Malicious Intent (25 page)

Anya concentrated and missed the target by about a foot to her right. A couple of passersby laughed.

‘You’re doing well. Try again,’ Vaughan encouraged.

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‘What do you mean, “We’re all capable”?’

‘We’re all capable of killing under the right circumstances.

Surely you’ve experienced that in your line of work.’

Anya lined up and completely missed the target again.

‘Not everyone murders their former abuser, or the pedo-phile priest who molested them as a child.’

Vaughan took aim and hit the target three times in the middle. ‘Bull’s-eye. Misspent childhood,’ he said. ‘Don’t you think that under certain circumstances even the most convinced pacifist could kill? Mothers have been known to protect their children if it means killing to do so. Isn’t there anything that would drive you to go against your value system, under the right circumstances?’

‘Killing doesn’t solve anything. And it hurts a lot more people than just the victim.’

‘Impressive. You are opposed to the death penalty, even for the person who took your sister?’

‘Capital punishment doesn’t make sense. Aren’t we better off making these people’s lives hell on earth in prison, rather than martyring them? Look at terrorists. If they’re prepared to die in a suicide bombing, the death penalty is hardly a disincentive.’

Vaughan handed over more coins and reloaded. ‘Is that why you chose a profession in which it is impossible to kill anyone?’

he asked wryly. ‘They’re already dead, so even if you make a mistake, there’s no harm done.’

Anya picked up her rifle again. She didn’t manage to hit any of the targets with her next three shots.

‘Why do psychiatrists have to pigeonhole people based on some archaic theories about id, ego and superego? I chose this career path because of the fascinating subject matter, and the fact that I can maybe help people to get closure in their lives.

Help them find out what happened to their loved one, how they died. I also see rape and assault victims, so your theory about only looking after the dead doesn’t hold. It’s not the fear of incompetence or failure that drove me, as you imply.’

She fired one last time and missed again. ‘And I believe guns KATHRYN FOX

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do kill. Whether it’s accidental or deliberate, the result is equally devastating. Can’t recall a mass murderer killing thirty-five people with a shoelace and shoe, or even a machete, for that matter. The only way to kill on that sort of scale is with guns.’

Vaughan smiled broadly, with no hint of sarcasm. ‘I stand corrected. Perhaps you have more faith in human nature than I do.’

‘Maybe I have less.’

The Tongan man retrieved his rifle. ‘Bad luck, lady. Mister, do you want a prize?’

‘I’ll take the large blue dinosaur for my little friend, thanks.’

Anya said, ‘Only if you promise not to tell Ben I had a gun in my hands.’

‘Agreed. We’d better get our stories straight about what kind of dinosaur this is and what it ate, who it mated with, who its friends were and what its favorite color was, or you’ll be in trouble tomorrow.’

Anya had already forgotten their discussion. Vaughan made her laugh and she enjoyed hearing herself sound and feel happy.

They headed for the exit, with Ben stirring only as they arrived back in Annandale.

She carried her son inside, sat him on the lounge half asleep and returned to Vaughan, who waited at the door.

‘Would you like to come in for a coffee? I’d offer dinner but I’m a terrible cook.’

‘Thanks, but I might pass this time. I really should be going.’

‘Of course.’ Anya tried to hide her disappointment.

She wanted to make amends if she’d offended him. ‘I sort of overreact sometimes and assault people with my opinions, especially about the gun issue. I get all worked up and just babble on –’

He took a step closer and she noticed his subtle aftershave.

She stopped talking and inhaled slowly.

Vaughan leaned down and her skin tingled as his face moved closer. Like a schoolgirl, she closed her eyes as he gently brushed the hair from her face and touched his lips to her cheek.

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‘It has nothing to do with that, believe me. There is nothing more attractive than an intelligent woman with strong opinions.’ He took both of her hands. ‘I’d love to come in, but this isn’t the right time – for you.’

Anya stood there, like Oliver Twist, wanting more.

He stepped back down the path. ‘Tell Ben I’d like to see him again sometime.’

She started to close the door and paused.

‘Hey, it eats plants.’

‘What does?’

‘A parasaurolophus.’

He laughed, and was gone.

31

Anya couldn’t get comfortable in bed. Neither hot nor cold, she tossed and turned with a feverishness that left the sheet strangling one leg.

Eventually, she decided to have a glass of water and check on Ben. After covering him with a light blanket, she padded downstairs. On the hallway table sat the thick yellow envelope Vaughan had left. She held the package for a few minutes before opening it.

Inside she found a wad of papers on cults and the psychology of recruitment. To Anya, cults had always conjured up images of disillusioned adolescents escaping society’s ills by setting up their own communities. Eventually they grew up and moved back into mainstream life, which explained why no one ever saw geriatric Hare Krishnas or wizened Orange People.

Although she hoped for a list of known cults in the area, the papers contained extracts from medical literature.
The Annals of
Psychiatry
,
The Journal of Cultic Studies
,
Abnormal Psychology
were all represented, along with a series of titles unfamiliar to her.

The package also contained abstracts of over forty articles on related topics. Vaughan either had an extensive, well-organized library, or had gone to the trouble of doing a literature search and locating relevant articles. The least she could do was read 200

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some of them in case he asked what she thought. Psychiatric mumbo jumbo didn’t hold much interest, but like anything, if it was applied, it became more interesting.

She took the stack to the living room, dimmed the light, turned on the muted television for company and curled up on the lounge.

Within a few pages, her assumptions about cults were proven false. Rather than outlining a series of benign and

‘whacky’ fads, the papers described a litany of cults dominated by psychopaths intent on violence to protect their concept of order. People like Charles Manson and David Koresh came to mind. She remembered seeing the siege at Waco on television, and the controversy surrounding the U.S. government’s management of the situation. Like so many other horrors, the memory had been filed somewhere in the section of the brain that dealt with tragedies that only affected other people.

She read on. Case studies compared cult members’ behavior to that of prisoners of war under the Koreans, Nazis and Japanese. Some of these prisoners, who had documented their incarceration and become aligned with their captors, described stages of behavior that were often called ‘brainwashing.’

The case of Patty Hearst, the American heiress who joined her kidnappers in committing an armed robbery, was compelling. Back then the jury had failed to accept that her behavior could have been modified by torture and isolation, but the psychological changes she underwent made sense under the circumstances.

Anya couldn’t think of any cults run by females, yet women were among the most committed followers. Were women less educated and psychologically weaker than men, and therefore incapable of analyzing and rejecting the cult’s beliefs? Judging by the next study in the pile, that couldn’t be further from the truth.

The television flickered. On screen two trim bodies promoted the latest exercise machine. Without sound, they seemed more like satires of themselves.

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Cults targeted better-educated, wealthier members. University campuses, religious colleges and many professional organizations were infiltrated to identify potential recruits.

Anya wanted to understand why cults attracted strong, ambitious, intelligent women. It didn’t make sense, but neither did so much of what she saw in life. A gadget to make perfect curls of zucchini skins flashed on the screen. Life was way too short to curl bloody zucchinis! She stretched her legs, wandered into the kitchen and boiled water for a hot chocolate.

Ben would be awake in six hours. Somehow sleeping while he was in the house felt like a waste. It was silly, but she enjoyed being awake just knowing he was comfortable and safe. With an oversized cup warming her hands, she returned to the lounge room and the articles.

One author hypothesized that people wanted acceptance, to belong to a group, especially if they had poor social skills. That fitted with the demands and wants of many of today’s women, she thought. Cults tended to deceive members, just as people often did early in relationships. The similarities were remarkable. Being intelligent certainly didn’t protect you from a destructive relationship. In the beginning they both offered sat-isfaction, affection and a wonderful life together. What woman didn’t want to be seduced by love? The clincher seemed to be the cult leader convincing recruits that he had the answers to life’s most difficult questions. If an intelligent person’s questions were answered, they were likely to join and remain committed to the cause.

The next paper looked at behaviors in cults. Manipulative and deceitful actions were often implemented to recruit members who would ‘volunteer’ to join the group. That’s when the isolation began. A typical pattern seemed to be to indoctrinate, punish lack of commitment or wrongdoing, and make the member completely dependent on the cult.

Sounded just like army training, she thought, and took a sip. The liquid scalded her tongue.

‘Shit!’ She put down the cup and continued.

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In each case, the individual’s character was systematically destroyed by ‘techniques’ including deprivation of basic needs like sleep, food and cleanliness. Some groups locked people in rooms to watch the same video over and over again. Anya almost couldn’t believe what she read. It seemed more like Orwellian fiction than something that happened in the twenty-first century.

The next step in the process was the most difficult to com-prehend: why people stayed when the abuse of members that almost all the papers described was horrific. Women were often physically and sexually abused by the leaders and other members. In many cases, children born into the cult underwent similar abuse.

Anya couldn’t understand how an intelligent mother could let that happen and not stop it. Surely her instinct was to protect her children above all else?

While a woman smiled and contorted herself into a yoga position from the screen, Anya read multiple descriptions of cults and mass killings. In 1978, over nine hundred people died when the Reverend Jim Jones ordered them to kill themselves.

Children died first, babies fed the poison via syringes. In 1993

more than eighty followers died with David Koresh. The Order of the Solar Temple managed to murder child members before mass suicides. Suicide by cult members was the shocking, recurring theme.

Anya stretched her stiff back and felt the crack of a vertebra.

She blew on then sipped the chocolate and thought of the four dead women with lung fibers. The cases bothered her more than ever. Fibers, shaved pubic regions in at least two cases, a period of disappearance and probable suicide. Not much to go on, but they had to have something else in common. She scribbled a note to remind herself to ask Peter if Clare Matthews had been shaved. Moving into her office, she found the newspaper stories Zara had photocopied, about the woman doctor who overdosed.

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stared back at her. At least the children were alive. If all of these women joined the same cult they’d have lived in the same place, which is probably where they inhaled the fibers. It also meant that Fatima’s death may have had nothing to do with Mohammed Deab at all.

Zara had attached a handwritten note about Alf Carney doing the autopsy. Great. She knew that Jeff Sales was in Montreal and wouldn’t be back for another two weeks. Realistically that meant she had little chance of getting information until then. After Alf ’s performance about refusing her information, she decided to contact the doctor’s husband on Tuesday morning and see if he would agree to a meeting. No one else needed to know what she was exploring.

Anya finished her drink and decided to head back to bed.

With Ben in the house, though, she couldn’t leave papers strewn across the floor. While collecting them into a pile, she found one she’d missed – a study of domestic violence, which described thirteen behaviors used by perpetrators of domestic violence to manipulate their victims.

Many of the behaviors were identical to those used by cult leaders to control members. They isolated victims from friends and family, used economic abuse to deprive them of money to escape or go out. They coerced and threatened their victims and used their male position as ‘king of the castle’ to dominate the household. The list went on: sleep deprivation, unpre-dictability, and violent actions followed by displays of love and affection.

One paragraph in particular stunned her. Battered women might be forced to commit acts that went against their beliefs and values. They could be made to steal, sell drugs or prostitute themselves for the abuser.

She immediately thought of Fatima Deab. Crime scene assumed she was on the game when they found the money in her bra. She’d been cut off from social contact, had her salary confiscated, so her father knew exactly how much money she had. How could she have afforded to leave?

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Mohammed had threatened her life and the Galea boy. He’d been unpredictable in his violence, hitting Fatima when she hadn’t done anything wrong. How did Fatima cope not knowing what would set her father off, knowing that following the rules didn’t save her from being beaten?