Daughter of Darkness Read online

  Soon after his confrontation with their murderer, Coffey took early retirement and bought himself a new Ford and, after getting his chauffeur's license, became a cab driver. He no longer felt he could be a reliable cop. There were too many emotions surging through him to remain completely rational. Despite the fact that all his friends thought he was crazy, he liked the city at night. Yes, there was violence, but there was glamour and excitement, too. The job also let him do something else he had a passion for. He was able to sleep late in the morning, usually hitting the sack around two a.m., and then get up and spend some time at the typewriter. He had sold his first novel last year, a paperback original about a rookie cop. The book had won him decent if not remarkable reviews and a contract for a sequel, which he was halfway through. He had framed reproductions of his first cover hanging up in no less than four rooms in his house. His sister Jan had suggested that maybe he could hang one on the front door. That was one thing about the kid sister he'd always loved so much. She was a true Coffey, a smart-ass from the get-go.

  There were a number of conventions going on in the city, so Coffey had spent a good deal of the night in the Loop ferrying guys back and forth between expensive hotels, past Blooomingdale's and Brooks Brothers and Neiman Marcus, and out to the North Pier where a number of yacht parties were going on. The new night spots were especially popular tonight: the Hard Rock Cafe and Michael Jordan's and Rainforest and the House of Blues. Conventioneers were apparently getting hipper, no longer settling for the same old same old. Nobody had barfed, nobody had picked a fight with him, nobody had asked him to find them hookers. Coffey felt blessed. He'd drive over and have a soda with Sister Mary Agnes, and then call it a night.

  He kept the window rolled down. It was one of those smoky-smelling autumn nights in the city. Hot and ripe. Indian summer.

  ***

  The front of the shelter was dark. Coffey had a key, so that was no problem. He usually let himself in anyway. This time of night, you could generally find Sister Mary Agnes in her tiny office going over the books, or in the infirmary trying to calm somebody who had delirium tremens or was experiencing some bad drugs. If the person looked to be in serious trouble, Sister Mary Agnes always called an ambulance right away, then phoned ahead to a nearby ER to let them know who was coming and what the trouble was. Coffey was amazed at how little the nun slept. Partly this was due to her nightmares. The nun had told him all about going into the concentration camps. She'd brought the Holocaust home to him in a way that he'd never experienced before. No wonder she had nightmares…

  The front part of the ground floor was in shadow. In fact, the only light Coffey could see anywhere came from the infirmary. Coffey, a slender, intense-looking man with unruly black hair, made his way to the light.

  He peeked in and was stunned by what he saw. The woman was startlingly gorgeous. Classically so. He just stood there in the doorway, looking at her as she lay there, apparently sleeping. Her face suggested so many things, beauty, intelligence, eroticism, humor, and yet-great sorrow.

  And then he realized why the sleeping woman appealed to him so much. Because she resembled Janice so much…

  The resemblance was almost chilling.

  But what was anybody so lovely and so well-dressed doing in a homeless shelter? And where was Sister Agnes?

  The woman said, "Have you seen the Sister?" Her eyes were open now. They were as beautiful as the rest of her.

  "I was going to ask you the same thing."

  "She went to get me a soda. But she's been gone a long time."

  "She'll be along, then." He couldn't take his eyes off her.

  "You… you look as if you've seen me before," the woman said quietly. "Do you know who I am?"

  What a strange question to ask-almost as if she didn't know who she was. "No, I'm afraid I don't." Then, "My name's Michael Coffey, by the way."

  The woman made a hapless face. "That's one of the things the Sister and I are trying to figure out."

  "Oh?"

  "My name. I can't remember it. She thinks it may be amnesia of some kind." The woman looked absolutely terrified. And he didn't blame her.

  ***

  The woman was sitting up on the cot when Sister Mary Agnes reached the infirmary.

  The woman put her lovely face in her long, shapely hands. "This is such a nightmare. I can't remember anything."

  Sister Mary Agnes stepped forward and handed her a can of Diet Pepsi. "Here, sweetheart, you said you were dry."

  The woman looked up, took the can, and quietly thanked the nun.

  Sister Mary Agnes said, "Coffey drives a cab now, but he used to be a homicide detective. Maybe he can help us."

  "The first thing we need to do, is get you to a hospital," Coffey said. "You need to be examined by a doctor or two. Then you need to go to the police. They can help you find out who you are."

  "Maybe by that time," Sister Mary Agnes said, "your memory will've come back. Most amnesia goes away pretty quickly."

  "I'll be happy to drive you in my cab," Coffey said. "Free."

  "That's an offer he only makes to pretty women," Sister Mary Agnes said. "The 'free' I mean."

  The woman suddenly clutched her head, a whimpering sound coming from her throat.

  "What's wrong?" Coffey said.

  "Headache," the woman said, a moaning tone in her voice now. "Motel room."

  Coffey and the nun looked at each other. Motel room? Was the woman having some kind of breakdown?

  "We really need to get you to an ER," Coffey said.

  Coffey and the nun went over to the woman and helped her to her feet. Her slender hands still clung to her head and her face was a portrait of near-intolerable pain. Sister Mary Agnes hurried to her medicine supply and grabbed a large bottle of aspirin. She dumped three into the palm of her hand and then rushed over and fed them to the woman one at a time, who chased them down with Diet Pepsi.

  ***

  "How's your head?"

  "Better. Amazingly so."

  "You stick with Sister Mary Agnes, and you can't go wrong."

  The woman smiled. "Apparently."

  There was a sadness to the empty streets at this time of night. Coffey had once seen an Edward Hopper exhibit at the Art Museum. Ever since, empty midnight streets had always reminded him of Hopper's paintings, the lonesome sitting alone in diners while darkness prowled around them, hungry, relentless, and sometimes fatal. They always looked so small and scared. Hopper's people. This part of Downtown South was Hopper country, the neon burning in the windows of ancient taverns, the ancient rusted cars, and the occasional sad winos shambling down the streets.

  "She sure is nice," the woman said.

  "Sister Mary Agnes?"

  "Yes."

  "Yeah. She sure is."

  "How do you know her?"

  "She was my shrink for a while."

  "Your shrink?"

  He looked over at her. "I started drinking more than I should." He told her what happened to his wife and daughter. And he told her about his novel, his new life. "The liquor started to affect my work. I tried AA. I even tried a detox clinic. Neither one worked for me. So one night I found this homeless guy crawling around in the street-he was in really bad shape-and since I was near Sister Mary Agnes' place, I decided to take him there. That's how I met her. After she cleaned up the poor guy and got him into bed. she asked me if I wanted a cup of coffee. I said yes, and I've been seeing her ever since."

  "So you've quit drinking completely?"

  "Completely. Eleven months dry."

  "That's impressive." Then, "It's so terrible, what happened to your wife and daughter."

  "Yeah," he said. Then, almost to himself, "I was out bowling with the boys when it happened."

  Even from a few blocks away, Coffey could see the blazing red neon sign EMERGENCY ROOM glowing in the night. He had no experience with amnesia except in mystery novels. But right now. the woman's headaches bothered him a lot more than the amnesia did. She could be s
eriously injured. He pressed the gas pedal a little closer to the floor.

  The woman cried out and once again seized both sides of her head. The pain was so intense it lifted her up off the seat and then quickly slammed her back against it. He hit the brakes and pulled over to the curb.

  She was crying softly.

  He took her in his arms, and just held her tightly. Her body was damp from sweat and trembling from pain and anxiety.

  "There's somewhere I need to go," she said, gently slipping out of his arms.

  "Yeah," he said, starting to take the emergency brake off, "the ER."

  "No. We can do that later."

  "Listen," he said. "I'm not trying to scare you, but you could be seriously hurt. The ER is just a couple of blocks away. And that's where we're going."

  "No," she said, reaching over and setting her hand on his. "Please do what I'm asking. Please. There's something I… I need to find out."

  He wanted to argue the point, but what was the use? He saw how determined she was.

  "How's your headache?"

  "It comes and goes. The last time-it really hurt."

  He studied her a moment. He still saw Janice. "Yeah, I kind've got that impression." Then, "Care to tell me where we're going?"

  She gave an area to look for. She wasn't sure of the exact address.

  ***

  Dark streets. Empty spaces where houses had once been. Roaming dogs. Streetlights like lonely sentries swaying in the wind. These sights filled the windshield.

  "Around here," she said suddenly. And then pressed her fingers to her forehead.

  "The headache again?"

  "Yes."

  "We could always go to the ER."

  "No, please."

  They drove on. Wind was kicking up small dust storms in the gutters, pushing along pieces of paper like urban tumble-weed. Coffey always felt snug at such times. The cab was new and safe. The dashboard glowed a restful blue. He liked the cab especially now, with the woman sitting near him.

  "You like driving a cab?"

  "Yeah. Except for the drunks. Which I suppose is a little hypocritical of me since I have the same problem."

  "But at least you've done something about it." Then, "It feels so weird."

  "What does?"

  "Having this perfectly normal conversation with you-and I don't know who I am. Or how I got here."

  She jerked again, her whole body, and her head dropped back against the seat. It was as if she'd been shot.

  What the hell was going on with her. anyway? What was this mysterious mission?

  "Around here." She touched her fingers to her forehead. Her eyes were closed, squinting, as if she were desperately trying to visualize something.

  "You said that before. What's supposed to be 'around here?' "

  "There's a motel somewhere around here."

  "We're coming into a section where there are a lot of motels."

  He noticed that she kept her eyes closed. She sat perfectly rigid. "Is there one named the Econo-Nite?"

  "Yes. About three blocks from here."

  "I need to go there."

  "You mind if I ask why?"

  She opened her eyes. Sat up. Looked at him. "I'm not sure why. I just-had this image of it suddenly. I felt this pain in my head, and there was a picture of the motel. It was strange. You know, that the pain would trigger an image like that."

  "Maybe you're starting to remember something."

  "Maybe. But I don't like it."

  "Why not?"

  "Because I also saw a door in the motel. Room 127. And it scares me."

  "But you don't know why?"

  "No. I just have this-terrible feeling."

  He did something he'd been wanting to do for some time. He reached out and touched her hand. "Maybe I should get you to the ER first. You could be starting to hallucinate."

  "I don't think it was a hallucination."

  "Sometimes, they can be very real. I had the d.t.s once. I dreamed there was a giant lizard in my closet waiting to pounce on me."

  "No, please. Let's go to the motel first. Then the ER."

  "You sure?"

  The woman nodded. She looked lost and terrified.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Was there anything sexier than watching a strange woman undress?

  A few years ago. Quinlan had persuaded a department store friend of his to put a surveillance camera in one of the women's dressing rooms. He did this in the spring, when there was the usual bikini frenzy among young women.

  Quinlan had watched the tapes over and over. They were far better than commercial porno because that was staged, with very predictable responses by the actors and actresses. Watching unsuspecting women undress was a much bigger turn-on…

  As now.

  Quinlan sat in front of a bank of three color TV monitors in a small, dark room. A console of buttons and switches sat before him.

  The monitor screens were filled with identical images-the tall, slender dark-haired woman just now stepping out of her panties, her ample breasts swinging bountifully as she bent over.

  He pushed a red button on the console and said. "Sandra, you're feeling very sexy now. Very sexy now. You feel a need for an orgasm." Microwave technology being what it was these days, the signal went out just as a radio signal. Microwave signaling no longer took a couple hundred pounds of clumsy gear.

  Quinlan's suggestion worked very quickly. Sandra began to touch herself in slow, gentle but singularly erotic ways. Her fingers found the lovely baby-pink nipples of her uptilted breasts, and then the gentle slope of her belly, which showed the faint red banding of where her panties had been. From there, she found her sex, and the moment she touched it her entire body shuddered and exploded. She became wanton with herself. Quinlan smiled. Just as the dressing room had been superior to XXX-porno, just so was this superior to the dressing room.

  He was in complete control of a beautiful woman.

  He wondered what the district attorney would say if he knew what his wife was doing this afternoon. Quinlan and the DA were golfing buddies. Quite innocently, at dinner at the DA's house one night, Quinlan wondered if Sandra, the DA's wife, would like to be a guinea pig in some experiments at Quinlan's clinic some time. Sandra, a very jaded suburban housewife, volunteered on the spot. She said it sounded exciting. If she only knew the things she'd done at the clinic, the things that Quinlan had totally erased from her memory…

  When she was finished with herself, Sandra (on command) put her blue sweater and gray skirt and gray suede pumps back on. She had an elegant, slightly spoiled face, the face of a beautiful woman who was used to being kept happy. It gave Quinlan great satisfaction to use women like this, the wives and daughters of gentry and society.

  Then Quinlan said, again depressing the red button, "Now, I want you to go over to the table in the corner, Sandra. And pick up the gun."

  She did so without hesitation.

  Her fingers had barely touched the weapon when the door of the room opened and a man shuffled in.

  His face was grimy with dirt and dried sweat. His hair was a bird's nest of filth and weeds and grass. His workshirt and trousers had once been a real color. Now they were simply the color of his face, the color of poverty and a kind of despair that could only be alleviated with the succor of cheap wine. The wine would bring a red tint back to his cheeks and a crazed sad private giggle to his lips. The eyes reflected nothing. He was too drugged out to feel anything. The man was one of Chicago's homeless. One of Quinlan's employees had snatched him off the streets last night and brought him out here to the clinic. The way Quinlan saw it, he was doing the poor bastard a favor.

  The man came into the room and closed the door behind him. Just as he'd been instructed to. Now, he stood staring at the far wall, the dead eyes seeming to comprehend nothing. He paid no attention whatsoever to the beautiful woman standing before him.

  Now came the test.

  He'd see how far along Sandra had come over the past thr
ee months.

  He depressed the red button again. "Sandra, I have to warn you. He's going to rape you and then he's going to kill you. But he'll kill you slowly. He's HIV-positive. Remember the photos of the AIDS patient we showed you? How horrible he looked? You'll die later on with AIDS. Your only chance is to kill him, Sandra. Raise the gun and point it at him and kill him. You don't have much time, Sandra. And you're the only one who can stop him. You have the gun. You have to kill him. Sandra. You have to kill him now."

  But could she do it?

  Quinlan sat there, fascinated by what he was doing. Could she actually do it? God, he hoped so. As a man of science, and a man who loved controlling women, he sincerely hoped so.

  She started to raise the gun, point it at the homeless man…

  ***

  Robert James Quinlan was probably the only man to ever appear in both Psychiatric America and Cosmopolitan. At least in the same month.

  The psychiatric magazine was honoring him for doing the most important work in behavior modification since the controversial Russian, Maslow.

  The women's magazine was honoring him as one of the country's most handsome and most eligible bachelors. They went positively orgasmic over his "Robert Wagner-like good looks."

  Shortly after the articles appeared, Quinlan left behind the snows (and the nubile and willing daughters of rich and powerful people) of Harvard and went to the sunny shores of California, up the coast near Malibu, where he was CEO of the Sigma Corporation, a company that was rather mysterious once you looked into it. (Not to worry; he immediately found nubile and willing young women here, too.) Sigma was mysterious on purpose. It was a CIA front. Quinlan had signed on with the Agency to expand his work with behavior modification, angling it more toward mind control. At the time, the Agency was trying to take certain control secrets it had learned in its MK-Ultra program (years later it was called the Artichoke program when it was exposed by a senate investigating committee) and combine them with the results of his own work. Simply put, the Agency wanted to know if there really was such a thing as mind control. While the public (thanks to hours of sloppy and scaremongering reporting done by the networks) just assumed that there was such a process, the Agency had great doubts about the results the Russians, the Chinese, and the Koreans had reported. During the Korean War, for instance, it was widely reported that the Koreans had "brainwashed" many American troops. But what "brainwashing" meant in this context was simply that, through the use of torture, drugs, and sleep deprivation, the Koreans had succeeded in turning American soldiers into mental basket cases. They suffered from depression, terrible paranoia, and anxiety, and even certain levels of schizophrenia. But as to "secret soldiers" controlled from afar-that was all crapola. The poor bastards were utterly useless. Most of them died not long after being returned home; and the majority of them died in psychiatric hospitals.