‘You’ve never had a man here named John?’
‘No.’
‘How do you know about this John Wilkes Enterprises?’
‘I get a check from them every month. A very nice check.’
Shakily, Dan got to his feet.
Regine was visibly disappointed.
He looked around, spotted the suitcases by the door, which he had noticed when he’d first come in. ‘Going away?’
‘For a few days.’
‘Where?’
‘Las Vegas.’
‘Are you running, Regine?’
‘What would I be running from?’
‘People are getting killed because of what happened in that gray room.’
‘But I don’t know what happened in the gray room, and I don’t care,’ she said. ‘So I’m safe.’
Staring down at her, Dan realized that Regine Savannah Hoffritz had a gray room all of her own. She carried it with her wherever she went, for her gray room was where the real Regine was locked away, trapped, imprisoned.
He said, ‘Regine, you need help.’
‘I need to be what you want.’
‘No. You need—’
‘I’m fine.’
‘You need counseling.’
‘I’m free. Willy taught me how to be free.’
‘Free from what?’
‘Responsibility. Fear. Hope. Free from everything.’
‘Willy didn’t free you. He enslaved you.’
‘You don’t understand.’
‘He was a sadist.’
‘There’s nothing wrong with that.’
‘He got inside your mind, twisted you. We’re not talking about some half-baked psychology professor, Regine. This lunatic was a heavyweight. This was a guy who worked for the Pentagon, researching behavior modification, developing new methods of brainwashing. Ego-repressing drugs, Regine. Subliminal persuasion. Willy was to Big Brother what Merlin was to King Arthur. Except Willy did bad magic, Regine. He transformed you into … into this … into a masochist, for his amusement.’
‘And that’s how he freed me,’ she said serenely. ‘You see, when you no longer fear pain, when you learn to love pain, then you can’t be afraid of anything anymore. That’s why I’m free.’
Dan wanted to shake her, but he knew that shaking her would do no good. Quite the opposite. She would only beg for more.
He wanted to get her in front of a sympathetic judge and have her committed without her consent, so she could receive psychiatric treatment. But he wasn’t related to her; he was virtually a stranger to her; no judge would play along with him; it just wasn’t done that way. There seemed to be nothing he could do for her.
She said, ‘You know something interesting? I think maybe Willy’s not really dead.’
‘Oh, he’s dead, all right.’
‘Maybe not.’
‘I saw the body. We got a positive ID match from dental records and fingerprints.’
‘Maybe,’ she said. ‘But … well, I get the feeling he’s still alive. Sometimes I sense him out there … I feel him. It’s strange. I can’t explain it. But that’s why I’m not as broken up as I might have been. Because I’m not convinced he’s dead. Somehow, he’s still … out there.’
Her self-image and her primary reasons for continuing to live were so dependent upon Willy Hoffritz, upon the prospect of receiving his praise and his approval or at least upon hearing his voice on the telephone every once in a while, that she was never going to be able to accept his death. Dan suspected that he could take her to the morgue, confront her with the bloody corpse, force her to place her hands upon the cold dead flesh, make her stare into the grotesquely battered countenance, shove the coroner’s report in front of her — and nevertheless fail to convince her that Hoffritz had been killed. Hoffritz had gotten inside her, had shattered her psyche, then had rejoined the pieces in a pattern that was more pleasing to himself, with himself as the bonding agent holding her together. If Regine accepted the reality of his death, there would be no glue binding her anymore, and she might collapse into insanity. Her only hope — or so it must seem to her — was to believe that Willy was still alive.
‘Yes, he’s out there,’ she said again. ‘I feel it. Somehow, somewhere, he’s out there.’
Feeling utterly ineffectual, loathing his powerlessness, Dan headed toward the door.
Behind him, Regine rose quickly from the sofa and said, ‘Please. Wait.’