The Girls He Adored

66

Being a multiple was a lot like being a sports team with a deep bench. With Christopher in hiding and Max exhausted after the traumatic morning session, it was Useless-Ulysses, the erstwhile host alter-who picked up the plum assignment: driving into town for supplies.

Before he left, he brought a lunch tray up to Irene's room, and apologetically locked the door behind him on his way out, assuring her that “Ih-ih-it's for your oh-oh-own safety.” Not Jimmy Stewart-Useless had a vowel stammer of his own. “I–I-I'm locking her ih-ih-in too.”

Irene, who was still trying to digest the idea that there were at least two homicidal psychopaths on the ridge-Kinch and Miss Miller-didn't touch the food. Instead she sat down at the writing table, looking over the green meadow, and began making out her will.

I, Irene Cogan, being of sound mind and body, declare this my last will and testament. All my worldly goods, I leave to be divided equally between my father, Edward McMullen of Sebastopol, and my brothers, Thomas McMullen of San Jose and Edward McMullen Jr. of Campbell, except for my jewelry, which I leave to my dear friend Barbara Klopfman, of Pacific Grove.

What else? Not much to show for a life. Not that it mattered- the document was not likely to be found. Maybe years hence, if she hid it well. Or never, if she hid it either too well or not well enough. She tore the sheet out of her notebook and slipped it under the fold-up top of the writing table, then crossed over to the bed, stripped off the sheets, and knotted the ends together. No more fooling herself about being rescued, or about achieving through therapy some miraculous fusion that would help Maxwell see the error of his ways. She'd known it was time to escape-or at least begin actively seeking out a means of escape-since midway through this morning's session, when Maxwell had uttered those chilling words: The first one's name was Mary Malloy.

The first one? Dear Jesus, the first one? She'd realized then that he'd never let her go voluntarily-all that would be left of her would be her panties and jogging bra in the top drawer of the bureau, her tank top in the middle drawer, her running shorts in the bottom drawer, her Reeboks on the floor of the closet. And of course her hair on Miss Miller's head, after it had grown out to its original color.

A drop of fifteen feet from the window ledge to the roof of the porch below. Two sheets and two blankets knotted together at the corners and anchored to a leg of the heavy bureau gave Irene more than enough length. She hadn't climbed a rope since high school gym class, but she could still hear Miss Hatton shouting at the girls to use those legs, ladies, use those legs, the good lord made 'em stronger than your arms.

Irene, in a pair of Guess? jeans and a long-sleeved green jersey, climbed out feet first, belly to the sill, hunching her shoulders together and angling them diagonally to squeeze through the narrow opening. Hanging from the sill with both hands, she hooked her left leg twice around the uppermost sheet until it was draped across her instep. Right foot on left, squeezing the rope between sole and instep, she let go of the sill and inchwormed her way down.

Thank you, Miss Hatton, she thought to herself as her feet touched the shingles-then she realized that she still had a tenfoot drop to the ground. Irene tiptoed to the corner of the sloping porch roof, dropped to her belly, and slipped over the side, lowering herself from the aluminum rain gutter, wrapping her legs around the downspout strapped to the corner post supporting the roof, then shinnying the rest of the way. When her feet hit the ground, she backed away from the porch and looked up, up, up to her bedroom window.

Suddenly it occurred to her, much too late to do anything about it, that if she didn't find a way off the property before Maxwell returned, she might not have the strength to climb back up.

Time to hustle those buns, ladies, hustle those buns, thought Irene-it was another of Miss Hatton's sayings.

Moving at a steady trot, it took Irene half an hour to understand that her first assumption had been correct-there was no easy way off Scorned Ridge. The electrified chain-link fence enclosed the entire property, and the juice was on, as evidenced by the freshly charred corpse of a rabbit just outside the fence at the northwest edge of the meadow. The gate at the southwest corner of the property that led down to the river bore a diamond-shaped yellow High Voltage sign, and the gates of the sally port at the southeast corner of the property were padlocked, and topped with triple strands of electrified barbed wire mounted on ceramic spools.

And when Irene looked through the chain-link into the dappled green darkness of the embowered sally port, the Rottweilers were waiting for her. Six of them had come trotting silently through the open door in the side of the sally port-they paced the enclosure like caged lions, their amber eyes trained on Irene as she peered through the inner gate, and following her intently as she turned back from it.

Having failed to find a way off the property, Irene decided to explore the outbuildings. She trotted up the blacktop that wound through the woods and curved to the north, following the crest of the ridge past the house, past the chicken coops, and over a hump in the ridge to a weathered old red clapboard barn with sliding double doors, a cement floor, and a hay loft at the far end.

No livestock in the barn: instead the stalls contained vehicles. A Ford Taurus, a VW bug, a blue Nissan, a Geo Metro, a fortythousand-dollar Lexus coupe, and in the first stall on the right, old Maybelline, the powder-blue Coupe de Ville. Only Maybelline and the Lexus had license plates; the Texas plates on the Lexus had expired six months earlier. After checking out a few of the cars and finding no keys, Irene climbed the ladder to the hayloft, where hundreds upon hundreds of books, magazines, and journals of all ages and on all manner of subjects were stacked or tossed about seemingly at random.

Makes sense, thought Irene, as she explored the loft. With an MTP like Mose, Maxwell would never have to read a book twice, or find one he'd already read to look something up. In a way, the loft was like a model of Maxwell's mind: zillions of facts stored away randomly.

Encyclopedias. History. Back issues of Scientific American, Poultry Journal. Fiction: heavy on Joyce-at least three separate editions of Ulysses. Horror fiction-King, Koontz, Card. Paperback crime novels with lurid covers. True crime, mostly serial killer biographies: Bundy, Gacy, Jack the Ripper, Thomas Piper, Bela Kiss, Dr. Thomas Neill Cream. Red Dragon and Silence of the Lambs. Stacks of National Geographics with their distinctive yellow covers. Travel books. Spy novels. Medical books-a facsimile first edition of Gray's Anatomy. Stacks upon stacks of pornographic magazines, heavy on bondage and discipline. Pornographic paperbacks, most of them rape- or incest-themed, judging by their covers, were mixed up with manuals on carpentry, furniture and cabinet making, hunting, wig making, butchering, wiring, gardening.

And along the back wall, scattered haphazardly under open wooden shutters that had probably once led to a hay chute, was a collection of psychology texts and journals that surpassed Irene's own library. All the standard texts, including a valuable first edition of Rorschach's Psychodiagnostics and several handbooks on the MMPI and TAT-no wonder Maxwell had done so well on his standardized tests.

There was also an eclectic assortment of journals and magazines. Out of curiosity, Irene started going through the periodicals, looking for the issues that contained her pieces, the ones that Mose had cited. She spotted one right away: a copy of the Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology with her article on DID vs. MPD. Next to that, leaning against the back wall, a 1997 issue of the Journal of Nervous and Mental Diseases.

And there in the corner was the copy of Psychology Today with her article on dissociative trance disorder and Pentecostal Christianity. She thumbed through it, saw her picture in the contributor's column.

“Good night, Irene, my Aunt Fanny,” she muttered. Maxwell, with Mose's help, had probably recognized her the first time he laid eyes on her.

On her way down the ladder, it occurred to Irene that she'd overlooked an unlikely, but terribly important possibility. Maybelline! The car phone! Dear God, was it possible he'd left the phone in the Caddy?

She jumped the last few feet to the ground and raced the length of the barn to the de Ville. No keys, but the cell phone was still plugged into the cigarette lighter, the charging indicator a glowing red dot in the dim light of the barn. Irene held her breath, took the phone out of the cradle, and read the green display in the handset window. NO SERVICE.

Then she remembered Maxwell telling her yesterday morning that he'd had to climb up to the hayloft to get a signal. She scrambled back up the ladder and tried the phone again. NO SERVICE. She paced the length of the loft, even leaned way out the window and held the phone over her head. NO SERVICE NO SERVICE NO SERVICE.

But Maxwell had promised her he'd called about Bernadette. She thought back to her last glimpse through the rearview mirror of the black-haired girl lying on her side, her eyes closed, unmoving, and understood, with a sick heavy feeling, that Maxwell had lied, that he had either killed Bernadette or left her there to die of exposure. Then she recalled Maxwell's cryptic words when he'd emerged from old Bill's trailer in Big Sur: I happen to know the old man just gave up smoking.

I bet he did, thought Irene. And Barbara? Had Maxwell lied about Barbara? Had he somehow finished her off as well? With a moan, Irene dropped to her knees and began vomiting up what little remained in her stomach of the fine country breakfast Miss Miller had cooked for her five hours earlier.