“Good morning,” the doctor said in his usual bright and cheerful and careful and annoying voice. “And how are we feeling today?”
“We are feeling fine.”
“You say
we
. Who are you talking about?”
“You said
we
first. Who were you talkin’ about?”
“True. Very perceptive.” The doctor steepled his fingers and rocked back in his chair, as if they had made an important breakthrough. “So, is Bones here with you today?”
Punk looked around the empty office. He shook his head. These endless stupid questions were really getting on his nerves. “Don’t see him anywhere, but I sure wish he was. Maybe he could get me outta here and away from you and these chains.”
“Is he your best friend?”
“No, sir. He is my twin brother. I done told you that every single day since you locked me up in here. Aren’t you listenin’ to me, at all?”
“Are you aware that your older brothers deny that you ever had a twin brother named Bones?”
Punk stared hard at him. Now both those things were great big stupid lies, but he’d heard the doctor say them before, and nearly every day, too. “If they did say that, they’re just tryin’ to protect him. They probably think you’re gonna lock him up inside this place like you did me. Hell, they probably think you’re gonna lock
them
up. Like I told you a million times, he’s the one who killed Pa, not me, and he killed some other people, too. He’s probably hidin’ out somewhere over there on the farm.”
“They said that Bones is a figment of your imagination and always has been since you were a small child. They say they went along with it so you wouldn’t have one of your temper tantrums and attack them with a hammer.”
Punk threw his head back and laughed out loud. “Well, then they’re all lyin’. Find our birth certificates, why don’t you? That’ll show you that I’m tellin’ you the truth. What is this, anyway? What’re you tryin’ to get me to say?”
“Please, now, remain calm. I’m not trying to upset you. As a matter of fact, we’ve been searching for your birth certificate, but there isn’t one to be found. It appears that you and your brothers were born at home and never were legally registered by the state of Missouri. Therefore, there is no legal documentation for your birth.”
Frowning, Punk tried to think what kind of joke they were playing on him. “They’re lying to you, I tell you. Lots of people have seen Bones. He fought people in the cage, just like Pa made us all do every Saturday night. The guys he put face down in the dirt sure do remember him. Ask ’em.”
“Well, to date, we haven’t found a single person who admits to ever having seen this twin brother you talk about. This Bones person. No one has a picture of him. No one has ever spoken to him or seen him or even known about him. How do you explain that?”
Then they stared at each other. Just like every day, always the same questions, the same answers, the same dumb idiots. Punk didn’t know what the hell to say this time, either. They didn’t know what they were talking about. Or it must be a trick, a shrink’s trick to make him say things that would keep him locked up in the looney bin and far away from his true love. Finally, he said, “Well, I’ll just say it again. I don’t understand any of that. Bones is my twin brother. He’s tougher than anybody and he always helps me when I get in trouble. You must be askin’ the wrong folks. Or they’re still scared to cross him. Look for the ones with the broken bones and fear on their faces.”
The doctor gave Punk his usual kindly, you-poor-crazy-nut smile. “I know all this must seem very confusing to you. Would you like for me to tell you what I suspect has happened to you?”
Sure, spill it out again, I’ve only heard it a million times
, Punk thought. Then he stared at the doctor, trying to remain patient, but always expecting some kind of double cross or a new untried psychiatrist tactic to throw him off. He didn’t trust doctors, none of them. Especially the ones he had met in this place. He had never even seen a head doctor until they locked him in and chained him up and ogled at him like he was some kind of wild animal in the zoo.
“We’ve talked to you a lot since you came here. Not just me, but everyone on our psychiatric staff. We’ve come to the conclusion that you have Dissociative Syndrome. Split personality is the layman’s term, and that’s probably what you’ve heard of.”
Actually, Punk had never heard of either of those things. This guy was a real kook, way out in left field. He was the one that needed to be in handcuffs. “What the hell does that mean?”
“Simply put, it means that you probably experienced some kind of terrible trauma at some point in your young life, so horrible that your mind just could not handle it. Therefore, it created another stronger personality to handle the most stressful situations that would otherwise cause you to shut down. We have come to believe it was as if two different people lived inside you, two distinct personalities, but you only related to the one you identify as Punk. Although you obviously were aware of the Bones personality as well and what that second personality said and did, we don’t think you metamorphosed into him. We believe that you always remained identified with the persona that you refer to as Punk, which allowed you to stand by and watch as if another person, all the deeds you perpetrated when you became Bones, but without realizing you were actually committing them.”
Punk did not move a muscle. This guy was so far out in left field that it was pitiful. “I see you’re still spouting the same old crap, right? You can’t really believe all that crazy stuff. Bones is as real as I am.”
“We don’t use that word here.”
“What word? Crap?”
“No. Crazy. The patients here are ill, not crazy.”
“Well, I’m not talkin’ about them, I’m talkin’ about you. Anyways, you oughta wake up and smell the coffee. Everybody in this place is pretty much bonkers, and you know it, too.”
“Please, listen to me. You have a serious mental disorder brought on by severe childhood abuse. Please understand that we’re all working very hard to help you resolve this issue. If you will allow yourself to relax and cooperate with our diagnosis and treatment, then you will be fine one day and you’ll be able to go home and lead a pleasant and productive life with your brothers.”
Listening to all that, yet again, Punk mainly latched on to the going home part. “What kind of therapy? What are you gonna do to me? You gonna cut up my brain and make me dumb like I saw once in that movie about flying over the cuckoo’s nest.”
“No, no, not to worry. We’ll just continue with your sessions where you’ll be encouraged to chat with us about your past and what you went through with your father. We want to try to figure out what initiated this fantasy figure that you’ve created inside your mind. Once we figure out what specifically caused this mental aberration, then we’ll talk through it with you.”
This doctor dude was so weirded out nuts that it was downright hard to watch
, Punk thought, disgusted. Bones was every bit as real as he was. Nothing they could say would ever make him think otherwise. Just ask all the boys he beat up all those years. Just ask anybody who watched all those Saturday night fights. Nobody up around home gave out information to the cops, and didn’t trust them doctors, either. Maybe that’s why nobody copped to knowing Bones. It had to be something like that. But, maybe, if Punk just played along with this guy, see if he could get the shrinks to take off the chains, then he could escape and go back home and find his girl. He heaved in one deep breath. “Okay, but I’m tired of being locked up like this. Can’t you let me go around here some without all these restraints? I won’t hurt nobody. I swear to God, I won’t. I don’t even want to, not anymore.”
“In time that will happen. Once you convince us by your good behavior and willing cooperation that you never intend to hurt anyone else, ever again. You beat several men to death on the day they brought you here. Do you remember anything about that?”
“Bones did it. Not me. Why won’t you believe me?”
“You see, here again you have returned to that story, and rather convincingly, I must say. But as I said, there is no one named Bones in your life. He does not exist, and you need to accept that. He is nothing but a strong character in your imagination. One that is very real to you and that protects you and handles all the stressful events that you are forced to face. Your brothers have all told us that you’ve been volatile and unpredictable since you were a small boy.”
“What’s ‘volatile’?”
“In this context, it means high-strung, easily angered, aggressive, and prone to physical altercations.”
“That’s Bones to a T, I’m telling you. Not me. It’s not
me
! Why don’t you just believe what I say? I’m tellin’ you the truth. Why wouldn’t I? I wanna get outta here! My brothers are the ones who’re lying.”
The shrink just looked sad. He shook his head. “Okay, I think that’s enough for today. You’re becoming agitated again. How about we make us a little deal, okay? If you are quiet and behave well and cause no more trouble for the nurses and orderlies, we’ll take off the restraints and let you mingle with the other patients in the common room. How does that sound?”
Now the guy was talking. “That would be good. I won’t make no problems at all, I swear it.”
“Then I guess you may go back to your room now and think about all the things we have discussed, and we’ll chat again tomorrow. Same time, same place.”
“Yes, doctor,” he said meekly. What a laugh. He couldn’t wait to fool this little sissy guy and head back home. He and Bones had some serious work to do.
Chapter Seventeen
Man, alive, Black was gonna be so royally pissed off, it wasn’t even funny,
Claire thought, frowning at the mere idea of what he was going to say about what she was getting ready to do. But then again, he was still way down yonder in New Orleans waiting for the skies to clear, and totally unavailable to warn her off and/or accompany her to St. Louis to step into Ivan Petrov’s creepy and highly dangerous compound. Unfortunately, Charlie had ordered Bud and her to again postpone their planned trip to Fitch Hillbilly Hollow and to instead pay an up close and personal visit to a certain East St. Louis criminal don. They were almost there now, using Bud’s GPS to find the place. It was fairly isolated, too, especially being located so close to a large metropolitan area, but they finally found it, way out in some snowy woods in the middle of nowhere.
There were two armed guards at the front gate, and Claire stared at them as Bud rolled the Bronco to a stop. She wondered if Black had been right, and if they were going to be swallowed up in said Russian Thugland, as surely as if plunging headfirst into a deep space black hole. He had certainly overreacted the first time he thought she was going to visit Petrov, acted as if it equated with entering a Moscow-run portal to hell. Right now, they were on the verge of walking straight into Petrov’s compound and checking out all the bad things, and yes, they certainly did have their hands full, oh, yeah. Murderous Mafioso, or not, however, surely this guy wouldn’t dare lay a finger on them. He better not. Charlie would have every cop in both Missouri and Illinois on his back, if he did. Of course, they’d both still be in corpse mode, and Black would be pissed about that, too.
“Yes, sir, may I help you?” the polite lowlife guard said to Bud, no doubt pretending he was a regular, normal human being. Then he leaned down farther and examined Claire’s face, where she sat watching the action from the passenger’s seat. “Oh, hello there, Detective Morgan. How you doin’?”
“Have we met, sir?” Claire asked him pointedly. She’d never seen the guy before in her life. He was clean cut for a henchman, not as heavily muscled as most of them. He sported a little goatee and mustache that reminded her of the Three Musketeers but he had no detectable French accent. Nope, his accent was American with a Russian lilt that she could just barely pick up. He wore wraparound black sunglasses and a long black trench coat that helped with his menacing image thing.
“No, but I saw you at the fight arena with Nicky Black. Congrats on the upcoming wedding.”
Claire frowned, somehow feeling dirty. “Thank you. We’re here on official police business to see Mr. Ivan Petrov. Is he at home?”
“Yes, ma’am. Let me call up to the main house and get permission for you to enter the compound.”
“Very courteous guy,” Bud said, pressing a button and rolling up his window. “He probably smiles when he knifes people, too. And what is this, anyway, the White House?”
“More like the Kremlin. I did hear that people who go inside this compound don’t come out. At least, not alive.”
Bud jerked his face toward her. “
Now
you tell me that?”
“Well, Charlie knows where we are. If they try anything funny with us, they won’t get away with it. And I did put in a cautionary call to the East St. Louis PD to apprise them when and where we were going in. I’m supposed to call them once we’re safely out.”
“Oh, wow, Claire, that makes me feel so much better. Who told you all that?”
“A little birdie.”
“A Black birdie, maybe? Hope he doesn’t know what he’s talking about.”
“Alas, but he usually does.”
The guard was tapping a bent knuckle on the window. “He said to come on up. Just follow the road until you hit the end of the line.”
“Thanks,” Bud said, and then accelerated through the gate, which closed behind them in a rather final way. “I don’t think I like the sound of that. End of the line—that sounds like a premonition to me.”
“We’re gonna be fine.” She hoped.
The parking lot was just up around the first curve. There were several more beefy men standing out there waiting for them. All were wearing heavy winter overcoats, scary black ones like the other guy’s that hung past the knee, probably with M60 machine guns hidden under them, loaded for bear. They also had on mafia-inspired fedoras and black leather military boots with their pants tucked in. Probably hobnailed, too. “Looks like we’re gonna be outnumbered, Bud.”
“Great. I can’t tell you what a good time I’m havin’. Yeah, and just when Bri gets back, too.”
“Okay, let’s go see what’s so scary about our deceivingly chummy Moscow buds.”
A rather hefty and pockmarked and swarthy Slavic giant examined their badges, even turning them over and looking at the backs, no doubt looking for Toys “R” Us tags, before he motioned them to follow him. He wasn’t particularly chatty. Or friendly. In fact, he said nothing. Maybe he couldn’t speak English. Maybe he couldn’t speak any language and just grunted and gestured his way through life. They trailed him up a wood ramp to an extremely modern structure that appeared to be the main house. Another hood stood guard at the front door. His big gun was readily apparent, in his big hand, even. He checked their badges, too. Jeez, there probably weren’t this many checkpoints at Fort Knox.
Ushered into a surprisingly spacious living room, all burgundy and black decor, and maybe about the size of a basketball court and a half, they found the King of Red Square sitting in court beside a huge walk-in stacked stone fireplace with a giant moose head above the mantel. All the furniture was black leather with lots of studs and rough wood with my-owner’s-one-tough-mother appeal. Oh, yeah, everything looked mucho manly, in an elegant East European sort of way. Maybe Ivan needed tough surroundings to help him scare his visitors to death. It was working.
“Ah, there you are, my dear, the future Mrs. Nicholas Black. Please, do come in, come in. I’ve been absolutely dying to meet the woman who slipped that ring through Nicky’s nose. Nobody thought it could be done. Me, included.”
Nice. Not. Okay, true, that little spurt of nasty certainly rubbed Claire the wrong way. What a creep. Everything about the man, the giant room, the deep voice, and the roaring fire, all of it made her want to rub him the wrong way, too. Rub him out, maybe. She fought the extremely strong urge overtaking her, the one that compelled her to sprint the rest of the way to the smug Russian and make his nose bleed. Instead, she remembered her mission and stopped in front of the supposedly scary-as-hell Mafioso, and said, “Thank you for seeing us, sir. We do need to ask you a few questions. It won’t take long. This is Bud Davis, my partner, and my name is Claire Morgan.”
“Oh, yes, ma’am, we’re all at your service. Any friend of Nicky’s is a friend of mine.”
Then Ivan Petrov finished his annoying name-dropping and looked her up and down as if she didn’t have on a bulky parka and a sock hat that made her hair stick out with static, and all of which pretty much hid anything that he might be interested in insulting. Lascivious? You bet. Why, she wasn’t quite sure. Her insulated down parka and jeans and makeup-less face didn’t exactly excite strip club ogling. No way could he tell what was underneath all those layers; she could look like a geriatric bag lady, for all he knew. To her sensibilities that branded the remarks as simply hateful and meant to provoke wrath.
So, okay. Who gave a hot damn what a deadly imbecile thought? He hadn’t gotten her goat yet, if that was his plan. But he had one hand on its bleating neck with malice aforethought in his head. Bud was frowning, also understanding the tacky innuendo and not liking it any more than she did. But he didn’t punch out their host, either. They both remained the picture of official restraint. She shuddered to think what Black would’ve done to him, but the mental picture did have a certain happy appeal for her.
“This concerns your ex-wife, Mr. Petrov,” she told him, still calm, watching his face for a revealing reaction to the subject.
His face registered on cue. Open and easy to read. Surprise, shock even. He got that under control quickly enough. “Blythe, you mean? You probably want to talk to her current husband, not me. We were divorced several years ago.”
“Well, yes, but thing is, sir, we recently found that little text message you sent to her cell phone on occasion. You know, the one that said, ‘I’m gonna kill you, bitch, if you don’t come home.’”
Curtains down on incriminating expressions, just like that. He’d had some practice evading answers in police interviews, all right. “I really have no idea what you’re talking about. But please, where are my manners? Please, sit down and make yourselves comfortable. Let me get you something to drink. Shall I call someone to take your coats and hats?”
“No, thank you. We’re fine.” They took seats across from the chair aka throne on which he sat. However, he immediately stood up, and moved to where he could warm his back at the huge grate with its leaping, crackling flames. He looked extremely relaxed now. As if he had them where he wanted them, and was oh, so pleased with himself. Claire fought her desire to pull her weapon and blast him a good one right through the chest. All humanity would be better off.
After a moment, Petrov pondered aloud. “That message sounds like a terrible thing to say to anyone. I assure you that I would never say such a thing to my ex-wife. Blythe is much too fragile and easily upset to frighten like that.” He smiled, easy and self-assured, and now really hunkered down into his lies.
“Then I guess you didn’t slit her throat and toss her out her bedroom window, either. Right?”
Okay, he wasn’t smiling anymore. He looked stunned. Then he looked disbelieving. Then he looked stricken. Then he looked like he was crying on the inside. Then he really was crying on the outside, real live godfather tears running down his cheeks. Whoa, Nelly, he wasn’t holding anything back, either. He was in full-fledged grief mode. Bud looked over at her as their tough-guy host hid his face in his hands and sobbed out loud. “No, no, no,” he kept saying.
Well, well, what’d you know, the guy had a heart in there somewhere, after all. And Anna had been on target about him still loving Blythe Parker. But now, he had resurfaced again, super creep once more, coming out of his two-minute mourning period just like that, and now onto fierce, stampeding mad-elephant anger mode, which was definitely a transition worth watching.
“Who? Goddamn it, who killed her? Tell me!” Abruptly, he went silent, then let out a pitiful little sob muffled behind his hand, then mopped the tears off his face with a white handkerchief that he pulled out of the inside pocket of his dark brown suede smoking jacket. “You tell me, girl, you tell me right now who dared put his hands on her.”
Girl? Alrighty now, enough is enough
. “Or what, Mr. Petrov? I am an officer of the law, and I expect you to remember that and address me with respect. You got that, sir? Now compose yourself, because I want to ask you some questions we need answered for our homicide investigation. Are you ready to proceed? Or do you need time to get control of your emotions?”
He didn’t need time. And he didn’t like her anymore, and didn’t think Black was so lucky to hook up with her, either, she supposed. He glared at her, and she took it in stride. Not exactly something she wasn’t expecting. Lots of people glared at her. Even Black, now and again. She was used to it.
Bud chose that moment to enter their polite back and forth. He said, “You need to sit down, Mr. Petrov, or we’re gonna think you’re tryin’ to hide something.”
Then Petrov shared his glare with Bud. Apparently not used to people answering back without being shot in the temple right where they stood. She wondered if he had one of those devious trapdoors under their chairs, like in all those 007 movies when the villain pulled a lever and his victims plummeted into a pool of sharks or a vat of acid. They waited for the plunge or attack by summoned thugs, both of them matching the guy stare for rude stare.
Surprisingly, Petrov didn’t pull the lever. “I’m sorry, detectives. I’m just in shock, I guess.” He sank down into a different big wingback chair covered with fabric that had designs of German castles standing majestically on high cliffs, or maybe they were Russian strongholds. He shook his head. “I never stopped loving her, even when she ran off with that fighter. I always wanted her to come back home and live here with Anna and me and the boys. I could’ve protected her from this. Better than Paulie ever could.” He leaned his head back against the cushions and shut his eyes and sighed, really pitiful now. So tired of murder and dead wives and getting blamed for everything.
Okay, that was all very interesting. Fearing he’d dropped off to sleep, however, she raised her voice. “Protect her from whom, Mr. Petrov?”
He jerked up to sitting, faster than a blink, accent growing thicker now. “From her crazy family, that’s who. The Fitches. Those goddamn crazy sons of bitches. They’re all nuts, insane, all of them, every single one, down to the smallest child. That’s why she fled her parents in the first place and came to St. Louis to be my wife. She knew I could protect her, that’s the reason she married me. And I did. As long as she lived in this compound, they couldn’t get within an inch of her. Then she up and ran off with Paulie. I tried everything to get her to come back, but she could be so stubborn, and she thought she was in love with that bastard. And now, she’s dead. Just like I told her she would end up.”
Claire and Bud sat there and listened to all that and studied his very emotionally charged face. Nothing about this interview was going as she had envisioned. Black had talked as if this guy was Attila the Hun, for God’s sake, and now Petrov was acting like Little Orphan Annie at Daddy Warbucks’s funeral. But Black the Shrink was not usually this much off with his take on other people’s character traits. If he said that Ivan Petrov was a scary, maniacal killer, then he was one. But he was also doing a pretty good job of acting like a sad and distraught former husband who still loved his wife. Maybe he could be both, which was a more likely scenario. Still, she didn’t feel sorry for him. She wasn’t so sure he hadn’t ordered the hit on Blythe, either, and/or cut her throat himself with his own special finesse and the sharpest, one-swipe blade in the world. Maybe he was putting on an Oscar-worthy performance. Maybe he had been president of drama club at Moscow Senior High School.