Dantes' Inferno (24 page)

It is also Thomas who adds, quite casually, that judging from all the tests, the fuss, the hubbub, “This celebrity outlaw patient must be stone cold crazy.”

 . . . to the extent an offender's schema is well developed and stable, a profiler will be able to isolate discriminating, stable characteristics of the offender.

D. A. Berkerian and J. L. Jackson,
Critical Issues in Offender Profiling

6:43
A.M.
Relentless thoughts . . 
.

Those two words from M looped like a mantra in Sylvia's mind as she followed Purcell's vehicle west along Melrose Avenue, red light after red light: Cahuenga, La Brea, Fairfax. The sun touched her shoulder blades, warm fingers of a downtown dawn reaching out through the mesh of haze and smog.

Karen knows . . . ask the master . . 
.

Sylvia didn't have a clue what Dantes meant, and she wasn't likely to learn any more from him, at least not for the next few hours.

Before she'd left the hospital, she'd managed to extract a
last bit of information from Dr. Mendoza: Dantes now had thirty milligrams of Novodipam flowing through his system. Enough to sedate a patient who suffers from convulsive disorders or status epilepticus. Within five minutes of the injection, Mendoza predicted he would be unlikely to communicate—probably would not open his eyes—for the next twelve to eighteen hours.

Dantes was the obvious link to M.

A lot could happen in eighteen hours. The city could explode, for example.

The sight of Dantes, his physical and mental deterioration, had left her shaken. Was he seriously ill—or was he a consummate actor?

And did she actually believe she might find a fallen hero hidden inside the violent criminal? If so, she was harboring a dangerous illusion.

Sylvia almost missed the turn, cutting too close to the curb as she followed Purcell's town car north onto Crescent Heights.

John Dantes is exhibiting signs of visual disturbance and paralysis
.

Detective Red Church had been killed and a bomb squad tech had been blinded by the blast, his arm torn off.

Dantes shows no evidence of organic defect . . 
.

Somatic symptoms with no obvious organic neurological justification . . 
.

Sylvia pulled a cigarette from behind her ear and stuck it unceremoniously and unlit between her lips. Bright sunlight glinted off the single silver bangle on her left wrist.

Dr. Mendoza had opened the door to one of the more colorful psychoanalytic explanations for his symptoms: 300.11 conversion disorder. That diagnosis—and its requisites—could be found in the DSM-IV, the diagnostic bible of mental health professionals.

“ . . . presence of symptoms or deficits affecting voluntary motor or sensory function that suggest a neurological or other general medical condition (Criterion A). Psychological factors are judged to be associated with the symptom or deficit. . . .”

Conversion disorder, a subset of the somatoform disorders, the fucking black hole of diagnoses.

She shook her head, warning herself, Don't even go there.

But she would; she always did. Like a moth drawn to light, her intellect could never resist the attraction of perplexity, the psychological enigma, that one piece of the puzzle that defied logic.

Swerving around a protruding manhole cover, she stabbed out the still-unlit cigarette in the ashtray of the Lincoln. This particular disorder was the stuff of nineteenth-century drawing rooms, crinolines, the vapors. The domain of Charcot and Freud and nineteenth-century hysteria. In ancient times, the Greeks had blamed its manifestation in females on a wandering uterus; hysterical men were just plain loony.

Times hadn't changed all that much.

Wedging the cell phone between chin and shoulder, she pressed the first button on auto dial. The more likely scenario: this was about factitious disorder and secondary gain. In other words, Dantes was preconsciously manufacturing his symptoms to gain some advantage. It was a step up from malingering, or pure fakery.
Maybe
.

Accelerating through a yellow light, she flicked another cigarette from the pack. Preoccupied, she tried to draw air through the unlit cigarette, succeeding only in dampening the filter.

The damn phone wasn't ringing. She punched in the number manually.

If you followed classic Freudian reasoning—
for half a
moment
—you ended up with someone experiencing extreme conflict as in shame or guilt, repressing ineffectively, and acting out, or physicalizing the anxiety via the body—somatic expression, as in paralysis and blindness . . .

Still no answer.

Bumper to bumper with Purcell, Sylvia ran a red light, bracing for the next. She tossed the damp, otherwise untouched cigarette onto the floor of the Lincoln. “Leo?”

“Where have you been?” His overly precise enunciation revealed his level of frustration and concern.

“I had to leave in a hurry,” she said apologetically. “I didn't have time to explain.”

“Explain now. I was worried.”

“I've been to see our mutual acquaintance.” She wasn't going to mention John Dantes by name on an open transmission. Leo would fill in the blanks.

She was relieved to hear his voice; she'd needed a sounding board—correction, she needed a
friend
. She felt an abrupt pang of longing for Matt, Serena, and her friends in New Mexico—she craved bare earth beneath her feet.

“How did it go?” Leo was asking slowly.

“Interesting . . . uh, pretty bizarre. . . . we should talk about it.” She flipped on the car's air-conditioning, tilting her face toward a vent. “Leo, when you did the pretrial evaluation, didn't you come up with a V-profile on the MMPI?” She'd read Leo's report a half dozen times, but she wanted to make sure she wasn't hallucinating; if MMPI scales one and three were elevated, and the depressive scale (two) was low, the visual was literally a
V
—hence the name. A V-profile could confirm a tendency toward hysteria, hypochondriasis . . . toward conversion tendencies in general.

“Meet me in thirty minutes,” Leo said. “We'll go over that information.”

“Not possible. A
yes
or
no
will do.”

“It was a mild V-profile, yes.” Leo was silent for a moment, before adding, “I'm concerned about your role in all this.”

“Me, too. We'll talk. I promise.”

She followed Purcell past Laurel Canyon, then east, onto Selma, a small, tree-lined street at the very base of the Hollywood Hills. At the end of the second short block, the agent turned into a driveway, stopping short of an eight-foot-high grilled fence.

Sylvia pulled up alongside Purcell's vehicle to exchange final notes. “You're not coming inside?”

“No need.” Purcell glanced at her wristwatch. “Go talk your shrink talk with the professor—but make sure you conjugate for me in layman's terms.”

“Where will I find you?”

“I'll find you.” Without ceremony, Purcell shifted into reverse, turning in the direction of Sunset Boulevard.

Sylvia pulled the Lincoln forward; she spoke into a metal speaker set in a post.

“This is Dr. Strange.”

Five seconds later the gate rolled open, allowing access to the inner circle; she guided the Lincoln to a stop behind a minivan and a Harley.

The stepping-stone walkway was protected by a canopy of flame trees. The lawn—a smooth green sea—surged gently upward to meet a reef of bonsai pines, azaleas, bird-of-paradise, day lilies, and ginger.

It was all a far cry from the Xeriscape gardens of New Mexico, with their delicate, hardscrabble cholla, echinacea, and chamiza.

The Craftsman-style house was large, low, and elegant, with distinct California–Pacific Rim accents.

She passed under a simple wooden arch into a Japanese-style
garden. Surrounding the granite path, perfectly raked river stones supported a glassine reflecting pool.

Her gaze was arrested by a life-sized gleaming bronze sculpture of a flight-helmeted, harnessed fat man with a wing—
one
feathered angel wing—looking heavenward, poised in midstep, already committed to venturing off the edge of the precipice. She was studying the work when the front door opened after the staccato click of at least three dead bolts.

“
Fallen Angel
,” a voice announced.

Sylvia turned to see a man, late twenties, standing in the doorway. He was handsome in his white tank tee that exposed a tattoo of a flying fish on his right biceps, tight paint-spattered jeans, broken-down biker boots.

“The fallen angel's about to take the plunge all over again,” she said softly.

“Ain't that the way,” he agreed with a nod. “Michael Bergt's the artist—actually, he lives in Santa Fe like you. Great guy. The professor collects his work—incredible paintings, sculpture.”

He smiled, letting the words roll on the waves of his soft, deep voice. “Dr. Sylvia Strange. We've been expecting you. I'm Luke.”

“Nice Harley,” she said.

“Thanks, but I don't get to play with it as much as I'd like. When I'm not slaving over my dissertation, I'm the professor's slave.” He winked. “I loved your paper on narcissism, by the way.”

Hollywood
.

“Thanks. Nice to meet you, Luke.” On second glance, he might be just over thirty. Her hand slid from the cool bronze of the sculpture to touch his, and then she stepped over the threshold into Sweetheart's domain.

Inside the foyer, two dogs scampered around her legs—a
miniature bulldog and a Jack Russell terrier—and she stooped to scratch soft ears. When she stood again, she took in the crisp paper lanterns (Isamu Noguchi, no doubt), and the polished wooden stairs that curved so gently upward. A massive yellow, blue, and white abstract painting—reminiscent of de Kooning—filled much of the wall next to the staircase.

The interior decor was more than tasteful; it was impressively simple, maintaining the Asian flavor of the garden.

Three arched doorways opened off the foyer; Luke turned left, leading Sylvia into what looked like a formal dining room, except for the fact it was lined with work stations.

A strapping woman greeted Sylvia with a loopy smile and a myopic gaze framed by horned-rimmed glasses. “I'm Gretchen. Welcome to antiterrorist command central. I love going after the
bad guys
.” A definite Scandinavian accent. “That's why I came to America—to study under the professor.”

“We have more bad guys?” Sylvia asked.

“America, the FBI—you are the world's rottweiller.” Gretchen caught her lip between her teeth and considered Sylvia from head to toe. “I feel as if I know you.”

“Really?” Sylvia smiled uneasily.

“MOSAIK's profile works like a primer, synthesizing all this,” Gretchen said vaguely, nodding toward a green-glazed, very modern dining table in the center of the room; it was littered with books, manuscripts, pages, graphs, maps. Food had been strategically interspersed with work product.

“What profile?”

“
Yours
.” Gretchen gave a casual shrug. “Paternal desertion—uprooted by the move to California as an adolescent—UCLA, the episode of your mini marriage—then back to New Mexico to buy your father's home, your foster daughter—the prison work.”

With barely a breath, Gretchen extended her arms like a game show model now advertising the prizes behind door number two: “Grapes, cheese, green tea, miso . . . the peaches are organic. So is the seaweed.
Ooh
, and organic Belgian chocolate.”

She winked. “I have a wicked sweet tooth, too.”

“Oops.” Luke flashed Sylvia a sympathetic smile. “None of us are thrilled when we find out our lives are in the database, but it's a damn good way to acquaint yourself with the possibilities of our system.”

“Really.” Sylvia met his smile with a flat stare. “Then I'll start with Sweetheart's profile.”

Luke turned his back to attend to a computer, but his laugh was quick and deep.

No less than three printers were feeding out data; the hum of computers filled the room. Chopin didn't stand a chance, although Sylvia thought she recognized faint musical strains in the background.

On one wall, she noticed a five-foot-square version of the map of Dante's hell that Sweetheart had given her; red pushpins marked the first four circles.

She veered toward framed degrees on the opposite wall—gilded letters advertised various universities, including Yale, University of Hawaii, Penn State, and Cambridge—all for Edmond Holomalia Sweetheart.

A photograph caught her eye; muscled wrestlers captured in midbout.

“The professor's into sumo,” Luke said. “Hey, really, you'd better eat something,” he added. “It's going to be a long day.”