And not only psychiatrists!
She stared at the phone on her desk, listening to the last call again in her head, word for word.
“She went to see Babs St. Clair.”
Tara hadn’t been able to believe what she was hearing. What insanity was that? Audrey had no connection to the St. Clair woman. Tara had never cared for the coincidence that had led Babs St. Clair to choose to live so close to Audrey. But the likelihood of the two of them ever meeting seemed remote and even if they did, what harm could it cause? But that had been before Babs started blurting out information on the Timothy Merrill case. That revelation had been a stunner. There was no way for Babs to know anything about the case. No way.
“Why?”
“I don’t know.”
“What did she do after?”
“Her husband drove her home.”
“Keep doing as I told you.” She held a ballpoint pen close to the receiver and clicked it once. “Portal,” she said.
The phone had gone dead.
Tara strode across the hallway to the elevator. The bright lights inside forced her to squint, but she found the button without looking, just as Adler leapt in beside her. The lift dropped precipitously and came to a sudden stop, but rather than exiting through the open doors, she turned and reached beneath the rectangular metal bar that ran around the perimeter of the elevator at waist height. With a barely audible click, the rear wall swung outward, revealing a dank, brick-lined corridor with missing floor tiles.
The air was thick with mildew and disinfectant and something else, something almost nauseating. The soft whoosh of the door closing behind her harmonized with the circulation system struggling valiantly overhead. The dog’s panting breath sounded like a metronome as he loped along beside Tara.
She turned down a dark side corridor and stopped in front of a white metal door. Slipping a key from a thin gold chain around her neck, she opened the door and stood for a moment, preparing herself. The smell that the corridor had only hinted at, hit her full in the face. She stepped into the laboratory and the door hissed closed behind her.
No matter how high the ventilators were turned on, no matter how often she cleaned her laboratory, the odor of death would not leave it. The noxious smell of feces, urine, blood, vomit, disinfectants, and formaldehyde saturated the floor, walls, and ceiling.
She knew that she was overly sensitized to it, when she should have been completely indifferent after all these years. It was because she was such a sensitive person that she had taken to her chosen field to begin with. Since childhood, Tara had been drawn to people with problems. She was a fixer by nature. And the one thing that she could not stand was other people telling her how to do things. She knew how things had been done in the past. Freud and Jung and all the others. She had named her dog Adler because she thought the Doberman exhibited more sense than the man.
Against one wall of the white, tiled room, a small boy, clad in a set of Barney boxer shorts, sat strapped tightly into a wheelchair. His head was encased in a metal helmet with red and gold electrical wires attached in a polka-dot pattern upon it. Bright adjustable lights circled him. The walls were hidden behind glass cabinets filled with bottles and jars, and strange electronic equipment in green and blue and gray stood around like a silent computerized audience.
Tara stood beside the chair and stared down into what would have been the child’s face, willing him to focus on her. When she felt nothing, she reached out and twisted one of the myriad dials attached to the face of the machine. Voltage raced through bright electrical wires taped to the boy’s shaved head, and the smell of ozone and singed flesh was added to the ghastly stench. Tara calmly watched readouts on monitors placed strategically over the boy.
She had never wanted to hurt anyone. But she could when she had to. This was about her life’s work. About the development of mankind. And she wasn’t going to make any more mistakes.
From now on, the doors she closed would stay closed.
THE TERROR
All the things one has forgotten scream
for help in dreams.
—Elias Canetti,
The Human Province
33
COODER SCRUBBED THE DENTED SOUP POT, ignoring the nickel-sized pieces of Teflon that floated away into the big old slate sink, listening to a Grateful Dead song in his head, and enjoying the vibration of the steel wool in his hands. Cooder lived a frugal life, but to him it seemed full enough.
Gas was delivered monthly so his stove worked, and state checks and food stamps covered his basic needs. Since he wasn’t particular about his clothes, he wore them for years. The phone and power had long since been turned off, but he kept a five-gallon can of kerosene beside his chair, to refill his three oil lamps, and they gave him all the light he needed. His water was gravity-fed from a spring in the hill out back, but it only came in cold. That was all right with Cooder. A sponge bath or a good splash now and then in the summer was all he needed, and besides, he got rained on enough on his endless walks.
The noonday sun bounced off the windshield of the Chevy half-buried in the backyard, splintering rainbow patterns across the kitchen window. Normally he would have been caught in the colors like a deer in a headlight, but ever since Virgil’s visit, Cooder had been tickling at something hard and crusty in the dusty back side of his brain.
The pot clanged into the bottom of the wide stone trough and Cooder dropped into his sitter, a recliner so ancient it looked as though it had been reclaimed not once but twice from a Dumpster. He propped his feet on an apple crate and crossed both hands on his stomach. Then he closed his eyes and tried to remember what it was that had been gnawing at him.
I seen bad things, Virg.
Now why had he said that? What was he talking about? It was as though he had opened his mouth and a stranger’s voice had spit out. Only it wasn’t a stranger, it was his voice and his words and he knew right off, without being told, that they were true and he had wanted to say them. But as soon as Virgil had asked him what he was talking about, the thought had raced out of his sieve of a head.
He had seen bad things. He dreamed about them sometimes, and sometimes the pills didn’t get rid of all of them the next day. They drifted through his mind like phantoms, turning his wake-up time into a nightmare. It was then that he went walking. Only outside, with the wind in his face and the open sky overhead and his feet nick-nick-nicking along on hard asphalt, could he get any relief.
He had awakened in the night with a flash so bright in his head that he was unable to breathe. Pain struck from all directions. Pain he’d felt before. He’d struggled to his feet, leaning against the wall with his fingernails digging into the decaying plaster, the sound of it falling to the floor like sand in an hourglass, dribbling away the minutes of his life. He hadn’t been able to get back to sleep in bed, finally curling up in his sitter and drifting off again just before dawn.
He’d been thinking about the flash all through his oatmeal. All through his coffee. All through the ritual of washing dishes. He thought about it now in the semi-comfort of his recliner. He couldn’t figure out what it meant. Where it had come from. But he knew he should know what it was. He should remember what had caused it. Whenever he was just about sure he had something, a distorted image would shimmer across his mind and then melt into something completely different. Something that made no sense at all.
He recalled Virgil’s visit and he wondered if somehow the pain and the weird flashes and Virgil had anything to do with one another. Virgil was looking for a little boy. Did Virgil think he might have seen the kid on one of his walks? He had seen children. In fact, he thought he might have seen a lot of children. But which one was Virgil looking for?
He slammed his hands together and the slap echoed through the tiny house. With unusual vigor, he fumbled to his feet and stomped out the back door, not pausing on the stoop. When he reached the road out front, he was so intent on his walk that he was very nearly run down by a speedin
g semi. The roar of the air horn blasted away through the trees, but that was only a momentary distraction to Cooder.
Somewhere along his route, on one of his countless walks, something had gotten into his head. Something he had had to tell Virgil. But the thought had raced out of his mouth with the sound, and if he ever wanted to recapture it, then the only way that he could think of was to go and find it. The sun warmed his back and the wind was in his face.
Somewhere ahead, there were bad things to see.
34
THE DINER WAS DESERTED late on Saturday morning, and Mac and Virgil had a booth near the windows. Virgil had politely made it clear to the waitress that they wouldn’t be needing anything more.
“Audrey Bock’s maiden name was Remont,” said Virgil. “Her mother’s name was Martha Remont. She filed charges against Tara for trespassing in California before Tara took Audrey from her.”
Mac’s coffee mug seemed too big for him and he gripped it in both hands. “Quite a family.”
“I have no information at all on Audrey’s father. I have a hunch he died before Audrey knew him, but it’s just a hunch.” Virgil read from a spiral notepad on the table. “I need more info on Martha.”
“You want me to look for the mother?”
Virgil shrugged. “If you can find her. Looks like she disappeared completely. Couldn’t find hide or hair of her after Audrey begins to show up on her aunt’s tax returns.”
“How did you get Tara’s tax returns?” said Mac, frowning.
Virgil grinned. “You’re not the only one with friends.”
“You’re going out on a limb, Virg. What are you trying to prove?”
“I want to know what’s going on with Audrey Bock.”
Mac shook his head. “What’s going on? Virg, the woman lost her only child.”
“I think she had a lot of problems before that. Her husband called me this morning. He thinks they have a Peeping Tom at their house, but Audrey’s convinced it’s their next-door neighbor and that her son is locked up in his basement.”
“Did you check it out?”
“Yeah. There’s a trail behind the house real enough. But I couldn’t find any tracks on it other than the husband’s, and Merle Coonts was out of town on a trucking run the night it happened.”
Standing in that notch in the hills, Virgil and Richard had stared at the back of Merle Coonts’s house in silence until Richard spoke.
“Why would he come over here and peek in our windows?” he said, never taking his eyes off of the farm.
Virgil frowned. “We don’t know that he did, Mister Bock.”
Richard shook his head. “You saw the trail. I wasn’t mistaken about the prints.”
“You said they were small. Audrey says it was a woman at the window. Merle Coonts lives alone and if you’d ever seen his feet, you’d know they aren’t small.”
Richard sighed loudly. “I know it doesn’t make any sense. But Audrey’s so sure.”
“I’ll talk to Merle Coonts again,” said Virgil, staring back down the trail, with Richard close behind. “Close your drapes tonight and lock your windows and doors.”
“You’ll let me know what you find out?”
“Of course.”
But Merle was just coming back from another crosscountry trip, and once again his logs held up. When Virgil mentioned the trail through the alders, he just shook his head and denied any knowledge of it.
Virgil stared at Mac now, hoping for a break. “What about you? Haven’t found out anything for me?”
Mac glanced out the window. “Sorry. I’ve been really busy on another case. Sounds like you’re finding out plenty all by your lonesome.” Mac turned back. “What have you got on the mother?”
“A kid in California ran her address through his computer and it gave me names and phone numbers up and down the block. I called. But in California, everybody moves every couple of years. There’s no one left that lived there eighteen years ago. So that was a dead end.”
“Who else did you talk to?”
“I spoke to Motor Vehicles. Martha Remont hasn’t had a license there since Audrey split. I also called the county registrar. She sold the house that year too. It’s like she disappeared off the face of the earth. No tax returns. No license in another state.”
“Could have been a Jane Doe.”
“Maybe. Or maybe she just wanted to disappear.”
“That takes a little expertise. Do you think Martha Remont had it?”
“I have no way of knowing what she had. Don’t even know what she did for a living, if she worked.”
“Did you get any information on Tara’s background?”
Virgil shook his head. “She’s retired. Had a respectable career. Lives alone near Augusta.”
“That all?”
“She’s fifty-two. Wrote a couple of best-selling books on self-hypnosis.”
Mac made a face. “Hypnosis?”
“Yeah. Kinda do-it-yourself home therapy. Forget the bad things. Get on with your life.”
Virgil set his cup on the table and reached into his vest pocket for another crumpled sheet of paper. “Graduated top of her class from Columbia in the late sixties. Another degree from Stanford. Did independent research work under Timothy Leary, for God’s sake. She also worked with James Reins. Know the name?”
“Should I?”
“No. Unless you’re into ESP and such. Reins worked for the government for a while on a project to spy on the Soviets using something called long-distance viewing.”
“The U.S. government paid for that?”
“I guess they paid for a lot of goofy stuff during the Cold War. She worked at several institutions over the years on grants. I can’t find anyone who knows anymore detail than that, regarding what the grants were for or what she was trying to accomplish. In the early eighties her funding was pulled and evidently enough of her colleagues disagreed with her methods strongly enough to have her license to practice revoked. I got the idea that even the government guys started to feel antsy about the way she was conducting her research. But by that time it didn’t matter, since she had two best-selling books and could retire in luxury to her secluded home.”
“Virgil,” said Mac, leaning across the table, “do you suspect Tara Beals?”
Virgil frowned. “No.”
“Ah… You suspect the kid’s mother.”
“I didn’t say that.”
“You’ve already asked me to look into Audrey Bock’s past, and you’re only investigating women, Virg. How many other women have I mentioned? You don’t think the grandmother suddenly appeared out of nowhere and kidnapped her own grandson?”
“According to Audrey, her mother was crazy.”
“Do you have any evidence linking the old lady to the disappearance of her grandson?”
“No. Like I say, I’m not even sure she’s alive.”
“Just a gut feeling?”
“Not even that.”
“Then what?”
“I don’t have anything else!”
“Jesus, Virg. You need to take some time off.”
“That’s the last thing I need.”
“Well, I’m sorry I couldn’t be more help. I’ll see if I can dig up anything on Martha Remont as soon as I get a chance.”
Virgil shrugged, studying him. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah,” said Mac. “I’m okay. Why wouldn’t I be?”
“No reason. You just seem distracted lately.”
Mac sighed. “I’m thinking about getting out of here for a while.”
“Where you going?”
“I don’t care. I just need a break.”
“Then you ought to take one.” Virgil stared out the window for a moment and both men held on to the silence. When Virgil spoke again, he turned to face Mac. “I like bouncing stuff off you. If I told Birch or anyone else some of the stuff I’m thinking… you know.”
“They’d think you were obsessing again.”
“At the l
east,” said Virgil, smiling.
“Virg, have you ever considered the possibility that maybe you are?”
“There’s something strange going on in this county, and I’m going to find out what it is.”
“Something like what?” said Mac, frowning.
“For one thing, Tara Beals is covering something up about Audrey.”
“You spoke to Tara?”
Virgil nodded. “She wouldn’t tell me anything about Audrey’s past. That’s why all the digging.”
“Well, she wouldn’t, would she? I mean, she was the woman’s doctor.”
“That’s what she said.”
“Then maybe you ought to leave that end of it alone.”
“These aren’t dead cases. There’s something going on,” said Virgil. “I can feel it in my bones.”
“You’re starting to sound a little paranoid, Virg. Or are you psychic?”
Virgil shook his head. “No. But I’m starting to listen to one.”
Mac’s frown was worse than Virgil had expected.
35
RICHARD CHECKED THEM IN at Doctor Cates’s front desk at two o’clock Monday afternoon. Right on time. Audrey sat on a love seat beneath a huge painting done all in shades of blue, wondering again if Cates would really be able to help her, and if she was prepared for the help he might offer.
Richard sat down beside her. “Are you sure you want to do this? You might not be able to separate the bad from the good.”
She nodded. “I know this is the right thing. I thought you wanted me to do this.”
He frowned. “I want you to be better.”
“You don’t think Doctor Cates can make me better?”
He tried a smile. “Sure. I’m just nervous, I guess.”
“Me too.”
Doctor Cates’s office door opened and a pretty brunette woman of about thirty emerged with Cates behind her. She was smiling with tears in her eyes. Audrey felt trepidation building, but when Cates noticed her and opened the door wider, she strode through it without glancing back at Richard.
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