City of Echoes (26 page)

“What the hell did your parents do to you, man?”

Baylor looked up, surprised. “You’re back. How are you feeling?”

“What did they do to you?”

The doctor smiled as he considered the question. “I’ve never been one to think that Freud had much to say, Matthew. Sorry if that’s a disappointment. My parents were two loving, nurturing, gentle souls who did their best to raise me and my three sisters in a tranquil, educated, and cultured environment.”

“Then what happened to you? You’re obviously out of your mind.”

He laughed. “Who isn’t these days? When was the last time you turned on a television?”

“Where’s Laura?”

“Tied up, I’m afraid.”

“Where is she?”

“In the sunroom,” he said. “Sleeping.”

“Then you didn’t hurt her. She’s alive.”

The doctor nodded. “I haven’t quite decided what to do with the two of you yet. I thought we might talk it over if there’s time.”

Baylor turned back to the girl and started applying makeup to her face. Matt took a moment to get his bearings. He thought that he remembered seeing the sunroom at the other end of the hallway as he was helped downstairs, but he couldn’t be sure. Even worse, how could he take the word of a man who had murdered so many people? So many young women?

He thought about Laura being dead, then used all of his strength to block the image and push it out of his mind.

He filled his lungs with air and exhaled. He could see his gun on the far counter by the camera. On the rack above the vase of dead flowers, he noted the shears hanging beside a variety of other gardening tools. He gazed down at his chest. The blood had been washed away, the wound bandaged. Two of the three IV bags were still hanging from the irrigation pipe and connected to the catheter in his arm. While his arms and legs weren’t bound, they didn’t need to be. The weakness was so overwhelming, he felt like an insect that had been glued down and placed inside a picture frame.

“I can’t move,” he said.

“I’m guessing it’ll be a while. I pulled the anesthetic, but all good things take time.”

Several moments passed with Matt watching the plastic surgeon hover over the girl with his makeup kit. When she began to stir ever so slightly, Baylor produced a syringe from his coat pocket and injected something into her thigh, as if the moment had been expected and planned for.

But all Matt could feel right now was an overpowering wave of fear. He searched for his voice. Something steady that wouldn’t reveal his thoughts or emotions.

“I don’t believe the things you said, Doctor. Something happened to you when you were a child. Something horrible. Your life was anything but tranquil. Your parents, anything but loving.”

“And you called your father what, Matthew? Dear old Dad? He walked out on you and your mother. He left you high and dry when you were only a boy.”

Matt grimaced at the memory. “How would you know that?”

“I recognized you the moment you walked into my office. I told you that. You have your father’s face, you have his name, but you don’t even get a mention in his biography.” The doctor took a moment to think it over, then spoke in a voice that seemed softer and more gentle. “Let’s just say that it was a safe guess, Matthew. And that while you were under the anesthetic, I asked a few questions, and you answered back. I know about your mother’s death from breast cancer. I know that your father, M. Trevor Jones—chairman of the board, president, and CEO of PSF Bank of New York, one of the five largest banks in the United States—M. Trevor Jones, the reigning King of Wall Street, refused to recognize your existence. I know that in the end you were raised by your aunt in a modest home and that you loved her very much. As you said yourself, she was a woman of uncommon grace and intelligence, a woman who loved the arts as much as she loved taking care of you.”

Matt tried to ignore the feelings welling up inside his gut and clenched his teeth. “Was Millie Brown your first, or are there others, Doctor?”

Baylor noticed the shift in subject matter and seemed amused by it, maybe even saddened, then cheered up as he got back to work on the girl’s face.

“Millie Brown was her daddy’s pride and joy,” he said. “And Congressman Jack Brown was a righteous daddy—a used-to-be fringe politician who switched parties every time his district was redrawn. Now he’s been radicalized. He’s a full-blown fanatic. You know how it is with liars, Matthew. They won’t meet you halfway, because even when they’re wrong they’re always right.”

“Okay, so he’s a piece of shit. I know who he is. He was a piece of shit the day he was born. But his daughter didn’t do anything. She was completely innocent.”

“He’s more than a piece of shit, Matthew. He influences people. He shapes the world we live in. He infects it with his ignorance and his lack of decency and taste. Pull away the veil and Jack Brown is pure white trash. And that’s why I became so curious. How did Jack come into all that money? Just like you, he and his wife came from humble backgrounds. Their only income is from a congressman’s salary, yet they live in a multimillion-dollar home in Los Angeles. How is that possible?”

“Why do you care? It must be part of your illness. You’re broken.”

“Easy, Matthew. Mind your manners. You want to know what happened, and I’m willing to talk about it while I get Anna Marie ready for her dance with the fates.”

Matt tried to lift his head, but the room started spinning. Baylor noticed and laughed.

“Dizzy, huh?”

He didn’t respond. The anger coursing through his veins was impossible to manage. A torrent of fire and rage, but also a sense of overwhelming despair. Matt tried not to let his mind linger too long on the girl’s
dance with the fates
and looked back at the doctor.

“Okay,” he said. “Okay. How did the shithead congressman get so rich?”

“It took me a while to figure it out. I watched the man for almost a year. I went to fund-raisers and listened to his perverted ideas. I made him my mission until one day, when I was sifting through his desk at the house, it became clear. I found out his secret.”

“What secret?”

Baylor paused a moment, then turned to meet Matt’s eyes. “As you might expect, it’s not very creative. It’s not even very new. In fact, it’s quite ordinary. If I had been born a cynic, which I’m not, I’d say it went with the job.”

“What is it? What’s his secret?”

Baylor shrugged. “He’s taking money under the table,” he said. “And it’s a lot of money. He’s taking kickbacks for writing a bill that passed in his second term. Here’s Jack’s logic. If you give billions of dollars to a corporation that’s already making billions of dollars, that’s not welfare, that’s a subsidy. Even better, that’s a contribution to his campaign from every executive in that corporation. But if you pay for a lunch program for kids in school who can’t focus or learn because they’re starving to death, if you’re standing on a hill with a loaf of bread and manage to feed the crowd, that’s called
what
? Tell me, Matthew. What do the stupid people in this world call that? What words do they use to express their ignorance and hatred?”

The doctor’s eyes flared up like a bonfire. He was seething. Matt remained quiet, watching the surgeon wrestle with his demons, his madness.

“I wanted to punish him,” Baylor said, still pulling himself together. “I wanted to punish him when I discovered that he was taking food out of hungry people’s mouths and had been doing it for almost sixteen years. I wanted to punish him for living a life that he’d stolen while masquerading as someone who was honest and forthright. A life built on the backs of others—the poor, the weak, the least able to speak up for themselves—anything it takes for Jack and his cunt wife to claw their way to the top of the shit pile. I wanted to hurt him in some fundamental way for living a life that he didn’t earn. A life that hadn’t even been handed down to him by his loved ones, his family, but instead was a crime. A felony. An outrageous lie. I wanted to deliver a mortal blow, Matthew, but I didn’t know how to go about it. You see, one of the problems with people like Jack is that they have no real sense of the difference between right and wrong. They have no conscience, no manners, no feeling of guilt, no understanding of what’s true or what’s false, no ability to feel anything at all, no matter what they’ve done or who they’ve hurt. They’re manipulators. They’re sociopaths living in a place where everything has been dumbed down and facts have no meaning anymore. They’re narcissistic. They think that the world spins around them and only them. And unfortunately people like this, people like Jack, are
everywhere
right now. So trying to come up with a punishment, something bold enough that he would actually notice, was a difficult process. But then a few weeks later I saw that his house was being remodeled. This time I went in through the front door. I pretended to be a building inspector from the county and walked in with a clipboard for a quick look around. And that’s when I saw her. That’s when I saw Millie. She was with Jamie Taladyne, whom I recognized from his rape trial. She was trying to seduce Taladyne in her bedroom. She was holding her blouse open and giving him a good, long look at those tits of hers—that is, until her dirty daddy came home.”

“That’s how you got the idea to commit multiple murders, Doctor? Watching Millie Brown try to seduce Taladyne? Watching a teenage girl interact with her father?”

Baylor seemed to relish the memory. “All the pieces were right there, Matthew. The victim, the fall guy, and the sacrificial lamb. All three of them were standing right in front of me. Like I said, Millie Brown was her daddy’s pride and joy. And if there’s any truth to the saying that in every great woman there’s a bit of whore, she was on her way to becoming one of the best.”

“Then you knew about Ron Harris?”

“Her science teacher? No, I didn’t. Harris came as a complete surprise. I was talking about my time alone with her. We spent several days together before the freshness wore off and I became bored.”

The thought of Baylor spending several days with his victim made Matt’s blood curdle, particularly because he doubted that any of the doctor’s victims were ever conscious. He wasn’t sure if he could continue to listen to a maniac talk about right and wrong or what it means to be a sociopath in the modern world. He wasn’t sure if he could keep all these bad thoughts in his head. He tried balling his hands up into fists but didn’t have the strength. He tried to feed off the image of Baylor posing as a building inspector and walking into the Browns’ home. He could picture the congressman loosening his tie as he headed upstairs to change. He could see the doctor eyeing him as if he were prey. Millie Brown had been murdered eighteen months ago. Matt hadn’t seen her father’s name in the news lately and wondered why.

“Her father,” he said. “How did he take the loss of his daughter?”

“You don’t keep up with current events, do you?”

Matt didn’t respond. He read the paper as often as he could, in print and online. Still, there were days and even weeks and months when he had worked narcotics that life became too grueling, too harsh, and he needed distance between himself and the world.

“How did he handle it?” Matt repeated.

Baylor flashed a thoughtful smile. “It took a month or two, but Jack Brown eventually stopped showing up for work. He lost the fortune that he’d stolen in a divorce settlement that became so ugly, so perfect, I’m disappointed that you didn’t hear about it. He lost everything—his money, his home, his wife, his seat in the House, and yes, he lost his not-so-innocent daughter, Millie. He lost it all, Matthew. They both did. Their lawyers took everything. I can’t say that I’ve paid much attention to his wife since the divorce, though I’ve heard rumors that when she hit bottom it wasn’t a soft landing. As for Jack, let’s just say that he’s become something of a professional drinker these days. Jack’s a regular at a dive bar in the Valley called the Lucky Star. I go there for a cocktail from time to time because I’m still monitoring his progress. Last week Jack fell down on the sidewalk. I sat with him and smoked a cigar, but the man never came to. He just laid there, mumbling to himself and pissing himself in his pants. After a while the smell of urine got to me, so I left.”

A moment passed—the weight of the horror settling into the greenhouse like an infection that had gone global and had no cure. Matt remained quiet while he gathered his thoughts. The doctor’s insanity. His will to punish and hurt. The severity of it all.

“And what about Faith Novakoff?” he said finally. “Was it her mother or her father? What did they do to deserve your wrath?”

The doctor became quiet and seemed put off. Matt figured that it was his use of the word
wrath
, another one of the seven deadly sins, that slowed him down. As he watched Baylor return to the girl’s makeup, Matt remembered Dante’s description of vengeance as a love for justice where only revenge and spite remained. A love for justice that had become wicked and depraved.

Matt cleared his throat. “It is what it is, Doctor. What did Faith Novakoff’s parents do to deserve your wrath?”

“It was her father,” he said quietly. “Maybe you’ll read about him someday.”

“Is he another politician?”

Baylor looked up at the glass ceiling, as if struck by an idea. “No, of course not,” he said, breaking into a Southern drawl. “And he doesn’t run a health insurance company either. He’s a TV evangelist from Kentucky. He wears a .45 on his belt and strokes the barrel like it’s his cock during sermons. He performs miracles on country folk and likes to dress up in odd clothing. You’ve probably seen his show a hundred times.”

“Never once, Doctor. What’s his name?”

Baylor got up and sauntered over to the French doors. Matt couldn’t tell for sure, but it looked like he was gazing at the lights shimmering off the lake. His face was awash in a fiery mix of orange and red hues, and it seemed like he was in some sort of trance.

“David Novakoff,” the doctor whispered. “Davy . . . Novakoff. His show is called
A Sunday Sermon: I Can Hear God’s Voice
.” Baylor looked over his shoulder, his eyes sparkling in the red light. “And if you send him a check, Matthew, you can hear God, too. You’ve got Davy’s pledge. His personal guarantee.”