Chapter 47
TWO DAYS LATER, I wangled another hour with Gary Soneji/Murphy. I’d been up the previous two nights rereading multiple-personality cases. My dining room looked like a carrel at a psych library. There are tomes written about multiples, but few of us really agree on the material. There is even serious disagreement about whether there are any real multiple-personality cases at all.
Gary was sitting on his hospital cot, staring into space, when I arrived. His shoulder sling was gone. It was hard to come and talk to this kidnapper, child-killer, serial killer. I remembered something the philosopher Spinoza once wrote: “I have striven not to laugh at human actions, not to weep at them, nor to hate them, but to understand them.” So far, I didn’t understand.
“Hello Gary,” I said softly, not wanting to startle him. “Are you ready to talk?”
He turned around and seemed glad to see me. He pulled a chair over for me by his cot.
“I was afraid they wouldn’t let you come,” he said. “I’m glad they did.”
“What made you think they wouldn’t let me come?” I wanted to know.
“Oh, I don’t know. It’s just… I felt you were someone I might be able to talk to. The way my luck’s been going, I thought they would shut you right off.”
There was a na?veté about him that was troubling to me. He was almost charming. He was the man his neighbors in Wilmington had described.
“What were you just thinking about? A minute ago?” I asked. “Before I interrupted.”
He smiled and shook his head. “I don’t even know. What was I thinking about? Oh, I know what it was. I was remembering it’s my birthday this month. I keep thinking that I’m suddenly going to wake up out of this. That’s one recurring thought, a leitmotif through all my thinking.”
“Go back a little for me. Tell me how you were arrested again,” I said, changing the subject.
“I woke up, I came to in a police car outside a McDonald’s.” He was consistent on that point. He’d told me the same thing two days before. “My arms were handcuffed behind my back. Later on, they used leg-irons, too.”
“You don’t know how you got into the police car?” I asked. Boy, was he good at this. Soft-spoken, very nice, believable.
“No, and I don’t know how I got to a McDonald’s in Wilkinsburg, either. That is the most freakish thing that’s ever happened to me.”
“I can see how it would be.”
A theory had occurred to me on the ride down from Washington. It was a long shot, but it might explain a few things that didn’t make any sense so far.
“Has anything like this ever happened to you before?” I asked. “Anything vaguely like it, Gary?”
“No. I’ve never been in any trouble. Never been arrested. You can check that, can’t you? Of course you can.”
“I mean have you ever woken up in a strange place before? No idea how you got there?”
Gary gave me a strange look, his head cocked slightly. “Why would you ask that?”
“Did you, Gary?”
“Well… yes.”
“Tell me about it. Tell me about those times when you woke up in a strange place.”
He had a habit of pulling on his shirt, between the second and third buttons. He would pull the fabric away from his chest. I wondered if he had a fear of not being able to breathe, and where it might have come from if he did.
Maybe he’d been sick as a child. Or trapped with a limited air supply. Or locked up somewhere—the way Maggie Rose and Michael Goldberg had been locked away.
“For the past year or so, maybe more than that, I’ve suffered from insomnia. I told that to one of the doctors who came to see me,” he said.
There was nothing about insomnia in any of the prison workups. I wondered if he’d told any of the doctors, or simply imagined that he had. There was stuff about an uneven Wechsler profile, indicative of impulsivity. There was a verbal I.Q. and a performance I.Q., both through the roof. There was a Rorschach profile that reflected severe emotional stress. There was a positive response to T.A.T. card #14, the so-called suicide card. But not a word about insomnia.
“Tell me about it, please. It could help me to understand.” We’d already talked about the fact that I was a psychologist, besides being a really crackerjack detective. He was comfortable with my credentials. So far, anyway. Did that have anything to do with his asking for me down in Florida?
He looked into my eyes. “Will you really try to help me? Not trap me, Doctor, help me?”
I told him that I’d try. I’d listen to what he had to say. I’d keep an open mind. He said that was all he could ask for.
“I haven’t been able to sleep for a while. This goes back for as long as I can remember,” he went on. “It was becoming a jumble. Being awake, dreams. I had trouble sorting one out from the other. I woke up in that police car in Pennsylvania. I have no idea how I got there. That’s really how it happened. Do you believe me? Somebody has to believe me.”
“I’m listening to you, Gary. When you’ve finished, I’ll tell you what I think. I promise. For the moment, I have to hear everything you remember.”
That seemed to satisfy him.
“You asked if it’s happened to me before. It has. A few times. Waking in strange places. Sometimes in my car, pulled over along some road. Sometimes a road I’ve never seen, or even heard of before. A couple of times it’s happened in motels. Or wandering the streets. Philadelphia, New York, Atlantic City one time. I had casino chips and a complimentary parking ticket in my pocket. No idea how they got there.”
“Did it ever happen to you in Washington?” I asked.
“No. Not in Washington. I haven’t been in Washington since I was a kid, actually. Lately, I’ve found I can ‘come to’ in a conscious state. Completely conscious. I might be eating a meal, for example. But I have no idea how I got in the restaurant.”
“Did you see anybody about this? Did you try to get help? A doctor?”
He shut his eyes, which were clear chestnut brown—his most striking feature. A smile came across his face as he opened his eyes again.
“We don’t have money to spend on psychiatrists. We’re barely scraping by. That’s why I’ve been so depressed. We’re in the hole over thirty grand. My family is thirty thousand in debt, and I’m here in prison.”
He stopped talking, and looked at me again. He wasn’t embarrassed about staring, trying to read my face. I was finding him cooperative, stable, and generally lucid.
I also knew that anybody who worked with him might be the victim of manipulation by an extremely clever and gifted sociopath. He’d fooled a lot of people before me; he was obviously good at it.
“So far, I believe you,” I finally said to him. “What you’re saying makes sense to me, Gary. I’d like to help you if I can.”
Tears suddenly welled in his eyes, and rolled down his cheeks. He put his hands out to me.
I reached out, and I held Gary Soneji/Murphy’s hands. They were very cold. He seemed to be afraid.
“I’m innocent,” he said to me. “I know it sounds crazy, but I’m innocent.”
I didn’t get home until late that night. A motorcycle eased up alongside the car as I was about to pull into my driveway. What the hell was this?
“Please follow me, sir,” said the person atop the bike. The line was delivered in nearly perfect highway-patrol style. “Just fall in behind.”
It was Jezzie. She started to laugh and so did I. I knew she was trying to lure me back to the land of the living again. She’d told me I was working too hard on the case. She reminded me that it was solved.
I continued into the driveway and got out of the old Porsche. I went around to where she had curbed her motorcycle.
“Quitting time, Alex,” Jezzie said. “Can you do it? Is it okay for you to quit work at eleven o’clock?”
I went inside to check on the kids. They were sleeping, so I had no reason to resist Jezzie’s offer. I came back out and climbed on the bike.
“This is either the worst or the best thing I’ve done in recent memory,” I told her.
“Don’t worry, it’s the best. You’re in good hands. Nothing to fear except instant death.”
Within seconds, 9th Street was being eaten up under the glare of the single motorcycle headlamp. The bike sped down Independence, then onto the Parkway, which can be ridiculously curvy in spots. Jezzie leaned into every curve, buzzing by passenger cars as if they were standing still.
She definitely knew how to drive the bike. She wasn’t a dilettante. As the landscape slashed past us, the electric wires overhead, and the roadway’s dotted line just to the left of the bike’s front wheel, I thought that she was doing at least a hundred, but I felt extraordinarily calm on the bike.
I didn’t know where we were going, and I didn’t care. The kids were asleep. Nana was there. This was all part of the night’s therapy. I could feel the cold air forcing itself back through every socket and aperture in my body. It cleared my head nicely, and my head sure needed clearing.
N Street was empty of traffic. It was a long, narrow straightaway with hundred-year-old town houses on either side. It was pretty, especially in winter. Gabled roofs crusted with snow. Winking porch lights.
Jezzie opened the bike up again on the deserted street. Seventy, ninety, a hundred. I couldn’t tell how fast for sure, only that we were really flying. The trees and houses were a blur. The pavement below was a blur. It was kind of nice, actually. If we lived to tell about it.
Jezzie braked the BMW smoothly. She wasn’t showing off, just knew how it’s done.
“We’re home. I just got the place. I’m getting my home act together,” she said as she dismounted. “You were pretty good. You only yelped that one time on the George Washington.”
“I keep my yelps to myself.”
Exhilarated by the ride, we went inside. The apartment wasn’t at all what I had expected. Jezzie said she hadn’t found time to fix the place up, but it was beautiful and tasteful. The overall style was sleek and modern, but not at all stark. There were lots of striking art photographs, mostly black and white. Jezzie said she’d taken them all. Fresh flowers were in the living room and kitchen. Books with bookmarks sticking out—The Prince of Tides, Burn Marks, Women in Power, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, A wine rack—Beringer, Rutherford. A hook on the wall for her cycle helmet.
“So you’re a homebody after all.”
“I am like hell. Take it back, Alex. I’m a tough-as-they-come Secret Service woman.”
I took Jezzie in my arms and we kissed very gently in her living room. I was finding tenderness where I hadn’t expected it; I was discovering sensuality that surprised me. It was the whole package I’d been searching for, only with one little catch.
“I’m glad you brought me to your house,” I said. “I mean that, Jezzie. I really am touched.”
“Even if I practically had to kidnap you to get you over here?”
“Fast motorcycle rides in the night. Beautiful, homey apartment. Annie Leibovitz—quality photographs. What other secrets do you have?”
Jezzie moved a finger gently down and around my jawline, exploring my face. “I don’t want to have any secrets. That’s what I’d like. Okay?”
I said yes. That was exactly the way I wanted it, too. It was time to open up to someone again. It was way past time, probably for both of us. Maybe we hadn’t looked it to the outside world, but we’d been lonely and inner-driven for too long. That was the simple truth we were helping each other to get in touch with.
Early the next morning, we rode the bike back to my house in Washington. The wind was cold and rough on our faces. I held on to her chest as we floated through the dim, gray light of early dawn. The few people who were up, driving or walking to work, stared at us. I probably would have stared, too. What a damn fine and handsome couple we were.
Jezzie dropped me exactly where she’d picked me up. I leaned close against her and the warm, vibrating bike. I kissed her again. Her cheeks, her throat, finally her lips. I thought I could stay there all morning. Just like that, on the mean streets of Southeast. I had the passing thought that it should always be like this. Why not?
“I have to get inside,” I finally said.
“Yep. I know you do. Go home, Alex,” Jezzie said. “Give your babies a kiss for me.” She looked a little sad as I turned away and headed in, though.
Don’t start something you can’t finish, I remembered.