Portrait of the Psychopath as a Young Woman - Edward Lee.wps

by phuc

  "Wonderful?" Spence questioned. He couldn't think of a word more inappropriate.

  "Because unlike sociopaths, psychopaths always make mistakes," Simmons asserted. "You'll probably catch her soon, probably through some very unelaborate means."

  "Unelaborate?" Spence could've laughed. "She manually extracted the teeth of the first three victims to prevent a dental record ID. She burned up their hands and feet. And she hasn't left a single latent, not in the car, not on any of the bodies. My guy at CES says she's wearing double pairs of surgical gloves, for God's sake. In other words, she's so well informed about modern criminalistic procedures that she knows about the resin applications that can ID latents left through a single pair. Christ, she's knocking these guys out with sodium amobarbital."

  "Fine, fine. She's intricate. But what you're under rating is that she's a chronic stage bipolar. As more time passes, the delusional stage becomes more apparent. Psychopaths are notoriously forgetful. They have outstanding long term memories but almost no short term memories. They can have human body parts going karyolytic in their bedrooms and not even be aware of it. When enough time passes after the psychotic event, they become convinced of their delusions. They become monomanic, oblivious. They begin to think in fragments and visual splices. They hallucinate. They'll drive to the store naked and think there's nothing wrong with that. I had a man last year who actually buried a bag of garbage and left a body out by the curb. It doesn't matter that they often have higher IQs than you and I. When their delusions overtake them, they become prone to outrageous, and even comedic, acts of stupidity." Simmons sipped his coffee and grimaced. "Don't worry, your red haired friend will start making mistakes. But that doesn't mean you don't have quite a lot to worry about in the meantime."

  "What should I expect in the meantime?"

  "More bodies," Simmons said. His mouth hooked up, then he dumped his coffee in the wastebasket. "You remember your basic psychiatric terms from school. Do you remember what a nascent is?"

  Spence dumped his coffee out too. "An object or ideation that causes a delusion to become real to the afflicted. Or something like that."

  Simmons held up a finger. "Exactly. And Kathleen Shade is the link to the nascent." Simmons'

  bizarre smile seemed to radiate. "Find the nascent, Jeffrey, and you will find your psychopath."

  | |

  Chapter 8

  (I)

  She's at the kitchen table.

  Late morning.

  She can see birds hopping on the cracked patio outside.

  She'll have to remember to mow the grass.

  She's naked beneath a silk, purple robe.

  She doesn't like mornings.

  Mornings make her remember things.

  Memories, she thinks, drinking wine.

  But her memories are what make her important.

  Memories are what make her story...

  She begins to type.

  «« »»

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHILDHOOD MEMORIES

  Your father is a memory. Your mother is a ghost. The Cross reminds you of something but you never know what. Your mother died when you were about 15. She was a prostitute and took heroin. Daddy beat her up a lot because he had friends who liked to have sex with women who were beaten up or unconscious. You loved your mother very much. You wish there was some way you could find all the men who had sex with your mother so you could kill them all. Daddy made you watch sometimes. He made you touch him while he watched the men in Daddy's Room through a trick mirror in the closet. He first started molesting you when you were four or five.

  Whenever he came back from his job, he'd take you into the den, which you only think of as Daddy's Room, and he'd fuck you. He'd make you do things to him. He was never mean like he was to your mother. He'd do mean things but he'd never act mean. And lots of times his work friends would come to the house and Daddy would let them do things to you and your mother, sometimes at the same time. All those nights for all those years you remember being fucked on the couch or on the table or on the floor, and you remember looking up into The Window and seeing The Cross.

  The Cross glows like huge beautiful white fire.

  It's The Cross that saves you. It's The Cross that gives you your power.

  Your mother's ghost told you that.

  Sometimes Daddy and his friends would tie your mother up and stick things in her. They'd all laugh as she quivered on the floor.

  You look at The Cross and decide that one day you'll tie them up and stick things in them.

  Later she mows the lawn.

  She used to pay neighborhood boys to do it, but then her mother told her that they might find something in the yard.

  Places where she's buried things.

  After that she drives to work to pick up her paycheck.

  She's driving the little blue car. Her mother isn't with her today.

  Maybe she's with Daddy.

  Maybe she's cutting the devil off of Daddy.

  In Daddy's Room.

  Again and again and again.

  She wishes she were a ghost like her mother so she could cut off Daddy's devil too.

  Sometimes she sees skulls beneath people's faces.

  "Skulls mean death," her mother told her once.

  It's The Cross that lets her see the skulls.

  She wonders if Kathleen Shade sees the skulls too.

  «« »»

  She gets her paycheck at the hospital's physical plant office.

  Her supervisor says "Hello," and gives her her check.

  Nobody talks to her very much.

  They all think she's weird.

  She smiles at that.

  She goes up to the 4th floor where most of the ICU coves are.

  A candy striper at the nurses' station says "Hello," and she says "Hello" back.

  "You're working four to twelve today?"

  "No, I don't work again 'til tomorrow night," she tells the candy striper. She wants to warn the young girl, about the devils, and about all the horrible things that men would like to do to her, but of course she can't. "I forgot to finish my shift log from last night."

  "Oh, okay."

  While she's finishing her shift log, a doctor comes around the corner and starts yelling at the candy striper. "Carrington, not Carrolton!" he yells and slaps down an aluminum folder that they keep the ICU records in. It makes a sound so loud she jumps.

  "I'm sorry, doctor," the candy striper apologizes.

  "Do you have any idea, any idea at all, what could happen when you order the wrong records!"

  "I'm sorry, doctor. I thought you said Carrolton."

  "I thought you said Carrolton," the doctor mimics her. "Jesus Christ, girl, a patient could die because of your stupidity!"

  The candy striper starts to cry.

  The doctor jerks around into the station, to get the records himself. "If it were up to me, you'd all be fired," he mutters, rummaging. "Incompetent, the bunch of you."

  She feels sorry for the candy striper, but she smiles. "Don't worry," she consoles when the doctor stalks off. "I heard that a patient went comatose last year because he administered the wrong beta blocker. The patient almost died."

  "He's such a prick!" the candy striper half sobbed. "He's always acting like that. It's not my fault he can't say a patient's name right."

  "Don't worry."

  A fantasy blooms, like a light turning on.

  Hold him down, she's saying to the candy striper, while I get him cuffed.

  He's jerking and screaming as she cuts off his face with a Gradle Miltex post mortem abdominal knife.

  See what I'm doing for you? she says to the candy striper. You can learn from me.

  She slices off his ears like the ends of a loaf of bread.

  She clips off his nose with Knowels cartilage shears.

  She places the shears in the candy striper's hand and holds up the doctor's penis so the candy striper can cut it off.

  "That asshole," the
candy striper says, dabbing her eyes with Kleenex. "I could kill him."

  Yes, she thinks.

  All the while she's been putting the tag number into the computer. All hospitals have an uplink to surrounding motor vehicle administrations for car wreck victims who are brought in with no IDs so they can run the plates and get a print out of the owner's driver's license and see if the car wreck victim matches the face on the license.

  "If I wasn't in school, I'd quit this damn place," the candy-striper is saying. At least she's calmed down a little now. "I don't deserve to be treated like that."

  "Nobody does."

  She doesn't print out the information because she knows that if she does the computer will out index it.

  Instead she memorizes what appears on the color graphic monitor.

  HEIGHT: 5-6

  WEIGHT: 135

  SEX: F

  LIC. TYPE: R

  KATHLEEN MARGARET SHADE

  3660 LEIBER STREET #307

  WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005

  | |

  Chapter 9

  (I)

  "I'm sorry I missed your lecture, honey," Kathleen's father said over the phone. "I completely forgot about it."

  Kathleen had never expected him to show up in the first place. "It went pretty well," she said. She was looking out the window, into sunlight. "I met a nice man."

  "Oh, really?"

  "His name's Maxwell. He's a poet."

  She could nearly hear her father's frown. "A poet?" he said. "Do poets make money?"

  "He also teaches college, but he's off for the summer."

  "Hmm. A poet."

  Her father called every few weeks, either from his house in Alexandria, or from his company office. He was a millionaire. From his own father, he and Sam had inherited a mining company, coal and tin, in Allegheny County. He made several 100,000 per year in what he called "Schedule E Mineral Royalties," which, over the years, he'd converted to millions through real estate deals and the stock market. Sammy sold his shares to her father and put the money in the bank. It infuriated Kathleen, that a pedophile should be allowed to be wealthy.

  "I want to meet him when I'm back in town," her father went on. "How old is he?"

  "I'm not sure. Late twenties, early thirties."

  "We'll go to a nice restaurant, 21 Federal maybe, or how about Duke's? Maybe we'll see Ted Kennedy again."

  "Anyplace'll be fine, dad. You'll like him."

  "Who? Kennedy?"

  "No, dad. Maxwell. He's really nice."

  "He better be. Nobody's too nice for my little girl."

  What a trip, Kathleen thought. I'm a 33 year old little girl. She didn't even consider telling him about the killer. As far as over reactive fathers went, her own father was outdone by no one. He'd have her moving out of state. He'd send her on a vacation for a year.

  "Do you need any money?" he asked.

  "No, dad, I'm fine."

  "You're sure."

  "Really, dad. Things are great."

  And it dawned on her then, that things really were great. Even if her conception of Maxwell was an over reaction of her own she'd met him less than 24 hours ago her life suddenly felt bristling with excitement and reality. What's different about it now? she wondered. Was it the credibility she had as a writer? Was it Maxwell? Is it the killer? she wondered.

  She felt complete. She was a complete woman in, basically, a man's world, and she knew she always had been. So why was she only realizing that now?

  The moment darkened, though. Almost, alm Here. Kathleen shriveled. She knew she shouldn't ask, but...

  "Dad? Sam's still in prison, isn't he?"

  The pause unreeled like something dropped into an abyss.

  "Honey, oh Jesus. Of course he is. Are you having problems with that again?"

  Kathleen wasn't quite sure how to answer. "A little, or...something," she said. Late morning sun glared in the window, an inferno. "Just lately, for some reason..." She didn't bother finishing. The cat clock ticked in her head.

  She knew how guilty her father felt about it. Sam was his brother, his blood. Worse was that he'd found out only years later, when Sammy had been caught. "You remember what the prosecutor's office said," her father recounted as though it were some unimpeachable assurance. "Even when he's up for parole he'll be turned down. Don't worry about him."

  "I won't," she said, then hastened to correct: "I'm not... Well, be sure to call when you're back home."

  "I will." The voice sounded ruined. "'Bye."

  "'Bye."

  Well, Kathleen, you sure screwed up his day. Why had she even brought it up? The radio shrink would say she'd done it on purpose, that subconsciously she blamed her father more than Sam.

  To a 9 year old, Father was God, Father was Protector. Kathleen's mother had died the same year; Sam, the weak link in the family business, had looked after her constantly while her father was on the job, or away on business. He looked after me, all right, she sourly reminded herself. And all those years afterward... For so long she hadn't even suspected that something was wrong.

  Don't worry, Kathleen. I'll take good care of you while your dad's away. Years, yes. Years. Such was the precision of Sam's diabolical ability to brainwash her. The counselor had told her this was a common trait, the pedophile's talent for gaining the child's absolute trust and then converting it to his own end. Kathleen had never said a word until she was 27. Sammy had been caught in a Justice Department sting. All those years, all those years, she thought now. "It's part of the offender's overall strategy," the counselor had informed her. "You never said anything to your father about it because you were expertly programmed not to. And as you gradually became an adult, and gradually realized that your uncle's behavior had been criminal, you remained silent out of a retroactive shame fixation. This is a typical complex in these situations."

  It had been an honor to testify against him, however after the fact; the evidence had been heinous.

  Sam had probably molested over a 100 children, male and female, in his two decades of pedophilia. He'd been in some of the films himself, and in some of the magazines, with a beard or mustache. She'd never forget the titles: It's Playtime, Stomper Room, Cum To Jeannie's Birthday Party, Uncle Dick Comes to Visit. The defense attorney had actually tried to have Kathleen's testimony dismissed, since she'd been recounting experiences that had taken place when she was a minor. What a joke. How could anybody deny all those films and magazines? A plea bargain had reduced Sam's sentence; he'd wound up testifying against all his associates. But 13 years in Lorton, she'd been told, was worse than 50 anywhere else.

  She had no qualms with her rage. She hoped Sam was being sodomized every night in his cell.

  She hoped he was being treated as the object he'd treated all those children as. "I hope you hang yourself," she told him as the bailiffs escorted him out. He'd only looked back at her dolefully, which felt strange.

  The memories hadn't bothered her for years. She'd been trained by the private counselors by backward association techniques, and memory links to recreate in her mind her own endings for the images. "There are times when it's perfectly healthy to redirect the pain in our lives. To transform it into someone else's pain." The method worked very well. Whenever a memory popped up, whenever she remembered the cat clock or heard Sammy's hypnotic words Almost, Almost Here, she simply murdered him in her mind. "Rape Conclusion Substitution is what we call it," the counselors had said. Often rescuers would barge in at the last moment, policemen usually, and shoot Sammy as he attempted to flee. Sometimes children would barge in, and cut him up into pieces. Sometimes she'd shoot him herself, watch his sweating, intent face explode before the muzzle flash. Sometimes she'd let him be eaten by monsters...

  Her editor at '90s Woman wasn't in, so she took a nap for an hour or two. The August heat embraced her, it made her feel dreamy and cool; the sunlight in the window seemed to drape her in darkness. Wisps of the dream kept brushing back: the darkened figure showing her pictures
she couldn't see. It aggravated her, so she stopped trying to sleep. She wanted to see the pictures, and she knew the dream would never let her.