Greg Iles - Dead Sleep

“It’s a fascinating premise,” says Lenz, “but it verges on pure fantasy. The image laypeople have of so-called ‘split personality’ comes from The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. That construct appeals to our sense of evil masked behind a benign public face. But clinically that’s not the way MPD manifests itself. You don’t get a benign public person with a diabolical intelligence concealed behind it. You get pathetic fragments of personality, most of them manifesting as damaged children arrested in development at the age sexual abuse was visited upon them. The dominant personality is the one best able to adapt and cope under extreme stress. That’s all.”

John is nodding. “A lot of the serial offenders we’ve caught or interviewed have endured sexual abuse as children.”

“But how many had multiple-personality disorder?” asks Lenz.

“None.”

Lenz smiles like a chess master who has led an opponent into a trap. “Before we seriously consider this theory, we should fire our art experts and bring in a new group.”

“Let’s do that,” John snaps. “We’re not getting anywhere with the ones we’ve got. Goddamn it, everyone in this mess knows more than he’s saying. The suspects, de Becque, even us.”

“Wingate knew a lot too,” I tell them. “I could feel it.”

Baxter looks hard at me. “Have you changed your mind about telling us Frank Smith’s explanation for his visits with Wheaton, or for their arguments?”

An image of Smith confiding Wheaton’s desire for assisted suicide flashes through my mind. “No. You’ve just got to trust me on that.”

“Does the reason reflect on their psychology?” asks Lenz. “That could be just as important.”

“There’s nothing unique about it. It’s something normal people would argue about.”

The phone on Bowles’s desk rings. The SAC answers, then holds out the phone to Baxter. “ERF at Quantico.”

The ISU chief gets up and takes the phone, his jaw braced for bad news. As he listens, his face gives away nothing.

“Got it,” he says. “I understand.”

“What?” asks John as he hangs up.

Baxter lays his hands flat on Bowles’s desk. “It was a stolen cell phone, reprogrammed. No way to trace the UNSUB from that. But ERF salvaged the chips. They got the speed-dial numbers programmed into the phone. One belonged to Marcel de Becque.”

As John pumps his fist in a victory sign, a memory of the old French expatriate standing before his great window comes into my mind, his cultured voice telling me about my father and the glory days in Vietnam.

Baxter presses a button on the phone. “EOC? This is Baxter. Tell me where Marcel de Becque is right now.” We sit in silence as Baxter waits. Then his face goes ashen.

“When?… Call the FAA and the foreign legats. Then call me back.”

He hangs up and rubs his hand hard across his chin. “Six hours ago, de Becque’s jet left Grand Cayman. The pilot filed a flight plan for Rio de Janeiro, but he never arrived. De Becque could be anywhere.”

“Goddamn it,” says John.

Before anyone else can comment, Bowles’s phone rings again. Baxter activates the speakerphone.

“Baxter here.”

“We’ve got Chief Farrell on the phone for you.”

“I’m ready.”

“Daniel?” says a rich African-American voice.

“Afternoon, Henry. What’s up?”

“We just got a call about the photo running on TV. A widow lady out in Kenner says she rents a room to the guy. She’s dead sure. Says he goes by the name of Johnson, and he’s hardly ever in town. Says he’s a salesman. The address is Two-twenty-one Wisteria Drive. That’s the south side of I-10, right by the airport. Jefferson Parish.”

Even Baxter’s poker face betrays excitement as he scrawls on a file folder. “Has the sheriff sent anyone out there yet?”

“He doesn’t know about it yet. I thought I’d call you boys first.”

Baxter looks heavenward with grateful eyes. “We’ve got the forensic unit ready to roll. We’ll take care of the interdepartmental relations.”

“Good luck, Daniel. The lady’s name is Pitre.”

“We owe you, Henry.”

“I’ll get plenty of chances to collect. Good luck.”

Baxter hangs up and looks at SAC Bowles. “Five years ago, would we have got that call?”

“Not a chance in hell. Farrell’s tough. He’s fired or jailed hundreds of cops in the past five years.”

Baxter punches a number into the speakerphone.

“Forensics,” says a female voice.

“Two-twenty-one Wisteria Drive, Kenner. Take the whole unit.”

“Sirens? Everything?”

“No, but step on it. We’ll meet you there.”

“We’re gone.”

Mrs. Pitre lives in a warren of streets just north of the runways of New Orleans’ Moisant International Airport. As Baxter, Lenz, John, and I roll past cookie-cutter houses, an inbound jet floats down like a massive bird and passes over our Crown Victoria with a ground-shaking roar.

“Lovely neighborhood,” remarks Baxter, who’s driving. “You could shoot somebody in the head while one of those planes flew over and nobody would hear it.”

“Something to think about,” says Lenz, who’s up front beside him.

Baxter looks over the seat at me. “Sorry, Jordan.”

“Don’t apologize for the truth.”

John slides his hand across the backseat and covers mine.

“There it is,” says Lenz, pointing. “Two-twenty-one.”

It’s a typical suburban tract house. When we pull into the driveway, I see the roof of a two-story garage behind it. The clapboard garage looks like it was added as an afterthought, and not by a master carpenter. The walls are out of plumb, and the roof overhung with branches from an elm that should have been cut before construction.

As Baxter kills the engine, a woman with a cigarette in her mouth walks out of the carport door, waving a set of keys in her hand. Though in her late fifties, she’s wearing a pink spandex tube top and blue shorts that reveal legs shot with varicose veins.

John reaches for the door handle. “Here we go.”

“Take your cane,” advises Baxter. “There’ll be stairs.”

“Screw the cane,” John replies, confirming my theory that male vanity is every bit as powerful as the female variety.

“You got here quick, I’ll say that,” Mrs. Pitre says in a smoke-parched voice pitched like a man’s. “I’ve been worried he’d come back before you got here.” She sticks out her right hand. “Carol Pitre, widowed four years since my husband got killed offshore.”

“Special Agent John Kaiser.” He shakes her hand. “Mr. Johnson won’t be coming back, ma’am.”

“How do you know? He gone on another business trip?”

“No.”

She cocks her head at John. “What’s he done, anyhow? Why you looking for him? The police said he was a federal fugitive, but that doesn’t tell me anything.”

“That’s all we can say at this point, ma’am.”

Mrs. Pitre bites her lip and takes John’s measure again. She decides not to push it. “What happened to your leg there?”

“skiing accident.”

“Waterskiing?”

The forensic unit’s Suburban pulls into the driveway with a roar and a squeal of brakes.

“Who’s that?” asks Mrs. Pitre, craning her neck. “They part of your bunch?”

“They’re evidence technicians, Mrs. Pitre.”

“Like the O.J. trial?”

“That’s right.”

“I hope they’re a damn sight better than the ones in Los Angeles.”

“They are. Mrs. Pitre, we-”

“I guess you want to go up now.”

As the doors of the Suburban slam, a second one pulls in behind it. The vehicles aren’t marked with FBI decals, but if you look closely at the grilles, you can see blue lights and a siren.