“What happened?” she asked him.
“I had the bright idea I could put out a fire with my bare hands.”
“Those are grafts?”
“From the buttocks.” He laughed bitterly. “I suppose I should be grateful I don't have a hairy ass.”
“How old were you?”
“Old enough to know better.”
“It must have been terribly painful.”
“The pain was welcome.”
“Oh?”
“Guilt, you know. Burns hotter than fire.” Then, seeing Irene's eager expression: “And that's all I have to say on that subject.” He took the pencil in his left hand. “Ready when you are, Doctor.”
“All right… Begin.”
Irene checked her watch and made a note of the time-1:04 P.M. She also noted another eye roll and flutter- apparently one of the other alters was going to take the test. Or at least that was what he wanted her to think.
She'd brought along several journals to read, under the assumption that the MMPI would take at least two hours, but she'd scarcely finished the latest edition of the American Journal of Psychiatry when the prisoner announced that he was done.
Again Irene checked the time-2:02-and shook her head disbelievingly. “You do understand that if you answered randomly, it'll show up on the results.”
“The F scale, I believe.” He grinned proudly. “Give me another one.”
“Beg pardon?”
“Let me take another MMPI-did you bring another?”
“Yes, but-”
“Let me do it again.”
“But why?”
He leaned forward; the deputy, seated behind and to the side of the prisoner, half rose from his chair.
“You'll find out,” whispered the prisoner. Then, in case she hadn't made the connection, he whispered the words again. “You'll.. find… out.”
As in: That's for me to know and you to find out. Irene reached into her suitcase and brought out another answer sheet.
The prisoner finished the second MMPI in just over an hour. He had again switched alters both before and after the test, but kept his head down diligently during it, so Irene couldn't read him.
“How long will it take you to get the results back?” he asked, as the deputy once again fastened the prisoner's wrists to the chain around his waist, then left the room carrying his folding chair.
“Back?”
“Yes, back. You do send them out, don't you? To get them scored? Or do you do them yourself?”
Irene sidestepped the question. “Why do you ask?”
“Just wondering how long until our next session.”
“At this point, I can't even tell you whether there'll be a next session. I may not need to see you again to perform my evaluation-it depends in large part on the test results.”
“I'm not worried about that,” he replied confidently. “Once you get the results back, you'll want to interview me again-I guarantee it.”
“Oh? And why is that?”
“Because you've never seen anything like me.”
“In that case,” said Irene, “I'll be sure to pay particular attention.”
“I'll be sure to pay par-tic-u-lar atten-shee-un.” Again, the devastatingly accurate imitation, this time with a petulant twist. Then, in his own voice: “Don't patronize me, Dr. Cogan. I haven't done anything to deserve that tone from you.”
“You're right, and I apologize,” said Irene promptly. “I'll be evaluating the tests tonight-if I need a follow-up interview, it'll probably be within a day or two.”
“I'll be looking forward to it,” said the prisoner.
For the first time that day, Irene turned her back to him as she lifted the receiver of the black telephone on the wall.
“We're about done here,” she told the female deputy who picked up on the other end. The woman told her someone would be right in. When Irene turned around again she had the impression she was meeting yet a fourth alter-his posture had slumped, as if he were suddenly exhausted, and he had developed a mild tic in his right eye.
“There ih-ih-is one thing,” he said-the stammer on the initial vowel sounds was new. “If it were possible, if circumstances were uh-uh-altered, so to speak, would you consider taking uh-us ahahon a-as uh-uh-a patient?”
“I'm not terribly comfortable with hypotheticals,” said Irene, her suspicions heightened-true multiples, who'd spent their entire lives trying to disguise their dissociated identities, rarely used the first person plural until after months of therapy, if then. She hauled her leather briefcase onto the desk and began to pack up her things. “In any event, I wouldn't be able to say for sure until after I'd reached a working diagnosis. I have a small, rather specialized practice, and I couldn't tell you at this point whether you fit the parameters. I can tell you this much, though-I couldn't treat a patient who doesn't trust me enough to even give me his name.”
“Fair eh-eh-enough,” replied the prisoner. Another eye roll, another alter switch, as the deputy entered the room behind him. Then, in a whisper: “By the way, next session, if you get a chance, maybe you could pick up a pack of Camel straights on your way over. There's not enough nicotine in those Benson and Hedges to pacify a lab rat.”
“Maybe,” said Irene. “If there is a next time.”
“Thanks,” he said hurriedly, as the deputy tapped him on the shoulder.
“On your feet, Doe-let's go.”
“Whatever you say, boss-you're the ace with the Mace.”
“Good-bye, Christopher,” Irene said, snapping her briefcase shut. She wanted to see how he would react to the name.
“Call me Max,” he said with a wink, shuffling toward the door with the deputy at his elbow.
“Good-bye, Max.” Irene wasn't sure what, if anything, she'd learned from this latest gambit.
The prisoner turned and and gave her another wink, broader this time. “Good night, Irene,” he called, as his guard hustled him out the door. “See you in my dreams.”
7
Sheriff Bustamante's warning aside, Special Agent E. L. Pender knew better than most what he was getting into. (E.L. stood for Edgar Lee, but no FBI man named Edgar used his first name professionally for long.) He'd joined the FBI in '72, at the age of twenty-eight, after working six years as a Cortland County sheriff's deputy and earning a degree in criminology in his spare time, then spent his first five years with the bureau paying his dues at the resident agency in Arkansas before being transferred to the New York field office. His wife Pam had paid her dues too, trying to make a go of it in New York on the same salary he'd earned in Arkansas-in those days there was no cost-of-living differential for FBI agents.
In the late seventies, Pender had been transferred to Washington to help his old FBI Academy roommate Steve McDougal form a unit to coordinate multijurisdictional, multivictim homicide investigations. Never again, it was hoped, would a serial killer be able to gain an advantage by moving from one jurisdiction to another.
And for the next ten years or so Pender was one of the bureau's golden boys. He'd hunted serial killers all around the country, moving from one task force to another, going wherever his skills were needed, and spent his spare time interviewing jailed serial killers for the VICAP-Violent Criminal Apprehension Program- files.
