The Girls He Adored

by Jonathan Nasaw

  Mose, though—Mose would know how to shut off the power. He'd tell her, too. But unlike Lyssy, Max and the MTP did share memory—they might even have some sort of co-consciousness or copresence setup, in which case Max would know the moment Mose told her.

  Alicea was a possibility, if Irene could establish some sort of sisterhood connection. But even if Alicea agreed to help Irene, Max could easily seize consciousness from her.

  Christopher, though—what was it Christopher said yesterday? When he was in love, his personality was strong enough to threaten Max's control. That was why Max hadn't warned him about Miss Miller.

  When he was in love. In love. In love . . .

  Irene found herself in the bathroom again. Not sitting on the toilet this time, but standing in front of the sink, staring alternately at the box of Strawberry Blonds Forever on the stainless steel shelf, and her reflection in the mirror behind it.

  For the first time in years, Christopher had been in control as Maxwell fell asleep, and stayed in control long enough to enter REM sleep. In the beginning of his dream he was down at the swimming hole with Mary. Below the dark green surface of the water, she had slipped the top of her bathing suit down for him; her nipples were puckered and hard from the cold.

  By the time the dream ended, though, she wasn't Mary anymore— she had somehow turned into Irene. Which was fine with Christopher. He slipped from REM back into stage-two sleep with a peaceful smile on his face and an erection substantial enough to prevent him from turning onto his stomach for several more minutes.

  But it was Max who awakened in the body the next morning. As always, he recalled, indirectly, as if he'd seen it in a movie, everything that had happened while Christopher and Useless and the others had been in control. He understood immediately what was going on. Not only was Christopher gaining power and influence from the therapy, but the other alters seemed strengthened as well. Exactly the opposite of the results he'd hoped for—he vowed to put a stop to it.

  “Not . . . guh . . . happen,” he muttered aloud. “Wouldn't be prudent.” A pedestrian George Bush impression, not up to his usual standards.

  By ten o'clock, when the knock came at Irene's door, the fog had burned away—it was another gorgeous day in the southern Cascades.

  “Just a minute.” Irene checked her reflection in the mirror, primped up her slightly damp strawberry blond hair, and opened the door. She couldn't tell at first which alter she was dealing with, but whichever one it was, he was momentarily struck dumb. She prompted him: “Well, what do you think?”

  He whistled softly—he couldn't take his eyes off her. “I think my dreams just came true.”

  It's Christopher, she decided. Thank you, Jesus. “It's a little dark, but it'll probably lighten up as it dries.”

  “It's perfect.”

  “Thank you. By the way, I wanted to apologize for last night, for not letting you in to say good night. The truth is, I had the impression you might be going through some transference, and well, the real truth is, I was going through some countertransference myself.”

  “Now my dreams really are coming true.”

  “We can't act on it—surely you understand we can't act on it.”

  “Of course not.”

  She could see the hurt in his eyes. “At least not yet,” she added hastily. “We still have a lot more work to do.”

  “I understand,” he said sweetly. But although the voice was Christopher's, for just a moment there, Irene could have sworn she saw a flicker of Max's sardonic expression gazing back at her from behind those gold-flecked brown eyes.

  “Is there anything that's happened since our last session that you need to discuss?”

  It was slightly chillier in the forest this morning than it had been the two previous days. Maxwell wore a bulky brown-and-white Oaxacan sweater over his hula shirt and shorts. Irene wore a cranberry-colored cardigan from the closet over a short-sleeved blouse and a pair of white ducks.

  “Other than falling in love with my therapist?” He glanced over his shoulder, gave her that Christopher grin.

  Irene forced herself to smile back. “We can start there if you'd like—but I'd have to give you my standard speech on transference.”

  “Something that happened while I was in town, then.”

  “Yes?”

  “We must have had a spontaneous alter switch—I don't think anybody noticed. I found myself in the Old Umpqua Feed Barn.”

  “Where you originally met Mary.”

  “Right. But what I wanted to tell you—as far as I can remember, it was the first time I was back there since, I guess since she died, that I didn't feel an overwhelming sense of guilt.”

  “What did you feel?”

  “Sadness. But a peaceful sadness—like I'm finally starting to put all that behind me.”

  “Sounds like progress. Anything else?”

  “Not off the top of my head.”

  “All right then, let's move on. Yesterday, before you started telling me about Mary, you said something I need to ask you about.”

  “What's that?”

  “You said something about Mary being the first one.”

  “No, I didn't.”

  “I distinctly remember—”

  “Max said that.”

  “I see. What do you think he meant by it?”

  “I'll tell you later. First I have a present for you.” From the deep pocket of his sweater he removed a small packet: gilt wrapping paper folded into a rectangle and secured with transparent tape. “Happy anniversary.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Don't tell me you don't remember?” Genuine disappointment, even a hint of anger.

  Desperately, Irene searched her memory. Finally it came to her. “It's our one-week anniversary. We met one week ago today.”

  “I knew you couldn't have forgotten.” He handed it to her. “Go ahead, open it. Just a little something I picked up in town.”

  She tore open the paper; a pair of emerald drop earrings spilled out onto her palm. They were exquisite—and if Irene knew her jewelry, frightfully expensive. She realized immediately that he hadn't bought them yesterday, or they'd have been in a plush box. She tried to think how to react.

  In the normal course of therapy, Irene would have had to: 1) inform him that an expensive gift was inappropriate at this point in their relationship and that she couldn't accept it; 2) gently call him on his lie about having just bought it, and try to find out why he'd felt it was necessary to lie; and 3) point out that he'd changed the subject from Max's comment about Mary being the first one.

  But this wasn't about therapy—it was about surviving. So she thanked him as effusively as she could, then worked the questionmarkshaped gold wires into her own earlobes, her own flesh, despite a suspicion so strong it bordered on telepathy that Maxwell had stripped them from the previous owner's body after raping, then murdering her.

  71

  THE YELLOW BRICKS FOR the Umpqua County Courthouse had been fired in the first brickyard in the state of Oregon, according to the plaque on the wall outside the frosted-glass door of the Umpqua County Probation Department—a plaque Pender had become all too familiar with by the time he wangled Cazimir Buckley's current address out of Penelope Frye, the lone and harried receptionist/secretary/clerk who seemed to be holding down the fort while everybody else in the department was either off on vacation or out sick.

  The problem, Miss Frye explained, was that only Mr. Harris, Buckley's case officer, could authorize her to give out personal information on the parolee. Pender tinned her, reasoned with her, begged her, and badgered her until she finally agreed to make a few phone calls—but only if he in turn agreed to wait outside: she was getting a stiff neck looking up at him.

  So he paced the hall and read the plaque until Miss Frye opened the door to inform him that according to Mrs. Harris, Mr. Harris was at that moment somewhere in the middle of Crater Lake with a fishing rod in one hand and his first cold Bud of the morning in the ot
her.

  Another round of reasoning, begging, and badgering; another few phone calls; another wait in the hall until Miss Frye finally reached one of the department higher-ups. But eventually all the pacing and badgering paid off: Pender left the courthouse with an address—304 Britt Street, in Umpqua—and the distinct impression that if Penelope Frye had been in charge of security at the Department of Energy, the Chinese would never have made off with any of our nuclear secrets.

  * * *

  Lovely morning—there'd been no fog in the valley. The sky was clear, the air was cool, the surrounding mountains picturepostcard perfect above the quaint old town. Pender walked the thirteen blocks to Britt Street—the brand-new boots had his dogs howling by the time he reached the handsome blue Victorian.

  He double-checked the address in his notebook: either 304 had been divided into apartments or converted to a halfway house, or else Caz Buckley was one wealthy parolee. Remembering Buckley's predilection for aggravated assault, Pender unsnapped the flap of his shoulder holster as he started up the steps. Before he could ring the bell, the door was opened by an attractive black woman in a white uniform, her graying hair pulled back into a severe bun under a peaked nurse's cap.

  “Yes?”

  “I'm here to see Caz Buckley.”

  “Well, thank the good Lord,” said the nurse, her face softening as she reached out to take Pender's hand between both of hers. “Bless your heart, you're the first visitor he's had since he's been here. Come in, please.”

  Encouraged but puzzled, Pender forgot to duck as he went through the doorway, and nearly knocked his hat off. He reached up to catch it, and was thankful for Alvin Ralphs' knowing tailoring— his old jacket would have revealed his shoulder hoster for sure.

  Once he was inside, a glance at the entrance hall cleared everything up. On a side table was a display stand with brochures—Your Hospice and You; Patient's Bill of Rights; You Are Not Alone—and on the wall was a bulletin board listing various support groups and grief workshops.

  Pender weighed his options briefly, and decided that when the law enforcement gods drop a gift like this into your lap, it would be bad luck to throw it back. “I'm glad I'm still in time. How long does he have?”

  The nurse shrugged, her usual response to that particular question. “Why don't you wait in there?” she told Pender, indicating the parlor to his left. “I'll see if he's still awake.”

  “I'd rather surprise him,” said Pender. “I can't wait to catch the look on old Caz's face when he sees me.”

  “I really shouldn't, Mr . . . ?”

  “Pender. Look, I give you my word of honor, if he's asleep, I'll tiptoe right on out.” Then he looked down at his boots. “Well, maybe not tiptoe—I just bought these yesterday and they're not broke in yet.”

  The confidence had two purposes. First, it was a confidence, and confidences always invite trust. Second, it was a good way to get the woman's sympathy. Like cops, nurses knew all about sore feet.

  “Well, I suppose it would be all right, if you promise not to wake him. . . .”

  “Word of honor. If he's asleep, I'll sit quietly by the bed.”

  “It's room 302. I'll take you back to the elevator.”

  Pender ducked through the low doorway and shut the door softly behind him. The room was tiny, with a downward-slanting roof. According to the printout, Buckley was a hundred-andeightypound African American, but the skin color of the man in the bed was a sickly yellowish gray, and he couldn't have weighed much over a hundred pounds.

  His eyes were closed, his breathing shallow. He appeared to be asleep, but Pender never for a moment considered keeping his promise to the nurse. There was a wooden chair next to the bed; Pender sat down with his hat in his lap, leaned over, and whispered into the dying man's slightly cauliflowered ear.

  “Cazimir Buckley, do you believe in an afterlife?”

  “Who wants to know?” whispered Buckley, without opening his eyes.

  “Pender, FBI.”

  With his left hand, the one that wasn't hooked up to the IV, Buckley reached for the buzzer to summon the nurse. Pender grabbed his wrist.

  “I need some information about somebody you might have done time with in Juvie.”

  “Fuck you,” said Buckley, with an effort.

  “You're dying, Caz. You're gonna need all the good time you can get, when you're called to the Lord.”

  Buckley didn't have another fuck you in him. He raised the middle finger of his right hand weakly instead.

  “At the moment, he's averaging two murders a day.”

  Finger.

  “Black women.” One black woman, anyway.

  But the finger stayed up. So much for appealing to the man's sense of religion, humanity, or racial identity. On to self-interest, which was where Pender would have started with any con but a dying one.

  “Listen up, Caz. Here comes the deal, and it's only coming by once. This is a sweet setup you have here. I don't know how you wangled it, but it's a helluva nice place to die. Only maybe you don't deserve a nice place to die. I've already talked to Mr. Harris, and if I don't get full cooperation from you, starting with my very next question, I can have your parole revoked by tomorrow afternoon.”

  The upraised finger wavered. Buckley's nostrils flared from the effort of breathing. Pender went on: “It's your choice, Caz. You get to decide whether you want to die here or in the hospital wing of the state penitentiary. Now, do you understand me?”

  Slowly the gaunt gray man opened his eyes; the whites were yellow as egg yolks. “He killin' black women, you said?”

  “The last one was named Aletha Winkle. I found her body. He fractured her skull, raped her repeatedly while she was dying, then hacked her to pieces with a butcher knife.”

  “You got a pitcher of him?”

  Pender showed him Casey's mug shot.

  “I dunno. Juvie, you said? Thass goin way back, man.”

  “He said you taught him some trick, some martial arts trick for getting the jump on somebody?”

  Buckley looked at the picture again. He started to smile, then a spasm of pain wracked him.

  “Leggo my hand,” he said. Pender unpinned the call button from the sheet and moved it out of reach, but that wasn't what Buckley was going for. He found the handset that controlled the morphine infuser and jabbed the button with his thumb.

  Pender waited a full minute. He could afford to be generous. He now had an even surer way of guaranteeing Buckley's cooperation: he could take the morphine button away from him. Ends and means. “Feeling better now?”

  “Hurt less. Shit don' get me high no more.”

  “Sorry to hear that. You have a name to give me?”

  “Might have.”

  “Well then, I might let you have that magic button back next time you need it. Now who are we talking about?”

  “Max. We talkin' 'bout little Max. And you know what's really fucked up?”

  “What?”

  “I made up all that shit about countin' backwards and all. Flat made it up.”

  72

  IRENE, THOUGH SHE WAS still flirting, letting Christopher rattle on about how lovely she was, how her hair set off the earrings, could feel herself starting to lose her nerve. How tempting it seemed, how easy it would be, to sit here and let him talk himself out. Then a nice lunch, maybe a swim, and another travesty of a session. A nice dinner. Maybe a video—there was quite a collection in the parlor. Her room was comfortable enough. And if he insisted on sex, as long as he remained Christopher, it wouldn't be so bad. He was gentle—he even smelled good. It wouldn't be giving up, she told herself—she'd just be staying alive, waiting to be rescued.

  But for how long? This was a highly unstable multiple, living in an unstable relationship with . . . Irene made a differential diagnosis of Miss Miller on the fly: a pedophiliac with either narcissistic, avoidant, or dependent personality disorders, or all of the above, exacerbated by post-traumatic stress disorder to the level of psych
osis.

  So why are you still futzing around? she asked herself. Futzing— that was one of Barbara's expressions. And it was the thought of Barbara—please Jesus let her be alive—that gave Irene the strength to push on.

  “What do you say we get back to work here, Christopher? I think the best way I can express my appreciation for these lovely earrings is by moving ahead with your therapy.”

  “Okay by me.”

  “Yesterday you said something I found interesting. You said that when you were in love with Mary, you were able to resist Max's control.”

  “Right.”

  “But on Sunday you told me that what was good for Max was good for the system. Is that something you really believe?”

  “No, but he does.” Suddenly Maxwell sat up, swung his legs over the side of the chaise, took the pen from Irene, and set it down on the arm of her chair, then pressed her hand between his two hands. “Tell me that you love me, Irene—tell me quick if you want to keep talking to me.”

  Was it a trick? Was it even Christopher? Irene felt an immense weariness coming over her, like someone lost in a snowstorm, who only wants to sleep, yet knows that sleep is death. The thought of saying those three little words to this man was equally repellent to her both as a therapist and as a woman. But if this was Christopher, she had to do everything in her power to help him maintain dominance over the system, over Max.

  “I love you.” Her voice rang strangely in her ears.

  “Kiss me like you mean it.”

  In for a penny, in for a pound. She allowed him to press his lips lightly to hers.

  “Thank you,” he said. “Now I'm going to tell you a story. But I need you to hold my hand the whole time, and look into my eyes.”

  “All right.”

  “When I was fourteen I started keeping a diary. Every day that I was in control of the body, I'd make an entry. When Miss Miller and I were going good, it'd have three, four daily entries in a row. When we were fighting, there might be one a week. Then one night I discovered I had run out of pages—filled the diary up. I was looking around my room for something else to write in, and in the back of the closet I found an old composition book—you know, the kind with the black-and-white marbled cardboard covers?