Psychopath (33 page)

"Thanks for keeping an eye on her.  Our man may still be in the neighborhood."

"It’s none of my business, but it doesn’t sound to me like you’re anywhere near over her," Anderson said.

"I’ve got other things on my mind right now," Clevenger said.

"I guess that’s a no, but I won’t press you."

"Good."

"You want me to call the hospital where this guy said he worked at in Pennsylvania?" Anderson asked.  "See if anyone there can figure out who he was?"

"I’m on it right after we hang up."

"Fair enough.  Hey, how’s Billy, by the way?"

For some reason Clevenger didn’t want to tell him he had another custody battle on his hands.  Maybe he just didn’t want to get into the details right then.  Or maybe he was embarrassed, worried Anderson would give him the
I told you so
routine, which he pretty much deserved, trying to track down a serial killer and create a stable home for a troubled teenager at the same time.  He wasn’t exactly scoring a perfect ten on either performance.  "He’s good today," he said.  "Tomorrow, who knows?"

"One day at a time."

Clevenger hung up.  Then he dialed directory assistance and got the number for Venango Regional Medical Center, suddenly feeling how fragile a lead he was following, how little he really had to go on, and how much he had already put at risk.

t h r e e

Jonah sat behind his desk at the Rock Springs Medical Center, a blank sheet of paper and a pen in front of him.  He stretched his arms above his head, spread his fingers wide and took the deepest breath he could.  He felt more alive than he had in a very long time.  His vision and hearing and sense of smell were at their heights again.  He could feel the underside of his skin stretching over his bulging muscles.  When he sat perfectly still, he thought he could actually sense the opening and closing of his aortic and pulmonary valves as the ventricles of his heart squeezed down powerfully, pumping not only his blood, but the blood of all the others who had died to be reborn inside him.

He had triumphed over his own destructiveness by healing Marie Pierce.  He could still feel her warm embrace, her overflowing gratitude.

He had triumphed over Heaven Garber and set little Sam free.  He could still see the boy grinning ear-to-ear as he left the locked unit with his father Hank earlier that morning.

He let out his breath, lowered his hands, and picked up the pen to start his next letter to Clevenger.  He planned to mail it once he had finished his stint in Wyoming and could head for a week in the mountains before his next assignment in Pidcoke, Texas, near the Fort Hood Military Reservation.

He looked at the clock.  4:27
P.M.
   He started writing:

Dr. Clevenger:

I have indeed experienced true love — the greatest being my love for God Almighty, King of the Universe.  By loving Him 1 can love others, no matter how seemingly demonic or reprehensible.  And through Him I pray that I will, one day soon, come to love myself.

You arrogantly claim that my father did not torture me.  You challenge me to put my mother’s face on my assailant.  But I shall not engage in mental charades that defile her.  I will not be brainwashed.  For even if she were the actor in the dark memories that plague me, even if she were the devil in my life and not my angel, I would have compassion for her and struggle to forgive her.

You and your lovely Whitney would hide your destructiveness behind mine.  You would pretend that extinguishing glorious memories of my mother, in order to weaken me, catch me, and ultimately extinguish me is defensible because you are upholding man’s laws.  But there are greater laws.

We are all sinners, Frank.  We are all sick with violence.  The difference between us is my ceaseless struggle to follow the light.

My vision is clear now.  Yours is still clouded by your need for vengeance.

That need inside you exists only because you have missed a critical truth, perhaps the most critical of all.  And it is simply this:  self-hatred is the only hatred in the world.  It merely finds convenient decoys. 

I am one of yours.  I am only the most recent tool you have used to escape looking at the killer inside you — that beaten, humiliated boy who once used alcohol and cocaine to avoid feeling his pain.  Love that boy, and you will find it in your heart to love me, as I have come to love you.

Isn’t it clear you would be a better guide for the troubled boy in your home if you embraced the troubled boy in your heart?

I see so clearly now that the men and women I met along the highways did not give their lives in vain.  They were stepping-stones to heaven.  And not for me alone.  For them, as well.  And for you, too, should you choose the path.  For all of us are journeying forward together to a more perfect place.  It matters so little in the grand scheme which collection of flesh and bones takes the final leap.

I hold dear the words of Antonio Machado:

I dreamt last night,

oh marvelous error,

that there were honeybees in my heart,

making honey out of my old failures.

There was a knock at his office door.  He slipped the sheet of paper inside his desk drawer.  "Come in," he called out.

Dr. Corrine Wallace, the medical director, walked in, looking even more somber than she had that morning.  She shut the door behind her.  "We need to talk."

Jonah could see in her eyes that something was very wrong.  He motioned for her to take the chair in front of it.

She sat down.  "I don’t know how to tell you this, Jonah, so I’m just going to say it."

Jonah looked at her and knew.  "Sam?" he asked, praying he was wrong.

"I got a call from the police."

He didn’t want to ask, sat there several seconds, with only the buzz of the fluorescent lights breaking the silence.  "How bad?" he asked, finally.

"She killed him," Wallace said.  "Hank let her back in the house."  Her eyes filled up.

"He’s dead?  Sam is dead?"  He instinctively looked at the clock.  4:52
P.M.

"She told the arresting officer that all she’d wanted from him was an apology.

She said he refused, that he ‘pushed her over the edge.’"

"What about Hank?  Was he there?"

"Yes.  He did nothing to stop her.  They’re both charged with first-degree murder."

Jonah pictured Heaven Garber, three hundred pounds, a mammoth towering over Sam, screaming at him, "Tell me you’re sorry! Tell me you’re sorry!" But the brave boy refused.  And his silence only enraged the beast more.

Then, in the most horrible transformation imaginable, Jonah watched as his mental image of Heaven’s face melted into the face of his own mother, her angelic eyes bloodshot, her beautiful lips twisted with rage.

When he looked again for Sam, he saw himself on the floor, weeping, begging not to be struck again.

Was this some invasion of his mind by Clevenger?  Had he succeeded in brainwashing him?

"Are you all right?" Wallace asked, leaning forward in her chair.

Jonah looked at her in front of his desk, saw her for who she was.  But an instant later her features, too, fused with Heaven’s.  He rubbed his fists into his eyes.  "I need a little time," he said.  "I’m sorry."

"Of course."  She stood up and started to leave, but turned back to him.  "You did nothing wrong.  I want you to know that.  There was no way to see this was going to happen."

Jonah didn’t respond.

She headed for the door.

As soon as Jonah heard the door click shut behind her, he fell to his knees and let his head fall into his hands.

*            *            *

Clevenger called Kane Warner at the FBI and got a cool response to his suggestion the Agency consider whether the Highway Killer might be a locum tenens psychiatrist.

He didn’t waste time worrying about that.  By the end of the day he had spoken with the director and assistant director of the Venango Regional Medical Center human resources department, the head nurse for the locked unit, and the hospital CEO.  They all insisted he’d need a court order for them to release any personnel files or other information pertaining to whether the hospital retained locum tenens psychiatrists — at that time or in the past.  He managed to get connected to the locked unit, but the nurse who answered the phone there had only been on staff eight months, and the description Clevenger gave didn’t remind her of any psychiatrist she knew.

At 6:40
P.M.
EST
he decided to give it one more shot, MD to MD.  He had the medical director paged. The operator told him to hold for Dr. Kurt LeShan.

LeShan answered five minutes later.

Clevenger introduced himself. "I’m sorry to bother you after hours."

"Not all.  I feel like I know you," LeShan said.  "I’ve been following your work in the
Times
.  Fascinating.  To what do I owe the call?"

"I’m following up on a tip — someone you may have had on staff."

"Who is that?"

"I’m not sure of his name."

"Some tip."

"I think he worked at your hospital during 1995.  Around Christmas.  He may have been a locum."

"We usually have at least one locum around here.  Recruiting staff docs is impossible."

"Tall.  Longish gray hair.  Blue—"

"Jonah!" LeShan broke in.  "Jonah Wrens."

"Can you tell me anything about him?" Clevenger asked.

"I can tell you this — he was the best psychiatrist I’ve ever hired, the best I’ve ever worked with, locum tenens and staff docs included.  Absolutely topnotch."

"Any chance he treated a boy named Phillip Keane?"

"Possible.  Keane’s a frequent flier here.  Quite psychotic.  Why do you ask?"

"Dr. Wrens apparently introduced himself as Phillip Keane, on at least one occasion — to a woman he met."

"Maybe he didn’t want her to know who he was.  Keane’s name probably popped into his head, so he borrowed it.  It isn’t gentlemanly, I suppose.  Certainly not professional.  But it hardly merits the attention of a forensic psychiatrist."

"Do you remember what agency Wrens was from?"

"I do.  But tell me something first — why are you looking for him?"

Clevenger didn’t want to imply Wrens was a suspect in the case, which he wasn’t.  Not officially.  Not even rationally.  He was what had turned up on a hook cast blindly into the sea of millions of
New York Times
readers.  "We received an anonymous call stating that a doctor with Wrens’s description may know something important about the Highway Killer."

"You think he might have crossed paths with him, treated him?"

"Possible."

"Well, if anyone could help that lunatic, it would be Jonah," LeShan said.  He chuckled.  "No offense to you."

"None taken," Clevenger said.  "What makes Wrens so extraordinary?"

"You know how it is.  Either you have it or you don’t.  He has it, in spades.  The gift.  The third ear.  He could get patients to open up who wouldn’t talk to anyone else on staff.  And if we were dealing with a violent person, everyone knew to call Jonah right away.  When he walked up to a guy who was out of control, that guy settled down.  Period.  End of discussion.  Something about his presence.  He put out a vibe.  Very calming.  Very strong."

"You liked him — as a person, I mean, his professional abilities aside."

"Everyone did.  Nothing
not
to like about Jonah.  You’ll see.  If he can help you out, he will.  He’s that kind of guy."

"And he was from which agency?"

"Communicare," LeShan said.  "We use them almost exclusively.  They’re out of Denver.  Hold a minute, and I’ll get you their number."

*            *            *

Whitney McCormick had moved her meeting at the Red Cross to the following day so she could stop back at the Rock Springs Medical Center.  It was 5:45 when she pressed the buzzer beside the iron door to the locked psychiatry unit.

"Yes?" a female voice said through a speaker.

"My name is Dr. Whitney McCormick.  I was hoping to see Dr. Wrens."

"Certainly.  He’s expecting you."

Hearing that did nothing to put McCormick at ease.  Pierce had obviously called to let Wrens know she would be stopping by.

A nurse came to let her in, then escorted her to the door to Wrens’s office.  She knocked, got no response, knocked harder.  Still, nothing.  She was ready to try the door when it opened.

"Dr. McCormick," Jonah said.  "How might I help you?"

McCormick noted how flushed he looked, as though he had been screaming or crying.  Even so, he was everything Marie Pierce had described.  A man with a voice and a face and a bearing that promised understanding.  "I’m sorry to bother you," she said.  She noted his wavy, silver hair, blue eyes, perfect skin, the soft hues of his pleated gray wool trousers, brown suede shoes, and deep blue mock turtleneck.  "Would you mind if I ask you a few questions?"

"Not at all."  Jonah turned around, walked back into the office.

McCormick followed him, intentionally leaving the office door ajar.  "I’m looking into the murder that occurred at the Bitter Creek Diner," she said.

"A senseless killing," Jonah said, standing with his back to her as he filled a box on his desk with books and folders.

"You helped Marie a great deal.  She’s feeling much better."

Jonah kept packing.

"I wondered whether you’d found out anything that might be of value to the investigation," McCormick said.