The Tower Page 19

  And Jade knew right where he was headed.

  He picked up the phone and called Dr. Yung. The secretary put him on hold. Jade’s knee bounced up and down as he waited.

  “Mr. Marlow, I’m so glad you called,” Dr. Yung said when he finally picked up. “I was about to call you. I went through some of the materials again and I think I came up with something.”

  “Go ahead,” Jade said.

  “On the tape you left with me, he said that Dr. Schlomo—whom you identified as Freud—‘just never should have backed off.’ I didn’t give this much thought at first, but then I went back to it. Freud initially thought the sexual content of his patients’ dreams was based in reality, that many of them really had sexual interactions with their opposite-sex parents. But then he switched his position and posited that these thoughts were just fantasies, just wishes.

  “I think that’s what Allander meant by ‘he just never should have backed off.’ He thinks Freud was right the first time. That these sexual thoughts are the reality, not the fantasy. Which means he doesn’t think you outgrow them.”

  “But you can act them out.”

  “Exactly. Now if he’s ready to take on the Oedipal complex, we could have a dead father and a raped mother on our hands soon. Or on your hands, I should say.”

  “His father and mother,” Jade said. Dr. Yung was quiet, so Jade continued. “I think there’s already a history there that we haven’t begun to penetrate. In one of his interviews, he said that he’s lived all the fantasies. He said something like, ‘I’m the only one to do it without a Greek wrap’—pointing at what Oedipus did. I think he’s talking about intercourse. I think he actually raped his mother.”

  Dr. Yung was quiet for a long time. “It could be. But we shouldn’t take anything he says literally. You never know how much the lines between fantasy and reality have blurred, Mr. Marlow.”

  “That’s exactly what I’m concerned about.”

  Jade hung up the phone. He had been studying Allander’s files ever since he’d gotten back from Dr. Lithemeir’s office. The sleep he’d missed last night was starting to affect him. His eyes ached and his head was throbbing. He felt as if he’d just finished a boxing match.

  But he was fitting pieces into the puzzle, getting a full picture of Allander’s mind. Now that he felt he was really getting to know how Allander thought, he needed a plan. The first killings had happened before he’d been called in on the case. But now the game was live.

  His breathing tightened and he felt a sudden heaviness across his shoulders. He was disgusted with its familiarity. A flash of cold tickled across his lower back and he shivered, shaking it off. He was hired to track Atlasia. There would be more bodies before he got to him, but that’s just how it worked. They could pile up for all he cared, as long as he let blood in the end.

  Allander peered back at Jade from his mug shots, his voice rattling around in Jade’s head. Jade looked around the living room and saw only Allander. And corpses.

  The pain in his head intensified and he grunted out loud, pressing his fists to his forehead to slow the dull throbbing. He stumbled toward the study, accidentally stepping on the remote control and turning on the TV. Allander’s trial tape continued.

  The mother of the molested girl sobbed on the witness stand, her cries following Jade down the hall. He banged through the study door and fell into his chair. He took deep breaths, counting them backward. He started with twenty and worked his way down. As he counted, he pulled himself slowly to the desk.

  Above his pounding heart, his mind carried him back to a place from his youth, a place that smelled like wood sweepings and burning leaves. It carried him across a field where foxtails waved in the wind, catching the sun in all its yellow splendor and reflecting it back so brightly one needed to raise an arm against the glare.

  Four boys cut a path through the high weeds, leaving a small trail behind them as foxtails fell beneath their feet. Looks of preadolescent cruelty sat across their freckled faces. Raised on country breakfasts and yellow school buses, boys like these were too naive to have empathy. All four had the same haircut, a side part with hair flared across in the front so that it spiked up or dangled over their foreheads.

  They were voiceless to Jade as they screamed, though he noticed the strain in their necks and the rise and fall of their Adam’s apples. With a sweeping aerial view, he saw up ahead to where the children were running.

  The field led to an enormous mound with a large scarecrow planted in the middle. The scarecrow’s arms cast a fierce shadow from its ten-foot perch. The enormous clothes hanging limply from the wooden frame were the product of hours of Mrs. Joe Allen’s work on the sewing machine.

  The scarecrow was stitched for the town fair back in ’61, and the Allens left it out among the weeds as a sort of eerie landmark about which the locals could weave stories to entertain travelers. Mr. Hollow, they called him. He was surrounded by a circle of rocks, making the mound look like some mystical shrine to an ancient deity. Large crows would settle over the vast span of Mr. Hollow’s arms, setting him alive with fluttering motion.

  Mr. Hollow didn’t come down until ’79 when Slick James and a crew of his friends ran him over during a drunken ride in their Ford pickup. He was so big he left a dent in Slick’s front bumper and Slick bragged for weeks about the size of the deer he hit on Highway 74.

  In the vast expanse of weedland between the four running boys and the scarecrow there was a smaller figure, an animated dot in Jade’s view. It was another boy, about eleven years old, whose run was clumsy with fear. A silver chain with medical tags bounced around his neck as he moved.

  Jade could see his face more clearly now, the droop of his cheeks, the full upper eyelids, and the lolling lower lip. It was a miracle that his awkward legs found footing at all, but he lurched along with a spastic rhythm. A thin line of drool spun from the retarded boy’s lip, draping across his shirt, and he grunted like an animal fleeing a predator.

  In the distance, another boy ran down a countryside path into a quaint two-story home. He carried a baseball bat across his shoulder, his glove hooked on the end of the bat through the wrist hole. The boy looked tough; he was definitely a scrapper, and he wore a baseball hat cocked defiantly backward on his head.

  The screen door slammed behind him as he casually loped into the house. His eyes were green, as green as emeralds. Jade looked into his eyes and his pulse raced.

  A pair of hands grabbed him, nails digging into his arms. The face of a woman, distorted with rage and fear. Goddamnit, where’s your brother? I told you to watch your brother! Over her shoulder as she bent to swat his face, the boy could see a bedroom door open, a frayed cord dangling from the doorknob. Behind the swinging door, yellow-and-pink striped wallpaper—the wallpaper of a circus tent—was visible, suited to a child much younger than eleven. On the floor a small music box lay on its side, thrown down in the child’s rage at being trapped alone in his room. A brightly colored porcelain circus tent was glued on top of the lid. The woman’s hand drew back to land another blow on the boy’s reddened cheek.

  The images scattered dreamlike across Jade’s mind, every detail unfolding with excruciatingly slow clarity as the scene started to come apart.

  The slap of his hand on the desk brought him back to reality. Jade shook his head as he raised it from the desk. He had been counting. Forward or backward, he didn’t know, but he was on 153.

  The box of pens and pencils faced him and he ran his fingertips across it. He had to move, had to keep moving. There was still a lot of digging to be done at the Atlasias’, with Darby in particular. He pushed himself back from the desk and stood up, walked out of the study, and closed the door behind him.

  After a minute, he came back in, picked up the phone, and dialed.

  “Yeah. Travers. I’m heading back to the Atlasias.’ You coming? Yeah, whatever. I just want a driver.”

  36

  DARBY had greeted Jade and Travers coolly, but with
forgiveness in her smile. We’re all doing our jobs here, her smile said. Let’s not forget that. She had just come in from a visit with neighbors and she was breathless. She seemed always to be slightly breathless, Jade thought.

  Now he and Travers sat side by side on a brown couch, facing Allander’s parents as classical music played softly in the background. It was a shame to interrupt the peaceful sound with words. Especially these words.

  As soon as Jade said Allander’s name, the makeup came out again. Darby turned away, looking into a small mirror. Arching her eyebrows, blushing her cheeks, painting her lips.

  “Mr. Marlow, you have a propensity for ruining my afternoons,” she said with a wicked grin.

  Jade didn’t respond.

  “Oh, come now. I’m just teasing you. Since you’re down here to make me miserable, you should at least allow me the occasional tension breaker.”

  “All right. Fair enough.” Jade was being gentle. He found that he liked Darby and Thomas more each time he saw them. He wondered why. It might have been the sad but honest life they had managed to put back together for themselves. Like resurrecting a house after a tornado blows through, he thought.

  “I need to ask you a few questions about Allander’s childhood.”

  “Why?” Darby asked. “Is it really necessary to get into all this?”

  “Well—” Travers started.

  “Yes, I’m afraid so,” Jade said, shooting Travers a warning look. “I’m trying to get a profile of how he thinks. I need your help.”

  “And why …” Darby’s voice trailed off.

  “Should you help me?” Jade finished. “Because you don’t want him to kill more people. Because you feel responsible every time he does. Because he should be caught. Because you know you agree with me.”

  He was going out on a limb, but he thought he was right. He and Darby stared at each other for a long time, momentarily forgetting that Thomas and Travers were in the room.

  “You’re going to kill him,” Darby said simply. “And you want me to help.”

  “I don’t know if you’ve been watching the news, but—”

  “Please, Mr. Marlow,” Darby said, cutting him off sharply. “Let’s not play these games. I am well aware of what is going on and you are well aware that I am. So why don’t you reconsider how you’re going to ask for our help.”

  Jade sighed and rubbed his forehead. He noticed a hint of a smile on Travers’s lips.

  “Look, Darby. My job’s not exactly a picnic—”

  “Oh. That’s right. You have to make the difficult decision to sacrifice people you hardly know.”

  “Look, goddamnit.” Jade pointed at her, and Thomas leaned back. “That is not fair and you know it. You want to stop playing games? Let’s cut the one-upmanship.”

  Darby nodded, her mouth shifted to one side. “You’re right. That was unwarranted. I apologize.”

  For a moment, Jade wasn’t sure how to respond. Then he nodded his acceptance. “I know that you and Thomas want to help end this,” he said. “However painful it may be, I’m going to need you to open up.” Of course, he knew that what he really needed from them involved more than just “opening up,” and he had a suspicion that Darby knew, too, but there was a sort of unspoken agreement between them to take things one step at a time.

  They locked eyes for a long time as Darby thought. “I will help you,” she finally said, “if you promise not to kill him. If you promise to bring him in alive.”

  Standing suddenly, Jade threw his arms up and walked away from Darby. “Jesus Christ!”

  “Look, Jade, I think—” Travers said, but Jade waved her off violently.

  He turned and approached Darby, his hands and voice shaking with intensity. “Do you know what that means for an investigation like this?” he asked. “It’s like sending me into a war zone with my hands tied.” He realized that he was coming dangerously close to pleading.

  “Do I know what it means?” Darby asked coldly, her eyes indignant.

  Jade’s sigh sounded like a growl. He turned and walked toward the fireplace, having a heated dialogue with himself under his breath. He ran his hand through his hair, stopping to grip the top of his head with his fingers.

  “Mr. Marlow,” Darby said calmly to the back of his head. “I think we both know you don’t have much choice. You need our cooperation. We might as well begin.”

  Jade turned around. “Fine,” he said shortly. “Fine. I’ll try to bring him in alive.”

  “You will not try to bring him in alive, Mr. Marlow. You will bring him in alive. Don’t equivocate on that point.”

  “I’ll bring him in alive,” Jade repeated, feeling like a punished schoolboy.

  Darby stood and approached him, her head cocked, looking deeply into his eyes, asking if she could trust him. “Do you promise?”

  “What the hell? You have my word. You want me to swear on a Bible?”

  She shook her head. “No,” she said. She reached out and tapped the outline of the silver chain under Jade’s shirt. “On this.”

  At first Jade thought she was joking, but her eyes were dead serious. He matched her expression and nodded solemnly. “All right.” He glanced at Travers, who had a puzzled expression on her face. “I promise.”

  “His childhood,” Darby said, picking up the conversation as if there had been no interruption, “was turbulent, often frightening.”

  “Let’s start with physical disorders. Anything major?”

  “No. He got sick a lot, but nothing serious. Just the flu and colds and things. He wet the bed until he was twelve. Does that count?”

  Jade wasn’t surprised. He knew from his training in psychology that many disturbed criminals had had bed-wetting problems when they’d been younger. Jade figured he’d probe further to see if anything else turned up.

  He nodded. “Predictable. Any pyromania?”

  Darby looked surprised. “Yes.”

  “And?”

  “He liked to set things on fire,” Thomas said. “Toys, shoes, branches. He’d sometimes get mesmerized by the flames and burn his hand. We thought it was all fairly normal ‘boys-will-be-boys’ behavior until—”

  Darby shot him a glare and he stopped mid-sentence. He sat down on the fireplace with a small grunt and began tracing the pattern of the rocks.

  “Until what?” Jade asked.

  The Atlasias looked at each other. Thomas’s eyes implored her to speak. “Honey,” he said. “We talked about this.”

  “All right. Fine.” Darby looked at Jade and forced a laugh. “We already agreed that if I could exact my promise from you, we’d try to help. More. More than we have in the past.”

  “I … well … good,” Jade said dumbly. Travers looked at him affectionately. He could have killed her for it.

  “So what happened?”

  “I came upon him one time in the backyard,” Darby said. “I remember I was all dressed up—a silk outfit. We were heading to the symphony benefit dinner. It’s something we did every year as a family. It was really important to us, still is.”

  “And?” Jade asked impatiently.

  “Just because we’re trying to share these things with you does not mean they’re easy, son,” Thomas said. “Give her some time. She’s—we’re trying.”

  “We’re sorry, Mrs. Atlasia,” Travers said.

  “Please, hon. It’s okay,” Thomas said to his wife.

  “And what was he doing?” Jade asked.

  “Well, he had cornered a squirrel on the porch, right against the house. I think it had a broken leg or something, and he—” She took a deep breath. “Allander,” she said. “Allander had trapped it against the house.” Her voice was getting shaky. She looked angrily at Thomas. “Oh, Jesus, do I really have to do this? Is it really so important to bring this up now?”

  “It could be,” Jade said. Virtually any childhood story might help him understand Allander better. But more important, it established trust with the Atlasias and got them talking
. He was just paving the way.

  “Sweetheart, please,” Thomas said.

  “Fine.” Darby’s hand shot up and nervously patted her hair in the back. “He got a can of Lysol or something from under the kitchen sink and a match. He held the match under the spray and set the poor little thing on fire.” Her voice cracked. “I came out when I heard it scampering around the deck. He was … he was …”

  “Masturbating?” Jade said.

  She looked quietly at Jade. Her cheek was quivering and he could see the pulse beating in her temple. “Yes,” she said.

  The phone rang in the kitchen and she was gone instantly.

  “Well, hello there! Yes, yes, we’re fine. Fine. Great. Uh-huh. Oh really?”

  Jade, Travers, and Thomas sat quietly in the living room as Darby’s conversation continued. Jade caught Thomas’s eye, but he lowered his head and began his mindless tracing again. Darby’s laughter filled the room. After a few minutes, she hung up and returned.

  Her smile faded as she entered the room. She locked eyes with Thomas.

  “Sorry,” she said softly without taking her eyes off her husband.

  “What’d you say when you found him?” Jade asked her, picking up right where she’d left off.

  “I told him he’d burn in hell forever,” she said. Then she laughed, a mature giggle. “No, no. We’re quite liberal people, Mr. Marlow. I told him that the masturbation part was normal, even healthy. I believe it is,” she said, as if someone had disagreed with her. “I didn’t want him to feel guilty about it. But I was very upset about the poor animal, and I scolded him for that. A lecture about cruelty to animals. If only I’d known. That should’ve been the least of my concerns.”

  A long, awkward silence ensued. Thomas cleared his throat twice but said nothing.

  Jade finally broke the silence. “That was before Allander’s kidnapping, wasn’t it, Darby?”