There was one fiber in the second envelope. A small white thread, no more than an eighth of an inch long. Frayed at the end. Meaningless on its own.
The paper that the photographs had been printed on was standard and sold in almost every photography-supply store in the United States, as well as hundreds of stores online. Even if they found out where it had been bought, what were the chances that the photographer would have used a credit card?
It didn’t matter. They had experts working on tracing the stock.
The nine-by-twelve manila envelopes were even more common than the photo paper. The postmarks were at least interesting. The first envelope had been sent from midtown Manhattan. The second from Port Chester, New York, about a half hour away from the city. And the third had been mailed from Harlem.
They were working on finding the pattern to those three locations. But it was too early for them to lock in on it.
The footsteps were light, but since both men were waiting for her they looked up even before Officer Butler walked in.
She was smiling, which Jordain thought was the most beautiful thing he’d seen in at least thirty-two hours. “What do you have?” he asked.
“The hair sample on Firth.”
Both men had leaned forward and were listening hard. “Yeah?”
“There was some blood on it. And in the blood are traces of Thorazine. We checked with Firth’s wife. No history of any prescription drugs. No antidepressants. No mood elevators. Nothing.”
“Which means that he was drugged before he was killed,” Jordain said. “Or the drug killed him.”
Butler nodded.
“How hard is it to get Thorazine?” Perez asked. “And how hard is it to OD on the stuff?”
“I’m ahead of you on that,” Butler said. “As soon as I saw the report, I put in a call to the M.E.”
“And?”
“And I’m waiting for him to call me back.”
“More waiting,” Jordain said.
“There’s something else,” Butler said.
“Yes?” Both men looked back at her.
“There’s another substance on one of the hair samples. The lab guys aren’t sure what it is. A chemical. They’re running more tests now. Should have some information in a few hours, if we are lucky.”
“So far there hasn’t been any luck on this case,” Perez lamented.
“Maybe that’s about to change,” Jordain said.
Perez smiled at his partner the way a parent smiles at his child on Christmas Eve when the kid is putting out cookies and milk for Santa.
“It’s nice that you can still dream.”
“If you stop dreaming, you might as well stop living,” Jordain said.
It was true. He believed that. Even doing what he did every day, even seeing what he saw, even knowing what he knew about the human psyche and the ability man had to be evil.
“It’s that damn piano,” Perez said. “You’re a fucking romantic because of that damn piano.”
In answer, Jordain put his hands on the edge of his desk as if it were a keyboard and moved his fingers up and down, miming playing. He scatted along with the action, his voice giving real life to a jazz riff that he’d written. Perez had seen his partner do this a hundred times, and so had Butler, but they still stared in wonder at the way Jordain’s hands moved with a grace that wasn’t expected, and the way his voice moved them even though they were tough cops and should know better.
Thirty-Three
My last patient on Tuesday left at 4:55 p.m.-ten minutes late because we had broken through a major issue and I was loath to rush her out. I hurried to the staff meeting in the upstairs conference room that usually began on time.
There were eight therapists at the institute, all of whom specialized in sex therapy, and our weekly conclaves gave us a chance to talk with one another about our patients and their treatments. Nina-and her husband before her-believed that one of the strengths of the Butterfield Institute was the combined expertise of several doctors and therapists under one roof. Indeed, for me, being able to consult with others had proved preferable to working alone, as most members of my profession did.
That night, the discussion was focused on one of Nina’s patients whom she thought needed to begin working with a sex surrogate. She wanted our opinions-surrogacy being the last resort.
We’d been going around and around about whether there was any other impotency treatment Nina might try first, but no one offered any options that Nina hadn’t already exhausted. She looked at me and said, “You haven’t had much to add, Morgan. No ideas?”
“It sounds like you’ve covered pretty much everything but the surrogate.”
She nodded but was frowning. “We moved off of that about five minutes ago.”
I stared at her.
“We’ve been talking about which surrogate would be best in the situation.”
“Sorry.”
“What’s going on with your caseload?” she asked.
It wasn’t required, but it was expected that at some point in the meeting we’d each do an update on some of our most complicated cases. But the only thing I needed to discuss was the one thing I didn’t want to discuss. I tried to think of every other patient I was seeing, to dredge up some valid question and get a conversation going and move Nina’s attention-and her fierce eyes-off me.
“Morgan?”
I still hadn’t said anything and she was waiting. This wasn’t like me, I knew. Anxiety was making my blood race. I forced myself to just say it.
“I need to talk about going to the police,” I said.
Nina’s eyebrows arched. “I thought we covered that.”
I shook my head.
“Going to the police about what?” Simon Weiss asked.
There were no windows in the conference room. Just dark green walls, comfortable black leather chairs, a verdant marble table, and antique prints of maps on the walls. From where I was seated, I could see a line of etchings of Europe on maps from the seventeenth century. The blue of the ocean was slightly faded, but the reds, browns and yellows of the countries were still fairly intense. I couldn’t keep staring at the prints. Taking a breath, I launched into an explanation of what had been going on with the Scarlet Society, what I had seen at the police station, and what I felt I needed to do.
“The only thing Morgan hasn’t mentioned,” Nina said in a tone that was harsher than normal, “is that we already talked about this and I advised her not to talk to the police again.”
“You did. But I just don’t think that’s the right decision.”
“It’s the only decision that you can make under the circumstances,” she countered.
Around us, Simon and the rest of the staff must have been aware of the subtext of the conversation. Everyone knew of Nina’s overdeveloped and irrational anger at the NYPD.
“Please, Morgan, can’t you just trust me on this?”
I looked at Simon, my closest friend at the institute, imploring him with my eyes to step in. He did. Of course he did. I could always count on him, and I gave him a half smile before the fact to thank him.
“Nina, what’s your objection? If the women in the group haven’t given Morgan this information, if it’s something she saw on her own, there’s no reason she can’t go to the police.”
There were murmurs and assents from two other therapists.
“I don’t think you can, Morgan,” Helen Grant said. She was one of the older members of the staff and had been handpicked by Sam, even before he married Nina, to work at Butterfield. She was elderly then. Now she was approaching ancient, but she still came in five days a week and saw patients. “No. Morgan can’t go to the police. She has a commitment to her group. There is nothing she can offer up that will help, if the society is as secret as she says it is.” Her white curls bobbed with the intensity of her next words. “It is not our job to solve crimes. Haven’t we gone through enough of that around here?”