The Hand That Feeds You (14 page)

More chilling was the discovery made by the forensic psychologist Adrian Raine. He found that psychopaths shared one biological factor—a low pulse rate. The significance of this discovery is that increasing levels of risk are necessary to create a heightened feeling of excitement. Dr. Raine also found that successful psychopaths—the ones who elude capture—are able to increase their pulse rate enough to make them careful. Less successful are the psychopaths who do not experience a significant rise in pulse rate; their attempts to feel excitement become increasingly reckless until they are caught.

Not all sociopaths are psychopaths. It’s not just a matter of degree. The predisposition to violence is high in a psychopath, whereas it varies in the sociopath. In criminal behavior the psychopath leaves clues, whereas the sociopath schemes to minimize exposure. Most pertinent to my research was that a psychopath is unable to maintain a normal relationship, while a sociopath can appear superficially normal while actually functioning as a social predator.

Clinical definitions differentiate on the basis of the ability to feel empathy—the received wisdom says that psychopaths feel none, while sociopaths experience a diminished form of empathy, but choose to ignore it. Psychopaths are fearless; sociopaths aren’t. Psychopaths don’t understand right from wrong; sociopaths do, though it doesn’t change their behavior. Bennett was a sociopath if he lied so comfortably and completely to me and everyone else. He was a psychopath if he killed Susan Rorke and then drove to Maine for a romantic weekend with me.

My theory was provocative: both sociopaths and psychopaths may lack empathy, but sociopaths are aware enough of other people’s feelings to see what they are missing—love—and they want some of that. They seek out goodness as well as weakness in their victims (Speck killing nurses, Bundy asking for help), because where there is goodness, there is often love.

Working on my thesis had been a worthy distraction from the meeting with Pat Loewi that I had arranged the night before. I told her that I had information about her ex-husband that I needed to discuss with her. When I sensed her hesitation, I offered to go to her and she acquiesced. I recognized her before I stepped off the jitney because she said she would have her dog with her. Two women were holding on to leashed dogs, waiting. A stock figure of the equestrienne in jodhpurs and riding boots was wrangling a retriever; and then there was, I felt certain, Bennett’s ex-wife. A slight woman with curly, shoulder-length red hair, gray at the roots. She wore an oversize barn jacket, jeans, and wellies. Sitting at attention beside her was a sleek and powerful-looking rottweiler.

She held the leash with both hands. “Audie needs to know a person before you can touch her.”

Far from a welcome, this woman had brought backup. We walked from the jitney stop and headed slowly up Main Street away from the wharf. I chose to walk to the right of Pat since she had Audie on her left. I thanked her for agreeing to meet me. We passed three shops targeted for tourists before she said, “I thought we might take Audie over to Havens Beach. It’s about a fifteen-minute walk.”

We fell into an easy pace, and after a couple more blocks I said I needed a coffee and could I bring her one, too. She said she didn’t drink coffee, just tea, but when I offered to bring her tea instead, she said she only drank green tea and the deli I was heading into did not have it. I was in and out in a couple of minutes with only the coffee.

We continued up Main Street until Pat turned left onto a residential street. Everything I’d thought to ask or say was too lame to utter. The news I planned to deliver was the kind of news for which the time is never right. Still, I thought I would wait to tell her until we were on the beach.

Havens Beach, off-season, was nearly empty of people. But several unaccompanied dogs ran into and out of the gentle waves of the bay. I worried that Pat would unleash her unreliable dog, and then she did. Audie sniffed at my purse—the repository of so many treats.

“Just ignore her,” Pat said.

It came out in a rush. I told her that her ex-husband was dead.

“We were never married.”

Did Samantha lie to me, or did she really not know?

The moment Pat said that, Audie was at her side, fixing me in her gaze. Though Pat had not spoken loudly, the dog had picked up her distress and stood ready.

I told her the circumstances of his death. I told her that I had been engaged to him at the time. I told her that I was not the only one engaged to him at the time, and that another fiancée had just been murdered, possibly by Pat’s former lover.

So much for easing her into it.

“He never liked dogs and dogs never liked him.” Pat seemed remarkably composed, though her dog grew agitated, reacting to what I assumed were her true feelings. I waited for her to go on. Pat picked a piece of sea glass from the sand and examined it. “So he hadn’t changed. Only two fiancées?”

“This doesn’t surprise you.”

“He lived by his own rules.” Audie ran off into the waves. “But murder is a new one.”

“The police think he did it.”

“And you don’t?”

“I don’t know what I think.” I hadn’t noticed Audie’s return from the water until she shook off next to me.

“I know I’m not reacting the way you might have expected. But this man put me through it.”

“How long were you with him?”

“Long enough for him to derail my life. You?”

“I got off easy. Relatively.” I didn’t want to one-up her in any way. I wanted her to tell me what he had done to her.

“I was teaching an extension studio course out here, interviewing students during registration, when this cocky kid in tight jeans and a white T-shirt asked the department secretary if there was still room in my class. I was busy with another student. The kid—he looked about twenty-one—couldn’t or wouldn’t wait until I was free. When he turned to leave, I whispered to the secretary, ‘There’s always room in my class for him.’ I whispered, but the acoustics of the room were such that he heard me; I saw him stop. I had twelve years on him, but from then on he pursued me.

“I was painting then, looking for a gallery. He claimed great enthusiasm for my work and talked about opening a gallery someday. There was no biological clock ticking, but my gallery clock was ticking. You know the old joke about how the Holland Tunnel was built: they gave New Jersey artists teaspoons and said the first one to dig to Manhattan gets a gallery. It took years for me to see what he had seen in me: an opportunity.

“He didn’t have money. He had charm. And he charmed me out of everything I cared about.”

We were walking in step along the hard-packed sand, taking turns throwing a stick for Audie to retrieve.

“The irony was that I taught him everything he knew about art, without even knowing I was doing it. And when he knew enough to realize the value of my grandfather’s paintings, he stole the only two canvases of his that I had. His going-away present to himself.”

“Jesus.”

“It gets better. I was hurt that he didn’t steal
my
work.”

“He caused a lot of us a lot of hurt.”

“How many are we talking about here?”

“Including myself, four that I know about. That’s concurrent, not consecutive.”

That got a small laugh from her. Audie seemed to share in the mood change; she flipped onto her back in the sand and kicked her legs in the air, then righted herself and shook the sand off. We had been walking into the wind, and a further synchronicity had us turn together to head back. Pat asked if I’d like to see her studio.

We walked for another twenty minutes before she turned onto a narrow dirt drive through the woods. I feared ticks despite the low temperature. What was the cutoff point when you didn’t have to worry about them? We moved through scrub oak and pine, the soil sandy. I was wishing I had not worn my good suede boots. These woods had not been cleared of storm damage, and we had to climb over broken limbs.

Pat’s studio was a weathered silver-cedar barn about the size of a three-car garage, with an old sliding door bolted shut and padlocked. After turning the combination right, left, and then right again, Pat threw her weight into the push that slid the door open. She slapped the wall where a switch was, and fluorescent light filled the space. It was much larger than it looked from the outside.

I had expected generic seascapes and was surprised by the life-size nude photographs of her posed with a bloody heart held against her left breast.

“Don’t worry, it’s a pig’s heart.”

Was I worried? I was now. In the photos she looked about ten years younger than the woman standing next to me. Pat preempted whatever I might have thought to say with a single word: “Subtle. I did these right after he left; I got them out after you called last night.” She pointed to another wall. “Here’s what I’m up to now.”

Here were the seascapes, made modern by muted patterns of graphite waves. If Vija Celmins hadn’t got there first, Pat would have been onto something. Pat was adding to what was already in the world, instead of creating something new. It appeared that Bennett had also stolen her nerve.

She made us green tea and then gave Audie an enormous smoked femur to chew on. I was incredulous that Pat didn’t seem to see the horror of this after what I had told her about Bennett’s death. The sound of tooth on bone was unnerving.

As if on cue there was a noise outside—a sound like the snapping of branches underfoot. Audie raced to the window and set to barking and snarling. With the lights on in the studio, and the sun gone down, neither Pat nor I could see outside. Audie lunged at the glass and I feared it would break. I did a quick survey of the studio to see where I might hide. I was standing in a brightly lit, open space. I was close to panicking, yet Pat remained oddly oblivious.

“I switched to acrylic with this series. I don’t know if I like the surfaces as much, but I’m too impatient to wait for oil to dry.”

“Does Audie always act like this? Should we look outside?”

“It’s either a raccoon trying to get into the trash or a coyote. In either case, I’m not letting Audie out. My other dog was killed last week by coyotes.”

“Oh, God, I’m so sorry.”

“Well, the neighbors think it’s coyotes, but I’m not so sure.”

“What else could it be?”

“Audie, enough!” The dog finally retreated from the window with a low growl. Pat walked over to where the naked self-portraits hung. Staring at her younger self, she said, “I know his real name.”

My mouth felt dry. “Who was he?”

“It cost me five thousand to find out.”

I expected her to go on, but when she didn’t, I wondered if she was expecting payment for passing along this information to me.

“I hired a PI to track down my grandfather’s paintings. He discovered that they’d been auctioned in Qatar for a little over a million dollars. He said the seller was anonymous, but he was able to determine that the seller was from Maine.”

“You said you know his name.”

“I know the name he started out with: Jimmy Gordon. The PI never found the paintings, but he got me an address for Jimmy’s mother.”

“What was she like?”

“I never contacted the woman. Why would I want her in my life?”

“Would you mind if I contacted her?”

“Ask her where my grandfather’s paintings are.”

I carried our empty mugs over to the slop sink in one corner of the studio. Audie watched me from her dog bed. I gave her wide berth. I asked if I could use the bathroom before I left.

“The studio doesn’t have one. I just go in the woods.”

I thanked her for the tea and for taking the time to meet with me.

Pat asked if I had a recent photo of Bennett. I took out the worn half of the photograph that I still carried with me and handed it to her. She glanced at it and handed it right back. “Still inscrutable. That haircut—Jesus.”

I had wanted to ask her one question—Did she feel he was capable of murder?—but I wouldn’t have trusted her answer.

Pat slid the door open barely enough for me to squeeze through and closed it the moment I was outside. There was only a quarter moon and no other lights were in sight. Only ten steps but I had already veered from the narrow path. I felt for a Kleenex in my tote bag and squatted. I relieved myself, terrified of poison ivy, ticks, snakes, wolf spiders, and coyotes. I’d hitched up my pants. I could hear Audie going ballistic inside the studio; I hoped it was inside.

I headed for what I hoped would be the way out. A branch scratched my cheek enough to draw a little blood, I twisted my ankle, I moved through a spiderweb face-first, all in darkness. I had to talk myself down from panic. I strained to hear the sound of traffic. All I heard was barking.

A cloud cover obscured the stars, not that I could have navigated by them. I found my cell phone and tried to get a signal, but there was no service. Why hadn’t I downloaded the flashlight app?

My coat was not adequate against the damp cold. Then it hit me: find the shore and I’ll know where to go. I tried to detect any scent other than the pine that surrounded me. Either it was an olfactory hallucination or I really did pick up the faintest whiff of the sea.

I moved cautiously in that direction, but after a couple of minutes I lost the scent and my short-lived confidence. I heard a sound like the one I had heard in the studio, a branch snapping underfoot. The last of my composure left me. I moved as quickly as I could away from the sound, which wasn’t quick enough. I heard it again and said out loud, “Really?” This was the staple of countless horror films: a woman alone flees an unknown predator in the dark woods. Who was the predator? Audie? Coyotes? Pat? Samantha? The person who pretended to be Susan Rorke? In that instant, as though reading it on the page, I recovered a quote by Helen Keller, “Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. The fearful are caught as often as the bold.” I mean, if walking through your life blind and deaf doesn’t teach you about fear, nothing will.

My heartbeat slowed, I took a deep breath and continued in the direction of what might be the sea. On the heels of Helen Keller, something that Cilla had told me came to mind: “Curiosity conquers fear even more than bravery does.” As I felt my way through the dark, I asked the question that had guided me so far. The question wasn’t whether or not Bennett was capable of murder. The question was, how had I been capable of loving him?