Daughter of Darkness
Page 13
A minute later, the bedroom door opened all the way and she came out.
It was Jenny, and yet it was not Jenny.
Where Jenny usually dressed in expensive casual clothes, Linda Fleming favored a gaudy lemon-colored suit with a micro-mini skirt. There was a run in her dark stockings. The suit looked at least one size too small. Her makeup was as gaudy as her clothes. Too much blush; too much eyeshadow; too much lipstick. The only thing she wore that Jenny would have approved of was her modest one-inch black pumps.
It was a testament to the classic angles of her face that despite her best efforts to tart herself up, Linda Fleming remained a beauty.
"Who the hell are you?" she said, stunned and angry. While the timbre of her voice was Jenny's, there was a faint Southern accent to some of her words. Soft, the way Virginia accents are.
"C mon Jenny," he said. "What's going on here?"
She strode across the room to where a white Princess telephone sat on top of a Zenith console model TV set. She picked up the receiver. "I'm calling the police. And my name's not Jenny. It's Linda." She started to punch in phone numbers.
"That wouldn't be too smart," he said, "since the police are looking for you."
She looked genuinely surprised. "Why would the police be looking for me?"
"The Econo-Nite Motel two nights ago," he said. "A dead man in Room 127."
He watched her face. She seemed to be battling certain memories. Her face showed confusion, then fear, then recognition. Then, "How you'd know about that?"
"It doesn't matter how I know about it. It matters how the police know about it."
He could see her pale even beneath the layers of her makeup, the weariness and wariness of her eyes.
She said, "I asked you who the hell you are."
"My name is Coffey."
She remained standing in the center of the floor and then she crossed to an overstuffed chair and sat down. She put one hand to her face and let the other one dangle off the side of the chair.
The silence of the place became overpowering once again. And then the silence was broken with her sharp, aggrieved tears.
Coffey stayed still. Letting her cry was the best thing he could do. He wanted to scrub her face. He wanted her to be Jenny. His Jenny.
Several times, her tears sounded as if they were trailing off. But then she'd get upset all over again and her tears would burst into violent new life.
After a time, he got up and went into the bathroom. He found a box of tissues and brought it out to her. She was at the sniffling stage, trying to shut her tears down. She muttered a tearful thank you.
He went back and sat across from her and didn't say anything.
By now, her too-heavy makeup was streaking, especially around the eyes, and her micro-mini skirt had pulled way up on her lovely thighs. He tried not to look. It wasn't easy.
He said, "I'd like to help you."
"Oh, right. How many men have I heard that from in my life."
"I'm serious."
"That's what they said, too." She waved a hand to indicate the apartment. "This is the kind've help they gave me. A dump like this." There was no point arguing with her. He sat back and looked at her. As he watched her, he realized that this was actually Jenny Stafford number two he was looking at. The plastic surgery following her car accident had changed her looks considerably. That was probably why more people hadn't recognized the police sketch of her. Not many people had seen the post-accident Jenny Stafford.
"Where'd you go to high school?" he said. He wanted to see how deep the Linda Fleming character ran. It was eerie, trying to think of her as both Jenny and Linda.
She looked suspicious. "Why do you want to know that?"
"I'm just curious."
"You seem curious about a whole lot of things."
He smiled. "Must be my nature. So where'd you go to school?"
"Kennedy."
"Any college?"
"One year. I dropped out."
"Where'd you go?"
She glared at him. "Man, you're really a pain in the ass, you know that?"
He probably was a pain in the ass. But he was working on a theory and he needed to know some things. "So where'd you go?"
"Clark College is where I went. God. No more questions."
"Just one."
She sighed, greatly put-upon. "All right. One more."
"How old is your father?"
"My father? He's dead, why?"
"When did he die?"
She shrugged." Who cares? He never did much for me, anyway." Pause. "Eight, nine years ago, he had a heart attack."
"I see. And where had he worked most of his life?"
"At Motorola. Driving a delivery truck." She sighed. "I haven't done so good with my life. You know the funny thing? I was considered the smart one. I had two sisters. My folks couldn't really afford more than one, but my mom was a strict Catholic and wouldn't use any birth control. So they had three kids. And I was considered the smartest one. But that isn't the way things turned out. My youngest sister, she married this banker and they live out in Oak Park. And my oldest sister married this doctor and they've got this really beautiful house out in San Diego." Her head was still back, her eyes closed. It was almost like a therapy session.
"I've got this splitting headache."
"Why don't I get you a couple of aspirin?"
"Yeah, actually, that sounds good. You think you can find everything?"
"Sure."
Her bed was unmade. Three or four pairs of shoes were scattered across the floor. A bureau drawer was open, a pair of white panties hanging off the drawer edge.
The bathroom was no better. Myriad forms of makeup were strewn across the top of the toilet and the sink. The soap dish was encrusted with hardened soap residue. She hadn't bothered to put the new roll of toilet paper on the roller. It sat on the floor next to the john. The medicine cabinet above the sink was mirrored and probably hadn't been wiped clean for months. The mirror slid to the right to allow you access to the four rows of toothpaste. Vaseline, cold medications, combs, eyebrow tweezers, and cotton swabs that waited inside.
But what interested him most was the photo of the girl that had been taped to the far edge of the mirror. It was a society page item, a small story, the headline reading: DEBUTANTE OF YEAR NAMED TO ART MUSEUM BOARD. Four paragraphs detailed how the debutante would not only join the board but spearhead the next fund-raising job.
But the copy wasn't nearly as interesting as the photograph that accompanied it.
The photo showed a slightly posed but stunningly beautiful Jenny Stafford.
He spent the next minute searching through the medicine cabinet for aspirin. The clutter didn't make it easy. Finally, he found a small tin of Bayer. The tin was covered with some kind of sticky goop that had been spilled on it. He took the plastic glass on the sink and washed it out several times, then filled it up with fresh water. He carried this and the aspirin back to the living room.
She hadn't moved.
Her eyes were open, and she was staring at the ceiling.
"Here you go," he said.
She sat up straight and looked at him. "Well, I guess you're good for something."
"You're very kind."
She laughed. "You're a smart-ass, aren't you?"
"Sometimes."
He gave her the water and the aspirin.
"I'm sorry this place is such a pit."
"That's all right."
"I'm for shit as a housekeeper."
"Take your aspirin."
"Thanks." Ever mercurial, ever-changing moods, she said, "I probably look like hell."
"You look fine."
She looked at him. "How did you get in here? I just realized you never explained that."
"The door was open. I just walked in."
"God, I didn't lock it?"
"Apparently not." Then, "I want to help you, Linda."
"Help me with what?"
"With dealing with the
police. I want you to see a friend of mine."
He showed her the police sketch that had been in the Tribune this morning.
"Hey, that looks a lot like me." Looks a lot like me? It clearly was her. At first, he thought she might be kidding. But then he saw she was serious.
He watched her somberly. The sketch had unnerved her. Anxiety played on her face.
"What sort of a friend are you talking about?" she said.
"A shrink."
She touched a hand to her head. "This headache is killing me."
"Then take the aspirin."
She took the aspirin. "I'll be honest with you. I don't remember much about that night." Her face tightened. "If the cops ask me-"
"That's where my friend can help. He's also a hypnotist."
"Oh, no. I hate booga-booga."
"It's not booga-booga. He can help you remember things under hypnosis. Do you even remember where you met the guy you were in Room 127 with."
She nodded. "Some bar. Arnie's, a sports bar or something like that."
"Is that some place you go very often?"
She shook her blonde head. "No. I'd never been there before."
"You've got a newspaper clipping in the bathroom."
Murky recognition shone in her eyes momentarily. "Oh, yeah."
"Do you know Jenny Stafford?"
She shook her head. "No. She just looked-pretty, I guess. I just clipped out her picture was all. No special reason."
A complete history, Coffey thought. Linda Fleming had a complete history, apparently down to the smallest detail.
He could already see her legal defense shaping up. He'd had a few experiences with multiple personalities before. He'd been skeptical of the whole multiple notion until he'd run into a black pimp who, by day, was a well-regarded bank clerk. In interrogating the man, Coffey had seen both personalities emerge strong and clear, shifting dominance in the man as his interrogation went on.
This would explain why she'd had no memory the other night. A small percentage of multiple personalities suffered acute memory loss following trauma. Finding yourself in a motel room with a dead man had to qualify as traumatic. Being a multiple also explained her temper. This was the temper that Jenny kept under control. Multiples were always expression of repressed impulses and needs and resentments.
He had all sorts of feelings for her as he sat there-desire, curiosity, protectiveness-but most of all he felt pity. There were few psychological burdens as difficult to bear as multiple personalities, both for the sufferer and all the people around her.
"How would you like to go to my place?" he said.
"I already told you," she said in her brassy Linda Fleming voice, "I gotta go to work."
"You go to work, the police could find you."
"Oh, I never thought of that."
"You could stay at my place tonight, and then we can figure out what to do."
Anger tightened her face. She was off again, mercurial. "You're pathetic, you know that? All this bullshit just to get laid. 'I'm really curious about you.' 'I really want to help you.' Guys sound so pathetic when they're sniffin' around a woman, and they don't even know it. Well, you're not gonna get laid. At least not by me."
"I still want you to come to my place."
"Even if I don't put out?"
"Even if you don't put out."
"You gay or something?"
"No."
"Then I don't get it."
"Maybe you remind me of my little sister. Maybe that's why I want to help you."
"Where's your little sister?"
"Omaha. She's about to have her third kid any day now."
"Man," Linda Fleming said, "no way I want a kid. Ball and chain is what a kid would be to me."
"Why don't we go?"
"Now?"
"Yeah"
She shrugged. "Give me a few minutes."
"Fine."
She got up and went into the bedroom. When she came out, she had even more makeup on. "I don't know about this shrink guy."
"You'll like him."
She rolled her eyes. Her beautiful eyes. "Oh, yeah. I'll probably fall in love."
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
One butterfly-summer afternoon at the northernmost edge of the compound, Gretchen found the dog. It was just a mutt, brown and white, with creek-dirty white paws and a thistle hanging off its tail. This was about three months after she arrived at the compound. One of Quinlan's favorite theories was that criminals, even double murderers such as Gretchen herself, could be rehabilitated through a combination of behavior modification, hypnosis, and drug treatment. He'd also done work creating multiple personalities, isolating the Bad Person from the Good Person. While no state legislature was likely to ever actually let any of his test-case people out of the hospital, they did look at his test results with curiosity and skeptical admiration. Three California psychiatrists who had evaluated three of Quinlan's most notorious patients for California murder trials-and found each of them hopelessly sociopathic-flew out to Chicago and spent a week evaluating those same three men again. The results stunned them. Under Quinlan's guiding hand, the three men exhibited a humanity the shrinks had never even glimpsed before. Gone were the violent impulses, the total self-absorption. They even had a limited sense of right and wrong. None of the men had become angels, true. But Quinlan's rehabilitative techniques were impressive and deserved further serious study and funding. Grant and foundation money poured into the compound.
If only Gretchen had been as malleable as those other three sociopaths. Her first month here she cut a female patient with her ballpoint pen, stabbing it into the woman's cheek and then ripping downward; her second month here, she set fire to the room they had put in; and the third month she had seduced a guard and tried to get him to give her a gun. During all this time, she was sleeping with Quinlan, and spending many nights in his aerie. He'd been fascinated by her in those golden days. She interested him both as a case study and a seductress. She knew how to use her body and for the sexually adventurous, she could provide a memorable night's entertainment.
His pride was that he could bring her in line with everybody else. That through behavior modification he could help her unlearn her psychotic inclinations and rejoin society at large.
The night she tried to castrate him in his sleep, he decided she was hopeless. She'd walked in on him that afternoon. He'd been sleeping with the new nurse from Building One. A brunette she was, with breasts that owed far more to science than God. She'd made a scene. The nurse fled in terror. He calmed Gretchen down with sweet talk and drugs. She wouldn't leave. That night, in the darkness of his bedroom, she'd fallen asleep in his arms.
But something woke him a few hours later and when he looked up, he saw her straddling him, a pair of long scissors arcing toward his crotch. He rolled away just in time. Grabbed her, slapped her. She spent the night in a maximum-security room. He kept her there for three weeks.
And the day she got out, he told her she could walk around the compound and enjoy the spring day. But she had to check in every forty-five minutes or lose her freedom.
This was the day she found the dog.
He came timidly over to her outstretched hand. She petted him. And after he was no longer afraid of her, she hugged him. He had fleas, which pissed her off. She was fanatical about being clean.
Then she saw the rock, a jagged flinty piece that more than filled her hand. All the time she reached for the rock with her left hand, she continued to stroke the dog with her right. He was now whimpering, he was in such ecstasy from her touch. Her powers of seduction were apparently cross-species. What a goddess she was!
She had to club him four times before he was dead, before blood leaked from his nostrils, and he fouled himself all over his tail. Then she got to work.
Quinlan got the package next day. It was sitting on his desk waiting for him. It was gaily wrapped in expensive blue paper.
A lot of the women patients he slept with fell in love w
ith him. Fortunately, this kind of transference was short-lived. They got over it. But while in its thrall, they were always sending him gifts.
He wondered who this one was from.
After he opened it, after he ran to his private john to wash his hands of the blood, after he began the useless process of trying to forget the sight of the dead dog's head in the box-after all this, he had no doubt who had sent the gift.
This time, he put her in maximum security for a month-and-a-half. He had even thought of requesting that another facility take her on. But that would make him look bad. She'd come here under splashy circumstances. Sending her away would make it look as if his methodology didn't work. Best to simply keep her locked up for a while.
She was thinking about the dog's head now, as she sat in the room where Barcroft had put her, right down the hall from Quinlan's lavish apartment. He'd wanted to put her in maximum security but there wouldn't be a room free till later in the day. And two other fully-secured rooms were filled as well, so he'd had to put her in what was almost like a hotel room. Sparse but decent furnishings-couch, table, magazines, TV-and even a tiny vertical window to look out of.
She walked over and turned on the TV. And a miracle happened. Jenny Stafford's face filled the screen.
There were points in her life when Gretchen felt as if her life was a dream-as if she were a disembodied psyche wandering in a world of ghosts and phantoms and other disembodied psyches-and at such times the faces of people she despised appeared to her. Sometimes, it was the mother who had picked on her twenty-four hours a day; other times, it was the father who'd shown no interest in her whatsoever. Now it was Jenny Stafford, and she was on TV.
What the hell was this all about?
She sank to her knees in front of the TV and listened as the announcer explained why the police were looking for the unnamed suspect who was clearly Jenny Stafford.