“When I was in high school,” I told her as she continued to turn her end of a Day-Glo pink jump rope, “I had a girlfriend over at John Carroll. This was in my sophomore and junior years.”
“Mmm, hmmm. Nice Catholic girl? White blouse, plaid skirt, saddle shoes?”
“She was very nice. Actually, she’s a botanist now. See, nice? I used to walk all the way over to South Carolina Avenue just on the off chance I might see Jeanne for a couple of minutes after she finished school. I was seriously smitten.”
“Must have been the saddle shoes. Are you trying to tell me that you’re smitten again?” Christine laughed. The kids couldn’t quite hear us, but they were laughing anyway.
“I am way beyond smitten. I am smote.”
“Well that’s good,” she said and continued to turn the pink rope and smile at her kids, “because so am I. And when this case is over, Alex—”
“Anything you want, just say the word.”
Her eyes brightened even more than was usual. “A weekend away from everything. Maybe at a country inn, but anywhere remote will do just fine.”
I wanted to hold Christine so much. I wanted to kiss her right there, but that wasn’t going to happen in the crowded schoolyard.
“It’s a date,” I said. “It’s a promise.”
“I’ll hold you to it. Smote, that’s good. We can try that on our weekend away.”
Chapter 124
BACK HOME, I worked on the Pierce case until supper time. I ate a quick meal of hamburgers and summer squash with Nana and the kids. I took some more heavy heat for being an incurable and unrepentant workaholic. Nana cut me a slice of pie, and I retreated to my room again. Well fed, but deeply unsatisfied.
I couldn’t help it — I was worried. Thomas Pierce might already have grabbed another victim. He could be performing an “autopsy” tonight. He could send us a message at any time.
I reread the notes I had plastered on the bedroom wall. I felt as if the answer were on the tip of my tongue and it was driving me crazy. People’s lives hung in the balance.
He had “pierced” the heart of Isabella Calais.
His apartment in Cambridge was an obsessive shrine to her memory.
He had returned “home” when he went to Point Pleasant Beach. The opportunity to catch him was there — if we were smart enough, if we were as good as he was.
What were we missing, the FBI and me?
I played more word games with the assortment of clues.
He always “pierces” his victims. I wondered if he was impotent or had become impotent, unable to have a sexual relationship with Isabella.
Mr. Smith operates like a doctor — which Pierce nearly was — which his father and his siblings are. He had failed as a doctor.
I went to bed early, around eleven, but I couldn’t sleep. I guess I’d just wanted to try and turn the case off. I finally called Christine and we talked for about an hour. As we talked and I listened to the music of her voice, I couldn’t help thinking about Pierce and Isabella Calais.
Pierce had loved her. Obsessive love. What would happen if I lost Christine now? What happened to Pierce after the murder? Had he gone mad?
After I got off the phone, I went back at the case again. For a while, I thought his pattern might have something to do with Homer’s Odyssey. He was heading home after a series of tragedies and misfortunes? No, that wasn’t it.
What the hell was the key to his code? If he wanted to drive all of us mad, it was working.
I began to play with the names of the victims, starting with Isabella and ending with Inez. I goes full circle to I? Full circle? Circles? I looked at the clock on the desk — it was almost one-thirty in the morning, but I kept at it.
I wrote — I.
I. Was that something? It could be a start. The personal pronoun I? I tried a few combinations with the letters
of the names.