The Girls He Adored elp-1

by Jonathan Nasaw

“Not much.” Irene stretched with her shorter, darker, plumper, and immeasurably more Jewish friend and therapist for a few minutes, then they set out on their waterfront jog, trotting side by side where the path was wide enough, Irene taking the lead where it narrowed. Across the bay the sun was rising over Moss Landing; the light on the water was dazzling.

  “I did a psych evaluation of the man who murdered that girl in his car the other week,” Irene began. Below them to the right, the tide was low enough to uncover the deep green moss of the tidepool rocks. White western gulls wheeled and screamed; fat harbor seals, brown and mottled gray, climbed onto the offshore rocks to begin their hard day's basking.

  “That what kept you up?” Barbara was already breathing hard. Neither of them had been a runner for long; between Barbara's weight problem and Irene's cigarette habit, their pace was necessarily unhurried.

  “More or less. I kept having these erotic dreams about him.”

  “Do tell, do tell.”

  By the time Irene finished her story, the two women had rounded Point Pinos, the rocky outcropping where John Denver's plane had gone down two years earlier, and collapsed, winded, on a concrete bench.

  “Well, what's the verdict?” asked Irene, when she had caught her breath. Below them the Pacific waves were pounding themselves into misty foam against the rocks; a flight of pelicans crossed in front of the sun in a straight line.

  “Verdict?… Odd choice of… words. Feeling… guilty about something?” Barbara said between gasps.

  “It's only a figure of speech.”

  “Yes, Irene-and a cigar is only a smoke.” Barbara mopped her face with the hem of her oversize T-shirt. “Listen, honey, it's not all bad.”

  “Tell me the good news first.”

  “You're obviously starting to reconnect with your own sexuality. And not a minute too soon, in my opinion. How long has it been, three years?”

  “Three and a half. But why him?”

  “Because on the one hand he radiates sexuality, with a whiff of danger, and on the other hand, being a patient and being behind bars, he's relatively safe to fantasize about.”

  “Then what's the problem?”

  “The problem is, he's not safe to fantasize about. The way you've described him to me, he sounds like a charming, attractive, intelligent, and extremely manipulative sociopath who's trying to get under your skin. And doing a pretty good job of it, apparently.”

  “So what do you think I should do?”

  Barbara patted Irene's knee. “Put up your psychic shield, wrap up this evaluation as quick as you can, then let me play shadchen and fix you up with some guy who's not a patient, is not going to be behind bars for the rest of his life, and is hopefully not a psychopathic multiple either.”

  “Where's the fun in that?” said Irene-but she did feel better. Somehow talking to Barbara always made her feel better.

  When the sheriff's deputy showed Irene into the interview room via the visitor's door around eleven o'clock, the first thing she did was examine the desk. She was relieved to be reminded that it did indeed have a solid front, as she'd vaguely recalled-at least she wouldn't be spending the entire interview worrying about Max playing cloven-hoofed footsies with her under the desk.

  A few minutes later the prisoner was led in through the inmate's door, and they exchanged perfunctory greetings. As soon as the deputy left the room, Irene took out the pack of Camels she'd bought for the prisoner, slit the cellophane with her manicured thumbnail, shook one out, tamped the end expertly, placed it between his waiting lips, and fired it up with the jade-and-silver lighter Frank had given her for their last anniversary.

  “Try one,” he urged her, his face wreathed in smoke as she placed a brown plastic battery-powered smoke-sucker ashtray in front of him. “See what a real cigarette tastes like.”

  “Some other time. I have a few follow-up questions I wanted to ask you.”

  “I thought you might.” Holding the Camel in one side of his mouth, he worked a shred of tobacco out of the other with the tip of his tongue, which was unusually pointed and, like his lips, a surprisingly dark shade of red.

  “To begin with, how did you know my first name?”

  “Educated guess. The monogram on your briefcase. How many women's names begin with the letter I?” Then, in an exaggerated brogue: “Especially colleens with the map of Oirland writ large across their loovly countenance.”

  Irene thought back-it was true, he hadn't used her name until after she'd set the briefcase on the desk while packing up at the end of the session. And her heritage was Irish as Paddy's pig on both sides.

  Feeling somewhat relieved, she took the Dictaphone out of her briefcase, set it on the desk, and turned it on. Rather than ask him outright if he had DID, she tried an indirect approach. “Next question: yesterday you told me about coming to in the car next to the young woman's body. Has this ever happened to you before?” Recurring fugue states and time loss were classic markers for DID.

  Max cocked his head, amused. “No.”

  A sociopath with an above-average ability to manipulate standardized psychological tests, then. Irene felt curiously disappointed. “I see.”

  “That's no, I've never come to in a car next to a young woman's body. Good lord, Irene, you've had nearly twenty-four hours to frame that question, and that's the best you can do?”

  The shred of tobacco still clung to the corner of his lips-when he stuck his tongue out to lick it off he accidentally pushed it farther onto his cheek, where he could no longer reach it. Irene found a tissue in her purse, reached across the desk (she was wearing a summerweight cotton turtleneck under a navy blue blazer today), and removed it for him. He thanked her with a winning grin; she made a mental note that along with his need to feel mentally superior, as exemplified by his last statement, he also seemed comfortable with being infantilized.

  “I'll rephrase the question. Have you-”

  “The answer is yes.”

  “I see. Have you ever heard voices?”

  The amused cock of the head again. “You mean other than, say, yours, now?”

  “I'll rephrase: I mean voices that no one else can hear, originating from either inside or outside your head.”

  “Yes-inside. But you know what's even scarier than hearing somebody else talking inside your head?” He'd been speaking out of one side of his mouth, squinting against the smoke; now he leaned forward and carefully placed the cigarette in the ashtray with his mouth.

  “What's that?”

  “It's the feeling that there's somebody else listening.”

  13

  Pender had no trouble locating the Monterey County courthouse complex on West Alisal Street in Salinas. Three buildings surrounded a courtyard with curved walkways and waist-high hedge mazes. Glass catwalks atop pillared porticos connected the older east and west wings to the ugly rectangular box of the north wing at second-floor height. Stone heads of figures from California history-helmeted conquistadors, Indians with pageboy bangs, pioneer women in bonnets, ranchers in narrow-brimmed hats- stared down blankly from the cornices of the exterior walls, and the windows of all three buildings were trimmed in a surprisingly festive Aztec blue. In the center of the courtyard was a garden island of tall purple flowers and orange bird-of-paradise.

  The old jail, a crumbling three-story, yellow-beige fortress with arched, grilled windows and a false parapet, was located next door to the courthouse, separated from the west wing by a narrow alley. The thick walls and straight rise of the front of the building reminded Pender of the Alamo, but the ornate dark green, wrought-iron window grilles and ornamental lamppost-sconces set into the front wall evoked old New Orleans.

  Pender parked the Toyota in the county lot behind the jail and placed the paper placard he'd been given at the sheriff's office in the windshield. He checked his watch and realized he had a couple of hours to kill before he was to meet his assigned liaison, Lieutenant Gonzalez. Then he remembered how his mother used to correct him whe
n he talked about having time to kill. Don't kill it, she would say, spend it!

  Right, Mom. Pender set off to explore the courthouse complex. The first thing he noticed was an egregious lack of security. There were no metal detectors in use-he was able to wander freely through the entire complex carrying a semiautomatic in a shoulder holster.

  Nor was he challenged when he stationed himself in the alley to observe the chained prisoners in red, orange, or green jumpsuits being convoyed back and forth between the white GMC vans stenciled with the motto “Keeping the Peace Since 1850” and the holding cells, or marched across the courtyard between the holding cells and the courthouse, in full view, and reach, of the public.

  Shaking his head sadly-the place was a disaster waiting to happen-Pender reentered the west wing of the courthouse and took the elevator up to the snack bar on the second floor.

  There was an embarrassing delay at the cash register-it took Pender a moment to realize that the cashier was stone blind.

  “I have a tuna fish sandwich and a cup of coffee,” he said, handing the man a five-dollar bill. Another pause. “It's a five.”

  “You must be from back east,” said the cashier as he made change.

  “Upstate New York,” replied Pender, wondering how many customers in the course of a day handed the man a single and told him it was a five-or a ten, or a twenty. “How could you tell?”

  “You said tuna fish. Out here, we just assume if it's a tuna, it's a fish.”

  Pender sat alone at a corner table. He felt surprisingly calm, for a man who was preparing himself to be locked into a cell with a murderer. It had been years since Pender had conducted an undercover interview-as he sipped at his black coffee, looking out over the pleasant courtyard, he mulled over his approach.

  It would be best, he knew, if the subject initiated a conversation. If not, Pender planned to start out either by bitching about his lawyer-every con in every cell in America had a beef with his attorney-or by talking about his travels: nothing suspicious in chatting about places you'd been to. He'd drop a lot of place names, sprinkling in mentions of one or two relevant towns- Plano, Texas; Sandusky, Ohio; San Antonio, where the knife had been purchased-and seeing if any of those elicited a response.

  Once he had the subject at ease, Pender planned to work the conversation around to sex, admit to a rape or a little rough stuff himself, and see if he couldn't draw the man out. He wouldn't be expecting a confession at this point, or much in the way of specifics, but a good round of jailhouse bragging could be remarkably instructive, and Casey, if it were Casey, might well drop an incriminating detail here or there.

  Suddenly it occurred to Pender that he hadn't prepared himself for the interview as thoroughly as he might have, that he'd failed to interview the one person who'd had more contact with the subject than anyone since the unfortunate Refugio Cortes: the psychiatrist who'd been evaluating him.

  But how to contact her? He didn't even know her name. He moved his chair closer to the window-Pender never really trusted cell phones-and called Lieutenant Gonzalez, who was not in his office. He had Gonzalez's voice mail kick him back out to the operator, who connected him with Visitor Reception at the jail on Natividad Road.

  “This is Special Agent Pender of the FBI. I'm trying to find out the name of the psychiatrist who visited-” He started to say Casey, but stopped himself. “your John Doe-prisoner number…” He flipped open his notebook and read it off.

  “I'm sorry, I can't give out that information over the telephone,” replied the female deputy who'd answered. Then, to Pender's surprise, as he was gearing up for a little bluff and bluster: “But according to the log, she's inside interviewing the prisoner. She'll have to log out when she's done-I could give her your number and ask her to call you.”

  “Ohhhhkey-doke.” Though not a superstitious man, Pender had learned from experience that luck, bad or good, came in waves-perhaps he'd caught a good one.

  14

  “All right, sweetheart, we're going back further. It's your birthday again-do you have a cake?”

  They were ten minutes into the age regression. The hypnosis had gone smoothly-like most multiples, Max/Christopher had proved eminently suggestible. After a short relaxation technique (not easy, with the prisoner seated, fettered and manacled, in a cold, relatively bare, brightly lit room with nothing but hard surfaces and right angles-but she pulled it off), Irene had him concentrate on a black dot she'd drawn on a sheet of blank notepaper, explained in a calm, low-pitched voice that he was getting sleepier and his eyelids heavier, and sent him to his safest place. She'd then implanted a code word to use as a cue for waking him up. That was pretty much all it took-Hypnosis 101, no bells, no whistles.

  When he was deeply under, she began regressing him, walking him backward through his birthdays. When she reached five she observed his eyes rolling upward beneath the closed, fluttering lids-it was his first switch of the session.

  “Choc'lit cake. Choc'lit icing. I like choc'lit.” His voice was chirpy, his body language fidgety.

  “Does it have candles?”

  “A course-it's a birthday cake, you silly.”

  “Can you count the candles?”

  “Five candles, one two three four five.”

  “Can you read the writing?”

  “My name-that's my name-Lyssy, el why ess ess why.”

  “Happy birthday, Lyssy. Five years old, isn't that something. Did you open your presents yet?”

  “After the cake-doncha know you can't open presents until after the cake?”

  “How about your presents from your mommy and daddy?”

  “I got a two-wheeler. In my room when I woke up in the morning. It's a red Schwinn, just like Walter cross the street, only red. Daddy said I was way too old for my Big Wheels. And no training wheels-Daddy says only, you know, sissies use training wheels.”

  “Tell me about your mommy and daddy. Do they ever do things you don't like? Hurt you or touch you?” Leading question, right on the border of suggestion. But Irene's time with the patient was limited, this was diagnosis, not treatment, and every verified DID patient in the literature had a history of early, horrendous abuse- not just your passing pat on the fanny, but really egregious stuff.

  “Daddy sometimes-but maybe I was dreaming. Mommy says I only dream it.”

  “Dream what? Tell me about one of the times Daddy did something and Mommy said it was a dream.”

  “Okay, the first time I was all tucked in, I was lyin' in bed lookin' at the wallpaper. I have party balloon wallpaper in my room-pink and blue party balloons, on account a they didn't know if I would be a boy or a girl. And alla sudden I can see right through the wall into their room, Mommy's and Daddy's room. They're sitting up in bed watching TV like usual, Mommy in her nightgown, Daddy in his T-shirt.

  “Only their faces are different: they look like the monsters in Where the Wild Things Are. Daddy has a lion face, Mommy's face is all scary and furry and pointed like a fox. And their regular faces, their people faces, are lying next to them on the bed, all empty and rubbery and wrinkly, like these monster faces are their real faces, and the regular faces are just masks they put on in the daytime.”

  “That does sound like a dream, doesn't it?”

  “I know. I even dreamed I woke up. And I was staring at the wallpaper again, I couldn' see through any more. I'm still scared. I wanna call Mommy. But that's scary too. 'Cause what if what I saw was real? All they'd have to do is put on their people masks-how would I know?

  “So I climb out a bed, ssh, real quiet, and open my door. The house is all dark for the night, except for the night-light in the hall, you know, for when I have to get up to go peepee. Tippy-toe down the hall. I can see light through the bottom a their door. I'm pos' to knock, always knock before you come in Mommy and Daddy's room, only then I think about how quick they could put their people masks on. So I try and turn the doorknob. But it's locked. But I know how to open it, cause one time Walter locked hisself in the b
affroom and Mommy got the ice pick outta the drawer and stuck it in the little hole in the doorknob and it opened up.

  “So I go into the kitchen and I get the ice pick outa the drawer and go back to Mommy and Daddy's room and stick it in and it goes pop and then the knob turns and I open the door and there's Mommy and Daddy with their regular faces on. Only they're not watching TV. Mommy is sitting in a chair all bare naked and she's all tied up and Daddy is standing over her, he's bare naked too and his peepee is all red and sticking out and he's holding this red candle, and he's dripping hot drips, I see the red drips on her boobies.

  “Then she sees me, she says, ‘Oh fuck, honey, it's the kid.’ So he turns around-his peepee's pointing at me and I can't move and I can't scream, just like in a dream only I know it's real. Then he's standing over me. He pulls the ice pick outa the doorknob and looks down at it in his hand, and I know, I just know he's gonna, wham, stick it right down through the top a my head, only instead he picks me up and carries me over to the bed and tosses me on the bed and pulls down my pajama pants and I don' wanna talk about it anymore and you can't make me.”

  Irene had no intention of forcing him. Even using hypnosis so early in DID therapy was unconventional-pressuring him at this point could be disastrous.

  “Lyssy, honey,” she said soothingly. “I need you to know you never have to talk about anything until you're ready. But when you are ready, I need you to know you're safe telling me anything at all-nothing you tell me can ever come back to hurt you. Now, you said your mommy told you it was all only a dream?”

  “A nightmare-next morning she said I had a nightmare. I axed her how do you know, she says I yelled in my sleep. Then she axed me to tell her about my nightmare. She says I hafta or it will never go away.

  “So I say I saw through the wall, and you and Daddy took your faces off and you were both monsters and I woke up and I went into your room to see if it was true and he was hurting you, and then he pulled down my pants and he hurted me.