The Girls He Adored

by Jonathan Nasaw

  “Of course.”

  “Well, I'll be.” Upon learning that Dr. Cogan had been abducted, the FBI had broken into her office, but there was no sign of the notes she'd promised to type up for them. Case Agent Pastor had confiscated her PC and was having an FBI computer security expert sent down from San Jose to break her password, but it would take at least another day. Once again, Pender was one jump ahead of the investigative curve.

  “Where would she keep the tapes?” he asked Barbara.

  “Her office, I suppose. I know where she keeps the spare key—I could take you over first thing tomorrow morning.”

  “Tomorrow morning, hell,” said Pender, starting to throw back the covers, then remembering that he was in his underwear. “Didn't anybody ever tell you, the FBI never sleeps?”

  “I sleep,” replied Barbara.

  “Irene won't,” said Pender—that clinched the deal.

  37

  IN ORDER TO HELP THE system protect itself, Max, with Ish's help, had years earlier put in place what might be termed an emergency response reflex. If any alter but Max was ever asked his or her name, a switch would be executed instantaneously; only Max would be allowed to respond to such a question.

  Unfortunately, Max had never anticipated a contingency in which the question was asked while another alter was driving a car at high speed along a fairly crowded highway. Though the driver's eyes were off the road for only a few seconds, the van veered sharply to the left again—apparently old Bill didn't believe in spending a lot of money on alignments. Then Max, seizing control, overcompensated, jerking the wheel to the right; the van lurched so sharply that it rocked briefly on two wheels.

  Irene screamed and closed her eyes. When she opened them again, the van was back in the center lane, horns were blaring, and her captor had drawn the snub-nosed revolver from his waist for the first time since he'd pulled it on the old man.

  “Irene, Irene, Irene, what have I ever done to make you treat me with such disrespect?”

  The voice was a husky whisper, the accent Italian or Spanish. A second wave of fear, colder, deeper, and somehow even more threatening than the pure physical terror of the near wreck, all but swamped Irene's reason. Was this the homicidal alter she had dreaded meeting? With her adrenaline pumping and a brassy taste in the back of her throat, Irene struggled for control over her runaway emotions. She knew her survival depended on her mind, on her training. He's mentally ill, she told herself, and you're a psychiatrist. Use it, for God's sake: work it.

  And when she had mastered her terror, or at least subdued it temporarily, the answer came to her—this wasn't an alter at all, but another of his impressions. “The Godfather, right?” she asked shakily.

  Max nodded, and slipped the gun back into the waistband of the jeans. “I'd better explain before we end up running off the fucking road. Irene, when I first showed up on the scene, Ulysses Christopher Maxwell Jr. was an unholy mess. Chaos—absolute chaos. Alters popping up randomly at all the wrong moments, rarely communicating with each other. You said Lyssy told you about the first time he was molested. Hell, he doesn't even know about the first time—the abuse had been going on for years by then. And frankly, what happened that night was a walk in the park compared to the earlier abuse—by the time he was five, he'd split off half a dozen alters to deal with it.

  “And Ulysses, the so-called host, was a joke—Useless, I call him. Completely powerless—he didn't even know he was part of a multiple. This system was heading straight for the funny farm, Irene— if it even survived long enough.

  “Enter Max. I restored order, established communications, laid down a few simple rules of conduct, one of which is that I'm the only alter allowed to answer questions about our identity. So from now on, no more asking for names, no more peeping around until we're in a more or less formal therapeutic setting.”

  Therapeutic setting, thought Irene. So she'd been right when she told Barbara that what he wanted was help. But her relief at having been right on that score was tempered by a troubling thought: he'd told her his name. Which meant he had no intention of ever letting her go.

  She could feel that cold wave of terror threatening to swamp her again. Of course he had no intention of letting her go—she told herself that on some level she'd known that all along. But it still didn't equal a death sentence. Escape, rescue—those were very real possibilities. As long as she managed to remain alive. By using her mind. Her training. Work it, she reminded herself. Listen.

  “Now, once we start our therapy, I have no objection to your speaking to whomever you please,” Max was saying. “As long as you don't try to take advantage of the situation, that is. Keep in mind—I'll be there, I'll be listening, I'll know everything any of them tells you, and hear everything you tell any of them.”

  Not any, thought Irene, remembering Max's confusion after the hypnotherapy session. Not Lyssy.

  “And if you try to persuade any of them to do anything against the system's best interest, I will terminate the therapy with extreme prejudice. Are you familiar with that term?”

  “Not exactly.”

  “I got it out of Apocalypse Now. It's a euphemism. A termination with extreme prejudice is invariably fatal.”

  “I'll keep that in mind,” said Irene. “But may I speak frankly?”

  “Always.”

  “If in your opinion you have the system operating so smoothly, why are you seeking therapy?”

  He looked over at her sharply, then turned back to the road unspooling ahead of them. Traffic had begun to clear. They were cruising at fifty miles an hour, the van's maximum speed. That was why he'd stayed on 101 instead of cutting over to the interstate: doing fifty on Route 5 could get you pulled over for obstructing traffic.

  “You're not being sarcastic by any chance, are you Irene?”

  “No—I think it's a legitimate question.”

  “Then I'll give you a legitimate answer. It's no goddamn picnic being a multiple. You're always one slip away from humiliation. Hard to hold down a job. And as for a relationship, forget it— who'd want a relationship with a whole theatrical troupe? You'd never know whom you're making love to.”

  Irene decided not to point out that the DID literature was rife with examples of multiples' spouses (usually male spouses of female multiples) who actively subverted therapy because being married to a multiple was like having your own imaginary harem.

  “I'm still a little confused,” she told him instead. “You said you've restored order to the system. Why not just stay in control yourself?”

  “I wish to hell I could. But it doesn't work like that. The only way I can stay in control is by letting the others all have their turns. If I don't, they're apt to force their way out. Sometimes they do anyway—that's how you met Useless the other day.”

  Irene thought back to what the hapless host alter had said—that Max wouldn't allow any therapy. Now she was beginning to understand. “So what you're telling me is that you want to go into therapy not to achieve integration, but to maintain more effective control over the other alters. I don't know how much progress we can make under those ground rules.”

  “A little fine-tuning, for a more efficiently functioning system? That's just textbook fusion, Irene—a textbook therapeutic resolution. I think it's doable, and I think it's worth a shot. How about you?”

  Irene knew better than to ask him what her alternatives were. Suppressing a shudder, she turned her thoughts to the work ahead of her. Fusion was difficult enough to achieve in the best of circumstances—and time-consuming: three years at a minimum. But who could say for sure? This multiple was different from any of the others she'd treated—perhaps with a powerful alter like Max in charge, instead of the usual ineffective host, the possibility of an early resolution might not be all that far-fetched.

  In any event, it would surely beat termination with extreme prejudice. So: start therapy, keep Max happy, keep your eyes open for any crack or weakness in the system that might be exploitable�
��and most important, stay alive.

  “I suppose I'm game if you are,” she told him. Then she turned to her left, reached across the space separating them, and gently pushed that unruly comma of hair, blond now, back from his forehead, and tucked it under his watchcap for him.

  38

  ED PENDER HAD TOSSED his share of houses in his time, and one of the conclusions he'd come to was that it was often easier to find something that had been deliberately hidden than something that hadn't. Cops, like burglars, knew all the hiding places—mattresses and drawer bottoms, freezers and toilet tanks, wall safes and crawl spaces.

  But Irene Cogan hadn't been trying to conceal her Dictaphone, which meant it might be anywhere. After a thorough search first of her office, then her living room, kitchen, bathroom, and bedroom, Pender had learned almost as much about Dr. Cogan as he would have from meeting her face to face—certainly more than she would have volunteered.

  He knew her late husband had been named Frank, that he'd been a builder and a golfer and an amateur painter. He knew that either she and Frank hadn't been able to have children or didn't want any—although there was obviously no shortage of money, they'd purchased a small home with only one bedroom.

  He saw that she was neat, but not a fastidious housekeeper, that she was a conservative dresser who preferred department stores to couturiers. He knew she was slender, small in the top and long in the legs, and that she had her hair dyed at the hairdressers but touched it up occasionally with L'Oreal. Her scent was Rain, her favorite color was blue, and she was probably proud of those long legs—she had more dresses than pantsuits, more skirts and shorts than slacks, and although she wore plain white cotton panties from Olga, she wasn't averse to shelling out the big bucks for high-end pantyhose and stockings, and understood the value of high heels.

  From the journals and books on psychology in every room of the house, and the dearth of fiction in the bookshelves, videos in the TV stand, or publications other than professional in the bathroom, he gathered she was a workaholic. He also knew that she smoked Benson and Hedges, had recently taken up jogging, subsisted largely on salads, and probably didn't care for chocolate.

  Pender could also make some informed assumptions as to Dr. Cogan's sexual habits. There were no signs that she'd entertained an overnight visitor in the recent past, much less that she was involved in a long-term relationship. Only one toothbrush in the bathroom, and one dainty Silk Effects razor by the bathtub. No man had left his pajamas folded in one of her drawers or hanging in her closet—there was no indication, in fact, that anyone but herself had been in that bedroom in a long, long time. No snazzy lingerie in her underwear drawer—just those Olga panties and a utilitarian-looking beige garterbelt for her beloved stockings— while the sexy satin nightgown in her closet had gone unworn for so long that there were deep-scored hanger marks pressed into the shoulders.

  Most telling of all, there was no diaphragm in the bathroom, nor spermicidal jelly, contraceptive foam, or birth control pills, and no condoms, oils, or unguents in the drawer of the bedside table— there wasn't even a vibrator in evidence. All of which suggested strongly to Special Agent Pender that Dr. Irene Cogan had not (to put it crudely) been getting any lately.

  Oh, and one other thing. He knew from the wedding picture of the Cogans on the mantel over the small fireplace in the living room that before she started coloring her hair, Dr. Irene Cogan had been a strawberry blond. He only prayed that Casey didn't know it.

  But despite all that he had learned about Dr. Cogan, Pender still had no idea where the hell she'd stashed her Dictaphone, and after two hours of searching, his head was absolutely killing him.

  Might as well call it a night, he told himself, entering the upstairs bathroom for the second time that evening. This time he wasn't looking for anything except relief for his bladder. When he bent forward (carefully, on account of his pounding head) to raise the toilet seat, he noticed that the decorative guest towel hanging from the rack on the wall behind the toilet had been pulled down until it brushed the top of the toilet tank. The front of the top of the tank—it wasn't hanging parallel to the wall.

  And now he knew—he knew almost before he flipped the towel up. Thirty years an investigator, a re-creator of events, Pender tended to think first in terms of reverse process. Dictaphone on toilet, hidden by towel. Not hidden—shielded. From what? To protect it from getting wet—it's in a bathroom.

  But why a bathroom? Of course: Dr. Cogan was a workaholic. Pender already knew she worked while eating. How about while bathing? You bet. So she put her expensive Dictaphone on the toilet seat, where she could reach it, but where there was no danger of it falling into the tub.

  Once he had Dr. Cogan in the bath listening to the Dictaphone resting on the toilet seat, Pender worked forward again. Splish, splash, she steps out of the bath. Wraps a towel around her—not the guest towel—and maybe another to make a turban for her hair. But she needs to sit down, dry her toes or whatever. Moves the Dictaphone to the top of the toilet tank. Pulls the towel on the rack down to cover the apparatus so it won't get wet when she unwraps her turban.

  All this Pender saw in his mind's eye within seconds of lifting the decoratively hemmed bottom of the towel to reveal a pearlgray, state-of-the-art Dictaphone the size of a paperback novel, with one tiny tape cassette beside it and another still inside. At the same time, though, he understood full well that for all his investigative prowess, he would never have discovered it if he hadn't needed to take a piss.

  It's better to be lucky than smart, Ed Pender reminded himself, not for the first time in his long career.

  39

  FLASHING LIGHTS IN THE passenger-side mirror.

  Please, I want to live, thought Irene. Maxwell pulled the van over to the side of the highway, steering with his right hand while reaching across his body to draw Terry Jervis's snub-nosed offduty .38 from the waistband of Bill's jeans with his left.

  “What's going to happen?” Irene asked him.

  His eyes were fixed on the rearview mirror as he lowered the revolver out of sight between the edge of the seat and the door. He knew what he had to do—he also knew it would be better for his relationship with Irene if he pretended that one of the other alters had done it. Luckily, he could imitate them all.

  First, though, he had to feign a switch. “I don't . . . I don't know,” he stammered, as if he were in the process of stressing out, then closed his eyes and blinked them violently several times before continuing in Kinch's rough, reluctant voice. “The fuck do I know? He probably calls in the plates first. They're looking for this van, he stays in his unit, calls over the loudspeaker for us to put our hands up, keep them in view.

  “That happens, I either hold the gun to your head, see how much leverage you buy me as a hostage, or I put a few rounds through his windshield and run for it.”

  “And if he only wants to give you a ticket or something?”

  “He asks me for my license, I have to kill him. Don't make me have to kill you, too—I don't want Max to have to start all over with another therapist.”

  For the next few seconds the wheels of Irene's mind spun ineffectually. If the highway patrolman got out of his car, this new alter would kill him. If the cop didn't get out of his car, the alter would kill her. She couldn't pray for the latter and wouldn't pray for the former. But when she heard the door of the cruiser opening, her first reaction was pure relief, followed quickly by shame and a sense of impending horror. She closed her eyes.

  Footsteps on gravel, then Maxwell's voice—his new voice: “What's the problem, officer?”

  “Did you know you have a taillight out?”

  He sounded like a young one. Irene kept her eyes shut tight— she didn't want to see his face.

  “No, I didn't. I'll get it fixed at the next town, I—”

  “Can I see your license and registration, please?”

  “Got 'em right here.”

  The pistol cracked three times. The noise was un
bearable in the confines of the van. Irene covered her ears. Maxwell opened his door, stepped out. Another shot. Irene buried her face in her hands and began sobbing.

  “Oh, knock it the fuck off.” Maxwell slammed the door and peeled out. He steered the van across the grassy, depressed median strip, executing a wide U-turn; they roared south on 101, past the orphaned highway patrol car with its lightbar flashing and its radio squawking. The left sleeve of Max's blue flannel shirt was splattered by blowback—blood and soggy, spongy beige brain tissue from the point-blank coup de grâce.

  He switched the pistol to his right hand, leaned toward her, and shoved the end of the short barrel against her neck; the steel was still hot. “Calm down or I'll blow your head off, right here, right now.”

  “Okay,” she managed. “Okay, okay. . . .”

  Okay okay okay. . . . Pounding the side of her fists against her thigh to the rhythm. Okay okay okay. . . .

  By the time she stopped, her thighs were sore, but the panic attack was over, replaced by an exquisite spiritual and emotional numbness. Irene sat up, looked around—they were off the highway, driving east up a steep mountain road. “I'm okay,” she told him.

  “So I heard.” He was hunched forward, concentrating on the road.

  “Do you know where you're going?”

  “I think so. If not, I'll find somebody who does.”

  “And kill them?”

  “When I no longer need them.”

  “Are you going to kill me when you no longer need me?”

  Max gave her his best Kinch glare—ordinarily, when a woman saw it, it was her last sight on earth.

  “Frankly, lady, I don't need you now.”

  Max had bigger problems to attend to than a hysterical woman— though he had expected better from a psychiatrist. He knew it wouldn't take long for the CHP to realize they'd lost one of their officers. He needed another vehicle, quickly—he figured he had no more than fifteen minutes to get off the highway, then find a way north without running into any of the roadblocks the CHP would be throwing up on 101.