by Greg Iles
“And Jane wanted the same thing?”
“Absolutely. From her father and her husband, when she found one. Dad never gave it to her, but she found a husband who did.”
Lenz holds up his forefinger. “A few moments ago you used the word ‘disappeared’ about your father. Isn’t it generally accepted that he died in Vietnam?”
“Yes. Cambodia, actually. But I’ve never accepted that. I never felt that he was dead, and over the years there’ve been occasional sightings of him in Asia by former colleagues. I’ve spent a lot of money through the years trying to find him.”
“What sort of scenario do you envision? If your father survived, that might mean that he chose not to return to America. That he chose to abandon you, your sister, and your mother.”
“Probably so.”
“Do you think he was capable of that?”
I pull back my hair, digging my fingernails into my scalp as I go. “I don’t know. I always suspected that he had a woman there. In Vietnam. Maybe another whole family. Lots of servicemen did. Why should photographers be any different?”
Lenz’s blue-gray eyes flicker with cold light. “Could you forgive him that?”
The central question of my life. “I’ve spent a lot of time in distant countries photographing wars, just as he did. I know how lonely it can be. You’re cut off from the world, sometimes from any friendly contact. You might be the only person for a hundred miles who understands English, living in a hell no one else will ever really see. It’s a loneliness that’s almost despair.”
“But Vietnam wasn’t like that. It was bursting with Americans.”
“Dad worked a lot of other places. If I find out he’s alive—or that he did survive for a while—I’ll deal with it then.”
“You said you never felt your father was dead. What about Jane? Do you feel she’s dead?”
“I felt it twelve hours before I got the call.”
“So you two shared the sort of intuitive bond that many twins speak of?”
“Despite our differences, we had that. It’s a very real thing, in my opinion.”
“I don’t dispute it. You’re being very forthcoming with me, Jordan, and I appreciate that. I think we could save a lot of time if you would just describe what you consider the seminal events in your lives as siblings.”
“I don’t recall any particularly seminal events.” Lenz’s eyes appear soft, but there is a hardness beneath them, a cruelty even, and it shows now. Perhaps that’s a requirement for his type of work.
“This is not psychotherapy, Jordan. We don’t have weeks to labor through your defense mechanisms. I’m sure if you think about it, certain events will come to mind.”
I say nothing.
“For example, I noticed in your file that you never graduated high school. Jane graduated with honors, participated in all sorts of extracurricular activities. Cheerleading, debate, et cetera. You did none of that.”
“You guys really dig, don’t you?”
“I also discovered that you had the highest ACT score in your school. So”—he folds his arms and raises his eyebrows—“why would such a student drop out?”
The small jet suddenly seems smaller. “Look, I don’t see how questions about my high school life are going to help you understand Jane.”
“What happens to one child happens to the other. Think back. The two of you are twelve years old. Your father has died, your mother can’t cope, there’s no money to buy necessities. You’re twins, you have the same teachers, yet you turn out opposites. What’s the story?”
“You just summed it up, Doctor. Let’s move on to something that might actually help you find Jane’s killer. That’s the goal here, right?”
Lenz only watches me. “You’re a photographer. You use filters to produce certain visual effects, yes? To modify light before it reaches the film?”
“Yes.”
“Human beings use similar filters. Emotional filters. They’re put in place by our parents, our siblings, our friends and enemies. Will you concede that?”
“I guess.”
“Daniel and I intend to use you for a critical purpose in this case. But before we bring you into contact with any suspects, I must understand you. I need to be able to correct for your particular filter.”
I look at the porthole window to my left. There’s not enough moonlight to show clouds. We could be at five thousand feet or thirty-five thousand. That’s how I feel in relation to my past and future, unanchored, floating between the unknown and the known-too-well. Lenz wants my secrets. Why? Psychiatrists, like photographers, are essentially voyeurs. But some things are between me and my conscience, no one else. Not even God, if I can help it. Still, I feel some obligation to cooperate. Lenz is the professional in this sphere, not me. And he is trusting me not to screw up his investigation. I suppose I have to trust him a little.
“The years after my father disappeared were difficult. The truth is, Jane had been living as though he were dead for several years before that. Her strategy was assimilation. Conformity. She studied hard, became cheerleader, then head cheerleader, and kept the same boyfriend for three years. I give her a lot of credit. Being popular isn’t easy without money.”
“Money seems to be a recurring theme with Jane.”
“Not only with her. Before Dad was gone, I didn’t realize how poor we were. But by thirteen, you start to notice. Material things are part of high school snobbery. Clothes and shoes, what kind of car you have, your house. Mom wrecked our car, and after that we didn’t have one. She drank more and more, and it seemed like the power company cut our electricity every other month. It was embarrassing. One day, prowling through the attic, I discovered three footlockers filled with old camera equipment. Mom told me that when she got pregnant with us, she persuaded Dad to open a portrait studio, to try to make their lives more stable. I don’t know why he went along with her. It never came to anything, of course. But he kept the equipment. A Mamiya large-format camera, floodlights, a background sheet, darkroom equipment, the works. Mom wanted to sell it all, but I threw a fit and she let me keep it. Over the next few months, I taught myself to use the stuff. A year later, I was running a portrait studio out of our house and shooting snaps for the Oxford Eagle in whatever spare time I had. Our lives improved. I was paying the light bill and buying the groceries, and because of that, I could pretty much do what I wanted.”
Lenz nods encouragement. “And what did you want?”
“My own life. Oxford’s a college town, and I rode all over it on my ten-speed bicycle, watching people, shooting pictures. Sony introduced the Walkman in my junior year of high school, and from the moment I got one, I lived with a sound track pouring into my ears and a camera around my neck. While Jane and her friends were dancing to the Bee Gees, I listened to homemade tapes of my father’s records: Joni Mitchell, Motown, Neil Young, the Beatles, and the Stones.”
“It sounds like an idyllic childhood,” Lenz says with a knowing smile. “Is that what it was?”
“Not exactly. While other girls my age were riding out to Sardis Reservoir to fumble around in backseats with guys from the football team, I was doing something a little different.”
A deep stillness settles over Lenz’s body. Like a priest, he has heard so many confessions that nothing could surprise him, yet he waits with a receptivity that seems to pull the words from my mouth.
“The first week of my senior year, our history teacher died. He was about seventy. To fill his shoes, the school board hired a young alumnus named David Gresham, who was teaching night classes at Ole Miss. Gresham had been drafted in 1970, and served one tour in Vietnam. He came back to Oxford wounded, but his wounds weren’t visible, so the school board didn’t notice them. After a few days in his class, I did. Sometimes he would stop speaking in midsentence, and it was clear that his mind was ten thousand miles away. His brain had skipped off track, jumped from our reality to one my classmates couldn’t even guess at. But I could. I watched Mr. Gresha
m very closely, because he’d been to the place where my father vanished. One day after school, I stayed to ask him what he knew about Cambodia. He knew a lot—none of it good, except the beauty of Phnom Penh and Angkor Wat. When he asked why I was interested, I told him about my father. I hadn’t meant to, but when I looked into his eyes, my pain and grief poured out like a river through a broken dam. A month later, we became lovers.”
“How old was he?” asks Lenz.
“Twenty-six. I was seventeen and a half. A virgin. We both knew it was dangerous, but there was never any question of him seducing an innocent child. Yes, there was a void in my life because of my father’s death; yes, he was a sympathetic older man. But I knew exactly what I was doing. He taught me a lot about the world. I discovered a lot about myself, about my body and what it could do. For me and for someone else. And I gave some peace to a boy who had been broken in some fundamental way that could never be corrected, only made less painful.”
“It’s amazing that you found each other,” Lenz says without a trace of judgment in his eyes. “This did not end well, of course.”
“We managed to keep our relationship secret for most of the year. During that time, he opened up about Vietnam, and through his eyes I experienced things my father must have seen as well. Seen, but kept out of his letters. Even out of his photographs. In April, one of David’s neighbors saw us kissing at the creek behind his house—with my flannel shirt open to the waist, no less—and took it on himself to report it to the school board. The board called a special meeting, and during something called ‘ex ecutive session’ gave David the option of resigning and leaving town before they opened an investigation that would destroy both our futures. To protect him, I denied everything, but it didn’t help. I offered to leave town with him, but he told me that wouldn’t be fair to me. Ultimately, we were incompatible, he said. When I asked why, he said, ‘Because you have something I don’t.’ ‘What?’ I asked.”
“A future?” Lenz finishes.
“Right. Two nights later, he went down to the creek and managed to drown himself. The coroner called it an accident, but David had enough scotch in him to sedate a bull.”
“I’m sorry.”
My eyes seek out the porthole again, a round well of night. “I like to think he was unconscious when he went under the water. He probably thought his death would end the scandal, but it only got worse. Jane had a breakdown brought on by social embarrassment. My mother just drank more. There was talk of putting us in foster homes. I went back to school with my head high, but it didn’t last. My Star Student award was revoked. Then my appointment book went blank. No one wanted me shooting their family portraits. I’d done a lot of the senior pictures, but people didn’t even pick them up. They had them reshot elsewhere. When I refused to abase myself in contrition, various mothers told the school board that they didn’t want their daughters exposed to a ‘teenage Jezebel.’ They really called me that. Before long, the ostracism bled over onto Jane. She was cut dead a hundred times on the street by parents who thought she was me. At that point, I did what David should have done. I had three thousand dollars in the bank. I took two thousand, packed my clothes and cameras, rode the bus to New Orleans, got a judge to emancipate me, and scratched up a job developing prints for the staff photographers at the Times-Picayune. A year later, I was a staff photographer myself.”
“Did you continue to support your family financially?”
“Yes. But things between Jane and me only got worse.”
“Why?”
“She was obsessed with being a Chi O. She thought—”
”Excuse me? A what?”
“A Chi Omega. It’s a sorority. The apogee of southern womanhood at Ole Miss. Blue-eyed blondes raised with silver spoons in their mouths. Like that song, ‘Summer time’? ‘Your daddy’s rich, and your mama’s good lookin’ . . .’ ”
“Ah.”
“Several of her cheerleaders friends were going to pledge Chi O. Their sisters were already in, or their mothers. Like that.”
“Legacies,” says Lenz.
“Whatever. Jane really thought she had a chance. She thought I was the only obstacle to her getting it. She claimed active Chi Os had seen me around Oxford on my bike, looking ratty and saying whatever I felt like, and thought I was her. That probably did happen. But the truth was, she never had a chance. Those bitches wouldn’t have given her that. They got their self-esteem from excluding girls like Jane, who wanted it terribly but had some flaw. And Jane had several. She had no money—therefore no high-end clothes, car, or any of the other trappings; her father had been a celebrity, but not the right kind; and then there was me. Jane was prettier than all of them, too. You hear beauty is its own aristocracy, but that’s not always true. A lot of attractive women fear beauty.”
“Interesting, isn’t it?” Lenz’s eyes play over my body in a strange way, not lustfully, but in a coldly appraising manner. “Jane broke down after the scandal over you and the teacher?”
“She wouldn’t leave the house. But when they started talking about making us wards of the state, she went back to school. She graduated salutatorian, but she never got to be a Chi O. She pledged Delta Gamma, which was considered decent but definitely second tier.”
“You’ve asserted how beautiful Jane was. You’re her identical twin. How do you feel about your own looks?”
“I know I’m attractive. But Jane cultivated her looks in a way I never have. Toward the ideals of southern beauty, you know? That’s a weird thing that extends from your appearance right into your personality. For me looks are secondary. I’ve used them to gain advantage in my work—I’d be a fool not to—but it makes me uncomfortable. Beauty is an accident of genetics for which I deserve no credit.”
“That’s disingenuous, to say the least.”
This makes me laugh. “You’re a man, okay? You don’t know how many times I’ve listened to my mother whine about how much ‘potential’ I have, that if I’d just do something with it, fix myself up a little—like Jane, is the subtext—I’d find a wonderful provider who’d marry me and take care of me for the rest of my life. Well, wake up, Mom. I don’t need a goddamn provider, okay? I am one.”
“For whom do you provide, Jordan?”
“Myself.”
“I see.” Lenz looks at his watch, then taps his knees. “Jane married a wealthy attorney?”
“That’s right.”
“Jump to her disappearance. You didn’t handle it well? The file says you interfered with the investigation.”
“I don’t take exclusion well, okay? I’m a journalist. This was my sister. And the FBI was getting exactly nowhere with the case. I badgered them for the victims’ families, walked the streets, worked my old contacts at the Times-Picayune. But none of it did any good.”
“So what did you finally do?”
“Took off and tried to bury myself in work. Literally. I went to Sierra Leone. I took crazy risks, had some close calls. Word got back to my agency. They begged me to slow down, so I did. I slowed down so much that I couldn’t get out of bed. I was sleeping around the clock. When I finally came out of that, I couldn’t sleep at all. I had to have prescription drugs just to close my eyes without seeing Jane being raped, tied hand and foot in some dark room.”
“Was rape a particular fear of hers?”
“It’s a particular fear for every woman.”
“What about you? You must have placed yourself in some very dangerous situations vis-à-vis rape. War zones full of men. Teenagers with guns.”
“I can take care of myself. Jane’s a lot softer.”
Lenz nods slowly. “If we found Jane tomorrow—alive—what would you say to her? In other words, what have you most regretted not saying to her?”
“That’s none of your business.”
“I’ve explained why—”
”Some things are too personal, Doctor. Let’s leave it at that.”
Lenz rubs his face with his hands, then inclines his head
to me. “Some years ago, I worked a very difficult murder case. I lost my wife during that investigation. She was murdered. Violently. Viciously. And I felt responsible. Perhaps I was. We had grown apart in our marriage, but that hardly lessened the agony. We’ve all done terrible things to the people we love, Jordan. It’s our nature as humans. If there’s something like that between you and your sister, it would help me to know. To see her as she really was.”
The pain in Lenz’s eyes looks genuine, but he’s an old hand at this game. He could have a stock of stories like this one, barter beads he uses to elicit intimacies.
“There’s nothing like that.”
He takes a frustrated breath through his nose, and I’m reminded of a surgeon working to remove a bullet, his gloved thumb and finger in forceps, trying first one angle and then another, probing for a route to the heart of the wound.
“Certain types of people become targets for predators,” Lenz says. “The same way that injured or weak animals are chosen as prey by leopards. Certain types of children tend to be molested, for example: the shy ones, those who don’t fit in, who play at the edge of the group, who separate themselves for various reasons. The same holds true for adults. I’m currently profiling every known victim in this case. Some had very low self-image, but others were superachievers. Some had siblings, others none. Some were housewives, others career women. I must find—”
“I’ve told you all I know, Doctor.”
“You haven’t begun to tell me what you know.” He shifts in his seat, and the cruelty reappears in his eyes. “Why have you never married, Jordan?”
“I was engaged. He was killed. End of story.”
“Killed how?”
“He was an ITN reporter. He was shot down in a helicopter over Namibia and tortured to death.”
“You’ve lost your father, your fiancé, and your sister to violent death?”
