Dantes' Inferno (5 page)

“You're board certified, you have a Ph.D., and a diplomate in forensic psychology. University of New Mexico, Case Western Reserve, not to mention UCLA—our shared alma mater.”

“You did your research,” she said, moving slowly.

“I know some facts about your life—my attorney provides me with résumés—but that's not the same as hearing your side of the story.” He appeared as internally contained as the dark eye at the center of a raging hurricane. “I even managed to read a dozen of your published papers.” He studied her. “Don't look now but your clinical bias is showing. You might even believe in redemption.”

She shifted in the hard chair, and its metal legs scraped loudly over the concrete floor.

“All the way from New Mexico,” he said, dismissing her effortlessly. “Did you travel such a distance for the honor of sharing a few hours with me?”

“I often travel for my work,” she said, not quite biting back her own impatience. Now she retrieved a packet of pencils from one pocket of her briefcase. She ran her thumbnail along the plastic wrapping without making a dent.

“But it's not every day you travel for the FBI, ATF, all those VIP Feds.”

“I already told you, I'm working with Dr. Carreras.” The plastic wrap suddenly split, spilling pencils onto Formica; one rolled off the edge and Dantes caught it in midair.

“Just like your predecessors?” He shrugged. “You're not the first to arrive with your psychometric inventories.”

“That's irrelevant.”

“Is it?” He laced his fingers across his chest, glancing again briefly at the room's only window, a twelve-by-twelve-inch
square cut in the door. “Have you seen the new exhibit at the County?” he asked, slowly returning his focus to her face.

She shook her head, letting him lead the dance, feeling she'd missed a step.

“Francisco Goya, the eyes of the Enlightenment,” Dantes prodded. His long, wiry body overwhelmed the pitted plastic chair, and yet he wore the state-issue jumpsuit, bullet-proof vest, and ankle manacles like a three-piece suit.

“I've seen his work in other museums.” She snapped open the center compartment of her briefcase.

“A true democrat. Equally offended by corruption in state or church.” Glancing toward the door for the third time in minutes, Dantes carried on his conversation as if he were hosting a social occasion. “And like Dürer and Dante Alighieri, Goya refused to keep his eyes or his mouth shut. Always a dangerous choice. He was betrayed by spies, by cowards.”

Sylvia set the first booklet on the table, adjusting the corners, setting one pencil on top. “Are you comparing yourself to Dürer, or Dante, or both?”

“Are you pissed you aren't the first to offer me your
standard measurements?
” he countered. “Isn't that what they're called in the deconstructing biz?”

“Whether I'm first or tenth, the important thing is to complete the standardized inventories.” Her throat felt so dry she could barely swallow. “My participation in the profiling project is highly circumscribed.”

He raised an eyebrow. “You don't strike me as the type.”

“What type is that?”

“The highly circumscribed type.”

They were leading each other in circles, like dogs guarding a bone.

“The FBI sent a tedious suit,” Dantes said. His fingers
drummed the table:
a-rat-a-tat-a-rat-a-tat
. “Rand sent a redhead with a bad attitude.”

“Do you have any intention of completing the inventories with me?” She shifted in the chair, and the thick test booklet slid from the table, hitting the floor with a
slap
.

“Which of Goya's images stayed with you?” Dantes asked.

Without breathing, she stared back at him, lured by his intensity. “The devils.”

“Not the lunatics?” He tipped his head forward, eyelids lowering, as if without looking he clearly sensed her vulnerability. “Oh, c'mon, admit it, Dr. Strange. You feel a kinship with the lunatics.”

Dark lashes fringed her deep-set eyes, shading a restless acuity, lending her face an ordinary prettiness. She almost shook her head—this was what she wanted, wasn't it, to maintain contact, to keep him engaged? She flashed on an image: her father and a young girl fishing from a dinghy in Heron Lake.
You've got to give the fish some slack, Sylvie. Play out the line until it's time to set the hook
.

She said, “Goya was chronicling the bigotry and superstition of his time.”

“Goya chronicles
our
time.” Dantes tapped out a few more hyperkinetic beats, marking double time on the fake wood grain. His gaze was arrogant and cold, but the ember of some passion was sparking deep in those eyes.

Rage, hatred . . . fear? She couldn't quite catch it.

He frowned, the muscles around his bruised eye ticcing ever so faintly. “Those in power, the members of the privileged class, should not abuse their position or their duties of stewardship, neither by commission or omission. If they do, they're common criminals—or worse, they're cowards.” He pulled back suddenly, shrugging off the brief excursion into rhetoric.

“You don't think much of cowards.”

“Do you?”

“You've made reference to them twice in a matter of minutes.”

“I don't like psychoanalysis, either.” He smiled.

Sylvia reached out, her fingers sliding over molded plastic, to tear open the seal on the test booklet. The first two inventories she planned to administer—the Millon Clinical Multiaxial and the Minnesota Multiphasic—would total at least five hours.

She glanced at her watch.

“Hot date?”

She met his eyes, saw the mockery there, and reached for her briefcase. “Mr. Dantes, either I'm not doing any better than my colleagues or you're not interested in completing these inventories
or
both.” She stood. “Let's not waste any more time.”

Immediately, he held his palms out; it was a gesture of surrender, the action of a lonely man. “You win,” he said, reaching for the booklet, sliding it to his side of the table. He picked up the pencil, gesturing for her to be seated again.

She blinked as if coming from dark to light, disoriented, mustering herself. Her head ached, her deltoids were so tight they burned, she had to pee—but the last thing she'd do was take a break now and end up with nothing.

Outside, in the hallway, heavy footsteps sounded. The urgent tones of an argument penetrated the walls of the room.

Taking her seat opposite him for the second time, she said, “This conversation—and the test results—will not be confidential, but the project's coordinators will make every attempt to keep transcripts secure and available only to participants—”

She stiffened when Dantes' hand suddenly covered her own.

“Lunatics and inmates. We're not so bad, are we?” he whispered.

Wrenching her hand away, Sylvia felt Dantes watching her, felt the hunger of his curiosity.

“You can't save them all, can you, Sylvia?” Dantes' voice was soft, seductive.

Sylvia stared at him, blinking, hearing another voice internally.
Dr. Strange, although the committee finds no grounds to cite you with an ethical violation in the death of Mona Carpenter, we do have concerns. It seems you did comply with the standards of your profession regarding safeguards against suicide, but when it came to the use of your judgment you could've gone the extra mile, relying less on intuition and luck, more on solid follow-up
.

Dantes gazed back at her, his face a study in compassion, his voice soothing, as he said, “Tell me about Mona Carpenter.”

The shock registered. She said nothing. She focused on a single thought: I know how to handle this—it comes with the job.

Dantes said, “Pills
and
cutting—isn't that overkill?” With each word his breath quickened as if he was aroused. If he had assaulted her physically, it couldn't have been worse. But he wasn't finished yet.

“What did it feel like to actually
hear
her death?” he asked.

Sylvia gathered together the tests and the tape recorder, sweeping them into her briefcase. She watched her sunglasses skid to the floor. Her heart was racing.

Dantes rose straight up from his chair, his presence filling the room as he whispered his last question. “What's it like to know you could've saved her?”

For an instant Sylvia believed he would go further than verbal assault—but he'd already drawn blood. He stood rooted, burning her with his stare.

She knew the protocol for threatening or aggressive patients: remain calm, maintain distance, keep a barrier between you—always know where to find the panic button. She'd been here before—she'd be here again. None of that seemed to matter. She felt the rush of adrenaline, every synapse trapped in looping panic.

“You pathetic son of a bitch,” she hissed, suddenly coming to life. “Do you really believe you're any better than a common sociopath?” She turned and took four steps to the door, her fist hitting metal.

The door swung wide. A uniformed guard blinked at the sight of Sylvia. “Done already?”

She left Dantes behind as the door slammed shut.

Man is a rope, fastened between animal and Superman—a rope over an abyss. A dangerous going-across, a dangerous wayfaring, a dangerous looking-back, a dangerous shuddering and staying still.

Nietzsche

9:55
A.M.
From an office in his Hollywood Hills home, Professor Edmond Sweetheart watched as the female psychologist unceremoniously exited the private visiting room at MDC.

As an image captured by the hidden video camera and
transmitted via a live satellite feed, Dr. Sylvia Strange appeared shaken and disturbed by Dantes' verbally aggressive assault; but Sweetheart thought the woman possessed her own raw energy, her own dangerous edge, visible even on the small screen. And when she whispered some inaudible but clearly intense farewell, he was disappointed that the camera angle didn't allow him to read her lips.

He still wasn't sure about her; she was an unknown element—a positive or negative charge—introduced into this particular chemical equation. She was a catalyst—and when it came to John Dantes, a catalyst was exactly what they needed.

Strange walked into the hall, her screen image disappearing as the door closed behind her back. Sweetheart was left to study the prisoner, John Freeman Dantes. In turn, Dantes studied Sweetheart. He did this by facing the eye of the camera hidden in the wall-mounted clock.

Dantes stood without moving, without blinking as the seconds passed, adding up to one minute, then two. He stared through the lens, the wall, seemingly straight across the city into Sweetheart's ebony eyes. Finally, his mouth took a slow turn, curling into a smile. He raised his right hand, middle finger extended.

Sweetheart's eyes didn't waver. He didn't shift his posture on the tatami. His mouth was set in a rigid line, every muscle in his 280-pound frame was firing, but his breathing stayed slow and steady. Each inhalation, each exhalation helped still his violent thoughts.

Nor did Dantes break concentration—or the level of threat in his stance—not even when the prison door swung wide and three BOP officers entered the room. The door slammed and locked as the first officer shoved Dantes off balance. The prisoner resisted against the odds, refusing to
relinquish power, even when the second officer raised a rubber baton. With one practiced blow, the guard barely grazed Dantes' ribs as a warning.

The inmate dropped to his knees, apparently compliant.

Watching the show from his war room, Sweetheart didn't bat an eye. His expression was as calm as the faces of the sumo wrestlers whose portraits decorated his walls. His gaze never strayed from the scene taking place on the monitor. The hum of computers, the distant buzz of traffic from Sunset Boulevard, the rustle of bamboo in the garden, the rhythm of his own breathing melded into white noise undisturbed even by the audio transmission coming from MDC. Thanks to the miracle of technology, the live feed could just as easily be originating from four thousand miles away instead of four.

Now the audio transmission was filled with the sounds of physical exertion and pain—grunts, groans. Sweetheart watched calmly, perhaps inclining his body just a fraction of an inch. No one in that small prison room was lifting an aggressive finger. The noise was coming from John Dantes as he collapsed to the floor apparently ill and retching violently.

Sweetheart studied the kinetic reactions of the prisoner. (That's how he usually thought of Dantes these days—in the abstract. It was safer that way.) There was an abnormal spastic quality to those movements, as if they were the result of seizure activity. But Sweetheart had read the most recent physical and neurological reports on the prisoner, who despite institutional life was in near perfect health. The professor stored this latest bit in his own organic information processing system for later retrieval and evaluation.