by Daniel Hecht
"Big Bad John," he said again, almost getting it right.
"You sound . . . troubled, nephew," Vivien said.
"Yeah, well. It's been a rough day." Paul stared at the wallpaper over the telephone desk in the farm's kitchen, wondering why he'd called her. Lia was upstairs, probably asleep. Mark was back at Janet's. Paul was exhausted, demoralized, as he always was after one of Mark's episodes.
"Are you having problems with the house?"
"No. We're pretty well on schedule. Actually, I'm at home—I've been in Vermont for the last couple of days."
"Aha." Vivien gave that a moment. "I take it that means you're wrestling with some of the . . . issues . . . that came up when we last spoke."
"My son had another of his seizures. It's always hard for me." Paul was surprised at himself. He'd told himself he was calling to ask Vivien some questions about the vandalism—about the KKK photos, at least. But he was too tired to muster any challenge to her. Anyway, he realized he'd called her for another reason entirely: that somehow Vivien was the sounding board he needed. Somehow at this point the Dragon Lady was the one person who might understand. Maybe it was her connection to Ben. Right now he felt lost in the job of being a father.
"Tell me," Vivien said sympathetically.
He told her: Monday afternoon, Paul had picked up Mark from school and they'd returned to the farm. Paul had sent him to his room to pack up his things, preparatory to returning to Janet's. Lia would be at Dartmouth until late, and he planned to have dinner and some relaxed time with Mark, just the two of them, before Janet came to pick up their son.
That was the plan, anyway.
When Mark returned to the kitchen, Paul talked casually as he cooked dinner, not noticing Mark's immobility until it was too late. Then he'd tried desperately to get Mark out of it. It was an unusual episode in that Mark went through the catatonic phase and into the violent phase in less than an hour. As he told Vivien about it, Paul winced at the memory of holding the writhing, kicking body. In the bruised muscles of his chest and stomach, he could still feel Mark's wrenching, convulsive movements, the struggles of the thing that Mark had become.
By the time Janet arrived, the fit was easing off. She came into the kitchen to see Paul sitting on the floor among the toppled chairs and broken dishes, holding Mark in a bear hug from behind. Mark came out of it crying heartbreakingly.
"You have my deepest sympathy," Vivien said. "It is a terrible thing to see a loved one in such distress. I know your father often spoke of his similar . . . concern . . . for you."
Paul said nothing for a moment. When Mark was leaving, he had burst into tears again and refused to let go of Paul: "Please, don't be away so long. It's scarier when you're not around." He was looking at Janet as he said it, as if he knew the real obstacle to being with his father was now her resistance.
Paul and Janet had locked eyes. "I've got to stay down there now, until the job is done," Paul told Mark, told Janet. "I've made a commitment. But you can come visit me there, stay at Dempsey's house. Would you like that?"
"Yes."
"If your mother agrees." Paul held her eyes until he knew she'd relented. Under the circumstances, she had little choice. Only when they settled on Mark coming down the following weekend did the boy let go of Paul.
When he walked them out to the car, Paul said good-bye to Mark and then walked around to Janet's window. "Janet. Honor Mark's desire to see me. Don't change our plans for next week."
"I promised my son, Paul," she'd hissed. "7 keep my promises." Paul came back from the memory. Vivien was saying something:
"Paulie, tell me this," she said. Her voice had dropped, intensified.
"How is Mark's physical health, generally?"
"He's prone to colds, little infections. Nothing serious."
"A lot of them? Is there a pattern to his getting sick? What I'm driving at is this: Is there any relation between his episodes and his minor illnesses? Frequency, intensity, duration?"
Paul couldn't really remember, but it seemed like a possibility. He was too tired to concentrate. But Mark's physician's records and his journal would reveal a pattern if there were one. "I'm not sure. Maybe. Why?"
"Just look into it. I have another request. Remind me of what diagnostic work you have done."
"We've done EEGs, CAT scans, MRIs. Nothing shows up."
"No PETs, no 18E fluorooxyglucose? How about SPECT?"
"No." These were new cranial imaging technologies, prohibitively expensive.
"What about blood work?"
"Standard full-spectrum tests, many times over. His blood is good."
"You checked for high levels of plasma tryptophan?"
Paul thought for a moment. "I believe so. As I recall, it was normal. You're asking about IED, intermittent explosive disorder, aren't you?
We've ruled it out."
"Very impressive, nephew! You do know your physiology, don't you?" Vivien's voice took on a hushed intensity, almost a whisper. "I have another suggestion, then: The next time Mark has an episode, get him in to draw some blood. Have them look for CRF levels. Look for ACTH levels. It's imperative you do it while he's having the seizure, or very soon after."
Corticotropic releasing factor was a "messenger" secreted by the hypothalamus that stimulated the pituitary gland to produce adreno-corticotropic hormone. ACTH in turn caused cortisol to be released into the bloodstream. Both were reactions to environmental stimulation or stress, producing a variety of bodily responses from rage to panic to sexual arousal.
"Right." Paul wrote down the words. "Why those?" He came close to asking her something else: Is that something you learned from your own secret son, Vivien?
"Just a theory of mine. I could be wrong, but it can't hurt to try, can it? Do it, Paulie. And let me know what they find."
Why not? He was reluctant to subject Mark to any more clinical work, but anything would be better than what he'd witnessed tonight.
Anything. It had been a relief to tell it all to Vivien, and there was even a glint of hope in her ideas, her theory. Maybe it was the grasping of a drowning man, but he needed to have hope that something would help.
Paul hung up, turned out the downstairs lights, trudged upstairs. If he were to ask the gods for one favor, he'd wish he could forget the sound of Mark's grating teeth, creaking and screeching in his skull as he'd writhed in Paul's arms four hours ago.
47
"O KAY, TO SUMMARIZE," Mo was saying, "we've got a number of possibilities. The problem now is to follow down each one to see what's real and what isn't. That's what these sessions are for."
They were in the smoking room. It was mid-afternoon, a dull day outside. Paul turned on the lights just to cheer things up. Once Cohen had declared the wiring safe, he'd ordered electrical service reconnected and had bought a couple of clamp lamps at the hardware store. It would still be a while before the new furnaces could be installed, but having electric lights meant that they could work longer hours after sunset. Dempsey was working in the main room, at last able to use an electric soldering gun to reassemble lead mullions in the badly damaged windows. Now they'd see some real progress.
Paul had been surprised when Mo suggested the three of them hold a skull session, not imagining such a term would be vernacular in the Bureau of Criminal Investigation. Mo said that BCI staff often put together skull sessions, where the agent in charge of a case, his supervisors, various forensics experts, maybe some fresh ears and eyes, all sat down and brainstormed about where to go with a case that had stalled out.
"Anything goes," Mo had told them. "No matter how far out. A skull session is when you let whatever's in there"—he tapped his head—"rattle around, recombine, come out in whatever form it takes. If an idea rings bells in somebody else's head, then you toss it around. If it doesn't strike any sparks, it probably doesn't hold water. Sorry about the mixed metaphors." His apologetic grin was directed to Lia.
Mo had brought them up to date on his meeting with th
e man who turned out to be the son of the original Falcone, Vivien's gardener. He'd also done some homework on Royce's finances but hadn't really gotten anywhere with it. Trooper Rizal had indeed been bullshitting Paul with his talk about a drug investigation involving Highwood. Paul had to credit him with a sense of the dramatic: He'd saved the story of his visit to the historical society until last, building the suspense until he revealed that Royce and Rizal had been juvenile partners in crime.
"Leaving us with the question of whether they are still 'collaborating' on any little schemes," Lia said. "Like trying to scare us or tempt us away from fixing up Highwood."
Lia seemed impressed with Mo's ingenuity. And he did have a kind of heat as he stalked back and forth, lost in his story, his smart, tough talk. He rolled his shoulders as if loosening up for a fight.
When no one had any more to offer, Paul told Mo about Royce's visit, the sense of threat in his comments. Mo took notes.
"Making me more sure than ever your cousin ties in," Mo said. "Just how or why, we don't know, but we'll get there. Anything else? No matter how wild?"
Again, Paul debated mentioning his other ideas, his intuitions. Tell them now, his mind screamed, the door's open. But he couldn't. He couldn't match Mo's certainty or Lia's enthusiasm. His thoughts had become too personal, too revealing: Weird medical conditions that give people super strength, secret societies from a hundred years ago, violent psychopaths imprisoned in windowless rooms. Paul's gone nuts, gone morbid. He's got a neurological condition, so he thinks of everything in those terms. He's got a son with mental problems, so he projects that predicament onto everyone. He's letting this place get to him.
Mo had been watching him closely. "Why do I get the feeling that you're not happy about where we're going with this?"
Paul thought for a moment about how to phrase it. "I keep feeling that we're ignoring what we see here at the house. Maybe we can answer the why and the who if we can just answer the how."
To Paul's surprise, the question seemed to pierce Mo. For a time the detective seemed to be looking inward. "Duly noted," he said simply. "We should give it more thought."
"Something that's been bothering me since you told us about Falcone," Lia said. "That Falcone Senior disappeared. His son thinks he's dead because his family pride makes him need to see it that way. Or he claims to think that, to throw you off. But what if the elder Falcone isn't dead?"
"Right," Paul said, glad the attention had shifted from him, "and he's living around here, in the woods like the Leather Man. And he's still got a grudge."
"Leather Man?"
"A famous eccentric who roamed this area, sort of a wild man. A hundred years ago."
Mo rolled his eyes. "Stranger things have happened."
"What about you, Mo?" Lia asked.
"Me?" Mo walked away again, turned, the restless energy of a panther in a cage. "I keep coming back to the son, Royce. He's got something to gain by your aunt's leaving the house. Either he lays hands on something here, or something else. He wants her gone, that's why he doesn't want you to fix the place up for her."
"How would that tie in with your missing kids?"
Mo looked bothered by the question. "Maybe no connection. And maybe the kids got hurt because they happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Or maybe the psychopathology that did all this manifests in other ways as well. Like serial killing."
They mulled it over for a time. Paul felt tics building. A mournful tune was playing in his head, infuriating him: "Ringo's Theme," The Beatles, 1964. "That bo-oy took my love away." He played the rhythm with his tongue on the roof of his mouth, angry at himself. Pathetic. But Lia and Mo looked great together, they had some of the same, what, aura, the same juice. The fact certainly hadn't escaped Mo's notice.
Plus there were the things he couldn't bring himself to mention. Dempsey's strange behavior: In a flash, he saw Dempsey, harboring some grudge against Vivien, coming up and ripping the place apart. The old fighter still had banded muscles in his working man's arms, the deep chest of an athlete. The image played like a movie in his head, and he shivered involuntarily. Not just the brutality of it, the deception.
Dempsey, the one person he'd always counted on. But who could you trust? Could you really trust anyone? Paul bit his tongue. He was beginning to sound like Vivien. He was right to hold back—there seemed to be no end to his paranoia.
They spent the next fifteen minutes thinking up practical steps to take. Mo would look into Royce some more, see if there was anything else to be found on Falcone, explore the Royce-Pdzal connection. He'd make another attempt to talk to Heather Mason. Paul and Lia would keep on with the papers, looking for anything else on the Philippine connection. Paul would talk to Vivien.
And, Paul thought, try to meet with Stropes. And make Dempsey talk.
"I've got a question for you, Mo," Lia was saying. She beckoned him to turn, and when he did she pointed to his gun. "Do you always carry that?"
Mo smiled, looking flattered by her attention. "Not when I'm in the shower."
"Do you ever have to use it?"
The detective lost his smile. "On occasion, yes."
"Can I see it? Is it some special kind? My father likes a Walther 9millimeter."
"Glock 17, also a 9-millimeter. What, uh, occasions your interest?"
Mo had gotten stiff, lost his insouciance, Paul thought. He made no offer to show the gun to Lia.
"We brought a gun with us," Lia said. She brought out the box containing Ted's revolver. "Smith and Wesson .38. Any advice? I'm assuming you're an expert."
Mo lifted the gun out, flipped the cylinder and inspected the weapon.
"This has been well taken care of."
"My brother-in-law's an ex-cop," Paul said. "It's his gun."
"You want advice? I'll give you some: Don't take it out of the box again. Guns seem to beget shooting. Shooting seems to beget serious mistakes."
"You say that like you know what you're talking about," Lia said.
"Another suggestion: Don't use it to frighten somebody. Don't think it'll accomplish anything by waving it around. It's not a fucking magic wand. If you show it, use it."
"Not a magic wand—I think Paul and I can grasp that, conceptually." Lia smiled at Mo, gently mocking his sudden seriousness, and it seemed to work: He came back out of whatever mood had taken him.
"Okay," Mo said. "Sorry. I don't like guns. A necessary evil. But I do have a suggestion for you. If you're going to load it, use the hollow points. It looks like your brother-in-law put a box of them in there."
"What's the difference?" Paul asked.
Mo tilted his head toward the door. "I'll show you. We'll let off a couple of rounds. Not SOP for a New York State Police employee, but who gives a fuck? Excuse my French."
They went out to the driveway. Under Mo's supervision, Paul found a suitable target, a three-foot length of rough-cut two-by-eight lumber from the carriage house. Paul propped the board upright at the top of the retaining wall at the curve of the driveway, a slope of soft earth behind it. Mo walked them back twenty paces, loaded the .38 with bullets from one of the boxes of ammunition Ted had provided.
"Go ahead," he said. "Take a few pops."
Lia offered the gun to Paul, but he shook his head. With the look of focus on her, face set, eyes alive, she checked the cylinder, closed it, slipped the safety. Beauty and the beast, Paul thought, although it didn't look foreign in her hands. She took a stance and with both hands aimed at the board. The explosion made him jump. The board didn't move.
"Out of practice," Lia said.
"Excellent form, though," Mo said. Then he looked embarrassed.
Lia aimed and fired again, missed, held her stance, fired twice more, knocking the board over with her last shot.
They went to inspect the board. A hole the diameter of a pencil had appeared near its upper right edge. Where the bullet emerged, it had flipped off a chip of wood the size of a postage stamp, but otherwise the hole
it had burrowed stayed the same width all the way through two inches of pine. Paul set up the board again.
"Okay. So that's solid point," Mo said. He ejected the spent shells, then loaded the .38 with one bullet from the other box. "This is a hollow point."
They paced back and Mo turned, fired. The board did a back flip. The earth behind it was now littered with chunks and chips of yellow wood.
Mo walked back and leapt easily up the retaining wall to retrieve the board. When he brought it back down and showed it to them, they could see that the bullet had gone in small and come out in a ragged, fist-sized crater.
"That's hollow nose," Mo said. "In flesh they're hke little bombs. Somebody's coming at you, you even tip him and he'll lose a handful of tissue. He'll lose interest in you, fast."
Lia watched Mo with one eyebrow raised. "I take it you've had some experience."
Mo looked away.
"Show us, Mo."
Mo started to protest, then shrugged. They walked back with him to the middle of the drive and turned. Paul didn't see him draw, but suddenly his Glock was in his hands and without a pause he was firing. The first shot flipped the board up, and Mo's successive shots kept it walking, flipping end over end, uphill. He fired five times in no more than two seconds. When he was done, the board had traveled twenty feet uphill. Wood chips littered the slope.
Lia's jaw had dropped. "That's. . . uh, impressive, I guess you could say," she said at last.
Mo put his gun away. He shrugged again, straightened his jacket lapels, checked his watch. "Thanks," he said.
After Mo had gone and they went back inside, Lia appeared thoughtful.
"Our friend Mo," Paul prompted, "is a remarkable fellow."
Lia nodded.
"I take it that's good shooting."
"It's supernatural shooting," Lia said. The cold had brought color to her face, a blush high on her cheekbones, the kind movie stars paid fortunes to achieve. She picked up a sheaf of papers, started going through them—rather listlessly, he thought.
