Chapter 38
WOW,” SAID CHAMBERS, GETTING out of the rental car and looking out beyond the motel parking lot. “You ever been here before, Pendergast? These views are sublime.”
They had flown into Flagstaff and driven to Sedona, Arizona, to interview what their research indicated might have been Wickman’s last girlfriend, Sophie Petruska.
They had extended their interviews—at Pendergast’s insistence—to Wickman’s undergraduate years at Tulane, speaking to a dorm RA and a roommate.
But as before, their probing into Wickman’s background confounded all their assumptions and yielded nothing—young Wickman had been a delightful child, an earnest and highly intelligent teenager, and an industrious, straight-A college student.
Following Chambers’s gaze, Pendergast also glanced up and around at the landscape of surrounding mountains and sharp ledges of a peculiar red color that was Sedona’s claim to fame. “There is only one step from the sublime to the ridiculous,” he said.
Chambers had to laugh. Pendergast was clearly annoyed, in a sour mood ever since that interview with the English teacher. His method wasn’t panning out, and he was being provocative and contrary just for the sake of it. “You don’t see the glory of nature here?”
“What I see are a great many dangerous precipices and rocks. I will say this, however: the climate is not unattractive.”
At this, Chambers shook his head. It was over a hundred degrees and Pendergast, as usual, was dressed in one of his black suits.
At least it was a dry heat and not New Orleans soup.
He took out a card on which he’d jotted an address.
“Sophie Petruska, Petruska Jewelry, Capitol Butte Road. We can walk there from here.”
“Excellent.”
This was the last clue left to follow up on—the girlfriend Wickman’s roommate said the serial killer had in college.
They found the jewelry store, a small but prosperous-looking establishment with a plate-glass window featuring an array of glittering gold jewelry pieces, many encrusted with gems.
Chambers paused to look. “There’s some incredible work in there.”
Pendergast stopped as well, uncharacteristically showing some interest. “Lovely,” he said. “And all in crown gold—unusual.”
Chambers didn’t know what crown gold was but didn’t ask. Nothing good came of asking Pendergast to explain something.
They entered the store, the door announcing their arrival with a tinkling of bells. A woman behind the counter greeted them.
“We’re here to see Miss Sophie Petruska,” said Chambers, holding up the ID on the lanyard. “FBI. We called earlier.”
“She’s in the workshop,” said the woman behind the counter. “Um, she’s in the middle of casting—I’ll take you back there, but you might have to wait a few minutes.”
They followed her into a rear workshop that was considerably larger than the store.
A woman wearing a heavy apron, gloves, and Plexiglas face cover was in the process of removing a yellow-hot crucible from a furnace and, with great focus, using tongs to pour a stream of molten metal into a mold. Chambers watched with interest.
Petruska finished pouring the metal and put the crucible aside to cool off, then shut off the furnace and arranged her tools. Finally, she turned and came over, removing her gloves and face mask. An enormous quantity of mahogany-colored hair tumbled down, which she shook out.
Chambers realized he was looking at a very attractive woman, with fine high cheekbones, full lips, jade-colored eyes, and smooth white skin. Recovering, he said: “Miss Petruska? I’m Agent Chambers and this is Agent Pendergast, FBI. We spoke on the phone.”
“Of course. Follow me into my office.”
They settled down in a tiny office behind the furnace, Petruska behind a small desk while the agents wedged themselves into uncomfortable wooden chairs on either side.
“Apologies for the tight quarters,” she said. “I keep all the space I can out there for the workshop.”
“I find it intriguing,” Pendergast began, “that you work in twenty-two-karat gold only.”
Chambers had suggested Pendergast take the lead in the interview, but that was before he’d seen her. Now he was annoyed at himself. The man was so damn honey-tongued.
“I see you have an eye for gold. I would never work in lower karat—the color just doesn’t have the richness. Even eighteen karat is a pale imitation of real gold. Those cultures that truly value gold, such as in India and Arabia, only settle for twenty-two or twenty-four karat.”
“Indeed,” said Pendergast. “I share their love of the one true color. I also note that you seem to be using the Dutch technique of delft clay casting. I had thought that rather rare.”
She looked at him curiously. “For an FBI agent, you seem to know a great deal about working gold.”
“The ancient art of gold-working is an interest of mine. Ars longa, vita brevis.”
Christ, thought Chambers, disgusted, Pendergast was really laying it on thick.
Petruska’s face brightened. “A Hippocrates-quoting FBI agent! However, I hope you won’t handcuff me if I point out that the original was written in Greek, not Latin—? β?ο? βραχ??, ? δ? τ?χνη μακρ?.”
Pendergast bowed his head slightly. “And I thus stand corrected.”
“My father taught ancient languages at Princeton. You just happened upon one quote I remember.”
Chambers could see that, apparently for reasons of his own, Pendergast was charming the hell out of this jeweler, and now he’d finally had enough. He cleared his throat. “Can we, ah, ask you a few questions, Miss Petruska?”
“Of course. You were quite mysterious on the phone. I’m curious to know what this is all about.”
Chambers seized the lead. “Miss Petruska, we’re here to ask you about a former boyfriend of yours, Parker Wickman.”
At this her face seemed to go very still and watchful. “Yes?”
“Could you share with us how you met him, when, your relationship to him—the basic details?”
A short silence. “And this is in reference to what?”
“We’re working on a homicide case. I wish I could share specifics with you, but I can’t. We need your help. Of course, this interview is totally voluntary.”
“I don’t see any reason not to answer your questions,” she said. “I’d like to help. Is Wickman in trouble?”
A silence. “I’m sorry to tell you he was the victim of a homicide.”
“Oh.” She drew her hand to her mouth. “Oh my.”
“So, can we start from the beginning?”
She smoothed down her hair with a long hand and tried to collect herself. Nevertheless, Chambers could see she was badly shaken up by the news.
“We met in college.”
“Tulane?”
She nodded. “It was the beginning of our junior years. Class of ’85, so this would have been… the fall of ’83.”
Chambers nodded, taking notes. He often avoided using a microcassette recorder, finding it could prove a hindrance. “Go on, please.”
“He was one of the most interesting men in the class. A brilliant student, but not a grind. Lots of fun, lively, with a good sense of humor. Nerdy in a lovable way. He liked playing dumb practical jokes.”
“Jokes?”
She managed a laugh while recollecting. “Once he got a bunch of guys together and they hauled the dean’s VW Bug up into the main dining hall.
Another time, he borrowed a tray from the kitchen and made the usual Jell-O dessert, only he put giant garden slugs in it instead of bananas.
He put it out there and thought it was hilarious when everyone tucked into it—before realizing. ”
Chambers shuddered. “So he had friends?”
“Tons. Everyone loved him.”
More of the same wonderfulness. What the hell had happened—and when? “How did you meet?” he continued.
“We were both in the chess club. I whipped his ass a couple of times and he apparently liked that, said getting whupped in chess was sexy. We began dating.” She paused. “I fell for him pretty hard.”
“What was his major?”
“Psychology, on a med school track. I majored in chemistry. At the time I was fascinated with PSI.”
“Sigh?” Chambers repeated, confused.
“PSI. You know, the parapsychology discipline that covers ways that human beings can perceive things outside the five traditional senses, like ESP. It comes from the Greek letter psi. I was trying to find chemical factors in the brain that could explain it, or at least identify it. He thought it was hogwash at first, but eventually he became fascinated. He even wrote his senior thesis on precognition in dreams.”
“And the relationship continued with no issues?”
“We went out for a year, but over that following summer—well, we sort of drifted apart and ultimately broke up. But we remained friends, good friends, for the rest of senior year. He went on to graduate school in parapsychology at Tulane, while I moved to Arizona and apprenticed to a jeweler.”
“No more chemistry?” Pendergast asked.
She smiled almost shyly. “Metallurgy and its chemical qualities began to interest me more.”
“Why did you break up?” Chambers resumed.
“No reason in particular.” She hesitated. “I think we were meant to be more friends than lovers. These things happen.”
“Did he date any other women?”
“Not that I know of.”
“And you?”
“I had boyfriends after that.”
“And he didn’t mind?”
There was an uneasy pause. “Not at first.”
“But then later?”
Another awkward pause. “We lost touch after graduation. I sometimes wondered how he was doing, whether he went to medical school or pursued a career in PSI research. But then…” She hesitated. “I was back home in New Orleans visiting family, and I ran into him. At a car wash, of all crazy places.”
“When was this?”
“Let’s see. A few years after we graduated—1988 or thereabouts.” She hesitated again and a troubled look crossed her face.
“And then?”
“It was a shock. He looked different—all buttoned up like a ’50s Madison Avenue advertising exec.
He told me he had a job fixing up cadavers.
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. He’d dropped out of the graduate program at Tulane.
He looked good—if kind of weird—it was the way he talked that had changed the most. Flat, kind of.
Not at all like his previous funny and easy manner. He was… kind of all wound up.”
“Do you have any idea what might have caused the change?”
“No. I probed, asked him if everything was okay, you know… But he wasn’t forthcoming.
I thought maybe he’d been in a car accident and gotten a traumatic brain injury.
But as we talked, I realized he was still just as smart as ever—maybe even more so.
But almost… Machiavellian. No longer an open book.
Nobody else would have noticed it, and he seemed to be at pains to act like his old self.
But I’d been his girlfriend. I could see it.
Later, I wondered if it was my imagination.
But instinct told me no.” She shuddered.
“Instinct also told me I shouldn’t see him again—and I never did. ”
At this, Pendergast spoke again. “Machiavellian?”
“For want of a better word. Devious. Calculating. Careful.”
Pendergast gave a slow nod. “You said you’d remained friends through your senior year. So this change must have occurred during his time in Tulane graduate school?”
“I… think so.”
“He was there two years, you say?”
“Yes. Then he dropped out.”
“Do you know if, during that time, he took a human anatomy class? Dissected cadavers?”
“Funny you should ask. He mentioned that he’d gotten the job at the funeral home because he’d taken just such a class, and right after dropping out he’d worked as a kind of diener for the medical school classes on human anatomy. Seemed really proud of how he knew his way around a corpse.”
“Did you, by chance, read his thesis on dream precognition?”
“I did. It explored the fact that dreams often seem to predict future events in a person’s life. He had a theory about that.”
“And that theory?”
“It was a variant of the Jungian idea of the universal subconsciousness. Not only was the unconscious a source of wisdom, but it could potentially be used or cultivated to see into your future—in a misty sort of way, of course, especially in dreams.”
“Do you believe that?”
“As a matter of fact, I do.”
“Who was his thesis advisor in graduate school?”
“I don’t know. He didn’t want to talk about it.”
“Do you think he had a falling-out with a graduate school professor, or something else that might have soured him, causing him to drop out?”
“It’s possible. I really don’t know.”
“You implied there might have been some friction between you two about your later boyfriends.”
“Not friction so much as a… well, a kind of morbid curiosity. Wanting to know details.”
“Such as?”
“Like what I did with them.”
“I see.” Pendergast paused. “When you were in a relationship with him, did he evince any unusual proclivities?”
At this she reddened a little. “Well, nothing outside what, ah, people usually do.”
“Was he a skillful lover?”
Chambers wondered where the hell Pendergast was going with this. If he pushed her too far, they might lose the interview.
“Yes,” was all she said.
“What was the subject of his dissertation?”
“I don’t know. We never talked about the details of his graduate work—beyond the anatomy class, anyway.”
“One final question. What kind of car was he driving at the car wash?”
She thought for a moment. “It was a large white panel truck.”