Thr3e (44 page)

“Do what the professor says, Kevin,” Sam said. “Shoot Slater.”

Kevin stared at Slater and wondered why he hadn’t fired. The man had swung his gun from Balinda and aimed it at Jennifer, but he wasn’t pulling the trigger. The time had come and gone and still Slater hadn’t shot.

It occurred to him that he still had the gun in his hand, trained on Sam. He lowered his arm. They wanted him to shoot Slater.

But . . . if Sam and Jennifer were right, that was him over there, threatening Jennifer. And they wanted him to shoot himself? He’d flushed the man out of his hiding and now he was to kill him.

Kevin turned to Sam. She looked so tender, so lovely, eyes drawn with sympathy.
Dear Sam, I love you so.
Her eyes reached into his mind, his heart, melting him with their love.

She took a step toward him. “I should go now, Kevin.”

“Go?” The thought frightened him.

“I won’t be gone. I’ll be with you. I
am
you. Shoot Slater.”

“Stop!” Slater screamed. “Stop!” He stepped out and swung his gun on Samantha.

“I love you, Kevin,” Samantha said. She stepped up to him, smiled gently, knowingly. “Shoot him. His kind is powerless when you understand who holds the true power. I know you’re the one who feels powerless, and on your own, you are. But if you look to your Maker, you’ll find enough power to kill a thousand Slaters, wherever they crop up. He will save you. Listen to Dr. Francis.”

She reached out and touched his hand. Her finger went through his skin, into his hand. Kevin watched, mouth gaping. Samantha stepped into him, her knee into his knee, her shoulder into his shoulder. He couldn’t feel her. Then she was gone.

Kevin gasped for air. She was him! She’d always been him! The realization fell into his mind like an anvil dropped from heaven. And she was gone, wasn’t she? Or maybe closer than ever. A buzz circled his mind.

And if Sam was him, then Slater . . .

Kevin turned to his right. Slater shook from head to foot, gun aimed at Kevin’s head now. But that wasn’t a real person over there; it was only his evil nature, right?

Kevin looked at Jennifer. Her eyes were begging him. She couldn’t stop Slater because she couldn’t see him. She only saw him—Kevin.

If he was Slater, then the gun was really in his hand, wasn’t it? He could force Slater to lower the gun by lowering it himself, in his mind.

Look to your Maker, Sam had said.

Open my eyes.

Kevin looked at the pathetic man who called himself Slater. He closed his eyes. It occurred to him then that he had two guns in his hands—one at his side and one at his temple. That would be Slater. He lowered the gun; now he had two guns by his side, one in each hand. He opened his eyes.

Slater faced him, gun lowered, face twisted with fury. “You’ll never succeed, Kevin. Never! You’re just like me, and nothing will ever change that. You hear me? Nothing!”

“Now, Kevin,” Dr. Francis said. “Now.”

Kevin lifted his right arm, pointed the nine millimeter at Slater’s head, and pulled the trigger. The shot echoed loudly. At this range he could hardly miss.

But he did miss. He missed because suddenly there was no target to hit. Slater was gone.

Kevin lowered the gun. The bullet had buried itself in the metal desk behind the spot where Slater had stood, but it hadn’t penetrated any flesh and blood. Slater wasn’t flesh or blood. He was dead just the same. At least for now.

For a few long seconds the room rang in the aftermath of the detonation. Balinda began to sob. Kevin looked at her and pity, not anger, washed through his mind. She needed help, didn’t she? She was a wounded soul, like him. She needed love and understanding. He doubted she would ever be able to return to the false reality she’d created.

“Kevin?”

The world seemed to collapse at the sound of Jennifer’s voice. He wasn’t certain what had just happened, but if he wasn’t mistaken, he’d blown up a bus and a library and kidnapped his aunt. He needed help. Dear God, he needed help!

“Are you all right, Kevin?” Jennifer’s voice broke.

He lowered his head and began to cry. He couldn’t help it.
Dear God, what have I done?

An arm settled on his shoulders. He could smell the musty scent of her perfume as she pulled him close.

“It’s okay, Kevin. Everything’s okay now. I won’t let them hurt you, I promise.”

He dissolved in sobs at her words. He deserved to be hurt. Or was that Slater’s old voice?

Listen to Dr. Francis, Samantha had said. He would. He would listen to Dr. Francis and let Jennifer hold him. It was all he had now. Truth and love.

30

One Week Later

J
ENNIFER LOOKED THROUGH the glass door at Kevin, who stood by the flowers in the professor’s lawn, touching and smelling the roses as if he’d newly discovered them. Dr. John Francis stood beside her, gazing out. Kevin had spent the last seven days in a prison cell, awaiting an extended bail hearing that had ended three hours earlier. Persuading the judge that Kevin wasn’t a flight risk was a simple matter; convincing her that Kevin wasn’t a threat to society wasn’t. But Chuck Hatters, a good friend to Jennifer and now Kevin’s attorney, had managed.

The press had slaughtered Kevin that first day, but as the details of his childhood leaked out over the next week, their tenor had changed— Jennifer had seen to that. She’d held a news conference and revealed his past in all of its horrifying detail. Kevin was simply role-playing as only a child who’d been severely abused and fractured could role-play. If even a single person had been hurt or killed, the public would probably have continued screaming retribution until another earth-shattering event distracted them. But in Kevin’s case, pity quickly took precedence over a few destroyed buildings. The Slater personality would never have blown up any bus before it had been evacuated, Jennifer argued. She wasn’t sure she believed it, but enough of the public did to swing the tide of outrage. Kevin still had his significant detractors, of course, but they no longer dominated the airwaves.

Was he insane? No, but she couldn’t tell them that yet. The courts would put him through the wringer, and legal insanity was his only defense. In many ways, he
had
been legally insane, but he seemed to have emerged from the basement with a full grasp of himself, perhaps for the first time in his life. Patients who suffered from Dissociative Identity Disorder typically required years of therapy to pull themselves free of their alternate personalities.

For that matter, even the diagnosis would take some time. Kevin’s admittedly enigmatic behavior didn’t fit any classical disorder. Dissociative Identity Disorder, yes, but there were no cases of three personalities carrying on a conversation as she herself had witnessed. Posttraumatic Stress Disorder, perhaps. Or a strange blend of Schizophrenia and DID. The scientific community would undoubtedly argue over this one.

The good news was that Kevin could hardly be better. He would need help, but she’d never seen such a sudden shift.

“I’m curious,” Dr. Francis said. “Have you unraveled Samantha’s part in all this?”

Samantha? He spoke as if she were still a real person. Jennifer looked at him and caught the smile in his eyes. “I think you mean how Kevin managed to play Samantha without tipping his hand, don’t you?”

“Yes. In the public places.”

“You were right—another day or two and we’d have caught on. There were only three places where Sam was supposedly exposed to the public. The Howard Johnson hotel, the hotel in Palos Verdes where they spent the night, and when they cleared the bus. I talked to the clerk at the Howard Johnson where Sam stayed. She did remember Sam, if you recall, but the person who she remembers was a man with brown hair and blue eyes. Sam.”

“Kevin,” the professor said.

“Yes. He actually went over there and checked in as Sam, thinking he really was her. If he’d signed in under Samantha instead of Sam, the clerk would have raised a brow. But to her he was Sam.”

“Hmm. And Palos Verdes?”

“The maître d’ from the restaurant will be a good witness. Evidently some of the customers complained about the strange behavior of the man seated by the window. Kevin. He was staring directly across the table and speaking to an empty chair in hushed tones. Raised his voice a couple times.” Jennifer smiled. “The maître d’ approached and asked if everything was okay, and Kevin assured him it was. But that didn’t stop him from walking to the dance floor a few minutes later and dancing with an invisible partner before leaving the room.”

“Sam.”

“Sam. According to Kevin, the only other time they were together in public was when they cleared the bus that blew up. Kevin insisted that Sam was in the car, but none of the passengers remember seeing another person in the car. And when I drove by a few minutes after the explosion, Kevin was alone, although he clearly remembers Sam sitting beside him, talking on her phone to her superiors. The California Bureau of Investigation has no record of her, of course.”

“Of course. And I suppose Kevin chose to imitate the Riddle Killer because it offered him a fully fleshed persona.”

“Don’t you mean
Slater?
”

“Pardon me—Slater.” The professor smiled.

“We found a stack of newspaper clippings on the Riddle Killer in Slater’s desk. Several were addressed to Kevin’s home. He never remembers receiving them. He can’t remember how he got into the library undetected or how he planted the bombs in his car or the bus, although the evidence in the basement leaves no doubt that he built all three bombs.”

Jennifer shook her head. “Kevin himself, as himself, wasn’t aware that he was carrying both Sam’s and Slater’s cell phones most of the time. You’d think when he wasn’t in their personas, he’d be aware of that much, but somehow the alter egos managed to shut off his mind to those realities. Amazing how the mind works. I’ve never heard of such a clear fragmentation.”

“Because the personalities Kevin spun off were so diametrically opposed,” Dr. Francis said. “
What falls but never breaks; what breaks but never falls?
Night and day. Black and white. Evil and good. Kevin.”

“Night and day. Evil. Some in your camp are calling him possessed, you know?”

“I’ve heard.”

“And you?”

He took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “If they want to attribute his evil nature to a demonic presence or a stronghold, they may do so without argument or endorsement from me. It sounds quite sensational, but it doesn’t change the fundamental truth. Evil is evil, whether it takes the form of a devil with horns or a demon from hell or the gossip of a bishop. I believe Kevin was merely playing out the natures that reside in all humans from birth. Like a child might play Dorothy and the Wicked Witch of the West. But Kevin really believed he was both Slater and Samantha, thanks to his own childhood.”

The professor crossed his arms and looked back out at Kevin, who was staring at a cloud formation now.

“I do believe that we all have Slater and Samantha living within us as part of our own nature,” he said. “You could call me
Slater-John-Samantha
.”

“Hmm. And I suppose that would make me
Slater-Jennifer-Samantha
.”

“Why not? We all struggle between good and evil. Kevin lived that struggle out in dramatic fashion, but we all live the same struggle. We all struggle with our own Slaters. With gossip and anger and jealousy. Kevin said his term paper was going to be a story—in more ways than one, I think he just lived his paper out.”

“Forgive my ignorance, Professor,” Jennifer said without looking at him, “but how is it that you, supposedly a ‘regenerated’ man, devoted servant of God, still struggle with evil?”

“Because I am a creature of free will,” Dr. Francis said. “I have the choice at any given moment how I will live. And if I choose to hide my evil in a basement, as Kevin did, it will grow. Those who populate America’s churches may not be blowing up buses and kidnapping, to be sure, but most hide their sin just the same. Slater lurks in their dungeons and they refuse to blow the lid off them, so to speak. Kevin, on the other hand, most certainly blew the lid off, no pun intended.”

“Unfortunately, he took half the city with him.”

“Did you hear what Samantha said in the basement?” the professor asked.

Jennifer had wondered if he would bring up Samantha’s words. “‘You are powerless on your own. But if you look to your Maker, you’ll find enough power to kill a thousand Slaters,’” she said. The words Samantha spoke to Kevin had haunted Jennifer for the last week. How had Kevin known to say that? Was it really as simple as his good nature crying out the truth?

“She was right. We are all powerless to deal with Slater on our own.”

He was talking about man’s dependence on God to find true freedom. He’d spent long hours with Kevin in his prison cell—Jennifer wondered what had passed between them.

“After seeing what I’ve seen down here, I’m not going to even try to argue with you, Professor.” She nodded at Kevin. “You think he’s . . . okay?”

“Okay?” Dr. Francis’s right eyebrow went up. He smiled. “I’m sure he’ll be delighted to hear the news you have, if that’s what you mean.”