Greg Iles - Blood Memory

He gives me a pointed look that I have no trouble reading: It’s time to Mirandize this girl and put her in front of a video camera. “That depends on what you tell us,” he says.

“Angie,” I say softly, “I know it’s hard for you to trust people. It’s hard for me, too. That’s one of the problems women like us have. But you need to listen to me now. Because I don’t want to put you in jail. Okay? I am the best friend you’re ever going to have. ”

The guarded look doesn’t lessen in vigilance, but there’s confusion in her eyes. She’s wavering.

“Take a deep breath, Angie. Take a deep breath and get it off your chest.”

Slowly, Angie Pitre sits back down on the sofa.

“Whose idea was it?” I ask. “Who first said, ‘We can’t just sit around and bitch about this. We have to do something’?”

Her eyes flick back and forth like those of a crack addict. Then she says, “That’s hard to say, you know? It wasn’t really like that.”

My heart thuds in my chest. I force myself not to look at Sean. “Was it Dr. Malik?”

She draws up her shoulders and hugs herself like a sullen child. “Sort of. I mean, he was always talking about how the men who do it never stop. You know? How none of the treatments work, except maybe castration. He said only death or prison ever really stop them from doing it.”

“By ‘it,’ you mean sexually abusing children?”

“Yeah. Dr. Malik didn’t think any of the old ways worked for victims either. They didn’t make you well. It was all a lot of feel-good talk, he said. When you got back out in the world, it couldn’t stop you from doing the bad things caused by what happened when you were a kid. You know? Sleeping around, or dope, or cutting yourself…whatever. Numbing behavior, he called it.”

I nod understanding. “I’ve been an alcoholic since I was a teenager.”

“There you go. So, that’s why Dr. Malik started Group X. To try something new. It was like exploring a new world, he said. The dark world inside our heads.”

“How many women were in the group?”

She shakes her head, the survivor’s eyes glinting again.

“But all the members of Group X were repressed-memory cases.”

“Yeah. Our lives were all fucked-up, and we didn’t know why. I only got in because I was seeing this lady down at the mental health center, and she referred me. I don’t have no money or nothing.”

“I understand. So…Group X?”

“Yeah. What was different was that Dr. Malik did the delayed-memory work right there with all of us in the same room. And it was intense, man. If we weren’t reliving what had happened to us, we were hearing somebody else relive what happened to them . And the way Dr. Malik did it, you couldn’t hardly stand to hear it. When you’re the patient, he makes you, like, become the kid you were when it happened to you. You talk in a little girl’s voice and everything. It’s scary to hear. I mean, some of the stuff I heard was really sick. Some people couldn’t take it. Two or three times, people peed in their chairs. Seriously, man. And I think what happened came out of that.”

“The decision to kill an abuser?”

She nods with sudden solemnity. “See, even though the bad stuff had happened to most of us years ago, in Group X it was like it was happening right then. All the terror and rage you couldn’t express back then comes blasting out of you like an explosion or something. And it makes you mad. All of us felt that way. Even Dr. Malik. You could see it in his face. He wanted to hurt those men the way they’d hurt us.”

“Did he suggest that you do that?”

Angie shakes her head. “No. See, as intense as all that was, it wasn’t what started the…you know. It was that we got to talking afterward. We got to be friends, see? All of us. We weren’t supposed to, but we started meeting outside Dr. Malik’s office after group on Wednesdays. We’d go to somebody’s apartment or whatever and drink Cokes and stuff. And talk. And it was there that we figured out the really scary thing.”

I glance at Sean. He’s hypnotized by Pitre’s story. “What was that, Angie? What was the really scary thing?”

“That the guys who had done this to us were probably still doing it.” She bites her bottom lip and nods as though talking silently to herself. “Not to us, but to other kids. You know? So we started watching them, trying to figure out what to do. But it’s hard to tell, right? Unless you live in the house with them…and most of us had jobs or whatever.”

“Of course.”

“But I knew, okay? There’s this kid on my dad’s block, he’s home alone all day-” Angie shakes her head with sudden violence. “Anyway, that’s what it came out of. It wasn’t just to punish them. I mean, that was part of it-to make them admit what they did. Because none of them will, you know? You get up your nerve for this big blowout, and then they just deny it. All of it. Dr. Malik had seen it a million times. They look at you like you’re the crazy one, and then they tell you how much they love you and shit. It’s sick. It makes you think maybe you are crazy.”

“You’re not crazy, Angie. I know that.”

Sean is staring at me again, trying to get my attention. He’s ready to make this official right now. But I’m not ready to call Kaiser yet. “So basically, you all agreed about what you were going to do?”

Angie nods slowly at me. She’s transferred her allegiance away from Sean.

“How many of you were there, Angie?”

“Six.”

“And now six men are dead.”

She nods again.

“So you’re finished?”

“Yep.” She gives me a little smile.

“Did all of you help commit the crimes?”

She doesn’t respond.

“‘My work is never done,’” I quote, recalling the letters boldly drawn in blood. “Who came up with that?”

She gives me a conspiratorial smile, then shakes her head. “I can’t tell on anybody else.”

“But your work is done. That’s what you’re telling me?”

“Yep. All done.”

Somehow, I knew this before I ever got here. That’s why I didn’t let Sean call in the task force. “Who killed Dr. Malik, Angie?”

Her smile vanishes, replaced by a profound fear. “I don’t know. Nobody knows what to do now.”

Is she lying? “This is very important, Angie. Who decided to make the crimes look like serial murders? Why didn’t you just kill the men with one shot and make their deaths look like muggings or something? Something simple?”

“That was cool, huh?”

Sean clears his throat loudly, but I don’t look at him. A strange light has come into Angie’s eyes.

“You want to see one?” she asks.

“One what?”

“You know. What we did.”

My pulse begins to race. “A murder, you mean?”

“We didn’t call it that. We called it a sentence. Carrying out a sentence.”

Now I glance at Sean. He looks like he’s about to have a stroke. “Do you have a videotape here, Angie?”

She points into the corner near the television, where a cardboard box stands under a small round table.

“ Jesus, ” Sean intones.

“Is that Dr Malik’s box?” I ask, feeling sweat in my palms. “The one with the stuff for the film in it?”

Angie nods, then goes to the box and pulls out a videotape. “This is one of the only ones on VHS. Most of them are on those little tapes. Those digital things. Mini-DVs or whatever.”

“Cat,” Sean whispers.

I feel a familiar buzzing in the back of my head. The tapes in that box could put my grandfather in jail for the rest of his life.

“Put it in the player, Angie. I want to see.”