Mortal Fear

SIXTEEN

When the receptionist finally calls my name, Miles has not yet reappeared. Perhaps Lenz wants to talk to us together. As I get up and move toward the door that bars the office proper, I turn to get a closer look at the receptionist.

She is no longer there.

The door leads into a short hallway carpeted in royal blue. To my left is the empty receptionist’s cubicle, at the end of the hall another door. I open it without knocking.

Arthur Lenz is seated behind a cherry desk in a worn leather chair much like the one my father used in his medical office. But Lenz smells of cigarettes, not cigars. And his office is spartan compared to the Dickensian clutter of my father’s sanctum sanctorum.

My first thought when Lenz looks up is that I pegged him wrong in New Orleans. There he seemed a handsomer version of William F. Buckley Jr. Now, seated silently behind the ornate desk with his iron-gray hair and gold-rimmed spectacles, he seems to have morphed into a more sinister character—Donald Sutherland in one of his heavier roles. Lenz gives me a perfunctory smile and motions me toward a sleek black couch that reminds me of an orthodontist’s chair.

“Did you transport Miles to an alternate dimension?” I ask.

He looks puzzled. “Here are your printouts,” I say quickly, dumping the contents of my briefcase on the center of his desk.

Lenz gives the laser-printed pages a quick scan, then slips them into a desk drawer. “I was about to have some tea sent in,” he says. “Care for some?”

So this is how he means to play it: two supercivilized males sitting here sipping tea. “Got any Tabs?”

“Tabs?”

“You know, the drink. Tab. Tasted shitty in the Seventies, now it’s just palatable. That’s what I drink.”

The psychiatrist’s mouth crinkles with distaste. “There’s a vending machine in the building next door. I suppose I could send my receptionist over for some.”

“Fine. Normally, I’d be gracious, but since you’re the one picking my brain, I insist. I need some caffeine.”

“Tea has caffeine.”

“But it ain’t got fizz.”

Lenz pushes a button on a desk intercom and makes the request. It reminds me of the old Bob Newhart Show. I almost laugh at the memory.

“What’s funny, Mr. Cole?”

“Nothing. Everything. You’re wasting time talking to me. Your UNSUB could be out there killing another woman right this second.”

“Yes, he could. But you don’t seem to grasp the fact that you and Mr. Turner are the only direct lines into this case. And as for wasting time, I frequently spend hours interviewing janitors or postmen whose only connection to a case may be that they walked past the crime scene.”

I don’t respond to this.

Lenz smiles like he’s my favorite uncle or something. “I know the couch seems camp. But it does tend to concentrate the mind.” He takes a pencil from the pocket of his pinpoint cotton shirt and taps the eraser on a blank notepad in front of him. “Lie back and relax, Mr. Cole.”

The soft leather couch wraps itself around my back like beach sand, which tells me it does anything but concentrate the mind. Lenz’s ceiling tiles tell me his roof has leaked before. He modulates his deep voice into a fatherly Masterpiece Theatre register, but behind it I sense an unblinking gaze.

“This is not a formal interview,” he says. “Psychological profiling is not an exact science. Any wet-nosed FBI trainee could question you about the homicidal triangle: bed-wetting, fire starting, cruelty to animals. I use a different approach. Despite the attempts of thousands to discredit Sigmund Freud, I still believe the old grouch was onto something regarding the importance of sexual experiences.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Are you familiar with Nietzsche’s epigram?”

“That tired old saw about monsters and the abyss?”

“No, this.” Suddenly Lenz is speaking harsh German that sounds like Erich von Stroheim in Five Graves to Cairo.

“I didn’t catch that, Doctor.”

“Forgive me. ‘The degree and kind of a man’s sexuality reach up into the ultimate pinnacle of his spirit.’”

“I’ve seen that on EROS.”

“I happen to believe it. I’m going to ask you some very personal questions. I hope you’ll answer frankly. You may feel a bit harried. I tend to jump from subject to subject, following my nose, as it were. Please try to remember that there is no personal motive behind my questions.”

Right. You just want to put me in line for a lethal injection. “Fine,” I say aloud. “Let’s do it.”

“What is the worst thing you’ve ever done, Mr. Cole?”

The question takes me off guard. “I’m not sure I understand.”

“What could be simpler? Please answer.”

“You don’t waste much time on foreplay, do you?”

“What is the worst thing you’ve ever done?”

“Next question.”

Lenz sighs in frustration, but I don’t really care. “Very well. What moment are you proudest of in your life?”

“What is this?” I ask, trying to get some idea of how to handle this guy.

“Mr. Cole, did you come here expecting to look at Rorschach blots? Perhaps to say the first thing that popped into your head when I said words like ‘breast’ or ‘hate’?”

“I guess I thought you were going to ask me about EROS.”

“EROS, you, Turner—it’s all one package, isn’t it? For the moment I’m concerned with you personally. Moments of shame and pride are frequently things people keep to themselves. The acts that cause these emotions often illuminate the extreme boundaries of the personality. If I know the extremes, I know the man. So please try to answer frankly. Yes?”

“Okay.”

“Would you consider yourself what laymen call a control freak?”

“Yes. I guess that makes two of us.”

“Do you masturbate regularly?”

“Don’t you?”

“Is that a yes?”

“I’m still waiting for your answer.”

Lenz gives a faint smile. “Do you masturbate while communicating on EROS?”

“Occasionally.”

“Would you say most subscribers use EROS as an aid to masturbation?”

“I’m sure most of them have. I wouldn’t say that’s their primary use for it. EROS is more for your head than your body.”

“What do you think about when you masturbate?”

“That’s my business.”

“Mr. Cole.”

“Women, of course.”

“Women doing what?”

“What do you think?”

“That you’re being evasive.”

“What the hell do you want to know?”

“Do you have violent fantasies?”

“Such as?”

“Women bound, for example.”

“No.”

“Women making sounds of supplication?”

“No.”

“Women in pain?”

“No.”

“Do you ever make mental connections between sex and blood?”

“Hell no.”

“This may be a sensitive question, but I must ask it. You grew up in a rural area. Have you ever had sex with an animal of any kind?”

“Have you ever had someone pound the living shit out of you? Jesus.”

Lenz marks on his notepad. “Would it surprise you to learn that over a third of all males raised in rural areas have had intercourse with some type of animal to the point of orgasm?”

“It’s not something I’ve ever thought about, okay? And I’d like to keep it that way.”

“I hope you can control your temper, Mr. Cole. There is a method to my madness, I assure you. Now … what is your first sexual memory?”

“What do you mean? Like as a kid?”

“Your first sexual memory of any kind.”

“Well … trying to peek under my mother’s nightgown while she was sleeping, I guess.”

“What did you see?”

“Not much. It was dark.”

“After that?”

“Playing doctor in a tree house.”

“With girls or boys?”

“Girls. One girl.”

“The same age as you?”

“Yes.”

“What age?”

“I don’t know. Definitely little kids. Innocent stuff.”

“Any genital touching?”

“Nah. Just show-and-tell.”

“What about same-sex play?”

I hesitate. “A little.”

“One boy, or several together?”

“Several. Just neighborhood buddies.”

“How old were you?”

“Older. Still young, though.”

“Any fear that you were a homosexual because of it?”

“We didn’t even know what a homosexual was. Discovering my dad’s stash of Playboys was like unearthing the Rosetta Stone.”

“Have you had online sex with other men?”

“Not knowingly.”

“What do you mean?”

“A lot of men pretend to be women online. On regular networks it’s because there’s a shortage of women. But on EROS that doesn’t apply. Some men still do it there, so I guess I could unknowingly have fantasized sex with a man.”

“But you’ve never pretended to be a woman online?”

“Once. My wife told me I should try it to see what it felt like. I did, and I didn’t like it.”

“Why?”

“It’s like you’re assaulted from every side. Even on EROS, which is the most civilized online service, being a woman means you’re constantly approached by men. It’s the loss of control, I guess.”

“How old were you when you first had sex with a woman?”

“All the way? Complete intercourse?”

“Serious foreplay. Touching of genitals.”

“Probably … thirteen. With a couple of curious girls the same age. When I was fourteen this other girl and I did pretty much everything but intercourse. We were in love, though. Jesus. Like holding hands and kissing and touching each other was some kind of new religion. An indescribable intensity of feeling. Your heart pounding like it would punch through your chest. She was a year older than me.”

“How did that relationship end?”

“She broke my heart after seven months. I still remember that. Funny, huh? Seven months. I was physically sick. I think that warped me. I was never willing to fall totally for a girl after that. I knew what could happen.”

“How did that color your relationship with other girls? You were angry?”

“I don’t think so.”

“When did you first have sexual intercourse?

“Fifteen. The girl was eighteen.”

“A one-time experience?”

“Are you kidding? Once I got a taste of that, it was nonstop. Day and night, sneaking out of the house, anywhere we could find a place.”

“What kind of places did you usually find?”

“Outside, mostly. Or in the car, you know.”

“Not in her parents’ house?”

“No. We had a little respect.”

“What do you remember most about that relationship?”

I close my eyes. “Later, a couple of years later, I heard she’d become a slut. I’d really started to care for her after a while. She was country, but she read poetry, like that. She was a real person, just a little lost. She had feelings nobody knew about. It was sad.”

“What makes you say that?”

“Well … I read her diary once.”

“She let you read her diary?”

“Not exactly. I went over to her house one time, and nobody answered the door. I went in anyway.”

“The door was open?”

“No. The few times I’d sneaked in to see her, I went though her window, so I did that. I looked around the house. Her room, especially. I found this little calendar where she’d written really small in the day spaces, like a diary.”

“What had she written?”

“All kinds of things. She had codes. Simple ones. There were Xs on the days when she had her periods, that was easy. Then there were some initials, which I figured out were guys she knew—guys her age. Then there was ‘M.L.’ on some days, which stood for ‘made love.’ I knew that because I’d been with her on those days.”

“All of them?”

“Not all.”

“How did you feel reading that diary?”

“Like a spy.”

“You put it back where you found it?”

“No. I took it.”

“Stole it?”

“Mm-hm. There were a few of them. I just took the one.”

“Do you still have it?”

“No.”

“When did you get rid of it?”

“Just after I got married. With a bunch of old letters and stuff. I didn’t want Drewe finding that kind of thing. Stuff from old girlfriends, you know? Some of it was pretty explicit. And she knew some of the girls.”

“Why did you keep those letters so long?”

“All is vanity, right?”

Lenz scribbles something on his notepad. “How many women have you slept with in your life?”

I pause. “Fifteen.”

“Approximately fifteen? Or fifteen exactly?”

“Exactly.”

“You could write down all their names? Here and now, I mean?”

“Yeah, but I won’t.”

“But you’ve written down their names before.”

“Yes.”

“Ever rated their performances? Their looks, what they did, things like that?”

“Any guy who says he hasn’t is probably lying.”

Lenz chuckles, a quick deep rumble. “Odd, isn’t it? This compulsion to prove what we have done? Were you in love with these women?”

“I thought I was, with some of them. Some not. I guess I just wanted to know they wanted me enough to do that.”

“One-night stands?”

“Not my thing.”

Lenz scribbles some more on his pad.

“What experience would you say constitutes the best sex you’ve ever had?”

“The best sex? Well … I guess the best sex—I mean the most uninhibited, unrestrained sex—I had with women who were a little crazy.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean very intense women. Very jealous, or if not jealous, then kind of haunted … driven. Doomed, maybe.”

“Doomed to what?”

“I don’t know. Unhappiness. Unfulfillment.”

“Can you elaborate?”

“I’m talking about purely physical sex, now. Not necessarily … loving sex. I don’t know if I can explain. I think once you start down the road toward pure pleasure, some things get left behind. I know the PC line, how the best sex can only happen in the context of love, all that. But from an existential point of view, I’d disagree. The most intense sex takes place where there is no psychological limit. No moral limit. The word ‘no’ has never been uttered, so possibility is infinite. And that covers a lot of territory, you know?”

“Please go on.”

“I’m talking about exploration, discovery, crossing thresholds. And once you cross some thresholds, I’m not sure you can get back. Sex engages the whole psyche, doesn’t it? Self-respect is involved, and your respect for the other person. Love, lust, obsession … it all blurs. Some women do things they might never ordinarily do because they want to be unique in your experience. They want to prove they love you more than anyone else ever did or could, and they do that by venturing into erotically scary territory. And you pretend they’re unique, because to tell them the truth would probably deny you the physical pleasure of the act, and also devalue their gift to you in their eyes. Yet … these acts, these roads you travel down, aren’t a place you want to be all your life. A sexual relationship has an organic curve. The more intense the experience, the shorter the curve.”

“You’re saying you don’t have or want these types of experiences with your wife?”

“I guess I am. Maybe a taste of it now and then. But you can’t push sexual limits for thirty or forty years with one person. Eventually you run into a wall. I think you have to come to an accommodation. A nice warm place where there is heat and light, though maybe a little less fire. It sounds provincial as hell, I know, but there’s a lot more to marriage than sex.”

Lenz taps the end of his pen against his lower lip, which is gray and bloodless. At length, he says, “What are you hiding from your wife?”

My cheeks burning, I try to hide my embarrassment in anger. “What the hell are you talking about?”

He looks at me like a state trooper watching a drunk driver claim he’s sober. After tapping the pen some more, he says, “You just described a problem of intimacy with your wife.”

“Bullshit.”

Another tired sigh. “The intense sexual experiences you described are essentially adolescent in character. The aggrandizement of the self and the depersonalization of the woman in pursuit of physical ecstasy. I’ve seen a photograph of your wife. She’s—”

“Where did you get a picture of my wife?”

“A beautiful woman,” he continues. “And obviously intelligent. You’ve been married only three years and have no children, yet you recall premarital sexual adventures with more than mere wistfulness. Furthermore, you spend a great deal of time pursuing relationships with other women through your computer, acting out virtual sexual fantasies with famous actresses who have no idea you know who they are—”

“Did Miles tell you that?” I heave myself up into a sitting position.

“Mr. Cole, I suggest that there is something preventing you from fully accepting the love of your wife, and thus from entering into a fully mature and satisfying sexual relationship with her. I doubt whether anything you could tell me would do more to exonerate you of these crimes, in my eyes, than what that is.”

“Look, Doctor, I’ve done just about anything sexual I ever wanted to in real life. Do I miss sex for its own sake? Sure. Married sex is different. It gets weighted down by everyday life. I don’t care how imaginative you are. Everybody thinks he’s an expert on sex, from the frigid old schoolteacher to the great Arthur Lenz, but everybody has the same problem. Men want more sex and women want more love. We’re hardwired differently. Do Drewe and I have a perfect relationship? No. Do we have a good one? Yes. Next question.”

Lenz seems about to argue further, then thinks better of it. “Have you ever struck a woman?” he asks.

“Once,” I reply, forcing myself to lie back down.

“What prompted it?”

“She tried to kill me.”

“Why?”

“Jealousy.”

“How did she try to kill you?”

“Once with a car. Another time with a rifle. I don’t think she really knew who she wanted to kill, me or her.”

“Where is this woman now?”

“Married with kids.”

“Do you consider yourself a handsome man?”

“Handsome? In a regular kind of way, I guess. I don’t think it was necessarily my looks that attracted women to me, if that’s what you’re getting at.”

“What was it?”

“I knew how to talk to them.”

A sudden heightening of awareness. “What do you mean? You were smooth? You had a good line, as they say?”

“God, no. I understood them, is all. I could talk to them like their female friends did, but probably more honestly than their friends would. You know what I mean?”

“Tell me.”

“Most guys are into things I have no interest in. Sports, hunting, like that. I mean I played sports, but I could care less about watching them, you know? Vicarious thrills aren’t for me.”

“You like to participate.”

“Right.”

“Have you ever participated in a murder?”

“Is that your idea of a trick question?”

“Will you answer it, please?”

“Hell no, I’ve never committed murder.”

“Ever thought about it?”

“Sure. I’ve known a couple of dyed-in-the wool sons of bitches who deserved it. They never get it, though. It’s the good people that get it. Right, Doctor?”

“Define ‘good people.’”

“I mean regular folks. People who try to obey the rules. Little kids minding their own business and trying just to grow up. I think anybody that purposefully hurts a person like that has forfeited his right to much consideration. People say the world’s gone gray, but that’s bullshit. There’s still a line. And anybody who crosses that line deserves whatever they get.”

“How do you feel about capital punishment?”

“In first-degree murder cases? The murder of a child, like that?”

“Yes.”

“Fry the fuckers. Instant karma.”

Lenz writes on his notepad again.

“You think I sound like some reactionary Southern redneck, right? Let me tell you, Doctor, where I live I’m considered a liberal. If this nut kills a woman down my way, he’d better get clear in a hurry. There’s still a lot of Old Testament justice down South. And I’m not sure that’s such a bad thing.”

“He killed a woman in New Orleans with impunity.”

It’s my turn to chuckle. “New Orleans isn’t the South I’m talking about.”

“I get the feeling you believe the killer is not from the South.”

“You’re right.”

“Why?”

“For one thing, he doesn’t write like a Southerner.”

“He is remarkably literate.”

“Fuck you, Doctor. Ever read Faulkner? Thomas Harris?”

“I meant for a serial murderer, Mr. Cole. No need to get defensive.”

A soft knock sounds at the door. I look over quickly, half expecting Miles. When the door opens, a slender woman with cinnamon skin enters soundlessly and places a silver tea service on Lenz’s desk. The sweating pink Tab can looks incongruous on the gleaming tray. Without meeting my eyes she offers me a glass of ice, but I take only the can, pop the top, and drink half the contents in a few long swallows. Her black eyes rise to mine with disapproval. I try for a moment to guess her race but find myself at a loss. Living in Mississippi doesn’t give you much practice for this. There it’s either black or white, with a smattering of Vietnamese, Chinese, Lebanese, and Hispanic.