Winter House

by Carol O'Connell

  “So it’s true what they say,” said Charles, and by they he meant the Supreme Court of the United States. “A polygraph has the same chance of detecting a lie as the flip of a coin.”

  “Right, but that’s not why we use it. When a cop does this test, it’s a full-blown interrogation without a lawyer. Sweet, huh?”

  “But this examiner isn’t—”

  “No, he’s an independent. That was the deal we did with Bitty Smyth. We picked the time and place—she picked the examiner. This guy’s only experience is interviewing applicants for low-level jobs.” Riker leaned back and closed his eyes, saying, “Let me know when Mallory takes over. I’ll turn on the volume again.”

  While Riker slept, Charles watched the tableau in front of him. The lame card trick was set aside, and they were moving on to other questions. After each response, the examiner made notations on the rolling paper. Mallory was drumming her nails on the clipboard, regarding the man as a bug. Nedda always glanced at the detective before answering a question. And now Charles intuited Mallory’s stance as a prelude to a lunge. He nudged Riker to wake him. “She’s almost ready.”

  Riker’s eyes opened. “Good. Time to rock ’n’ roll.” He turned on the volume.

  The examiner asked his next question. “Did you ever kill anyone?”

  “You know I did,” said Nedda Winter. “I already signed a statement to that effect.”

  “Once again, if you could confine your responses to yes or no.”

  “Yes,” said Nedda.

  Mallory stood behind the examiner, watching over his shoulder as the paper scrolled across the top of his machine. “You’re botching it.” She ripped the paper out. The man half rose in protest. She glared at him. “Sit down.”

  And he did.

  The detective made her own notations, matching up the responses with respiration and heartbeats, then tapped the different spikes on the chart each time she said, “Inconclusive, inconclusive, inconclusive.” She turned on the examiner. “You don’t know what you’re doing.”

  Riker turned the volume off again. “That might be the last true thing you hear from that room.” He looked back to the glass as Mallory slapped the top of the polygraph machine. “She’s telling him his equipment is crap.”

  “I think I guessed that,” said Charles.

  The examiner’s mouth had stopped flapping. He could only gawk at the detective in disbelief.

  “Fortunately,” said Riker, “she just happens to have a brand-new, state-of-the-art polygraph parked right outside the door. Our machine doesn’t work any better, but it has more bells and whistles. So Mallory won the pissing contest. The guy’s out of the game, and he knows it. There’s no way to make a recovery now that Nedda thinks he’s a clown. But don’t feel sorry for him, Charles. He’s young. He can still find honest work.”

  Mallory carried a heavy suitcase into the room and placed it on the table. She undid the snaps and opened it with a sideways glance at the civilian examiner, saying, “Now this is a lie detector.” She held up a large clip of plastic and metal trailing a wire. “And this is a transducer.” She attached it to Nedda’s thumb, treating the woman as an inanimate part of her show-and-tell exhibit. “This is what we use for cardio readings in the twenty-first century.” The detective proceeded to strip Nedda of all the paraphernalia that belonged to the independent examiner, then neatly packed it away in the man’s suitcase.

  She spoke to Nedda for the first time. “We can put this off for another day or get it over with now. Up to you.”

  “I’m ready.”

  When Mallory turned around again to face the examiner, she feigned surprise to see him. “Still here?”

  The man slunk out of the room, lacking the energy to entirely close the door behind him. Mallory slammed it shut. Her voice was icy when she turned to the woman seated in the chair and said, commanded, “Take off your shoes.”

  Charles turned to Riker. “Her shoes?”

  “Yeah.” The detective shrugged as he slouched lower in his chair. “Some perps use countermeasures like a tack in the shoe. It jacks up the response to a control question. Any question that raises a real sweat looks kind of pale by comparison.”

  “So the response to a small anxiety disguises the larger one.”

  “Now you got it.” The detective was watching the other room as Nedda, following another order, dragged her chair across the floor. Barefoot and wired to the machine, she sat down with her back to the wall. “That chair is set up with a stress plate to catch muscle tension. That’s another trick the perps use to beat the box.”

  “But I’m guessing that you’re not actually worried about Nedda using countermeasures.”

  “No.”

  “In fact, Mallory’s not even certified for this sort of thing, is she?”

  “Charles, it doesn’t matter. No polygraph exam is admissible in court. But now we get to ask questions that no lawyer would ever let her answer.”

  “I can’t believe that Bitty Smyth would allow her to take this exam.”

  “Bitty’s a contract attorney. Never handled a criminal case.”

  Charles watched Mallory fasten restraints to the older woman’s legs. “I think I can guess what that’s for. She’s pinned now, helpless.” He turned to Riker in the dark. “You know this isn’t right.”

  “I know, but it’s what we do.”

  Nedda Winter stared at the wires that made her seem part machine. “Bitty arranged for the independent examiner. Maybe I should talk to her before—”

  “Good idea.” Mallory stood before her suspect. “But I need answers today. Your niece is downstairs. If you don’t feel up to this, I can strap her in instead. I’m sure she’ll be happy to take your place if this is too stressful.”

  Yeah, right.

  No lawyer ever born would consent to a polygraph examination, but Nedda was nodding her head, wanting to spare Bitty Smyth any—unpleasantness. Barefoot and pinned by rubber tubes and wires, restraints on both her arms and legs, the old woman would not be able to imagine her timid niece in that chair.

  Mallory sat down at the table before the equipment. She gave a cursory glance at the sheet of paper she had torn from the civilian’s machine. “You’ve got too many mixed responses here. We have to start over. If you like, we can wait a few hours while we find an independent who knows what he’s doing. Or would you rather get this over with?”

  “I said I’d take the test, but I don’t—”

  “Fine.” Mallory reached into the back pocket of her jeans and pulled out the deck of cards she had stolen from the civilian examiner. “Let’s try another trick. That fool only used four cards.” She shuffled the deck as she spoke. “Let’s try it with fifty-two possibilities. Pull out a card, any card.” Fanning the cards, Mallory held them just far enough away to make the older woman strain to reach one. Nedda had no sooner taken her selection from the deck, when Mallory said, “Seven of hearts.”

  Nedda nodded, surprised.

  “I palmed the only cards you could reach, and I memorized their order.”

  Riker leaned far forward in his chair, caught between surprise and confusion.

  “You heard right,” said Charles. “She just told the truth.” And he understood why. Nedda must believe in Mallory. Hang the damned machine.

  The examiner your niece picked out was a useless cheat,” said Mallory, setting the deck on the table. “Bad card tricks are a hack’s game. He wanted you to believe that he could read your mind. Now me? I don’t care what you believe.” She pointed to the waving lines at the top of the machine. “If you hold your breath, I’ll know.” One long red fingernail moved down through the other lines. “If your heart beats a little faster, I’ll know. When you break a sweat, I’ll see it on the machine before it shows up on your face.” She held up the sheet she had torn from the examiner’s machine. “His last question was inconclusive, so we’ll try it again.” She wadded the paper into a ball and threw it across the room. Nedda Winter flinched, p
erhaps believing that it was aimed at her.

  A good start.

  Turning on the machine, Mallory said, “Now, let’s go for a ride.” She picked up her pencil and watched the scrolling lines, asking, “Did you ever kill anyone? Yes or no.”

  “Yes.”

  Mallory consulted the spikes on the scrolling paper, making notes here and there. “You were very calm the night we came to your house, but now your heart is beating way too fast. Is the burglar the only man you ever killed?”

  Nedda’s voice was not much above a whisper, asking, “What does this have to do with the—”

  “Yes or no. If I knew your total body count, would I be impressed?”

  Charles sank low in his chair. “I think I prefer the dark old days of thumbscrews and the rack. Does Mallory understand that she’s reading signs of stress—not guilt? Just being in the same room with her is enough to—”

  “She knows,” said Riker. “With a little preparation, a brain-dead Girl Scout can beat the box. But you can tell the truth and still fail the exam.”

  “So it’s totally useless. Why would—”

  “Nedda’s our only lead. We sent the Maine cops to Susan McReedy’s house to ask a few questions and check out her story. Seems the lady disappeared. Nedda’s all we got left.” This was not entirely true. The last resort would be Bitty Smyth, who would lawyer up immediately. And then they would lose their leverage over the woman on the other side of the glass.

  “I know you like Nedda Winter,” said Charles. “Why can’t you do the interrogation instead of Mallory?”

  “No,” said Riker, “I could never do what she’s gonna do.”

  Mallory turned off the machine. “This looks bad for you. I can’t help you if you hold out on me. So we have to clarify your response. Right now, all I know for sure is that the burglar wasn’t your first kill.”

  The detective leaned far back in her chair. No need to consult the machine—Nedda Winter’s face said it all. The woman had just been assaulted with no bruising, no blood loss. All the pain was in her eyes, the mouth half open, hands clenching.

  “So let’s clear up that previous death. Suppose you had an accident, ran somebody down in a car. That would explain the readings I see on this machine. Give me the circumstances, and then I can eliminate the last question.”

  Nedda was flailing, arms raising, wires dangling from her body parts. She looked at her right hand, mechanized now, and she was horrified.

  “All right.” Mallory turned the machine on. “Let’s take an easy question, a throwaway. The other night at the dinner party, I understand your niece gave you an old pack of tarot cards. She said they were yours. Was that true?”

  “You’ve been talking to Charles Butler.” Nedda turned to the mirror. “Is he there now? Bitty said she’d picked him for the neutral observer.”

  Charles turned to Riker. “When were you going to tell me that?”

  “Never. No reason to. If Bitty hadn’t made you a condition of the test, Mallory would’ve asked you to come. The key word here is neutral. You’re Switzerland, Charles.”

  “The hell I am.”

  Next question,” said Mallory, “another easy one. Have you been reading tarot cards for a long time?”

  “Yes. Wait.” Nedda Winter erased her answer, wiping the air with both hands. “I mean . . . no. That was so long ago. I was a child the last time I saw that deck.”

  “A child? Was this before the massacre?”

  Nedda looked up in dumb surprise. Her mouth opened to speak, but she had no words.

  “Did you get your tarot deck before the Winter House Massacre? Yes or no.” Mallory drummed her nails on the table. “What’s the problem, Miss Winter? Too many murders? I’m talking about one massacre, your father, your stepmother, five small children, the nanny and the housekeeper—nine people. Did you get that tarot deck before they—”

  “No!” Nedda lowered her voice to a whisper. “No.”

  Mallory switched off the machine. “All right. You didn’t hold out on that one, but now I’ve got another problem.” She waited a beat, then asked, “Why did you come home again?”

  The woman looked down at her hands, her head slowly moving from side to side.

  The machine was switched on again. “Are you telling me it wasn’t your idea?” She glanced at the readings, though she had no need of them since she already knew the answer. “That’s it, isn’t it? Someone else brought you home. Was it Lionel Winter?” Mallory made a note below a spiking line. “No, not him. Was it Cleo Winter-Smyth? No. I’m getting odd responses here, Nedda. Your brother and sister—they didn’t welcome you back, did they?” The spikes on the scrolling paper were climbing. “Not a very warm reception?”

  Nedda shook her head. No, it was not.

  And now Mallory leaned far forward. “Was it your niece? Did Bitty Smyth bring you home?” The detective’s head dropped closer to the machine as she made the next notation. “Yes, it was Bitty.” Mallory looked up. “And where did she find you?”

  “In a hospice. No, wait. I’m sorry. The nursing home—I think. I wasn’t very clearheaded then. I was moved into a nursing home after a diagnosis of end-stage cancer. The hospice was the last place. I was taken there to die.”

  “But you weren’t dying, and you knew it—even if your doctors didn’t. Nobody comes back from the end stage. So, before the nursing home, you were in a hospital?”

  Nedda nodded her head.

  “But not a regular hospital, not a place where they would’ve cut you open to look for a malignancy. No expensive tests. Maybe a state asylum with a clinic? Nothing else fits, Nedda. A real hospital would’ve gone looking for that cancer. Did you want to die? Was that it? An asylum is junkie heaven—all those drugs. Did you steal medication from other patients? Is that why you had yellow skin and odd results in your blood work?”

  Nedda nodded.

  “How did Bitty Smyth know where to find you?”

  Nedda looked up, genuinely curious, as if she had never considered this problem before. “A private investigator, I think.”

  “No,” said Mallory. “That doesn’t work for me. It’s a country of three hundred million people, six million square miles.” The detective unfolded a dust jacket from one of the pulp books written about the murders at Winter House. It was illustrated with the Red Winter painting. “Do you see any resemblance between you and this little girl? No, even old family photographs wouldn’t have helped to find you. Don’t you wonder what Bitty’s hiding? Why would your niece zero in on the state of Maine? She was working with insider information, knowledge she could only get from her family. You know what this means? Your sister and your brother always knew where you were.”

  Nedda moved her head from side to side.

  “And they let you rot,” said Mallory. “Do they hate you that much? They never wanted you back. Why? Do they believe that you slaughtered their family—parents, sisters, brothers? Do they want you dead?”

  The old woman’s head tilted at an odd angle and her eyes were suddenly vacant, as if the detective had just turned her off with the same switch used to shut down the machine.

  “Tell you what,” said Mallory, rising from the table, “you think about it for a while.” She ripped her long tract of paper free of the polygraph. “I have to review my readings. Maybe you’ll feel better when I get back.”

  Riker was quick to disillusion Charles of the idea that Mallory was showing the woman any kindness. “Welcome to hell.”

  “You have to stop this. She’s poisoning that poor woman against her whole family.”

  “Can’t. It’s a big mistake to get between Mallory and a case. And we’re so close, Charles.”

  “Close to what?”

  “The only good result from a polygraph exam is a confession.”

  “Confession to a mass murder? I’ll never believe that.” Mallory stood in the doorway. “Maybe the killer was breaking in an apprentice. Does that make it a little easier to believe?”
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br />   “A twelve-year-old girl?” Charles shook his head. “I don’t think so.”

  “New York has a criminal class of children,” said Riker. “Adults use them for robberies ’cause the kids are too young to do time. They make the perfect little perps, and sometimes they carry lethal weapons.”

  “And sometimes they kill people,” said Mallory. “Now take that dead man on Nedda’s rug the other night.” The detective was watching the glass window on the other room. “She killed that man in the dark. No hesitation marks. She just did him without even thinking about it. I say she’s had some practice.”

  “She was protecting herself and Bitty.”

  “And then,” said Riker, “there’s history—the one you won’t find in Pinwitty’s book. There were three generations of hitmen with the same signature as the Winter House Massacre—so they had apprentices.”

  “And,” said Mallory, “the apprentices killed the masters. The ice-pick murders stopped when Nedda was a little girl, when she killed Humboldt.”

  Charles’s attention was riveted to Nedda, and she was looking his way by chance. Was she searching the mirror side, seeking him in the looking glass, wanting an ally, needing a friend? “You can’t go on with this. I know what you’re doing. You’re cutting this woman’s legs out from under her. After you strip her of family support, the only one she’ll be able to turn to is you.”

  “She’s safer with me than her relatives,” said Mallory. “The one crime nobody expects me to care about is the death of Willy Roy Boyd. He was a piece of scum, but he was my piece of scum, and that’s the case I’m working here. Somebody hired him to kill a woman that night—probably Nedda. She’s key to everything. So I torture her a little and she lives . . . or I can let her go and watch her die. Pick one.”