P. Parrish - Paint It Black

“In water,” Louis said.

Emily let out a sigh. “There’s quite a bit from the psychiatrist here,” she said. “ ‘The subject, Tyrone Heller, exhibits reaction formation and confabulation. ’ ”

“Translate, Farentino,” Louis said.

She looked up at them. “Reaction formation is a kind of defensive mechanism, a way of dealing with negative and unacceptable feelings by substituting thoughts or behaviors that are completely opposite of the bad feelings.”

“I don’t get it,” Wainwright said.

“Normal people, healthy people, can channel negative feelings into something positive,” Emily went on. “But people like Heller can’t, so they almost turn against themselves.” She paused. “Like the closet homosexual who covers up true feelings about himself by acting like a homophobe or gay basher.”

“So to Heller the unacceptable fact is that he looks black?” Louis asked.

Emily was nodding, remembering something. “It’s why he asked me what Lynch said about him. It’s why he asked me if Lynch said he was black. I think Heller truly believes he is white.” She paused. “It explains his racism toward his black victims.”

“And why Roscoe Webb was so certain he heard a white man talking to him when Heller called him a nigger,” Louis said.

“What’s confabulation?” Wainwright asked.

“Lying,” Louis said.

Emily hesitated. “Not really,” she said. “It’s more like filling in the gaps in your memory with unconscious fiction. It’s making up stories to cover up the fact that you don’t know the truth. Alzheimer patients do it to hide the fact that they can’t remember things they know they should be able to.”

Wainwright shook his head. “But you said Heller really believed he was white. So was he was kidding himself? Is that what confabulating is?”

“In Heller’s case, I’m guessing that the unacceptable fact of his black side caused him to suppress many of his memories about growing up and he has invented a more acceptable past-and identity.”

“As a white man,” Louis said tightly. He got up and went to the window, his back to them.

They were silent. The rain pounded on the windows. Wainwright was watching Louis but finally he turned back to Emily.

“Anything else in there we need to know?” Wainwright asked.

Emily scanned the rest of the medical report. “Diagnosis: antisocial personality disorder, substance abuse disorder, substance-induced psychosis versus paranoid schizophrenia.” She took off her glasses, rubbing the bridge of her nose. “No wonder I thought I heard two men talking to me.”

“Jesus, he isn’t one of those multiple personalities, like that Sybil woman?” Wainwright said.

Emily shook her head. She slipped her glasses back on. “I think I know what set him off-Lynch,” she said quietly.

“Lynch?” Wainwright said.

“Lynch told me he was retiring after the fishing season was over. Tyrone Heller probably knew that. And Lynch was Heller’s acceptable father figure.”

Wainwright was staring at her. “Bullshit,” he said softly. “Some people are just born bad and this asshole is one of them. I don’t buy it.”

“I do,” Louis said, turning.

They both looked at him.

“Heller was raised by people who told him that being black was inferior,” Louis said. “He grew up believing it, believing that being black was less than. . that it was garbage.”

He paused. “His father was gone, his black side was gone. He wanted to be accepted, but to do that he had to change the one thing he couldn’t change-his skin. In his mind, he became white.”

Louis paused. He realized he was clenching his fists. He turned away, flexing his fingers.

Wainwright glanced at Emily.

“Louis,” Emily said quietly, “go on. Please.”

He didn’t turn. He didn’t speak.

Wainwright cleared his throat. “Why did he kill his father then?” he asked.

“Abandoned children sometimes kill out of rejection,” Emily began.

Louis turned. “Heller didn’t search for his father because he wanted acceptance. He searched for him-hunted him down-to kill him. When he realized the world wasn’t going to accept him as white, he blamed his father. He saw his father as something that had infected him.”

He came back toward the table and sat down.

“Is that why he cut Farentino?” Wainwright asked. “Was he trying to infect her with his black blood?”

Emily looked at Louis. When he didn’t say anything, she shook her head. “Heller might have moments of reality. I might have been there for one, and he might have been trying to make me feel his pain.”

“It still doesn’t explain why he killed those men,” Wainwright said. “Or why he painted them. What? Is he trying to show the world that they deserve to die just because they’re black?”

Emily thought about that for a moment, then shook her head. “I think his victims are symbolic fathers. Heller stabbed his father but he never actually saw him die. Maybe the paint is his way of trying to erase him over and over again.”

Louis had fallen quiet again. Emily looked over at him.

“I think it’s more,” Louis said. “I think it’s tied in to why the victims’ skin colors got lighter.”

Emily nodded. She was on the same track.

“Maybe he started out trying to kill his father,” Louis said, “but even after he kills these men, his father’s face is still there. That’s why he beats them so badly, and when that doesn’t erase the face, he paints them.”

“But it isn’t working for him,” Emily said.

“No,” Louis said. “They are still there. He is still there. His self-hatred is catching up with him. Some part of him knows the face he is trying to erase is his own.”

“Okay,” Wainwright said quietly. “I have one more question. Who was killed in that shack?”

They fell silent suddenly, as if they had forgotten there was an unidentified victim still out there somewhere. Louis turned back to face the bulletin board. The rain beat a steady tattoo on the windows.

“We ruined his plan,” Emily said. “He told me that. There’s no telling who he killed in that shack.”

She closed the file and slid it across the table to Wainwright. “You’d better get this to Horton,” she said.

“You’d better come with me and explain it,” Wainwright said, rising.

Emily rose and slipped on her green rain slicker. They both stopped and looked at Louis. He was still staring at the empty bulletin board. The phone on the table rang. Wainwright picked it, spoke briefly, and hung up.

“That was Horton. They got the search warrant for Heller’s trailer. Mobley’s men are on their way there now.”

“I want to be there,” Louis said, turning.

“Take Candy with you,” Wainwright said. “We’ll meet you downtown later.”

Candy jerked the cruiser to a stop behind the Lee County Sheriff’s Department car. Louis could see Sheriff Mobley and a deputy standing under an awning at Heller’s door. They had already checked the tiny trailer twice before, first doing a routine welfare check the night Heller went missing and then again the next day. And there had been a sheriff’s deputy posted out front since last Tuesday.

But now they were here to look with different eyes, armed with a search warrant.

Louis got out of the cruiser and hurried through the driving rain to the door. Candy came up behind him and pulled off his cap, shaking the water from it. The four men stood huddled under the listing awning.

Mobley stared at Louis. “Wainwright couldn’t come?”

“He’s with Horton,” Louis said. He had to speak up to be heard over the rain beating on the metal awning. He debated whether to fill Mobley in on what they had just learned about Heller from Emily’s file. He decided not to bother. He wasn’t sure he understood it well enough himself.