Daughter of Darkness (18 page)

    "Then take the aspirin."

    She took the aspirin. "I'll be honest with you. I don't remember much about that night." Her face tightened. "If the cops ask me-"

    "That's where my friend can help. He's also a hypnotist."

    "Oh, no. I hate booga-booga."

    "It's not booga-booga. He can help you remember things under hypnosis. Do you even remember where you met the guy you were in Room 127 with."

    She nodded. "Some bar. Arnie's, a sports bar or something like that."

    "Is that some place you go very often?"

    She shook her blonde head. "No. I'd never been there before."

    "You've got a newspaper clipping in the bathroom."

    Murky recognition shone in her eyes momentarily. "Oh, yeah."

    "Do you know Jenny Stafford?"

    She shook her head. "No. She just looked-pretty, I guess. I just clipped out her picture was all. No special reason."

    A complete history, Coffey thought. Linda Fleming had a complete history, apparently down to the smallest detail.

    He could already see her legal defense shaping up. He'd had a few experiences with multiple personalities before. He'd been skeptical of the whole multiple notion until he'd run into a black pimp who, by day, was a well-regarded bank clerk. In interrogating the man, Coffey had seen both personalities emerge strong and clear, shifting dominance in the man as his interrogation went on.

    This would explain why she'd had no memory the other night. A small percentage of multiple personalities suffered acute memory loss following trauma. Finding yourself in a motel room with a dead man had to qualify as traumatic. Being a multiple also explained her temper. This was the temper that Jenny kept under control. Multiples were always expression of repressed impulses and needs and resentments.

    He had all sorts of feelings for her as he sat there-desire, curiosity, protectiveness-but most of all he felt pity. There were few psychological burdens as difficult to bear as multiple personalities, both for the sufferer and all the people around her.

    "How would you like to go to my place?" he said.

    "I already told you," she said in her brassy Linda Fleming voice, "I gotta go to work."

    "You go to work, the police could find you."

    "Oh, I never thought of that."

    "You could stay at my place tonight, and then we can figure out what to do."

    Anger tightened her face. She was off again, mercurial. "You're pathetic, you know that? All this bullshit just to get laid. 'I'm really curious about you.' 'I really want to help you.' Guys sound so pathetic when they're sniffin' around a woman, and they don't even know it. Well, you're not
gonna
get laid. At least not by me."

    "I still want you to come to my place."

    "Even if I don't put out?"

    "Even if you don't put out."

    "You gay or something?"

    "No."

    "Then I don't get it."

    "Maybe you remind me of my little sister. Maybe that's why I want to help you."

    "Where's your little sister?"

    "Omaha. She's about to have her third kid any day now."

    "Man," Linda Fleming said, "no way I want a kid. Ball and chain is what a kid would be to me."

    "Why don't we go?"

    "Now?"

    "Yeah"

    She shrugged. "Give me a few minutes."

    "Fine."

    She got up and went into the bedroom. When she came out, she had even more makeup on. "I don't know about this shrink guy."

    "You'll like him."

    She rolled her eyes. Her beautiful eyes. "Oh, yeah. I'll probably fall in love."

    

    

    One butterfly-summer afternoon at the northernmost edge of the compound, Gretchen found the dog. It was just a mutt, brown and white, with creek-dirty white paws and a thistle hanging off its tail. This was about three months after she arrived at the compound. One of Quinlan's favorite theories was that criminals, even double murderers such as Gretchen herself, could be rehabilitated through a combination of behavior modification, hypnosis, and drug treatment. He'd also done work creating multiple personalities, isolating the Bad Person from the Good Person. While no state legislature was likely to ever actually let any of his test-case people out of the hospital, they did look at his test results with curiosity and skeptical admiration. Three California psychiatrists who had evaluated three of Quinlan's most notorious patients for California murder trials-and found each of them hopelessly sociopathic-flew out to Chicago and spent a week evaluating those same three men again. The results stunned them. Under Quinlan's guiding hand, the three men exhibited a humanity the shrinks had never even glimpsed before. Gone were the violent impulses, the total self-absorption. They even had a limited sense of right and wrong. None of the men had become angels, true. But Quinlan's rehabilitative techniques were impressive and deserved further serious study and funding. Grant and foundation money poured into the compound.

    If only Gretchen had been as malleable as those other three sociopaths. Her first month here she cut a female patient with her ballpoint pen, stabbing it into the woman's cheek and then ripping downward; her second month here, she set fire to the room they had put in; and the third month she had seduced a guard and tried to get him to give her a gun. During all this time, she was sleeping with Quinlan, and spending many nights in his aerie. He'd been fascinated by her in those golden days. She interested him both as a case study and a seductress. She knew how to use her body and for the sexually adventurous, she could provide a memorable night's entertainment.

    His pride was that he could bring her in line with everybody else. That through behavior modification he could help her unlearn her psychotic inclinations and rejoin society at large.

    The night she tried to castrate him in his sleep, he decided she was hopeless. She'd walked in on him that afternoon. He'd been sleeping with the new nurse from Building One. A brunette she was, with breasts that owed far more to science than God. She'd made a scene. The nurse fled in terror. He calmed Gretchen down with sweet talk and drugs. She wouldn't leave. That night, in the darkness of his bedroom, she'd fallen asleep in his arms.

    But something woke him a few hours later and when he looked up, he saw her straddling him, a pair of long scissors arcing toward his crotch. He rolled away just in time. Grabbed her, slapped her. She spent the night in a maximum-security room. He kept her there for three weeks.

    And the day she got out, he told her she could walk around the compound and enjoy the spring day. But she had to check in every forty-five minutes or lose her freedom.

    This was the day she found the dog.

    He came timidly over to her outstretched hand. She petted him. And after he was no longer afraid of her, she hugged him. He had fleas, which pissed her off. She was fanatical about being clean.

    Then she saw the rock, a jagged flinty piece that more than filled her hand. All the time she reached for the rock with her left hand, she continued to stroke the dog with her right. He was now whimpering, he was in such ecstasy from her touch. Her powers of seduction were apparently cross-species. What a goddess she was!

    She had to club him four times before he was dead, before blood leaked from his nostrils, and he fouled himself all over his tail. Then she got to work.

    Quinlan got the package next day. It was sitting on his desk waiting for him. It was gaily wrapped in expensive blue paper.

    A lot of the women patients he slept with fell in love with him. Fortunately, this kind of transference was short-lived. They got over it. But while in its thrall, they were always sending him gifts.

    He wondered who this one was from.

    After he opened it, after he ran to his private john to wash his hands of the blood, after he began the useless process of trying to forget the sight of the dead dog's head in the box-after all this, he had no doubt who had sent the gift.

    This time, he put her in maximum security for a month-and-a-half. He had even thought of requesting that another facility take her on. But that would make him look bad. She'd come here under splashy circumstances. Sending her away would make it look as if his methodology didn't work. Best to simply keep her locked up for a while.

    She was thinking about the dog's head now, as she sat in the room where Barcroft had put her, right down the hall from Quinlan's lavish apartment. He'd wanted to put her in maximum security but there wouldn't be a room free till later in the day. And two other fully-secured rooms were filled as well, so he'd had to put her in what was almost like a hotel room. Sparse but decent furnishings-couch, table, magazines, TV-and even a tiny vertical window to look out of.

    She walked over and turned on the TV. And a miracle happened. Jenny Stafford's face filled the screen.

    There were points in her life when Gretchen felt as if her life was a dream-as if she were a disembodied psyche wandering in a world of ghosts and phantoms and other disembodied psyches-and at such times the faces of people she despised appeared to her. Sometimes, it was the mother who had picked on her twenty-four hours a day; other times, it was the father who'd shown no interest in her whatsoever. Now it was Jenny Stafford, and she was on TV.

    What the hell was this all about?

    She sank to her knees in front of the TV and listened as the announcer explained why the police were looking for the unnamed suspect who was clearly Jenny Stafford.

    What the hell
was
this all about?

    Then she thought of the videotape she'd made of Quinlan. The woman shooting the man. The woman under Quinlan's…

    … And then another image came to her, Jenny fading on the screen. Another, more disturbing image. Her mind sought to clarify the image… find out what it had to do with Jenny.

    The headache was so sharp and so sudden that she fell over backward from her kneeling position, clutching her face and screaming.

    

    

    Coffey called Hal Ford as soon as he got to his place. Jenny was using the john, so he could speak freely.

    "I know you don't believe in multiple personalities," Coffey said. "But there's no other explanation for this."

    Ford laughed. "Evil twin?"

    "Yeah. That's it. Evil twin."

    "Listen, it's not that I don't believe in multiples. It's just that I think they're relatively rare. I mean, you have all these TV stars and mass murderers claiming multiple personalities-no way. But I can be open-minded."

    "I'd appreciate it if you could talk to somebody for me."

    "Maybe it would be more relaxing over here."

    "Some people are looking for her."

    " 'Some people?' "

    "That's about all I can tell you."

    "Well, I'll be able to call you back in about an hour or so. How's that? I'll just chat with her on the phone."

    "I really appreciate it."

    Ford was one of the shrinks who had an arrangement with the police force. Officers could go in and see him whenever they wanted, and the city picked up the tab. Coffey had seen him a good deal following the murders of his wife and daughter.

    "Now you've got me curious."

    "Oh?"

    "Maybe I'm about to talk to my first multiple."

    "Maybe I can take your picture standing next to her, pointing at her. You know, the way men do when they've caught a big fish."

    "You really are a wise-ass, Coffey."

    "I just meant to puncture your lordly ego a bit."

    Ford laughed. "Well, you did a good job, you sonofabitch."

    

    

    He couldn't find her.

    He'd heard the toilet flush several minutes ago. And her footsteps emerge from the john.

    But where was she? Not in the living room, not in the dining room, not in his office.

    She'd gotten scared and run.

    That was all he could think of.

    He started calling her name and retracing his steps through the house. Kitchen. Office. Living room. No woman. His friends the cats followed him room to room, meowing. They seemed to sense his fear.

    He decided to try the bathroom. Maybe she'd gone back in there. His panic waned for a moment. That was it. The bathroom. She'd gone back there. Maybe she'd forgotten to clean up her makeup or something.

    She wasn't in the bathroom. The door stood wide. The bathroom was empty.

    He started back down the hall to the living room. He heard it faintly as he passed the bedroom. A soft, moist, almost purring sound.

    The door was ajar but not by much. He pushed the door open.

    She tossed restlessly on the bed. the way a child sleeps, limbs twisted every which way. She was completely dressed except for her shoes, which she'd kicked off her feet at the head of the bed. He smiled. He felt an almost painful tenderness for her. Then he felt the fear that had besieged him the past two days. He was so taken with her, what if she was put in prison? Or was somehow killed?

    He closed the door quietly.

    

    

    In the kitchen, he called his friend at the Traffic Bureau.

    "Got something for you," the friend said.

    "All right."

    "David Alan Foster. 2245 Skyway Terrace. You know where that is?"