The Syndrome

Duran was stu

“The man you’re impersonating never grew up,” Adrie

“I know you’re distraught about your sister’s death,” Duran said calmly, “and I can make a lot of allowances for that. But this… the effort that went into this… “ He tossed the death certificate onto the coffee table. “You’re a very disturbed person. I hope you get some help.” Then he turned to Bonilla with a ferocious look. “And you—” he began.

“‘Get some help?!’“ Adrie

“This is ridiculous,” Duran told them. “This goes way beyond providing closure—”

“‘Closure’?!” Adrie

Duran took a step back as Adrie

“Talk about sick!” Adrie

“Take it easy,” Bonilla murmured. “We’ll see him in court—and you can write to him in jail. He’ll have lots of time to read.”

Duran was dumbfounded by her anger. “I feel like I’ve stepped through the looking glass,” he said, to no one in particular.

Bonilla chuckled as he steered Adrie

Duran remained where he was, standing in the foyer, staring at the door. In irons.

Chapter 13

It was insane.

Sitting at the computer, u

15 October

Trance state. Encouraged client to recall “shadow night.” Initial resistance overcome, but blocking persisted. Recollection of “black mass” traumatic, even under hypnosis. New detail: participation in Eucharistic ritual with semen and blood.

20 October

Nicole Sullivan dead. Younger sister, Adrie

Paging down to the bottom of the file, Duran made a new entry:

5 November

Second visit from Adrie

It was crazy. If the documents had been genuine, it might have made sense to confront him with them. But they weren’t. So what had Nico’s sister hoped to accomplish?

It made you wonder about lawyers and private eyes.

Getting up from the computer, Duran crossed the room to an antique wooden cabinet that held a selection of single malt whiskies and a rack of Waterford tumblers. Pouring two fingers of Laphroaig in one of the glasses, he swirled it for a moment, and sipped. You could create any kind of document you wanted with desktop publishing, he thought. Birth certificate. Death certificate. Whatever. But that wasn’t the point—that wasn’t what was bothering him. What was bothering him was the fact that Bonilla and Cope had nothing to gain by confronting him with phony documents.

Duran took a second sip of Laphroaig, and wandered over to the window. Looking out toward the cathedral, he thought, Maybe this guy, Bonilla, fabricated it all, and sold the package as a bill of goods to Nico’s sister. Maybe he figured he’d make a few bucks, jack up his hours…

It was possible, of course, but… how hard up would a guy like that have to be?

He shook his head, uncertain what to think. It was irritating, on the one hand—disconcerting on the other. To have someone get in your face and deny something as fundamental as your own identity—and to do it in your own living room was… Well, it put you off-balance.

What was the phrase she’d used? the man you’re impersonating. A ridiculous accusation but, even so, it made him feel as if she’d shone a flashlight into his soul—and found a structural flaw that ran from his forehead to his feet. She was wrong, obviously, but her accusation went to the heart of what had been bothering him so much of late: the alienation that he felt, and the feeling that… how to put it?

In his heart of hearts, there was no heart of hearts.

Finishing his scotch, Duran turned from the window and wandered into the hall. There, he picked up the photo of his mother, sitting on the porch swing, head thrown back in laughter. Then he squeezed his eyes shut and tried to remember her as she really was. And what he remembered was… the photograph. Mom in the swing…

Which was the trouble with memory—or his memories, at least. There was nothing “eidetic” about them. He’d been reading up about it, and that was the word Ernst Young used to describe memories of a “Proustian” character, referring to the scene in which the bedridden Proust is suddenly immersed in a fully textured past by a single bite of tea-soaked, madeleine.

Not so Duran, whose own long-term memories were almost entirely visual and matter-of-fact. There was no sense of color or smell, no taste or sound. There was just the image, and only the image. Or to put it another way: he remembered his mother in the same way that he remembered… Eleanor Roosevelt. (Or Marilyn Monroe—or Pocahontas).

Eddie Bonilla’s predatory grin floated before him, like the Cheshire Cat’s smile. And the private eye’s crazy accusation filled his hearing: The man you’re impersonating…

How could he remember things—words—and not remember his mother’s voice? If asked, he could recite chapter and verse of her life: where she was born, the time she got lost in the woods, how she’d fallen from a horse at seventeen and broken her collarbone—which kept her from the senior prom. But the truth was he didn’t remember his mother as a mother. She was part of his “database”—along with James Dean, the Baltimore harbor, and long division.

Going over to his desk, he looked up the number for the D.C. Office of Vital Records and punched it out on the telephone keypad. Then he listened through a long and well-organized voice-mail menu outlining procedures for obtaining birth and death certificates. The voice noted that disclosure of these documents was limited under privacy statutes. Birth certificates did not become publicly available for one-hundred years. Death certificates did not become releasable until fifty years had passed. The only exceptions to these rules were the individuals whose records they were, and next of kin.