Headcase, p.27
Headcase, page 27
Maybe she’s the crazy one.
‘Did anyone come to visit me?’ I ask. ‘While I was unconscious?’
‘Not that I’m aware of,’ Diaz says. ‘Are you expecting someone?’
‘Zara.’
‘Ah.’ Diaz doesn’t push this.
Zara was supposed to come when she saw the paper in the window. To find out what Harmony had told me, and get me out of here. It’s been two days. What’s taking so long?
I know what’s going through Diaz’s head. She thinks Zara isn’t real, so of course she hasn’t visited. But Zara is real.
Isn’t she?
•
‘In one of our sessions, you mentioned a sun,’ Diaz says.
My head is feeling better today. Clearer. I’m telling myself it’s because the drugs are out of my system and the concussion from the chair leg has worn off.
I don’t want to believe that it’s because therapy is working.
We’re not in Diaz’s office. We’re alone in the garden, sitting on hard metal benches. Her notebook is on a wrought-iron table between us, and she hasn’t touched it so far. This morning, Diaz could see that I was gloomy and suggested that being out in the sunshine might help. I hate sunshine, and we’re sitting facing the brick wall that imprisons me here, which isn’t exactly perking me up. But I let her think she’s helping.
‘Sun?’ I say.
She nods. ‘From a sperm donation. You said his name was Kyle.’
Oh. Son. I don’t remember telling her that. But this place is playing tricks on my memory. I no longer know how long I’ve been here. Whether Zara is a day overdue, or two, or a week.
‘He died,’ I say.
‘What was he like?’ she asks.
‘A lot like me,’ I said. ‘Five eight. Scruffy. Kind of an asshole.’
Diaz laughs gently. We look at the flowers in front of the wall for a while. A lone bee buzzes around them. Perhaps the swarm has moved on, and no one told her.
‘How did you find Kyle?’ Diaz says. ‘After the donation.’
When I infiltrated the house of dark web criminals and met Zara, Kyle was there too. A teenage boy, just as lost as I’d been at his age. He was cruel, and stupid. He might have grown out of it, except he was murdered right in front of me. I was too slow to save him.
I give Diaz the shortest, least painful version of this story: ‘I just walked into a house, and there he was.’
‘You recognised him?’
‘Yeah, he looked like me.’
Diaz pauses just long enough for me to feel how unlikely she thinks this is.
‘He looked like me,’ I say again.
‘Before you arrived at this house,’ Diaz asks, ‘how were you feeling?’
‘Bad.’
‘Just bad?’
It was significantly worse than that, and she knows it. I drove to that house with the intention of killing myself after one last meal. ‘What’s your point?’
‘With seven billion people on Earth, what are the chances that you would bump into your long-lost child at—’
‘With seven billion people on Earth, some weird things are gonna happen. In the seventies, a seventeen-year-old kid in Hamilton, Bermuda, was run over by the same taxi that had killed his brother on the same day the previous year, and it was carrying the same passenger.’
‘I’ve heard that story before. Do you know how small Hamilton, Bermuda, is? Not many cabs. Especially not in the seventies—’ She breaks off. ‘You’re very good at that.’
‘At what?’
‘Changing the subject. Are you willing to hear a different theory?’
She’s asked the question in such a way that it’s difficult to say no. So I say nothing.
‘The mind is a funny thing,’ she says. ‘If I have the timeline right, you arrived at that house just after a traumatic break-up with your first love.’
‘Thistle found a human head in my freezer,’ I say.
Diaz pretends to believe this. ‘You might have felt like you didn’t have much left. So, when you walked into that house, your mind gave you something to live for. You saw a kid who looked a bit like you, and—’
‘I lost Kyle once,’ I say. My voice cracks. ‘Now you’re trying to take him away from me again. Saying he wasn’t my son.’
‘No,’ she says. ‘I’m saying he became your son, because that’s who you needed him to be.’
My throat is closing up. I don’t trust myself to speak.
‘I have a daughter,’ Diaz said. ‘We decided my wife would be the one to carry her, since her job didn’t pay as well as mine. So my daughter has some DNA from my wife, some from a male friend, and none from me.’
As an orphan who never got adopted, I’ve always hated couples who insist on having their own biological children. I take a shaky breath. ‘Do you feel left out?’
‘No. She’s my daughter because I love her.’
‘I don’t know if I loved Kyle.’ My voice falters. ‘I didn’t know him very long.’
‘How did you feel when he died?’
Just like that, I’m in the back of the van again. Cradling his broken body, howling.
‘I think you loved him enough for it to count,’ Diaz says.
‘He never knew.’ I can’t meet her gaze. ‘I never told him.’
‘I’m sorry. That will probably always be painful.’
I can’t hold back the tears anymore, but I manage to keep them quiet. She knows I’m crying, but I can pretend she doesn’t, as long as I don’t make a sound.
When I’m done, I find myself watching that solitary bee humming around for a while.
‘You said you don’t remember your own parents,’ Diaz says finally.
I clear my throat. ‘Right.’
‘So you don’t remember them telling you they loved you, either.’
It’s like she’s trying to hurt me. ‘Are you sure you’re a real therapist?’
She ignores this. ‘I bet they did, though. Love you, I mean. They would be glad to see that you turned out all right.’
I snort, but she doesn’t seem to be joking.
‘You think I turned out all right?’ I intended to sound incredulous, but it comes out like a plea.
‘I do,’ she says. ‘All things considered.’
‘They’re not watching me. I don’t believe in heaven,’ I say.
‘Nor do I,’ Diaz says. ‘I said they would be glad, not they are glad. But still.’
We sit in silence for the rest of the session. But it’s not a hostile silence, like when she called me lazy. It’s comfortable.
Just as we’re getting up, Nurse Kelly approaches. He’s been watching me more warily since my near-escape. I wonder if he was told that I’d been vomiting up the pills. Maybe he got in trouble for not monitoring me closely enough. He might be angry at me.
Or possibly not. It might be par for the course. Like Diaz said, people with mental illnesses don’t believe they are sick. They probably all try to avoid taking their meds.
‘Timothy,’ Kelly says. ‘You have a visitor.’
Zara. She’s finally here for me. On the one hand, I’m desperate to leave. But on the other, I feel like I was just starting to make progress.
Diaz asks me, ‘Do you feel well enough for a visit?’
‘Yes,’ I say. ‘Thank you, doctor.’
She gives me an odd look. She doesn’t know that this is the last time I’ll ever see her.
‘You’re welcome, Timothy,’ she says.
Kelly leads me through the corridors to a locked door. He unlocks it and takes me into a room filled with tables and chairs, plus a vending machine. I’ve never seen the room before, because I’ve never had a visitor before. A window looks out onto a small aviary, filled with tiny, sickly-looking birds. I sit at one of the tables and wait. Kelly takes a seat in one corner, scrolling through his phone.
I’m there a long time. Long enough for me to wonder if Zara has breached protocol somehow and been sent away. It’s very peaceful here, watching the birds hop from one withered branch to another.
Then my visitor walks in, and it’s not Zara.
It’s Thistle.
CHAPTER 36
What’s black and white, but red all over?
My shock must show on my face, because she mirrors it. Thistle has always been empathetic. Good at consoling victims by sharing their pain, celebrating someone else’s victory when they solve a case, catching killers by sensing their rage. It’s like she takes some of my surprise and wears it on her own face, to spare me.
‘Thistle?’ I say, a bit stupidly.
‘Blake.’ She generously pretends I was just greeting her.
She’s wearing dangly gold earrings and a leather jacket over a cream turtleneck. She smells good. I want to slide my arm around her, underneath that jacket, and pull her chest against mine.
This isn’t a prison. Hugs are allowed. Just the same, I don’t touch her. I take a seat opposite her, my elbow on the laminate tabletop. ‘What are you doing here?’
Immediately, I wish I’d said It’s good to see you.
‘You weren’t hard to find,’ she says. ‘Medical files are confidential only up to a point.’
This is true. Zara uses them all the time.
Thistle looks around at the vending machine, the little stack of newspapers on a table, the aviary outside the window, taking it all in.
‘How are you?’ she asks finally.
‘Embarrassed.’ I don’t know where the worst place to bump into your ex is, but I’m sure a mental hospital is in the top five.
‘About being here?’
I nod.
‘You shouldn’t be,’ she says. ‘I’m told you admitted yourself.’
‘Is that less embarrassing than being committed against my will?’
‘Much less. It takes guts, to admit that you need help. And to check yourself into a place like this …’
‘I didn’t really have a choice,’ I say.
What I mean is, if there had been another way to investigate Cho’s murder, I would have taken it. But Thistle gives me such a sad look that my throat closes up, and I can’t say any more.
‘Are you allowed to leave?’ she asks.
‘Not till I’m better.’
She doesn’t ask how long that will take. Maybe she knows the answer.
‘So …’ she begins. But I don’t want her to get to the purpose of her visit. I want to keep talking to her forever.
‘How’s your husband?’ I ask.
‘Ex-husband,’ she corrects me.
‘Right.’ I knew they were divorced, but assumed they were back together, since she was living with him again.
She seems to choose her words carefully. ‘He seemed glad to have me back. But I don’t think it was because he’d missed me. I think it was just pride. Me coming back proved there was nothing wrong with him.’
‘I’m sorry.’ And I am. She deserves to be happy with someone.
‘It’s okay. I realised I hadn’t missed him, either. Anyway, that’s not why I’m here.’ She taps her long nails on the tabletop. I want to reach for her hand. It always surprised me how soft her palms were, given how tough the rest of her is. But I don’t move.
She glances at Kelly in the corner. He’s not watching and doesn’t seem to be listening. She lowers her voice. ‘I hate having to ask you this. But I’m hoping you’ll understand.’
I force a smile. ‘I don’t think you can offend me.’
‘It’s about the Texas Reaper,’ she begins.
Okay, I’m a little offended. On the one hand, Thistle is the only person at the FBI who knows I’m a cannibal. But somehow I also expected her to be the one person who would know I didn’t strangle a bunch of innocent women.
‘It’s not me,’ I say.
‘The killings started pretty soon after you and I escaped from the dark web house.’ She takes a folder from her bag and places it on the table but doesn’t open it. ‘I checked hotel records and phone tower data. You were here in Houston when the first two bodies turned up. Then you drove to California. You stopped overnight at Las Cruces, New Mexico, where victim number three was found.’
Remembering the list of addresses on the FBI whiteboard, I realise it wasn’t the locations that bothered me. It was the dates.
‘When you got to LA, another woman was killed,’ Thistle continues. ‘Since you got back to Houston, there have been two more.’
My heart is pounding. ‘I didn’t do it.’
‘You were seen talking to Ruciani on the day he died. Forensics searched some crime scenes a second time. There was a partial print on Ethyl Braidwyn’s doorhandle, and another on one of her pill organisers. They match yours.’
I thought I’d been careful not to touch anything. Apparently not.
‘I broke into her house,’ I say. ‘I wanted to help solve the case.’
Thistle stares at me for a long moment. ‘That’s a very dumb lie.’
‘It’s true.’
‘If so, that would be even dumber. Look, I’m not going to turn you in. What would be the point? You’re already institutionalised.’
Hopefully she’s trying to trick me. I don’t want to think I’ve compromised her so badly. Before we fell in love, she never would have agreed to conceal evidence to protect a serial killer. The betrayal—mine, not hers—is like a shard of broken glass wedged through my heart.
‘I didn’t strangle anybody,’ I say.‘Why would I hide something like that? You already know I’ve done far worse.’
Thistle’s gaze hardens, and I realise I’ve said the wrong thing. Eating dead bodies is more disgusting than strangling innocent women—but it’s not ‘worse’.
‘You know what I mean,’ I say. ‘I already know I don’t have a chance …’ With you. ‘A chance of convincing you that I’m a decent guy. Why would I deny some murders but not others?’
‘I want to believe you, Blake,’ she says. ‘But you’ve lied to me before.’
‘I know. I’m sorry.’
I have no way to prove my innocence. If I want Thistle to believe I didn’t do this, I need to confess to something else.
‘I slept with Zara,’ I hear myself say.
She flinches. ‘What’s your point?’
‘I betrayed you.’
‘Do I need to remind you that we’re not together anymore? You can fuck whoever you want. That’s not a betrayal.’
‘Zara was one of the maniacs who held you prisoner.’
Thistle goes very still. I immediately regret bringing this up. The event was traumatic for both of us—but I’ve been abducted, beaten, starved and chained up more times than I can count, especially now that I only have four fingers left to count with. It only happened once to Thistle, and it was probably the worst experience of her life.
‘She was at Space City,’ Thistle says slowly. ‘I didn’t recognise her.’
‘I know you’ll never forgive me for that,’ I say. ‘But I told you anyway. Because I don’t lie to you. Not anymore.’
Thistle looks at me for a long time. Then she takes a folder out of her bag and slides it across the table.
‘Explain this, then,’ she says.
I open the folder. There’s a photo printed on cheap copy paper. The image shows a man in the passenger seat of a car. He’s unshaven, with dirty skin, a beanie stretched across his skull.
‘That’s the only photo we have of the Reaper,’ Thistle says.
I stare down at the page. The man is unquestionably me.
The room spins, then disappears. Nothing exists except that photo. Incontrovertible proof—but of what?
Thistle’s voice floats towards me from somewhere. ‘You want to know where that photo was taken?’
I already know. ‘Los Angeles.’
‘Correct. Right outside the house of one of the Reaper’s victims, within the time-of-death window.’
‘Not right outside,’ I say. ‘Around the corner.’
The threads disentangle, separating into parallel lines. I get it. Not just the Reaper case—everything. I know why Sam Garcia confessed to kidnapping a girl he’d never met. I know why Rob Cho was murdered. I know who dragged his body to Mars. I know what the MSS is so desperate to hide.
When I look up from the photo, Thistle is watching me. She can tell I’m thinking hard. She probably believes I’m trying to come up with a plausible lie.
She taps the photograph. ‘Why were you at the victim’s house, Blake?’
Rob Cho’s killer is still out there. If they find out Thistle has talked to me, they might come after her. The only way to keep her safe is to tell her everything.
I start talking, fast. Because it’s a long story, and I don’t know how much time she’ll give me.
‘The CIA has been running off-books operations on US soil, spying on American citizens,’ I say. ‘Zara recruited me to help with some of them. She’s a CIA agent—that’s why she was at the house, where you were held prisoner.’
‘A CIA agent?’ Thistle repeats.
I need to skip ahead. Get to the important bit. ‘Right. She sent me to the Johnson Space Center to investigate reports of a Chinese astronaut falling out of the sky. The CIA thought there was a secret space station above our heads. But I stole the earlobe from the body, and it didn’t taste like it had been frozen or burned, so I figured the dead guy wasn’t an astronaut at all.’
Thistle looks horrified. I press on. ‘I turned out to be right—he was the head of security at Space City, a guy named Rob Cho. Someone had killed him using a hypobaric chamber, and then dressed him in a flight suit and left him outside to make it look like he’d fallen from space. Or at least, that’s what I thought at the time. But now I realise two people were involved. One killed Cho, the other disguised him as an astronaut. And those two people weren’t working together. They have very different agendas, and each one is trying to identify the other.’
Thistle’s eyes are growing wider and wider. ‘Blake …’ she begins.
‘Rob Cho knew something that got him killed,’ I say. My voice is getting louder. I can’t help it. ‘I thought he might have told his sister, Harmony. She’s one of the other patients here. I admitted myself to the hospital so I could find out what Rob told her. I thought it might have been the identity of the Chinese asset at the Space Center. But now I realise it was the other way around. Rob didn’t tell Harmony anything. She told him something. About the space station. Don’t you see?’
