The Prettiest Feathers (35 page)

I
hate motels, hotels, any home away from home. This one made me feel caged at a time when every ounce of me wanted to take action.

I had packed my .22, and I knew what Wolf looked like, so I decided it was safe to take a short walk. I put on my blue wool jacket and went out.

There were no neon signs or street lights to brighten the midnight sky. There wasn’t even any moonlight to reflect off the cover of light snow that had fallen. I felt as if I were wandering around in a sensory-deprivation tank, with only an occasional sound from the forest to keep me grounded in reality.

Words, other people’s words, were running through my mind like an incessant soundtrack. I love poetry. Dickinson. Millay. Frost. Plath. Berryman. Stevens. For several minutes I walked, moving to the rhythm of random lines from their works.

As I headed back to my room, I counted off the windows on the west side of the building, locating Pop’s room. His
draperies were open—and I could see someone sitting there, staring out.

But at what?

It occurred to me once again how little I knew my father. Goethe said, “Whoever wishes to keep a secret must hide the fact that he possesses one.” When I left him earlier, there had been no sign that he was intending to do anything but get a good night’s sleep.

I went inside and walked down the hallway to Pop’s room. I tapped lightly on the door. In a few seconds he was there, in T-shirt and jeans, his eyes heavy with the need for sleep. I’d never seen my father look quite so weary or so old.

“Just wanted to see if everything’s okay,” I said.

He looked at my jacket. “You’re not going out, are you?”

“Nope,” I said.

I didn’t see any reason to tell him I’d already been out. “Why are you still up?”

“Just thinking. Go tuck yourself in, and be sure to lock up.”

He watched as I returned to my room. I paused at the door and looked back at him. He gave me sort of a half wave, but continued to stand there. I knew what he was waiting for. The sound of my door, locking.

I was restless and had trouble sleeping. I kept waking up, looking around the darkened room, trying to figure out why I was so uneasy. Finally, it hit me. I got out of bed, walked to the window, and looked out at the graying of black night. It was almost dawn.

I had to see Wrenville. How long would it be before somebody told this guy that the feds had been asking questions about him? All that was necessary was that I see this guy from a distance. Certainly Pop would be willing to go along with that.

The shower had felt so good the night before, I decided to pay it another visit. I was getting ready to step in when I
saw my reflection in the mirror—the furrows across my forehead. I looked tired.
Just like Pop
, I thought.

“Oh, God,” I said, grabbing my clothes and pulling them back on.

I rang Pop’s room, but there was no answer. I went down the hall and pounded on his door. Still no answer.

I returned to my room, called the front desk, and asked if Dr. Frank had left a message for me.

“No,” the desk clerk told me. “He had some coffee here in the lobby, then left.”

“Are you sure?”

“He didn’t check out, miss. I believe he said he was going to breakfast.”

“When?”

“Maybe a half hour ago.”

Whoever wishes to keep a secret must hide the fact that he possesses one
.

I knew, of course, that he had gone after Wolf. Carver. Chadwick. Pease. Wrenville.

Daedalus Construction. I pulled the phone book out of the drawer in my bedside table and found the listing in the yellow pages. A woman answered on the first ring.

“Daedalus Construction.”

“Mr. Wrenville, please,” I said.

I didn’t know what I’d do if I reached him, but I didn’t have to worry about it.

“Mr. Wrenville is out of the office at the moment,” she said. “May I have him return your call?”

I hung up.

Pop said that he had rescheduled an early meeting with Wrenville because of the feds. But
where
?

All my life, I’d been watching Pop open that window in his mind—to let a killer fly in. Now I had to let Pop wander into my mind; only he could tell me where he was.

Pop knew that the man had a sustaining identity. A profession that served as a foundation for all his other identities. A source of support. The name—Christopher Wrenville—was
an adulteration of Christopher Wren, a great architect, but also a man whose namesake was a bird. Wrenville loved birds, especially ravens. He loved how they imitated other birds, moved about, avoided danger. But Wrenville, himself, was a homing pigeon. Hadn’t Pop found him within twenty miles of the place where he was born?

Homing pigeon
.

The place where he was born
.

I knew where my father was. And I knew that Wrenville was with him.

S
now continued to fall, swirling in the light wind. Deer hunters loved this stuff. The white covering made tracking their quarry that much easier. The announcer on the local radio station chatted up the hunters’ good fortune, and speculated about the probable increase in the deer kill.

Smoke from wood fires drifted up from chimneys along the sides of the state road as I drove west. Vermont was locking itself up for the winter months. The earth freezes, the wind cuts its way down from Canada, and it snows.

The roads were where my map said they would be. As I neared the end of an unnumbered road outside Brownsville, I saw the sign.

Daedalus Construction.

The previous night, after I had heard Lane turn her lock and drop the chain in place, I sat with the yellow pages until I found an ad for a hardware store that listed the owner’s name. Then I turned to the white pages and found his home phone number. It required some gentle persuasion, and the
promise of 250 dollars for eight bucks’ worth of purchases, but he finally agreed to meet me at his shop.

I found what I needed, then drove again to the house in Saxtons River. I discovered what I expected to discover, made a few alterations, and returned to the motel.

The stage was set.

Wolf thought he was superior to every cop who ever wore a badge. He was probably right. None had ever posed a real threat to him, or a risk to his freedom. He never saw in any of them the power he attributed to the stepfather he was driven to destroy. But then, years later, he found the ultimate challenge, one that promised the highest of highs.

Let me tell you a story, lad
.

Many years after my fathers death, I dreamed about a white-haired old man. I was alone, walking through the alley to my apartment. He was there, sitting on the pavement, his legs stretched out in front of him, his back against the brick wall. I could see the white hair. I knew that he was drunk—passed out on the cinders, moaning. I grabbed him by his shirt, pulled him to his feet, and smashed his head against the wall, again and again, until he was dead
.

I could see my breath in the cold, still night—puffs of air shaped like small ghosts
.

When I awakened, I knew there was nothing of which I was incapable
.

Somewhere along the line Wolf had made one final connection. In me he saw more than just the father of the lead investigator on the Sarah Sinclair case. He saw Dr. Lucas Frank. The one man left who was worth fearing, the one who might best him at his own game.

You want me dead, don’t you? I’m worthy enough to inherit the mantle of the most powerful man in your universe. He died before you could get him, before you could slay your own ghosts. Once I’m out of the way, you wont ever have to return to the cellar
.

It’s your misfortune that I understand
.

Wolf was so blinded by imagined omnipotence, he was
unable to envision his own demise. He
had
to play his game; he couldn’t resist. And I was gambling that he wouldn’t expect me to arrive until he was finished with Lane.

I turned onto the dirt drive and began climbing through a densely wooded area. After a mile and a half, there was an area of open fields, then a development—Birdland, the sign said—and a street directory. Blue Jay Way. Cardinal Lane. Blackbird Place. The main street was Raven Avenue.

Paul Wolf had built himself another town.

As crazy as his concept seemed, the man had designed and built a small and attractive settlement on the side of the hill. Each house was unique, and a careful attention to detail was evident. There was a sense of community about the place, yet each home had its privacy.

Beyond the self-contained village, the road climbed back through the woods to another clearing. There was a large red barn ahead with the Daedalus sign on the front. A pickup truck with the same business logo painted on its door sat nearby.

I parked next to the truck and walked toward a stairway on the side of the barn. A head of me, the mountain was engulfed by clouds and blowing snow. I climbed the stairs and stepped into a small waiting room.

You’ve left me no choice, lad. It’s too bad you didn’t handle the old man in your own dreams. Now I have to stop you
.

I could hear his voice—he was talking on the phone—and I moved to the open door. His office took up the remainder of the long loft. There were bookcases and shelves carved from exotic woods as well as exquisite local oak and maple. The walls were crowded with framed photographs of birds—no doubt specimens he had stalked and captured on film. He waved me in.

Christopher Wrenville was about six feet tall, 185 pounds, well built, with graying hair, a mustache, and a ruddy, outdoor complexion. As I walked toward him, I continued my inventory of the room.

A large stereo system dominated the wall behind his desk, but was silent. There was a computer screen filled with swans swimming back and forth on a pond. The bookcases held leather-bound collectors’ editions of classics, including several editions of Peterson’s
Field Guild to the Birds
, Bulfinch’s
Mythology
, books on building design and site preparation, and a single, worn copy of John Fowles’s
The Collector
.

“Impressive,” I said, as he hung up the phone.

“I’ve had the time, and, fortunately, the resources to indulge myself a bit.”

We shook hands and he gestured toward the leather chair in front of his desk. I sat, and continued to survey the room.

“I have a castle,” I said, still looking away from him.

“A castle.”

“In Stratford, England.”

I turned toward the desk and looked into his blue eyes.

“I want it moved—stone by numbered stone—possibly to this piece of land here in Vermont.”

I spread the crude copy of the surveyor’s map in front of him.

“I want to hire someone who will give his complete attention to each detail—someone to oversee the entire project, beginning with the site assessment.”

“There’s a building on here now,” he said.

“Remove it. I have no interest in that. It’s the water that runs under the structure that I’d like you to look at this morning. I’m flying to London tonight, and I want to be able to close the deal on the land before I leave. Obviously I’ll leave a retainer with you as well.”

I watched as he studied the map.

“There’s no indication of a stream on here,” he said. “If there’s something running underground, it wouldn’t be shown on this map. Where is the place?”

“A small village south of Bellows Falls. It’s called Saxtons River.”

“I know where it is,” he said, never looking up from the map.

We agreed that I would lead the way in my rental car, with him following in his truck. When we stepped out of the loft, it was snowing heavily, nearly obscuring the mountain.

“Early for this,” he said. “A dusting, maybe, but not this.”

I led the way back down the hill, toward the interstate. He had his headlights on because of the weather, so I could see him driving right behind me.

The best psychopath will beat the best shrink nearly every time. He knows how to create doubt. His normal state is barely a degree above lethargic. Calm, laid back, unconcerned. Wrenville was one of the best. His mask of sanity was intact.

The man never even batted an eye when I said Saxtons River. If it hadn’t been for the walls of birds, the books, his town of Birdland, I would have doubted myself.

But Wrenville was Wolf. I was sure of it.

I opened the envelope beside me on the passenger seat. The .32 slipped comfortably into my jacket pocket. I sifted through the composite drawings until I came to the one I wanted—right down to the mustache and the expressionless eyes. It was Wrenville. It was Wolf.

Twenty years earlier I had worked a case on Boston’s south shore. Three young men, all hitchhikers, had—in separate incidents—been sexually assaulted, stabbed to death, then dumped in wooded areas off main roads. The police had developed a suspect, a twenty-eight-year-old man who lived with his mother and sister.

Investigators questioned Oscar Ray twice, but got nowhere. His alibi was flimsy. The route he traveled on his way home from a job in a bowling alley took him right by the three locations where the bodies had been found—and, in one case, the timing was perfect. Both he and his car fit descriptions provided by witnesses. And Oscar had a prior: the sexual assault of a fifteen-year-old when Oscar was nineteen.