“You are an unanswered question,” Alex agreed, walking over to her.
“Gee, thanks.”
He regarded her thoughtfully. “But you know what? You’re something more.”
“A brilliant detective? Perfect wife? Loving mother? It’s okay; you can lay it on thick. Melvin’s starting to really piss me off, and I could use some sickeningly sweet platitudes right now.”
“Actually, I was thinking more along the lines of how detectives answer questions. Or really, how I answer questions.”
She stared at him. “You’re a criminalist.”
“Exactly. I study crime scenes. And you, D.D., your shoulder, your arm, your injuries, you are a crime scene. Better yet, you’re the one scene our killer didn’t control.”
Chapter 5
PAIN IS . . .
A conversation. My adoptive father started it when I was twelve, seeking to help me understand all the various forms and functions of both physical and emotional discomfort. Pain is . . . watching our housekeeper break a glass, then use tweezers to remove a shard from the meat of her thumb, her breath hissing sharply.
Pain is . . . forgetting how to spell vertebrae on a test, though I had studied it just the night before. Thus, I scored ninety, which my father said was okay, but which we both knew wasn’t excellent.
Pain is . . . my father not making it to the state science fair. Another case, a pressing paper, work forever demanding. But assuring me that he loved me and was sorry, while I studied him closely and attempted to understand those sentiments as well. Regret. Remorse. Repentance. Emotions that were by definition corollaries of the pain process.
Pain is . . . my best friend reciting every detail of her first kiss. Watching her face glow and hearing her voice giggle and wondering if I would ever feel the same. My father had found two case studies of sisters with congenital insensitivity to pain who’d married and had children. In theory, the inability to feel pain did not preclude the possibility of falling in love, of being loved back. It didn’t stop the genetically abnormal from hoping to grow into normalcy.
It didn’t keep you from wanting a family.
My adoptive father loved me. Not right away. He wasn’t the type. His was a measured, controlled approach to life. Understanding the hard realities facing a foster child, he made the necessary investment in my future care by opening his large home and considerable financial resources. Most likely, he assumed proper staffing would meet my everyday needs, while he continued to study my condition and write up stunningly dry academic reports.
He hadn’t anticipated my nightmares, however, or foreseen that a little girl who couldn’t feel pain was still perfectly capable of dreaming of it, night after night. In the beginning, he puzzled over this phenomenon, asking me endless questions. What did I see? What did I hear? What did I feel?
I couldn’t answer. Only that I did fear. The night. The dark. The sound of canned laugh tracks. Dolls. Scissors. Nylons. Pencils. Once, I spotted a shovel leaning against the gardening shed; I ran screaming for my closet and wouldn’t come out for hours.
Thunder, lightning, hard rain. Black cats. Blue quilts. Some of my fears were ordinary enough in the lexicon of childhood. Others were completely bewildering.
My adoptive father consulted with a child therapist. Under her advice, he asked me to draw pictures of my nightmares. But I couldn’t. My artistic vision was limited to a black pool, bisected by a faint line of yellow.
Later, I overheard the therapist saying to my father, “Probably all she could see, shut up in the closet like that. But understand even an infant is capable of recognizing and responding to terror. And given what was going on in that house, the things her father was doing . . .”
“But how would she know?” my father pressed. “And I don’t mean because she was just an infant at the time. But if you can’t feel pain, then how do you know what to fear? Isn’t the root of most of our fears pain itself?”
The therapist had no answers, and neither did I.
When I was fourteen, I stopped waiting for my nightmares to magically reveal themselves and started researching my family instead. I read about the various exploits of my birth father, Harry Day, under headings such as “Beverly House of Horrors,” and “Crazed Carpenter’s Killing Rampage.” Turns out, not only did my birth father murder eight prostitutes, but he buried them beneath his private workshop as well as our family room floor. The police theorized some of the women had been kept alive for days, maybe even weeks, while he tortured them.
For a while, I was obsessed with uncovering every piece of information I could find about Harry Day. And not just because my past was horrifying and shocking, but also because it was so . . . alien. I would gaze at pictures of the house, a rusted-out bike propped against the front porch, and I would feel . . . nothing.
Even staring at the photo of my own father, I couldn’t summon the tiniest flicker of recognition. I didn’t see my eyes or my sister’s nose. I didn’t picture large calloused hands or hear a faint, deep chuckle. Harry Day, 338 Bloomfield Street. It was like staring at scenes from a movie set. All real, but all make-believe.
Of course, I was only eleven months old when the police discovered Harry’s homicidal hobby and rushed our house. Harry was found dead in the bathtub, wrists slit, while my mother was taken away to a mental hospital. She died, alone and still restrained for her own safety, while my sister and I became official wards of the state.
Some days, when not staring at Harry’s grinning face, I would study my mother instead. Not many photos of her existed. High school dropout, I learned. Ran away from her own family, who lived somewhere in the Midwest. She made her way to Boston, where she worked as a waitress in a diner. Then she hooked up with Harry, and her fate was sealed.
The only pictures I could find were police photos of her standing in the background while detectives ripped up the floorboards of her home. A gaunt-looking woman with washed-out features, unkempt long brown hair and an already broken posture.
I didn’t see my eyes or my sister’s nose when I looked at her, either. I saw merely a ghost, a woman who was lost way before outside help arrived.
Eventually, my nightmares faded. I worried less about the family that had gifted me with faulty DNA and worked harder to gain my adoptive father’s praise. And in turn, my father began excusing the weekend staff, helping me himself with school projects and, in time, even sitting up with me the nights I couldn’t sleep, offering the quiet reassurance of his solid, contemplative company.
He loved me. Despite his academic’s heart, despite my flawed wiring, we became a family.
Then he died, and my nightmares returned with a vengeance.
First night, all alone after my father’s funeral. Having consumed too much port. Finally closing my eyes . . .
And seeing the closet door suddenly swing open. Recalling the thin glow cast by a bare bulb across the tiny, cluttered bedroom. Seeing my toddler sister in the center of the room, clutching a threadbare brown teddy, as my father’s gaze cast from her to me to her.
Hearing my mother say, “Please, Harry, not the baby,” before I was plunged once more into the gloom.
Pain is not what you see and not what you feel. Pain is what you can only hear, alone in the dark.
• • •
I WOKE FOR THE FIRST TIME shortly after eleven. I’d been asleep for approximately ten minutes, and yet my heart was pounding uncontrollably, my face covered in sweat. I stared at the tray ceiling of my bedroom. Practiced the deep-breathing exercises I’d been taught so many years ago.
The noise machine in the corner of my bedroom. I’d forgotten to turn it on. Of course.
I got out of bed, hit the large button of the Brookstone unit and was rewarded with the soothing sound of crashing ocean waves and crying seagulls. Back to bed. I assumed the position, on my back, lying coffin straight, arms by my sides. I clo
sed my eyes, focused on the sound of some exotic, salty shore.
Eight minutes, to judge by the glowing red numbers of my bedside clock. Then I bolted upright, fisting the sheets while swallowing the scream and staring intently into the shadows of my expansive bedroom. Three night-lights. Oval LED plug-ins that offered pools of soft, green glow. I counted the lights five times, waiting for my heart to decelerate, my breathing to slow. Then I gave up and snapped on my bedside light.
I have a beautiful master bedroom. Expensive. Carpeted in the softest wool. Designed using only the richest silks, including custom bedding and hand-stitched window dressings, all fashioned in shades of soft blue, rich cream and sage green.
A soothing oasis of look and feel. A reminder of my adoptive father’s generosity and my own continued success.
But tonight, it wouldn’t work for me. And I knew by eleven thirty what I would do next.
Because even though I was the product of some of the finest intellectual upbringing, both a person and a case study, a doctor and a patient, I was still a member of the human race. And humanity is a messy business, where knowing what is right doesn’t necessarily preclude you from doing what is wrong.
I showered. Donned a tight black pencil skirt, knee-high black leather boots and, without even thinking about it, my sister’s preferred fuchsia top. I made my face up, left my brown hair down and added a simple gold band to my left ring finger. I’d learned years ago that was the key to success; to appear as married as they were. It reduced their fear of future entanglements while adding to their sense of mutual culpability. You were no better than them, hence a desirable target.
Ten minutes till midnight. I grabbed the plastic kit I kept hidden away in the back of the lower bathroom drawer. Tucked it in my gray bag. Then I was out the door, driving toward Boston’s Logan Airport and my destination of choice, the Hyatt Boston Harbor.
• • •
AFTER MIDNIGHT ON A MONDAY NIGHT, most bars, even in a major city, were quieting down. But airport hotels exist in a timeless vacuum. People getting up, people going to bed, on so many different schedules, the actual hour ceases to have meaning. You can always find people drinking at an airport hotel’s bar.
I took a table near the windows overlooking the Hyatt’s fabled view of Boston’s skyline. Dark harbor waters below, glittering city lights above. I ordered a Cosmopolitan, alcoholically aggressive, while still being appropriately feminine. Then I went to work.
I counted eight other occupants in the bar. One couple, six individuals. Of the individuals, two were older gentlemen, one clearly European, lost deep in his single malt, the other Asian. I discounted them as a reflection of my own lack of interest, not necessarily theirs.
Two guys at the end of the bar held my attention the longest. Both in blue suits. Clean-cut, short dark hair. Midwestern, I judged. On the younger side of middle-aged. The one to the right was larger, the dominant male, clearly at ease with himself and his surroundings. Sales would be my guess. The kind of man accustomed to life on the road, outgoing and energetic enough not to mind a new city every day, savvy enough to have developed a system for maximizing travel’s upside while minimizing its inconveniences.
I sipped my fruity martini, feeling the hard rim of the glass with my teeth, my tongue. Letting my gaze find his back, linger.
Fifteen minutes later he appeared tableside, cheeks flushed, eyes sparkling. Alcohol? Anticipation? Did it matter?
I watched his gaze go to my left hand, note the ring that was a match for his own. Two consenting adults, same short-term needs, identical long-term constraints. His smile grew. He offered me a drink. I replied with an invitation to the vacant chair across from me.
He returned to the bar, ostensibly to order the drinks, while most likely informing his travel companion not to wait up. The traveling companion grinned, made his exit.
Then Salesman was back, introducing himself as Neil, admiring my sweater—nice color!—and we were off. Questions for me, questions for him. All easily answered, most of it probably lies. But kindly meant and prettily spoken. Just going through the motions, a third Cosmo for me, a fourth, fifth, sixth? whiskey for him. Then that delicate moment, as I watched him lick his lower lip, contemplate his next move.
I didn’t like to make it too easy for them. Didn’t resort to fawning giggles or suggestive touches. I had my own standards. The man had to come to me. He had to work for it.
Then finally, as worthy of a professional salesman, he made the ask. Would I like to retire someplace quieter? Maybe continue our conversation more privately?
In answer, I picked up my purse, rose to standing. His smile growing, as he realized it honestly was happening, the strange woman in the bar was really saying yes. And by God she was as good-looking standing up as sitting down and please oh please oh please let her be wearing a black thong beneath that tight-fitting skirt . . .
I followed him to his room, never having to give away that I didn’t have one of my own, because in this day and age rooms required photo ID and these were not the kinds of evenings I wanted connected back to me.
Once inside, it was all pretty straightforward. Nothing special, nothing kinky. I always marveled at this. All these men, straying beyond the bonds of marriage to engage in the same old sex acts. A set repertoire on their part? Or maybe they didn’t require variety as much as they thought. Even with a new partner, they instinctively sought out the routine they were most comfortable with.
My one request: Leave the lights on.
He liked that. Most of them did. Men are visual, after all.
I let him remove my tall leather boots. Unpeel my tight skirt to find the black lace thong. Then my fingers worked the clasp of his slacks, the buttons of his shirt. Clothes on the floor, two bodies on the bed, condom on the nightstand. I smelled his aftershave, probably applied right before he journeyed downstairs in search of conquest. I heard his guttural words of praise as his hands ran down my naked body.
I sighed, let myself go. The pressure of his fingers gripping my hips. The roughness of his whiskers against my nipples. The first, penetrating feel of him thrusting into my body. The sensations I could feel. A physical act I could register.
Then that suspended moment, his head arched back, teeth gritting, arms trembling . . .
I opened my eyes. I always did. I had to know, if even for an instant, that this person’s ecstasy had something to do with me.
I touched his cheek. I buried my fingers in his thick brown hair. And I permitted him to see, for this second when he was aware of nothing, just how much this fleeting moment of contact meant to someone like me.
A woman who controlled all, having spent her entire life being told it would be physically dangerous to trust in what she could feel. A child, still trying to unravel the mystery of pain and still absolutely, positively terrified of sounds in the dark.
Afterward, he collapsed. I reached over, snapped off the light.
“I have an early morning flight,” I said, the only words that needed to be spoken.
Reassured, he dozed off while I lay next to him, stroking the muscular outline of his upper arm, concentrating on the ripples of his shoulders and triceps, as if mapping the planes of his body with my fingertips.
I counted off the minutes in my mind. After five had passed and his breathing dropped to a slower, heavier tone, dulled by whiskey, sated by sex, I made my move.
First order of business, snapping on the bathroom light. I grabbed my purse, then moved into the lit space, closing the door behind me. Not thinking anymore. What I was going to do next defied rational thought or well-adjusted reasoning.
What had I tried to explain to my new patient, Detective Warren, earlier in the day? Without balance, difference pieces of Self sought dominance. Meaning even the strongest Manager mind couldn’t run the ship 24/7. Sooner or later, the weak, hurting Exiles were bound to break out and wr
eak havoc for the Firefighters to handle next.
By engaging in various acts of self-destruction. By creating drama for the sake of drama. By ensuring for at least a brief period of time, the rest of the world felt their pain.
Slim black plastic kit out of my purse. Easing it open. Removing the square packages of lidocaine-soaked wipes. Tearing open the pack, removing the sheet. Holding it in my right hand, while picking up the slender, stainless steel scalpel in my left.
Cracking open the bathroom door. Adjusting until the glowing strip of white light fell across my target’s sleeping form like a thin spotlight. Pausing, then, when he remained snoring lightly, padding naked to his side of the bed.
First, the lidocaine wipe. With light, even strokes, applying the topical anesthetic down the length of the salesman’s left shoulder, slowly but surely numbing the surface of the skin.
Setting down the wipe. Counting carefully to sixty in order to give the lidocaine enough time to do its work.
My fingers, running along the contours of his left shoulder, mapping the muscles once more in my mind.
Then, picking up the scalpel. Positioning the blade. A slight prick to test for physical response.
Then, when my salesman remained snoring blissfully unaware, telling myself this was what set me apart from my family. I was not like my sister. I was not like my father.
I was not driven by a need to inflict pain. I just . . . Sometimes . . .
No sound mind would do what I was about to do. And yet. And yet . . .
My right hand moved. Four quick strokes. Two long, two short. Incising a thin ribbon of skin, approximately three inches in length and not even a quarter of an inch wide. Then, using the blade of the scalpel, wicking it away from the flesh, until it landed warm and wet in the palm of my left hand.
Blood welling up on the surface of the salesman’s numbed skin. I picked up my own black panties and held them against the wound till the bleeding slowed, then stopped.