Regina's Song (26 page)

I’d just reached that huddled figure when one of the spotlights on a police car came probing through the fog. I dropped to the ground near the body to stay out of sight.

When I raised my head, I found myself looking directly at Fergusson’s face. That spotlight was setting the fog aglow, so I could see a lot more than I really wanted to see. The look of stark terror on the dead man’s face will probably stay etched on my memory for the rest of my life. He’d obviously recognized the face of a girl he’d murdered almost three years ago.

I retched and scrambled back, almost like a crab trying to escape. Then I rolled over and came up running in a low crouch until I got to the water’s edge.

Things were starting to get a little intense. I had to stay ahead of the cops, but Renata wasn’t swimming very fast. She probably wasn’t even thinking at this point. All she seemed to be doing was trying to stay ahead of the flashlights. I was trying to do the same thing, but it was a little more complicated for me, because I was trying to keep track of her as well.

Then I heard a shout from somewhere behind me. I looked back and saw all the flashlights converging on the place I’d just left. One of the cops had obviously found Fergusson—or what was left of him. That
might
give me a little more time.
I’d
known from the beginning what was probably going to happen. The cops had just been investigating some strange sounds. The discovery of Fergusson’s body would distract them. It’d take them a little while to realize that they were almost right on top of Joan the Ripper. The first two cops had heard Renata singing, but they hadn’t realized exactly what that meant.

The splashing sounds out in the lake were growing fainter. Renata seemed to be swimming out farther away from shore. Things weren’t going too well. She
could
drown out there. I was sure she’d been pretty well hyped-up while she was cutting Fergusson to pieces, and the water was probably colder than hell. Once that all caught up with her, she
might
stop swimming and sink.

The lakeshore began to curve off toward the left, and the lights from the street began to recede into the fog. The howling of the wolves in the zoo seemed closer now, and it suddenly dawned on me that I’d left the strip-park between Green Lake Way and the water, and moved into Woodland Park itself.

I looked back again. The flashlights were still clustered together in the same place. That gave me a little breathing room.

I hadn’t heard any splashing out in the fog for quite some time, and
that
didn’t make me feel very good.

Then I saw something that seemed to explain it. As luck had it, there was a narrow sand beach at the edge of the lake, and a line of footprints came out of the water and ran up into the grass of Woodland Park.

It had to be Renata. You won’t find
too
many people swimming around in Green Lake after midnight in February.

That freezing fog that I’d been cursing all week suddenly seemed like a gift from God. Where it had settled on the grass, it’d frozen, laying a pale white veil on that well-manicured lawn. And running across that frosty grass was the track Renata had left when she’d emerged from the lake.

Tracking her was easy now, but it’d be just as easy for the cops—assuming that they didn’t all stay bunched up around the body. I hurried after her, cutting back and forth across the trail she had laid down in the frozen grass, zigzagging to lay down false trails leading off in several different directions. I hoped that would slow them down, in the event that one of them was sharp enough to realize that Fergusson’s murderer was probably still in the general vicinity. If they started to fan out for a general search, they’d end up obliterating even more tracks by accident than I was trying to do on purpose.

I was positive that Renata was going to have to find shelter, and soon. It was freezing, and she was soaking wet after her swim. Plus, she hadn’t been wearing very much to begin with. If she didn’t find someplace in out of the weather fairly soon, hypothermia would set in, and that was only about one step away from pneumonia.

The trail she’d laid down through the park ran due south. I quit zigzagging and started to run. I had to get her in sight before she reached Fiftieth Street. Once she hit cement, she wouldn’t be leaving a trail anymore.

Then I saw her. Thank God she’d been forced to leave that black raincoat behind. She was hiding behind a large tree right at the edge of the park, obviously waiting for a break in the traffic on Fiftieth Street. Even if her brains were scrambled, she was still sharp enough to stay out of sight until she’d put more distance between her and what was left of Fergusson.

I hunkered down behind a large bush and watched her tensely. The fog pretty much obscured the neighborhood on the other side of the street at the edge of the park, but a sudden eddy pushed the fog aside, and I saw a familiar structure rising out of the surrounding rooftops—the spire of St. Benedict’s Church on Forty-ninth Street.

I’d assumed that Renata had been trying to get back to that alley where she’d stashed her bike, and cycle from there back to Mary’s place. Then she’d wait a day or so and take a bus to the neighborhood where her car was parked so she could drive it somewhere closer to home.

The proximity of St. Benedict’s, though, raised an entirely different possibility. If her head was
really
turned off, wasn’t it possible that the term “sanctuary” had something to do with that beeline she’d laid down in the grass? Had she been running to reach the church from the moment she’d come out of the lake?

More to the point, though, did the concept of sanctuary still have any legal validity? Could Father O just slam the church door shut and tell the cops to buzz off? I didn’t
think
he could, but a lot of strange things from the Middle Ages are still kicking around in the legal system.

I tensed up when Renata stepped out from behind that tree and hurried across Fiftieth Street. There weren’t any cars in sight, so she made it to the shadows on the other side before anybody came along to spot her.

“What the hell?” I muttered. Then I crossed the street as well. By the time I got to the other side, Renata was a half block down Stone Way, headed toward Forty-ninth Street. When she got to that corner, she went off to her right. That nailed it down: She
was
headed toward the church.

I hurried along and reached that corner in about two minutes. I didn’t want to lose her now. She was still in plain sight, walking directly toward the church.

It was only two blocks, and it didn’t take her long to get there. She started up the front stairs to the church door, and I gave a vast sigh of relief. Wonder of wonders, I’d guessed right for a change.

Father O had left the church door unlocked, as he’d told me he always did, and Renata opened it and went inside.

Now what the hell was I going to do? I definitely didn’t want to go barging into that church right behind her.

Then the church door opened, and Father O’Donnell stuck his head out. “Hello?” he called, sounding baffled. I guess the motion sensor in the vestibule had told him that he had a visitor, but evidently he hadn’t spotted Renata.

“It’s me, Father O’Donnell,” I called to him.

“Mark? Is that you?”

“Right,” I replied. “Renata just went inside your church.”

“I didn’t see anybody.”

I went up the steps and joined him. “We’ve got big trouble, Father,” I told him.

“Come inside,” he told me.

“Let’s hold off a minute. I’d better fill you in. Renata definitely went inside, but she’s having one of her episodes. I’ve been following her for the last couple of hours, and we don’t want to get too close to her right now. She’s dangerous.”

“
Renata?
Be serious, Mark.”

“I am, Father O’Donnell—dead serious. I hate to say this, but Renata’s the serial killer who’s been butchering guys all over the Puget Sound area since last fall.”

“Renata?”
His voice sounded incredulous.

“I choked on it myself, but she just took out another one. The cops are probably right behind me, so I’d better keep this short. Renata might
seem
to be recovering, but every so often, she goes psychotic. I don’t think she realizes what’s happening, but when she flips out, she goes hunting, like some avenging angel. I can’t prove it, but I
think
the guy she just took out was the one she’s been after since last September—the guy who murdered her sister.”

“Good for her!”

“Father O’Donnell,” I said in a pained voice, “she doesn’t need a rooting section. We’ve
got
to get her off the streets. If her load shifts just a little bit more, she’ll start killing anything wearing pants—you, me, the postman—anybody!”

“Maybe I
was
being a little . . .” He left it hanging. “What do you think we ought to do?”

“The best thing would probably be to take her back to Doc Fallon’s bughouse. He might have to keep her doped up, but she’ll be safe. If the cops get her, they won’t know what’s going on, and she’ll probably spend the rest of her life screaming. I’m not
about
to let that happen.”

“Amen,” he agreed. “Let’s go back inside and see if we can find her.”

“Right—but be careful. As far as I know, she’s still got that knife. Maybe you’d better lock this door behind us. We don’t want her slipping out again. The cops are wound up pretty tight, and they might start shooting if they happen to come across her.”

“Good idea,” he agreed.

We went into the vestibule, and Father O locked the heavy door behind us. “Let’s go down to the altar,” he whispered. “Maybe if we try talking to her, we can persuade her to come out.”

“It’s worth a try, I suppose,” I agreed. “Wrestling her to the ground wouldn’t be a very good idea.”

The two of us went quietly through the dimly lighted church. I think we were both pretty well spooked. I know
I
was.

“Maybe
you
should try to talk to her,” Father O suggested.

I was about to agree, when I heard a lisping sound coming from one of the alcoves off to my right. “Hold it,” I whispered to Father O. “She’s right over there.”

We both listened intently—not that it did us any good. I recognized the sibilant hissing of the twins’ private language. If Renata was talking to herself in twin-speak, she was obviously completely out of it.

I cautiously moved a little closer, trying to spot her in that shadowy alcove where the statue of Saint Benedict stood with one hand raised in blessing.

Then the headlights from a passing car briefly flickered through the stained-glass windows on the other side of the church.

I almost lost it right there. In that momentary flicker I could swear that I saw
two
figures in that alcove.

Father O’Donnell drew in a sharp breath. “Holy Mother of God!” he choked.

We moved slowly closer to the alcove, and I could see the two figures more clearly now. They were identical in every detail, except that one figure had wet hair and the other didn’t. I don’t think they realized that Father O’Donnell and I were there; they probably didn’t even realize where they were. They were speaking urgently to each other, the lisping words tumbling out in half whispers. One voice seemed anguished, but the other was triumphant.

Then the anguished figure began to weep, and the other one embraced her as if to comfort her.

And then, even as Father O’Donnell and I stood staring in stunned disbelief, they merged, and what had been two became one, and the sibilance of twin-speak died to be replaced by the song I’d heard earlier on that particular night.

The lights from another car flickered inside the church, washing the walls with color from the stained-glass windows, and Father O’Donnell and I could clearly see Renata for a moment. She’d sunk down onto the floor in that alcove with vacant eyes and an untroubled face, and she was singing softly to herself under the watchful eyes of the statue of Saint Benedict.

FOURTH MOVEMENT

AGNUS DEI

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

Father O’Donnell and I stood staring at Renata in stunned and speechless disbelief. “I’d better get a blanket to wrap her in,” the father said quietly after several minutes. “She’s soaking wet, and she just came in out of the cold.”

That brought me to my senses. “What do you think, Father O?” I asked him. “Should we call an ambulance and get her to a hospital?”

“It might be best, Mark,” he said seriously. “She’s suffering from exposure, and it’s dreadful cold out there tonight.”

“Tell me about it.”

“How did she get all wet like that?”

“She dunked herself in Green Lake to wash off the blood. Then she saw all the lights, so she swam down to the beach on the north end of Woodland Park—about a quarter of a mile. If she’s got hypothermia, we’d better get her to a hospital. I can take her to Lake Stevens
after
she recovers.”

“I’ll get that blanket, and then I’ll call an ambulance.” He hurried back toward the rectory.

The ambulance arrived about ten minutes later from the University of Washington Medical Center, the closest hospital to St. Benedict’s. The ambulance guys said I could ride along. Somebody was going to have to fill out all the paperwork, and my car was still over on Green Lake Way.

“I’ll keep you posted, Father,” I promised as I followed the stretcher out to the ambulance. Father O watched us go from the doorway of the church, his expression grave.

The driver hit the flashing lights and the siren, even though there wasn’t very much traffic, and it didn’t take long to reach the medical center down on campus. Renata was shaking violently now, and moaning that song she’d picked up from her favorite tape. I held her hand, but I don’t think she was even aware of it.

After we got her inside the emergency room I was short-stopped by the lady who needed certain information to fill out a whole stack of papers. I tried to cooperate, but I wasn’t in the mood to answer a lot of questions. I finally cut across them. “She’s got some serious mental problems,” I said by way of explanation. “She seemed to think it was a nice night for a swim.”

“In
February
?” the lady said incredulously.

“Like I said, she’s disturbed. Her dad’s stinking rich, so don’t worry about who’s going to pay the bills.”

“Could you give me his name, address, and phone number.”

“I’ll go you one better. Hand me your phone and I’ll call him. He can give you all the details himself.”

Les sounded groggy when he answered the phone—it
was
after two in the morning. “Renata’s flipped out again, boss,” I told him. “She fell in the lake in Woodland Park and wound up at St. Benedict’s Church. I’ve got her here at the university medical center, and the lady who’s filling out the admission forms needs some information. I’ll keep you posted on how she’s doing just as soon as I find out how serious this is.” I handed the phone to the admissions lady and went back to the desk to ask for an update.

I didn’t get too many specific answers, so I sat in the waiting room for about half an hour until the doctor came out. He was fairly young—probably a second-year intern—but he seemed to know what he was doing. “We’re treating Miss Greenleaf for hypothermia, Mr. Austin,” he told me. “We have to be careful, because if we rush things, the patient can go into shock.”

“We wouldn’t want to add that to her other problems,” I agreed.

He hesitated for a few seconds, then he came right out with it. “Since it’s come up anyway, is Miss Greenleaf suffering from some sort of mental condition? She’s moaning and babbling incoherently.”

“She’s a psycho, Doc,” I told him bluntly. “She graduated from an asylum last year, but she still flips out every so often. We all thought she was on the road to recovery, but it looks like we were wrong. Patch her up as best you can, and I’ll take her home to that private sanitarium.”

“It’s
that
bad?” He looked startled.

“That only
begins
to describe how bad it is, Doc. Watch yourself when you’re close to her. She could be dangerous.”

“Maybe we should move her to the psychiatric ward after she gets out of intensive care,” he suggested.

“I didn’t realize that there
was
a psycho ward here,” I said.

“We
are
a large hospital, Mr. Austin, not just a clinic to patch up students who get drunk and fall downstairs. We’re a teaching hospital, and med students need to be exposed to just about every medical condition that comes down the pike.”

“I should have realized that,” I admitted. “One of my housemates is a medical student. She doesn’t talk much about what goes on in med school, though—probably because we’ve asked her not to. A clinical description of an autopsy doesn’t go down very well at the supper table.”

“You’re a student, then?”

I nodded. “English. We dissect poems, though, not people.”

He smiled faintly. “I’ll caution the staff about Miss Greenleaf,” he assured me.

I called Father O to give him an update—such as it was—and he suggested that I try getting in touch with Mary. I rooted around in my wallet until I found the slip of paper with the cop-shop phone number she’d given me. It took me a while to get connected to her, but I kept waving “family emergency” around until whoever was on the other end of the line gave up and patched me through to her.

“You’re not supposed to call me at work, Mark,” she scolded.

“We’ve got a serious problem, Mary. Twinkie flipped out again. She was wandering around up near Woodland Park, and she fell in the lake. She’s got a fairly serious case of hypothermia. I’m at the University of Washington Medical Center, and they’re treating her right now. You’d better come by here when you get off work.”

“Did you get in touch with Les?”

“Yeah, I called him as soon as we got her here.”

“How did you find out about it?”

Oops—I realized I’d have to be careful here. There was a distinct possibility that this call was being monitored—and recorded. “She homed in on St. Benedict’s Church, and Father O gave me a quick call,” I replied. I didn’t want to get
too
much more specific.

“I’ll come by as soon as I get off work,” she promised.

I hung up the phone and went back to the waiting room. I hadn’t really blown anything so far. If I played this right, I might still be able to keep Twink in the clear. OK, Fergusson was dead, and it’d been Twink who’d taken him out. Big deal. The way I saw it, my job was to get Twink safely back to Doc Fallon
before
the cops caught up with her. It’d take some fancy footwork and a fair amount of just plain lying, but if I could keep things low-key, the cops might not make the connection, and I could still get her out of town. When she’d given me the slip and hacked Fergusson to pieces, I’d thought that everything had gone out the window, but now I began to hope that I
still
might be able to pull this off.

I dozed off in the waiting room until about seven. Then I called the boardinghouse.

“Yes?” It was Erika.

“It’s me, babe—Mark. I’m at the emergency room at the University Medical Center. Renata flipped out last night, and she fell in the water somehow, and then wandered around in Woodland Park. Then she got herself to St. Benedict’s, and Father O called an ambulance.”

“Hypothermia?”

“That’s what they tell me. As soon as I’m sure that she’s going to be OK, I’ll come on home.”

“You don’t sound very good, Mark.”

“I’m running on short sleep, Erika. It’s all I can do to keep my eyes open right now. I could definitely use a cup or six of your coffee.”

“Try the hospital cafeteria. The coffee’s sort of rancid, but it’s got a pretty good kick to it.”

“I’ll give it a shot. Pass the word, OK?”

“Got it covered.”

I hung up the phone and went down the hall to the men’s room. I was washing my hands, and then I suddenly froze, staring at my reflection in the mirror. There was a blood smear on the front of my jacket. I’d obviously flopped down a little too close to Fergusson’s body back there in the park, and I’d been parading around in public flaunting something I really didn’t want anybody to see. I tried to wash it off, but I don’t think I got all of it. I finally gave up, and I carried my coat back to the waiting room instead of wearing it.

I should have guessed that the girls at the boardinghouse wouldn’t just let it lie, but I
was
a little foggy upstairs by then. It only took Erika and Sylvia about three-quarters of an hour to join me at the hospital. “You two stay here,” Erika told Sylvia and me. “I’m going to find out what’s
really
going on.”

“You look awful, Mark,” Sylvia said.

“You should see it from in here.”

“What really happened last night?”

“Damned if I know. Renata showed up at St. Benedict’s dripping water and sprouting icicles. She was babbling in twin-speak and shivering hard enough to start an earthquake. Father O got hold of me, and then he called an ambulance.”

“I thought you were out on the town last night. How did he know how to get in touch?”

Don’t try to tell lies when you’re groggy. You’ll mess up every time. “I was just coming in,” I replied—a little too quickly. “I heard the phone ringing, and it was Father O. The call was for me, so I didn’t wake anybody.”

Sylvia gave me a skeptical look. I don’t think
anybody
would have bought that one.

Then Erika came back, and she looked
very
concerned. “Renata was apparently coming down with a cold,” she told us. “This hypothermia seems to have kicked it across the line. She’s running a high fever, and my best guess is full-bore pneumonia.”

“Oh, dear!” Sylvia exclaimed. “Is it serious?”

“It’s no joke, that’s for certain,” Erika told her, “but if you ever decide to come down with pneumonia, do it in a hospital. The staff here is right on top of it. I’ll stay and keep an eye on things. Sitting around wringing your hands won’t accomplish very much, so you two might as well get out of here. Take Mark back home and put him to bed, Sylvia. He looks like he’s just about ready to fall apart.”

Sylvia drove me back to the boardinghouse, and I went upstairs to the boys’ bathroom. I scrubbed down the front of that jacket and carefully checked the rest of my clothes for any other bloodstains. I didn’t see any, but I decided not to take any chances. I went to my room and stuffed all the clothes I’d been wearing into a large plastic bag. I could take a quick trip to a laundromat after things quieted down. Right now I was too groggy to think clearly, so I crashed. I doubt I’ve ever been that tired in my whole life.

I’d been almost sure that I’d sleep the clock around, but I woke up at one that afternoon. I was still pretty tired, but I was too worried about Renata to fall asleep again. I got up, put on clean clothes, and grabbed a different jacket.

Charlie’s door was open, so I fed him the same story I’d dropped on Sylvia. I must have been getting better at it, because he didn’t look
nearly
as skeptical as Sylvia had. “Can you run me back to the hospital?” I asked him. “My car’s still where I left it when I rode down to the hospital in the ambulance.”

“Sure,” he agreed. “No problem.”

Mary was in the waiting room when we got there. “I called Les,” she told us. “I thought he ought to know that Ren’s got pneumonia. He and Inga should be here before long.”

“Is she getting any better?” I asked.

“They’ve got her in intensive care, Mark. Does that answer your question?”

It was about three-thirty when Bob West showed up. He glanced around the waiting room to make sure there weren’t any strangers there. “What the hell’s going on, Mark?” he demanded in a quiet voice that seemed pretty strained. “The hospital staff put in a call. They inventoried that purse the Greenleaf girl had strapped around her waist, and there was a hypodermic needle in the damn thing. They did a routine check for heroin or cocaine, but they found traces of curare instead, for Christ’s sake!”

That’s when I realized that I’d blown it. I’d been so stunned by what’d happened in the church that I’d forgotten that plastic purse. My scheme to keep my mouth shut and hustle Twink back out to Fallon’s sanitarium without letting anybody know what’d
really
happened fell apart at that point.

“Curare?” Mary exclaimed. “That’s impossible!”

“They tested it three times, Mary,” Bob told her. “We’d put out an alert that anybody in any health-care facility who came across curare was supposed to call us immediately because of the connection of curare with the Slasher murders. What the hell was that girl doing with a hypo filled with curare?”

“What else was in the purse?” I asked him, hoping against hope that Twink had thrown her linoleum knife away.

“Lots of real interesting stuff, Mark,” he replied sarcastically. “There were a couple of strings of rosary beads—one red and one blue. There was a driver’s license that belonged to a girl named Regina Greenleaf—even though the picture shows that girl who’s in intensive care right now, and her name’s Renata, isn’t it? That was about all we found—except for a linoleum knife with traces of blood on it. They’re doing a DNA check, but I think we all know whose blood it is, don’t we? You’d better come clean, Mark, and do it right now. It was just sheer dumb luck that
I
picked up the phone when the hospital called. If it’d been Burpee, half the Seattle Police Department would be here right now—along with three or four SWAT teams.”

I knew that he’d stay right on top of me until I gave him what he wanted, but there was something I needed to know first. “How crazy does somebody have to be to pull off the insanity defense?” I asked him.

“Pretty far gone—particularly in a case that’s gotten as much publicity as this one has. With that curare and the knife, the prosecutor’s going to have an open-and-shut case. He’ll fight an insanity plea all the way to the wall.”

“What the hell is this all about?” Charlie demanded.

“Grow up, kid,” Bob told him. “That Greenleaf girl is Joan the Ripper.”

“But she’s just a baby!” Charlie protested.