“In most cases that is true. Not yours.”
Wolfe hesitated. He glanced over at his mother, who had settled into a chair in front of the big-screen television as if Adrian and Detective Collins and her son weren’t in the room at all. She was reaching for the remote control. “Mother!” he said suddenly. “Not now. Go to the kitchen.”
“But it’s time,” she said, complaining.
“Soon. Not yet.”
The woman reluctantly stood up and left the room. Adrian could hear her shuffling in the kitchen. This was followed by the sound of a glass shattering in the sink and a howl of frustration cut off by a torrent of obscenities. The son looked that way, a scowl crossing his face, but as if anticipating his response the mother called out, “It was just an accident. I’ll clean it up.”
“Goddammit,” Wolfe said. “That’s all we have. Accidents.” He turned and glared at Terri Collins. “You see how hard this is, she’s sick and I got to . . .”
He stopped. He understood that Terri didn’t care in the slightest about the difficulties of living with someone in the tendrils of that disease.
“Your therapy,” she said sharply.
“I go every week,” Mark Wolfe answered glumly. “I’m making progress. That’s what the doc tells me.”
“Tell me what you mean by that,” Terri asked.
Wolfe looked a little hesitant. “Progress is just progress,” he said.
“You’re going to have to be more precise, Mark,” Terri said. Adrian noticed that she used the man’s first name. Disarming, he thought.
“Well,” Wolfe said, “I’m not sure what . . .”
Terri stared hard at him. An unmistakable detective’s you have to do better look. Adrian thought this wasn’t all that different from a silent stare he’d used on promising students who had fallen short of his expectations.
“He’s helping me curb my wishes,” Wolfe said.
Wishes, Adrian believed, was a poor substitute for desires.
“How?”
“We talk.”
“What did you say your doctor’s name was?”
“I didn’t.”
“Why not?”
Wolfe shrugged. “I see Doctor West in town. You want his number and address?”
“No,” Terri replied. “I already have those.”
Adrian was listening carefully. Cognitive behavior therapy. Aversion therapy. Reality therapy. Acceptance-based therapy. Twelve-step programs. He was familiar with the wealth of treatment programs and the small likelihood of success for a paraphilia such as exhibitionism. What he wanted to hear was how a new age therapist like Scott West treated someone suffering from a prehistoric condition.
“Where do you meet Doctor West?”
“At his office.”
“Ever meet anywhere else?”
The sex offender made the mistake of hesitating briefly.
“No.”
Terri paused. Harsh glance.
“I’ll try again. Ever meet—”
“He took me in his car once.”
“Where?”
“He said it was part of the therapy. He said it was really important for me to show myself I had control over—”
“Where did he take you?”
The sex offender looked away. “He drove me past a couple of schools.”
“Which schools?”
“The high school. An elementary school two blocks away. I forget the name.”
“You forget?”
Again the sex offender hesitated. “Kennedy Elementary,” he said.
“Not Wildwood School or Fort River Elementary?”
“No,” Wolfe blurted out. “We didn’t go past those.”
Terri Collins paused again. “But you know the names, and I bet you know the addresses as well.”
Wolfe turned his head but he didn’t try to move. He didn’t answer the question because it was clear he knew. Adrian figured that the sex offender could also tell them the daily schedule, when the students arrived, when they left, when they filled the playground for recess. The detective slowly wrote down a couple of notes before continuing.
“So you drove past the schools. Did you stop?”
“No.”
Adrian knew this was a lie.
“You were convicted of false imprisonment—” Terri started, but the sex offender interrupted her.
“Look, I gave that girl a ride. That’s all. I never touched her.”
“A ride with your pants unzipped.”
Wolfe scowled and didn’t reply.
“Ever go to your doctor’s house?”
This took the questioning in a direction that must have surprised the sex offender. He blurted out his response.
“No.”
“You know where he lives?”
“No.”
“Ever meet his family?”
“No. That’s not a part of the therapy.”
“Tell me what you talk about.”
“He asks me about what I’m thinking and feeling when I see . . .” He stopped at that word, breathing in deeply. “He wants me to talk about everything that goes through my head. I tell him the truth. It’s hard, but I’m learning to control myself. I don’t need to . . .” Again he stopped.
Adrian was nearly mesmerized by the way Terri probed the sex offender without indicating what it was she was searching for. But when he heard Wolfe’s last comment, something stirred in the back of his own imagination. He wasn’t certain what it was, but he thought he’d heard something critical. He tried to remember his own studies, clinical moments in laboratories. Stimulus, he thought. A subject would have a normal series of responses to a situation, until an extra stimulus was bought into the equation. Then the ability to control emotions was changed and sometimes abandoned. In a movie theater, when the knife-wielding bad guy jumps out from the darkness, we scream. When a car skids out of control on a wet pavement, heart rate, glandular activity, brain waves all increase as we fight panic. Out of control. He wondered whether his wife had been frightened when she steered her car into the oak tree. No, he thought, she was relieved because she was doing what she thought she wanted. Adrian cocked his head, trying to listen for his wife’s voice, but it wasn’t there. Something was. He had the sensation that there was a hand on his shoulder, trying to get him to turn and see something. The feeling tightened, as if he were being gripped urgently. But instead he stared over at the exhibitionist. Place the ordinary reality of schoolchildren in front of him and it triggers fantasy. Other people see children at play. Mark Wolfe saw objects of desire. Adrian suddenly wanted to hate instead of understand. Hate is much easier.
“Look, detective, I’m a lot better. Doctor West has really helped me. You maybe don’t believe it but it’s true. You can ask him.”
Terri nodded. “I will. You understand that even driving by those schools with your therapist was a violation?”
“He said it wouldn’t be. He said my parole officer approved it. And we didn’t stop.”
Terri nodded again. She doesn’t believe this, Adrian realized. And she’s right not to.
“All right, I’ll check. We’re finished here.”
She closed her notebook, gestured to Adrian, but then stopped and abruptly demanded, “Who is Jennifer Riggins?”
Mark Wolfe looked confused.
“Who?”
“Jennifer Riggins. Where is she?”
“I don’t know any—”
“If you lie to me, you will be going back to prison.”
“I don’t know that name. Never heard it.”
Terri took out her notebook once again and wrote something down. “You know that it is a felony to lie to a police officer?”
“I’m telling
you the truth. I don’t know who you’re talking about.”
Adrian saw many things in the sex offender’s face. Remarkable, he thought, how he mixes truth and lies.
“I think I will be back to speak with you again,” Terri said. “You don’t have any plans to leave, do you?”
This wasn’t really a question. It was an order.
She turned to Adrian. “Okay, professor, we’re finished here for tonight.”
Adrian thought he’d had a hundred questions but he could not immediately think of any. He took a step forward and felt as if someone beside him were whispering in his ear. Brian. It had to be. He thought for a moment. No. Maybe it was Tommy.
“Do you have a computer?” he blurted out.
Terri stopped at the door. This was a good question, she thought. “Tell him, Mark. You have a computer?”
The sex offender nodded.
“What do you use a computer for?”
“Nothing. Like e-mails and getting sports scores.”
“Who e-mails you?”
“I know some people. I’ve got some friends.”
“Sure you do,” Terri said. “I’ll take it.”
“You need a warrant.”
“Do I?”
Wolfe hesitated.
“I’ll get it. It’s in my room.”
“We’ll go with you.”
They followed Wolfe through the kitchen. He glared at his mother when the old woman asked, “Can I knit now? Who are your friends?”
He opened the door to his bedroom. Adrian saw some work clothes strewn about. A few tattered sex magazines, a couple of books, and a small desk with a laptop computer. Wolfe walked over and unplugged the machine. He handed it to Terri.
“When do I—”
“A day or two. What’s your password?”
Wolfe hesitated.
“What’s your password?” she asked again.
“Candyman,” he replied.
Terri took the machine. “Yeah,” she said. “Making progress.”
As she tucked the computer under her arm, Adrian thought, He gave that up much too easily.
It didn’t make sense to him. Still, he rapidly turned and tried to take in as much as he could about what the room said of the man who occupied it. He wished he could read the titles of the books. He suspected there might be a drawer filled with DVDs as well. But the room had a stark, empty quality. A single bed, a chest of drawers, the desk, and a stiff wooden chair. Not much that said much.
Except, he guessed, maybe it did.
As he turned to leave, right behind the detective and the exhibitionist, he heard a whisper. Substitute.
The thought came so quickly that it almost slid through his mind like sand through his fingers.
He turned around but no one was there. He didn’t understand the word, but it troubled him as he trailed the detective out the front door.
The old professor and the detective drove in silence.
She had placed the computer on the backseat, knowing it wasn’t evidence and would probably be just wasted time when she searched through its files. The relationship between the offender and Scott West troubled her but she couldn’t see past the strong possibility that it was mere coincidence. She knew there were lies in what Mark Wolfe had said to her, but her antennae hadn’t picked up the sort of falsehood that might steer her in one direction or another. She drummed her fingers against the steering wheel as she drove through the darkness toward the old man’s house.
He was singularly quiet.
“What’s bothering you?” she asked abruptly.
He seemed to reel in whatever memories or thoughts he was processing before replying.
“Jennifer,” he said softly. “What are the chances that we’ll find her, detective?”
“Not good,” she replied. “It’s not as hard to disappear in our society as people think. Or make someone disappear.”
Adrian seemed to think deeply. “Do you imagine there’s something on that computer—” She cut him off.
“No.”
He half turned in his seat, as if the answer needed expansion. She obliged.
“It will have some troubling things. Maybe some run-of-the-mill pornography. I wouldn’t be surprised if there was some kiddie porn hidden in some file. Maybe something else that indicates that the good Doctor West isn’t doing quite as good a job at therapy as he probably imagines he’s doing. But something about Jennifer? What would the connection be? No. I don’t think so. I’ll look. But I’m not optimistic.”
Adrian nodded slowly.
“I found the entire meeting to be provocative,” he said. His voice was only barely above a whisper. “I’ve never spoken with a man like that before. It was enlightening.”
“Did you hear anything that might help?” Terri asked this question more to be polite than because she thought he actually might have noticed something important.
“Is that what detectives do?” Adrian replied. “Do they process information so quickly?”
“Not like the classroom, professor. Sometimes there’s not much time and one has to see answers pretty damn fast. In homicides they like to talk about the first forty-eight hours. In fact there’s a damn television show called that. The window is smaller for some crimes, a little larger for others. But you need to see, if not answers, at least where you will find answers pretty damn fast.”
Terri sighed. “We’ve already gone way past Jennifer’s window.”
Adrian seemed to consider this. “Jennifer needs more time,” he said. “I hope she has it.”
Terri realized that she didn’t dislike the old man. She understood he was sincere in his efforts to help. Usually civilians managed only to clumsily get in the way of law enforcement. Too many folks had seen too much television and thought they actually knew something. Obstacles, not help, she thought. This was a part of her training and her experience. But then the old man seated beside her, who seemed to drift from acute observation to demanding insistence to a different planet, wasn’t like most of the busybodies and do-gooders she was accustomed to.
She steered the car to a stop in front of his house.
“Door-to-door service,” she said.
“Thank you,” Adrian said as he exited. “Perhaps you will call me with any information you might acquire . . .”
“Professor, leave the police work to me. If there is something I think you can help with, I’ll be in touch.”
She thought the old man looked crestfallen.
Jennifer is gone, she thought, and he blames himself.
There is a distinction between the police—who find the deepest tragedies to be a part of their daily routine—and the people who feel they have been made special by the sudden engagement with a crime. It is so beyond their ordinary existence that it not only fascinates but can be obsessive. But to a cop like Terri it was nothing more than normal. Tragic, but normal.
Adrian stepped away from the car and watched as it disappeared down the road.
“She’s a good cop,” Brian said. “But she’s limited. The super-clever, innately intuitive, quasi-intellectual detective is a trick of mystery writers. Cops are really straightforward problem solvers. Tic-tac-toe, not ‘The Lady or the Tiger.’”
Adrian trudged toward the front door. “Was that you in the house?” he asked.
“Of course,” Brian admitted. He sounded coy, as if inviting another question. Adrian turned to his dead brother. It was lawyer Brian, fiddling with his silk tie, working the tight crease in his two-thousand-dollar suit. Brian looked up. “You learned something.”
“But the detective said—”
“Come on, Audie, from square one this hasn’t been about finding someone culpable. At least, not yet. It’s about finding where to look for
Jennifer. The only way to do that is to imagine who took her. And why.”
Adrian nodded. “Yes.”
“And that sure as hell isn’t the way a nice little college town detective thinks, even if she seems pretty competent.”
This seemed true to Adrian. It was chilly. He wondered where the warmth of spring was hiding. The air seemed deceptive, as if it might promise one thing and deliver something different. Untrustworthy time of year, he thought.
“Audie!”
He turned back to Brian. “It’s getting harder,” he said. “It’s like every hour, every day, a little more of me slips away.”
“That’s why we’re here.”
“I think I’m too sick.”
“Hell, Audie,” Brian laughed. “I’m dead and that’s not slowing me down.”
Adrian smiled.
“What did you see in the creep’s house?”
“An old woman who suffers . . .” What did he see?
“I saw a man who acted compliant, as if he had nothing to hide, who probably wants to hide everything.”
Brian grinned and clapped his brother on the back.
“What does that mean?”
“It means I missed something.”
Brian put his hand to his forehead, right to the spot where he must have placed the barrel of the gun that Adrian now had inside on his bureau top. He made a shooting motion but didn’t seem to think this was ironic.
“I think we both know what to do,” Brian said.
Adrian scrunched down in his car seat, hoping that his prior visit hadn’t made Mark Wolfe more alert to the idea that someone might be watching him. There were morning shadows carving out spots of shade where the rising sun was blocked by trees just starting to fill out with leaves. The world outside his window seemed to Adrian to be not quite naked, but not clothed either. Sometimes he thought the change in seasons had moments where some natural force was awaiting permission, a go-ahead, to gather momentum and turn the day from winter to spring.
He did not know how many changes he had left. Nor did he know how much longer he would be able to perceive them.
He shifted in his seat, to ask Brian, but his brother was no longer with him. He wondered why he couldn’t conjure up his hallucinations when he needed them. It would be reassuring to have someone to speak with and he wished his brother’s confident tones would help his own resolve.
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