The kid wore a short-sleeved leather jacket over his narrow bare chest.
He had on black tights, probably made from polyester, tucked inside black motorcycle boots. The jacket and the boots were both studded with silver. The kid's hair was pink and cut in a high mohawk and he had maybe nine silver earrings in one ear. Bravado.
My man nodded and stepped out into the rain, and the kid went with him.
They continued up Mass. Ave. together in the rain. The kid's Mohawk wilted a little, but didn't run. Even in the rain there was a lot of street activity. People coming home from work, students going to the library, or the barroom, or the movies, a scattering of tourists coming to see the famous Harvard Square and looking vaguely puzzled when they found it. On the north side of Mass. Ave." Harvard did its red brick loom, while on the south side the Holyoke Center, which was also Harvard, seemed grayer than usual in the wet evening.
At Putnam Street, where Mount Auburn merges with Mass. Ave." we three turned toward the river, past the big furniture store and into a sort of shabby neighborhood where there wasn't much foot traffic. I dropped farther back. It was getting tricky now. Most of the homes here were multiple dwellings, and if he turned into one, I might end up with a choice of six names. I closed up. My man stopped before a green two-story, and gave a quick glance about. Furtive, since he'd joined the kid.
I walked past them, my head ducked into the rain that seemed to be coming straight up Putnam Street off the river. A few steps beyond, I stopped and looked in the window of an Italian delicatessen and watched them by turning my eyes while I kept my head straight. My man watched me for a moment. The boy shook his arm and said something, and my man nodded and headed in the walk along the side of the building.
I waited a full minute and walked back up Putnam Street. There was no one in sight. I turned in the same walkway that my man had taken and there was a side entrance. It was closed. As I stopped in front of it a light went on above me on the second floor. I bent close and looked at the nameplate. It was not dark yet, but it had gotten murky and I couldn't read it. There was no one else in sight. I reached inside my leather jacket and took out a pair of twelve-dollar magnifiers and put them on and looked again. The nameplate said PHILIP ISELIN, PH.D. If it had been sunny, I could have read it without glasses.
CHAPTER 17
When I got back from following Philip Iselin, Hawk and Susan were standing in her waiting room on the first floor, looking at the fish tank. The tank hood was off, there was something that looked like oil slick on the surface of the water and in the oil slick floated a red rose. In various stages of suspension in the water beneath the surface, the tropical fish floated dead, or in two instances dying.
"Probably gasoline," Hawk said. "Smells like it."
I nodded, looking at Susan. The filter apparatus in the fish tank continued to bubble pointlessly, easily overmatched by the gasoline.
"I don't know when it happened," Susan said. "The front door is unlocked during the day, obviously, and anyone could walk in while I was with a patient."
"No way to hear him?" I said.
"No. Patients normally ring the bell and walk into the waiting room.
There is a double door system to my office to ensure privacy."
Hawk looked over at the office doors. There were two of them. One opened out, into the waiting room; the other opened into the office.
Privileged information.
"But it would require a patient to know the routine," I said.
"Most therapists probably have a not dissimilar routine," Susan said.
"Aw, come on, Susan," Hawk said. "If it not one of your patients we got to imagine somebody walking around with gasoline in his pocket and a red rose, looking for working fish tank."
"And being lucky enough," I said,
"to wander in here by accident and find one."
Susan nodded.
"Wishful thinking," she said. "But it doesn't mean he or she is the Red Rose killer."
"She is wishful thinking too," I said. "Unless you want to believe that this is a different person than the one who broke in here the other night and left a rose."
Susan took in a long, slow breath.
"That would be asking a lot of coincidence," she said. "So it's probably a he, and it's probably one of my patients. But it doesn't have to be probably the killer."
"But we can't act as if it weren't," I said. "Can we get a list of your patients today?"
She shook her head.
"God, you're stubborn," I said.
"Yes, but it's more than that," Susan said. "It seems to me that anyone planning to do this would do so on a day he wasn't scheduled. And it seems to me that it is someone trying to say something to me that he can't yet say in therapy. If it is the killer, our best hope may be to keep him in therapy until he tells me he's the one. If it is not the killer, the reasons to keep him anonymous must be obvious."
I looked at Hawk. He shrugged very slightly. "Smart too," he said.
"If the Red Rose killer does, in fact, surface in therapy, could you take the time to mention it to one of us," I said.
"Oh, don't be so pissy," Susan said. "You know I will when I'm sure. I don't want anyone else killed, including me."
"Pissy?" I said.
"Pissy," Susan said. "I shouldn't expect you to understand all the technical terms of my profession."
"You want to clean out the tank?" I said.
"Yes," Susan said. "And I want to put more fish in."
"Don't disturb the patients?"
"No, in fact I wish to disturb one. I wish to thwart and frustrate whoever poisoned the fish. It will force him to rechannel whatever he's trying to express, and perhaps he'll rechannel it my way."
"You shrinks are a devious bunch," I said. "What if he re channels it violently?"
Susan smiled sweetly.
"Why, then you or Hawkie-poo will intervene," she said. "Why else are you hanging around?"
I had nothing to say to that. Neither did Hawkie-poo. . Was she scared? She must be scared. They were all scared when it came down to it. Any woman could be frightened. Had she guessed it was him? Had her boyfriend seen him clearly? The thought that she might know nearly smothered him with its lovely frenzy. Maybe someday…
"I saw your name in the paper." She said, "Um hmm."
Maybe someday…
"Your boyfriend's working on the Red Rose case."
"Um hmm."
Maybe someday… The fear slivered through him.
"Why would a guy do something like that?"
She merely looked interested. She didn't speak.
The sensation he felt as he talked with her was reminiscent of the way it felt to wiggle a loose tooth when he was small. She suspected him.
It was like undressing in front of her. Look at this.
"I'm sort of fascinated with this guy, this Red Rose guy."
"Um hmm?" she said. There was encouragement in her voice, no disapproval.
"You don't mind me talking about it?"
"No," she said. "See what it leads to."
"My mother would have been .. He did an imitation of his mother's uncomfortable disapproving frown. "She hated anything dirty."
"What kinds of things did she consider dirty?"
"You know, sex, anything about sex."
She nodded. She understood.
"And your father?" she said.
"He loved her so much. He did everything she wanted . except stop drinking."
"So she was the power in the family," she said.
"No, yes, well, it was funny. We all pretended she was, and we said how smart she was, and how she could always fix things and find things and figure out things. But in fact she was weak and stupid and scared of everything, and it was like a game my father and me played. Except we never said."
"Did you know?" She sat very quietly, her big eyes on his face. She was very interested and very kind.