Mortal Fear

by Greg Iles

  “Don’t sweat it. Nobody reads my e-mail if I don’t want them to. Not even God.”

  I tear off Lenz’s fax and run for the Explorer. I believe nobody reads Miles’s e-mail if he doesn’t want them to, but what I’m thinking as I crank the engine is this:

  Maybe somebody should.

  Chapter 15

  I am crossing the Washington Beltway in a yellow taxi driven by a black lay preacher. Lenz told me I would be met at Dulles Airport by FBI agents, but none showed, so I took the cab. The driver tries to make conversation—he still knows a lot of people from “down home,” meaning the South—but I am too absorbed in the object of my journey to keep up my end of the exchange.

  Lenz’s private office is supposed to be in McLean, Virginia. All I know is that my lay preacher is leading me deep into upscale suburbia. Old money suburbia. Colonial homes, Mercedeses, Beemers (700 series), matched Lexi, tasteful retail and office space. The driver pulls into the redbrick courtyard of a three-story building and stops. You could probably buy five acres of Delta farmland for the monthly rent on Lenz’s office.

  The first floor of the building is deserted but for ferns, its walls covered with abstract paintings that look purchased by the square yard. A bronze-lettered notice board directs me to the third floor. When the elevator door opens on three, I am facing a short corridor with a door at the end. No letters on the door.

  Beyond the door I find a small, well-appointed waiting room. There’s a lot of indirect light, but the only window faces the billing office. A dark-skinned receptionist sits behind the window. I am not looking at her. I’m looking at a pale, gangly, long-haired young man folded oddly across a wing chair and ottoman. He is snoring.

  “Miles?” I say softly.

  He does not stir. A Hewlett-Packard notebook computer and a cellular telephone lie on the floor beside him. The computer screen swirls with a psychedelic screen-saver program.

  “Miles.”

  The snoring stops. Miles Turner flips the hair out of his eyes and looks up at me without surprise. His eyes are the same distant blue they have always been.

  “Hello, snitch,” he says. “What’s in the briefcase? The names of everybody who works at EROS?”

  “Fresh underwear. What the hell are you doing here?”

  “Same as you, I guess. The mad doctor wants to pry open my skull, see what he can find. I hope he’s in the mood for drama. I certainly am.”

  “I can’t believe you agreed to come.”

  A fleeting smile touches his lips. “Didn’t have any choice, did I? I’ve got an old drug charge hanging over my head. All Lenz has to do is tell his sidekick—Baxter—to push the button, and I go to jail. Do not pass GO, et cetera.”

  “Jesus.”

  Miles leans his angular head back with a theatrical flourish and tries to catch the eye of the receptionist. I take the opportunity to study him more closely. It’s been four years since I saw him in the flesh. Miles long ago vowed never to set foot in Mississippi again. When I saw him last, in New Orleans, he had short hair and wore fairly conservative clothes. No polo or khakis, of course, but your basic Gap in basic black. He’s wearing black again today, but his hair hangs over his shoulders, his sweater is not only torn but looks cheap, and he is dirty. I don’t smell him—yet—but he plainly hasn’t bathed for at least a couple of days.

  “Staring is rude,” he says, his eyes still on the window to my left. “Don’t you read your Amy Vanderbilt? Or is it Gloria Vanderbilt?”

  “Miles, what the hell is going on? You look terrible. What’s happening with the case?”

  He smiles conspiratorially and brings a warning finger to his lips. His eyebrows shimmy up and down as he says in a stage whisper: “Shhhh. The walls have ears.”

  When I stare blankly, he adds, “But then their ears have walls, so perhaps it doesn’t matter.”

  “Are you telling me you think this waiting room is bugged?”

  “Why not? Lenz works for the FBI. They could bug this room in the time it took you to wake me up.”

  “How do you know how long that took?”

  “Touché.”

  “What’s the computer for?”

  “Keeping up with developments, of course. Baxter just got the court order to do the trace in Wyoming. He must have blackmailed the judge. I think it’s a standard FBI tactic.”

  “Has Brahma logged on again?”

  “Once, about an hour ago, but Baxter didn’t have the court order then. He was only on for a couple minutes. They did manage to trace digitally back to the Wyoming phone company again. Lake Champion.”

  “How do you know that?”

  Miles smiles with satisfaction, then replies in a vintage Hollywood Nazi accent: “I haf my sources, Herr Cole.”

  “What about the kidnapping? Rosalind May. Anything on that?”

  “Nada. By the way, I didn’t know you had a mole among my faithful.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  He smiles again. “How else could the FBI have found out about Rosalind May?”

  “Don’t you care about these women, Miles?”

  “I care about all women.” Suddenly he is whispering so that I can barely hear. I sit beside him.

  “They’re going to call one of us in there soon,” he says. “Why don’t we make a little deal right now? I say nothing to Lenz about you, you say nothing about me.”

  This shocks me more than anything I’ve seen or heard yet. “You think you have to spell it out like that? You think I’d tell these people anything about you?”

  His lips narrow in a shadow of the smile Jesus must have given Peter when he prophesied the disciple’s betrayal. “Humans do strange things under stress, Harper. Why don’t we just shake hands on it?”

  I look down at the proffered hand and surprise myself by taking it.

  “You want to grab a bite to eat after this?” he asks lightly. “Tie on the old feed bag, as they say back home?”

  “Sure. I want to find out what the hell’s going on with this manhunt.”

  “Whoever goes first waits for the other. Cool?”

  “Sure.”

  “Mr. Turner?”

  The receptionist has slid open her window, but she is seated, and I see only a tight black bun atop her head.

  “Dr. Lenz will see you first,” she says in a husky, almost luminous voice. “Go through the door and down the corridor. The doctor is waiting.”

  Miles stands slowly, looks through the billing window, and says, “You have spooky eyes.” Then he picks up his computer and his cellular phone and disappears through the door like a tall and undernourished White Rabbit.

  Chapter 16

  When the receptionist finally calls my name, Miles has not yet reappeared. Perhaps Lenz wants to talk to us together. As I get up and move toward the door that bars the office proper, I turn to get a closer look at the receptionist.

  She is no longer there.

  The door leads into a short hallway carpeted in royal blue. To my left is the empty receptionist’s cubicle, at the end of the hall another door. I open it without knocking.

  Arthur Lenz is seated behind a cherry desk in a worn leather chair much like the one my father used in his medical office. But Lenz smells of cigarettes, not cigars. And his office is spartan compared to the Dickensian clutter of my father’s sanctum sanctorum.

  My first thought when Lenz looks up is that I pegged him wrong in New Orleans. There he seemed a handsomer version of William F. Buckley Jr. Now, seated silently behind the ornate desk with his iron gray hair and gold-rimmed spectacles, he seems to have morphed into a more sinister character—Donald Sutherland in one of his heavier roles. Lenz gives me a perfunctory smile and motions me toward a sleek black couch that reminds me of an orthodontist’s chair.

  “Did you transport Miles to an alternate dimension?” I ask.

  He looks puzzled. “Here are your printouts,” I say quickly, dumping the contents of my briefcase on the center of his desk.


  Lenz gives the laser-printed pages a quick scan, then slips them into a desk drawer. “I was about to have some tea sent in,” he says. “Care for some?”

  So this is how he means to play it: two supercivilized males sitting here sipping tea. “Got any Tabs?”

  “Tabs?”

  “You know, the drink. Tab. Tasted shitty in the seventies, now it’s just palatable. That’s what I drink.”

  The psychiatrist’s mouth crinkles with distaste. “There’s a vending machine in the building next door. I suppose I could send my receptionist over for some.”

  “Fine. Normally, I’d be gracious, but since you’re the one picking my brain, I insist. I need some caffeine.”

  “Tea has caffeine.”

  “But it ain’t got fizz.”

  Lenz pushes a button on a desk intercom and makes the request. It reminds me of the old Bob Newhart Show. I almost laugh at the memory.

  “What’s funny, Mr. Cole?”

  “Nothing. Everything. You’re wasting time talking to me. Your UNSUB could be out there killing another woman right this second.”

  “Yes, he could. But you don’t seem to grasp the fact that you and Mr. Turner are the only direct lines into this case. And as for wasting time, I frequently spend hours interviewing janitors or postmen whose only connection to a case may be that they walked past the crime scene.”

  I don’t respond to this.

  Lenz smiles like he’s my favorite uncle or something. “I know the couch seems camp. But it does tend to concentrate the mind.” He takes a pencil from the pocket of his pinpoint cotton shirt and taps the eraser on a blank notepad in front of him. “Lie back and relax, Mr. Cole.”

  The soft leather couch wraps itself around my back like beach sand, which tells me it does anything but concentrate the mind. Lenz’s ceiling tiles tell me his roof has leaked before. He modulates his deep voice into a fatherly Masterpiece Theatre register, but behind it I sense an unblinking gaze.

  “This is not a formal interview,” he says. “Psychological profiling is not an exact science. Any wet-nosed FBI trainee could question you about the homicidal triangle: bed-wetting, fire starting, cruelty to animals. I use a different approach. Despite the attempts of thousands to discredit Sigmund Freud, I still believe the old grouch was onto something regarding the importance of sexual experiences.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Are you familiar with Nietzsche’s epigram?”

  “That tired old saw about monsters and the abyss?”

  “No, this.” Suddenly Lenz is speaking harsh German that sounds like Erich von Stroheim in Five Graves to Cairo.

  “I didn’t catch that, Doctor.”

  “Forgive me. ‘The degree and kind of a man’s sexuality reach up into the ultimate pinnacle of his spirit.’ ”

  “I’ve seen that on EROS.”

  “I happen to believe it. I’m going to ask you some very personal questions. I hope you’ll answer frankly. You may feel a bit harried. I tend to jump from subject to subject, following my nose, as it were. Please try to remember that there is no personal motive behind my questions.”

  Right. You just want to put me in line for a lethal injection. “Fine,” I say aloud. “Let’s do it.”

  “What is the worst thing you’ve ever done, Mr. Cole?”

  The question takes me off guard. “I’m not sure I understand.”

  “What could be simpler? Please answer.”

  “You don’t waste much time on foreplay, do you?”

  “What is the worst thing you’ve ever done?”

  “Next question.”

  Lenz sighs in frustration, but I don’t really care. “Very well. What moment are you proudest of in your life?”

  “What is this?” I ask, trying to get some idea of how to handle this guy.

  “Mr. Cole, did you come here expecting to look at Rorschach blots? Perhaps to say the first thing that popped into your head when I said words like ‘breast’ or ‘hate’?”

  “I guess I thought you were going to ask me about EROS.”

  “EROS, you, Turner—it’s all one package, isn’t it? For the moment I’m concerned with you personally. Moments of shame and pride are frequently things people keep to themselves. The acts that cause these emotions often illuminate the extreme boundaries of the personality. If I know the extremes, I know the man. So please try to answer frankly. Yes?”

  “Okay.”

  “Would you consider yourself what laymen call a control freak?”

  “Yes. I guess that makes two of us.”

  “Do you masturbate regularly?”

  “Don’t you?”

  “Is that a yes?”

  “I’m still waiting for your answer.”

  Lenz gives a faint smile. “Do you masturbate while communicating on EROS?”

  “Occasionally.”

  “Would you say most subscribers use EROS as an aid to masturbation?”

  “I’m sure most of them have. I wouldn’t say that’s their primary use for it. EROS is more for your head than your body.”

  “What do you think about when you masturbate?”

  “That’s my business.”

  “Mr. Cole.”

  “Women, of course.”

  “Women doing what?”

  “What do you think?”

  “That you’re being evasive.”

  “What the hell do you want to know?”

  “Do you have violent fantasies?”

  “Such as?”

  “Women bound, for example.”

  “No.”

  “Women making sounds of supplication?”

  “No.”

  “Women in pain?”

  “No.”

  “Do you ever make mental connections between sex and blood?”

  “Hell no.”

  “This may be a sensitive question, but I must ask it. You grew up in a rural area. Have you ever had sex with an animal of any kind?”

  “Have you ever had someone pound the living shit out of you? Jesus.”

  Lenz marks on his notepad. “Would it surprise you to learn that over a third of all males raised in rural areas have had intercourse with some type of animal to the point of orgasm?”

  “It’s not something I’ve ever thought about, okay? And I’d like to keep it that way.”

  “I hope you can control your temper, Mr. Cole. There is a method to my madness, I assure you. Now . . . what is your first sexual memory?”

  “What do you mean? Like as a kid?”

  “Your first sexual memory of any kind.”

  “Well . . . trying to peek under my mother’s nightgown while she was sleeping, I guess.”

  “What did you see?”

  “Not much. It was dark.”

  “After that?”

  “Playing doctor in a tree house.”

  “With girls or boys?”

  “Girls. One girl.”

  “The same age as you?”

  “Yes.”

  “What age?”

  “I don’t know. Definitely little kids. Innocent stuff.”

  “Any genital touching?”

  “Nah. Just show-and-tell.”

  “What about same-sex play?”

  I hesitate. “A little.”

  “One boy, or several together?”

  “Several. Just neighborhood buddies.”

  “How old were you?”

  “Older. Still young, though.”

  “Any fear that you were a homosexual because of it?”

  “We didn’t even know what a homosexual was. Discovering my dad’s stash of Playboys was like unearthing the Rosetta Stone.”

  “Have you had online sex with other men?”

  “Not knowingly.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “A lot of men pretend to be women online. On regular networks it’s because there’s a shortage of women. But on EROS that doesn’t apply. Some men still do it there, so I guess I could unknowingly have fantasized sex
with a man.”

  “But you’ve never pretended to be a woman online?”

  “Once. My wife told me I should try it to see what it felt like. I did, and I didn’t like it.”

  “Why?”

  “It’s like you’re assaulted from every side. Even on EROS, which is the most civilized online service, being a woman means you’re constantly approached by men. It’s the loss of control, I guess.”

  “How old were you when you first had sex with a woman?”

  “All the way? Complete intercourse?”

  “Serious foreplay. Touching of genitals.”

  “Probably . . . thirteen. With a couple of curious girls the same age. When I was fourteen this other girl and I did pretty much everything but intercourse. We were in love, though. Jesus. Like holding hands and kissing and touching each other was some kind of new religion. An indescribable intensity of feeling. Your heart pounding like it would punch through your chest. She was a year older than me.”

  “How did that relationship end?”

  “She broke my heart after seven months. I still remember that. Funny, huh? Seven months. I was physically sick. I think that warped me. I was never willing to fall totally for a girl after that. I knew what could happen.”

  “How did that color your relationship with other girls? You were angry?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “When did you first have sexual intercourse?

  “Fifteen. The girl was eighteen.”

  “A one-time experience?”

  “Are you kidding? Once I got a taste of that, it was nonstop. Day and night, sneaking out of the house, anywhere we could find a place.”

  “What kind of places did you usually find?”

  “Outside, mostly. Or in the car, you know.”

  “Not in her parents’ house?”

  “No. We had a little respect.”

  “What do you remember most about that relationship?”

  I close my eyes. “Later, a couple of years later, I heard she’d become a slut. I’d really started to care for her after a while. She was country, but she read poetry, like that. She was a real person, just a little lost. She had feelings nobody knew about. It was sad.”

  “What makes you say that?”

  “Well . . . I read her diary once.”