The Girls He Adored elp-1

by Jonathan Nasaw

  Bernadette tore herself away from her lover just before dawn, and was not far from the Covelo Road when she spotted a man staggering out of the brush, carrying a woman in his arms. She jammed on the brakes and pulled as far over onto the side of the narrow road as she could, set her flashers, grabbed her car phone, and hurried back down the hill to help.

  Her first thought was that the couple had gone off the road nearby-it could be treacherous if you weren't familiar with it-but as she approached them she saw that the situation was more complicated than she had assumed. The woman was struggling; her red wig was askew, and the man had his hand over her mouth.

  Before Bernadette could decide what to do, the man dropped the woman in the dirt by the side of the road and drew a snubnosed revolver from the waistband of his jeans.

  “Thanks for stopping,” he said conversationally, as if he weren't pointing a pistol directly at Bernadette's chest. “Lots of people wouldn't have, nowadays.”

  40

  It didn't take long for Pender to realize that he was being frozen out of the investigation. For one thing, no one had told him about the murder of the highway patrolman, or that the manhunt was being shifted to the north. He heard about it accidentally when he showed up at the resident agency on the outskirts of Monterey bright and early Saturday morning to have Dr. Cogan's tapes transcribed for distribution, copied, and messengered back to Behavioral Science's psycholinguistics consultant in Maryland for further analysis.

  His next hint came when he inquired about a seat on the Buplane that would be leaving within the hour for Mendocino and was told it was full up by case agent Pastor.

  “Okay, fine, how about a Bu-car?”

  “Sorry, Pender, can't spare one,” said Pastor brusquely.

  “What the hell's going on?” Pender demanded.

  “My question exactly. You come waltzing out here from Washington. You don't bother to check in with the RA. You piss off the locals, start a prison break, and get a sheriff's deputy killed. You stumble on a crime scene you had no business investigating and take your own sweet time for a walk-through before you call in the BOLO, which gives our fugitive another hour's lead. Possibly contributing to the subsequent murder of a California Highway Patrol officer.”

  Pastor paused for breath; it sounded to Pender as if he were reading a list of charges that had already been filed.

  “But when the SAC calls McDougal yesterday to have your ass jerked back to Washington, instead of turning you over to OPR, McDougal tells him to find you something to do. So you tell me what the hell's going on. You got pictures of McDougal and the director burying a dead whore or something?

  “On second thought, don't tell me. All I want from you is a full report, ASAP, pronto, immediamente, stat, on everything Casey said and did while you were together, and I particularly want a detailed account of any and all events leading up to his escape, and I want it by this evening. And that's all I want from you. I don't care what McDougal says, you stay the fuck away from my investigation.”

  Pender had taken off his hat upon entering the office; he looked down and saw himself twisting it in his hands like a nervous supplicant.

  I'm KMA, he thought. I don't have to take this shit. KMA was Bu-slang for an agent who'd already qualified for his pension; the initials stood for Kiss My Ass. He drew himself up to his full height, towering over the younger man, who stepped back involuntarily.

  “Fuck you,” said Pender, with what he hoped was at least a degree of dignity. “And while I'm at it, fuck the RA, fuck the SAC, and fuck the locals.”

  Then he handed Dr. Cogan's two Dictaphone minicassettes to Pastor, who up until that moment hadn't even known they existed, put his crumpled hat back on, straightened the brim and crease as best he could without a mirror, and turned his back on Pastor and the bureau.

  41

  With Bernadette behind the wheel of the blue Caddy, Irene to her right, and Max in the back holding the pistol to Irene's head, the old land yacht navigated the back roads of Round Valley, a shallow dish twenty miles in diameter, surrounded by a circular rim of mountains, then cut through a corner of the Mendocino National Forest and worked its way steadily northeast through Trinity County while the search planes circled ever nearer.

  Max was starting to feel the strain. He not only had to keep an eye on the planes and on Irene, but also on Bernadette, who had promised to find him an escape route via unmapped roads, to be sure she didn't try to double-cross him. And as if that weren't enough stress, he had to do it all while monitoring a chaotic interior free-for-all. The system was in a nearly ungovernable panic, and with his attention splintering off in several directions at once, Max wasn't sure he could maintain his dominance over the others much longer.

  Then it occurred to him that there was a way he could kill two birds with one stone and relieve the stress on the system while they were hiding from the air search. He ordered Bernadette to pull off the county road onto an abandoned dirt logging road. With Maybelline's belly occasionally dragging the ground, they climbed until the road gave out in the deep woods at the edge of a stand of shallower second-growth scrub pine. He had Bernadette park the Caddy under the cover of the trees, then ordered her out of the car.

  Irene started to get out as well.

  “You stay here,” said Max, holding the gun on Irene with one hand, and removing a set of handcuffs from Terry Jervis's carpet bag with the other.

  “What are you going to do to her?”

  “None of your-No, wait, I guess it is your business.”

  Max suddenly realized that he could make it three birds with one stone, hiding from the air search and relieving the stress on the system while at the same time providing Irene with a damn good incentive to go forward with therapy. He leaned in through the open driver's door. “It's chaos in here,” he whispered, tapping his temple with the muzzle of the. 38. “I'm losing control. If I don't give them what they want, I can't guarantee her safety or yours.”

  “No!” said Irene. “Max, this isn't the way.”

  “Of course it isn't,” he said softly, cuffing her left wrist to the steering wheel. “You know the way. Therapy. Fusion. Unfortunately, we don't have time for that at the moment.”

  Bernadette Sandoval stood trembling by the side of the car, her black hair glistening in the morning sunlight that filtered through the pines. The trembling stemmed not so much from fear as nervous resolve: she had already made up her mind to go for the gun at the first opportunity. If this Max creep killed her, he killed her, but she would not be raped-and he wouldn't have been the first who'd tried. She had an uncle who still bore the scar of her nail file across his temple.

  “Pick out a soft spot and lie down.” Max waved the pistol around to indicate the general area he had in mind, in the carpet of needles under the pines to the right of the car.

  Bernadette did as he asked-she couldn't go for the gun until he brought it within reach.

  “Pull down your panties and show me your pretty.”

  Bernadette told herself it was nothing-kindergarten stuff. She hoped he wouldn't make her undress all the way before he brought the gun within reach, but told herself she could do that too if she had to.

  “Now unbutton your blouse, Bernadette, and let's see-”

  The car door opened. Maxwell whirled, gun in hand. Bernadette tried to run while his back was turned, but her panties were around her ankles. She fell, tried to crawl away. The gun barked; a bullet whizzed over her head and tore into a tree trunk, sending chips of bark flying. She fell onto her face, her arms covering her head, trying futilely to protect it from the bullet she knew would be coming.

  When the bullet didn't arrive, Bernadette rolled onto her back and saw Max pointing the gun at her. Behind him, Irene was leaning out from Maybelline's open door as far as her handcuffs would permit. Her mouth was moving; it took a few seconds for Bernadette's brain to start processing the words.

  “-take me, not her. If you want my help, you're all going to have t
o cooperate. Leave the girl be, or so help me God you'll have to kill us both.”

  Bernadette was afraid to look up at Max again. She kept her eyes on the other woman's face. Usually she could read white people easily-unlike Indians, everything they were thinking or feeling showed up on their faces. This Irene was deep, though, no shit. She'd been through the fires. Bernadette believed what she'd said. Again she steeled herself to die.

  Fortunately, Max believed it too. “What the fuck, any port in a storm,” he growled, as much to the others as to himself. Then he gestured with the barrel of the pistol for Bernadette to get up.

  42

  Pender's resolve lasted a good forty-five seconds-he was still in the elevator when the slide show began. He saw Aletha Winkle and Terry Jervis alive; he saw them on the bed, shamed and butchered, then posed in a humiliating tableau. He saw the faces of the strawberry blonds. He saw his mother's face-how proud she'd been of him when he joined the bureau. A picture of her Eddie receiving a citation from Judge Sessions had gone with her to the nursing home where she died.

  And lastly, he saw his father walking toward him in his dress blues, medallions gleaming. Quitters never win and Penders never quit. Then the elevator doors opened, and Pender caught sight of a big bald bozo in a loud sport jacket and crumpled hat reflected in the glass doors of the building entrance.

  “Special Agent E. L. Pender reporting for duty, sir,” he said aloud, then saluted the comical figure in the glass the way his father had taught him-hand straight as a blade, upper arm parallel to the ground, and snap it off, boy, snap it off.

  Where to?

  That was the first question for Pender. No longer welcome in Monterey, he thought about jumping in the rented Toyota and driving north to Mendocino. But there was nothing he could do up there that wasn't already being done. Same for Santa Barbara, home of Paula Ann Wisniewski, the most recent strawberry blond-the L.A. field office would have agents all over Santa Barbara.

  So his next question was, What do I know that nobody else knows? What do I have to bring to the party?

  At the moment, he knew from listening to the tapes that the killer had multiple personalities, that he used the names Max, Christopher, and Lyssy, and that he'd been abused as a child. But within hours, transcriptions of the tapes would be available to every investigator, and the bureau would begin investigating DID patients, hospital records, DID support groups, as well as searching the national crime databases for name concurrences. (It occurred to Pender that Pastor would almost certainly take credit for finding the tapes; he was surprised to note that he didn't particularly care.)

  So what other information did Pender have? He asked himself what salient facts would have gone into that report that Agent Pastor had requested, and was now about as likely to get as he was a blow job from the attorney general.

  Easy: Dallas. The Sleep-Tite motel where you could call for a number-one girl to make boom-boom. A number-one girl named… what was it… think back… no, go back… pussy's pussy… call the desk… tightest little piece I ever… Ann something.. Ann Tran!

  Where to? Suddenly Pender had the answer to his first question.

  43

  For her day and age, and taking into account her profession and the corner of the world she lived in, Irene Cogan's sexual experience was somewhat limited. She knew everything that people did, she just hadn't done much of it herself. And what she had done, she'd done with Frank-she'd remained a virgin until shortly after they became engaged. Their sex life was fulfilling, if not adventurous, a phrase that might have been applied to the rest of their marriage as well. The last time they made love was the night before he died. It was sweet; the next morning he was cold beside her. She hadn't made love to a man since, except in her dreams.

  And now this. While Max handcuffed Bernadette to the steering wheel, Irene took a blanket from the trunk, spread it across a bed of pine needles, and stood beside it-for some reason it seemed important to her not to be lying down waiting for him. Then he was standing before her, face to face, and it was as if she were back in that dream of the operating theater, where they were naked, and he'd dropped to his knees and kissed her to orgasm.

  If he drops to his knees, I'll die, she thought. Instead he took off her red wig, tossed it into the bushes, then leaned forward and kissed her. She realized he wanted her to open her mouth, to kiss him back. And she should have, she knew she should have-two lives were at stake-but she just couldn't bring herself to do it. She averted her face; or rather her head turned itself away from him- that was more how it felt.

  “Even better,” he whispered into her left ear, which she'd unwittingly presented to him-at these close quarters there was no escaping intimacy. He brought his hand up, splayed those smooth, bony fingers across her left cheek, and shoved gently, turning her around, all the way around until her back was to him. One of his arms was around her chest, the other behind her, fumbling; she heard a zipper.

  He was pressing the length of his body against her now; if he had an erection, she couldn't feel it. He grabbed the waistbands of her slacks and running shorts, and tugged them down to her lower thighs, his weight still pressed against her.

  She toppled forward, her pants around her knees; the strong arm around her chest supported her, lowered her gently. Then she was on her hands and knees and his weight was on top of her, his arms around her. He slid his hands under Mrs. Bill's polyester blouse and pulled up her jogging bra to caress her breasts. She could feel his penis pressed against her panties, her homely white Olga panties. He began humping, rubbing his still soft penis against her buttocks, but making no attempt to lower her panties or enter her. Then he withdrew his hands from her breasts and began slapping her across the shoulders and the back of her head.

  It didn't last long, a minute, maybe two. He moaned; his weight came off her. As she crawled on her hands and knees to the edge of the blanket, she heard him swearing under his breath. When he didn't come after her, she stood up, pulled her shorts and slacks up over her panties, rearranged her bra, started to turn around. His face was red; he was wiping his hand on his jeans.

  Premature ejaculation, thought Irene, turning away again quickly, before he caught her looking. Frotteurism. Erectile dysfunction. Her inner voice had turned self-protectively clinical.

  “I changed my mind,” said Max after another minute had passed. “It'd probably screw up our therapeutic relationship, don't you think?”

  And that was that-it was over. Of course it would never really be over. Irene's neck and shoulders still stung from being slapped, and her breasts retained the sense memory of those slippery smooth fingertips. But she'd been preparing herself for far worse, so along with the shame and anger was an enormous sense of relief. And he'd never entered her, never been inside her-for some reason, that made more of a difference than she ever could have imagined.

  Another cause for relief: afterward, Irene managed to talk Max into leaving Bernadette behind, arms cuffed behind her and ankles tied, but otherwise unharmed. He'd even helped Irene make the girl as comfortable as possible, gathering armfuls of pine needles to make a bed, and spreading a blanket over them.

  “I promise we'll call somebody to come get you as soon as we're done with Maybelline,” Irene promised Bernadette loudly, as Maxwell returned to the car to fetch a second blanket from the trunk. Then, whispering: “You'll be safer here.”

  “Don't worry about me-I can get loose, I know I can. I've seen people do it in movies-you work your hands behind your back and under your legs. I can walk back to the county road, somebody'll come along. Plus there's a good chance my mom reported me missing and they're already looking for the car. I'll keep my fingers crossed for you.”

  “I'll keep mine crossed for you.”

  “Thanks for what you did back there-I'll never forget it.”

  “That's all right. I'm just sorry-”

  But Maxwell had returned. “Get in the car, Irene. I want to check these cuffs, and give Bernie here a word to the
wise.”

  This next part would be the trickiest for Max. He knew how the Bucharest thrust worked theoretically-he'd have to get behind Bernadette and slip the blade of the boning knife between her first and second cervical vertebrae-but he'd never actually attempted it himself. None of the alters had. And the timing would have to be perfect-he'd have to do it while Irene's back was turned. Nor could he let Kinch out to handle this one-subtlety was not Kinch's strong suit.

  But if Max did pull it off, Irene would never know, and Bernadette would scarcely feel the knife. Of course, even if she did, she'd have neither the time nor the neural connections to enable her to cry out.

  “Here, let me help you get settled,” he said, kneeling behind the girl and tilting her head forward to spread the vertebrae.

  “Thanks.”

  “Don't mention it.”

  44

  For once, traveler's luck was with Pender. Not much Saturday traffic from Monterey to San Jose, oldies on the radio, no trouble returning the Toyota at the airport, plenty of seats left on the Southwest flight, plenty of time to fill out the forms required to bring his weapon onboard. And on the connecting flight to Dallas's Love Field, Pender even had room to stretch out for a much-needed nap-he hadn't slept but two or three hours in the last twenty-four-before the plane touched down.

  Love Field. Was it possible for a man of Pender's age to hear the name and not think of Jack Kennedy? Pender had been nineteen at the time of the assassination. His first year at college. He was still living at home, still driving the '53 Plymouth his folks had given him as a graduation present (it was the only car they could afford), struggling to cover his expenses by holding down two jobs (washing breakfast dishes at Dan's Deluxe Diner, and pumping gas at the Flying A), chronically short of sleep, time, and money-and yet he found himself looking back on those years with considerable nostalgia. The past was like an old whore, he had read someplace- the farther away you got, the better she looked.