by Greg Iles
“Which question?”
“What am I proudest of.”
“Ah. Will you answer it now?”
“I don’t see the relevance.”
“Please let me decide what’s relevant.”
“You think I’m going to spill my guts to you in the naive belief that you’d honor doctor-patient confidentiality?”
Lenz straightens at his desk. “I honor patient confidences absolutely.”
“Yeah?” Propelled by some contrary impulse, I take out my wallet, withdraw a hundred-dollar bill, cross the room, and stuff the bill into Lenz’s breast pocket. “You’re hired.”
“You’re testing my patience, Mr. Cole.”
“And I give you a C-minus. You want to turn off the tape recorder now?”
“I do not tape my sessions,” he says indignantly.
“Thank you, Doctor Nixon.”
Lenz looks genuinely indignant. “You’re making me angry, Cole.”
I back over to the couch and lie down again. “I’m now officially your patient. What if I tell you I killed those seven women?”
He catches his breath. “Did you?”
“Answer my question first.”
Lenz nervously pushes up the nosepiece of his glasses. “If you’re telling me that you did . . . well . . . my honest answer would be that I . . . I would try to find some other way of proving your guilt than violating doctor-patient confidentiality.”
“What if you couldn’t do that? And you knew I was going to kill again?”
“I don’t know.”
“You could always kill me yourself. Then doctor-patient privilege would no longer be in effect, right?”
“You’re as bad as your friend.”
“What do you mean?”
“The levels of deviousness. I don’t know whether to tell Daniel to arrest Turner or to hire him as a consultant. I think he’s already figured out more about the EROS killer than the Bureau has.”
“ That wouldn’t surprise me.” Again I wonder if the FBI arrested Miles right on this couch and hauled him off to jail. “On the other hand, maybe Miles knows so much because he is the killer.”
Lenz doesn’t bite.
A telephone on the desk emits a soft chirp and the psychiatrist answers, his eyes still focused on me. He listens, then covers the transmitter and says, “Would you mind leaving the room until I’m done?”
I stand up and step into the hall. Lenz’s sonorous voice resumes behind me, muted by the heavy door. The dark-skinned receptionist is still AWOL from the billing office. I open the waiting-room door on the off chance that Miles may be there, but he isn’t. Thinking I might catch Drewe on her cellular, I step over to the receptionist’s desk. I am reaching for her phone when I notice an envelope with my name on it at the center of the desk. Without hesitation I pick it up and scan the few handwritten words on the paper inside.
Harper,
Brahma just logged back on to EROS under alias “Shiva.” With that Wyoming court order, Baxter now has the power he needs to trace the call. I’ll talk to you when I can.
Ciao
As I slip the note back into the envelope, the waiting-room door opens and a blond, square-jawed yuppie in a blue business suit steps inside. I crush the envelope into my pants pocket and head back toward Lenz’s office.
The psychiatrist almost bowls me over as he hurries up the hallway, tugging on his jacket to the jingle of car keys.
“Sorry, Cole,” he says, his voice clipped. “We’re going to have to talk on the move. This is Special Agent Peter Schmidt.”
I ignore Agent Schmidt as he steps up behind me. “What are you talking about? Where are we going?”
“That was Daniel Baxter on the phone. There’s been a new development. I’m needed at Quantico and he told me to bring you along.”
“What kind of development?” I ask, thinking of Miles’s message.
“They may have found Rosalind May.”
My heart thumps. “Dead?”
“We don’t know.”
“Look, I’ve got a flight to catch tonight, remember?”
“Cole, need I remind you that you are currently a suspect in seven capital murders?”
“You know I didn’t kill those women.”
“What I think doesn’t matter at this point. A woman’s life is at stake.”
“You’re lying, Doctor. What you think is all that matters.”
Lenz looks at Agent Schmidt, then at the floor, then back at me. “Our UNSUB’s in Dallas, Texas. It’s your choice. Fly home and be out of it, or watch the killer you smoked out get what’s coming to him.”
In that moment all the hours I spent reading “David Strobekker’s” dark seductions alone in my office come back to me. Beyond that, the horror and guilt of watching the first CNN report of Karin Wheat’s murder twists in my gut like a strand of barbed wire. I have no choice.
“Let’s go.”
Chapter 17
Lenz leads Agent Schmidt and me across the parking lot to a midnight blue Mercedes 450SL. Schmidt starts to get in, but the psychiatrist pulls him aside and speaks softly, and he disappears.
Lenz drives with assurance, keeping just under the speed limit as he makes for a distant overpass bristling with green metal signs. Afternoon is wearing toward evening, the gray over our heads fading downward to a deep blue.
“We’re about thirty-five miles from Quantico,” he says, punching a button on his cellular phone, apparently to make sure it’s working.
“If everything’s happening in Dallas, why are we going to Quantico?”
“They have certain facilities there.” He threads the Mercedes through a thicket of cars. “You’ll know more soon.”
“Nice ride,” I comment.
“A gift from my wife,” he says in a taut voice.
At that moment Lenz’s cellular rings, and the speed with which he snatches it up betrays the tension he feels. He listens for twenty seconds, says yes twice, and then hangs up.
“Come on,” I say sharply. “They traced Strobekker’s call through Wyoming to Dallas, right? And they just got an exact address.”
He looks over in astonishment. “How . . . ? Ah. Turner, of course.” He stares at me another few seconds. “They traced the call from the Lake Champion phone exchange to the WATS line of a mining company in that town. The WATS was connected to Dallas, Texas. To an apartment. Rented under the name of David M. Strobekker.”
“Holy shit. What’s going to happen?”
“Dallas FBI and police SWAT teams have already surrounded the complex and evacuated the nearby apartments. Strobekker’s still online. An FBI Hostage Rescue Team is en route from Kansas City via jet. They were waiting on alert there so that they could reach any U.S. destination in the shortest possible time.”
“Don’t you need to be in Dallas? In case there’s a standoff or something? To try to talk the guy out?”
“Daniel has authorized explosive entry. Rosalind May could be inside, and Strobekker has already proved he’ll kill without mercy. Hostage Rescue blows down the doors as soon as they get there. ETA eighty minutes.”
“What if Strobekker tries to leave before they get there?”
“Dallas SWAT takes him down.”
“You mean they kill him?”
“I hope it doesn’t come to that. Where we’re going, I’ll be able to speak directly to whoever’s in the apartment, if necessary.”
I sit back heavily in my seat. Ten minutes ago I was angry and tired; now I taste the euphoria of my name being cleared, of my life getting back to its normal anxiety level.
Lenz gooses the Mercedes up an on-ramp and joins the southbound stream of traffic on 495. “Cole, I need your help, and you need mine. The best way for you to avoid trouble in this case is to assist with the investigation. But before I can use you, I have to be sure you’re not involved.”
“But they’re about to nail the guy.”
“Perhaps. Perhaps not. The evidence in this case suggests
a group of offenders working in concert. Is Strobekker himself in that apartment? Or is it the owner of that Indian hair found at one of the crime scenes?”
Great. “What do you want from me?”
“Answers. I think you’re a good man haunted by a bad thing. The question is, is that thing related to this case or not?”
“It’s not, okay? Isn’t my word enough?”
“I’m afraid not.”
“Goddamn it, I reported the murders! And so far all I’ve gotten for my trouble is more trouble.”
The psychiatrist looks away from the darkening road long enough to fix me with a disquieting stare. His face looks like my father’s did the first time he confessed money problems to me. One minute I was looking at a man in his prime—responsible, circumspect, in charge—the next at a drawn visage haunted by failure and doubt. A face about to confide secrets that would change my life forever.
“I’ve been a forensic psychiatrist more than thirty years,” Lenz says in a voice stripped of all affect. “Thirty years of listening to men describe how they tortured and violated children. Watching videotapes of men tearing women into bloody pieces in vans and basements.” He lowers his head almost defensively. “My work is the benchmark by which others are measured. But not long ago, I reached a point where the compass that had led me thus far no longer functioned. I had problems at home. My work had become an endless round of tedium. Do you have any idea what the Investigative Support Unit actually does, Cole?”
“Catches serial killers, right?”
“Wrong. It does exactly what its title says. Gives support. The movie image of FBI agents single-handedly tracking down serial killers is pure fantasy. We advise. Local police do the physical work, make the arrest, and get the credit.”
I watch Lenz from the corner of my eye.
“Killers are monotonous, as a rule,” he goes on. “Variations on a theme. I testify at their trials, seal their fates, then recede back into the shadows. It’s just . . . rote. The whole goddamned profession is being corrupted. By greed, ambition. Men I’ve trained peddle my ideas to the masses in the form of sensational books, lectures, and Hollywood consulting. None of which I ever had a taste for. I’m a scientist, do you understand? A physician.”
The integrity in Lenz’s voice is almost embarrassing. “I understand, Doctor.”
“The only thing that kept me working was that the prospect of retirement seemed even less appealing.”
“You just spoke in the past tense. What changed it?”
“You.” Lenz turns to me with new light in his eyes. “The EROS killer has already murdered seven women we know of, with the corpses found in every case. Yet he staged each crime but two in such a way that they were not linked. And homicide detectives look for staging, believe me. Were it not for your coming forward—courageously, against the wishes of your company—he would still be killing without any risk of being caught.”
Lenz may be manipulating me, but it feels pretty good to finally hear someone recognize my effort.
“Serial murderers normally operate on an emotional cycle,” he explains. “They kill, cool off, kill again. Generally, the period between kills gets shorter and shorter until the murderer begins to decompensate, or come unstrung, in layman’s terms. This is generally what allows him to be caught. You with me?”
“I’m with you.”
“The EROS killer is different. He operates with utter calm and deliberation. He’s not even close to decompensating. Serial offenders frequently communicate with police. He has not done so.”
“What about the Henry Miller quote?”
“That was more staging, not real communication. In the stakes-through-the-eye-sockets case, he smeared the words ‘Now she can see’ on the bedroom mirror with feces. Pure theater. This man has harnessed computer technology not only to select his victims but also to probe their minds and emotions before he strikes. Miles Turner is a computer genius, yet he cannot or will not explain how Strobekker got hold of the EROS master client list—”
“That’s why you suspect Miles,” I cut in. “This guy is like Miles would be if he decided to start killing people.”
“Exactly. And now he has kidnapped a woman.”
“Do you know why?”
“No.”
“Something to do with the pineal gland?”
“Almost certainly.”
“This may sound crazy, Doctor, but could he be killing these women for some perfectly logical reason? Something we can’t understand because we lack the information?”
“Crimes of this type are always eminently logical to the man who commits them, Cole. Keep one thing in mind. In serial murder, selection is everything. How does the killer choose his victims? What fantasy do they fulfill? If you can parse that out, you have your man. Or at least his profile.”
“He uses EROS to select them.”
“That’s merely method. What are his criteria? The printouts you gave me are interesting, but they’re basically seductions. They reveal no critical similarities among victims. Neither do studies of the victims’ bodies or daily lives.”
“They all had pineal glands.”
“Yes. But of what sexual importance is the pineal?”
“I don’t know. Does it have to be sexual?”
“Ultimately, yes. All murders of this type are sexually motivated. It’s just that the sexual component may be deeply repressed. The taking of the pineal conjures images of cults or mad scientists, but in the end, all this will resolve into some variant of old-fashioned lust. Mr. Strobekker is what we called in the bad old days a lust killer, Cole. A sex killer.”
“That’s why you asked so much about my sex life.”
He nods distractedly, his head swaying slightly from side to side as he drives. When he speaks again, his voice carries startling certitude. “I’m the only man alive who can stop him, Cole.” He glances over as if to reassure me. “No, I haven’t lost my head. All my life I’ve been training for this moment. You should see some of the profiles the junior men in the Unit have turned in. Not even close. Strobekker has them all chasing their tails. Why? Because he’s a new species, Cole. They don’t have little crib sheets that fit him.”
“And you do?”
“I don’t need any.” Lenz taps his fingers excitedly on the wheel. “I wrote the books. The police won’t stop Strobekker because he won’t make a conventional mistake. He’s not some traumatized human robot composted from the dregs of society. He has a brain. And he’s using it.” Lenz falls silent, apparently lost in a reverie. “This time,” he says almost to himself, “I’m going to do something no one in the Unit has ever done. That no psychiatrist has ever done. I’m going to catch this one myself.”
I keep my eyes averted, surprised by the emotion he has invested in this case. “Unless Hostage Rescue gets him in”—I glance at my watch—“sixty minutes, you mean.”
“Of course,” he says, looking at me. “I’ve been speaking in terms of a single person, but the evidence points to a team-offender situation. That’s what underlies the police interest in you and Turner. And that’s what makes Dallas such an interesting development. Think about it. Who is inside that apartment?”
“I just don’t see what you want from me.”
“You will. I’ve been studying the printouts you gave me, and I’m convinced I can trap Strobekker.”
“How?”
“By creating a fictional woman, then becoming that woman on EROS. To be frank, I’m almost done with her.”
I am trying to digest Lenz’s words, but the implications are too complex to take in at once.
“She fits the new victim profile almost exactly,” he adds.
“New profile? You mean you’re making her like Karin Wheat instead of the younger victims?”
“Yes. It’s rare for a killer to establish so clear a pattern and then break it. If Wheat were merely a crime of opportunity, I’d discard her from the group. But she wasn’t. Wheat represents a new paradigm.”
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“And my function?”
“Smoothing my entry into the EROS community.”
“You don’t know what you’re getting into, Doctor. God only knows what databases this guy can access to check out people who approach him online.”
Lenz chuckles. “Don’t worry about that. Daniel’s men are very good at paperwork. My personal Eliza Doolittle is in the process of coming to official life as we speak. Social Security number, DMV, voter registration, credit cards, credit history, a house, and a car. In a matter of hours she’ll be as real as your wife.”
“What’s this fictitious woman’s name?”
“Anne Bridges. But that’s irrelevant. It’s the alias that matters, correct?”
He’s right. “What’s the alias?”
“Something primal,” Lenz says, obviously pleased with himself. “Archetypal. Biblical.”
“What the hell is it?”
“You’re interested now? Don’t worry, you’ll know soon enough. If you cooperate.”
I could care less about the alias, but I do want to know who is in that Dallas apartment. After all, it was I who first detected Strobekker’s deadly passage through the digital universe. “But you don’t know anything about how EROS really works,” I point out. “There are all kinds of esoteric abbreviations, informal practices, things that are understood only by the members.”
Lenz smiles. “You just argued yourself into the job.”
“You really think you can fool people—not just people, but him—into thinking you’re a woman?”
“That’s what makes it worthwhile. How much insight do I truly have into the female mind? This will be the acid test.”
He blinks his headlights twice and roars past a semitruck. “We’re over halfway to Quantico, Cole. Let’s hear your secret. If I decide it’s unrelated to the case, you get me started on EROS, then you go home with no more police problems.”
I turn and look out the passenger window. Halfway to Quantico. Halfway to the Hostage Rescue Team knocking down Brahma’s door in Dallas. Lenz wants answers to his little questions, snapshots of my soul before I’m allowed into the inner circle of the investigation. What am I proudest of? Most ashamed of? The answer to the first question is private but not really secret, and it will get me to Quantico. The other answer can wait until that door goes down in Dallas. It can wait forever.
