moving; it took a few seconds for Bernadette's brain to start processing the words.
“-take me, not her. If you want my help, you're all going to have to cooperate. Leave the girl be, or so help me God you'll have to kill us both.”
Bernadette was afraid to look up at Max again. She kept her eyes on the other woman's face. Usually she could read white people easily-unlike Indians, everything they were thinking or feeling showed up on their faces. This Irene was deep, though, no shit. She'd been through the fires. Bernadette believed what she'd said. Again she steeled herself to die.
Fortunately, Max believed it too. “What the fuck, any port in a storm,” he growled, as much to the others as to himself. Then he gestured with the barrel of the pistol for Bernadette to get up.
42
Pender's resolve lasted a good forty-five seconds-he was still in the elevator when the slide show began. He saw Aletha Winkle and Terry Jervis alive; he saw them on the bed, shamed and butchered, then posed in a humiliating tableau. He saw the faces of the strawberry blonds. He saw his mother's face-how proud she'd been of him when he joined the bureau. A picture of her Eddie receiving a citation from Judge Sessions had gone with her to the nursing home where she died.
And lastly, he saw his father walking toward him in his dress blues, medallions gleaming. Quitters never win and Penders never quit. Then the elevator doors opened, and Pender caught sight of a big bald bozo in a loud sport jacket and crumpled hat reflected in the glass doors of the building entrance.
“Special Agent E. L. Pender reporting for duty, sir,” he said aloud, then saluted the comical figure in the glass the way his father had taught him-hand straight as a blade, upper arm parallel to the ground, and snap it off, boy, snap it off.
Where to?
That was the first question for Pender. No longer welcome in Monterey, he thought about jumping in the rented Toyota and driving north to Mendocino. But there was nothing he could do up there that wasn't already being done. Same for Santa Barbara, home of Paula Ann Wisniewski, the most recent strawberry blond-the L.A. field office would have agents all over Santa Barbara.
So his next question was, What do I know that nobody else knows? What do I have to bring to the party?
At the moment, he knew from listening to the tapes that the killer had multiple personalities, that he used the names Max, Christopher, and Lyssy, and that he'd been abused as a child. But within hours, transcriptions of the tapes would be available to every investigator, and the bureau would begin investigating DID patients, hospital records, DID support groups, as well as searching the national crime databases for name concurrences. (It occurred to Pender that Pastor would almost certainly take credit for finding the tapes; he was surprised to note that he didn't particularly care.)
So what other information did Pender have? He asked himself what salient facts would have gone into that report that Agent Pastor had requested, and was now about as likely to get as he was a blow job from the attorney general.
Easy: Dallas. The Sleep-Tite motel where you could call for a number-one girl to make boom-boom. A number-one girl named… what was it… think back… no, go back… pussy's pussy… call the desk… tightest little piece I ever… Ann something.. Ann Tran!
Where to? Suddenly Pender had the answer to his first question.
43
For her day and age, and taking into account her profession and the corner of the world she lived in, Irene Cogan's sexual experience was somewhat limited. She knew everything that people did, she just hadn't done much of it herself. And what she had done, she'd done with Frank-she'd remained a virgin until shortly after they became engaged. Their sex life was fulfilling, if not adventurous, a phrase that might have been applied to the rest of their marriage as well. The last time they made love was the night before he died. It was sweet; the next morning he was cold beside her. She hadn't made love to a man since, except in her dreams.
And now this. While Max handcuffed Bernadette to the steering wheel, Irene took a blanket from the trunk, spread it across a bed of pine needles, and stood beside it-for some reason it seemed important to her not to be lying down waiting for him. Then he was standing before her, face to face, and it was as if she were back in that dream of the operating theater, where they were naked, and he'd dropped to his knees and kissed her to orgasm.
If he drops to his knees, I'll die, she thought. Instead he took off her red wig, tossed it into the bushes, then leaned forward and kissed her. She realized he wanted her to open her mouth, to kiss him back. And she should have, she knew she should have-two lives were at stake-but she just couldn't bring herself to do it. She averted her face; or rather her head turned itself away from him- that was more how it felt.
“Even better,” he whispered into her left ear, which she'd unwittingly presented to him-at these close quarters there was no escaping intimacy. He brought his hand up, splayed those smooth, bony fingers across her left cheek, and shoved gently, turning her around, all the way around until her back was to him. One of his arms was around her chest, the other behind her, fumbling; she heard a zipper.
He was pressing the length of his body against her now; if he had an erection, she couldn't feel it. He grabbed the waistbands of her slacks and running shorts, and tugged them down to her lower thighs, his weight still pressed against her.
She toppled forward, her pants around her knees; the strong arm around her chest supported her, lowered her gently. Then she was on her hands and knees and his weight was on top of her, his arms around her. He slid his hands under Mrs. Bill's polyester blouse and pulled up her jogging bra to caress her breasts. She could feel his penis pressed against her panties, her homely white Olga panties. He began humping, rubbing his still soft penis against her buttocks, but making no attempt to lower her panties or enter her. Then he withdrew his hands from her breasts and began slapping her across the shoulders and the back of her head.
It didn't last long, a minute, maybe two. He moaned; his weight came off her. As she crawled on her hands and knees to the edge of the blanket, she heard him swearing under his breath. When he didn't come after her, she stood up, pulled her shorts and slacks up over her panties, rearranged her bra, started to turn around. His face was red; he was wiping his hand on his jeans.
Premature ejaculation, thought Irene, turning away again quickly, before he caught her looking. Frotteurism. Erectile dysfunction. Her inner voice had turned self-protectively clinical.
“I changed my mind,” said Max after another minute had passed. “It'd probably screw up our therapeutic relationship, don't you think?”
And that was that-it was over. Of course it would never really be over. Irene's neck and shoulders still stung from being slapped, and her breasts retained the sense memory of those slippery smooth fingertips. But she'd been preparing herself for far worse, so along with the shame and anger was an enormous sense of relief. And he'd never entered her, never been inside her-for some reason, that made more of a difference than she ever could have imagined.
Another cause for relief: afterward, Irene managed to talk Max into leaving Bernadette behind, arms cuffed behind her and ankles tied, but otherwise unharmed. He'd even helped Irene make the girl as comfortable as possible, gathering armfuls of pine needles to make a bed, and spreading a blanket over them.
“I promise we'll call somebody to come get you as soon as we're done with Maybelline,” Irene promised Bernadette loudly, as Maxwell returned to the car to fetch a second blanket from the trunk. Then, whispering: “You'll be safer here.”
“Don't worry about me-I can get loose, I know I can. I've seen people do it in movies-you work your hands behind your back and under your legs. I can walk back to the county road, somebody'll come along. Plus there's a
