Blinded (18 page)

I used my cell phone to call Simon from a truck stop outside Montgomery. While I talked to my son, I was strolling along the border of the property, kicking at weeds I didn’t recognize and swatting at insects I didn’t know lived on the planet with me. I didn’t tell Simon I was calling from the South. It wouldn’t have bothered me at all that he knew I was in Alabama-with his limited worldview he’d have figured I was at the U of A for a football game, and he’d have a question or two about the Crimson Tide-but I didn’t want him to start conspiring with me to keep secrets from his mom, so I kept the news about my travels to myself.

Sherry didn’t want to talk to me. Her father, a gruff, kind, barrel of a man whom I’d always liked, was the one she’d tapped to tell me she didn’t want to talk to me. Angus had always been fond of me, and after I’d bulldogged my way a few years back into a position to help my niece-his granddaughter-get some medical care she desperately needed, he thought I was the son-in-law from heaven. I’d always tried hard to do nothing to dissuade him.

“She’s still being a bitch, Sam, what can I say?” was the way Angus described the situation to me. Angus was never one to mince words about his progeny. When one of his girls acted heroic, he called her a hero. When one of them acted bitchy, he called her a bitch. Angus taught me good things about being a dad.

“How about you and I cut her a little slack, Angus? How about that? She’s working stuff out.” Sherry and I had our problems, but gang-tackling her with her father didn’t seem like a fair way to confront them.

He harrumphed. “You okay? Your ticker?”

“It’s ticking fine. I’m following all the rules, and the docs think I’m a star. Simon sounds good.”

I didn’t like lying to Angus, but there it was. Not the part about Simon, the part about following all the recovering-from-a-heart-attack rules. Buried somewhere in the fine print there had to be a rule about no nonstop road trips to the land of deep-fried everything.

Yep, that was probably prohibited. That’s the one I’d broken. That one and maybe a few others.

“Simon’s good. He’s a great kid. A little on the wild side, but a great kid. Though he should be in school. You and I both know that.”

“Stay cool, Angus. This will all work out.”

“Ask me, it’s goofy. They should both be in Boulder with you. But nobody asks me. You get to be seventy-five, and everybody thinks you’re an idiot. You wait until you get old.”

“You know I agree with you,” I said. “And I don’t think you’re an idiot.”

“Now there’s an endorsement.” He laughed. “There’s something I got to ask you, Sammy.”

“Yeah.”

He laughed again, a deep roar. “Are those Avalanche of yours ever going to score more than one goal in the same game? I mean ever? The point of the game is to put the puck in the net, isn’t it?” Angus’s laugh exploded into a guffaw.

All I said in reply was “Let’s see whose team is still playing in June, Angus, what do you say?”

He was laughing so loudly, I’m pretty sure he didn’t hear me.

The bathrooms in the truck stop were surprisingly clean. The restaurant seemed to be run by a group of women my mother’s age-two black, two white-who were suspicious about a guy my size ordering egg whites and grapefruit and decaf coffee. As soon as my order made it over to the kitchen, one of the waitresses came by and asked me where was I from, honey. When I told her Colorado, she nodded knowingly.

I didn’t even have to say “Boulder.”

She’d seen my kind before, apparently.

The matrons kept a careful eye on me after that. I figured they were waiting for me to call them over to the table and order some tofu, or a kiwi smoothie, or maybe a grande cappuccino.

Despite their suspicions they were kind women, all in all. Even brought me a side of grits I didn’t order. There was a big fat orb of butter melting like a setting sun right in the center of the grits. I ate around the circle of butter so that what was left on the plate when I was done looked like a cool caricature of a sunny-side-up egg that my kid might have drawn at school.

I dropped enough money on the table to leave the ladies a hundred-percent tip on the meal, filled the tank out at the pumps, checked my maps, and pointed the Cherokee toward Georgia.

I hadn’t looked in my rearview mirrors-not intentionally, not once-since I’d headed east on I-70 out of Denver. I didn’t look at the mirrors when I pulled away from that Alabama truck stop. Nor did I bother to wave good-bye to the matrons who’d made and served my meal.

I’d told myself from the beginning of my trip that I would only know that I’d really finished leaving someplace when I passed a sign that was promising me that I’d arrived at someplace new. That was the way my life seemed lately, so that was how I was going to travel.

My current plan, always subject to revision, was to cross the border into Georgia right about where Phenix City, Alabama, ended and a highway sign said that Columbus, Georgia, was beginning. Then I would drift southeast toward Albany. Farther south than that, Rand McNally said I’d find the legendary wilds of the Ochlockonee River.

When I got there?

The answer to that question eluded me, I must admit. For well over a thousand miles I’d been trying hard not to think about it. Instinct had rarely failed me in life, and I was counting on a visit from the instinct fairy sometime after I crossed the border into Georgia.

On the short stretch of frontage road between the truck stop and the highway I drove over some railroad tracks that were protruding high above the roadbed. I felt the sharp jolt from the rails as a punch below my sternum, and my pulse immediately popped up a good twenty percent.

Since I’d left the hospital, it seemed that I felt almost everything that happened to my body right in the center of my chest. It was as though any physical sensation was amplified and focused right below my ribs, centered a couple of inches down from my man-boobs.

A belch? Heart attack.

Indigestion? Heart attack.

Roll over in bed? Heart attack.

I knew that the next time I stubbed my toe, I was going to finger that damn brown bottle of nitro.

I thought about my injured heart, and about my broken heart, until I saw the sign for Phenix City. What I was close to deciding was that neither assault on my heart was going to kill me.

I was thinking maybe I was going to be okay after all.

I didn’t know where Gibbs had grown up. I didn’t know what her family of origin was like.

Siblings? Dog? Cat?

Didn’t know, didn’t know, didn’t know.

Had her parents loved each other? What did her dad do? Had her mother worked? What was school like for her? Did she wear braces? Had she lived in the same house her whole life or had she moved a dozen times? Did she play the piano or enjoy playing any sports?

Did she yearn for children?

Or a career?

Had her heart been broken? Had she endured wrenching losses?

I didn’t know.

Typically, after a handful of conjoint sessions and a few individual appointments, I would be able to construct a pretty reliable social history of any one of my patients. But not with Gibbs.

With Gibbs, I didn’t know much at all that didn’t have to do with St. Tropez yachts and Wilshire Boulevard balconies.

I gave that state of affairs some thought.

What did I know?

I knew about an old murder that purportedly involved her husband, and I knew that voyeuristic sex turned her on. I knew that her husband sometimes said “catch me” during lovemaking. I knew about a magical night in St. Tropez.

And oh yes, I knew about Louise Lake and the other dead women. Gibbs kept reminding me about them.

Did I actually forget about the victims in between her reminders? Hardly. I just kept telling myself that when the chaos quieted, Gibbs and I would get back to it.

The chaos? Yes.

Murder, sex, multiple murder, sex, search warrants, sex, coffee with my friend the detective, sex.

In psychotherapy that kind of progression constitutes chaos.

And now she’d moved us again back to multiple murder.

Damn.

Psychotherapy rule number six: If you want to understand the motivation behind an act, first examine its consequences.

The consequences of Gibbs’s chaos-creation proclivities? Her therapist-me-would end up way too off balance to focus on the big picture, whatever the big picture was.

Was that Gibbs’s intent?

I didn’t know.

But I suspected that my not knowing
was
her intent.

“Gibbs?” I waited until she focused her eyes on me.

“Yes?” she said pleasantly.

“Why don’t you tell me about the other murders?”

She fingered her wedding ring. “Just between us?”

An interesting response. I replied, “Of course.”

“What difference does it make now? If Sterling is really gone, what difference does it make?”

“I could answer that question for you, but I think it’s better if you answer it for yourself. You keep bringing up the other women whom you think Sterling killed. You brought them up again just now. It apparently makes a difference for you that he killed more than one woman. That’s what difference it makes.”

Psychotherapy rule number eleven: Follow, don’t lead.

Had I just broken it?

“They are all women he was involved with at one time or another. At least that’s what he told me. I’m not sure I believe him.”

I waited. I couldn’t follow if she didn’t take another step forward.

“You don’t believe what? That he was involved with them?”

“I don’t know. Sterling lies a lot. He… betrayed me. You know?”

“No,” I said. “I don’t know. The reality is that I don’t know anything that you don’t tell me, Gibbs. But I don’t understand why he would admit to affairs that he didn’t have.”

“He probably had them.” She glanced at her hands before she continued. “The first one he told me about was at Augusta.”

“Augusta, Georgia?”

“Yes. He met her at the Masters.”

I waited, wondering why it was important that he met her at the Masters. “She was the first one he… killed?”

“She was the first one he told me about. But there was another one at West Point, too.”

“The military academy?”

“She was a hostess he met. At the Army-Navy game.”

I was still following her, but now I was on my tiptoes, trying to look over her shoulder.

“And then Indianapolis,” she added.

I thought I was getting the swing of it. Sterling met women while he was producing the broadcast of sporting events. “The Indianapolis 500? The car race?”

She shook her head. “No, the College Combine. The NFL draft? She worked for the arena people.”

I took a few steps back to give Gibbs room to lead. “Why just between us? Why not share this information with the authorities?”

“I don’t want people to think he was that kind of man.”

“Even though he was?”

She glowered. “He has demons, Dr. Gregory. Women make him crazy sometimes. Crazy. He’s been fighting it his whole life. He really has. I don’t think people will understand.”

I couldn’t argue with that. Gibbs was absolutely right: People wouldn’t understand.

“Women make him crazy?” I asked. It wasn’t much of a question. I could have just as easily have said,
“I’m going to skip my turn, why don’t you just keep going?”
But instead I said, “Women make him crazy?”

“He was afraid that they wouldn’t let him go, that they would ruin what he had. All the good things he’d accomplished…” Her voice trailed away.

I was confused about the good things. I asked, “His career?”

“Yes, but… no. I was talking about his marriage to me.”

“So he killed these women because… they threatened your marriage? I’m not sure I follow.”

“I don’t know very much about any of it.” She wriggled and tugged on her sleeves, finally looking back my way as though I were a vanity mirror and she was checking her reflection. “It’s not like we talked about this all the time.”

I had a thousand questions. I asked none of them.

Her voice was pressured when she resumed. “Just once. We only talked about all this once, okay? Right before we moved back here to Boulder. He admitted the affairs with all the women-there were others, too, many others. I don’t know the details. Ones he didn’t… you know, kill, but I think felt an impulse to… There was one in South Bend, a sports information something”-she shivered-“and a girl in Flushing Meadows-she was a publicity something with the women’s tour, I think. And Daytona Beach, maybe. I forget. I try to forget.”

South Bend was Notre Dame University, probably football. Flushing Meadows was tennis, the U.S. Open. Daytona Beach was NASCAR, I thought. Some car race. Sam would know.

She exhaled deeply. “That wasn’t a surprise to me. The affairs. I knew he was… seeing other women. I just did. It’s who he was. But he promised me that he was done. He told me he had changed, that moving back here would be a new start for us. That he valued our marriage too much to ever cheat on me again.”

A tear moved a centimeter down her cheek, paused, and then tracked at an angle toward her nose. She touched it with the tip of her finger. Another tear soon followed the same track. Her chest heaved a little.

“Take your time,” I said.

“He said he was going to prove his love for me all over again by putting his life in my hands. That’s when he told me that the women were gone. The ones who were a threat… to us.”

“Gone?”

“That’s what I asked. He said they wouldn’t bother us ever again. I asked him what he meant.”

The tears on her cheeks were leaving silky tracks in the powder on her skin.

“ ‘Louise is at peace. They are, too.’ That’s what he said. Those were his exact words. What do you think he meant?” Gibbs’s hands were rolled into fists.

I slid the box of tissues closer to her. She appeared not to notice.

I didn’t have a prayer of knowing exactly what Sterling had meant with his words. But every one of my guesses chilled me.

Gibbs continued. “We made love that night. And he said ‘catch me’ again. He was trusting me with his secret, begging me to keep him from falling.” She paused for a good hunk of a minute before she confessed, “His life was in my hands for a few weeks. That’s how long it took me to betray him.”