Suspicion of Madness

by Barbara Parker

  "Oh, my God."

  She pushed Anthony's arm off her waist and rolled out of bed, nearly tripping over the sheet before she managed to wrap it around herself. The sky was so overcast it hardly seemed possible the sun had come up.

  From his pillow Anthony mumbled, "¿Qué pasa?"

  "Stupid clock. The alarm didn't go off." She found her cell phone on the dresser and hit the speed dial for her mother's house. "I have to call Karen. The bus might not have come yet."

  "Go in the living room," he said.

  When Irene picked up, Gail said, "Hi, Mom. Has Karen left already?... I know, I'm sorry, but we got back so late last night, and I must've hit the wrong buttons on the alarm…. Was she mad?"

  Not mad, Irene said. Disappointed.

  Anthony put his pillow over his head.

  "What did she say? No, wait, let me guess. That I don't care. I'm so mean, I'm the worst mother, running away on vacation, ignoring her—"

  "Gail!"

  She turned her back and said quietly, "When Karen comes home, would you please tell her I'll try again this afternoon? This is so ridiculous. She has my number. There's no reason she can't call me. She just won't. It's like unless I call her, I have somehow failed this test of motherhood that—"

  "¡Es de madrugada! ¡Hazme favor, sal de aquí con el teléfono!"

  "Anthony, please!" She spoke into the phone again. "Sorry. Señor Grouch needs his IV of café cubano before he can be civil in the morning. I'll call you later." She disconnected. "Anthony, don't yell at me when I'm talking to my mother."

  "Why didn't you go in the other room?"

  "You told me you had to get up early."

  "Not this early." His hair curled in all directions. Squinty-eyed, he bunched his pillow under his neck. "When are you going to stop letting Karen pull your strings?"

  "Look. I promised her I'd call. I said, 'Karen, I promise to call you every day.'"

  "And yesterday you didn't have time. Too bad."

  "If I make a promise," Gail said, "I try to follow through. Karen needs to know she can rely on me."

  "You promised to call her because you feel guilty about being here with me."

  "Oh, please."

  "¡Es verdad!"

  Gail sat on the edge of the bed. "You're probably right. I need to stop feeling guilty. Why should I? We've been working." Dragging the sheet with her, she crawled over to Anthony. "I'm such a bad person. I don't want to make sandwiches for the homeless. I want to lie on the beach with you."

  "I'll tell you something. I'm ready to get out of here. If we finish this case today, let's go back. We'll get a room at the Fontainebleau tonight, and you can have your wish."

  "I don't think so. It's going to be raining on Miami Beach."

  "Good. We'll sleep. Shhhh."

  Gail settled into his arms. "Do you think Joan Sinclair is going to come through for Billy?"

  "Yes, I do. I had my doubts at first, but she isn't crazy. Eccentric, yes, but alert and in full control of her faculties."

  "So Billy is innocent."

  "You sound uncertain."

  "No, but... I wish we knew the rest of it. Why he confessed."

  "Let his psychiatrist figure it out."

  Gail put a kiss on the corner of his mouth. "I should try to be more like Joan Sinclair."

  He laughed. "Why?"

  "Not as she is now. I mean as she used to be. Not Joan the actress but Joan the person, before she turned nutty. She sat through Citizen Kane ten times with Billy Fadden. Who else would give him ten minutes? Well, his mother, but mothers don't count. I loved what you told me, how Joan let her hair go all gray, and she wore blue jeans when Tom came to dinner with champagne. I hope I have the courage to do that. Will you love me when I get old and gray?"

  "Siempre, mi vida." He yawned into the pillow. A moment later his eyes opened. "What time is it? I have to meet Billy at ten o'clock."

  "About eight-thirty, I guess. Why do you have to meet Billy?"

  "We're going to be very well prepared before we talk to the cops." Anthony raised up far enough to grab his watch off his nightstand. He frowned at it, closing one eye.

  "You need your eyes checked," Gail said. "I've noticed you squinting."

  "No, it's too dark in here to see."

  "Give me that." She glanced at his watch. "Eight-twenty-two. Uh-oh. Anthony needs glasses. Caballo viejo," she said. The old horse, out to pasture, the name he used for his grandfather, when the old man wasn't around to hear it.

  "¿Caballo Viejo?" Anthony put his watch back on the nightstand then moved down in the bed until their faces were aligned. "Ven a montar este caballo." He had a horse he wanted her to ride. He took her hand and put it under the covers.

  The pause in the rain would not last long. Heavy masses of clouds lumbered across the sky. Brief shafts of sunlight hit the water in sparkling patches that quickly dimmed and were gone. The sea was an empty plain of murky blue.

  From his position on the dock, Anthony turned toward shore and spotted movement in the bushes. Billy Fadden was still looking for his stepfather's .38-caliber revolver. Martin had been unable to find it yesterday before nightfall, and Anthony had suggested that Billy have a look. The boy came out from behind a tangle of low branches and poked the weeds with a stick. The blond spikes in his hair had fallen, and his jeans were soaked.

  Anthony had just finished talking to Billy about the meeting with the police, set to take place four hours from now. Billy had been in a dark mood, unable to focus, his responses not going much beyond "Uh-huh," "Yeah," and "I guess." Anthony assumed the medication was having an effect, though it was hard to know what was going on in Billy's head.

  He might have imagined throwing the gun away. He remembered shooting at dogs that night, but there were no dogs on the island. He said he had tried to shoot himself, but the gun wasn't loaded. Or maybe it was loaded, and he had dropped it somewhere else with six rounds in the chambers. Loaded or not, if the gun had landed in the water, or in the thick and undulating mat of decaying turtle grass near the seawall, they would never find it. Anthony decided to give this five more minutes.

  He stepped further onto the dock, which was shiny with rain. Bird excrement dripped down the pilings where pelicans sat, ready to push off if he came near. Seagulls skittered away from his feet, rose in a flock, and wheeled away, quickly becoming gray dots against a grayer sky. He walked around a pile of rotting lobster traps and stopped to look up at the beam from which Billy had hanged himself. It was eight feet off the dock, supported by two heavy vertical timbers. A rope from one of the lobster traps had made the noose.

  That memory had come back. Billy had told Anthony this morning that he remembered trying to kill himself, and he remembered calling the police and confessing to murder. Anthony had asked him why. Billy had shrugged. He didn't know why.

  Studying the beam's height, and guessing at the distance between the dock and the rope, Anthony wondered how Joan Sinclair had cut him down. What had she used? Had she been out taking a walk and by luck had a knife in her pocket? Anthony made a mental note to ask her.

  He noticed at the end of the dock an old lawn chair and a small plastic table. Ideal for a young man who wanted a place to get drunk or smoke a joint after dark. The road was two miles away, and water closed in on all sides. One could easily feel so isolated in this dreary place that suicide might not seem an irrational idea.

  A raindrop hit his shoulder, then another. There was a curtain of rain a few miles east, moving this way.

  "Mr. Quintana!"

  Billy stood at the other end of the dock, a gaunt figure in a white T-shirt and jeans. His reflection shone dully in the wood. He lifted his hand to show Anthony what he'd found. A gun.

  Anthony retraced his steps. "Let me have it. I'll give it to Martin." He took out his handkerchief.

  "Hang on." Sitting on his heels, Billy laid the revolver on the dock. Water had pooled in a depression in one of the boards. Careful of his injured hand, he used
the other to splash dirt and bits of grass off the wood grips. The barrel was dark gray, about two and a half inches long. Standing, Billy wiped it dry with his T-shirt. "Is it ruined?"

  "I doubt it." Anthony checked the chambers. Empty. He spun it, clicked it shut, and wrapped the gun in his handkerchief. "It just needs a cleaning." The gun fit in his trousers pocket.

  Billy raised his head and glanced toward shore as though startled.

  "What did you hear?"

  He smiled hesitantly. "Nothing." He crossed his arms over his chest. His shoulders twitched as though someone had put a cold and unwanted hand on his neck.

  Anthony looked at him. "Tell me what you heard, Billy."

  "Dogs barking. Kind of far away. You don't hear them, do you?"

  "No."

  Billy bent over as if in pain and pressed the heel of his hand against his ear. "Oh, man."

  Anthony gripped his arm. "Do you need Dr. Vogelhut? I have my cell phone."

  "Don't call her, I'm okay." He was trembling. "They aren't real. I know they aren't."

  "Do you hear them a lot?"

  "Not a lot. Sometimes not for a long time, then they'll come back. It's usually if I'm tired and I'm trying to go to sleep. It's pretty funny, you know. Like being awake and having a dream at the same time. It's like there's this wall between what's real and what's not real, and things can break through it. Black dogs. Why can't it be something else?" He laughed. "You know what it means? It means death. They use them in the movies. They put in black dogs to signify death. Joan told me, and now whenever I see it, I go, 'Uh-oh. Metaphor! Bzzzzzt!'"

  Anthony was caught between wanting to get this kid out of here and wanting an answer. "Whose death do they signify for you? Yours?"

  "My brother." Billy took a breath that seemed to scour his lungs. "Yeah. I'm pretty sure about that. When he drowned, the rottweilers were running all over the yard barking. Big dogs. Huge. It's so real. I can hear their tags jingling on their choke collars. So when I hear them barking... when I think I do, then I feel like if I looked in the water right now I'd see Jeremy. But he isn't there. Is he? He isn't." Billy's face twisted. "Would you... this is stupid... would you look? Just tell me he isn't there. I'll be okay if I know for sure."

  Billy's terror was so real, so palpable and immediate, that Anthony could nearly believe that if he looked over the edge of the dock there would be a six-year-old boy in pajamas, floating face up, eyes wide and staring, his body moving slightly, bumping against the barnacle-encrusted piling.

  Not letting go of Billy's upper arm, Anthony moved toward the edge. He saw gray-green water and bits of sea grass. Occasional drops of rain made circles that wobbled on the surface and vanished.

  "It's all right, Billy. There's nothing."

  "I knew that." He forced another laugh.

  Among the many facts that Anthony had heard about Jeremy's drowning, he could not recall the dogs. "Did your family have rottweilers?"

  Billy stared back at him for a few seconds. "No."

  "You said they were in the yard, running around and barking."

  "They couldn't have been ours. Mom doesn't like dogs. Maybe they were at the house next door. I don't remember." His voice dropped to a deep, portentous monotone. '"Black dogs of death. Scream and scream again. Coming soon to a theater near you.'" He turned toward the shore, and as he did, looked over the edge of the dock as if to assure himself he could do it. He stopped, and his eyes became fixed. His mouth went slack.

  With a low moan he sank to his knees.

  "Billy!" Anthony grabbed him to keep him upright. "Lean over. Get some blood in your head." The boy was skinny but had enough dead weight to threaten to send them both into the water. Anthony pulled him back, wishing he had followed his first instinct, to get Billy away from here as quickly as possible.

  "Breathe!" he ordered.

  Billy mumbled, "Goddamn. Didn't want to do that. Sorry." He took some breaths and sat up. He moistened his lips. "I want to tell you what I saw before I forget. It's really interesting, you'll like it. A mermaid. It's the second time I saw the chick. She was out here two days ago when I had my party. I saw her off the end of the dock. She's got red hair and a green tail. She's holding the moon in her hand. I look at her, and she looks back and she opens her eyes and smiles at me, but she's dead. Whoa. What's Dr. Vogelhut going to say about that one? My brother turning into a mermaid. I guess I am nuts."

  "Can you walk?" Anthony asked.

  "Yeah." He got to his feet. "I am so tired of this shit."

  "You'll be okay. You're seeing Dr. Vogelhut on Tuesday."

  "Tell her not to put me in the hospital. No thanks. Been there, done that, bought the T-shirt." He laughed shakily.

  A few steps took them off the dock and onto the path. The way was narrow, and they had to dodge through the brush before reaching the clearing where they had parked the cart. Rain had caught up to them, falling not hard but steadily. Anthony swung into the passenger seat and waited for Billy to get in.

  Billy didn't move. Strands of blond hair reached to his thick, dark eyebrows. A drop of water slid down his forehead. "The mermaid was real," he said.

  "The mermaid?"

  "She was real. I'm not making it up. I remember. She was a lamp on the dock behind our house. She was made out of concrete. I remember her hair hung down and hid her breasts. She had a white plastic ball in her hand. Like this." Billy extended his arm and turned up his palm. "The light was turned on when Jeremy died. That's how I saw his body in the dark." Billy's eyes pleaded with Anthony to believe him.

  Anthony nodded. "All right. Get in, let's go."

  "You think I'm lying."

  "I think you don't know what is real and what isn't."

  Saying no more, but clearly feeling betrayed, Billy got into the cart and turned the key. They jerked forward, skidding over the weeds as they turned in a tight circle back toward the resort.

  Gail was in the middle of a phone call to her secretary when she heard Anthony's footsteps coming up the stairs. He came through the screen door with wet shoulders and rain on his face. Gail gave him a quick kiss as he went to the bedroom to change clothes.

  On his way he dropped a couple of take-out bags on the table by the sofa. Gail went over to see what he'd brought. Sandwiches. And tucked in beside them, a video. Still talking to her secretary, she took it out. A copy of a video, to be more precise, with a color copy of the original box taped to this one. Bride of Nosferatu, starring Edward Steele, introducing Joan Sinclair, a gloomy castle behind them. The bride was a blond with dark eyes and a heart-shaped face, the kind of face that could look either innocent or evil. She stared from the cover of the box as if she wanted to take a bite out of Gail's neck. The vampire was older with streaks of white over his ears. The points of his teeth showed on his lower lip. Hers were also visible, but not long and yellow, like his. They were cute, little-girl-vampire teeth. It was creepy and perverse, Gail thought.

  "Miriam, go ahead and do a draft of that complaint and e-mail it to me. I'll take a look at it tonight and get the changes to you in the morning, okay?" She disconnected.

  Anthony came out fastening the gold cuff links in his dress shirt. He had changed into his suit pants too. Time to play lawyer. Noticing the video in her hand, he said, "That's from Billy. Do you want anything to drink?" Anthony went to the minibar.

  "No, thanks. Listen to this. 'The vampire Count Nosferatu kidnaps the beautiful Katerina on the eve of her wedding and soon discovers that she has a blood-lust even greater than his own. To satisfy his new bride's raging thirst, Nosferatu opens his castle to travelers on the lonely road through the mountains.'" Gail said, "Ooooh. A husband trying to satisfy his wife. This might be good."

  "We'll watch it later. Help me clear off the table, por favor, bonboncita?"

  They couldn't eat outside today; the deck was too wet. Cool damp air came through the screen. As Gail unwrapped sandwiches, Anthony told her that Billy Fadden had found the gun.

  "So h
e didn't imagine it after all."

  "Oh, no, if the gun had been loaded, his death would have been very real. I took it back to the office. Lois said she would lock it in her desk."

  Gail asked how his talk had gone with Billy. If Billy would be nervous talking to Detective Baylor. And what would Anthony do if Joan Sinclair bombed in her performance—

  "Anthony, are you listening to me?"

  He was frowning out the window. "I want to ask your opinion about something."

  She put down her sandwich. "All right. What?"

  He told her what had happened to Billy on the dock.

  "Oh, my God," Gail said. "He saw his brother's body?"

  "It's even more strange. He saw a red-haired mermaid holding the moon. She was dead, but she looked at him and smiled."

  "Oh, Anthony."

  "Billy said she was real. Not at that moment, but real in the past, in the time his brother drowned, and he and his parents were living in the house in Marathon. The mermaid was a lamp.

  It was on their dock. That's how he was able to see Jeremy in the water that night."

  Anthony pushed away from the table, turning sideways in his chair. "Gail, I just spoke to Teri. She said there was no mermaid. They had a dock, but the only light was an outdoor spotlight. There was no mermaid on any of the neighbors' docks, and no rottweilers in their yards. No black dogs. But he hears them barking."

  Gail looked back at him, speechless.

  "Aha, you see? This kid is having delusions, and I'm supposed to convince the cops he had nothing to do with a murder? How can I? He's not going anywhere near Detective Baylor today. We take Joan Sinclair and that's it. Let Sharon deal with Billy. She's the psychiatrist."

  "But you can't leave it alone," Gail said.

  "Yes, I can."

  "No. You can't." She put a finger to his lips. "Let me say this. You asked my opinion, remember? I think Sharon Vogelhut was wrong when she said Billy's suicide attempt wasn't connected to his brother. They have to be connected. Billy found Jeremy's body in the canal. That means he'd been looking for him, that he felt responsible for his brother. When Billy found him dead, he blamed himself. His father had already taught him how bad he was. Don't you see? Two days before Sandra died, they had a fight, and Billy hit her. He felt bad about it. His guilt about his brother came back, and he called the police to confess, but he's mixing it all up in his head. Sandra's murder and his brother's accident."