Talk (The Alexandra Chronicles Book 4) Read online

  After Jessica calmed down and stopped crying, she backed away from Leopold, apologizing for her outburst, saying she thought it would be best if he left so that she could get some rest. She picked up her paper napkin from the table and turned her back to Leopold to wipe her eyes and blow her nose.

  "I don't want to leave you like this, Jessica," he said softly.

  She looked at the napkin clenched in her hand. "Will you be coming back?"

  "Oh, yes," he assured her in a low tone. "As soon as you wish."

  She tried to think. "Are you staying here, too?"

  This time he didn't answer and she thought she best let it pass.

  "Maybe you'll come for dinner tomorrow? At seven again?"

  "All right."

  She turned around. "I'll cook for you, if you want."

  "No, I'll bring you dinner, Jessica. Something fresh."

  She smiled. And sniffed. "Thank you, Leopold."

  " Are you going to be all right?"

  She nodded. "I just need to rest."

  "Good night, then," he said.

  "Good night," she said.

  He started out the door. "Oh, I almost forgot," he said, sounding like a normal person. He withdrew a cassette from his pocket and walked over to hand it to her. She looked at it and read the label, New York State AA Conference, Ben H. "It's all I could find on short notice."

  It was a tape of someone telling his story at a regional AA conference. "You've given me a precious gift. Thank you."

  He nodded and went out the door, closing it softly behind him.

  She waited for the sound of the bolt.

  She didn't hear it.

  She wiped the steak knife Leopold had used and stuck it back under the sofa cushion. Moments later she was rushing into the kitchen to crush penicillin in applesauce to feed to Hurt Guy.

  "I thought the warrant would be ready when we got here," Will said, frustrated.

  Alexandra didn't even bother answering. Nor did Detective Hepplewhite, who was smoking a cigarette in the corner. They were sitting in a windowless conference room in the downtown Buffalo FBI office.

  "It takes time," Wendy said. "And the fact that it's Friday—"

  The door opened and they all started. It was Agent Cole. "Sorry," she said. "Not yet."

  They all slumped back down in their seats.

  "Where's Dirk?" Alexandra asked.

  "Checking on something with one of our people. He'll be back." The agent moved to the table. "I've got a lot more on Plattener." Heads raised in interest again, and moments later the group had assembled around the table. "Okay, as you know," Agent Cole began, "Albany says Plattener's on vacation for a month."

  "Where do they think he is?" Alexandra asked.

  "Europe. With his wife and kids. The thing is, they've gone through the apartment from top to bottom in Albany—"

  "They've already gotten in?" Will said. "So what's the hang-up here?"

  "Just let me read you the report," Agent Cole begged. She cleared her throat. "In the closets they found almost all men's clothing, with the exception of a few toys—a game called Lie Detector, a Huckleberry Hound stuffed animal and a Lionel train set. They also found three items of women's clothing—a white rabbit-fur muff, a yellow cardigan with lace collar and a Playtex girdle with fasteners, size eighteen." She looked at them. "How does that strike you?"

  "It strikes me the toys and women's things are from the 1960s at least," Alexandra said. "A white rabbit-fur muff?"

  "The guy is a loony toon," Detective Hepplewhite declared, rubbing his eyes. "God only knows what the wife and kids are like."

  "We've got to get into that house," Wendy stressed. "Can't I just—"

  "No," Cole said, cutting her off. "And don't worry, we're watching it. No one's going to come or go without our knowing about it."

  "But Jessica could be in there," Will said. "Or under there, or—"

  "I know, I know," Cole said, "but we have to be patient. Now—" she opened a manila file "—this is what I've got on Plattener. James Albert Plattener. Born Niagara Falls, 1963. Only child of Albert Marcus Plattener, an engineer working on the Niagara Power Project, who died of lymphatic cancer in 1968, age thirty-nine. Plattener was five. Mother, Lillian Ruth Wiesner Plattener, moved them to a house in Buffalo where she worked as a private nurse. Plattener attended public schools, graduated high school at fifteen, Bachelor of Science in interdisciplinary sciences from Buffalo State at eighteen. Started an accelerated Ph.D. program in physics and electrical engineering at Rochester Institute of Technology, but dropped out in 1982 because his mother got sick with asthma and he moved with her to Arizona."

  "There it is," Alexandra murmured, making a note on her legal pad.

  "Where in Arizona?" Will asked.

  "Phoenix. He worked for the Arizona Board of Energy and Resource Management until 1994."

  "So he could have picked up Jessica's show from the very first year," Alexandra said, looking up.

  "Denny Ladler checked the old program registers," Agent Cole said, "and he confirms it. Plattener and his mother were in the studio audience in Tucson several times while the show was still there."

  "Where is that warrant?" Will demanded, getting up to pace the room.

  "So when did the mother die?" Detective Hepplewhite wanted to know. Alexandra looked at him with a question in her expression. "It's the mother," he explained. "It's always the mother behind these guys."

  "She died four years ago," Cole said. "And Plattener came back home to Buffalo, moved back into their old house and then started working for the Niagara Power Project."

  "What about the wife and children?" Alexandra wondered. "Where did they come in?"

  Cole threw up her hands. "Got me. We're checking on it. Right now, Albany says the wife and kids live here in Buffalo, but here in Buffalo the neighbors are telling us the wife and kids live in Albany."

  Hepplewhite visibly winced. "That's not good.”

  "Oh, God," Wendy said, "I hope he hasn't done something to them."

  "How the hell did this guy get to Albany?" Will wanted to know. "Who the hell would hire him?"

  "Apparently he's a genius," Agent Cole said. "A strange bird for sure, everyone says that, but the guy apparently knows his way around power. Electrical, I mean."

  There was a short knock on the door and then Dirk came in. "We were just wondering how this guy Plattener got hired in Albany," Alexandra explained.

  Dirk pulled up a chair.

  "When Pataki came into office," Agent Cole said, "Plattener's name kept coming up. He was too much of a kook to give him the big post, so the commissioner lured him as a special assistant."

  "Ten to one when we look into it," Dirk said, "we'll find that he lured them."

  "I agree," Alexandra said. "This guy's had a thing for Jessica since Arizona. The state job would get him to the studio in New York."

  Hepplewhite was shaking his head. "No, it's too much of a stretch. If he wanted to be near her, why didn't he just move to New York? Try for a job at West End?"

  "Who's to say he didn't?" Dirk asked.

  "I don't know jack shit about Jessica Wright's disappearance!" Mark Brewer yelled.

  "Suppose you explain to me, then," Agent Kunsa said, "how the van signed out to you from Niagara Power was used to transport Jessica Wright out of New York City after she was kidnapped."

  "I told you, I didn't sign out the van!"

  "Then how come your name is on the register?"

  "I didn't sign it out!" he insisted.

  "Have you ever signed out a van before?"

  "Of course I have! I transport shit, I have to have a van."

  "So how did your signature get on the register?"

  "I didn't sign the register!" he nearly shrieked.

  "Didn't you sign out the van and help James Plattener?"

  At the sound of that name, Brewer's face first screwed up in disgust and then expanded into an expression of disbelief. "That wuss? You think I'd have j
ack shit to do with a wuss like Plattener?"

  Kunsa didn't say anything. He only waited.

  Brewer's expression had changed again. Now something seemed to be dawning. "Oh, I get it. Hey, look, it's not me you're after—let me tell you about that techno-troll nerd-fuck. He's setting me up."

  Hurt Guy was failing. When Jessica went in to give him the penicillin Leopold brought, she turned the comer of the bed and gasped, horrified at what she found. He must have had some kind of seizure while they had been eating dinner, for there was spittle down the sides of his mouth and there was a new gash on the side of his head where, evidently, he had banged it again and again against the sharp comer of the bedpost leg.

  "Oh, Hurt Guy, I didn't know," she murmured. She opened his mouth and saw that he had bitten his tongue badly. She cleaned the new wound on his head and bandaged it, made him rinse his mouth and then got the applesauce laced with penicillin down him. Then he went into another seizure.

  Alexandra's head was resting on her arms as she dozed on the table; Will was nodding off in a chair, head propped back against the wall; Hepplewhite was curled up around the steam radiator in the comer; and Dirk was poring over papers spread out on the table while Wendy was checking her facial burns in a compact mirror. The overhead light burnt, the clock ticked, and the bureau noises from outside the conference room were picking up.

  The door suddenly opened, jerking them all awake. "We've got the warrant," Debbie announced.

  Everybody scrambled to their feet.

  "And we've got something else on the mother," Debbie added. "Guess what her father's name was?"

  "Leopold," Alexandra said, heading out the door.

  Jessica snapped on the rubber gloves, jammed a bunch of stainless-steel spoons and forks into the front pockets of her slacks, put the steak knife from the bedroom in her back pocket and went into the parlor. She picked up the round candle from the table, slipped the matches in her other back pocket, took a deep breath and opened the door. Tentatively she stepped out in the hallway.

  Where the heck was she?

  This was no ordinary Victorian house. She was standing in a huge hallway with an arched ceiling at least twelve feet high. It was a long, enormous space, with wooden and black-steel trusses overhead, and on the floor old fashioned black-and-white linoleum.

  To the right, at the end of the hall, there was a six-foot high window, but massive wood shutters were spiked over it. She turned the other way, slowly making her way by candlelight. There was no sound. No sign of life. Where was Leopold? Moreover, where was that electric field?

  There were wooden doors on either side of the hall and Jessica paused at the one next to hers, the room where Hurt Guy had been. Not only was there a big steel bolt across it, but also a large padlock that secured it in place.

  Leopold's intentions were clear. He had definitely left Hurt Guy to die.

  She stopped at the next door. She took a spoon out of her pocket and tossed it against the door handle. Nothing. The clatter of the spoon on the linoleum sounded horribly loud, but no other sound followed. She opened the next door and peered in. Just a big blank room with a bricked-up window like the two in her bedroom. She picked up her spoon, turning her eyes on the double wooden doors ahead in the hall. The doors met in an eight-foot-high arch and had huge brass handles. Clearly, if anything led to anywhere, these were the doors she was going to have to get through.

  20

  The authorities were swarming the nice neat property at 23 Old Bridge Road. Curious neighbors had lined the street to watch.

  "Got to be drugs, don't you think?" one woman clucked to her neighbor, pulling her raincoat more tightly over her nightie.

  "On 'Cops' they always have dogs," her neighbor commented.

  "That's the FBI, look at their jackets."

  "So what? They still ought to have dogs."

  Inside the modest three-bedroom house, Alexandra was watching as Debbie Cole went through the master bedroom with a local policeman. Although clean and tidy, it was clear that no one had actually used this room in some time, and that Leopold—that was, James Albert Plattener—had kept all of his mother's things as if she were still alive. The old-lady dresses and cardigans and sensible shoes were lined up in the closet; the bureau had large old-fashioned bras and panties and girdles and stockings; there was even an embroidery hoop sitting on the padded rocking chair by the window, making it appear as though someone had only paused to go downstairs and get a cup of tea before resuming the project.

  The next bedroom was like an embroidery museum. The walls were covered with matted and framed pictures, and there were perhaps a hundred pillows carefully arranged on shelves, chairs and a double bed. Like the agents and the police, Alexandra was wearing a pair of surgical gloves, and she went over to peer inside the double doors of the room's closet.

  Glass shelving had been installed in the closet, from floor to ceiling to display what appeared to be hundreds of silver souvenir spoons. Alexandra looked closer.

  "Probably the mother's," Agent Cole said over her shoulder.

  "She didn't travel much," Alexandra said, bending to check out another shelf. "They're all from New York State or Arizona."

  "Let's check out next door," Agent Cole said, leading the way to the third and final bedroom. It was more of a maid's room, it was so tiny. There was a single narrow bed, a tiny window, a narrow dresser and closet. This, evidently, was the bedroom belonging to Leopold. In the closet hung several men's suits; in the bureau there were nice neat piles of underwear, dress socks and laundered shirts. On the bureau was a snapshot of an old lady squinting into the camera. Agent Cole lifted the old green rug briefly to look at the floorboards and then moved on to the bathroom across the hall.

  Here everything was pink, the walls, the tile, the rug, the fixtures. There was a large basket of individually wrapped soaps and packets of bubble bath. Samples of expensive perfumes were carefully lined up. There was a sterling silver brush, comb and hand-mirror set carefully laid out on a pink hand towel. Over the sink, on a small shelf, was a shaving mug, straight razor, an old-fashioned bar of shaving soap and a huge bottle of witch hazel. "Who do you know that uses witch hazel as aftershave?" Agent Cole wondered.

  "I think my grandfather did," Alexandra said.

  The agent turned around. "Really?"

  "On the farm they used it for everything—cuts, bums, bites. My grandmother used to use it to wash her face. As an astringent."

  Downstairs, Agent Kunsa had arrived from Niagara Falls and Will stood by as the FBI agent conferred with members of the local team. In the living room they were surrounded by petit-point pictures, a sofa and chairs with lace doilies carefully placed on them, against the wall an upright piano that was terribly out of a tune, and several cabinets.

  "He's been here recently," Hepplewhite said, coming in from the kitchen with Dirk. "He's got milk and eggs and bread in the refrigerator."

  Will was looking at the photograph of the young woman and two boys that was on top of the piano. "They look normal enough."

  "Considering they have no connection with Plattener whatsoever," Kunsa said, "there's no reason why they shouldn't."

  Will turned around.

  "The wife and kids don't exist," Kunsa said. "We cracked his tax returns and he's been filing on behalf of a woman who died in Phoenix several years ago, a baby that died in Flagstaff and a child who was killed in Schenectady."

  "You mean he—" Will began, horrified.

  "No, they died of natural causes," Kunsa said. "The woman had cancer, the baby had a tumor, the other child was hit by a car. But he used them because their ages were about right and he's been filing returns for them under their social security numbers—only he's been filing them as his wife and kids. As for these pictures, who knows who these people are? They don't even match the pictures from his apartment that Albany faxed to us."

  "Look at this," Wendy said, straightening up from the crouch she had been in.

  Kunsa m
oved over to the large wooden cabinet and squatted, looking inside. Abruptly he stood back up. "This is our guy, all right."

  Will went to look. Inside the cabinet there were four shelves with double rows of videotapes, each one carefully and neatly labeled with five entries. "Jessica 10/14/97 Sarah Ferguson on Princess Diana" listed one, "Jessica 10/15/97 NFL Heroes," "Jessica 10/16/97 How to Buy a Home," "Jessica 10/17/97 Rev. Billy Graham," "Jessica 10/18/97 The Rolling Stones."

  "There's more over here," a cop said, stooping to look in another cabinet.

  "And in here," Detective Hepplewhite said after lifting the lid on an old mahogany phonograph cabinet.

  "Norm?" Agent Cole called, coming down the stairs behind Alexandra. "Central's just called. They've got Plattener's employment records."

  "Agent Kunsa?" a female voice called from the kitchen doorway. It belonged to a uniformed policewoman. "You better come downstairs."

  Will's expression made her quickly add, "No, sir, it's nothing like that."

  Kunsa led the way through the kitchen to the basement stairs. They went down the suspended flight of stairs one at a time, following the flashlight of the policewoman. "The lights are out down here on purpose," she explained. "The wiring's been ripped out."

  It was a small basement and the policewoman walked them over to the dusty floor-to-ceiling shelves holding canned tomatoes and pickles and relish. Alexandra audibly gasped when the officer demonstrated how the whole wall swung out on well-oiled hinges, and then they were temporarily blinded by lights.

  Behind the wall was a very large second room. "This room is hooked into the outside power line."

  A police technician was packing several test tubes and vials in his bag while a police photographer snapped pictures. The room was carpeted and contained a large TV, VCR and La-Z-Boy chair, but it was the walls of the room that held their attention. They were covered with pictures of Jessica.

  There were magazine covers and pictures from newspapers, publicity handouts, fan-club pictures and what looked to be regular snapshots. An agent walked over and pulled down one of several huge volumes in a bookcase and brought it over to Agent Kunsa. Inside was nothing but clippings about Jessica. Then he pulled open a drawer in the file cabinet in the comer, exposing file after file of tear sheets about Jessica. "They start back when she was on-air in Tucson."