"Barbara's mom's name was Doris Lyman," Mace continues. "Doris made her living as a gambler. A good enough living to give her only child the best of everything – nice clothes, private schools, tennis and riding lessons, fancy summer camps, Vassar College. Doris was a regular at Woodmere Downs. She liked to play the ponies. She also played cards like a demon – poker, bridge, gin, you name it. She had a fantastic memory and a computer-type mind, so she could remember long runs and rapidly calculate odds."
He pulls up in front of a gray concrete apartment building in the Danvers-Torrington area, one of many in town constructed in the 1920s. This one has the name FAIRVIEW APARTMENTS cut into the stone above the door. Above that there's a molded escutcheon, an empty shield crossed by two long swords.
"Neighborhood's the same," Mace says. "Ordinary, middle class, lots of elderly. In these buildings there's always an old crab who complains about the kids, and a faint smell of cabbage and cat piss in the halls."
I gaze at the building, trying to imagine Barbara's childhood. What must it have been like for her to depart this place every morning for Ashley-Burnett, sister school to Hayes, where the girls all came from big houses in Delamere, Van Buren Heights, and Maple Hills? Her only choice would have been to outdo them, be smarter, prettier, more athletic, and display such savoir-faire that her classmates, rather than looking down on her, would vie for her favor.
"Barbara's mom knew everybody out at the track," Mace says. "All the owners, trainers, jocks. Early on, she had Barbara up on horses. The kid was a natural. Started winning trophies when she was six. When we went into her house after she was killed, we found a room full of them, hundreds of blue ribbons and silver cups. It was her horsemanship that got her into society. It was at a Maple Hills Hunt Club Christmas dance where she met Fulraine. She was back on holiday from her junior year at Vassar. He was home from his senior year at Yale. He fell for her right away, but she didn't make it easy for him. There were lots of young men interested in Barbara Lyman. Took three years of courtship before she agreed to get engaged."
So it was by her excellent horseback riding that she won her station in life – wealth, social position, her magnificent house. By her charm too, no doubt, also her beauty, her intelligence, ambition, and, of course, her smoldering sexuality. Then tragedy! Her infant daughter was abducted. It's from that point, the point of the abduction, that her life started turning strange.
"I met Doris Lyman at the funeral," Mace tells me.
We're heading back up Gale now, passing antique shops, galleries, trendy bars.
"She'd moved down to Florida. Barbara had bought her a little place in Coral Gables. She still looked pretty good. Had a few facelifts, no doubt. She told me she still played the ponies, got herself over to Hialeah two, three times a week. I gave her my typical homicide investigator's speech about how we weren't going to rest until we found her daughter's killer. Then she said, ‘I had a feeling it would end for Barb like this.’ I was so surprised I forgot to ask her what she meant. When I called her a couple days later, she played hard-ass, said she didn't remember saying that, I must've misheard or misunderstood."
Mace turns to me. "But I hadn't. No mistake. I'd heard her perfectly. I can even remember the expression on her face."
I stop at Waldo's, find the usual crowd of journalists and network people. No sign of Pam. I'm about to leave when I notice Tony standing in his usual meditative position behind the bar.
"How's it going, Tony?"
"Same as usual," he says.
I take a stool across from him. "You've been around, Tony. You know this town pretty well."
"Well as any barman, I'd say."
"Over the years ever hear of a guy named Max Rakoubian?"
Tony grins. "Sure, I remember Max. Been a while. He kicked the bucket a few years back."
"What'd you know about him?"
Tony strokes his chin. "Max was kinda slimy as I recall. Took pictures, some of ‘em nice, some not – now what I mean?"
"He did porn?"
"Not porn exactly. More like bust-in stuff."
"‘Bust-in’?"
"You know, say a gentleman's looking to divorce, he doesn't want to get taken to the cleaners, so he needs proof his spouse is shacking up. Pictures make good proof. To get pictures he needs a bust-in guy, guy who'll bust in on the spouse and lover, take a few shots. That's bust-in stuff."
"Max did that?"
"His specialty. This'll probably surprise you – he and Mr. C. were fairly tight. I think they had some deals going. Max'd tip Mr. C off on stuff. There was also talk Max did bust-ins freelance, busted in on folks without being hired to. Then he'd try to sell the pictures back. Those were the rumors anyway."
"Blackmail photographs?"
"You could call them that."
"Jesus!"
"Don't think badly of him, Mr. Weiss. Max was a gent. Knew how to talk to the ladies. Could sweet-talk ‘em into taking off their clothes, not for any reason but to let him record their God-given beauty – or so he used to put it."
"Doesn't sound like much of a gent to me, Tony."
"Well, each to his own I always say."
But in guy, bust-in stuff – seems to me that's exactly what the shooter did at the Flamingo Court, burst in on Barbara and Tom, not with a camera but with a gun. I'm thinking about that, working myself toward sleep, when I hear knocking at my door. I open up to find Pam looking sexy, swaying in the doorway.
"Hi, loverboy!" she purrs in her sexiest voice. "Mind if I come in?"
This morning, after Pam goes up to the gym for her workout, I phone Kate Evans, ask if she's made a decision.
"I've given it a lot of thought," she says. "I don't know if I can help, but I'm willing to try."
Great!
We agree to meet at the Flamingo at 2:00 p.m.. She'll leave her kids at her mother's for the afternoon. I'm to come directly to her suite above the office.
"I'm a little nervous about this," she tells me, "but I guess it's something that's gotta be done."
For me, an ID interview is an exploration into another person's mind. I don't do so-called cognitive interviews or employ standard forensic techniques. I also don't put such techniques down. They work well for most forensic artists. However, I'm interested in probing deep, plumbing the unconscious of my informants. In this respect, I'm following in the footsteps of my dad. As I often remind myself, plumbing the unconscious is the family trade.
At exactly two o'clock, sketchbook in hand, I climb an exterior staircase on the Dawson side of the Flamingo, then follow a narrow walkway to the owner's apartment. One side of this walkway is demarcated by the back of the large neon Flamingo image that proclaims the name of the motel to passing cars.
It's another hot, humid Calista summer afternoon. Standing before Kate Evans's door, I feel my shirt sticking to my back. I knock, then hear footsteps. The door opens and Kate peers at me out of the gloom. She's wearing sandals, tight shorts, and a skinny, ribbed tanktop. The blinds in the room have been pulled.
Her eyes seem to glow in her face. They're large eyes alive with curiosity, perhaps some trepidation, too. I've been made uneasy by her scrutiny before – on my first visit to room 201 and two days ago when we spoke. I like the fact that she makes strong eye contact; that's usually a lifelong trait. If her vision was as direct when she was a girl, she may have seen the shooter clearly.
She invites me in, offers me a beer. I opt for a Coke. While she fetches it, I check out her living room: basic furniture with tough fabric upholstery, the kind of indestructible stuff one expects to find in a residence inhabited by a couple of rowdy kids. The carpeting's wall-to-wall, the pictures are conventional. The only striking characteristic, the single feature that differentiates the room from American Motel, are the shelves crammed with paperback editions of self-help books – books about how to get along, make money, build self-esteem, find success, analyze your own dreams, become your own best friend. Books too about wicca, tarot, astrology, and the occult.