Body of Evidence (25 page)

"Tell me about the person who did this to her, Al," I said. "Would he have reached out to her had the circumstances ever been right?"

"No."

"No?"

"The circumstances would never have been right because he is inadequate and knows it," Hunt said. His sudden transformation was disconcerting. Now he was the psychologist. His voice was calmer. He was concentrating very hard, tightly clasping his hands in his lap.

He was saying, "He has a very low opinion of himself and is unable to express feelings in a constructive manner. Attraction turns to obsession, love becomes pathological. When he loves, he has to possess because he feels so insecure and unworthy, is so easily threatened. When his secret love is not returned, he becomes increasingly obsessed. He becomes so fixated his ability to react and function becomes limited. It's like Frankie hearing the voices. Something else drives him. He no longer has control."

"Is he intelligent?" I asked.

"Reasonably so."

"What about education?"

"His problems are such that he isn't able to function in the capacity he is intellectually capable of."

"Why her?" I asked him. "Why did he select Beryl Madison?"

"She has freedom, fame, he doesn't have," Hunt replied, his eyes glazed. "He thinks he's attracted to her, but it's more than that. He wants to possess those qualities he lacks. He wants to possess her in a sense, he wants to be her."

"Then you're saying he knew Beryl was a writer?" I asked.

"There is very little you can keep from him. One way or another, he would have found out she's a writer. He would know so much about her that when she began to pick up on it, she would have felt terribly violated and profoundly afraid."

"Tell me about that night," I said. "What happened the night she died, Al?"

"I know only what I've read in the papers."

"What have you pieced together from reading what has been in the papers?"

I asked.

"She was home," he said, staring off. "And it was getting late in the evening when he appeared at her door. Most likely she let him in. At some point before midnight he left her house and the burglar alarm went off. She was stabbed to death. There was an implication of sexual assault. That's as much as I've read."

"Do you have any theories as to what might have gone on?"

I asked blandly. "Speculations that go above and beyond what you've read?"

He leaned forward in the chair, his demeanor dramatically changing again. His eyes got hot with emotion. His lower lip began to quiver.

"I see scenes in my mind," he said.

"Such as?"

"Things I wouldn't want to tell the police."

"I'm not the police," I said.

"They wouldn't understand," he said. "These things I see and feel without having any reason to know them. It's like Frankie."

He blinked back tears. "It's like the others. I could see what happened and understand it, even though I wasn't always given the details. But you don't always need the details. Nor are you likely to get them in most instances. You know why that is, don't you?"

"I'm not sure ..."

"Because the Frankies in the world don't know the details, either! It's like a bad accident you can't remember. The awareness returns like waking up from a bad dream and you find yourself staring at the wreckage. The mother who no longer has a face. Or the Beryl who is bloody and dead. The Frankies wake up when they're running or a cop they don't remember calling pulls up in front of the house."

"Are you telling me Beryl's killer doesn't remember exactly what he did?"

I asked carefully.

He nodded.

"You're quite sure of that?"

"Your most skilled psychiatrist could question him for a million years and there would never be an accurate replay," Hunt said. "The truth will never be known. It has to be re-created and, to an extent, inferred."

"Which is what you've done. Re-created and inferred." I said.

He wet his bottom lip, his breathing tremulous. "Do you want me to tell you what I see?"

"Yes," I answered.

"Much time had elapsed since his first contact with her," he began. "But she had no awareness of him as a person, though she may have seen him somewhere in the past--seen him without having any idea. His frustration, his obsessiveness had driven him to her doorstep. Something kicked that off, made it an overwhelming need to confront her."

"What?" I asked. "What kicked it off?"

"I don't know."

"What was he feeling when he decided to come after her?"

Hunt closed his eyes and said, "Anger. Anger because he couldn't make things work the way he wanted."

"Anger because he couldn't have a relationship with Beryl?" I asked.

Eyes still shut, Hunt slowly shook his head from side to side and said, "No. Maybe that's what was closest to the surface. But the root was much deeper. Anger because nothing worked the way he wanted it to in the beginning."

"When he was a child?" I asked.

"Yes."

"Was he abused?"

"He was emotionally," Hunt said.

"By whom?"

Eyes still shut, he answered, "His mother. When he killed Beryl he killed his mother."

"Do you study forensic psychiatry books, Al? Do you read about these things?" I asked.

He opened his eyes and stared at me as if he had not heard what I had said.

He went on, emotionally, "You have to appreciate how many times he had imagined the moment. It wasn't impulsive in the sense he simply rushed to her house without premeditation. The timing may have been impulsive, but his method had been planned with meticulous detail. He absolutely couldn't afford for her to be alarmed and refuse him entrance into her house. She'd call the police, give them a description. And even if he wasn't apprehended, his mask had been ripped off and he'd never be able to come near her again. He had created a scheme that was guaranteed not to fail, something that would not excite her suspicions. When he appeared at her door that night, he inspired trust. And she let him in."

In my mind I saw the man in Beryl's foyer, but I could not see his face or the color of his hair, just an indistinct figure and the glinting of the long steel blade as he introduced himself with the weapon he used to murder her.

"This is when it deteriorated for him," Hunt continued. "He won't remember what happened next. Her panic, her terror, are not pleasant for him. He had not completely thought out this part of his ritual. When she ran, tried to get away from him, when he saw the panic in her eyes, he fully realized her rejection of him. He realized the horrible thing he was doing, and his contempt for himself was acted out as contempt for her. Rage. He quickly lost control of her while he was reduced to the lowest form. A killer. A destroyer. A mindless savage tearing and cutting and inflicting pain. Her screams, her blood were awful for him. And the more he razed and defaced this temple where he had worshiped for so long, the more he couldn't bear the sight of it."

He looked at me and there was nobody home behind his eyes. His face was drained of all emotion when he asked, "Can you relate to this, Dr. Scarpetta?"

"I'm listening" was all I said.

"He is in all of us," he said.

"Does he feel remorse, Al?"

"He is beyond that," he said. "I don't think he feels good about what he did or even completely realizes what he did. He was left with confused emotions. In his mind he will not let her die. He wonders about her, relives his contacts with her, and fantasizes that his relationship with her was the deepest, most profound of all because she was thinking about him when she breathed her last and this is the ultimate closeness to another human being. In his fantasies he imagines she continues to think about him after death. But the rational part of him is unsatisfied and frustrated. No one can completely belong to another person, and this is what he begins to discover."

"What do you mean?" I asked. "His deed could not possibly produce the desired effect," Hunt answered. "He is unsure of the closeness-- just as he was never sure of his mother's closeness. The distrust again. And there are other people now who have a more legitimate reason to have a relationship with Beryl than he does."

"Like who?"

'The police." His eyes focused on me. "And you."

"Because we're investigating her murder?" I asked, a chill running up my spine. "Yes."

"Because she has become a preoccupation for us, and our relationship with her is more public than his?" I said.

"Yes."

"Where does this lead?"

I then asked. "Gary Harper is dead."

"He killed Harper?"

"Yes."

"Why?"

I nervously lit a cigarette. "What he did to Beryl was a love thing," Hunt responded. "What he did to Harper was a hate thing. He is into hate things now. Anybody connected to Beryl is in danger. And this is what I wanted to tell Lieutenant Marino, the police. But I knew it wouldn't do any good. He-- They would just think I have a loose screw."

"Who is he?" I asked. "Who killed Beryl?"

Al Hunt moved to the edge of the couch and rubbed his face in his hands. When he looked up, his cheeks were splotched red. "Jim Jim," he whispered. "Jim Jim?"

I asked, mystified.

"1 don't know."

His voice broke. "I keep hearing that name in my head, hearing it and hearing it...."

I sat very still.

"It was so long ago I was at Valhalla Hospital," he said.

"The forensic unit?" I broke out. "Was this Jim Jim a patient while you were there?"

"I'm not sure."

The emotions were gathering in his eyes like a storm. "I hear his name and I see that place. My thoughts drift back to its dark memories. Like I'm being sucked down a drain. It was so long ago. So much blacked out now, Jim Jim. Jim Jim. Like a train chugging. The sound won't stop. I have headaches because of the sound."

"When was this?" I demanded.

"Ten years ago," he cried.

Hunt couldn't have been working on a master's thesis then, I realized. He would have been only in his late teens.

"Al," I said, "you weren't doing research in the forensic unit. You were a patient there, weren't you?"

He covered his face with his hands and wept. When he finally was in sufficient control, he refused to talk anymore. Obviously deeply distressed, he mumbled he was late for an appointment and practically ran out the door. My heart was racing and wouldn't slow down. I fixed myself a cup of coffee and paced the kitchen, trying to figure out what to do next. I jumped when the telephone rang.

"Kay Scarpetta, please."

"Speaking."

"This is John with Amtrak. I've finally got your information, ma'am. Let's see... Sterling Harper had a round-trip ticket on The Virginian for October twenty-seventh, returning on the thirty-first. According to my records, she was on the train, or at least somebody with her tickets was. You want the times?"

"Yes, please," I said, and I wrote them down. "What stations?"

He answered, "Originating in Fredericksburg, destination Baltimore."

I tried to call Marino. He was on the street. It was evening when he returned my call with news of his own.

"Do you want me to come?" I asked, stunned.

"Don't see no point in it," Marino's voice came over the line. "No question what he did. He wrote a note and pinned it to his undershorts. Said he was sorry, he couldn't take it no more. That's pretty much it. Nothing suspicious about the scene. We're about to clear on out. And Doc Coleman's here," he added, referring to one of my local medical examiners.

Shortly after Al Hunt left my house he drove to his own, a brick colonial in Ginter Park where he lived with his parents. He took a pad of paper and a pen from his father's study. He descended the stairs leading to the basement and removed his narrow black-leather belt. He left his shoes and trousers on the floor. When his mother went down later to put in a load of wash, she found her only son hanging from a pipe inside the laundry room.

A freezing rain began to fall past midnight, and by morning the world was glass. I stayed in my house Saturday, my conversation with Al Hunt replaying in my mind, startling the solitude of my private thoughts like the thawing ice suddenly crackling to the earth beyond my window. I felt guilty. Like every other mortal who has ever been touched by suicide, I had the fallacious belief that I could have done something to stop it.

Numbly, I added him to the list. Four people were dead. Two deaths were blatant, vicious homicides, two of them were not, and yet all of the cases were somehow connected. Perhaps connected by a bright orange thread. Saturday and Sunday I worked in my home office because my downtown office would only remind me that I no longer felt in charge--for that matter, I no longer felt needed. The work went on without me. People reached out to me and then were dead. Respected colleagues like the attorney general asked for answers, and I did not have anything to offer.