Psychopath (22 page)

That’s what had him getting high.  That’s what had him riding the rails.

He pulled into Burlington at 12:55
A.M.
   He would have taken a train right back to Boston’s South Station, but there wasn’t one until 7
A.M.
   So he stepped out of the station, into the icy edge of a Vermont morning, and started walking along Route 7, headed toward Casey’s parents’ cabin.

*            *            *

Clevenger didn’t sleep at all that night.  Neither of the Newburyport cops he contacted knew any ‘Casey.’  Peter Fitzgerald at the shipyard had seen her around, but couldn’t offer anything more.  Then at 3:37
A.M.
the phone rang.  North Anderson’s home number showed on the Caller I.D.  Clevenger reached for the receiver, but his hand froze with worry that he was about to get bad news, that this was that call the unluckiest parents in the world got, that their kid had overdosed or been hit by a car or murdered.  3:37
A.M.
   Would he remember that time the rest of his life, wake with a start more nights than not, staring at those blood-red digits splayed across his alarm clock?  He made himself pick up.  "Find out anything?" he asked.

"He headed to Vermont," Anderson said.

"Vermont?"

"I found his girlfriend about an hour ago.  She’s a sophomore at Governor Welch Academy up in Georgetown.  Goes by Casey, but her real name is Katherine Paulson Simms.  One of Newburyport’s first families.  She was tight-lipped, a real stand-up girl — until I bluffed and told her the cops might want to talk to her about the pot she left behind in your apartment."

"Why’s he headed to Vermont?"

"He told Casey he needed time to think, a little space, that kind of thing.  The Simms have a cabin on Lake Champlain.  She gave him the key.  I called Greyhound and Amtrak.  He took the train, used an American Express — yours — to pay for his trip.  He got in just before one
A.M.
"

"Thanks," Clevenger said.  "I’m going up there now."

"Listen, Frank," Anderson said.  "Tell me if I’m stepping out of line, but maybe he was being straight with her.  He might need a little time to think something through, get his head screwed on straight."

"He needs detox," Clevenger said.

"This could be his way of getting clean.  Who knows?  Maybe the couple days will do him good."

"So, what am I supposed to do?  Just wait?"

"Sometimes that’s all you can do.  At least it’s all I can do with my Kristie.

She’s still too young to hop on a train, but she’s been way out of reach a few times.  That can happen when she’s right down the hall.  It won’t be any different with Tyler."

"He’s, what, five months old?  You don’t need to start worrying."

"I started the day he was born."

Clevenger took a deep breath.  "Is there a phone up there?"

"None in the cabin.  No heat, either.  But there’s a woodstove and a half cord stacked on the porch."

"Why not send a cruiser by, see that he got there?"

"I’ll take care of it."

"Let me know if..." Clevenger started.

"If there isn’t a light burning or smoke coming out of the chimney, I’ll call you," Anderson interrupted.  "Otherwise, get some sleep."

"Will do.  Thanks."

*            *            *

Morning, April 7, 2003

He slept about an hour altogether, dozing off for five or ten minutes at a time, then waking and listening to the silence in the loft, hoping to hear a door slamming or the shower running or Billy’s footsteps falling across the floor.  But he heard nothing.

He awakened for good at 6:20
A.M.
, remembered he’d arranged for delivery of the
New York Times
, and grabbed it outside his door.  He sat down on the couch and reread his front-page response to the Highway Killer’s last letter.  He imagined the killer reading it at the same moment — at a truck stop or a rest area or having a nice, hot breakfast at some diner that might be just a quarter mile from where he had left another body.  And he felt sick to his stomach.  Because he imagined that body as Billy’s.  And he wondered whether losing him would change the answer he had given Josh Resnek from the
Chelsea Independent
— that healing the Highway Killer was what mattered to him, that catching him was up to the FBI.  He wondered how well his empathy would weather a murdered son. 

But it wasn’t really supposed to hold up, was it?  That’s why juries and judges and the whole rule of law existed in the first place — to buffer the understandable desire for vengeance in the bereaved.  Because if justice were left to victims, gallows would outnumber jails a hundred to one.

Together, as a society, we can aspire to act like Christ or Ghandi.  Left alone, most of us would act more like the Terminator.

The phone rang.  North Anderson again.  Clevenger picked up.

"I think he may be heading back your way," Anderson said.

Clevenger looked at the ceiling, closed his eyes, and thanked God.  "How do you know?" he asked.

"After the Burlington police told me there was activity at the cottage, I drove up here," Anderson said.  "Just to make sure he stayed safe."

"You drove to Vermont?  In the middle of the night?  You told me to sit tight."

"
You
can’t be tailing him.  You’re his father."  He chuckled.  "Anyhow, he’s up and dressed and out the door, walking toward the train station.  Maybe roughing it doesn’t suit him.  He’ll probably use your charge card again.  I’ll track it.  Just in case he decides to take a detour."

"Maybe you should just stop him and bring him home."

"If that’s what you want," Anderson said.  "It’s your call."

Clevenger thought about that-how much better he would feel about Billy for the moment, and how much the same he might feel in a day or a week.  "I guess we better let him decide where he’s going," he said.

"Tough, isn’t it?" Anderson asked.

"What?"

"Loving a kid like you love him."

Clevenger’s throat tightened.  "Does it get easier?"

"Harder and harder."

"Great," Clevenger said.

"Yes, it is," Anderson said.

Clevenger smiled.  "Thanks, again, North."

"Talk to you soon."

s e v e n

Late Afternoon, April 7, 2003

Rock Springs, Wyoming

Jonah Wrens began reading Clevenger’s letter for the fifth time just before a family meeting with the parents of his newest patient, nine-year-old Sam Garber.  That morning he had begun two weeks of coverage for a vacationing psychiatrist on the inpatient unit of the Rock Springs Medical Center at the foot of the Aspen Mountains.  But he could barely focus on his work.  The letter had infuriated him.  The parts about Clevenger’s own life were interesting enough.  His revelation that he fantasized about killing his father seemed honest.  But then the letter veered into self-righteousness and outright manipulation.

I accept my pain.  You refuse yours.  You describe feeling victorious even ‘with blood in your mouth’ because you knew you had your mother’s love.  But your sense of triumph was only a defense against deeper feelings of terror and weakness.  As a four-year-old you never truly faced the horrible truth that it was your blood leaking from your mouth, that you were powerless to protect yourself, and that no one else would or could protect you.

Now you seek the ultimate power over others — whether they live or die — as if that could erase your humiliation and helplessness.

You speak of experiencing great physical pain — migraines, jaw pain.  You feel terrible anxiety — palpitations, shortness of breath.  But I doubt you feel gut-level sadness or rage.  Because the worst of what you went through as a child remains locked in your unconscious.

What trauma have you failed to look at, Gabriel?  What buried fury exploded when you were with Paulette Bramberg?  What was it about an elderly female (a woman the age of your mother?) that caused you to completely lose control, so that it was no longer enough to be with someone dying, but necessary to kill so brutally.  Monstrously.  And why did you take no blood from her?  Would it be poison to have Paulette Bramberg inside you?

Why would Clevenger lie? Jonah wondered.  What possible reason could he have for misrepresenting the body Jonah had left by Route 80 in Utah — the body of a man at least seventy, a man the age of his father?  A man named Paul.  A man who had died quietly in his arms, no more horribly than any of the Highway Killer’s other victims.  What sort of mental trap was Clevenger trying to lay, challenging Jonah’s memory of his mother, a mother he still longed for, every day on the road?  Why descend to the ugly trickery of besmirching their relationship, implying Jonah had some unconscious store of rage toward the only person who had ever truly loved him, the only person he had ever truly loved?

The last of the letter made Jonah’s pulse race even faster.  His teeth began to grind.  Because he saw the hook Clevenger had set for readers of the
Times
, his not-so-subtle attempt to catch him by jogging the memories of the good and giving people he had set free, to turn them, too, into hunters:

Or was Paulette Bramberg’s sin simply that she remained aloof from the Highway Killer, keeping her distance, never coming to feel the extraordinary and instant intimacy I believe you can inspire in others, so that they open up their hearts in a way they never have before, open up to a stranger in a way they would remember all their lives were their lives not cut short?

I asked you for the remains of all the Highway Killer’s victims.  You gave me a body different than the rest.  Why?

I believe finding the answer will be the beginning of the end of the Highway Killer
.

—Frank Clevenger, MD

Jonah closed his eyes and imagined himself back at the airport in Utah, plunging his knife into Clevenger’s heart.  At that moment he wished he had done it, wished he had put Clevenger out of his misery, rather than trying to heal him or be healed by him.  Because Clevenger was obviously infected to the bone with Whitney McCormick, lost inside his lust for her.

He reached into his pocket and took out the trinket his mother had given him at his birthday party at the park, a tiny, enameled carousel horse.  He ran his thumb back and forth over its mane, the black coating worn away from so many years of touching, and made himself consider how God might be testing him, what was now required of him.

A knock at the door brought him back to the moment.

He shook his head clear, opened his eyes. "Come in," he called out.

The door opened and Sam Garber’s parents, Hank and Heaven, walked in, looking like a couple items off humanity’s closeout rack — the husband maybe sixty, short, nervous, and wiry with bloodshot eyes; the wife much taller, no older than thirty-five, at least three hundred pounds, looking irritated.

"Please, sit down," Jonah said.  He opened Sam’s chart to a line drawing from the emergency room that showed the locations of his physical injuries.  The nine-year-old had been admitted to Rock Springs Medical Center after his gym teacher found fresh bruises and healed burn marks on his abdomen, back, arms and legs, leading the Wyoming Department of Social Services to temporarily remove him from the Garber household.  "You do understand why Sam has been admitted to this unit?" he began, looking from Hank to Heaven, then back again.

"On account of that Mr. Daravekias getting the wrong idea," Hank said.

"About the bruises," Jonah said.  "And the burns."

"Already explained all that to the social worker," Hank said.

Jonah looked directly at Heaven, who stared right back at him, still chewing her gum.  "From what I’ve read," he said, "you told the social worker Sam fell down a flight of stairs recently and fell off his bike a while back.  And there was something about him falling into the fireplace?"

"All of which is what Sam says himself," Hank said.

"How did he fall down the stairs?" Jonah asked Heaven.

"Tripped, I guess," Hank said.  "Kid’s always losin’ balance.  Love him to death, but he’s got the coordination of a frickin’ mule."

Love him to death?
  Not if Jonah could help it.  "Did you see him fall?" he asked Heaven.

She stared back at Jonah for several seconds.  "I don’t suppose I can be watching him every minute," she finally answered, chewing over some of the words. 

Jonah kept looking at her. For an instant he saw his own mother’s face, much thinner than Heaven’s, far paler, her eyes lighter and brighter.  Through an act of will he forced her out of his mind, silently chastising himself for letting her image mingle with a beast’s.  "There was one other worrisome finding," he went on, staring into eyes that had gone back to being Heaven’s — dirt-brown and lifeless.

"You might be worrying over it," Hank said.  "We ain’t."

"Worrisome to me," Jonah allowed, glancing at him.  "Worrisome to the social worker, too."

"Well, you, the social worker, and anybody else can relax yourselves," Hank said.  "We’re raisin’ our boy right.  Accidents do happen."

Jonah looked down at his hands, folded on the desk in front of him.  And for a split second he pictured them around Heaven Garber’s thick neck.  He closed his eyes, tried to diffuse the rage building inside him.  "We got a full series of X-rays on your son," he said.  "We found two fractures.  One on his left forearm, all healed up.  The other mostly healed, but newer, near his right biceps."  He opened his eyes, looked at Heaven.

"Like I already made mention," Hank said, "Sam is always falling over himself."

"The X rays showed what we call spiral fractures," Jonah told him.  "The way a stick would break if you twisted it like you were wringing water from a dishrag."  He held his fists in the air, rotated one toward the Garbers, one back toward himself.  And again he saw his hands wringing Heaven’s neck.  "You get an S-shaped crack in the bone as it gives way," he said, his voice shaking.