But what about the girl? BC looked beside the bed. Immediately he saw a smattering of brownish red dots that had soaked into nicks in the old wooden bed frame. Scrubbed, but still visible. So she had been shot. There were no stains on the floor, however, and BC wanted to believe she hadn’t bled a lot, that the wound hadn’t been serious. But even if the bullet hadn’t hit anything major, if it wasn’t removed quickly it could easily lead to sepsis.
He put his hand on the wall. The plaster felt cool and slightly damp. It could’ve just been the humidity from the rain, or … He ran his fingers over the wall like a blind man reading Braille. It took nearly a minute to find it. A soft spot about eighteen inches above the mattress. BC pushed hard, and a bullet-sized hole appeared in the plaster. Now he knew for sure: whoever’d shot at Forrestal had aimed above his head. The body bag had just been a cover. The CIA wanted BC to tell J. Edgar Hoover that Chandler Forrestal was dead.
He pressed deeper, feeling for the slug. His fingertip bumped against something smooth and hard. He had to wiggle his finger to widen the hole so he could get it around the bullet, and when he pulled it out a chunk of wet plaster fell to the floor. A red gleam caught his eye, and he jerked his hand back as though it might be a lump of congealed blood. But of course it wasn’t.
It was the girl’s ring.
For a moment all he could do was stare at the dark ruby, wondering why Melchior had chosen to hide it here of all places. But then he realized: Melchior hadn’t hidden it. He’d left it for BC to find. It was both a test and bait, and as BC picked it up and slipped it in his pocket he knew: he was hooked.
Just then a thump sounded from the lower floor—outside. The porch. A moment later the door creaked open, clunked quietly closed.
The bedroom was directly above the living room. If BC moved, whoever was downstairs would know he was here. All he could do was wait. He pulled his gun out. A part of him—it seemed to be centered on his trigger finger—prayed that it was Melchior. He would shoot him in the hip. He would cripple him, then beat the girl’s location out of him.
For a long time there was no sound downstairs. It was as if whoever’d come in was as awed by the cottage as BC was. Then, slowly, steps marched toward the center of the house. The staircase. The person’s tread was heavy, and BC couldn’t help but imagine Melchior’s large form moving through the living room. He sighted on the door and waited.
The steps mounted the stairs, slowing as they neared the top. BC knew the person was staring at the open door, working up the nerve to look in. He could almost hear him counting under his breath. Then, almost as if he’d been pushed, a man’s form filled the doorway.
“Don’t move!”
“Aaah!” Timothy Leary screamed like a frightened child and immediately collapsed on himself, covering his face with his hands. “Don’t shoot, don’t shoot!”
When Leary could walk again, BC took him downstairs, sat him on the couch (a cushion was missing, he noted now—the one he’d knelt on to keep from getting Logan’s blood on his pants). Even after BC identified himself as an FBI agent, the doctor remained terrified, and his fear only increased when BC, hedging his bets, told him about the three body bags that had left the cottage.
“Chandler? Naz? Dead? Dear God.”
“That was the girl’s name? Naz?”
“Nazanin Haverman. She was Persian,” Leary added, almost tenderly.
“Why was she even here? Was she Mr. Forrestal’s girlfriend?”
BC felt almost jealous as he asked the question, but when Leary shook his head and said, “She was a prostitute,” it was all he could do not to slug the man.
“What do you mean, a prostitute?”
“I only know what Morganthau told me. As near as I can tell, he made her give LSD to her johns in exchange for not having her arrested. She’s been working for him for almost a year.”
BC couldn’t believe it. Even in her emotionally fraught state, the girl had looked like anything but a prostitute—and, as well, the idea that the nephew of the former secretary of defense would have to resort to whores beggared belief. But it also coincided with what Melchior had told him on the train yesterday.
“The girl called him Logan. Was that his first name, or …?”
“We all assumed Morganthau was an alias, especially since he slipped up once and called himself Morganthal.” A little smile flickered over the doctor’s mouth, then quickly faded. “He was a little boy playing at being a spy. Logan could’ve been his real name, or just another alias.”
BC was about to ask if Leary had ever seen Melchior before, but the doctor spoke first.
“Apparently Miss Haverman’s father was what they call a CIA ‘asset.’ In Persia. He provided assistance during the revolution in ’53, but was killed during the fighting, along with her mother and the rest of her family. Naz was barely a teenager then. The CIA brought her to the States and placed her with the Havermans, a wealthy Boston family. They even went so far as to adopt her, but she had trouble fitting in. Morganthau, Logan, whatever his name was, he alluded to the idea that her adoptive father might have behaved inappropriately. She was expelled from private schools up and down the East Coast for drinking and aggressive behavior and, ah, precocity. Morganthau told me he saw her name in a file when he was hired by the Boston office and decided to check up on her. When he found her, she was living hand to mouth, exchanging sex for cash or drink or whatever she could get. He seemed to think the arrangement he created was a step up for her. That he was helping her out.” Leary shrugged. “It seemed to me he was obsessed with her. Even after he brought Chandler here, it was her he talked about. Her he was fascinated with.” The doctor looked up at BC. “Just like you.”
Even as Leary spoke, BC felt his hand in his pocket, fiddling with the ring that Melchior had left for him. It’s not just me and Logan, he thought. Melchior was also caught in Naz’s spell.
“I was going to get to Mr. Forrestal,” he said brusquely, yanking his hand from his pocket. “It’s just …” He shrugged helplessly. “I’m not really sure what to ask beyond, well, what happened yesterday?”
Despite the gravity of the situation, the smile came back to the doctor’s face, and a look of awe gleamed in his twinkling eyes.
“It’s easiest just to say it. Rippling trees. The Mezquita of Córdoba. Furniture flying across a room of its own accord. These images came from Chandler’s head. Somehow he is able to broadcast his thoughts—his hallucinations—into the minds of the people around him.”
An image of the burning boy filled BC’s brain. “But there were other things. Things that came from my head. My past.”
If anything Leary’s smile grew bigger. “His ability seems to be related to the amount of LSD in his body. Seemed to be. Toward the end Morganthau was pumping him with thousands of times the normal dosage.”
“But Miss Haverman said he administered the drug with an eye dropper while Mr. Forrestal was sleeping. How do you get thousands of doses—”
“You have to understand, Agent … Querrey?” Leary paused just long enough to remind BC that Morganthau wasn’t the only young man who’d tried on an alias. “LSD is extraordinarily powerful. Doses are measured not in grams or milligrams but micrograms—one one-millionth of a gram. The threshold dosage is only about twenty or thirty mics. An eyedropper could contain enough acid to give everyone in Manhattan a buzz.”