Wallflower (33 page)

The homeless man, according to Kit and Aaron's theory, was a practice shot in preparation for the later homicides. Diana, it seemed, was quite rigorous in her preparation. In addition to karate training, she worked out regularly at a local health club and two summers before had taken a ten-day course in commando tactics at a shadowy survivalist school in Colorado, where she learned the ice pick technique.

(Aaron found the receipt in Diana's desk. Beverly had no knowledge of the foray; Diana had simply told her she was going white water rafting on her vacation.)

In any event, it seemed consistent with such rigor that Diana would first try out her newly acquired skills on a relatively defenseless target in New York before venturing to distant cities in search of whole families to execute.

As for what exactly had attracted Diana to the two non-Archer-connected victim clusters (the Robert Wexler family in Fort Worth and the Anthony Scotto family in Providence)—that, said Aaron and Kit, would probably never be known. Beverly Archer had her own theory—namely, that the very image of a family stirred up tremendous murderous aggression inside Diana, similar to the aggression that had exploded on the morning she killed her own core family with the ax.

The stabbing of the cat burglar Leo Titus was easier to explain. By intruding into Beverly's house, he posed a threat of invasion to which Diana's hair-trigger mentality could only respond with an attack. Janek, of course, was another invader and thus had to be killed like the first. In her interview Beverly stated her belief that had Janek not succeeded in stopping Diana, she herself would have become a victim the moment she reentered her house. An extra irony of the affair was that the Archer-connected Wallflower victims (Parce, Morse, and the MacDonalds) were minor figures in Beverly's past, people with whom she'd been out of touch for decades. She hadn't even known any of them were dead until Aaron showed her the FBI's victim list.

The shrink seemed to have suffered something close to a ner
vous breakdown as a result of the discovery that her "best patient" had in fact not been cured at all but had, even while in intensive therapy, committed a series of horrible murders against these past players in her life. Beverly's suffering over her therapeutic catastrophe was demonstrated to Janek on the videotape of her interview with Aaron.

While still in the hospital, Janek viewed this tape several times. In it the psychologist seemed truly shattered. The tight, withdrawn quality she'd displayed in her interviews with him was replaced in Aaron's interview by tearful eruptions of agony and remorse. Her cool half-smile was supplanted by haggard, tormented eyes, making for a portrait of a woman in despair. But after rerunning and studying the tape, Janek decided her performance was feigned. No matter her broken appearance and the apparent sincerity of her grief, he did not believe a word of it.

The result was that no matter how many times Aaron and Kit told him their story and no matter how much evidence they carted into his hospital room to prove it, Janek insisted it was not complete. If, as all the evidence showed, Diana Proctor had physically committed the murders, then, Janek maintained, by some method he could not describe Beverly Archer had put Diana up to it.

"You're usually right about these things," Kit said. "But how can you be so sure?"

"I feel it," Janek replied. "I don't care how many times Diana described herself as a wallflower or signed her name that way. For me Beverly Archer is the only wallflower in the case. The flowers left beside the walls at the murder scenes were her signatures, not Diana's."

O
n their first day in Yucatan, Janek and Monika settled into their rented
casita,
then lay out on their terrace in the sun. When it grew dark, they drove into Cozumel, looking for a place to eat. They explored for a while, finally settling on a quiet thatch-roofed restaurant on the beach where the wine was good and the fish was fresh and well prepared.

Afterward they took another walk through the town, passing various bars and clubs, pausing occasionally to listen to laughter or music playing within. Then Monika drove them back to their little blue and white house, where the garden was filled with orchids and hibiscus and the terrace overlooked the sea. Here they sat out as they had in the afternoon, staring across the water at a magnificent tropical moon, which reminded them of the moon that had lit their way not two months before in Venice.

"
It happens every night around this time," Janek said. "I start feeling chilled and then afraid."

"Of the dream?" He nodded.
"
I can give you a pill," Monika said.
"
It will help you sleep and probably stop you from dreaming. But I don't recommend it."

"
Why not?"

"
I think it's good for you to dream, Frank. Even if the dream is bad. If you can dream it through, the power of the dream will weaken, and then you'll be released."

Janek thought about that awhile. When he spoke again, his voice was hushed and steady.

"I can't see all the details. I see the redness over everything. The glow like a kind of rust. And I see the picture, so big, looming there: the handsome face; the glossy red curls; the sparkling eyes; the cruel, sensual mouth. And then I see this slim, little, bald woman charging at me like a fiend. She sticks me. I feel the pain. The room begins to spin. And then I see other things, objects, but I'm whirling so fast I can't tell you what they are. I want to see them clearly, Monika. I think that's why I dream about them. To see them again, hoping this time they'll register. Because they're important. I know they are." He sat back, shrugged.
"
I have no idea why."

T
hat night, when the nightmare came and he began to shake, he felt her arms wrap his chest. The nightmare passed. He got up, shuffled to the bathroom, poured himself a glass of water, and drank it off. Back in bed, in her arms again, her breasts warm points against his back, he felt better, less haunted, not so cold.

"I
'
ve got an idea," he whispered to her in the morning.

"What?"

"It's nice here. I like it. But I want us to go back to New York."

"
We just arrived, Frank."

"I know. But there's something I want to do. The photos Aaron
showed me weren't enough. I should have insisted on seeing the room again for myself. What do you say we fly up there this morning, spend twenty-four hours, then fly back? I know it'll be expensive, but I'll pay for the tickets. I think seeing the room in daylight will help."

She shook her head. "I don't think so, Frank. I don't think that will help you at all."

"Look, I'm not a child. Whatever's there—I can take it."

She smiled.
"
Of course, you can. But there isn't anything there. You'll be wasting your time."

"But—"

"Please, listen to me. Right now you're recovering from two major physical wounds and a great deal of psychic stress. In a few brief seconds, perhaps the most intense of your life, many things converged on you—sounds, sights, revelations. You saw things. You were attacked. You defended yourself, hit back at your attacker. Your mind suffered overload. Time and space were foreshortened and condensed. Some memories were etched, and others, perhaps the most important, were lost in the trauma of shooting that woman and being stabbed. No wonder you keep reliving those moments. The key to your nightmare, to your chills and tears, lies someplace within. Not in the actual room, as you might see it in daylight if we flew back up to New York today, but in the room as you
experienced
it that night, the room as it
seemed
to you then. I told you that if you can re-create the vision that haunts you, it won't disturb you anymore. I believe that's true. It will become just another memory. The bad dream will . . . disappear."

He rolled onto his back.
"
Fine," he said.
"
Now how am I going to do all that?"

"After breakfast I'll drive down to the village. I'm going to buy you paper and a set of crayons."

"Oh, Monika, please. . ."

"I'm serious, Frank. I want you to draw."

"Draw what?"

"The sea. The house. The garden. Whatever you like. Draw me if you want, or I'll bring a mirror out to the terrace and you can try to draw yourself. And if other images happen to come to you, then you'll draw them, too. You see, to draw a thing is to master it. I believe soon you'll be able to see those objects you cannot remember now. When you see them, you must try to draw them even if the images are only partial. Draw them and you'll control them. And then the dream will lose its power."

A
aron had brought photographs of Beverly's bedroom to the hospital. They had pored over them together. Everything was as he remembered it . . . almost. Leo Titus lay dead on the floor at the foot of the bed. Diana Proctor lay dead where she'd fallen after Janek's bullets had blasted her back. The light in the room was dim and red, and the painting was in the niche. But the portrait seemed smaller in the photos, less intense, the manner of its display less compelling to the eye. Everything looked the same, yet the cumulative effect was different. It was as if Janek's mind had played a trick on him, distorting the actual scene, which in the police photos appeared relatively normal, into something threatening and grotesque.

And still there were things missing from the photos, those strange and inappropriate objects which haunted his dreams. Where were they? The room had been searched, and nothing out of the ordinary had been found. When Aaron asked Janek to describe the objects, he shook his head, for he could not.

"
I just know they were there," he said.

T
he dream was always the same: a cavernous bedroom; reddish light; a huge oil painting of a woman; strange, not clearly seen objects arranged symmetrically before the portrait. He looked to his left: A body was curled on the floor. He looked to his right: A black-clothed virago with shaven skull rushed at him out of the gloom. At the very instant in his dream when he felt the ice pick slice into his flesh and hit his bone, he was possessed by the feeling that he had entered into something more than a stranger's bedroom, that he had entered into a secret chamber inside a madwoman's mind.

When he awoke from the dream, his thought was always the same:
It was Beverly Archer's madness, not Diana Proctor's that had been displayed.

H
e had other visitors over his two weeks in the hospital and his week of recuperation in his apartment. Laura and Stanton, attentive and concerned, arrived with two magnificent bouquets. Later Stanton came alone to tell him in a bitter whisper that he was glad Janek had killed the girl.

"
A trial would have been awful, Frank. All that stuff about Jess—we don't even like to think about it." Stanton paused.
"
You gave us closure. We'll always be grateful for that. If you ever need anything, any kind of help, I want you to think of us and call."

After Stanton left, Janek had a feeling that he probably wouldn't be seeing much of the Dorances anymore. The three of them had shared Jess, but now that she was gone, there was nothing to bring them together again except the all-too-painful memory of her promise.

S
ullivan also paid him a visit. He brought no flowers but was respectful and solicitous. If he was envious of Janek's resolution of his case, he succeeded in concealing it.

When Janek asked if anyone on his team harbored doubts that Diana Proctor had been the HF killer, Sullivan gazed at him mystified.

"Gee, Frank, why do you ask that?"

"No particular reason," Janek said.

"You think we're the kind of people who'd resist a case solution because an outsider got to it first? I'm offended. Whatever you may think of us, I promise you we're not that small."

Janek let it go. Sullivan, like any good FBI man, was interested in forensic evidence, not psychological speculation. But then Janek became aware that Sullivan was not visiting him merely to wish him well. He had his own agenda, which, after the pleasantries, he wasted no time bringing up.

"I was talking last night to Grey Scopetta, my film director friend."

"Yeah, I remember you mentioning him," Janek said.

"We both feel there could be a terrific miniseries here. What we're hoping is you'll give us a release so we can pitch the idea to a network."

Janek smiled graciously.
"
You don't need a release from me, Harry. Just don't use my name, okay?"

"But we have to use your name, Frank. You'll be the star." Sullivan stood and began to pace the little room.
"
Think of it. Two miniseries! You'll be the most famous detective in the country!"

"I've tasted fame, Harry, and as they say, it's vastly overrated."

"You're not serious." Sullivan paused. "Are you, Frank?"