by phuc
"All I have is beer and wine," Kathleen responded. "You see, I'm a clinical alcoholic, preformed by a genetic addition propensity that you read about in some magazine."
"Speaking of magazines, when's the next issue of your rag come out? I especially enjoy the column called ‘Verdict.' It's funnier than National Lampoon." Spence turned to her like a chess piece. "All jokes aside "
"Oh, we were joking?"
" have you received anything more from "
She slapped him in the chest with a manila envelope.
"Originals, right?" he asked.
"Of course. I rented a copier from Shields today."
"Industrious. I trust you didn't handle the originals until you put on the gloves?"
"I wore the damn gloves, Lieutenant. Now why don't you be like a hockey player and "
Spence sat down at her desk before the slider. He picked up a sheaf of papers. "These are the photocopies?"
"Yes."
"Good material for the book?"
Kathleen didn't say anything. She opened the slider and lit a Now 100. Spence began to read her photocopies, so not to touch the originals.
"Hmm. ‘Needle Work.' By the way, how's the blazing love affair with Maxwell Platt?"
"Mind your own business."
"It's strange. I read some of his work today in some literary magazines that our research department dug up. Did you know he's had poetry published in Esquire, The New York Times Literary Review, even Cosmopolitan?"
"What's strange about that?"
"Well, they're formidable magazines, highly competitive markets, I should think "
"Oh, you think?"
" and his work is quite well done. Insightful, honest, highly creative. That's the strange part, that a person with such respectable artistic talents should find anything at all in common with you."
"He only comes around for the blatant, indulgent sex."
"Like last night? He was here last night, wasn't he?"
"I know you have your watchdogs on me. You get a kick out of that, don't you? Intruding on real people's lives?"
"It's only for your protection. Personally I'd much prefer to see district tax dollars spent elsewhere." Spence flipped a page of the manuscript. "But Maxwell Platt is innocent."
Cigarette smoke dangled before Kathleen's eyes. "What's that supposed to mean?"
"You know full well that a psychopathic killer is aware of your exact place of residence, yet you're pursuing a romantic involvement with Platt. You're inviting him over here. You don't care about anyone, do you? Platt could wind up dead due to your reckless selfishness."
"That's ridiculous," Kathleen spat. But actually she hadn't thought of that at all. No, no, she tried to rationalize. It's too far fetched...
"And it's therefore my professional obligation to see that he's protected when he's over here.
That's why I've got the undercover vehicle in your parking lot."
"Why don't you just leave?" Kathleen suggested, but, still, what he'd implied bothered her. "Or maybe it's just that you've got nothing better to do. Big bad muscle bound existential hot shot police investigator. What a laugh. It's not my fault that a killer is sending me accounts of her murders. It's not my fault that you've gotten nowhere on this case."
"Quite the contrary," Spence offered. He was reading and talking simultaneously. "We know who the killer is."
Kathleen bent forward. "You... What?"
"She's a prostitute known as Creamy. Her real name is Heather B. Willet. Twenty six years old, red hair, Caucasian. You know her?"
"How would I know a prostitute, for God's sake?" Kathleen stubbed out her cigarette, thinking.
This revelation sat in her gut like a bad meal. Was Spence lying? He'd lied before, she felt sure of it. "A prostitute? That doesn't sound very logical."
"People who are pathological seldom behave logically. And by the way, I'm not an existentialist.
I conform to a spiritual philosophy known as solipsisty the theory that the self is the only thing that can be known and therefore verified."
This comment seemed to stretch her face against her skull, like thin elastic. "The last time I talked to you, you lied to me."
"I didn't lie, I prevaricated "
Kathleen laughed out loud.
"We've found two more bodies."
Her laughter dissolved. Suddenly, though backed by the blaze of sun, she felt frigid.
"This passage here " He held up the manuscript she'd received today. "‘Needle Work.' It describes in verifiable detail the murder of a young man named Brad Weston. Traffic Branch found his body in his car about 36 hours ago. He was a barhound, like Calabrice."
"But you said two bodies."
Spence nodded, never looking up. "Early this morning. A black man named Tyrone Chaplin. I talked to him hours before his death. He was Heather B. Willet's pimp. The physical evidence is incontestable. She killed them all. And her behavior patterns are evolving exactly as our forensic psychiatrist predicted. With each murder, her delusion is becoming more and more real to her. I won't bother telling you the details regarding Chaplin's death. I'm quite sure that you'll be informed, posthaste."
Posthaste, Kathleen thought. Only a dolt would use a word like that.
When Spence rose, his shadow submerged the kitchen. He buttoned his jacket, made an adjustment to his tie. "Call me when you get the next manuscript," he said.
"What's the magic word?"
"Pretty please with misprision of a felony and obstruction of justice on top."
"Kiss my ass, Spence," Kathleen answered his levity.
Spence retrieved the manuscript, unafflicted. He headed toward the door, then stopped and returned his gaze to her. "I was checking some things," he mentioned. "Public record."
She cast the one per hour rule to the wayside, and lit another cigarette. "So?"
"Who is Samuel Curtis Shade?"
Kathleen felt something inside her shrivel, like slug skin when sprinkled with salt. "He's my uncle. He's the "
"The man who sexually abused you as a child?"
"Yes," she said dryly. "And goddamn you for prying into my personal life. And goddamn you double for even bringing it up."
"I apologize," Spence said. His sober face and attire almost lent sincerity to his apology.
The cat clock ticked.
Almost, almost. Alm Here.
She heard the words now as clearly as Uncle Sammy had whispered them so long ago. The little bed was creaking; her dolls lined up along the dresser bore witness; the plastic eyes of the cat clock ticked back and forth. From behind, Uncle Sammy's hands molded her nine year old body like fresh white dough...
She spoke on, retracted from her own will. A puppet master directed her mouth to configure the words and leak them from her throat. "He sexually abused me from the time I was nine 'til my late teens. My mother was dead. My father was always away on business. Uncle Sammy...looked after me." She gulped jagged stones. "He made porno movies for the mob, and transported them here for development and distribution. In 1988 he got caught in a Justice Department sting, or something like that. He was sentenced to 13 years in prison."
Spence looked away, discomfited. "Well, something happened to him yesterday."
Bright flowers seemed to open in her vision, before a raving light. He's dead, she thought. Uncle Sammy's dead. He hanged himself in prison. Someone murdered him. He died of cancer...something. Please tell me that Uncle Sammy's dead.
"He's dead?" she asked, her voice like a tiny scratch.
"No, no he's not," Spence answered her. "Yesterday at noon your uncle was paroled."
| |
Chapter 18
(I)
Is she right? Maxwell Platt paused to wonder over his Brother typewriter. Am I deluded? Has love deluded me?
If so, it wasn't really love.
Then he tossed his head back and laughed.
She was wrong. He was not deluded.
I'm in love, he thoug
ht.
He knew it was true. Since when was truth bound to criteria, to structure? Since when was love bound to rules? There were no rules, there was only the truth.
These seemed appropriate reflections for a poet. I don't give a damn that I've known her less than a week. I love her. I know I love her. I'm going to marry her. I'm going to spend the rest of my life with her. I'm going to be the father of her children, and I'm going to grow old and die with her.
He didn't need to know anything beyond that.
From the window, P Street traffic sounded like a river at high spate. Maxwell's deliberating happiness made him feel like the world revolved around him, he its axis.
Now, he thought. He felt risen. The poems of his past were done; it was time to begin the poems of his future. Good-bye, Exit, he thought. Now it was time to write a poem for her.
The typewriter regurgitated loud clicking sounds within its steady hum; it was old. The keys tapped sluggishly and often jammed, and you could grow old waiting for the carriage to return.
But Maxwell wouldn't dream of replacing it. It was like an old friend, a companion that never let him down. The typewriter provided the tool for his muse. One day, when it broke down completely, he would bury it. Like a dead loved one, he thought.
Kathleen's first poem, he knew, would take time, a lot of reworking, rewriting. He felt this would be the most important poem he'd ever write. He typed out the title: A KEATSIAN INQUIRY by Maxwell Platt
He typed for the rest of the day.
Then he went to his nightstand and got the gun.
(II)
"Your friend, your killer," Simmons said, "is now fully established in the Totem Phase of her delusion. She feels invincible, wholly and completely protected. Her crimes which she of course doesn't see as crimes, but acts of truth have risen in her perceptions to a stratum of absolute meaning."
"Wait," Spence said. "Back up." He felt as fuddled as he must look. "Totem Phase?"
Simmons' goatee looked like spun steel. He unconsciously turned a large blue Stelazine paperweight on his desk. A pencil cup faced Spence, which read MELLARIL S SUSPENSION, Buttermint Flavor! Spence recalled from his one psychopharmacology course that Mellaril was a heavy duty anti psychotic drug which often turned patients into pensive zombies.
But...buttermint? At least they've made it taste good, he thought. Simmons continued, his head atilt. "Pattern serial killer behavior exists in a total of seven phases. The first few are developmental; we already know about them in this case. The sexual abuse from an early age, the doubtless genetic and environmental ramifications, etc. Your friend has now progressed to the most serious later phase, the Totem Phase, where all of her feelings amass to a single point of reference, through which she executes her crimes. Totem, in this case, means symbol. She feels energized now by the symbol."
"What symbol?" Spence inquired. "You mean the cross?"
"Exactly." Simmons patted the manuscripts. "It's relative to something in her past that she feels protected by. And in this protection she realizes the truth of her delusion."
"But I can't nail it down. I don't even know how to begin."
"You may never nail it down," Simmons enlightened him. "The totem of the typical serial killer is usually a gross abstraction. Something that makes sense only to the afflicted. Psychopathic totems are generally related to the prominent parental figure the killer's mother, in this instance and always carries back to early childhood. Strong initial religious assertions, perhaps. Perhaps her mother took her to church as a child, and she remembers seeing the cross above the altar, or maybe she recalls the priest making the sign of the cross. It could've been something her mother gave her, or something her mother wore, a cross on a necklace perhaps. It could be anything."
"In the manuscript she referred to the cross as being illuminated," Spence said. "She writes that it ‘glows' like a ‘beautiful white fire.' I've got some people checking out all the area churches, to get a geographic list of the ones with illuminated crosses "
"You're wasting your time," Simmons cut him off. "Psychopaths regularly see the critical symbols of their lives enshrouded by some kind of light a protective aura, so to speak. These symbols, in other words, aren't really illuminated. The light is a hallucination. The psychopath believes that the light emanating from the totem will protect them. Forget about the cross, Jeffrey. It's a dead end."
It occurred to Spence just that moment: Simmons was the only person who addressed him by his first name. He didn't know anybody else well enough. Poor me, he thought. I don't have any friends. But what did it matter? "I feel useless," he admitted.
"Don't. You're a very perceptive person. You're driven, Jeffrey, by your sense of duty." Simmons paused to smile. "But for the life of me I can't figure out what that is."
Neither could Spence. This is all I have, he thought, and suddenly it was a dreadful thought, fertile with despair. Idealisms didn't work now; the world was a scape of rain and failure. Of inhumanity and lies. Catching one killer would not amend that status. Nor would catching a 1,000. The world would remain as it was. Disinterested. Unflinching in its evil.
Spence felt crushed in the fine clothes. "I don't know what to do," he said. "I don't know how to proceed from here."
"There's never an easy way out, Jeffrey. You know that." Simmons' eyes, in spite of their accrual of years, shined crisply and bright as an infant's. "But you can take heart in some rather indisputable statistics. The Totem Phase always burns itself out, leaving in its wake a catastrophic amine related depression. It's called the Capture Phase. Very quickly the falsehood of the delusion is unveiled; the bipolar mental state reverses poles, so to speak, locking the killer in an inescapable feeling of capture. The psychopath's self image is reduced to total meaninglessness... Suicide is the most frequent result."
Spence found no solace in this possibility. He wanted the killer caught, not dead by her own hand. He wanted to see her; he wanted to look into her living face and see that same face looking back in all its reality. Without that evidence, and without the hope of it, he wouldn't feel real himself. He'd feel as though he'd been cheated by a myth, or a ghost.
"She's objectifying the delusion now," Simmons went on.
"How do you know?"
"She killed her pimp an objective gesture of revenge. Expect her to identify even more closely now with what I told you about the other day. With the nascent."
"Kathleen Shade," Spence said.
"Yes. Kathleen Shade is the link between the murders and the killer's sense of purpose.
Throughout the Totem Phase this perception will amplify. The psychotic delusion will build Shade as a trust figure. The killer will believe that Shade approves of the murders. This can be easily exploited if you handle it right. The killer, as I've said, identifies with Shade for whatever reason. If you can trust Shade, you're at a great advantage. But, of course, if you can't "
"I'm screwed," Spence said.
"Yes, and so is Shade. She could easily wind up dead." Simmons seemed relaxed as he spoke of this. "Shade, after all, is using the killer's delusion for her own advantage; she has a vested interest."
"The book."
"Precisely. Can you trust Shade to cooperate?"
"I think so."
"Are you still maintaining an acrimonious relationship with her?"
Spence laughed lightly. "She can't stand me, and she thinks I can't stand her."
"Then you're convinced she's unduly independent?"
"Yes, otherwise the Bad Guy routine wouldn't work."
"Good. You remember well. Just be careful. The person you must trust the most, in this case, is not Shade. It's yourself. And I think you know what I'm talking about."
Spence nodded. The easiest way to catch the killer would be to use Kathleen Shade as bait.
Spence wondered if he was too ethical for that, and felt slightly shamed when he came to no solid conclusion. As if to pardon the thought, he said, "I tried to get her to move out of
her apartment, but she refused."
Simmons smiled. "Did you try very hard?"
"I guess it's pretty stupid for me to lie to you," Spence admitted. "No, I guess I didn't. But I've got a tactical guy in her parking lot, and I'm on her phones under the table."
"Good. Better safe than sorry, civil rights notwithstanding."
Spence didn't much care. "Thanks for your time," he said, and got up. "Did you hear the one about the guy who joined Paranoiacs Anonymous?"