Psychopath (20 page)

"Just you?" she asked.  "Or are you out to prove everyone is worthwhile at some level?  Even killers.  Even the Highway Killer."

Now Clevenger was the one taking a deep breath, letting it out.  He found himself thinking not only of his life, but of Billy Bishop’s.  "When your own father doesn’t see you as a person, you have to work hard to see yourself as one, to see the part of yourself that’s real and substantial — the part that really is worthy of love.  Maybe it got to be a habit with me.  I probably want to do for everyone what he couldn’t — or wouldn’t — do for me."  His throat felt tight, maybe because he had said enough, maybe because he had said too much.  "You know?" he managed.

McCormick answered by sliding her hand across the table, into his.

He ran his thumb along hers, then down the ball of her hand, along the inside of her palm.

"I see you," she said.

*            *            *

The sleet had turned to sheets of rain.  The only thing clear about the night was that nothing would be flying out of Canyonlands Field.  Clevenger and McCormick headed to the airport Marriott in a taxi.

Clevenger called Billy on the way.

"Hey," he answered.  He sounded tired.

"How are you?"

"Fine," he said dismissively.

"I’m rained in here for the night.  Why don’t we sit down and talk when I get back tomorrow."

"Sure."

"I should be home by three or so."

"Whenever.  I’ll be here."

"Listen," Clevenger started, "I really miss..."  But Billy had already hung up.  The sting showed on Clevenger’s face as he clicked off his phone.

"He’s sharing you with the Bureau," McCormick said.  "And the Highway Killer."

Clevenger nodded.

"Maybe you should bring him to Quantico with you next time.  We could give him the VIP tour."

"I want to keep him away from what I do," Clevenger said.  "He’s seen enough violence."

McCormick nodded halfheartedly.

"What are you thinking?" Clevenger asked her.

"It’s really not my business," she said.

"Pretend it is."

She nodded.  "He ended up living with you because of what you do.  You
were
a forensic psychiatrist, after all, when you popped into his life and saved him from going to jail forever."

"And?"

"And you’re still a forensic psychiatrist.  Why should you pretend otherwise?"

"He’s had trouble with violence and drugs lately," Clevenger said.

"And you worry that if he gets too close to your work he could lose it.  You think he could become much more violent."

Billy had taken the same message from Clevenger’s concern.  "Maybe," Clevenger said.

"Interesting," she said.

"What do you mean,
interesting
?"

"You sure you’re not projecting?  According to the letter you just showed me you’re worried there might be a killer deep inside you.  That doesn’t mean there’s one inside him."

"I see what you’re saying."

"That’s what people usually say when they disagree with what they’ve heard."

Clevenger smiled at her.  Maybe it would be better to invite Billy into his professional life, even its darkest corners.  Maybe Billy was less fragile than Clevenger thought.  But it still seemed risky.

"So..." McCormick said.  "I should be up front — we’re booking two rooms."

"We can book three, if you want," Clevenger said.  He took her hand.  "I’m in no rush, Whitney."  Speaking her name made him feel warm.  "Just so you know, though, I won’t stop listening to you after we start making love."

"If we ever make love."

"If," Clevenger allowed.

McCormick moved her hand to his knee.

*            *            *

Clevenger stayed up past midnight, finishing off his letter to Gabriel, aka the Highway Killer:

As a child I thought of killing him more than once.  Is that killer still inside me?

No doubt.  Though embryonic.  And the more I can touch that unborn part of me, the more I can feel the gut-level helplessness and rage my father’s violence spawned, the less likely it is to ever be born.

I accept my pain.  You refuse yours.  You describe feeling victorious ‘with blood in your mouth’ because you knew you had your mother’s love.  But your sense of triumph was only a defense against deeper feelings of terror and weakness.  As a four-year-old you never truly faced the horrible truth that it was your blood leaking from your mouth, that you were powerless to protect yourself, and that no one else would or could protect you.

Now you seek the ultimate power over others — whether they live or die — as if that could erase your humiliation and helplessness.

You speak of experiencing great physical pain — migraines, jaw pain.  You feel terrible anxiety —palpitations, shortness of breath.  But I doubt you feel gut-level sadness or rage.  Because the worst of what you went through as a child remains locked in your unconscious.

What trauma have you failed to look at, Gabriel?  What buried fury exploded when you were with Paulette Bramberg?  What was it about an elderly female (a woman the age of your mother?) that caused you to completely lose control, so that it was no longer enough to be with someone dying, but necessary to kill so brutally.  Monstrously.  And why did you take no blood from her?  Would it be poison to have Paulette Bramberg inside you?

Or was Paulette Bramberg’s sin simply that she remained aloof from the Highway Killer, keeping her distance, never coming to feel the extraordinary and instant intimacy I believe you can inspire in others, so that they open up their hearts in a way they never have before; open up to a stranger in a way they would remember all their lives were their lives not cut short?

I asked you for the remains of all the Highway Killer’s victims.  You gave me a body different than the rest.  Why?

I believe finding the answer will be the beginning of the end of the Highway Killer.

*            *            *

There was a knock at the door to his room.  He looked at his watch. 12:50
A.M.

"Who is it?" he called out.

"Whitney."

He walked to the door, opened it.  She was standing outside, barefoot, in faded blue jeans and a worn, gray FBI sweatshirt.  Dressed down, she looked even more stunning.

"Couldn’t sleep?" he asked.

"I’m glad we booked two rooms," she said.

"Okay..."

"But I don’t think we should use both."

Clevenger took her hand, pulled her into the room and into his arms, then gently pushed her against the door as it closed.  They kissed deeply, yielding to each other’s lips and tongues, feeding one another’s hunger.  Then, without warning, McCormick pushed him away, almost angrily.  She grinned at his surprise, pulled her sweatshirt over her head and dropped it to the ground.  She was naked from the waist up.  He stepped closer, reached out and brushed his fingers lightly over her breasts, watched her nipples rise at his touch.  Then he sank to his knees, unbuttoned and unzipped her jeans, and kissed the lowest part of her abdomen.  "I wanted you the first time I saw you," he whispered.

"That could be a bad sign," she said, her words trailing off as Clevenger pressed his hand between her legs.

"Could be," he said.  He stood, picked her up in his arms, and carried her to the bed.

They made love tenderly at first, then furiously, two people living on the edge, falling into one another, releasing their passions and frustrations and hopes and needs until they were spent and lay quietly looking into each other’s eyes.

"You’ve been with a lot of women," she said.

"Excuse me?" he deadpanned.  "I wasn’t listening to you."

She laughed.  "Fuck you," she said.

Then they made love again.

*            *            *

April 6, 2003

Leaving Utah

Clevenger showed McCormick his finished letter just before they boarded their flights, hers scheduled for 12:25
P.M.
, his for 12:50
P.M.

She shook her head.  "Look," she said.  "I promised to back you up, and I will.  But you’re going for the jugular right away, and I want you to think it over.  As he bleeds out psychologically, he could spill a lot of other people’s blood."

"Sooner or later, he’s going to have to come face-to-face with his demons," Clevenger said.  "It might as well be sooner."

An overhead speaker announced final boarding for McCormick’s flight.

"If he responds negatively in his next letter, we reassess," she said.

"Deal."

She turned for her gate.

"I’ll miss you," Clevenger said, surprised again by his own words.  It had been a long time since he’d allowed himself to care about a woman.  It made him feel anxious.

She turned around, self-consciously checking to make sure Clevenger hadn’t been overheard by anyone, like one of the state troopers, a cagey reporter, or an undercover FBI agent working the case. Seeing no one, she placed her palm over her heart, then held it out to him.

*            *            *

Jonah Wrens had heard — and seen — everything.  He was sitting at the gate in a light gray, pinstriped wool suit, light blue tab-collar shirt, and blue-on-blue striped tie, his briefcase at his feet, pretending to read the
Salt Lake Sentinel and Telegraph
.  His heart was pounding.  His eyes ached.  He had reached out.  He had trusted.  And he had been betrayed.  Clevenger had never intended to join him in his struggle for redemption.  He wanted to cage him.  He had promised not to work with the FBI, but had gone right along working with them — with Whitney McCormick, the huntress.

Through binoculars, from his perch on a steep hill half a mile away, Jonah had watched the Utah State Police van pull to the side of the road off Exit 42, had waited for each person to step out, praying that Clevenger would not be among them.  But then he had seen him, seen him fully for the fraud that he was.  And he had felt the all too familiar loneliness begin to gnaw at his soul, hollowing him out, leaving him empty and in agony.

The pain was even worse now.  He needed to fill himself up, to fortify his marrow with the lifeblood of another.  And who better to feed him than the man who had promised to relieve his suffering.

He stood up from his seat at the gate, reached through a hole in the front pocket of his pants and gripped the handle of the hunting knife taped to his leg.  He twisted it free.  Then he started toward Clevenger, picturing how he would smile at him as though they were old friends, surprise him with an embrace, then drive the blade up under his sternum, piercing the left ventricle of his heart, at the same time whispering in his ear how much his own heart ached, how desperate he had been for healing, how Clevenger had been his last chance, his only hope.  Then he would simply walk away, leaving Clevenger’s body behind, escaping with what he could of the man’s spirit, the pure truth in his dying eyes.

Maybe that, after all, was the only genuine part of Clevenger to be had.

He closed to ten feet... nine... eight... and then Clevenger suddenly shifted his gaze and made eye contact with him.  For an instant or two, no more.  The window was there and then it was gone.  But through that window Jonah thought he saw straight into Clevenger’s soul, saw something of rare intelligence, powerful and even fierce, but also something injured and in need, something empty and alone.  He saw parts of himself.  And that reflection weakened his grip on the hunting knife and sapped his rage and made everything perfectly clear to him.

He remembered the Dean of Johns Hopkins Medical School, Jonah’s mentor when he was a student there, telling him that life would hold such moments — moments of epiphany — but he had never experienced one before.  Now he saw the greater plan the Lord had in mind for him: to be healed, but also to heal.

What a glorious and complete circle:  he and Clevenger redeeming one another.  Two psychiatrists joining hearts and minds, becoming one.

Who was to say, after all, whether he had reached out for help to Clevenger or Clevenger had reached out to him?  Wasn’t it plain that the hand of God had directed them to one another?  Wasn’t it true that he never would have known of Clevenger but for a news broadcast linking the two of them?  And hadn’t it been obvious — even to the FBI — that Clevenger’s whole professional life had led him to this moment?

As Jonah walked past Clevenger he heard, as if for the first time, Clevenger’s words of farewell to Whitney McCormick. 
I’ll miss you
.  And he remembered seeing in Clevenger’s expression that those words came directly from his heart.  Clevenger was falling in love with a woman who could not love, a woman devoid of empathy, a woman who would drag him into a black hole of despair.

Jonah could save him.  Jonah could fix what was broken inside Clevenger, whatever fractured pieces of his psyche were getting caught in McCormick’s sticky web.  And in the process, in God’s mysterious way and in God’s good time, Jonah had complete faith that he would be saved as well.

s i x

Back in Chelsea, Billy Bishop was finally waking up.  It was 1:10
P.M.
   He propped himself on an elbow and looked at sixteen-year-old Casey Simms still asleep on the mattress beside him, lying on her side, her long, auburn curls draped over her shoulder, her navel pierced with a diamond, a bar code like the ones scanned in a checkout line tattooed across the small of her back.

They’d been up past 3:00
A.M.
, having sex again and again, and talking about everything and about nothing in that ceaseless flow of verbiage that good weed can fuel.  Casey’s weed.  They had talked about Billy losing his baby sister and about Billy living with Clevenger and about how cool it was to have his name in the
New York Times
, how everyone at Auden Prep and its sister school Governor Welch Academy, where Casey went, was talking about it, how Billy was more famous than ever.  And they had talked about Casey’s parents not understanding where she was coming from, how all her father cared about was business and tennis, and all her mother cared about was business and shopping and tennis, and about how Casey wasn’t long for her hometown of Newburyport, an hour north of Boston, where the streets looked like a movie set of 1890, with overly quaint storefronts beneath overly quaint wooden, gold-leafed signs, along perfectly bricked sidewalks lighted by pristine gas lanterns that were nothing but lies because they were contrived.  Fake.  Casey wanted to be real, spontaneous, alive, in the here and now.  She wanted to move to L.A., become an actress.