Nine p.m. Would this be the last therapy session of my career?
The Wolf’s premature departure gave me extra time before my final session to run more computer searches. I called the rest of the phone numbers in Kris’ appointment calendar and searched through her insurance provider statements. I replayed the recordings of the killer in search of a thread, a connection that would click from the past.
The light bulb started to sputter to life again when the phone on my desk rang.
“YOU WARNED THAT JUICY STEWARDESS GROUPIE OF YOURS,” the Darth Vader voice said.
“What if I did?”
“AS PUNISHMENT, A CONFEDERATE CALLED LEMASTER AND BAKER.”
A confederate? Is he collaborating with someone?
“NOW THEY KNOW YOUR BIG SECRET.”
I closed my eyes and waited for the blow.
“THEY KNOW KRISTIN WAS YOUR FORMER CLIENT.”
He paused, waiting for a response that never came.
“THEY KNOW THAT WAS YOUR TIE AROUND HER NECK. THEY KNOW YOU WORE IT THE DAY YOU PUNCHED THE MAN DURING THE NEWS SEGMENT.”
The Stranger wanted to scream, hit something.
“YOU’RE FARTHER ALONG IN THE GAME THAN I EXPECTED YOU TO BE. I SUSPECT YOU CHEATED SOMEHOW … BECAUSE THAT’S YOUR NATURE.” Angry laughter filled my ear, then he said, “THIS IS TOO EASY. NO WONDER SO MANY MURDERS GO UNSOLVED.”
“I’m going to enjoy tearing you apart,” The Stranger answered.
“MY JUDGMENT IS FOR YOU TO LIVE OUT YOUR DAYS IN DISGRACE IN PRISON. I WILL SEND NEWS CLIPPINGS OF MY FUTURE ‘WORK’ WITH YOUR CLIENTS, STARTING WITH THAT LEGGY FLIGHT ATTENDANT. THAT UNFORTUNATE SOLDIER BOY IN THE HOSPITAL MAY HAVE TO RELIVE HIS INJURIES WITH ME. YOUR PARENTS, TOO. THE WORLD IS OVERPOPULATED, YOU KNOW.”
“You know where I am. Come get me.”
“YOUR CLIENTS WILL LEARN THEY WOULD HAVE BEEN BETTER OFF IF THEY’D NEVER MET YOU. THAT WILL BE YOUR LEGACY.”
“You’ll regret you were ever born. More than you already do,” I said.
“I WILL CONTACT A COMRADE IN PRISON. HE WILL REIGN DOWN PHYSICAL DEGRADATION ON YOU. MAYBE ONE DAY, BEFORE LONG-TERM INCARCERATION HAS TURNED YOUR MIND TO MUSH, I WILL TELL YOU WHY I DID THIS—”
“I like this story better,” I interrupted, “You gave the cops old news. I already told them about Kris. I told them about the tie that you stole from her apartment. The detectives know I didn’t kill her. They know I’ve recorded every phone call you’ve made. Soon they’ll isolate your real voice. If you don’t want to die in prison, let’s settle this once and for all.” Come meet The Stranger, you bastard.
Darth Vader paused. “YOU’RE BLUFFING,” the mechanical voice said.
I hoped I’d shaken his tree enough to cause him to act impulsively. “Suit yourself. Wait for them to break down your door. You have a few hours of freedom left. Start searching for a rock to crawl under or a cave to hide in. Your life is over.”
The Darth Vader voice continued undeterred. “YOU WILL NEVER FIND ME NOW; I’M GOING UNDERGROUND. FOR THE REST OF YOUR DAYS, YOU WILL NEVER KNOW THE TRUTH. LIVE WITH THAT,” the mechanical voice said.
“No. Please don’t go. Tell me what she said that—”
The line went dead.
If I contact a brother or comrade in prison…. Is he an ex-con like Rick Arno?
The Great White shark of psych patients was up next, the last of my Alpha males, and I wondered if he would take me down, if this would be my last night as a free man.
Rick Arno strode through the doorway straight to the leather chair, as if doing so could speed the passage of time in my office and get him back on the street faster. He wore a black Harley-Davidson shirt, faded jeans threadbare at the right knee and boots with pointed steel toes. He had his customary three-day growth of beard, today his stringy hair was pulled back into a ponytail. He wore a shark’s tooth around his neck that dangled from a plain brown leather cord.
A wary look appeared on his face as he said, “Why’d you call for an extra session? My p.o. pissed at me or something?”
“Your name surfaced again in a criminal matter. You will tell me the truth or go back to jail. A client of mine nearly died. You were a witness. I want to know what you know about it.”
His restless leg immediately stopped shaking.
“I’ve told you when our sessions are over you are to leave through the privacy door. You are not to return to the waiting room and talk with other clients. This is to insure confidentiality for all. You met Bob in the waiting room. You took him to Dolly’s Delight massage parlor the night a group of goons beat and robbed him. He’s been in a coma since. Now he’s awake and talking. I know you were there and that the trip was your idea. You waited until his disability check came on the first of the month. Explain yourself. If you lie, I’ll know. Consider me your parole officer before you answer.”
He sat stunned. “You’re right. I met him in the waiting room. He liked my stories about life and playing in a rock band. He looked up to me like a big bro—”
He looked to see if I was going to interrupt or challenge his claim. “—ther. He suggested we do the town one night. He was a lonely, dorky guy who wanted to find a nice girl. He kept talking about your woman, the heartbreaker I saw you with. He saw some picture in your office and wouldn’t shut up about her. It was getting old. I could tell from the jump he was a sandwich shy of a picnic, so I said, ‘Trust me, where we’re going all the girls are nice,’ and if he wanted to get lucky, then we had to drive out to Dolly’s. He can dress up like Napoleon Bonaparte there and act nutty as a fruit bat, long as he has the green.”
“How noble of you, Rick. Go on.”
He cleared his throat and shifted in the chair. “I drove us there in my cherry-red Camaro. He loves my ride—”
“I know all about your car and its gravitational pull on barflies and orgasms. What happened next?”
He closed his eyes and said, “We each chose a girl. Mine was Amber. She has these gi-normous fake—”
“Stick to the facts about Bob.”
He seemed to be chewing the inside of his mouth. His hands took turns balling into fists. “We went into separate rooms in back. Afterward, I ran into his girl and she asked what the hell was wrong with my friend. I told her he was just a little slow, and then she laughed and said all he wanted to do was talk and get a massage. She’d never given a massage before. When their time was up, he asked her out on a date. A date. Can you believe it?” He tried to contain a snicker, but couldn’t.
“Dolly’s advertises itself as a massage parlor, does it not?”
Rick slowly regained control over his laughter. “Sure, and I hear there are people who go to strip clubs on the east side for room temperature, ten dollar beer.”
“Did you see Bob get into a fight at Dolly’s? Did you see him get into a truck with a group of men?”
Rick scratched old pockmarks on his nose and shook his head. “Never saw the dude again. His hooker thought he left when me and Amber were upstairs.”
“What did you do then?”
“I waited for him until three in the morning, drinking and chatting up the girls. Then maybe I heard one of them say that the bouncers had escorted a guy out earlier because he was bad for business. Asking customers all sorts of questions. Duh! Clients like their privacy. I cruised the parking lot, when I didn’t find him I split.”
I glared at him.
He caved. “What was I supposed to do, end up bleeding in the same ditch with Forrest Gump?”
‘Maybe I heard.’ You heard plenty. If only real life treated the Forrest Gumps of the world like the movie did.
“How did you know Bob was bleeding in a ditch if you weren’t involved?
He was stalling, trying to invent an answer that never came.
“Déjà vu all over again. You abandoned Bob forty miles from home at a brothel, like the young woman with asthma you ditched along a roadside. What do you do to your enemies—like me?”
Rick looked perplexed and on the defensive. “I looked for him and he was gone. Dude had no cell.” He raised his voice, fists balled. “Who the fuck doesn’t have a cell phone?” He’d reached fight or flight mode but made no effort to leave.
“Did you see or hear from him again?’
“No,” he said, looking at me sideways.
“Called his house the next day.” He shrugged. “No answer, no machine.”
“You witnessed the beating, didn’t you?”
He closed his eyes and turned away from me. He didn’t answer.
“DIDN’T YOU?” I shouted.
Startled, he looked down. After a minute, he nodded.
“Did you take part in it?”
He looked me in the eyes. “No, I swear.”
“You can connect names to faces of those who did?”
He nodded again, nervous. “I had to give him to the dark man.”
“You were guilty by association.”
He sat stiff in the chair. I could tell he was scared.
“You have a prior relationship with DeLuca or you’d be in the hospital bed next to Bob.”
In his silence I read the expression on his face and said, “You do. Tell me about him.”
He fidgeted with the bottom of his shirt and scratched his stubble. “This goes nowhere?”
“If you tell the truth.”
He massaged the bridge of his nose with his fingertips like he had a migraine. “I worked for him the week he moved Dolly’s from the boonies to Jefferson County. It was a hot summer day. I drove a rusted U-Haul van at the tail end of a convoy of trucks. Ate a ton of dust. Helped his crew set-up the counters, magazine and video racks, massage tables, beds, sex toys, peepshows, and trailers out back for the girls.” He looked at me and said, “Punching him on television made you a marked man. He’s a righteous badass.”
“Does he know you see me in therapy?”
“Don’t think so, but I wouldn’t underestimate him.”
“What else can you tell me about him?”
“During the set-up, this twitchy little tweaker got nabbed trying a five-finger discount. DeLuca’s right hand man KC caught him in the act.”
“What did he steal?”
“Half a trunk load of sex flicks, skin rags, feather boas, lotions, condoms, strapons, and cock rings. Penny ante shit, but the dark man wanted to make a statement. We had to watch while the bouncers tied him to a chair and beat his face bloody. Then the dark man poured gasoline over him. That stung him awake. The dark man struck matches around him. Quoted Bible verses about stealing. He had this calm, detached look on his face. Like he was a cat toying with a mouse. The tweaker was the last one to see it coming. When he did, he peed his pants. The dark man patted his head, reassured him it would all be over soon. He smiled and cut his hands free. I saw a glimmer of hope return to the little dude’s face. The dark man tossed him a towel but the tweaker didn’t know his upper body remained tied to the chair. DeLuca tossed one more match. Lit him up like a Roman candle.”
He seemed to visualize the scene and shudder. “Meth freak’s hopping up and down on the chair like a flaming Mexican jumping bean. Screaming and crying. All the time trying to put out the fire on his face and body with the towel.” He tried but failed to stifle a nervous laugh. “The bouncers and drivers laughed so hard their sides ached. Meth freak overturned the chair. His head hit the floor, hard. The jerking and twitching stopped and the place got quiet. KC finally turned a hose on the poor bastard. The tweaker was passed out or dead. They left him tied to the chair, smoking. He wasn’t moving. The dark man looked each of us in the eye and said, ‘This is what happens when you fuck with my business.’”
“What happened to the man after that?”
“Don’t know. KC and the dark man ordered us all back to work to finish setting up shop. Next chance we had to look, meth freak was gone. Guess DeLuca’s steroid freaks disposed of him. Don’t know if he was dead or alive.”
I imagine Rick laughed his ass off along with the others, grateful it wasn’t him in the chair.
There was nothing of substance to pursue in Rick’s story. There was no victim and still no one to back up Rick’s claim. Nevertheless, I said, “Would you testify to this in court?”
Rick looked at me as if I’d grown another head. “And wind up worse than the tweaker he made a meth flambé out of? No way, Jose. Jefferson County is to methamphetamine as Columbia is to cocaine. The dark man is well connected in Jeff. Co. I’d rather do hard time. Don’t even think about using my p.o. against me.”
I believed him.
“You saw what DeLuca did to the thief. You had a good idea what Bob was in for, yet you did nothing.”
He sat quietly seething.
Where was I going with this anyway and how does it help me find Kris’s killer? I didn’t think DeLuca or his muscle-bound monkeys killed her, but I sure wanted to put the dark man away. I need more from Bob to accomplish that. Time to shift gears.
He hates you.
Kris’ duct-taped death scream flashed before my eyes as I turned my attention to Rick.
“How clever of you to invent Bob’s fascination with my girlfriend, but Bob was in a hospital bed fighting for his life when you attacked her. You saw us that evening outside her apartment. She turned you on. You followed us, didn’t you?”
“What? No, I—”
“Why did you kill her? Why are you calling me in a disguised voice, promising to ruin my life? What have I done to you?”
He sat as still as a partridge in high grass about to be flushed. At last he said, “Your girlfriend … somebody snuffed her?”
Not the response I expected.
I nodded.
“Bummer, man,” he sniffed. “She was hot.”
“I know how you feel about me. I’ve also lobbied to shut down DeLuca’s prostitution ring. You admitted you worked for him. Is he your drug supplier and fence, too?”
He didn’t answer.
“Was it your idea or his? Did he hire you to kill her as payback for me blowing the whistle on Dolly’s? Did you rape her as a fringe benefit of the deal?”
He sat rigid in the client chair; his hands gripped the armrests so tightly his knuckles turned white. “I don’t know what your game is, man. I’ve done some badass things in my day, but I never snuffed the life from anybody.”
“You killed Kris. WHY?”
He stood and strode to the door. “You’re the one who needs help. You’re crazy as that goofy dude who asked a hooker out on a date. Try to send me back to prison on this bogus charge, you’re in for a fight. You won’t find me hanging around the waiting room in this cuckoo’s nest anymore.”
He slammed the door behind him.
I exhaled and rubbed my aching forehead, feeling defeated.
Great, now the clients are calling me nuts.
Thanks to in part to The Stranger, all my practice needs now is a bare light bulb swinging from the ceiling and a water boarding area. I’ve just invented the Dick Cheney School of therapy, where recidivism is zero because no one survives the treatment. What have I just done to three of my clients? And it didn’t lead me to the killer.
What to do next? Diving into a giant Tanqueray swimming pool sounded inviting.
Strike three, I’m out. I’m a failure. He’s gonna get away with murder, I’ll be in prison, and he’s gonna target my parents and clients.
If that pubic hair matches my DNA, I’m going to jail. Too much time has passed. I need a miracle—an eyewitness to step forward, startling new evidence, or the killer to get drunk in a bar and brag about the crime to an off-duty cop.
Get ready to be arrested, Mitch. You’re in for a long hard road.
I’d gone all-in with my chips, certain the killer was one of my three Alpha males. They called my bluff each time. Had one of them misdirected me down the wrong rabbit hole?
I wanted to scream, but instead let out a strangled groan which, like a prayer, went unanswered. I fell to the floor, defeated.
I’m missing something. Deductive reasoning hadn’t led me to the killer. I’m trying too hard. I’ve got to let it go. Let Kris go. I must free my mind. Listen to the world around me, focus. Achieve a higher level of consciousness.
I sat and rested with my legs crossed. I thought of the Buddhist practice of mindfulness and their belief that life is pain and suffering. I’d meditated before, but it had been a while, so I struggled, at first, to let go of all my angry thoughts at the unfairness of life. But after a while, I felt more at peace. I rested in the bare awareness of new thoughts, feelings, and perceptions as they occurred to me. I allowed new neuronal connections to occur. If I observed every thought that passed through my mind, my limited self would dissolve and be replaced by a more serene and spacious sense of awareness. I don’t know how long I sat this way, but out of the emptiness I achieved what Buddhists call the clear light of mind.
This clarity called to me and I listened. My stream of thought flowed to my birth, to everyone I’d met in my life or heard about in history. This seemed to last forever but may have been an eye blink. I lost all track of time. A rapid-fire hodgepodge of images and thoughts appeared before me: Adam and Eve, the Ying/Yang symbol, pictures of Buono and Bianchi, the duality of good and evil, police sketches of the Zodiac killer, a Schwarzenegger and DeVito comedy, the infamous law students Leopold and Loeb, the actress Julia Roberts, the grim faces of LeMaster and Baker, and the shy, smiling face of the first little girl I ever had a crush on. These images and thoughts repeated in my mind like a continuous film loop.
There was some connection between all these things—the first couple on earth, the duality of male and female, the Hillside Stranglers, good and evil, The Zodiac Killer who was believed to have been one man and was never caught, the movie Twins, two sociopath lawyers in the early twenty-first century who murdered a fourteen year old boy in a plan to commit the perfect crime, a famous current actress, my detective antagonists, and a nice, cute girl I knew in grade school.
The light bulb flickered and went out.
Couples, duos, twins, duality, male/female, criminal and comedy pairs. Singles that didn’t fit were the Zodiac Killer, Julia Roberts, and the girl from grade school. But they had to, somehow.
Julia Roberts has an actor brother Eric. A twin brother.
Rochelle, the cute little girl with the nice smile and figure, had a twin sister.
Only the Zodiac Killer didn’t fit.
I thought of the signs. The light bulb stayed on.
The symbol II. Gemini. Close to the heart. Twins.
The light bulb stayed on.
The pieces suddenly fell in place like Tetris blocks. It made perfect sense, to a sick mind.
I had to journey all the way back to the beginning. My neophyte theory jibed when I thought back to how I first met Kris and even further back, to the first days of my graduate practicum.
I should have stayed with you. He couldn’t resist running his mouth. His hubris betrayed him after all.
I quickly ran computer searches with a more focused direction. I recalled every memory I could of my first River City State Hospital psych patient ten years ago when I heard a knock on my office door. No wonder I missed it the first time. He’s a clever, cunning killer as well as an accomplished liar and actor. He twisted the story enough for me to be unable to piece it together earlier. Without access to the murder file, the clandestine tapes of our phone conversations, her insurance records, and a long memory of my early years as a fledgling therapist, I would have been helpless against him.
A decade old chart gathering dust in the Medical Records Department at River City State Hospital on Arsenal held the key to begin to understand the motivations of a killer. The knocking grew louder.
The world appeared a bit brighter and balanced than a minute ago. I should have meditated days ago. The answer came to me when I quit trying so hard. When you stop searching for something is when you find it. When you don’t think about hitting a home run is when you do.
The man was pounding now. Impatient.
Knowledge is power, and I was certain the man who killed Kris stood outside, banging on my door. I knew who he was. One way or another this ends tonight.