“I think I already got my workout tonight.”
“No doubt. Hey, who knew you were going to that island today?”
I think about it as we walk to the table. “Pearlie. My grandfather and his driver. Somebody probably told Mom after I was gone. I guess Mose, the yardman, could have found out.”
Michael slowly stirs his ice cream. “Once you were on the island, word probably spread quickly that you were there. But I don’t think it was anybody from that island who tried to kill you. I think somebody followed you there, or found out you went there and went after you.”
“But I don’t get it. What good does killing me do anybody?”
“Good is a relative term. What good did killing the other five victims do?”
“You’re right. If I knew that, I could solve the case.”
“I know you feel like this Dr. Malik isn’t the killer. But you’re not stable enough right now to make that kind of judgment.”
“I know. When I’m off my meds, I feel much more alive and in the moment, but that comes at a price. My memory and logic definitely suffer. Maybe if I wean myself completely, they’ll come back.”
“Malik’s at the center of this whole mess. He’s the only known connection between you and the New Orleans murders. He’s already demonstrated that he’s fixated on you. I think you should consider him the prime suspect.”
I hold some ice cream in my mouth, savoring the rich taste of vanilla. “Well…the FBI is already searching for him, and he couldn’t have known I was on the island.”
“You don’t know that. You do know he’s going to call you back, yet you haven’t told the FBI that. Why?”
“How do you know I haven’t?”
Michael’s eyes say, Give me a break. “I think you want to talk to Dr. Malik without anyone listening in. You think he can figure out things about your life that other therapists never could.”
“Like…?”
“Like why this abuse happened to you. Proof that it did happen. That’s one thing I read today about people with delayed memories of abuse. Even when they manage to find proof that their memories are real, they still doubt the truth of what comes back to them.”
This gives me an unexpected chill. “Why?”
“Because accepting that the abuse really happened means accepting that the person who abused them never really loved them. To accept your abuse, Cat, the little girl inside of you is going to have to admit, My daddy never loved me. Do you think you can do that? I’m not sure I could.”
I’ve never wanted ice cream less than I want it now.
“That’s the core of this whole problem,” Michael reflects. “Denial. Mothers deny it’s happening to their children so they can keep their families together. The rest of us refuse to believe that our doctor or our minister or the nice mailman is having sex with his three-year-old child, because if we do, we admit that the whole veneer of civilization is bullshit. Worse, we’d have to admit the danger that our own kids are in. Because if we can’t recognize the abusers we shake hands with every day, how can we protect our children?”
“This is a depressing conversation.”
“You want to watch that movie now?”
“God, no. I want to sleep for thirty hours straight.”
“Then that’s what you should do.” Michael shrugs as if we’re on vacation together, deciding whether to go out to dinner or to eat in. “I don’t blame you for not wanting to go home. Going back into the physical space where the abuse happened to you can’t be a good idea.”
“Do you really have a guest room I can stay in?”
He smiles. “I have three. You’ll have total privacy. The whole second floor is yours. You won’t know I’m here unless you come downstairs and find me.”
I wait a moment before speaking. “I don’t want to sound ungrateful, but guys have made me promises like that before. They never seem to live up to them.”
“I’m not most guys.”
“I believe you. But why aren’t you?”
A self-deprecating smile. “Probably because my puberty years sucked so badly. I understand deferred gratification.”
“Is that what you want from this relationship, though? In the end? Gratification?”
Michael suddenly looks very serious. “I’m not thinking that far ahead, okay? I don’t even know if you’re sane enough to handle a real relationship. I just like you. I always did. I also happen to think you’re beautiful. But anyone can see that. The point is, you can stay here as long as you want, and you don’t have to worry about sex being in the mix.”
I don’t know why, but I believe him. “Okay, deal. Show me the bedroom.”
“You can find it. Upstairs is all you need to know. Take your pick.”
The wide smile on my face surprises me. Before it can fade, I turn and walk to the foyer, where the stairs are. I remember the layout from when the Hemmeters owned the house. As I put my foot on the second step, I hear Michael’s voice.
“I have to go to work in the morning,” he says, walking into the foyer. “But I’m going to leave the Expedition for you.”
“What will you drive?”
“I have a motorcycle.”
“A motorcycle?”
“Does that surprise you?”
“Well…” A strange laugh escapes my lips. “You have a plane and a motorcycle. I guess I associate that with a certain kind of guy. And you don’t seem like that kind of guy.”
“It doesn’t pay to stereotype people.”
“Touché.”
He takes a step back toward the kitchen. “I’ll leave the keys on the counter.”
I start to go up, but something has been nagging me since he said it. “Michael, what you said before…about why mothers keep quiet about abuse going on in their homes?”
“Yes?”
“You said they do it to keep their families together, right?”
“Right.”
“I would think that’s because the father in those situations is the primary breadwinner. The source of support for the whole family.”
Michael nods. “Exactly. The abuser creates a situation in which everyone in the family is dependent upon him. By denying the abuse, the mother avoids her worst nightmares of abandonment and poverty.”
“But that doesn’t work in my case, see? For my family.”
“Because your father wasn’t the provider?”
“Right. My grandfather was.”
“What about your father’s sculpting?”
“He didn’t make any real money from that until a couple of years before his death. Grandpapa paid for everything. I mean, we lived in his slave quarters, for God’s sake. It sounds terrible, but if my dad had been hit by a bus, it wouldn’t have affected our situation in the least.”
“Materially speaking,” Michael says. “But money isn’t everything. Based on what you’ve told me tonight, I think your father’s early death went a long way toward wrecking your life.”
He’s right, of course.
Michael steps back toward the staircase. “So why would your mother deny that your father was abusing you if she didn’t have to fear losing him?”
I feel blood heat my cheeks. “Right.”
“It may be that she didn’t really know about it. But think…your father returned from Vietnam with severe post-traumatic stress disorder. He told you himself that you couldn’t be around him at certain times. Now you’ve learned that he was part of a military unit that committed atrocities during the war. It would probably be difficult to overestimate your mother’s fear of what that man might do to her—or to you—if she confronted him about abuse, or worse, tried to take you away from him.”
Michael’s logic leaves me in cold shock. Why is it so easy to see the essential nature of relationships in other people’s families but not in our own? I’ve been angry at my mother for years, and I didn’t know why. Today I thought I’d discovered the reason. But now…given an idea of what it must have been like to live wi
th Daddy, not as a blindly loving daughter but as a wife, my mother seems a completely different person to me.
Michael lays his hand over mine, which is resting on the newel post. “Get some sleep, Cat. It’s going to take a while for all this to sink in.”
I’ve gotten similar advice countless times from the women in my life: Go to sleep. Everything will look better in the morning. But it doesn’t sound the same coming from Michael. He has no illusions that things will be better tomorrow. “Thanks,” I tell him. “I mean it.”
“You’re welcome.” He withdraws his hand and walks back toward the kitchen.
I slowly climb the stairs and flick on the light in the first bedroom to my right. The walls are pale yellow, and the queen bed has a white comforter on it. Walking to the window, I see that it overlooks the glowing blue rectangle of the swimming pool.
I can sleep here.
The bathroom is stocked with towels and toiletries, even a new toothbrush. I strip off the warm-up pants and T-shirt Michael brought me, then lean into the shower to turn the faucet handles. Before I can, the opening notes of “Sunday, Bloody Sunday” fill the bathroom. I glance at the screen of my cell phone, and my pulse instantly accelerates. It’s a New Orleans number that I don’t recognize. Nathan Malik?
I press SEND and then hold the phone to my ear.
“Dr. Ferry?” says a man who sounds nothing like Dr. Malik.
“Yes?” I say cautiously.
“This is John Kaiser. I need to talk to you about Nathan Malik.”
Chapter
34
“Is he alive?” I ask without any rational reason.
The silence that follows this question seems interminable. I sit on the lid of Michael Wells’s commode and wait for Agent Kaiser to tip me off my precarious mental precipice.
“Why would you ask me that question?” he asks. “Didn’t you speak to Dr. Malik earlier tonight?”
Sean’s warning that Malik might be declared a fugitive from a murder charge comes back to me with all its implications. “Yes,” I confess. “Briefly.”
“You’re aware Dr. Malik purposefully evaded surveillance and will be declared a fugitive if he leaves Louisiana?”
Two things hit me instantly: one, Kaiser is speaking for a tape recorder; two, Sean obviously told Kaiser about our conversation. “Yes. I think you know that.”
“Did Malik give you any idea where he was when you were talking?”
“No, but you must have figured that out by now.”
A brief pause. “He called you from a pay phone on the West Bank in New Orleans. By the time we got a car there, he was gone.”
“Is that right?” I stall, trying to gather my wits. It’s disorienting to deal with this call while naked in the guest bathroom of Michael Wells’s house. I’d do better in my own house, or even in my car. But one thing I know: if Malik was on the West Bank when he called me, he could not have been shooting at me on the island.
“Dr. Ferry,” Kaiser says in a softer voice. “You’ve asked me to call you Cat. May I do that?”
“Sure,” I say, pulling the T-shirt back on.
“I need to cover several things with you quickly. I want you to tell me everything that pops into your head while we talk. Is there any reason you feel you won’t be able to do that?”
“Such as?”
“Some sort of loyalty to Dr. Malik.”
My cheeks burn. “I told you, I don’t even know the guy! You heard every word of our meeting in his office.”
“Yes, I did. But clearly the two of you feel some sort of rapport. An emotional connection. Perhaps it has to do with your similar medical histories.”
I close my eyes, wondering how much Kaiser knows about my personal life. Did Sean tell him about my sexual abuse? “Please go ahead with your questions, Agent Kaiser.”
“All right. Are you absolutely positive that Dr. Malik never treated you as a patient?”
“Yes.”
“Did Sean Regan tell you that we finally found a patient of Malik’s who would talk to us?”
“No.”
“Like his other patients, she feels great loyalty to Malik, but she had to drop out of her therapy group with him. She found it too stressful.”
This piques my interest, as Kaiser must have known it would. “Stressful how?”
“Apparently Malik does delayed-memory-recall work with several patients in the same room. That’s highly unorthodox. The experience of hearing other women relive abusive experiences gave this patient acute anxiety attacks.”
“And?”
“Well…that’s what you’ve been having at our crime scenes.”
“Give me a break. Anything can cause an anxiety attack.”
“Nevertheless. Malik manages several different groups. His treatment protocols vary according to what he thinks each group can tolerate. Drugs with some, not with others. In this woman’s group, Malik encouraged aggressive confrontations with family members who had sexually abused the patients as children. Malik compared these confrontations to the solo flights of student pilots. The final step to freedom and independence. Anyway, this woman couldn’t handle that, and she dropped out. We found her through the psychologist who initially referred her to Malik.”
“That’s all very interesting, but it has nothing to do with me.”
Kaiser’s sigh carries a lot of fatigue in it. “Cat, a lot of people on the task force are very angry with you. I’m not one of them, whether you believe me or not. I think you have some real insight into this case. Maybe insight you don’t even realize you have. I also know that you gave Sean Regan a lot of help on one of the serial murder cases he got credit for solving.”
“Who told you that?”
“Sean did.”
“That’s a shock.”
“He really cares for you, Cat. Extramarital affairs are hard on everybody. But Sean thinks you’re a genius.”
Men always try flattery first to manipulate women. John Kaiser’s no different. The threat will come later. “I’m no genius. I’m just obsessive.”
“Whatever works. Sean told me somebody tried to kill you tonight.”
“Yep.”
“Do you know who it was?”
“Nope.”
“Is this your Gary Cooper impression?”
I can’t help but smile a little. “Nope.”
“Do you think the attempt on your life was connected to the New Orleans murders in any way? Or to your work on those murders?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“I’m looking into a separate matter up here. A personal matter.”
“A personal matter.” Kaiser seems to mull this over. “Are you sure it’s unrelated to your work in New Orleans?”
“You can’t be a hundred percent sure of anything. But I’m pretty sure it’s not.”
“Did you tell Dr. Malik about the attempt on your life?”
“Yes.”
“Did he suggest there might be a link between that and the New Orleans murders?”
I suddenly have the feeling that Kaiser has every word of my phone conversation with Malik on tape—that he’s just testing my honesty with these questions. “I asked him that exact question. He said yes and no.”
“Cat, I want you back in New Orleans. You’re tied into these murders somehow. Surely you see that?”
There’s an earnestness in Kaiser’s voice that tells me he’s really worried about me. “I concede that Malik has a fixation on me, okay? But if he called me from the West Bank of New Orleans this evening, he couldn’t have shot at me on DeSalle Island thirty minutes before that. That’s physically impossible.”
“I’m not sure what we’re dealing with here,” Kaiser confesses. “But I know Nathan Malik is involved in the murders.”
“He probably knows more than he’s telling. But if you want to know what he knows, I have a lot better chance talking to him on my own than with you listening in.”
“Do you plan to speak
to him again?”
“If he calls me.”
“Hm.”
I get the feeling Kaiser would like to run this investigation one way, while his colleagues on the task force would prefer a stricter approach. “Are you listening in on my cell calls?”
“No. Not yet, anyway.”
If Kaiser is telling the truth, it’s only because he doesn’t yet have a court order or the assets in place to bug my phone. But he soon will.
“Why did you go to DeSalle Island?” he asks. “This personal matter of yours?”
“I’m trying to find out something about my past.”
“About your father?”
“How did you know that?”
“I’m extrapolating from your conversation with Malik in his office. Did you learn anything important?”
I’m not about to give Kaiser the sordid history of my childhood. “Nothing relating to your case.”
“Well, the fact that Luke’s military record was sealed bothered me, so I did some digging on my own.”
My heart is tight in my chest. “What did you find out?”
“Luke Ferry was in a unit called the White Tigers. They made an illegal incursion into Cambodia in 1969. Details are tough to come by, but there’s no doubt that the White Tigers committed war crimes during that period. Two major investigations were conducted by the JAG corps, but all charges were ultimately dropped. The whole thing was deemed too embarrassing for the government. However, I did learn that some veterans of the White Tigers were prosecuted for heroin trafficking after the war. Some as recently as the late 1980s. Your father was murdered in 1981, so I’m not ruling out anything.”
I’m tempted to tell Kaiser that my father was shot by my grandfather, but something holds me back. “Have you found any connection between Malik and drugs?”
“Yes. Malik tortured a Vietnamese prisoner with drugs in 1969. He was a medic then, remember? Apparently he did it on the order of his commanding officer. He was also arrested for selling army pharmaceuticals on the black market in Saigon. The charges were later dropped, and he was returned to his unit. No reason given.”