“You’re going to have a hard time pulling anything out of that kid.”
“Why’s that?”
“If she’s not a little autistic, she’s something close. Monk could reach her, but nobody else really can.”
“Does she even know her dad’s dead?”
“Let’s put it this way, no one really knows how to break it to her. But it won’t be pretty.”
“Why, is she a violent child?”
Rivest shook his head. “She’s quiet and shy and one helluva pianist.”
“So what’s her problem?”
“She lives in her own world, Sean. You can be talking to her normally and all of a sudden it’s like she disappears. She just doesn’t communicate on the same level as you and me.”
“Has she been evaluated by a professional?”
“Don’t know.”
Sean thought of Horatio Barnes. “If it comes down to it, I might have someone who can help. Who’s looking after her now?”
“Alicia Chadwick among others.”
“And who is she?”
“She works in one of the departments here. I said Monk was the only one who got through to Viggie. But Alicia seems to be able to do it too, if on a limited basis.”
“Who found Monk’s body?”
“A guard on patrol at Camp Peary.”
“Any forensics at the crime scene to suggest any leads?”
“None that I know of.”
“The gun?”
“It was Turing’s. He had a permit for it.”
“Were his prints on the gun?”
“It seems like they were.”
“It seems like they were? Either they were or they weren’t!”
“Okay, they were. There was also nothing to suggest he’d been bound and no defensive wounds.” Rivest blurted out, “Look, maybe a damn Camp Peary guard pulled the trigger.”
“Using Turing’s gun?”
“Monk was trespassing. A guard shot him and they’re trying to cover it up.”
Sean shook his head. “If he was trespassing the guard would have a good reason to kill him. Covering it up just digs the hole deeper. And you wouldn’t use Monk’s own gun to do the deed.”
“Who the hell knows with the CIA?” Rivest protested.
“The second reason is even stronger. Monk was killed with a near contact wound. If a guard was close enough to do that he could’ve arrested Monk without killing him.”
“They got in a scuffle and the gun went off accidentally?” Rivest suggested.
“But there was no evidence of a fight, you said.”
Rivest sighed. “Who the hell knows where the real truth lies.”
“So what’s the CIA position?”
“That he climbed over the fence and shot himself.”
“You obviously don’t think that?”
Rivest looked around uneasily. “There’re a lot of eyes around here.”
“Meaning what?”
“Meaning a place like this, there might be spies.”
“Spies? Why do you think that?”
“No proof. Just my gut again.”
“Anything turn up in Turing’s personal possessions?” Sean asked.
“The Bureau’s taken all that stuff. His computer, papers, passport, etc.”
“Who was the last person to see Monk alive?”
Rivest said, “It might have been his daughter.”
“Doesn’t the Bureau have experts who can help with her?”
Rivest seemed to welcome this change in topics. “They brought one of these so-called experts down and she got nowhere with the kid.”
Sean thought again about his Harley-riding friend Horatio Barnes and decided he would give him a call later. He was torn, though, because he wanted Horatio to focus on getting Michelle well.
Rivest continued, “He was seen at dinner the night before his body was discovered. After that he went to do some follow-up work in his department.”
“How do you know that?” Sean said sharply.
“The computer log showed him leaving there at eight-thirty. His movements after that are just speculation.”
“How’d he get to Camp Peary? Did he swim or take a boat? Or drive?”
“I don’t see how he could have driven. You can’t get to that part of the compound without going through the main gate. And we can’t tell if he swam over or not. Because of all the rain his body and clothes were soaked through. But it’d be a long haul across the river.”
“By process of elimination he probably went by boat. Any found nearby?”
“No.”
“Are there any boats kept here?”
“Oh, sure. Some rowboats and kayaks; there’s a large sailboat and a few racing sculls. And there’re a couple of powerboats owned by Babbage Town.”
“So lots of watercraft available; but none missing?”
“Right. But if someone did take him over, they could have just put the boat back in its place and who would know?”
“Where are they kept?” Sean asked.
“At a boathouse down by the river.”
“Anybody hear a motorboat on the night Monk was killed?”
Rivest shook his head. “But the boathouse is a good ways away with forest in between. It’s conceivable nothing would’ve been heard.”
“We seem to be hitting a wall everywhere.”
“You feel like a drink?” Rivest asked.
“You think I need one?”
“No, I do. Come on, we’ll have some dinner, a few drinks, and then tomorrow I’ll tell you more about Babbage Town than you’ll ever want to know.”
“Tell me this much, is it worth somebody getting killed over?”
In the fading sunlight, Rivest stared over Sean’s shoulder at the mansion. “Hell, Sean, it’s worth countries going to war over.”
CHAPTER
16
IT WAS ONE A.M. when over the sounds of Cheryl’s light snoring Michelle heard footsteps in the hallway again. Already dressed, she stepped out in the hallway in her stocking feet and followed the person. It was Barry’s tread, she was pretty sure.
She stopped as the footsteps up ahead halted. Michelle looked around. She was on the corridor headed to Sandy’s room. She hadn’t believed Barry when he’d said he didn’t know the woman. His explanation had been too clumsy. Her ears perked up as the person started walking again.
She slid forward, her gaze sweeping across the dimmed lights of the hallway ahead. She heard a door open and close. Michelle edged forward and peered around the corner. There was a light on at the end of the hallway. Then it went out. She ducked back behind the wall when another door opened and closed. After waiting about five minutes, Michelle heard a door open and close again. The footsteps started coming back toward her. She looked around for someplace to hide.
She ducked inside an empty room and crouched next to the door. When the person walked past she peered through the window in the top half of the door. It wasn’t Barry. The person was too small. She didn’t get a good look at him because he had on a hat and his coat collar was turned up. When he disappeared from her line of sight she left the room and debated whether to follow him or go and see where he had been. She finally opted for the latter. She crept down the hall, turned the corner and continued on.
At the end of the hall was the door to the pharmacy. Was that the one she’d heard open and close? She looked to her left. Sandy’s room was here too. She peered through the glass of the woman’s door. Sandy was asleep in her bed or at least she seemed to be.
As Michelle glanced down at the floor, her gaze caught on something. She stooped and picked it up. It was a piece of white puffy plastic that people used in shipping boxes. She put it in her pocket, looked once more at Sandy sleeping and quietly made her way back to her room.
The next morning Michelle woke early and made the rounds of the corridors. She passed Sandy’s room as the woman wheeled herself out into the hall. Sandy wore a Red Sox ball cap and a generous
smile.
“How’s the migraine?” Michelle asked.
“All gone. One good night of sleep usually does it. Thanks for asking.”
“When’s your shrink session?”
“My first is at eleven. Then there’s a group session after lunch. Then they give me my drugs. Then a counselor comes and sees me. Then I get another little pop of joy pills and then go gab with some more strangers. At that point, I’m so looped I could give a shit. I’ll tell ’em whatever they want to hear. Like my mom breast-fed me until I left for the prom, stuff like that. They eat it up and then go write articles on it for the medical journals while I’m laughing my ass off.”
“I don’t think I could do the group thing,” Michelle said.
Sandy spun her wheelchair around in a tight circle. “Oh, it’s easy. All you have to do is get up, or, in my case, remain seated, and say, ‘Hi, I’m Sandy and I’m screwed up so bad, but I want to do something about it. That’s why I’m here.’ And then everybody claps and throws you kisses and tells you how brave you are. And then I get a sleeping pill and crash for ten hours and get up and do it all over again.”
“Sounds like you have the routine down pat.”
“Oh, honey, I’m at the point where I see the questions coming before they even ask them. It’s cat and mouse stuff, only they haven’t figured out that I’m the cat and they’re the mouse.”
“You ever try and address whatever’s actually making you depressed?”
“Hell no, then it gets way too complicated. The truth will not set me free, it’ll just make me suicidal. So until they let me out of here, I dance my little jig”—she slapped the wheels of her chair—“figuratively speaking of course, and Sandy goes with the flow, so long as they keep giving me my pills.”
“Are you in a lot of pain?”
“When people tell you you’re paralyzed from the waist down, you think to yourself, ‘Okay, that’s a real bitch, but at least I can’t feel anything hurting.’ Wrong with a capital fucking W. What they don’t tell you is how much being paralyzed hurts. The bullet that took my legs away is still inside me. The quacks said it was too close to my spine to remove. So it just sits there, that little nine-millimeter son of a bitch. And every year or so it moves a tiny bit. Ain’t that something? I can’t move but it can. And the real zinger is the quacks say that if it ever hits against a certain place on my spine, I might just drop dead, or lose the feeling in the rest of my body and become a full-fledged quad. How ’bout that? Isn’t that just too screwed up for words?”
Michelle said, “I’m really sorry. My problems don’t seem like such a big deal now.”
Sandy waved this remark off. “Let’s go get some breakfast. The eggs are for shit and the bacon looks like pieces of tire tread and tastes worse, but at least the coffee’s hot. Come on, I’ll race you.” Sandy took off and Michelle, smiling, trotted after her, then grabbed the wheelchair’s handles and sprinted down the hallway, Sandy screaming with laughter the whole way.
After breakfast, Michelle met with Horatio.
“I talked with your brother Bill again.”
“And how is Bill?”
“Good. He doesn’t see you much, though. That goes for the rest of the family.”
“We’re all busy.”
He handed her the letter from her mother.
“I was at your and Sean’s apartment and picked it up. I know you haven’t seen the place, but it’s really nice. I’m glad I got to see it before you trashed it like your truck. Speaking of major landfills, ever think of cleaning your Toyota out? I mean just from the perspective of preventing bubonic plague.”
“My truck might be a little messy, but I know where everything is.”
“Yeah, about two hours after I eat spicy Mexican I know what’s inside my colon, but that doesn’t mean I want to see it. You want to read the letter from your parents? It might be important.”
“If it were, they would’ve reached me some other way.”
“Do they keep in touch with you?”
Michelle crossed her arms. “So is this parents day with the shrink?”
Horatio held up his notepad. “It says right here that I have to ask.”
“I talk to my parents.”
“But you almost never visit them. Although they’re not that far away.”
“Lots of kids don’t visit their parents. It doesn’t mean they don’t love them.”
“True. Do you feel like you have a chip on your shoulder being the only girl and your big brothers and father being cops?”
“I prefer to think of it as healthy motivation.”
“Okay, do you like the fact that you pretty much can physically dominate any man you come across?”
“I like to be able to take care of myself. It’s a violent world out there.”
“And being in law enforcement, you’ve seen more than your share of that. And it’s men who commit the vast majority of violent crimes, isn’t that right?”
“Too many men tend to lead with their muscle instead of their mind.”
“Do you still want to hurt yourself?”
“You have the most awkward segues of any person I’ve ever met.”
“I like to think of them as something to wake you up in case you were starting to doze off.”
“I never wanted to hurt myself in the first place.”
“Okay, I’ll just check that one off in the ‘I’m lying my ass off’ box, and we’ll move on. So what do you see as the problem? And how do you think I can help you?”
Michelle looked nervously away.
“It’s not a trick question, Michelle. I want you to get better. I can sense you want to get better. So how do we get there?”
“We’re talking, isn’t that something?”
“It is. But at this rate I’ll be long dead and buried and you’ll be sucking your dinner through a straw before we figure out what makes you tick. There’s no rule against going for the point of least resistance.”
Michelle blurted out, “I don’t know what you want from me, Horatio.”
“Honesty, candidness, a real desire to participate in this exercise we call soul-searching. I know the questions to ask, but the questions don’t help if the answers to them mean nothing.”
“I’m trying to be honest with you. Ask me a question.”
“Do you love your brothers?”
“Yes!”
“Do you love your parents?”
Again she said yes. But Horatio cocked his head at the way she said it.
“Will you talk to me about your childhood?”
“Is that what every shrink thinks? It all comes down to crap that happened when you were a kid? Well, you’re running down the wrong road.”
“Then point me in the right direction. It’s all up in your head. You know it is, you just have to suck it up and have the courage to tell me.”
Michelle stood, trembling with rage. “Where the hell do you get off questioning my courage, or my ability to suck it up? You wouldn’t have lasted ten minutes in my shoes.”
“I don’t doubt it. But the answer to your problems is between your left and right frontal lobes. It’s a distance of about four inches and quite remarkable in that it contains trillions of bits of thoughts and memories that make you, you. If we get to just the right piece of you stuck away up there we can reach the point where you’ll never pick another fight with a guy hoping he’ll send you straight to the morgue.”
“I’m telling you that didn’t happen!”
“And I’m telling you, you’re full of shit.”
Michelle balled up her fists and screamed, “Do you want me to hurt
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