It was quarter to four in the morning and even the surfcasting fishermen weren’t out yet. He’d seen only one police patrol car so far. The police in the tiny beach town were a joke anyway.
Mr. Smith against the Keystone Kops.
This whole funky seashore area reminded him of Laguna Beach, at least the tourista parts of Laguna. He could still picture the surf shops that dotted the Pacific Coast Highway back home-the Southern California artifacts: Flogo sandals, Stussy T’s, neroprene gloves and wet suits, beach boots, the unmistakable smell of board wax.
He was physically strong-had a workingman’s build. He carried Anthony Bruno over one shoulder without much effort. He had cut out all the vital parts, so there wasnt’t much of Anthony anymore. Anthony was a shell. No heart, liver, intestines, lungs, or brain.
Thomas Pierce thought about the FBI’s continuing search. The Bureau’s fabled “manhunts” were overrated-a holdover from the glory days of John Dillinger and Bonnie and Clyde. He knew this to be so after years of observing the Bureau chase Mr. Smith. They would never have caught Smith, not in a hundred years.
The FBI was looking for him in all the wrong places. They would surely have “numbers,” meaning excessive force, their trademark maneuver. They would be all over the airports, probably expecting him to head back to Europe. And what about the wild cards in the search, people like Alex Cross? Cross had made his bones, no doubt about that. Maybe Cross was more than he seemed to be. At any rate, he relished the thought of Dr. Cross being in on this, too. He liked the competition.
The dead weight on his back and shoulder was starting to get heavy. It was almost morning, close to daybreak. I wouldn’t do to be found lugging a disemboweled corpse across Point Pleasant Beach.
He carried Anthony Bruno another fifty yards to a glistening white lifeguard’s chair. He climbed the creaking rungs of the chair, and propped the body in the seat.
The remains of the corpse were naked and exposed for the world to see. Quite a sight. Anthony was a clue. If anybody on the search team had half a brain and was using it properly.
“I’m not an alien. Do any of you follow that?” Pierce shouted above the ocean’s steady roar.
“I’m human. I’m perfectly normal. I’m just like you.”
Chapter 114
IT WAS all a mind game, was’t it-Pierce against the rest of us.
While I had been at his apartment in Cambridge, a team of FBI agents went out to Southern California to meet with Thomas Pierce’s family. The mother and father still lived on the same farm, between Laguna and EI Toro, where Thomas Pierce had grown up.
Henry Pierce practiced medicine, mostly among the indigent farmworkers in the area. His lifestyle was modest and the reputation of the family impeccable. Pierce had an older brother and sister, doctors in Northern California, who were also well regarded and worked with the poor.
Not a person the profilers spoke to could imagine Thomas a murderer. He’d always been a good son and brother, a gifted student who seemed to have close friends and no enemies.
Thomas Pierce fit no brief for a pattern killer that I was familiar with. He was an original.
“Impeccable” was a word that jumped out of the FBI profiler reports. Maybe Pierce didn’t want to be impeccable.
I re-reviewed the news articles and clippings about Pierce from the time of Isabella Calais’s gruesome murder. I was keeping track of the more perplexing notions on three-by-five index cards. The packet was growing rapidly.
Laguna Beach -commercial shore town. Parts similar to point Pleasant and Bay Head. Had Pierce killed in Laguna in the past? Had the disease now spread to the Northeast?
Pierce’s father was a doctor. Pierce didn’t “Make it” to Dr. Pierce, but as a med student he had performed autopsies.
Looking for his humanity when he kills? Studying humans because he fears he has no human qualities himself?
He had a dual major as an undergrad: biology and philosophy. Fan of the linguist Noam Chomsky. Or is it Chomsky’s political writings that turn Pierce on? Plays word and much games on his PowerBook.
What were we all missing so far?
What was I missing?
Why was Thomas Pierce killing all of these people?
He was “impeccable,” wasn’t he.
Chapter 115
PIERCE STOLE a forest green BMW convertible in the expensive, quaint, quite lovely shore town of Bay Head, New Jersey. On the corner of East Avenue and Harris Street, a prime location, he hot-wired and grabbed the vehicle as slickly as a pickpocket working the boardwalks down at Point Pleasant Beach. He was so good at this, overqualified for the scut work.
He drove west through Brick Town at moderate speeds, to the Garden State Parkway. He played music all the way-Talking Heads, Alanis Morissette, Melissa Etheridge, Blind Faith. Music helped him to feel something. It always had, from the time he’d been a boy. An hour and a quarter later he entered Atlantic City.
He sighed with pleasure. He loved it instantly-the shameless tawdriness, the grubbiness, the tattered sinfulness, the soullessness of the place. He felt as if he were “home,” and he wondered if the FBI geniuses had linked the Jersey Shore to Laguna Beach yet?
Entering Atlantic City, he had half expected to see a beautifully maintained expanse of lawn sloping down to the ocean. Surfers with peroxided, gnarly hair; volleyball played around the clock.
But no, no, this was New Jersey. Southern California, his real home, was thousands of miles away. He mustn’t get confused now.
He checked into Bally’s Park Place. Up in his room, he started to make phone calls. He wanted to “order in.” He stood at a picture window and watched the ghostly waves of the Atlantic punish the beach again and again. Far down the beach he could see Trump Plaza. The audacious and ridiculous penthouse apartments were perched on the main building, like a space shuttle ready to take off.
Yes, ladies and gentlemen, of course there was a pattern. Why couldn’t anyone figure it out? Why did he always have to be misunderstood?
At two in the morning, Thomas Pierce sent the trackers another voice-mail message: Inez in Atlantic City.
Chapter 116
GODDAMN HIM! Half a day after we recovered the body of Anthony Bruno, we got the next message from Pierce. He had taken another one already.
We were on the move immediately. Two dozen of us rushed to Atlantic City and prayed he was still there, that someone named Inez hadn’t already been butchered and “studied” by Mr. Smith and discarded like the evening trash.
Giant billboards screamed all along the Atlantic City Expressway. Caesars Atlantic City, Harrah’s, Merv Griffin ’s Resorts Casino Hotel, Trump’s Castle, Trump Taj Mahal. Call 1-800-GAMBLER. Now that was funny.
Inez, Atlantic city, I kept hearing inside my head. Sounds like Isabella.
We set up shop in the FBI field office, which was only a few blocks from the old Stell Pier and the so-called “ Great Wooden Way.” There were usually only four agents in the small office. Their expertise was organized crime and gambling, and they weren’t considered movers and shakers inside the Bureau. They weren’t prepared for a savage, unpredictable killer who had once been a very good agent.
Someone had bought a stack of newspapers and they were piled high on the conference table. The New York, Philly, and Jersey headline writers were having a field day with this one.