Thr3e

by Ted Dekker

  He takes a deep breath. “Now, let’s calm down, shall we? I have a new game I would like to play.”

  “I’m not going to play any more games,” Kevin says.

  “Yes, you are. You’ll play more games or I’ll cut up Mommy, one finger at a time.”

  Kevin glances at the door that holds the old woman.

  “And if we still aren’t properly motivated, I’ll start on your fingers. Are we still all stuffed and cocky?”

  Kevin just stares at him. At least he isn’t whimpering and crying like the old hag.

  “Let’s face it, Kevin. You came here with one thing on your mind. You wanted to kill. Kill, kill, kill. That’s another way you and I are alike.” Slater shrugs. “True, the object of your blood lust is me, but when you cut away all the face-saving, it’s the same instinct. Most humans are truly murderers, but I didn’t bring you here to lecture. I brought you here to kill. I’m going to give you your wish. You came to kill me, but that doesn’t suit my tastes, so I’ve chosen to flip things a bit.”

  Kevin doesn’t flinch.

  “We already have one, but we need the other.” Slater looks at the wall, the collage of pictures. It’s in part her beauty that he hates so much. It’s why he keeps the photographs covered. By nine o’clock she will be dead.

  “Kill me,” Kevin says. “I hate you.” He speaks the last words with such contempt that Slater feels a sliver of shock.

  But Slater doesn’t show shock. He shows anger and hatred, but not shock, because shock is weakness.

  “So courageous. So noble. How can I refuse such a sincere request? Consider yourself dead already. We all die; yours will be a living death until you finally do kick the bucket. In the meantime, we must lure in our second victim. She will fly to your rescue. Her knight is in peril.”

  “I despise you.”

  “You will help me or Mommy will begin to scream!” Slater says.

  Kevin glares at him and then closes his eyes slowly.

  “Just a simple call, Kevin. I would do it, but I really need her to hear your voice.”

  Kevin shakes his head and is about to speak, but Slater doesn’t want to hear it. He steps forward and slams the gun against the side of Kevin’s head.

  “I’ll kill her, you perverted little brat!”

  Blood oozes down Kevin’s face. This excites Slater.

  Kevin’s face wrinkles and he begins to cry. Better, much better. He sinks slowly to his knees and for the first time since his nemesis entered the room, Slater knows he will win.

  Samantha raced through Long Beach. Secret. What secret? Kevin had hidden his dealing with Slater as a boy and he’d remained quiet about his home life, but the journal entry had to be something else. Something the professor knew.

  She was a block away when her cell phone rang. She couldn’t imagine how investigators had managed before the advent of cellular technology. On the other hand, criminals took advantage as well. Slater certainly had.

  “Sam.”

  “This is Kevin.”

  “Kevin!”

  “ . . . no one else. Do you understand?” His voice sounded flat— horrible. He was reading, being forced. Sam veered for the curb, ignoring a honk behind.

  “Kevin, if you’re with Slater keep talking and don’t cough. If you’re not, cough. Yes, I do understand.” Actually, she’d missed what she was supposed to understand. And she quickly considered asking him to repeat it, but that might endanger him.

  Kevin didn’t cough.

  “We’re playing a new game,” he said. “This game’s for you, Sam. If you can find us before nine, he’ll set me and Mommy free.” His voice wavered. She heard a muffled voice in the background. Slater.

  “I will give you the first clue. If you find it, there will be another one. No authorities can be involved, including that wench, Jennifer.” Slater chuckled in the background. His voice suddenly filled the phone, loud and eager.

  “First clue: Who loves what he sees, but hates what he loves? You might find a clue in his house; you might not. Hurry to the rescue, Princess.” The phone went dead.

  “Slater? Kevin!” Sam threw the phone against the windshield. “Aaaahh!”

  Who loves what he sees, but hates what he loves? Her mind was blank. 6:27. Less than three hours. She had to get back to Kevin’s house. The answers had to be in his papers. His journal. Somewhere!

  She roared through a U-turn and headed back north. What was the chance that Slater had found a way to monitor her phone calls? If he knew electronics well enough to pull off a frame on Kevin, he knew more than she. No authorities involved, he’d said.

  Sam bent for her cell on the floor and swerved badly enough to force a second attempt. She caught the phone, fumbled with the battery, which had jarred loose. Power on. Redial.

  “Thank you again for your time, Dr. Francis. As I explained on the phone—”

  “Yes, yes, of course.” The professor waved her in. “Please come in, dear. Believe me, I will do whatever I can for that boy.”

  Jennifer paused. “You understand why I’m here? It seems that you know more about Kevin than you first suggested. At least Kevin believes you do.”

  “I know him better than most, yes. But nothing that I haven’t told you.”

  “That’s what we’re going to find out. With your help.” She stepped into the house. “We’re running out of time, Professor. If you can’t help us, I’m afraid no one will be able to. You talked to Samantha Sheer from CBI earlier today; she’ll be here shortly.” Her cell went off and she pulled it from her waist. “Excuse me.”

  It was Sam. She’d heard from Kevin. Jennifer instinctively turned back toward the door and listened while Sam ran through the details.

  “So you’re headed back to the house?”

  “Yes. Review the clue with Dr. Francis. Who loves what he sees, but hates what he loves? You got it? Review everything with him. He has to know something.”

  “I have to report this.”

  “Slater said no cops, and he mentioned you by name. You won’t be out of the loop. Just stay where you are. Don’t brief Milton. Let me work alone; that’s all I ask. If you think of anything, call me. But this is between us now. Kevin, Slater, and me. Please, Jennifer.”

  Jennifer hesitated. “Okay. I’ll give you an hour. Then I call this in, understood? I’m over my head here.”

  “I’ll call you.”

  “One hour.” She closed the cell.

  “Anything wrong?” Dr. Francis asked.

  “Everything’s wrong, Doctor.”

  25

  Monday

  6:37 P.M.

  WHO LOVES WHAT HE SEES, but hates what he loves?” Dr. Francis said. “Every man, every woman, every child beyond the age of accountability.”

  “He loves the ice cream, but hates the fat it puts on his waist,” Jennifer said.

  “Yes. She loves the wrong man, but hates what he does to her life. The dilemma goes back to Eve and the apple in the garden. Sin.”

  “I don’t see how that helps us,” Jennifer said. “The reference has to be personal, something that only Sam or Kevin might know. Something the three of them knew when they were children.”

  “Three children? Or two? Sam and Kevin, who had his alter ego—the boy?” Dr. Francis sat in a large leather recliner and leaned forward. “Tell me everything. From the beginning. Time is slipping.”

  He listened, eyes sparkling, with only the occasional frown to betray his anxiety over Kevin’s predicament. In many ways he reminded Jennifer of Kevin, genuine to the bone and thoroughly intelligent. It was the first time she’d run through the last four days aloud and with such comprehensive minutiae with anyone except Galager. The first call, the car bomb, the second call regarding the doghouse. Then the bus, Kevin’s flight with Sam to Palos Verdes, the warehouse, the library, the kidnapping, and now this death threat.

  She told it all in one long run-on, interrupted only by his prodding for further detail. He was a thinker, among the best
, and he seemed to like playing detective. So did most people. His questions were insightful. How do you know that Kevin was inside his house when the second phone call was made? Is there a way to intercept a laser signal? All the questions lent themselves to whether Kevin could logically be Slater.

  Twenty minutes and Sam still hadn’t called. Jennifer stood and paced, hand on chin. “I can’t believe it’s coming down to this. Kevin’s out there somewhere in the dark with a madman and we’re . . .” She ran her hands through her hair. “It’s been like that since I got down here. Slater’s always one step ahead, and we’re running around like a bunch of toy monkeys.”

  “You remind me of Kevin when you do that.”

  He was looking at her hands, still in her hair. She sat down on the couch and sighed. “So now I’m Kevin as well.”

  He chuckled. “Hardly. But I do agree that the primary question is who, not what. Who is Kevin? Really.”

  “And?”

  He leaned back and crossed his legs. “Multiple Personality Disorder. It’s referred to as Dissociative Identity Disorder these days, isn’t it? Where two or more personalities inhabit a single body. As you know, not everyone acknowledges such an animal. Some spiritualize the phenomenon—demon possession. Others discount it outright or think of it as commonplace, a gift even.”

  “And you?”

  “While I do believe in spiritual forces and even demon possession, I can assure you that Kevin is not possessed. I’ve spent many hours with the boy, and my own spirit isn’t so callous. The fact of the matter is, all of us experience some level of dissociation, more so with age. We suddenly forget why we walked into the bathroom. Or we have strange déjà vu. Daydreaming, highway hypnosis, even losing yourself in a book or movie. All forms of dissociation that are thoroughly natural.”

  “A far cry from the kind of dissociation that would be required for Kevin to be Slater,” Jennifer said. “As you said, you’ve spent time with him, so have I. Kevin doesn’t have a trace of Slater in him. If both personalities share the same body, they are completely unaware of each other.”

  “If. That is the operative word here. If Kevin is also Slater. Frankly, your theory that Slater may be framing Kevin makes as much sense. But . . .” Dr. Francis stood and paced to the fireplace and back. “But let’s assume Kevin is Slater for the moment. What if there was a child, a boy, who from a very young age was isolated from the real world.”

  “Kevin.”

  “Yes. What would that child learn?”

  “He would learn whatever he was taught from his surroundings: the environment he could touch, taste, hear, smell, see. If he were alone on an island, he would think the world was a small piece of dirt floating on the water, and he would wonder why he didn’t have fur like the rest of his playmates. Like Tarzan.”

  “Yes, but our child does not grow up on an island. He grows up in a world of shifting realities. A world where realities are merely slips of paper cut up into truth. There are no absolutes. There is no evil and, by extension, there is no good. Everything is pretend, and only that which you decide to be real is actually real. Life is merely a string of role-playing adventures.”

  Dr. Frances lifted his hand to his beard and pulled lightly at the gray strands. “But there is an absolute, you see. There is good and there is evil. The boy feels a void in his soul. He longs for an understanding of those absolutes, good and evil. He is abused in the most mentally strenuous ways, causing his mind to separate into dissociative realities. He becomes a master role-player, and finally, when he is old enough to understand evil, he subconsciously creates a personality to play the part. Because that’s what he’s learned to do.”

  “The boy. Slater.”

  “A walking, living personification of man’s dual nature. The natures of man could be playing themselves out through personalities he’s created. It does follow, doesn’t it?”

  “Assuming man has more than one nature. It could also be a simple fracture—common dissociation.”

  “Man does have more than one nature,” the professor said. “The ‘old man,’ which is our flesh, and the fingerprint of God, the good.”

  “And for those of us who don’t necessarily believe in the spirit of God? Who aren’t religious?”

  “A person’s inner natures have nothing to do with religion. They are spiritual, not religious. Two natures battling. Good and evil. They are the good that we would do but do not do, and they are that which we would not do, but still do. The apostle Paul. Romans chapter seven. The capacity for good and evil is within every person from birth, I think. The spirit of God can regenerate man, but it is the human spirit I’m talking about here. Not a separate nature, although I would say that the struggle between good and evil is hopeless without divine intervention. Perhaps that’s what you think of when you say ‘religious,’ although really religion has little to do with divine intervention either.”

  He offered a quick smile. For the second time in as many days he was tempting her to discover his faith. Right now, however, she didn’t have the time.

  “So you’re thinking Kevin, as a young boy, simply struggled to make sense of the conflict within him, between basic good and evil. He dealt with it the way he learned to deal with all reality. He creates roles for each persona and plays them out without knowing that he’s doing it.”

  “Yes, that’s exactly what I’m thinking,” the professor said, standing and pacing to his right. “It’s possible. Entirely possible. It may not even be classical Dissociative Identity Disorder. Could be Posttraumatic Stress Disorder, which is even more likely for this kind of unconscious role-playing.”

  “Assuming Kevin is Slater.”

  “Yes, assuming Kevin is Slater.”

  Sam poured through Kevin’s journal, searching desperately for a key to the riddle. Who loves what he sees, but hates what he loves? When that yielded no answer, she paged through his class notebooks.

  The most obvious answer was mankind, of course. Mankind looks and sees and loves and then hates. The story of humanity in one sentence. Not quite up there with Descartes’s “I think therefore I am,” but obvious enough.

  Who loves what he sees, but hates what he loves? Who, who? Slater. Slater was who. Despite Jennifer’s theory, Kevin had to be Slater. If so, Slater was the hater of the two.

  She sighed. Something common to all three of them triggered this riddle. But what? She had only two hours to win this mad game. And even if she did find them, Slater surely wouldn’t let them all go.

  Someone would die in the next two hours. Kevin had saved her from the killer once; he’d risked his life. Now it was her turn.

  6:59. And this riddle was only the first clue.

  She mumbled through gritted teeth. “Come on, Kevin! Tell me something.”

  “Then Slater’s the boy, stalking Sam, but he’s really Kevin’s evil alter ego,” Jennifer said.

  “And Kevin doesn’t like the evil boy, so he kills him,” the professor said.

  “But isn’t that evil? To kill?”

  “God killed a few men in their time. Read the Old Testament. Kevin tries to kill the boy because the boy threatens to kill his childhood friend.”

  “But the boy is really Kevin. So Kevin would have killed Samantha if he hadn’t dealt with the boy?”

  “Think of it—a personality that embodies only evil would be quite a little monster. Slater, the evil in Kevin, sees that Samantha favored Kevin over him. Slater decides he must kill Sam.”

  “And now that monster has come back to life and is stalking Kevin,” Jennifer said. “In this scenario of yours.”

  “That monster never died. That would require more than Kevin was capable of on his own. Death to the old self.” Dr. Francis paused and then continued. “As Kevin matured, he recognized Balinda’s folly, but he didn’t recognize his dual nature. He did, however, successfully climb out of his past, leave the house, and embrace the real world.”

  “Until three months of seminary and discussions of his o
ne obsession, the natures of man, finally brings Slater back to the surface,” Jennifer finished.

  The professor lifted an eyebrow. “It’s possible.”

  As a clinical theory the possibilities were interesting, but Jennifer was having difficulty accepting it as reality. Theories abounded in the study of the mind, a new one every month, it seemed. This was a theory. And time was still ticking away, while the real Kevin possibly sat at the real Slater’s gunpoint, praying desperately for someone to burst through the doors and save him.

  “But why the game? Why the riddles?”

  “I don’t know.” His eyes glimmered mischievously. “Perhaps the whole thing was really Kevin’s idea.”

  “I don’t follow.”

  “Evil only survives in the dark. This isn’t religious either, by the way. The simplest way to deal with evil is to force it into the light of truth. Expose its secret. Sun on the vampire. Sin thrives in the dungeon, but slap it on the table for all to see, and it withers rather quickly. It was one of Kevin’s greatest complaints about the church, actually. That everyone hides their evil. Their sin. Pastors, deacons, bishops—they perpetuate the very nature they are in business to destroy by covering it up. No confession allowed except in secret.”

  “Now you sound like a skeptic.”

  “I’m a skeptic of religious systems, not of the faith. Someday I will be happy to discuss the difference with you.”

  “How does this make the riddles Kevin’s idea?”

  “Perhaps subconsciously Kevin knows that Slater still lurks. What better way to destroy him than to expose him? Kevin could be forcing Slater’s hand, forcing him to reveal himself. Ha! I’m telling you, Kevin is genuine enough to conceive of just such a plan! Slater thinks he has Kevin where he wants him by forcing a confession, when it’s the very confession that will destroy Slater, not Kevin! It’s like the cross all over again.”

  Jennifer rubbed her temples. “I can just hear the court case now. This all assumes Slater isn’t framing Kevin.”