First Daughter

In the aftermath of the cinder swirl, Jack flashed his ID, watched as her eyes tracked uninterestedly to the information. He began to wonder whether it was tobacco she was smoking.

"Do you work at S-and-W?" he asked.

"Used to."

"They fired you?"

"The world fired them. S-and-W is history." She jerked a thumb. "I'm just cleaning out the place."

Jack sat down beside her. "What's your name?"

"Hayley. Can you believe it? Ugh! Everyone calls me Leelee."

"How long did you work here?"

"Seven to life." She took a drag on her cigarette. "A fucking jail term."

Jack laughed. "You're a hard piece of work."

"It's self-preservation, so you can be sure I try my damnedest." She watched him out of the corners of her black eyes. "You don't look like a cop."

"Thank you."

It was her turn to laugh.

"How far along are you with the-" He jerked his thumb. "-you know?"

She sighed. "Not nearly far enough."

"I'm trying to track down a customer of S-and-W's," Jack said. "He's a tattoo artist who mixes his own pigments. I'm hoping he ordered logwood from you."

"Not too many of those," Leelee observed. "It's why S-and-W was overtaken by history. That and the fact that the owner never came around. The fucker stopped paying his bills altogether-including my salary. If I wasn't hired by the mail-order company taking over the building, I wouldn't even be here now." She shrugged. "But who cares? Odds are the new company'll go belly-up, too."

"Do you know something your new bosses don't?"

"That's the way the world works, isn't it?" She stared at the glowing tip of her cigarette. "I mean, we're all sheep, aren't we, persuading ourselves that we're different, that we're beautiful or smart or cool. But we all end up the same way-as a little pile of ashes."

"That's a pretty bleak outlook."

She shrugged. "Par for the course for a nihilist."

"You need a boyfriend," Jack said.

"Someone to tell me what to do and how to do it, someone to leave me at night to go out with the guys, someone to roll over in bed and snore his way to morning? You're right. I need that."

"How about someone to love you, protect you, take care of you?"

She tossed her head. "I do that myself."

"I see how that's working out for you."

Through her armor, she gave him a wry smile.

"Come on, Leelee, you need to believe in something," Jack said.

"Oh, I do. I believe in courage and discipline."

"Admirable." Jack nodded. "But I mean something outside of yourself. We're all co

"Think so? Here's the truest thing I know: Don't for a moment let religion or art or patriotism persuade you that you mean more than you do." She took another deep drag, gave him a challenging, alpha-dog look. "That comes from a play called Secret Life. I bet you never heard of it."

"It was written by Harley Granville-Barker."

Leelee's eyes opened wide. "Shit, yeah. Now I'm impressed."

"Then give me a hand here."

"I could bust your hump, but you've taken all the fun out of that." She swept her hair behind one ear. "Does your tattoo artist have a name?"

"Ian Brady," Jack said. "Or Ro

Leelee took the butt from between her lips. "You're shitting me."

"He was a customer, right?"

"More than." She didn't look as if she was interested in smoking anymore. "Charles Whitman owns S-and-W."

THE EVENING was furry with sleet, but as Jack worked his way south toward the District, it became an icy rain his wipers cast off either side of his windshield. The roads were slick and treacherous, peppered with spin-outs and fender benders, which slowed him down considerably. He returned from Mexico with an address for Charles Whitman. He had no way of knowing whether this was Brady's current residence, but he wasn't going to take any chances. The approach had to be thought out in detail.

As soon as he entered the house, he turned on the stereo, along with the lights and his stove top. But the only meat he had-a steak-was frozen solid, so he turned off the burner, sat down at the kitchen table with a jar of peanut butter and one of orange marmalade. Using a teaspoon, he scooped out mouthfuls from one jar then the other.

Afterwards, he went through his LP collection without finding anything he wanted to listen to. That's when he came upon Emma's iPod. He'd stuck it on top of a Big Bill Broonzy album that contained two of his favorite songs, "Baby, Please Don't Go" and "C C Rider." Tonight, he didn't want to hear either of them.

He took up the iPod, plugged it in because the battery was low. Using the thumb wheel, he browsed through Emma's collection of MP3s. There were the usual suspects: Justin Timberlake, R.E.M., U2, and Kanye West, but he was startled to see tracks by artists he loved and had played for her: Carla Thomas, Jackie Taylor, the Bar-Kays.

Searching through the shelves that housed his records and video-cassettes, he found the box containing the iPod dock he'd bought but never used. He took it out, plugged it into the aux receptacle in the back of the stereo receiver. Then he put the iPod into the dock.

He decided to listen to something of Emma's at random. This turned out to be an album for some reason called Boxer, by a band called The National. He thought of Emma, imagined her listening to these muscular songs-he particularly liked "Fake Empire"-wondered what would have been going through her mind.

As the music played, he fired up his computer, went online. According to Leelee's records, the address where Brady had his logwood delivered was on Shepherd Street, in Mount Rainier, Maryland. He pulled up Google Maps, punched in the address, and clicked the HYBRID Button, which gave him both the map and the satellite photo of the area. The address was only five or six miles southeast of where he was born. The thought gave him the shivers.

Forty minutes later, he got up, rummaged around the house for several items he thought he might need, stuffed them into a lightweight gym bag. He checked his Glock, shoved extra ammunition in his pocket, grabbed his coat. On the way out the door, he called Sharon. There was no answer. He disco

FORTY — SIX

WHAT WERE the odds that Ian Brady lived in a hotel just four miles from Jack's house? Yet this was what Jack saw as he cruised by the address Leelee had given him. RAINIER RESIDENCE HOTEL. SHORT-TERM AND LONG-TERM CORPORATE LEASES AVAILABLE the sign out front read. He didn't stop, didn't even slow down until he turned the corner onto Thirty-first Street, where he pulled into the curb and parked. The first thing he did was to check out the rear, which was flat, save for a zigzag of tiered black iron fire escapes. It gave out onto a concrete apron and, just beyond, a modestly sized blacktop parking lot, lit by sodium lights, from whose hard glare he kept his careful distance. But there was no rear entrance, most likely because of the same security concerns that had led to the installation of the parking lot lights.

Walking back to Shepherd Street, he found himself across the street from an ugly U-shaped structure hugging a courtyard with four withered trees, a Maginot Line of evergreen shrubs, fully a third of which were as brown and useless as sun-scorched newspapers. The hotel itself was three stories of pale yellow brick. Access to the apartments was via metal staircases at the center and either end of the U, along raw concrete catwalks that ran the length of the building. There was a coarseness about it, a glittery shabbiness, like a Christmas present wrapped in used paper. Had it been painted turquoise or flamingo, it could have passed as a down-at-the-heels Florida condo.