several times to friends at Carlisle.
Carl Drucker turned over a note from Diana signed 'Wallflower' which police handwriting analysts verified was in the girl's hand. Moreover, a huge trove of evidence was found in Diana's room: airline ticket receipts, motel receipts, car rental receipts, caulking guns, glue, ice picks, and, most important, a hit list bearing the names of all the Wallflower victims. Kit said the evidence was so convincing that had i Diana survived her encounter with Janek, she would i easily have been convicted of murder. Which still left several other killings to be explained: the homeless man, the two non-Archer-connected Happy i Families, Leo Titus, and the attack against Janek on the final night.
The homeless man, according to Kit and Aaron's theory, was a practice shot in preparation for the later homicides. Diana, it seemed, was quite rigorous in her preparation. In addition to karate training, she worked out regularly at a local health club and two summers before had taken a ten-day course in commando tactics at a shadowy survivalist school in Colorado, where she learned the ice pick technique. (Aaron found the receipt in Diana's desk. Beverly had no knowledge of the foray; Diana had simply told her she was going white water rafung on her vacation.) In any event, it seemed consistent with such rigor that Diana would first try out her newly acquired skills on a relatively defenseless target in New York before venturing to distant cities in search of whole families to execute.
As for what exactly had attracted Diana to the two non-Archer-connected victim clusters (the Robert Wexler family in Fort Worth and the Anthony Scotto family in Providence)-that, said Aaron and Kit, would probably never be known. Beverly Archer had her own theory-namely, that the very image of a family stirred up tremendous murderous aggression inside Diana, similar to the aggression that had exploded on the morning she killed her own core family with the ax.
The stabbing of the cat burglar Leo Titus was easier to explain. By intruding into Beverly's house, he posed a threat of invasion to which Diana's hair-trigger mentality could only respond with an attack. Janek, of course, was another invader and thus had to be killed like the first.
In her interview Beverly stated her belief that had Janek not succeeded in stopping Diana, she herself would have become a victim the moment she reentered her house. An extra irony of the affair was that the Archer- connected Wallflower victims (Parce, Morse, and the MacDonalds) were minor figures in Beverly's past, people with whom she'd been out of touch for years. She hadn't even known any of them were dead until Aaron showed her the FBI's victim list.
The shrink seemed to have suffered something close to a nervous breakdown as a result of the discovery that her 'best patient' had in fact not been cured at all but had, even while in intensive therapy, committed a series of horrible murders against these past players in her life. Beverly's suffering over her therapeutic catastrophe was demonstrated to Janek on the videotape of her interview with Aaron.
While still in the hospital, Janek viewed this tape several times. In it the psychologist seemed truly shattered. The tight, withdrawn quality she'd displayed in her interviews with him were replaced in Aaron's interview by tearful eruptions of agony and remorse. Her cool half-smile was supplanted by haggard, tormented eyes, making for a portrait of a woman in despair. But after rerunning and studying the tape, Janek decided her performance was feigned. No matter her broken appearance and the apparent sincerity of her grief, he did not believe a word of it.
The result was that no matter how many times Aaron and Kit told him their story and no matter how much evidence they carted into his hospital room to prove it, Janek insisted it was not complete. If, as all the evidence showed, Diana Proctor had physically committed the murders, then, Janek maintained, by some method he could not describe, Beverly Archer had put Diana up to it.
'You're usually right about these things,' Kit said. 'But how can you be so sure?'
'I feel it,' Janek replied. 'I don't care how many times Diana described herself as a wallflower or signed her name that way. For me Beverly Archer is the only wallflower in the case. The flowers left beside the walls at the murder scenes were her signatures, not Diana's.'
On their first day in Yucatdn, Janek and Monika settled into their rented caseta, then lay out on their terrace in the sun. When it grew dark, they drove into Cozumel, looking for a place to eat. they explored for a while, finally settling on a quiet thatch-roofed restaurant on the beach where the wine was good and the fish was fresh and well prepared.
Afterward they took another walk through the town, passing various bars and clubs, pausing occasionally to listen to laughter or music playing within. Then Monika drove them back to their little blue and white house, where the garden was filled with orchids and hibiscus and the terrace overlooked the sea. Here they sat out as they had in the afternoon, staring across the water at a magnificent tropical moon, which reminded them of the moon that had lit their way not two months before in Venice.
'It happens every night around this time,' Janek said. 'I start feeling chilled and then afraid.'
'Of the dream?' He nodded. 'I can give you a pill,' Monika said. 'It will help you sleep and probably stop you from dreaming.
But I don't recommend it.' 'Why not?'
'I think it's good for you to dream, Frank. Even if the dream is bad. If you can dream it through, the power of the dream will weaken, and then you'll be released.'
Janek thought about that awhile. When he spoke again, his voice was hushed and steady.
'I can't see all the details. I see the redness over everything.
The glow like a kind of rust. And I see the picture, so big, looming there: the handsome face; the glossy red curls; the sparkling eyes; the cruel, sensual mouth. And then I see this slim, little, bald woman charging at me like a fiend. She sticks me. I feel the pain. The room begins to spin. And then I see other things, objects, but I'm whirling so fast I can't tell you what they are. I want to see them clearly, Monika. I think that's why I dream about them. to see them again, hoping this time they'll register. Because they're important. I know they are. ' He sat back, shrugged. '
I have no idea why That night, when the nightmare came and he began to shake, he felt her arms wrap his chest. The nightmare passed. He got up, shuffled to the bathroom, poured himself a glass of water, and drank it off. Back in bed, in her arms again, her breasts warm points against his back, he felt better, less haunted, not so cold.
'I've got an idea,' he whispered to her in the morning.
'What?'
'It's nice here. I like it. But I want us to go back to New York.'
'We just arrived, Frank.'
'I know. But there's something I want to do. The photos Aaron showed me weren't enough. I should have insisted on seeing the room again for myself. What do you say we fly up there this morning, spend twenty-four hours, then fly back? I know it'll be expensive, but I'll pay for the tickets. I think seeing the room in daylight will help.'
She shook her head. 'I don't think so, Frank. I don't think that will help you at all.'
'Look, I'm not a child. Whate'ver's there-I can take it. '
She smiled. 'Of course, you can. But there isn't anything there. You'll be wasting your time.'
'But-'
'Please, listen to me. Right now you're recovering from two major physical wounds and a great deal of psychic stress. In a few brief seconds, perhaps the most intense of your life, many things converged on yousound, sights, revelations. You saw things. You were attacked. You defended yourself, hit back at your attacker. Your mind suffered overload. Time and space were foreshortened and condensed. Some memories were etched, and others, perhaps the most important, were lost in the trauma of shooting that woman and being stabbed. No wonder you keep reliving those moments. The key to your nightmare, to your chills and tears, lies someplace within. Not in the actual room, as you might see it in daylight if we flew back to New York today, but in the room as you experienced it that night, the room as it seemed to you then. I told you that if you can re-create the vision that haunts you, it won't disturb you anymore. I believe that's true. It will become just another memory. The bad dream will… disappear.'
He rolled onto his back. 'Fine,' he said. 'Now how am I going to do all that?' 'After breakfast I'll drive down to the village. I'm going to buy you paper and a set of crayons.' 'Oh, Monika, please… m serious, Frank. I want you to draw.' 'Draw what?'
