Psychopath (27 page)

"The press might have stumbled on this one themselves.  I’m sure you’re being followed most of the time."

"I got a message from DSS," Clevenger said, scrolling through his Caller ID list.  "They want to meet."  He came to numbers slugged
HERALD NEWS
, then another slugged
NY TIMES
.  "The
Herald
tried me, too. And the
New York Times
."

"Whatever they’re running, they’ve put it to bed," Anderson said.  "Nothing you can do tonight."

"That won’t make me sleep any easier."

"I guess not.  How’s Billy?"

"So far so good," Clevenger said.

"Glad to hear it," Anderson said.  "Anything you need, call me.  Understand?"

"Thanks."

Clevenger dialed his voice mail as soon as he had hung up from Anderson.  As he expected, the message from the
Herald
was from Stephanie Schorow, wanting an interview about Clevenger’s relationship with Billy.  But the message from the
New York Times
was from Kyle Roland, the legendary publisher, not some reporter looking for a sidebar to the Highway Killer story.  And Roland had left his office number, his mobile number, and his home phone.

It was past 11:00
P.M.
   Clevenger dialed the mobile.

Roland answered on the first ring.  "Kyle Roland," he said, in the throaty yet musical voice that was his trademark.  Clevenger pictured the still brawny seventy-year-old in the Manhattan penthouse apartment Clevenger had seen featured in the
Times
’s Style section, every wall a recessed floor-to-ceiling bookcase stocked with classics, great biographies, and the novels Roland loved most: detective stories.  He owned first editions of every work by Conan Doyle, Chandler, Hammet.  And he had signed volumes from the new greats.  Evanovich.  Kellerman.  LeHane.  Coben.  Parker. 

"Frank Clevenger getting back to you."

"I appreciate the call," Roland said.  "I had a difficult decision to make earlier today.  I made it, wanted you to know about it, and want to know how you’re likely to respond."

"That’s a lot of ‘want’ in one sentence," Clevenger said.

Roland laughed, but got right to the point.  "We received another letter from the Highway Killer this morning, Fedex.  He makes reference to you and Dr. McCormick being romantically involved.  He saw the two of you together in Utah."

Clevenger could hardly believe what he was hearing.  "He was watching us?"

"That’s what he claims.  Which seems possible.  He told you where to find Paulette Bramberg’s body.  He could have driven right by while you were at the scene.  He could have been anywhere in those woods.  He could have been waiting at your gate when you flew in."  He skipped a beat.  "Or at your hotel."

"He was that close," Clevenger said, his voice just above a whisper.

"I’m calling because the FBI asked me not to publish the letter," Roland said.

"Kane Warner?"

"Warner and Jake Hanley, both."

"And?"

Roland cleared his throat.  "There are legitimate reasons not to publish material — even material as compelling as this letter.  I think when something jeopardizes a police matter as important as the Highway Killer investigation, that test is met."

"You couldn’t edit out the part that refers to McCormick and me?"

"Edit it out?  No way.  I think that reference is integral to what the killer is saying.  Part of what he’s focused on is your alliance with Dr. McCormick.  I’m no psychiatrist, but I think that’s meaningful, especially given the likelihood that we’re dealing with a man with very few, if any, real attachments."

Clevenger let out his breath.  It all seemed to add up to politics as usual, even coming out of Kyle Roland’s charmed mouth.  "If you’re not going to run it, why bother talking about it?"

"I did run it," Roland said.  "Front page, above the fold, tomorrow morning."

Clevenger felt a wave of energy flow into him.  "Then what was all that about it jeopardizing the investigation?" he asked.

"I think it’s important for you to know where I’m coming from.  I would have pulled the letter
if
I believed it represented a real hurdle to arresting the killer.  I don’t.  I think Kane and Jake are trying to keep their noses clean and keep the public off their backs.  And that’s not a good enough reason to censor anything — even for a friend."

"Good for you."

"So here’s my question:  will you respond to the letter without the FBI being involved?  Same ground rules would apply.  We don’t print anything that would make it easier for this guy to get away."

Clevenger felt like another major fork in the road had snuck up on him.  If he chose to continue his public psychotherapy with the Highway Killer, he’d not only be playing his own game, he’d be playing without any backup at all.  He’d also be working the case while fending off the Department of Social Services and a new storm of media attention certain to begin swirling around him and Billy as soon as the
Boston Herald
hit the stands.  Not to mention all the fun the tabloids would have with his apparently DOA romance with McCormick.  But with all those reasons to say no, he heard himself say yes, and he felt good about saying it.  Settled.  And he realized — not for the first time, but perhaps more clearly than ever — that he and his work in this world were inseparable.  One thing.  Elemental.  Billy Bishop’s father was married to forensic psychiatry.  Call it a profession or an obsession or an addiction.  The label didn’t matter.  The motivation to understand how violent criminals were made and how their minds worked rose above all labels, above all value judgments, above reason.  In this life, Frank Clevenger was tied, permanently and inextricably, to understanding destructiveness wherever he saw it.  There could be no divorce.  Not ever.

"Excellent," Roland said.  "If you can get us your response by, say, one
P.M.
tomorrow, we’ll run it Thursday."

"You’ll have it," Clevenger said.

"Then let’s talk tomorrow," Roland said.

t e n

6:12 A.M.  Wednesday, April 9, 2003

Clevenger didn’t sleep at all.  His mind kept visiting Utah, replaying his every move, trying to register a face to go with the Highway Killer’s words.  But he couldn’t bring one into focus.  Like Roland had said, the killer could have been anywhere — driving by the crime scene as Clevenger and McCormick were getting out of the state police van, at the restaurant where they had had dinner, at their hotel, at the airport.  And there was another reason he might not be registering in Clevenger’s mind.  He blended in.  No rough edges, nothing to turn heads.  A pleasant-looking man who caused no alarm.  A blank slate of a man you could pour out your heart to.

He went to get the
New York Times
the moment he heard it hit the floor in front of his loft.  He sat down and read the Highway Killer’s letter, rereading part of it three times:

You think you can avoid that struggle by submerging your heart and mind in the sex act.  You choose the huntress to avoid choosing a true self, to avoid the question that haunts you.  Are you — at core, in the darkest moment of your night — a healer or a hunter, my physician or my executioner?

I will help you answer that question.  Because I — unlike you — am a man of my word.

One by one, I would have returned each and every body to you, to be reunited with its family, but you have proven yourself unworthy, arriving in Utah with the FBI (whom you promised to disavow), then lying about my offering in order to make me question my love for my mother, my defender, my angel.

Could it be, he wondered, that the Highway Killer didn’t remember what he had done to Paulette Bramberg?

The phone rang.  He glanced at the Caller ID. Federal Bureau.  He picked up.  "Frank Clevenger."

"It’s me," Whitney McCormick said.  "The
Times
got another letter from the Highway Killer."

"I know," Clevenger said.  "I talked to Kyle Roland last night."

"You talked to Kyle Roland?"

Clevenger didn’t think he should tell McCormick about his agreement with Roland to keep the Highway Killer’s therapy going.  Kane Warner or Jake Hanley might take another shot at trying to end it.  "He wanted to explain why he hadn’t withheld the part about you and me from the FBI," he told her.  "He felt they should know how focused the Highway Killer is on our relationship."

"Kane grilled me on whether it was true," she said.

"What did you tell him?"

"The truth — that I care about you."

Clevenger was surprised how much he liked hearing that.  "Same here," he said.  "For whatever it’s worth."

"It’s worth a lot," she said.  "Maybe when this is all over I can prove how much."  She paused.  "He wanted to know whether we had slept together."

"He can’t ask you that.  You work for him."

"He can if he has reason to believe it could affect my work."

"So what happened?"

"I answered his question, and he took me off the case.  He said he can’t trust me to be objective.  Hanley backed him up."

"You sided with them yesterday, not me.  How can they say you’re not objective?"

"It doesn’t matter anymore," she said.  "I quit."

"You
quit
?"  Clevenger pictured the smug look on Kane Warner’s face when Warner had almost gotten him to quit the case.  "Why give them the satisfaction?"

"It’s not about them," she said.  "I thought about what you said in my office.  You were right.  I’ve never known whether I really deserved this job."

Maybe McCormick was more vulnerable than Clevenger had imagined.  Maybe he’d really shaken her to her roots.  "What are you going to do now?" he asked her.

"Earn it."

Clevenger heard a mixture of defiance and intrigue in her voice that told him she wasn’t even close to finished with the Highway Killer investigation.  "Earn it, how?" he asked her.

"Our man definitely killed Sally Pierce.  The letter was stained with her blood.  It was mailed from a Fedex box about fifty miles away from Bitter Creek.  In Creston.  If he’s unraveling the way you say he is, maybe he really didn’t plan this one at all.  Maybe he wasn’t just passing through.  Maybe he’s even still around."

"Do not go after this guy, Whitney."

She didn’t respond.

"You’re a psychiatrist, not a cop.  It’s not your place to try to capture him.  Certainly not now, without Agency support.  And certainly not when he’s already focused on you as a ‘huntress.’"

"Maybe that’s what he’s afraid of."

"What?"

"That I’m the one who could actually find him.  That I really am my father’s daughter."

"Or maybe he’s setting you up," Clevenger said.  "Maybe he wants you to come after him."

"I can take care of myself."

"There are other ways to prove it without putting yourself in danger."

"That’s interesting advice, coming from you.  You’ve never exactly played it safe."

"And it’s cost me."

"I’ll touch base in the next couple days," McCormick said.

"Whitney!"

She hung up.

Clevenger dialed North Anderson at home right away.

"What’s up?" he asked.

"The psychiatrist I was working with at the FBI, Whitney McCormick, quit her job."

"And?"

"She and I had gotten involved.  That’s what triggered her resignation.  The Highway Killer must have seen us together in Utah.  He wrote about it in a letter to the
Times
.  It was published this morning."

"Old habits die hard, chief," Anderson said.  "Hope she was worth it."

"I think she’s got it in her head to try to find the Highway Killer herself, get her job back — whatever. She might just get herself killed."

"You want me to keep an eye on her?"

"I think she’s headed to Wyoming," Clevenger said.  "I know it’s asking a lot, but I can’t check up on her without her knowing.  And I’ve got a storm brewing here with DSS."

"I’ll get someone to check airline reservations," Anderson said.  "If she booked a flight, I’ll be on the same one."

"I owe you."

"We’re past balancing accounts with each other, partner."

*            *            *

Clevenger spent the next three hours drafting his response to the Highway Killer’s letter.  He believed the killer was projecting when he asked whether anyone had shown Clevenger pure love:  no one had loved the
killer
purely, certainly not the mother he called his ‘angel.’  With two mutilated corpses of women in their sixties as data, Clevenger decided to go with the theory he and Billy had come up with:  the killer was raised by a woman who could be gentle at one moment, brutal at another.  He was mimicking that dynamic — getting close to his victims, then cutting their throats.

It was time to ratchet up the psychological pressure.  If the killer truly believed Paulette Bramberg’s body was no more horribly disfigured than the rest, then he had the capacity for a real break with reality.  Psychosis.  And if Clevenger could trigger that break, then the killer’s ability to reason, strategize, and avoid being caught would be obliterated.

The finished letter was designed to pull apart the Highway Killer’s fragile defense mechanisms, to unmask the insanity smoldering beneath:

Gabriel:

You ask if I have experienced true love, but the question is better put to you.  The bodies found in Utah and Wyoming make it plain your anger is directed toward the woman you claim you adore — your mother.  Why else would you lose control so completely with women her age?  Why else would the most chilling injury you inflicted — to the woman you killed in Wyoming — be to her reproductive organs?

Do you even remember killing Paulette Bramberg?  Or has your mind blinded you so completely to the abuse you suffered at your mother’s hand that you cannot bear to look upon the destruction you visit upon others in her place?