Body Double

SIXTEEN

I CAN STILL CHANGE my mind.

That thought kept going through Maura’s head as she walked through visitor processing. As she removed her watch and placed it, along with her handbag, in a locker. She could bring no jewelry or wallet into the visitors’ room, and she felt naked without her purse, stripped of any proof of identity, of all the little plastic cards that told the world who she was. She closed the locker and the clang was a jarring reminder of the world she was about to enter: a place where doors slammed shut, where lives were trapped in boxes.

Maura had hoped this meeting would be private, but when the guard admitted her into the visiting room, Maura saw that privacy was an impossibility. Afternoon visiting hours had commenced an hour earlier, and the room was noisy with the voices of children and the chaos of reunited families. Coins clattered into a vending machine, which disgorged plastic-wrapped sandwiches and chips and candy bars.

“Amalthea’s on her way down now,” the guard said to Maura. “Why don’t you find a seat?”

Maura went to an unoccupied table and sat down. The plastic tabletop was sticky with spilled juice; she kept her hands in her lap and waited, her heart hammering, her throat dry. The classic fight-or-flight response, she thought. Why the hell am I so nervous?

She rose and crossed to a sink. Filled a paper cup with water and gulped it down. Her throat still felt dry. This kind of thirst couldn’t be quenched by mere water; the thirst, the quickened pulse, the sweating hands-it was all the same reflex, the body preparing itself for imminent threat. Relax, relax. You’ll meet her, say a few words, satisfy your curiosity, and walk out. How hard can that be? She crushed the paper cup, turned, and froze.

A door had just opened and a woman entered, her shoulders squared, her jaw lifted in regal confidence. Her gaze settled on Maura and for a moment it locked there. But then, just as Maura thought: It’s her, the woman turned, smiled, and opened her arms wide to embrace a child who was running toward her.

Maura halted in confusion, not knowing whether to sit down or remain standing. Then the door opened again, and the guard who had spoken to her earlier reappeared, leading a woman by the arm. A woman who did not walk but shuffled, her shoulders slumped forward, her head bent, as though obsessively searching the floor for something she’d lost. The guard brought her to Maura’s table, pulled out a chair, and sat the prisoner down.

“There, now, Amalthea. This lady’s come to see you. Why don’t you have a nice talk with her, hmm?”

Amalthea’s head remained bent, her gaze fixed on the tabletop. Tangled strands of hair fell across her face in a greasy curtain. Though heavily streaked with gray, clearly that hair had once been black. Like mine, thought Maura. Like Anna’s.

The guard shrugged and looked at Maura. “Well, I’ll just let you two visit, okay? When you’re finished, give me a wave and I’ll take her back.”

Amalthea did not even glance up as the guard walked away. Nor did she seem to notice the visitor who had just sat down across from her. Her posture remained frozen, her face hidden behind that veil of dirty hair. The prison shirt hung loose on her shoulders, as though she was shrinking inside her clothes. Her hand, resting on the table, was rocking back and forth in a ceaseless tremor.

“Hello, Amalthea,” said Maura. “Do you know who I am?”

No response.

“My name is Maura Isles. I…” Maura swallowed. “I’ve been looking for you for a very long time.” For all my life.

The woman’s head twitched sideways. Not in reaction to Maura’s words, just an involuntary tic. A stray impulse sparking through nerves and muscles.

“Amalthea, I’m your daughter.”

Maura watched, waiting for a reaction. Even longing to see one. In that moment, everything else in the room seemed to vanish. She did not hear the cacophony of children’s voices or the quarters dropping into the vending machine or the scrape of chair legs across linoleum. All she saw was this tired and broken woman.

“Can you look at me? Please, look at me.”

At last the head came up, moving in little jerks, like a mechanical doll whose gears have rusted. The unkempt hair parted, and the eyes focused on Maura. Fathomless eyes. Maura saw nothing there, not awareness. Not a soul. Amalthea’s lips moved, but soundlessly. Just another twitching of muscles, without intent, without meaning.

A small boy toddled by, trailing the scent of a wet diaper. At the next table a dishwater blonde in prison denim was sitting with her head in her hands and quietly sobbing as her male visitor watched, expressionless. At that moment a dozen family dramas like Maura’s were taking place; she was just one more bit player who couldn’t see beyond the circle of her own crisis.

“My sister Anna came to see you,” Maura said. “She looked just like me. Do you remember her?”

Amalthea’s jaw was moving now, as though chewing food. An imaginary meal that only she could taste.

No, of course she doesn’t remember, thought Maura, gazing in frustration at Amalthea’s blank expression. She doesn’t register me, or who I am, or why I’m here. I’m shouting into an empty cave, and only my own voice is echoing back.

Determined to dredge up a reaction, any reaction, Maura said with what was almost deliberate cruelty: “Anna’s dead. Your other daughter is dead. Did you know that?”

No answer.

Why the hell do I keep trying? There’s nobody home in there. There’s no light in those eyes.

“Well,” said Maura. “I’ll come back another time. Maybe you’ll talk to me then.” With a sigh, Maura stood and looked around for the guard. She spotted her at the other end of the room. Maura had just raised her hand in a wave when she heard the voice. A whisper so soft she might have imagined it:

“Go away.”

Startled, Maura looked down at Amalthea, who was sitting in exactly the same position, lips twitching, gaze still unfocused.

Slowly, Maura sat back down. “What did you say?”

Amalthea’s gaze lifted to hers. And just for an instant, Maura saw awareness there. A gleam of intelligence. “Go away. Before he sees you.”

Maura stared. A chill clambered up her spine, made the hairs on the back of her neck bristle.

At the next table, the dishwater blonde was still crying. Her male visitor stood up and said, “I’m sorry, but you’ll just have to accept it. That’s the way it is.” He walked away, back to his life on the outside where women wore pretty blouses, not blue denim. Where doors that locked could be unlocked.

“Who?” Maura asked softly. Amalthea didn’t answer. “Who’s going to see me, Amalthea?” Maura pressed her. “What do you mean?”

But Amalthea’s gaze had clouded over. That brief flash of awareness was gone, and Maura was staring, once more, into a void.

“So, are we all done with the visit?” the guard asked cheerfully.

“Is she always like this?” asked Maura, watching Amalthea’s lips form soundless words.

“Pretty much. She has good days and bad days.”

“She hardly spoke to me at all.”

“She will, if she gets to know you better. Mostly keeps to herself, but sometimes she’ll come out of it. Writes letters, even uses the phone.”

“Whom does she call?”

“I don’t know. Her shrink, I guess.”

“Dr. O’Donnell?”

“The blond lady. She’s been in a few times, so Amalthea’s pretty comfortable with her. Aren’t you, honey?” Reaching for the prisoner’s arm, the guard said: “Come on, upsy daisy. Let’s walk you back.”

Obediently Amalthea rose to her feet and allowed the guard to guide her away from the table. She moved only a few steps, then stopped.

“Amalthea, let’s go.”

But the prisoner did not move. She stood as though her muscles had suddenly solidified.

“Honey, I can’t wait all day for you. Let’s go.”

Slowly Amalthea turned. Her eyes were still vacant. The words she said next came out in a voice that was not quite human, but mechanical. A foreign entity, channeled through a machine. She looked at Maura.

“Now you’re going to die, too,” she said. Then she turned and shuffled away, back to her cell.

“She has tardive dyskinesia,” said Maura. “That’s why Superintendent Gurley tried to discourage me from visiting her. She didn’t want me to see Amalthea’s condition. She didn’t want me to find out what they’ve done to her.”

“What exactly did they do to her?” said Rizzoli. She was once again behind the wheel, guiding them fearlessly past trucks that made the road shake, that rattled the little Subaru with turbulence. “Are you saying they turned her into some kind of zombie?”

“You saw her psychiatric record. Her first doctors treated her with phenothiazines. That’s a class of antipsychotic drugs. In older women, those drugs can have devastating side effects. One of them is called tardive dyskinesia-involuntary movements of the mouth and the face. The patient can’t stop chewing or puffing her cheeks or sticking out her tongue. She can’t control any of it. Think about what that’s like. Everyone staring at you as you make weird faces. You’re a freak.”

“How do you stop the movements?”

“You can’t. They should have discontinued the drugs immediately, as soon as she had the first symptoms. But they waited too long. Then Dr. O’Donnell came on the case. She was the one who finally stopped the drugs. Recognized what was happening.” Maura gave an angry sigh. “The tardive dyskinesia is probably permanent.” She looked out the window at the tightening traffic. This time she felt no anxiety, seeing tons of steel hurtling past. She was thinking instead of Amalthea Lank, her lips ceaselessly moving, as though whispering secrets.

“Are you saying she didn’t need those drugs in the first place?”

“No. I’m saying they should have been stopped sooner.”

“So is she crazy? Or isn’t she?”

“That was their initial diagnosis. Schizophrenia.”

“And what’s your diagnosis?”

Maura thought about Amalthea’s blank stare, her cryptic words. Words that made no sense except as a paranoid’s delusion. “I would have to agree,” she said. With a sigh, she leaned back. “I don’t see myself in her, Jane. I don’t see any part of me in that woman.”

“Well, that’s got to be a relief. Considering.”

“But it’s still there, that link between us. You can’t deny your own DNA.”

“You know the old saying, blood is thicker than water? It’s bullshit, Doc. You don’t have anything in common with that woman. She had you, and she gave you up at birth. That’s that. Relationship over.”

“She knows so many answers. Who my father is. Who I am.”

Rizzoli shot her a sharp glance, then turned back to the road. “I’m going to give you some advice. I know you’ll wonder where I’m coming from on this. Believe me, I’m not pulling this out of thin air. But that woman, Amalthea Lank, is someone you need to stay away from. Don’t see her, don’t talk to her. Don’t even think about her. She’s dangerous.”

“She’s nothing but a burned-out schizophrenic.”

“I’m not so sure about that.”

Maura looked at Rizzoli. “What do you know about her that I don’t?”

For a moment Rizzoli drove without speaking. It was not the traffic that preoccupied her; she seemed to be weighing her response, considering how best to phrase her answer. “Do you remember Warren Hoyt?” she finally asked. Though she said the name without discernible emotion, her jaw had squared, and her hands had tightened around the steering wheel.

Warren Hoyt, thought Maura. The Surgeon.

That was what the police had dubbed him. He had earned that nickname because of the atrocities he’d inflicted on his victims. His instruments were duct tape and a scalpel; his prey were women asleep in their beds, unaware of the intruder who stood beside them in the darkness, anticipating the pleasure of making the first cut. Jane Rizzoli had been his final target, his opponent in a game of wits he’d never expected to lose.

But it was Rizzoli who brought him down with a single shot, her bullet piercing his spinal cord. Now quadriplegic, his limbs paralyzed and useless, Warren Hoyt’s universe had shrunk to a hospital room, where the few pleasures left to him were those of the mind-a mind that remained as brilliant and dangerous as ever.

“Of course I remember him,” said Maura. She had seen the result of his work, the terrible mutilation his scalpel had wrought in the flesh of one of his victims.

“I’ve been keeping tabs on him,” said Rizzoli. “You know, just to reassure myself that the monster’s still in his cage. He’s still there, all right, on the spinal cord unit. And every Wednesday afternoon, for the last eight months, he’s been getting a visitor. Dr. Joyce O’Donnell.”

Maura frowned. “Why?”

“She claims it’s part of her research in violent behavior. Her theory is that killers aren’t responsible for their actions. That some bump on the noggin when they’re kids makes them prone to violence. Naturally, defense attorneys have her on speed dial. She’d probably tell you that Jeffrey Dahmer was just misunderstood, that John Wayne Gacy just got his head knocked a few too many times. She’ll defend anyone.”

“People do what they’re paid to do.”

“I don’t think she does it for the money.”

“Then for what?”

“For the chance to get up close and personal to people who kill. She says it’s her field of study, that she does it for science. Yeah, well, Josef Mengele did it for science, too. That’s just the excuse, a way to make what she does respectable.”

“What does she do?”

“She’s a thrill seeker. She gets a kick out of hearing a killer’s fantasies. She likes stepping into his head, taking a look around, seeing what he sees. Knowing what it feels like to be a monster.”

“You make it sound like she’s one of them.”

“Maybe she’d like to be. I’ve seen letters she wrote to Hoyt while he was in prison. Urging him to tell her all the details about his kills. Oh yeah, she loves the details.”

“A lot of people are curious about the macabre.”

“She’s beyond curious. She wants to know what it’s like to cut skin and watch a victim bleed. What it’s like to enjoy that ultimate power. She’s hungry for details the way a vampire’s hungry for blood.” Rizzoli paused. Gave a startled laugh. “You know, I just realized something. That’s exactly what she is, a vampire. She and Hoyt feed off each other. He tells her his fantasies, she tells him it’s okay to enjoy them. It’s okay to get turned on by the thought of cutting someone’s throat.”

“And now she’s visiting my mother.”

“Yeah.” Rizzoli looked at her. “I wonder what fantasies they’re sharing.”

Maura thought of the crimes Amalthea Lank had been convicted of. She wondered what had gone through her mind when she’d picked up the two sisters at the side of the road. Did she feel an anticipatory thrill, a heady shot of power?

“Just the fact O’Donnell finds Amalthea worth visiting should tell you something,” said Rizzoli.

“What should it tell me?”

“O’Donnell doesn’t waste her time on your everyday murderers. She doesn’t care about the guy who shoots some 7-Eleven clerk during a robbery. Or the husband who gets pissed at his wife and shoves her down the stairs. No, she spends her time with the creeps who kill because they enjoy it. The ones who give that knife the extra twist, because they like the way it feels scraping against bone. She spends her time with the special ones. The monsters.”

My mother, thought Maura. Is she a monster, too?