Cat and Mouse

curious test-tube rack of corked vials of sand. Each vial was labeled with the name of a different beach: Laguna, Montauk, Normandy, Parma, Virgin Gorda, Oahu. I thought about the curious notion that Pierce had bottled something so vast, infinite, and random to give it order and substance.
    So what was his organizing principle for Mr. Smith’s murders? What would explain them?
    There were GT Zaskar mountain bikes stored inside the apartment and two GT Machete helmets. Isabella and Thomas biked together through New Hampshire and across into Vermont. More and more, I was sure that he had loved her deeply. Then his love had turned to a hatred so intense few of us could imagine it.
    I recalled that the first Cambridge police reports had convincingly described Pierce’s grief at the murder scene as “impossible to fake.” One of the detectives had written, “He is shocked, surprised, utterly heartbroken. Thomas Pierce not considered a suspect at this time.”
    What else, what else? There had to be a clue here. There had to be a pattern.
    A framed quote was hung in the hallway.
Without God, We Are Condemned to Be Free.
Was it Sartre? I thought so. I wondered whose thinking it really represented. Did Pierce take it seriously himself or was he making a joke?
Condemned
was a word that interested me. Was Thomas Pierce a condemned man?
    In the master bedroom there was a bookcase with a well-preserved, three-volume set of H. L. Mencken’s
The American Language
. It rested on the top shelf. Obviously, this was a prized possession. Maybe it had been a gift? I remembered that Pierce had been a dual major as an undergraduate: biology and philosophy. Philosophy texts were everywhere in the apartment. I read the spines: Jacques Derrida, Foucault, Jean Baudrillard, Heidegger, Habermas, Sartre.
    There was several dictionaries as well: French, German, English, Italian, and Spanish. A compact, two-volume set of the
Oxford English Dictionary
had type so small it came with a magnifying glass.
    There was a framed diagram of the human voice mechanism directly over Pierce’s work desk. And a quote:
“Language is more than speech.”
Several books by the linguist and activist Noam Chomsky were on his desk. What I remembered about Chomsky was that he had suggested a complex biological component of language acquisition. He had a view of the mind as a set of mental organs. I
think
that was Chomsky.
    I wondered what, if anything, Noam Chomsky or the diagram of the human voice mechanism had to do with Smith, or the death of Isabella Calais.
    I was lost in my thoughts, when I was startled by a loud
buzzing
noise. It came from the kitchen at the other end of the hall.
    I thought I was alone in the apartment, and the buzzing spooked me. I took my Glock from its shoulder holster and started down the long narrow hallway. Then I began to run.
    I entered the kitchen with my gun in position and then understood what the buzzing was. I had brought along a PowerBook that Pierce had left in his hotel room in Princeton.
Left on purpose? Left as another clue?
A special alarm on the laptop personal computer was the source of the noise.
    Had he sent a message to us? A fax or Voice mail? Or perhaps someone was sending a message to Pierce? Who would be sending him messages?
    I checked voice mail first.
It was Pierce.
    His voice was strong and steady and almost soothing. It was the voice of someone in control of himself and the situation. It was eerie under the circumstances, to be hearing it alone in his apartment.

Dr. Cross — at least I suspect it’s you I’ve reached. This is the kind of message I used to receive when I was tracking Smith.

Of course, I was using the messages for misdirection, sending them myself. I wanted to mislead the police, the FBI. Who knows, maybe I still do.

At any rate, here’s your very first message-Anthony Bruno, Brielle, New Jersey.

Why don’t you come to the seashore and join me for a swim? Have you arrived at any conclusions about Isabella yet? She is important to all of this. You’re right to be in Cambridge.

Smith/Pierce

Chapter 112

    T HE FBI provided me with a helicopter out of Logan International Airport to fly me to Brielle, New Jersey. I was on board the Disorient Express and there was no getting off.
    I spent the flight obsessing about Pierce, his apartment, Isabella Calais,
their
apartment, his studies in biology and modern philosophy, Noam Chomsky. I wouldn’t have thought it possible, wouldn’t have