Striking Back

by Mark Nykanen

  “Well, there’s nothing particularly nor . . . mal,” stretching out those two syllables till each could have been as lonely as a snowflake, “about any of us. And yet . . . ”

  Harken paused, as if lost in his notes, but Gwyn thought she knew better as she raised her water bottle to her lips.

  “And yet . . . ” he repeated, confirming her suspicion with a wink to the crowd (a “we’re all in this together” gesture) “the men I’ve interviewed, those creatures we’re most comfortable labeling ‘psychopaths,’ are a social fulfillment of our most abject and silent impulses. Now what do I mean by that?”

  Another pause.

  “What I’m saying, as long as you’ve asked,” back to his entertainer mode, “is that the shadow heart, as I’ve begun to think of it, remains a firm fixture in each of us. Not the heart that pumps blood and sustains life, but the heart that sees in existence only the potential for pain. The metaphorical heart that stalks the alleyways and crawlspaces of our minds.

  “Almost all of us have done evil in our lives, and I use the word ‘evil’ with great advisement.” He leaned closer to the microphone, “Do think about that . . . ” a curt Briticism, an imperious imperative, “. . . the evil you have done.”

  I didn’t come here for this.

  Gwyn gulped the chill water, felt its sinuous slide into her belly.

  No, this is exactly why you came.

  She swallowed again, as if to wash away the anxiety now rushing through her body.

  “So what is the difference between you and your evil—hold it in your mind for a moment, please—and the evil of this man?”

  A screen Gwyn hadn’t noticed lit up behind Harken. Most of his audience hadn’t noticed either, to judge by the collective intake of breath at the appearance of Jeffrey DeMichael. His maniacal grin now loomed above Harken’s head, revealing fang-like incisors that received the full media glare during his trial for the murder of thirteen girls between the ages of eight and twelve. A cannibal, though selective in his choice of “cuts,” as he had referred to the “meats” he’d butchered from the girls’ bodies. “I prefer,” he’d claimed from the stand, “the loins to the limbs.”

  “Yes, I can see you’re familiar with Mr. DeMichael. I had occasion to talk to this . . . fellow.”

  Stylized understatement, thought Gwyn. Harken had been a key member of the defense team and had testified during the penalty phase of the trial, pleading—none too effectively, as it turned out—for the jury to spare DeMichael’s life for “research purposes.”

  The governor’s pleas for lethal injection—“He must pay for his terrible crimes,”—had much greater resonance with the polled public and the members of the jury, who’d condemned DeMichael to death.

  “I found him to be utterly psychopathic, utterly sadistic, and utterly sane. That’s right, not insane, but sane. Does that strike you as inconsistent? Paradoxical, perhaps?

  “It shouldn’t, because the shadow heart beats in each of us to one degree or another. Whether it beats loudly enough to be heard is the question each one of us must answer, and when we can no longer do that, others must do it for us. They are called ‘jurors.’

  “Now, sitting comfortably in this room, you can assure yourself of both your sanity and your humanity. They seem to go hand-in-hand. But how many of you recall Dr. Stanley Milgram’s famous, or should I say infamous, electroshock experiments?”

  A covey of hands flew into the air. Gwyn remembered Milgram’s work but didn’t let on. Neither did she assume that many in the latest generation of students knew about Milgram’s disturbing findings. Whenever she worked with interns, or spoke to a sociology or psychology class at a local college, she almost always walked away depressed by the academic anemia of most of the students.

  Harken was easier on his audience. “You needn’t feel bad. Most of you—and I’d have to include myself here—were little more than a glint in your daddy’s eye when Milgram told students to send painful jolts of electricity into people strapped to a chair, simply because an authority figure said it was important as part of an experiment.”

  A smile before he said, “Want to know what those students did?”

  “They zapped ’em,” a guy yelled out from the back of the hall.

  “That’s right, they ‘zapped ’em,’” Harken answered. “Thank you, sir.” Nodding in the student’s direction, Harken added, “Maybe, like our young friend here, you’ve heard about Milgram, or feel it’s ancient history, right up there with the lions and Christians. And I’d have to agree with you, except what about Abu Ghraib, or those jihadists with their penchant for lopping off the heads of the innocent? Or the American soldiers who beat and tortured to death Afghan and Iraqi prisoners? Shall I even bother you with the ‘banality of evil’ in Nazi Germany? Or Kosovo? How about those Tutsis? Cambodians?”

  Or husbands, Gwyn muttered to herself.

  “Some of you know all about cruelty, the cruelty of others, of yourselves, and some of you . . . ”

  Had Harken been staring at her? He had. No question this time.

  What’s he been saying?

  “. . . have seen it in the recent past . . . ”

  His eyes were on her again.

  “We have, as a culture, a society, become inured to violence. We’ve gotten used to it.

  “So what’s the Violence Index and why do I find it useful? We’ll talk more about that next week. But first I want you to consider what evil is. As a psychiatrist, I can tell you this much: Evil is not what a psychopath is. It’s not an innate quality. Evil is what he or she . . . ”

  He’s looking at me aigain.

  “does. Does he extend the agony of the criminal act as much as possible?”

  Yes, she said to herself.

  “Does he degrade his victim as much as possible?”

  Yes.

  “Does he force family members to watch his most monstrous activities as much as possible?”

  Yes, she said to herself once more, no longer thinking only of Alfred Croce, or of his two little girls, who were never out of earshot, but also of the violent men she still counseled in her group.

  “Does he consciously manipulate and exploit the worst fears of his victim?”

  Gwyn sat still as a stain, another memory, another madness, courting her consciousness, the specter of her brutal stepfather never far from her thoughts.

  Harken’s words flew past her, setting off a squall of recollections she could have drowned in. She heard only snatches of his request that they take the online Violence Index survey.

  Like an insomniac rising from a bed of bad dreams, Gwyn moved from her seat with the exiting crowd. Clouds spattered the sky with gray and white, and as she slipped her skates back on, mindful only of memories and shoe laces, nightmares and knots, the first few drops of rain hit her.

  All the way back across campus, the concrete dampened and grayed, as if a dim reflection of the sky. The pathways, so sure and fast on her way to the lecture, grew slick and scary, and she had to focus entirely on her wavering balance or she knew she’d take a fall. She skated uneasily into a parking lot that had largely emptied. Willows in the median shifted restlessly under the gathering storm, as if they, too, were anxious to flee the fury.

  Gwyn felt the breeze on her face and bare legs as she coasted carefully across the slippery blacktop, gliding up to her silver Honda CR-V as thunder rolled over west L.A. With her eyes pinned to the perilously wet surface, she’d missed the lightning flash. Jesus, that was close.

  The raindrops thickened and fell faster, spattering her exposed skin as she searched her backpack for her key fob, looking up only when she heard a car turning into the lot. A sleek black Saab with smoked windows drove directly toward her. She looked around. No one in sight.

  She clawed through her belongings for the fob as the hissing of the car’s damp tires grew louder. Precious seconds passed before she found the damn thing stuck in the toe of her espadrille and stabbed the electronic button with
her thumb. The driver’s door clicked, and she threw it open, never pausing till she’d locked it back up.

  The Saab pulled alongside, and its darkened passenger window lowered. Doctor Harken leaned over the gray leather seat and gestured for her to open her window.

  She filled with such a rush of relief that she felt giddy. Foolish, too, but not that foolish, reminding herself that she was all alone. Could have been the next Hillside Strangler. You never know in this place.

  “Hi,” she offered as the ion-saturated air swept in, richly reminiscent of the subtle scents that rise from a breaking wave.

  “I tried to flag you down after the lecture, but you looked like you were in a daze.”

  “I guess I was in a bit of a funk.”

  “You’ve been through it.”

  “You know?” With effort, she pulled off the Blades and dug out the pilfering espadrille’s twin.

  “I suppose everyone knows, unless they’ve been living under a rock.”

  “I try not to notice the stares.”

  “Based on my limited experience trying to catch your eye, I’d say you’re succeeding rather splendidly.” The same smooth delivery she’d heard in Latimore Hall.

  “What did you want?” More smile than impatience in her voice, even if she did catch herself glancing at the digital on the dash. Forty minutes to her next client intake meeting. This one happened to be a burn victim: scarred, angry, and violent, though it felt superfluous to note the last. They were all violent or she’d never meet them.

  “I wanted to urge you to fill out the online survey. You would seem uniquely qualified to provide an experienced and educated perspective.”

  “I’d planned to. I’m curious about it.”

  “Good.”

  Silence now. She finally had to look away, too uncomfortable for eye contact without having something to say, and “something” wouldn’t come to mind.

  He appeared completely at ease gazing at her, and it was with real relief that she greeted the rupturing thunder. The sky promptly parted, opening all of its valves, and the rain drummed their cars so hard it forced him to shout.

  She wasn’t sure she’d heard him correctly. “Come again?” she yelled, leaning close enough to the open window that her face caught spray from the raindrops dashing against the roof.

  “I said,” he deepened and projected his voice, “I’d like to have tea with you some time. Or dinner.”

  “We’ll surf,” she shouted back, pleased when she registered his surprise. “It was in the article. That you surf. The Times?”

  “You too?”

  “Oh yeah.”

  “Saturday morning? Pacific Palisades?”

  “Fine. Early?” She hoped so. Beat the crowd, maybe, and catch the glassy wave faces before the ocean breezes woke up enough to crack them.

  “Not too. Seven?”

  “Seven’s fine.”

  She offered a good-bye smile and drove away, her thoughts less on Doctor Harken’s interest in waves than the darker world of male violence that she already shared with him.

  Chapter 2

  The deluge turned traffic into a bubbling brew of fender-benders and lookie-loos, and Gwyn didn’t make it back downtown until ten minutes before her intake at three o’clock. She sprinted from the parking garage to the stairs, taking them two, three at a time for four floors, knowing that even on her slowest days she could beat the sluggish elevator.

  After sweeping into her office, she locked the door and hurried to a second one that opened to a small room for the young, female assistant whom she shared with a psychologist across the hall.

  “I’m here. I have a client showing up at three, a burn victim named Barr Onstott.” Letting the receptionist know what to expect was a standard precautionary measure.

  Gwyn retreated to her closet and snatched a hanger with gray slacks and a shapeless, short-sleeved blue cotton top. She quickly shed her shorts and sleeveless crew neck and put on her “spousal abuse drag,” as she called the loose-fitting clothing that now hung from her trim frame and barely hinted at her figure.

  Then she moved into the bathroom for a once-over in front of the mirror. She noticed her lipstick had run its course—just as well—and pulled the band off her pony tail to brush out her hair, using snappy strokes that forced the bristles through a series of moist knots. A few moments later, with her hair once again banded behind her head, she settled at her desk not five seconds before the knock came.

  “I’ll be right there.” She walked over, looked through the peephole, and took a deep breath. No mistaking him. When she opened the door and introduced herself, she did her damndest not to stare. “Come in. Have a seat.”

  She turned her back on him to return to her desk, and took in the rain-spattered view of downtown as if it were the most arresting tableau in all of California. Not worrying, as she might have with some new clients, that he’d stick a shiv in her back. More than anything, she needed to look away from his horrendous disfigurement.

  Barr Onstott limped to the chair in front of her desk, wide-brimmed hat low on his forehead, and a turtle-neck, wholly unsuited for the weather, unfolded to his chin.

  A lot of cover, she noticed, but there would never be enough for those scars. He could be fifty years old or a hundred. No way to tell. But according to the records the court rushed over, he was twenty-three, a former poly-sci major at USC. A scholarship student from Idaho.

  He removed his hat slowly, almost ducking out from under it, and she wondered if it hurt him to lift his arm. He dropped his hat into his lap. “Go on, take a look. Let’s get it over with.” He spoke without inflection, a docent referring to a diorama for the fifteenth thousandth time.

  She wondered, as she did look at his scars, if he could possibly feel as bored as his blasé manner suggested. The skin around his mouth and lower cheeks appeared melted, as if, rather than rising, the flames had succumbed to the vicious lassitude of gravity. His lips were so thin and dark they could have been drawn with an eyeliner, and the fire had narrowed his nose until his nostrils looked like they’d been pinched with a clothespin.

  Purplish scars encased his eyes. No lashes, no eyebrows. No hair on his head either. Completely bald, a gruesome palette of searing reds and purples, as if his hair had been sheared not from his scalp but from his skull. But on his left temple she spied a patch of skin so purely white it could have been bleached.

  She would never have thought it possible when she first saw him, but the top of his head proved more disturbing than his deeply disfigured face. He was wise to wear a hat if he cared at all for peoples’ reactions.

  “Had enough?” he said in the same flat voice. Before she could respond, he put his hat back on. Clearly, he’d had enough.

  “How did it happen?”

  “You’re talking about the burns, right? Or are we getting right to the other stuff?”

  “Which would you prefer?”

  He smiled, or what she took for a smile. His mouth opened, and she saw that he was missing teeth, but his skin didn’t look as if it could stretch enough to accommodate a facial gesture as generous as the one he might have intended.

  “It was during the Chatsworth quake. I got stuck in a building and a gas line exploded. A huge fireball fried me while I was stuck under a wall. I just about died.”

  “How long were you in the hospital?”

  “Forever.”

  He looked away, as if finished, and his hand worried the brim of his hat. He’d done that twice now. She also heard his labored breathing, and saw that his mouth never fully closed. Those nostrils weren’t pinched, they were nearly sealed.

  “Let’s talk about the reason you’re here.” She’d said that many times before, but perhaps never so softly, and she realized that Barr Onstott had her sympathy. But looking at him, how could he not?

  “The fight?” Shifting in his seat.

  Gwyn nodded to get him talking, even though it hadn’t been a “fight.” No more than a battleship is
a rowboat. She’d reviewed his court record, the arresting officer’s report, and had spoken to his Parole Officer. This was simply truth checking time.

  “I guess you could say all that shit started with the goddamn earthquake, too.”

  “Hold the profanities, please.”

  Not that she especially cared, or was offended, but with these guys it was all about having them learn self-control. You started with the small stuff, like language, and moved on to anger’s more virulent forms. You tried to shape them into men who could empathize with their partners. Short of that, you made it abundantly clear that they’d do hard time if they ever struck a woman again. For a small number of them, even minor missteps—a push, a profanity—could lead to overkill, a word she did not use lightly.

  “Whatever.” He shrugged, and that’s when she noticed his hands, the same horrible scars she’d seen on his head. She shouldn’t have been surprised. Ninety percent of his body had suffered third degree burns. He really was lucky to be alive.

  “When I got out of the burn unit, she was real nice to me there for a while.”

  “Who’s she?” Gwyn knew the answer, but wanted Barr to personalize his victim.

  “Vickie.”

  “With a ‘y’ or an ‘i-e?’”

  “I-e.”

  She forced the spelling for the same reason: to keep his punching bag real.

  “Very nice. Fixed me my favorite foods, helped me with my meds and physical therapy. Made sure I was nice and comfortable. But she wouldn’t touch me.”

  “What do you mean?”

  She heard his breath, louder now, as he shook his head again. “No sex.”

  “And?”

  “And what?”

  “How did that lead to the—”

  “I know I’m a monster,” his voice rose for the first time, “but I’ve got needs . . . ”