Greg Iles: Blood Memory

Dr. Hannah Goldman put it best when she dropped by to see me and found Kaiser at my bedside. She patiently laid out the connections by drawing a line diagram on the back of a hospital cafeteria menu. The primary link between Natchez and New Orleans was sexual abuse. Nathan Malik first noticed me in Jackson, Mississippi, because I was sleeping with a man twenty-five years my senior. That relationship-a symptom of my childhood abuse-also resulted in my being expelled from medical school, which led me into dentistry and, ultimately, into forensic odontology. Malik’s childhood abuse led him slowly but surely into work with sexual abuse victims. He became the natural end point of my aunt Ann’s quest to find a therapist who could control the terrible fallout of her childhood sexual abuse. Given Ann’s history-and Nathan Malik’s sexual predilections-sexual involvement between the two of them was almost inevitable. Malik’s childhood abuse also made him ripe for the countertransference that caused him to encourage vigilante justice among the patients in Group X. The murders committed by Stacey Lorio and Angie Pitre-and the decision by those women to use bite marks to mask the true nature of the crimes-resulted in my being called into the case. (The FBI’s search of Stacey Lorio’s apartment turned up a huge collection of true-crime paperbacks, filled with underlined sections about forensics and the psychology of sexual homicide.) As soon as Dr. Malik became aware of my involvement in the investigation, he became obsessed with communicating with me. Given his knowledge of my family’s secret history-and what Ann had probably told him about me-he felt that my appearance represented some sort of meaningful synchronicity, and he could not ignore it.

“The simple answer,” Dr. Goldman concluded, “is that sick people attract other sick people. Psychologically speaking, of course.”

According to Hannah, though, my recent wave of nightmares about my grandfather and the truck had nothing to do with the murders in New Orleans. Those, she insisted, were the result of my pregnancy. The moment my brain knew that I was going to have a child, my subconscious realized that to protect my baby I needed to remember my childhood abuse. “Evolution at work,” Hannah said. “Carrying on the species is the highest priority of any organism. Your brain decided that protecting your child was more important than protecting you from the trauma of your own past. Thus, the flood of nightmares and flashbacks. You were going to remember what your grandfather did to you whether anyone got killed here in New Orleans or not. Take my word for that.”

But not even Hannah could explain what it was about the murder scenes that had clued me in on the true nature of the crimes. Like the FBI, I had been presented with classic evidence of a male sexual predator at work, and I had looked at similar scenes many times before. So what caused my panic attacks? What told me that I was looking at violence that was somehow related to sexual abuse similar to my own? Hannah thought it might have been the sight of naked old men. But in the end, I decided it was the smallest of clues. My first attack happened at the murder scene of the third victim. Eleven days before, at the home of the second victim-Andrus Riviere-I had seen a little girl who stuck in my mind. Her grandfather had just died violently, yet she seemed almost wild with joyous energy. She was racing around the house as if her birthday party were about to start. And knowing what I know now, I believe that it was. Andrus Riviere’s murder had released that little girl from a living hell. And something about her face-something in her too-wise eyes, I think now-sent me a message without my knowing it. As Pearlie had known subconsciously about Ann’s abuse when she was a child, I knew subconsciously that something was wrong in the Riviere house. Something that death had remedied.

Kaiser stunned me by telling me that Dr. Malik had willed all the videotapes and other raw materials for his documentary film project to me. These included his patient records, which were found in Biloxi, Mississippi, cached in the home of my aunt’s third husband. As soon as these materials are released from the NOPD evidence room, they will be delivered to me. At some point I intend to review them all and begin working to finish Malik’s film. I will include no footage of the murders, but I will do all I can to explain their motivation.

The day I was to be discharged from the Tulane hospital, I learned that Margaret Lavigne was also a patient there. I had an orderly wheel me down to her floor and leave me alone in her room. Margaret lay comatose beneath a white sheet, connected to an assortment of monitors and tubes. The insulin she’d injected into her veins had turned her brain into a useless gray lump. John Kaiser had told me that Lavigne’s mother was likely to authorize the withdrawal of life support later in the week. I held Margaret’s hand for a while, thinking quietly about the suicide note she’d left behind, and of the horror she must have felt when she realized she’d condemned an innocent man to death. Like me, she had been unable to believe that her father had raped her. She erroneously blamed her stepfather instead. I’m thankful that in my own case I was right, but I could so easily have been wrong.

The first funeral I attended was Nathan Malik’s.

The psychiatrist had elected to be cremated, so it was a memorial service, held in a New Orleans park. About fifty people attended, most of them women. There were a few men, too, some of them obviously Vietnam veterans. A Buddhist monk chanted and said some prayers, and everyone laid flowers by the urn.

The second funeral was Ann’s, and it was held in Natchez.

Michael Wells drove me to McDonough’s Funeral Home, helped me into my wheelchair, and even drove me out to the cemetery afterward for the burial. While the minister gave a generic eulogy, I sat in the pews reserved for family and thought of the tape Ann had made for Nathan Malik. The mini-DV cassette I stole from the box at Angie Pitre’s house had made it all the way to the hospital in my purse. I borrowed a camcorder to watch it, but I could only endure about ten minutes before I was overwhelmed. Ann had suffered far more than the rest of us. For whatever reason, she had not dissociated during her abuse. She had felt and processed and remembered every agonizing detail. Her primary concern had been protecting her younger sister-my mother. And though she failed in that goal, she tried her best. She did this by luring my grandfather to her room whenever she sensed his attention wandering to her sister. But Ann wasn’t trying to protect only Gwen. The reason for her silence over the years was simple: Grandpapa had threatened that if she ever revealed what he was doing to her, he would kill both her sister and her mother. Ann had no doubt that he would carry out his threat. She knew better than any of us that he was capable of murder.

The third funeral-the unexpected one-was held one day after Ann’s.

Today.

I didn’t go to the funeral home. I had Michael drive me out to the cemetery to sit beside Ann’s freshly covered grave. I stared at the mound of wet brown earth on the grass and wondered if I could somehow have prevented her suicide. Michael assured me that I could not, and I’m trying my best to believe him. A few minutes before the mourners were to arrive, Michael wheeled me up the lane to a vantage point from which I could watch the burial service without being bothered.

And here I sit.

The line of luxury cars behind the black hearse seems to go on forever, like the cortege of a slain president. I shouldn’t be surprised. Dr. William Kirkland was a wealthy, powerful, and respected man, a pillar of the community.

My mother tried to keep the funeral simple, but in the end she gave in to the well-intentioned friends who insisted on a large production, including eulogies delivered by the mayor, the attorney general, and the governor of Mississippi.