Stone Maidens (26 page)

Prusik felt the table shake from David’s vibrating leg. But he wouldn’t answer the question.

“Ever experience blackouts before, David? Hear voices in your head? Have an upsetting vision that seems real as life? A person screaming, a bad dream?”

Prusik presented the facts that had been written down in the psychiatrist’s file as questions, piling them up, pushing him toward the edge of toleration, which wasn’t nearly so invisible now as it had been earlier.

His brow furrowed. “You’re working with Dr. Walstein?” He lifted his head, focused on the documents open in front of the forensic anthropologist. “That’s whose file that is?”

“Yes, I’ve read your medical files. We subpoenaed them. It’s my job as a forensic investigator to be thorough, David. Tell me about these visions of screaming girls. According to your file, they started last March?”

“Then you already know everything.” He scowled. “What’s the point in asking?”

Prusik steeled herself—the time bomb inside David Claremont was fused to go off at any moment. She knew all too well that world of out-of-control, pile-driving fear. Easing, she changed her tack.

“You don’t know what’s happening to you when a vision strikes?”

“There’s a difference, you know, between seeing things and doing them,” he said forcefully. “They’re not the same thing at all.”

Prusik nodded, sympathizing. “You’re right. There is a big difference.”

She slid a blank piece of paper and a pencil across the table. “Do me a favor, David. Write down your name.”

He picked up the pencil with his hurt left hand and printed out each letter.

“This time I’d like you to try writing cursive, in long hand,” she urged. “Using your right hand.”

Claremont put down the pencil. “Can’t write that way.”

“Some people are naturally ambidextrous,” Prusik said. “Maybe you’re one.”

The pencil clumsily popped out of his right hand twice. Breaking off the pencil point, he scratched a hole in the paper. The muscles tightened around his jaw. He cast a despondent gaze down at his lap.

Claremont was most definitely a lefty. From the forensic evidence the killer was clearly right-handed. And the implication was just as clear to Prusik. Claremont was not the man responsible. But she could not dismiss the possibility that he was somehow involved, either.

“Ever give someone a ride in your truck, David? While out running errands?”

“Might have once or twice.”

“A girl, for instance? Ever offer a ride to a girl walking home?”

He bowed his head. “I...I don’t really know any girls.”

He sat stiffly. The sound of knuckles cracking under the table confused Prusik. So many of Claremont’s nuances and behaviors ran counter to his seeming helplessness, as if the man was a battleground for good and evil and the winner hadn’t yet been declared.

“You’d remember taking a girl somewhere, wouldn’t you?”

He looked her straight in the eye, desperate. “You want me to say it, don’t you? That I’m the one you’re after?” He tapped his temple with a sardonic grin. “A damn killer’s trapped in my mind is what.” His face became somber. “You think asking questions is going to help any? It’s not going to change one thing, no matter what I say. The way people always look at me twice. Their eyes say it, their frowns. They see something’s not right. Like I should have been the one born dead.”

Prusik wrinkled her brow. “Why would you say that?”

Claremont continued staring somewhere past the far corner of the room. “Could I have been born dead? That would explain it, all the things I see. Coming back from the dead, they say you remember seeing things.”

Concerned, Prusik reached out her hand, touching the top of his. It felt clammy and tense.

“I read about it once,” he continued, in a more animated frame of mind, “the way people can come back from awful experiences, from drowning, car accidents. When their hearts stop.” His face eased noticeably. “Seeing themselves all torn up from far above their bodies, like they’re in two places at once.”

“Is that what you feel, David, in two places at once?”

“Seeing them lying there on the ground...all cut up.” He hung his head, defeated again.

“Covered in your blood, David, or someone else’s?”

He flicked his hand away from hers, as if electrically charged. He scrubbed his fingers across his crew cut again, his biceps bulging noticeably under his shirt.

“Car-accident scenes are different, aren’t they?” Prusik said, playing along with his idea. “You look down. You see yourself, maybe another passenger who was with you in the crash. But the action’s stopped, hasn’t it? It’s over, except for seeing the mangled body down there, and you looking down from above...”

She needn’t have repeated his words; he was already there.

“Right, right! So does that make me a killer? Seeing it? Hearing it?” He crossed his arms and gripped his biceps, his fingers white with tension.

“Your visions are pretty upsetting,” Prusik said sympathetically.

What Claremont had said a moment ago—that he should have been the one born dead—intrigued her. As had his reference to being in two places at once. Both were said reflexively and sounded truthful. Prusik returned to Dr. Walstein’s file, reviewing one paragraph she’d earlier marked off in which the psychiatrist had summarized his comments: “The patient shows remarkable recall for certain events that take place during his blackout periods in the wakeful moments afterward. Descriptions include that of a girl’s face, identifying clothing, seeing her running and screaming and falling down in the woods, then being butchered.”

“I understand you’ve put a name to it?”

His gaze narrowed on the file lying open in front of her. “So what if I have?”

“That you call this man in your visions a two-face?”

“Is that a crime?”

“Anyone you know ever double-cross you before?”

“Not really.”

“Oh come on, David. No one’s life is that perfect. Maybe someone you knew in high school? Someone you ran into while you
were out running an errand? Or when you went up to Chicago?” she needled. “Someone you don’t like very much and would rather not speak openly about? People who hurt us, David, we don’t usually like to talk about.”

His eyes widened, and something stirred behind his lids. “I don’t know. I suppose it’s a common enough thing not being able to trust people.”

Prusik sensed he was hedging. “Could this two-face be a relative?” she continued. “Someone who might have dropped by the farm infrequently, someone you might not have seen since you were much younger? A distant cousin even?”

Claremont gazed blankly at the table. “Can’t say exactly where he comes from. But he’s there all right.” He swallowed hard and tapped his sternum when he did. “Right there inside.”

“So you do know him.”

“I...I can’t”—he massaged his throat—“stop him.”

Prusik thought she detected the dilation of his pupils, but wasn’t sure.

“Look, David, things will only get worse from here on out. A search warrant has already been issued. The field unit will tear up every board in that barn if they have to. They’ll take apart the seats and bed of your truck, and your parents’ truck, too. They’ll go through your room and the rest of the house with a fine-tooth comb. As soon as they find evidence—and a single strand of hair is all it will take—linking you to Julie Heath or any of the other victims, your case will be transferred to the US attorney’s office in Chicago for federal prosecution. Cooperate with me, talk to me, and I’ll see what I can do to help you.”

“I told you. I’ve done nothing wrong,” David said, his face agonized. “There is no evidence. There can’t be. Except for my blanking out, seeing things...”

“And I
do
believe you.” It surprised Prusik, hearing her own conviction. “But an eyewitness puts you at the scene of Julie Heath’s abduction in Crosshaven.”

Prusik tapped the tip of her forefinger on the center of the tabletop. “Another witness from Parker claims two days ago you followed her in your truck after her soccer practice. She described the gray fender paint, said you scared the living daylights out of her. I want to help you, David. But to do it, I’ll need your complete cooperation.”

She played the hunch she’d been considering since Claremont’s puzzling revelation about feeling that he was in two places at once. “If you’re innocent—and I believe you are—it means someone else out there who looks like you is committing these crimes. Someone who’s probably laughing right now seeing it all pinned on some fool named David.”

He blinked. “Nobody could have seen me in Crosshaven, because I wasn’t there. I wasn’t in Parker, either, unless I was passing through with my parents. It couldn’t be my truck they saw. It’s a mistake, I tell you.” Claremont’s eyes implored her. “What you were saying before...”

“About your visions?” she said. “Seeing him, this two-face of a man?” She sensed the depth of the man’s despair, felt she could almost follow the neuronal pathway to the very source of his pain.

“Things have been getting worse.” Claremont rotated his hurt hand in front of his face, staring at it as if it weren’t his own flesh. A bead of sweat raced down his cheek.

“Tell me.” Prusik’s voice was calm, soothing. “What other bad things does he do to you?”

“It’s not a dream, is it? It’s too real to be. Oh God,” Claremont moaned.

Prusik shoved another notepad across the table. “Write it all down for me, David. Everything you can recall about him, about the visions, what he does to the girls, when he does it. Locations, ones that may be familiar to you—it’s crucial that I know every detail if I am to help you.”

Claremont flattened his palms on the tabletop, surrendering. “Do you think I’m crazy?” On his weary face was the look of a man who very much cared.

“Sometimes we’re our own worst enemy, David. But my opinion won’t save you now. Give me something to go on, and then we’ll see.” Prusik pointed to the pad. “Try to remember every detail. Even ones that don’t seem important could be key.”

Prusik checked herself, wondering if Claremont’s visions could be explained by a psyche trying to exonerate itself, externalizing the horror, placing blame on a construct, some fantasized other, this “two-face” manifestation. She’d discuss it further back at headquarters with Dr. Katz in behavioral sciences.

“Let’s end here, David,” she said. “You write everything down for me, just like I’ve asked, and we’ll talk again soon.”

She slipped out the door and crossed into the ten-degrees-cooler hallway, then took her time making her way to the front of the police station and the parking lot beyond. The muggy southern Indiana air seemed to seep through her clothing right into her skin. Two news trucks with satellite dishes had already staked out claims along the chain-link fencing; technicians were setting up cameras for their respective news teams.

The FBI’s RV was idling inside the station lot, Howard’s men milling beside it. Howard himself stood among a gathering of state troopers, looking ready for the television cameras in his navy-blue Windbreaker and trim khaki twills. He was yukking it up with some of the troopers, enjoying himself immensely. Jocular laughter erupted from the group—in response to some male chauvinist remark by Howard no doubt, Prusik thought sourly. The man’s cells didn’t contain enough DNA to respect a woman, much less a woman who happened to be a scientist.

She leaned one hand on her hip, assessing things from the top of the steps. She could imagine Thorne cooling the champagne, Howard getting ready to pull the cork after she’d just finished serving up Claremont on a platter, delivering everything but a complete confession. Judging from Howard’s cockiness, the lack of a confession hardly seemed to matter. But the niggling thought that wouldn’t leave her—that Claremont was just another victim
who somehow held the key to the killer’s identity—was getting stronger and stronger.

The killer was right-handed, she was sure. The strangulation had been performed face-to-face in each case. The killer’s right hand was far stronger than his left and had crushed the hyoid bone under the larynx in all three murders. Claremont was a natural lefty. The ease with which he’d signed his name with his left hand proved it—physical evidence that further buttressed her growing suspicions that the killer was somehow exploiting David Claremont, tormenting the man. As fantastic as it sounded, no other explanation fit, in her estimation. If she shared her suspicions with either Howard or Thorne it would finish her as far as this investigation was concerned. She needed time to corroborate, but investigating potential leads would take her away from the lab, and she’d have to be careful or she’d risk infuriating her two direct supervisors, who’d see her actions as hostile insubordination or worse.

“Christine?” Howard pulled his sunglasses partway down the bridge of his nose and motioned for her to approach. “Have you got a moment?” The troopers dispersed.

Prusik walked toward Howard, stopped halfway, and put down her case. She tried to keep her expression neutral.

Howard sauntered over. “Finish up with Claremont then?” he said, repositioning his aviator glasses higher up on his nose. “Your assessment was correct. You certainly were the right person for the job.”

“Who said anything about finishing up?” she said levelly. “I’m heading home to Chicago, assuming you still want me to chase down forensics on the suspect we’re questioning.”

“Suspect? Come on, wasn’t that a full confession? Pretty clearly he had no rational response to half your questions.”

She picked up her bag. If Howard thought that was a full confession, he was more of a dimwit than she thought. “Yes, his answers were puzzling, I’ll grant you. But be that as it may, he
doesn’t fit at all the profile we’ve developed of our killer. And he’s left-handed, while our killer is clearly right-handed.”

“Well, be that as it may, profiling has its limits. As for handedness, there are ways for a clever killer to disguise that. We’re damn better off having Claremont on ice while we sort out the evidence,” Howard said. “See that you report any findings—incriminating or exculpatory—to me when you’re done.” The corners of his mouth turned up just slightly and he gave her shoulder a little pat. “Nice work, Christine.”