Predator ks-14

by Patricia Cornwell

  Josh rotates the image so the guards can see it from different angles.

  “Why’s his head look cut off?” one of them asks.

  “That’s where the signal from the coil stopped.”

  “His skin doesn’t look real.”

  “Red uh green, blue I mean red, green…” Basil’s voice enters the room.

  “It’s not really skin. How to explain… well, what the computer’s doing is volume reconstruction, a surface rendering.”

  “Red, blue uh green, blue I mean green…”

  “Only thing we really use it for is PowerPoints, mainly, to overlay structural with functional. Just an fMRI analysis package where you can put data together and look at it any way you want, have fun with it.”

  “Man, he’s ugly.”

  Bentonhas heard enough. The color naming has stopped. He gives Josh a sharp look.

  “Josh? You ready?”

  “Four, three, two, one, ready,” Josh says, and Dr. Lane begins the interference test.

  “Blue, red I mean… shit, uh red I mean blue, green, red…” Basil’s voice violates the room as he gets all of them wrong.

  “He ever tell you why?” Dr. Lane asksBenton.

  “I’m sorry,” he says, distracted. “Why what?”

  “Red, blue shit! Uh red, blue-green…”

  “Why he gouged their eyes out.”

  “He said he didn’t want them to see how small his penis is.”

  “Blue, blue-red, red, green…”

  “He didn’t do so well on this one,” she says. “In fact, he missed most of them. What police department did he work for, so I remember not to get pulled for speeding in that part of the world?” She pushes the talk button. “You okay in there?”

  “Ten-four.”

  “DadeCountyPD.”

  “Too bad. I’ve always likedMiami. So that’s how you managed to conjure this one up. Because of yourSouth Floridaconnections,” she replies, pushing the talk button again.

  “Not exactly.”Bentonstares through the glass at Basil’s head in the far end of the magnet, imagining the rest of him dressed like a normal person in jeans and a button-up white shirt.

  The inmates are not allowed to wear prison fatigues on the hospital campus. It’s bad public relations.

  “When we began querying state penitentiaries for study subjects,Floridathought he was just the guy for the job. He was bored. They were happy to get rid of him,”Bentonsays.

  “Very good, Mr. Jenrette,” Dr. Lane says into the intercom. “Now, Dr. Wesley is going to come in and give you the mouse. You’re going to see some faces next.”

  “Ten-four.”

  Ordinarily, Dr. Lane would go into the MRI room and deal with the patient herself. But women doctors and scientists are not allowed physical contact with the subjects of PREDATOR. Male doctors and scientists have to be cautious, too, while inside the MRI suite. Outside of it, restraining research study subjects during interviews is up to the clinician.Bentonis accompanied by the two prison guards as he turns on the lights inside the MRI room and shuts the door. The guards hover near the magnet and pay attention as he plugs in the mouse and places it in Basil’s restrained hands.

  He is nothing much to look at, a short, slight man with thinning blond hair and small gray eyes closely spaced. In the animal kingdom, lions, tigers and bears-the predators-have closely spaced eyes. Giraffes, rabbits, doves-the preyed upon-have eyes more widely spaced and oriented toward the sides of their heads, because they need their peripheral vision to survive.Bentonhas always wondered if the same evolutionary phenomenon applies to humans. That’s a research study nobody’s going to fund.

  “You doing all right, Basil?”Bentonasks him.

  “What kind of faces?” Basil’s head talks from the end of the magnet, bringing to mind an iron lung.

  “Dr. Lane will explain it to you.”

  “I’ve got a surprise,” Basil says. “I’ll tell you when we’re done.”

  He has an odd gaze, as if a malignant creature is looking out through his eyes.

  “Great. I love surprises. Just a few more minutes and you’re done,”Bentonsays with a smile. “Then we’ll have a follow-up chat.”

  The guards accompanyBentonback outside the MRI room and return to the suite as Dr. Lane begins to explain over the intercom that all she wants Basil to do is click the left side of the mouse if the face is male and right if it is female.

  “Nothing for you to do or say, just press the button,” she reiterates.

  There are three tests, and the point of them is not the patient’s ability to distinguish between the two genders. What is actually measured in this series of functional scanning is affective processing. The male and female faces appearing on the screen are behind other faces that flash too quickly for the eye to detect, but the brain sees all. Jenrette’s brain sees the faces behind the masks, faces that are happy, angry or afraid, faces that are provocative.

  After each set, Dr. Lane asks him what he saw, and if he had to attach an emotion to the faces, what was it. The male faces are more serious than the female, he answers. He says basically the same thing for each set. It means nothing yet. None of what has gone on in these rooms will mean anything until the thousands of neuroimages are analyzed. Then the scientists can visualize which areas of his brain were most active during the tests. The point is to see if his brain works differently from someone who supposedly is normal, and to learn something besides the fact that he has an incidental cyst that is completely unrelated to his predatory proclivities.

  “Anything jump out at you?”Bentonasks Dr. Lane. “And by the way, thanks, as always, Susan. You’re a good sport.”

  They try to schedule inmate scans late in the day or on the weekend, when few people are around.

  “Just from the localizers, he looks okay-I don’t see any gross abnormalities. Except for his incessant chatting. His hyper fluency. He ever been diagnosed as bipolar?”

  “His evaluations and history make me wonder. But no. Never diagnosed. Unmedicated for any psychiatric disorders, in prison only a year. A dream subject.”

  “Well, your dream subject didn’t do well suppressing interfering stimuli, made a huge number of errors by commission on the interference test. My bet is he doesn’t stay in set, which is certainly consistent with bipolar disorder. We’ll know more later.”

  She pushes the talk button again and says, “Mr. Jenrette? We’re all done. You did an excellent job. Dr. Wesley’s coming back in to get you out. I want you to sit up very slowly, okay? Very slowly so you don’t get dizzy. Okay?”

  “That’s all? Just these stupid tests? Show me the pictures.”

  She givesBentona look and releases the talk button.

  “You said you’d look at my brain when I’m looking at the pictures.”

  “Autopsy pictures of his victims,”Bentonexplains to Dr. Lane.

  “You promised me pictures! You promised I’d get my mail!”

  “All righty,” she says toBenton. “He’s all yours.”

  The shotgun is heavy and cumbersome, and she has trouble lying on the couch and pointing the barrel at her chest while trying to pull the trigger with her left toe.

  Scarpetta lowers the shotgun and imagines attempting the same thing after wrist surgery. Her shotgun weighs about seven and a half pounds and starts to shake in her hands when she holds it up by its eighteen-inch barrel. She lowers her feet to the floor and takes off her right running shoe and sock. Her left foot is dominant, but she will have to try her right, and she wonders what Johnny Swift was, right-foot-dominant or left. It would make a difference, but not necessarily a significant one, especially if he was depressed and determined, but she’s not sure he was either, not sure of much.

  She thinks about Marino, and the more her thoughts shift back to him, the more upset she gets. He has no right to treat her this way, no right to disrespect her the same way he did when they first met, and that was many years ago, so many years ago she is surprised he can e
ven remember how to treat her the way he once did. The aroma of her homemade pizza sauce is in the living room. It fills the house, and resentment speeds up her heart and makes her chest tight. She lies back down on her left side, props the stock of the shotgun on the back of the couch, positions the barrel at the center of her chest and pulls the trigger with her right big toe.

  4

  Basil Jenrette is not going to hurt him.

  Unrestrained, he sits across the table fromBentoninside the small examination room, the door shut. Basil is quiet and polite in his chair. His outburst inside the magnet lasted maybe two minutes, and when he calmed down, Dr. Lane was already gone. He didn’t see her when he was escorted out, andBentonwill make sure he never does.

  “You’re sure you’re not lightheaded or dizzy,”Bentonsays in his calm, understanding way.

  “I feel great. The tests were cool. I’ve always loved tests. I knew I’d get everything right. Where are the pictures? You promised.”

  “We never discussed anything like that, Basil.”

  “I got everything right, straight A’s.”

  “So you enjoyed the experience.”

  “Next time show me the pictures like you promised.”

  “I never promised you that, Basil. Did you find the experience exciting?”

  “I guess I can’t smoke in here.”

  “I’m afraid not.”

  “What did my brain look like? Did it look good? Did you see anything? Can you tell how smart someone is by looking at their brain? If you showed me the pictures you’d see they match the ones I have in my brain.”

  He is talking quietly and rapidly now, his eyes bright, almost glassy, as he goes on and on about what the scientists might expect to find in his brain, assuming they are able to decipher what is there, and there is definitely a there there, he keeps saying.

  “A there there?”Bentoninquires. “Can you explain what you mean, Basil?”

  “My memory. If you can see into it, see what’s in there, see my memories.”

  “I’m afraid not.”

  “Really. I’ll bet all kinds of pictures came up when you were doing the beep-beep, bang-bang, knock-knock. Bet you saw the pictures and don’t want to tell me. There were ten of them, and you saw them. Saw their pictures, ten of them, not four. I always say ten-four as a joke, a real big ha-ha. You think it’s four and I know it’s ten, and you would know if you showed me the pictures, because you’d see they matched the pictures in my brain. You’d see my pictures when you’re inside my brain. Ten-four.”

  “Tell me which pictures you mean, Basil.”

  “I’m just messing with you,” he says with a wink. “I want my mail.”

  “What pictures might we see inside your brain?”

  “Those foolish women. They won’t give me my mail.”

  “You’re saying you killed ten women?”Bentonasks this without shock or judgment. Basil smiles as if something has occurred to him.

  “Oh. I can move my head now, can’t I. No more tape on my chin. Will they tape my chin down when they give me the needle?”

  “You won’t be getting the needle, Basil. That’s part of the deal. Your sentence has been commuted to life. You remember us talking about that?”

  “Because I’m crazy,” he says with a smile. “That’s why I’m here.”

  “No. We’ll go over this again, because it is important you understand. You’re here because you’ve agreed to participate in our study, Basil. The governor ofFloridaallowed you to be transferred to our state hospital,Butler, butMassachusettswouldn’t agree to it unless he commuted your sentence to life. We don’t have the death penalty inMassachusetts.”

  “I know you want to see the ten ladies. See them as I remember them. They’re in my brain.”

  He knows it isn’t possible to scan someone and see his thoughts and memories. He is being his usual clever self. He wants the autopsy photographs so he can fuel his violent fantasies, and as is true of narcissistic sociopaths, he thinks he is quite entertaining.

  “Is that the surprise, Basil?” he asks. “That you committed ten murders instead of the four you were charged with?”

  He shakes his head and says, “There’s one you want to know about. That’s the surprise. Something special just for you because you’ve been so nice to me. But I want mail. That’s the deal.”

  “I’m very interested in hearing about your surprise.”

  “The lady in The Christmas Shop,” he says. “Remember that one?”

  “Why don’t you tell me about it,”Bentonreplies, and he doesn’t know what Basil means. He isn’t familiar with a murder that occurred in a Christmas shop.

  “What about my mail?”

  “I’ll see what I can do.”

  “Cross your heart and hope to die?”

  “I’ll look into it.”

  “I can’t remember the exact date. Let me see.” He stares at the ceiling, his unrestrained hands restless in his lap. “About three years ago in Las Olas, I think it was around July. So maybe two and a half years ago. Why would anyone want to buy Christmas shit in July inSouth Florida? She sold little Santas and his elves and nutcrackers and baby Jesuses. I went in on this particular morning after staying up all night.”

  “Do you remember her name?”

  “I never knew her name. Well, I might have. But I forgot it. If you showed me the pictures, it might jog my memory, you might see her in my brain. Let me see if I can describe her. Let me see. Oh, yes. She was a white woman with long, dyed hair the color of Love Lucy. Sort of fat. Maybe thirty-five or forty. I went in and locked the door and pulled a knife on her. I raped her in the back, in the storage area, cut her throat from here to here in one cut.”

  He makes a slicing motion across his neck.

  “It was funny because there was one of those oscillating fans in there and I turned it on because it was hot and stuffy and it blew blood all the fuck over the place. Quite a mess to clean up. Then, let’s see”-he looks up at the ceiling again, the way he often does when he’s lying-“I wasn’t in my cop car that day, had taken my bike and parked it in a pay lot behind the Riverside Hotel.”

  “Your motorcycle or a bicycle?”

  “My Honda Shadow. Like I would ride a bicycle when I was going to kill someone.”

  “So you planned on killing someone that morning?”

  “It seemed like a good idea.”

  “You planned on killing her or just planned on killing someone?”

  “I remember there were all these ducks in the parking lot hanging out around the puddles because it had been raining for days. Mommy ducks and little baby ducks everywhere. That’s always bothered me. Poor little ducks. They get run over a lot. You see little babies squashed in the road and mommy walking round and around her dead little baby, looking so sad.”

  “Did you ever run over the ducks, Basil?”

  “I would never hurt an animal, Dr. Wesley.”

  “You said you killed birds and rabbits when you were a child.”

  “That was a long time ago. You know, boys and their BB guns. Anyway, to go on with my story, all I got was twenty-six dollars and ninety-one cents. You have to do something about my mail.”

  “So you’ve said repeatedly, Basil. I told you I’ll do my best.”

  “Sort of disappointing after all that. Twenty-six dollars and ninety-one cents.”

  “From the cash drawer.”

  “Ten-four.”

  “You must have had a lot of blood on you, Basil.”

  “She had a bathroom in the back of the shop.” He looks up at the ceiling again. “I poured Clorox on her, just now remembered it. To kill my DNA. Now you owe me. I want my fucking mail. Get me out of the suicide cell. I want a normal cell where they don’t spy on me.”

  “We’re making sure you’re safe.”

  “Get me a new cell and the pictures and my mail, and I’ll tell you more about The Christmas Shop,” he says and his eyes are very glassy now and he is very restless in the chai
r, clenching his fists, tapping his foot. “I deserve to be rewarded.”

  5

  Lucy sits where she can see the front door, where she can see who is coming in or leaving. She watches people without them knowing. She watches and calculates even when she is supposed to be relaxing.

  The last few nights, she has wandered intoLorraine’s and talked to the bartenders, Buddy and Tonia. Neither knows Lucy’s real name, but both remember Johnny Swift, remember him as that hot-looking doctor who was straight. A brain doctor who likedProvincetownand unfortunately was straight, Buddy says. What a shame, Buddy says. Always alone, too, except for the last time he was here, Tonia says. She was working that night and remembers that Johnny had splints on his wrists. When she asked him about it, he said he’d just had surgery and it hadn’t gone very well.

  Johnny and a woman sat at the bar and were very friendly with each other, talking as if no one else was there. Her name was Jan and she seemed really smart, was pretty and polite, very shy, not the least bit stuck on herself, young, dressed casually in jeans and a sweatshirt, Tonia recalls. It was obvious Johnny hadn’t known her long, maybe had just met her, found her interesting, obviously liked her, Tonia says.

  “Liked her as in sexually?” Lucy asked Tonia.

  “I didn’t get that impression. He was more, well, it’s like she had some sort of problem and he was helping her out. He was a doctor, you know.”

  That doesn’t surprise Lucy. Johnny was unselfish. He was extraordinarily kind.

  She sits at the bar inLorraine’s and thinks about Johnny walking in the same way she just did and sitting at the same bar, maybe on the same stool. She imagines him with Jan, someone he may have just met. It wasn’t like him to pick up women, to have casual encounters. He wasn’t into one-night stands and may very well have been helping her, counseling her. But about what? Some medical problem? Some psychological problem? The story about the shy young woman named Jan is puzzling and disconcerting. Lucy isn’t quite sure why.

  Maybe he wasn’t feeling good about himself. Maybe he was scared because the carpal tunnel surgery wasn’t as successful as he had hoped. Maybe counseling and befriending a shy, pretty young woman made him forget his fears, feel powerful and important. Lucy drinks tequila and thinks about what he said to her inSan Franciscowhen she was with him last September, the last time she saw him.