Gurney’s first impulse was to lie, hide the wound. But then he thought, why? The truth was the truth. It was what it was. He said, “I had a son by that name.”
Kale looked baffled. “What name?”
“Danny.”
“I don’t understand.”
“The flute… It… it doesn’t matter. An old memory. Sorry for the interruption. You were describing the… the transition from one type of clientele to another.”
Kale frowned. “Transition-such a benign term for so massive a dislocation.”
“But the school continues to be successful?”
Kale’s smile sparkled like glare ice. “There’s money to be made in housing the demented offspring of guilty parents. The more terrifying they are, the more their parents will pay to get rid of them.”
“Regardless of whether they get any better?”
Kale’s laugh was as cold as his smile. “Let me be perfectly clear about this, Detective, so that I leave no doubt in your mind what we’re talking about. If you were to discover that your twelve-year-old has been raping five-year-olds, you might be willing to pay anything for that lunatic child of yours to disappear for a few years.”
“That’s who’s sent to Mapleshade?”
“Precisely.”
“Like Jillian Perry?”
Kale’s expression moved through a small series of tics and frowns. “Mentioning individual student names in a context like this puts us on the edge of a legal minefield. I don’t feel that I can give you a specific answer.”
“I already have reliable descriptions of Jillian’s behavior. I only mention her because the timing raises a question. Wasn’t she sent to Mapleshade before Dr. Ashton altered the school’s focus?”
“That’s true. However, without saying anything one way or the other about the Perry girl, I can tell you that Mapleshade traditionally accepted students with a wide range of problems, and there were always a few who were far sicker than the others. What Ashton did was focus Mapleshade’s enrollment policy entirely on the sickest. Give any one of them a gram of coke and they’d seduce a horse. Does that answer your question?”
Gurney’s gaze rested thoughtfully on the little red woodstove. “I understand your reluctance to violate confidentiality commitments. However, Jillian Perry can no longer be harmed, and finding her murderer may depend on finding out more about her own past contacts. If Jillian ever confided anything to you about-”
“Stop right there. Whatever was confided to me remains confidential.”
“There’s a great deal at stake, Doctor.”
“Yes, there is. Integrity is at stake. I will not reveal anything that was told to me with the understanding that I would not reveal it. Is that clear?”
“Unfortunately, yes.”
“If you want to know about Mapleshade and its transmogrification from a school to a zoo, we can discuss that in general terms. But the details of individual lives will not be discussed. It’s a slippery world we live in, Detective, in case you hadn’t noticed. We have no secure footing beyond our principles.”
“What principle dictated your departure from Mapleshade?”
“Mapleshade became a home for female sexual psychopaths. Most of them don’t need therapists, they need exorcists.”
“When you left, did Dr. Ashton hire someone to replace you?”
“He hired someone for the same position.” There was acid in the neat distinction and something like real hatred in Kale’s eyes.
“What sort of person?”
“His name is Lazarus. That says it all.”
“How so?”
“Dr. Lazarus has all the warmth and animation of a cadaver.” There was a bitter finality in Kale’s voice that told Gurney the interview was over.
As if on cue, the flute began again, and the plaintive strains of “Danny Boy” propelled him from the house.
Chapter 33
The living fable, the pivotal dream, the vision that had changed everything, was as vivid to him now as when it first came to him.
It was like watching a movie and being in the movie at the same time, then forgetting that it was a movie, and living it, feeling it-an experience more real than so-called real life had ever been.
It was always the same.
John the Baptist was barefoot and naked except for a homespun brown loincloth that barely covered his genitals. It was secured by a rough leather belt from which hung a primitive hunting knife. He stood beside a rumpled bed in a space that seemed to be both a bedroom and a dungeon cell. There were no visible restraints upon him, yet he could move neither his arms nor his legs. The feeling was claustrophobic, and he feared that if he lost his balance and fell onto the bed, he would suffocate.
Into the dungeon, descending on dark stone steps, came Salome. She came toward him in a swirling air of perfume and translucent silk, stood before him, swaying, dancing. Moving more like a snake than a human being. The silk slipped away, dissolving, revealing creamy skin, breasts surprisingly ample for the lithe body, full round buttocks, breathtakingly perfect, breathtakingly deadly. The body writhing in the anticipation of pleasure.
The archetype of degradation.
Eve the succubus.
Avatar of the serpent.
Essence of evil.
Incarnation of lust.
Writhing, dancing like a snake.
Dancing around him, against him. Slime of sweat forming on her swaying breasts, pinpricks of sweat around her mouth. Electric shock of her legs brushing against his legs, her legs parting, the rasp of pubic hair against his thigh, a scream of horror building in his chest, horror racing through his blood. The scream in his heart struggling to burst out. At first a tiny constricted whine, building, straining through his clenched teeth. Her eyes burning, her groin pressed against his, burning, his scream rising, bursting out, a roar now, a torrent of sound, the roar of a cyclone leveling the world, freeing his arms and legs of their paralysis, his hunting knife transformed now into a sword, a blessed scimitar. With all the strength of heaven and earth, he swings the great scimitar-swings it in a sweet, perfect arc-hardly feeling it pass through her sweating neck, the head falling, falling free. As it falls, disappearing through the stone floor, the damp body dries into gray dust and is gone, blown away by a wind that warms his soul, filling him with light and peace, filling him with the knowledge of his true identity, filling him with his Mission and Method.
They say that God comes to some men slowly and to others in a flash of light that illuminates everything. And so it was with him.
The power and clarity of it had stunned him the first time, as it did each time he recalled it, each time he reexperienced the Great Truth that had been revealed to him in the “dream.”
Like all great ideas, it was astonishingly simple: Salome cannot have John the Baptist beheaded by Herod if John the Baptist strikes first. John the Baptist, alive in him. John the Baptist, destroyer of the evil Eve. John the Baptist, vessel of the baptism of blood. John the Baptist, scourge of the slimy snakes of the earth. Severer of the head of Salome the serpent.
It was a wonderful insight. A source of purpose, serenity, and solace. He felt uniquely blessed. So many people in the modern world had no idea who they really were.
He knew who he was. And what he had to do.
Chapter 34
As Gurney was pulling in to the parking lot of the county building that housed the office of the district attorney, his phone rang. He was surprised to hear the voice of Scott Ashton, and more surprised at its new insecurity and informality.