Psychopath (17 page)

Billy stared at Clevenger a few seconds.  Then he threw his head back and gazed at the ceiling.  "I get it," he said.  "You’re worried if I get into this stuff at all, I’ll get
too
into it."

"I think it could take up a lot of time," Clevenger said.  "I think it could be distracting.  And I think it’s pretty depressing stuff, when you come right down to it.  You don’t need that kind of negativity in your life right now."

Billy looked at him in the piercing way he sometimes could, when his emotional intelligence was working like radar.  "What you really think is that I could become obsessed.  Maybe even go the wrong way with it and end up like him.  A killer."

"That’s not what I’m thinking," Clevenger said, reflexively.  But wasn’t it?  Wasn’t it possible that by immersing himself in darkness Billy could be pulled fully into his own shadow?  "You’ve done good things in your life and bad things, Billy.  We’re only a month past the fights at Auden.

You’re only clean from drugs a few weeks.  I think dwelling on violence is a mistake.  That’s all."

"No problem," he said flatly.  He shrugged, closed the books.  "Feel free to look at this stuff.  It took a while to put it together."  His upper lip began to tremble.  "Some of it’s off the Web, but I had to find the rest on microfiche at the library."  He got up and started toward his room.

"Hold on," Clevenger called after him.  He wanted to say something more to honor the part of Billy’s effort that really was an attempt to be helpful — to reach out. "I really do appreciate what you—"

"Sure thing," Billy said, without turning around.  He walked into his room and shut the door behind him.

Clevenger got up, walked toward the room.  When he’d gotten within a few feet of the door, it opened.

Billy stood in the doorway, staring at the floor.  "Can we just drop it?" he asked.  "Can you at least respect me enough to back off when I ask you to?"

Clevenger nodded reluctantly.

The door closed again.

t h r e e

April 1, 2003

Chelsea, Massachusetts

The door was still closed at 6:30
A.M.
when Clevenger left to take the 8:00
A.M.
shuttle to Washington, D.C.  He met Whitney McCormick at her office in the main building of the FBI Academy in Quantico.  She was decked out in straight-legged black pants, a black leotard, and a black blazer that was the perfect backdrop for her straight blonde hair.  She looked every bit as beautiful as the last time Clevenger had seen her.

"Welcome to the team," she said, extending her hand.  "Some invitation — from the killer himself."

To focus on raising Billy, Clevenger had dialed down his sensitivity to feminine beauty, but not to zero.  As he shook McCormick’s hand he didn’t miss her soft skin, her long, graceful fingers, her manicured nails, perhaps even a special tenderness in her grip.  "I finished the first draft of my response last night," he said.  "I brought it with me."

"Great," she said.  "I can approve it that much faster."  She walked behind her desk, took a seat.  "Make yourself comfortable."  She nodded at a leather sofa at the side of the room.

"Approve it?" Clevenger said, sitting down.

"It’s the way we’ve structured things with the
Times
.  Before they print anything, they’ll run it by me.  If I think it’s questionable, it goes to Kane Warner for a final decision."

"I didn’t plan on being edited."

"Relax," she said, in a truly soothing voice.  "No one’s going to get heavy-handed."

"Thanks for the reassurance," Clevenger said.  "But just so I know, what kind of content might be ‘questionable?’"

"That’s hard to say before I see it," she said.  "From your side, I guess an example would be if you inadvertently disclosed sensitive information about the investigation.  From the Highway Killer’s side, I might censor something that would be unbearable for a victim’s family to read — something beyond the pale."

"Okay."

"I suppose you and the Agency could also have a disagreement about how deep to go with this guy," she said, in a less comforting tone.  "How far to push him."

"The
Agency
?  A minute ago,
you
were vetting my letters."

She smiled.  "Count on me to go to the edge with you.  Okay?  From what you said at the last meeting, I know where you’re coming from with this guy.  We’ve got to take the fight to him, not be sitting around waiting for the next body.  That’s why I broke ranks with Kane over whether to publish the letters at all."

"But..."

"But I agree with Kane that there’s a risk.  It could backfire.  He could get worse rather than better."

"No question."

"Then we’re all on the same page."

"It’s early," Clevenger said.  He noticed McCormick’s degrees from Yale Medical School and the Yale psychiatry residency on the wall opposite him.  Beside them hung a white board filled with half sentences, arrows connecting one thought to another, some words underscored three or four times, some crossed out.

"Brainstorming?" he asked, nodding at it.

"More like brain fog," she said.  "On the surface this guy gives us everything:  the bodies out in the open; an unmistakable signature including severed throats and venipuncture wounds; plenty of fingerprints — even on the stamps he used to send your letter to the
Times
.  But none of it leads anywhere.  The prints obviously don’t match anything in our database.  The bodies can be found days or weeks or months after he dumps them.  And the victims have absolutely nothing in common."

"He’s random because he’s out of control," Clevenger said.  "From what he wrote in the
Times
, he’s not moved to kill by seeing a person of a particular gender or body type or hair color or age.  He’s driven to kill by loneliness.  He strikes out.  He isn’t hunting for his next twelve-year-old, brown-eyed blonde girl to abduct."

"Brown-eyed blonde girl?" McCormick asked, tilting her head.  "Where did that come from?"

Clevenger realized he’d borrowed McCormick’s hair and eye color for his example.

"Sorry about that."

She half smiled.  "Remind me not to make you angry."

"Why would I have to remind you?"

A full smile this time.  "As driven as this guy is, he’s methodical," she said.  "We don’t have a single eyewitness catching a glimpse of him.  We haven’t heard of any close call — somebody escaping.  He doesn’t leave anything trackable at the scene.  That adds up to real self-discipline, real planning, even though he’s got us believing he just loses it."

"Maybe he’d like to believe that himself," Clevenger said.  "It absolves him of moral responsibility."

"And legal responsibility.  It’s nice groundwork for an insanity plea when he’s apprehended.  He can say, ‘Hey, look, I couldn’t stop myself.  Just read what I wrote in the
Times
’."  She paused.  "What I’ve started to wonder about is how he feeds himself short of killing.  Because he does go long stretches without taking a life.  He must be interacting with people other than his victims in very intimate ways."

"Plenty of sexual partners, for one thing," Clevenger said.

"Those don’t necessarily add up to intimacy," she said.

"Agreed."

"You wonder about a truck driver crisscrossing the United States," she said.  "He picks up hitchhikers who go on and on about their lives, maybe hooks up with a needy woman here and there at a bar or a restaurant, and plays therapist, maybe hires prostitutes and gets them to spill their guts — and sometimes that’s enough.

But other times he can’t connect.  And that’s when he takes lives."

"Or when he can’t connect deeply enough..." Clevenger said.

"Say more."

"Maybe if he gets close enough to a person, truly gets his emotional fix, he lets that person go.  If he can’t, he kills in order to share the moment of death, to play next of kin at the bedside."

McCormick nodded.  "That would explain why people wouldn’t struggle very much to get away from him.  He’s gone a long way toward winning them over."

"And if that’s true," Clevenger said, "then there are people out there who have gotten exceedingly close to him — and lived.  The ones who bond with him most deeply walk away.  They’ve paid their dues."

"Finding them wouldn’t be easy," McCormick said.  "They probably have no idea how close they came to being victims."

"They might, deep down."  He looked directly at her.  "You know how you sometimes meet someone you feel close to right away?"

"I’ve seen it happen in movies," she said.  "In reality, I think it’s pretty rare."

McCormick couldn’t be accused of flirting.  "It is rare," Clevenger said.  "That’s why when it happens, you don’t forget it."  He leaned forward.  "If I could somehow make the point in the
Times
that our man inspires that kind of feeling," he went on, "we might get people thinking about it.  Maybe somebody would call in."

"It’s worth a try."

There was a knock at the door.

"Come in," McCormick said.

Kane Warner opened the door.  He was dressed to the nines again — this time in a dark blue pinstriped suit, blood-red tie, and white tab-collar shirt. "Dr. Clevenger," he said, sounding like an entomologist identifying a bug he had picked off a blade of grass.

"Kane," Clevenger said.

"If you two can take a break," he said, glancing at McCormick, "we’ve received a package addressed to Frank Clevenger, MD, care of Whitney McCormick, MD.  It came Federal Express, a little over an hour ago.  The airbill was typed.  The sender’s name is listed as Anna Beckwith.  Bastard used her credit card number, too."

*            *            *

Clevenger and McCormick followed Warner to the basement of the Behavioral Sciences Unit, into an observation room with a six-inch-thick tilted wall of glass overlooking another, smaller room with a concrete floor, cinderblock walls, and a polished iron door that looked like the door to a bank vault.  A nondescript cardboard box about eight inches tall and twelve inches long, sat atop an elevated concrete slab in the center of the room.

Warner picked up a phone mounted to the wall, spoke into it. "All set," he said.

"Where was it mailed from?" Clevenger asked.

"Upstate Pennsylvania.  A little town called Windham, close to New York.  He used a Federal Express drop box outside a strip mall."

"Any weight to it?" McCormick asked.

"A little under two pounds," Warner said.

The door to the room opened and a man wearing a welder’s face mask and carrying a long, Plexiglas shield walked to the box.  He reached his hands through holes in the shield, into explosive-resistant gloves fastened to it.  The gloves were fashioned with a carbon fiber blade affixed to the palm.  He started to cut the seams of the box.

"We sent agents up to Windham to poke around, on the off chance we’d get lucky," Warner said.  "No one who works around the drop box recalled seeing anyone unusual.  The agents are canvassing motels and RV parks now."

The man opening the box had finished cutting the seams and was peeling the cardboard down toward the concrete block.

"Could be a hoax," McCormick said.  "With this much publicity, people are going to try to jump on the bandwagon."

Warner shook his head.  "We lifted fingerprints from the plastic tape.  They match ones from the crime scenes and from the letter to the
Times
."

Clevenger watched as crumpled sheets of newspaper fell out of the sides of the box.  He squinted at what was left behind:  a large glass conch shell, with a swirl of colors inside it.

"What the hell?" Warner said.

The man opening the box carefully pushed the glass shell aside.  Beneath it was a small, handwritten card and a typed letter.  Warner spoke into the phone again.

"We’ll take a look at those as soon as they’re processed."

The man gave Warner a thumbs-up.

Clevenger looked to McCormick for an explanation.

"They’ll dust them for prints, make sure nothing toxic is on them-like anthrax."

"Will that take long?" Clevenger asked her.

"Two, three hours," McCormick said.

"Why not have him show it to us through the glass right now?" Clevenger asked.

"Listen to you," Warner said to Clevenger.  "Hanging on this bloodsucker’s every word.  You think he’s at the edge of his seat, combing the
Times
for your letter to him?  He’s playing you."

"At least we’re finally in the game," Clevenger said.

"There’s no reason to wait two hours, Kane," McCormick intervened.

"I guess you’re right," Warner said.  He winked.  "Whatever you two want."  He spoke into the telephone.  "Would you bring that card and sheet of paper to the window?"

The man took off the explosive-resistant gloves, set his shield against the concrete block, and pulled on a pair of rubber gloves.  He picked up the card and sheet of paper, carried them to the observation window, and held them up toward the glass.

The card was the one Doug Holt had written to his fiancée Naomi’s parents, thanking them for bringing her into the world.

The typewritten letter read:

Dr. Clevenger:

I frown upon you working with the FBI, understandable and predictable as that initial instinct on your part might be.  I extend my hand to you as a brother.  I believe you have the ability to help me end my violence.  Trying to end it through my capture is a waste of our good time and energy.  Let small minds busy themselves with such foolishness.

Have you read Dr. McCormick’s writings?  They are the writings of a hunter, not a healer.  A stalker for the government.  She fails to see, as Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn did, that ‘the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being.’  Even her own heart.

The attempt to cage me, perhaps to execute me, to deprive me of my God-given right to conquer the evil inside me, can only inflame that evil.  Could anyone, after all, fault a lion for turning on one sighting him through crosshairs?