A MASTER OF EVIL. . .
Los Angeles psychiatrist Grant Blaine’s biggest worry should be whether or not his stunning wife, Maggie, will make full partner at her law firm. But his new patient, Jules Bois, pervades his every thought. Despite Bois’ delusional boasts of being a master manipulator of evil and death, Grant finds him fascinating, brilliant—and inexplicably privy to his own childhood secrets and adult fantasies. Soon, his marriage begins to crumble under Bois’ vile influence, and with each session, Grant feels his authority as a doctor slipping from his grasp. . . .
Maggie is dead scared of Bois’ hypnotic grip on her husband. As a criminal defense attorney she wants to respect the sanctity of doctor/patient privilege, but she can’t ignore Bois’ horrifyingly detailed knowledge of recent deaths in the news. With much more than her marriage at stake, Maggie knows she must call upon all her resources to battle a man who seems to want to possess her husband . . .
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“I enjoy causing, stimulating, encouraging others to perform illegal, immoral, self-destructive, and destructive acts.”
“If it’s a compulsion, Dr. Grant, I will need your help, correct?”
“Yes, Mr. Bois, if it’s truly a compulsion, something you can’t control. When did it occur last?”
“About five weeks ago.”
“What did you get someone to do?”
Bois smiled. “Recently, I talked someone into killing his wife,” Bois told him.
“Killing his wife?”
“Yes.”
“You talked a man into murdering his wife?”
“He went ahead and hammered on her head until she was dead,” Bois replied. “I suppose you could call that murder.”
THE DARK
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This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
An Original Publication of POCKET BOOKS
POCKET BOOKS, a division of Simon & Schuster Inc. 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020
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Copyright © 1997 by Andrew Neiderman
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ISBN: 0-671-00796-3
eISBN: 978-1-4516-8258-8
First Pocket Books printing December 1997
POCKET and colophon are registered trademarks of Simon & Schuster Inc.
Cover design by James Wang
For
Doctor Stanley Friedman
Whose friendship and compassion
Made him a doctor’s doctor
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Contents
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Epilogue
THE DARK
PROLOGUE
The elongated shadow of Doctor Henry Flemming’s 520 Sel Mercedes sedan washed over the mauve tiles of his wide, circular driveway as he turned in to his Brentwood Park Tudor house. Above and behind the vehicle, the twilight sun resembled a wafer of blood in the western sky. There was barely an ocean breeze coming east from Santa Monica. It was as if the world were holding its breath.
Flemming triggered his garage door. It lifted like a curtain of metal to display a garage so neat and clean it could be a stage on which were displayed a vintage red 54 MG convertible and another Mercedes, the smaller, silver gray 300 E his wife used. Doctor Flemming, a man who looked to be in his late forties but was closer to sixty, gazed with curiosity at the front windows of his home. The filtered sunlight glittered on the panes, changing them into mirrors that reflected the sprawling red maple, some of the manicured hedges, and the grand weeping willow. But the house looked dim, deserted, strangely quiet.
He pulled into the garage and got out of his car, a rich, dark brown leather briefcase carrying his psychiatric evaluations in hand. On the flap were the gold-embossed initials H.F. He paused for a moment and looked back as the garage door, again like a metal curtain, came down to shut out the quiet but lush Brentwood Park world. The garage light, which automatically went on and off with the opening and closing of the door, provided only dim, yellowish illumination of the white walls, hanging garden tools, and cabinets.
Flemming didn’t linger there. He opened the door to the house quickly and stepped in, pausing with puzzlement at the darkness he confronted.
Not only wasn’t this corridor lit, but neither was the kitchen on the left, nor the hallway of the house ahead of him. The living room was just as dark.
“Lydia!” he called, and waited for a response, gazing up the winding staircase with its mahogany balustrade. The upstairs was just as dark as the downstairs. There was no response. “Lydia!” He raised his voice and his heavy apricot-tinted eyebrows rose with the effort. He had clear hazel eyes, a strong, straight nose, and firm lips. His face, tense, looked carved in granite at the moment, the jawline taut. There was just a slight twitch in his right eyelid as he listened for his wife’s response.
Impatient and annoyed, he straightened up. The shoulders of his Armani suit jacket hung snugly. He turned on the hallway lights and the chandelier above him exploded with dazzling brightness, raining down illumination over the rich oil paintings, the plush carpet, and the case of Oriental collectibles. He checked his Rolex and shook his head, glancing at the stairway one more time before heading down the long corridor to the door of his den-office. It, too, was dark, even darker than the other rooms, since it was on the southeast corner of the house and the blinds were drawn shut. He hated that and he knew he hadn’t left them that way. Either Lydia’s damn housekeeper did it or she had done it, Henry thought.
He reached around the doorjamb and slapped the light switch that turned on the standing lamps and the desk lamp. Without gazing right or left, he marched toward his desk, but something made him pause halfway and he stopped and turned. It was Lydia, sitting in the deep, red leather chair quietly, her hands in her lap covered with a dish towel.
“What are you doing, sitting in here in the dark, Lydia?” he asked.
His wife of nearly thirty years smiled softly. She was a petite woman with soft, nearly golden hair, blue eyes, and rich complexion. Her fe
atures were diminutive, especially her nose. Doll-like, she seemed more like Henry Flemming’s little girl when she stood next to her six-foot-two-inch husband.
“I was waiting for you,” she said.
He grimaced.
“Not a light on,” he muttered, continuing toward his desk. “The place looks dreary. I guess we’re going out to eat or sending out for something, since you’re not in the kitchen preparing anything,” he continued, opening his suitcase and pulling out folders. He paused and looked up.
Lydia had risen to her full five feet one inch. In her right hand she clutched the model ten .38 Henry had received as a gift from the California highway supervisor he had treated for depression almost ten years ago. The man had lost a partner in a shoot-out and blamed himself. His partner was a young officer with a two-year-old daughter. Henry had helped him successfully return to work.
“What . . . what are you doing?” he asked. The gun was pointed at him. The hammer was cocked.
Lydia stepped forward, still smiling softly. He widened his eyes just before she pulled the trigger. The impact of the .38 at such close range was terrific. Despite his size, Henry flew back against the desk chair, which turned over, him following.
Lydia came around the desk and looked down at him. He was still alive, stunned, his eyes bulging, the blood pouring freely from his chest cavity. In a few seconds, he’ll go into shock, she thought.
He started to mouth the word “Why?”
But he saw the answer in her eyes, and he knew it anyway. It was almost as if he wanted this to happen, because his last willful, voluntary bodily act was to smile.
Which, of course, would confuse the police, but not Lydia. It would convince her she had done the right thing.
1
Grant Blaine took the stairs two steps at a time instead of riding the elevator up to his seventh-floor office. He was thirty-five years old, six feet one, and trim because he always avoided the easier physical alternatives, and this after he had played racquetball for nearly an hour and a half this morning at the Club. Carl Thornton beat him five games to three, but Carl, a forty-one-year-old wunderkind with his own psychiatric group, had been at it longer and was always more competitive about winning than Grant. It was a criticism of Grant that his wife Maggie had as well, especially when he complained about her ambition and what he termed her “overdrive.”
“You’re jealous because you don’t have the edge,” she would reply. “You were born with the silver spoon in your mouth, not me.”
She had come from the Midwest, the eldest daughter in a family with three children, all girls, a family euphemistically described as of modest income. Her father, a postal worker, and her mother, a paralegal, had always struggled to make ends meet. If Maggie hadn’t won all those scholarships, law school would have been out of reach.
But now, at thirty-one, she was already a prominent Los Angeles criminal defense attorney. After only two years at her present firm, Simms, Krammer and Beadsly, she had been promoted to junior partner, and there was a solid rumor they were about to offer her a full partnership. She had handily won her last three high-profile cases. The firm believed they had a female trial attorney who was attractive as well as intelligent and the partners were well aware that lately the courtroom had become the new arena for theater.
As he rounded the corner of a landing and attacked another flight of steps, Grant thought about Maggie becoming a full law partner. His mother, who originally thought he had married beneath his station, had come full circle and was prouder of her daughter-in-law than she was of her psychiatrist son. He had been an only child, admittedly spoiled, pampered, but he had a halfway decent practice and had garnered respect in the psychiatric community.
He and Maggie had met while Grant was still in his residency at Bellevue in New York. Maggie was attending NYU Law School and they were both invited to a party after the opening of an off-Broadway play. She realized he had been watching her and laughing to himself. Tall and svelte, Maggie was a five-foot-ten-inch redhead with a strikingly resonant speaking voice who always made an impressive appearance wherever she was and especially now in court. Boldly, which was her style, she approached him and demanded what was so funny.
“I just like the way you handle the artsy-fartsy crowd,” he replied. She thought a moment and then she burst out laughing, too.
After nearly six years of marriage, the only troubling concern between them seemed to be when they would begin to have children. The question loomed unanswered, periodically making itself more visible as the omnipresent biological clock ticked.
Grant paused at his office doorway, caught his breath, straightened his posture, and entered. Fay Moffit, his secretary, was already behind her desk, working.
“Oh, Doctor Blaine,” she said, standing, a mask of tragedy over her face. “Your wife wants you to call her immediately.”
“My wife? What’s up?”
Fay shook her head, but he understood, she knew. She just wasn’t going to be the one to say. He hurried into his inner office and sat behind his desk. Maggie’s personal number at her office was under 2 on his speed dial. She picked up the receiver after one ring.
“Grant, I have horrible news. I was just on my way to the police station.”
“Police station? What’s up?”
“Lydia Flemming shot Henry.” After a short pause, she added, “He’s dead, Grant.”
“What?” He almost laughed. What a ridiculous idea. Lydia Flemming shot someone? Shot Henry?
Henry Flemming had been Grant’s mentor. Henry had hired him to be part of his group when Grant finished his internship and decided to practice in Los Angeles. Henry had been Grant’s father’s shrink, right up to the day Grant’s father died of cardiac arrest while walking to his import-export business office in Beverly Hills. That walk had been his only exercise. He had just made it to sixty, which was probably the primary reason for Grant’s neurosis with exercise.
“Why would Lydia shoot Henry?” he asked.
“All I know now is she shot him sometime last night in his office, Grant,” Maggie said.
“Could it have been some gun accident?”
“It doesn’t look like an accident, Grant. She’s admitting it anyway. I’ve got to get down there.”
“Right. I’ll cancel my morning appointments and meet you,” he said. “I’ll be there as soon as possible, Maggie.”
Grant buzzed Fay and told her to reschedule his morning appointments.
“Just tell everyone an emergency has come up,” he said, and then sat back for a moment to catch his emotional breath.
Carl hadn’t mentioned anything this morning, so he certainly didn’t know. He, too, had worked with Henry. Everyone in the psychiatric community was going to be so devastated and so confused.
Grant didn’t even remember the drive to the police station. Along the way, he got caught in some early morning L.A. traffic, but he didn’t notice or care. He was remembering all the good times with Henry, the socializing, the celebrations, the weddings of Henry’s children, Henry’s twenty-fifth wedding anniversary party nearly five years ago. It all passed through his mind like a series of dreams printed on soap bubbles and popped the moment he drove into the police station parking lot to face this ugly, illogical reality.
Maggie was waiting with Phil Martin, one of the other junior partners at her firm.
“Phil’s here to handle Lydia’s legal needs,” she told him quickly. “I didn’t think I could do it, Grant, and after I spoke with her, I know for sure that I couldn’t do it.”
“Then you’ve already spoken with her?”
“Just a few words ten minutes ago. Phil has asked them to keep her in the conference room for you.”
He turned to Phil Martin, a six-foot-one-inch, dark-haired man of thirty-six, more on the cute side than handsome because of his impish smile and dimpled cheeks. Phil’s wife Susan often voiced revealing remarks about the way Phil flirted.
“Yeah, we need your qui
ck evaluation, Doc,” Phil said.
“I don’t do quick evaluations,” Grant responded. He looked at Maggie. Her eyes were glassy, tearful. She shook her head.
“She’s not making an ounce of sense, Grant.”
He nodded.
“All right. Let me talk to her. Alone,” he emphasized.
“Great,” Phil said. He turned to the police detective nearby and moments later Grant was led to the conference room where Lydia Flemming sat calmly sipping hot tea. She looked up at him and smiled.
“Hello, Grant,” she said. “How are you?”
“I’m fine, Lydia.” He kissed her on the cheek and sat adjacent to her. “What happened?” he asked after a beat. She sipped some more tea.
“I did what I had to do, Grant.”
“You did what you had to do?” She nodded. “You shot him, Lydia.”
She smiled as if he had said the stupidest thing.
“Of course.”
“Lydia,” he said, leaning over. “Do you realize you killed him? You killed Henry,” he said.
She widened her smile.
“That wasn’t Henry,” she said.
They conferred in the hallway. Maggie was sitting on the bench talking to her office on her cellular when Grant emerged from his session with Lydia Flemming. Phil was standing nearby, leaning against the wall, looking like a wise guy gunslinger with his coy smile, like Jack Palance in Shane, eager to bait some unsuspecting dirt farmer. Grant directed himself to Maggie, who got off the phone the moment he appeared.
“She’s lost all sense of reality,” he said. “A form of autism, I’d say. She’s preoccupied with illogical ideas, fantasies, schizophrenia.”
“Perfect,” Phil Martin said.
Grant turned to him.
“Perfect? She shot and killed the man she married and lived with for nearly thirty years. They have children, grandchildren, and he was one of the most highly respected psychiatrists in the country. Perfect?”
The Dark Page 1