Over the Edge (10 page)

I didn't answer.

'How long have you been a psychiatrist, sir?'

'Psychologist. About thirteen years.'

'Pretty interesting work?'

'I enjoy it.'

'Treat a lot of people with sexual problems?'

'No. I work mostly with children.'

'Deviant children?'

'All kinds of children.'

'Where'd you go to school?'

'UCLA.'

'Great school.'

'I agree.'

'The kids you treat, any of them do violent things - chop up small animals, tear the wings off of flies?'

'I can't talk to you about my cases.'

'Go to any Bruin games?'

'Once in a while.'

'What about Cadmus? Was he into sports?'

'How would I know that?'

'You ever know him to do anything violent or weird -besides being sexually deviant?'

'Not to my knowledge.'

'Nothing like that ever came up in treatment?'

'That's confidential.'

He cracked his gum and looked annoyed.

'This is a homicide investigation, sir. We can do the paper work and get the information anyway.'

'Then you'll have to do that.'

He flushed with anger.

'You want to know who you're protecting? He butchered those - '

'Cal' - Cash broke in - 'the doctor's only doing what he has to.' He smiled at me over tinted lenses. 'Got to play it by the book. Right, Doctor?'

On the surface it seemed a hackneyed skit, standard good cop - bad cop stuff, but the hostile stare Whitehead threw at the other man made me wonder.

'Right,' I said, looking away to avoid the appearance of

camaraderie.

Whitehead pulled a pack of Juicy Fruit out of his pants pocket, unwrapped two sticks, and added them to the cud in his mouth. His jaws made little wet noises.

'Sure,' he said, giving me a cold, knowing smile. 'By the book. Tell me, sir, how long have you known he was sexually deviant?'

I didn't answer.

He stared at me hard. Then, suddenly, like a dog peeing to mark his turf, he made a show of getting comfortable: leaning back; spreading his arms along the back of the couch; stretching and crossing his legs. His shins were coated with ginger-pink hair.

'You know,' he said, 'you can always tell a fag cutting. They slice deeper and more often. Seventy, eighty, a hundred wounds on one body. Why do you suppose that is, sir?'

'I wouldn't know.'

'No?' he said with mock disappointment. 'I thought you might. One of the psychiatrists I asked about it said it had something to do with repressed rage. All those pretty boys act sweet and gentle, but they've got this shitload of rage boiling inside. So they chop each other into hamburger. That make sense to you?'

'No single rule ever explains an entire group.'

'Uh-huh. Just thought you might have an opinion on

it.'

He rolled his tongue inside his cheek and feigned contemplation. 'What about Cadmus? Do you see him as someone carrying around a lot of repressed rage?'

'Like I said before, no diagnoses from a phone call.'

'You tell that to Horace Souza, too?'

'My conversation with Mr. Souza is - '

'Confidential,' he mimicked. 'You're a pretty stubborn guy, sir.'

'It's not
 
a
 
matter of stubbornness.
  
It's
 
professional ethics.'

'Doctor-patient stuff?'

'Right.'

'But he's not your patient anymore?'

'Correct.'

'What is he then?'

'I don't understand what you're asking.'

The cold smile surfaced again.

'He called you even though he's not your patient. Are you friends or something?'

'No.'

'So the call was out of the clear blue?'

'I'm not sure why he called. Maybe he remembered me as someone he could talk to.'

'After five years.'

'Right.'

'Uh-huh. Tell me, did he ever mention the name Ivar Digby Chancellor?'

'No.'

'Richard Emmet Ford?'

'No."

'Darrel Gonzales? Matthew Higbie?'

'No.'

'Rolf Piper? John Henry Spinola? Andrew Terrance Boyle? Ray ford Bunker?'

'None of those.'

'How about these:
  
Rusty
 
Nails,
 
Tinkerbell,
 
Angel, Quarterflash?'

'No.'

'Never mentioned any of them?'

'Not a one.'

'You know who those people are?'

'I assume they're victims of the Lavender Slasher.'

'They're victims all right. Of little Jimmy Cadmus. Your former patient.'

He'd shot questions at me that were oblique and out of context in an attempt to throw me off guard and establish psychological dominance. I was familiar with the technique, having seen it used by Milo and some of the more devious psychotherapists. But while Milo was a virtuoso who capitalised upon an uncanny ability to appear stupid and inept before moving in for the kill, Whitehead seemed genuinely inept. His tangents had led nowhere, he'd learned close to nothing, and now he was frustrated.

'This guy you're protecting,' he said angrily, 'let me tell you what he did. First he strangled them; then he cut their throats ear to ear. The "second smile" the lab boys call it. He gave 'em all nice big smiles. After that he went to work on the eyes. Popped 'em out with his fingers and pureed 'em. Then down to the other balls.'

He recounted the details of the killings, growing progressively angrier with each lurid disclosure, glaring at me as if I'd wielded the knife. I found the intensity of his hostility puzzling. I hadn't been able to help him because I knew next to nothing. He was convinced I was stonewalling, and I could understand his frustration. But frustration alone didn't account for the naked contempt in his eyes.

When the recitation of horrors was over, he took Cash's notes from the smaller man's lap and read them slowly. The Beverly Hills detective looked bored and began fidgeting, a one-man band of narcissistic mannerisms -smoothing his razor-cut; scrutinising his manicure; removing his rosy glasses, holding them up to the light, spitting on them, and wiping them lovingly. Then he got up and walked around the room.

'This is very nice,' he said, eyeing a collection of framed ivory miniatures. 'Indian?'

'Persian.'

'Very nice.'

He inspected paintings, examined books on the coffee

table, fingered upholstery fabric, and checked his reflection in a Victorian bevelled mirror.

'Great room,' he pronounced. 'Did you use a decorator?'

'No.'

'Just kinda did it yourself?'

'Over the years.'

'Has a good feel to it,' he said. 'Coherent.' He smiled. I thought I detected a mocking edge to his words, but I couldn't be sure: the tinted lenses did a good job of masking his emotions.

'All right, sir,' said Whitehead, 'let's go over that phone call again. From start to finish.'

It was busywork. I considered protesting but knew it would only make things more difficult. Feeling like a kid kept after school, I complied. Whitehead removed a plum-sized lump of dead gum from his mouth, wrapped it in a handkerchief, and stowed the mess in his pocket. After filling his mouth with a fresh wad, he resumed the interrogation.

It was a stultifying process. He repeated old questions and tossed in a batch of new ones. All ranged from pointless to irrelevant. As we trudged farther along the road to nowhere, Cash continued to check out the room, interrupting several times to comment on my good taste. Whitehead acted as if he weren't there.

I decided this was no good cop-bad cop routine. This was no routine at all.

They hated each other.

By a quarter to six the interrogation was dead. At ten to, Robin came home. When I introduced her to them as my fiancée, their eyes widened in amazement.

Suddenly I understood it all: Whitehead's antipathy and pointed comments about deviates; Cash's preoccupation with my interior decoration.

They'd assumed I was gay.

When you stopped to think, it make a kind of narrow-minded sense: I was friends with a homosexual cop; I'd treated - and had shown human concern for - a homosexual teenager. I had a well-decorated home. Utilising a mindless formula that approached life as simple arithmetic, they'd done their calculations and had come up with a neat little answer:

One plus one equalled queer.

As they fumbled and prepared to leave, I filled with anger. Not at being mistaken for a homosexual but at being categorised and dehumanised. I thought of Jamey. His whole life had been one categorisation after another. Orphan. Genius. Misfit. Pervert. Now they said he was a monster, and I didn't know enough to dispute it. But I realised, at that moment, that I couldn't walk away from learning more.

Souza had foisted a tough choice upon me. The two policeman had helped me make my decision.

I CALLED the attorney the next morning and, after reminding him of my terms, agreed to work with him.

'Good, Doctor,' he said, as if I'd made the only rational decision under the circumstances. 'Just tell me what you need.'

'First I want to see Jamey. After that I'll take a complete family history. Who'd be the best person to start with?'

'I'm the most knowledgeable historian of the Cadmuses you could find,' he said. 'I'll give you an overview, and then you can talk with Dwight and anyone else you choose. When would you like to see the boy?'

'As soon as possible.'

'Fine. I'll arrange it for this morning. Have you ever visited the jail?'

'No.'

'Then I'll have someone meet you and orient you. Bring ID that states you're a doctor.'

He gave me directions and offered to messenger over the ten-thousand-dollar retainer. I told him to keep the money

until my evaluation was complete. It was a symbolic gesture, bordering on pettiness, but it made me feel less encumbered.

The County Jail was on Bauchet Street, near Union Station, in a neighbourhood east of downtown that was half industrial, half slum. Truck yards, warehouses, and machine shops shared the area with twenty-four hour bail bondsmen, crumbling fleabags, and dusty stretches of vacant lot.

Entry to the facility was through a subterranean parking structure. I found a space in the dimness next to a decrepit white Chrysler Imperial blotched with rust spots. Two kerchiefed and haltered young black women got out of the big car, solemn-faced.

I followed them up a flight of iron stairs and into a small, silent courtyard created by the U-shaped intersection of the parking structure with the jail. On the left arm of the U was a door stencilled OWN RECOGNISANCE COURT. Running through the yard was a short strip of grimy sidewalk bordered by parched, yellowing lawn. A large spruce tree grew on one side of the lawn; from the other sprouted a spruce seedling - stunted, tilted, and stingily branched -that resembled nothing so much as the big tree's neglected child. The walkway ended at double doors of mirrored glass set into the high, windowless front wall of the jail.

The building was a study in cement slab - massive, sprawling, the colour of smog. The expanse of raw, flat concrete was crosshatched overhead by concrete beams at the seam of the union with the parking garage. The junction yielded a maze of right angles as cruelly stark as monochrome Mondrian that cast cruciform shadows across the courtyard. The sold concession to ornament was the scoring of the concrete into parallel grooves, as if an enormous rake had been dragged through the cement before it had dried.

The women reached the double doors. One of them pulled a handle and the mirror parted. They preceded me into an incongruously tiny room with glossy pale yellow walls. The floors were worn linoleum. Adorning the right

wall was a patch of tarnished hand lockers. Blue letters over the lockers instructed anyone carrying a firearm to deposit it within.

Straight ahead was more one-way mirror, shielding a booth similar to that of a movie house ticket taker. In the ' centre of the silvered glass was a grilled speaker. Below the speaker was a stainless steel trough. To the right of the booth was a gate of iron bars painted blue. Over the gate were painted the words SALLY PORT. Beyond the blue bars was empty space backed by an opaque metal door.

The women stepped up to the booth. A voice barked through the speaker. At the end of the bark was a question mark. One of the women said, 'Hawkins. Rainier P.' Another bark elicited the deposit of two driver's licences through the trough. Several moments later the bars slid open. The women trudged through, and the blue gate clanged shut behind them with earsplitting finality. They waited silently in the sally port, shifting their weight from hip to hip, looking too tired for their ages. In response to a third bark they passed their purses to the left, answered more questions, and waited some more. When the rear metal door opened suddenly, a beefy tan-uniformed sheriff's deputy stood in the opening. He nodded perfunctorily, and the women followed him through the door. When they'd disappeared, it slammed shut, loud enough to echo. The entire procedure had taken ten minutes.

'Sir,' barked the speaker.

I stepped up and announced myself. Up close I could make out movement on the other side of the glass, shadowy reflections of young, sharp-eyed faces.

The speaker asked for identification, and I dropped my hospital badge from Western Paediatric into the Trough.

A minute of scrutiny.

'Okay, Doctor. Step into the sally port.'

The holding area was the size of a walk-in closet. On one wall was a key-operated elevator. To the left were tinted glass sliding windows set over a steel barrier. Behind the glass sat four deputies - three moustached men, one woman. All were fair and under thirty. The men looked up

at me briefly before resuming their examination of a copy of Hustler. The woman sat in a swivel chair and peered at a hangnail. The booth was papered with county memoranda and outfitted with a panel of electronic equipment.

I waited restlessly, suspended between freedom and what waited on the other side of the metal door. I was no prisoner, but for the time being I was trapped, at the mercy of whoever pushed the buttons. I started to feel antsy, the anticipatory anxiety of a kid being strapped into a roller coaster seat, unsure of his fortitude and just wanting it to be over.