The psychiatrist waves his hand. “I’m not getting into that controversy with you. Recantations are a problem for therapists who are inexperienced, misguided, poorly trained, or downright gutless.”
I understand why Harold Shubb warned me that the FBI had better have an ironclad case if they were going after Malik. The man has no fear, and he never questions his own judgment. But maybe that’s his weakness. “I’ve been here for quite a while now, and you haven’t asked me anything about the murders.”
Malik looks surprised. “Did you expect me to?”
“I thought they would interest you from a psychiatric perspective.”
“I’m afraid sexual homicide is depressingly predictable as a rule. I suppose trying to identify and apprehend particular offenders offers a certain lurid excitement-the thrill of the hunt, as it were-but I have no interest in that.”
Malik’s subtle cuts and backhanded insults remind me of my grandfather on a bad day. “You don’t see sexual homicide as an extreme form of sexual abuse?”
He shrugs. “It’s merely the dropping of the other shoe. The poisoned chicken coming home to roost. Childhood sexual abuse is almost universal in serial murderers. And they’ve frequently suffered the most systematic and violent forms of it. The rage they carry is unbearable. Their turning that violence back on the world is as inevitable as the setting of the sun.”
I suddenly remember Kaiser and the others listening to the transmission from my “hidden” microphone. I have a unique opportunity to probe their most likely suspect, and I don’t want to squander it. I close my eyes and try to let instinct guide me, but the voice that comes to me is not my own.
“Do you have nightmares, Catherine? Recurring nightmares?”
Before I can dissemble or deny, I see blue lights in the rain and my father lying dead, his eyes open to the sky. Hordes of faceless figures caper at the edges of the scene, the dark men who’ve tried to break into my house during countless dreams. Then the image vanishes, and I find myself riding slowly over a grassy pasture with my grandfather, in the round-nosed, old pickup truck that smells of mildew and hand-rolled cigarettes. We grind our way up a hill, toward the pond that lies on the other side. My grandfather is smiling, but the fear in my chest is like a wild animal trying to claw its way out of my body. I don’t want to see what’s on the other side of that hill. This dream began only two weeks ago. Yet each time it recurs, the truck moves farther toward the crest-
“Why do you ask that?”
Malik is watching me with compassion in his face. “I sense needs in certain people. I sense pain. It’s an empathic ability I’ve always had. More a burden than a gift, really.”
“I don’t remember you as particularly empathetic. Or insightful, for that matter. Mostly I remember you as an arrogant smart-ass.”
An understanding smile from the doctor. “You’re still an alcoholic, aren’t you? But you’re not an annoying drunk. No…a secret drinker.” His face wears the sad familiarity of a man for whom life holds no surprises. “Yes, that’s you. Publicly an overachiever, privately a mess.”
I want to pull the microphone from the transmitter on my thigh. John Kaiser and the FBI wire team are the only ones hearing this now, but God only knows how many people will listen to the tape later.
“I mentioned EMDR therapy earlier,” Malik says. “Have you heard of it?”
I shake my head.
“It stands for ‘eye movement desensitization and reprocessing.’ It’s a relatively new therapy that’s worked wonders for PTSD patients. It allows you safely to reexperience your trauma without becoming too distraught to handle the information. You might derive great benefit from that.”
I’m not sure I’ve heard correctly. “I beg your pardon?”
“You’ve obviously suffered severe trauma in your life, Catherine. You showed clear signs of PTSD when I knew you in Jackson. Similar to the Vietnam vets I was working with at the time. That’s another reason I noticed you.”
I don’t want to let Malik know how close to the bone he’s come, but he has gotten me curious. “What kind of trauma do you think I suffered?”
“The murder of your father, for a start. Beyond that, I have no idea. Merely living with him in the years prior to his death might have constituted severe stress.”
I feel a rush of anxiety, as though my innermost thoughts have suddenly become visible to the man sitting in front of me. “What do you know about my father?”
“I know he was wounded in Vietnam, and that he suffered severe post-traumatic stress disorder.”
“How do you know that? Did Chris Omartian tell you that?”
Another careworn smile. “Does it matter?”
“It matters to me.”
Malik leans back and sighs. “Well…perhaps we can go into more detail at another time.”
“Why not now?”
“We’re not exactly alone here.”
“I have nothing to hide,” I say with bravado I don’t feel.
“We all hide things, Catherine. Sometimes from ourselves.”
His voice feels like a stiff finger probing the spongy tissue of my brain. “Look, if we’re ever going to talk about this, now’s the only chance we’re going to get.”
“I’m sorry to hear that. I thought you might consider coming to me as a patient.”
My scalp is tingling again. “Are you kidding me?”
“I’m quite serious.”
I cross my legs and try to keep my face impassive. “This is a joke, right? I don’t even know what I’m doing here, except that you used to hit on me when I was a stupid kid dating a man twenty-five years older than I was.”
“And married,” Malik observes.
“And married. So?”
“You’re over that now, are you? Dating married men?”
I don’t want to lie, but Sean is already in enough trouble. “Yes, I’m over it.”
“A peccadillo of your student days? All behind you now?”
“Go to hell. What is this?”
“A frank conversation. Exchanging confidences is the basis of trust, Catherine.”
“Exchanging? You haven’t told me a damn thing.”
Malik gives me an expansive smile. “What would you like to know? We can trade stories. I’ll show you mine, if you show me yours.”
“Is that something you do commonly with patients? Trade horror stories?”
“I do whatever is required. I’m not afraid to experiment.”
“Do you consider that ethical?”
“In the benighted times in which we live, I consider it essential.”
“All right, then. Let’s do some sharing. Your spiel about being the ferryman to the underworld sounded a little shopworn to me. The stuff about the holocaust was from the heart. You’re not just a bystander to sexual abuse, are you?”
Malik looks more intrigued than angry. “What are you suggesting?”
“I think you have some personal experience.”
“You’re very perceptive.”
“You were sexually abused as a child?”
“Yes.”
I feel a strange quivering in my limbs, as though from a mild electric shock. This is the stuff Kaiser wants and needs. “By whom?”
“My father.”
“I’m sorry. Did you repress the memory?”
“No. But it destroyed me anyway.”
“Can you talk about it?”
Malik gives another dismissive wave of his hand. “The actual abuse…what’s the point? It’s not the crimes against us that make us unique, but our responses. When I was sixteen, I talked to my older sister about what had
