Projection (8 page)

"It didn't happen that way."

"No.  It didn't.  And the police didn't solve the case after one victim.  And Lucas didn't stop the killings after the second victim — which he could have.  And, twenty years ago, nobody protected an eleven-year-old girl whose father was raping her and her kid sister.  And nobody ever got that girl any help, until now, which is exactly four bodies too late in the game.  Five, if you count the life she should have had herself."  He shoveled in a forkful of hash.  "The world isn't very predictable, pal, which means you can't control it.  Putting your life on the line may fool everyone else into thinking you're a saint, but don't look for me to be singing any praises at your wake."

"The last thing I want at my wake," I said, "is you breaking into song."

Hollander smiled, in spite of himself.  He attacked his hash, then grew serious again.  "So you had hopes of seeing her," he said.

My heart began to race.  "I didn't say that."

"Right.  You said you needed to touch base with me, out of the blue, just before laying your life on the line."  He tapped his forehead.  "Don't forget I grease and oil this rocket ship every day.  You want to touch base with what we did and the person we did it for.  You need to know whether you were a fool."

"I'm not sure I want to know that."

"And you'd be better off letting it go."

Several seconds passed with nothing but the clinking of Hollander's fork to fill the time.

"Is she still on the unit?" I asked.  "Did you move her to another hospital?"

He pressed his lips together.  Deep furrows appeared across his brow.  "For your own good, I should probably lie to you."

"If you believed that, you'd be in a different business."

He looked out the window.  "Before Lucas’ trial started I thought about sending her to my facility in the Virgin Islands.  That may have been the right thing to do."  His eyes shifted back to meet mine.  "But I didn't do it."

"Why not?"

"She kept begging me to set up a visit with you first.  Part of me must have wanted to see it happen."  He shook his head.  "I may be crazier than you."

"Doubtful."

He reached for my coffee and took a swig.  "If I arrange for you to see her, you'll have to be discreet.  You can't use her real name or your own.  I admitted her as Nancy Matheson.  I've worked hard to keep her under wraps.  I've even held on to staff I might otherwise have fired, in order to limit turnover and expose her to as few people as possible."

"Thank you.  I knew how much I was asking when I brought her to you."

"Don't mention it.  Just don't blow it."

"Does anyone suspect the truth?"

"I don't think so.  At the beginning — the first few weeks of her stay — she kept insisting she was a doctor herself, that she'd been drugged and brought to the unit illegally.  I dealt with that reality by helping the staff diagnose paranoid schizophrenia and then ordering very high doses of Haldol and Ativan for sedation.  Once she gave me the chance to sit with her for long enough, she seemed to understand it was in her best interest to be in the hospital, rather than behind bars.  She hasn't mentioned the doctor thing since."  He finished off his hash.  "Still, you never know; there is one counselor — a very kind young man named Scott Trembley — who took a special interest in her from the word go.  I'm told hey still talk privately every day."

"But this Trembley hasn't brought anything up."

"Not to me."

"You're not being very reassuring."

"Sorry.  I didn't know it was my job to make you feel better."

I glanced out the window, at nothing in particular.  "Have you been able to reach her?  Do you think she's making progress?"

"Hard to say.  I've only had six months.  I don't have to tell you we're talking about pathology that could take many years to address."

"So she's not
any
better."

He shrugged.  "Baby steps, my boy.  She seems a little more willing to talk about her childhood, maybe a bit more open to the idea that her own early trauma might have fueled her rage as an adult.  I see her on the unit, though, not in the community.  She may still be taking the path of least resistance, telling me what she thinks I want to hear."

"She has an extraordinary capacity to deceive."

"Most serial killers do."

*            *            *

I followed Hollander's Suburban Silverado down Route 97 East to a simple wooden arrow nailed to a tree and painted with the letters AGC.  The road curved through miles of farmhouses and woods before ending at a set of stone pillars at the entrance to the Austin Grate Clinic.  We parked in the semicircular drive of Hollander's magnificent residence.

Hollander was at my door before I was halfway out of the car.  I remembered his size had always seemed inversely proportional to his speed.  "I've called ahead to the chief of nursing, so everything will be set for the visit," he said.  "I told her you're a psychiatrist consulting on the case."

We walked into the main building, built in 1809 as a prominent merchant's mansion, then converted to a school and a nursing home before being turned into a psychiatric hospital by the prior owner.  Hollander had stripped away layers of wall-to-wall carpet, linoleum and Formica and restored every inch of wide-pine flooring, wainscoting and chair rail.  Walking through the lobby and corridors gave no hint of the building's earlier — or current — uses.  It reminded me a little of the admissions offices of the half dozen Ivy League colleges that had rejected me, which might be one reason I had never taken up Hollander on his offers of a job at Austin Grate.  Elegance leaves me feeling unsettled, dangling too high above the uglier reality of things.  The doors and walls of the elevator we took were overlaid with raised mahogany panels.  The brass controls gleamed.  Graffiti would have reassured me, but there wasn't a single obscenity scrawled anywhere.  Hollander pressed the button for the fourth floor.  "We had to renovate the Secure Care Unit in compliance with more rigid state standards," he said.  "You won't miss the difference."

As the doors glided open, the incandescent lighting of the elevator was flooded out by fluorescent ceiling fixtures.  The floors were covered with high-gloss green and black vinyl squares.  The walls were cinder block painted white.  Everything gleamed, but nothing caught the eye.  "Beautiful wood underneath all this concrete and plastic, just like downstairs," Hollander said, shaking his head.  "Damn shame.  I would have left it exposed if the decision were mine.  When you build a fortress, people act like they belong in one."

At the entrance to the unit two iron doors with chicken-wire windows were separated by a guard station behind half-inch plate glass.  The guard flipped a switch to unlock the first door for us.  Hollander paused before instructing him to let us through the second one.  "Fifteen minutes, max," he said.  "And if Ms. Matheson seems to be losing control or beginning to voice her delusions about being a physician, you'll need to leave immediately.  Understood?"

I nodded.

Hollander signaled the guard.  The lock clicked.  We walked inside.

The main hallway of the until was barren, save for an occasional art poster under Plexiglas bolted to the wall.  Nurses ferried medications here and there.  I saw just three patients in the Day Room, each with a staff member within arm's length.  "Low census?" I asked.

"Actually we're full.  Nine men.  Nine women," Hollander said.  "Every patient here is on a fifty/ten program.  Fifty minutes in your room, ten minutes out, other than scheduled therapy sessions.  We rotate the schedules so a maximum of three patients are in common areas at any one time."

"Very efficient," I said.

"It's simple arithmetic," he said, winking at me.  "If you get no structure as a kid — and you know as well as I that there isn't a single person in here who's known anything but chaos and cruelty — the world ends up jamming all the structure you missed, plus interest, down your throat in a single dose.  Locked doors, room programs, jail cells."

"I guess it's necessary."

"Of course it's necessary.  These are dangerous people.  But it's also a tragedy.  That's what the criminal justice system doesn't understand.  You can't punish the evil out of anyone."

I thought of Trevor Lucas, but said nothing.

"You know what Gerry Spence said."

"No."

"The desire to be a judge should disqualify one from serving."

Hollander escorted me to interview C, a room about ten by twelve feet, with faint pink walls, a small, natural wood coffee table and two upholstered armchairs facing one another.  Another chicken-wire window looked onto the ward's main corridor.  "I hope you get what you came for," he said.  He walked out.

I sat down in one of the armchairs.  I tried to move it for a better view out the window, but it wouldn't budge.  I looked down and saw that the legs were bracketed to the floor.  I checked out the coffee table and fond the same thing.

A few minutes later the random footsteps I heard in the hallway distilled into two sets headed my way.  I stood up.  My heart began to race.  The emotional momentum that had carried me back to Austin Grate evaporated.  What had I really hoped to get out of seeing her, after all?  What did it meant that I wanted to see her?  I thought of turning her away and hitting the road.

The door opened.  Kathy stood there in jeans and a white T-shirt, Hollander by her side.  Her blonde hair, perfect build and green eyes were no different than when I'd left her with him six months before, no different than when we'd lived together in Marblehead.  On the face of it, we'd made a pretty picture:  a psychiatrist and an obstetrician in a Victorian by the beach.  No one would have guessed it the backdrop for murderous jealousy.

Kathy had been sleeping with Trevor Lucas and me at the same time, brimming over with rage toward our other sexual partners.  There had been four.  Staring at her, I felt the same strange mixture of hatred, pity and grief I had felt the night I carried her into Hollander's house, knowing she had killed three of Lucas’ lovers (one of them male) and my only real love, Rachel.

"Will you be seeing Ms. Matheson alone?" Hollander asked.

Kathy glanced at him, then at me.

I hesitated.  I could still call the whole thing off.  But I knew that would leave me in more turmoil, not less.

"You'd like me to stay with you?" Hollander asked.

"No," I blurted out.  I tried to collect myself, remembering how important it was that my interaction with Kathy appear professional.  "Let me know when our fifteen minutes have passed."

Hollander led Kathy to the armchair opposite mine.  "Find me at the house when you're through," he told me, then left the room.

My mind was frozen with anxiety.  I slowly took my seat.  Neither of us said a word.  A ticking sound filled the room.  I looked up and noticed a clock mounted behind an iron grid over the chicken-wire window.

"Why are you here?" Kathy said finally, her voice emotionless.

"I can't say exactly why."  I hadn't missed Kathy, wasn't glad to see her, didn't feel anything like longing.  But I still felt connected to her.  Maybe it was not only violence, but pain that joined us.  Though Kathy hadn't confessed her traumatic past to me until after the killings, both of us had been in harm's way as children.  Both of us had sought mastery over our suffering by becoming doctors, trying to relieve the suffering of others.

A few seconds passed.  She smiled faintly.  "Are you OK?"

"Getting by."

"I was hoping one of us was doing better than that."

I nodded.

"Have you been able to stay away from the drugs?  Are you getting stronger?"

I thought of Hollander's words at breakfast, but I could not bear her reaching out to me.  "Have they been kind to you here?" I asked.

Her face every hint of amiability.  "That must feel good.  Finally being in total control."

"It's not about that."

"Oh," she mocked.  "It's so easy to get confused.  You're free to go.  I'm locked up.  Your friend Matt can pump me full of Haldol or Thorazine anytime he feels like it.  I can be strip-searched if they think I stole a pencil or a plastic spoon.  If I were to threaten you, I'd land in the ‘quiet room’ or in restraints."  Her eyes moved to my crotch.  "It just
seemed
like you were on top."

I instinctively moved my forearm to cover myself.  "This is going wrong.  Can we kind of start again?"

"Does having that much power get you hard, Frank?  Did you fantasize about me coming in here in a little Johnny, open at the back?"  She spread her knees apart and ran a finger up one thigh, then over the denim seam between her legs.  "Does it make you want to spank me?"  She caught her lower lip between her teeth like a shy schoolgirl.  "Does it make you want to fuck me?"

My stomach churned.  "It makes me sad," I managed.  "It makes me wish I could help you."

"You want to help me," she chuckled, leaning forward and squinting incredulously.  "That's what putting me in this hell was all about?"

"I wanted you in a hospital instead of in prison."

"Because this is your domain."

"Because you're ill."  Because I thought I loved you.

"Ah, yes.  Sick little Kathy.  Wind her up, and she thanks the all-powerful shrink for sparing her.  What about
your
sickness?"  She settled back into her chair.  "I could have sworn you were torturing me for killing your little whore Rachel."

I took those words like a roundhouse kick to my gut.  "Don't," I said.

"Look at you," she said, rolling her eyes.  "You're still obsessed with her."

If I had let myself go I would have leapt at Kathy and beaten her with my fists for soiling Rachel's name.  But I reminded myself that it was her illness speaking.  My visit had ignited her primitive jealousy and rage.  I had to keep my composure — to think and act like a psychiatrist.  "And you still hate her," I managed, "even though she's dead.  Do you have any idea why?  Has Hollander helped you figure it out?"

"It's Psych 101, really.  He thinks my dad raping me, then blowing me off in favor of my little sister when I reached puberty has a lot to do with it.  He thinks I've been confused and angry ever since.  Very angry."