Greg Iles - Dead Sleep

“Interesting, isn’t it?” Lenz’s eyes play over my body in a strange way, not lustfully, but in a coldly appraising manner. “Jane broke down after the scandal over you and the teacher?”

“She wouldn’t leave the house. But when they started talking about making us wards of the state, she went back to school. She graduated salutatorian, but she never got to be a Chi-O. She pledged Delta Gamma, which was considered decent but definitely second tier.”

“You’ve asserted how beautiful Jane was. You’re her identical twin. How do you feel about your own looks?”

“I know I’m attractive. But Jane cultivated her looks in a way I never have. Toward the ideals of southern beauty, you know? That’s a weird thing that extends from your appearance right into your personality. For me looks are secondary. I’ve used them to gain advantage in my work -I’d be a fool not to – but it makes me uncomfortable. Beauty is an accident of genetics for which I deserve no credit.”

“That’s disingenuous, to say the least.”

This makes me laugh. “You’re a man, okay? You don’t know how many times I’ve listened to my mother whine about how much ‘potential’ I have, that if I’d just do something with it, fix myself up a little – like Jane, is the subtext – I’d find a wonderful provider who’d marry me and take care of me for the rest of my life. Well, wake up, Mom. I don’t need a goddamn provider, okay? I am one.”

“For whom do you provide, Jordan?”

“Myself.”

“I see.” Lenz looks at his watch, then taps his knees. “Jane married a wealthy attorney?”

“That’s right.”

“Jump to her disappearance. You didn’t handle it well? The file says you interfered with the investigation.”

“I don’t take exclusion well, okay? I’m a journalist. This was my sister. And the FBI was getting exactly nowhere with the case. I badgered them for the victims’ families, walked the streets, worked my old contacts at the Times-Picayune. But none of it did any good.”

“So what did you finally do?”

“Took off and tried to bury myself in work. Literally. I went to Sierra Leone. I took crazy risks, had some close calls. Word got back to my agency. They begged me to slow down, so I did. I slowed down so much that I couldn’t get out of bed. I was sleeping around the clock. When I finally came out of that, I couldn’t sleep at all. I had to have prescription drugs just to close my eyes without seeing Jane being raped, tied hand and foot in some dark room.”

“Was rape a particular fear of hers?”

“It’s a particular fear for every woman.”

“What about you? You must have placed yourself in some very dangerous situations vis-a-vis rape. War zones full of men. Teenagers with guns.”

“I can take care of myself. Jane’s a lot softer.”

Lenz nods slowly. “If we found Jane tomorrow – alive -what would you say to her? In other words, what have you most regretted not saying to her?”

“That’s none of your business.”

“I’ve explained why-”

“Some things are too personal, Doctor. Let’s leave it at that.”

Lenz rubs his face with his hands, then inclines his head to me. “Some years ago, I worked a very difficult murder case. I lost my wife during that investigation. She was murdered. Violently. Viciously. And I felt responsible. Perhaps I was. We had grown apart in our marriage, but that hardly lessened the agony. We’ve all done terrible things to the people we love, Jordan. It’s our nature as humans. If there’s something like that between you and your sister, it would help me to know. To see her as she really was.”

The pain in Lenz’s eyes looks genuine, but he’s an old hand at this game. He could have a stock of stories like this one, barter beads he uses to elicit intimacies.

“There’s nothing like that.”

He takes a frustrated breath through his nose, and I’m reminded of a surgeon working to remove a bullet, his gloved thumb and finger in forceps, trying first one angle and then another, probing for a route to the heart of the wound.

“Certain types of people become targets for predators,” Lenz says. “The same way that injured or weak animals are chosen as prey by leopards. Certain types of children tend to be molested, for example: the shy ones, those who don’t fit in, who play at the edge of the group, who separate themselves for various reasons. The same holds true for adults. I’m currently profiling every known victim in this case. Some had very low self-image, but others were super-achievers… Some had siblings, others none. Some were housewives, others career women. I must find-”

“I’ve told you all I know, Doctor.”

“You haven’t begun to tell me what you know.” He shifts in his seat, and the cruelty reappears in his eyes. “Why have you never married, Jordan?”

“I was engaged. He was killed. End of story.”

“Killed how?”

“He was an ITN reporter. He was shot down in a helicopter over Namibia and tortured to death.”

“You’ve lost your father, your fiance, and your sister to violent death?”

“Bad things come in threes, right?”

“You’re forty years old. There must be more to your romantic life than one engagement.”

“I’ve had lovers. Does that make you happy?”

“Did Jane have lovers?”

“One boyfriend through high school, like I said. She never had sex with him.”

“How do you know?”

“I just know. Okay? After him, she dated around, but nothing serious. Then in college she met a guy from a wealthy family in New Orleans. Married him his senior year of law school. She found the handsomest, most reliable provider she could, married him, had two kids, and lived happily ever after.”

For some reason this inaccurate summary brings a wave of tears to my eyes. “I need a drink. Do you think they have any of those little airplane bottles stowed on this plane?”

“No. Jordan, I want you to-”

“Get off it! Okay? You wanted our story, you’ve got it. We’re poster girls for nurture in the nature-versus-nurture debate. We’re identical right down to our mitochondria, but emotionally we’re opposites. Jane acted like she despised me, but she was so jealous of me it made her sick. She was jealous of my name. She thought ‘Jordan’ was exotic, while hers was literally plain Jane. I called her that when I was angry. She hated having to depend on me for money, for her cheerleading outfits and expenses. She wanted Izod shirts and Bass Weejuns, and I made her wear J.C. fucking Penney! That’s how petty it was, okay? But to girls in our situation, that was a big deal. Was she weak or frail in some way? Yes. But weaker people can’t help being weak, you know? I tried to protect her. Until she stopped wanting me to, and even then I tried. Jane became a southern belle because it was the only choice she was capable of making. She had to feel safe.”

“We’re all defined by the choices we make to survive,” Lenz says in a fatherly voice. “The Walter Mittys and the monsters.”

His paternalistic bit finally snaps my patience. “Is that supposed to be profound? Doctor, you may have lost your wife to a killer, but I suspect that most of the trauma you’ve encountered was vicarious. Told to you by patients or prisoners. It can be tough to hear things, I know. I’ve heard some bad things myself. But I have also endured some bad things. I have descended into the pit of hell, if you want to know. I have seen some shit. And all this talk we’re doing means nothing. Jane is alive or she’s dead. Either way, I have to know. That’s the way I’m built. But your games aren’t taking us any closer to an answer. I don’t think anything connects all these victims, except the fact that they’re women.”