Predator

  “It’s about respect. About her treating me like shit and lying.”

  “You feel she doesn’t trust you anymore because of what happened last summer at that place in Knoxville where they do all that research on dead bodies. What’s it called? The Decay Research something or other.”

  “The Body Farm.”

  “Oh, yes.”

  What an intriguing topic for discussion on one of her shows: The Body Farm Isn’t a Health Spa. What Is Death? Talk It Out with Dr. Self.

  She has already composed the promo.

  Marino looks at his watch, makes a big production of lifting his thick wrist to see what time it is, as if it doesn’t bother him that their time is about up, as if he is looking forward to its being up.

  She isn’t fooled.

  “Fear,” Dr. Self begins her summary. “An existential fear of not counting, of not mattering, of being left utterly alone. When the day ends, when the storm ends. When things end. It’s scary when things end, isn’t it? Money ends. Health ends. Youthfulness ends. Love ends. Maybe your relationship with Dr. Scarpetta will end? Maybe she’ll finally reject you?”

  “There’s nothing to end except work and that will go on forever because people are shits and will keep killing each other long after I got my little angel wings. I’m not coming here anymore and listening to this bullshit. All you do is talk about the Doc. I think it’s pretty obvious my problem isn’t her.”

  “We do have to stop now.”

  She rises from her chair and smiles at him.

  “I quit taking that medicine you prescribed. A couple weeks ago, forgot to tell you.”

  He gets up and his big presence seems to fill the room.

  “It didn’t do nothing, so why bother,” he says.

  When he is on his feet, she is always a bit startled by what a big man he is. His sun-darkened hands remind her of baseball mitts, of baked hams. She can imagine him crushing someone’s skull or neck, of smashing another person’s bones like potato chips.

  “We’ll talk about the Effexor next week. I’m seeing you…” She picks up the appointment book from her desk. “Next Tuesday at five.”

  Marino stares through the open doorway, scanning the small sunroom with its one table and two chairs and potted plants, several of them palms that are almost as high as the ceiling. There are no other patients waiting. There never are this time of day.

  “Huh,” he says. “Good thing we hurried up and finished on time. Hate for you to keep someone waiting.”

  “Would you like to pay me at our next appointment?”

  It is Dr. Self’s way of reminding him that he owes her three hundred dollars.

  “Yeah, yeah. I forgot my checkbook,” he replies.

  Of course he did. He isn’t about to owe her money. He will be back.

  33

  Benton parks his Porsche in a visitor’s slot outside tall metal fencing that is curved like a breaking wave and topped with coils of razor wire. Guard towers rise starkly against the cold, overcast sky from each corner of the grounds. Parked in a side lot are unmarked white vans with steel dividers, no windows and no interior locks, mobile holding cells used to transport prisoners like Basil off-grounds.

  Butler State Hospital is eight stories of precast and steel-mesh-covered windows on twenty acres amid woods and ponds less than an hour southwest of Boston. Butler is where offenders are committed by reason of insanity and is considered a model of enlightenment and civility with pods called cottages, each one housing patients requiring different levels of security and attention. D Cottage stands alone not far from the administration building, and houses approximately one hundred dangerous predatory inmates.

  Segregated from the rest of the hospital population, they spend most of the day, depending on their status, in single cells, each with its own shower that can be used ten minutes per day. Toilets can be flushed twice an hour. A team of forensic psychiatrists is assigned to D Pod, and other mental health and legal professionals such as Benton are in and out regularly. Butler is supposed to be humane and constructive, a place to get well. To Benton, it is nothing more than attractive maximum-security confinement for people who can never be repaired. He has no illusions. People like Basil have no lives and never did. They ruin lives and always will, given the chance.

  Inside the beige-painted lobby, Benton approaches a bulletproof window and speaks through an intercom.

  “How you doing, George?”

  “No better than last time you asked.”

  “Sorry to hear that,” Benton says as a loud metallic click grants him entrance through the first set of airlocked doors. “That mean you haven’t gotten around to seeing your doctor yet?”

  The door shuts behind him and he places his briefcase on a small metal table. George is in his sixties and never feels well. He hates his job. He hates his wife. He hates the weather. He hates politicians and, when he can, removes the photograph of the governor from the wall in the lobby. For the past year, he has struggled with extreme fatigue, stomach problems and achiness. He also hates doctors.

  “I’m not taking medicine, so what’s the point? That’s all doctors do anymore is throw drugs at you,” George says as he searches Benton’s briefcase and returns it to him. “Your pal’s in the usual spot. Have fun.”

  Another click and Benton steps through a second steel door, and a guard in a tan-and-brown uniform, Geoff, leads him along a polished hallway, passing through another set of airlock doors into the high-security unit where lawyers and mental-health workers meet with inmates in small, windowless rooms made of cinder block.

  “Basil says he’s not getting his mail,” Benton says.

  “He says a lot of things,” Geoff replies without smiling. “All he does is run his mouth.”

  He unlocks a gray steel door and holds it open.

  “Thanks,” Benton says.

  “I’ll be right outside.” Geoff fires a look at Basil, shuts the door.

  Basil sits at a small wooden table and doesn’t get up. He is unrestrained and wears his usual prison garb of blue pants, white T-shirt and flip-flops with socks. His eyes are bloodshot and distracted, and he stinks.

  “How are you, Basil?” Benton asks, taking a seat across from him.

  “I had a bad day.”

  “That’s what I hear. Tell me.”

  “I’m feeling anxious.”

  “How are you sleeping?”

  “I was awake most of the night. I kept thinking about our talk.”

  “You seem fidgety,” Benton says.

  “I can’t sit still. It’s because of what I told you. I need something, Dr. Wesley. I need some Ativan or something. Have you looked at the pictures yet?”

  “What pictures?”

  “The ones of my brain. You must have. I know you’re curious. Everybody over there is curious, right?” he says with a nervous smile.

  “Is that what you wanted to see me about?”

  “Pretty much. And I want my mail. They won’t give it to me and I can’t sleep or eat, I’m so upset and stressed. Maybe some Ativan, too. I hope you’ve thought about it.”

  “About?”

  “What I told you about that lady who got killed.”

  “The lady in The Christmas Shop.”

  “Ten-four.”

  “Yes, I have been thinking quite a lot about what you told me, Basil,” Benton says, as if he accepts that what Basil told him is true.

  He can never let on when he thinks a patient is lying. In this instance, he’s not sure Basil is, not at all.

  “Let’s go back to that day in July, two and a half years ago,” Benton says.

  It bothers Marino that Dr. Self shut the door behind him and wasted no time flipping the deadbolt, as if he is the one she is locking out.

  He is insulted by the gesture and what it implies. He always is. She doesn’t care about him. He’s just an appointment. She is glad he is out of her way and she won’t have to subject herself to his company for another week, and then i
t will be for fifty minutes and fifty minutes only, not a second more, even if he’s quit his medicine.

  That stuff is shit. He couldn’t have sex. What good is an antidepressant if you can’t have sex. You want to be depressed, take an antidepressant that ruins sex.

  He stands outside the locked door on her sunporch, staring rather dazedly at the two pale-green cushioned chairs and the green glass table with its stack of magazines. He has read the magazines, all of them, because he is always early for his appointments. That bothers him, too. He would prefer to be late, to stroll in as if he has better things to do than show up for a shrink, but if he is late, he loses those minutes, and he can’t afford to lose even one minute when every minute counts and is costly.

  Six dollars a minute, to be exact. Fifty minutes and not a minute more, not a second more. She isn’t going to add a minute or two for good measure or goodwill or for any reason. He could threaten to kill himself and she is going to glance at her watch and say, We’ve got to stop. He could tell her about killing someone and be right in the middle of it, about to pull the trigger, and she is going to say, We’ve got to stop.

  Aren’t you curious? he has asked her in the past. How can you just end it right here when I haven’t even gotten to the good part yet?

  You’ll tell me the rest of the story next time, Pete. She always smiles.

  Maybe I won’t. You’re lucky I’m telling you, period. A lot of people would pay money to hear the whole story, the God’s-truth story.

  Next time.

  Forget it. There ain’t gonna be a next time.

  She won’t argue with him when it is time to stop. No matter what he does to steal another minute or two, she gets up and opens the door and waits for him to walk out so she can lock it behind him. There is no negotiating when it is time to stop. Six dollars a minute for what? To be insulted. He doesn’t know why he comes back.

  He stares at the small, kidney-shaped pool with its colorful Spanish-tile border. He stares at orange and grapefruit trees heavy with fruit, stares at the red-painted stripes around the trunks of them.

  Twelve hundred dollars each month. Why does he do it? He could buy one of those Dodge trucks with the V-10 Viper engine. He could buy a lot of things for twelve hundred bucks a month.

  He hears her voice behind the shut door. She is on the phone. He pretends to be looking at a magazine, listening.

  “I’m sorry, who is this?” Dr. Self is saying.

  She has a big voice, a radio voice, a voice that projects and carries as much authority as a gun or a badge. Her voice really gets to him. He likes her voice and it really does something to him. She looks good, really good, so good it’s hard to sit across from her and imagine other men sitting in his same chair and seeing what he sees. Her dark hair and delicate features, her bright eyes and perfect white teeth. He isn’t happy that she’s started a television show, doesn’t want other men to see what she looks like, see how sexy she is.

  “Who is this, and how did you get this number?” she says from behind the locked door. “No, she’s not, and she doesn’t take those kinds of calls directly. Who is this?”

  Marino listens, getting anxious and overheated as he stands on the sunporch outside her locked door. The early evening is steamy, and water drips from trees and is beaded on the grass. Dr. Self doesn’t sound happy. She seems to be talking to someone she doesn’t know.

  “I understand your privacy concerns, and I’m sure you understand it isn’t possible to verify the validity of your claim if you won’t say who you are. Things like this have to be followed up on and verified or Dr. Self can’t have anything to do with them. Well, that’s a nickname, not a real name. Oh, it is, I see. All right, then.”

  Marino realizes she is pretending to be someone else. She doesn’t know the person on the line and is uneasy about it.

  “Yes, all right,” says the person Dr. Self pretends to be. “You can do that. Certainly you can talk to the producer. I must admit it’s interesting if it’s true, but you need to call the producer. I suggest you do so right away, since Thursday’s show is on that topic. No, not radio. Her new television show,” she says in the same firm voice, a voice that easily penetrates the wooden door and flows right into the sunporch.

  She talks much louder on the phone than she does in her sessions. It’s a good thing. It wouldn’t be good if some other patient were sitting on the sunporch and could hear every word Dr. Self says to Marino during their brief but expensive fifty minutes together. She doesn’t talk this loudly when they are together behind that shut door. Of course, there is never anyone waiting on the sunporch when he has a session. He is always the last one, all the more reason she ought to cut him some slack and throw in a few extra minutes. It isn’t like she would keep anyone waiting, because there isn’t anyone. There never is after his appointment. One of these days, he will say something so moving and important, she will give him a few extra minutes. It might be the first time she has ever done it in her life, and she will do it with him. She will want to do it. Maybe it will be him who doesn’t have the extra time on that occasion.

  I’ve got to go, he imagines himself saying.

  Please finish. I really want to hear what happened.

  Can’t do it. Got to be somewhere. He will get up from his chair. Next time. I promise I’ll tell you the rest of it when…let’s see…Next week, whenever. Just remind me, okay?

  Marino realizes Dr. Self has gotten off the phone, and he moves across the sunporch as silently as a shadow and lets himself out the glass door. He shuts it without a sound and follows the walkway around the pool, through the garden with its fruit trees that have the red stripes around them, and along the side of the small, white, stucco house where Dr. Self lives but shouldn’t live, simply has no business living. Anybody could walk right up to her front door. Anybody could walk right up to her office in back by the palm-shaded pool. It isn’t safe. Millions of people listen to her every week and she lives like this. It isn’t safe. He should go back and knock on her door and tell her.

  His tricked-out Screamin’ Eagle Deuce is parked on the street, and he walks around it once to make sure nobody has done anything to it while he was in his appointment. He thinks about his flat tire. He thinks about getting his hands on whoever did it. A light film of dust coats the flames over blue paint and the chrome, and he is more than a little irritated. He detailed the motorcycle early this morning, polished every inch of trim and then had a flat tire and now there is dust. Dr. Self should have covered parking. She should have a damn garage. Her fancy white Mercedes convertible is in the driveway and no other car will fit, so her patients park on the street. It isn’t safe.

  He unlocks the bike’s front fork and ignition and swings his leg over the warrior seat, thinking how much he loves not living like the poor city cop he was most of his life. The Academy supplies him with an H2 Hummer, black with a turbo-diesel V8, 250-horsepower engine, four-speed overdrive transmission, a load-bearing exterior rack, winch and off-road adventure package. He bought the Deuce and tricked it out to his heart’s content, and he can afford a psychiatrist. Imagine that.

  He shifts the bike into neutral and presses the starter button as he stares at the attractive white house where Dr. Self lives but shouldn’t live. He holds in the clutch and gives the bike some gas, the ThunderHead pipes making plenty of noise as lightning flashes in the distance and a dark army of retreating clouds wastes its artillery over the sea.

  34

  Basil smiles again. “I can’t find anything about a murder,” Benton is saying to him, “but two and a half years ago, a woman and her daughter disappeared from a business called The Christmas Shop.”

  “Didn’t I tell you that?” Basil says, smiling.

  “You didn’t say anything about people disappearing or a daughter.”

  “They won’t give me my mail.”

  “I’m checking on it, Basil.”

  “You said you’d check on it a week ago. I want my mail. I want it toda
y. They quit giving it to me right after I had the disagreement.”

  “When you got angry at Geoff and called him Uncle Remus.”

  “And for that I don’t get my mail. I think he spits in my food. I want all of it, all the old mail that’s been sitting around for a month. Then you can move me to a different cell.”

  “That I can’t do, Basil. It’s for your own good.”

  “I guess you don’t want to know,” Basil says.

  “How about I promise you’ll have all your mail by the end of the day.”

  “I better get it or that’s the end of our friendly conversation about The Christmas Shop. I’m getting rather bored with your little science project.”

  “The only Christmas shop I could find was in Las Olas on the beach,” Benton says. “July fourteenth, Florrie Quincy and her seventeen-year-old daughter, Helen, disappeared. Does that mean anything to you, Basil?”

  “I’m not good with names.”

  “Describe for me what you remember about The Christmas Shop, Basil.”

  “Trees with lights, little trains and ornaments everywhere,” he says, no longer smiling. “I already told you all that. I want to know what you found inside my brain. You see their pictures?” He points at his head. “You should see everything you want to know. Now you’re wasting my time. I want my damn mail!”

  “I promised, didn’t I?”

  “And there was a trunk in back, you know, a big foot-locker. It was stupid as shit. I made her open it and she had these collector’s ornaments made in Germany in painted wooden boxes. Stuff like Hansel and Gretel and Snoopy and Little Red Riding Hood. She kept them locked up because of how expensive they were, and I said, ‘What the fuck for? All someone has to do is steal the trunk. You really think locking them up in there is going to stop someone from stealing them?’”

  He falls silent, staring off at the cinder-block wall.

  “What else did you talk about with her before you killed her?”

  “I told her, ‘You’re going down, bitch.’”