Predator (3 page)

    
He is nothing much to look at, a short, slight man with thinning blond hair and small gray eyes closely spaced. In the animal kingdom, lions, tigers and bears—the predators—have closely spaced eyes. Giraffes, rabbits, doves—the preyed upon—have eyes more widely spaced and oriented toward the sides of their heads, because they need their peripheral vision to survive. Benton has always wondered if the same evolutionary phenomenon applies to humans. That’s a research study nobody’s going to fund.

    
“You doing all right, Basil?” Benton asks him.

    
“What kind of faces?” Basil’s head talks from the end of the magnet, bringing to mind an iron lung.

    
“Dr. Lane will explain it to you.”

    
“I’ve got a surprise,” Basil says. “I’ll tell you when we’re done.”

    
He has an odd gaze, as if a malignant creature is looking out through his eyes.

    
“Great. I love surprises. Just a few more minutes and you’re done,” Benton says with a smile. “Then we’ll have a follow-up chat.”

    
The guards accompany Benton back outside the MRI room and return to the suite as Dr. Lane begins to explain over the intercom that all she wants Basil to do is click the left side of the mouse if the face is male and right if it is female.

    
“Nothing for you to do or say, just press the button,” she reiterates.

    
There are three tests, and the point of them is not the patient’s ability to distinguish between the two genders. What is actually measured in this series of functional scanning is affective processing. The male and female faces appearing on the screen are behind other faces that flash too quickly for the eye to detect, but the brain sees all. Jenrette’s brain sees the faces behind the masks, faces that are happy, angry or afraid, faces that are provocative.

    
After each set, Dr. Lane asks him what he saw, and if he had to attach an emotion to the faces, what was it. The male faces are more serious than the female, he answers. He says basically the same thing for each set. It means nothing yet. None of what has gone on in these rooms will mean anything until the thousands of neuroimages are analyzed. Then the scientists can visualize which areas of his brain were most active during the tests. The point is to see if his brain works differently from someone who supposedly is normal, and to learn something besides the fact that he has an incidental cyst that is completely unrelated to his predatory proclivities.

    
“Anything jump out at you?” Benton asks Dr. Lane. “And by the way, thanks, as always, Susan. You’re a good sport.”

    
They try to schedule inmate scans late in the day or on the weekend, when few people are around.

    
“Just from the localizers, he looks okay—I don’t see any gross abnormalities. Except for his incessant chatting. His hyper fluency. He ever been diagnosed as bipolar?”

    
“His evaluations and history make me wonder. But no. Never diagnosed. Unmedicated for any psychiatric disorders, in prison only a year. A dream subject.”

    
“Well, your dream subject didn’t do well suppressing interfering stimuli, made a huge number of errors by commission on the interference test. My bet is he doesn’t stay in set, which is certainly consistent with bipolar disorder. We’ll know more later.”

    
She pushes the talk button again and says, “Mr. Jenrette? We’re all done. You did an excellent job. Dr. Wesley’s coming back in to get you out. I want you to sit up very slowly, okay? Very slowly so you don’t get dizzy. Okay?”

    
“That’s all? Just these stupid tests? Show me the pictures.”

    
She gives Benton a look and releases the talk button.

    
“You said you’d look at my brain when I’m looking at the pictures.”

    
“Autopsy pictures of his victims,” Benton explains to Dr. Lane.

    
“You promised me pictures! You promised I’d get my mail!”

    
“All righty,” she says to Benton. “He’s all yours.”

    
The shotgun is heavy and cumbersome, and she has trouble lying on the couch and pointing the barrel at her chest while trying to pull the trigger with her left toe.

    
Scarpetta lowers the shotgun and imagines attempting the same thing after wrist surgery. Her shotgun weighs about seven and a half pounds and starts to shake in her hands when she holds it up by its eighteen-inch barrel. She lowers her feet to the floor and takes off her right running shoe and sock. Her left foot is dominant, but she will have to try her right, and she wonders what Johnny Swift was, right-foot-dominant or left. It would make a difference, but not necessarily a significant one, especially if he was depressed and determined, but she’s not sure he was either, not sure of much.

    
She thinks about Marino, and the more her thoughts shift back to him, the more upset she gets. He has no right to treat her this way, no right to disrespect her the same way he did when they first met, and that was many years ago, so many years ago she is surprised he can even remember how to treat her the way he once did. The aroma of her homemade pizza sauce is in the living room. It fills the house, and resentment speeds up her heart and makes her chest tight. She lies back down on her left side, props the stock of the shotgun on the back of the couch, positions the barrel at the center of her chest and pulls the trigger with her right big toe.

Chapter 4

    
Basil Jenrette is not going to hurt him.

    
Unrestrained, he sits across the table from Benton inside the small examination room, the door shut. Basil is quiet and polite in his chair. His outburst inside the magnet lasted maybe two minutes, and when he calmed down, Dr. Lane was already gone. He didn’t see her when he was escorted out, and Benton will make sure he never does.

    
“You’re sure you’re not lightheaded or dizzy,” Benton says in his calm, understanding way.

    
“I feel great. The tests were cool. I’ve always loved tests. I knew I’d get everything right. Where are the pictures? You promised.”

    
“We never discussed anything like that, Basil.”

    
“I got everything right, straight A’s.”

    
“So you enjoyed the experience.”

    
“Next time show me the pictures like you promised.”

    
“I never promised you that, Basil. Did you find the experience exciting?”

    
“I guess I can’t smoke in here.”

    
“I’m afraid not.”

    
“What did my brain look like? Did it look good? Did you see anything? Can you tell how smart someone is by looking at their brain? If you showed me the pictures you’d see they match the ones I have in my brain.”

    
He is talking quietly and rapidly now, his eyes bright, almost glassy, as he goes on and on about what the scientists might expect to find in his brain, assuming they are able to decipher what is there, and there is definitely a there there, he keeps saying.

    
“A there there?” Benton inquires. “Can you explain what you mean, Basil?”

    
“My memory. If you can see into it, see what’s in there, see my memories.”

    
“I’m afraid not.”

    
“Really. I’ll bet all kinds of pictures came up when you were doing the beep-beep, bang-bang, knock-knock. Bet you saw the pictures and don’t want to tell me. There were ten of them, and you saw them. Saw their pictures, ten of them, not four. I always say ten-four as a joke, a real big ha-ha. You think it’s four and I know it’s ten, and you would know if you showed me the pictures, because you’d see they matched the pictures in my brain. You’d see my pictures when you’re inside my brain. Ten-four.”

    
“Tell me which pictures you mean, Basil.”

    
“I’m just messing with you,” he says with a wink. “I want my mail.”

    
“What pictures might we see inside your brain?”

    
“Those foolish women. They won’t give me my mail.”

    
“You’re saying you killed ten women?” Benton asks this without shock or judgment. Basil smiles as if something has occurred to him.

    
“Oh. I can move my head now, can’t I. No more tape on my chin. Will they tape my chin down when they give me the needle?”

    
“You won’t be getting the needle, Basil. That’s part of the deal. Your sentence has been commuted to life. You remember us talking about that?”

    
“Because I’m crazy,” he says with a smile. “That’s why I’m here.”

    
“No. We’ll go over this again, because it is important you understand. You’re here because you’ve agreed to participate in our study, Basil. The governor of Florida allowed you to be transferred to our state hospital, Butler, but Massachusetts wouldn’t agree to it unless he commuted your sentence to life. We don’t have the death penalty in Massachusetts.”

    
“I know you want to see the ten ladies. See them as I remember them. They’re in my brain.”

    
He knows it isn’t possible to scan someone and see his thoughts and memories. He is being his usual clever self. He wants the autopsy photographs so he can fuel his violent fantasies, and as is true of narcissistic sociopaths, he thinks he is quite entertaining.

    
“Is that the surprise, Basil?” he asks. “That you committed ten murders instead of the four you were charged with?”

    
He shakes his head and says, “There’s one you want to know about. That’s the surprise. Something special just for you because you’ve been so nice to me. But I want mail. That’s the deal.”

    
“I’m very interested in hearing about your surprise.”

    
“The lady in The Christmas Shop,” he says. “Remember that one?”

    
“Why don’t you tell me about it,” Benton replies, and he doesn’t know what Basil means. He isn’t familiar with a murder that occurred in a Christmas shop.

    
“What about my mail?”

    
“I’ll see what I can do.”

    
“Cross your heart and hope to die?”

    
“I’ll look into it.”

    
“I can’t remember the exact date. Let me see.” He stares at the ceiling, his unrestrained hands restless in his lap. “About three years ago in Las Olas, I think it was around July. So maybe two and a half years ago. Why would anyone want to buy Christmas shit in July in South Florida? She sold little Santas and his elves and nutcrackers and baby Jesuses. I went in on this particular morning after staying up all night.”

    
“Do you remember her name?”

    
“I never knew her name. Well, I might have. But I forgot it. If you showed me the pictures, it might jog my memory, you might see her in my brain. Let me see if I can describe her. Let me see. Oh, yes. She was a white woman with long, dyed hair the color of I Love Lucy. Sort of fat. Maybe thirty-five or forty. I went in and locked the door and pulled a knife on her. I raped her in the back, in the storage area, cut her throat from here to here in one cut.”