Dead Sleep (11 page)

“How old was he?” asks Lenz.

“Twenty-six. I was seventeen and a half. A virgin. We both knew it was dangerous, but there was never any question of him seducing an innocent child. Yes, there was a void in my life because of my father's death; yes, he was a sympathetic older man. But I knew exactly what I was doing. He taught me a lot about the world. I discovered a lot about myself, about my body and what it could do. For me and for someone else. And I gave some peace to a boy who had been broken in some fundamental way that could never be corrected, only made less painful.”

“It's amazing that you found each other,” Lenz says without a trace of judgment in his eyes. “This did not end well, of course.”

“We managed to keep our relationship secret for most of the year. During that time, he opened up about Vietnam, and through his eyes I experienced things my father must have seen as well. Seen, but kept out of his letters. Even out of his photographs. In April, one of David's neighbors saw us kissing at the creek behind his house—with my flannel shirt open to the waist, no less—and took it on himself to report it to the school board. The board called a special meeting, and during something called ‘ex ecutive session' gave David the option of resigning and leaving town before they opened an investigation that would destroy both our futures. To protect him, I denied everything, but it didn't help. I offered to leave town with him, but he told me that wouldn't be fair to me. Ultimately, we were incompatible, he said. When I asked why, he said, ‘Because you have something I don't.' ‘What?' I asked.”

“A future?” Lenz finishes.

“Right. Two nights later, he went down to the creek and managed to drown himself. The coroner called it an accident, but David had enough scotch in him to sedate a bull.”

“I'm sorry.”

My eyes seek out the porthole again, a round well of night. “I like to think he was unconscious when he went under the water. He probably thought his death would end the scandal, but it only got worse. Jane had a breakdown brought on by social embarrassment. My mother just drank more. There was talk of putting us in foster homes. I went back to school with my head high, but it didn't last. My Star Student award was revoked. Then my appointment book went blank. No one wanted me shooting their family portraits. I'd done a lot of the senior pictures, but people didn't even pick them up. They had them reshot elsewhere. When I refused to abase myself in contrition, various mothers told the school board that they didn't want their daughters exposed to a ‘teenage Jezebel.' They really called me that. Before long, the ostracism bled over onto Jane. She was cut dead a hundred times on the street by parents who thought she was me. At that point, I did what David should have done. I had three thousand dollars in the bank. I took two thousand, packed my clothes and cameras, rode the bus to New Orleans, got a judge to emancipate me, and scratched up a job developing prints for the staff photographers at the
Times-Picayune.
A year later, I was a staff photographer myself.”

“Did you continue to support your family financially?”

“Yes. But things between Jane and me only got worse.”

“Why?”

“She was obsessed with being a Chi O. She thought—”

”Excuse me? A what?”

“A Chi Omega. It's a sorority. The apogee of southern womanhood at Ole Miss. Blue-eyed blondes raised with silver spoons in their mouths. Like that song, ‘Summer time'? ‘Your daddy's rich, and your mama's good lookin' . . .' ”

“Ah.”

“Several of her cheerleaders friends were going to pledge Chi O. Their sisters were already in, or their mothers. Like that.”

“Legacies,” says Lenz.

“Whatever. Jane really thought she had a chance. She thought I was the only obstacle to her getting it. She claimed active Chi Os had seen me around Oxford on my bike, looking ratty and saying whatever I felt like, and thought I was her. That probably did happen. But the truth was, she never had a chance. Those bitches wouldn't have given her that. They got their self-esteem from
excluding
girls like Jane, who wanted it terribly but had some flaw. And Jane had several. She had no money—therefore no high-end clothes, car, or any of the other trappings; her father had been a celebrity, but not the right kind; and then there was me. Jane was prettier than all of them, too. You hear beauty is its own aristocracy, but that's not always true. A lot of attractive women fear beauty.”

“Interesting, isn't it?” Lenz's eyes play over my body in a strange way, not lustfully, but in a coldly appraising manner. “Jane broke down after the scandal over you and the teacher?”

“She wouldn't leave the house. But when they started talking about making us wards of the state, she went back to school. She graduated salutatorian, but she never got to be a Chi O. She pledged Delta Gamma, which was considered decent but definitely second tier.”

“You've asserted how beautiful Jane was. You're her identical twin. How do you feel about your own looks?”

“I know I'm attractive. But Jane cultivated her looks in a way I never have. Toward the ideals of southern beauty, you know? That's a weird thing that extends from your appearance right into your personality. For me looks are secondary. I've used them to gain advantage in my work—I'd be a fool not to—but it makes me uncomfortable. Beauty is an accident of genetics for which I deserve no credit.”

“That's disingenuous, to say the least.”

This makes me laugh. “You're a man, okay? You don't know how many times I've listened to my mother whine about how much ‘potential' I have, that if I'd just
do
something with it, fix myself up a little—like Jane, is the subtext—I'd find a wonderful provider who'd marry me and take care of me for the rest of my life. Well, wake up, Mom. I don't need a goddamn provider, okay? I
am
one.”

“For whom do you provide, Jordan?”

“Myself.”

“I see.” Lenz looks at his watch, then taps his knees. “Jane married a wealthy attorney?”

“That's right.”

“Jump to her disappearance. You didn't handle it well? The file says you interfered with the investigation.”

“I don't take exclusion well, okay? I'm a journalist. This was my sister. And the FBI was getting exactly nowhere with the case. I badgered them for the victims' families, walked the streets, worked my old contacts at the
Times-Picayune.
But none of it did any good.”

“So what did you finally do?”

“Took off and tried to bury myself in work. Literally. I went to Sierra Leone. I took crazy risks, had some close calls. Word got back to my agency. They begged me to slow down, so I did. I slowed down so much that I couldn't get out of bed. I was sleeping around the clock. When I finally came out of that, I couldn't sleep at all. I had to have prescription drugs just to close my eyes without seeing Jane being raped, tied hand and foot in some dark room.”

“Was rape a particular fear of hers?”

“It's a particular fear for every woman.”

“What about you? You must have placed yourself in some very dangerous situations vis-à-vis rape. War zones full of men. Teenagers with guns.”

“I can take care of myself. Jane's a lot softer.”

Lenz nods slowly. “If we found Jane tomorrow—alive—what would you say to her? In other words, what have you most regretted not saying to her?”

“That's none of your business.”

“I've explained why—”

”Some things are too personal, Doctor. Let's leave it at that.”

Lenz rubs his face with his hands, then inclines his head to me. “Some years ago, I worked a very difficult murder case. I lost my wife during that investigation. She was murdered. Violently. Viciously. And I felt responsible. Perhaps I was. We had grown apart in our marriage, but that hardly lessened the agony. We've all done terrible things to the people we love, Jordan. It's our nature as humans. If there's something like that between you and your sister, it would help me to know. To see her as she really was.”

The pain in Lenz's eyes looks genuine, but he's an old hand at this game. He could have a stock of stories like this one, barter beads he uses to elicit intimacies.

“There's nothing like that.”

He takes a frustrated breath through his nose, and I'm reminded of a surgeon working to remove a bullet, his gloved thumb and finger in forceps, trying first one angle and then another, probing for a route to the heart of the wound.

“Certain types of people become targets for predators,” Lenz says. “The same way that injured or weak animals are chosen as prey by leopards. Certain types of children tend to be molested, for example: the shy ones, those who don't fit in, who play at the edge of the group, who separate themselves for various reasons. The same holds true for adults. I'm currently profiling every known victim in this case. Some had very low self-image, but others were superachievers. Some had siblings, others none. Some were housewives, others career women. I must find—”

“I've told you all I know, Doctor.”

“You haven't begun to tell me what you know.” He shifts in his seat, and the cruelty reappears in his eyes. “Why have you never married, Jordan?”

“I was engaged. He was killed. End of story.”

“Killed how?”

“He was an ITN reporter. He was shot down in a helicopter over Namibia and tortured to death.”

“You've lost your father, your fiancé, and your sister to violent death?”

“Bad things come in threes, right?”

“You're forty years old. There must be more to your romantic life than one engagement.”

“I've had lovers. Does that make you happy?”

“Did Jane have lovers?”

“One boyfriend through high school, like I said. She never had sex with him.”

“How do you know?”

“I just
know.
Okay? After him, she dated around, but nothing serious. Then in college she met a guy from a wealthy family in New Orleans. Married him his senior year of law school. She found the handsomest, most reliable provider she could, married him, had two kids, and lived happily ever after.”

For some reason this inaccurate summary brings a wave of tears to my eyes. “I need a drink. Do you think they have any of those little airplane bottles stowed on this plane?”

“No. Jordan, I want you to—”

“Get off it! Okay? You wanted our story, you've got it. We're poster girls for nurture in the nature-versus-nurture debate. We're identical right down to our mitochondria, but emotionally we're opposites. Jane acted like she despised me, but she was so jealous of me it made her sick. She was jealous of my
name.
She thought ‘Jordan' was exotic, while hers was literally plain Jane. I called her that when I was angry. She hated having to depend on me for money, for her cheerleading outfits and expenses. She wanted Izod shirts and Bass Weejuns, and I made her wear J.C. fucking Penney! That's how petty it was, okay? But to girls in our situation, that was a big deal. Was she weak or frail in some way? Yes. But weaker people can't help being weak, you know? I tried to protect her. Until she stopped wanting me to, and even then I tried. Jane became a southern belle because it was the only choice she was capable of making. She had to feel safe.”

“We're all defined by the choices we make to survive,” Lenz says in a fatherly voice. “The Walter Mittys and the monsters.”

His paternalistic bit finally snaps my patience. “Is that supposed to be profound? Doctor, you may have lost your wife to a killer, but I suspect that most of the trauma you've encountered was vicarious. Told to you by patients or prisoners. It can be tough to hear things, I know. I've heard some bad things myself. But I have also
endured
some bad things. I have descended into the pit of hell, if you want to know. I have
seen some shit.
And all this talk we're doing means nothing. Jane is alive or she's dead. Either way, I have to know. That's the way I'm built. But your games aren't taking us any closer to an answer. I don't think anything connects all these victims, except the fact that they're women.”

“Jordan, don't you want to—”

“What I
want
is what Baxter promised me. A complete breakdown of the FBI's investigation so far. I want it clear and concise, and I want it now.”

Lenz splays his age-spotted hands on the desktop and leans back. “Did that outburst make you feel better?”

“Start talking, damn it!”

“There's not much to tell. We're now gathering every known painting that belongs to the Sleeping Women series.”

“Where?”

“The National Gallery in Washington.”

“How many do you have so far?”

“None. Four will arrive by plane tomorrow, several more the next day. Some collectors have refused to ship their paintings but agreed to allow Bureau forensic teams and art consultants to travel to their collections. First we'll try to match the paintings to the known victims in New Orleans. In some cases it should be easy. Harder with the more abstract canvases, but we have some ideas about that. Then we'll establish the order in which the canvases were painted, if we can; it may differ from the order in which they were sold. While this is being done, we'll be searching the canvases for fingerprints, hairs, skin flakes, other biological artifacts. The paint itself will be analyzed and lot numbers traced, if possible. Brush fibers may be found and traced. Connoisseurs will make studies of the painter's style and try to draw comparisons with known artists. And that's only the beginning of what the paintings will go through.”