Daughter of Darkness (20 page)

    Jenny thought of this now as she lay in bed trying to nap after her session with Hal, Coffey's shrink friend. She had been afraid of the cancer, of course. During her visit to the doctor, she'd actually felt her knees buckle, she'd been so afraid. But given the car accident, the plastic surgery, and the profound depression that followed, she wondered if she truly had the will to live. In some ways, it seemed easier to just give in to the cancer.

    And in some ways, now, as she lay on the guest room bed, she wondered if it wouldn't be easier to just give in now. The cancer had turned out to be a benign cyst. Maybe what she should do now-with her dread that she'd actually killed a man-maybe she should just turn herself over to the police and be done with it. Give in. And whatever happened, happened. She was sick of the headaches, sick of the way she had to grapple with her memory, sick of the notion that she might truly be this other person, this Linda woman. Hal had helped her escape from Linda. But now what was she left with? The prospect that she was a killer? Not very reassuring.

    Finally, she drifted into an uneasy, sweaty sleep filled with quiet yet relentless demons.

    

    

    Coffey didn't have any trouble getting into Linda Fleming's apartment. The lock on the door was a familiar style. All he needed was a credit card and the point of a pocketknife and he was in. He didn't even see the irritating old busybody down the hall. The only problem was that his sinuses and lungs were still responding to whatever kind of knockout gas the van people had used on him. He was coughing like a two-pack-a-day smoker.

    Even with the place empty, he felt guilty about invading somebody's place. He'd arrested a burglar once who'd told him that the greatest thrill of all was going through the private belongings of somebody else. The man was now serving life for receiving his third felony conviction.

    The place was noisy. Car doors slammed in the parking lot below. A TV blared above him, a radio below. People were talking in the hallway. The workday was over and folks were relaxing.

    The living room air was thick with dust motes. He took an extended look at the shabby furniture, the water-stained walls, the cigarette-burned carpet. A few dozen quietly desperate lives had passed through this apartment, lives without enough money, without enough love, without enough hope. If you were lucky, this was the sort of place you started out in. And over the years, you worked your way up into something a lot better. But for too many people-especially in this era of corporate downsizing and part-time employees who got few raises and no benefits-this was not only where they started out but also where they ended up.

    Coffey started in the living room. He had no idea what he was looking for, just anything that would tell him something more about Linda Fleming.

    He went through a stack of magazines, a three-tier bookcase, and a small, wobbly desk in a corner. He found nothing interesting or useful.

    He tried the kitchen. There was a small wicker basket on the table filled with mail that mostly ran to coupons and fliers advertising discounts. Again, nothing useful or interesting, not unless you considered a dry cleaner changing its name a hot news item.

    By this time, he held out little hope. Coming over here had probably been a waste of time.

    He went into the bedroom. The scent of cheap perfume made him sneeze.

    He started with the bureau, working quickly through the drawers with panties and bras so he wouldn't feel like a pervert. Nothing.

    He next tried her nightstand. Nothing here either, other than a romance novel and some cough drops.

    He didn't spend much time in the closet. There weren't many clothes to search through, for one thing, and he sensed instinctively that a closet wasn't going to yield much anyway.

    Then across the room, on a window ledge, he saw a stack of six or seven paperbacks. Probably weren't worth looking through, though he decided he might as well glance at them.

    More romance novels. The people on the covers were of a species superior to mere mortals. Nobody ever had breasts like these, or pectoral muscles for that matter; and nobody had ever posed so dramatically either, the wench caught up in the arms of the bad-boy hero. Mythic figures, not folks you were likely to run into in the supermarket.

    One of the paperbacks had a small white envelope edge sticking out of it. He pulled the envelope free. It was a bill. The name on the return address was: Priscilla Bowman, MD, Psychiatric Services.

    At first, the name meant nothing to him. But as he was sticking the envelope back in the book, he remembered that Jenny had told him about the shrink she was seeing. Priscilla Bowman had been her name. He was sure of it.

    He took the envelope out again. Tugged out the bill inside. Read it.

    On five occasions in the last month, Linda Fleming had seen Priscilla Bowman. Which meant that Dr. Bowman had to be aware of Jenny's two personalities. He wondered what else the good doctor knew about Jenny.

    He put Bowman's bill in his jacket pocket.

    He spent ten more minutes in the apartment, going back through the living room. Nothing else to be found.

    He opened the door and peeked out. To his left, the hallway was empty. To his right-

    The cranky woman was just going into her apartment. She was overburdened with three large grocery sacks. She wore the same faded housedress. Her knee-high hose had slipped down around her ankles. She'd be needing to get a new pair real, real soon. The crowning touch in this portrait was, of course, the cigarette dangling from the corner of her mouth. She was having a hard time reaching past her grocery bags to slip the key in She had one knee against the door, supporting the groceries. But her cigarette was in place-the smoke, rising upward, causing her to blink and cough-and that was all that mattered.

    He moved quickly. He was almost to the stairs at the opposite end of the hallway before she saw him.

    "Hey! You! I seen you! I seen you!" she called after him. She had to stop every other word to cough.

    What a lovely neighbor she'd make.

    

    

    "There's a detective at the door, ma'am," Eileen said. She was dressed in her crisp gray maid's uniform. The end of the day like this, she looked tired. She worked very hard. The Staffords saw that she was well paid for her labors.

    "A detective?" Molly said. She looked up from the Somerset Maugham collection she was reading. She preferred the writers of other eras to the writers of today. They were better storytellers, and the time of which they wrote seemed so much kinder and gentler than the world today. History made everything quaint, she remembered a history professor telling the class once. Even Caligula had a certain crazed romance about him viewed all these years later. Not to mention Vlad the Impaler, better known as Dracula. Reading Maugham was like looking at the French Impressionists of the 1880s and 1890s.

    So soft and lovely, even when their material was coarse-a whorehouse or a working-class dance hall.

    "She says she needs to talk to you, ma'am."

    "I wonder what she wants," Molly said. She had her own little reading room, with a recliner in a small square room filled with built-in bookcases. There was good strong afternoon light in the window. She loved sitting in here and reading. It had the feel of a library.

    "All she said was that she'd like to speak to you, ma'am."

    Molly moved the recliner forward so she could more easily stand up. She wondered how she looked in her white turtleneck sweater and dark slacks.

    "You look fine, ma'am," Eileen said.

    Molly smiled. "I'm that vain, huh?"

    "No. I just know that you worry about the impression you'll make. How you look and everything."

    "I wonder what the proper attire is to meet a detective."

    "You look fine, ma'am." Either Eileen hadn't gotten Molly's little joke, or she hadn't found it funny.

    "Does she look mean?"

    "No. She's very small and cute, actually."

    "Good. Small and cute I can handle. Why don't you bring her into the study?"

    "Yes, ma'am."

    For all her banter, Molly was terrified that the detective was bringing some bad news about Jenny. She found herself wanting to run upstairs and take a cigarette from her secret pack. Five years ago, she'd promised both husband and daughter that she'd give up the devil weed. And, for the most part, she had. But every once in a while, especially when she sensed trouble coming… The secret pack was always upstairs. Her security blanket.

    But she was being silly, she decided. For one thing, there wasn't
time
to run upstairs right now. And for another, she didn't even know what the detective was going to tell her. It certainly wouldn't be good news-but that didn't necessarily mean it would be terrible news, either.

    The thing was to appear calm when she presented herself to the detective. Cops were probably like animals. When they sensed human fear, they probably got nasty.

    The other thing to keep in mind was that the detective would very likely be intimidated by Molly and the mansion. That would give Molly the edge. It was the
detective
who should be anxious, not Molly.

    As she left her reading room, Molly wished that she
felt
half as self-confident and poised as she looked. Everybody always remarked on how composed she was. But inside-Molly died a thousand deaths a day, wondering if she'd inadvertently hurt the bag boy's feelings, or reacted insensitively to something her hairdresser said.

    She reached the study before the detective did.

    She walked over to one of the mullioned windows and looked out on the grounds. Nature. That was her true solace. The beauty and grandeur of God. Nature was far more interesting to her than the human world, and its inhabitants far more trustworthy than the creatures who walked upright on two legs.

    "Ma'am," Eileen said behind her. "This is Detective Margie Ryan."

    When she turned and looked at Margie Ryan, Molly almost smiled. Eileen's description had been apt. Cute and small. Ryan came forward with her arm stiffly out, aiming herself at Molly like a hungry shark.

    Some kind of body signal passed between the two women as they shook hands. And, for Molly, the signal was strong and clear.

    She didn't like this little munchkin of a woman. And she certainly did not trust her.

    

    

    As he pulled into his driveway, Coffey checked his rearview mirror for Hal's car. No sign of it.

    He drove up the strip of concrete leading to the garage. Another melancholy dusk was falling, the stars already vivid in the night blue of the northern sky. The temperature had fallen six or seven degrees from the day. A fireplace and a good book and maybe a cup of hot cocoa. A simple yet satisfying need.

    He went in through the kitchen door. At first, the house was quiet, which struck him as strange.

    The phone rang. He picked up. Hal.

    "I figured you'd want a report," the shrink said. "It was quite a session."

    "Tell me about it."

    "Definitely a multiple."

    Coffey nodded. "That's what I thought."

    "But it's not that easy."

    "What's that mean?"

    "The dividing line is too neat." Hal said.

    "You're losing me."

    "Look, multiple personalities reflect the repressed nature of the primary. If you're sexually repressed, one of your multiples may be sexually promiscuous."

    "All right. lean see that."

    "I spent two hours just talking to Jenny about her life before I hypnotized her. In other words, I got to know
Jenny
first. I like her. She's a nice, sensible young woman who's had a very difficult time in her life."

    "Did she tell you about her breakdown?"

    "Yes."

    "Anything you can share with me?"

    Hal coughed. "I promised I wouldn't tell you anything we discussed in our little therapy session. And I have to honor that."

    "All right."

    "I wouldn't be surprised if she voluntarily told you everything, though. She really likes you. And the way you sound now-pretty damned sappy, my friend-I can tell you feel the same way. In spades." He lifted his coffee cup and blew on the pool of the dark liquid. "But that's up to her. All I can tell you is what kind of conclusion I've come to."

    "Fair enough."

    "I don't think," he said, "that her Linda Fleming personality is a 'real' one."

    "You're losing me again."

    "I'm losing
me
again, too, my friend. As I said, most multiples are organic. The new personality reflects some need or repression in the primary personality. But from my conversations with Jenny, I can't see where Linda Fleming comes in. Linda isn't in any way a reflection of Jenny, if you see what I mean."

    "And that leaves us where, exactly, Hal?"

    "I'm not sure. But I've got some work I need to do tonight."

    "Work?"

    "I'm a very practical shrink. I tend to read only the new material that pertains to my practice. I don't get involved in a lot of abstract theoretical stuff, all that New Age psychobabble and all the super-drug therapies. I like to feel that it's mostly a waste of time for a hard-headed practical shrink like me. But tonight, I want to read up a little on brainwashing."

    "Brainwashing?" Coffey said. The word startled him. His most immediate association with it was
The Manchurian Candidate
, one of his favorite suspense films, and the Korean War, during which the Chinese started to perfect brainwashing as a tool for both espionage and assassination. "You think she's been brainwashed?"