Skull Session

by Daniel Hecht

  Mo certainly did have a showman's instinct. The marksmanship, the nonchalance, the understatement. How much of it was conscious, a show to impress Lia? Hard to tell. And Lia: Did her idea of risk include risking their relationship? Even a month ago, he'd have said no. But clearly her risk-taking compulsion was growing, permeating all parts of her life. Now, about Mo, he couldn't be sure. Was it just his changing neurochemistry, or was there something there he should worry about?

  Lia interrupted his musings. "I just thought of something."

  "What's that?"

  "Rizal. The name. It's been nagging at my memory since last week. I can't quite remember the context, but I think I've come across it in Vivien's papers." Lia looked thoughtful for a moment. "Stupid of me. But I'll try to dig it up again. Don't let me forget to tell Mo—I should probably call him," she said, brightening.

  48

  MO RETURNED TO HIS OFFICE feeling like he'd been riding a roller-coaster. His heart had flown up like a lark in springtime at the sight of Lia. He'd had to muster all his self-control to keep their discussion focused and purposeful. God, she was everything he'd ever wanted. No one had ever clicked like this. Being around her had been at once ecstatic and painful.

  But then Paul kept asking How? and Mo kept thinking, Superman. Superman did it. Thinking about it in that wrecked house, Mo had felt momentarily sick all over. A strange feeling, a dark deja vu. Don't you want to know what happens to the detective? Roller-coaster down.

  But then Lia had given him the perfect excuse to show off, and he'd gone out to the driveway and had just let his gun do what it did so easily. And he'd felt Lia's eyes go keener, more attentive. He'd fucking basked in it. God, to see that again. And to see her shooting, legs wide, a trim sweater showing her perfect waist, the athletic grace and competence of her shooting form. Roller-coaster up.

  And yet, driving away, he'd felt more than a little remorse. Paul had caught the whole thing. And Paul was a good guy. He had some nervous disorder, Mo was certain, that made him start to say things and stifle himself, or make an odd gesture now and then. But otherwise he seemed an admirable guy. He had the kind of build Mo had always wanted—rangy, tall, well-muscled—and that open, square face. A person who went by his conscience, always. A noble look, a face that had seen a large measure of sorrow and had found something to sustain himself with despite it, and kept a sense of humor into the bargain. Kind of the way King Arthur was always portrayed in the movies. Right— and Lia was Guinevere, leaving Mo to be Lancelot, the king's most trusted friend, and his betrayer. Roller-coaster down again.

  Then, stopping at home briefly on the way back to the barracks, he'd found her voice on his answering machine, telling him thanks, telling him it was good to see him again, and oh, by the way, Rizal was a Philippine name and Rizal had apparently helped Royce feed razor blades to some show dogs in the distant past. There was an excited, confiding tone in her voice. What else was she telling him? His neck veins pulsed as he replayed her message. His instincts were screaming at him: Go for it. For once in your life, reach for what you really want. Respect yourself enough to believe it can be reciprocal. It's too bad about Paul, but it's nobody's fault, all's fair in love and war. She knows herself, she makes her own choices. Roller-coaster way up.

  It was almost four o'clock by the time he made it back to the barracks, just enough time to follow up on a couple of small details. He picked up a handful of mail from his box, checked his phone messages, and filed some notes on other cases. Then he dialed Helmut Pierce's number at the Vallhalla lab to see about the scrapings he had taken from the walls at Highwood. Dr. Pierce wasn't available, the secretary said, but he had left a message for Mo.

  "The samples definitely include blood," she said. Mo's hopes leapt. He'd finesse a way to have come by the samples legally, open Highwood up for a real forensic investigation. "Blood of a Procyon lotor, he says."

  "What's a Procyon lotor?"

  "I asked him. He always does this, thinks everyone knows everything he does. It's the Latin name for a raccoon. It's raccoon blood."

  Roller-coaster down. One of those days, start to finish.

  But his pulse rose abruptly when, sorting his mail, he came across another monogrammed, lavender-tinted letter. His hands shook as he slit the envelope.

  Dear Detective Ford,

  In my story, what happened was I got tired of waiting in the car and went down the road. It was so dark I couldn't see very well. Then I heard someone coming, running, and I got off the road and hid in the bushes. It was Richard, and behind him someone else. The first part was bad, when he got folded in half backward and I could hear the sound in his back like someone cracking their knuckles, and then he got turned almost inside out. But the worst part was right afterward, when there was just this wheezing from him, I think his lungs were still going even though they weren't connected anymore, like Richard was just this meat machine that didn't know yet it was broken and its parts were still trying stupidly to work. It humped on the ground for a few seconds and I couldn't stop looking at it.

  Probably the same thing happened to Essie, but I didn't see that. Probably it happened to those other kids too—/ heard you talking to my mother about them.

  Is this what you wanted me to tell you?

  The question that keeps bothering me is about what Richard was, right afterward. Was he just that meat machine, breaking down because the Richard part of him was gone, and it was still going, automatically, for a second or two? Or were the noises it made really Richard, still in there and trying, to talk or move but unable to because his meat machine had been so completely screwed up? Which one am I? Which is worse?

  But I've decided on a title for the story. I call it "Five Things Worse Than Dying," because the schizophrenic girl keeps thinking of things and she makes a list. Here's the list:

  1. Being just a meat machine, almost like you're trapped inside of it, it does what it does whether you want it to or not.

  2. Losing your sense of what a human being is, and so not having any idea what you are or where you belong.

  3. Living life but not being able to feel it, because it's either not enough or it's too much.

  4. Being so alone, you're not sure other people are real.

  5. Going through life not ever sure whether something is just inside your mind or whether it's really in the world outside you.

  Mo rocked back in his chair, feeling Heather's words as if they were blows, battering him remorselessly. After a stunned moment, he folded the letter and covered it with his notebook to shield himself. On the heels of his shock came anger, a bone-deep hatred for whoever or whatever had done this to the poor kid. Somebody was going to have to pay.

  For half a minute he labored to calm himself, then dialed the Masons' number, only to get the answering machine again. He left another pleading message and hung up, suddenly feeling, a sense of the impossibility of taking this on. He knew what a shrink would say about the letter: a plea for attention, a cry for help. But was it only that? The part about what happened to Richard—had she really seen something? Was what she wrote real or delusion, as she herself seemed to ask, or a third, more devious possibility that she didn't mention: fucking with Mo's head? A complex, troubled child's idea of a joke, of kidding around?

  He was debating what to do next when the phone rang. It was Bennett Quinn, agent in charge of the case of the human thigh in Ridgefield, Connecticut.

  "Sorry it's taken me so long to get back to you," Quinn said. He had an agreeable, tired-sounding voice, a New Jersey accent. "We've had some action on the severed thigh. I don't know what you're after, but maybe this will help. It's a little unusual."

  "I'm after something unusual."

  "Good. See, here these kids are playing around in the woods near Highway 35 and they find this human thigh, but nobody seems to be missing one, right? It's obviously been around for a while, maybe a month or more. Some animal tooth marks, it's been partly eaten, dogs, raccoons. For a while we check ou
t the idea that maybe it's from a grave, but no embalming chemicals show up in the tests, so that's out. You can see why we were stuck."

  "So what happened?"

  "We found the rest of the body. Remains are unrecognizable, but from dental records we find out it's a Priscilla Zeichner, twenty-four years old, lived in Waterbury. The reason we didn't locate the rest of her right away is she was found in the bushes next to some railroad track four miles away. It's a dedicated track, about three miles long, runs from the Lanier Company plant to the main trunk freight line. Lanier's a big employer over here—they build these huge container tanks for like gasoline tanker trucks? The only time their track gets used is when they have an order being shipped out, flatcars full of stainless-steel tanks. Wooded area, no houses nearby, no traffic on the line for anyone to notice Ms. Zeichner's remains, until the crew on the next shipment out found her. Five days ago." Mo's hands were tingling. "I take it she w a s . . . in pretty bad shape?"

  "Oh yeah. Missing more than her thigh, I'll tell you that. Couldn't have identified her without the lab work. We're figuring she got hit by the Lanier train that went out on November second. The thigh, we don't know how it got four miles away except some dogs carried it. But the date we've pinned down tight—once we ID'd her, we found that ties in with when she was last seen, according to her friends."

  "What was she doing over in Ridgefield? On the Lanier train tracks?"

  "Well, that's what we wanted to know. We started asking around. You know. Apparently the boyfriend's from over your way, but what they might've been doing at this end of the state we don't know yet."

  "So how're you looking at it? Accident or—"

  "Let's say we're keeping our minds open. Could be accident, sure—you've got to figure nationwide there's two hundred fifty-some train-pedestrian deaths a year, right? Happens. But we're real interested in the whereabouts of the boyfriend, Eddy."

  "I'll bet. Any leads?"

  "Hey, this just broke open for us," Quinn said, laughing good-naturedly. "I figure we've done pretty good so far."

  After they hung up, Mo checked his regional atlas, which showed the Lanier tracks running from the plant, about five miles east of the New York border, southeast into Ridgefield. Less than ten miles, as the crow flies, from Highwood.

  He brought up the computer file he'd started, the calendar he'd built for the missing kid case. Cycles. Calculating on a projected cycle of about forty-four days, he'd figured that a third cycle of violence would have had to happen in early November. And there it was: November 2nd, the date Priscilla Zeichner disappeared, plugged right into the projection. Which left December 16th, give or take a few days, as the next one. Eight days away.

  So no matter how he kept trying to stay clear on familiar turf like financial motives and so on, there was a big ugly scary that kept popping out at him. The general drift of it was that somebody was chopping people to pieces, by means unknown, at fairly regular intervals, in upper Westchester County. How many people? Two at least, and maybe Essie Howrigan, and Priscilla Zeichner's boyfriend, and maybe Dub Gilmore and Steve Rubio, and maybe more. So where were the others? They could be buried, they could be lying along some other seldom-used railroad track. The woods could be full of body parts. How would it work? The perp or perps did the deed and bagged up the remains and put them someplace, like the road, like the tracks, that would make the whole thing look like a somewhat bizarre but ultimately believable accident. If John Wayne Gacy could keep twenty-seven corpses secret in the crawl space of a ranch house in suburban Milwaukee, somebody could stash an army of them in the woods of upper Westchester.

  And somehow, into that you had to fit a crazy kid who claimed fucking Superman did it and who brought up existential questions best left unasked, and a big house all wrecked up, high school kids talking about Satanic rituals, Paul and Lia only half kidding around about Falcone Senior gone wild and living in the woods.

  And hard-boiled, pragmatic Mo Ford, try as he might, couldn't quite disbelieve any of it. It was truly the shits.

  49

  YOU SOUND RATHER TAKEN ABACK," Vivien said. "Of course I will need to review the progress you've made so far before proceeding to the next phase. And of course I ought to take another look at my lonely fortress before deciding if I have the . . . endurance . . . to live there again."

  "I expected you would come east sooner or later. I just want to be sure it's all in order when you arrive."

  "I have perfect faith in you. And you needn't worry about my well-being. I'll rent a car and reserve a hotel room in the city. I'll be no trouble at all."

  Paul sat on the motel bed with the phone while Lia splashed in the tub, poaching herself in water hotter than Paul could have believed possible. They'd splurged on a night in a nearby motel as a respite from the chaos of Highwood.

  Yes, his discomfort level had risen abruptly when Vivien casually informed him that she would be flying east in just over a week. The work was behind schedule—he'd really have to haul ass to abide by his end of the contract. There was Mo's investigation to think of too, which he'd concealed from her. And Dempsey's working at the lodge, which he hadn't yet mentioned.

  "I do enjoy our conversations, nephew," Vivien was saying. "And do you know, I believe you do also. Quite against your will, I'm sure, but nonetheless. . . . " She trailed off, letting him see it for himself.

  It was true, if hard to admit. Paul couldn't decide just how talking to Vivien fit into the scheme of his life. He still distrusted her, still disliked her contempt for her inferiors—a category that seemed to include almost everyone—but nevertheless he couldn't deny the paradoxical need to talk with her, the pleasure it had begun to give him.

  Maybe it was just the sheer intellectual stimulus. In the course of a fifteen-minute telephone call, they had discussed the repairs at High-wood and then digressed to Festinger's dissonance theory, then gone on to Aristotle's heart versus Plato's mind as the defining characteristic of human beings. Vivien had talked about the usefulness of other "quaint" terms, such as the German Gemut, meaning a person's nature, Seek, the psyche or soul, and Geist, the spirit or ghost, and was pleased when Paul responded with the parallels between those concepts and the ancient Egyptian ba and ka. No question: His mind was more awake. He was able to enjoy the interplay of ideas more, follow the branching of thoughts better, than at any time he could remember. Vivien's obvious emotional investment in such ideas, her hushed, urgent tone of voice, gave their conversations a curiously intimate quality.

  "I am curious to hear about your son," she was saying. "Have you had the opportunity to look into those . . . issues I suggested last time we spoke?"

  "As far as the blood tests go, he hasn't had another seizure, so we haven't done any new diagnostics. I did figure out that, yes, there is a correspondence between his seizures and minor illnesses. Less than a one-to-one parallel, but a clear general pattern. It's a good point."

  "Have you any idea why that would be the case?" Her interest level had intensified and was beginning to feel intrusive.

  "Sure. The episodes are stressful. Exhausting for Mark. He'd naturally be more prone to infections."

  Vivien cackled. "Yes," she said, "that sounds like a very sensible conclusion."

  Her condescension irritated him. And as they talked her sardonic amusement seemed to grow until, abruptly, he'd had enough. "Vivien, not to change the subject, but I've got a question for you. Tell me about KKK. Tell me how it bears on what happened here."

  "Aha. Doing some detective work among my papers, apparently." There was acid in her voice.

  "We're sorting them, as you requested. I'm curious about two old photos that showed some damage up here, and the graffiti. I know about the Philippine secret society."

  "Good heavens! You have been doing your research!" Then her voice changed again, darkening with anger. "And what about my concern for privacy? Have you ever considered that your detective games are an intrusion that I don't care for?"

  "You
're dodging me."

  That brought her back. She laughed again. "Oh, Paulie. Oh, my! Who's got the klieg lights and truncheons now? You are so much more assertive lately! Well, I don't see any harm in a revelation or two, especially since it is not at all as interesting as you apparently have fantasized. Royce, of course. He had such a flair for the dramatic as a boy. I'm certain he'd read every last swashbuckling tale of Oriental pirates and cults and oddities then in print. Or perhaps he got the idea from his vicious httle friend, Peter Rizal. The son of a Filipino family nearby. I've always maintained it was dear Peter who gave Royce the idea to do in those St. Bernards in that particularly . . . gruesome way."

  She snorted indignantly. "That boy was positively steeped in every sort of nonsense from his ancestral islands: secret societies, native superstitions, the injured self-righteousness of the victims of colonialism—"

  "What happened in the library?"

  Vivien chuckled again. "My dear son's idea of a prank, Paulie—tear apart the library, leave the blood-chilling signature of the Katipunan. > Presumably I was supposed to be terrified—some vengeance due the Hoffmanns, I imagine, catching up at last. However, in his enthusiasm, Royce quite forgot that I would recognize his handwriting."

  "Who did the damage this time? Was it Royce?"

  "You asked me that once before. I take it you have entirely discarded my answer then—the ghosts?"

  They were sparring again, and Paul was suddenly impatient with it.

  "Do you really mean Geist? Or perhaps you mean Gemut, or Seek?"

  "Lovely," she said sincerely. "Quite lovely, nephew, truly. An elegant challenge and provocation. You are changing, aren't you? Does this mean you are doing something different with your medication?

  You remind me more and more of your father."