Psychopath (28 page)

When you returned home from your birthday party in the park, it was not your father who attacked you.  It was your mother, the woman you idealize as your long-suffering defender, the beauty you fantasize cowering in the corner, blowing you a kiss.  What a pretty illusion.

Your mother gave you that birthday party, then turned on you and punished you for having it, split your lip, destroyed your gifts.  How could your young mind make sense of that dichotomy:  kindness and cruelty from the same person?  How could you do anything but split her into two — the perfect mother who loved you completely, the demonic other who tortured you?

She was one and the same.  She loved you and hated you, nursed you and cursed you, caressed you and beat you.

In what other ways did she terrorize you, Gabriel?  What else did she do to completely sever your sensitivity and intelligence from your aggression, so that the aggression floated free, unrestrained by reason, untempered by empathy, and became embodied in the Highway Killer?

I do not believe you search for victims.  I believe you search for comfort, for love, for the kind of complete union you fantasize you had with her.  But it was a mirage then, and it is a mirage now.  Being reminded of that fact reignites the primitive rage you felt as a boy, the infant’s pure fury when the breast is pulled from his hungry lips
.

Clevenger decided to cast another line for someone who might remember a rare, intimate interaction with a perfect stranger:

Only when someone fulfills your titanic need for closeness can you let that person go.  Only when someone connects immediately and intensely — in a way he or she would never be likely to forget — do you feel sufficiently well-fed to forego a blood meal.

You took no blood sample from Paulette Bramberg or Sally Pierce.  For them, your violence was pure and unrestrained, possibly entirely unconscious, since it erupted from that dark well you refuse even to acknowledge:  your hatred for the woman who brought you into the world.

The pain in your head and in your jaw, the aching in your gut, are your body’s reactions to you suppressing the truth:  you had no one to defend you as a child.  You were entirely vulnerable to the mood swings of the woman upon whom you depended for love.  When she provided it, you felt alive.  When she withheld it, you felt dead.  And as you drive the highways, you are fleeing from the truth that she was two things:  your angel and your devil.

The reason you focus on my connection with Whitney McCormick is that male-female relationships always appear toxic to you, full of peril.  Because in your mind a woman is never as she seems to be.  Behind every kind word, every tender touch, each passionate moment, lurks the unpredictable demon you feared as a child — the demon you wrongly remember as your father.

Did you ever meet your father, Gabriel?  Can you bring his face to mind?  His voice?  Do you have a single possession that was his?  Haven’t you ever wondered why not?  Where has he gone?  Disappeared into thin air?

Why did your mother call you a ‘little bastard’ — literally a fatherless child?

He wanted to make the Highway Killer confront the truth by inducing him to paint a mental image of it:

Put this letter down a moment, close your eyes, and picture the scene you described in your house again.  Put your mother’s face on the person striking you, berating you, destroying your toys.  Can you even bear to do it?  And once you put that face on your assailant, can you remove it?  Or is it permanently affixed there by reality, by the truth the Highway Killer could never bear to see — that your mother was, like you, both darkness and light, good and evil, heaven and hell.

The words of Jung you quoted should speak to you now:

The sad truth is that man’s real life consists of a complex of inexorable opposites — day and night, birth and death, happiness and misery, good and evil.  We are not sure that one will prevail against the other, that good will overcome evil, or joy defeat pain.  Life is a battleground.  It always has been, and always will be; and if it were not so, existence would come to an end.

Let go of your illusions.  Let yourself be the boy injured by a violent, schizophrenic mother, rather than the living embodiment of her illness.  Embrace the parts of you that died as a child and you will no longer hunger to watch others die.  Look long and hard at what was murdered inside you, and the Highway Killer will die a vampire’s death under the bright light of the truth.

Every day you remain ill does indeed reflect my limitations as a healer, but it also represents your limitations as a human being and as a Christian.  Should we fail to stop the Highway Killer, my skill as a physician will be in question.

But your stake is infinitely greater: the final verdict on your soul.

You are the one lost in your blind love for a woman, Gabriel, not me.  See her for what she was and set yourself free.

He read the letter a few times before signing it.  He was going on his gut, which he had learned was the only way to take a giant leap forward — in an investigation or in psychotherapy.  The real breakthroughs came when you pushed your intuition to the limit.  But there was no turning back when you took that gamble.  You either got through to the patient and changed his life or you lost him — sometimes for that session, sometimes forever.  And Clevenger had no illusions:  losing Gabriel meant other people would lose their lives.

e l e v e n

Jonah took his seat behind his desk as soon as Hank Garber had taken one of the chairs in front of it.  Sam was sitting beside his father, nervously drumming his fingers on his thigh.  The
New York Times
lay on Jonah’s desk, his letter splayed across the front page.

Hank motioned toward the paper.  "Another one of them letters out of New York City?"  He shook his head.  "Bet you’d like to get under the hood of that crackpot."

"Yes," Jonah said, with a smile, "I would."  He paused.  "I’m glad you were willing to meet.  And I think it’s just as well your wife wasn’t able to.  It gives the three of us a little time."

"Heaven’s got her own health problems," Hank said, looking over at Sam.  "Back went out on her again.  She’s in a world of pain."

Sam looked down.

Jonah didn’t want the boy to lose his nerve.  "Trust me on this — your son is suffering far more than your wife," he said to Hank.  "That’s why I asked you here.  Sam wants you to hear firsthand what he’s going to tell the Department of Social Services tomorrow.  He needs you to back him up, to admit that he’s telling the truth."

Hank looked at Sam.  "Ain’t told nothin’ but the truth from the beginning."

Sam shrugged weakly.

"A couple, three accidents," Hank said, his unblinking eyes bearing down on the boy.

"Telling DSS what really happened will help you keep custody of your son," Jonah persisted.  "You could take him home with you — provided, of course, your wife isn’t living with you anymore."

Hank blinked once, but never stopped staring at Sam.  "We had a run of bad luck.  But I’m gonna be around a hell of a lot more.  Keep track of things.  Keep you safe."

Sam looked up at his father.

Jonah could see hope clouding the boy’s eyes.  The poor kid was thinking things really might be different this time, that maybe he should keep his secret.  "Go ahead, Sam," Jonah said.  "Tell him."

Sam looked down again.

"You have all the power," Jonah said.  He waited for Sam to look at him.  "But you have to use it."

Sam gazed into Jonah’s eyes several seconds, as if recharging a weak battery running his soul.  He turned to his father.  "You know how she is to me," he said.

You know how she is to me
.  Jonah’s scalp tingled.  Sam had spoken just those seven words, but the words were no less moving to Jonah than the Declaration of Independence or the Emancipation Proclamation or Jesus’ words from the cross.  Because with them, beaten and abused Sam Garber, shackled to a life that was no life, had suddenly and irrevocably declared himself free, declared himself alive.

Hank held up his hand. "Things are gonna be all right if you just—"

"Won’t, though," Sam said, choked up.  "You know it."

Hank closed his eyes.

Jonah waited a few seconds before speaking.  When he did, his voice was pure compassion.  All his rage was blissfully submerged in the tortured lives before him.  "Why are you so afraid of losing her, Hank?" he asked.  "Why risk losing Sam?"

Hank took a deep breath, shook his head.

"Who left
you
as a child?" Jonah asked.

"Nobody by their own choosing.  I can tell you that."

"You lost someone you loved."

Hank suddenly looked angry.  "Since you want to know so bad, my parents got killed," Hank said.

"I do want to know," Jonah said, his voice a gentle wave rolling to shore.  "How old were you?"

"Six," Hank said.

"A car crash," Jonah said, half to himself.  Jonah’s breathing slowed.  The muscles in his arms went slack.  "You were in the car."

Hank nodded.

The last of the background noise in Jonah’s brain evaporated.  "Who raised you?"

"I got put with an aunt."

Put with
.  Not
raised by
.  Not
taken care of by
.  "She was cruel," Jonah said.

"I was a tough little bastard," Hank said.  He winked at Sam.

"You couldn’t leave your aunt when you were a child," Jonah said.  "You had already lost the two people who truly loved you."

Hank stayed silent.

"You would be all alone.  A little boy with nowhere to go."

Hank shrugged in the same weak way Sam had moments before.  "It’s just how she was," he said, then squinted and shook his head, seeming to realize how similar his words were to the ones he had heard from Sam.

"Here’s the saddest part," Jonah said.  "You
never
really left.  Because Heaven is just like your aunt.  She probably even looks like your aunt, now that you think of it.  A big woman.  A blonde woman.  Brown eyes."

The look of disbelief on Hank’s face proved what Jonah had said was true.

"All you’ve done is transfer your suffering to your son."

Hank swallowed hard.  "Sam’s like me," he said, his voice cracking.  "Tough."

"He is tough," Jonah said.  "But maybe not as tough as you.  And Heaven may be more violent than your aunt.  That’s the big danger when you re-create the past — you can never get it exactly right."  He paused.  "You survived.  That doesn’t mean Sam will."

Hank’s eyes filled up.

"He’s going to tell the truth tomorrow," Jonah said.  "That gives you one last chance to be true to him.  Don’t waste that chance, Hank.  Help DSS do the right thing.  Back Sam up."

Several seconds passed in silence.

"Dad?" Sam said.

Hank wouldn’t look at him.

"
Dad?
"

Hank wrapped his arms around himself and hung his head.

"It’ll be okay," Sam said.

Jonah nearly gasped, watching this victim, this young and tortured soul, become a healer before his eyes.

Hank’s chin was quivering. "All right," he said, still looking down. "All right.  We’ll do this together."

Sam smiled the first real smile Jonah had seen on his face, a full, ear-to-ear grin.  He stood up, bounded over to Hank, but stopped short when Hank didn’t raise his head.

Jonah literally held his breath as the seconds crawled by, seconds slowed by the weighty question of whether Hank — nothing but a beaten, frightened boy himself — could grow suddenly into a real man, into a real father willing to do for his son what he could not do for himself.  Ten, eleven seconds passed in that purgatory.  And just as Jonah was about to lose hope, just as he was about to acknowledge that God cannot be everywhere for everyone at every moment, he watched in amazement as Hank opened his arms, grabbed his son, and held him to his heart.  And then Jonah felt God’s love shining down upon all of them, despite Anna Beckwith and Scott Carmady and Paulette Bramberg and Sally Pierce and all the others.  Despite Heaven Garber.  Despite his own monster of a father.  Despite every evil in the world.  Despite his own evil.  And he knew in his heart that he would be saved.

*            *            *

Though we often miss it, the world has symmetry, a true pattern.  We are connected one to another in mystical, immeasurable ways we know little about.  As Hank Garber was embracing his son in Jonah’s office on the fifth floor of the Rock Springs Medical Center in Wyoming, Clevenger was being escorted to Linda Diario’s office on the fifth floor of the Department of Social Services, 3,354 miles away in Boston.

He was already a couple rounds into a day that felt like a heavyweight bout.  Kane Warner had called around 6:00 a.m., railing against the
Times
’s decision to print the Highway Killer’s letter and warning Clevenger not to respond.  "You’d be interfering with an ongoing investigation," Warner had said.

"I happen to have been part of that investigation until you shut me out," Clevenger told him.  "Now I have to go my own way."

"You don’t care about anyone but yourself, do you?"

"If this is where I’m supposed to start feeling bad for you, book an appointment."

"You’ve got this guy focused on a sexual relationship between you and Whitney," Warner said.  "He was
watching
the two of you in Utah.  And the way I read his letter, he’s got the twisted idea in his head he can save you from her.  You can’t know whether the guy is around the corner from her condo right now.  And you don’t give a shit."