I worry about what he’ll tell her. Carl alone with anyone wasn’t in the plan.
I say, “Of course,” and close the door tightly behind me.
34
Forty-five minutes have passed in the waiting room while Lucy and Carl get to know each other. Forty-six. Forty-seven.
Dr. Lucy Blumstein spends almost every waking hour of her life with a murderer. It was naive of me to think for a second that she can’t physically handle Carl or that her beautiful brain hasn’t been pushed around before. Lucy’s primary world is not this office where her name is etched with a stack of partners on the door. It’s the wing of a federal prison.
She agreed to this interruption to her routine because I lied and pled my case as the long-lost daughter of possible serial killer Carl Louis Feldman. As the kill shot, I’d emailed her a selfie of Carl and me hanging out on the crumbling steps at Mrs. T’s. I knew it would be a hard combination to resist: Carl’s celebrity, my youthful vulnerability, her own dark backstory. And I knew she’d be forced to keep us confidential.
The same adoptive father who had loved Lucy before he saw her face, who had determinedly pulled her across the ocean at two years old like he was dragging a fishing line, shot her mother one morning in bed. By that time, Lucy was out of the house, a college freshman at Princeton. He was a victim of Alzheimer’s and his aim, luckily, not so good. Her mother survived but endured a long rehabilitative struggle and refused to ever see him again.
A scroll through the Dark Web for neurologists murderers dementia is the way I learned all about the brilliant Lucy and her weekends spent cramming for the MCAT in a motel. It was five miles from the un-air-conditioned Texas prison where her father endured a military routine equivalent to setting an Alzheimer’s patient’s brain on fire.
After medical school, she’d convinced a rich Texas conservative to fund a prison program that separates dementia patients in their own unit, away from predators, so they can chew a piece of cold toast as long as they like and wake up at their leisure instead of in terror because a man they don’t remember with a gun and a uniform is dragging them out of bed.
She blazed a way for a cheap, and, it turned out, humanizing solution to the care of felons with dementia: a work program using fellow inmates to change their diapers, feed them, coax them into showers. Killers caring for killers.
So even though she wasn’t that nice to me on the phone, I know that Lucy’s nice. Somewhere inside me, I’m still nice, too, just no longer the shy little sister of that wild girl down the street.
Fifty-two minutes now.
The glass is sliding open at the receptionist’s desk and a mop of curly black hair leans out. “Miss Feldman?”
It takes a second to remember she means me.
“Yes. Yes.” I’m out of the chair.
“Lucy wants you to meet her in her office. I’ll buzz you in. Go left, and it’s the second to last door on the right past the bathroom. Your father is being taken for a quick brain scan.”
Quick. Perfect. Simple.
Lucy has already changed into slim jeans and a blue T-shirt that says Girls Are Not for Sale. She’s replaced her clogs with white slip-on Keds and has strapped on a blue Apple Watch. Her office is windowless, claustrophobic, neglected. Nothing on the walls except a few scratches.
It’s basically a storage closet for a lonely desk, old papers, thick medical journals, awards and degrees that must mean zero to her, except as a means to an end. I’m guessing she thinks of this room as more of a cell than the ones she visits.
She’s shrunk a couple of inches by taking off the Birkenstocks but seems no less intimidating. I imagine killers listening for her rubber-soled Keds squeaking on shiny prison linoleum.
“Take a seat.” She tosses a stack of papers from a chair to the floor. “I met Walt.”
“I didn’t know Walt came along.”
Lucy’s not biting. She doesn’t think I’m funny. She might not think anything is funny.
“The hallucinations possibly suggest LBD—dementia with Lewy bodies. It’s caused by abnormal protein deposits in the brain. It affects thinking, behavior, mood. Seeing things that aren’t there is one symptom. Hallucinations present early only in a very small percentage.” She shrugs. “I’m guessing he has a little psychosis as well.”
I shake my head. “All I know is that he was diagnosed with dementia after the police picked him up for vagrancy. He claimed he couldn’t remember where he’d been or who he was.”
“That could be the result of a fall or a transient ischemic attack, a ministroke. I told you: It’s impossible for me to make a judgment in this short amount of time. I won’t charge for the brain scan. He’s agreed to let me use any information I gather on him in my research. He signed a release.”
“I don’t know if I’m comfortable with him…signing things with me not there.”
She shrugs again. “His call, don’t you think?”
“Do you think he’s lying to me?”
“About?”
“Do you think he could be pretending about the ghosts? All the forgetting?”
“He’s not making up the hallucinations. Yes, he probably lies about some of the forgetting. There are no great answers here. My research into the brains and DNA of killers with dementia is in its fetal stage. Killers already have something mental going on. Carl may seem in bad shape to you, but I’m about to meet with a prisoner who keeps begging me to get his wife out of his cell toilet. He sees her face in there every time he pees. The same wife he can’t remember beating to death with his son’s baseball bat. He does remember that once upon a time he nicknamed his wife Little Dumbo. Please get Little Dumbo out of the toilet. It’s his constant refrain.”
“Carl also sees what isn’t there,” I say.
“The patient I’m talking about wears a diaper,” she snaps. “He doesn’t bathe. Mr. Feldman is functional with some memory loss. He wasn’t convicted of anything. And you and I don’t know whether he is a killer. You wouldn’t be here asking questions otherwise.”
“There must be something else you can tell me.”
She’s quiet for a long time. Too long. “I appreciate your time,” I say. “Really.”
“The truth is,” she says slowly, “I think you’d get more definitive answers with Carl by trying a more creative approach, like interviewing Walt and delving into whatever interesting layer that is. But I want to be sure you understand the ramifications.”
“What do you mean?”
“You’re out there on your own playing guessing games with a smart, highly unpredictable man. When you hit just the right spot, there will be no guards to rush in and remove his hands from your throat. And when he hits your raw spots—and he will—are you ready for it?”
I fight to keep the mask on my face. “What about the scan…when can you tell me about it?”
“That’s up to Carl. I let you forgo the usual paperwork because you said you didn’t have access to all of his records. I can’t waive the records permission form when he is not a regular patient of mine.”
“He told you I’m not his daughter.” I say it flatly, a statement.
“It seems to be the one thing he’s a hundred percent sure of.” She holds up her hand. “Don’t say anything. I don’t know what’s motivating you. It doesn’t matter to me. If I haven’t made it clear, I’m a person way past making moral judgments. And you look to be in great shape physically. Just never look away too long. For God’s sake, be alert.”
35
“Windows and mirrors,” Carl is muttering.
He’s back at the hotel, sorting his gold into the small sauté pan he stole from Mrs. T. Carl seems especially off after his visit with the doctor. Barfly’s camped out underneath the table, his nose resting on Carl’s boot, which is becoming a habit.
“I am not cruel, only truthful,” Carl quotes. “Sylvia Plath. Talking in the voice of a mirror.”
I watch him silently, not sure if he expects my participation. T
he crisscross of scratches on the table stick out like a manic game of tic-tac-toe. I plan to attack them later with the Cherry Oak touch-up furniture marker I found at a drugstore in the hospital district while Carl hunted for Mountain Dew.
The sun is climbing down outside the wall of windows.
“I’m not putting the mirrors back up until we leave in the morning,” I assure him. “I can close the curtains if the windows are bothering you.”
Carl has barely said a word in the last two hours, except a disparaging remark to the over-pixelated image of Frank Sinatra tipping his hat in the elevator. I asked him about his visit with the doctor and he seemed genuinely vague, as if the brain scan and the examination were fragments of a dream.
“I’m talking about photographs,” Carl says. “They are both mirrors and windows. The story the photographer tells and the infinite interpretations of strangers. The perfect shot lives. Breathes. Expands. People think music is the universal language. It’s photography.”
This is almost a direct quote from the preamble of his book of photographs. Do I tell him that I know this? That I’ve spent countless nights in bed freefalling into his black-and-white worlds? That I’ve bobbed with Violet in the sadistic gray waves of Galveston? That I played with his little Marys shut up inside a closet? It makes me sound as unhinged as he is.
The picture of Rachel is still propped against the lamp. I will myself to pick it up and lay it flat on the table in front of him. “Tell me about this.”
“I didn’t shoot it.”
“Just tell me what story she tells.”
“That girl wishes like hell she was somewhere else.”
“What does Walt say about her?”
“Walt says it’s too bad she died. He says set-up shots like this are for the birds.”
With one furious movement of his arm, Carl sweeps his loot onto the floor. Barfly raises his head and decides it’s better to stay put.
I walk over to the lamp a little unsteadily and prop my sister back up. I bend to pick up the rocks so he can’t see my tears, then change my mind. Open my fist. Deliberately let the rocks trickle out of my hand and fall to the floor.
“Pick up your own gold, Carl. Order room service. Don’t bother me for the rest of the night. Come on, Barfly.” Once I’m behind the bedroom door, I work steadily to even my breath, to stop the flow of tears. I pull the die out of my pocket and roll it across the carpet as many times as it takes until it lands on my lucky number, three. On Rachel’s lucky number, six.
In ten minutes, like always, I am better. It never takes longer than that for me anymore. I have even trained my grief.
Carl’s book of photographs, in two pieces, is lying on the dresser.
The bed and pillows are still tossed like a snowdrift. No maid service today. I’d hung the Catching Some Zs sign on the door.
I walk over and scratch on the hotel pad by the nightstand. Newspaper, $1.25. Cafeteria lunch, $10.12. Furn markers, $8.37.
In the closet, I unzip the hidden pocket inside my backpack. My fingers graze the wad of nylon rope first, slick as a snake, before I hook my finger into the silver duct tape and pull it out. Carl has turned on Family Feud again, although I only hear the occasional spurt of raucous laughter. It is now and forever the soundtrack of crazy.
Walt said my sister was dead. No one had ever said that aloud to me.
I lay Carl’s book on the bed and carefully tape its broken spine.
36
I was eighteen when I tracked Edna Zito, the previous owner of our house, to a nursing home. She was the master hider of envelopes with appliance instructions, and I couldn’t just dismiss the possibility that she was the one who placed the twins under the staircase.
Her son, Nixon, thought there was a chance. “She hid crap everywhere,” he’d said when I called him. He described his mother as “forgetful.” When I told him I had lived in his old childhood home, secretly saved his measurements on the wall, and found an “interesting” photograph of little ghost girls under the attic staircase, he’d described me as a born romantic.
Still, he’d arranged the first meeting with his mother rather reluctantly and didn’t bother to show up himself. He didn’t ask too many questions, either, which was good. I was still working to limit any tattletale calls to my mother at that point.
The first time I saw Edna, she was crumpled in a wheelchair in a red polka-dot shirt and black pants, a shriveled ladybug. She was part of a tight circle of five elderly women grouped around a game table, all confined to metal devices. They called themselves the Roly Polies and shot marbles like professional gamblers.
They remembered playfully torturing roly-poly doodlebugs in their tiny palms; Beatrix Potter’s roly-poly pudding; every word of the “Roly Poly” song where Daddy’s little fatty ate corn and taters.
Just not so much what year it was.
Her son warned me to go slowly, so I had waited until my second visit to place a photocopy of the little girls in Edna’s hands. Look at their faces, I urged her. Do you know them? Are you related? I thought I saw a flicker of recognition. She muttered, Little devils, aren’t they? before she shook her head no and passed the picture to Ida, and Ida to Gertie, and Gertie to Hazel, and Hazel to Opal.
That glimmer in Edna’s eyes kept me going back. Edna was my earliest trainer for Carl, even if she never knew it. She made me patient, able to coexist with invisible things. In her cozy room at the nursing home, we lived in her colorful hallucinations.
We ate lunch with Audrey Hepburn, sped along a treacherous sea coast with our hair flying, watched the harrowing birth of her own stillborn daughter, only this time, she lived. Once, she whispered in my ear: Fantasy is just an alternative to reality, dear.
Edna is why I dragged myself out of ZaZa’s bed of clouds this morning with renewed hope. Edna had starred in my dreams last night. She dyed my hair blue and we danced barefoot in the sand.
The Edna of my dream had assured me that Violet Santana, the third red dot on my map, would crack Carl wide open.
* * *
—
The Galveston beach where Violet disappeared fifteen years ago is only an hour away from the hotel. I’m dressed and packed by 8 A.M. Carl and I won’t be coming back here.
Instead of coloring my hair as planned, I pack the dyes. When I venture out of my room, the door to the half-bath in the living area is shut. I can hear Carl running the sink.
The TV, on all night, is low-talking about the orchid mantis, a pretty, pink-petaled insect that captures its prey by pretending to be a flower. On-screen, the bug looks like a stem fresh from the florist. Carl must have won a battle with Walt for some Discovery Channel time.
An encouraging sign: Carl has picked up everything but the mirrors, including the rocks scattered across the floor. Whatever room service tray I heard him clanking around last night is gone.
I snap off the TV. Carl has folded the newspaper that was covering the table and laid it by the trash can. My finger snags as it runs over the scratches he made, deeper rivers than I thought. I glance around, but I can’t find the package with the new furniture marker anywhere to color them in. I’ll have to ask Carl. I tackle the rehanging of all of the mirrors instead. It’s a blinding task; when I’m done, halos of light hover in my vision.
Carl is still camped in the bathroom. It’s been a long time, even for him. I knock lightly. “Carl, are you good in there? Did you eat breakfast?”
No answer. Carl pretends to be a little deaf, or he actually is. I wander over to the mini-fridge to hunt for some $4 orange juice. It’s an easy search because half of the shelf is bare. The fairy-size bottles of Tito’s, Jack Daniel’s, and Don Julio, the cheap single-serve wineglasses with the rip-off tops, the Stellas, the Buds, the Sam Adams—all missing. I’d memorized every label so I’d know what he drank.
My eyes whip back to the closed bathroom door. Carl could be drunk. Passed out. Dead, if he combined all that alcohol at once with his medication.
&n
bsp; I bang with my fist this time. “Carl, are you OK?”
No answer.
The knob twists easily.
The room is empty.
The faucet is running.
So, I realize, is Carl.
37
The panic doesn’t begin to set in until I hit the lobby and see the disco show of cop car lights bouncing through the revolving door.
I pick the youngest of the three valets on duty, the one whose eyes are already focused on the smooth white ribbon of belly peeking between my tank top and jeans.
“What’s going on?” I ask sweetly.
“Someone stole the longhorn skull that was wired to the hood of our guest shuttle,” he says. “Nothing for our guests to worry about. Our manager is real ticked. Hard to lose horns ten feet long.”
He nods to a woman animatedly accosting the two police officers at the end of the drive. The cops appear sexist and bored.
“I’d like the keys to my truck,” I tell the valet. “Here’s my ticket.”
“If you give me a minute, I’ll bring it right down for you. Yours is the white Chevy with the Warrior Wheels, right? I explained our retrieval policy to your father when I helped him out last night. We like to bring up the vehicles ourselves. I’m sorry about his brain tumor. He asked me to pray for him. Gave me a super sweet tip.”
Brain tumor? A lie or the truth? Did Carl get bad news I didn’t know about yesterday? “You pulled the truck up for my father? Last night?”
“Yeah, he wanted to make sure his remote was working. Thought it might need a battery. Then I took the truck back to the garage, where it is safe and sound.”
He must have stolen the extra remote from my makeup bag. Carl could be turning the ignition as we speak.
My eyes are glued to the perfectly square yellow soul patch on the valet’s chin, definitely bleached, and his perfectly hip name tag with the Z.
Paper Ghosts_A Novel of Suspense Page 14
