Think of a Number

by John Verdon

  Chapter 8

  A rock and a hard place

  The sparkling autumn weather deteriorated that afternoon. The clouds, which in the morning had been joyful little cotton-ball clichés, darkened. Premonitory rumbles of thunder could be heard—so far in the distance that the direction from which they originated was unclear. They were more like an intangible presence in the atmosphere than the product of a specific storm—a perception that strengthened as they persisted over a period of hours, seeming neither to draw closer nor entirely cease.

  That evening Madeleine went to a local concert with one of her new Walnut Crossing friends. It was not an event she expected Gurney to attend, so he didn’t feel defensive about his decision to stay home and work on his art project.

  Shortly after her departure, he found himself sitting in front of his computer screen, gazing at the mug shot of Peter Possum Piggert. All he had done so far was to import the graphics file and set it up as a new project—to which he had given a wretchedly cute name: Oedipus Wrecks.

  In the Sophocles version of the old Greek tale, Oedipus kills a man who turns out to be his father, marries a woman who turns out to be his mother, and sires two daughters with her, creating great misery for all concerned. In Freud’s psychology the Greek tale is a symbol for the developmental phase in the life of a male child during which he desires his father’s absence (disappearance, death) so that he may possess exclusively the affection of his mother. In the case of Peter Possum Piggert, however, there was neither exculpatory ignorance nor any question of symbolism. Knowing exactly what he was doing and to whom, Peter at the age of fifteen murdered his father, entered into a new relationship with his mother, and sired two daughters with her. But it did not stop there. Fifteen years later he murdered his mother in a dispute over a new relationship he had entered into with their daughters, then thirteen and fourteen.

  Gurney’s involvement in the case had begun when half of Mrs. Iris Piggert’s body was discovered tangled in the rudder mechanism of a Hudson River day liner docked at a Manhattan pier, and it ended with the arrest of Peter Piggert in a desert compound of “traditionalist” Mormons in Utah, where he had gone to live as the husband of his two daughters.

  Despite the depravity of the crimes, steeped in blood and family horror, Piggert remained a controlled and taciturn figure in all interrogations and throughout the criminal proceedings against him, keeping his Mr. Hyde well concealed and looking more like a depressed auto mechanic than a parricidal, incestuous polygamist.

  Gurney stared at Piggert on the screen, and Piggert stared back. Ever since he first interrogated him, and even more so now, Gurney felt that the key quality of the man was a need (taken to bizarre lengths) to control his environment. People, even family—in fact, family most of all—were part of that environment, and making them do as he wished was essential. If he had to kill someone to establish his control, so be it. The sex, as big a driving force as it appeared to be, was more about power than lust.

  As he searched the stolid face for a hint of the demon, a gust of wind picked up a swirl of dry leaves. They blew with the sound of a feathery broom across the patio; a few clicked lightly against the glass panes of the French doors. The restlessness of the leaves, plus the intermittent thunder, made it hard for him to concentrate. The idea of being alone for a few hours of progress on the portrait, free of raised eyebrows and unpleasant questions, had appealed to him. But now his mind was unsettled. He peered into Piggert’s eyes, heavy and dark—with none of the wild glare that animated the eyes of Charlie Manson, the tabloid prince of sex and slaughter—but again the wind and the leaves distracted him, and then the thunder. Out beyond the line of hills, there was a faint flashing in the murky sky. A couplet from one of Mellery’s threatening poems had been drifting in and out of his mind. Now it came again and stuck there.

  What you took you will give

  when you get what you gave.

  It was at first an impossible riddle. The words were too general; they had too much and too little meaning; yet he could not get them out of his head.

  He opened the desk drawer and removed the sequence of messages Mellery had given him. He shut down the computer and pushed the keyboard to the side of the desk so he could arrange the messages in order—beginning with the first note.

  Do you believe in Fate? I do, because I thought I’d never see you again—and then one day, there you were. It all came back: how you sound, how you move—most of all, how you think. If someone told you to think of a number, I know what number you’d think of. You don’t believe me? I’ll prove it to you. Think of any number up to a thousand—the first number that comes to your mind. Picture it. Now see how well I know your secrets. Open the little envelope.

  Although he’d done so earlier, he examined the outer envelope, inside and out, as well as the notepaper on which the message was written to be sure there was no faint trace anywhere of the number 658—not even a watermark—that could have suggested the number that seemed to come spontaneously to Mellery’s mind. There was no such trace. More definitive tests could be conducted later, but he was satisfied for now that whatever it was that enabled the writer to know that Mellery would choose 658, it wasn’t a subtle imprint in the paper.

  The content of the message comprised a number of claims that Gurney enumerated on a lined yellow notepad:

  I knew you in the past but lost contact with you.

  I encountered you again, recently.

  I recall a great deal about you.

  I can prove I know your secrets by writing down and sealing in the enclosed envelope the next number that will enter your mind.

  The tone struck him as creepily playful, and the reference to knowing Mellery’s “secrets” could be read as a threat—reinforced by the request for money in the smaller envelope.

  Does it shock you that I knew you would pick 658?

  Who knows you that well? If you want the answer,

  you must first repay me the $289.87 it cost me to find you.

  Send that exact amount to

  P.O. Box 49449, Wycherly, CT 61010.

  Send me CASH or a PERSONAL CHECK.

  Make it out to X. Arybdis.

  (That was not always my name.)

  In addition to the inexplicable number prediction, the smaller note reiterated the claim of close personal knowledge and specified $289.87 as a cost incurred in locating Mellery (although the first half of the message made it sound like a chance encounter) and as a precondition to the writer’s revealing his identity; it offered a choice of paying the amount by check or cash; it gave the name for the check as “X. Arybdis,” offered an explanation of why Mellery would not recognize the name, and provided a Wycherly P.O. box address to send the money to. Gurney jotted all these facts down on his yellow pad, finding it helpful in organizing his thoughts.

  Those thoughts centered on four questions: How could the number prediction be explained without hypothesizing some sort of Manchurian Candidate hypnosis or ESP? Did the other specific number in the note, $289.87, have any significance beyond the stated “cost to find you”? Why the cash-or-check option, which sounded like a parody of a direct-marketing ad? And what was it about that name, Arybdis, that kept tickling a dark corner of Gurney’s memory? He wrote these questions down alongside his other notes.

  Next he laid out the three poems in the sequence of their envelope postmarks.

  How many bright angels

  can dance on a pin?

  How many hopes drown in

  a bottle of gin?

  Did the thought ever come

  that your glass was a gun

  and one day you’d wonder,

  God, what have I done?

  What you took you will give

  when you get what you gave.

  I know what you think,

  when you blink,

  where you’ve been,

  where you’ll be.

  You and I have a date,

  Mr. 658.

 
; I do what I’ve done

  not for money or fun

  but for debts to be paid,

  amends to be made.

  For blood that’s as red

  as a painted rose.

  So every man knows

  he reaps what he sows.

  The first thing that struck him was the change in attitude. The toying tone of the two prose messages had become prosecutorial in the first poem, overtly menacing in the second, and vengeful in the third. Putting aside the question of how seriously it should be taken, the message itself was clear: The writer (X. Arybdis?) was saying that he intended to get even with (kill?) Mellery for a drinking-related misdeed in his past. As Gurney wrote the word kill in the notes he was making, his attention jumped back to the initial couplet in the second poem:

  What you took you will give

  when you get what you gave.

  Now he knew exactly what the words meant, and the meaning was chillingly simple. For the life you took, you will give your life. What you did will be done to you.

  He wasn’t sure whether the frisson he felt convinced him he was right or if knowing he was right created the frisson, but either way he had no doubt about it. This did not, however, answer his other questions. It only made them more urgent, and it gave rise to new ones.

  Was the threat of murder just a threat, designed only to inflict the pain of apprehension—or was it a declaration of practical intent? To what was the writer referring when he said “I do what I’ve done” in the first line of the third poem? Had he previously done to someone else what he now proposed to do to Mellery? Might Mellery have done something in concert with someone else whom the writer had already dealt with? Gurney made a note to ask Mellery if any friend or associate of his had ever been killed, assaulted, or threatened.

  Maybe it was the mood created by the flashes of light beyond the blackening foothills, or the eerie persistence of the low thunder, or his own exhaustion, but the personality behind the messages was emerging from the shadows. The detachment of the voice in those poems, bloody purpose and careful syntax, hatred and calculation—he had seen those qualities combined before to horrible effect. As he stared out the den window, surrounded by the unsettled atmosphere of the approaching storms, he could sense in those messages the iciness of a psychopath. A psychopath who called himself X. Arybdis.

  Of course, it was possible that he was off base. It wouldn’t be the first time that a certain mood, particularly in the evening, particularly when he was alone, had generated in him convictions unsupported by the facts.

  Still … what was it about that name? In what dusty box of memories was it faintly stirring?

  He went to bed early that night, long before Madeleine returned home from her concert, determined that tomorrow he would return the letters to Mellery and insist that he go to the police. The stakes were too high, the danger too palpable. In bed, though, he found it impossible to lay the day to rest. His mind was a racecourse with no exits and no finish line. It was an experience he was familiar with—a price he paid (he’d come to believe) for the intense attention he devoted to certain kinds of challenges. Once his obsessed mind, instead of falling asleep, fell into this circular rut, there were only two options. He could let the process run its course, which could take three or four hours, or he could force himself out of bed and into his clothes.

  Minutes later, dressed in jeans and a comfortable old cotton sweater, he was standing outside on the patio. A full moon behind the overcast sky created a faint illumination, making the barn visible. It was in that direction, along the rutted road through the pasture, that he decided to walk.

  Past the barn was the pond. Halfway there he stopped and listened to the sound of a car coming up the road from the direction of the village. He estimated it to be about half a mile away. In that quiet corner of the Catskills, where the sporadic howling of coyotes was the loudest nighttime sound, a vehicle could be heard at a great distance.

  Soon the headlights of Madeleine’s car swept over the tangle of dying goldenrod that bordered the pasture. She turned toward the barn, stopped on the crunchy gravel, and switched off the headlights. She got out and walked toward him—cautiously, her eyes adjusting to the semidarkness.

  “What are you doing?” Her question sounded soft, friendly.

  “Couldn’t sleep. Mind racing. Thought I’d take a walk around the pond.”

  “Feels like rain.” A rumble in the sky punctuated her observation.

  He nodded.

  She stood next to him on the path and inhaled deeply.

  “Wonderful smell. Come on, let’s walk,” she said, taking his arm.

  As they reached the pond, the path broadened into a mowed swath. Somewhere in the woods, an owl screeched—or, more precisely, there was a familiar screech they thought might be an owl when they first heard it that summer, and each time after that they became more certain it was an owl. It was in the nature of Gurney’s intellect to realize that this process of increasing conviction made no logical sense, but he also knew that pointing it out, interesting though this trick of the mind might be to him, would bore and annoy her. So he said nothing, happy that he knew her well enough to know when to be quiet, and they ambled on to the far side of the pond in amiable silence. She was right about the smell—a wonderful sweetness in the air.

  They had moments like this from time to time, moments of easy affection and quiet closeness, that reminded him of the early years of their marriage, the years before the accident. “The Accident”—that dense, generic label with which he wrapped the event in his memory to keep its razor-wire details from slicing his heart. The accident—the death—that eclipsed the sun, turning their marriage into a shifting mixture of habit, duty, edgy companionship, and rare moments of hope—rare moments when something bright and clear as a diamond would shoot back and forth between them, reminding him of what once was and might again be possible.

  “You always seem to be wrestling with something,” she said, curling her fingers around the inside of his arm, just above his elbow.

  Right again.

  “How was the concert?” he finally asked.

  “First half was baroque, lovely. Second half was twentieth century, not so lovely.”

  He was about to chime in with his own low opinion of modern music but thought better of it.

  “What kept you awake?” she asked.

  “I’m not really sure.”

  He sensed her skepticism. She let go of his arm. Something splashed into the pond a few yards ahead of them.

  “I couldn’t get the Mellery business out of my mind,” he said.

  She didn’t reply.

  “Bits and pieces of it kept running around in my head—not getting anywhere—just making me uncomfortable—too tired to think straight.”

  Again she offered nothing but a thoughtful silence.

  “I kept thinking about that name on the note.”

  “X. Arybdis?”

  “How did you …? You heard us mention it?”

  “I have good hearing.”

  “I know, but it always surprises me.”

  “It might not really be X. Arybdis, you know,” she said in that offhand way that he knew was anything but offhand.

  “What?” he said, stopping.

  “It might not be X. Arybdis.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I was suffering through one of the atonal atrocities in the second half of the concert, thinking that some modern composers must really hate the cello. Why would you force a beautiful instrument to make such painful noises? Horrible scraping and whining.”

  “And …?” he said gently, trying to keep his curiosity from sounding edgy.

  “And I’d have left at that point, but I couldn’t because I’d given Ellie a ride there.”

  “Ellie?”

  “Ellie from the bottom of the hill—rather than take two cars? But she seemed to be enjoying it, God knows why.”

  “Yes?”

  “So
I asked myself, what can I do to pass the time and keep from killing the musicians?”

  There was another splash in the pond, and she stopped to listen. He half saw, half sensed her smile. Madeleine was fond of frogs.

  “And?”

  “And I thought to myself I could start figuring out my Christmas card list—it’s practically November—so I took out my pen and on the back of my program, at the top of the page, I wrote ‘Xmas Cards’—not the whole word Christmas but the abbreviation, X-M-A-S,” she said, spelling it out.

  In the darkness he could feel more than see her inquiring look, as if she were asking whether he was getting the point.

  “Go on,” he said.

  “Every time I see that abbreviation, it reminds me of little Tommy Milakos.”

  “Who?”

  “Tommy had a crush on me in the ninth grade at Our Lady of Chastity.”

  “I thought it was Our Lady of Sorrows,” said Gurney with a twinge of irritation.

  She paused a beat to let her little joke register, then went on. “Anyway, one day Sister Immaculata, a very large woman, started screaming at me because I’d abbreviated Christmas as Xmas in a little quiz about Catholic holy days. She said anyone who wrote it that way was purposely ‘X-ing Christ out of Christmas.’ She was furious. I thought she was going to hit me. But right then Tommy—sweet little brown-eyed Tommy—jumped up out of his seat and shouted, ‘It’s not an X.’

  “Sister Immaculata was shocked. It was the first time anyone had ever dared to interrupt her. She just stared at him, but he stared right back, my little champion. ‘It’s not an English letter,’ he said. ‘It’s a Greek letter. It’s the same as an English ch. It’s the first letter of Christ in Greek.’ And, of course, Tommy Milakos was Greek, so everybody knew he must be right.”

  Dark as it was, he thought he could see her smiling softly at the recollection, even suspected he heard a little sigh. Maybe he was wrong about the sigh—he hoped so. And another distraction—had she betrayed a preference for brown eyes over blue? Get ahold of yourself, Gurney, she’s talking about the ninth grade.