A Cruel Season for Dying (21 page)

“Well,
washing
is not the best metaphor for the process.” She settled back in the chair. “Computer terminology works better. Reprogramming
the brain … erasing old patterns of thought and behavior, replacing them with new ones.”

“I remember your mentioning the Hearst case.”

She nodded. “Spoiled heiress Patty transformed against her will into machine gun–wielding Tanya. Nice trick, even if the jury
didn’t buy it.”

“But you believe she should have been acquitted?”

“Patty Hearst wasn’t guilty of anything more than possessing a human brain,” she said. “The jury just didn’t want to accept
how quickly and profoundly a person’s reality could be changed by someone with the knowledge and ruthlessness to do it.”

She drained her cup, set it down on the desk. “You don’t like that idea, do you, Jimmy? You think you could have resisted.”

“Are you saying nobody could?”

“No. And certainly if you understand the process, that’s a defense.”

“Make me understand it.”

“The human brain is designed to accept certain kinds of
software,
” she said. “If the software is properly structured,
and
presented at the appropriate time, the brain will imprint the program—no questions asked.”

“What do you mean …
imprint
?”

“Although we don’t generally call what we do to our children brainwashing, we’re all programmed into modes of thought and
behavior by our parents, society, and whatever culture we’re members of. From infancy on we build up a functioning model of
the world, that little bubble of personal reality we so stubbornly mistake for the real thing.”

“But the model can be changed?” he said.

“It can be modified as we process new information. But the core realities that we develop early in life are extremely difficult
to change.”

“But the Hearst case implies that they can.”

She nodded. “The subject must be returned to the infantile state. In the case of Patty Hearst, the SLA ripped her violently
out of her old life, then isolated her for months in a dark closet. Functionally, she was returned to the womb and made totally
dependent on her captors for all her most basic needs. First food and warmth. Later love and approval. Finally even sex. Every
biosurvival circuit in her brain was disengaged from the rich American heiress model and reprogrammed to respond to the Symbionese
Liberation Army model instead.”

He reached for the pot, poured more tea for them both. “What’s this have to do with the killer?”

He’d always known when to do that, she thought, even in class. Reel her in and return her to the bottom line. She picked up
her cup, feeling the heat of the liquid. “The SLA did it the old-fashioned way,” she said. “There’s a faster method of reprogramming
that’s more like a conversion experience. Like Saul becoming Paul on the road to Damascus.”

His own tea sat ignored. “LSD?” he said.

“Theoretically,” she answered, “LSD can chemically break down imprints. If the experience is carefully structured, a new set
of imprints can be put into place while the subject is still in the vulnerable state.”

“And that’s what you think the killer is doing?”

She leaned forward toward him. “The wings, the writing, the symbol on the chests, it could all be part of what’s technically
called the
set,
part of the structuring. Think about it, Jimmy. Isn’t that what all serial killers crave? For the victim to become part of
the fantasy. He’s programming them to actually share that reality tunnel he’s trapped in.”

The audacity of it registered in his voice. “You don’t really believe that’s possible?”

She shook her head. “The subject’s attitude is critical to the process. I can’t imagine that the victims are in any mood to
cooperate. Not that it probably matters.”

“Meaning?”

She watched him lift his cup, drink the steaming liquid.

“Meaning he’s probably psychotic,” she said. “It’s only what he believes that counts.”

The reception area of Physicians Plaza was at war with itself. The walls, tempered into a cool institutional gray, were fractured
at irregular intervals with canvases of bold color and erratic line. The man, waiting for his three o’clock appointment, decided
the raised and crusty pools of red pigment in the largest of the abstract paintings reminded him of drying blood.

He brushed back the cuff of his sleeve and checked his watch. It was now three-thirty, but he was a forgiving soul. His regular
orthopedist had taken a last-minute ski trip with his family for Thanksgiving, and
an associate was going to see him. He had never seen Dr. Kerry and was slightly disappointed he wouldn’t be seeing Hendrick,
since this was probably his final checkup. He’d already gotten clean bills of health from Dr. Patel and Dr. Skidmore.

He heard his name called and looked up to see a pretty blond nurse standing at the entrance to the examination area.

“I’m Diana Tierney”—she smiled—“Dr. Kerry’s nurse.” She opened the door wider. “I’m sorry for the wait.” She apologized over
her shoulder as she led him down the long hall.

“No problem,” he answered her breezily.

She opened the door to exam room 3. “It shouldn’t be too long.”

“Just grateful Dr. Kerry was able to fit me in.”

“We help each other out around here.” Another smile. “Any problem with the leg?”

“None at all,” he reassured her.

“Doing the exercises the therapist showed you?” She was studying his chart.

“Graduated to full body workouts,” he boasted.

“Great. Wish all our patients were as conscientious.” She reached for the paper sheet. “If you would remove your pants and
cover your legs with this.”

“Of course,” he said.

He glanced around the room. The walls were sage green. He thought he might have been in this room before, but couldn’t recall
ever seeing the painting over the examination table. Another abstract. This one smaller than the ones in the waiting room.
No blood here.

He heard the voice first. Telling Nurse Tierney something about another patient. Then the sound of the door opening. The first
thing he saw was the hand, beautifully manicured, extending toward him, taking his own into its soft dry palm. Then the voice
again. Introducing himself. Saying something about the fine progress he’d made. Now he drew back the sheet, running the cool
tip of a finger down the pale and puckered flesh of his scar.

The man looked up, finally focusing, forcing his other senses to shut down. Only his eyes fed. Inhaling, swallowing, ingesting
the light exploding like a nova from the physician’s head. Pouring out from the
sockets of his eyes, the narrow nostrils of his nose. Spilling from his open mouth, from between even white teeth.

He willed himself to breathe air, his heart to pump. Blood through vessels.
Stay in control,
spoke the small voice inside his head.

More than a year ago, he had met Luis here. A patient like himself. Never, even in his dreams, had he expected to find another.

Almost a week now since Pinot and nothing learned from his death. If there was a different feel to the murder of the young
hustler, it was a difference of degree, not of kind. Sakura threw down the report he’d been reading, a completely unenlightening
interview with one of Pinot’s roommates. Perhaps it was only the dry simplicity of the reporting officer’s prose, but Gil
Avery seemed singularly unaffected by the death of a boy with whom he had shared a room. Life seemed to mean so little to
these lost children. Even their own. Had Pinot cared about the waste of his years at the end?

He had worked through lunch, and without a break his efficiency would begin to suffer. He boiled fresh water and poured it
into the pot, the pleasant fragrance of his grandmother’s favorite
gyokuro
sending him back to Hokkaido.

The island was Japan’s northernmost. He had grown up on an unspoiled Pacific coast—cold in winter, but with summers of unimaginable
beauty. The family farm grew rice. But his grandfather’s delight was in the breeding of
chabo,
ornamental bantam chickens.

It was his grandfather’s birds that had raised the dilemma of the fox.
Kitsune
lived everywhere on Hokkaido, carnivores whose main sources of food were insects and fruit. But it was a hard winter that
last year of his boyhood, and one particular fox had discovered his grand-father’s chickens.

The
kitsune
were sacred to the goddess of rice, and his grandfather paid as much homage to the
Kami
as anyone. But his chickens were sacred too. So Grandfather declared that the fox’s actions in this case were
Kunitsu-Tsumi,
a hazard that must be taken care of for the good of the community. Which meant that he, Akira, was given the duty of dealing
as he could with the fox.

According to Shinto, animals had spirits that were
mono,
which meant they could sometimes be mischievous and cause trouble for humans, as it was now with
kitsune
and his grandfather. So he went to the place in the woods where he had seen fox spoor and made offering of
inarizushi,
rice-stuffed tofu, which was the favorite food of the foxes that were the messengers of the goddess.

But the spirit of his adversary would not be soothed, and two more of his grandfather’s chickens disappeared. So now he made
a wooden trap and baited it with the least valuable of the hens, and he placed the trap at dusk in the forest near the trail
where he knew the fox would pass.

In the morning all was well with the birds. His grandfather smiled. But his own heart was heavy as he went with his noose
to the forest.

Kitsune
was there, very fine in his winter coat, pacing in the small cage, where chicken blood stained red the drifts of snow. So
many years ago, he thought now. But the image so clear. And the feeling.

He raised the tea to his lips, letting its astringent sweetness soothe the memory. He had done what he had to do, the duty
he owed his grandfather. And immediately after, he had gone to the shrine for purification.

But locked in its wild eyes, in the moments before the rope, had he not in his boy’s heart envied
kitsune
his freedom?

The lightbulb on the second-floor landing was out. Michael Darius stood in the unwholesome dark, knocking on the door to 23.
He got no answer—as expected. According to the girl who rented the room below him, the guy who was living here now was out
most nights. He reached into his pocket for the pick, adding illegal entry to his sins.

The apartment inside was cold and incredibly tiny. Paint peeled in scabs from the discolored ceiling. It was amazing what
people would put up with to live in this city. Westlake, when he’d stayed here, had been working regularly as a model. But
the money, no doubt, had gone for restaurants and clothes. He must have jumped at the invitation to move into Lindel’s apartment.

Had it been only after the move that Westlake had been targeted by the killer? It was the question he had come here hoping
to answer. A
call to the actors’ union had gotten him Westlake’s old address, which was still in their files. But now that he was here
… He looked around at the scarred and mismatched furniture, at the personal possessions of a stranger. And felt nothing.