Lassiter 07 - Flesh and Bones by Levine, Paul (best fiction books to read TXT) 📗

"Now you see a tunnel with a brilliant light at the other end. You begin walking through the tunnel toward the light. When you emerge into the light, you'll be in a different time and different place, and you'll be able to remember everything. The knowledge is within you, the wisdom, the memories. Your inner child is ready to speak."

Another pause with no sound except the monotonous repetition of the low-key piano, now joined by a nearly inaudible flute. Then, the doctor's voice. "How old are you, Christina?"

"Eleven."

"Are you a happy girl?"

"Oh, yes." The words came slowly but clearly, the sweet voice of a child. "I have everything a girl could want."

"What do you have?"

"Toys and friends and a wonderful mommy."

"What about your father?"

A pause, then, "He gives me everything."

"Does Mommy love him?"

"I don't know."

"Christina, I'm Dr. Schein. I'm a friend of your mommy's."

"I know. You take care of her. She likes you. She told me so."

"Your mother is a wonderful woman. Tell me about your father."

"He hits her," Christina said, beginning to sob. "He hits her a lot and calls her names. Mommy got sick, so she stays in her room. Daddy moved down the hall, next to my room."

"Does your father ever hit you?"

"No. Never. Not even when I'm bad."

"When are you bad, Christina?"

"When I don't do what Daddy says."

"Does he ever touch you in ways that frighten you?"

Silence. Then, "No."

"Does he ever come into your bedroom and do things to you?"

"No. I don't remember anything like that at all."

"Christina, memory is a funny thing. There are memories we recall and some we just feel. What do you feel?"

"I don't know. Strange things."

"Ah, that may be the beginning. Do you know what sex is?"

"Yes."

"Did you ever have sex with your father?"

Another sob. "I don't remember that."

"But you're crying. Why are you crying?"

"I don't know."

"Christina, have you ever seen the tracks of a wild animal in the woods?"

"Not in the woods, but I've seen turtle tracks on the beach."

"And did you see the turtle, too?"

"Not always. Sometimes just the tracks."

"But you knew the turtle had been there."

"Yes."

"I can see the tracks of the animal all through your life. The monster has been there. I think you see it, too, but you've covered it with layers of dirt. Can we scrape through that dirt, can we uncover the monster?"

"I don't know."

Click. What the hell was that? The faint sound of the recorder being turned off.

Then Schein's voice. "Let's talk about your father."

Wait a second! I stopped and rewound the tape. The same click, and then Schein continued. How long was the gap? A second, a minute, eighteen and a half minutes? Who knows? And what happened then? What did Schein say in the darkness of his office to the troubled young woman, groggy under hypnosis? And what was he saying now?

"Let's talk about your father."

"I always loved my daddy. Always."

"Good Chrissy. That's a good girl."

"And my daddy always loved me."

"Did he?"

"Daddy told me I was his best girl, and now that Mommy's sick, I . . ."

"What, Christina?"

"I remember now. I remember."

"Very good, Christina. Very good. What do you remember?"

"I make Daddy happy. I pretend I'm Mommy."

"Does he come to your bedroom?"

"Yes."

"Do you have sex with your daddy?"

"Of course I do, silly. I'm his wife."

I listened to the rest of the tapes. The memories became more vivid and graphic. Chrissy's little-girl voice re-created the nighttime whispers with her father. "Our little secret," he had told her. Her adult cries reflected her anger. She was in and out of a hypnotic trance. I heard her sobs when she described the pain she had felt in her "peepee." I heard her voice waver between the innocent confusion of a child and the angry cries of a woman.

The male of the species. His chromosomes tuned for survival of the fittest, he wages war and slaughters his fellowman. His soul shriveled, he defiles the earth, mocks his Creator, and lives by no code other than his own. At the low end of the evolutionary scale, he lords his physical superiority over women, beating and raping. At the very bottom, this reptilian cousin of Homo sapiens neander-thalensis, this horned beast of hellish evil, is the father who would rape his own child.

I felt sick and angry and, for a moment, felt like killing Harry Bernhardt myself. Which made me think. Whether the memories were real or not, they sounded authentic. And though I knew that the prior abuse was not a defense to murder, I wondered if a jury might not be persuaded to come back on a lesser charge of manslaughter or even to acquit.

On the final tape, Chrissy wasn't hypnotized at all. She was telling Dr. Schein about her adult life, the failed romances, the drug and alcohol abuse, and thanking him for opening the door to her past. "I've thought more about what we discussed yesterday," she said.

"The need for goals?" he asked.

"No. What we talked about afterward."

There was a pause. "Oh, that."

"I've made a decision that you're not going to like."

"Maybe you shouldn't tell me," he said.

What the hell was this all about? What were they dancing around?

"But I've told you everything else. I can't imagine not telling you first."

"All right then. But first, let me . . ."

I heard papers rustling and the sound of a chair squeaking.

Click.

Again. Damn! I waited, but this time, nothing. Just a faint mechanical hum as the tape wound out. I looked for another tape, but there was none. I checked the date on the plastic box: June 14, 1995.

I considered all the things Chrissy might have said to her psychiatrist two days before shooting her father, and I didn't like any of them one bit.

Like Father, Like Son

A short, stocky Nicaraguan woman in a white uniform dipped a ladle into a bowl and served me chilled gazpacho. I tasted some without slurping or leaving a tomato stain on my blue oxford-cloth shirt. Refreshing on a steamy July day, but a