I recalled that the first Cambridge police reports had convincingly described Pierce’s grief at the murder scene as “impossible to fake.” One of the detectives had written, “He is shocked, surprised, utterly heartbroken. Thomas Pierce not considered a suspect at this time.”
What else, what else? There had to be a clue here. There had to be a pattern.
A framed quote was hung in the hallway. Without God, We Are Condemned to Be Free. Was it Sartre? I thought so. I wondered whose thinking it really represented. Did Pierce take it seriously himself or was he making a joke? Condemned was a word that interested me. Was Thomas Pierce a condemned man?
In the master bedroom there was a bookcase with a well-preserved, three-volume set of H. L. Mencken’s The American Language. It rested on the top shelf. Obviously, this was a prized possession. Maybe it had been a gift? I remembered that Pierce had been a dual major as an undergraduate: biology and philosophy. Philosophy texts were everywhere in the apartment. I read the spines: Jacques Derrida, Foucault, Jean Baudrillard, Heidegger, Habermas, Sartre.
There was several dictionaries as welclass="underline" French, German, English, Italian, and Spanish. A compact, two-volume set of the Oxford English Dictionary had type so small it came with a magnifying glass.
There was a framed diagram of the human voice mechanism directly over Pierce’s work desk. And a quote: “Language is more than speech.” Several books by the linguist and activist Noam Chomsky were on his desk. What I remembered about Chomsky was that he had suggested a complex biological component of language acquisition. He had a view of the mind as a set of mental organs. I think that was Chomsky.
I wondered what, if anything, Noam Chomsky or the diagram of the human voice mechanism had to do with Smith, or the death of Isabella Calais.
I was lost in my thoughts, when I was startled by a loud buzzing noise. It came from the kitchen at the other end of the hall.
I thought I was alone in the apartment, and the buzzing spooked me. I took my Glock from its shoulder holster and started down the long narrow hallway. Then I began to run.
I entered the kitchen with my gun in position and then understood what the buzzing was. I had brought along a PowerBook that Pierce had left in his hotel room in Princeton. Left on purpose? Left as another clue? A special alarm on the laptop personal computer was the source of the noise.
Had he sent a message to us? A fax or Voice mail? Or perhaps someone was sending a message to Pierce? Who would be sending him messages?
I checked voice mail first. It was Pierce.
His voice was strong and steady and almost soothing. It was the voice of someone in control of himself and the situation. It was eerie under the circumstances, to be hearing it alone in his apartment.
Dr. Cross-at least I suspect it’s you I’ve reached. This is the kind of message I used to receive when I was tracking Smith.
Of course, I was using the messages for misdirection, sending them myself. I wanted to mislead the police, the FBI. Who knows, maybe I still do.
At any rate, here’s your very first message-Anthony Bruno, Brielle, New Jersey.
Why don’t you come to the seashore and join me for a swim? Have you arrived at any conclusions about Isabella yet? She is important to all of this. You’re right to be in Cambridge.
Smith/Pierce
Chapter 112
THE FBI provided me with a helicopter out of Logan International Airport to fly me to Brielle, New Jersey. I was on board the Disorient Express and there was no getting off.
I spent the flight obsessing about Pierce, his apartment, Isabella Calais, their apartment, his studies in biology and modern philosophy, Noam Chomsky. I wouldn’t have thought it possible, wouldn’t have dreamed it possible, but Pierce was already eclipsing Gary Soneji and Simon Conklin. I despised everything about Pierce. Seeing the pictures of Isabella Calasis had done it for me.
Alien? I wrote on the foolscap pad lying across my lap. He identifies with descriptor.
Alienated? Alienated from what? Idyllic upbringing in California. Doesn’t fit any of the psychopathic profiles we used before. He’s an original. He secretly enjoys that, doesn’t he?
No discernible pattern to murders that link with a psychological motive.
Murders seem haphazard and arbitrary! He revels in his own originality.
Dr. Sante, Simon Conklin, now Anthony Bruno. Why them? Does Conklin count?
Seems impossible to predict Thomas Pierce’s next move. His next kill.
Why go south toward the New Jersey Shore?
It had occurred to me that he was originally from a shore town. Pierce had grown up near Laguna Beach in Southern California. Was he going home, in a manner of speaking? Was the New Jersey Shore as close to home as he could get-as close as he dared go?
I now had a reasonable amount of information about his background in California before he came east. He had lived on a working farm not far from the famous Irvine Ranch properties. Three generations of doctors in the family. Good, hardworking people. His siblings were all dong well, and not one of them believed that Thomas was capable of any of this mayhem and murder he was accused of committing.
FBI says Mr. Smith is disorganized, chaotic, unpredictable, I scribbled in my pad.
What if they’re wrong? Pierce is responsible for much of their data about Smith. Pierce created Mr. Smith, then did the profile on him.
I kept revisiting his and Isabella’s apartment in my mind. The place was so very neat and organized. The home had a definite organizing principle. It revolved around Isabella-her pictures, clothes, even her perfume bottles had been left in place. The smell of L’Air du Temps and Je Reviens permeated their bedroom to this day.
Thomas Pierce had loved her. Pierce had loved. Pierce had felt passion and emotion. That was another thing the FBI was wrong about. He’d killed because he thought he was losing her, and he couldn’t bear it. Was Isabella the only person who had ever loved Pierce?
Another small piece of the puzzle suddenly fell into place! I was so struck by it that I said it aloud in the helicopter. “Her heart on a spear!”
He had “pierced” her heart! Jesus Christ! He had confessed to the very first murder! He had confessed!
He’d left a clue, but the police missed it. What else were we missing? What was he up to now? What did “Mr. Smith” represent inside his mind? Was everything representational for him? Symbolic? Artistic? Was he creating a kind of language for us to follow? Or was it even simpler? He had “pierced” her heart. Pierce wanted to be caught. Caught and punished.
Crime and punishment.
Why couldn’t we catch him?
I landed in New Jersey around five at night. Kyle Craig was waiting for me. Kyle was sitting on the hood of a dark blue Town Car. He was drinking Samuel Adams beer out of a bottle.
“You find Anthony Bruno yet?” I called out as I walked toward him. “You find the body?”
Chapter 113
MR. SMITH goes to the seashore. Sounded like an unimaginative children’s story.
There was enough moonlight for Thomas Pierce to make his way along the long stretch of glowing White sand at Point Pleasant Beach. He was carrying a corpse, what was left of it. He had Anthony Bruno loaded on his back and shoulders.
He walked just south of popular Jenkinson’s Pier and the much newer Seaquarium. The boarded-up arcades of the amusement part were tightly packed along the beach shoulder. The small, grayish buildings looked forlorn and mute in their shuttered state.
As usual, music ran through his head-first Elvis Costello’s “Clubland,” then Beethoven’s Piano Sonata No. 21, then “Mother Mother” by Tracy Bonham. The savage beast inside him wasn’t calmed, not even close, but at least he could feel a beat.