Matthews said, "I was here, let's see, on six intakes. Must have been four years altogether. I was like a jailhouse lawyer, Collier. As soon as the patients heard I was a therapist they started coming to me."
"So you were 'Patient Matthews,' " Megan said, eyes widening. "In the reports about the deaths here."
"That's my Megan," Matthews said.
She said to Tate, "They closed this place because of a bunch of suicides. I thought it was Peter who'd killed them."
"But it was you?" Tate asked Matthews.
"The DSM-III diagnosis was that I was sociopathic--well, it's called an antisocial/criminal personality now. How delicate. I knew the hospital examiners in Richmond were looking for an excuse to close down places like this. So I simply helped them out. The place was too understaffed and too incompetent to keep patients from killing themselves. So they shut it down."
"But it was really just a game to you, right?" Megan asked in disgust. "Seeing how many patients you could talk into suicide."
Matthews shrugged. He continued. "I got transferred to a halfway house and one bright, sunny May morning, I walked out the front door. Moved to Prince William County, right behind your farm. And started planning how to destroy you." Matthews winced and pressed his side. The wound didn't seem that severe.
Tate recalled something else from the trial and asked, "What about your wife?"
Matthews said nothing but his eyes responded.
Tate understood. "She was your first victim, wasn't she? Did you talk her into killing herself? Or maybe just slip some drugs into her wine during dinner?"
"She was vulnerable," Matthews responded. "Insecure. Most therapists are."
Tate asked, "What was she trying to do? Take Peter away from you?"
"Yes, she was. She wanted to place him in a hospital full-time. She shouldn't have meddled. I understood Peter. No one else did."
"But you made Peter the way he was," Megan blurted. "You cut him off from the world."
She was right. Tate recalled the defense's expert witness, Dr. Rothstein, testifying that if you arrest development by isolating a child before the age of eight, social--and communications--skills will never develop. You've basically destroyed the child forever.
Tate remembered too how he'd handled the expert witness's testimony at Peter Matthews's murder trial.
The Court: The Commonwealth may cross-examine.
Mr. Collier: Dr. Rothstein, thank you for that trip down memory lane about the defendant's sad history. But let me ask you: psychologically, is the defendant capable of premeditated murder?
Dr. Rothstein: Peter Matthews is a troubled--
Mr. Collier: Your Honor?
The Court: Please answer the question, sir.
Dr. Rothstein: I--
Mr. Collier: Is the defendant capable of premeditated murder?
Dr. Rothstein: Yes, but--
Mr. Collier: No further questions.
"All he needed was me!" Matthews now raged. "He didn't need anyone else in his life. We'd spend hours together--when my wife wasn't trying to sneak him out the door."
"Did you love him that much?" Tate asked.
"You don't have a clue, do you? Why, you know what we did? Peter and I? We talked. About everything. About snakes, about stars, about floods, about explorers, about airplanes, about the mind . . ."
Delusional ramblings, Tate imagined. Poor Peter, baffled and lonely, undoubtedly could do nothing but listen.
Yet . . . with a sorrowful twist deep within him Tate realized that this was something Megan and he didn't do. They didn't talk at all. They never had.
And now we won't ever, he realized. We've lost that chance forever.
Their captor fell silent, looking into a corner of the hospital lobby, lost in a memory or thought or some confused delusion.
Finally Tate said, "So, Aaron. Tell me what you want. Tell me exactly." He closed his eyes, fighting the incredible pain in his head.
After a moment Matthews said, "I want justice. Pure and simple. I'm going to kill your daughter and you're going to watch. You'll live with that sight for the rest of your life."
So it's come to this . . .
Tate sighed and thought, as he had so often on the way to the jury box or the podium in a debate, All right, time to get to work.
*
"I don't know how you can have justice, Aaron," Tate said to him. "I just don't know. In all my years practicing law--"
Matthews's face writhed in disgust. "Oh, stop right there."
"What?" Tate asked innocently.
"I hear it," the psychiatrist said. "The glib tongue, the smooth words. You have the orator's gift . . . sure. We know that. But so do I. I'm immune to you."
"I won't try to talk you into a single thing, Aaron. You don't seem to be the sort--"
"It won't work! Not with me. The advocate's tricks. The therapist's tricks. 'Personalize the discourse.' 'Aaron' this and 'Aaron' that. Try to get me to think of you as a specific human being, Tate. But that won't work, Tate. See, it's Tate Collier the human being I despise."
Undeterred, Tate continued, "Was he your only child? Peter?"
"Why even try?" Matthews rolled his eyes.
"All I want is to get out of this and save our lives. Is that a surprise?"
"A perfect example of a rhetorical question. Well, no, it's not a surprise. But there's nothing you can say that's going to make any difference."
"I'm trying to save your life too, Aaron. They know about you. The police. You heard the message from the detective, I assume? On your answering machine?"
"They may figure it out eventually but since you're here by yourself, an escapee, I think I have a bit of time."
"What does he mean?" Megan asked. "Escapee?"
He saw no reason to tell her now that her friend Amy was dead. He shook his head and continued, "Let's talk, Aaron. I'm a wealthy man. You're going to have to leave the country. I'll give you some money if you let us go."
"Leading with your weakest argument. Doesn't that mean you've just lost the debate? That's what you say on your American Forensics Association tape."
The faint smile never wavered from Tate's face. "You saw my house, the land," he continued. "You know I've got resources."
A splinter of disdain in Matthews's eyes.
"How much do you want?"
"You're using a rhetorical fallacy. Appealing to a false need--for diversion." Matthews smiled. "I do it all the time. Soften up the patient, get the defenses down. Then, bang, a kick in the head. Come on, I didn't do this for ransom. That's obvious."
"Whatever your motive was, Aaron, the circumstances've changed. They know about you now. But you've got a chance to get out of the country. I can get you a half million in cash. Just like that. More by hocking the house."
Matthews said nothing but paced slowly, staring at Megan, who gazed back defiantly.
Tate knew, of course, that money wasn't the issue at all; neither was helping Matthews escape. His immediate purpose was simply to make the man indecisive, wear down his resistance. Matthews was right--this was a diversion. And even though the man knew it Tate believed the technique was working.
"I can't make you a rich man but I can make you comfortable."
"Pointless," Matthews said, shaking his head as if he were disappointed.
"Aaron, you can't change things," Tate continued. "You can't make it the way it was. You can't bring Peter back. So will you just let us go?"
"Specific request within the opponent's power to grant," Matthews recited, "requiring only an affirmative or negative response. Your skills are still in top form, Collier. My answer, however, is neg-a-tive."
"You tell me you're after justice." Tate shrugged. "But I wonder if it's not really something else."
A flicker in the doctor's eyes.
"Have you really thought about why you're doing this?" Tate asked.
"Of course."
"Why?"
"I--"
Tate said quickly,
"It's to take the pain away, isn't it?"
Matthews's lips moved as he carried on a conversation with himself, or his dead wife, or his dead son. Or perhaps no one at all.
What a man hears, he may doubt.
What a man sees . . .
Tate leaned toward him, ignoring the agony in his head. He whispered urgently, "Think about it, Aaron. Think. This is very important. What if you get it wrong? What if killing Megan makes the pain worse?"
"Nice try," Matthews cried. "Setting up straw men."
"Or what if it has no effect at all? What if this is your one chance to make the pain go away and it doesn't work? Did you ever consider that?"
"You're trying to distract me!"
"You lost someone you loved. You lie on your back for hours, paralyzed with the pain. You wake up at two A.M. and think you're going mad. Right?"
Matthews fell silent. Tate saw he'd touched a nerve.
"I know all about that. It happened to me." Tate leaned forward and, without feigning, matched the agony he saw in Matthews's face with pain of his own. "I've been there. I lost someone I loved more than life itself. I lost my wife. I can see it in your face. These aren't tricks, Aaron. I do know what I'm talking about. That's all you want--the pain to go away. You're not a lust killer, Aaron. You're not an expediency killer. You're not a hired killer. You only kill when there's a reason. And that reason is to make the pain go away!"
And to Tate's astonishment he heard a woman's voice beside him. A smooth contralto. Megan, gazing into Matthews's eyes, was saying, "Even those patients you killed here, Aaron . . . You didn't want to kill them. I was wrong. It wasn't a game at all. You just wanted to help them stop hurting."
Excellent, Tate thought, proud of her.
"The pain," the lawyer took over. "That's what this is all about. You just want it to go away."
Matthews's eyes were uncertain, even wild. How we hate the confusing and the unknown, and how we flock to those who offer us answers simple as a child's drawing.
"I'll tell you, Aaron, that I've lived with your son's death every day since the Department of Corrections called and told me what happened. I feel that pain too. I know what you're going through. I--"
Suddenly Matthews leapt forward and grabbed Tate's shirt, began slugging him madly, knocking him to the floor. Megan cried out and stepped toward them but the madman shoved her to the floor again. He screamed at Tate, "You know? You know, do you? You have no fucking idea! All the days, the weeks and weeks that I haven't been able to do anything but lie on my back and stare at the ceiling, thinking about the trial. You know what I see? I don't see Peter's face. I see your back. You, standing in the courtroom with your back to my son. You sent him to die but you didn't even look at him! The jury were the only people in that room, weren't they?"
No, Tate reflected, they were the only people in the universe. He said to Matthews, "I'm sorry for you."
"I don't want your fucking pity." Another wave of fury crossed his face and he lifted Tate in his powerful hands and shoved him to the floor again, rolled him on his back. He took a knife from his pocket, opened it with a click and bent down over Tate.
"No!" Megan cried.
Matthews slipped the blade past Tate's lips into his mouth. Tate tasted metal and felt the chill of the sharp point against his tongue. He didn't move a muscle. Then Matthews's eyes crinkled with what seemed to be humor. His lips moved and he seemed to be speaking to himself. He withdrew the blade.
"No, Collier, no. Not you. I don't want you."
"But why not?" Tate whispered quickly. "Why not? Tell me!"
"Because you're going to live your life without your daughter. Just like I'm going to live mine without my son."
"And that'll take the pain away?"
"Yes!"
The lawyer nodded. "Then you have to let her go." He struggled to keep the triumph from his voice--as he always did in court or at the debate podium. "Then you have to let her go and kill me. It's the only answer for you."
"Daddy," Megan whimpered. Tate believed it was the first time he'd heard her say the word in ten years.
"Only answer?" Matthews asked uncertainly.
Tate had known that eventually it would come to this. But what a time, what a place for it to happen.
All cats see in the dark.
Therefore Midnight can see in the dark.
He leaned his head against the girl's cheek. "Oh, honey . . ."
Megan asked. "What is it? What?"
Unless Midnight is blind.
Tate began to speak. His voice cracked. He started again. "Aaron, what you want makes perfect sense. Except that . . ." It was Megan's eyes he gazed into, not their captor's, as he said, "Except that I'm not her father."
Chapter Thirty
Matthews seemed to gaze down at his captives but he was backlit by dawn light in the picture window and Tate couldn't see where his eyes were turned.
Megan, pale in the same oblique light, clasped her injured face. A pink sheen of blood was on her cheeks and hands. She was frowning.
Matthews laughed but Tate could see that his quick mind was considering facts and drawing tentative conclusions.
"I'm disappointed, Collier. That's obvious and simpleminded. You're lying."
"When you were stalking Megan and me how often did you see us together?" Tate asked.
"That doesn't mean anything."
"You followed us for how long?"
A splinter of doubt, like a faint cloud obscuring the sun momentarily. Tate had seen this in the eyes of a thousand witnesses.
Matthews answered, "Six months."
"How many weekends was she with me?"
"That doesn't--"
"How many?"
"Two, I think."
"You broke into my house to plant those letters. How many pictures of her did you see?"
"Dad . . ."
"How many?" Tate asked firmly, ignoring the girl.
Matthews finally said, "None."
"What did her bedroom look like?"
Another hesitation. Then: "A storeroom."
"How much affection did you ever see between us? Did I seem like a father? I've got dark, curly hair and eyes. Bett's auburn. And Megan's blond, for God's sake. Does she even look like me? Look at the eyes. Look!"
He did. He said uncertainly, "I still don't believe you."
"No, Daddy! No!"
"You went to see my wife," Tate continued to Matthews, squeezing Megan's leg to silence her.
The doctor nodded.
"Well, you're a therapist. What did you see in Bett's face when you were talking to her? What was there when she was telling you about us and about Megan?"
Matthews reflected. "I saw . . . guilt."
"That's right," Tate said. "Guilt."
Matthews looked from one of his captives to the other.
"Seventeen years ago," Tate began slowly, speaking to Megan, finally revealing the truth they'd kept from her for all these years, "I was prosecuting cases, making a name for myself. The Washington Post called me the hottest young prosecutor in the commonwealth. I'd take on every assignment that came into the office. I was working eighty hours a week. I got home to your mother on weekends at best. I'd go for three or four days in a row and hardly even call. I was trying to be my grandfather. The lawyer-farmer-patriarch. I'd be a local celebrity. We'd have a huge family, an old manse. Sunday dinners, reunions, holidays . . . the whole nine yards."
He took a deep breath. "That was when your aunt Susan had her first bad heart attack. She was in the hospital for a month and mostly bedridden after that."
"What are you saying?" Megan whispered.
"Susan was married. Her husband, you remember him."
"Uncle Harris."
"You were right in your letter, Megan. Your mother did spend a lot of time caring for her sister. Harris and your mother both did."
"No," Megan said abruptly. "I don't believe it."
"They'd go to the hospital together, Harris and Bett.
They'd have lunch, dinner. Go shopping. Sometimes Bett cooked him meals in his studio. Helped him clean. Your aunt felt better knowing he was being looked after. And it was okay with me. I was free to handle my cases."
"She told you all this?" Megan asked. "Mom?"
His face was a blank mask as he said slowly, "No. Harris did. The day of his funeral."
Tate had been upstairs on that eerily warm November night years ago. The funeral reception, at the Collier farm, was over.
Standing at a bedroom window, Tate had looked out over the yard. Felt the hot air, filled with leaf dust. Smelled cedar from the closet.
He'd just checked on three-year-old Megan, asleep in her room, and he'd come here to open windows to air out the upstairs bedrooms; several relatives would be spending the night.
He'd looked down at the backyard, gazing at Bett in her long black dress. She hiked up the hem and climbed onto the new picnic table to unhook the Japanese lanterns.
Tate had tried to open the window but it was stuck. He took off his jacket to get a better grip and heard the crinkle of paper in the pocket. At the funeral service one of Harris's attorneys had given him an envelope, hand-addressed to him from Harris, marked Personal, apparently written just before the man had shot himself. He'd forgotten about it. He opened the envelope and read the brief letter inside.
Tate had nodded to himself, folded the note slowly and walked downstairs, then outside.
He remembered hearing a Loretta Lynn song playing on the stereo.
He remembered hearing the rustling of the hot wind over the brown grass and sedge, stirring pumpkin vines and the refuse of the corn harvest.
He remembered watching the arc of Bett's narrow arm as she reached for an orange lantern. She glanced down at him.
"I have something to tell you," he'd said.
"What?" she'd whispered. Then, seeing the look in his eyes, Bett had asked desperately: "What, what?"
She'd climbed down from the bench. Tate came up close, and instead of putting his arm around his wife's shoulders, as a husband might do late at night in a house of death, he handed her the letter.
She read it.
"Oh my. Oh."
Bett didn't deny anything that was contained in the note: Harris's declaration of intense love for her, the affair, his fathering Megan, Bett's refusal to marry him and her threat to take the girl away from him forever if Harris told Bett's sister of the infidelity. At the end the words had degenerated into mad rambling and his chillingly lucid acknowledgment that the pain was simply too much.