Lethal Experiment Read online

  Kimberly said, “Mr. Denhollen was our pharmacist. There’s been a rumor he left his wife. Has he been found?”

  “There’s nothing in the report about it,” I said. “Here, I’ll read you what I have: ‘Denhollen is or was a Darnell pharmacist. Friends and neighbors interviewed considered Ned and his wife Anita to be living beyond their means, suggesting possible after-hours drug sales. The kill shots appeared to be professional in nature, suggesting a gangland-style murder or underworld execution.’”

  “So far, none of this makes any sense,” Kimberly said. “If Mr. Denhollen was selling drugs, they would have shot him, not Charlie and the others.”

  “Let me keep reading,” I said. “It starts to come together: ‘Madison Park police discovered the four bodies Sunday morning. Because the area where the bodies were found encompasses both jurisdictions, police officers from Madison Park and Darnell have joined forces to create a task force to investigate the shootings. All four victims were known to police at the scene and therefore identified simultaneously. At 1:25 p.m. today the task force began a thorough search of the victims’ homes, personal belongings, and computers. They discovered several clear, odorless vials of liquid in a box on the top shelf of Bickham Wright’s bedroom closet, which they turned over to a local medical lab for testing. Riley Cobb, a local computer expert, was able to access Robby Milford’s computer. He was able to uncover hundreds of pornographic downloads, as well as a folder named ‘Fuck Club.’”

  I waited to see if she had a comment about that. She didn’t.

  “Sorry about the language,” I said.

  “Its okay, Daddy,” she said. “I’ve heard the word a million times.”

  “There’s a lot of stuff about this,” I said. “Rather than read it, I’ll summarize. The task force found several files in the Fuck Club folder on Robbie’s computer, including seven rules for participating in the club, and photographs of three local girls, all nude, all apparently unconscious.

  “Who were they, Dad?”

  “I don’t have their names yet, but the task force has identified them as local girls, meaning either Darnell or Madison Park, or both.”

  “Why were they unconscious? Were they drunk? I don’t understand.”

  “This is the part you’re not going to like. The task force is almost certain that the test results on the vials found in Bickham’s closet will reveal GHB, the date rape drug. Based on the files and photographs they uncovered from Robbie’s computer, and the vials found in Bickham’s closet, it looks like the boys had a club where they were drugging girls and having sex with them.”

  “That’s ridiculous!” Kimberly shouted. “I don’t know the others. I mean, I know of them, but I don’t know them. But I do know Charlie. He was gorgeous, Dad. He could’ve had any girl. He didn’t need to drug anyone. If there actually was such a club, Charlie couldn’t possibly have been a part of it.”

  I had to bite my tongue not to speak. Because not only was Charlie part of it, he was the worst part of it.

  “I’m sure you’re right, Kitten. By the time they finish the investigation maybe they’ll conclude it was the other three, not Charlie.”

  “I can guarantee it,” she said.

  “Well, you certainly knew him better than me,” I said, “so I’m sure you’re right.”

  “Did they find any evidence when they searched the van?”

  That’s my daughter, I thought.

  “In fact, they have. In addition to blood evidence, they’ve found five shell casings that are almost certainly related to the shooting, hundreds of fingerprints, and they’ve collected dozens of hair and fiber samples. They’ve also found numerous semen stains and other bodily fluid stains on sleeping bags found in the back of the van.”

  “They’ll test the semen against the boys, won’t they?” she said.

  “They will.”

  “And if they find a match to Charlie, they’ll think he was in on it.”

  “Not necessarily.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “From what I understand, Charlie’s father is an outstanding criminal lawyer. I’m sure if Charlie is innocent, his father will be able to make a compelling argument to prove it.”

  “You believe me, don’t you Dad? About Charlie?”

  “I do, honey.”

  “Good. I couldn’t bear it if you didn’t.”

  “I understand there’s going to be a vigil tonight,” I said. “At the high school.”

  “It starts at nine. We’re all going.”

  “Well, you be safe, okay?”

  “I will. And thanks for trusting me with all this. I won’t tell anyone.”

  “No problem. I love you, Kimberly.”

  “I love you too, Dad. And…”

  “Yes?”

  “I loved Charlie.”

  I winced. “I know you did, honey.”

  Chapter 17

  “Donovan, let’s cut to the chase,” said Dr. Nadine Crouch. “This is our third visit, and so far you’ve refused to talk about your parents or your childhood, you’ve refused to talk about your job, or even what you were doing in the moments before the chest pain occurred. So I have to assume you were doing something illegal or immoral.”

  She paused to see if her words stirred a reaction in me.

  “Do you deny it?” she said.

  “Would it bother you?”

  She said, “Suppose you found a bird with a broken wing that needs your help. Is it really important how its wing got broken?”

  I paused a moment, trying to follow her train of thought. Giving up, I said, “Maybe you should just tell me what you’re trying to say.”

  “It’s not my job to judge you.”

  “In that case, I don’t deny it.”

  “Very well,” she said. “So you were doing something immoral or illegal when the pain began. Is this an activity you’ve engaged in previously?”

  “Hypothetically?”

  “Of course.”

  “Yes.”

  “Would I be right in assuming you haven’t suffered chest pains while performing this activity in the past?”

  “You would.”

  She pursed her lips. “Normally I wouldn’t make a rush to judgment, but you’re not a typical patient. By helping you, I might be protecting others.”

  “I appreciate that,” I said. “So what’s the verdict?”

  “We haven’t spent enough time together for me to pronounce this with a high degree of certainty. But at first blush, this seems to be a classic example.”

  “Of?”

  “Psychologically Induced Pain Syndrome. PIPS, for short.”

  “PIPS? I’ve got PIPS? Boy, won’t Gladys Knight be jealous!”

  “Psychological pain syndromes are defense mechanisms created by your subconscious mind to cover up unresolved emotional issues. In short, whatever your body was doing the day of the chest pains, your mind wanted no part of it. Your mind fought back the only way it could: by creating pain.”

  “Are you being serious?” I said.

  “Completely. Your mind creates an intense pain to try to force you to stop doing whatever it is you’re doing. It forces you to focus on the pain. If you don’t, the pain gets worse. Your mind is determined to make you stop doing whatever it is that is so distasteful. If you don’t come to grips with it, it can shut you down altogether.”

  I thought about that for a minute. “Is this a common thing?”

  “It is, but it typically manifests in back pain.”

  “Then why the heart this time?”

  “Look at you,” she said. “You’re strong as an ox. I’m guessing you’ve never had the slightest back pain, am I right?”

  “You are.”

  “So your mind knows you wouldn’t believe a back pain. The subconscious mind is very clever. It won’t create a pain that can be ignored or put off . It takes advantage of you by creating something so convincing, you have to focus on it. In your case I’m going to go out on a lim
b and guess your father, or someone close to you, died of a heart attack.”

  I could feel her looking at me, hoping for a reaction.

  “So you’re saying the pain is only a smokescreen, something my subconscious mind created to distract me from what I was doing at the time.”

  “That’s correct. Be glad it wasn’t colitis.”

  “Colitis?”

  “That’s the worst of the psychosomatic pains.”

  “Worse than the heart?”

  “Far worse.”

  “Fair enough,” I said. “But as we discussed, what I was doing at the time is something I’ve done many times before.”

  “Think it through, Donovan. I’ll bet there was something different about that particular time.”

  So she was saying that my mind didn’t want me to kill the Peterson sisters. No, it was more than that. My mind tried to prevent me from killing them. But why? I’d killed dozens—okay, more than a hundred—people before. What made the Petersons different? It couldn’t be that they were women. I’ve killed women before, with no pains or afterthoughts. It couldn’t be that I’m going soft, because I’d recently killed Ned Denhollen without the first sign of chest pains.

  So what made the Peterson sisters different from all the rest?

  The answer was somewhere in the back of my mind, hiding in a place I couldn’t quite access. I was probably trying too hard to make sense of something my mind was trying to repress. Best thing to do was put it on hold and come back to it later. I stood.

  She stood.

  We shook hands.

  “Will you come back?” she said.

  “You’ve given me a lot to think about.”

  “You need this,” she said.

  “I’ll let you know.”

  For a moment it seemed as though she wanted to say something else. The thought seemed to flit about her face like a scrap of paper caught on a wind current. In the end, she chose not to say it, whatever it was, and I was left to wonder what it could have been.

  And realized that’s probably how she gets her patients to return.

  Chapter 18

  Sensory Resources had a Gulfstream in a hangar in Trenton that needed to get back to LA, so Callie and I caught it as far west as Vegas. With a ride like that, you grab while you can. In a perfect world it would have been a round-tripper, but hey, I couldn’t complain. I’d just have to charter something on my own dime to get us back home Thursday. I’d keep it Thursday night and use it to fly Kathleen and me to Charlie’s funeral on Friday.

  In a G4, Trenton to Vegas runs about four hours. A lot of time to chat, but we were quiet most of the trip. I couldn’t stop thinking about what Dr. Crouch had said about the psychological pain. Until I got a handle on its cause, I’d be susceptible to severe chest pains at the worst possible times. That type of physical disability could prove deadly in my line of work.

  “Cirque du Soleil,” I said.

  Callie looked up at me. “What about it?”

  “I didn’t know you were such a big fan of performance art.”

  “There’s a lot you don’t know about me,” she said.

  True, I thought. And a lot I did know.

  This is how you get to be Callie: you’re eight years old, you watch TV, you play in the yard, you go to school, and you’ve got the brightest smile and bubbliest laugh in town. Except that one day you’re playing outside at your friend’s house and the sky has gotten dark and you decide if you run you can beat the rain, because it’s only a couple of blocks.

  So you start running and you get about half-way home before the rain comes hard and you do something that changes your life.

  You hesitate.

  You stop running and wonder what to do. Should you keep heading home, or go back to your friend’s house and call your mom to pick you up.

  At that precise moment of indecision, you’re tackled, punched, and dragged into the bushes.

  The man is large and powerfully built. He smells of garlic and moldy cheese. He’s got you face down in the mud and he doesn’t have to hit you in the back of the head, but he does, and he hits you again and again. And each time he hits you, you start to black out, and you wish you could scream, but when you try, nothing comes out but a hiss.

  The smelly man pulls your panties down to your ankles and hits you again. He starts touching you in a certain way—you know the word: inappropriately. At first you don’t worry so much because what you wanted more than anything was for him to stop punching the back of your head. But then, when he starts talking to you with a love voice, and calls you his sexy little girl you want to vomit. When his words turn really dirty and he starts calling you names, you start wishing he’d stop saying those things and go back to hitting you.

  Then, just when you think it can’t get any worse, it gets much worse. The pain is unlike anything you’ve ever experienced, or ever imagined. It numbs you and your mind can’t tolerate it, so it just shuts down.

  The man leaves you lying there to die, face down in a muddy field. You nearly drown in the muck but someone finds you and brings you home and for the next six months you’re in and out of hospitals and you can’t speak, can’t feel, can’t think. You sit in a chair facing a window and everyone thinks you’re looking out the window, but you’re actually staring at the window, and your mind is trying to work out the way the wooden pieces intersect, the slats that hold the window panes. Something about how they intersect. If you can figure that out, well, it’s not much, but it’s something to hold on to; a place from which to reclaim your sanity.

  And then one day it’s fall and the wind is blowing the leaves off the trees and one errant leaf snags on the window pane next to the wooden slats and when it does, you focus on the leaf. For the first time in months, you see there’s something on the other side of the window, and if there’s something beyond that window, then maybe it’s something big enough to live for.

  You begin the process of building your life from scratch. But you’re not building the life you were meant to live, you’re building something else altogether.

  You realize you’re alive and not dead or dreaming. But you also realize that while you’re alive on the outside, on the inside you’re dead. A few months pass and they send you back to school, but something’s different. All the kids know what happened to you. They taunt you, hit you, but when they do, you feel no pain. That’s because none of them can hit you like the man hit you. And yet, you want to be hit, so you taunt them back. They hit you and you laugh. They hit you some more and you laugh harder. You love the feel of your own blood in your mouth. The taste and texture makes you feel almost alive.

  You’re fifteen now, and you keep growing more and more beautiful, but you could care less. You start taking drugs, you flirt with the fathers of your former friends, and you get some of them to sleep with you in return for money you use to buy more drugs.

  You eventually get busted for prostitution and you’re sent to a state hospital for evaluation. You’re coming off your drugs cold turkey and you freak out and they give you an injection and put you in restraints. The first time you wake up you find your arms, waist and ankles strapped to a bed. The next time you wake up, two orderlies are molesting you. You scream and wail and they run away and you think you know how to beat them, but all you’ve done was teach them to give you a stronger dose next time.

  You spend a few weeks in the ward and by the time you’re clean you learn you have an IQ of 182, which is a hundred points more than you need for the life you’re willing to accept.

  So you’re back home and back to other things, as well, like buying drugs and selling your body. And by the time you’re eighteen, you’re doing some new things, too, like stealing cars. You love the cars, love boosting them, love driving them fast, with the windows down and the radio up and the bass line thumping strong and steady.

  Like a beating heart.

  One night you’re driving a tweaked out Super Bee and you’re blitzed enough to wonder what it fee
ls like to slam into the car that’s parked near the bushes where it all changed for you. You hit it hard, but you survive, and then it’s back to the ward, back to the knockout drugs that make the late night rape sessions possible for the otherwise un-dateable orderlies.

  And you go on like that for a number of weeks or months until something happens: for the second time in your life, a man shows up and changes your life. Except that this man understands you and knows what you need. His name is Donovan Creed and yeah, he knows exactly what you need.

  You need a reason.

  You don’t get to be like eighteen-year-old Callie without experiencing soul-crushing trauma. And you don’t become the empty, broken, killing machine Callie of today unless you have a reason.

  So yeah, I gave Callie a reason. I took her under my wing and trained her. She was an easy study because she was indefatigable, and because she flat didn’t give a shit.

  Callie’s reason is revenge.

  That’s why it’s easy for her to put a bullet into a total stranger, or kill date raping young men in cold blood. That’s why sometimes, for Callie, it’s personal.

  I looked at her in the Gulfstream, sitting across the aisle, facing me, reclining, eyes closed. And God help her, she was and is the most exquisitely beautiful woman to ever walk the earth.

  And the most deadly.

  I couldn’t fathom this request of hers to see a Vegas show, but if Callie’s heart had opened to the point that she could appreciate theater, then I wanted to be there to experience it with her.

  Still, I wondered what she meant by the life and death part.

  Chapter 19

  The Cirque du Soleil stage production of “O” was considered so important to the success of the Bellagio Hotel, they actually built the stage first, and then built the hotel and casino around it. And what a stage it is! It houses a pool containing one-point-five million gallons of water! There is a platform in the pool filled with thousands of tiny holes that allows it to rise and fall in seconds, without creating a wake. This enables cast members to perform high dives into the pool one minute, and skip across the surface the next.