Wallflower j-3

by William Bayer

A piece of paper with printing for the homeless man. A hair curler for Bertha Parce. A small book, probably a much-read paperback for the Wexler family. An oversize book for Cynthia Morse. A pair of neatly arranged toothbrushes for the MacDonalds. An eggbeater for the Scottos. That left only position seven, the last trophy position, the Jessica Foy position, marked with an X.

  He couldn't bring himself to try to draw that trophy. He couldn't even bear to think about it. Or did he resist, as Monika suggested, because to render it would make the scene in the bedroom clear and then he would no longer be haunted by his dream?

  When he asked her to explain that, she said people often resist giving up a source of pain.

  "Imagine how you'd feel without it, Frank? What would it be like not to be tormented?"

  "I'd love it."

  "You think so? I'm not so sure."

  "Why wouldn't I love that? I don't understand."

  She sat down on his chaise, placed her hand upon his knee. "Physically you're fine. Your body's mended. But your mind is wounded still. Like anybody who's spent years living dangerously, you've become addicted to stress. If you saw the seventh trophy, the puzzle would be solved and the stress would be relieved." She spoke kindly. "Maybe you're not yet ready for that. I think maybe you need to suffer awhile longer. Don't you?"

  He stared down at the water, then slowly turned back to her. His eyes, she saw, were filled with tears. they had leased the house for five days, intending to spend their last two on the mainland in Yucatdn, where Monika wanted to visit some of the great Mayan ruins. So on the fifth day they flew from the Isla de Cozumel to M6rida, where they checked, into a low all-white Moorish-style hotel set amidst a tranquil park of pools, flowering jacarandas, and palms.. The next morning they rented a car and went exploring. they had prepared for this visit by reading about the Mayans, enough so that they would know the purposes of the structures and the basic meaning of the art that they would see.

  But they were far less interested in archaeology than in viscerally experiencing the sites.

  On the weed-choked field before the great pyramid at Chich6n Itzd, Monika admitted to being deeply intrigued by the ancient Mayan cult of cruelty. Janek was attentive as she spoke. She made a stunning figure, he thought, dressed in white cotton slacks and a white polo shirt, her old Leica hanging casually from her shoulder, her face framed by the silver earrings he had bought for her in Cozumel.

  "Human sacfifices," she said, "pfiests in bejeweled robes excising hearts from naked living persons on a high altar before multitudes of witnesses-it was an atavistic culture, Frank, obsessed by astrology, magical beasts, worship of the sun, sacrifices to gods who demanded blood." She paused. "In my profession we speak of the subconscious as if it were a kind of jungle like the one around us here.

  Dark, dank, overgrown, filled with snakes, reptiles, and other threatening creatures, a place where the most elemental drives, to dominate, rape, avenge, and kill, thrive without constraint. Well, here we have a place cut out of such a jungle where ancient men created a great civilization. And what did they do? they didn't suppress their animal drives. Rather, they organized them, turned them into a religion of cosmic symbols and dramatic ceremonies." She paused again.

  "Perhaps they were a little like the Venetians in that regard. Remember their carnival costumes and winged horses and the churches everywhere we turned?"

  He loved listening to her. She was the most brilliant woman he'd ever been involved with. And the things she said found a responsive chord. He believed she was right, that there was as much cruelty in the masterpiece that was Venice as in the ancient capital of Mayan culture. A different kind of cruelty perhaps, more refined, less direct, but in the end nearly as ruthless and as bloody.

  He borrowed her camera, took a picture of her. Looking through the lens, he saw a beautiful woman poised against sunstruck stone ruins with dense green jungle foliage behind. Perhaps, he kidded her, she might want to use his picture to represent herself on the back of her next book.

  "You know," he said, "the gorgeous and brainy German shrink visiting the cradle of high barbarism in Central America."

  Later, as they explored the site, strode along its walls, among its steles, gazing at the sculptures incised into the stones-grotesque human figures in elaborate headdresses, mouths grimacing, eyes bulging, frozen in postures that suggested the commission of violent actsJanek asked Monika if these images were not expressions of the evil that had always fascinated him and that, he so often claimed, he struggled in his work to comprehend.

  The answer she gave surprised him a little bit: "Perhaps it isn't merely the mystery of evil that intrigues you, Frank. Perhaps it's something bigger, the mystery of the human mind."

  "I think you know what the seventh trophy is," she told him that evening. they were back in M6rida, sipping tequila by the hotel pool beside an open thatch-roofed garden bar. Janek looked around. There were two other couples and a black-haired Mexican bartender with Indian features gazing at the setting sun. On the tables were tiny hurricane lamps. The candles flickered in the dying light.

  "If I know what it is, I sure can't see it now," he said. "What makes you think I know?"

  "The trophy take n from Jess should be the easiest one for you to figure out. "

  "Because she was jogging?" Monika nodded. "She had a watch and the keys to her room on a leather thong around her neck. She was wearing a Walkman. All those things were found." He heard his voice break. It still disturbed him to talk about Jess this way, as a homicide victim instead of a person he had loved. "What else could she have been carrying?"

  Monika shook her head. Her expression was compassionate. "I think you know," she said quietly.

  Later in their room, as they lay naked together on their bed while the ceiling fan revolved slowly overhead, he broached the subject again.

  "You think you know what it is, don't you?" She looked at him. "I could venture a guess." "But you won't tell me?" She shook her head. "Why not?"

  "It's better for you to tell me, Frank," she said in a whisper.

  In the morning he was angry. He spoke harshly while they dressed.

  "I'm not in therapy. This isn't about me. It's a fucking murder case. Why won't you help?" She turned to him. She spoke calmly. She was buckling her belt. "Why must I tell you what you already know?"

  "Damn it, Monika! Don't speak to me in riddles!"

  She stood still and faced him. Her eyes were sad. "Of course this is about you, Frank," she said gently. "It's your dream, your vision. Why don't you just close your eyes and look inside yourself? It's there. All you have to do is look."

  After breakfast they went out to the hotel pool for an early swim. He watched her as she breaststroked back and forth. Who am I kidding? he asked himself I loved Jess. I ought to know what Diana took from her. But what was missing? He couldn't think of anything. What would Jess carry when she went out jogging? Maybe there was no seventh trophy, he thought.

  It came to him on the plane that afternoon, shortly after they had taken off for New York. they were crossing the Gulf of Mexico, still and green below. He peered out the window, and then he saw it in the pattern of the reefs.

  He turned to Monika beside him. "It was a knife." She nodded. "I think so, too."

  "That switchblade she bought at the knife show, the one Fran Dunning said had an ivory handle. I'm sure that's what I saw." She squeezed his hand. "Feel better now?"

  He leaned toward her, kissed her. "Thanks. You were right, I must have known what it was. Why did I fight it?"

  "I think it hurt you to see her knife sitting there. Your hurt blinded you, and then you couldn't see the other trophies either." :,But why did it hurt so much?" 'Because it was hers. And possibly because of something else. If she was carrying a knife, she could have put up a fight. But she didn't get a chance. She was attacked from behind. The thought of that still makes you furious. Your fury may have blinded you as well."

  It was a dazzling New York that greeted the
m, cold but brilliant, a city of sparkling granite and shimmering glass. As they taxied into Manhattan, Janek was struck by the difference between this arrival and his arrival from Venice eight weeks before. That day he and Aaron had driven though a damp and noxious fog that matched the sorrow and confusion in his soul. today, with Monika, the air was clear. And now, too, he knew what he was up against. they settled into Janek's apartment, then at dusk went out to walk.

  Upper Broadway was filled with Christmas shoppers. On Fifth Avenue all the stores were jammed. Santas with scraggly beards stood on comers rattling pails. At Rockfeller Center skaters glided across the ice, while above the golden statue of Prometheus, Christmas lights blazed upon an enormous spruce. they ate in a little Czech restaurant on West Twelfth Street. The owner, who had known Janek's father, embraced him when they walked in. After dinner they strolled through Greenwich Village. There were crowds of young people out on the streets, many walking briskly on their way to parties while others, grasping bags choked with gifts, attempted to flag down cabs. Foursomes stood on comers making jokes, waiting for traffic lights to change. A drunken old man, in a tweed suit and bow tie, stumbled past them mouthing the lyrics to "Hark! The Herald Angels Sing."

  "I love this energy," Monika said. "New York's a fascinating town."

  "It's no Venice, but it takes a bum rap," Janek said. "It's a cruel place, but it can be wonderful, too."

  She nodded. "I've often wondered what it would be like to live here. I've been offered a visiting professorship of psychiatry.

  Last month the Albert Einstein College of Medicine approached me again.

  Perhaps I should accept, move here for a year," She looked at him. "A year of living dangerously."

  "We could get to know each other pretty well over a year," he said.

  She smiled, took his arm. "I wish I didn't have to go back so soon.

  But sadly I do."

  Later that night, at his apartment, he asked if she'd be willing to take a look at Beverly Archer.

  "Just to observe her," he said. "She'll never know."

  Monika thought about it, then agreed. "I'm not a forensic psychiatrist. I doubt I'll see anything. But I confess-I'm very curious."

  Janek phoned Aaron, asked if he could set it up. Aaron thought he could. Beverly's schedule was so rigid, he said, there shouldn't be any difficulty arranging a covert surveillance. They'd park on Second Avenue down the block from her house and wait for her to come out after her last appointment. When she started on her round of errands, Monika could follow her and observe.

  The plan worked. At exactly six fifty-five the following evening Beverly appeared. When she went into a dry cleaning shop, Monika got out of the car and followed. Sitting with Aaron, waiting for her to return, Janek started feeling nervous.

  "This reminds me of one very bad night."

  Aaron reassured him. "I know it's spooky, Frank, but your girl's terrific. Don't worry. Beverly's met her match."

  When Monika returned, she was shivering. Janek took her hands, rubbed them to restore warmth. She seemed disturbed. "Let's go get something to drink," she said.

  Aaron drove down Second to a cop hangout near East Seventy-first. The place was filled, cops full of holiday bluster toasting one another with mugs of beer. Janek and Aaron nodded to acquaintances; then the three of them squeezed into a booth.

  "A strange woman," Monika reported after the waiter had brought her tea.

  "A lot of people in my field are. The profession's always attracted troubled individuals. they often make gifted therapists."

  "So she's just another weirdo shrink, is that what you're saying?" Aaron asked. Monika shook her head. "More than that. She functions, of course, very well from what you've told me. But I felt I was observing an extremely high-strung person, very tense, very tightly controlled. The way she moves, dresses, smiles at the sales clerks, tilts her head, tightens up her lips-it's as if there's a NO CONTACT! DON'T TOUCH ME! sign hanging on her back. Still, for all her smiles I could feel the rage coming off her. Sexual rage, too. She truly hates males.

  It shows every time she deals with one. "

  Aaron glanced at Janek. "Could she have done what Frank says?"

  "Sent the girl out to kill her old enemies? I can't tell that from looking at her. But in theory, yes, it's possible."

  "But by using a surrogate killer," Janek asked, "didn't she give up the pleasures of killing the old enemies herself?"

  "Not necessarily. The pleasures might have been even greater for her. She'd have the satisfaction of knowing she had done them in fiendishly, and I think it would have been very exciting for her to hear Diana describe the glue mutilations, too. That would have been the best part of it, perhaps the only erotic excitement she's capable of having."

  Monika went on to analyze the paradox in a person such as Beverly, who, though ostensibly asexual, could still take an intense sexual interest in her victims.

  "The brain is more flexible than people think," she explained. "It can do a kind of somersault. What seems disgusting can suddenly become appetizing; what's repulsive can suddenly become erotic. In a flash a person can become addicted to the very thing he or she previously hated. It's a way to survive in the world, to turn pain into pleasure, to take the worst, most painful scenarios of one's childhood and, by controlling them, rewrite the script so that in the new final act there is victory rather than defeat."

  "Beverly's victories are the exec I utions, right? Executions of the people who humiliated her in the past?"

  "Again, we're talking theory, Frank. After only fifteen minutes of observation I can't tell you this woman did what you think. But yes, she could have done it, and if she did, I don't think her victories would have been just the executions. to me the neuterings are far more important. Killing an old enemy is one thing. Doing something to his body is quite another. Attacking the genitals, the seat of your enemy's sexuality, is the ultimate revenge. to have another person do it for you and then describe it is a way of distancing yourself while still enjoying your old tormentor's degradation. It's like hearing about something bad that has befallen a rival. You didn't do it, you didn't dirty your hands, but you have the satisfaction of knowing that the person has been dealt a devastating blow. We have a special word for that in German. Schadenfreude. It means taking joy in another's pain. If you're right, I think Schadenfreude may be what Beverly Archer is all about."

  "Okay," said Aaron. "That makes sense. But could she have gotten Diana to kill and glue all those people? We know the girl killed her mother, grandmother, and sister. But except for Jess, the others all seem to have been perfect strangers."

  "It's not that difficult for one person to gain control over another's mind," Monika said. "Behavioral methods, hypnosis, rote training, rewards and punishments, plain old-fashioned domination-there are many ways. The basic method is simple: get someone dependent and susceptible in your power; then circumscribe her world so that your commands have the power of laws. You see it all the time in cults, prisons, terrorist groups, pathological personal relationships. In Nazi Germany you saw it on the extraordinary scale of an entire nation.

  There's a part in all of us that responds to force and craves to be controlled. We want to be led, commanded, told what to do. If it weren't for that particular trait, human society probably wouldn't work. But what is extremely difficult is to force someone to perform an act completely contrary to his moral nature. Here, however, you have a girl, still young and malleable, who had not only killed people before but afterwards attacked their sexual organs. The distance from ax to ice pick, from chopping at genitals to imprisoning them with glue, is not all that great. So, to answer your question, yes, everything Frank has theorized is absolutely possible. But whether it happened or not… I'm not the one to say."

  Late in the afternoon on Christmas Eve, Janek went down to Police Plaza to see Kit Kopta. This time the crusty red-haired sergeant who ran her office greeted him with warmth.

  "How's the shoulder,
Detective? The throat?" And before Janek could answer: "That was one close call. Too bad you had to wax the girl.

  Luck of the draw, I guess. Anyway, Merry Christmas!"

  Kit rose when he came in. "You look grand, Frank. I don't think I've ever seen you with a tan."

  "Well, it was a great trip."

  She smiled. "I can just imagine the two of you snuggling on some Mexican beach. What I'd give for a little vacation.

  "Why don't you take one? God knows you deserve it."

  She laughed. "Sure. Check into a Club Med. Have a three-day affair with a gorgeous Nordic ice god, the kind with a stomach so hard you can use it for a washboard. Make an ass out of myself trying to stuff my body into a bikini. Hang out at the bar, pay for drinks with little doodads off my necklace, and wish to hell I was back here in good old tit-freezing New York, where at least I don't have to act jolly or pretend I'm having a good time. "

  Janek shook his head. "Are you always like this on Christmas Eve?"

  "It's not as if I had a nice husband to go home to." She smiled. "I'll probably end the evening curling up with a bottle. But I'm not bitter. Maybe a little ironic, that's all." She sat down behind her desk, turned serious. "Now what's all this about you wanting to reopen the case?"

  It took Janek twenty minutes to lay out his theory of the Wallflower crimes. Kit didn't interrupt him or nod encouragement; she just gazed steadily into his eyes. When he finally finished, she asked him what exactly he wanted her to authorize.

  "An investigation."

  ")"at sort of investigation?" He squinted at her. Her tone seemed hard. "What's the matter? My theory too farfetched?"

  She stood, walked over to the window, stared down at Police Plaza.

  "Sure, it's farfetched. You know it is. But so is the theory you were too smart to swallow, the one Sullivan and his people seem to have bought whole hog.

  "So what's the problem?"

  She turned to face him. Her thick black hair framed her little face. "The problem is if you hadn't nearly gotten killed that night, I'd have put IA on your ass."