by Polly Iyer
“Yes, I do. I’ll tell her. Thanks for your time. I’ll ask Ms. Racine to drop by and see you.”
“Excellent.”
But not in my lifetime.
* * * * *
After swearing he wouldn’t tell Diana about his visit to the mission, let alone Slater’s disappointment she wasn’t with him, when he got to her house he told her anyway. He could have written her response beforehand. She never disappointed.
“I want to go.”
“No way. I didn’t tell you that to encourage a visit. I’m only reporting what happened.”
“I know, but maybe I can get something out of him.”
“That’s what I’m afraid of.” Damn right, that’s what I’m afraid of.
Diana arched one brow. “You’re not jealous, are you?”
Lucier turned away, unwilling to look her in the eye. He could usually hide his feelings, but not where she was concerned. “Don’t be ridiculous.”
“Really.”
It wasn’t a question.
“I heard the panic in your voice when we were in his office,” she said. “You couldn’t wait to get me out of there.”
He turned to face her. “You’re right. The man’s probably a Satanist, a baby kidnapper, and a serious sex addict, considering all those beautiful young girls who furnish a constant supply of infant nourishment. Who knows? Maybe he keeps them pregnant. You saw the look on Brigid’s face. She worships him. Tell me that didn’t enter your mind.”
Diana let out a long breath. “I thought of it. Slater is a handsome, sexy man who’d have no trouble enticing young women to be his sex slave.”
Lucier didn’t like Diana’s description, because he couldn’t be objective where Slater was concerned. He was allowing personal feelings to interfere with a case. It was wrong and unprofessional.
“I remember the way Brigid looked at him,” Diana continued. “And guess what it says about Nona in the mythology book. She’s the goddess of pregnancy.”
Lucier slapped the sofa. “What did I tell you?”
“Okay, so you might be right.”
“Those two women are long gone. I told Ralph Stallings about my meeting with Slater. The feds questioned him too, but they came up as empty as I did.”
“Let me go, Ernie. Slater’s curious about me. I think he’s afraid I might read him, but on the other hand, he’s willing to tempt fate. He can’t help himself.”
“I won’t allow it.” The minute the words came out of his mouth, he knew they were a mistake.
“You can’t stop me.”
“Could I ever? Once you’ve made up your mind, you’ll do what you damn well please. I recall you going off to meet a man who was hell bent on killing you.”
“I knew you’d bring that up.” She sighed heavily. “This is different. This is…intellectual.”
Lucier didn’t like that response either. “Fine, go. But I’ll be nearby. In case.”
“I wouldn’t have it any other way,” she said.
He hoped she couldn’t decipher what he said under his breath.
* * * * *
Diana debated whether to drop into the mission or to call first. She decided to play it straight and phone. Slater claimed he was delighted to hear from her and asked if two that afternoon suited. She said it did.
She arrived at exactly the appointed hour, and one of the women cleaning up after lunch ushered her into Slater’s office.
“Thanks for seeing me, Mr. Slater.”
“It was I who asked to see you, Ms. Racine. I’m surprised the lieutenant told you.” He still didn’t offer his hand, nor did he take hers when she held it out.
Diana stared at her empty hand and grinned. “You still refuse to touch me. Why?”
“I find your gift fascinating but not enough to let you glean anything from my touch. You may be able to anyway, but I’d rather not make it easy.”
“Are you afraid I might see what you’re hiding?”
“Of course. We all hide things, don’t we?”
His honesty always caught her off guard. “Oh, not me. My life’s been an open book for twenty-five years. Everyone knows my story.”
“I researched you before you came. I’d give anything to have your talents. Not for entertainment but for the insight to help people.”
Diana made a circle of his office, stopping in front of the bookcase. “Is that what you’re all about, Mr. Slater? Helping people?”
“Not all. I hope there’s more to me than that.”
She ran her finger across the book bindings, scanning the titles. “I’m sure there is.” Turning, she said, “You’re interested in the metaphysical, the abstract, and the unexplainable. A man searching to find his way in life.” She flicked a finger at a familiar book, one she’d read long ago. “You have a particular attraction to Jung.”
Slater stood by his desk, clearly watching her every move. “Yes, he’s my favorite.”
“Mine too,” she said.
“Really. His interests were very eclectic. Besides philosophy, he was into mythology and religion. Mystical stuff as well. Alchemy and Kabala.”
“I came across his interest in mythology during my own studies.”
“A fascinating man.” Slater rubbed his chin. “He dreamt about the dead and interpreted it as representing the unconscious. Not the personal unconscious that defined Freud, but a new ‘collective unconscious.’”
“The kind of knowledge we’re all born with without being directly aware of it. The reservoir of our experiences,” she added.
He pulled out a chair for her, but she remained standing. He edged around the desk and sat. “When you have a vision, how do you feel? Do you think it’s part of your collective unconscious?”
“I don’t know. I don’t intellectualize my gift. That part is out of my control.”
“Hmm.” He trained an almost hypnotic stare on her. “Intriguing. I can only imagine what that’s like.”
Diana forced a break from his visual intensity by momentarily focusing on the camera light. “It can be very scary and invasive to both me and my sitter.” She brushed her hand down the spine of the Jung book, feeling nothing but the heat of Slater’s gaze. Nothing from the book. Nothing from the room. His voice broke her concentration.
“Sitter―that’s the person you’re reading?”
“Yes. Sometimes I see and feel things I don’t want to, like in the house on Parkside Avenue.”
A smile curled Slater’s lips. “Is that the reason you came here? To connect me to whatever went on there?”
Slater read her perfectly, but mentioning the house was a dead giveaway. No point in stopping now. “Those two women breastfed the babies there. Stolen babies, Mr. Slater.”
“Both girls came here pregnant: Brigid first. She’s the older. Her baby was stillborn. Nona came after. She gave up her baby for adoption. The girls are sisters. Their father was the father of both those babies.”
Diana gasped.
“Frightening, isn’t it,” Slater said. “That those girls should suffer the sins of their parents. I say parents because apparently their mother knew and did nothing to stop her husband’s abuse.” He drew a deep breath, hissed it out. “After they had their babies, they were never pregnant again.” He kept his gaze riveted on Diana. “I’m not the most attentive man, but I’m sure I would have noticed that.”
The thought going through Diana’s head was something she’d rather not think, but she brought it up anyway. “Because a woman loses a baby or gives one up for adoption doesn’t preclude her nursing after. That’s what wet nurses do.”
“Are you implying those girls nursed stolen babies from the end of their pregnancies to the present?”
“It’s a possibility,” she answered.
“That’s preposterous.”
“Unless you’re holding back to protect them.”
Slater frowned. “Why would I lie?”
“To protect yourself.”
His chair squeaked
on its hinges as he leaned back. He steepled his fingers under his chin. “For what reason? Do you think I impregnated them?”
Now it was her turn to stare him down. “The thought entered my mind.”
Slater’s skin paled, and he didn’t flinch except for a small twitch in his cheek. “Would that I could.”
The response stopped her. “What does that mean?”
“I don’t have a penis, Ms. Racine.”
Chapter Fourteen
The Descent into Hell
Diana gasped for the second time in as many minutes. Shocked and confused, words failed her. No psychic revelation prepared her for this. She slunk down in the chair, aware of Slater watching her reaction.
“I was twenty-one,” he said.” One of the rarest forms of cancer, and even rarer in one so young. Almost unheard of, in fact. It started with a small lesion at the base of my penis when I was in divinity school. I wasn’t a virgin. Not that I was promiscuous, but I’d discovered sex and liked it―a lot. I assumed I’d contracted herpes and bought some over-the-counter cream, but it didn’t clear up.”
He stopped and gazed across the room, then back at Diana. She felt the heat on her face, saw the pain on his.
“Finally, I went to a family practitioner. He prescribed a pill and more cream, but the sore still didn’t clear up; in fact, it got worse. I went back to the doctor and he prescribed a more potent pill. By the time I went to a urologist, the cancer had spread to the lymph nodes in the groin. I won’t bore you with the chemical torture other than to say nothing worked. My penis had to be excised or I would have died. Surgery was the only way to save my life, and against the odds, I’m still alive. Ironic, because I spent the next ten years trying different ways to kill myself. It would have been a lot easier and less painful had I let nature take its course.” Slater’s voice came out flat, his statement a matter-of-fact explanation of a condition he’d long since suffered and accepted.
Flashes of heat pulsed through Diana’s body, her heart thrummed. When she realized she sat as rigid as a statue, she made a point of relaxing. But the gesture must have seemed as phony to Slater as it felt to her. His story shook her, and he knew it.
“I’m…I’m so sorry. I don’t know what to say.”
“That’s why I didn’t want to touch you. I was afraid you’d sense something.”
She didn’t think she was capable of such a vision, of so shocking a revelation. “So, the name Osiris was a literal interpretation. Cut into little pieces and put back together, except for the phallus.”
“Exactly. I thought you might figure it out.”
“Who could possibly connect mythology with reality and come to that conclusion? Those ten years you spoke of, where were you?”
“Reconstructive surgery, not to create a penis as Isis succeeded in doing, although I wear a prosthesis to create the illusion, but surgery that allows me to urinate. Then more chemo, radiation, drugs, alcohol, and three suicide attempts. I’ve been to hell and back, Ms. Racine. I’m sure there are worse things than losing your manhood, but to be honest, after what I’ve been through, I can’t think of one. And don’t say that one’s manhood isn’t all between his legs. Try telling that to a woman who thinks she loves you, until you tell her you’re missing a crucial part of the love-making process.”
Diana nodded, then wondered how she would feel if she learned that about the man she loved. She shook off the thought. “So you lost faith in God.”
“No benevolent god could allow such a travesty. Believe me, being a divinity student put my faith to a test. My faith lost.”
“Hence, all the studies, the psychology and philosophy. You were looking for answers. You must have come to terms with your situation. You seem at peace.”
“In many cases, radiation kills sexual urges, but not in mine. So I had myself castrated. It was the hardest thing I’ve ever done, but it relieved me of feelings I couldn’t engage in and lessened my torment.”
So that’s why he didn’t follow through with Jeanine Highsmith. He couldn’t.
“Why are you telling me this, Mr. Slater? Obviously, you’ve kept this from everyone. You refused to touch me, so why tell me now?”
“Because we share a sense of mysticism. In that realm, I am normal.”
“So you became a mythological figure, explaining, if only to yourself, a situation you couldn’t face as Edward Slater.”
He sucked in his bottom lip and closed his eyes for a minute. When he opened them, he stared at Diana. There passed between them a brief connection so strong it was as if a spark ignited. She couldn’t explain the sensation, nor did she want to as a picture of Lucier flashed in front of her eyes, but her heart raced.
“Something like that,” he said, still staring.
A moment later she found her voice. “What took the place of your faith?”
“I’m an atheist. That’s renouncing belief in a supreme being. I never said I relinquished my faith. On the contrary, if you remember when we first met, I said I was a disciple of faith and reverence. It’s not faith in God. Nothing radical, I assure you, but it entails a long story, which I’ll save for another time. I’ll probably regret telling you what I’ve already told you.”
“Did you tell Jeanine Highsmith?”
“Jeanine was seeking something I couldn’t give her. She possessed an exceptional intellect, but she clearly had other things in mind―carnal pleasure, for one. And I…well, I’m not in the market for that and never will be.”
“You still could have pleasured a woman. Not with penetration but certainly with other methods. Before castration you had physical cravings.”
“Which only made me more aware of my deficiency―no pun intended. I read something of Kierkegaard once. I’ve kept it as a kind of mantra because it applies in so many ways. ‘There are two ways to be fooled,’ he said. ‘One is to believe what isn't so; the other is to refuse to believe what is so.’ It took me ten years to face reality and come to that conclusion. If I were going to live any kind of life, I couldn’t live as half a man, feeling sexual desires without the goods to follow through. That’s worse than torture. So, I made my decision to live in a way I understood, and God wasn’t part of it. Granted, my way isn’t for everyone, but it makes sense to me. I certainly don’t bandy about my atheism, especially here.”
“Who saved you?”
“As I said, another time, and I hope there will be another time. Maybe I’m holding back the rest of the story so I’ll be sure we meet again. You’re intellectually stimulating, and we’ve barely scratched the surface of subject matter.”
He got up, walked around to the back of her chair, and pulled it out. “You can tell your lieutenant to relax. I have no designs on you sexually.” He smiled and looked at her as a man would look at a woman who holds for him sexual interest. “Would that I could.”
* * * * *
“He what?”
Lucier and Diana finished dinner and curled up together on the sofa. His exclamatory question was in response to a chronicle of Diana’s day, which ended with most of her conversation with Edward Slater.
“You heard me,” she said. “The man is incapable of being a sexual predator or impregnating those women.” Diana decided not to break Slater’s confidence by telling Lucier the true nature of his condition. She inferred Slater was gay. How could any man understand the choices he made or comprehend living without his manhood? “He couldn’t possibly be a Satanist. One of the primary characteristics of a Satanist is carnal pleasure, and Edward Slater isn’t interested in those women.”
“So maybe it’s carnal pleasure with men. It works both ways, you know. Pleasure is pleasure. Depends what floats your boat.”
“He didn’t impregnate those two girls, and I don’t believe he’s involved in the disappearance of that baby, any baby. The man’s been through hell, Ernie. Drugs and alcohol brought him down as low as a man can go, and he’s rebuilt his life, devoting himself to helping people. At worst, someone is using his mis
sion to prey on the women who wind up there, for whatever reasons.”
“You’re losing your objectivity.”
“He’s not a Satanist,” she said louder than she intended.
“Then what’s so secret about his faith or religious persuasion?”
“I don’t know―something he’s devised to make sense out of his life. All I know is that Edward Slater hasn’t got the perverted character to be involved in what went on in that house.”
“And he told you this, or is it something you felt?”
She noted his sarcasm but chose to ignore it. “Why are you so negative concerning him?”
“Because I think your feelings about our good Brother Osiris are way off track.” He rose from the sofa. “It’s been a long day. I’m going home before one of us says something we’ll regret later.”
He pecked her on the forehead and walked out the door, leaving her confused and―dammit―angry at him for being so stubborn and shortsighted. Then she wondered if she had indeed lost her objectivity. Had she become a victim of Slater’s charismatic spell?
Chapter Fifteen
Hacker Extraordinaire
Diana sat in the dim light alone, stung by Lucier’s accusation. Was his opinion of Slater colored by his love for her? He judged Slater as an adversary and as a suspect rather than how she saw the man―as a victim. But then she knew his story, or part of it. There was more. He as much as told her so.
She couldn’t share Slater’s secret with Lucier or anyone else. She’d be betraying a man who’d been betrayed, rightly or wrongly, by the greatest force in his life: his God. No, she entered into a tacit agreement, and she wouldn’t break it without good reason.
In questioning Lucier’s motives, she had to ask about her own. What made her so sure Slater was telling the truth? This time, to reinforce her intuition that she wasn’t being conned, she needed outside help. She’d deal with the residual guilt later.