Dantes' Inferno Read Online Free PDF Page A

hysteria, psychopathology, mania, hypochondriasis, schizophrenia, psychasthenia.
    She was here precisely because psychological testing was the most analytical, standardized, measurable, and emotionally detached portion of the profiling project.
    I can’t offer judgment calls, intuition, or emotion. Not this month.
    No clinical interviews, no therapy, no need for empathic connection.
    No trespassing on the dangerous terrain of soul or psyche. Thanks anyway.
    Electronic clamor caught her attention, cuffing it on the ear. The officer was nodding her through the yawning jaws of security.
    She tripped on a fraying edge of rubber matting, abruptly unsteady, reminding herself she was about to be forty minutes late for a meeting with a killer named John Dantes.
    8:41 A.M. “You made it past the hounds of hell,” he said softly. At the moment, he was a disembodied presence, his face lost in shadow.
    But Sylvia felt the sting of his eyes on her skin.
    Fluorescent light abruptly flooded the small square room.
    She blinked, off balance, only to find she was staring directly into his face.
    It was heart shaped, capped with light brown hair gone prematurely gray at the temples and knotted into a rough ponytail. His cheekbones were prominent, his mouth wide, his chiseled features drawn together by a small, almost pointed chin. Fatigue and prison life had dulled his complexion, and it had been at least two days since his last shave. The fresh bruise bluing the skin of his left cheek added to the overall effect of eighteenth-century castaway mixed with contemporary street fighter.
    But it was his eyes that threatened to penetrate her emotional perimeter; behind wire rims, they were green—no, gray—flecked with sparks of white and yellow, fringed with thick lashes. They were the eyes of a visionary. Or a psychopath.
    She looked away, belatedly, hearing the echoing hiss of whispered words: “—last time—I can’t—” She registered another presence in the room: a female correctional officer. The Bureau of Prisons employee was young, lost inside a tan uniform with epaulettes and a black and white name tag identifying her as D. FLORETTE.
    Sylvia had the feeling she’d interrupted some heated exchange between the guard and Dantes; her curiosity was aroused, but left unsatisfied when CO Florette ducked her head and launched into a seemingly endless rote speech covering rules and regulations.
    While Florette droned on, Sylvia had the chance to study the man who—at age twenty-four—had been teaching postgraduate urban structural sociology at one of southern California’s most prestigious universities when he wasn’t busy blowing up the California aqueduct in retributionfor historic sins. Now, at thirty-seven, he was serving his first year of a life sentence—for the Getty, the one bombing he claimed he didn’t commit.
    Over the course of his outlaw career, the media had alternately exhibited Dantes as a mysterious and clever fugitive, an impassioned charismatic defendant, a stridently political prisoner. Sylvia thought he looked less functional than any of his public personas.
    â€œDr. Strange?” Florette’s hard, unwelcoming voice snagged Sylvia’s attention. “You can see for yourself he’s manacled, ankles only—we freed his hands per your request. I’ll step outside, that’s regulation—and I’ll do my visuals at random.”
    â€œThank you, Deborah,” Dantes said politely.
    â€œPlease remember to avoid all physical contact with the prisoner. Excuse me, ma’am.” Ignoring Dantes, she brushed past Sylvia; the door slammed shut behind her back.
    The sound bounced around the angular space before it died at the feet of an artificial silence broken only by the ticking of a clock mounted on the wall.
    â€œShe’s jealous.” John Dantes was the first to speak. “Even prisons have their stars.”
    Sylvia