before. Why now?”

“Because,” she said, knitting her brow, “our woman vice presidential candidate is making an unscheduled campaign stop here
tomorrow morning. It’s in today’s paper, but the news was on the Internet last night. Sword saw it. Go look at your e-mail.”

Rox had already booted up my computer, so I clicked on the server’s icon and waited. In seconds the list of mail was visible.
One from dad, as usual. Two from book companies tracing out-of-print books for me. Five or six from discussion groups. One
from “[email protected].” It had been copied to me from an original sent to the
San Diego Union-Tribune
, with copies to eighteen network and cable TV stations and the SDPD. I brought it up on the screen and noticed its buttons.
Three little blue willow plates now, not two.

The third time’s the charm.

“Vice President is a man not a women,” it said. “This women tyring to be a man is an abomination must dye. The Sword of Heaven
is swift and will kill with guns this time.”

The predictable typed signature was, “The Sword of Heaven.”

A
t least ‘abomination’ is spelled right,” I told Roxie.

The word made me think about Old Testament vengeance and Lilith and wild places and the photograph of an adobe shack on my
wall. I thought about a grid of universal intention whose purposes were apparently served at the moment by a woman running
for the second highest office in the United States. And the killer who threatened to stop that. The killer who kept leaving
me blue willow plates. No coincidence, none of it. And my only choice, I realized, was to hang on for the ride or … well,
there was no other choice.

“Probably copied it out of the Bible,” Rox answered, pouring coffee. “I have to leave soon, Blue. I’m meeting Jennings Rainer
and Kate Van Der Elst at the Rainer Clinic at noon.”

I’d been deep in thought, planning what to do. The plan felt right even though nobody else would see it that way.

“You’re what?” I said. “What for? And it won’t take you three hours to get down there, anyway.”

“Not everybody drives twenty miles over the speed limit,” she mentioned. “And the reason is that we’re going to run a blood
test on Kate, see if she’s got an MAOI in her system. If she does, there’s a pretty good chance my theory’s correct even though
we’ll never really know unless Sword tells us. Rainer has the equipment to run the test at his clinic. I’ll draw the blood,
Rainer will run the analysis, and then I’ll have the test replicated at another lab in case it’s needed later as evidence.
And there’s something else—”

“How did Jennings Rainer get involved in this?” I interrupted over a bowl of cereal I was trying to eat before the bran flakes
got soggy. “And where did Kate stay last night? Did she stay home or go to the hotel where Pieter is?”

“She went to a different hotel,” Rox said approvingly. “It was good for her to take control that way, meet her need for security
on her own. You gave her good advice, Blue. Same with Rainer. He called me yesterday afternoon, said you’d referred him to
me. I can’t see him because there’d be conflict over my working for the police on a case in which he’s technically a suspect.
He understood that. I referred him to another psychiatrist, someone I know, and then checked to be sure he’d made an appointment,
which he had. I asked him to do the blood test on Kate today, Blue. I wanted him to feel that he’d done his part to help the
police find the killer.”

“But Rox, what if he
is
the killer? You’re sending Kate right into his hands!”

“I don’t think he is, and he won’t be touching Kate in any event,” she said. “The other thing I didn’t tell you is about the
list of medications BB saw in Isadora Grecchi’s medicine cabinet.”

“Yeah?”

“They’re all antidepressants, Blue. And two of them, Parnate and Nardil, are MAOIs. Looks like Grecchi’s got a serious problem
with clinical depression and her physician’s trying everything in the book. Nobody prescribes MAOIs now unless the client
is unresponsive to everything else. But there it is. Grecchi’s got the stuff. It doesn’t look good for her.”

“Oh, no, “ I muttered. “Did you tell Rathbone?”

“I told him, but I also told him depressed people are usually only a danger to themselves. They commit suicide to escape the
indescribable despair of depression, but generally they don’t commit murder. I don’t think he really understood, but he did
understand that Grecchi’s possession of MAOIs doesn’t mean she’s the perp. It only moves her up a slot in the list of suspects.
Anyway, you and I are supposed to be in Rathbone’s office by one o’clock for a briefing with the FBI guy who’s in charge now,
and—”

“Roxie, could you handle that alone?” I interrupted. “You’ll have the results from Kate’s test. If she’s got this MAOI stuff
in her blood, then you’re the one to explain it to the FBI. I don’t know anything about antidepressants and blood pressure.
Neither do I know anything about psychiatric profiles of serial killers. There’s something else I need to do, okay?”

The look I got was the same one my mother gave me when I was eight and told her I would be digging for buried pirate treasure
in the backyard all day and therefore could not go to school. To her credit, my mother took the time to explain that as far
as anyone knew, no pirates had sailed the sea of corn surrounding Waterloo, Illinois, ten miles from the Mississippi River,
and so could not have buried treasure in our yard. Roxie merely fumed.

“Blue, Sword has killed three people already and now threatens to kill a vice presidential candidate within less than twenty-four
hours! What can you possibly have to do that can’t wait?”

I let Brontë lap the rest of the milk from my cereal and eyed Roxie sitting next to me at my kitchen counter on a barstool.
In her black turtleneck she looked like an undercover agent. She also looked puzzled and harried. She glanced at her watch,
cocked her head at me. Irritated. I’d expected this, but if Rox and I wanted to have anything resembling the serious relationship
that kept shaping up between us, then I had to make something about myself crystal clear.

“I need to talk about last night,” I began, facing her squarely. “Something hap—”

She grabbed both my hands in hers and looked even more harried. “Girl, I know,” she whispered. “But not now. There’s no time.
We’ve got these bozos outside who want you to tell them about every damn snake trail in the desert, and then we’ve got to
help Rathbone. We’ve got a
job
here, Blue. It’s important.”

“Rox, last night—”

“I know,” she said, holding my hands so tight it hurt. “But we can’t go there now, understand? There isn’t
time.
We’ll talk later. I know we have to talk. I’m not trying to duck the Philadelphia thing, Blue. It’s tearing me apart. We’ll
work something out. I don’t know what. But right now—”

“It’s not about Philadelphia and you leaving or me staying, it’s way beyond that. I learned to trust you last night,” I went
on determinedly. “Now I’m asking you to trust me.”

She shook her head and her beads rattled with impatience. “I do, Blue, but—”

Taking a deep breath, I launched into the defense of a decision that hadn’t existed three minutes earlier.

“I’m asking you to trust me, trust the way I am and think, even though it’s not your way,” I said. “I’m asking you to trust
me out of the dark, out of bed, away from each other without this thing that pulls us together and blinds us to everything
else. There are some things I need to do today and they aren’t ‘rational,’ but I think they might have something to do with
Sword. I don’t even know why I think that, I just do. But I can’t defend my thoughts in your terms, so I don’t want to talk
about them. I just want you to trust me. Will you?”

There was a long silence in which I could hear my stomach reducing bran flakes to chemical gruel.

“Okay, yes,” she said somberly. “Girl, I
do
trust you.”

I hadn’t planned on getting married in my kitchen with two armed FBI agents in camp chairs outside the window, but that’s
what it felt like.

We decided that I’d brief the agents on the desert terrain from which Sword might reappear, since Roxie knew nothing about
the area except that it was hot and short on buildings. The two men sat on my couch happily perusing maps of the AnzaBorrego
Desert and asking questions about what they called the “plate drops.” What time, where, and did I understand the significance
of the plates, the blue willow pattern? The FBI is not without impressive resources, but I was still stunned when one of them
unfolded a large diagram of a blue willow plate on my coffee table. Somebody, I knew, had been up all night drawing it on
a computer.

“I don’t know what the plates are about,” I told them, “although I do know a lot about the plates. The design reflects an
Asian story, but it was first used on plates in England. It is …” I said, pausing dramatically, “the most popular china pattern
in the world.
” I was sure Hutton Pierce, the curator, would have been proud.

“It’s real popular with us right now, too,” one of the agents growled amiably, pointing to the three little figures on the
bridge. “You’re a psychologist, right? One of our guys at Quantico is guessing the perp has had some problem with authority
figures, maybe an abusive mother since the victims are women, and feels trapped like the characters in the story.”

“I’m a
social
psychologist,” I replied, wondering how many more times I would have to explain this before I died. “I analyze tons of data
and draw conclusions based on it. I can only talk about the likelihood that a certain proportion of a defined population will
do or not do a particular thing. I can never talk about individuals. I have no idea what motivates the perpetrator of these
crimes.”

“So what proportion of a population defined as ‘blue-willow-plate-nuts’ is likely to kill women in positions formerly reserved
for men?” the other one asked.

These guys weren’t dumb, I realized. It was a good question. And I’d walked right into it. I could feel Roxie smiling beside
me even though I didn’t look at her.

“I talked to a woman in Phoenix who’s something of an expert on these plates, and she said—”

“Name?” the first guy interrupted, grabbing a pen from the cargo pocket of his tan shorts. “We’ll need her name and phone
number.”

“Um, Lauer. Jackie Lauer. I didn’t keep her number, but you can find her on the Internet. Look under either ‘blue willow’
or ‘Crankshaft Car Club.’ And what she told me is that blue willow collectors break down into two categories—people who want
the plates for their potential monetary value and those who are attracted by the design. One’s purely practical, the other
is emotional. The second category is comprised primarily of women. I’d say Sword is attached to these plates emotionally rather
than practically.”

“So you think our guy’s a girl?”

“I think the gender markers are inconsistent,” I concluded, wishing I didn’t sound like a pompous windbag.

“Yeah,” they both said.

“So what are you going to do if the perp shows up out here with another plate?” Rox asked them.