The Visible Man
Page 22
But he didn’t attack.
He didn’t even talk.
He dropped the hammer, and the hammer went thud. I heard him casually walk toward the door, and I watched our deadbolt unlock itself. The door swung open and swung itself shut. I started crying uncontrollably. I tried to help John stand, but he couldn’t move. I ran into the kitchen (still crying) to fetch him a glass of water; when I returned, I could see rolling blue and red lights through our picture windows. I sprinted to the front door, opened it wide, and yelled, “Get an ambulance,” at the first cop I saw.
I went back inside, covered John’s midsection with a towel, and tried to figure out how I was going to explain my life to other people.
Epilogue
It would be wrong to classify John as “paralyzed.” He still has some feeling in his feet and lower extremities, and he can pivot his right ankle forty-five degrees. If he were truly paralyzed, he’d have no pain around his coccyx, and the pain is definitely there, every minute of every day. But he can’t stand and he can’t walk, and he’ll spend the rest of his days in a wheelchair. We both accepted that certainty very early on, immediately following his surgery. However, he can still read and he can still write, and—if the pain subsides by next fall—he’ll resume teaching full-time. He’s excited about that. John’s become a totally different person. Amazingly, there’s been an upside to this incident, something I could never have imagined. But before I get to that, I need to explain what happened in the wake of Y____’s final, destructive cameo.
Try to put yourself in the position of the first police officer on the scene: You’ve been summoned to investigate a home invasion, but when you arrive no one is there except the two residents. One resident is injured, seemingly from a fall. He’s in no position to explain anything. The other is topless and hysterical. You’re informed that a man was in the house, that this man was familiar with the homeowners, and that he’d escaped (on foot) just minutes ago. But you’re also told that any attempt to search for this man in the immediate area will be completely useless. You ask, “In what direction did he flee?” You are told, “That doesn’t matter.” You start to wonder what’s really going on here; you start to wonder if this is some kind of domestic dispute, or maybe that drugs are involved. You start to wonder if you need to take the hysterical woman into custody, so that’s what you do.
After John was rushed to the hospital, I spent six hours in Austin City Jail. They never charged me with anything, probably because they didn’t know what to charge me with. I never got the sense they saw me as a perpetrator, but they were certainly confused. The next morning, I began a series of interviews with Detective Paul LaBour. To his credit, Paul never seemed to doubt any detail of the story (even when he admitted there wasn’t much he could do about it).
Knowing what was at stake, I explained the situation like this: I told Detective LaBour that the intruder had been my patient. This, right away, seemed to remove any suspicion about my motives. I was conscious not to use the word invisible—it dawned on me why Y____ had always been so careful about using that word flippantly. It hijacks every conversation. Instead, I said that this patient had detailed a long history of entering people’s homes, and that he was exceedingly adroit at urban camouflage. I mentioned the “heavy dudes” case in Minneapolis that Y____ had described in June, and the authorities were immediately able to confirm that such a crime had occurred.16 I described the events of the previous evening as accurately as possible, once again avoiding the word invisible (instead, I would use phrases like “we could not really see him”). I also made an off-the-cuff decision that proved invaluable: I told Paul that he could interview John immediately after he recovered from his emergency spinal surgery, even before I had a chance to see him myself. This was an extremely difficult decision, and perhaps a bit cruel. Considering his condition, I’m sure John wanted to see me even more than I wanted to see him. But it was the rational move. Paul needed just five minutes with John to conclude that the details of our stories matched.17 Had we not done this, I wonder if they’d ever have believed a word of what we said. Beyond the broken latch on our back door, there was no evidence of anything. The finger smudges on the hammer were useless—they matched nothing in the FBI database.
The hunt for Y____ continues to this day. But it’s a feeble hunt, devoid of doggedness. In my opinion, the authorities have lost interest.
It is, I suppose, a paradox: Despite listening to Y____ talk about himself for nearly one hundred hours, I’d learned almost nothing useful about him. I knew his name, but it’s a common name and probably fake. I had his previous cell phone number, but the number was registered to a person who’d been dead for years. I didn’t know Y____’s specific address or where he was born. He paid for everything in cash. I turned over all the audiotapes in my possession, and investigators have scoured the transcripts for any clue that might illustrate who this person was. Yet every time they find a useful detail, it’s inevitably contradicted by something different Y____ would say later. His deception, it seems, was conscious.
Our strongest lead, certainly, were the dialogue passages about his time at Chaminade as a researcher. That period was key to every crime he would later commit. But this presented its own kind of problem: Whatever happened in that Hawaii laboratory has been artlessly stricken from the public record. The school has no information about the program, and the building where such research would have been conducted has been converted into married student housing. On his own, John has tried to ascertain details about the espoused military program through the Freedom of Information Act, but the FOIA documents we received were useless: All the names of the researchers have been blackened out, and the explanation for what was being studied is so simultaneously vague and technical that it’s virtually unreadable. We didn’t learn anything, beyond proving that some kind of military program did, in fact, exist in Hawaii.
Did we ever encounter Y____ again? No. For weeks after the attack, I was certain we would. I feared he would show up at the hospital, so I spent almost every night in John’s room. But he never appeared. If he did, I was not aware of it (and as one might expect, I’ve grown hyperconscious of every sound and movement that would indicate the presence of a man who isn’t there). The nights are still the worst. I wake up a lot. I probably wake up five times a night. But that used to happen twice as often, so I suppose that’s progress.
I still think about Y____ all the time. I know I should hate him, but I don’t. Whenever I try to hate him, it doesn’t work. All his worst qualities were totally transparent, but so were the things that made him different than other people. What can I say? I can’t deny that he was interesting, even if he was interesting in a negative way.
Almost six months after John’s fall, Y____ contacted me one final time. He sent me a postcard, addressed to my office. The postmark was from Golden, Colorado, but he claimed to be writing from Canada. Did he think I’d fail to notice the discrepancy? I’ve given up trying to understand his lies. The image on the front of the card was of all four members of the Beatles in lab coats, curiously adorned with decapitated baby dolls and hunks of raw meat. I have no idea if this is supposed to indicate an unhinged state of mind, a sick inside joke, or nothing at all. Y____’s message was handwritten in blue ink; his printing was minuscule and exacting. The message was as follows:
Victoria:
I’m sorry about what happened. I did not enter your home with the intention of hurting your husband. He should not have attacked me with a hammer, but I forgive him. It sounds like he got the worst of it. Obviously, I’m sad about how we left things. It’s hard to be a private person, I suppose. I miss you, and I hope you miss me as well. I am as much to blame for all this as you are, so don’t beat yourself up. I would like to think we’ll meet again, but I know that can’t happen. We were no good together, but try to remember me as best you can. I am doing well here in Montreal. The subway system is very efficient.
Votre ami,
Y____
To the very end, he stayed in his lane.
John was (predictably) angry when I showed him Y____’s postcard. I believe his initial comment was, “So he thinks he’s Hannibal Lecter now?” But—to John’s credit—he eventually conceded that these were not words written by a reasonable person, so there’s really no point in despising him from afar. Maybe John has forgiven him, too. Since his accident, he’s become a different man. Gone is the condescending person devoid of empathy; in his place, I have a husband who needs me, and who admits that he needs me, and who realizes that I am the only person who can help him when he wants help. I am the only person who can pull up his pants or get his books out of the attic or help him go to the toilet in a restaurant lavatory. It was jarring to see him realize these things. He speaks differently. He listens more. We share our lives equally, but I make the real decisions. John’s perspicacity will always be present, but he comprehends his own weakness (and, by extension, the weaknesses of others). I am by no means happy that he cannot walk, and his condition makes our life difficult. But not every tragic situation is tragic in totality.
I must be frank: There are many reasons why I’m writing this book, but the main one is money. John and I both have large life insurance policies, but neither of us ever thought to purchase disability insurance—it didn’t seem applicable to our nonphysical careers. Since his fall, we’ve had to remodel most of our home (including all the bathrooms) and install ramps and chairlifts. Many types of physical therapy are prohibitively expensive. My only option was to sell this story. It’s the only thing I have that’s worth anything. Much of the advance money is already gone, but at least we are comfortable and John is recovering. We needed the money. We did. Y____ wasn’t wrong about everything.
Still, if I’m going to be straight, I need to go all the way: Beyond the money, I’m pleased with the work. I’m happy this record of Y____’s life exists, and I’m proud to be the person who heard it firsthand.
Is the publication of this book precisely what Y____ wanted all along? Probably. It probably is. I can imagine him reading it wherever he’s hiding, scribbling in the margins, consumed by its minor inaccuracies. He will probably send me a letter outlining the revisions he wants to see in the paperback. Y____ could never see the things about himself that were obvious, but that’s not atypical. It might have been the only thing about him that was normal. The only thing I hope is that—wherever he is—he’s reading this book alone. He needs to be alone, and he needs to stay alone. He’s not ready to be the person he is.
1. Calls were received on Saturday at 2:55 a.m. and 3:03 a.m.; both messages transcribed on Saturday, March 22, at 8:55 a.m.
2. This is more commonly referred to as pathological lying.
3. In quantum mechanics, the Uncertainty Principle suggests that the act of measuring one magnitude of a particle, be it mass, velocity, or position, causes the other magnitudes to blur. In other words, the very process of examining something changes what that something is.
4. These were two former patients. In both cases, I became overly involved with their problems (the former regarding the death of an infant, the latter involving a rape that occurred during penal incarceration). In both cases, I had to request that our treatment terminate prematurely.
5. Calls were received on Saturday, at 3:00 a.m. and 3:03 a.m.; both messages transcribed on Saturday, April 5, at 9:58 a.m.
6. National Security Agency.
7. At the time I wrote this sentence, I was having minor problems at home and projecting that frustration onto other aspects of my life. It is not an accurate reflection of my professional self-image and should not be taken as such. I did not think it would ever be read by other people.
8. Daniel Johnston.
9. It has been pointed out to me (by a colleague) that Y____ was incorrect here. The tribe he meant to reference was actually the Tarahumara.
10. Was this an aborted segue to our previous conversation? I thought it might be, but it was not. He didn’t even look at me when he said this.
11. 111 Cesar Chavez Street.
12. It’s my belief that “Zug” was attempting to reference William Ian Miller of the University of Michigan. This is assuming Y____ was telling the truth about what he remembered.
13. Technically speaking, this is the ability to conceive of mental activity in others, particularly how children conceptualize mental activity in other children, how they attribute intentions, and how they predict the behavior of others.
14. “One Percenters” refers to a sect of outlaw motorcycle gangs who regularly engage in criminal activity. The term comes from the (likely apocryphal) belief that the American Motorcycle Association once argued that 99 percent of bikers were not criminals; members of the One Percenter society embrace the concept of being the “1 percent” who do live a life of crime.
15. The experience of making deep connections and/or seeing meaningful patterns within random data.
16. Unfortunately, my subsequent deposition regarding this case was deemed inadmissible by the Minnesota court. As of this writing, the defendant remains in custody and is awaiting appeal.
17. Interestingly, John claims he directly referred to Y____ as “invisible” as soon as he met with the police. To the best of his memory, they never really questioned that detail—but John was also under fairly heavy sedation at the time of the conversation. Perhaps they took him for a superstoned drama queen? More likely, they just accepted his story because he had no reason to lie.
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