A matter of control

Halfway between his Stewart’s stop and Walnut Crossing, Gurney’s phone rang again. Rebecca Holdenfield’s voice was smart, edgy—as reminiscent of the young Sigourney Weaver as were her face and hair. “So I guess you’re not coming?”

“Beg pardon?”

“Don’t you check your messages?”

He remembered. That morning there had been one text and one voice mail. He’d checked the text first—the message that had spun him off into a world of speculation about his brownstone blackout. He’d never checked the voice mail.

“Christ, I’m sorry, Rebecca. I’m running too damn fast. You expected me this afternoon?”

“It was your request in your voice mail to me. So I said fine, come.”

“Any chance we could do it tomorrow? What’s tomorrow, anyway?”

“Tuesday. And I’m jammed all day. How about Thursday? That’s my next free time.”

“Too far away. Can we talk now?”

“I’m free till five. Which means we have about ten minutes. What’s the topic?”

“I’ve got a few: the effects of being raised by a promiscuous mother, the mind-set of women who sexually abuse children, the psychological weaknesses of male sex murderers … and the behavior range of adult males under the influence of a Rohypnol cocktail.”

After a two-second silence, she burst into laughter. “Sure. And in the time we have left after that, we can discuss the causes of divorce, ways to eliminate war, and—”

“Okay, okay, I get it. Pick the topic you think we have enough time to talk about.”

“You planning on spiking your next martini with Rohypnol?”

“Hardly.”

“Just an academic question, then?”

“Sort of.”

“Hmm. Well, there’s no standard range of behavior for intoxication in general. Different chemicals skew behavior in different directions. Cocaine, for example, tends to produce a heightened sexual drive. But if what you’re asking is, are there limits to the behavior that a nonhallucinogenic disinhibitor will allow, the answer is yes and no. There’s no specific limit that applies to everyone, but there are individual limits.”

“Like what?”

“There’s no way of knowing. The limitations on our behavior depend on the accuracy of our perceptions, the strength of our instinctive desires, and the strength of our fears. If the drug is a disinhibitor that removes our fear of consequences, then our behavior will reflect our desires and be limited mainly by pain, satisfaction, or exhaustion. We’ll do whatever we would do in a world with no consequences, but not things we have no desire to do. Disinhibitors give free rein to one’s existing impulses, but they don’t manufacture impulses that are inconsistent with the underlying psychic structure of the individual. Am I answering your question?”

“Bottom line, give people a drug like that and they might act out their fantasies?”

“They might even do things they’d been afraid to fantasize about.”

“I see,” he said, feeling sick to his stomach. “Let me change the subject to something completely different. A recent Mapleshade graduate has turned up dead—a sex murder in Florida. Rape, torture, decapitation, body in the suspect’s freezer.”

“How long?” As usual, Holdenfield was unfazed by gory details—or adept at making it seem that way.

“What do you mean?”

“How long was the body in the freezer?”

“ME thought a couple of days, maybe. Why do you ask?”

“Just wondering what he was saving it for. It was a he, right?”

“Jordan Ballston, hotshot in the financial-derivatives business.”

“Ballston, the super-rich guy? I remember reading about that. First-degree murder charge. But that was months ago.”

“Right, but the identity of the victim was originally withheld from the media, and the connection to the other disappearances at Mapleshade was just discovered.”

“You’re sure there is a connection?”

“Hell of a coincidence if there isn’t one.”

“Do you guys get to interview Ballston?”

“Apparently not. He’s hunkering down behind a thorny hedge of attorneys.”

“Then what can I do for you?”

“Suppose I manage to get to him.”

“How?”

“I don’t know yet. Just suppose I do.”

“Okay. I’m supposing. Now what?”

“What would he be most afraid of?”

“Surrounded by his thorny attorneys?” She clucked her tongue repeatedly, rapidly, making it sound like a finger-tapping accompaniment to fast thinking. “Not much … unless …”

“What?”

“Unless he thinks someone else knows what he’s done, someone who might have an agenda in conflict with his own. That kind of situation would leave a gap in his span of control. Sadistic sex murderers are control freaks to the max, and the one thing that will blow a control freak’s circuits is being at the mercy of someone else.” She paused for a moment. “Do you have a way of contacting Ballston?”

“Not yet.”

“Why do I have the feeling that you’re about to come up with one?”

“I appreciate your confidence.”

“I need to hang up now. Sorry I don’t have more time. Just remember, Dave, the more power he believes you have over him, the more likely he is to come apart.”

“Thanks, Becca. I appreciate your help.”

“I hope I didn’t make it sound like it’s going to be easy.”

“Don’t worry. ‘Easy’ is not what I’m imagining.”

“Good. Keep me up to date, okay? And good luck!”

The same mental-overload factor that caused him to neglect that morning’s phone message from Holdenfield kept him, for the rest of his trip home, oblivious to another spectacular mountain sunset. By the time he had turned off the county highway and driven up the winding road to his property, all that was left of it was a subdued wash of faded rose in the western sky, and even that he barely noticed.

At the transition area in front of his barn, where the town’s dirt road faded into his narrower and grassier driveway, he pulled over to his mailbox, which was cantilevered out from a fence post. As he was about to open it, a little patch of yellow on the hillside ahead caught his eye. The patch of yellow was moving slowly along the arc of the path over the high pasture. He recognized it as Madeleine’s light Windbreaker.

Because of the intervening ryegrass and milkweed, she was visible only from the waist up, but he imagined he could perceive the gentle rhythm of her steps. He sat and watched her until the trajectory of the path and the rolling contour of the field took her gradually out of sight, a solitary figure moving calmly into an obscuring ocean of tall grass.

He remained there awhile longer, gazing up at the deserted hillside, until all the color in the sky was gone, replaced by a gray as monotone as the note that registers the absence of a heartbeat. He blinked, found some dampness in his eyes, swiped at it with his knuckles, and drove the rest of the way up to the house.

He decided to take a shower in the hope that it might restore in him some sense of normalcy. As he stood in the heavy spray of hot water, its tingly massage relaxing his neck and shoulders, he let his mind drift into the sound: the soft roar of a summer downpour. For a strange second or two, his brain was filled with the pure and peaceful scent of rain. He scrubbed himself with soap and a rough sponge, rinsed, got out, and toweled himself dry.

Too drowsy now to dress, still warm from the shower, he pulled back the quilted cover on their bed and lay down on the cool sheet. For a wonderful minute, the whole world consisted of that cool sheet, grass-scented air wafting over him from an open window, imagined sunlight sparkling through the leaves of giant trees … as he descended the free-associating staircase of dreams into a deep sleep.

He awoke in the dark with no sense of the time. A pillow had been placed under his head, and the quilt had been drawn up to his chin. He got up, turned on the bedside lamp, and checked the clock. It was 7:49 P.M. He put on the clothes he’d had on before his shower and went out to the kitchen. Something baroque was faintly audible on the stereo. Madeleine was sitting at the smaller of the room’s two tables with a bowl of orange-colored soup and half a baguette, reading a book. She looked up as he entered the room.

She said, “I thought maybe you’d gone to bed for the night.”

“Apparently not,” he muttered. Finding his voice hoarse, he coughed to clear it.

Her eyes returned to her book. “If you feel like eating, there’s carrot soup in the pot and a stir-fried chicken thing in the wok.”

He yawned. “What are you reading?”

“The Natural History of Moths.”

“History of what?”

She articulated the word as one might to a lip-reader. “Moths.” She turned the page. “Was there any mail?”

“Mail? I … I don’t know. I think … Oh, right, I was about to get it, and then I saw you up on the hill and got distracted.”

“You’ve been distracted for a while.”

“Is that a fact?” He immediately regretted his defensive tone, but not enough to admit it.

“You don’t think so?”

He sighed nervously. “I suppose.” He went to the pot on the stove and ladled out a bowl of soup.

“Is there anything you want to talk about?”

He delayed answering until he was seated across from her with his soup and the other half of the baguette. “There’s a major development in the case. A former Mapleshade girl has turned up dead in Florida. Victim of a sex murderer.”

Madeleine closed her book, stared at him. “So you’re thinking … what?”

“It’s possible that the other girls who’ve disappeared have ended up the same way.”

“Murdered by the same person?”

“It’s possible.”

Madeleine studied his face as if unspoken information were written on it.

“What?” he asked.

“Is that what’s on your mind?”

A rush of unease passed through his stomach. “That’s part of it. Another part is that the police haven’t been able to get a single word out of the man they’ve charged with the murder—nothing beyond a categorical denial. Meanwhile his law firm and PR firm are creating alternative scenarios to feed to the media—lots of innocent reasons that a woman’s raped, tortured, and beheaded body might have been in his freezer.”

“And you’re thinking, if only you could sit down and talk to this monster …”

“I’m not saying that I’d get a confession, but …”

“But you’d do a better job than the locals?”

“That wouldn’t be so difficult.” He winced inwardly at his own arrogance.

Madeleine frowned. “It wouldn’t be the first time the star detective rose to the challenge and deciphered the mystery.”

He stared at her uncomfortably.

Again she seemed to be examining the message encoded in his expression.

“What?” he asked.

“I didn’t say anything.”

“But you’re thinking something. What is it? Tell me.”

She hesitated. “I thought you liked puzzles.”

“I admit that I do. So what?”

“So why do you look so miserable?”

The question jarred him. “Maybe I’m just exhausted. I don’t know.” But he did know. The reason he felt as bad as he did was that he couldn’t bring himself to tell her why he felt bad to begin with. His reluctance to reveal the full chagrin of being duped and the intensity of his worry over what may have happened during his period of amnesia had isolated him in a terrible way.

He shook his head, as if refusing the pleas of his better self, the small voice within that was begging him to lay the facts of the matter before this woman who loved him. His fear was so great that it blocked the very action that would have removed it.