A Desperate Silence (Dr. Sylvia Strange Book 3) (21 page)

     
The locked ward was different—the lights were dimmer and the tile was a soothing shade of pastel blue. Sylvia slowed, then stopped to glance through the window of Room 21. It was empty, and she motioned Noelle to follow once more. As they walked, Sylvia said, "I wanted Serena to participate in supervised activities. She's probably with Betsy, who's an intern and really good with kids."

     
They continued down the hall through another locked door. This new area consisted of offices and treatment rooms. Just beyond a small staff room that smelled of coffee, Sylvia ushered Noelle Harding into a cramped office. It contained a folding chair and a narrow desk. A notebook lay on the desk, directly in front of what appeared to be a wide mirror. Sylvia pushed aside the notebook, motioning for Noelle to step forward.

     
The mirror was actually an observation window. On the other side of the glass, inside a room that functioned as a play-therapy area, a young woman was seated at a low table. Just beyond the woman's easy reach, Serena was on the floor, hunched over scattered toys. The child seemed to be all knees and elbows, and her face was hidden beneath her mane of ebony hair, which had fallen loose from a ponytail.

     
Noelle leaned forward attentively, her composure worn like her perfectly tailored suit. "She's holding herself in . . . she seems stiff." She glanced worriedly at Sylvia, then returned her gaze to the scene beyond the window. "She's not autistic—"

     
"You're right, she's not." Sylvia was reminded that Noelle Harding, as founder of the Rescue Fund, would have seen hundreds of children with diverse problems, physical as well as psychological. This time, though, she was watching a girl who might be family—a niece who had been presumed dead for the last ten years.

     
Harding asked, "You mentioned that the hospital ran a battery of tests on her after the accident. Did they rule out all organic problems?"

     
"As far as we can tell, none of this is organically based. We know she's experienced trauma . . . and I believe she also exhibits aspects of a psychological disorder. It would affect her social skills, her ability to communicate with strangers." Sylvia shifted her gaze to Noelle.

     
"It's some sort of communication disorder? Give me a name."

     
Sylvia pushed a loose strand of hair from her cheek, then adjusted her eyeglasses. With her hair clipped back and the tortoiseshell rims, she resembled a young, very serious professor. She frowned, and spoke with obvious reluctance. "Selective mutism; it's rare—"

     
"How selective?"

     
"I can give you diagnostic criteria—failure to speak in specific social settings despite a level of competence with the spoken language, despite normal or above-normal cognitive skills." Sylvia removed her glasses and rubbed her nose gently. "But I don't think it's wise to slap a label—"

     
Noelle interrupted. "All I want is information."

     
"Then we want the same thing. And at the moment, I have very little information about this child. From observation, I believe selective mutism is a probable factor, but there are others that may be even more relevant."

     
Sylvia watched the other woman closely. "Serena said one word when she saw the photograph of your brother."

     
The weight of Noelle Harding's body pressed against the desk. "I was told she identified Cash, but I had no idea she spoke—"

     
"She said, 'Dada.'
Da
is one of the first sounds preverbal children form." She didn't add that she believed Serena had spoken previously . . . two nights earlier, while keeping vigil at the house.

     
Sylvia hesitated just an instant, then she touched the other woman's arm reassuringly. "Are you all right?"

     
Noelle didn't answer. Instead, the soft voice of the intern was audible through glass. It had been Sylvia's idea to continue working with the story of the Six Swans; Betsy was reading from
Grimms' Fairy Tales
. She was in the middle of the story.

      
After watching her six brothers turn into swans, the young girl ventured deep into the forest where she found the large white birds in a rough wooden hut. The swans shook off their feathers, and for a very brief time, they regained their human form. The boys told their little sister that she could save them only by remaining mute—without giving voice to words or laughter—for six years. And that she would also be obliged to make six tiny shirts of wildflowers, one for each brother. "That would be much too difficult for a little girl like you." And then the girl's brothers turned back into swans once more and flew away. But the girl vowed she would free her brothers; she would remain silent for six years, and she would sew six tiny shirts of wildflowers. And without a word she climbed up into a tall tree deep in the forest, and she began to sew
.

      
Much later, the king of that particular forest was hunting, and his huntsmen came upon the girl perched up in the tree. When they pestered her with questions, she tried to make them go away; she threw down her necklace, her belt, her stockings, everything but her dress. They would not be dissuaded; they climbed the tree and took her back to the king
.

      
The king asked many questions. "Who are you? Why were you sitting so high up in a tree? Why won't you answer me?" He talked to her in different languages, hoping she would understand—but she refused to speak
.

      
The king fell in love with the girl, and he took her to his castle, and he married
—

     
"Her lips are moving! She's talking!''

     
Sylvia looked through the glass. Noelle was right, Serena's lips were moving—quickly, as if she were whispering urgently into some invisible ear. Was she following the story? Whatever she said was lost; her words—if indeed they were words—were inaudible.

     
Abruptly, Serena grabbed the picture book from the young woman's hand and flung it at the mirror. When the book thudded off the glass, Noelle Harding flinched and stepped back.

     
"She saw me." Noelle paused, then shook her head rapidly. "No—of course not . . . what's wrong with me? I know she can't see anything through the mirror."

     
Sylvia studied Noelle, but she couldn't read her expression. She was aware of the anxious ache in her own stomach, and the question looping through her mind—was the child related to Cash Wheeler? She could only imagine that Noelle was feeling the same anxiety, heightened even, by relationship and circumstance.

     
At that moment, Serena turned toward the observation glass. Her hair fell away from her heart-shaped face, and her features were plainly visible—wide mouth, broad nose, small chin. The charcoal-dark eyes opened wide as her gaze settled on the mirror. She stared as if she knew other eyes were watching. Not an eyelash flickered as she regarded them stonily. Then she turned away.

     
Noelle's shoulders slumped, and her chest barely moved beneath the pale silk fabric of her suit. Was her reaction caused by disappointment? Did Serena look like millions of other lost children in Juárez? Noelle walked quickly from the room. Uneasily Sylvia followed.

     
At the entrance to the hospital, Noelle thrust open the doors and strode outside. Sylvia called to her. When Noelle turned, her blue eyes glistened. The harsh sunlight bleached the warmth from her hair, turned it from blond to bone-white; her voice was low and taut as strung wire. "She doesn't look like Elena."

     
Sylvia felt her body contract with barely suppressed disappointment. Was the woman saying
yes
or
no
?

     
But Noelle spoke again. "She
is
Elena. She's my brother's little girl."

B
Y THE TIME
Matt drove off the prison grounds, he had spent three hours dealing with business related to Cash Wheeler. His meetings with Rosie Sanchez had taken up most of two hours; he had been shut up with Wheeler inside a twelve-by-twelve space for another forty-five minutes; then Jim Teague, Wheeler's irritatingly flamboyant lawyer, had waylaid him outside North Facility.

     
As Matt guided the Caprice along Highway 14, he thought about his own response to the death row inmate. There were some sins the investigator believed pardonable—killing a child wasn't one of them. It had been more than two decades since Matt's wife and young son had died in a car crash. He still felt the loss—most days the pain was a faint ache. Had Cash Wheeler murdered his infant daughter? It seemed believable given the information Rosie had supplied via one of her correctional officers. Sure, some inmates bragged idly about crimes they didn't commit—these guys were cons, they lied about what they'd had for breakfast. Matt didn't believe Cash Wheeler was the "idle type."

     
But he might lie for other reasons—out of bitterness, as a defense against prison predators, to protect someone else.

     
Matt braked to avoid tailgaiting a slow driver on the rural road. It had been a very long day; prison always wore at him. He'd promised to catch up with Sylvia by late afternoon, but he had to stop by his office on the way. He followed Highway 14 the few miles to Cerrillos Road, turning off at the Department of Public Safety.

     
The main building was almost deserted. His office, part of his section's new addition, was pleasant enough. And, to his liking, it was sparsely furnished: a government-issue desk, his swivel chair, a hard metal chair for visitors—facing the window and bright southeastern sun—two filing cabinets, and a bookcase that supported a VCR and monitor.

     
He had bought a Coke from the vending machine, and he opened the can at his desk. Feet up, Rolodex at his fingertips, he placed a phone call to the Office of the Medical Investigator in Albuquerque; during the brief conversation he scratched notes with a fountain pen on a pad of graph paper. After he hung up, he called the El Paso Information Center.

     
Dale Pitkin was working on Sunday. Matt wasn't surprised. Pitkin had worked Sundays for the last dozen years; he'd worked them up in Santa Fe when he was with the governor's detail, and he worked them at E.P.I.C. in Texas. He'd always said it gave him two weekdays off when "a man can hunt and fish and spelunker without a goddamn crowd."

     
Now he answered his phone with his familiar drawl. "Pitkin here."

     
"Hey, Dale." The toes of Matt's cowboy boots pointed to ten past twelve. "Did you catch your limit last week?"

     
"Nope. Went caving. Just me, the wife, and the blind scorpions."

     
"Sounds kinky." The two men spent a few minutes catching up long-distance. Matt's segue to business was a statement. "We've got a homicide: Hispanic male, forty-five to fifty—"

     
"Good, you can keep him."

     
"We don't want him." Matt crumpled his empty Coke can accordion-style. "The postmortem's tomorrow—at this point, no match on the prints—but we do have a handmade leather belt, personalized: P-A-C-O. Got a silver buckle." Matt tossed the can at a trash receptacle by the door. The aluminum clattered as it hit home. "I've seen all kinds of silver work . . . but I've never seen this. Hammered silver, real ornate, maybe some kind of Indian, maybe Aztec motif?"

     
Pitkin paused on the line for a moment. Matt imagined the man was cracking his knuckles, a chronic nervous habit. Dale's voice was low, teasing. "You say
Paco
? Hell, I'll be frank." He chuckled to himself while Matt rolled his eyes. In English, Paco translated to Frank.

     
Dryly, Pitkin continued. "Besides the fact he's Hispanic like five billion other guys—one billion of them named Paco—why do you think he's one of ours?"

     
"He's connected to a vehicle, and your computer tracked the El Paso license plates to a business: Hat-Trick. A drop box."

     
"What do they sell, bunny rabbits?" Pitkin's throaty laugh was beginning to irritate. "Describe that buckle again."

     
Matt gazed at the Polaroid on his desk. "The grade of silver is excellent. The technique is cutout, overlay. The metal is beaten, pounded, but delicately shaped . . . the design is distinctive . . . the clasp-hinge system is unique."

     
"What you need is an expert on silversmithing." Pitkin let a beat go by. "Anything else?"

     
"Yeah. My guess is Taxco. That's what, a hundred miles southwest of Mexico City?" Matt tapped the edge of the Polaroid against the phone. "You know there was a silversmith from Santa Fe—name of Parsons or Larson—he went to Taxco in the 1950s, taught the locals his designs. He had a big influence on the area's silver work."

     
"What happened to the guy?"

     
"He died, long time ago. But Taxco is famous. A couple of families have an international reputation. The designs are flavored with Indian, Aztec, Mexican motifs."

     
"What are you thinking?"

     
"The area down there—it's not far from Guadalajara."

     
"And Guadalajara's an infamous drug nest filled with nefarious criminals?" Pitkin cleared his throat. "The only Paco I know who might be missing . . . he's the
primo
of Amado Fortuna. You eat tuna, don't you, Matt?"

     
Matt sat up in his swivel chair, and his boots hit the floor. "You eat
shit
, Dale."

     
Pitkin snorted and let his voice ride sing-song. "The Holy Grail, Noah's Ark, the Tuna Diaries. You've heard of the Tuna Diaries, haven't you,
hombre
?"