Blood Memory

by Greg Iles

  Malik’s pale cheeks color with passion. “But here there is no denial. In this office, I shut out nothing. Here the shadows come out and play. These walls have heard the most depraved acts of humanity recounted in all their sickening detail.” He sits back in his chair and speaks quietly. “Here, Catherine, I deal with the worst thing in the world.”

  I fold my hands over my knees. “Don’t you think you might be overdramatizing a bit?”

  “You think so?” A humorless chuckle escapes Malik’s lips. “What’s the worst scourge of mankind? War?”

  “I suppose so. War and the things that go with it.”

  “I’ve seen war.” He gestures at the stone Buddha staring placidly from the sideboard. “Hand-to-hand savagery and anonymous slaughter. I’ve been shot. I’ve killed human beings. But what I’ve seen and heard inside this drab little office building is worse. Far worse.”

  The psychiatrist speaks with such conviction that I’m not sure what to say. “Why are you telling me all this?”

  “To answer your question.”

  “Which question?”

  “The same one all your friends are asking out there in the world. ‘Why won’t he give us the names of his patients? What’s the big deal?’”

  I let the silence stretch out, hoping to dissipate some of Malik’s intensity. “I still think that the imminent danger to innocent people outweighs your patients’ right to privacy.”

  “It’s so easy to say that, Catherine. What if I told you that the majority of my patients are Holocaust survivors? Survivors of concentration camps that were never liberated, and that some of them still live with their Nazi guards?”

  “That’s not a fair analogy. It’s not true.”

  “You’re wrong.” Malik’s eyes flash. “Children suffering prolonged and repeated sexual abuse are living in concentration camps. They’re under the power of despots on whom they depend for their very survival. They suffer terror and torture on a daily basis. Their own siblings, and often their mothers, betray them in the struggle for survival. Any identity these children have is systematically destroyed, and hope isn’t even a memory. Make no mistake, Doctor, there’s a holocaust going on all around us. Only most of us prefer not to see it.”

  Nathan Malik’s preternatural calm has given way to a deep and abiding anger. He is nothing like the psychiatrists I’ve seen as a patient. At some level, I always craved this kind of passion in my therapists. But in truth, it’s not their proper role. This kind of passion in a therapist is dangerous.

  In a neutral voice, I say, “My memory from med school is that therapists should maintain objectivity at all costs. You sound more like a patient advocate than a dispassionate clinician.”

  “Should one be objective in the face of a holocaust? Just because one happens to be a physician? Do you know how many American women are believed to have suffered sexual abuse as children? One in three. One in three. That’s tens of millions of women. That’s women in your family, Catherine. For men, it’s between one in four and one in seven.”

  I force myself to maintain my neutral tone. “Believed by whom?”

  “That’s hard data, not propaganda from some victims’ group. The average duration of incestuous abuse is four years. Half of abused children are assaulted by multiple perpetrators. You want to know more, Doctor?”

  “I’m a little confused,” I say softly. “Are you treating children or adults?”

  With an explosive movement Malik stands, as though the chair can no longer contain him. He’s only about five-nine, but he radiates a power that seems to have its origin in his unearthly stillness. He projects a centeredness I’ve only seen in devotees of the martial arts.

  “You’re speaking in a chronological sense,” he says, his voice almost too quiet for me to hear. “I can’t afford to make such distinctions. A child’s emotional development is typically frozen in whatever stage he or she was in at the time the abuse occurred. Sometimes I don’t know whether I’m dealing with an adult or a child until the patient opens her mouth.”

  “So…what you’re talking about now is repressed memories. Right?”

  Malik hasn’t moved toward me, but he suddenly seems much closer than he did before. And the SWAT team seems a lot farther away than it did a minute ago. My eyes go to the samurai sword on the wall to my left. Its placement opposite the Buddha on the right wall creates a disturbing impression of extremes: peace and war, serenity and violence.

  “I think you know what I’m talking about,” Malik says. “Doctor.”

  For the first time since entering the office, I am afraid. My scalp is tingling, and my palms are wet. The man before me isn’t the man I knew in medical school. Physically, he is. But emotionally he has evolved into something else. The psychiatrist I knew was an observer, essentially impotent. This man is as far from impotent as I can imagine, and his agenda remains a mystery to me.

  “I need to pee,” I say lamely.

  “Down the hall,” Malik replies, his expression unchanging. “Last door on the right.”

  As I walk to the door, I feel as though his words emerged from the simplest cells in his brain, while the higher functions remained totally focused on his internal landscape—of which I am clearly a part.

  Alone in the corridor, I exhale as though I’ve been holding in a single breath for fifteen minutes. I don’t need to pee, but I walk down the hall anyway, certain that Malik would notice a lack of footsteps. As I pass an open door on my left, I see a man covered in black body armor kneeling in the doorway with a stubby submachine gun. His eyes track me as I pass, but he doesn’t move.

  When I pull open the bathroom door, I find John Kaiser standing inside. He quickly motions for me to enter the tiny cubicle.

  “Do you really have to pee?” he asks.

  “No. I just had to get out of there. He jumped up from his desk, and it scared me.”

  The FBI agent squeezes my upper arm, his hazel eyes reassuring. “Do you feel you’re in danger?”

  “I don’t know. He didn’t really threaten me. It just felt scary.”

  “You’re doing great, Cat. Can you handle going back in?”

  I turn the taps on the little sink and splash cold water on my neck. “Is it really doing any good?”

  “Are you kidding? This conversation is the only window we have into this guy’s head.”

  I lean back against the wall and dry my neck with a paper towel. “Okay.”

  “Do you feel confident enough to try to provoke him a little?”

  “Jesus. How do you suggest I do that?”

  Kaiser gives me a smile that tells me he knows me better than I thought. “I don’t think you need any suggestions in that area. Do you?”

  “I guess not.”

  “If you feel threatened, don’t hesitate to pull the plug. We’ll have him facedown on the floor in five seconds.”

  “Alive or dead?”

  “That’s his choice.” Kaiser’s eyes almost glitter in their hardness.

  “Is it?”

  The FBI agent reaches behind him and flushes the toilet. “You’re right where you like to be, Cat. On the edge. Go nail this guy.”

  Chapter

  17

  Nathan Malik is standing at the sideboard, lighting a cone of incense on a burner before the Buddha. A tendril of gray smoke spirals upward, and the aroma of sandalwood reaches me. When he returns to his desk and takes his seat, the aura of threat that surrounded him before is gone. With his shaved head, spare frame, and black clothing, he looks almost like a choreographer from a Broadway show. But that’s an illusion, I remind myself. This man has killed people in combat, if not in the city outside this office.

  “Do you believe that traumatic memories can be lost, Catherine?”

  In my mind I see the flashing blue lights on the night my father died, and feel the terrible blankness of the hours before that. “I don’t reject the idea out of hand. I suppose I’m a little suspicious of it.”

  “Most people
are. The word repression itself is freighted with all sorts of Freudian overtones. We should drop it altogether. Memories are lost by a sophisticated neurological trick called dissociation. Dissociation is a well-documented human defense mechanism. I’m sure you recall it from your med school days.”

  “Refresh my memory.”

  “Daydreaming is a common example of dissociation. You’re sitting in a classroom, but your mind is a thousand miles away. Your body’s in one place, your mind in another. When the professor calls your name, you might as well have been asleep. We’ve all experienced that.”

  “Sure.”

  “How about driving your car while totally focused on something inside it? The CD player. A child. Programming your cell phone. Your body and brain are performing the task of driving, of keeping the car on the road, while your conscious mind is entirely occupied elsewhere. I’ve actually driven quite a distance without consciously looking at the road.”

  “So have I. But I don’t have amnesia for whatever I was doing at the time.”

  “You weren’t in a traumatic situation.” Malik gives me a paternal smile. “When used as a coping mechanism against trauma, dissociation has far more profound effects. When human beings are placed under such severe stress that fight or flight are the only sane responses, they must do one or the other. If they’re in a position where neither response is possible, the brain—the mind, rather—will attempt to flee on its own. The body endures the trauma, but the mind, in effect, is not present. It may well watch the trauma occur, but it will not process it. Not conventionally, anyway.” Malik has not moved a muscle apart from those that control his mouth and jaw. “Do you find this concept difficult to accept?”

  “It makes sense. In theory.”

  “Then let’s get down to cases. Imagine a three-year-old girl suffering repeated rape. Several nights a week—she never knows which—a man ten times her weight and strength slips into her room and does things to her body. Initially she may be flattered. She feels pleasure and participates. But eventually the secret nature of the activity comes home to her. She begs him to stop. He doesn’t. Threats are made. Threats of violence, abandonment, murder. A tremendous amount of negative anticipation is set up inside her mind. She endures unimaginable levels of fear. Which night will he come? Does going to sleep make him come? But no matter what she does to prevent it, he still comes. This huge and terrifying man—usually a man who is supposed to love and protect her—climbs on top of her and begins to hurt her. Maybe she’s four or five now, but she can’t fight or run from him. So, what happens? Just as in combat situations, the brain attempts to cope with the unbearable as best it can. Massive defense mechanisms are set in motion. And dissociation is the most powerful of those mechanisms. The girl’s mind simply vacates the premises, and only her body suffers the rape. In the most extreme cases, these kids develop DID.”

  “DID?”

  “Dissociative identity disorder. What we used to call multiple personalty disorder. The mind becomes so adept at splitting off from reality that separate psyches come into being. Prolonged sexual abuse is the only known cause of multiple personality disorder.”

  “These traumatic memories,” I say, trying to find my way back to the main thread of the conversation. “They remain intact? Even though the person isn’t conscious of them? Intact and accessible at a later date? Years later?”

  Malik nods. “The degree of recall varies, of course, but not the veracity. The actual memory is indelible. It’s simply located in another part of the brain. This idea, of course, is at the root of the repressed memory debate.”

  “Well, how do you help patients access these lost memories?”

  “In some ways, they’re not really lost. If an adult woman finds herself in a situation similar to that in which the abuse took place—say normal sex with her husband, and he tries something new, like oral or rear-entry sex—she may suddenly experience panic, pain, heart palpitations, anything. A smell can trigger the same responses. A hair cream the abuser wore, say. Bathrooms can do it. This phenomenon is called body memory. The sensory part of the brain recalls the trauma, but the conscious mind does not.”

  “But how do you bring these memories to the conscious level? Talk therapy? Hypnosis? What?”

  “Hypnosis has been largely discredited as a tool of memory recovery. Inexperienced clinicians have implanted too many false memories with it. Which is a pity. Throwing the baby out with the bathwater, I think.”

  “Do you use drugs?”

  Malik looks impatient. “I use whatever approach I think best for a particular patient. Drugs, talk therapy, EMDR, hypnosis—I could run clinical jargon past you for hours, precise but pointless. I find it useful to use symbolism when discussing my work. Mythology, most of all. The Greeks knew a thing or two about psychology. Incest, especially.”

  Malik’s gaze wanders to my legs again. I pull my skirt down over my knees. “I’m all ears.”

  “Are you familiar with the concept of the underworld? The River Styx? Charon, the ferryman? Cerberus, the three-headed dog?”

  “I know the basics.”

  “If you want to understand my work, think of it this way. Victims of chronic sexual abuse aren’t merely the walking wounded. They’re the walking dead. The repeated trauma and dissociation I described to you has effectively killed their spirits. ‘Soul murder’ is how some clinicians describe this pathology. I see these patients’ souls as trapped in the underworld. Call it the subconscious, whatever you will. The children that they once were are cut off from the world of light, wandering in eternal shadow. But though their souls have crossed the river to the land of the dead, their bodies remain behind. With us.”

  I remember the jacket of Malik’s book, the old man in the boat waiting for the young woman to board. “What river do they cross? The Styx? Your book had Lethe in the title.”

  Malik smiles in surprise. “Five rivers bordered the underworld. Styx was merely the river the gods swore oaths by. My patients have crossed Lethe, the river of forgetfulness. And my job is to do what the living are not meant to do: journey to the land of the dead and bring back the souls of those poor children.”

  “Is that how you see yourself? A classic hero reversing the whims of fate?”

  “No. But it’s certainly a heroic undertaking. In myth, only Orpheus came close to accomplishing the task, and even he failed in the end. I actually see myself as Charon, the ferryman. I know the underworld the way most people know this one, and I guide travelers back and forth between the two.”

  I think about the metaphor for a while. “It’s interesting that you identify with Charon. The main thing I remember about him is that he had to be paid to ferry the dead across the river.”

  “Your turn for insults?” Malik smiles in appreciation. “Yes, Charon had to be paid. With a coin in the mouth. But you misunderstand the metaphor. My fees don’t pay the price of the patient’s journey to the underworld. The patients have usually paid that price long before they see me.”

  “To whom?”

  “To the darkness. The price is paid in tears and pain.”

  To avoid Malik’s challenging gaze, I look over at the Buddha. “Repressed-memory work is pretty controversial. Aren’t you afraid of lawsuits?”

  “Lawyers are parasites, Catherine. I have no fear of them. I deal in truth. I journey to the land of the dead and come back with memories that terrify the most powerful of men. They haven’t got the balls to sue me. They know that if they do, they’ll be destroyed. Destroyed by eyewitnesses to their own depravity.”

  “What about your patients?”

  “I’ve never been sued by a patient.”

  “Haven’t you ever made a mistake? I mean, even if delayed-memory recall is a real phenomenon, there are many documented cases of such memories being proven false. Recantations by patients. Right?”

  The psychiatrist waves his hand. “I’m not getting into that controversy with you. Recantations are a problem for therapists who are inexp
erienced, misguided, poorly trained, or downright gutless.”

  I understand why Harold Shubb warned me that the FBI had better have an ironclad case if they were going after Malik. The man has no fear, and he never questions his own judgment. But maybe that’s his weakness. “I’ve been here for quite a while now, and you haven’t asked me anything about the murders.”

  Malik looks surprised. “Did you expect me to?”

  “I thought they would interest you from a psychiatric perspective.”

  “I’m afraid sexual homicide is depressingly predictable as a rule. I suppose trying to identify and apprehend particular offenders offers a certain lurid excitement—the thrill of the hunt, as it were—but I have no interest in that.”

  Malik’s subtle cuts and backhanded insults remind me of my grandfather on a bad day. “You don’t see sexual homicide as an extreme form of sexual abuse?”

  He shrugs. “It’s merely the dropping of the other shoe. The poisoned chicken coming home to roost. Childhood sexual abuse is almost universal in serial murderers. And they’ve frequently suffered the most systematic and violent forms of it. The rage they carry is unbearable. Their turning that violence back on the world is as inevitable as the setting of the sun.”

  I suddenly remember Kaiser and the others listening to the transmission from my “hidden” microphone. I have a unique opportunity to probe their most likely suspect, and I don’t want to squander it. I close my eyes and try to let instinct guide me, but the voice that comes to me is not my own.

  “Do you have nightmares, Catherine? Recurring nightmares?”

  Before I can dissemble or deny, I see blue lights in the rain and my father lying dead, his eyes open to the sky. Hordes of faceless figures caper at the edges of the scene, the dark men who’ve tried to break into my house during countless dreams. Then the image vanishes, and I find myself riding slowly over a grassy pasture with my grandfather, in the round-nosed, old pickup truck that smells of mildew and hand-rolled cigarettes. We grind our way up a hill, toward the pond that lies on the other side. My grandfather is smiling, but the fear in my chest is like a wild animal trying to claw its way out of my body. I don’t want to see what’s on the other side of that hill. This dream began only two weeks ago. Yet each time it recurs, the truck moves farther toward the crest—