“That’s very good, Tommy,” Vail said. “I have to get back up to Daisyland. Can we discuss these creative attacks of yours when I get back?”
“I didn’t write it, Nathaniel Hawthorne did,” Tommy said as Vail sidestepped around him. “In The Scarlet Letter. I copied it out of one of the bishop’s books.”
“Good for him.”
Goodman grabbed Vail by the arm. “Come here,” he ordered, walking back into Vail’s office. He picked up the library book he had taken from Aaron’s stander and held it up with the spine facing Vail.
“What do you see?”
“East of Eden by John Steinbeck,” he said.
“What else?”
“302.16,” the Judge said.
“That’s right. It’s called the Dewey decimal system. It’s the way they index books at the library. I remembered something—the books in Rushman’s library also had index numbers on the spines, so I went over and checked. He devised his own index system, much simpler than the library’s. Book B32 is The Scarlet Letter. The passage is on page 156 and it’s marked the same way those two quotes were marked in the books at Rebecca’s house.”
Vail took the book and stared at it a moment.
“B32.156,” he said. “I’ll be damned.”
“Molly said he was sending messages,” Goodman said. “The numbers are symbols. Remember what he said? The clue is on the tape?” He leafed back through the notes he had made while watching the tape. “He said the bishop dropped his mask.”
“So the face he wore to the multitude was a mask, and the face he wore to the altar boys was his true face,” Naomi suggested.
“There’s only one way to find out,” Vail said, heading toward the door. “I’ll go ask him.”
What had brought Roy out? That was the crucial question now. Molly had taken copious notes on her taped interviews with Roy and she and Martin discussed them at length when he arrived at Daisyland.
“You don’t think he’s faking?” Vail asked.
“So far, I’ve heard nothing, seen nothing on the tapes, and found nothing in my notes to indicate he’s faking. I think we have to assume Roy is for real.”
It was Molly’s contention that the only way to draw Roy back out was to trick him, to find some clue in her previous interview that would enable them to lure Roy back out into the open. They watched excerpts from several of the tapes and pinpointed the precise moment when Roy had replaced Aaron.
“Notice he has a slight malaise, rolls his eyes and then seems to get drowsy for a few seconds,” Molly said, pointing out what she felt were significant moments from the hours of interviews. “He looks away from me, his body seems to sag, his eyes kind of go out of focus. His whole body changes. When he looks back up, he’s Roy. That whole procedure doesn’t take more than a few seconds.”
“Have you ever seen it happen like that before?” Vail asked.
“It’s not uncommon.” She nodded. “We sometimes see it in epilepsy, just before a seizure.”
“You were looking away from him the first two times he came out,” said Vail. “Could that have had something to do with it?”
“Maybe. Who knows?”
“Is there any common subject matter when it happens?”
“It frequently involves some sexual reference. This last time we were talking about Rebecca, about sex. I asked him if she ever touched him and he started getting angry. ‘Why do you want to know that?’ he asked, and I said something about being honest and that’s when I said, ‘Did Rebecca make love to you?’ and he got very upset, it was the first time I ever saw him approach anger. I looked down at my notes and that’s when Roy came out.”
“So it had something to do with Rebecca?”
“Or sex. Or fear we were getting too close to him. Or maybe it reminded him of something else, something we don’t know about yet.”
“Like what?”
“I don’t know, Martin. We’re dealing with anxiety, phobia, pedophilia, voyeurism, neurosis, dissociative behavior, multiple personality, religious and, possibly, sexual disorientation …”
“Sounds like a list of every mental disorder in the book.”
“Yes,” she said. “And I’m still not sure which problem—or combination of problems—tipped him.”
“What’s the first thing Roy ever said to you?” Vail asked.
“He said, ‘He’ll lie to you, Doc.’”
“Sounds like he was already trying to come between you and Sonny. Or Aaron. Christ, I have a hard time keeping these people sorted out.”
“Yes, there’s definitely jealousy there.”
“Maybe Aaron is harboring unclean thoughts about you, Molly, and Roy’s acting on them.”
“That’s very possible.”
“It makes me nervous.”
“What?”
“You going in there alone.”
“He won’t do anything to me,” she said.
“What makes you so sure?”
“Because Roy’s very street smart. He knows we’re all that stands between him and the electric chair. Besides, we’re playing his game and that’s very important to him.”
“Do you think Roy will talk to me, if he comes out?”
“That’s up to him.”
Vail’s biggest concern was to try to explain to the jury the immense complexities of this case, for he knew that without a basic understanding of the way the mind works, the jury would never accept the bizarre phenomenon known as multiple personality disorder or that it was a verifiable disease.
“Okay, you’re on the witness stand,” he said. “How would you explain all this to twelve layman?”
“I would tell them that the mind is a marvelous instrument consisting of three parts, like three boxes. The first box is the ego, which contains conscious, everyday thoughts and learned responses, all the things that permit us to perform normally—everything from cooking eggs to arguing a case in court to sweeping the floor. Second, there’s the superego. Also conscious. This is where our values are stored. Ideals, imagination, integrity. Consequently, it also controls our morals. It prohibits certain acts—like lying, for instance—and punishes us with guilt feelings if we commit them.”
“Your conscience?” Vail asked.
“Yes, that’s a reasonable analogy,” she said. “Finally there’s the id, the subconscious. It contains our basic instincts, but it’s also where all our repressions are stored. All our suppressed desires lurk in the id. Finally, there are two basic drives, aggression, which prompts most behavior patterns, and the libido, which is the sexual drive.”
“Okay, let me try this. I work at the grocery store. I get up, go to the store, do my job. That’s my ego at work. I know I shouldn’t take money out of the cash register, that’s my superego talking. But my libido is working overtime. I harbor sexual feelings toward the boss’s teenage daughter and my superego tells me that’s taboo. It makes me feel guilty for thinking about it and so I suppress those feelings and they go to my id.”
“That’s very good,” she said.
“Then explain what happened to Aaron.”
“Well, on the simplest level, your mind is just like your body. A perfect machine except when it gets sick. There are strong boundaries in the mind between the ego and the id. When the mind gets sick, the boundaries, or walls, between the ego and the id break down and repressed thoughts seep into the ego from the id. They clash with the superego and the mind becomes confused. Suddenly it’s getting mixed signals. Sometimes the id wins out and the repressed thoughts become normal. When that happens, the mind is disordered. And that’s the disease. It can manifest in hundreds of ways. There are more than two hundred identifiable mental diseases. In many respects, it’s worse than a physical disease because we can’t take X rays. We can’t operate. We can’t give him a prescription for antibiotics.”
“Can it be cured?”
“Sometimes. First we have to determine why the wall broke down. Then we decide the best way to fix it.”
“That’s an evasive answer.”
“Okay. With proper therapy—maybe.”
Not bad, Vail thought. Calm, authoritative, concise, self-assured. She’ll make a good witness.
For the next two days at Daisyland they got nowhere. Aaron had no objection to Vail being in the room during the interviews, but during the next four interviews Molly could not bring Roy out. Vail said nothing. He marveled at how effortlessly she conducted the interviews, the economy of her questions, how subtly and instinctively she moved from one subject to the other. She continued to probe Aaron’s childhood; his relationships with his family and Mary; they talked about Rebecca, although Aaron was steadfast in his refusal to discuss their sexual exploits; about his relationship with Rushman, which he described as benign; and about Shackles and the occasions when he had lost time in the past. It was obvious he was unaware that the mad evangelist was dead, if indeed he was. Perhaps Roy was lying about that, just as Aaron lied about his relationships with Rebecca and Rushman.
At night they went back to Vail’s motel room and studied the tapes of the day’s interviews, looking for leads. The only subjects Molly avoided were the altar boys and the existence of Roy, which she still felt were too dangerous to broach.
“I’ll know when it’s time,” she told Vail. “Trust me on this.”
They studied the tapes and talked about the case, went to dinner and discussed the case, and dutifully avoided the subject of their respective libidos as if the subject had never been brought up.
On the third day, Vail was all smiles when he showed up for breakfast.
“I think I figured out how to get to Roy,” he said.
“How’s that?” she asked skeptically.
“B32.156,” he answered with a smile.
Vail despised the hospital. To get to the maximum security wing, they had to pass one of the wards. Some patients wandered around the large room talking to themselves, others sat in catatonic stupor, staring into space. Still others were curled up in the comers in fetal positions. There was a constant din as the patients babbled inanely or cried out as they were suddenly overcome by obscure pains or fears. He hated the odor of disinfectant that seemed to permeate the entire establishment, the sterility of the white walls, the cold, proficient, emotionless way in which the staff dealt with the patients. Each time he entered the institution, Martin was reminded that if he successfully defended Aaron Stampler, the young Appalachian could spent the rest of his life here.
In contrast, the max wing, as it was known, was almost pleasant, although monotonous. Muzak was piped softly into the rooms and the stark white walls and high windows gave them an airy ambience.
On this morning, Aaron seemed distracted and disinterested when he first entered the interrogation room. He flopped down on the cot with hardly a word of greeting.
“Something wrong?” Molly asked.
“It’s them other doctors,” he said. “They ain’t really interested in me. They ask the saim questions over and over. Give me stupid tests, one after t’other. You wanta know the truth? It’s boring. Sometimes I feel like maikin’ sumpin’ up just to see what they’d do.”
“Don’t they ever ask you about your parents and Crikside?”
“ ’Taint like you, Molly. ’Taint like they really care.”
“Have you ever lost time when you were talking to them?”
“No ma’am. Leastways I don’t think so.”
“But you’re pretty sure you haven’t?”
“Yes ma’am.”
“Do they ever ask you about your education, things you’ve read, what you remember?”
“They did at first.”
“What’s your favorite quote, Aaron?”
“Gosh, I dunno. Got a lot of them. Told you that one from Emerson. Thomas Jefferson hardly wrote a word thet wasn’t worth rememberin’.”
“How about Nathaniel Hawthorne?”
“Yes ma’am, a fayvrit of mine.”
“Any favorite quotes of his?”
“Not thet I thaink of, offhaind.”
“Let me try one and see if you can finish it. Want to try that?”
“If you want.”
“‘No man, for any considerable period, can wear…’ Can you finish that, Roy?”
A few seconds passed, then Aaron suddenly sat up and swung his feet to the floor. It was Roy who turned to face them, his eyes defiant, his lips drawn back in a sneer.
“Ain’t you the clever one, Doc,” he said in his harsh whisper. “Or maybe it was your boyfriend here. Maybe he figured it out.”
“This is Martin Vail, Roy,” Molly said, ignoring the sarcasm.
“I know who the fuck he is. You think I been sleepin’ for the last couple days?”
“He’s going to defend you and Aaron.”
“Shiit. He’s not gonna defend me.” He breathed softly. “He’s gonna lay it all off on me, that’s what this is all about.”
“That’s not true. You say Aaron and you planned everything together.”
“It was his idea,” he said in his threatening voice. “He thinks, ‘I’d like to kill that son of a bitch.’ Bing! Here comes old Roy to the rescue.”
“So that’s the way it works?” Molly said.
“How the fuck you think it works?”
“I wasn’t sure.”
His tone turned more venomous than usual. “I told you last time, he gets a beating, I get the pain. I get him laid, he comes. He gets pissed, I do the dirty work. It’s called the shitty end of the stick.”
“What do you want out of this, Roy?” Vail asked.
“Well.” He leered. “We don’t want to get fried, do we, Mr. Vail?”
“That’s right,” Martin said. “And maybe if you help, you won’t get fried.”
“How’m I supposed to do that?”
“I want you to come out and testify at the trial.”
“Ohhh,” he said softly. “And you want me to confess, right?”
“I just want to prove to the jury there are two of you. And you both need help.”
“I don’t need any fuckin’ help,” Roy snapped. “What you mean is, you’re gonna put me through the wringer and get rid of me. I know that trick. We’ve read about all that.”
“All what?” Molly asked.
“Shock treatments, drugs, ice water baths,” he said, standing and walking into the shadowy corner of the room. “Shit, I know about that. You’re gonna get rid of me and he’ll sashay out the fuckin’ door free as a bird, as goddamn usual. Well it ain’t gonna happen.”
“Maybe you’re right,” Molly said. “Maybe we’ll work it out so you share the pain and the joy.”
“That’s bull.”
“Not if you help,” Vail said.
Roy started rubbing his hands together. “You must really think I’m stupid.”
“Of course not,” Molly said.
He rolled his eyes and knelt down in an Indian squat, staying in the shadows. “Bullshit. Bullshit! Look I’m the one knows the tricks, I’m the one with the smarts. You forgot that, Doc?”
“No, I didn’t forget it. It’s also you who’s sending the message.”
His eyes narrowed again. He cocked his head to one side and stared at her, half grinning.
“Message?” he whispered.
“From The Scarlet Letter. That’s what brought you out, isn’t it?”
He sneered at her. “‘No man, for any considerable period, can wear one face to himself, and another to the multitude, without finally getting bewildered as to which may be the true.’ Which one of you figured it out?”
“Actually it was Tom Goodman,” Molly said.
“The one who gave Rebecca all that shit?”
“He didn’t give anybody any shit, Roy,” said Vail. “She told him. I think maybe she figured the information might help you and Aaron.”
He stood and walked slowly back to the cot, where he stood for several seconds chewing on his lower lip, then suddenly he hissed like a snake
and, holding his two fists together, twisted them in opposite directions, as if throttling a chicken.
“Kill the chicken and leave the bones,” he said cryptically in his soft, sibilant voice.
“What does that mean?” Molly asked.
“You’re so smart, figure it out,” he said.
“I think you want the world to know what a demon the bishop was, that’s why you picked that verse and that’s why you emasculated him. You wanted to draw attention to the gravity of his crime and you knew Aaron wouldn’t do it.”
“Aaron would never tell,” Roy said. “You know why? Because he’d rather fry in hell than admit it. Same as those other two.”
“You mean Billy and Peter?” Molly asked cautiously.
“Who the fuck else would I be talkin’ about, Mary and Sam? Shit, that was different anyway.” He suddenly pointed at them. “You think he figured that one out? Never! Little bastard still doesn’t know where he was that day. But he had me kill his own brother and his old girlfriend.”
Molly was trying to think a step ahead of Roy, trying to outguess him. Mary and Sam. Billy and Peter. My God, she wondered, how many people has he killed?
“No, I’m sure it was your plan to make it look like an accident,” she said.
“Damn sure. I read about it in the newspaper.” He leaned back sideways on the cot, supporting himself on his elbows. “It was an article about how if you get stuck in the snow, don’t leave your windows closed or you can die from carbon monoxide. I knew when Sonny read it to me what he wanted. They used to go up to Sackett’s Ridge and fuck their brains out. Then Sam’d brag to Sonny about it, knowing how Sonny felt about Mary. Shit, little wonder Sonny started thinking about it.”
“You mean Mary and Sam.”
“Of course.”
“Weren’t you afraid they’d catch you?”
“C’mon.” He let his head loll back and closed his eyes. He began to breathe heavier. His smile turned lascivious. “They’d go at it, you could throw water on ’em like a couple of stuck dogs, they wouldn’t notice it. She was a real chunk, Mary was, and she loved her screwin’. We went up there once or twice and hid in the woods and watched. Couldn’t see a hell of a lot, the windows were all frosted over, but Sam always left the window cracked and I could hear them in there, him grunting, her squealin’—like damn pigs.