Encyclopedias. History. Back issues of Scientific American, Poultry Journal. Fiction: heavy on Joyce-at least three separate editions of Ulysses. Horror fiction-King, Koontz, Card. Paperback crime novels with lurid covers. True crime, mostly serial killer biographies: Bundy, Gacy, Jack the Ripper, Thomas Piper, Bela Kiss, Dr. Thomas Neill Cream. Red Dragon and Silence of the Lambs. Stacks of National Geographics with their distinctive yellow covers. Travel books. Spy novels. Medical books-a facsimile first edition of Gray's Anatomy. Stacks upon stacks of pornographic magazines, heavy on bondage and discipline. Pornographic paperbacks, most of them rape- or incest- themed, judging by their covers, were mixed up with manuals on carpentry, furniture and cabinet making, hunting, wig making, butchering, wiring, gardening.
And along the back wall, scattered haphazardly under open wooden shutters that had probably once led to a hay chute, was a collection of psychology texts and journals that surpassed Irene's own library. All the standard texts, including a valuable first edition of Rorschach's Psychodiagnostics and several handbooks on the MMPI and TAT-no wonder Maxwell had done so well on his standardized tests.
There was also an eclectic assortment of journals and magazines. Out of curiosity, Irene started going through the periodicals, looking for the issues that contained her pieces, the ones that Mose had cited. She spotted one right away: a copy of the Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology with her article on DID vs. MPD. Next to that, leaning against the back wall, a 1997 issue of the Journal of Nervous and Mental Diseases.
And there in the corner was the copy of Psychology Today with her article on dissociative trance disorder and Pentecostal Christianity. She thumbed through it, saw her picture in the contributor's column.
“Good night, Irene, my Aunt Fanny,” she muttered. Maxwell, with Mose's help, had probably recognized her the first time he laid eyes on her.
On her way down the ladder, it occurred to Irene that she'd overlooked an unlikely, but terribly important possibility. Maybelline! The car phone! Dear God, was it possible he'd left the phone in the Caddy?
She jumped the last few feet to the ground and raced the length of the barn to the de Ville. No keys, but the cell phone was still plugged into the cigarette lighter, the charging indicator a glowing red dot in the dim light of the barn. Irene held her breath, took the phone out of the cradle, and read the green display in the handset window. NO SERVICE.
Then she remembered Maxwell telling her yesterday morning that he'd had to climb up to the hayloft to get a signal. She scrambled back up the ladder and tried the phone again. NO SERVICE. She paced the length of the loft, even leaned way out the window and held the phone over her head. NO SERVICE NO SERVICE NO SERVICE.
But Maxwell had promised her he'd called about Bernadette. She thought back to her last glimpse through the rearview mirror of the black-haired girl lying on her side, her eyes closed, unmoving, and understood, with a sick heavy feeling, that Maxwell had lied, that he had either killed Bernadette or left her there to die of exposure. Then she recalled Maxwell's cryptic words when he'd emerged from old Bill's trailer in Big Sur: I happen to know the old man just gave up smoking.
I bet he did, thought Irene. And Barbara? Had Maxwell lied about Barbara? Had he somehow finished her off as well? With a moan, Irene dropped to her knees and began vomiting up what little remained in her stomach of the fine country breakfast Miss Miller had cooked for her five hours earlier.
67
Feeling uncomfortable about leaving Irene and Miss Miller alone at the ranch, even locked in their rooms, Maxwell hurried through his errands in town. It was Useless who refilled Miss Miller's prescriptions and purchased a bottle of Lady Clairol Strawberry Blonds Forever at the Old Umpqua Pharmacy, spent two hundred dollars of Donna Hughes's remaining mad money at CostCo to replenish food stocks depleted by his long absence, and stopped into the Old Umpqua Feed Barn at the outskirts of town. But it was Christopher who left the feed store with chicken pellets, supplements, dog treats, and four fifty-pound bags of dog chow- the familiar surroundings, the sweet smell of hay and alfalfa, the dusty, particulate light streaming in from the high windows, had triggered an alter switch.
With the Grand Cherokee loaded to the gunwales, the drive back to Scorned Ridge via the hairpin twists and cutback turns of Charbonneau Road took nearly an hour, but Christopher enjoyed it immensely. After his long session this morning, and a short rest in the darkness, he was feeling astonishingly well-vital, recharged. It was true what Ish's books in the loft said about the cathartic effect of talking out your innermost sorrows.
It had been the first time he'd ever discussed Mary with anyone but the unsympathetic Miss Miller, and although according to the books it was far too early to expect a complete healing, nonetheless he was starting to feel as if the worst was behind him. After all, what did the books know about the resources and capabilities of a state-of-the-art multiple?
But even a fully conscious, next-generation multiple couldn't have done it on his own. Christopher understood that he had Irene to thank for his newfound peace-he realized suddenly that he was in the process of falling head over heels in love with his shrink.
And although he knew what the books would say- transference-he had to remind himself once again that the singles who wrote those books didn't understand what it was like to be a multiple. Falling in love was Christopher's function. It strengthened the system, it vitalized the body.
It also pissed off Max no end-but that was Max's problem. He should have seen this coming-and the fact that he had not indicated to Christopher that Max's control might be weakening, that his long tyrannical reign over the system might at last be coming to an end.
Christopher drove the Cherokee into the cool green darkness of the sally port and closed the gate behind him. The dogs came out to greet him; he roughhoused with them for a few minutes and gave each of them a rawhide chew, then unloaded the dog chow before unlocking the inner gate and driving the Cherokee on through.
After unloading the groceries at the house and stripping off the scraggly gray wig he always wore into town, Christopher drove on to the barn to park the Cherokee, then hurried back up to the house. On his way out of the barn, he noticed a sour smell he hadn't picked up before-probably a dead rodent-but was in too much of a hurry to see his new beloved to look for its origin just yet.
Now that he knew he loved her, he couldn't wait to see Irene. He took the stairs two at a time, pretending not to hear Miss Miller calling to him from her room, and knocked at Irene's door. No answer. He knocked louder, then turned his key in the lock and silently opened the door.
She wasn't there. A quick moment of panic, a glance at the narrow window-then he heard the shower running. He tiptoed into the bathroom and saw her slender body silhouetted through the opaque shower curtain. His erection pressed against his trousers- it took an effort of pure willpower to back out of the room again. After all, he had guaranteed her privacy. And forty-eight hours in the darkness was far too long a time for Christopher to be separated from his beloved.
As Irene, exhausted emotionally from her discovery in the loft and physically from the desperate climb back up to the bedroom, turned off the water and stepped out of the shower, she heard Maxwell calling to her from the hallway.
“Be right there,” she yelled back as she wrapped one towel around her, and a second around her hair. On her way across the bedroom she glanced around to be sure that everything was in order-window closed, sheets and blankets back on the bed- before opening the door.
“I brought you a present,” said Maxwell, stepping past her into the room. He handed her the Strawberry Blonds Forever. “Until your natural color grows out.”
Irene's mind spun trying to work through the permutations of meaning in the gesture-was he readying her for a sacrifice? A love affair? But all other thoughts were driven from her head by Christopher's next statement:
“I see you've been a naughty girl.”
She blanched, turned away, struggled for control of her voice. “What… what do you mean?”
He gestured toward the writing table by the window. “Your lunch-you haven't touched it.”
