Regina's Song

by David Eddings

“Shush,” she told me. Then she sat down again and pushed the front section of the Sunday paper across the table to me. “Check out the front page, Mark,” she said. “Our local celebrity’s been moonlighting, it seems.”

  “Oh. Which park did he hit this time?”

  “It wasn’t a park. Some workers on a highway construction area up near Woodinville just happened to uncover a body. It had all the usual cuts and slashes, but it’d been dumped in a ditch, and dirt had been kicked over it. One of the road guys had lost a tool, and he and a couple of his friends were looking for it. If they hadn’t been rooting around in the dirt, the body would probably been paved over and would never have been discovered.”

  “Oh, that’s just dandy,” I said. “There could be a couple dozen bodies stashed all over King County. Now we’ve got ‘official’ murders and ‘unofficial’ murders. How long had the stiff been there?”

  “The paper didn’t say. If it’s been more than a week, the autopsy won’t be very precise. Decomposition rates vary a lot at this time of year. It’ll depend on mean temperature and how soggy the ground is.”

  “Not before breakfast, Erika,” I objected. “Let’s hold off on rotting bodies until after I’ve eaten.”

  “Squeamish, Mark?”

  “I just got up, Erika. Give me a little time before we get into the gooey descriptions, OK?”

  “Whatever makes you happy.”

  The “unofficial” murder near Woodinville gave us something to talk about at breakfast. Actually, most of us felt a bit relieved by the discovery. The Woodinville murder and the one in Saltwater Park strongly suggested that the Slasher wasn’t strictly a north Seattle butcher.

  “How’s your friend’s wife, James?” Trish asked, smoothly changing the subject.

  “The doctors at the hospital seem to think they caught her cancer in time,” he replied in that deep voice of his. “Andrew’s going to stick around until after Christmas, though.”

  “Is his dad the one who owns Perry Construction Company?” Charlie asked.

  “That’s him,” James replied. “There’s a man who started out at the bottom and worked his way up. His hand still fits a shovel handle, but he’s come a long way since we were kids.”

  “I worked for Perry Construction one summer,” Charlie said. “That’s where I learned how to run a backhoe.”

  “Is there any kind of job you haven’t tried, Charlie?” I asked him.

  “Not very many,” he replied. “I was going to sign on as part of the crew on a fishing boat once—one of those salmon boats that go up the inside passage between Vancouver Island and British Columbia, but I had to beg off by the time we got to Port Townsend. As it turns out, I seem to have a bad case of delly-belly.”

  “Delly-belly?” Erika asked him.

  “Delicate tummy,” he explained. “I get seasick pretty easy. I tried all the usual remedies, but they didn’t seem to work. I spent the whole trip to Port Townsend leaning over the rail and trying to upchuck my toenails. I just ain’t cut out to be a seafaring man. It’s a shame: A guy can make a bundle on one of those salmon boats.” Then he looked at James. “Did I hear you right the other day?” he asked. “Is old man Perry’s kid really going to Harvard?”

  “He sure is,” James told him, “and from what I hear, he’s tearing the Harvard Law School all to pieces. There’s no affirmative action involved in Andrew’s presence at Harvard. His IQ seems to go off the scale. The dean of the law school made a few arrangements, and Andrew’s going to test his way through the courses he was taking before his mother got sick.”

  “Can they actually do that?” Sylvia asked.

  “Harvard’s a private university, Sylvia. They can do just about anything they want. In Andrew’s case, going through the motions of taking the exams is practically a formality. I’m almost positive he could pass his bar exam right now, if he really wanted to.”

  Trish sighed, but she didn’t say anything.

  On Monday, the seventeenth, there was an apparent breakthrough in the Seattle Slasher case. Charlie was camped on the TV set in the kitchen when I got home after my freshman English class.

  “What’s up?” I asked him.

  “Good news, maybe,” he replied. “Some guy walked into the north precinct station about ten o’clock this morning and announced that he’s the Seattle Slasher. The reporters are all peeing their pants about it, but the cops aren’t letting too many details come out.”

  “Well, now,” I said. “How ‘bout that? We won’t have to run around with our fingers on the button of our pepper spray anymore.”

  “Let’s hold off on the celebration until we see what Bob has to say. Something about this doesn’t smell quite right.”

  After supper that evening, Charlie, James, and I hit the Green Lantern to see if we could get the straight scoop on that confession. “I expected you guys,” Bob said. “Let’s go back to the booth, and I’ll fill you in.”

  We retired to our traditional debriefing booth. “Does this confession you guys beat out of the suspect answer all the Slasher questions?” Charlie asked.

  “Get real, kid,” Bob told him. “That screwball who confessed this morning is a whacko who wants to be a celebrity. That sort of thing happens all the time, and the more fuss the reporters make, the more confessions we get. We usually manage to keep these fake confessions out of the newspapers and off TV.”

  “How did it get out this time, then?” James asked.

  “Can you believe that this nut made his confession to Burpee, of all people?”

  “You’ve got to be kidding,” Charlie said, laughing.

  “Not even a little bit. I think the desk sergeant’s got a warped sense of humor. This whacko shows up wringing his hands and blubbering, and the desk sergeant hands him off to Burpee without so much as cracking a smile. Then Burpee takes the nut to an interrogation room and swallows everything the guy tells him hook, line, and sinker. Then our mighty hero of truth, justice, and Mom’s apple pie calls a TV reporter and gives him an anonymous tip. The reporter flips out and puts it on the air without bothering to get verification.”

  “Somebody’s gonna get his ass in trouble over that one, isn’t he?” Charlie suggested.

  “You damn betcha he is,” Bob replied, chuckling wickedly. “The reporter’s probably going to spend the next six months reading weather reports, and Burpee’s likely to spend his time writing parking tickets—if he doesn’t get kicked off the force entirely.”

  “The price of fame just went up, didn’t it?” James suggested with a faint smile.

  “You’ve got that right, James,” Bob agreed. “We’ve got three guys absolutely dying to be stars, and they’ll do anything to get their names up in lights. Some nut walks in off the street with a fake confession that’s supposed to put him right up there with Ted Bundy. Burpee swallows his cock-and-bull story without even bothering to check it out. Then the TV reporter goes on camera with Burpee’s tip almost before Burpee finishes talking because he doesn’t want some other reporter to get there first. If Burpee—or the reporter—had taken a little time to check out the whacko’s background, they’d have found out that he’s been in and out of about a half dozen nuthouses in the last ten years. This three-way rush to fame didn’t accomplish a damn thing except to embarrass the police department and the TV station. Don’t relax your security measures, guys. The Slasher’s still alive and well. He’s out there somewhere—with knife—and he hasn’t finished up yet.”

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  The week of November 17th slid swiftly toward Thanksgiving, and everybody’s head seemed to be turned off at dear old U.W. The word “holiday” always seems to do that to the student body, and just about anything qualifies as a holiday—Arbor Day, John Dillinger’s birthday, and Groundhog Day. But I’m almost positive that a “let’s break down and do some work” day wouldn’t be as popular.

  Then on Saturday the twenty-second, the sliced-up body of another Slasher victim was found near the shore of Lake W
ashington in Luther Burbank Park on Mercer Island.

  James, Charlie, and I weren’t able to make our usual visit to the Green Lantern to get the inside dope on the latest victim because Bob West didn’t work on Saturday, and he stayed clear of the tavern on his days off. That left us nothing to go on but the usual hysteria on TV.

  The dead man was identified as Anthony Purvis, a thirty-year-old Caucasian with no criminal record. All sorts of theories fell apart because of the lack of any record on Purvis. Poor old Burpee most likely went into deep mourning along about then, since Cheetah wouldn’t have been interested in somebody like this latest victim.

  One reporter actually got off his duff, went over to Mercer Island, and interviewed residents of the posh neighborhood near the park. A couple of them told him that they’d heard dogs making a ruckus at about the time of the murder. This had come up a few times before, and the reporter tried to make a big issue of howling dogs, but when he started babbling about the possibility that dogs have some kind of “extrasensory perception,” I gave up and went back to work on my Milton paper.

  Sylvia wasn’t feeling well on Sunday morning, so she asked me to take Twinkie to church. I didn’t have anything hot on the fire for that Sunday anyway, so I agreed and called Mary to let Twink know about the change in the game plan.

  Mary answered. “Who had your phone tied up all day yesterday?” she demanded. “Ren had another one of those bad days and I wanted to get hold of Sylvia, but all I got was a busy signal.”

  “Damn!” I said. “Somebody must have left it off the hook. We don’t use this room very much, so we wouldn’t have heard it beeping at us. Did we miss anything important?”

  “Probably not. This one was pretty much the same as the one Sylvia taped a couple of weeks ago.”

  “How’s Twinkie doing today? Sylvia’s feeling sort of punk, and she asked me to fill in and take Twink to church. Maybe we’d better scratch the whole idea.”

  “She’s fine, Mark. You should know that by now. The bad days only last for that one day. When she wakes up the next morning, it’s almost like it never happened. I don’t think she has any coherent memory of those days.”

  “Maybe we should mention that to Doc Fallon the next time we see him. It might be important.”

  “Maybe so, but Ren’s getting ready to go to church, so you’d better suit up. I’ll let her know that you’ll be filling in for Sylvia today. Don’t make any big fuss about what happened yesterday. There’s no point in getting her all worked up about something that’s over and done with.”

  “You’re probably right, Mary. Tell Twink that I’ll be there in about a half an hour.”

  “I’ll do that. Don’t forget your necktie.”

  Twink was sitting at the table in Mary’s kitchen when I got there, struggling with her checkbook.

  “Problems?” I asked her.

  “The silly thing won’t balance,” she said, waving her bank statement at me. “The bank’s got one number, and I’ve got a different one.”

  “Put it away for now, Twink,” I told her. “Father O’s waiting for us.”

  “What’s wrong with Sylvia?” she demanded.

  “Nothing serious,” I replied. “I think it’s just that time of the month.”

  “Oh,” she said. “Can we go up to Northgate Mall after Mass? I’d like to do some Christmas shopping.”

  “This early?”

  “It’s only a month away, Markie. That’s why I was trying to balance my checkbook.”

  “How far off are you?”

  “Six or eight hundred dollars is about all.”

  “Good thing you’re not planning to be an accountant. When was the last time you balanced it?”

  “August. Maybe September.”

  “Give it up, Twink,” I told her. “You’ll never be able to make it come out right at this stage. Just use the number the bank gave you and call it square.”

  “What if they’re trying to cheat me?”

  “Banks almost never do that, Twink. If the Feds catch them, the bank president usually winds up in jail for twenty years or so. Just write down their number in your check register and call it good. Put it away for right now, baby sister. God’s waiting for you.”

  “I wouldn’t say anything like that around Father O, Markie. He might whomp on you a few times—for your own good, of course,” she assured me, folding her bank statement away.

  “Oh, of course,” I said sardonically.

  “Be nice, Markie,” she chided me.

  We sat near the back of the church when we got there. Maybe because Twink hadn’t been to confession, she didn’t feel the need to be right down front this time. And I was starting to grow more familiar with Catholic customs. Many of them still didn’t make much sense to me, but at least I knew they were coming.

  There was the usual lineup after the service as the parishioners filed out of the church, pausing briefly for a word or two with Father O as they went by. We finally reached Father O, and after a few pleasantries, he asked me if I could stop by some day that week.

  “Sure,” I replied. “Tomorrow afternoon be OK?”

  “It’s fine with me,” he agreed.

  “What are you two up to now?” Twink demanded.

  “Just some guy stuff, Twink,” I told her. “You know, talking about hunting, fishing, football, cars, chasing girls—that kind of stuff.”

  “I pretty much avoid that last one, Renata,” Father O told her. “The bishop frowns if we do that.”

  “Bishops just can’t seem to relax, can they?” she said with a little smirk.

  “Occupational hazard, probably,” he agreed.

  Twink and I went on to the Northgate Mall, and after Sunday brunch, I got to follow her around to every single store in the whole damned place. “Shopping” pretty much fits the definition of “cruel and unusual punishment,” ranking right up there with the rack and thumbscrews. A sentence of five to ten years in a shopping mall would probably be overturned out of hand by a unanimous vote of the Supreme Court. But when I said as much to Twink, she just laughed and asked what I was getting her for Christmas.

  I went to St. Benedict’s Church about three o’clock the next afternoon, and Father O and I retired to his office to kick a few things around.

  “I’m troubled about Renata, Mark,” he told me. “Her mood swings are growing more extreme. Sometimes in the confession booth, I can’t be exactly sure who’s talking to me.”

  “One of my housemates—Sylvia—said something like that just the other day,” I told him. “She’s been taping her sessions with Twink, and she noticed it when she played them back. I shrugged it off and told her it was probably changes in barometric pressure, humidity, and stuff like that. But if you’re hearing different voices in the confessional during one session, there wouldn’t be much change in the weather, would there?”

  “Not very likely,” he agreed. “There’s something else, too. I believe I told you that Renata sometimes lapses into an alien language in the confessional, didn’t I?”

  “I think you did, yes.”

  “Whenever that turns up, her voice is definitely the second one. Renata’s normal voice is a light soprano; her other voice is a rich contralto.”

  “Now that’s something we should tell her headshrinker about. Twinkie wouldn’t have any reason to start using twin-speak just for kicks. The only other person in the world who’d understand what she’d be saying would be Regina, and she doesn’t remember that Regina ever existed. It sounds to me like she’s flipping out right there in the confessional.”

  “Wouldn’t that bring up an interesting possibility?” he said. “Could this voice change and that alien language be an early warning signal? If I hear them in the confessional on Friday, Renata will go to pieces on Tuesday—or something along those lines. Does that make sense?”

  “It might at that, Father O. I’ll drop it on Sylvia, and she can mention it to Doc Fallon—they’re working together on this. If we can predict the
days when Twink’s going to flip out, it might be a long step toward coming up with some answers. I’d better give you the phone number at the boardinghouse. Everybody there’s pretty much wired-in on Twink’s problem, so they’ll pass the word to me—or to Sylvia. We all assumed that Twink’s nightmares were the things that were triggering the ‘bad days,’ but if you’re right about this voice-change thing, something else is triggering the nightmares, and that’s the thing we’re really trying to pin down. Maybe I should grab Sylvia and bring her over this evening so we can talk it over. What time do you lock the doors here?”

  “I don’t, Mark. I’m an old-fashioned priest, and I don’t believe in locking churches. My doors are always open. If somebody needs me, I’ll always be here.”

  “That’s real dedication, Father.”

  He shrugged. “It goes with the territory,” he said.

  I kicked the idea around with Sylvia when I got home, and she agreed that Father O’Donnell’s early warning notion might be valuable, so after supper we made a quick run over to the church.

  I hauled into the parking lot, and we went up the stairs, through the wide front door, and into the vestibule. Sylvia automatically dipped her fingers into the little basin of holy water, sank down on one knee, and crossed herself. I’m not certain that she was even aware that she was doing it.

  The interior of the church was dimly lighted, and shadows filled the little alcoves where statues of various saints looked out over the pews and the altar.

  “Hello,” Father O’Donnell’s voice echoed through the empty church. I looked around, then spotted him in that little doorway off to one side of the altar. There’s something spooky about coming into an empty church after dark.

  “It’s me, Father,” I called to him. “I’ve brought Sylvia so that we can talk over that notion we had this afternoon.”

  “Come on back,” he told us.

  Sylvia and I went down the center aisle, and she repeated that quick drop to one knee in front of the altar. They’d all told me that these little rituals were so ingrained they were automatic, but I don’t think I’d realized just how automatic.