The Ripper Gene (13 page)

I noticed she was switching the pronouns
he
and
you
more frequently as she spoke. Despite her sessions with Kinsey in recent days, deep down she apparently still wasn’t sure about her kidnapper’s identity.

“Mara,” I asked. “You know it wasn’t me. Right?”

“But he was
you,
Lucas. And now you say he wasn’t you. And the police say it wasn’t you. And Dr. Kinsey says it wasn’t you. Everybody says there’s all this goddamned proof.” Her eyes gleamed with tears. “I don’t know what to believe anymore.”

I looked at her through the partition, overcome with pity. Maybe she had problems, issues I didn’t understand, and while I was perhaps not quite ready to fully buy into Kinsey’s dissociative identity disorder once and for all, I knew one thing: Mara was, if nothing else, extremely frightened and confused.

She leaned forward, stopping only a few inches from the glass again. “It had to be you,” she whispered. “I’ve felt it before, I know I have. We made love. It wasn’t like rape at all.”

Suddenly Kinsey’s diagnosis sounded more and more correct, that Mara had made peace with what had happened in that basement through sheer, unadulterated repression and fantasy. Just as he’d claimed, she’d distorted the rape into an act of consensual intimacy. She whispered the disturbing falsehood again. “We made love, Lucas.”

“Mara,” I said, slowly shaking my head. “I swear to you that it wasn’t me. And what happened to you wasn’t love.”

“How can you be so sure?” She pulled away from the partition and spoke more loudly. “Why is everyone so fucking sure that it wasn’t you? Except me?”

I didn’t have any answers for her as she looked away and wiped her cheeks in anger. I’d abandoned her after her affair with Tyler and never looked back, because no woman made a fool out of Lucas Madden. Now, for the first time, I seriously considered the possibility that I shared some of the blame for her present condition. How could I have not seen this?

Suddenly our past, the hurt we’d caused each other, the confusion Mara now felt, the unresolved nature of our own dissolution … it all crashed into me like an angry wave of regret.

“Mara,” I said. “I have one last question for you. It’s about something you said to me that day on the phone.”

“Yes?”

“You mentioned a girl with writing on her forehead. Did you actually see the girl with writing on her forehead?”

She thought for a moment, but then shook her head. “No. I mean, I can’t remember. I’m sorry; everything’s so fuzzy. I think so? But I’m not sure. Maybe he just mentioned her?”

I smiled in a genuine attempt to put her at ease. “Okay.” I stood and pushed my chair back. “That’s everything, then. You should rest now. Can you think of anything else before I go?”

Mara leaned closer and motioned me toward her. She dropped her voice so that only I could possibly hear her, as if she knew we’d been observed through the one-way mirror all along. “Lucas,” she said, “I dream of all those girls before they die.”

“What’s that again?”

“Dead girls, sleeping, looking up at me through closed eyes. Their eyeballs move underneath their eyelids, but they can’t wake up because they’re dead. And then cuts appear on their bodies and they still don’t wake up. They just bleed and bleed and bleed. And their faces contort in pain, but they still don’t wake up. They can’t.” She took a deep breath, forcing herself to continue. “Then they die, and I watch the letters appear on their foreheads.”

“When do you dream them, Mara?”

“All the time.”

“Who are they?”

“Anna Cross, Jessica Harrison, and that girl in the basement with me.”

I stayed silent, scanning her face for any sign that she was either lying or toying with me. But I saw nothing.

Mara pushed her forehead against the window like a child, but her eyes fixed me with an adult intensity. “
He
talks to me, too,” she said, opening her eyes to emphasize it. “
He
tells me how he does it.”

My pulse quickened. “Who talks to you, Mara? The killer?” I heard my words and understood how foolish I sounded, but for some reason, even if I didn’t believe her, I wanted to hear her answer. Time had run out on the interview, and I had nothing. I’d take a chance on anything if it would help link Mara to the murderer and help us gain any tiny bit of better understanding about the Snow White Killer.

She bit her lip and shook her head, smiling, but on the verge of tears—as though smiling were her only option in the face of absurdity.

I leaned closer to the partition and pressed her for the answer. “Who do you see in your dreams, Mara? Who’s killing these women?”

She looked up at me, her eyes still rimmed with tears. “I never see his face, Lucas,” she whispered, the words finally spilling out of her mouth like water falling over the edge of a cliff. “But he tells me he’ll kill me if I ever tell anyone what he says. And he sounds just like you.”

She began to cry uncontrollably, then signaled to the exit door on her side of the partition.

At that moment Kinsey opened the door behind. I watched as Martin the orderly led her away. At the door, Mara looked back at me with a faint smile.

I realized I’d been so angry with her until that very moment. The ridiculous accusations, everything. And then in a moment, it was all gone. I only felt sorry for her and wished I could have seen it sooner or helped. Or even that my brother still could, possibly.

I stood up and left the room in which I’d interviewed Mara Bliss—my former lover, my brother’s companion, my recent assailant, and a near-victim of the Snow White Killer.

I suddenly appreciated Mara’s need to smile in the face of a universe gone otherwise completely mad.

SIXTEEN

“So, Madden.” Woodson pushed open the front doors of Memorial Oaks and waited for me to exit. “What do you think?”

“Not sure,” I said, as we walked down the steps toward the parking lot, hoping she was asking for a professional, rather than personal, opinion. “It sounds like she was drugged. She can’t remember anything. Do you think there’s any chance we missed something in the tox screen?”

“Anything’s possible,” Woodson said, adding, “I could review the toxicology reports with your man Terry, if you want.”

“Sure,” I said, as we arrived at the SUV.

Woodson stopped on the passenger’s side and looked over the roof at me. “Your friend certainly seemed convinced that you’re the Snow White Killer,” she said.

“So do
you
think I’m the Snow White Killer, Woodson?”

She shook her head, smiling at the inflection in my question. “No, Madden, I don’t. But it’s pretty strange that Mara Bliss does. I wonder if that’s more significant than the psychobabble we were fed in there.”

I shrugged. “Maybe Kinsey is right. Maybe Mara just projected me onto the identity of her abductor to cope with a traumatic experience. Just compensation on her part. Maybe it has nothing to do with the Snow White Killer.”

I unlocked the doors and we started to get into the car, but Woodson spoke again. “Honestly, Lucas? Some people might say it’s not you she’s describing, but your brother.”

“Are you shitting me?”

Woodson held up a hand. “I’m not saying it
is
him, Lucas, but think about it for a second. If you didn’t know Mara, wouldn’t you at least wonder whether she was talking about a companion? The killer talks to her in her sleep? Threatens to kill her if she says anything? Sounds like a lot of husbands or boyfriends to me.”

I realized Woodson and Kinsey must have heard Mara’s whispered conversation with me at the end of our interview. “Mara’s not reliable, Woodson. The person she describes doesn’t sound like my brother. It sounds more like Freddy fucking Krueger.”

“So if you’re sure about that, then why not interview him?”

“Who?”

“Your brother,” Woodson answered.

“Are you nuts? You want me to interview my own brother and ask him if he’s the Snow White Killer?”

Woodson leaned farther over the roof. “Yes,” she said, “and if you were thinking objectively, you’d agree. You better turn over every stone here or Jimmy is going to take you off this case. For good.”

I stared at Woodson as she spoke, unable to dismiss the soundness of her logic. She was right. I needed a paper trail to prove I’d treated this case objectively. Otherwise, Jimmy Raritan had all the ammunition he needed to remove me. If there was one thing I wanted, it was to stay on the SWK investigation. And if there was one thing Jimmy wanted, it was probably one good reason to take me off it.

I opened the driver’s side door. “So I guess we have to drive all the way up to Hattiesburg and talk to my brother, just to put a checkmark in the box and take it off the list of Things I Need to Do to Stay Off Jimmy’s Shit List. Right?”

Woodson opened her door as well. “Hey, it may not seem like it, but I really am just trying to look out for you.”

I climbed inside, started the engine without responding. Woodson shrugged her shoulders as she settled in the passenger seat. Hattiesburg was a good two hours away. Even though I suspected Woodson really was looking out for my best interests, I couldn’t bring myself to thank her for suggesting that I interrogate my brother as a suspect in the Snow White Killer case just to maintain my appearance as an objective agent of the FBI.

Even if she was right.

*   *   *

Two and a half hours later we arrived in the reception area of yet another doctor’s office, this time at my brother’s. I’d never been to his new office in the renovated medical wing at the University of Southern Mississippi. Except for our recent run-in at the hospital, it had been two years since he and I had spoken, and even longer since I’d visited him at work.

His assistant brought us into his office and assured us that he was on his way, encouraging us to make ourselves comfortable. Woodson took a seat in one of the three chairs facing my brother’s large desk, massaging her neck in silence. I stood to the side and looked around at the various scientific magazines and journals stacked in piles. Unlike the neuroscience theme in Kinsey’s office, all of the journals in Tyler’s office were related to reproduction and women’s health.
Reproductive Sciences, Molecular Reproduction and Development,
and other journals lay in ordered piles on his desk. In contrast to Kinsey’s office, the spaces on Tyler’s wall were taken up not with serene paintings but with anatomical charts, reproduction pathways, and other scientific wall hangings.

I walked around his desk and looked at the picture frames staring back at me. A large picture of Mara and Tyler sat in the center in a golden frame, both of them smiling, at some black-tie affair, laughing in mid dance. The other pictures were of Katie and the girls, and of my father fishing.

The absence of my own image on his desk wasn’t lost on me, but it wasn’t surprising, either. It wasn’t as if I had any pictures of Tyler displayed at home, except for one along my stairwell containing a framed picture of the two of us in elementary school, standing at the end of our parents’ driveway, waiting on a school bus with our backs toward the picture-taker, our mother. Tyler was in first grade and I was a fourth grader. That morning I’d held my arm around his shoulders to comfort him as he prepared for his first day of school.

“What are you doing here?”

I turned to face my brother, the memory swept away in a moment. “We just need to ask you a few questions, Tyler, to wrap up the inquiry about Mara’s disappearance.”

“Like what?”

I sighed. “Like whatever the hell we need to ask you. Don’t get defensive. I promise this is just to make sure we don’t leave any loose ends. We have to interview all the relevant witnesses. The sooner we get finished, the sooner we don’t have to deal with each other anymore.”

Tyler looked at me for a moment longer, the way someone sizes up a person they’re considering sucker punching, then abruptly extended his hand toward Woodson. “Hello.”

“Hello, Dr. Madden. Special Agent Woodson. I’m working with your brother on this case. Thank you for seeing us on such short notice.”

Tyler nodded pleasantly enough, but stiffened when Woodson referred to me as his brother. He leaned back against his office desk. “Well, let’s get on with it. I have ten minutes at most before my next appointment.”

I looked at Woodson. “Please. Feel free to start the interview at any time.”

The scowl on Woodson’s face confirmed her displeasure, but I didn’t care. After all, she’d been the one to push so hard to speak with Tyler. It was only fitting that she conduct the bogus interview.

She recovered quickly enough. “So, Dr. Madden,” she began, “you were out of town when Mara was initially noted as missing, presumably abducted?”

“Yes. I already told you people this. And she wasn’t
presumably
abducted. She
was
abducted.”

Woodson cleared her throat. “Right. I meant to establish that you were out of town at the time when she
claims
to have been abducted. Her abduction isn’t in doubt, but her timeline is pretty fuzzy.”

Tyler sighed. “All I can say for certain is that Mara was at home when I left for a conference in Mobile on Friday. When I returned on Sunday, she was gone. So
presumably,
” at this point he paused for emphasis, “she was abducted between two
P
.
M
. on Friday and six
P
.
M
. on Sunday.”

Woodson smiled a forced smile, while I smiled a genuine one. I didn’t know from whom we’d received it, but Tyler and I had inherited the same gift of sarcasm from one of our parents. I suspected our mother.

“Great,” Woodson said, flipping her pad closed. “Okay, I think at this point Lucas wants to review the results of his interview with Mara from earlier today.”

She looked up at me with what appeared to be a polite, professional smile. It took a moment to realize she’d just victimized me as efficiently as when I’d surprised her with an invitation to begin the interview.

Tyler stood, stepping away from desk. “What? You talked to Mara today?” His voice rose with each successive syllable.