Jeffery Deaver - Speaking In Tongues

Tate leapt out of the car and ran to the first door he could find. Gripping his pistol hard, he flung all his weight against the double panels.

He was expecting them to be locked. But the doors swung open with virtually no resistance and he stumbled headfirst into a large, dim lobby.

He saw shadows, shapes of furniture, angles of walls, unlit lamps, dust motes circling in the air.

He saw faint shafts of predawn blue light bleeding in through the windows.

But he never saw the bat or tire iron or whatever it was that hummed through the air behind him and caught him with a glancing blow just above the ear.

A hand stroked his hair.

Lying on his side, on a cold floor, Tate slowly opened his eyes, which stung fiercely from his own sweat. He tried to focus on the face before him. He believed momentarily that the soft fingers were Bett’s; she’d been the first person in his thoughts as he came to consciousness.

But he found that the blue eyes he gazed into were Megan’s.

“Hey, honey,” he wheezed.

“Dad.” Her face was pale, her hair pasted to her head with sweat, her hands bloody.

They were in the lobby of the decrepit hospital. His hands were bound behind him with scratchy rope. His vision was blurry. He got up and nearly fainted from the pain that roared in his temple.

Aaron Matthews was sitting on a chair nearby watching them both like the helpless prisoners that they were.

What astonishing black eyes he has, Tate thought. Like dark lasers. They turned to you as if you were the only person in the universe. Why, patients would tell him anything. He understood why Bett had been powerless to resist him earlier that night when he’d come to her house. Konnie too. And Megan.

Then he saw that Matthews was hurt. A large patch of blood covered the side of his shirt and he was sweating. His nose too was bloody. Tate glanced at Megan. She gave a weak smile and nodded, answering his tacit question if she was responsible for the wound. He lowered his head to the girl’s shoulder. A moment later Tate looked up. “You’ve lost those five pounds you wanted to,” he said to her. “You’re lean and mean.”

“It was ten,” she joked.

Matthews finally said, “Well, Tate Collier. Well.

Such a smooth, baritone voice, Tate reflected. But not phony or slick. So natural, so comforting. Patients would cling to every word he uttered.

“I was just doing my job,” Tate finally said to him. “Peter’s trial, I mean. The evidence was there. The jury believed it.”

Megan frowned and Tate explained about the trial and the boy’s murder in prison.

The girl scowled, said to Matthews, “I knew you’d never worked with him on cases. Those were just more lies.”

Matthews didn’t even notice her. He crossed his arms. “You probably don’t know it, Collier, but I used to watch you in court. After Pete died I’d go to your trials. I’d sit in the back of the gallery for hours and hours. You know what struck me? You reminded me of myself in therapy sessions. Talking to the patients. Leading them where they didn’t want to go. You did exactly the same with the witnesses and the juries.”

Tate said nothing.

Matthews smiled briefly. “And I learned some things about the law. Mens rea. The state of a killer’s mind-he has to intend the death in order to be guilty of murder. Well, that was you, all right, at Pete’s trial. You murdered Pete. You intended him to die.”

“My job was to prosecute cases as best I could.”

“If” Matthews pounced, “that was true then why did you quit prosecuting? Why did you turn tail and run?”

“Because I regretted what happened to your son,” Tate answered.

Matthews lowered his sweaty, stubbly face. “You looked at my boy and said, ‘You’re dead.’ You stood up in court and felt the power flowing through you. And you liked it.”

Tate looked around the room. “You did all this? And you went after all the others-Konnie and Hanson and Eckhard? Bett, too.”

“Mom?” Megan whispered.

“No, she’s okay,” Tate reassured her.

“I had to stop you,” Matthews said. “You kept coming. You wouldn’t listen to reason. You wouldn’t do what you were supposed to.”

“This is where you were committed, right?”

“Him?” Megan asked. “I thought he’d worked here.”

“I thought so too,” Tate said, “but then I remembered testimony at Peter’s trial. No. He was a therapist but he was the one committed here.” Nodding at Matthews. “Not Peter.” Tate recalled the trial:

Mr. Bogan: Now, Dr Rothstein, could you give an opinion of the source and nature of Peter’s difficulties?

Dr. Rothstein: Yes sir. Peter displays socialization problems. He is more comfortable with inanimate creations-stories and books and cartoons and the like-than with people. He also suffers from what I call affect deficit. The reason, from reviewing his medical records, appears to be that his father would lock him in his room for long periods of time-weeks, even months-and the only contact the boy would have with anyone was with his father, Aaron. He wouldn’t even let the boy’s mother see him, Peter withdrew into his books and television. Apparently the only time the boy spent with his mother and others was when his fat her was committed in mental hospitals for bipolar depression and delusional behavior

Matthews said, “I was here, let’s see, on six intakes. Must have been four years altogether. I was like a jailhouse lawyer, Collier. As soon as the patients heard I was a therapist they started coming to me.”

“So you were ‘Patient Matthews,’ “ Megan said, eyes widening. “In the reports about the deaths here.”

“That’s my Megan,” Matthews said.

She said to Tate, “They closed this place because of a bunch of suicides. I thought it was Peter who’d killed them.”

“But it was you?” Tate asked Matthews.

“The DSM-III diagnosis was that I was sociopathic-well, it’s called an antisocial/criminal personality now. How delicate. I knew the hospital examiners in Richmond were looking for an excuse to close down places like this. So I simply helped them out. The place was too understaffed and too incompetent to keep patients from killing themselves. So they shut it down.”

“But it was really just a game to you, right?” Megan asked in disgust. “Seeing how many patients you could talk into suicide.”

Matthews shrugged. He continued. “I got transferred to a halfway house and one bright, sunny May morning, I walked out the front door. Moved to Prince William County, right behind your farm. And started planning how to destroy you.” Matthews winced and pressed his side. The wound didn’t seem that severe.

Tate recalled something else from the trial and asked, “What about your wife?”

Matthews said nothing but his eyes responded.

Tate understood. “She was your first victim, wasn’t she? Did you talk her into killing herself? Or maybe just slip some drugs into her wine during dinner?”

“She was vulnerable,” Matthews responded. “Insecure. Most therapists are.”

Tate asked, “What was she trying to do? Take Peter away from you?”

“Yes, she was. She wanted to place him in a hospital full-time. She shouldn’t have meddled. I understood Peter. No one else did.”

“But you made Peter the way he was,” Megan blurted. “You cut him off from the world.”

She was right. Tate recalled the defense’s expert witness, Dr. Roth-stein, testifying that if you arrest development by isolating a child before the age of eight, social-and communications-skills will never develop. You’ve basically destroyed the child forever.