Speaking in Tongues (33 page)

Tate leapt out of the car and ran to the first door he could find. Gripping his pistol hard, he flung all his weight against the double panels.

He was expecting them to be locked. But the doors swung open with virtually no resistance and he stumbled headfirst into a large, dim lobby.

He saw shadows, shapes of furniture, angles of walls, unlit lamps, dust motes circling in the air.

He saw faint shafts of predawn blue light bleeding in through the windows.

But he never saw the bat or tire iron or whatever it was that hummed through the air behind him and caught him with a glancing blow just above the ear.

A hand stroked his hair.

Lying on his side, on a cold floor, Tate slowly opened his eyes, which stung fiercely from his own sweat. He tried to focus on the face before him. He believed momentarily that the soft fingers were Bett’s; she’d been the first person in his thoughts as he came to consciousness.

But he found that the blue eyes he gazed into were Megan’s.

“Hey, honey,” he wheezed.

“Dad.” Her face was pale, her hair pasted to her head with sweat, her hands bloody.

They were in the lobby of the decrepit hospital. His hands were bound behind him with scratchy rope. His vision was blurry. He got up and nearly fainted from the pain that roared in his temple.

Aaron Matthews was sitting on a chair nearby watching them both like the helpless prisoners that they were.

What astonishing black eyes he has, Tate thought. Like dark lasers. They turned to you as if you were the only person in the universe. Why, patients would tell him anything. He understood why Bett had been
powerless to resist him earlier that night when he’d come to her house. Konnie too. And Megan.

Then he saw that Matthews was hurt. A large patch of blood covered the side of his shirt and he was sweating. His nose too was bloody. Tate glanced at Megan. She gave a weak smile and nodded, answering his tacit question if she was responsible for the wound. He lowered his head to the girl’s shoulder. A moment later Tate looked up. “You’ve lost those five pounds you wanted to,” he said to her. “You’re lean and mean.”

“It was ten,” she joked.

Matthews finally said, “Well, Tate Collier. Well . . .”

Such a smooth, baritone voice, Tate reflected. But not phony or slick. So natural, so comforting. Patients would cling to every word he uttered.

“I was just doing my job,” Tate finally said to him. “Peter’s trial, I mean. The evidence was there. The jury believed it.”

Megan frowned and Tate explained about the trial and the boy’s murder in prison.

The girl scowled, said to Matthews, “I knew you’d never worked with him on cases. Those were just more lies.”

Matthews didn’t even notice her. He crossed his arms. “You probably don’t know it, Collier, but I used to watch you in court. After Pete died I’d go to your trials. I’d sit in the back of the gallery for hours and hours. You know what struck me? You reminded me of myself in therapy sessions. Talking to the patients. Leading them where they didn’t want to go. You did exactly the same with the witnesses and the juries.”

Tate said nothing.

Matthews smiled briefly. “And I learned some things about the law.
Mens rea.
The state of a killer’s mind—he has to
intend
the death in order to be guilty of murder. Well, that was you, all right, at Pete’s trial. You
murdered
Pete. You intended him to die.”

“My job was to prosecute cases as best I could.”

“If,”
Matthews pounced, “that was true then why did you quit prosecuting? Why did you turn tail and run?”

“Because I regretted what happened to your son,” Tate answered.

Matthews lowered his sweaty, stubbly face. “You looked at my boy and said, ‘You’re dead.’ You stood up in court and felt the power flowing through you. And you
liked
it.”

Tate looked around the room. “You did all this? And you went after all the others—Konnie and Hanson and Eckhard? Bett, too.”

“Mom?” Megan whispered.

“No, she’s okay,” Tate reassured her.

“I had to stop you,” Matthews said. “You kept coming. You wouldn’t listen to reason. You wouldn’t do what you were supposed to.”

“This is where you were committed, right?”

“Him?” Megan asked. “I thought he’d worked here.”

“I thought so too,” Tate said, “but then I remembered testimony at Peter’s trial. No. He
was
a therapist but
he
was the one committed here.” Nodding at Matthews. “Not Peter.” Tate recalled the trial:

Mr. Bogan:
Now, Dr. Rothstein, could you give an opinion of the source and nature of Peter’s difficulties?

Dr. Rothstein:
Yes sir. Peter displays socialization
problems. He is more comfortable with inanimate creations—stories and books and cartoons and the like—than with people. He also suffers from what I call affect deficit. The reason, from reviewing his medical records, appears to be that his father would lock him in his room for long periods of time—weeks, even months—and the only contact the boy would have with anyone was with his father, Aaron. He wouldn’t even let the boy’s mother see him. Peter withdrew into his books and television. Apparently the only time the boy spent with his mother and others was when his father was committed in mental hospitals for bipolar depression and delusional behavior.

Matthews said, “I was here, let’s see, on six intakes. Must have been four years altogether. I was like a jailhouse lawyer, Collier. As soon as the patients heard I was a therapist they started coming to me.”

“So
you
were ‘Patient Matthews,’ ” Megan said, eyes widening. “In the reports about the deaths here.”

“That’s my Megan,” Matthews said.

She said to Tate, “They closed this place because of a bunch of suicides. I thought it was
Peter
who’d killed them.”

“But it was you?” Tate asked Matthews.

“The DSM-III diagnosis was that I was sociopathic—well, it’s called an antisocial/criminal personality now. How delicate. I knew the hospital examiners in Richmond were looking for an excuse to close down places like this. So I simply helped them out. The place was too understaffed and too incompetent to keep patients from killing themselves. So they shut it down.”

“But it was really just a game to you, right?” Megan
asked in disgust. “Seeing how many patients you could talk into suicide.”

Matthews shrugged. He continued. “I got transferred to a halfway house and one bright, sunny May morning, I walked out the front door. Moved to Prince William County, right behind your farm. And started planning how to destroy you.” Matthews winced and pressed his side. The wound didn’t seem that severe.

Tate recalled something else from the trial and asked, “What about your wife?”

Matthews said nothing but his eyes responded.

Tate understood. “She was your first victim, wasn’t she? Did you talk her into killing herself? Or maybe just slip some drugs into her wine during dinner?”

“She was vulnerable,” Matthews responded. “Insecure. Most therapists are.”

Tate asked, “What was she trying to do? Take Peter away from you?”

“Yes, she was. She wanted to place him in a hospital full-time. She shouldn’t have meddled.
I
understood Peter. No one else did.”

“But you made Peter the way he was,” Megan blurted. “You cut him off from the world.”

She was right. Tate recalled the defense’s expert witness, Dr. Rothstein, testifying that if you arrest development by isolating a child before the age of eight, social—and communications—skills will never develop. You’ve basically destroyed the child forever.

Tate remembered too how he’d handled the expert witness’s testimony at Peter Matthews’s murder trial.

The Court:
The Commonwealth may cross-examine.

Mr. Collier:
Dr. Rothstein, thank you for that trip
down memory lane about the defendant’s sad history. But let me ask you: psychologically, is the defendant capable of premeditated murder?

Dr. Rothstein:
Peter Matthews is a troubled—

Mr. Collier:
Your Honor?

The Court:
Please answer the question, sir.

Dr. Rothstein:
I—

Mr. Collier:
Is the defendant capable of premeditated murder?

Dr. Rothstein:
Yes, but—

Mr. Collier:
No further questions.

“All he needed was
me!”
Matthews now raged. “He didn’t need anyone else in his life. We’d spend
hours
together—when my wife wasn’t trying to sneak him out the door.”

“Did you love him that much?” Tate asked.

“You don’t have a clue, do you? Why, you know what we did? Peter and I? We
talked.
About everything. About snakes, about stars, about floods, about explorers, about airplanes, about the mind . . .”

Delusional ramblings, Tate imagined. Poor Peter, baffled and lonely, undoubtedly could do nothing but listen.

Yet . . . with a sorrowful twist deep within him Tate realized that this was something Megan and he
didn’t
do. They didn’t talk at all. They never had.

And now we won’t ever, he realized. We’ve lost that chance forever.

Their captor fell silent, looking into a corner of the hospital lobby, lost in a memory or thought or some confused delusion.

Finally Tate said, “So, Aaron. Tell me what you
want. Tell me exactly.” He closed his eyes, fighting the incredible pain in his head.

After a moment Matthews said, “I want justice. Pure and simple. I’m going to kill your daughter and you’re going to watch. You’ll live with that sight for the rest of your life.”

So it’s come to this . . .

Tate sighed and thought, as he had so often on the way to the jury box or the podium in a debate,
All right, time to get to work.

•   •   •

“I don’t know how you can have justice, Aaron,” Tate said to him. “I just don’t know. In all my years practicing law—”

Matthews’s face writhed in disgust. “Oh, stop right there.”

“What?” Tate asked innocently.

“I hear it,” the psychiatrist said. “The glib tongue, the smooth words. You have the orator’s gift . . . sure. We know that. But so do I. I’m immune to you.”

“I won’t try to talk you into a single thing, Aaron. You don’t seem to be the sort—”

“It won’t work! Not with me. The advocate’s tricks. The therapist’s tricks. ‘Personalize the discourse.’ ‘Aaron’ this and ‘Aaron’ that. Try to get me to think of you as a specific human being,
Tate.
But that won’t work,
Tate.
See, it’s Tate Collier the human being I despise.”

Undeterred, Tate continued, “Was he your only child? Peter?”

“Why even try?” Matthews rolled his eyes.

“All I want is to get out of this and save our lives. Is that a surprise?”

“A perfect example of a rhetorical question. Well, no, it’s not a surprise. But there’s nothing you can say that’s going to make any difference.”

“I’m trying to save your life too, Aaron. They know about you. The police. You heard the message from the detective, I assume? On your answering machine?”

“They may figure it out eventually but since you’re here by yourself, an escapee, I think I have a bit of time.”

“What does he mean?” Megan asked. “Escapee?”

He saw no reason to tell her now that her friend Amy was dead. He shook his head and continued, “Let’s talk, Aaron. I’m a wealthy man. You’re going to have to leave the country. I’ll give you some money if you let us go.”

“Leading with your weakest argument. Doesn’t that mean you’ve just lost the debate? That’s what you say on your American Forensics Association tape.”

The faint smile never wavered from Tate’s face. “You saw my house, the land,” he continued. “You know I’ve got resources.”

A splinter of disdain in Matthews’s eyes.

“How much do you want?”

“You’re using a rhetorical fallacy. Appealing to a false need—for diversion.” Matthews smiled. “I do it all the time. Soften up the patient, get the defenses down. Then, bang, a kick in the head. Come on, I didn’t do this for ransom. That’s obvious.”

“Whatever your motive
was,
Aaron, the circumstances’ve changed. They know about you now. But you’ve got a chance to get out of the country. I can get you a half million in cash. Just like that. More by hocking the house.”

Matthews said nothing but paced slowly, staring at Megan, who gazed back defiantly.

Tate knew, of course, that money wasn’t the issue at all; neither was helping Matthews escape. His immediate purpose was simply to make the man indecisive, wear down his resistance. Matthews was right—this was a diversion. And even though the man knew it Tate believed the technique was working.

“I can’t make you a rich man but I can make you comfortable.”

“Pointless,” Matthews said, shaking his head as if he were disappointed.