Greg Iles - Blood Memory

“Sounds like a great guy.” Frustration is making me crave alcohol. “Okay then, a male patient of Malik’s. Abused as a boy. A large percentage of convicted serial killers were abused as young boys.”

“Now you’re talking,” Sean says, his tone warming. “The second we get that patient list, I’ll start working that angle.” He bends over and stretches his back, the vertebrae popping like Chinese firecrackers. “You want to take a break?”

My body tenses. Normally, when given an opportunity to be alone for an extended period like this, we would spend much of it in bed. But today the bedroom door is closed, and it’s going to stay that way.

My eyes must have betrayed my thoughts, because Sean quickly says, “I was thinking of running over to R and O’s, getting a couple of oyster po-boys.”

I relax-a little. “That sounds good.”

“I’ll be back in twenty minutes.”

“Look, you don’t have to stay here all day. I want to read Malik’s book.”

Sean looks at me with calm sincerity. “I want to stay. If that’s all right with you?”

I can’t help but smile. “Okay. Why don’t you get the food, then?”

He gets his keys and heads out to the garage. No kiss good-bye, just a light touch on my forearm.

I go into the bedroom and strip the vodka-soaked sheets, then carry them to the washing machine. The alcohol evaporating from the cotton is enough to ignite a craving that itches in every cell of my body. My mind goes to the Valium in my purse, but it’s time to start weaning myself off that. A birth defect isn’t the first gift I want to give the baby growing inside me.

To take my mind off my craving-as if anything could-I go back to the kitchen table and pick up Nathan Malik’s book, which Sean borrowed from the Tulane Medical School library. Titled The River Lethe: Repressed Memory and Soul Murder, it’s a thin volume, only 130 pages long. Its dark jacket shows an eerie, moonlit scene: an old, robed man standing in a boat in a river, and a frail young woman waiting to board. The image seems unlikely to inspire feelings of well-being in someone who’s been sexually abused. But maybe it presses a button in such victims that prompts them to want to discover what’s between the covers.

The book jacket has the opposite effect on me. Despite my desire to learn more about the inner workings of Nathan Malik’s mind, the prospect of wading through 130 pages on child abuse is too much to handle right now. Maybe it’s the pregnancy. Besides, Sean will be back soon. Better to start the book later, when I can read it in a single sitting.

While I wait for Sean to return, I scan a list of Malik’s professional publications. His earliest articles focused on bipolar disorder, summarizing extensive work he did with manic-depressives. Then came a study analyzing post-traumatic stress disorder in Vietnam veterans. Judging by the abstracts of the articles, Malik’s work on PTSD in veterans is what led him to study the same phenomenon in survivors of sexual abuse. This, in turn, led to groundbreaking research on multiple personality disorder.

“Oysters in the house!” Sean calls from the garage door.

He walks in carrying a brown bag spotted with grease. He’s opening it on the kitchen table when his cell phone rings. Glancing at the screen, he says, “It’s Joey.” Detective Joey Guercio is his partner. “Joey? What you got?”

The smile vanishes from Sean’s face. “No shit? Was Kaiser around when they found this?…Okay. I’ll talk to him later. This could be big, though…. I appreciate it…. Yeah. They checking all the other vics for the same thing?…Okay. Call me with anything else they find.” He hangs up and looks at me. “There’s another connection between two of the victims. The first one and today’s. Colonel Moreland and Calhoun.”

“Through Malik?” I ask hopefully.

“No.”

“What’s the connection?”

“Vietnam.”

I couldn’t have been more surprised if Sean had said “Harvard.” “What about Vietnam?”

“They both served there. Moreland and Calhoun.”

“At the same time?”

“Their dates of service intersect. Colonel Moreland was career army. He served in-country from 1966 to 1969. James Calhoun was there in sixty-eight and sixty-nine.”

“What branch of service?”

“None. Calhoun was a civilian engineer on contract to the Department of Defense.”

I find it difficult to believe that this connection is relevant to our case. “Vietnam’s a big country. There were five hundred thousand troops there. Is there any evidence that the two men knew each other?”

“Not yet. The task force just found this out. But it seems odd, don’t you think?”

“Not really. Most of the victims are the right age for Vietnam.”

“Yes, but most people that age didn’t serve over there. A couple of my older brother’s friends went, but that’s all I knew. Now, out of five murder victims, we get two guys who did?”

I don’t answer. I’m thinking about my father and his Vietnam service. How many of my schoolmates’ fathers or uncles served there? None that I can recall. But I went to a prep school. Probably quite a few kids from the public school had fathers in that war.

“We’re forgetting something else,” Sean says. “Nathan Malik did a tour in Nam. Same time frame as Calhoun, which means he was there at the same time as Moreland, too. What do you think about that?”

“It is sounding less like a coincidence.”

“We could be way off on motive, Cat. This directly links the victims themselves, not women who happen to be related to them.”

“But you’re using Malik as part of that linkage, and we got to Malik through those female relatives.”

Sean nods. “You’re right. And if these murders have to do with Vietnam, why are we seeing sexual homicides?”

“Maybe we’re not. Maybe that’s just staging. Think about it. There’s been no sexual penetration of any of the victims. No semen recovered anywhere at the scenes, which means there’s not even masturbation going on. Not unless it’s into a condom, and I’m just not getting that feel from these scenes. To me, these killings look like punishment. Our UNSUB is punishing the victims for something in the past. The antemortem biting…. that could either be torture as punishment, or for humiliation. Like the nudity…humiliation.”

“You’re going too fast,” Sean says.

“What about the gunshots? Why aren’t neighbors hearing the gunshots?”

“We’re assuming a silencer.”

“For a Saturday night special?”

“Hell, you can get one for anything these days. Guys have machine silencers in their garage workshops now.”

“Sounds like something a Vietnam vet might know how to do. Calhoun’s body was found by his maid?”

“Right. Been working there seven years.”

As I search in vain for some new angle on the facts, Sean’s cell phone rings again. He looks at the screen, then up at me. “It’s John Kaiser. Kaiser served in Nam himself. I wonder what he thinks about this.” Sean answers, then listens for several moments. When he hangs up, his mouth is hanging slack.

“What is it? What’s happened?”

He shakes his head as though in shock. The color has left his face. “Twenty minutes ago, Nathan Malik called the task force and said he wants to talk to you.”

My blood pressure drops twenty points. “That’s crazy.”

Sean looks me hard in the eyes, and I know something bad is coming. “You haven’t heard anything yet. Kaiser’s outside right now.”

“Outside where? Here? My house?”

“He knew I was here, Cat.”

“Oh my God. Are they following you?”

“I have no idea. Maybe Joey told them I was here.”