“So people don’t think you understand things?”
“I’m a kid. A kid, a kid, a kid,” she said in a singsong voice. “At least that’s what they think.”
“I bet Monk didn’t think that way about you, did he?”
“Monk treated me special.”
“How did he do that?”
“He trusted me.”
“That’s very impressive, an adult trusting someone your age. I bet that made you feel really good.” She shrugged noncommittally. “Do you remember the last time you saw Monk?” She shrugged again. “With a head like yours I bet if you try you’ll be able to do it easily.”
“I like remembering numbers better than anything. Numbers never change. A one is always a one and a ten is always a ten.”
“But numbers do change, don’t they? If you multiply them together, for example? Or add or subtract or divide them. And ten can be ten or ten thousand. And one can be one or one hundred. Right?”
Now Viggie focused squarely on him. “Right,” she said automatically.
“Or is it wrong?” Horatio queried.
“It’s wrong,” Viggie said. “Wrong, wrong, wrong.” She took another bite of her apple.
Horatio sat back. Quite a mynah bird. “You like number puzzles? There was one I learned in college. Would you like to play it? It’s sort of hard.”
Viggie put the apple down and said eagerly, “Not for me it won’t be.”
He said, “Suppose I’m a grandfather and I have a grandson who’s about as many days old as my son is weeks old and my grandson is as many months old as I am in years. My son, grandson and I together are 140 years old. How old am I in years?”
Horatio glanced at Alicia, who was working out the problem on a piece of paper she’d pulled from her purse. When he looked back at Viggie he said, “Would you like some paper and a pencil?”
“What for?”
“To work out the problem.”
“I’ve already worked it out. You’re eighty-four years old, but you don’t look it.”
A minute later Alicia looked up. On her piece of paper was a series of calculations with the number “84” written at the end. She smiled at Horatio and shook her head in a weary fashion. “I’m so clearly not in her league.”
Horatio looked back at Viggie, who sat there expectantly.
“Did you see all the numbers in your head?” he asked and she nodded before resuming her apple eating.
He gave her two large numbers and asked her to multiply them together. She did so in a matter of seconds. He gave her a division problem, which she solved almost instantly. Then he quizzed her with a square root exercise. Viggie answered them all within seconds and then looked bored as Horatio jotted some notes down on a piece of paper.
“I have another problem for you to think about,” he said.
She sat up straight though she still seemed bored.
Not a mynah bird. A well-trained dog, aren’t you, Viggie? “Suppose you had a best friend that you did everything with. Now suppose this best friend moved away and you’d never see her again. How would you feel?”
Viggie blinked once and then again. She started blinking so hard that her face scrunched up with the effort. Horatio felt like he was watching a computer whose circuit board was overheating.
“How would you feel, Viggie?” he asked again.
“There aren’t any numbers in the problem,” she said in a puzzled tone.
“I know, but not all questions have to do with numbers. Would you be happy, sad, ambivalent?”
“What’s ambivalent mean?”
“You don’t really care one way or another.”
“Yes,” she said automatically.
“Or how about sad?”
“Sad, I’d be sad.”
“But not happy?”
Viggie glanced over at Alicia. “There aren’t any numbers in the problem.”
“I know, Viggie, just do the best you can.”
Viggie shrugged and resumed eating her apple.
Horatio wrote some other notes down. “Have you been thinking about the last time you saw your father?”
“Why wouldn’t I be happy?” she asked suddenly.
“You wouldn’t be happy because your friend went away. You do fun things with your friends. So if your best friend went away you couldn’t do fun things anymore,” Horatio explained. “Like I’m sure you did fun things with your father before he went away. You’re sad that your father went away, right? No more fun things with him?”
“Monk went away.”
“That’s right. Were you doing something fun with him the last time you saw him.”
“Lots of fun.”
“What was it?”
“I can’t tell you.”
“Oh, it’s a secret? Secrets are fun. Did you have lots of secrets with Monk?”
Viggie lowered her voice and edged closer to him. “It was all secret.”
“And you can’t tell anybody else, right?”
“Right.”
“But you could if you wanted to.”
“Right, if I wanted to.”
“Do you want to? I bet you do.”
For the first time she showed hesitation with a prompting like that. “I’d have to tell it in a secret way.”
“You mean like in a code? I’m afraid I’m not very good at codes.”
“Monk loved codes. He loved secret codes. It made him bloody. He told me so.”
Horatio glanced questioningly over at Alicia, who looked equally confused.
Horatio said, “It made him bloody, Viggie? What do you mean by that?”
She smiled and said, “What do you mean by that?”
“I’m asking you, what did Monk mean when he said codes made him bloody?”
“That’s right, that’s what he said, codes made him bloody. Codes and blood, that’s what he said.”
Horatio sat back. “Did Monk get bloody the last time he saw you?”
“Yes,” she said happily.
“So he told you a secret?” She nodded again. “Can you tell us what it is?”
Her smile faded and she slowly shook her head.
“Why not? Was it a super-secret?”
Alicia said gently, “Viggie, if you know something it’s very important that you tell us.”
“I don’t think I like him,” Viggie answered, pointing to Horatio. “I have to go now.” She got up and walked out of the room.
Horatio glanced over at Alicia, who seemed to have been holding her breath. “I told you she’d be a hard nut to crack. Did you learn anything useful?”
He said, “I know her better than I did an hour ago. That’s something.”
“Well, the next time you meet her she could be someone else entirely.”
After Alicia left with Viggie, Horatio called Sean and filled him in on the session.
“So is Viggie autistic?” Sean asked.
“Autistism is a broad term,” Horatio replied. “But even so, I don’t think she is.”
“What then?”
“I think in certain ways she’s so much smarter than the rest of us, that she can’t relate. In other ways she’s not very intelligent, or mature, I should say. It might be a perception problem. Our perception problem. We expect her emotional abilities to match her intellect, but she’s still a little girl. And I got some strange vibes from her about her father.”
“Like what?”
“Monk apparently treated her like an adult, at least sometimes. But other times he treated her, well, like a… device.”
“A device?”
“I know I’m not making much sense. I wished I knew something about her mother. Viggie apparently doesn’t believe that she even had one.”
“So where does this all leave us?” Sean asked.
“Not much further, I’m afraid.”
“Well, at least our results are consistent. Meaning nil.”
“So what are you going to do?”
“I’m going to swing
at a pitch and see if I can get on base.”
Chapter 50
Since the woman hadn’t given Sean her phone number he checked the phone book and the Internet with no luck. Sean finally decided to head back to Williamsburg that evening and the same bar where he had seen her the previous night. Michelle wanted to tag along but Sean vetoed that idea as they sat in his room at Alicia’s cottage.
“I’m not sure Valerie would appreciate your presence as much as I would.”
“Sean, think about it, a guy like Ian Whitfield is not going to let his wife screw around on him. He probably has her followed 24/7.”
“Well, then they’ve already seen me with her. And if they spot me a second time they might just get rattled and make a mistake that will trip them up.”
“That’s a little bit of a long shot, isn’t it?”
“We don’t have a lot of other options. The bodies are burnt to a crisp, Ventris is stonewalling us, nobody at Babbage Town knows anything and the only person who might be able to help us, Viggie, doesn’t speak a language any of us can understand.”
“I thought Horatio was meeting with her.”
“He did.” Sean quickly recounted what Horatio had reported to him about his session with Viggie.
“So apparently Monk did tell his daughter something, but it’s in code.”
“If she’s to be believed. Codes and blood. What’s that supposed to mean?”
Michelle shrugged. “No clue.”
“That’s the thing about this case. There are a few clues but they keep disappearing. And there don’t appear to be any to take their place.”
“Speaking of, any word back from the pit bull in a skirt?”
Sean pulled a piece of paper out of his pocket. “Monk traveled to England.
Joan managed to track down his itinerary. He visited several places. London, Cambridge, Manchester and a place called Wilmslow in Cheshire. And one other place that makes the other locations make sense.”
“Which was?” she prompted.
“Bletchley Park,” he replied. “It’s where his relative Alan Turing worked during World War II and, according to Champ Pollion, saved the world.”
“And the connection to the other places?”
“Except for three years at Princeton, they basically track Alan Turing’s life. He was born in Paddington in London, went to college at Cambridge, Ph.D. at Princeton in the U.S., back to Cambridge, on to Bletchley Park, then to Manchester University after the war, and died by his own hand in Wilmslow, Cheshire, in 1954.”
“So the guy was related to Monk and he decided to take a little stroll down history lane,” Michelle said. “Or it could be more than that.”
“Possibly.”
“So while you’re dallying with a married woman, what do you want me to do?”
“Tonight you have Viggie duty, but before that Horatio wants to talk to you. And if you can squeeze it in, it would great if you could look around for a secret room in the mansion.”
“And what if I don’t want to talk to Horatio?”
“I’m not forcing you to do anything. But he sincerely wants to help you.”
“You mean by talking behind my back to my family and snooping into my past?”
“Here’s the address of the place where he’s staying.”
“And what will you be doing in the meantime?”
“Getting ready for my date.”
She scowled. “You really piss me off sometimes.”
“Really? I wouldn’t know how that feels.”
Chapter 51
Michelle spent the next hour going through the mansion’s main floor as methodically and yet unobtrusively as possible. She made rounds through the billiards room, the vast library, a smoking room, gun room with ancient rifles and shotguns kept behind iron grille doors, a parlor, and a trophy room with the requisite animal heads on the walls. Yet nowhere did she see any indication of a room that wasn’t supposed to be there. Tired of dark worm-eaten paneling, thick Persian rugs underfoot, the musty smell of another century grabbing at her twenty-first-century edges, and weary of making no progress she went outside to ponder her options.
It was too early to get Viggie, and yet it took another half-hour of fits and starts before Michelle climbed in her truck and drove to see Horatio.
“I’m doing this only for Sean,” she said as they sat down in the same room where Horatio had met with Viggie earlier.
“I’m just glad you’re here, whatever your motivation. You really left an impression on the psych facility, I can tell you that. You caught a criminal and literally saved that woman’s life. That has to make you feel good.”
“Yeah, I was feeling really good until Sean said you wanted to talk to me.”
“I’m just trying to do my job any way I can.”
“Look, let’s cut to the chase. I attended my little sessions, did my little exercises, answered your insulting questions, spilled my soul, caught a drug dealer and, like you said, saved a woman’s life. I think we can conclude that I’m cured, so we can just stop spending Sean’s money, okay? Now I’m going to go back to doing my job. And why don’t you go back to whatever it is you do, I guess I’ve never really been clear on that.” She got up.
The bark of his voice startled her. “You’re not cured. You’re not even close to being cured. You’re totally and completely fucked up, lady. Things will continue to spiral down and the day will come when you’re doing your job that you totally whack out and get yourself and maybe Sean killed. Now if you’re cool with that, keep on walking, climb in that Dumpster you call a ride and drive off into the sunsets of a gathering hell. But don’t sit here and think that you’re cured, because that’s the biggest load of crap I’ve ever heard. People who want to get better, they work at it. They don’t lie to themselves and everyone else. They don’t sit on their ass and sink deeper into a pathetic existence while denying anything’s wrong at all. They have balls not bullshit. And I’m pretty much fed up with yours.”
Michelle felt a blinding fury gathering inside her. Her fists clenched, her body tensed to strike.
He calmly continued. “See how much anger you have inside your gut right now? You see how quick it is to build, Mick? Just because of a few words I said. True words by the way, but still just words. That’s called losing your self-control. You want to kill me, right? I know you do. I can see it in every molecule. Same way you wanted to kill that poor slob back at the bar. The difference is at the bar you had to get wasted first before the rage became so bad you just had to release it on another human being. This time you’re stone-cold sober and that rage is taking control of you and makes you want to knock my head off. That’s what I meant by things spiraling down. What next? Will the rage be triggered by the way some stranger looks at you on the street? Or bumps into you on the subway? Or maybe just the way someone smells? It all comes down to that inner rage, Michelle. And you have to deal with yours right now.”
“And if I don’t?” she said hollowly.
“You lose. And the demons win. It’s your choice.”
Slowly, by almost imperceptible degrees of movement, Michelle sat back down.
Horatio watched her steadily. Her gaze remained on the floor while a muscle tremor worked its way down her neck.
When she spoke, her voice shook. “I don’t know what you want from me.”
“I could be flippant and say the truth, but that’s not really how the mind works. I want to talk, Michelle, that’s all. I want to ask some questions, listen to your answers, but mostly I just want to talk to you. About you. That’s all. You think you’re up to that?”
A full minute went by as she white-knuckled the arms of her chair. “Okay,” she finally said in a voice so small he could barely hear.
“I went to the home you lived in when you were six. Sean told you that.”
“Yes.”
“I met a woman named Hazel Rose. Do you remember her?”
Michelle nodded.
“Hazel certai
nly remembers you. She told me to tell you that she’s very proud of you.” Horatio waited a few moments but Michelle gave no reaction to this news. “Hazel said you used to come over to her house for tea parties with some of the other neighborhood kids. Do you remember those parties?”
“No.”
Horatio continued to watch her closely. There was no manual on how to do this. Essentially Horatio read the body cues of the patient and hoped those reads were right.
“Hazel told me about this beautiful rose hedge you had.”
As soon as he said it, Michelle’s entire body went lax, as though someone had pulled the plug on her heart. At first he thought she was going to faint. Then she rallied and sat up straighter in the chair.
“My father planted that rose hedge,” she said in an automatic tone.
“Right. An anniversary present. But someone cut it down.”
“Some kids, mad at my dad.”
“That’s one theory.”
She stiffened again, but didn’t look at him.
“Hazel noticed a change in you too back then. Can you remember why?”
“I was six, how am I supposed to know?”
“Well, you remembered the rose hedge. And you remembered that your father planted it and that someone cut it down.”
She snapped, “Maybe I brutally murdered someone when I was six and I’m repressing it. Would that satisfy your curiosity?”
“Are we going back to wisecracks already? I was hoping you’d hold off for at least ten minutes based on my big, pull-no-punches speech. I don’t drag that one out very often.”
Now she looked at him and her gaze was curious, hungry. “So why’d you use it on me?”
“Because I see you slipping away, Michelle,” he said quietly. “And I don’t want you to reach the point of no return.”
“Dammit, I’m here, Horatio, I’m working, thinking, helping Sean and a little girl who needs someone right now. How bad can I be? Tell me, how bad can I be?”
“That’s a question only you can answer.”
For a moment Horatio thought he could see her eyes moisten, and then they became hard and dry. “I know you’re trying to help me. I know Sean is too. I’ve got issues, I know that too. And I’m trying to deal with them. I’m trying to stay productive.”
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