Butterfield Institute - 01 - The Halo Effect (17 page)

Every Thursday night, for one hour, I watched a kind of magic I could not understand. For years I have been searching for copies of those shows. But the company who owned them has been sold and sold again, and I haven’t been able to track down anyone who knows about them. But I remember them.

And after my mother left my father and took me with her, we went to live in a tiny, messy apartment in a tenement building on Manhattan’s Lower East Side.

Some nights, when my mother lay on the couch in her selfinduced haze—which at eight I did not understand—I retold her the story of each episode. And when I ran out of real ones, I made them up.

Trying so hard to engage her, entertain her, make her sit up and get excited about something. Trying so hard just to get her to talk to me.

After I acted out the stories, I always ended the way the shows did, with me playing the part of my mother’s sidekick and delivering the next-to-last sign-off line.

“And what happened next?” I’d say to the pale, beautiful woman lying on the lumpy couch.

“They all lived happily never after,” she’d say.

Half drugged, half asleep, sick with her addiction, it didn’t
matter: she always knew her last line. The line her character had ended every episode with.

Just once I had wanted my mother to tell
me
a story. For her to be the mommy and me the little girl, with me under the covers and her sitting up.

And in my imagination, when she asked me what happened at the end, I would say something very different: I would smile and say, “They all lived happily
ever
after.”

Because that, of course, was my dream.

The doorbell rang.

As I walked from the kitchen into the living room, I wondered how it was going to end for Cleo. If there was any chance she would live happily ever after. Or if she would even live.

W
e sat in the kitchen while I made coffee. The detective was dressed more informally than he had been when he came to my office. Instead of the white cotton shirt and blazer with his jeans, he was wearing a blue chambray shirt and a windbreaker. Same loafers, same sunglasses stuck into the top button of his shirt, hanging precariously, as if he might need them at any second.

Instead of being nervous, once he was there, I felt calmer. I don’t like admitting that part of it was simply that he was a big man and he was in my apartment and he certainly was armed. Feeling unsafe wasn’t something I thought about. Until I felt safe. And then I became aware that I often felt frightened. I operated from a constant stance of being just slightly afraid.

Knowing too much about how the brain works, about the fragility of sanity, about the very thin line that separates the
functional human being from the madman, made me wary of people. Even people I should have been able to trust.

I put the coffeepot, mugs, sugar and milk on the table.

“Spoon?” he asked.

It took a minute for the word to compute. I picked up a spoon and handed it to him. Long fingers reached out. I looked away and my eyes settled on his face. A flash of his serene blue eyes. And then I looked away from his eyes, too.

I don’t know where he looked. Turning my back on him, I rummaged in the cabinets for something else to put out and found a package of Dulcie’s favorite Pepperidge Farm Milano cookies. So I got a plate and spent a few minutes laying them out, my Martha Stewart consciousness causing me to try to lay them out in some kind of pattern.

When I put them down on the table, I didn’t look back at him, but poured myself a cup of coffee and then used his spoon to stir in a teaspoon of sugar.

“We have had our profiler on this since the first woman was found.”

I nodded, waiting.

“And what we’ve put together is fine as far as it goes. But we are up against it on this one and time isn’t on our side anymore.” He shook his head. “Not that it ever was, but it’s worse now. He’s speeding up and we haven’t caught a break. No one remembers seeing him. We don’t have a clue what he looks like. He picks the busiest hotels, ones with hundreds of guests. And there are so many fingerprints, fibers and hair samples it’s like looking for the proverbial needle in the haystack.

“Our teams are working on it. We have some leads with the religious-supply houses. But even there I’m not holding out much hope. It’s not like he’s bought any one item to the exclusion of others. We’ve got it all. Nuns’ habits, communion wafers, what we think is holy water, and anointing oil. Basically, we are as on top of all the physical aspects of this
case as we can be, but we’re just not moving as fast as I’d like.”

He reached out, took one of the cookies and ate half of it before continuing. “I can’t sit around and wait. I have to get ahead of him. But to do that I need to get into the mind of this man.”

“And your forensic psychiatrist can’t do that because…?”

“He is trying to do that. But I want to involve you. Perez says you are the best person he has ever met at getting into the mind of someone with a sexual problem. He and Hobart—that’s our guy. You remember him?”

I nodded. Perez was good, Jordain was right. But he wasn’t always creative enough when it came to the more bizarre sex crimes.

“Well, Hobart agreed with Perez. I was surprised. It takes a healthy ego to agree to consult with someone from the outside.” He stopped, waiting, looking at me and expecting me to comment. I didn’t. But I did note that Jordain was talking shrink talk.

He sipped his coffee. When I didn’t say anything, he continued.

“Let me lay it all out for you. Show you the pictures. Go over the details of the cases. The ones that the reporters don’t have. All I’m asking are two things of you.

“One is that you let me tell you what we know. Get any insight you might have. The other is, I know that you’re worried about Cleo Thane’s disappearance and you’re going to, in your own way, try to find her. No, don’t argue with me. Just listen. I know you will. Even if you don’t know it yet. Because you can hardly even sit still when I talk about her. And what I want is an open communication with you in case you come across a connection. You won’t recognize it unless you know what page I’m on. Are you game?”

“No. The last thing I am is game.” I shook my head. “The
one time I agreed to consult with you guys, Hobart secondguessed everything I said and didn’t follow up. And I had nailed the guy’s psychosis. I don’t play well with teams.”

“I did my homework. Perez told me all about what happened last time. And about Sam Butterfield.”

I didn’t even acknowledge that but asked, “So why do you think I’d change my mind?”

“Because you care about Cleo. Besides, I’m not asking you to work with us. I’m just asking you to help me. And keep your eyes open. Take my cell phone number and call me whenever you want and let me know what you’re doing and thinking, and if there is anything—anything at all—that strikes you as a possible connection.”

He had been looking at me the whole time he was talking, but his gaze was becoming more intense. As if he was trying to see inside of me. To find someone there.

I knew the problem. I am so damn good at putting up a wall. At separating the patient from the shrink. And the shrink from the patient. At closing down emotionally so that I can just absorb and compute the information, the other person’s emotion and his or her dilemma. I make myself disappear. It makes me a good therapist.

I was doing it with Jordain, and he had not only noticed, he was fighting me for entry. Two points for the detective. Most people don’t. I don’t want my patients to, and don’t expect it of them. They are caught up in their own dramas—and the very point of the therapy is for them to connect to their own selves, their secrets, their souls. Not mine.

But my problem was that, since Mitch and I had separated, I’d gotten into the habit of closing myself off and staying in my comfort zone with everyone, not just my patients. Cut off and removed—that’s what I called it. No one could get to me when I was there. It was not only easy to venture forth without
connecting, it was painless. And lately I had been afraid of pain.

“Dr. Snow, I will not take advantage of you.”

I wanted to smile. His voice was just a shade too intimate, and it made totally acceptable comments strike me as absurdly flirtatious, even though there was nothing at all flirtatious in his demeanor or attitude.

In fact he was dead serious.

“You know you have to help me,” he said, making it sound personal. As if this was not about the police or the women at risk, but just about him.

“Why?”

“Because Cleo Thane is still missing and you can’t tell me anything about her, and the only way you can involve the police is if you consult with me. That way you could really be helping her. All without you compromising your ethics. Can you take the chance that you don’t need me with you on this?”

“Clever. The one thing—the only thing—that would influence me and you got it.”

He smiled, that same smile I’d seen in my office. His eyes squinted and the laugh lines around them deepened and his mouth went up at the corners. It was an off-center smile that was almost a smirk. It wasn’t arrogance, exactly, or selfassuredness that showed in that smile, but an audacity I responded to.

And there were other things I responded to. The way his fingers picked up his cup with a grace that a cop doesn’t usually have. The way he looked at things as if he was seeing past them. Even me. I couldn’t help it. His intensity was interesting. Atypical. And the analyst in me was intrigued by his contradictions.

“If I decided to do this I would have some rules.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he joked.

“No questions about Cleo Thane. Not one. Not one single question.”

He nodded and a lock of his thick hair fell into his eyes. He brushed it away and looked right into my eyes. “No questions. I promise.”

I didn’t know if I was right to or if I’d regret it later or if I was making a mistake, but I believed him.

S
he was scared by the darkness. By the idea that she might not be alive this time tomorrow. She was frightened because she had no idea what was expected of her or when she would escape from the nightmare she was shackled to.

But nothing terrorized her more than the silence. For hours at a time there was simply no noise, no sound. Nothing but her own heartbeat.

She had never been anywhere in her life that was this silent. Had never known how important noise was until she had been deprived of it for days.

How many?

How many days had she been here? Again she tried to figure it out. But when she thought back, she couldn’t count. There were not enough markers to tell her what time it was. She could not even tell sometimes if it was night or morning.

It was always dark in the cell. Even when he came to see her, he often kept it dark. But when she was alone, as she was
now, the blackness was dense and thick. As if it had dimension. As if it had weight. The weight of time passing without her knowing it.

In the darkness, Cleo could never see more than the ghostly glow of her bound hands and feet. They were so pale and thin she didn’t recognize them. She had always been thin, but now she was thinner. He did not give her much food. Sustenance. But that was all.

Other than craving sound, Cleo wanted to be able to use her hands. She wanted this desperately. She couldn’t touch her face or her hair. These are things you take for granted, she thought. Brushing a lock of hair off your cheek, rubbing your eye, resting your chin on your hand. Scratching an itch. And her arms and legs and her torso and breasts and back and neck itched. Everywhere the robe touched, her skin prickled. Her robe was abrasive against her skin. Where had it come from? This was not her clothing. She never would have bought anything so coarse. Or so heavy. Or so somber.

No client had ever asked her to wear a uniform like this.

Until now.

And until now, she had never minded doing what the men she’d been with asked of her.

But this had not been asked of her. This had been forced on her. He had stripped off her own clothes—the gray skirt and white silk blouse, the pale pink silk-and-lace bra and thong—and he had bathed her and then dressed her in this outfit.

When the blackness had first enveloped her head, when she felt the heaviness of the robe, in that one claustrophobic moment she had acknowledged what she had been afraid to accept until then. This was not a game. There was not going to be an easy end to this endless night.

She was not with a man who craved a simple sexual release or comfort or kindness.

If only she could hear a car horn. A bird chirping. A child calling out. If only there was some music playing nearby, wafting in through an open window. If only there was a dog barking. Or a leaf falling. Or the sound of a kettle boiling.

If only she could whisper her own name out loud and hear her own voice. If only she could touch her own face with her fingertips. If only she could lick her own lips.

Instead she felt the pull of the tape across her mouth and the taste of it—a fresh strip put on her twice a day—chemical and metallic.

She waited.

She waited longer.

She heard nothing.

She wanted to hear anything.

Anything except the one thing that was inevitable: the tapping of his shoes on the floor, coming toward her. The tread of the madman who wanted something from her that was not hers to give. That one sound was the only thing worse than this silence because it meant that she would have to endure his bizarre requests and pleas for an hour. Or sometimes two or three hours. But he had just left. She had time before he returned. But how much time?

If only she could hear a radio. Or the chiming of a clock. Or the ticking of a wristwatch. Any sound. To distract her from the confines of her dark prison where she sat and waited for the man who prayed at her feet for a deliverance she didn’t think would ever be hers to give.