Cat in Wolf's Clothing (9781101578889) Page 13

  At eight in the evening the panic came over me again. What if my analysis of the murders had been wrong? Why hadn’t I confided in anyone? Why had I kept it to myself? Was I that arrogant that I didn’t need confirmation or criticism? A lot had suddenly become clear to me when I discovered those bizarre wall paintings . . . but my comprehension and analysis could have been colored by the lingering grudge I held against Retro for firing me. Why did I persist in keeping it within me . . . as if it were some kind of secret treasure?

  Time moved very slowly. It enveloped me. At nine o’clock I started to tremble a bit, and it was hard to breathe. Stage fright? I burst out laughing. I hadn’t felt that bad since I was about to appear in my first stage performance in St. Paul—at the old Tyrone Guthrie Regional Theater.

  My grandmother had come to see me from her dairy farm. She saw my state. She told me that when she was nervous she read her Bible. What Bible, Grandma? I asked her. And she shyly and slyly took out an old book and gave it to me. It wasn’t a Bible. It was a book called Bird-Watching in Florida. It was the fantasy life of an old woman on a frigid Minnesota dairy farm who thought she would one day spend a few weeks in Florida looking for exotic birds. She never made it. I hadn’t looked at it that night long ago in St. Paul. But why shouldn’t I look at it now?

  I found it fifteen minutes later in my hall closet, buried beneath some old scrapbooks. Its green cover was battered and stained. Grandma’s name was still visible, printed in red ink. That I remembered well; she always used red ink in a leaky old-fashioned fountain pen.

  I opened the book at random. It read:

  Bonaparte’s gull. Larus Philadelphia. This small, strikingly patterned gull flies into Florida during fall and winter. The head is black in the breeding season, but white with a black spot when immature, and in winter. But on its swift flight over foamy wave tops, white outer primaries flash snowy by its gray mantle, unmistakably.

  The reading did nothing for my fears. I checked the clock. Nine thirty. I dressed quickly: half-boots, black knit sweater, black corduroy pants. I pulled my long hair up into a small bun and capped it with a ski cap. It was spring, but the park must be chilly at night.

  I decided to wait for the news program and then rush to the park in a cab. At ten o’clock I turned the program on.

  At ten twenty they broadcast the story. The announcer used Judy Mizener’s words, exactly as she had told it to me in the coffee shop. Then they showed a stock photo of the cave. I couldn’t tell if it was the cave in question or some other one.

  Then the announcer gave the kicker: the cave would be opened the following day to determine if it had been used by violent voodoo-type cults, and then resealed. Then the weather man came on.

  I left the apartment quickly, walked to Third Avenue, and took a cab up to Fifty-Seventh and Seventh. I entered the park at Fifty-Ninth and Seventh and headed toward the bow bridge, which provided access to the Ramble. It was the first time in my life I had ever been in Central Park at night—but there were many people about, joggers and walkers and cars and bicyclists.

  The moment, however, I crossed the bridge, I entered a quiet darkness. Where were the homeless I had seen before? Were they on the wooded slopes? I walked quickly, head down, at the point where the path met the grass.

  It was not hard to find the cave this time. Even in the darkness the path was etched in my head like a compass. I located the slope; I climbed it easily; I slipped through the narrow opening.

  Once inside, using a pocket flashlight, I moved swiftly through the cave until I reached the high vaulted chamber where the wall paintings were located. At night, as well as during the day, there were slivers of light that seemed to filter in from above. But all these slivers could do was pierce the gloom haphazardly. One could not truly see without a flash or a match.

  I slouched down against the far wall, totally hidden from humans and bats and ghosts.

  All was in place. The lights were down. The curtain was about to be raised. The stagehands were nervously out of sight, wherever they may be. The ushers had moved to the lobby. The audience was slowly twirling their rolled-up programs in their hands. The players were beginning to lose their stage fright and feel the rush of adrenaline.

  I checked my watch. It was only five minutes to eleven. It had taken me a mere thirty minutes to arrive here, from the moment I stepped out of my apartment.

  An hour passed. My slouch cramped my legs, so I stretched out in a sitting position, my back against the wall. The ground was damp, and I had forgotten to bring a mat or a pillow or even an extra sweater to sit on. I could feel flashes of those bizarre paintings through the haphazard filtered light. Where was the light coming from? Moonlight? Streetlights that lined the path with the iron railing over the top half of the cave? I didn’t know.

  The minutes and then the hours slipped by. I dozed and then stirred. It wasn’t really sleep—it was a kind of numbing unconsciousness.

  It was past three when I heard that first chilling sound. A kind of crunch, a distance away.

  I pulled my feet up to my face, almost in a fetal position, hoping, cowardly, that it was just a creature or the wind.

  And then the crunch was repeated. Someone was walking in the cave toward the chamber.

  My heart was pounding so hard I thought it would burst through my rib cage.

  The entrance to the chamber clouded over. Someone was in front of the wall paintings! My eyes could make out a shrouded form.

  I saw a glint of something . . . an object . . . and then a sound like water being poured from a bucket. My eyes could make out something being sprayed along the wall. I understood then what was happening. The individual was using spray paint to obliterate the paintings. The glint was the side of an aerosol can.

  Then the figure turned and started to leave the chamber. I had seen nothing. I could identify no one. It wasn’t supposed to happen like this. Not at all. The whole project was becoming futile. I had to see who it was.

  I panicked. Without thinking about my safety . . . without considering anything but the fact that I simply could not remain hidden while the solution slipped away in darkness . . . I stood up and cried out: “Arcenaux!”

  The figure froze at the entrance of the chamber. Then he turned toward me . . . the face of red-haired Detective Arcenaux suddenly visible.

  “You stupid, prying bitch!” he cried out, and strode toward me, his weapon in hand.

  I ran for the opening. He tripped me up, and I sprawled over the ground. When I turned over, his gun was inches away from my face.

  Everything happened so fast then. I heard a shout from behind us.

  Then a body smashed against Arcenaux’s face. The gun fell to the ground.

  Arcenaux rolled over, holding his hands up to protect his face.

  I sat up. Straddling Arcenaux was a tiny man, his powerful arms and shoulders keeping the detective immobilized. It was Bert Turk!

  “What is going on here?” another voice called. Judy Mizener was standing there, running a large beamed flashlight over the wall paintings, which had now been covered over by red spray paint.

  She approached us. Bert Turk rolled off Arcenaux, breathing heavily.

  “You really didn’t think I would let you do this alone, did you?” she asked, helping me to my feet.

  “In fact, I did,” I admitted, standing unsteadily.

  Judy Mizener stared at Arcenaux. “What are you doing here?” He didn’t answer. She turned back to me, perplexed. “Does he have something to do with this whole mess?”

  “Yes, he does.”

  “You mean one of our own detectives is the Toy Mouse Murderer?”

  “Oh, no, Judy. Arcenaux is no murderer. He’s worse. He was a consultant, a courier, a concierge of death. He was implicated in every murder. He advised every murderer.”

  �
��Every murderer? How many were there?”

  “Seventeen victims. Sixteen murderers. And one suicide—the last, Jack Tyre.”

  “Alice, you’ve had a scare. Go slow now. Think before you talk. You’re not making much sense.” Judy Mizener placed a consoling hand on my arm. I shook it off.

  “Do you remember that Jonestown horror?” I asked.

  “Of course. A mass suicide. The religious cult that extinguished itself—about eight hundred people, mostly Americans—in Guyana, by drinking poisoned Kool-Aid.”

  “Well, what we’re dealing with is very much the same—only on a smaller and more exotic scale. Jack Tyre was a charismatic man, a visionary who did not hesitate to proselytize for his vision. He preached a very ancient Egyptian creed.”

  I was calm. I was in control. It was like I was watching my analysis unfold and marveling at its lucidity. Yet, only minutes before I had been groveling on the wet ground in fear.

  “The creed of Bast?” Judy Mizener asked.

  “Yes, but with his own slight modifications. Jack Tyre obviously believed that this life was only an ugly preview of the glory to come in the next life. That the believer would be resurrected in the next life, body and soul. That the ideal mode in which to enter eternal life was as a cat. He gathered about himself cat lovers who were fascinated by Egyptian lore. They spent hours together among the artifacts of the Egyptian collection at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

  “Jack Tyre’s pseudo-Egyptian gospel was powerful. And he spoke—in the eyes of his followers—with the authority of Bast, the sun goddess who traditionally conferred immortality with the gentle rays of the sun. Lovely cat-headed Bast—the emblem of the sun god who brought new life to the dead just as the new plants came up in the fields.

  “Tyre created the scenario. His followers should not prolong their entry into paradise. Probably they drew lots to begin their demonic journey. Victim number one was murdered by victim number two. Victim number two was murdered by victim number three . . . and so on.”

  Judy pleaded, “Go slower, Alice. Go slower.”

  I breathed deeply in and out, then continued: “The moment a victim died, his or her cat was shipped to a desolate area of the Adirondacks to live out its life as a feral cat under the supposed guidance of the sun goddess. The moment the cat died of natural causes in the wild, the victim would enter the gates of paradise resurrected as the cat he or she loved.”

  “It is all so crazy,” Judy Mizener muttered.

  Fatigue suddenly broke into my clarity. My head was beginning to spin. I leaned against the wall for support.

  “That was why the sequence of the murders always mimicked the fertility and birth cycles of the cat. The believers were about to be reborn into eternal life as cats.”

  Arcenaux made a sudden movement. Bert Turk turned the detective’s own gun on him. “Keep him quiet,” Judy Mizener told the small man. Then she asked me, “What was the toy mouse about?”

  “It wasn’t left for the cat. It was left for the human. The Egyptians always provided gifts for the dead on their journey to the next life. The toy mouse was a symbolic gift signifying the transfer from human to divine cat. That’s what the crooked pictures were all about also. They signified that this life was crooked . . . ugly . . . deranged.”

  “But how is Arcenaux tied to all this—concretely?”

  “Each member of this cult contributed twenty-five hundred dollars a year—a kind of tithe . . . a membership fee in the church of Bast. That money was paid to Arcenaux in exchange for him helping them execute the ritual murders cleanly. Only a homicide detective could have been able to ingeniously create a different M.O. for each murder—a different weapon for each divine assassination. In fact, only the lucky hunch about the toy mouse spoiled the plan. Arcenaux was also used to transport the cats to the Adirondacks. But only Jack Tyre knew of Arcenaux’s connection with the plot. He was Arcenaux’s control. He gave the detective the money each year. Arcenaux reported only to Tyre.”

  “How did you piece all this together, Alice?”

  “It turns out that Arcenaux helped conduct the investigation into Jill Bonaventura’s murder many years ago. He interviewed her brother, who must have told him about the twenty-five hundred dollars he gave his sister each year—not knowing what it was for. But that information was never entered into the Retro files by Arcenaux. He also slipped up once in a moment of sadness and told me that his great ambition in life was to own a trucking firm. At the time, I thought it was his attempt at a humorous statement. His participation in the crimes was made clearer and more precise to me after the attempted murder of Tony Basillio on his trip upstate to check out an important lead. At first I thought that Karl Bonaventura was the shooter. But after he committed suicide the day before Tony went up there, I realized it had to be someone at Retro. Only people with access to the computer knew I had been to Jill Bonaventura’s apartment, where I found the slip showing that Jill was about to ship her cat to the Desolate Swamp in the Adirondacks in accordance with the cult’s belief that the cat must die in the feral state.”

  Judy Mizener walked slowly over to Arcenaux. She seemed to find it difficult to absorb—or believe—what I had told her. She seemed alternately reluctant and then happy to believe it.

  “Tell me, John,” she asked gently, “why did you deface these paintings?”

  Arcenaux didn’t answer. Judy Mizener persisted. “Is what she is saying true? Did it happen that way, John?”

  Detective John Arcenaux persisted in his silence. Judy Mizener turned back to me.

  “Do you have any hard proof of all this . . . of Arcenaux’s complicity? Obliterating wall paintings is not really a crime.”

  “Tony will have that evidence for you in a few hours. As soon as he comes back from upstate. As for Arcenaux’s motives. Money, no doubt. Over the years he must have collected almost two hundred thousand dollars in annual dues from the cult members. Of course, each year, the contributions were reduced by twenty-five hundred as another member entered paradise. But I think it was more than just the money. There was the perverse challenge. And maybe not a little madness. Who knows? Maybe he just liked being around a very strange group of people. Maybe he’s a sort of cult groupie.”

  “Those people were lunatics.”

  “No, Judy, you have it wrong. Their beliefs were as valid and as authentic as any other belief system. In fact, their faith was quite beautiful. I would like to believe that this life is only a pale, ugly preview of something to come. And I surely would like to spend eternity in the guise of a cat goddess.”

  “Do I cuff him?” Bert Turk suddenly asked, staring at Arcenaux with profound distaste.

  “Why not?” Judy Mizener replied. “We’ll book him on disorderly conduct and defacing park property. At least until we can get a conspiracy indictment on the murders.”

  Wearily we filed out of the cave.

  Chapter 21

  I stared into the white foam of my cappuccino. We were in a coffee shop on Madison Avenue and Thirty-Seventh Street in Manhattan. Tony was seated across from me. He was drinking his. Then he put the cup down with a theatrical gesture . . . as if the beverage was something he had been given for great heroism . . . as if it was a gift.

  “I gave everything to Mizener. You were absolutely right, Swede. There was a small trucking company up near Desolate Swamp with Arcenaux listed as one of the partners. No one up there gave me any trouble. Your Retro identification card opened all kinds of doors for me. He also has a bank account upstate, and two CDs.”

  “What amounts?”

  “They total about a hundred and seventy-three thousand.”

  “Not a lot when you consider it represents consultant fees in seventeen murders.”

  “Was it the money, Swede? Was that why Arcenaux did it?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe he
doesn’t know.”

  “And you were right about that kid, Swede—about Billy Shea. He was paid to get the cat out of the Tyres’ apartment. Just like that neighborhood kid who grabbed Jill Bonaventura’s cat out of her apartment. The trouble is, Billy Shea can’t I.D. Arcenaux. He told me the man who dealt with him wore big dark glasses.”

  “Well, let Judy Mizener sort it out.”

  “Do you know how Arcenaux got involved in the beginning? I mean, he doesn’t have a cat. And he doesn’t seem like the kind of guy who is obsessed with ancient Egyptian theology.”

  “I discovered that Arcenaux’s first assignment in the NYPD was as a mounted cop in Central Park. That’s where he probably met Jack Tyre. Tyre needed someone who knew weapons.”

  Tony sat back and stretched. Then he shook his head slowly from side to side, incredulously.

  “Swede,” he said, “tell me about those people. I mean, tell me why they did it.”

  “You mean why they believed what they believed?”

  “I mean . . . to the point of ending their lives suddenly . . . of their own free will.”

  “Many people yearn for immortality. Many people believe this life is worthless. There have been a lot stranger cults.”

  “But, Swede . . .”

  “Don’t get me wrong, Tony. I’m not apologizing for what they did. But it is an elegant concept—to live forever in the bodies of the creatures they love the most.”

  “A cat is a cat, Swede.”

  “No, Tony. A cat is . . . in a lonely harsh world . . . the repository of what is left of beauty and grace and truth.”

  Suddenly my effusive words embarrassed me. I changed the subject abruptly.

  “I have to go on a cat-sitting assignment now, just a few blocks from here. How about coming along?”

  “Why not? It’s better than the Adirondacks.”