"Blood Memory" - читать интересную книгу автора (Iles Greg)

Chapter 17

Nathan Malik is standing at the sideboard, lighting a cone of incense on a burner before the Buddha. A tendril of gray smoke spirals upward, and the aroma of sandalwood reaches me. When he returns to his desk and takes his seat, the aura of threat that surrounded him before is gone. With his shaved head, spare frame, and black clothing, he looks almost like a choreographer from a Broadway show. But that’s an illusion, I remind myself. This man has killed people in combat, if not in the city outside this office.

“Do you believe that traumatic memories can be lost, Catherine?”

In my mind I see the flashing blue lights on the night my father died, and feel the terrible blankness of the hours before that. “I don’t reject the idea out of hand. I suppose I’m a little suspicious of it.”

“Most people are. The word repression itself is freighted with all sorts of Freudian overtones. We should drop it altogether. Memories are lost by a sophisticated neurological trick called dissociation. Dissociation is a well-documented human defense mechanism. I’m sure you recall it from your med school days.”

“Refresh my memory.”

“Daydreaming is a common example of dissociation. You’re sitting in a classroom, but your mind is a thousand miles away. Your body’s in one place, your mind in another. When the professor calls your name, you might as well have been asleep. We’ve all experienced that.”

“Sure.”

“How about driving your car while totally focused on something inside it? The CD player. A child. Programming your cell phone. Your body and brain are performing the task of driving, of keeping the car on the road, while your conscious mind is entirely occupied elsewhere. I’ve actually driven quite a distance without consciously looking at the road.”

“So have I. But I don’t have amnesia for whatever I was doing at the time.”

“You weren’t in a traumatic situation.” Malik gives me a paternal smile. “When used as a coping mechanism against trauma, dissociation has far more profound effects. When human beings are placed under such severe stress that fight or flight are the only sane responses, they must do one or the other. If they’re in a position where neither response is possible, the brain-the mind, rather-will attempt to flee on its own. The body endures the trauma, but the mind, in effect, is not present. It may well watch the trauma occur, but it will not process it. Not conventionally, anyway.” Malik has not moved a muscle apart from those that control his mouth and jaw. “Do you find this concept difficult to accept?”

“It makes sense. In theory.”

“Then let’s get down to cases. Imagine a three-year-old girl suffering repeated rape. Several nights a week-she never knows which-a man ten times her weight and strength slips into her room and does things to her body. Initially she may be flattered. She feels pleasure and participates. But eventually the secret nature of the activity comes home to her. She begs him to stop. He doesn’t. Threats are made. Threats of violence, abandonment, murder. A tremendous amount of negative anticipation is set up inside her mind. She endures unimaginable levels of fear. Which night will he come? Does going to sleep make him come? But no matter what she does to prevent it, he still comes. This huge and terrifying man-usually a man who is supposed to love and protect her-climbs on top of her and begins to hurt her. Maybe she’s four or five now, but she can’t fight or run from him. So, what happens? Just as in combat situations, the brain attempts to cope with the unbearable as best it can. Massive defense mechanisms are set in motion. And dissociation is the most powerful of those mechanisms. The girl’s mind simply vacates the premises, and only her body suffers the rape. In the most extreme cases, these kids develop DID.”

“DID?”

“Dissociative identity disorder. What we used to call multiple personalty disorder. The mind becomes so adept at splitting off from reality that separate psyches come into being. Prolonged sexual abuse is the only known cause of multiple personality disorder.”

“These traumatic memories,” I say, trying to find my way back to the main thread of the conversation. “They remain intact? Even though the person isn’t conscious of them? Intact and accessible at a later date? Years later?”

Malik nods. “The degree of recall varies, of course, but not the veracity. The actual memory is indelible. It’s simply located in another part of the brain. This idea, of course, is at the root of the repressed memory debate.”

“Well, how do you help patients access these lost memories?”

“In some ways, they’re not really lost. If an adult woman finds herself in a situation similar to that in which the abuse took place-say normal sex with her husband, and he tries something new, like oral or rear-entry sex-she may suddenly experience panic, pain, heart palpitations, anything. A smell can trigger the same responses. A hair cream the abuser wore, say. Bathrooms can do it. This phenomenon is called body memory. The sensory part of the brain recalls the trauma, but the conscious mind does not.”

“But how do you bring these memories to the conscious level? Talk therapy? Hypnosis? What?”

“Hypnosis has been largely discredited as a tool of memory recovery. Inexperienced clinicians have implanted too many false memories with it. Which is a pity. Throwing the baby out with the bathwater, I think.”

“Do you use drugs?”

Malik looks impatient. “I use whatever approach I think best for a particular patient. Drugs, talk therapy, EMDR, hypnosis-I could run clinical jargon past you for hours, precise but pointless. I find it useful to use symbolism when discussing my work. Mythology, most of all. The Greeks knew a thing or two about psychology. Incest, especially.”

Malik’s gaze wanders to my legs again. I pull my skirt down over my knees. “I’m all ears.”

“Are you familiar with the concept of the underworld? The River Styx? Charon, the ferryman? Cerberus, the three-headed dog?”

“I know the basics.”

“If you want to understand my work, think of it this way. Victims of chronic sexual abuse aren’t merely the walking wounded. They’re the walking dead. The repeated trauma and dissociation I described to you has effectively killed their spirits. ‘Soul murder’ is how some clinicians describe this pathology. I see these patients’ souls as trapped in the underworld. Call it the subconscious, whatever you will. The children that they once were are cut off from the world of light, wandering in eternal shadow. But though their souls have crossed the river to the land of the dead, their bodies remain behind. With us.”

I remember the jacket of Malik’s book, the old man in the boat waiting for the young woman to board. “What river do they cross? The Styx? Your book had Lethe in the title.”

Malik smiles in surprise. “Five rivers bordered the underworld. Styx was merely the river the gods swore oaths by. My patients have crossed Lethe, the river of forgetfulness. And my job is to do what the living are not meant to do: journey to the land of the dead and bring back the souls of those poor children.”

“Is that how you see yourself? A classic hero reversing the whims of fate?”

“No. But it’s certainly a heroic undertaking. In myth, only Orpheus came close to accomplishing the task, and even he failed in the end. I actually see myself as Charon, the ferryman. I know the underworld the way most people know this one, and I guide travelers back and forth between the two.”

I think about the metaphor for a while. “It’s interesting that you identify with Charon. The main thing I remember about him is that he had to be paid to ferry the dead across the river.”

“Your turn for insults?” Malik smiles in appreciation. “Yes, Charon had to be paid. With a coin in the mouth. But you misunderstand the metaphor. My fees don’t pay the price of the patient’s journey to the underworld. The patients have usually paid that price long before they see me.”

“To whom?”

“To the darkness. The price is paid in tears and pain.”

To avoid Malik’s challenging gaze, I look over at the Buddha. “Repressed-memory work is pretty controversial. Aren’t you afraid of lawsuits?”

“Lawyers are parasites, Catherine. I have no fear of them. I deal in truth. I journey to the land of the dead and come back with memories that terrify the most powerful of men. They haven’t got the balls to sue me. They know that if they do, they’ll be destroyed. Destroyed by eyewitnesses to their own depravity.”

“What about your patients?”

“I’ve never been sued by a patient.”

“Haven’t you ever made a mistake? I mean, even if delayed-memory recall is a real phenomenon, there are many documented cases of such memories being proven false. Recantations by patients. Right?”

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. Noa 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. “Wellperhaps 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 abusewhat’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 happened to me. Tried to, anyway. I was very drunk. She didn’t believe me.”

“Why not?”

“Sarah was married by then. She’d married at seventeen. To get out of the house, of course, the fastest way she could. I asked if our father had done anything like that to her. She was flabbergasted. Didn’t know what I was talking about.”

“Maybe she was just pretending she didn’t.”

“No. Her eyes were blank as a doll’s. Two years later, I was drafted and sent to Vietnam. I did well there. I had a lot of rage inside, but also a desire to help people. A quite common paradox among abuse victims. They made me a medical corpsman, but I still managed to kill some Vietnamese.”

“Vietcong?”

Malik raises one eyebrow. “Dead Vietnamese were by definition Vietcong. Surely you know that.”

“Why would I know that?”

Another cryptic smile.

My sense of emotional nakedness has returned. “Look, if you have something to say about my father, why don’t you get it out? You knew him, didn’t you?”

“I know every man who served in Vietnam, more or less. We’re brothers under the skin.”

“You didn’t answer my question.”

Malik sighs. “I never knew your father.”

“Are you speaking literally or figuratively?”

“Does it matter?”

“Jesus. You were the same age, from the same state, and you both went to Vietnam- ”

“How much do you remember about the night your father died, Catherine?”

“That’s none of your business.”

“I’d like to make it my business. I think I could help you with it. If you would trust me-”

“I’m not here for therapy, Doctor.”

“Are you sure? You look like you could use a drink. I have some Isojiman sake here. No vodka, I’m afraid.”

How the hell does he know I drink vodka? Does he remember that from ten years ago? “Finish your story,” I tell him, trying to steer the conversation onto safe ground.

“Did I not?”

“Your sister had been abused, too, right? But she blocked out the memory?”

Malik studies me for perhaps half a minute. Then he begins speaking softly. “During my tour in-country, I got a letter from Sarah. She’d been having nightmares for some time. But now she was having what she thought were hallucinations. While she was awake. Images of our father removing her clothes, touching her. Those were flashbacks, of course, not hallucinations. At the end of her letter, she told me she’d been thinking of harming herself. Of ending her life.”

“What triggered all that? Your talking to her?”

“No. She had a daughter by then, and the daughter had just turned three-probably the age at which my father began abusing Sarah. That’s a very common trigger for delayed memory recall in young adult women.”

“What did you do?”

“I tried to get compassionate leave to go back to the States. The army wasn’t having any. I wrote her letters every day, trying to keep up her spirits, pointing out all she had to live for. Some of it must have rung hollow, because I had my suicidal moments, too. I’d run to wounded men in the middle of firefights, when I was almost certain to catch a bullet. I ran through mortar fire, machine-gun fire, everything. They gave me a medal for my death wish. A Bronze Star. Anywaymy letters weren’t enough. The flashbacks got worse, and Sarah came to realize that she was seeing something that had really happened to her. She couldn’t bear that. She hanged herself while her husband and daughter were at the zoo.”

Malik is no longer looking at me. His eyes have focused somewhere in the middle distance, and the glaze over them tells me his mind is far away. I don’t even presume to express my sympathy.

“I want to know what I’m doing here,” I say quietly.

The thinnest of smiles touches his lips, and then his eyes focus on mine at last. “So do I, Catherine.”

It’s time to end any semblance of a charade. “I’m here because I think you killed those five men.”

Malik’s eyes flicker above the smile. “Do you really?”

“If you didn’t kill them, you know who did. And you’re protecting them.”

“Them?”

“Him, whatever. You get my point.”

“Oh, Catherine. I expected so much more from you.”

His condescension is finally too much for me to bear. “I think our murder victims are male relatives of your patients-sexual abusers-and that by killing them you see yourself as some kind of crusader against an evil you know only too well.”

The psychiatrist watches me in silence. “What would you think of me if that were true? Pedophilia has the highest rate of recidivism of any crime. Abusers never stop, Catherine. They just move on to new victims. They cannot be rehabilitated.”

“Are you saying that murdering them is justified?”

“I’m saying that death or infirmity are the only things that will stop them.”

I pray that the transmitter is relaying all this to Kaiser and the others.

“Are you an expert shot, Doctor?”

“I can hit what I aim at.”

“Do you practice martial arts?”

He glances at the samurai sword on the wall. “I could decapitate you with that before the SWAT team outside could get in here, if that’s what you mean.”

A shudder goes through me. I glance at the closed door behind me, praying there’s a SWAT officer on the other side of it. I’ve forgotten the safety phrase. Something about football-

I almost jump out of my chair when Malik stands, but he only folds his arms across his chest and looks at me with something like pity. “When you leave, remember that we’ve barely scratched the surface of this subject. We haven’t even discussed the guilty ones.”

“The guilty ones?”

He nods. “How can a holocaust happen in our midst without the community rising up to stop it?”

“Well”

“Think about that, Catherine. I have things to do now. You can tell me your thoughts at our next meeting.”

“There won’t be another meeting.”

Malik smiles. “Of course there will. Much is going to come to you over the next few days. That’s the way it works.” He reaches back and takes something off a low table. Then he leans across the table that serves as his desk and holds it out.

It’s a business card.

Out of curiosity, I stand and take it. On it is printed Malik’s name, and beneath that two phone numbers.

“Call me,” he says. “If they decide to jail me, don’t worry. I’m quite capable of taking care of myself.”

The meeting is over. I walk to the door, then turn back one last time. Malik looks odd standing there, clad in black from head to toe, so still that he could be carved in stone. I’m not sure he blinked once during the entire interview.

“Don’t blame yourself,” he says.