Breaking news. Two crazies in a Miami restaurant had chopped people with a machete and stabbed with knives. Wounded five, killed three. They would have killed more if they hadn’t been dropped hard by a diner who was an armed off-duty policeman.
Jane surfed the channels, searching for an old black-and-white movie made in an age of innocence. Preferably a musical with a corny love story and a touch of comedy, not in the least ironic or hip. She couldn’t find one.
Off with the TV, on with the bedside clock-radio.
She located a station risking oldies from the ’50s, though few people alive remembered that decade anymore. It was something called “The Presley and Platters Hour.” The Platters were just rolling into the opening bars of “Twilight Time,” which was all right with her.
She put a pillow on her lap. She smoothed out the crumpled page from the notepad on which Jimmy Bob had written at her direction, and she placed it on the pillow.
As she sipped the Coke and vodka, Jane studied the names on the paper. Aspasia, a brothel named after the mistress of a statesman of ancient Athens. William Sterling Overton, kick-ass tort attorney.
She wondered about beautiful girls who were totally submissive, who were incapable of disobedience, who would satisfy even the most extreme desires, whose permanent silence was assured. She remembered the video of laboratory mice moving in regimented cadres.
Her thoughts were colder than the ice in her drink glass.
David James Michael, the billionaire, would be hard to get at.
Bertold Shenneck might be more vulnerable but still difficult.
In the morning, she would research William Sterling Overton. At the moment, he seemed to be an easier target.
She hoped the attorney could be persuaded to reveal to her the location of Shenneck’s playpen, Aspasia. She hoped he wouldn’t do something stupid and leave her no choice but to kill him.
Although she had not yet researched him and though he was no less a human being than she was, Jane suspected that, if she were forced to kill him, she would have no reason for remorse.
12
* * *
AT NINE O’CLOCK Friday morning, in her office in Springfield Town Center, Gladys Chang used a booster pillow on her chair, to bring her into a correct relationship with her desk.
Nathan Silverman sat in one of the two client chairs, smiling too much for an FBI agent making serious inquiries. He knew he was smiling excessively, but he couldn’t maintain a solemn expression because he delighted in looking at the woman and listening to her.
Mrs. Chang, thirtysomething, a second-generation Chinese American, was a stylish dresser and a petite dynamo—maybe all of five feet if she were to take off her high-heel shoes—with delicate features and jet-black hair and a musical voice. She insisted on being called Glad. Silverman was greatly charmed by her, and though his appreciation didn’t have an erotic edge—well, not much—he felt vaguely guilty because he was in fact a happily married man.
“Oh,” Mrs. Chang said, “Mrs. Hawk’s house, a whirlwind sale, zip-zoom-zap, listed and sold the same day to a developer who builds on spec. Very sad deal. I took longer to decide which hummingbird feeder to buy for my patio. Do you like hummingbirds, Nathan?”
“Yes,” he said. “They’re quite pretty, aren’t they?”
“Wonderful! Those iridescent feathers! And so industrious. Of the many species, in Virginia we see mostly the ruby-throated. Did you know the ruby-throated migrates from South America and flies nonstop for five hundred miles across the Gulf of Mexico?”
“Five hundred miles nonstop. That’s remarkable.”
“They build nests from plant down and spiderwebs. Spiderwebs!” She put one hand to her breast, as if the thought of building with something as delicate as spiderwebs took her breath away. “And they decorate the nests with lichen. Decorate! How sweet is that?”
“That’s delightful. Mrs. Chang—” She held up a hand to correct him. “I’m sorry,” he said. “Glad. A moment ago, Glad, you said…‘very sad deal.’ If Jane’s house sold so quickly, isn’t that good?”
“Not at her price. Crazy low. It pained me. She didn’t care as much about price as about how quick I could move it, and the poor girl wouldn’t listen to reason.”
“Maybe she couldn’t bear living there…after what happened to her husband.”
Mrs. Chang made a fist of her right hand and rapped it three times over her heart. “How terrible. I knew him a little. I sold the house to them. He was such a nice man. I knew about the suicide, of course. I know everything in neighborhoods where I sell houses. But she lived there two months after it happened, before she came to me. May I tell you something, Nathan, and you won’t think I’m bragging? I am very good at reading people. I’m not gifted with many talents, but I have that one. And I am sincerely sure it wasn’t grief that made her sell the house fast. It was fear.”
“Jane isn’t someone who scares,” he said. “Not easily, anyway.”
“Fraidy-cats don’t become FBI. Of course. But she wasn’t afraid for herself. She was scared for her sweet hummingbird, her little boy. What a darling little boy! She kept him close, didn’t want to let him out of her sight.”
“She told you she was afraid for him?”
“No. She didn’t have to. It was as plain as the print on a billboard. Anybody she didn’t know approached the boy, Mrs. Hawk tensed up. Once or twice, I thought she might draw her gun.”
Nathan leaned forward in his chair. “You think she had a concealed weapon?”
“She’s FBI. Why wouldn’t she have a gun? I got a glimpse of it once. She was leaning over the desk. Her blazer was unbuttoned and it hung open, and I just happened to see the holster, the handle of the gun along her left side.”
Less to Mrs. Chang than to himself, Silverman said, “But who would want to harm Travis?”
The Realtor leaned over her desk and pointed at him, jabbed her forefinger at him. “There is the question for your FBI, Nathan. Your FBI should investigate just that very thing. What horrible kind of person would want to hurt that beautiful little hummingbird? You go find out. You go find that horrible person and lock him up.”
13
* * *
FRIDAY MORNING, in her motel room, Jane spent two hours with more autopsy reports. She found three cases in which the forensic pathologists trephined decedents’ skulls and examined their brains.
One of the three was in Chicago. The part of the report dealing with the dead man’s gray matter was heavily redacted. Fully half the words had been electronically blacked out.
Autopsy reports were public records. These electronic files were the original documents. If a court ordered files released to a petitioner, authorities could attempt redaction of copies within the limits of the law. But it wasn’t legal to tamper with originals.
In the second case, involving the autopsy of a woman in Dallas, examination of the brain was one of the numbered items on the table of contents. But that section of the report had gone missing.
The third decedent, Benedetta Jane Ashcroft, had died by her own hand in a hotel in Century City. The L.A. medical examiner’s attending forensic pathologist, Dr. Emily Jo Rossman, examined the brain and made extensive observations, some of which were reported in language too technical for Jane to fully understand.
Photos of the brain were referenced in the report. The file contained no such photos.
14
* * *
AT 9:15, ON HER WAY out for the day, Jane stopped in the motel office to pay cash for another night.
The clerk was a girl, nineteen or twenty. Chopped everywhichway black hair. Dangling silver-spider earrings. A badge pinned to her shirt identified her as CHLOE. Engrossed in something that she was doing on her smartphone, Chloe put it aside reluctantly.
On the screen, Jane saw a photo of the actor Trai Byers.
After paying, she said, “Do you have one of those celebrity-tracking apps? Star Spotter or Just Spotted, anything like that?”
“Cooler than that. There’s always something way cooler like about every six months.”
“Could you do me a favor? This famous guy I’m interested in—is he in L.A. right now or where?”