by Saul Black
Will didn’t actually say What the fuck? but Valerie felt it coming off him. Her words had a curious effect on her. She hadn’t quite known what she was going to say when she opened her mouth, but now she’d said it it was as if some of the tension in her muscles had gone. She almost laughed.
Katherine looked sweetly thrilled. “Holy moly,” she said. “You’ve come a long way in six years. I love it. I’m almost lost for words—which is historic in its own right. I’ve missed talking to you, but obviously the precarious ingenue is no more. I have to recalibrate. All right. Good. And an ingenue is an innocent young woman, Will. As opposed to a French moose.”
“I think we’re already wasting our time,” Will said.
“Turn it back on,” Katherine said, leaning forward. “I’ll tell you everything I can remember. I don’t get many interesting days in here. This is definitely one.”
In the interview that followed, Katherine appeared to play it straight. There wasn’t, as far as Valerie could tell, anything new. Physical description, old money, hyper-intelligent, cultured, well-traveled, tech genius. All as before. Two of the victims—Alicia Hooper and Julia Galvez—had been low-rent prostitutes he’d watched for a few days and picked up on the street. The remaining four—Leonora Ramsey, Hannah Weisz, Kate O’Donovan, and Danielle Freyer—had required full-strength surveillance prep, in which Katherine wasn’t involved. “He never told me how he did it,” she said. “But he knew where and when they were alone and off any kind of CCTV. It’s rather incredible that I was still running the gallery when we started, although, obviously, that didn’t last past the first one. Once we were sure of each other—or rather, once he was sure of me—all that changed. Then I was on call.” Katherine had, as Valerie knew from the original investigation, owned a small but successful gallery in Pacific Heights, inherited from her father when he died of a heart attack two days after her twenty-second birthday. “Lucien Chastain” had cash-financed her hiring a manager to take over most of the work, freeing Katherine to be there only when she wanted to be. In fact, according to Katherine, her lover had given her thousands of dollars over their time together, most of which she laundered through the gallery. “What can I tell you?” she’d asked Valerie, rhetorically. “I’m worth it.”
“Any of this mean anything to you?” Valerie said. She passed Katherine the printed copies of the documents he’d sent, including the cover letter. The paintings, the poem, the photos, the cryptic letter grids. Katherine studied them in silence, carefully, page by page. For the first time in the interview her reflex archness dropped away. It was weirdly appalling, to see her for a moment undisguisedly engaged in something. It removed the barrier of difference, revealed her as a person. She might have been a prospective bride poring over a wedding dress catalog. Valerie could feel Will having the same reaction: Wait—isn’t she a monster?
“Well, I know the paintings, obviously. And the poem,” Katherine said. “Though I can tell you he hasn’t included it because he shares its sentiment.”
“What do you mean?” Valerie said.
“Wordsworth believed in the soul. Before birth, we’re part of God. Then we’re born, and incarnation tears us away from Him. A bit of Him, a bit of this divine perfection, remains in us: our soul. In childhood, the soul has tantalizing memories of its former state of bliss:
“Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting:
The Soul that rises with us, our life’s Star,
Hath had elsewhere its setting,
And cometh from afar:
Not in entire forgetfulness,
And not in utter nakedness,
But trailing clouds of glory do we come
From God, who is our home:
Heaven lies about us in our infancy!
“He didn’t believe any of that nonsense,” Katherine said. “He was an existentialist, for want of a better word.”
Will shifted in his seat: For God’s sake, this is bullshit.
Valerie was still adjusting to the strangeness of Katherine apparently with her guard down. “So why this poem?” she said.
“This is when I miss a cigarette,” Katherine said, with a little cartoon grimace. “Honestly? I don’t know. If you want my guess—and assuming he’s not just messing with you—I’d say the thematic content’s irrelevant. It’s more likely part of the key to the letters in the boxes. Maybe a correspondence of letters with the paintings’ titles … Could be the line numbers, but that seems too easy. He wouldn’t make it that easy. You have to understand: this is a guy who could do the Times crossword in less than two minutes. Patterns tickle him, as they do me, because they suggest meaning in a universe which daily pistol-whips us with its absurdity. Lateral connections, as he says in the note.”
“So ‘anyone spring to mind?’ is you—agreed?”
“Yes, it’s me. Renaissance art is me, anyway. And probably the map of Italy, since I did my junior year abroad in Rome. He knew that. He also smoked Nat Shermans. Got me onto them, too. The portrait is of the Marquis de Sade, of whom even you must have heard, Will. And if you haven’t, it’s where the word ‘sadism’ comes from. As for Sharon Stone…” She smiled. “I have no clue. Except he said she should play me in the movie of my terrible life. I assume the hilarious FBI are marshaling their eggheads for this?”
“Yes.”
“God, I’d love to be a fly on the wall for that.”
“He says he’s giving his victims fair warning. At Elizabeth Lambert’s I found this.” Valerie handed Katherine a photocopy, showing the postcard, front and back. Katherine smiled, a melancholy connoisseur among savages.
“This one’s not Italian,” she said. “It’s by Lucas Cranach the Elder. German artist, 1472 to 1553. The image, obviously, is in the Catholic tradition, though Cranach was a Protestant, and in fact a close friend of Martin Luther.”
“And?” Will said, impatience undisguised.
“And we had a seminal conversation about the Fall, Adam and Eve’s expulsion from paradise. It was one of his favorite subjects. He thought of it as the first and greatest humanist narrative.”
“What does that mean?” Valerie asked.
“It means Adam and Eve are heroes in spite of their superficial villainy. There are two trees in the Garden of Eden: the Tree of Life and the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. It’s the second tree that causes the trouble. Genesis 2:17: ‘But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.’ As soon as we read that we know where the story’s going. More important, we want it to go there. The subtextual question is rhetorical: Who wouldn’t do what our girl Eve did, sooner or later? We’re on her side, because we know that the Fall, whatever the consequences, is a fall into knowledge—and we want to know. We always want to know.”
Valerie could feel how much this was annoying Will. Not because he thought it was a waste of time, but because like everyone else he couldn’t resist the Katherine fascination. When she talked, when she was in full flight, it was impossible not to listen. Throughout the trial Valerie had watched people’s reaction to the woman on the stand: an incremental mesmerism. It wasn’t what she’d done. It was her articulate serenity in spite of what she’d done. Superficially, people were appalled by her actions. Deep down they were curious about what her actions had given her.
Knowledge.
Valerie had been no exception. Even now, she realized, she regarded Katherine as a woman who had been out past the known frontiers. Even now she couldn’t shake the feeling that Katherine knew something that she, Valerie, did not. It had always been part of the inequity between them. It was as if Katherine had gone out beyond the darkness to meet God and had returned carrying his inscrutable imprimatur.
God or the Devil.
In one of their interviews, Katherine had said to her: God and the Devil are one and the same. And they live in the same place. Which is where? Valerie had asked. Katherine had smiled and said: You know whe
re, Valerie.
“He had a soft spot for this painting,” Katherine said. “Because Adam and Eve are both holding the fruit, together. It’s the collusion again, you see? Nothing binds us together like shared sin, the conspiracy of disobedience. It’s the sweetest of all allegiances. Look at the end of the Genesis story: God kicks the lovers out of paradise. They’re distraught, initially, but it doesn’t last. They get over their guilt and start a farm and have kids and get on with it. The whole narrative is about God putting his money on fear and shame—and losing the bet. What does anyone think when they get to the end of the fable, apart from: Good. Serves the miserable old bastard right. Read Milton on the lovers’ exit from Eden, the last lines of Paradise Lost:
“Some natural tears they dropped, but wiped them soon;
The world was all before them, where to choose
Their place of rest, and Providence their guide.
They hand in hand with wandering steps and slow,
Through Eden took their solitary way.
“Hand in hand. It’s beautiful. And inevitable.”
“Do you run classes in here?” Will said, as much to shake himself out of his own seduction as anything else.
“You’d be surprised,” Katherine said. “There are some lively minds among these ladies. Do you think Nick fantasized about me, Valerie?”
“We’ve got everything we’re going to get here,” Will said.
“I know you did, Will. Which is sweet. Be careful I don’t creep in tonight, after you’ve turned your wife over.”
Valerie forced herself to sit very still. Will switched the recorder off. Valerie could feel how badly he wanted to hit Katherine. But he sat back in his chair and appraised her. “You’re too skinny,” he said. “And it’s obvious you’re not getting enough vitamin D. Don’t they exercise you in here?”
Katherine smiled languidly. “Good for you, Will,” she said. “I’m sorry. Old habits. Forgive me. It’s the boredom.”
“I’ll be outside,” Will said, getting to his feet.
As soon as he was out the door, Katherine said to Valerie: “You didn’t answer.”
Valerie resisted the desire to look away. Instead, she met Katherine’s eyes. She wasn’t sure why. Something drove her beyond her instincts. “I don’t know if Nick fantasized about you,” she said. “He’s a guy, and you’re a very beautiful woman. That’s the only relevant part of the equation. But it wouldn’t be the end of the world if he had. We’re not responsible for our desires. Only our actions. It’s only the actions that make a difference, in the end. But let me ask you something: Is that the only power you’ve ever had?”
She had astonished herself. The words had come out of her with a curious, gentle inevitability. It was as if she’d just casually brushed a cobweb from her consciousness.
Katherine didn’t answer right away. A faint uncertainty in her face for a moment. She glanced down at her hands. To Valerie’s mind, the first time Katherine had been the one to look away. But the green eyes came back to her.
“You really have grown,” Katherine said. “I’ve missed talking to you.” There was a discernible shift in her voice. The musical playfulness had gone. “And yes, I think perhaps that is the only power I’ve ever had. We don’t ask for our gifts.”
Valerie was thinking of a conversation she’d had six years ago with Nick. It was during the time of the original interviews with Katherine. She’d come home exhausted. Nick had run her a bath and given her a huge glass of wine, then sat on the edge of the tub with a glass of his own. With everyone else I know, Valerie had said to him, I can imagine them lying down to go to sleep at night and thinking about things. What they did that day, their families, the random ordinary crap you sift through while you’re lying there in the dark, drifting off. With Katherine, nothing. It’s impossible. I can’t imagine anything. I can’t imagine her even thinking about the things she’s done. I can’t imagine what it’s like for her to be alone with herself. I can’t really imagine her sleeping.
It was still that way, Valerie thought now. She couldn’t conceive of Katherine’s inner life. If she tried, she got a vision of her lying with her eyes open in the dark, deafened by a continuous internal scream. It was easy to shift what Katherine had done to one side and to be left with the knowledge that you were looking at the embodiment of absolute aloneness. Perhaps that was what evil was, when you got right down to it, an aloneness like no other. Unless you found someone in the darkness—as Katherine had. The Man in the Mask. It must have felt like love.
“Listen to me,” Katherine said. “I can help you.”
Valerie came back to herself. Time had stopped. She felt it flow again, as if a valve had been released.
“I don’t think so,” she said. She was exhausted. This was the way it had always been with Katherine: you spent minutes in her company and it was as if you’d been drained by an ordeal lasting years.
“You must have thought I might be some use to you or you wouldn’t have come,” Katherine said. “I can help with this.” She put her hands flat on the documents in front of her.
For the second time in their meeting it seemed to Valerie that Katherine’s default artfulness dropped away, as if the force field had been lowered. She told herself she couldn’t trust it. She told herself that the only thing about Katherine you could trust was that you couldn’t, under any circumstances, trust her.
“You can’t trust me,” Katherine said. A nauseous telepathy had always flirted between them. “I know you can’t trust me. I’m not asking you to. All I’m asking is that you leave this with me and let me see what sense I can make of it. Talk to Clayton and tell her that I can contact you if I come up with something. I know him. I know what he calls his ‘frame of reference.’ The FBI morons are going to be wasting their time. They’ll run algorithms and code patterns and all the usual shit and they’ll get nothing. Or rather, not nothing, but just enough to keep them going. He knows what he’s doing. This isn’t going to respond to the systematic, I guarantee you. This is going to require the lateral, the tangential, the personal. Again, that’s assuming he’s not fucking with you. Fucking with me, for that matter.”
“But as you point out,” Valerie said, “I can’t trust you. You could feed us misinformation. You have every reason to.”
“Of course,” Katherine said. “Of course I could. There’s nothing I can say to rule that out. Except to remind you of what he did to me. And to ask you to consult your intuition.”
“My intuition?”
“We understand each other, Valerie. We’ve always understood each other. We haven’t wanted to, but we have. We know the differences between us. Don’t you think?”
Valerie didn’t answer.
Katherine let it go. “All right,” she said. “But you do know one thing is true. This is the most interesting thing that’s happened to me in six years. Can you imagine what being in here is like? For me, I mean?”
“Yes.”
“I’m atrophying. It surprises me that I haven’t killed myself.”
“Why haven’t you?”
Katherine smiled, again, genuinely. “Well, they don’t make it easy, for one thing. But the truth is life is stubborn. The will to keep drawing breath. You know, like those stories of little kids they find alone in their houses after weeks, they’ve somehow kept themselves going on ketchup and sugar. It’s astonishing. And weirdly obscene. I always wondered what happened to those kids afterward. Except of course for me that’s where the analogy ends, since there isn’t ever going to be an afterward. Just more ketchup and sugar, on and on, indefinitely. Or until someone in here puts me out of my misery.”
“You seem established.”
“No one’s established in here. Established, I would have killed myself. Danger does you the service of forcing you to act.”
Valerie got to her feet. She’d had enough. The familiar claustrophobia.
“Let me find a way,” Katherine said.
“A way?”
The second guard, Lomax, put her head around the door. “Everything okay?” she said. Valerie wasn’t sure if the question was addressed to her or to Katherine.
“We’re fine,” Katherine said, with a forced evenness, not looking up. Lomax glanced at Valerie, then withdrew.
“I’ll talk to the warden,” Valerie said. “If you come up with something…” She left it unfinished.
“I can’t promise anything,” Katherine said. “But give me a chance. You know this is water in the desert for me.”
Valerie went to the door and called the guards.
“Valerie?” Katherine said.
“What?”
“There’s something else I want to talk to you about.”
“What?”
Katherine looked away from her. Looked, if anything, sheepish. “Maybe not this time. It’s something you need to know. I think it’s something you need to know.”
“If it’s about him, I need—”
“It’s not about him. Will you … I mean, if I can make anything of this, will you come and see me again?”
“Let’s see if you can make something of it.”
“Will you ask Clayton if I can get access to a computer?”
“You know that’s not going to happen.”
“Supervised,” Katherine said. “No e-mail. No chat rooms. No porn. Just for cracking this. You can send one of the FBI morons to make sure I’m not looking at anything pernicious or frisky.”