Ancestors, page 23
Numi advanced cautiously, always up for a new recruit and before long had draped himself over Bear’s ample thigh.
“Okay,” Bear began after two sandwiches, “I’ll save room for the pound cake later, but first things first. There’s a plan so let me hear it.”
Gertrude began. She directed most of what she had to say toward Bear because the others had already heard the gist of it. “Let me begin with some preliminary thoughts. After all, I’m a psychologist and you will hear how my mind thinks.”
Bear was eager to hear.
“After you spoke with Moremi by phone today, she and I, with Rebecca present, spent about four hours together. I must say I agree with your method of having her go back into her memory of these recent events and tell us every detail she can. We also spent some time going over her family history — the death in 1996 of both her parents, her brother and his wife and child, the part Peter and his family played in those deaths and Moremi’s total ignorance of what they had done.”
She paused and asked Bear if he knew this.
He accepted a plate of pound cake smothered with strawberries and whipped cream and said, “I know the basics from Richard but probably not many of the details. I’ll pick up those as we talk. I believe we are safe until morning. Let’s go as long as we can and then everyone should get some sleep before daylight. It’s 11:30 now, so let’s plan on at least a couple more hours. This guy will be out there at the crack of dawn cruising the streets. We better lay low but he’s a pro for sure so he’ll find us.”
“Maybe we should find him first,” Richard said.
“Okay, but we better know what we’re doing. Gertrude, I would very much like to hear your plan.”
“Of course.”
Numi had found Gertrude’s lap and as she spoke he watched her for a moment before settling in, yawning to show his huge mouth and tongue, with a perfect rows of feline incisors.
“What I’m suggesting is a strategy based on what I know about the characters in this drama. I’ve never met this psychopath or the professor but I think I know enough of the bits and pieces to form a working hypothesis about them.”
“Great,” Bear said, deeply into his cake and strawberries, “you’re really going to serve as our profiler here.”
“What’s that?”
After he explained, she grinned. “Okay. Let’s start with this psychopath first. He seems to be a man in his mid- to late thirties. Probably quite capable of adopting different personas to suit his needs. He’s of Latin descent, or maybe mixed. My guess is that his childhood was difficult from very early on and he probably grew up in the juvenile justice system. His license plate said Illinois so I’m going to guess the Chicago area and for some reason he’s proud of that. He may have several drivers’ licenses with different names to use as needed, but he keeps his Illinois plates for a reason. I’m going to take a giant leap and guess he grew up in Chicago.” She paused and asked Bear, “Did you get a chance to check out his license?”
“I’ve got a call in to a buddy in Chicago so I should hear first thing tomorrow if there’s anything to hear. We may just get a false name along with everything else, but we’ll see.”
“Good, then at least we can rule out my speculation about that. If he is what I think he is, he works for money. He probably doesn’t identify with being a killer. Rather, he sees himself as someone who has to make a living somehow. He’s vain, hence the cologne, and he’s very conflicted. This man, who probably can kill in a second, hesitated with Moremi. That means he’s not as cold blooded as one might think. On the contrary he may even have some positive associations with a woman or women whom he loved and most probably lost. A mother? A girlfriend? A woman he admired? We can only speculate.”
Bear’s plate was clean and he was now all ears. “So how do you think a guy like that turns into a killer for hire? I mean, you seem to be saying he may have some fuzzy feelings deep down inside that might get in the way if he feels positively toward a woman — in this instance, Moremi?”
“Yes,” Gertrude agreed, “that about says it, doesn’t it?” She smiled at everyone. She liked Bear. An honorable man. Rather like my late husband. “Let me try a short answer to your question. He probably never planned to become a killer for hire. Most likely he just fell into it and then couldn’t resist the money so he kept doing it and it became easier the more he did it. He probably compartmentalizes his work from his personal life and doesn’t think of himself as being a killer. We call that splitting. My guess is he lives on very little, saves his money, works through word of mouth and then might travel to exotic places where he can relax and replenish and recreate himself. I suspect he may be quite skilled in several ways. He also may consider himself something of an aesthete. He probably has some OCD traits that would explain his proficiency. Certain professions attract certain types. I don’t think you can be an assassin without being a bit of a perfectionist.”
She waited, then continued. “He probably reinvents himself when he’s not working and living somewhere on temporary vacation so to speak. He may even charm the ladies but I doubt he gets very involved. Intimacy would make him feel quite vulnerable and lead him to react impulsively and kill someone without hesitation, unlike his behavior with Moremi.”
Everyone was quiet, including Bear. He was amazed at Gertrude’s assessment and was fascinated by her careful mind. He knew she was eighty-three. To his eyes that evening she was ageless, beautiful and savvy.
Gertrude then moved on to describe her impressions of Peter based on what Moremi and Rebecca had told her. “He’s more complicated because this man is riddled with internal conflicts and carries secrets which must be like little time bombs he swallowed whole and that remain undigested.”
Thinking of his ham and strawberries, Bear interjected, “How do you mean, ‘undigested?’”
“Well,” Gertrude explained, “imagine you grew up being told by parents that you’re no good or that everything you do to make your parents admire you goes unnoticed or unacknowledged. Or worse, you are made to feel ashamed for caring about something, that to care shows weakness. Such parental judgments hold no complexity. Either you are good — doing things my way — or you are bad — going against me. There is no in between, no allowance for being human, making mistakes, needing to fall down many times before you learn to walk. With a very narcissistic parent there is no room for failure, only room to make the parent look good by reflecting his or her need for perfection. From such parents, there are no encouraging words. No supportive reassurance. Do you follow me?”
“Yes. If the parents have only one standard that suits their needs it would be tough for a kid growing up at any age to measure up. Maybe once in a while and only on the parents’ terms. So how could you grow up and become independent from your parents’ image of you?”
“Just so.” She smiled at Bear. What a nice man. “Peter’s father was a general in a military dictatorship. Staggering amounts of money were siphoned off to the dictator’s gangs, especially his generals. Since we are talking about Nigeria we are talking about blood oil profits. Such people almost certainly are very dangerous, ruthless, and quite narcissistic.”
“You wouldn’t want to be their child,” Richard chimed in.
“No indeed,” said Gertrude, still holding the floor. “Therefore I imagine Peter’s self-image is terribly distorted. He has probably developed a full-blown false personality, a total defense that splits off a scared, insecure little boy — who was never allowed to really develop — into the grown professor of economics, the pride of his parents. Being a professor would be more of a defense for him than a real self. I mean he grew into their perfect picture of who he should be and lost who he really might have been. Peter’s dark side is undoubtedly hidden even from himself, while I suspect this other psychopathic man’s dark side is quite well known to himself. I believe the professor is an exquisitely conflicted man. Half of him yearns to have his parents’ approval even after their deaths. The other half has suffered unbearable losses and terrible humiliation at their hands. His feelings of hatred toward them are beyond his awareness. He would deny all of this because he really has no access to those feelings. Maybe when he was younger, but not anymore.”
“Okay, I get all that, I think,” Bear said. “Now, what about Moremi? Who is she to him? And his son, Ayo? Who is he to this man?”
“Precisely, these are the important questions. My guess is Moremi represents an idealized feminine to him. That is, she is the all-good, beautiful mother. Moremi redeems him. This projection could have remained intact if Moremi had not found out the truth. Her finding out the truth would instantly render her existence impossible for him to tolerate.”
“How so?” Bear asked.
“Well,” Gertrude continued, “he would have held her in his psyche as perfect, as special, above all other women, his idealized object. He would have expected her to return this idealization. But when she stopped and learned his dark truth she fell from grace and became all too human. He would not only have to rid his psyche of her, he would have to do so by annihilating her. This, by the way, is what his family did. They annihilated whatever or whomever got in their way. By making her disappear Peter would be able to retrieve his imagined and yearned-for, projected admiration of his parents.”
“Even after they were dead and gone?”
“Yes, even after that. In fact, after parents are dead they can easily become idealized figures in their child’s mind. I suspect that is what Peter did.”
“Okay, I get that. And how about Ayo? Would he need to annihilate his son?”
“I doubt it. Ayo would be even more special and precious than Moremi. Ayo is the best of her and Peter’s yearned-for idealized self. I know this sounds like textbook psychology but it’s true. Ayo carries Moremi within him and to Peter that would make her even more expendable. As long as he has Ayo, whom he sees as a perfectly innocent and pristine self-object who also carries the idealized mother within him, Peter has all he needs.”
“All right,” Bear said, wrapping up, “I guess this brings us to your plan, Gertrude.”
“Indeed it does.”
“Let’s take a break,” Bear suggested. “Stretch a little and get back here in about twenty minutes. Let’s see, it’s about 12:30 am now, so let’s go for another hour or so when we reconvene.”
26
The next morning at 7:00 a.m. they were again together in Daniel’s living room. Gertrude had gone home and just returned laden with fresh bagels, cream cheese and other breakfast pastries. As they were sitting down and pouring coffee Moremi’s cell phone erupted in marimba tunes. They froze, staring at her phone on the table. She kept it with her in case Ayo called. She looked at the number and then looked up at everyone, slightly bewildered.
“It’s Peter’s office. They never call me. And certainly not so early.”
“Pick it up,” Bear instructed. “It might be important.”
She spoke with someone for several minutes. The others could not fathom what the call was about, as her expression moved from quizzical to puzzled and finally to somewhat alarmed.
“He hasn’t called in since yesterday,” she lied, “but I will let him know the news about Alice Gordon as soon as possible.”
Moremi hung up, stared at the phone for about twenty seconds and put it back on the coffee table. She was frozen in place, swallowed into her mind, lost in thought. When she had recovered she looked up at everyone and explained the call was from Peter’s secretary. The parents of a graduate student of his named Alice Gordon had left a voice mail and sent an email to him yesterday evening. They called from their home in Seattle where Alice was visiting over the spring break.
“Apparently they were unaware that Peter had taken a short leave of absence from the university, so Annie is picking up his messages. This message sounded urgent. She was unable to reach Peter so she called me instead, hoping he might be in touch with me.”
“Reasonable assumption,” Bear interjected.
“Yes, I suppose so.” She was still lost in thought while telling them what was said. They could all see that something about this message bothered her.
“At any rate, that is why she called.”
Moremi explained that Alice Gordon’s parents had reported their daughter had been in a serious car accident and that she was miraculously unscathed. They wanted to know if Peter would let their daughter take a semester off to recover while also doing some research on Nigeria under his advisement.
The room was still. The Queens were out in the back eating their breakfast on the deck and the only sound was Numi whapping the window as he watched them.
“Who is this Alice Gordon?” Bear asked, breaking the silence.
“I don’t know. Apparently she’s one of his gradate students.” She was searching the back of her mind for something. Bear could see she was trying to make some kind of connection and he didn’t want to interrupt her.
“Somehow that name rings a bell.” Absorbed, she was oblivious to Numi’s return to her lap, having lost interest in what The Queens were up to.
Moremi’s serious expression opened to surprise, before fear spread across her brow. Her eyes narrowed, focused on a growing memory. She cupped her hand over her mouth trying to shut out the intrusive thought.
Bear waited, sipped his coffee and watched her protectively.
The Queens finished their breakfast. Dido entered the room first, with a small, satisfied burp.
“That’s it,” Moremi said, bursting with enlightenment. “When I found the letter about six months ago in Peter’s office — the one he never sent to his father that told me what had really happened.” She turned to Rebecca, “You remember — I told you about that?”
Rebecca nodded.
“Well, in that same file box along with other documents there was a student’s paper. It was about twenty pages long. I thought it was a little strange at the time. What was it doing in a file box with only personal items? I couldn’t help noticing it and saw that Peter had scribbled notes in a red pen all over the pages. I glanced at a few.”
She squinted as if she could see the writing. “One notation of his at the end said ‘What a nuisance!’ He didn’t like what she had written. But even at the time that didn’t make sense to me because it looked like a well-researched paper. Of course I didn’t really know but that was my instinct. I guessed that he didn’t like what she’d written, not because she got it all wrong but because it was right.”
No one moved.
Rebecca said, “And now we need to connect the fact the killer out there has just returned from Seattle. This cannot be a coincidence.”
In seconds Bear was on his cell phone to a friend on the Seattle police force. He was not yet at work but he picked up the call on the first ring. They chatted for a few seconds. Bear asked if he knew anything about a car accident on the Mountain Grade yesterday morning and the owner of the car, Alice Gordon. Bear’s friend said he didn’t know but he would skip his doughnut stop so he could get to work sooner and find out.
“Thanks. I owe you a whole box. How about Krispie Kremes?” Bear laughed and snapped his phone shut and looked directly at Moremi.
“A student’s paper. Did you get at all what it was about?”
She closed her eyes. “The title was something like . . . umm . . .” She could almost see it. “It had something like ‘oil reserves in Nigeria,’ ‘toxic wasteland,’ ‘schemes,’ ‘money laundering’ and ‘tax shelters.’ I think I saw the names Shell Oil and I’m pretty sure Halliburton. That’s about it. It might have been focused on the Abaca regime. That was when Peter’s family cashed in. As that regime ended his parents moved to London, I’m sure taking their money with them. Peter’s parents put their money in tax shelters and I guess after they died Peter inherited all that. He never spoke of any of that with me. I knew Peter’s family had money but I never asked about it. I wasn’t interested and he didn’t want me to know.”
“For good reason,” Gertrude said. “He probably is very careful to deny the origins of such dirty money. Also, my dear,” she addressed Moremi, “I assume any mention to you about that would remind you of why your family died. Your parents were part of the growing opposition to that regime. To discuss that with you would draw you too close to the truth. He certainly wouldn’t want to risk that.”
Rebecca spoke up. “No, he wouldn’t, but he might want to flirt with the risk in some other way. Sociopathic personalities feed on risk. Perhaps he enjoyed taunting his students with hints about tax shelter schemes in Nigeria. After all, isn’t Nigeria sort of the scam center of the world?” She turned to Moremi and said, “No offence, but I understand it’s a pretty common practice there, sort of a national pastime.”
“None taken!” Moremi laughed. “It’s true. No Nigerian would deny that.”
“So,” Rebecca went on, “maybe Peter got some sort of secret pleasure in watching his students spin their wheels.”
“Yes,” Richard agreed, “and Alice Gordon figured something out that came too close for comfort, whatever it was. Peter’s assignment stirred her imagination, only in the wrong direction.”
They all helped themselves to the breakfast rolls and fresh fruit and coffee laid out on the table. After fifteen minutes Bear’s cell phone rang. He listened for about twenty seconds and then hung up.
“Okay, here’s the scoop. Alice Gordon is a graduate student in economics down here at the university. Her parents are well-known environmentalists. Serious people. Deep roots in Greenpeace. Alice’s car went over the cliff as it was coming down a steep mountain grade from her parents’ home yesterday morning at approximately 8:30 a.m. She should be dead. But she’s not, miraculously. She’s banged up and still in the hospital but she’ll be out in a few days. Her parents want her to stay out the next semester and do research from home on the Nigerian oil industry. They contacted the university to ask permission. Alice’s doctors think she will be physically fine but they’re worried about her emotional recovery. There’s some thought that Alice has Asberger’s and her parents are very protective of her. She’s also extremely bright.”
