Denial (18 page)

"Fantastic," I nodded.  "But why do you have the ring?"

"You'll think I'm crazy."

"Hey, it's like you said:  You're not the only perverted doctor north of Boston."

He reached up to the mirror, snapped the suture free and dropped the ring into the palm of his hand.  Then he closed his eyes and sniffed it.  "You can still smell her."  He held the ring out toward my face.

I felt like strangling him, but I leaned over and sniffed it.  I couldn't smell a thing, maybe because of the coke.  I kept my eyes closed as I straightened up.  "Imagine if you could bottle that and sell it," he sighed.

"How about Eau de Candy scratch-n’-sniff trading cards?  You'd have kids turning over Mo Vaughn and Jose Canseco like the Red Sox were a farm team."

I laughed.  "How'd you get it from her?"

"You want all the details?"

"Every single one."

"You really are as sick as I am."  He looked around as if someone might be listening.  "Picture her sitting there wearing a tight little lime green skirt that's hiked up around her waist.  No panties.  That's the rule:  She has to be naked from the waist down when she sits in the car."

"OK."

"She's leaning over, blowing me."  He used his left hand to simulate the motion of her head bobbing up and down.  "I'm reaching around back, between her legs, and I've got two fingers going like a sonofabitch — in and out, in and out, in and out."  He used his fingers to show me the frantic movement.  "She's gasping for air, cause she's got me down her throat and she's gonna come, especially when I'm tugging on that ring, right?  Cause she likes the pain."

"Right."  I was getting excited myself, which disturbed me.

"But I've got my hand on top of her head to keep her on me.  And I'm pumping away like a jackhammer."  He moved his hips like he was riding a horse.  "See?"

"I'm with you."

"I take a handful of her hair — nice, blond, soft hair — and I use that like a handle, you know?  Like her head's a goddamn maraca.  And she likes that, too."

"Nice."

"Then I blow my wad, and she swallows it, doesn't spill a drop, which is another rule, but I must have lost it there for a minute, because I pulled hard on the ring.  I mean
hard
.  And it rips right through her.  She screams like I stuck a knife in her snatch..."

"Is that when she clawed your neck?"

He rolled his eyes.  "Did you leave your ears at the office?  I told you the Kathy monster did that."

"The Kathy monster?"

"That's what I call her when she's mad."

"Oh."

"May I continue?"

"I'm listening."

"Good.  Because we were at the most exciting part of the story.  You'll appreciate this as a shrink."

Whatever excitement I might have felt was lost in the image of Monique's bloodied flesh.  "Go on," I managed.

"Well, right after I rip the ring out, she just comes and comes and comes.  She's shaking and moaning like a cow in heat.  And then, talk about crazy, what do you think she tells me?"

I couldn’t hide my disgust any longer.  "I have no idea," I scowled.

"Don't get down on yourself.  How could you know?  She leans over and whispers in my ear that she..."  He started to laugh.

"She..."

"She tells me that..."  He was laughing hysterically and could barely get the words out.  "She tells me... she loves me."

I felt sick to my stomach.  "So you killed her," I said.

"Perfect.  You're beautiful."  He laughed, but then turned serious.  "I don't know which of us is sicker."

"Why did you cut her up?" I asked.

"Cut her up, like how?  What do you mean?"

"Her breasts and genital area were mangled.  I just came from the morgue. How did you do that?"

"From the morgue..."  He looked at me blankly.  "I don't know.  Why would I do that?"  Without warning he hit the gas.

I barely managed to dive clear of his back tire as it swerved in my direction.  I smashed into the ground.  My side felt like it had caved in.  I struggled to my feet and looked down the parking lot.  The Ferrari was stopped at the exit.  It lingered there a few seconds, then started racing back toward me.  I stumbled toward the stairs.

Lucas skidded to a stop where we had been talking.  He got out of the car and came toward me.

I figured the best way to defend myself would be a head butt to his abdomen.  I crouched down on one knee, ready to spring.

He stopped about five feet away, just out of striking distance.  "I'm sorry, Frank," he said, "but I've had enough of you demeaning my character.  I happen to be the most honest man you'll ever meet.  If I killed somebody, it would be for a good reason, and I'd be the first one to take credit for it."  He turned around, got back into his car and drove away.

*            *            *

I brushed myself off and dragged myself into the Rover.  I locked the doors, then tapped my fingers along my side to find any point tenderness over the bones.  I had learned the exam long before medical school.  When I was thirteen, my father had landed a punch that fractured two of my ribs.  I couldn’t remember any longer what had gotten him angry, but I did remember having lied to Henry Harris, our family doctor, that I'd injured myself diving for second base during a pickup game down at the park.  Harris had been a boxer in the Marines, and every one of his movements still seemed exquisitely choreographed.  I had watched him as his fingers danced up and down my torso, his eyes searching my face for the slightest twinge of pain, homing in on the breaks, all the while talking me through the proper way to slide, feet first, keeping the bag in sight at all times.  After he'd fitted me for an elastic rib binder, he'd picked me off my feet effortlessly, set me down on that crinkly, white paper that covers every examination table in the world and given me another piece of advice.  "You go home now and rest.  I'm going to talk to your father about the risks of sports injuries.  If you get hurt again, you come right down here and let me know."

When my father had come home, his lip was split, and one eye was swollen shut.  Later that day, my ear to the bathroom door, I heard him cry for the first time and realized — also for the first time — that I loved him, would always love him, in spite of everything.  And that made the beatings even harder to take.

I couldn't find any fractures.  My breathing was steady, so I wasn't worried about a punctured lung.  But I was badly shaken.  Almost on instinct I reached into the glove compartment for the pillow of white powder.  For comfort.

Comfort
.  Was that what I really needed?  How far was comfort from numbness?  Could I uncover the secrets of a murderer, laced as they always are with great suffering, when my own goal was to escape suffering?

I could almost hear Ted Pearson telling me again that the roots of any evil deed can be traced to the perpetrator's refusal to experience pain.  "That makes facing your own demons a moral duty," he'd told me.  "It's the only way you'll ever be any different than your father."

Pearson's warning hadn't kept me from blowing off my psychotherapy sessions, but now I could see that he had been right.  How many people would I have to hurt before I allowed myself to hurt?

I held the pillow between my fingertips.  The powder shifted seductively.  I pulled apart the seal, plunged a wet fingertip inside and enjoyed the coke's sour taste one last time.  Then, absent any great drama, I poured about three grams of the stuff out my window.

I sat there a minute, convincing myself not to open the door to see whether any of the powder could be retrieved of the parking lot pavement.  It wasn't until I pictured myself on my knees licking the ground that I banished the idea from my mind.

I needed to tell Hancock that Lucas had Monique's ring, but I wanted to be certain of what I told her beyond that.  My jealousy and anger could easily make me paint Lucas as the killer when all I really knew was that he had something in his possession that belonged to the second victim.  It was true he had seen her just prior to her death, but so had I.  And I was troubled by the question he had put to me. 
Why would he do it?
  If he harbored rage toward women, he had found the perfect profession to deal with it:  He sliced women every day and got paid handsomely for his handiwork.  Maybe that wasn't enough for him anymore, maybe the fact that his patients wanted to be cut up took all the excitement out of it.  In the OR, after all, his rage was channeled according to
their
whims.  Maybe he was sick and tired of being a blade for hire.  Making precise cuts on a woman's face or breasts or buttocks might not satisfy a man who is, at heart, a butcher.  Yet why would he show me the ring?  Did he want me to stop him?  That seemed like a cliché.

Lucas’ motivation still didn't make any sense to me.  I had the impulse again to search for the coke on the ground.  After all, I needed to think.  But for the first time since I could remember, I was even more convinced that I needed to feel.

*            *            *

Union Street turns into Joyce Street, which heads into Highlands, the part of Lynn that houses its most dispossessed citizens.  It is a neighborhood of broken glass — little pieces glittering in the streets, jagged sheets tilting out of window frames, half-crushed bottles lining the curbs.  I took a left onto Monroe Avenue and pulled up in front of No. 115, a puke green triple-decker with a rusted pickup in the driveway.  Two cruisers were parked on the dirt where a front lawn belonged.

Of the three doorbells at the entrance, the only label was for the third-floor apartment.  A piece of yellowed paper carried the names Marzipan and Peletier.

I let myself in the foyer.  The smell reminded me of the stale air in the triple-decker where I'd grown up, but there was something sweeter mixed in.  I recognized it as the odor of melting cocaine.  The door to the apartment right of the staircase was missing, and I could see mattresses lined up on the orange shag carpeting.  Balls of aluminum foil were strewn everywhere.  I knew why.  The place was a crack den.  For ten bucks, you got a rock, a piece of foil to make a pipe and a place to sit while you smoked.  The amount of trash in the room testified to a thriving business.  Malloy would probably let it reopen — for a monthly fee — after the crime scene closed down.  Not that it mattered much what he did; crack cocaine is inevitable in a dying city.

I started up the stairs.  The wood creaked under my boots.

The door to the second-floor apartment was closed, but I could hear a man and a woman shouting at one another in Spanish.

I hurried up the steps.  A length of yellow tape stenciled with the words
POLICE BARRIER — DO NOT CROSS
was stretched across the doorway to Monique's apartment.  Angel Zangota, the officer who had first escorted me to Westmoreland's cell, was inside speaking to a lanky man with a shaved head.  He spotted me and waved me over.

I ripped the tape away from the door.  "Don't give me any crap about this place being off-limits," I said.  "I'm working directly with Hancock.  You have questions, call her."

"Kevin Malloy—"

"Fuck Malloy."

He held up a hand.  "Malloy called with a clearance a few minutes ago.  I guess he had some kind of medical emergency.  Otherwise he'd be here himself."

"His teeth are bothering him."

"That's right.  He was at Dr. Plotka's office.  How did you know?"

"Never mind.  What did he say?"

"He needs two molars bonded."

I shook my head.  "I mean about me."

"He told me to make sure you had access to whatever you wanted — including the first floor."

"What does the first floor have to do with anything?"

"The contraband we confiscated is in the cruiser."  He winked.  "Back seat, passenger side.  Matches are in the glove compartment."

Two-fifty an hour and all the cocaine I could snort or smoke.  What would I have done for a deal like that two days before?  "Thanks, anyhow," I told him.

"You sure?"

"Maybe later."

"It'll be gone later.  It's good stuff."

I looked into his eyes and realized he was wired himself.  "Obviously."  I walked past him and offered my hand to the man with the shaved head.  "Frank Clevenger," I said.  "I'm a psychiatrist helping out with the investigation."

He took my hand in both of his.  His willowy fingers ended in long red nails.  "I apologize for the place being such a mess," he lisped.  "They wouldn't let me touch a thing."

I took my hand back and glanced around.  The coffee table was overturned.  A lamp lay in pieces on the ground.  My eyes settled on the couch; the middle seat cushion was soaked with blood.  The walls were splattered in places, too.

Zangota joined us.  "Dr. Clevenger, this is Mercury Marzipan."

"
Mercury Marzipan?
"

"We can't all be cookie-cutter,
Frank
," Marzipan said.

"Thank God for that.  Did you change it form something?"

"My parents were Roman caterers," he smirked.

I smiled back.

"I changed it when I left the CIA."

"You worked for the Central Intelligence Agency?" Zangota asked.

Marzipan turned to him.  "I was a double agent," he mocked, "until the wall came down."  He looked back at me.  "CIA, as in Culinary Institute of America.  My thesis was a five-foot marzipan statue of Mercury, wings, cap and all."

"Hence, Mercury Marzipan."

"The name was a better fit with the position I had accepted."

"What position was that?"

"Associate pastry chef at the Ritz."  He became solemn.  "You see, I was born Elliot Stankowitz."

"I understand," I said.

"Mr. Marzipan lived with Monique Peletier for two years," Zangota broke in.

"Wrong, Zorro," Marzipan said.

"Zangota," I corrected him.

"Well, maybe now he knows how it feels.  I'm
Ms
. Marzipan.  At least, that's the way it's supposed to turn out.  You might understand, being a shrink.  I'm undergoing reassignment.  I was already a wreck over it, and then this..."  He looked around the room.