Psychopath (31 page)

Contrast their small-minded attempts to cage him with his own strivings to free himself from evil.  He had taken Dr. Corine Wallace’s invitation.  He had sat with Sally Pierce’s coworkers and with her daughter, Marie, absorbing their pain.  One after the other.  For over five hours.  He had held Marie Pierce as she sobbed over how much she missed her mother.  And he had felt her loss as though it were his own — so much so that he found himself sobbing with her.  Like Christ, he had given her grief a home inside him.

He was struggling with every cell in his body to be worthy of heaven, while Clevenger and McCormick worked day and night to consign him to hell.

A knock at the door.  He took a few deep breaths, willed open his fists, and stuffed the crumpled front page of the
New York Times
into his briefcase.  He tried to stand, but his legs would not budge.  His rage had paralyzed him again.  He tried a second time.  Nothing.  "Come in," he called out, unable to screen out the anger in his voice.

The door opened.  Sue Collins from DSS, a wisp of a woman about forty years old, under five feet, who could not have weighed more than ninety pounds, stood outside with Hank, Heaven, and Sam Garber.  "Too early?" she asked meekly.

"Not at all.  Please, come right in."  He realized how odd it must seem that he wasn’t moving from his chair.  He tried to cover up by smiling broadly and extending his hand energetically.  "It’s a pleasure to meet you," he said to Collins.

Collins’s face registered the fact that Jonah remained seated, but she mirrored his smile and shook his hand.  Then she took the seat furthest to his right, leaving three others for Heaven, Hank, and Sam.

Heaven groaned and grabbed her lower back as she poured her 300 pounds into her chair.

Hank sat beside her, laying a hand on her meaty arm.  "Are you alright?" he asked her tenderly.

"Don’t know how I make it through the day," she said.

Sam took the seat furthest to the left, beside his father.

Jonah made eye contact with him and held it, half to reassure the boy, half to anchor himself amidst the tides of rage still surging inside him.  It worked.  Sam gave him a slight, go-for-it nod of his head, and Jonah could feel the sails of his mind catch wind and begin carrying him toward calmer waters.  Nine-year-old Sam Garber, with his concussions, his fractured bones, his psychological contusions, with the certain knowledge that he was risking everything, was nonetheless ready to take his stand, to take on the Goliath of a woman who had very nearly destroyed him.  Jonah could almost feel himself shedding his own skin, slipping inside this Boy Wonder superhero, this incarnation of God’s grace and power.  He felt pins and needles in his thighs and calves as his flesh came back to life.  He was reborn in Sam.  He turned to Sue Collins.  "I appreciate you taking time from your busy schedule."

Collins glanced at Sam.  "No thanks necessary."

"What’s this all about, anyhow?" Heaven asked Jonah. "Why is
she
here?"

Collins straightened in her chair and brushed lint off her pleated black skirt.

Jonah looked into Heaven’s lifeless eyes.  "You are all here because Sam is going to tell Ms. Collins what has been happening to him at home."

Heaven crossed her arms, puffed out her chest.

"Unless," Jonah said, "you would rather tell us."

Hank shifted nervously in his seat.

Heaven’s lip curled.  "We already told you."  She turned on Collins.  "Hennessey out of your office did his investigation, gave us a clean report.  Accidents happen.  Said so himself."

Something very much like determination came into Collins’s face and bearing.  And all of a sudden her appearance changed from wispy to lean and tough — a certain flattening of her upper lip, a squaring of the shoulders, both her feet now flat on the floor.  Maybe she’d been pushed around one too many times herself as a girl, maybe that was what had brought her to her work in the first place.

"Sam has something to say," she said sharply.  "I intend to hear it and to take appropriate action."

Heaven turned on Hank next.  "You gonna sit here for this?  Let’s get the hell out of here, get us a lawyer."  She started to stand.

Hank put his hand back on her arm.  "We don’t need to get lawyered up just to listen," he said.

Heaven shook her head.  "You gotta be joking.  These people ain’t nothin’."  But she reluctantly settled back into her seat.

Hank looked over at Jonah.

"Sam?" Jonah prompted the boy.

Sam shrugged, chewed at his lower lip.

Heaven smelled his fear.  "Don’t be going telling no tall tales," she said.

"What is it, Sam?" Collins asked gently.  "I’m listening."

Sam’s skin turned ashen.

Jonah began a silent prayer for him.

"Warning you," Heaven said, leaning forward in her seat to stare at him.

Sam dropped his head so that his bangs covered his eyes.

"You can tell us anything that’s on your mind," Collins said.

Sam shook his head ever so slightly.

Heaven chuckled.  "Good boy," she nearly sang.  "We about done here?"  She looked from Jonah to Collins, then back again.  "Finished trying to put thoughts in my little angel’s head?"

"You can do this," Jonah told Sam.  But he wasn’t sure anymore that Sam could.  His bones and brain tissue had healed.  But his soul might still be fractured in too many places to bear the weight of what needed to be done.  Jonah’s teeth clenched with that realization, and his hatred of Heaven Garber surged.  He looked at her, saw with horror that she was wearing his mother’s eyes again.

A tear had started down Sam’s cheek.

Heaven was feeling bold.  "You people just don’t understand discipline.  You figure kids ought be allowed to run wild."

Jonah wanted nothing more than to rip those eyes away from her.  But his arms had gone tingly, and he could hardly move them.

"Sam’s gonna be better off for having his limits set," Heaven was ranting.  "He’s gonna be a good boy, not some hoodlum.  Gonna learn respect."  She looked at Hank.  "These people are paid to sit around.  We ain’t, last time I checked.  Let’s get going."

Hank didn’t move.  He was chewing his lower lip now, like Sam.  His spindly fingers were tugging at his pant legs.

"C’mon," she said.  She pried herself out of her seat, stood up.

Hank gazed up at the massive figure towering over him.  "Go on home, Heaven," he said.

The room fell utterly silent.

"Excuse me?" Heaven said, planting her hands on her hips.

"Bringing you along was the wrong idea.  Wasn’t what the doctor wanted, but I thought I knew better.  Thought it would be best for you to listen in.  But it’s pretty clear Sam can’t do what he needs to get done here with you hoverin’ over him.  And it’s pretty clear I can’t neither."

Jonah felt a crown of shivers ring his scalp.

Sam looked over at his father.

"What are you talking about?" Heaven asked, looking truly confused, as though she did not recognize her husband at all.

"I’m sorry," Hank said, choking back tears.  "I love you.  Least I think I do.  But there’s right and wrong in this life.  And I got to do the right thing here this once or I won’t be good for anyone or anything.  So you just go on home, get whatever things you need, and stay with your sister for now.  I’m taking Sam home with me today."

"We’re going home together, all of us, right now," Heaven said, her voice straining.  She reached down for Hank’s arm, but a flash in his eyes told her that grabbing him would do no good.  She was dealing with a different man.  A free man.  She had lost control over him.

Jonah watched as Heaven shrunk before his eyes, her face falling, her shoulders slumping, her chest no longer puffed out, her hands no longer on her hips, but now on the small of her back as she bent forward in what looked like real pain.

"They gone and brainwashed you," she said.  "You’re not thinking worth anything."

"All I been doin’ is thinking," Hank said.

Heaven turned on Jonah, her eyes wild with rage, but now hers again, and now filling with tears.  "You did this!" she seethed.

"I’ve told you that I understand you," Jonah said.  "I don’t think of you as a bad person.  My door is still open.  We can meet anytime you like."

"What do you think you are, God, handing out forgiveness?  You that much better than the rest of us?"

"I’m no better than you," Jonah said.

She took a step back, almost stumbling, most of the fight gone from her face, a dictator deposed, on the run, with only her mixed-up pride to insulate her from whatever fires of hell had burned the child inside her, leaving her psyche so monstrously disfigured.  "I would rather die than come to you," she said.

"I understand that, too," Jonah said.

*            *            *

By 3:10
P.M.
Whitney McCormick had used her badge and her charm to gain access to the employment files of seven area health care facilities, including Rock Springs’ two largest outpatient clinics, three largest primary care group practices, and two hospitals:  Rock Springs Memorial and the Rock Springs Medical Center.  She had come up dry.  Her selection criteria — someone skilled in blood drawing with many absences from work or with multiple terminations for such absences — had netted her a few older women battling arthritis; a doctor now incarcerated for his seventh driving under the influence arrest; and a young, very troubled male nurse about six-feet-four and 350 pounds with gender identity issues, now living in Paris as Patrice, rather than Patrick, who had sent very pretty photographs of herself/himself back to the hospital nearly every month at various stages of sexual reassignment surgery. Not exactly the kind of person you’d let into your car and pour your heart out to.

Now, waiting for Marie Pierce at Rock ’n’ Roll, a coffee shop in Rock Springs, she was anxious to get back on the road to make a 4:45
P.M.
meeting with the human resources director at the Red Cross offices in Quealy.  She was thinking of Pierce as the longest of longshots to help her catch the killer.

She recognized her the moment she walked in.  The loss she had suffered showed on her face.  Telltale dark circles.  Bloodshot eyes.  Flushed cheeks.  Yet she was still pretty, in a rough way.  She was in her early forties, but her body was as trim as a teenager’s.  Her hair was bleached blonde, tied in a ponytail.  She wore an oversized Harley-Davidson sweatshirt, a metal link belt, tight jeans, and black, ankle-high boots.

McCormick knew Pierce had not slept, had not stopped crying.  If the nightmares hadn’t started, they would soon.  Then, the second-guessing:  If I had just worked my mother’s shift that night.  If I had just gone by to check in on her.

She raised a hand to call her over.

Pierce spotted her, walked to the table.  "Dr. McCormick," she said.

McCormick stood.  "I’m so sorry about your mother."

"Thank you.  She was a wonderful person."  They sat down.

"I know this must be hard for you," McCormick started.  "I appreciate you coming here."

"The police already interviewed me.  And the FBI."

"I’m a forensic psychiatrist.  My role in the case is a little different."

Pierce nodded.

"I read a short article about you, your mother, and your two daughters all living together in the same household.  Three generations.  Obviously, you were very close."

"We were best friends.  I’ll do anything to find the person who did this."

The waitress came by and took their coffee orders.

"My questions are pretty straightforward," McCormick said.  "I need to know whether your mother had any conflicts with anyone, whether she had been threatened, even by a relative.  And I’d like to know whether she had been seeing anyone.  Dating."

Pierce answered simply and directly.  No one would want to harm her mother.  No one had been romantic with her mother since the death of her father three years before.  There was no vagabond, homeless, mentally ill son coming and going.  Nothing.  "I’m really going to miss her," Pierce said.  She took a deep breath, bit her lip.

McCormick readied herself for the part of the interview she dreaded — sitting with Pierce’s raw grief.  She wasn’t especially good at that, never had been, maybe because she had never really grieved her own mother’s death.

"In a way, though," Pierce said, "it’s like she isn’t even dead."

"That’s normal," McCormick said, knowing her words sounded much more clinical than compassionate.  "Denial is a stage of grief."

Pierce smiled indulgently.  "I know that," she said.  "I took Death and Dying at Quealy Community College.  Got my associate’s in psychology.  I’m not saying I don’t believe she was
murdered
.  What I mean is there were parts of her that couldn’t be killed.  Like the fact that I miss her and always will, the fact that she’s inside me and inside my girls Heidi and Sage."  She paused.  "Mom’s gone, physically.  I can’t hold her, can’t hug her.  But her spirit is still around.  I feel it.  I think I always will.  I think I’ll always be able to talk to her."

Half of McCormick thought Pierce was deluding herself.  Her mother really was dead, after all.  Every bit of her.  McCormick had seen her lying on a stainless steel table with her face macerated and her throat cut.  But the other half of her wished she could have the same conviction about her own mother, the same sense that her mother was still alive inside her.  "You’re dealing with this remarkably well," she said.  "Where do you find the strength?"

"I wasn’t dealing at all, believe me," Pierce said.  "All I could think about was how much I wanted to die.  I wanted to join her.  I didn’t get out of bed for a day and a half.  Then I met with this doctor at the hospital, and I started seeing things differently."

"You’ve already started counseling?"

"The hospital offered it up.  For me, and everyone who works at the diner.  I couldn’t stop crying, wouldn’t eat.  So when they called the house, my older daughter — that’s Heidi — she pretty much forced me to go to see this Dr. Wrens at the medical center in Rock Springs."