They were in the café down the street from the sheriff’s office, talking the situation over. The coroner’s report had been filed. The data on the unidentified dead girl was in the computer. Now they had to wait and see if something came up.
Milt started on his second doughnut. It was heavily frosted with glaze. Whenever he was distressed, he ate. He was silent, chewing thoughtfully.
“What about your friend in Twentynine Palms?” Newt asked. He wasn’t going to eat a doughnut no matter how tempted he got. They gave him heartburn. He kept that heartburn in mind as he watched Milt swallow.
“I was getting to that. I sent him the report, the photographs, everything,” Milt replied, licking his fingers.
“And?”
“And he’s on his way up here to have a look. He says the shape of the brand, or the object that made the burn, was not quite as clear on his victim. The appearance of the burn was altered by a superimposed bacterial infection of the surrounding skin. You know—gas formation, skin slippage.”
“What does that mean to me, Milt?”
“That means the girl in Twentynine Palms may have lived longer. Her wounds became infected before she died. He wasn’t even absolutely sure it was a brand. Except that even with the swelling and blurring around the edges, it had a very distinct shape. Now we have a better picture of it. It’s the only thing we have to go on. Maybe it’s his totem, or something.”
“Christ.”
Milt swallowed some cold coffee. “Real unusual. I’ve never seen anything like this. There’s no physical evidence at all.”
Newt nodded grimly. “That’s what Sex Crimes said. If they mutilate them, they usually kill them first. Very rare to torture them and then let them go.”
“The girl in Palms was found only a quarter of a mile from the road. She may have walked a long way. A little farther and she might even have been saved. You have any idea what it’s like to die of dehydration?”
Newt didn’t answer. He watched Milt take another doughnut.
“It’s a slow, agonizing death,” Milt said, his mouth full. “There’s military medical literature on it from American and Nazi soldiers who fought in the African Campaign in World War Two.”
“I’ll be sure to read it.” Newt shook his head apologetically. “Sorry. I just keep thinking there might be others out there. What do we do, get a copter and patrol a hundred of miles of desert, in case he decides to do it again?”
“Oh, hell do it again,” Milt said.
“Jesus. A serial brander whose victims die of—what would you say—natural causes?”
Milt put some money down. “No, I wouldn’t say that.”
“Maybe we ought to get the computer people on it. Maybe it’s not a local person, and there are cases of it somewhere else.”
“Maybe.”
“But you don’t think so?” Newt said dejectedly.
“Newt, I have no idea. I don’t even know if VICAP would even come in on something like this.”
Milt got up and dusted the sugar off the front of his shirt. After he had been gone for a minute or two, Newt ordered a doughnut.
18
“Great lunch,” Jason said.
“Yeah, it’s great to be together,” Charles agreed.
It was about fifty-five outside, the warmest day in months. Charles and Jason walked along the East River after lunch in Charles’s elegant apartment on East End Avenue.
“Isn’t this great?” Charles demanded. He pointed out to the water where a large sloop sailed between two barges. “Look at that boat. God, I’d love a boat.”
“When would you use it?” Jason laughed. “With the country house and the Caribbean vacations, skiing trips to Vail … Must be tough.”
Charles hunched his shoulders a little at the dig. Charles, who looked like he could be Jason’s brother, came from an extremely wealthy Westchester family. Jason came from the Bronx, had scholarships in college and medical school, and helped support his family all through his training. They met the first day at the New York Psychiatric Center where they did their training, and had been friends ever since.
“I don’t know. I’d find the time. I want to take up sailing. I didn’t sail as a kid. Did you?”
“No,” Jason said. The Bronx didn’t have much of a coastline. And his family’s primary concern had been food and shelter.
“Don’t have kids,” they liked to tell him. “They’ll drain you of your life’s blood and keep you as poor as we are.”
Now they were mad because he was married to a shiksa and were convinced God had made her barren to punish him. Jason had given them no grandchildren; what kind of son was that? They didn’t know he was the ambitious one, the one in the marriage who didn’t want life complicated by children. Until recently, Emma hadn’t seemed to care very much, either. Only recently had the question of enlarging their family become an issue that smoldered away under the surface of their daily life. Now he was beginning to see how much Emma wanted and needed a child.
Charles strode along, breathing deeply. “Isn’t this great? I just can’t stand being in the city on weekends. I feel caged. I really do. I need to be outside.” He swung his arms. “I need exercise.”
“Don’t you run?” Jason asked. Like Emma, Jason liked to run. It was good for the heart, made his body strong, and gave him energy. It was like taking an upper. The view wasn’t much different on Riverside Drive. They had good paths and trees and a river over there, too.
“Oh, yeah, and I go to the gym and play racquetball, but that’s a sprinter’s game. It’s not like standing back at the baseline in tennis and really smashing the ball.”
“No,” Jason said.
“Well, I can’t complain. Brenda had my office redecorated. It’s really nice now. I work a half a day a week at the hospital, to keep my hand in. Go away most weekends.” And there was Rosalie. Charles didn’t mention Rosalie, a colleague he popped from time to time when opportunity presented itself. He didn’t tell Jason things like that anymore. “Life is a well-oiled machine these days. Everything in its place and running smoothly. We’ve got it made. You’re the famous one. I’m the drone.” Charles laughed.
Jason had been putting one foot in front of the other, listening, listening. All afternoon. Listening with empathy was what he was famous for. Now he could contain himself no longer.
“Look, Charles. Something terrible is happening to me,” he blurted out. “I don’t know. I just—I’m falling apart.…” Jason’s steps faltered.
They were just at the bottom of the park, about to head back to Seventy-ninth Street down the broad walk along the river. Charles caught him under the arm. His somewhat vacant, smug expression was instantly wiped away. The intense, searching face that Jason used to know and hadn’t seen in many years reappeared.
It was the face of the young Charles who had come to work on the sixth floor of the Center one morning in their second year to find a beautiful, sixteen-year-old, acutely psychotic patient hanging by the neck on an exposed pipe in the ceiling. All her vital signs were gone, but Charles wouldn’t accept her death. He had never accepted the credo that patients like her couldn’t be treated with psychotherapy, either. He resuscitated her, and treated her for years after his training was completed. The girl recovered and never had another psychotic incident.
Charles caught sight of an unoccupied bench and headed for it with his arm around Jason’s shoulder.
“What’s going on?” he asked.
Jason sat on the bench. “It’s Emma.”
“Is she involved with someone else?” Charles frowned when Jason didn’t reply. “Oh, man, I’m sorry …”
Jason shook his head. “That’s not it.”
“Oh, you’re involved with someone else.” Charles cocked his head. “So, you had an accident. You fell. You can get through it.”
“No, no, Charles, it’s way beyond that. It’s something you could never believe.”
“You did a foursome. What? What could be so b
ad I couldn’t believe it?”
Jason paused. “Did you see Serpent’s Teeth?”
“No, what are they?” Charles looked confused.
“It’s a movie. Haven’t you seen the ads for it, the reviews?” Jason demanded irritably.
“No, what’s so important about it?”
“Emma’s in it,” Jason said.
“Oh, I see,” Charles replied. “Emma’s in a movie. That’s great.”
“You haven’t heard anything from anybody?” Jason demanded.
“No. I haven’t. What’s the big deal? What’s the matter with it?”
Jason took a deep breath. “It’s a porno film.”
“Jesus.” Charles’s mouth dropped open. “Emma in a porno film?”
“Well, it’s not a porno film. It’s an art film. But she—” Jason sniffed. “She plays the part of a young woman in therapy. With this guy who’s a creep. And there’s no sound in their sessions.”
“Jesus.” Charles shook his head as if he had water in his ears.
“It’s a really disturbing film. It makes therapy look … evil.”
“And there’s—sex in it?”
“Yeah. Emma fucks this hoodlum. She’s—really nude. And she really does it. Well, it looks like it. You don’t see penetration. We’ve seen penetration on the screen.”
They both pushed a little air out of their noses, remembering the sex clinic training, the films for doctors showing sex between all kinds of people—Very fat. Old. People with colostomies. Paraplegics. They had seen a number of films made to teach doctors and staff at hospitals that the desire for love and sex didn’t politely go away when people were old or ill, disfigured or disabled.
“Ahh.” Charles scratched his chin. “I’m stunned.”
“Yeah. Well, so was I.”
“She didn’t tell you about it?”
“No, she didn’t tell me. I don’t know what happened. I don’t understand how she could do it. I just don’t understand. If I could understand …” He shook his head again. “It’s a horrible thing to see your wife … I’m a doctor.”
“It’s upsetting.” Charles sat there with his mouth open. “But it’s—just a film. It’s not all bad. You can find your way together.” He murmured consoling words, hardly knowing what he was saying. He heard terrible, distressing things from his patients all the time, but personally he lived in a world where cheating a little on one’s spouse was about as bad as a person could get.
“But it is so bad. She got great reviews. This horrid film where this poor girl ends up getting herself tattooed—”
“She’s tattooed? Jesus,” Charles interrupted.
“That’s how it ends.”
“Jesus, is she really tattooed?”
“Of course not, it’s a movie.”
“Jason, this is amazing.”
“Yeah, well, it’s taken over our lives. She’s being pursued by these big-shot agents. She’s got movie offers.”
“Jesus,” Charles said a fifth time.
“She’s fucked her way into the big time, Charles, and I’m just—” Jason turned away.
“Afraid you’re going to lose her? Of course you are, but you know you love each other.”
“Oh, man, if she could do this, I lost her a long time ago.” Jason covered his face with his hands.
Charles put his arm around him again. “God, this is—I don’t know what to say.”
“And the worst thing is nothing will stop her. Not the letters. Not anything—” Jason stopped.
“What letters?”
“Ah, well, it’s not your problem. Forget it.”
“Come on, Jason, look at me. We’ve been through a lot together. What letters? Maybe I can help.”
“Not this time, old buddy.” Abruptly, Jason stood up. “Come on. We’ve left the girls alone together long enough.”
19
“They want us,” Ronnie said excitedly on the phone.
“Who does?” Emma asked. She had been in the shower when the phone rang.
“I don’t know. Jack does, and Albert. They want us. You.”
“Oh, right,” Emma said. Jack and Albert. Sure. She cocked her head. A flash of light was reflected off the mirror. “Jason?” she called.
“What?” Ronnie demanded. “Emma? Are you there?”
“Sorry. I thought there was—”
“Did you hear what I said? We got a callback on Wind,” Ronnie said.
“Yeah, I heard you, but it can’t be, Ronnie. I told you I was awful, really awful. And gorgeous, famous Bill North was awful, too. His breath stank. It was the worst audition I ever had.” Emma grimaced, thinking about it. “It was bad.”
“Well, Elinor said Jack said you were a delight.”
Jack? Ronnie was calling the producer, whom she had never met, Jack. And the director Albert? What a business.
“Jack was so delighted he never took the corned beef sandwich out of his mouth,” Emma said.
“Jack’s a great producer.” Ronnie bristled. “What’s the matter with you? I thought you’d be thrilled.”
“I’m thrilled,” Emma said. “What time do I have to be there?”
A minute later she dialed Jason’s number. His office was two walls away in what used to be a wing of the apartment. He had a separate entrance. He couldn’t get into the apartment from his office without going out into the hall. He had deliberately designed it that way.
He picked up. “Dr. Frank,” he said.
“Jason, were you just here?”
“What?”
“I think someone was here a minute ago. Was it you?” Emma demanded.
“Are you sure?”
“Yes, I’m sure.” She hesitated. “Well, no, not really. I just thought …” What did she think? That her own husband was trying to scare her? That was crazy.
“I’m with someone,” he said.
“Oh, sorry.” She hung up. That’s what they always said: I’m with someone. “Never need a shrink,” she muttered. “They’re always with someone.”
She felt like a fool for bothering him. She dried her hair, then went out to do the shopping. The old resentment, that he was always busy, always involved with someone else, gnawed at her, making her feel both hurt and lonely at the same time. She often wondered if other doctors’ wives, particularly the wives of psychiatrists, felt as isolated and cut off from their husbands as she did. Or if her loneliness had nothing to do with him and was a throwback from her childhood when help and reassurance were out of the question.
Jason came home as the hallway clock was chiming eight-fifteen.
“Come here, darling,” he said. He hugged her and took her hands. He examined them carefully, as if searching for disease. The backs of her hands were still young and smooth. Her fingers were slender and flawless. He turned them over and kissed the palms.
“You shouldn’t have hung up,” he murmured. “You were upset. I could have taken a minute.”
“What could I have said in a minute?” she asked.
“Whatever you wanted. I know these letters are getting you down. There was another one today, wasn’t there?”
“They’re not getting me down,” Emma said, dismissing the subject.
She picked up the script Ronnie had sent her for the next day’s audition.
“Well, you’re very tense for someone who says she’s not upset. Maybe you should take some medicine.” Jason looked at her intently. She didn’t put the script down.
“It’s not getting to me, Jason. I’m not going to fall apart because of a few weird letters. I’m not built that way.”
Jason got up and left the room.
“That’s right,” she muttered. “Walk away.”
He came back in a minute and handed her a drink.
“What’s in this?” she said suspiciously.
“Nice things, what do you think?” Jason looked hurt.
“I think you’re trying to scare me so I won’t be in any more films,” she said, getting ba
ck to his view of the letters that were now yet another issue between them.
“Why would I want to scare you? That doesn’t make any sense, Emma. Don’t you see it’s transference? You’re feeling guilty about the whole movie thing: the way you went about it, not telling me the whole story about what you were doing in it. And now you’re feeling guilty because you’re a big success.”
She didn’t take the drink he made for her, so he took a sip of it himself.
“My feelings about your career and these letters you’re getting are two separate things. I’m dealing with them in two different ways. Trust me on this. I’m the doctor,” Jason said.
“That’s a lie. You went crazy and slept in the other room,” she said.
“Look, I said I was sorry about that. You caught me by surprise. I had no idea you could hurt me that way.” He drank the rest of the drink and set the glass down.
“And now you’re writing me letters,” she said, angrily. “I know it’s you, Jason.”
“Why would I do that, Emma?” Jason looked shocked.
“Because if I got the part in Wind on the Water, I’d make a lot of money and be more famous than you. I don’t think you could take that.”
Jason shook his head, appalled. “That’s a pretty big indictment. Is that what you really think—that I’m petty and childish, that I would hurt you because you hurt me?”
Emma looked away.
“Is that what you really think?”
She couldn’t answer the question.
“Look, Emma, I trusted you; I loved you. I still love you. If you get the part, then you’ll have to decide if you want to take it. It’s up to you, but you have to face the fact that there’s more to being a film star than what I think about it. It’s a public thing. There are crazy people out there who don’t think it’s a character on the screen. They think it’s you.”
“Thank you, Doctor.” She looked back at the script.
“You have to be careful and think about what you’re doing.”
She was thinking about what she was doing, and she still thought it had to be him, writing those letters. No one else knew those things about her. She watched him go into the kitchen for another drink.
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